Midan of Anglesey

The Holy Priest Midan (Nidan) of Llanidan in Anglesey

Priest · d. c. 610

Midan — Nidan in the Welsh record, Idan in one manuscript — is a priest of Anglesey, patron of the church of Llanidan on the Menai shore of the island. The mediaeval Welsh genealogies of the saints make him a great-grandson of Urien Rheged and periglawr (priest-confessor) of the monastery of Penmon; the Welsh calendars keep his feast on September 30, the day on which the Antiochian GB&I calendar commemorates him; Orthodox England transmits his repose as c. 610. A Scottish tradition attaches him to Kentigern and to a foundation at Midmar in Aberdeenshire. His relics were kept at Llanidan, where a mediaeval stone reliquary containing bones, found under the altar about 1700, survives.

The record of Midan is a genealogical line, a dedication, a calendar entry, and the physical remains of his cultus at Llanidan; it permits no biography, and what follows is the whole of it.

The Welsh genealogies of the saints (Bonedd y Saint, in Peniarth MS 45 and Hafod MS 16; Cardiff MS 5 gives the name as Idan) make Nidan the son of Gwrfyw ab Pasgen ab Urien Rheged — a great-grandson of the famous sixth-century king of Rheged — and periglawr, that is priest-confessor, to the monastery of Penmon at the eastern tip of Anglesey. He is the patron and, by the tradition Baring-Gould and Fisher report, the founder of the church of Llanidan, which bears his name, on the Anglesey shore of the Menai Strait near Brynsiencyn. Nothing whatever is transmitted of his deeds or his death; Orthodox England's notice — "A saint on Anglesey in Wales" — gives his repose as c. 610, a date for which no early source is cited.

A Scottish tradition, reported by Forbes and Skene and relayed by Baring-Gould and Fisher, says that Nidan went north with Kentigern as one of the monks who accompanied him from Llanelwy (St Asaph), and made a foundation at Midmar in Aberdeenshire, in a cluster of Celtic dedications that includes Kentigern's own at Glengairn; the genealogy makes his father Gwrfyw a first cousin of Kentigern. On this tradition rests his entry in the Martyrology of Aberdeen, which commemorates him on November 3.

At Llanidan the marks of his cultus were long preserved, as Baring-Gould and Fisher describe them: in the roofed portion of the old church is kept a small stone reliquary with a coved lid, of about the fourteenth century, discovered about the year 1700 some two feet beneath the altar — where it had probably been hidden at the Reformation — still containing pieces of bone, its front open so the relics could be seen; the south porch holds a holy-water stoup that replenishes itself perpetually, a phenomenon locally accounted miraculous; and in the parish are his holy well, Ffynnon Idan, near Plas Llanidan, and the sites called Cadair Idan ("Idan's seat," where he is locally supposed to have lived) and Hendre Idan.

Feast and commemoration

September 30 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 13). The witness for this commemoration in the Antiochian GB&I layer is the St Constantine York calendar, whose line for this day reads "St. Midan of Anglesey (610)." The Welsh calendars in Peniarth MSS 186, 187 and 219, the British Library Additional MS 14,882, and the Welsh Prymers of 1618 and 1633 all give September 30, as does Orthodox England; the Martyrology of Aberdeen enters him on November 3, the day of his Scottish cult (all as reported by Baring-Gould and Fisher). He does not appear on the OCA's September 30 page (checked live 2026-07-29). No proper service is known; the common of the type applies (see references/common-readings.md).

Iconography

No image of Midan is known to this entry — no mediaeval representation, no attribute, no Orthodox icon was found in the sources consulted. The surviving physical witness of his cultus is the stone reliquary at Llanidan, an object rather than an image. He is listed in the the list of icons still being sought index with no current leads.

Disputed questions

Chronology. The traditions are not easily reconciled: the pedigree makes him a great-grandson of Urien Rheged (fl. later sixth century), while the Scottish tradition attaches him to Kentigern's Llanelwy community, and Orthodox England places his repose as early as c. 610. No early source dates him; the c. 610 of the calendar line is retained here as the witness's datum.
The patron of Llanidan. Llanidan has sometimes been assigned to Aidan — whether Aidan of Lindisfarne (whose feast is August 31) or the Irish Aidan/Maidoc of Ferns — because of the similarity of name and the September 30 wake; Baring-Gould and Fisher call this attribution "a mistake," the church being Nidan's. He is accordingly not to be confused with Aidan of Lindisfarne, a different saint of a different nation and century.
The form of the name. The Welsh record knows the saint as Nidan (Idan in Cardiff MS 5 — the initial n is unstable in Welsh names, as Baring-Gould and Fisher note); Midan is the form transmitted by Orthodox England ("Midan (Nidan)") and the York calendar, and is kept here as the name under which the witness commemorates him.