Pyr (Pŷr ; sometimes known as Piro in English) was a Welsh

abbot Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the head of an independent monastery for men in various Western Christian traditions. The name is derived from ''abba'', the Aramaic form of the Hebrew ''ab'', and means "father". The female equivale ...

of the 6th century who may later have been revered as a

saint In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

by some (though he was never canonised). Most of what is known of him comes from the First Life of St. Samson. He has been described in one handbook as being "an unsuitable abbot and...one of those

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

'saints' who would never have been canonized by any formal process".,Farmer, David Hugh. ''The Oxford Dictionary of Saints''
5th rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011, p. 446 but there seems no evidence that he was ever considered as a saint by anybody. Little is known about him apart from the fact that he was the abbot of the monastery on

Caldey Island Caldey Island (Welsh language, Welsh:''Ynys Bŷr'') is a small island near Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, less than off the coast. With a recorded history going back over 1,500 years, it is one of the holy islands of Britain. A number of trad ...

( Welsh ''Ynys Bŷr'' "Pŷr's Island"). According to Gerald of Wales, "Pyrrus" was also the owner of the island, and of a castle in Wales.Gerald of Wales, Journey through Wales, book 1, chapter 12
Online here
Pyr is said to have become so drunk one night that on the way back to his cell he fell into a

well A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

. He died soon after being pulled out. He was replaced as abbot by

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

, who resigned in disgust when he found that the young monks had become ungovernable due to the laxity of Pyr's rule.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pyr, Saint Welsh abbots Medieval Welsh saints 6th-century Christian saints Well-related accidents and incidents 6th-century Christian abbots