Welsh Journals

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College, Lampeter, on 1 March 1977, Professor Williams concludes that "Wales has become not much more than nominally a Christian country." The decline in organised religious practice has continued apace since 1977, by now not sparing the Roman Catholic Church, and Professor Williams may be correct in seeing the demise of a distinctively Welsh Christian tradition in sight, as the end of a "lingering but painfully inexorable process." Perhaps death has to come before resurrection. D T W Price Lampeter David H Williams, Atlas of Cistercian Lands in Wales. Cardiff, University of Wales Press. 1990. 153pp. 65 maps, plans and plates. ISBN 0 7083 1007 9. £ 35.00. As a culmination of many articles and a two volume book on the Welsh Cistercians (Cyhoeddiadau Sistersiaidd, Caldey Island 1984), David Williams has produced this gazetteer of all identified lands in Wales held by houses of the Cistercian order. The volume comprises an introduction, sixty-five maps, plans and plates, an inventory, bibliography and index. The Introduction places the study of the Welsh economic assets of the Cistercians in the context of the geographical and historical setting of the order in Europe. It provides a concise description of its expansion and distinctive features (pp 1-10). The second part (pp 10-18) discusses the coming of the White Monks to Wales and explores issues of recruitment, the function of the abbeys as providers of hospitality, their cultural contribution to Welsh literature and historical writing, political and diplomatic role and, of particular concern to this study, their importance in the economic development of Wales. The notes to the illustrations are most useful. Those accompanying the distribution map of Cistercian houses in Wales, for instance, provide information about the physical setting of the abbeys, relative to sea or river, height above sea level, and instances where depopulation and site changes took place. The maps, plans and aerial photographs range over the sites of individual abbeys and their immediate environs, granges, moated enclosures, mill sites, dovecotes and pilgrimage chapels, such as St Wineftide's Well at Holywell, Clwyd, in the care of the Cistercians of Basingwerk. Other maps include the distribution of Cistercian lands in Wales, keyed to the inventory (no 12, p 91); more detailed ones, superimposing anoutline of the Cistercian lands onto 1/4 inch O.S. maps (nos 13-19, pp 92-102); the variety of economic resources (no 22, p 105); and economic values based on the Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291 (no 21, p 104), and the Dissolution accounts (no 25, p 107). The Inventory (pp 36-68)