Founder of the Abbey of Redon and counsellor to Nominoë, he embodies the Breton Church of the ninth century, between faith and the building of a kingdom.
There is no kingdom without a Church to accompany it. At Nominoë's side stood a monk whose spiritual work counted as much as the battles: Conwoïon.
The founder of Redon
Around 832, Conwoïon founded the Abbey of Redon, on the border of the Breton and Nantes countries. This monastery would become one of the great religious and intellectual centres of early medieval Brittany — and its famous cartulary remains one of the major sources for our knowledge of that age.
The prince's counsellor
Conwoïon was a close associate of Nominoë. It was at the urging of the abbot of Redon that the prince undertook, from 845, to reorganise the Church of Brittany and to detach the Breton bishoprics from the authority of Tours. Faith and politics met in a single design: to give Brittany its autonomy, even in the spiritual sphere.
A regional memory
Died in 868, Conwoïon was honoured as a saint. His Abbey of Redon shone over the whole region, at the margins of the Pays de Retz. Through him, the Christian fervour of the early Breton Middle Ages comes to touch the horizon of Briord.