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Saints This Month – 4 June: St. Petroc

Saints This Month – 4 June: St. Petroc

In the year 2003 the fine county of Devon decided that it needed a flag. Spurred on by the high visibility of the Cornish flag. the Cross of St. Piran, a poll was held on the BBC Devon website to decide on a county standard. The winning design “the cross of St. Petroc” is surprising for many reasons but what is most strange is St. Petroc’s patronage of the county.

He was the son of a Welsh warlord, who was sent to Ireland to be educated at a very young age in 510AD. He became a monk in Ireland and it is thought that he was one of the the teachers of St. Kevin. He was sent as part of a mission to Cornwall where he established two monasteries at Padstow and Bodmin. After thirty year amongst the Cornish he went on pilgrimage to Rome via Brittany.

On his return trip to Cornwall he passed through Devon and reached the town of Newtone (now Newton Saint Petroc). Legend tells of how it began to rain on his arrival. Petroc predicted it would soon stop, but it rained for three days. As a self imposed penance for presuming to predict God’s weather, Petroc returned to Rome, then to Jerusalem, then to India where he lived for seven years on an island in the Indian Ocean. He then returned to Cornwall and died in Bodmin. Despite the little time he spent in Devon dedications to him are numerous, about seventeen compared to Cornwall’s five.

What is also interesting is use of such a Christian symbol in the supposedly secular twenty-first century. The people of Devon has chosen a flag that acknowledges that the foundation of European society is Christianity. It acknowledges that what united the warring tribes of the south-west into peaceful union was Christianity. What should inspire all Christians is that the effects of Petroc’s preaching and witness in Devon, which lasted only a few months, still echo nearly 1,500 years later. Truly this is an example of the Parable of the Mustard Seed realised.


Mark Davoren