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The Saint was a great traveller, and acquired the title of " the Itinerator."

Dagan was an ardent supporter of the Irish modes of tonsure and Paschal computation.

How it was, we do not know, but by some means he was brought into communication with Laurentius, immediate successor to Augustine at Canterbury (604-619). Augustine had failed to come to terms with the British Bishops, who were offended at his arrogance. Laurence attempted to effect a union with the Scotic (Irish) Bishops. Bede gives us the beginning of a letter sent to them, in which reference is made to Dagan.1

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To the lords, our very dear brethren, the bishops and abbots throughout all Scotia, Laurence, Mellitus, and Justus, bishops, servants of God:

When the Apostolic see sent us, as its wont has been in all parts of the world, to preach in these western parts to the pagan races, it happened that we entered the country before we were properly acquainted with it. We have venerated both the Britons and the Scots with great reverence for their sanctity, believing that they walked in the way of the Universal Church. But since we have got to know the Britons, we have supposed that the Scots are superior to them. Now, however, we have learned by means of Bishop Dagan, who has come to Britain, and of Abbat Columbanus among the Gauls, that they do not differ from the Britons in their manner of life. For when Bishop Dagan came to us, he not only would not take food with us, but would not even take food in the same guest-house in which we were eating."

Dagan had passed through Wales. Popular tradition pointed out the place of his landing on Strumble Head, where stood a Capel Degan, commemorating his visit there. About this more presently.

In Wales, among the British, he had heard of the conference at Augustine's Oak, and had felt the resentment that had been provoked by the rudeness of Augustine, shown to men he venerated profoundly, and he hotly took their side against the Italian Missioners.

Nevertheless, he is represented as a man of very mild disposition -præ-placidum he is called by Marianus O'Gorman, who is a very late authority (1167), and drew from his own imagination the characteristics of the Saints he commemorated.

One is tempted to quote the words of Pope in the Dunciad, relative to this controversy

1 Hist. Eccl., ii, c. 4.

Behold yon Isle, by Palmers, Pilgrims trod,

Men bearded, bald, cowl'd, uncowl'd, shod, unshod,
Peel'd, patch'd, and pyebald, linsey-wolsey brothers,
Grave Mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others.
That once was Britain. Happy! had she seen

No fiercer sons, had Easter nearer been.

Of Dagan no biography exists.

The Bishop of Bristol (Dr. Browne) says, in reference to the controversy between Dagan and Laurence, “It is very interesting to find that we can, in these happy days of the careful examination of ancient manuscripts, put a friendlier face upon the relations between the two Churches in times not much later than these, and in connexion with the very persons here named. In the earliest Missal of the Irish Church known to be in existence, the famous Stowe Missal, written probably eleven hundred years ago, and for the last eight hundred years contained in the silver case made for it by order of a son of Brian Boroimhe, there is of course a list-it is a very long list -of those for whom intercessory prayers were offered. In the earliest part of the list there are entered the names of Laurentius, Mellitus, and Justus, the second, third and fourth Archbishops of Canterbury, and then, with only one name between, comes Dagan. The presence of these Italian names in the list does great credit to the kindliness of the Celtic monks, as the marked absence of Augustine's name testifies to their appreciation of his character. Many criticisms on his conduct have appeared; I do not know of any that can compare, in first-hand interest, and discriminating severity, with the omission of his name and inclusion of his successors' names in the earliest Irish

Missal which we possess. It is so early that it contains a prayer that the Chieftain who had built them their church might be converted from idolatry. Dagan, who had refused to sit at table with Laurentius and Mellitus, reposed along with them on the Holy Table for many centuries in this forgiving list.” 1

Dagan died on September 13. The Annals of the Four Masters give the date as 640.

The meeting with Laurence would seem to have taken place about 608. He was then a bishop, and probably not very young.

S. Mochoemog or Pulcherius is said to have died in 655 at the advanced age of a hundred and six.

If we suppose that Dagan died at the age of eighty-eight, then he was born in 552, and he would have been over fifty when he met Laurentius. The dates in the life of S. Petrock are very difficult

1 Browne (G. F.), The Christian Church in these Lands before Augustine, S.P.C.K., 1897, pp. 128-9.

Petrock's arrival

to determine. Dagan was with him for five years. in Cornwall was between 520 and 560, so that Dagan was with him only when quite young.

His day in the Félire of Oengus, the Donegal and Tallagh Martyrologies, is September 13. He is also commemorated, as of Glendalough, on January 8. That this is the same Dagan we can hardly doubt, as he was akin to S. Coemgen of Glendalough.

In Wales he seems to have tarried some time and to have been well known. Fenton, in his Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire,1 says:—" Westward of Trehowel, near the edge of the cliff, overhanging a small creek, are seen the faint ruins of a Chapel dedicated to S. Tegan or Degan, of whom this country abounds with legends; his sanctity bore no proportion to his stature, for that is represented as most diminutive. When very young, I recollect an old man who said he remembered the Chapel up, and in a part of it then roofed, the Saint's sacred vest was preserved and shown, which was purchased many years after by a stranger travelling in those parts; with the removal of his robe, the fame of his sanctity died away.

"It seems this sacred garment was in existence about the year 1720; for in a letter of that date to Browne Willis, from one H. Goff, a member of the Cathedral of S. David's, the writer says (MSS. Bib. Bodl.), ' That above a small creek in Lanwnda parish there is a ruined chapel, called S. Degan's, having near to it a spring, named after the saint; and above the said spring a tumulus, called S. Degan's Knwc or Knoll, where people resort to seat themselves on holidays and Sundays. There is a remarkable habit of this said S. Degan preserved for several ages; the person that has it now having had it in his custody for forty years, to whom it was handed down by an elderly matron of upwards of ninety years of age. This habit, a piece whereof I have sent you enclosed, I had the curiosity to see; it is much in the form of a clergyman's cassock, but without sleeves. There were two of them of the same make near a yard in length, but having a like slit or hole at every corner on each end, and on the brim of each side were loops of blue silk.'

"The veneration for this little duodecimo saint is hereditary amongst the inhabitants of this district, who tell a thousand miraculous stories of him, and never fail to point out the prints of his horse's feet in the cliffs up which he rode when he emerged from the ocean, for it seems he was a sort of marine production. Numerous prophecies, likewise ascribed to him, have been handed down traditionally from father to son for generations; and one more remarkable than the rest for 1 London, 1811, pp. 20-1; Brecon, 1903, pp. 13-4.

prefiguring, with a most circumstantial coincidence, the late French descent on that coast."-Fenton alludes here to the French abortive invasion of Wales in 1797

In the Dunkeld Litany he is invoked as Dagamach, and in Scotland he is called Dagam. 'We often find a confusion between n and m in the Scottish lists. We find Cromanus and Cronanus confounded, so this Dagamus is the same as the Daganus of Beda.” 1 He received a certain cult in Galloway.

Bishop Forbes gives as his day May 29, but he does not occur in the Scottish Calendars.

William of Worcester says that Dagan with his companions Medan. and Croidan were commemorated at Bodmin on June 4.

Leland says: "S. Petrocus, S. Credanus, S. Medanus, et S. Dachuna vir in Botraeme [Bodmin in Cornubia], " i.e., were buried.2

Dagan is invoked in the Litany in the Stowe Missal.3

A Dagan was Abbot of Llancarfan in the time of Bishops Oudoceus. and Berthwyn.1

S. DANIEL, see S. DEINIOL

S. DAVID (DEWI), Abbot, Bishop, Confessor, Patron of Wales

THE authorities for the Life of Dewi Sant or S. David are :— 1. A Vita S. Davidis, by Ricemarchus (Rhygyfarch), Bishop of Menevia 1088-96, composed some 500 years after the Saint's death. Of this several MSS. exist, two in the British Museum, Cotton Vesp. A. xiv, and Nero, E. i; two in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and one in Corpus Christi College Library, Cambridge-all of the thirteenth century. It was published in part by Wharton, Anglia Sacra, ii, pp. 645-7, and in whole by Rees, Cambro-British Saints, pp. 117-43.

The various other Lives are all amplifications or abridgments of 1 Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 320.

2 Collect., i, p. 75.

3 Warren's Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, Oxf., 1881, p. 240.

4 Book of Llan Dâv, pp. 158, 175, 187, 196. Danoc is also given (p. 179) as its abbot in the latter bishop's time, by whom is probably meant Dagan. Danoc occurs also as a clerical witness in the Cartulary of Llancarfan (Cambro-British Saints, p. 90).

this one, the fullest known text of which is that in Cott. Vesp. A. xiv, but it may not be as Rhygyfarch wrote it.

2. A second, by Giraldus Cambrensis, d. 1223. The MS. Cotton Vitellius E. vii was badly injured by fire in 1731, and is now illegible. It was copied, however, by Wharton before its defacement, and printed in Anglia Sacra, ii, pp. 628-40, and again, after Wharton's transcript, in Brewer's Works of Giraldus, 1863, iii, pp. 377-404. Leland had made some extracts from the original, Collectanea, iv, p. 107. This Life is an expansion of that by Rhygyfarch. MS. Regis 13, C. i, gives the Miracula S. Davidis.

3. A third, from a MS. at Utrecht, in Acta SS. Boll., March 1, pp. 41-6. An abridgment of that by Rhygyfarch.

4. An abridgment of Rhygyfarch's in John of Tynemouth's Collection (Tiberius E. i), taken into the Nova Legenda Angliæ of Capgrave. The MSS. Lambeth 10-12 give the Historia Aurea of John of Tynemouth. Vita S. Davidis is No. 12, fol. 250.

5. A Welsh Life, in Jesus College, Oxford, MS. 119, generally known as Llyfr Ancr Llanddewi Breft. This MS. was written in 1346 by an anchorite of Llanddewi Brefi, in Cardiganshire, and has been published by the Clarendon Press, 1894, edited by Professors Morris Jones and Rhys. The Life is at pp. 105–118. A copy of it is also given in Cambro-British Saints, pp. 102-16, from MS. Cotton Titus D. xxii (fifteenth century). There are copies of circa 1400 in Llanstephan MSS. 4 and 27, and fifteenth century copies in Peniarth MSS. 15 and 27 (part ii). This Life again is an abridgment of Rhygyfarch's, but, like that by Giraldus, embodies material from other sources that are lost to us.

Rhygyfarch was the son of Bishop Sulien, and belonged to a family of scholars and divines that was in great prominence during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the Diocese of S. David's. He is styled "the Wise," and he died at the age of 43 in 1097-9. He wrote his own name in the quasi-Latin form Ricemarchus, which yields in Welsh Rhygyfarch.1

When we come to enquire whence he drew his material, we are bound to admit that he had but little at his disposal beyond oral tradition and ballads relative to the Saint. The city and church of S. David's had been sacked repeatedly by the Northmen between 795 and 1088. Two bishops met with violent deaths at their hands,

1 The name occurs as Rigewarc in Annales Cambriæ, Rigyvarch in Geoffrey's Brut, Rychmarch in Brut y Tywysogion, and Rhyddmarch in the Gwentian Brut. Rhygyfarch is the correct form. For his eulogy see the Bruts, ed. Rhys and Evans, pp. 273-4.

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