Eikon

Lythan

The Holy Lythan of Llwyneliddon in Glamorgan

Righteous

Commemorated 1 September — Feast kept at St Lythan's in the Vale of Glamorgan

Lythan (in the older Welsh form Elyddon) is a saint of south Wales known entirely from a church dedication: the church of St Lythan's — Llwyneliddon — a few miles south-west of Cardiff in the Vale of Glamorgan, is recorded in the Book of Llandaff as Ecclesia Sancti Lythano. No life, no date, no pedigree and no other act of his is transmitted anywhere. The Welsh antiquarian record gives September 1 as the feast kept at his church, and on that day the calendar of the Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland commemorates him. The poverty of the record is the record: a name on a church, and a feast day.

Nothing of Lythan's life is transmitted. What survives is the documentary trail of his church, and it is set out here in full because it is the whole of the evidence.

The Book of Llandaff (the twelfth-century Liber Landavensis) records a grant to the church of Llandaff by Meurig son of Athrwys, king of Morgannwg, made during the episcopate of Bishop Oudoceus (Euddogwy), of the place whose name appears in the charter material as Elidon — the boundary clauses mention Hen Lotre Elidon and Luin Elidon, the latter surviving into modern times as the parish-name Llwyn Elyddon, today Llwyneliddon or St Lythans. In the same book the church is called Ecclesia Sancti Lythano (or Lithano); the Taxatio of 1254 and that of 1291 repeat the form (the latter misprinting it Lychano), and the parish's Elizabethan paten of 1577 is inscribed "Saincte Lithvans." The dedication-name, in other words, is consistently attested from the mediaeval records onward; the man behind it is not. Baring-Gould and Fisher, who assembled this evidence, conclude flatly: "Of Elyddon or Lythan we know nothing" — adding only the conjecture (theirs alone, and flagged as such) that he probably lived a century or more later than Lupus of Troyes, i.e. in the sixth century or after.

The mention of Lupus is not idle, for the church has a rival identification. The parish was also known as Llanfleiddian Fach ("little Llanfleiddian"), to distinguish it from Llanfleiddian Fawr (Llanblethian) near Cowbridge, and both churches have customarily been regarded as foundations of Bleiddian — the name being taken as the Welsh rendering of Lupus of Troyes, the Gaulish bishop who accompanied Germanus of Auxerre to Britain against the Pelagians in 429. The Church in Wales today lists the St Lythans church under the dedication "St Bleiddian." Baring-Gould and Fisher argued against this: the early forms of both parish names, in their analysis, involve not Bleiddian but Elyddon/Elidan, so that "neither church can be dedicated to S. Bleiddian"; on this reading the true patron is the otherwise unknown Lythan, and the Lupus dedication is a later re-interpretation. The question — obscure local saint or re-named Gaulish bishop — remains genuinely open, and this entry records it rather than resolving it (see Disputed questions).

Fr Andrew Phillips's Orthodox England list — the named upstream of the calendar that is this entry's witness — carries him as "Lythan (Llythaothaw)," a saint in Wales "to whom two churches are dedicated," the second church presumably being Llanblethian, whose sixteenth-century name-forms (Llan-Liddan, -Leiddan, -Elidan) show the same name, though that church is now dedicated to St John the Baptist.

For his feast, Browne Willis (early eighteenth century) gives September 1 as the day kept at St Lythan's. Baring-Gould and Fisher caution that September 1 is also the festival of Lupus, archbishop of Sens (†623) — a third Lupus to complicate the dedication question — so that even the feast day may be borrowed. September 1 is nonetheless the day the parish kept, and the day on which the Orthodox calendar of the British Isles commemorates him.

Feast and commemoration

September 1 (church date; New Calendar civil September 1, Old Calendar civil September 14). The witness for the commemoration is the calendar of the Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland (St Constantine York feed), whose GB&I layer for this day reads "St. Lythan. St. Silin (6th C)." Independent corroboration of the day: Orthodox England lists him on September 1, and Browne Willis records September 1 as the feast at St Lythan's — with Baring-Gould and Fisher's caveat that this is also the day of Lupus of Sens. He appears on no Greek, Slavonic or North American Orthodox calendar consulted (the OCA's September 1 page, checked live, does not carry him). No proper service exists; where he is commemorated liturgically the common of the type would be used.

Iconography

No iconography of Lythan exists or is described in any source consulted — no mediaeval image, no attribute, no Orthodox icon. The church at St Lythans (largely twelfth–thirteenth century, restored in the nineteenth) preserves no image of its patron. He is listed in the the list of icons still being sought index with no current leads.

Disputed questions

  • Lythan or Bleiddian? The modern Church in Wales dedication of the St Lythans church is to St Bleiddian (Lupus of Troyes); the mediaeval forms (Ecclesia Sancti Lythano, Llwyn Elyddon) point, per Baring-Gould and Fisher's analysis, to a distinct saint Lythan/Elyddon of whom nothing else is known. This entry follows the calendar witness in treating Lythan as a saint in his own right, and records the rival identification without resolving it.
  • No date. No date of any kind is transmitted for the man. Baring-Gould and Fisher alone conjecture a sixth-century-or-later floruit; this entry therefore omits the century field and indexes under the unknown century.
  • Classification. No source records Lythan's state of life — bishop, monk, hermit and layman are all equally unattested. Baring-Gould and Fisher style him "Confessor" in the Western technical sense (a non-martyr), which does not correspond to this collection's confessor term. He is classed here under righteous as the term of least claim; the classification is a placeholder, not a datum.

Sources

  1. St Constantine York, Calendar of Saints and Readings (ICS feed), retrieved 2026-07-29 — September 1, GB&I layer: "St. Lythan."
  2. Orthodox England (Fr Andrew Phillips), "The Latin Saints of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome," letter L, consulted via the Wayback Machine 2026-07-29 — "Lythan (Llythaothaw), Sept 1: a saint in Wales to whom two churches are dedicated."
  3. S. Baring-Gould and J. Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints, vol. iii (1911), pp. 365–366 ("S. Lythan, Confessor") — the Book of Llandaff grant and church-name forms, the Taxatio entries, the 1577 paten, the Llanfleiddian Fach/Fawr and Bleiddian discussion, Browne Willis's September 1 feast, and the verdict "of Elyddon or Lythan we know nothing." The sixth-century-or-later floruit is Baring-Gould and Fisher's conjecture alone.
  4. Book of Llandaff (Liber Landavensis), pp. 31, 90, 157–158, as cited in source 3 — the grant of Elidon and the form Ecclesia Sancti Lythano.
  5. Church in Wales, church records ("St Bleiddian, St Lythans"), consulted live 2026-07-29 — the modern rival dedication.
  6. OCA, Lives of the Saints for September 1, consulted live 2026-07-29 — Lythan absent (negative corroboration, recorded per the pass's witness rule).