Welsh Journals

authority of this foundation that it was deemed the mother church of the whole of Penweddig a cantref which included the entire territory of Ceredigion north of the Ystwyth. In the Middle Ages Llanbadarn claimed as church land all that lay between the Ystwyth and the Clarach and much more besides. The parish was once the largest not only in the Diocese of St. David's but in the whole of southern Britain. Ecclesiastical influence was, therefore, dominant in the district and it followed almost inevitably that the new town and castle should carry the name of the great sanctuary on whose land and in great proximity to which they were being erected. Indeed, such was the case. The charter of 1277 was granted to 'Llanbadarn' for such was to be for many a year the official designation of the new settlement. Why, therefore, do the chronicles speak of Edmund beginning to erect 'the castle of Aberystwyth'? The answer lay in the fact that more than a hundred and fifty years before, there had existed an Anglo-Norman motte and bailey castle at Tanybwlch near the then estuary of the river Ystwyth — a castle thus properly called Aberystwyth Castle. It would seem that the soldiers and many of the Anglo-Normans settled in the new town carried the name of this older stronghold with them to the new, and thus the castle and town became popularly called 'Aberystwyth' — a name which ran side by side with the official title and ultimately superseded it. The Welsh inhabitants of the area used yet another name and referred to the new bastide for several generations as 'Llan- badarn Gaerog'. It is obvious, therefore, that in order to make the 'Aberystwyth 700' Exhibition fully representative it was essential that something representative of the older Llanbadarn and its greatness should be included among the exhibits. It follows almost naturally that an Exhibition staged by the National Library should include, if possible, some of the famous manuscripts written at Llanbadarn when Bishop Sulien and his distinguished family flourished there in the eleventh century. The two most important manuscripts copied at Llanbadarn are, of course, a Psalter (also containing a Latin poem by Rhygyfarch) now in Trinity College, Dublin, and St. Augustine's De Trinitate copied by leuan ap Sulien and containing his well known Latin poem describing the life and family of his father Bishop Sulien at Llanbadarn, which is preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Rhygyfarch's Vita Davidis the fullest text of which is found in the Vespasian A XIV documents which form part of the Cottonian Collection in the British Museum is not now considered to have been written at Llanbadarn. Because of the special conditions associated with Bishop Parker's bequest to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, it is not possible to exhibit here St. Augustine's De Trinitate, but photocopies of some of the more interesting leaves have been provided. The Library, however, was able to obtain the loan of the original Psalter from Trinity College, Dublin, through the kindness of the College officers, provided it was carried by our Librarian in person to Aberystwyth. The manuscript, therefore, forms one of the most important and precious additions to the Exhibition and is certainly the oldest item on display. Recent work on Llanbadarn has emphasized the very large library it must have possessed in Bishop Sulien's day and the extensive