Breage - Identity

Identity

Since the traditions about Breage that have come down are late, the veracity of the details are doubted. The hagiography is replete with stock elements: her association with other locally venerated saints as companions, her conflict with a heathen tyrant, and her establishment as a hermit in a remote part of the parish that was later named for her. Her Irish origin is suspect, as in this period in Cornwall it was common to attribute a fabricated Irish connection to obscure saints. In Breage's case it may have been suggested by the similarity between her name and the Campus Breace in the Life of Brigid.

As such the traditions surrounding Breage appear to be later legend attached to a figure whose true history had been lost. There was a saint with a similar name active in the area during the Early Middle Ages, Brioc, whose feast day was May 1, the same day given for Breage by William Worcester. Brioc was male, but it is not uncommon for the gender of poorly remembered saints to have been switched over the years. In Britanny there was also a Saint Briac, who gave his name to a number of places in the region. However, all medieval mentions of Breage regard her as female, complicating an identification with similarly named male saints.

Later brief accounts of Breage, mostly adapted from Leland, appear in the works of Alban Butler and Sabine Baring-Gould.