Welsh Journals

Book Reviews Glanmor Williams, The Welsh and their Religion, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1991. viii + 237 pp, 17 illus. ISBN 0-7083- 1097-4. Price £ 25.00. In this collection of essays, Professor Glanmor Williams, like the householder in Matthew 13.52, brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. "Neath Abbey" appeared in Elis Jenkins (ed), Neath and :District: a Symposium (1974), "Henry de Gower: bishop and builder" in Archaeologia Cambrensis (1981), "Carmarthen and the Reformation, 1536-1558" in Carmarthenshire Studies presented to Major Francis Jones (1974), and "Religion and Welsh Literature in the Age of the Reformation" in the Proceedings of the British Academy (1983). It is good to have these important articles, some with updated bibliographies and footnotes, in one volume, illustrated and indexed. The other two essays are also valuable contributions to a field which the author has--made so much his own. One, "Fire on Cambria's Altar: the Welsh and their Religion", appears here for the first time in extenso, while the other, "Bishop .William Morgan and the First Welsh Bible", is a completely rewritten version of material which first. came out 1m The Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society (1976); and in the Welsh History. Review (June 1989). "Fire on Cambria's Altar" is a tour-de-force. In 30,000 words Professor Williams traces the history of Christianity in Wales from the Roman occupation to the present. The newcomer to this huge subject could not ,find a clearer and surer guide; the specialist will find new and sparkling insights on every page. The author is perhaps most stimulating when he discusses the beliefs and religious practices. of the ordinary person, in the Dark Ages, in medieval Wales, during the Reformation and the Methodist Revival, and, above all, through the pen of Daniel Owen, in Victorian Wales, before we reach the "rising tide of affluence and secularism" of the second half of the twentieth century. My mind went back to an earlier influential collection of essays by Professor Williams, Religion, Language and Nationality in Wales, published in 1979. In one of these earlier essays, which I heard delivered as a lecture at St David's University