Gildas – also known as Gildas Badonicus, Gildas fab Caw and Gildas Sapiens – was a 6th-century British monk best known for his religious polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, which recounts the history of the Britons before and during the coming of the Saxons. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during the sub-Roman period, and was renowned for his Biblical knowledge and literary style. In his later life, he emigrated to Brittany, where he founded a monastery known as Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys.

January 29

• Welsh historians
• bell founders

450–500

570 (traditional)

Canonized

1

Q352995

29