Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

THE CELTIC SAINTS IN CARDIGANSHIRE.1 (MAP I. I-I. 5). THERE are approximately seventy churches on ancient sites in Card- iganshire of which forty are dedicated to Celtic saints. The remainder are dedicated to Biblical or Foreign saints or to the Archangel Michael and so fall beyond the scope of this paper. Material for the study of the Celtic saints may be grouped under two main headings. We naturally turn in the first place to the Lives of the various saints which claim to give an account of their work, their travels, and their contemporaries. Unfortunately, this seemingly promising source is a most unsatisfactory one from the point of view of the modem student, as these texts are known to have been written many hundreds of years after the particular saint whose life-history they purport to give was supposed to have lived. Furthermore, they are packed with hagiological material, which, while of interest to the anthropologist and student of primitive religions, is hardly a sat- isfactory source for the historian. Their value to the modern student is further depreciated by the fact that they were almost all written by medieval monks who were naturally eager to further the interests of their own church and those of the Norman conquerors of Wales. In the second place, we turn to what has been called the topographical approach. Most scholars are agreed that all ancient churches with Celtic dedications in Wales and elsewhere are on the sites of small religious communities that were originally established by the saint whose name they bear or by one of his immediate followers. By plotting on a map all the churches dedicated to a given saint we thereby obtain the general distribution of his cult and frequently some idea of the extent of his travels as well. Several problems arise in the use of this method. Some of the churches may be dedicated to a Celtic saint at a period long after his death by devotees who may have some special reason for remembering his or her name. Furthermore, the process of Normanisation meant that several churches originally dedicated to a Celtic saint would be re-dedicated to the Virgin or to St. Peter or possibly to some other saint carrying greater favour with the newcomers. Both these things, undoubtedly, happened, but it can be said that the former practice, where it can be detected, tended to 1An address given to the Society at Aberystwyth, i November 1947.