| ST. ELINED |
| Feast: August 1
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| Virgin and martyr, flourished c.
490. According to Bishop Challoner (Britannia Saneta, London, 1745. II, 59), she
was a daughter of Bragan (Brychan), a British prince, after whom the present
province of Brecknock is named, and her memory was kept in Wales. Giraldus
Cambrensis, in his "Itinerarium Cambr." (I, c. ii), the chief
authority for Elined, speaks of the many churches throughout Wales named after
the children of Bragan, and especially of one on the top of a hill, in the
region of Brecknock, not far from the castle of Aberhodni, which is called the
church of St. Almedha, "who, rejecting the marriage of an earthly prince,
and espousing herself to the eternal King, consummated her course by a
triumphant martyrdom". Her feast was celebrated 1 August, on which day
throngs of pilgrims visited the church, and many miracles were wrought. William
of Worcester says that she was buried at Usk. The church mentioned by Giraldus
was called, says Rees, Slweh chapel. The Bollandists (1 August) express
themselves satisfied with the evidence of her cultus. This saint is the Luned of
the "Mabinogion" (Lady Guest, I, 113-14, II, 164) and the Lynette of
Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette". She is also supposed to be identical
with the Enid of the "Mabinogion" and Tennyson's "Idylls".
G. E. Phillips From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright © 1913 by the Encyclopedia Press,
Inc. Electronic version copyright © 1996 by New Advent, Inc. |
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