ABSTRACT
Situated approximately twenty-two kilometres from Vannes and thirty-two from Ploërmel in Brittany, northern France, is the parish of Saint-Jean-Brévelay, which has adopted John of Beverley as its patron. There is no indication as to when this name was first affixed to the town, but one can say with certainty that a settlement existed there long before John was born, for it is known from the presence of menhirs and dolmens in the vicinity that the area was inhabited by the Celts in ancient times. Exactly when people crossed over the English Channel from the British Isles and settled in the Armorican peninsula is a matter of some dispute, with some scholars believing the emigration to have taken place before the Romans arrived in the area, and others believing it to have occurred when the Romans were already there, but with their consent. 1 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the migrations took place, and by the second half of the sixth century Armorica had come to be known as Britannia. 2
