Beuno

The medieval cult of Beuno appears to have been centred on Clynnog Fawr on the northern coast of the Llŷn Peninsular, but was also present in other areas including around Holywell, where he was associated with Winefride (Gwenfrewy), and in Powys at Berriew.

Feast Day: 21 April

All Welsh calendars give the feast day for Beuno as 21 April, although Wilson's Martyrologie gives 14 January.

More information

Texts

A fourteenth-century Welsh Life of Beuno survives, which was based on an earlier lost Latin Life. A late medieval cywydd in praise of Beuno was composed by an unknown poet.

Images

A few surviving medieval images might depict Beuno, although the absence of inscriptions or defining iconography makes them tentative identifications. They include a mitred saint in stained glass at the Church of St Beuno, Penmorfa, and two figures at Shrewsbury Abbey, one on a former shrine or reredos, and one from an open-air pulpit.

Beuno is also probably present among the scenes on the ceiling boss of the late fifteenth-century well chamber at Holywell. He was probably also depicted in wall paintings of the Life of Winefride in the well chapel over the well, now lost, but still visible in the late eighteenth century, and the remains of scenes from the lives of both Beuno and Winefride are known to have survived in the east window of Clynnog Fawr until the early nineteenth century.

The earliest nineteenth century imagery of Beuno in Wales is probably in the windows of the chapel at the Jesuit College at Tremeirchion, made by William Wailes in 1852. Beuno, as patron of the college, is shown alongside Peter as one of the six main standing figures in the apse windows of the chapel, and a scene in one of the side windows shows Beuno placing the head of Winefride back onto her body.

Later figures of Beuno in Welsh churches include a figure, paired with Winefride, on the reredos of the Church of St Beuno, Berriew, and a figure in stained glass holding Cyff Beuno (Beuno's chest), still extant at Clynnog Fawr, at Bangor Cathedral.

Beuno was occasionally depicted in stained glass windows in churches throughout the twentieth century, such as the scenes showing the raising of Winefride at the Cathedral Church of St David, Cardiff, and in an outer light of the east window of the Church of St David, Nefyn, where he is depicted with the cormorant who recovered the sermons that he dropped on his journey from Clynnog Fawr to Aberffraw. A recent window of 1994 in a newly-created chapel at St Winefride's Well depicts Beuno taking his leave from Winefride.

View images of Beuno on the Stained Glass in Wales website