SAMSON

St. Samson was a sixth-century contemporary of Arthur. His father was a Demetian landowner and also an altrix, a companion of the king, who was at that time probably Agricola (See Aircol).

The idea that Samson should attend Dltud’s monastic school at Llantwit Major in Glamorgan, next to a ruined Roman villa, came from “a learned master in the far north,” probably Maucennus, Abbot of Whithorn, who is known to have visited Demetia at the right time. Samson was duly sent to St. Iltud’s. Illtud was responsible for educating many boys from aristocratic families, from the age of five until they were 16 or 17. He had great influence, in that he turned out men of the caliber and importance of St. Samson, Paul Aurelian, Gildas, Leonorus, St. David, and Maelgwn, King of Gwynedd.

By the age of 15 Samson was already very learned and at an unusually young age was ordained priest and deacon by Bishop Dubricius. This aroused the jealousy of Illtud’s nephews, who feared that he might succeed as the school’s head when Iltud retired and so deprive them of their inheritance. Perhaps because of this ill-feeling, Samson gained a transfer to another of Illtud’s monasteries, newly set up by Piro on Caldey Island, where his great scholarship and austerity astonished the Caldey monks.

He did not stay long at Caldey He “longed for the desert,” and was really more suited to the life of a hermit than the monastic life. He lived for a time in an abandoned fort on the Severn River, and then in a cave at Stackpole. He was guided by visions and his inner voices directed him to cross to the monastery of Landocco, founded by Docco at St. Kew in Trigg in Cornwall. This was the earliest monastery we know of in Cornwall; it was already old when Samson arrived there. Docco, a nickname of Kyngar, had been born in about 410, when the Romans were still in Britain. But the abbot at Landocco, luniavus, did not want Samson there. He told him plainly, “Your request to stay with us is not convenient, for you are better than us; you might condemn us, and we might properly feel condemned by your superior merit. You had better go to Europe.”

When St. Petroc landed in Trigg, he found Samson living, not surprisingly, in a cell beside the Camel estuary. After some dispute, Petroc forced him to leave. Samson was stupefied by his rejection in Cornwall.

Before he left St. Kew he had a revealing encounter with a crowd of non-Christians at Trigg. He came upon the crowd, subjects of a Count Gwedian celebrating pagan rites at a standing stone. Samson dispersed the crowd and carved a cross on the stone with his pocket knife, an ad hoc example of the Christianization of pagan monoliths that was very common in Brittany.

He made his way across Cornwall to “the Southern Sea,” visiting Castle Dore, the power base of one of the Cornish sub-kings, Mark Conomorus. In 547, he sailed to Brittany, where he became bishop of the kingdom of Jonas of Dumnonie, based at Dol. Samson’s journey southward was repeated by a steady flow of Irish-inspired missionaries.

In 557, he is recorded as attending a church council in Paris. He seems to have died of old age in 563.

The oldest surviving Life of Samson dates from about 600, but it is based on a contemporary original written by Samson’s cousin Enoch, who is known to have gone to the trouble of interviewing Samson’s mother for details about his childhood.

So, what is written about St. Samson is rather more reliable than the stories we have about some other saints.