– c. 550 AD)[1] was an early 6th century British Christian abbot-bishop who founded Saint Padarn's Church in[2] Ceredigion, Wales.

His early vita is one of five insular and two Breton saints' lives that mention King Arthur independently of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

According to the Vita Sancti Paterni, Padarn is Armorican by race, born to "Petran, his father, and Guean, his mother".

[6] After Padarn returned to Llanbadarn Fawr, Maelgwn Gwynedd tried to cheat him out of property belonging to the monastery.

Two of Maelgwn's evil heralds were undone by the trial by ordeal of boiling water; scalded and defeated, "Their souls in raven-forms fly to the riverbed, which unto this day by the name of one of them is called, to wit, Graban.

In the most celebrated episode, King Arthur tries to steal Padarn's tunic and subsequently becomes Christian.

But the episode was probably meant to increase Padarn's prestige and credibility as a saint by being granted credit for "Christianizing" the semi-historical leader who allegedly defeated the Anglo-Saxons with the help of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in the battle of Mount Badon according to the 9th century ad monk Nennius.

He immediately acknowledging his guilt begins to praise both God and Padarn, until, while he begs forgiveness, the earth delivered him up.

By tradition, it is said that he was born in Poitiers, became a monk at the Abbey of Saint-Jouin de Marnes [fr] in France, and retreated with his fellow monk, Saint Scubilion, to the forest of Scissy [fr] in the diocese of Coutances before the Bishop of Coutances made him a priest in 512.