28 July - Saint Samson de Dol is one of the seven founding saints of Brittany. He is said to have been born in the region of present-day Glamorgan (South-West Wales). Amon and Anna, his parents, had waited a long time to have a child.
To consecrate him to God, they sent him to the monastery of Llaniltud Fawr, now Llantwit Major (near Cardiff). There he was a pupil of Saint Ildut who also left his name in Lanildut (north-west of Brest) and would have been a fellow student of Pol Aurelien. According to later traditions, Samson would have been noted for his ability to command destructive harvest birds. He converted his parents to monastic life and became head of the monastery of Ynys Bŷr' (now 'Abbey of Caldey') following the accidental death of Abbot Piron. After a stay in Ireland, he was consecrated bishop by Saint Dubrice and emigrated to Cornwall where he settled in Golant, in a cave from which he had driven a snake.
He then crossed the English Channel in the direction of mainland Brittany where he first settled in Plougasnou in a small hamlet still named Saint-Samson, not far from which he founded the monastery of Lanmeur; then he settled in Dol (today Dol-de-Bretagne in Ille-et-Vilaine). He then became involved in a political crisis between the Frankish king Childebert I (511-558) and the Breton chieftain Judual, whom he helped to restore his rights to the Domnonée. The donation by King Merovingian of the monastery of Pentale (Saint-Samson-de-la-Roque) completed the establishment by Samson, on both sides of the Channel, of a monastic network controlled by his family.
The tomb of Saint Samson is in the cathedral of the same name in Dol-de-Bretagne. Saint Samson gave his name to Saint-Samson-sur-Rance, near Dinan, and a hamlet of Plougasnou bears his name, as does the chapel there. A chapel bears his name in Landunvez (Finistère) as well as in Pleumeur-Bodou (Côtes d'Armor). His cult spread outside Brittany, notably in Jersey and Guernsey (Saint-Samson), as well as in Normandy, in Saint-Samson-sur-Risle (Saint-Samson-de-la-Roque), in the current department of Eure. The church of the village of La Roche-Guyon (Val-d'Oise) is dedicated to him; a local legend says that he took a wife there before becoming a monk. He was canonized for having delivered a possessed woman from the devil. The church of the town of Clermont and that of the village of Saint-Samson-la-Poterie (Oise) are dedicated to him. The Bretons fleeing the Vikings imported the cult of this saint; his relics were deposited in 930 in the monastery of Saint-Symphorien d'Orléans, which became an abbey and then the priory of Saint-Samson.
