Brittany

BRITTANY. - Historical region of France, corresponding to the peninsula of the same name (250 km long, at most 170 wide), which breaks away from the continental mass between the English Channel and the Atlantic.

The territory (approx. 30,000 sq km) consists of a peneplain, resulting from the demolition of a very ancient relief (Armorican massif), in which two anticlinal belts can be recognized, whose axis corresponds to the direction of the two northern and southern coasts, which enclose a syncline, partly occupied by depressions (basins of Châteaulin and of Rennes). This tectonic pattern still dominates the life of the country, opposing a maritime zone, or Armor, to an inland one, or Argoat; the former with a relatively prosperous economy and a dense population, the latter with a modest agricultural activity and a sparser population. The interior is largely occupied by moors of heather and rushes, by peat bogs and by thin woodlands; the best areas, cultivated, yield poor cereals (rye and sorghum) and, on the meadows, a fair amount of livestock raising (cattle). The coast, on the other hand, combines intense maritime activity (fishing drives the Breton sailor as far as the banks of Newfoundland) with forms of specialized agriculture (early vegetables and fruit), which, favored by the temperate-humid climate of the country, are stimulated by the proximity of consumer markets (England, Brest, Paris).

The peninsular character of B., its eccentric situation and the social conditions deriving from the local economy have favored the preservation of the original Celtic type, which has remained substantially resistant, in the interior, to French influence, as is proved, besides by the strength of tradition (customs, religious feeling and practices), by the persistence of the language, Breton, still spoken by over a million people, and which has nothing in common with the French dialects.

The population, which was 2,400,000 inhabitants in 1931, fell (1946) to 2,300,000 (a decrease of 3.1% in fifteen years), whereas in the past it tended to offset, with a high birth rate, the active migratory flow. Of the urban centers only Rennes exceeds, and only slightly, 100,000 inhabitants. Brest (79,000 inhabitants) is the largest naval arsenal of western France.

B. is divided into four departments: Ille-et-Vilaine (capital Rennes), Côtes-du-Nord (St. Brieuc with 37,000 inhabitants), Finistère (Quimper, 20,000 inhabitants) and Morbihan (Vannes, 28,000 inhabitants), in which the population is distributed, more than 98% Catholic.

Giuseppe Caraci

EVANGELIZATION OF BRITTANY

Armorica, the extreme north-western offshoot of Gaul, after the Roman conquest (57 B.C.) sheltered among its dense forests the last resistances of the druidic religion. Christianity struggled greatly to gain a foothold there. Until Martin of Tours (d. 397) we have no reliable information about the existence in Brittany of a true and proper Christian community. The martyrdom of the two young Christians Donatian and Rogatian at Nantes (cf. Martyr. Romanum, p. 264) attests at most the presence of a few Christians. Local traditions, not yet fully established, would give Nantes a bishop, Clarus, already in the middle of the 4th century. In any case it was Martin of Tours (372-97), metropolitan of the whole Lugdunensis III, of which Armorica was the northern part, who began its regular evangelization. It cannot, however, be said whether he reserved for himself directly the government of those Christian communities or gave them bishops of their own. The fact is that at the arrival of the Bretons there already existed in Armorica the three Gallo-Roman bishoprics of Nantes, Rennes and Vannes. Paganism nevertheless continued to predominate over the very sparse population, especially after the devastations of the Alans and the Saxons between 406 and 416. Christianity triumphed definitively when, around the middle of the 5th century, the Bretons began to swarm from neighboring Great Britain into Armorica, by whose force, having gradually become more numerous, the peninsula soon changed its name and language. Some group was led by its own bishop, and a Minsuetus, bishop of the Bretons, already appears at the Council of Tours of 461 alongside his Gallo-Roman colleagues; others were led by priests and monks; but their whole organization gathered around the monasteries. There were in fact no dioceses with precise boundaries; rather the bishops governed the faithful from their monasteries as in Great Britain and Ireland; Irish influences were indeed not lacking in those first centuries of organization, and the monastic element remained predominant. We find Breton bishops regularly at Alet, Tréguier, Quimper, Léon (St-Pol-de-Léon), St-Brieuc, Dol, St-Malo, alongside their Gallo-Roman colleagues. The whole territory continued to depend on the metropolitan see of Tours, but a movement of separation became gradually more powerful from the 8th century onward, because of political conflicts with the Carolingian sovereigns. There was even a moment when Dol attempted to arrogate metropolitan authority to itself. A good part of the legislation of the False Decretals was in fact directed at regulating the religious relations of the region.

Ireneo Daniele