When Noménoé, in the ninth century, reduced to something like a
regular organisation this half savage society of emigrants and created
the Duchy of Brittany by annexing to the territory in which the
Breton tongue was spoken, the Marches of Brittany, established by the
Carlovingians to hold in respect the forayers of the west, he found it
advisable to assimilate its religious organisation to that of the rest
of the world. He determined, therefore, that there should be bishops
on the northern coast, as there were at Rennes, Nantes, and Vannes,
and he accordingly converted into bishoprics the monasteries of St.
Pol de Léon, Tréguier, St. Brieuc, St. Malo, and Dol. He would
have liked to have had an archbishop as well and so form a separate
ecclesiastical province, but, despite the well-intentioned devices
employed to prove that St. Samson had been a metropolitan prelate, the
grades of the Church universal were already apportioned, and the new
bishoprics were perforce compelled to attach themselves to the nearest
Gallo-Roman province at Tours.
The meaning of these obscure beginnings gradually faded away, and from
the name of _Pabu Tual, Papa Tual_, found, as was reported, upon some
old stained-glass windows, it was inferred that St. Tudwal had been
Pope. The explanation seemed a very simple one, for St. Tudwal, it was
well known, had been to Rome, and he was so holy a man that what could
be more natural than that the cardinals, when they became acquainted
with him, should have selected him for the vacant See. Such things
were always happening, and the godly persons of Tréguier were
very proud of the pontifical reign of their patron saint. The more
reasonable ecclesiastics, however, admitted that it was no easy matter
to discover among the list, of popes the pontiff who previous to his
election was known as Tudwal.
In course of time a small town grew up around the bishop's palace,
but the lay town, dependent entirely upon the Church, increased very
slowly. The port failed to acquire any importance, and no wealthy
trading class came into existence. A very fine cathedral was built
towards the close of the thirteenth century, and from the beginning
of the seventeenth the monasteries became so numerous that they formed
whole streets to themselves. The bishop's palace, a handsome building
of the seventeenth century, and a few canons' residences were the only
houses inhabited by people of civilized habits. In the lower part of
the town, at the end of the High Street, which was flanked by several
turreted buildings, were a few inns for the accommodation of the
sailors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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