St Germans Priory Church, St Germans

A fitting start to the Cornish Celtic Way, which runs for 125 miles along Cornwall to St Michael’s Mount, this church was once the cathedral of the county.

Highlights

• Shrine of St Germanus
• Former cathedral of Cornwall

The fledgling years of British Christianity are best remembered here at St Germans, a little town on Cornwall’s south coast. Its church is a cavernous Norman building, once the site of a Saxon cathedral.

This grand church also housed the relics of St Germanus, a bishop from Auxerre in France. Traces of his former shrine can still be seen. He was one of the earliest European missionaries to visit England, during the mystery-shrouded years of the 5th century when the country has almost no recorded history.

St Germanus’ relics were placed in a shrine chapel, now the Lady Chapel at the far end of the south aisle, on the right as you walk down the nave. A stone canopy over the former shrine can still be seen built into the wall, a bracket-shaped design known as an ogee arch. The hexagonal plinth beneath would have displayed his reliquary.

The church ceased being a cathedral 1,000 years ago, when the bishop’s seat moved to Crediton in 1042 to join with Devon. It then lost its saint’s relics 500 years ago at the Reformation. But it was once an important monastery, and is today the largest parish church in Cornwall. Its western doorway is a noted masterpiece of Norman carving, layers of zigzag arches eroded beyond antiquity.

The Venerable Bede talks of St Germanus’ two missions to England at time when the country’s faith was at its lowest ebb. Besieged by pagan Saxons from the sea and Picts from the north, the church was also rent by an argument about original sin, known as the Pelagian controversy.

St Germanus brought hope to this troubled situation, convening a council to put an end to the church’s theological problems. He also brought relics of the apostles and early martyrs, and took away some earth from the shrine of St Alban. St Germanus died in 448 and was buried in Auxerre (Bede’s History i.18–21).

We don’t know whether the saint ever visited Cornwall, though the parish website claims he founded the church during his first trip to England in 429. There is a 9th-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library of a Mass for St Germanus, with margin notes written in Cornish. It seems to confirm an early link between the saint and Cornwall. A relic of the saint and a piece of his burial shroud were brought here in 1358 from Auxerre, but the church probably had a shrine to him before then.

The first recorded church was built under King Athelstan. It became a cathedral in 926 when the king appointed Conan, a Cornishman, as its first bishop. This act brought Cornwall into the Saxon ecclesiastical structure, dimming Celtic tradition in south-west England.

An old painted panel in the church refers to ‘St Patroc’ as one of its bishops, which is a puzzle. St Petroc was an abbot, who served at Padstow and Bodmin hundreds of years before St Germans became a cathedral – wishful thinking perhaps.

The disparity between the epic scale of this parish church and the small village it now serves is striking. Upkeep of this majestic building has recently passed to a trust run by local people, the Celtic tradition of independent community spirit shining through.

Directions

St Germans of Auxerre Church, Church Street, St Germans PL12 5NP

‍www.stgermansparishes.com

‍www.stgermanspriory.info

W3W: funky.until.alive

GPS: 50.3966N 4.3098W

St Germans railway station 350m Directions: The church is by the main road into town, the B3249. It is down the side of a steep hill, so not quite as obvious as its massive structure would be otherwise. It is kept open for visitors, donations gratefully received.