The cult of saints in the early Welsh March: aspects of cultural transmission in a time of political conflict John Reuben Davies In 1911, Professor J.E. Lloyd summed up the ecclesiastical consequences of Norman conquest and settlement in Welsh territories; his readership was informed of the ‘The subjugation of the Welsh Church’.1 This phase of Welsh ecclesiastical history, for Lloyd, could be summed up in the fortunes of church dedications to native Welsh saints:2 The last mark of subjection … touched the realm of sentiment merely and yet was none the less keenly felt by a people so imaginative as the Welsh. This was the rededication of churches bearing the names of Welsh founders unknown to the Christian world at large, to saints of wider reputation, commemorated throughout the length and breadth of Christendom … it was the substitution of the modern and the civilised for the antique and the grotesque. But in the eyes of the Welshman, it was the displacement of the ancient presiding genius of the place; the new patron … 1 John Edward Lloyd, A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest, 2 vols (London, 1911), ii, pp. 447–61. Sir John Edward Lloyd (1861–1947) was professor of History at the University College of North Wales, Bangor (now known as Bangor University), from 1899 until his retirement in 1930; see R.R. Davies, ‘Lloyd, Sir John Edward (1861–1947)’, in Oxford dictionary of national biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 61 vols (Oxford, 2004) [ODNB]. 2 Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, pp. 458–9.  John Reuben DAVIES was not, like the old, rooted in the soil and endeared by a thousand happy memories … In general … the effect was … to uproot many ancient ecclesiastical landmarks, which told of the heroic days, lying far back in the past, of the Church now fallen into weakness and bonds. Lloyd wrote in this way of the sentimentality of his medieval forebears, it seems, without any sense of irony. Eight decades after Lloyd’s History was first published, R.R. Davies, in his own landmark work, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, devoted one of the most substantial chapters to ‘Church and Religion in an Age of Change’.3 Davies’s analysis took its lead from Lloyd, although his stylish prose was less emotive. On the question of Normans and the dedications of churches in Wales, he said what follows.4 Towards the native church the Normans showed scant respect … its patrons were a motley crowd of unfamiliar ‘saints’ sporting outlandish names … The Welsh saints were treated … cavalierly … Some were entirely demoted, to be replaced by patrons drawn from the international calendar … Elsewhere, the native saints were too firmly established and their cults too profitable for such unceremonious demotion; even so, the merits of a local saint might be supplemented by those of an international colleague … Most remarkable was the way in which St David was pushed into second place by St Andrew at the cathedral church of Dewi himself … just as St Peter naturally took precedence over St Teilo at Llandaf. 3 R.R. Davies, Conquest, co-existence, and change: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), republished in paperback as The age of conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1991), chapter 7 (pp. 172–210). 4 Ibid., pp. 181–2. Page 2 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Shorn of Lloyd’s patriotic sentimentality, Davies’s account represented an apparently more reasonable interpretation of events; yet it was fundamentally the same view as Lloyd presented. Davies, like Lloyd, told of the way local cults were insensitively abolished, and churches re-dedicated in honour of more familiar, bona fide universal saints. So at Glasbury St Cynidr was ousted by St Peter (Prince of the Apostles); at Caerwent St Tathan was removed in favour of St Stephen (the Protomartyr); at Cilgerran St Llawddog was displaced by St Lawrence (an early Roman martyr, notoriously roasted alive). In the case of some stubborn local cults, St John the Evangelist joined forces with St Teulyddog at Carmarthen, and St Peter and St Paul bolstered the intercessory powers of St Trinio at Llandrinio.5 A view closely similar to Lloyd’s also came out in the last book to attempt a serious overview of the ecclesiastical history of early medieval Wales: a work published as long ago as 1977. Siân Victory’s Celtic Church in Wales continued to advance the erroneous idea that Welsh church life before the advent of William the Conqueror was by definition ‘Celtic’; this concept was bound up with Victory’s implicit acceptance that the active cult of local saints ended in Wales with the arrival of Norman colonizers, who re-dedicated churches to universal saints.6 Owen Chadwick too, writing two decades earlier, had made a similar assumption in his essay on ‘The evidence of dedications in the early history of the Welsh Church’.7 But this version of history, which J.E. Lloyd made respectable, and which R.R. Davies perpetuated, was flawed. They took for granted that foreign intruders had invaded a 5 Ibid., p. 182. 6 Siân Victory, The Celtic Church in Wales (London, 1977); pp. 35 and 129, illustrate the point nicely. 7 In N.K. Chadwick (ed.), Studies in early British history (Cambridge, 1954; rev. imp., 1959), pp. 173–88. Page 3 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES nation; and not just a nation, but one where the cult of local saints flourished; where the cult of local saints somehow imbued that nation with a distinctive national character. What is more, they assumed that these colonizers were in the business of imposing a continental culture upon what they – the colonizers – in their continental sophistication, perceived as a strange, foreign, backward people. This impression, formed and communicated by Lloyd and Davies, was coloured, one suspects, by an outlook that might have accompanied their deep commitment to Welsh language and culture, as well as Welsh Congregationalist and Presbyterian religion.8 The sincere sentiments of historians concerned for the future of a culture under pressure appears to have leaked into the wash of their narratives, like a scarlet garment in a machine full of whites. Lloyd’s sugary impression of a religious past, ‘endeared by a thousand happy memories’, was at least blatant in its sentimentality. Davies’s premises were not quite so overt, but were there none the less. He presupposed a ‘native’ church for which the ‘Normans’ showed ‘scant respect’; these Normans were held to have viewed the ‘Welsh’ saints as a ‘motley crowd’ who were only so-called ‘saints’; and having Welsh names, they were apparently ‘outlandish’ to the Normans; as such they were treated ‘cavalierly’. An examination of the sources, however, exposes Lloyd and Davies’s narrative as a profound misrepresentation of the evidence. Church dedications 8 Lloyd was chairman of the Union of Welsh Congregationalists (‘Lloyd’, ODNB); Davies was a lifelong Welsh Presbyterian (R.J.W. Evans, ‘Davies, Sir (Robert) Rees (1938–2005)’, ODNB). The present author declares his hand as an English-speaker, brought up in a clerical family of the Church in Wales (a province of the Anglican Communion). As I hope to show, it was in fact nineteenth-century Welsh Anglicans (writing in a patently partisan spirit, typical of the religious climate of that era) who were at the root of the imperfect understanding of the nature of saints’ cults in eleventh- and twelfth-century Wales. Page 4 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES The idea that Normans engaged in a general rededication of churches throughout their sphere of influence sprang from a book published in 1836, written by a young Welsh clergyman, Rice Rees (1804–1839), Professor of Welsh at St David’s College, Lampeter.9 In An essay on the Welsh saints, he wrote,10 That the Roman Catholics, or, at least, the various conquerors of Wales, all of whom professed that religion, hardly considered the primitive founders in the light of Saints, will further appear from the circumstance that in many instances they gave their churches a new dedication. Rees went on to give a list of seventeen churches where he thought that a church dedication to a ‘Welsh’ saint had been changed in favour of a more familiar universal saint (see the appendix to this chapter). Rees, however, was relying, firstly, on the supposition that the original dedication of churches corresponded to the person who lent his name to a llan- toponym; secondly, that the apparently new dedications were contemporary with the period of Norman settlement; and thirdly, that it was Normans or Anglo-Normans who made any such changes.11 Let us first consider the examples cited by Lloyd and Davies. 9 J.E. Lloyd, ‘Rees, Rice (1804–1839)’, rev. by N. Banerji, in ODNB. Rees was a nephew of W.J. Rees, who took over the editing of the Book of Llandaf upon the former’s premature death: The Liber Landavensis: Llyfr Teilo (Llandovery, 1840). The latter Rees also produced The Lives of the Cambro- British saints (Llandovery, 1853). 10 An essay on the Welsh saints: or the primitive Christians usually considered to have been the founders of churches in Wales (London, 1836), p. 70: this was certainly J.R. Phillips’ inspiration (see n. 21, below). 11 The present author dealt both with Rees’s religious prejudices and with the problem of equating Welsh ecclesiastical place-names with church dedications in ‘The saints of South Wales and the Welsh Church’, in A.T. Thacker and R. Sharpe (eds), Local saints and local churches in the early medieval West (Oxford, 2002), pp. 361–95. Page 5 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES The patron of Glasbury, on the border between Brycheiniog and Herefordshire, was Cynidr, an important local saint of Brycheiniog. In the past, Glasbury had been the seat of a bishop, but there is good reason to think that the community at Glasbury had collapsed in the middle of the eleventh century when the bishopric based there ceased to exist, subsumed as it seems in the diocese of Hereford.12 In 1088, Bernard de Neufmarché, who was in the course of dominating the minor kingdom of Brycheiniog, made a gift of Glasbury to St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, together with the ‘church of St Cynidr’ (ecclesia sancti Kenedri).13 By the nineteenth century, the rebuilt parish church was dedicated to St Peter; yet there is nothing in the cartulary of Gloucester Abbey to suggest such a rededication in the twelfth century.14 De situ Brecheniauc, a text copied around 1200 for an Anglo-Norman patron, associated Cynidr with Glasbury (sanct[us] Kenider de Glesbyri);15 in 1910, A. W. Wade-Evans thought Cynidr was the dedication.16 Churches associated with Cynidr are clustered in a triangle between Glasbury, Kenderchurch (near Ewyas Harold, on the river Dore in Archenfield; Lann Cinitr in the Book of Llandaf),17 and Llangynidr (near Crickhowell).18 Indeed, the church of Cynidr at 12 John Reuben Davies, ‘The archbishopric of St Davids and the bishops of Clas Cynidr’, in J. Wyn Evans and Jonathan M. Wooding (eds), St David of Wales: cult, church and nation, Studies in Celtic History 24 (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 296–304. 13 William Henry Hart (ed.), Historia et cartularium monasterii sancti Petri Gloucestriæ, Rolls Series 33, 3 vols (London, 1863–67), i, p. 314, no. 281. David Walker (‘The “Honours” of the earls of Hereford in the twelfth century’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 79 (1960), 174–211, at 193, n. 3) thought the date of this gift might have been as late as 1104. 14 In 1868, the parish church was said to be ruinous; the advowson continued in the hands of the bishop of Gloucester after the dissolution. 15 De situ Brecheniauc, London, British Lirbary, MS Cotton Vespasian A. xiv, fols 10v-11v; ed. by A.W. Wade-Evans, ‘The Brychan documents’, Y Cymmrodor, 19 (1906), 18–50, at 26. 16 A.W. Wade-Evans, ‘Parochiale Wallicanum’, Y Cymmrodor, 22 (1910), 22–124, at 43 (also published as a single volume, Stow-on-the-Wold, 1911, p. 23, cited hereafter). 17 J. Gwengovryn Evans (ed.), The text of the Book of Llan Dâv, reproduced from the Gwysaney manuscript (Oxford, 1893), pp. 275, 277. 18 The church of Llangynidr was dedicated to Cynidr at the time of Pope Nicholas’s assessment of 1291 (Taxatio ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate papae Nicholai IV, Record Commission (London, 1802) [available online at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/taxatio/]), where it appears as Ecclesia de sancto Kened’. Page 6 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Kenderchurch was consecrated in the reign of William I (1066–1087).19 We should also notice that St Cynidr was entered in the kalendar which accompanies a collection of saints’ Lives that we shall encounter later in this chapter; a collection which was put together under the auspices of the same patron for whom De situ Brecheniauc was copied, probably Gloucester Abbey.20 In the case of Cilgerran, there is also little reason to follow Lloyd and Davies’s assertion that there was a rededication from Llawddog to Lawrence. Davies was following Lloyd, and Lloyd was following J.R. Phillips, who thought that,21 foreign conquerors of this neighbourhood, the Normans and the Flemings – who undoubtedly professed the Roman Catholic religion, and who scarcely would consider the original Welsh founder, though honoured with sanctity in his own neighbourhood and by his own countrymen, but not canonized according to the rituals of the Church of Rome – as a saint – was again re-dedicated by them to a saint of their own selection, and from their own category. We find a fair of St Lawrence being held in the seventeenth century, but Llawddog or Lleuddad is still the saint associated with the church in the eighteenth century and at the 19 ‘Tempore Uuillelmi regis consecrauit [Hergualdus episcopus] Lanncinitir’ (Evans, Book of Llan Dâv, p. 277). 20 Kathleen Hughes, ‘British Museum MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xiv (‘Vitae Sanctorum Wallensium’): its purpose and povenance’, in Nora K. Cahdwick, K. Hughes, C. N. L. Brooke, K. Jackson, Studies in the early British Church (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 183–200. 21 John Roland Phillips, A history of Cilgerran (London, 1867), p. 52: this is Lloyd’s source for his assertion that St Lawrence displaced Llawddog. Phillips’s choice of terms betrays a degree of anti-Roman bias: he assumed that the Welsh did not – by contrast with the Normans and Flemings – profess ‘the Roman Catholic religion’, and that ‘the rituals of the Church of Rome’ were not in use in Welsh dioceses. See below, p. [12]. Page 7 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES time Phillips was writing (1867). I have found nothing to connect St Lawrence with the church itself. At Caerwent, the evidence is muddied, with little that is clear before references to a dedication to St Stephen appears in the nineteenth century, apparently displacing an original dedication to St Tathan. The present dedication is to St Stephen and St Tathan; but the reason for a dedication to St Stephen is almost certainly because the feast day of both saints is 26 December. The feast of St Tathan is recorded in the Kalendar of Lonodn, BL, MS. Cotton Vespasian A. xiv (c. 1200).22 Vita S. Tathei, the Life of St Tathan (a work of the mid twelfth century), tells us that the holy man founded a collegiate church in Caerwent dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity;23 but both this Life and Lifris’s Life of St Cadog make an assumption that the audience knew the church of Caerwent belonged to Tathan.24 We also know from the Life of St Tathan that there were shrines of St Tathan himself, and of St Machuta, in the church of Caerwent. So the evidence is not there to say that St Tathan was displaced by Stephen as a result of Norman influence. At Carmarthen, a new Benedictine priory of Battle Abbey was founded by Henry I, around 1110, and was dedicated to St John the Evangelist and St Teulyddog; a few years later it became an Augustinian priory, a dependant of Llanthony.25 Given the priory at Carmarthen was a new foundation, that it retained a dedication to St Teulyddog is remarkable. The author of the Chronicle of Battle Abbey, however, wrote that this church was ‘founded there in very ancient times in honour of St Theodore the martyr’; an 22 S.M. Harris (ed.), ‘The kalendar of the ‘Vitae Sanctorum Wallensium’ (Vespasian A. 14)’, Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, 3 (1953), 3–53. 23 Vita S. Tathei (A. W. Wade-Evans (ed. and trans.), Vitae sanctorum Britanniae et genealogiae (Cardiff, 1944), pp. 270–86), § 6. 24 Lifris, Vita S. Cadoci (Wade-Evans, Vitae, pp. 24–140), §§ 1–8. 25 See Alison Binns, Dedications of monastic houses in England and Wales, 1066–1216, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 1 (Woodbridge, 1989), p. 127. Page 8 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES identification ‘quite without warrant’, as the chronicle’s most recent editor remarked.26 Theodorei, however, could just as easily be a misreading of Theulacei .27 J. E. Lloyd pounced on this as ‘a bold endeavour to make respectable the unknown and uncouth Teulyddog’.28 The idea, however, that there was an attempt to remove Teulyddog from the dedication is contradicted by the Cartulary of the Augustinian Priory, in which it is called the ‘Priory of St John the Evangelist and St Theulacus’.2930 We should also note that the other daughter-house of Battle Abbey founded in Welsh territory around the same time as the earlier foundation at Carmarthen, namely Brecon Priory, was also dedicated to St John the Evangelist.31 The evidence for a dedication to anyone other than Trinio at Llandrinio is thin. In 1833, the dedication was said to be St Trinio.32 In 1309 King Edward II granted to Griffin de la Pole a three-day fair on the eve, day, and morrow of the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul (29 June) in his manor of Llandrinio.33 As with St Tathan and St Stephen, we notice that the feast of St Trinio occurred on the same day as Ss. Peter and Paul, 29 June.34 The current dedication to St Trinio, St Peter and St Paul, may date from that period. 26 ‘ecclesiam antiquiiisimis temporibus in honore sancti Theodorei martiris ibidem fundatam’ (Eleanor Searle (ed. and trans.), The Chronicle of Battle Abbey (Oxford, 1980), pp. 124–5; see n. 2). 27 As Alcwyn C. Evans pointed out as early as 1876: ‘St John’s priory, Carmarthen’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 31 (1876), 96–102, at 97. 28 Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, p. 432, n. 108; also quoted by Searle, Chronicle of Battle, p. 125, n. 2. 29 Thomas Phillips (ed.), Cartularium S. Johannis Baptistae de Carmarthen (Cheltenham, 1865). 30 We should also notice some apparent confusion in the dedication to St John: is it St John the Baptist or Evangelist? One explanation might be that it is to both, in imitation of the Pope’s cathedral at the Lateran, dedicated to the Holy Saviour and St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. The instances are laid out by Evans, ‘St John’s priory’, 101–2. 31 Chronicle of Battle, pp. 86–7; F.G. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066–1349 (Cardiff, 1977), pp. 13–14; 32 Samuel Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Wales, 2 vols (London, 1833; 3rd edn, 1845), i, p. 537. 33 London, TNA, MS. C 143/71/3. 34 ‘His festival seems only to occur in the calendar in the autograph of Gutyn Owain in Peniarth MS. 186 (late fifteenth century), where it is given on June 29, but in a later hand’: S. Baring-Gould and John Fisher, The lives of the British saints: the saints of Wales and Cornwall and such Irish saints as have dedications in Britain, 4 vols (London, 1907–1913), iv, p. 265. Page 9 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES R.R. Davies’s sole source for his account of church dedications in the ‘post-Conquest’ dioceses of Wales appears to have been Lloyd’s History of Wales; and the basis for Lloyd’s assertions were, in the main, a mixture of assumption and the anti-papal prejudices of early nineteenth-century Anglican clergymen.35 The cathedrals of Wales Lloyd and Davies queered the pitch when it came to the cathedrals of Wales too. Both the cathedrals of the two southern medieval dioceses, Llandaf in the South East, and St Davids, in the South West, were rebuilt in the first half of the twelfth century. At St Davids, the principal cult was of the founding bishop, David, known locally as Dewi Sant. But Dewi’s co-patron, who first appears in the twelfth century, was St Andrew the Apostle. Sometime during his pontificate, the conuentus of the ‘church of St Andrew and St David’ had written to Pope Honorius II (1124–1130), arguing in support of the claims of Bishop Bernard (1115–48) to metropolitan authority over the other Welsh bishoprics.36 Now, the corporeal relics of St David had almost certainly been lost in about 1090, when the shrine was despoiled by vikings.37 Bishop Bernard, aware of the value of the cult of Dewi Sant to his cathedral church, moved to obtain a signal of papal recognition, and it is 35 It is nevertheless a credit to Lloyd’s scholarship that his sources are more or less transparent; Davies was restricted in his references by the format of the series in which his book was published (Age of conquest, p. vi). 36 Gerald of Wales, Libellus inuectionum, ii.9; ed. W.S. Davies, ‘The Book of Invectives of Giraldus Cambrensis’, Y Cymmrodor, 30 (1920), 1–248, at 143. Parts of the letter, however, appear to rely on material that is to be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, which was not published until 1136, six years after Pope Honorius’s death. 37 ‘Scrinium sancti Dauid de ecclesia sua furatur et iuxta ciuitatem ex toto spoliatur’, ‘The reliquary of St David is stolen from his church and, near the city, is wholly stripped bare’ (Annales Cambriae ‘C’-text: Williams ab Ithel (ed.), Annales Cambriæ (London, 1860), pp. 28–9); cf. Thomas Jones (ed.), Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of Princes: Peniarth MS 20 Version (Cardiff, 1940), p. 18). Page 10 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES William of Malmesbury who tells us that Pope Calixtus II (1119–24) encouraged English pilgrims to go to St Davids rather than Rome, because of the length of the journey, and that those who went twice to St Davids should have the same privileges in the way of blessing as those who went once to Rome.38 The acquisition of such an indulgence from Pope Calixtus was an additional outcome of Bishop Bernard’s visit to the papal court in 1123. The addition of St Andrew as a patron of the cathedral church of St Davids is intriguing. Likewise, at Llandaf, the new cathedral was dedicated not just to St Dyfrig, St Teilo, and St Euddogwy, the founding episcopal saints, but also to St Peter. We may note that the pairing of dedications to St Peter and St Andrew (his brother) may be found elsewhere in Britain in the early middle ages, most notably at the monastery of St Peter and St Paul at Canterbury and the cathedral of St Andrew at Rochester.39 There is no evidence, however, to support a view that respective dedications to St Peter and St Andrew existed at Llandaf and St Davids before the rebuilding of the cathedral churches in the twelfth century. We may suppose, however, that the dedications are to some extent a result of rivalry between the sees of Llandaf and St Davids, and not of embarrassment over the prestige of the local cult on the part of a reformed church hierarchy. Urban of Llandaf had been courting Canterbury and the pope, and to emphasise his loyalty to both, was producing pseudo-historical accounts of early links with Rome, and immediate acceptance by the ‘archbishops of Llandaf’ of St Augustine’s authority when he arrived in 38 Gesta regum Anglorum, v, 435 (R.A.B. Mynors, M. Winterbotton, R.M. Thomson (ed. and trans.), William of Malmesbury: Gesta regum Anglorum, The history of the English kings, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998), i, p. 778–81). 39 See James E. Fraser, ‘Rochester, Hexham and Cennrígmonaid: the movements of St Andrew in Britain, 604–747’, in Steve Boardman, E. Williamson, and J.R. Davies (eds), Saints’ Cults in the Celtic World, Studies in Celtic History 25 (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 1–17. Page 11 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Britain. A Petrine dedication for the new cathedral at Llandaf demonstrated where Bishop Urban’s allegiance lay. As for St Andrew at St Davids, the new additional dedication would make sense too, for St Andrew was associated with the foundation of the earliest church at Byzantium – a kind of counterweight to Rome’s association with St Peter and St Paul.40 As the brother of Peter, Andrew was the obvious choice for this role as his counterbalance. The author of the St Andrews foundation legend wrote of St Andrews that, ‘in relation to the first Rome, this is the second’.41 Like St Andrews, then, St Davids was developing a view of itself as being like a second Rome. Of course, Bishop Bernard would have been familiar with the historical tradition of St Andrews. Immediately before his election to St Davids, Bernard had for many years been chaplain to Henry I’s consort, Queen Matilda, daughter of the Scottish monarch King Malcolm III and his queen, Margaret.42 Through Matilda, Bernard must have known Turgot, bishop of St Andrews (1107–1115), author of the Life of St Margaret the Queen (Queen Matilda’s mother). From a point sometime in the 1130s, until 1174, there was also a direct link between the Scottish crown and the see of St Davids; for the stewardship of the lands of the bishopric of St Davids was given by Bishop Bernard to Earl Henry, son of King David I (and Queen Matilda’s nephew). Bernard had also appointed as one of his archdeacons Jordan, one of Earl Henry’s chaplains, and chancellor to David I. We might also notice the neat association between David and Andrew at 40 Fraser, ‘Rochester’, p. 8; citing D. H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 4th edn (Oxford, 1997), p. 21. 41 Fraser, ‘Rochester’, p. 8; citing D. Broun, ‘Church of St Andrews and its Foundation Legend in the Early Twelfth Century: Recovering the Full Text of Version A of the Foundation Legend’, in S. Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland 500–1297 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 108–14, at p. 111. 42 For a summary of Bernard’s career prior to his election to St Davids, see my ‘Aspects of Church Reform in Wales, c. 1093–c. 1223’, in C. P. Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2007, Anglo-Norman Studies 30 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 85–99, at p. 88; Julia Barrow (ed.), St Davids Episcopal Acta, 1085–1280 (Cardiff, 1998), pp. 2–4, gives a more detailed account of Bernard’s episcopate. Page 12 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Mynyw, which would have reflected the association between King David (brother of Bishop Bernard’s former patron) and Scotland’s patron.43 We can therefore identify several motives for making St Andrew a patron of St Davids cathedral – motives other than the rather unimaginative and prejudiced idea, favoured of a former generation of Welsh historians of Wales, that St Andrew was needed because Anglo-Normans would not have recognised Dewi as a ‘proper saint’. We should also be aware that there were the newly enshrined relics of a recently deceased local saint, Caradog Fynach. A miracle-working hermit, Caradog had died in 1124, and an unofficial cult had grown up among the local Welsh, Flemish and Anglo- Norman inhabitants.44 From Gerald of Wales we learn that the church also claimed relics of St Stephen the Proto-Martyr.45 Bishop Bernard, a prelate with close ties to the Scottish court, was developing an identity for his see as a second Rome – another Constantinople – a counterpart to St Andrews in Fife, and a counterbalance to the neighbouring cathedral church of St Peter at Llandaf: we need not be startled, disturbed, or perplexed, therefore, by the appearance of St Andrew in the dedication of Bernard’s new cathedral. Now, in June 1120, the bishop of Llandaf (a Welshman, trained at Worcester, who had taken the name Urban), arranged for the bones of St Dyfrig to be solemnly translated from Bardsey Island and interred in a tomb at the new cathedral church of Llandaf. So too were the teeth of Ælfgar (Elgarus), a recently deceased hermit of Bardsey Island, and a 43 For all this, see Barrow, St Davids, p. 28. 44 The account of the translation is to be found in De sancto Caradoco heremita (Carl Horstman (ed.), Nova Legenda Anglie, 2 vols (Oxford, 1901), i, p. 176) and by Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium Kambriae, i, 11 (J. F. Dimock (ed.), Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol. 6, Rolls Series 21 (London, 1868), pp. 86–7; see F.G. Cowley, ‘The relics of St David: the historical evidence’, in Evans and Wooding, St David of Wales, pp. 274–281, at p. 275. 45 Itinerarium Kambriae, i, 11 (ed. Dimock, p. 87). Page 13 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES native of Devon. Llandaf Cathedral now housed, therefore, the relics of the most venerable saint of the southern Britons, and the most recent. The translation of Ælfgar’s teeth, like the later translation of St Caradog Fynach’s bodily relics, is a demonstration of how saint-making went on in reforming dioceses of twelfth-century Britain – and there can be no doubt that Bishop Urban was a reforming bishop who looked to Canterbury and Rome.46 Relics of this recently dead holy man were sought, and obtained by a bishop who enshrined them in his cathedral church, and commissioned a hagiography to accompany the translation. The idea of official canonization at Rome is anachronistic at this date. The two northern cathedral churches are dedicated in honour of founding bishops. The dedication of Bangor cathedral is St Deiniol (that is, Daniel). The antiquity of this dedication is not disputed.47 Although the diocese of Bangor was the first to come under direct Anglo-Norman control in the early 1070s, it quickly reverted to native royal control, and fell out of the orbit of the Welsh March. In the North East, two or three decades after the activities of Bishop Urban and Bishop Bernard in the south, Geoffrey of Monmouth became perhaps the third bishop of Llanelwy since its foundation in 1141. Geoffrey professed canonical obedience and 46 See John Reuben Davies, Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales, Studies in Celtic History 21 (Woodbridge, 2003); id., ‘Aspects of Church reform’. Bishop Urban and spent half of his episcopate engaged in appeals to Canterbury and the papal curia, and his literary legacy, the Book of Llandaf, records these in detail, preserving the texts of forty-six papal bulls in the process: see Davies, Book of Llandaf, pp. 32–45, 153–9. 47 Deiniol is first recorded in the early ninth-century Irish martyrology of Tallaght, where his feast day is given as 11 September; this agrees with almost all the later Welsh kalendars. In the martyrology of Tallaght he is given as ‘Deiniol, bishop of Bangor’, but in his obit in Annales Cambriae, s.a. 584, he is ‘Daniel of the Bangors’. This suggests that he was already known as the patron saint of his foundation, Bangor Is-coed, the monastery mentioned in a famous story in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, about the battle of Chester, assigned by Annales Cambriae to 613, nearly thirty years after Deiniol’s death. Entries in Irish annals referring to Bangor in Britain and the fact that he was one of only three Welsh saints to be included in the martyrology of Tallaght also indicate the importance of his foundations in the pre-viking period. Page 14 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES subjection to Canterbury in February 1152. He is the first bishop of that diocese to style himself ‘Bishop of St Asaph’ rather than ‘Bishop of Llanelwy’; and this was surely no coincidence. There appears to have been a translation of St Asaph’s relics, and there are the remnants of a Life, and possibly a charter of the type found in the Book of Llandaf.48 There is no direct evidence that either Kentigern or Asaph was connected with the see of Llanelwy before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s appearance on the scene. The relics of native Welsh saints, one may therefore argue, were called into service by a reformed episcopate, to establish and dig-in the re-defined or re-founded Welsh bishoprics of the early twelfth century. This was a self-conscious enterprise, which sought to give a grounding in historical tradition to a reformed ecclesiastical structure, both justifying its new appearance and providing itself with historical and cultural reference- points. An important aspect of this endeavour was the production of a corpus of hagiography – the Lives of Welsh saints. The Lives of the Welsh Saints Lloyd’s view of the Norman impact on ‘the Welsh Church’ gave rise to the idea that the composition of a new body of hagiography around this time, with the Lives of local Welsh saints as the subject-matter, was a reaction against the appropriation of ecclesiastical property by marcher lords, most of whom donated church lands in Wales to 48 Jocelin of Furness, in Vita S. Kentegerni, § 25, alludes to a ‘little book’ of the life of St Asaph, which we may suppose him to have used as a source for the episodes relating to Llanelwy in that Life (Alexander Penrose Forbers (ed. and trans.), Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigem (Edinburgh, 1874), p. 205). The lost thirteenth- or fourteenth-century manuscript called the Red Book of St Asaph (Llyfr Coch Asaph) is known to have contained a Vita sancti Assaph: ‘Index to “Llyfr Coch Asaph”’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 14, 3rd series (1868), 151–66 and 433–442, at 442; for the subsequent history of the manuscript, see D. L. Evans, ‘Llyfr Coch Asaph’, National Library of Wales Journal, 4 (1945–6), 177–83, and O. E. Jones, ‘Llyfr Coch Asaph: a textual and historical study’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2 vols (1968). Page 15 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES their own monastic foundations. The property-rights of the native saints were a prominent feature in the new saints’ Lives that began to appear at the end of the eleventh century; and the saints were jealous in the defence of their churches’ lands. Gerald of Wales was certainly aware of the vengeful character of Irish and Welsh saints, which he would have discovered from their uitae.49 As I have made clear in my Topography of Ireland, both the Irish and the Welsh are more prone to anger and revenge in this life than other nations, and similarly their Saints in the next world seem much more vindictive.50 The phenomenon is especially visible in Lifris of Llancarfan’s Life of St Cadog, which, hardly begun, has the saint, as a boy, calling down fire on one of his father’s servants who has refused to give him coals.51 Lifris’s Life of St Cadog has attached to it a kind of cartulary, recording gifts of land to the church of Llancarfan; and the Book of Llandaf is really a series of saints’ Lives incorporating a substantial corpus of pseudo-charters. The assumption again was that the reformed ecclesiastical order in Wales was inimical to the cult of Welsh saints. A comparable view had persisted for the English situation, where scholarship perceived a general disapproval of Anglo-Saxon saints in England in the early Norman period. This perception, however, has been definitively offset, now that we have come to see how the translation of saints’ relics in England had been revived in the 1090s, reflecting a desire of major churches to renew particular local cults. Professional 49 That Gerald read the Lives of the saints is shown, for example, in The topography of Ireland, i, 29 (James F. Dimock (ed.), Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol. 5, Rolls Series 61 (Oxford, 1867), p. 62), where he remarks, ‘One reads in the ancient writings of the saints of that land …’. 50 Lewis Thorpe (trans.), Gerald of Wales: The journey through Wales and The description of Wales (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 189 (Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium Kambriae, ii, 7; ed. Dimock, p. 130). 51 §7; see also §§8, 15, 16, 19, 23, 24, 36, 40, 69, for further stories of the saint’s vengeance. Page 16 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES hagiographers – Goscelin of Canterbury, Osberne of St Augustine’s, Eadmer – made a career out of promoting the cult of local saints for both English and Norman patrons.52 A phenomenon of similar type can be observed in Wales, where the hagiographers, whose names we know, were all home-grown; that is Rhygyfarch ap Sulien of Llanbadarn Fawr, Lifris of Llancarfan, and Caradog of Llancarfan.53 As one reads through the dossier of the Lives of Welsh saints (there are about eighteen of them) written in the period from the last decade of the eleventh century to the middle of the twelfth, criticism of the new political regime is not forthcoming. On the contrary, it is the native rulers of the Welsh territories (although usually of the distant past) who come in for unsympathetic treatment. The most striking example of a Welsh ruler as villain occurs in the Life of St Gwynllyw – one of the Lives that looks as though it was written by Caradog of Llancarfan, the contemporaneus of Geoffrey of Monmouth.54 In §12 we read of a piratical raid against St Gwynllyw’s church, undertaken by Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137), the exiled ruler of Gwynedd. In another story (§14), Ednywain of Gwynedd, a friend of Caradog of Glamorgan (d. 1081), broke into St Gwynllyw’s church. In §15, King Caradog takes into his protection a number of Norman knights who had rebelled against William the Conqueror. In the last chapter of the Life of St Illtud, there is an episode in which the army of Gwynedd is put to flight by the power of St Illtud, and the English- born and Norman-born are referred to as ciues, ‘fellow citizens’. 52 See Davies, Book of Llandaf, pp. 96–7. 53 But one suspects that Caradog had been educated in a continental school: this is what I take from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s reference to him as his ‘contemporary’ in the Bern manuscript of Historia regum Britannie, (Neil Wright (ed.), The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey Monmouth I. Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 568 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 147). See next paragraph. 54 Davies, Book of Llandaf, pp. 133–6; Vita S. Gundlei: Wade-Evans, Vitae, pp. 172–92. Page 17 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES The Life of St Cybi (Vita I S. Kebii, §§17–19), patron of Caergybi (Holyhead), tells of a dispute between Maelgwn Gwynedd (the progenitor of the kings of Gwynedd, and a famous addressee of Gildas’s polemic) and Cybi.55 In the Life of St Padarn (patron of Llanbadarn Fawr), Maelgwn is again the villain, being ‘ever the tempter of the saints’, semper temptator sanctorum (§15).56 The Life of St Cadog by Lifris also offers several unfavourable tales of native Welsh rulers.57 An interesting example of a saint’s Life which works in the other direction is that of St Winifred. Gwenfrewi (as Winifred is known in Welsh) is the patron of Holywell (Flintshire) and Gwytherin (Denbighshire). Her relics were translated to Shrewsbury in 1138, but even before that date she had an English as well as a Welsh cult. Tegeingl, an area of north-east Flintshire, where she is said to have been born, was under Mercian control in the tenth century; it was re-conquered by the men of Gwynedd shortly before the appearance of the Normans in Britain, but afterwards came under the control of the earls of Chester. Gwenfrewi’s English name, Winifred, and her English cult probably originate in the period of Mercian rule. The origin of Ffynnon Wenfrewi (Winifred’s Well) at Holywell – the most famous of local Welsh cults centred on wells – is explained in her uitae. The earlier of two Lives of St Winifred tells how a local prince, Caradog ab Alog, decapitated Winifred when she refused him sexual favours. On the spot where her blood stained the ground, a spring gushed forth; Winifred’s uncle, a holy man called Beuno, cursed the murderer, causing him to melt like wax; Beuno then fitted the head back to the body, and by the holy man’s prayers, God brought Winifred back to life. 55 Wade-Evans, Vitae, pp. 234–50. 56 Vita S. Paterni: Wade-Evans, Vitae, pp. 252–68. 57 §22, The dispute between saint Cadog and King Arthur; §23, Vengeance on the king of the men of Gwynedd for injury done to the man of God; §24, The blinding of King Rhun for the injury inflicted on saint Cadog; §44, another king of Rheinwg attempts to invade Glamorgan; § 69, the blinding of King Maelgwn. Page 18 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Beuno’s response to this miracle was to order a priestly vestment from his resuscitated niece: one chasuble was to be sent to him every year.58 Soror mi, hunc Deus tibi destinauit locum; meque oportet alias tendere, ubi Deus mihi prouiderit perendinare. Mihi autem circa hunc diem unoquoque anno hoc facito: casulam mihi dirige de uestro opere proprio. My sister, God has chosen this place for you; and it is fitting for me to go on to another place, where God will make provision for me to dwell. But every year, about this day, do this for me: send me a chasuble made by your own labour. The vestments must have gone to Beuno’s principal church at Clynnog Fawr, and one might speculate that the story justified an arrangement whereby the community at Holywell supplied sacramental vestments for Clynnog Fawr. (All previous translators appear to have had scruples about rendering casula as ‘chasuble’, preferring the less priestly ‘cloak’, lest we might suspect that St Beuno might ever have celebrated the Mass.) In this way, Gwenfrewi’s church at Holywell, the most significant cult-centre of Tegeingl, was linked with one of the principal churches of the Gwynedd heartlands, whose ruler, Gruffudd ap Cynan, at the date of the Life’s composition, had recently taken back control of Tegeingl from the Normans. A noteworthy feature of the Life of Gwenfrewi is that the post-mortem miracles recorded there had occurred lately, tempore Francorum, that is, when Tegeingl was under the control of the Norman earls of Chester. One miracle (§ 26) suggests Gwenfrewi’s 58 London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius A. v; Wade-Evans, Vitae, pp. 288–308, p. 293. Page 19 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES posthumous approval of the expulsion of the French from Gwynedd: after this event, for three days, her well was seen to flow with a milky liquid, sweet to the taste. This earlier, anonymous, Life of Gwenfrewi was written for a native audience of Gwynedd; a second Life was written by Robert, prior of Shrewsbury, to accompany the translation of St Winifred’s relics to Shrewsbury in 1138, and was therefore addressed to an Anglo-Norman audience. Here, then, is the case of a local cult which becomes important for the native inhabitants of Gwynedd, the Mercian English, and the Anglo-Normans, crossing those cultural boundaries. The most important factor to recognise in the cross-cultural popularity of this cult is its perceived efficacy. If a cult was efficacious, Anglo-Norman churchmen were as keen as the next man to apply themselves to it. Gerald of Wales demonstrated this phenomenon in The Topography of Ireland: Just as the marvels of the East have through the work of certain authors come to the light of public notice, so the marvels of the West, which, so far, have remained hidden away and almost unknown, may eventually find in me one to make them known even in these later days.59 Most of the foregoing Lives of Welsh saints are preserved in London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vespasian A.xiv (to fol. 107). The manuscript demonstrates the interest which Anglo-Norman settlers developed in the historical materials of British Christianity. It is, as Kathleen Hughes described it, 59 Topographia Hibernica, ii, preface (Dimock, p. 74); John O’Meara (ed.), Gerald of Wales: The History and Topography of Ireland (rev. edn, Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 57 (§ 33). Page 20 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES an industrious record of texts mainly written or re-written in the twelfth century. It reflects the restless enterprise of this period of Norman-Welsh history – the expansion of Gloucester, the rise of Llandaf, and the preservation, though abbreviated, enfeebled and but half-understood, of the traditions of the pre-Norman Welsh Church.60 Although it may be an obvious point to make, the most striking feature of the Vespasian collection is that it was the product of an Anglo-Norman monastic house. This, one of the two most important manuscripts relating to the churches of the Welsh March, came either from Gloucester Abbey or Monmouth Priory. The other important repository of Lives of Welsh saints written in a context of Anglo- Norman colonization is the Book of Llandaf, a history of the bishops of Llandaf though seven centuries – copied into a gospel book.61 One of the most noticeable features of the sources for the Llandaf Lives is the prevalence of material from Brittany: the Life of St Samson of Dôl, the Life of St Paul Aurelian (by Wrmonoc of Landévennec), the Life of St Turiau, and the charters of Landévennec have all been used as sources for the hagiographies contained between the boards of Liber Landauensis.62 The monks of Monmouth, who contributed in some important way to the Vespasian collection, had probably acted as a conduit for hagiographical materials for Llandaf at some earlier stage. Monmouth priory, we should remember, was a daughter-house of the Benedictine abbey 60 ‘British Museum MS. Cotton Vespasian A.xiv’, p. 200. 61 Liber Landauensis, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS. NLW 17110E; for the codicology, see Daniel Huws, ‘The making of Liber Landavensis’, National Library of Wales Journal, 25 (1987–8), 133–6 (reprinted in id., Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 123–57); in general, see Davies, The Book of Llandaf. 62 Vita S. Turiani (ninth-century Brittany), was a source for the Life of St Teilo. Other Breton elements in the Book of Llandaf include the Life of St Samson, based on Vita I; there are also references to Armorican cavalry and Breton counts. See Davies, Book of Llandaf, pp. 129–31. Page 21 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES of St. Florent, Saumur, and had been founded by a Breton noble, Wihenoc, lord of Monmouth, in 1074×86.63 Again, we can only draw the inference that reformed churchmen of continental origin – monks with martial patrons – were contributing to, rather than detracting from, the hagiology and cultus of local saints in the early Welsh March. Cultural transmission in the early Welsh March The historiography of the Church in the early Welsh March has been dominated by readings that have led to – what appears to be – a considerable overestimation of Anglo- Norman imperialism in the spheres of religious and ecclesiastical culture. A particular nationalistic and religious predisposition –whether conscious or not – has distorted our view of the period for generations. A scene in which ecclesiastical colonizers replaced dedications of churches to local Welsh saints with dedications to universal saints now appears as the invention of outmoded prejudices (which have gone into retirement, even if they stubbornly refuse to die). One should more readily take notice of an ecclesiastical landscape in which each of the four Welsh cathedrals was founded upon the cult of a local episcopal saint. And in the truly ‘Marcher’ sees of Llandaf and St Asaph, these local cults were given definitive affirmation with the building of new cathedral churches and the complete re-foundation of the bishopric in the twelfth century. And this was only part of a renewal of indigenous cults, which also saw the inauguration and evolution of new cults of local holy men, such as Ælfgar at Llandaf, and Caradog Fynach at St Davids. All these cults were furnished with shrines, and equipped with hagiographies. 63 Cowley, Monastic Order, p. 14–15, 271. Page 22 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES The new hagiographical corpus produced in this period, moreover, emphasises the distortion produced by the looking-glass into which the heirs of Rice Rees gazed while fashioning their version of Welsh ecclesiastical history. Far from the supposed propaganda of quasi-protestant Welsh churchmen resisting the incursion of ‘Roman Catholic’ Normans, the Lives of the Welsh saints were written, in the main, by reformed churchmen for a largely Anglo-Norman audience. Indeed, the two principal collections of Latin hagiography, Vespasian A.xiv and the Book of Llandaf, were created respectively by the patronage of Gloucester Abbey, and the Anglo-Norman marcher lords upon whom the bishopric and cathedral church of Llandaf depended for their existence. We cannot deny that the early Welsh March was the setting for political, cultural, and ecclesiastical conflict; yet we must do away with anachronistic political and religious judgments in evaluating the nature of that conflict. For in contemplating the cult of saints, it has become difficult to avoid the impression that conflict was tempered by a cultural transmission which passed as much from conquered to conqueror as the other way around. APPENDIX Churches claimed by Rice Rees to have had their dedications to local saints changed to universal saints as a consequence of Norman settlement.64 64 An essay on the Welsh saints, pp. 70–1. Those churches already mentioned in the foregoing text have been omitted from this list. Page 23 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES STEYNTON (PEMBS) ‘St Kewill’ [Cewydd] > St Peter An inspeximus of 1297/8 (25 Edward I) to Pill Priory, includes ecclesiam Sancti Kewit de Steintona, i.e. the church of St Cewydd.65 CHERITON / STACKPOLE ELIDOR (PEMBS) St Elider > St James Baring-Gould and Fisher doubted that Elidor was a saint’s name at all.66 LLANTHONY (MONM) St David > St John Baptist Llanthony is properly Llanddewi Nant Honddu: a dedication to Dewi (St David) is implied in the place-name; but place-name elements should not be confused with church dedications. Gerald of Wales tells of a chapel of St David the archbishop which had formerly been there.67 Whether or not there had been a chapel dedicated to St David on the site, the Augustinian house founded at Llanthony was a new church, dedicated in 1108 by the bishops of Llandaf and Hereford: this was not the re-dedication of an existing church, but the dedication of a completely new house of Augustinian canons.68 LLANFEUNO / LLANVEYNOE (HEREFORDSHIRE) St Beuno > St Peter The earliest evidence for a dedication to St Peter comes from 1868.69 Browne-Willis, in the eighteenth century, probably influenced by the place-name (Llan + Beuno ) thought 65 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives, iv, p.442, citing William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 6 vols (London, 1817–30), iv, p. 503. 66 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives, ii, p. 446. 67 Itinerarium Kambriae, i, 3 (Dimock, p. 37; Thorpe, p. 97). 68 Historia prioratus Lanthoniae in com. Glocest. (London, BL, Cotton Julius D.x, fols. 31–51, at 36r), translated in James Conway Davies, Episcopal acts relating to Welsh dioceses, 1066–1272, 2 vols (Cardiff, 1946–8), ii, p. 615 (no. L. 26). 69 N.E.S.A. Hamilton (ed.), The national gazetteer: a topographical dictionary of the British islands, 3 vols (London, 1868). Page 24 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES the dedication was to Beuno; but Frances Arnold-Forster (although without providing the evidence) considered the pre-Reformation dedication to be St Peter.70 We can neither be sure that there ever was a church dedication (rather than just an ecclesiastical place-name) to Beuno, not that a dedication to St Beuno was overturned in the twelfth century for one to St Peter. LLANSILLOE / LLANCILLO (HEREFORDSHIRE) St Tyssilio > St Peter This is Lann Sulbiu or ecclesia sancti Sulbiu of the Book of Llandaf.71 The ascription of Tyssilio as the earliest dedication of this church is wrong, as the name is properly Sulfyw; but there can be no doubt that the church was dedicated to Sulfyw as the Book of Llandaf unequivocally refers to ‘the church of St Sulfyw’. I have found no medieval references to a church of St Peter, but this is the only dedication known by the time Rees was writing.72 LLANGATHAN (CARMARTHENSHIRE ) St Cathen > St Michael and All Saints There appears to be no suggestion that the church of Llangathen had any other dedication than St Cathen; the dedication to Michael belongs to another nearby church in the parish of Llandeilo Fawr, that of Llanfihangel Cilfargen.73 ST DOGMAEL ’S / LLANDUDOCH (PEMBROKESHIRE) St Dogmael > St Mary 70 Wade-Evans, Parochiale Wallicanum, p. 21; Frances Arnold-Forster, Studies in church dedications: or, England's patron saints, 3 vols (London, 1899), iii, p. 185. 71 Evans, Book of Llan Dâv, p. 160, and pp. 31, 43, 90. 72 Arnold-Forster (Studies, iii, p. 184) considered the pre-Reformation dedication to be to St Peter, but again without providing the evidence. 73 Samuel Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Wales, 2 vols (London, 1844), ii, pp. 29, 141. Page 25 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES The Tironensian priory at St Dogmael’s was established c. 1113 × 15 and became an abbey in 1120.74 The house was founded in honore sanctae Dei genetricis semper Virginis Mariae (‘in honour of the holy Mother of God, Mary ever virgin’) from Robert FitzMartin’s gift of ecclesiam sancti Dogmaelis (‘church of St Dogmael’).75 The dedication later appears in several forms: St Mary, St Dogmael, Ss. Mary and Dogmael.76 A dedication to Mary was common in Tironensian houses; the retention of St Dogmael is significant in a new foundation. NORTHOP / LLANEURGAIN (FLINTSHIRE) St Eurgain > St Peter The dedication to Peter is probably late, and most likely arises from the occurrence of the feast of St Eurgain on 29 June, the feast also of St Peter.77 LLANGYNYW (MONTGOMERYSHIRE ) St Cynyw > All Saints That Cynyw was still the dedication at the end of the thirteenth century is attested by the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV.78 LLANEGRYN (MERIONETHSHIRE ) St Egryn > St Mary An association of Egryn with the church of Llanegryn and the surrounding area seems to have persisted through the sixteenth century and beyond, but positive evidence for a dedication to Egryn is lacking. The church eventually came to be dedicated to the Blessed 74 Cowley, Monastic Order, p. 20; Binns, Dedications, p. 104. 75 From the foundation charter of Robert FitzMartin in Monasticon, iv, p. 130, quoted in Binns, Dedications, p. 140. 76 Ibid. 77 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives, ii, p. 474. 78 Taxatio ecclesiastica, p. 287. Page 26 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES Virgin Mary on the Feast of the Assumption: we may safely assume that this occurred before the break with Rome.79 LLANBLEDDIAN (GLAMORGANSHIRE ) St Bleddian > St John Baptist Baring-Gould and Fisher dismissed the notion that Llanbleddian was dedicated to a St Bleddian. The person in question may have been an Elyddon or Lythan, but there is no evidence of a church dedication – only a place-name element, which is not the same thing.80 LLANFABON (GLAMORGANSHIRE ) St Mabon > St Constantine There is no direct medieval evidence for a dedication to Mabon; but this is the dedication reported in the eighteenth century, and the attribution of a dedication to St Constantine appears to have been erroneous.81 DYNSTOW / DYNGESTOW (MONMOUTHSHIRE) St Dingad > St Mary A cult of Dingad existed here at an early date, and certainly before the twelfth century, when the tell-tale designation Merthir Dingat is found in the Book of Llandaf – merthyr being a sign that the church housed corporeal relics.82 There is no evidence of a dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary before the nineteenth century.83 79 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives, ii, p. 415. 80 Ibid., iii, pp. 365–6. 81 Ibid., iii, p. 391, citing Browne-Willis, who gave both Mabon and St Constantine. 82 Evans, Book of Llan Dâv, 31, 43, 90, 227 (Merthir Dincat); 284 (Lann Dinegat); on the significance of merthyr as an element in Welsh place-names, see Richard Sharpe, ‘Martyrs and local saints in late antique Britain’, in Local Saints, ed. Thacker and Sharpe, pp. 75–154, at pp. 130–54. 83 Arnold-Forster (Studies, iii, p. 106) thought the pre-Reformation dedication was to St Dingad and St Mary. Page 27 of 28  John Reuben DAVIES LLANGYNIOW (LLANGEVIEW / LLANGYFYW) (MONMOUTHSHIRE) St Cynyw [for Cynfyw] > St David The dedication by the early nineteenth century was to St David, as Rees attests. Again there is only the toponymic suggestion for a dedication to Cynfyw – which is not evidence for a dedication.84 84 Arnold-Forster (ibid., p. 185) gave David as the pre-Reformation dedication. Page 28 of 28