360 COE.OTSH DEDICATIONS. 



Where Athelstan placed these refugees we are not told, some 

 probably in the north, for when some years later they returned 

 to their own land, they brought with them the cult of certain 

 East Anglian, Kent, and Yorkshire Saints. 



In 926 Athelstan defeated Howel, the King of Cornwall, 

 and after that went through the peninsula to the Land's End, 

 and even to Scilly. It is probable that he then planted colonies 

 of Breton refugees in Cornwall, as men attached to, and dependent 

 on, himself, in the midst of a resentful defeated population. 



There exists a letter from Agnan, archbishop, and Eudbod, 

 provost of Dol, about this time, to Athelstan (924) complaining 

 that they were living away from Dol, and entreating him to 

 provide for them.§ 



In 931 the Bretons rose in revolt. They had been abandoned 

 by their clergy and their nobles. On S. Michael's day, 935, they 

 massacred their Norman masters. John, Abbot of Landevenec, 

 then living at Montreuil, headed the rising. Alan Barbetorte 

 returned from England with a body of men supplied to him by 

 Athelstan. In 936 he was at Dol, and after a series of engage- 

 ments drove the Northmen to Plourivo, north-east of 8. Brieuc, 

 surrounded and exterminated them. 



Elodoard says, "in the year 937, after long exile from 

 Brittany, the Bretons returned to their homes .... and recovered 

 possession of their lands." In 939 the Normans were finally 

 expelled from Rennes. 



Consequently the fugitives were out of their own land only 

 about twenty years. That all returned is improbable. They had 

 received grants of lands, and had built churches, and contracted 

 marriages in Britain. It is due to this settlement that the cult 

 of such saints as S. Moran, S. Corentine, and S. Meriadoc, took 

 root in Cornwall, and that the cult of S. Augustine of Canterbury, 

 S. Mellitus of London, and S. John of Beverley, were introduced 

 into Brittany on the return of the fugitives. 



The day of S. Moran or Moderan in the Rennes Breviary of 

 1627, and at Berzetto in Parma, where his body is still preserved, 

 is October 22. In the Calendar of the Abbey of S. Melanius 



? Migne, Patriol. Lat. Tota. 179, col. 1 105-6. 



