St. Decuman

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

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August 27 · Hermit, Martyr

St. Decuman

St. Decuman

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

August 27
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

August 27 (also listed: February 27)
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Hermit
Martyr

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Keep their day. Remember them on August 27 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Wilson in his Anglican Martyrology, Wyon, Ferrarius and Castellanus, and the Bollandists. Authority: — A legend in Capgrave.J Degeman, in Latin Decumanus, was born of noble parents in the south-west of Wales. He is said to have thrown a faggot of rushes into the waters of the Severn Sea, and to have floated across upon them to the neighbourhood of Dunster, in Somersetshire. There he settled, living on the milk of a cow, clearing away the brambles, and making himself a wattled hut. A robber cut off his head. The story goes that the body then rose up, and, carrying the head in its hands to a fountain at which Decuman was wont to drink, washed it in the limpid spring. The date of his death is fixed at 706, but not with certainty.

Feast days

Feast: August 27

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Decuman's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on August 27
St. Poemen

St. Poemen

August 27 · Hermit
M

St. Maelrubha

August 27 · Martyr
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

Image: Killag Church SE 2010 09 27.jpg · Andreas F. Borchert · CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

Image: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.