Welsh Journals

THE CHRISTIAN ORIGINS OF MONTGOMERYSHIRE: AN INTERPRETATION Dr R.W.D. FENN, FSA,FRHistS and J.B. SINCLAIR, FSA Scot The J.K.D. Lloyd Memorial Lecture given to the Powysland Club, 26th November 1988 Edward Williamson, the saintly bishop of Swansea & Brecon, spoke of the resounding collisions between scholars who studied the Dark Ages and Professor J.R.R. Tolkien told us that it was a period "no longer in the sub-Roman murk, but the neo-Celtic twilight which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of reason" And he, as the creator of the world of the Hobbits, surely knew about these things. The collisions are so frequent because the sources are so few. This is particularly so in the field of Montgomeryshire's archaeology where there are a few crosses and slabs and that is all. There are no remains of pre-Norman ecclesiastical buildings. Amongst the written sources there is the Venerable Bede's version of events as related in his History of the English Church and People, Nennius's History of the Britons, the Welsh Annals, Gildas on the Ruin of Britain, the Welsh Pedigrees such as contained in Bonedd y Saint, the Welsh Triads, and various Norman Lives of the Welsh saints. These lives, however, were not written as serious, objective biography and were intended to amuse, impress, and improve rather than inform. Moreover, only the major saints like David, Cadoc, Tysilio, Beuno and Illtud had biographers, so that of Cadfarch of Penegoes, alias Llangadfarch; Gwyddelan, of Llanwyddelan; Gwyddyn, of Llanwyddyn; and Illog of Hirnant we know nothing. At other times as in the case of Cynog of Llangynog we may be dealing with two saints of the same name, for it is difficult to believe that we have here the patron of Merthyr Cynog in Breconshire. Consequently, one is thrown back upon the significance of dedications as a source of historical information, and that is when we hear the loudest thuds of disagreement. As long ago as 1836 Rice Rees observed in his pioneering essay on The Welsh Saints that "popular opinion seems to maintain that all churches which are named after Welshmen, were founded by them" And, despite recent arguments to the contrary, it is our opinion, that churches in Wales were indeed probably often named after their founders. It has to be remembered that with the solitary exception of St David none of the Welsh saints underwent the formal process of canonization. A Welsh saint was holy in the New Testament sense of being set apart for a special purpose, a leader, committed, tribal, and often charismatic, but the standards of virtue and holiness were frequently not those of traditional western canonized piety. To be remembered in a Welsh ecclesiastical place- name was not self-canonization and in the absence of a better hypothesis it is useful to assume that the Llangadfans and Llantysilios of Wales were either founded by those they name or by their immediate followers. In the Dark Ages the greater part of the present-day border of Wales was occupied by the kingdom of Powys which perhaps originally comprised the territory occupied in Roman times by the Cornovii. This connection is reflected in the derivation of its name from the Pagenses, the rural inhabitants of the old Civitas Cornoviorum, the Roman canton which preceded it. In which case, Powys in its prime covered an extensive area, embracing the whole of Shropshire and the Midland Gap. Its northern boundary was the Mersey and the 'Rice Rees, An Essay on the Welsh Saints, (London 1836), p.xiii.