Lives Of The Saints
April 15
St. Padarn
Quick answer
At a glance
- What it is
- Padarn comes through as an early Welsh bishop remembered more through tradition than through secure biography.
- Feast
- April 15
- Source
- Butler's Lives of the Saints, Volume II (April-May-June), April 15, St Padarn, or Patern, Bishop in Ceredigion, Christian Classics 1990, pp. 98-99. Read the source standards.
Saint Padarn, modern devotional icon
Brief life
Padarn is exactly the sort of saint for whom historical honesty has to be part of devotion. The surviving life mixes more than one Paternus and carries a fair amount of legend, so no serious account can pretend to offer a smooth modern biography. Yet something real still remains visible.
Padarn is remembered as a missionary bishop associated with Llanbadarn and with the difficult early work of giving Christian form to a Welsh region whose history is otherwise shadowy. The life is valuable not because every detail is solid, but because it preserves a genuine ecclesial memory: preaching, founding, and pastoral labor tied to a place that remained important for centuries. Here more than usual, sober outline serves the saint better than false certainty.
Historical note
This life uses St. Padarn because Butler gives him the principal fuller life on the date, while also warning that the surviving story is confused and unreliable in parts.
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