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S. Arthmael. From Stained Glass at S. Sauveur, Dinan.

S. Asaph. From Fifteenth-Century Glass in Chancel Window Llan

dyrnog Church, Denbighshire

S. Aude. From Statue at Guizény

S. Beuno. From the Open-air Pulpit of the Abbey, Shrewsbury

From Window at Penmorfa, Carnarvon

216

"

216

"

218

220

S. Brendan's Chapel and Statue. Inisgloria, Co. Mayo

S. Brychan. From Stained Glass Window, S. Neot, Cornwall

S. Azenor and S. Budoc. From Carving at Plourin

286

286

286

320

334

Introduction

I. THE WELSH AND CORNISH SAINTS

SINCE 1836, when appeared An Essay on the Welsh Saints, by the Rev. Rice Rees, nothing has been done in the same field, although material has accumulated enormously. That work was an attempt made, and successfully made, to throw light on a subject hitherto unstudied and dark. Archbishop Ussher had, indeed, in his Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, Dublin, 1639, dealt with the early history of the Church in the British Isles in a masterly manner. But he was unacquainted with the Welsh language, and the Welsh MSS. were not accessible to him. Nevertheless, with really wonderful perspicuity he arrived at results that were, in the main, correct. He dealt with only such of the Welsh Saints as had had the good fortune to have their Lives written in Latin, and of such there are few, and of these few all were not accessible to him. Moreover, these Vita do not always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The importance of the saintly pedigrees is not to be ignored. Ecclesiastical preferments were made according to tribal law. The family to which a saint belonged had to be fixed, and this was done by the pedigrees. Then a claimant to a foundation or benefice of the saint had to establish his descent from the family of the saint, without which he was deemed ineligible to enter upon it.

This condition of affairs existed at the time of Giraldus, at the end of the twelfth century, for he bitterly inveighs against the hereditary tenure of ecclesiastical benefices.1 And he says that the same condition of affairs existed in Armorica. S. Malachi (d. 1148) complained of the same abuse in Ireland.

It was with ecclesiastical property as with that which was secular.

1 Description of Wales, Bk. II, ch. vi. All members of the family, lay as. well as cleric, had a right to support out of the benefice. Willis Bund, The Celtic Church of Wales, 1897, pp. 284 et seq.

VOL. I.

1

B

Right to inherit one as the other had to be established by proof of descent. The pedigree was the title-deed appealed to in both cases. Before the fifth century, indeed, the genealogies are mostly fictitious. But it was precisely these fictitious pedigrees which possessed no legal value from the fifth century upwards; however, when the great rush was made into Wales by those who had been dispossessed of their lands by the Picts in the first place, and secondly by the Saxons, these records became of supreme importance. The new comers settled down on newly acquired territories, and from thenceforth the pedigrees had to be determined and carried on from generation to generation with the strictest regard to accuracy, for tribal rights, both secular and ecclesiastical, depended on them.

"Inheritance in land and all tribal rights could only be asserted by proof produced of legal descent. And it is clear that such proof contained in the production of a genealogy could not be left to irresponsible persons. Consequently, in every Celtic race each branch of a family maintained a professional genealogist, who kept a record of the family descent from the original tree. But further, for the checking and controlling of these records, the chief or king had his special recorder, who also made entries in the book kept for the use of the chief. In Ireland, the High King always had such an officer, to register, not only the descent of the royal family, but also of all the provincial kings and principal territorial chiefs in every province; in order that, in case of dispute, a final appeal could be made to this impartial public record. This officer was an olambh, and it was his function periodically to visit the principal courts and residences of the chieftains throughout the land, and to inspect the books of family history and genealogies; and on his return to Tara, or wherever the High King might reside, to enter into the monarch's book the accessions to these families and their expansion.

"So also, every provincial chief and king had his olambh, and in obedience to an ancient law, established before the introduction of Christianity into the land, all the provincial records were returnable every third year to the Convocation at Tara, where they were compared with each other, and with the monarch's book, the Saltair of Tara." 2

Our Heralds' Visitations, undertaken every few years through the land to record pedigrees, were analogous, though the heralds concerned themselves, not with rights to land, but to the bearing of

arins.

2 O'Curry, Lect. on the MS. Materials of Anc. Irish Hist., Dublin, 1861, pp. 203-4.