Tanguy of Brittany

Son of a lord of Léon, he was serving at Childebert's court when a letter warned him that his sister Haude, left at the manor, was behaving badly — a slander of their stepmother, tradition says. Returning, he found her at prayer and beheaded her with a sword-stroke without a word. The legend says Haude rose, took up her head and walked back to the manor, where she forgave her brother before dying; she lies at Kersaint, in Landunvez. Tanguy went and threw himself at the feet of Paul Aurelian, bishop of Léon, who gave him for penance not death but a foundation: to build a monastery at the land's end. He raised the abbey of Saint-Mathieu, on the point of that name, facing the ocean, and lived there as a monk until his death. The account is legendary throughout; the monastery, however, existed, and its ruins still stand above the sea.