St. Gwen
Feastday: October 18
Death: 5th century
Image of St. Gwen
Widowed martyr sometimes called Blanche, Wenn, or Candida. She was the daughter of a Chieftain, Brychan or Brecknock. Saxon pagans martyred Gwen at Talgrarth.
Gwen Teirbron (French: Blanche; Latin: Alba Trimammis or Candida; possibly English: Wite) was a Breton holy woman and wife of Fragan who supposedly lived in the 5th or 6th century. Her epithet is Welsh for '(of the) three breasts'.
Veneration
Popular devotion interpreted Gwen's unusual physical and spiritual fecundity by God's gift to her of a third breast. Her iconography followed suit. Gwen is invoked for women's fertility. She is commemorated on 3 October in the Catholic Church (although this has been transferred from Saint Candidus of Rome), and on 18 July (NS) by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Australia.[1]
Possible identification
She is interpreted by Dyfed Lloyd Evans as having been a euhemerized mother goddess
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