Gildas the Albanian

Gildas was the son of Caunus, king of some southern provinces in North Britain. His father was killed in war by king Arthur.[1] According to Alban Butler (1798),

St Gildas improved temporal afflictions into the greatest spiritual advantages, and, despising a false and treacherous world, aspired with his whole heart to an heavenly kingdom. Having engaged himself in a monastic state, he retired with St Cado, abbot of Llan-carvan into certain desert islands, from whence they were drove by pirates from the Orcades. Two islands called Ronech and Ecni afforded him for some time an happy retreat, which he forsook to preach to sinners the obligation of doing penance, and to invite all men to the happy state of divine love. After discharging this apostolical function for several years, he retired to the South-West part of Britain into the abbey of Glastenbury, where he died and was buried in 512. William of Malmesbury and John Fordun mention his prophecies and miracles.[2]

Butler notes that Mr. Gale has cleared up the dispute about the two Gildases and demonstrated this to have been a distinct person from Saint Gildas the Wise, which is also proved by Dom Lobineau and Dom Morice.[1] According to Robert Chambers in Chambers Book of Days (1883),

Many writers have tried to solve the difficulty by supposing that there were two or several saints of the name of Gildas, whose histories have been mixed up together. They give to one the title of Gildas Badonicus, or the Historian, because, in the tracts attributed to him, he says that he was born in the year when King Arthur defeated the Saxons in the battle of Mount Badon, in Somersetshire; the other they call Gildas the Albanian or Scot, supposing that he was the one who was born at Alcluyd. The first has also been called Gildas the Wise... Altogether, the legend of St. Gildas is one of the most mysterious and controvertible in the whole Roman Calendar, and its only real interest arises from the circumstance of the existence of a book written in this island, and claiming so great an antiquity.[3]