Talk:Goulven of Léon

Miraculous Spring

I am not sure about the sentence in the first paragraph of the Biography section “The spring (the Feunteun Sant Goulven), now near the saint’s church, still cures people miraculously.” It seems a bit weird for the miraculous cures to be stated as a fact rather than as something some people believe, but I cannot read the source and am a bit wary of re-writing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biskitty (talk • contribs) 02:33, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

• Tweaked. Drmies (talk) 22:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Goulven of Léon/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Whiteguru (talk · contribs) 01:40, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Starts GA Review; the review will follow the same sections of the Article. --Whiteguru (talk) 01:40, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

 

---

Observations

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

• Prose, Spelling and Grammar are excellent.

1. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

• Infobox: where is this feast day obtained from? Feria for Saint?
• Infobox: where is this translation feast obtained from?
• Biography section relies on one source.

1. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

• Insufficient attention is given to the Cult of Saints (role of cult in ecclesiology, Creeds, etc) Consider the elements of the cult: Church militant, Church Penitent, Church triumphant: all saints day celebrates Church Triumphant. You may also wish to consider evaluation of cults today: demotion of cult of saints (St Christopher, Cultus Marialis, Paul VI, )
• Pre St Francis nativity elements (Child, no room at inn, cleansing of child, miracle) elements needs some consideration
• Three square Bells: is this related to the evolution of Bells in Liturgy, Paraliturgy?
• Bells - what is the significance of square bells? Are these of agrarian origin, usage?
• Cult of relics, commentary of Pope Gregory I on the cult of relics, function of relics - current purposes - usage in altar stones
• The matter of anchorites or hermits raised to Bishop is very rare, if unknown.
• List of Ancien Régime dioceses of France it is noted that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Quimper does not mention this bishop.(est 6th century)

1. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

2. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

• This article came to life on 23 August 2018
• The article has had 119 edits from 20 editors
• The article has received 138 page views in the last 90 days.
• No evidence of edit wars observed.

1. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

• 063 Plougastel Chapelle Saint-Guénolé Tryptique Panneau de saint Goulven.JPG = Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

1. Overall:

• The focus appears to be on Breton historiography, and not on the fact that this was a saint of the 6-7th century Christian Church, the cult of saints, the cult of relics. Criticism of sources and hagiography appears to be the basic purpose of the article.
• That said, the section textual history of the vita; problems and inconsistencies raises valid criticisms and compare/contrast facts with the hagiography: one side of the diocese to the other and where the saint lived vis-a-vis burial and veneration.
• Some balance might be considered. --Whiteguru (talk) 21:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

• Whiteguru, thank you for the comprehensive review. I added a source (the old Sabine Baring-Gould) for the feast day and had to trim some information (the octave, the translation) since they couldn't be sourced reliable: that kind of information is always surprisingly difficult to properly verify, and I don't want to stick in a bunch of Catholic websites whose authority is often questionable. Anyway, the meat of the matter is elsewhere, in your comments on liturgy, the cult of the saints, relics, bells, etc. Let me try to address these in a concise manner.

  The bells are easy: there is nothing more to be said on these. I don't mean this in a dismissive way, but what's cited in the sources is pretty much all there is--the scholarship here is pretty comprehensive. The sources simply don't comment on them, neither the old (hagiographic/semi-historic) ones nor the new (critical, historiographic) ones.

  The biography section indeed relies pretty much on one source, the oldest one available--and that's really because that's the only one, as explained in the "Textual" section. So there isn't really much to cite: there are no critical editions of the vita that can have a set of different texts from which to compile an authoritative one, or make comparisons. And obviously there is no material that's historical in the modern sense of the word.

  The relics are addressed in the text: there aren't many left, except for the pieces noted in 1889. Scholars of the cult of saints know that the whole relic business is fraught with difficulty to begin with, and it is very rare that we have a set of remains with what one might call an uninterrupted chain of custody for those early saints. I can't find Patrick Geary's Furta Sacra on my bookshelf right now, but it lays out pretty clearly why this is so. Bottom line is, for most early saints there just isn't enough solid information; we're pretty sure about Saint Boniface's remains, but he's an exception.

  That leads me to the cult of the saints: I'm not quite sure what you are looking for. Discussing those cults over the course of a couple of centuries, or a millennium and a half, is well outside the scope of this article, nor is there any direct sourcing that discusses this saint in relation to the larger topics--except for what's already in here, about places and names and such. There simply is no more. For some saints (see Mark_the_Evangelist#Relics_of_Saint_Mark, where the real miracle is that Geary isn't cited) there are interesting things to say, that touch upon the cult of the saints, but for this guy there just isn't.

  And to that I'd add that other articles on saints don't stray from the specifics of their subject either--Oda of Canterbury, Clement of Alexandria, Saint Walstan are all GAs and this article conforms very closely to the focus and structure of those articles. And it's similar with placing this article on this saint in the larger tradition of the Christian Church, whether of the 6-7th century or later: saints, until well into the second millennium, were typically "local", and while they were frequently recorded in church documents and lists, they were celebrated, for the most part, only in the localities they were associated with--so you find this saint in Brittany and Cornwall, but nowhere else, so for the Christian church as a whole he's really meaningless, except as generalized evidence of the ongoing concern of God with the world. So I also don't really see how Paul VI comes in, for instance.

  Yes, the list of bishops of Quimper doesn't mention him, but that can't be helped. We do not have the record. In this case, the vita says he was a bishop, and that's all we have to go on, which is why I've tried to be careful in the phrasing--"According to that vita, he was the bishop of ..." And yes, it may have been rare for a hermit to become bishop, but there again, all we have is the vita, and no other historical sources--or modern commentary on the rarity of that fact. I hope you will take these comments into consideration; thank you in advance. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Drmies An interesting discussion, and definitely pleased we can agree on most matters, including Geary, whom I had to read a while back. Paul VI was the one who dropped St Christopher and many other non-historical (cult) saints. Once upon a time dioceses were were able to erect their own saints (as still happens in the Orthodox Church) and Rome took over, thank you Luther and Indulgences. I see where you are coming from, just as much as mine is an ecclesiastical focus that does not have many sources, as we agree. Thank you. --Whiteguru (talk) 23:59, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

 

 Passed

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.