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The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in South Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. G. Bowen
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Extract

A Considerable literature has grown up in an attempt to interpret the Lives of the Celtic Saints. It is, however, concerned almost exclusively with hagiological, textual and literary problems and very little attempt has been made to appreciate the part played by these pioneers in determining the pattern of settlement and culture reflected in the earliest written accounts of native Welsh society.

If we accept the view held by most students of the Celtic church that ancient churches and chapels now bearing the names of Celtic Saints owe their foundation in the first instance to the fact that the saint in question, or one of his immediate followers, actually visited the site and established thereon a small religious community which became the forerunner of the modern church, then, by plotting on a map all the churches known to be, or to have been, dedicated to a particular saint, we possess at once a readily available means of studying both the extent of a saint's influence—the distribution of his cult—and, at the same time, the relationship of his churches to relief and to other elements in the physical and cultural environment. This approach has, in addition, the further advantage of allowing the investigator to be independent of the entirely unsatisfactory material preserved in the Lives of the various saints, the vast majority of which were written in the 12th century, several hundreds of years after the events they purport to describe, by Norman monks eager to re-orientate local legends to their own particular theological and ecclesiastical prejudices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 19 , Issue 76 , December 1945 , pp. 175 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1945

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References

1 E. G. Bowen, ‘The Travels of the Celtic Saints’, ANTIQUITY, March 1944, p. 16 ff.

2 ibid. p. 17.

3 A. Williams, ‘Excavations at the Knave Promontory Fort, Rhossili, Glamorgan’. Arch. Camb., 1939, p. 219.

4 See ANTIQUITY, 1933, VII, 281–2, Map VIII.

5 V. E. Nash-Williams, Arch. Camb., 1933, p. 237 and 1939, p. 42, also R. E. M. Wheeler’s ‘Report on site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire‘, 1921.

6 O. G. S. Crawford, ‘Western Seaways’ in Custom is King, 1936, and E. G. Bowen ‘The Travels of St. Samson of Dol’, Aberystwyth Studies, vol. XIII, 1934.

7 H. Williams, Christianity in Early Britain, 1912, p. 354.

* For the sake of convenience and general reference the century in which a saint mentioned in this paper is traditionally supposed to have flourished is placed in brackets after the name when it is first mentioned in the text.

8 Canon G. H. Doble in a recent study of the Life of S. Dubricius ‘Welsh Saints’ series no. 2 (1943), describes him as ‘one of the chief figures in the creation of Christian Wales’, p. 35.

9 G. H. Doble, St. Cadoc in Cornwall and Brittany, 1937, p. 15 if.

10 Sir John Rhys. ‘Gleanings in the Italian Field of Celtic Epigraphy’. Proc. Brit. Acad., VI, p. 315.

11 It is worth noting that Illtud’s monastery at Llantwit was located within sight of the ruins of a Roman villa in South Glamorgan.

12 Royal Comm. Ane. Monts., VII. County of Pembroke, 1925, no. 782.

13 Lady A. Fox. ‘The Siting of some inscribed stones of the Dark Ages in Glamorgan and Breconshire, Arch. Camb., 1939, XCIV, pt. 1, p. 39.

14 Sir C. Fox. The Personality of Britain. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. 3rd edition 1938, p. 10. Note also that this trans-peninsular route is clearly marked on Map vin in this paper showing the distribution of the Ogam inscribed stones.

15 Gildas (Cymrod. Record series no. 3), pp. 160–1.

16 The Anc. Mont. Commission (Wales), vol. V, no. 429, gives the parish church of Llangadog Carmarthenshire, as dedicated to S. David, and S. Baring Gould and Fisher, Lives of the British Saints, vol. II, p. 316, give the dedication as S. David with S. Cadoc. This would appear to be an interesting example of an original Cadoc foundation (situated on the western fringes of the cult) being taken over by the devotees of the later saint.