Gwyddfarch was a hermit and founder of a Celtic abbey at Meifod in Wales.St. Gwyddfarch, Hermit of Moel yr Ancr, Wales.
He was a son of Amalarus"Montgomeryshire Churches Survey", Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust and disciple of Saint Llywelyn at Welshpool. About 550 AD he founded a monasterySaint Tysilio and St marys Church. at Meifod. This establishment became the mother church of several other monasteries and was a centre of the order for over one thousand years, and within a generation the monastery had become a centre of pilgrimage.
Gwyddfarch taught Tysilio,Elizabeth Rees, Celtic Sites and Their Saints: A Guidebook (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2003), p. 121. who replaced him as abbot.Llandysilio - St. Tysilio's Church, Anglesey History
Legend holds that near the end of his life Tysilio talked the aging abbot out of a pilgrimage to Rome. Baring-Gould, Sabine. A Book of North Wales (Library of Alexandria, 2016) He died about the year 610.Baring-Gould, Sabine and Fisher, John. The Lives of the British Saints, vol. III, London, The Honorable Society of Cymmrodorian, 1911, p. 220
He is commemorated on 3 November.St. Gwyddfarch, Hermit of Moel yr Ancr, Wales.
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