Cyngar (Cyngarus)


Unidentified Saint, late fifteenth century, Church of St Mary, Beaumaris
Cyngar was the patron of the church at Llangefni on Anglesey and at Hope in Flintshire, and the subject of a Latin Life.

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Feast Day: 7 November

The feast day of Cyngar is usually given as 7 November. Browne Willis gives 7 March at Llangefni, which Baring-Gould and Fisher put down to an error. At St Kewe in Cornwall, where Cyngar is patron, the feast day is on 25 July.

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Texts

A Latin Life of Cyngar was written by John of Tynemouth. He is also associated with Cybi in the Latin Lives of Cybi, where he is described both as a kinsman of Cybi and an old man, and also one of Cybi's ten disciples.

Vita Sancti Kebii

One of two medieval Lives of Cybi found in the British Library Cotton manuscript Vespasian A. xiv.

Vita Sancti Kebii

One of two medieval Lives of Cybi found in the British Library Cotton manuscript Vespasian A. xiv.

Places

The strongest associations with Cyngar appear to be on Anglesey, where he is the patron of Llangefni, and he has been linked with Cybi at Holyhead. He is the patron of the church at Hope in Flintshire, where the town has an early, but seemingly unique, attestation as Llangyngar in 1373. Two church dedications to Dochdwy in Glamorgan may also be part of the same cult. It has been suggested that a chapel once existed on Ynys Gyngar, near Porthmadog, but there is little evidence for a chapel at the site.

Further places related to Cyngar are found at Congresbury and Badgworth in Somerset, and St Kewe and Lanivet Cornwall. There is a Saint-Congard in Brittany.

  Church
Dedication
  Well   Placename Landscape
feature
 Modern Text

1. Church of St Cyngar, Hope , Flintshire (Dedication) Details
2. Church of St Cyngar, Llangefni , Anglesey (Dedication) Details
6. Ffynnon Gyngar, Hope , Flintshire (Well) Details

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Further reading

S. Baring-Gould and John Fisher The Lives of the British Saints (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1908), 248–53    View online

David Farmer The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 101

Elissa Henken Traditions of the Welsh Saints (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987), 185–6

Hywel David Emanuel 'Cyngar, saint (fl. 6th century)' in Dictionary of Welsh Biography (1959)    View online

Images

No images of Cyngar have so far been identified. A nineteenth-century image of a mitred saint in stained glass at Llandough (near Cardiff) probably represents the patron of the church.