Welsh Journals

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nawdd or protection may be found in many sources.10 Various passages in the law books concerning sacrilege also refer to the clas. n The history of the Bangor clas before the Normans is nearly impossible to determine due to the paucity of references in the primary sources and their opaque nature. The supposed founder and patron saint of Bangor, Deiniol, is given an obit of 584 in the Annales Cambriae,12 and the Book of Llandaff records the translation of his body from Bardsey to Llandaff in 1120.13 The next Bangor ecclesiastic to be named in the sources is Elfoddw or Elfodd who, in c. 768, ensured Wales adopted the Roman practice of observing Easter and who died in c. 809. 14 He is described as an archbishop, either an honorific title bestowed on him by his contemporaries,15 or one that meant something more specific. Either way, the sources do not explain their under- standing or use of this term. Gerald of Wales, in his De Invectionibus, transcribes a letter supposedly preserved in the archives of St David's which may well throw light on the history of the clas in its last century before the arrival of the Normans. The letter, which was sent by Bishop Bernard (1115-48) and his chapter to Pope Eugenius III (1145-53), claimed that the bishops of St David's had always possessed metropolitan powers over their fellow Welsh bishops, and to this effect stated that Bishop Joseph of St David's (d. 1063) had consecrated Morglais and Dyfan to Bangor, and that Sulien (1072/3-78 and 1080-5) provided Revedun to the same see.16 However, Welsh chronicles date the death of Morglais to c. 944/5; 17 this confusion between Gerald of Wales and native sources is probably to be explained by the enthusiasm of Bernard and his chapter to claim for past bishops 10 Pryce, Native Law, p. 168, and n. 31; Rhigyfarch's Life of St. David (ed. James), pp. 24-5; The History, p. 115; Historia, p. 8. 11 lor, p. 23; The Latin Texts of the Welsh Laws, ed. H. D. Emanuel (Cardiff, 1967), p. 290; Pryce, Native Law, pp. 179-80. 12 Ann. Carnb., p. 5. 13 The Text of the Book of Llan Dav, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1893), pp. 3,71,337. 14 Ann. Carnb., pp. 10-11; Brut, Peniarth 20, pp. 2-3; Brut, RBH, pp. 4-5. 15 Nora K. Chadwick, 'Early culture and learning in north Wales', in Studies in the Early British Church, ed. Nora K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1958), p. 44. 16 Gerald of Wales, De Invectionibus, ed. W. S. Davies, in Y Cymmrodor, 30 (London, 1920), p. 140. 17 Ann. Camb., p. 18; Brut, Peniarth 20, p. 7; Brut, RBH, pp. 12-13.