THE EARLY LIFE OF ST. SAMSON OF DOL. BY THE REV. W. DONE BUSHELL, LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. (A Lecture delivered at Caldey Priory, December 13th, 1901.) 475.-Birth of St. Dubric. 525.-Birth of St. Samson and St. 530.-St. Samson goes to Llantwit. 550.-St. Samson goes to Caldey Island. 552.--St. Samson leaves Caldey Island. 555.-St. Samson crosses to Brittany. 557.1-St. Samson at the Council 560.--Death of St. Dubric. RANGED round the centre of the great reading-room in Russell Square is what is perhaps the largest book in the world. At all events the British Museum has no other which can rival it. It is not yet complete, but it consists already of some seventy folio volumes, each containing six or seven hundred closely-printed pages. It is the Acta Sanctorum, the Lives of the Saints, the tales, that is, which once upon a time were told by many a Calefactory fire, as "Each in turn essayed to paint The rival merits of their saint," or which were read in the Refectory, what time the silent monks consumed their frugal meal. A treasure indeed, if it were but authentic history! We find, however, that in almost every case some centuries elapsed between the death of the saint and the compiling of the legends of his life; so that although the Acta show us what was thought about these holy men in later days, and therefore have in any case their value, yet they in general show us little more. There 1 This date only is trustworthy. The others are merely conjectural, and, at best, approximate. is however for the most part an historical substratum, much as it may have been idealised, and there are just a few of the Lives, some five or six, perhaps, although, alas no more, which are in the main trustworthy narratives. And such a one is the life of St. Samson, Prior of Caldey, Abbot of Llantwit, and in later life Archbishop of Dol. It is true that it was not compiled, as we now have it, for many years after the Archbishop's death; it however follows very closely a much older life, written by one Enoch, whose uncle was a kinsman of the saint, and who had conversed with Anne, St. Samson's mother. And of this life there are happily three texts, the French, the Breton, and the English, as they have been called, which are represented by the Acta, by a life which has been edited by one Dom Plaine in the Analecta Bollandiana, and by the Liber Landavensis; and all alike are founded upon Enoch's Life, and follow it very closely, so that it is possible to reconstruct the original account with very considerable success. In dealing, therefore, with St. Samson's life we are on historic ground. There may, indeed, be miracles recorded which are only due to the devout imagination of the writer; but they are few, and they are not grotesque, as when we read elsewhere of some decapitated Cornish saint, who carries his own head under his arm, or crosses from Armorica upon a paving-stone. They are rather, when they do occur, devout imaginings of pious souls, to whom the eternal world seemed very near, and angel ministry a fact of everyday occurrence. The life of St. Samson will divide itself most readily into two parts, the first extending from his birth, about the year 525, to the year 555, when at the age of thirty he crossed to Brittany, the second covering the remainder of his life. It is with the first part only I propose to deal; the years, that is, which Samson spent at Llantwit and on Caldey Island, and in the neighbouring districts of South Wales. Not far from Cowbridge, in that fertile tract of land which separates the uplands of Glamorgan from the sea, there lies a little village known to-day as Llantwit Major. It lies to the south of the great coal-basin of South Wales. The Vale of Glamorgan, which is the name the district bears, has little in common with the hill country to the north. The one is agricultural and peaceful, and the other mercantile and busy. The northern carboniferous districts tell of modern life; the Vale suggests the spirit of an older world, ecclesiastical and feudal, which indeed has long since passed away, but which is represented there by many a ruined castle, many an ancient church or desecrated priory, and, in the little village of Llantwit, by the remains of what was fourteen hundred years ago, and for many centuries to follow, a thriving University. And though the sympathies of some may rather turn to the teeming valleys full of hope and industry, the sources as they are of that sea power on which the Empire must depend, yet there are others to be found who take a very different view; the Abbé Duine, for example, who has done so much for the saints of Brittany, writes as follows: "When I had thus," he says, seen Cardiff, the modern town, the material town; when I had breathed the fog of the coal-carrying city, it was delicious to escape to Llantwit, village of peace, with air so pure, so mild, where life itself is hushed to silence, motionless, and lulled to sleep by the magic rays of the bright August sun! Place," he goes on to say, "before your eyes a very modest row of houses, small, with old thatched roofs, walls red or yellow, or white with lime, the doors bright green; within the windows, flowers; upon the window-sill a cat, her paws tucked in, as solemn as a sphinx! All that one saw was smiling, child-like, primitive." Doubtless the Abbé Duine has his share of the romantic spirit of his race. His words are those of sentiment; but a more balanced and prosaic writer bears a similar witness: the late Professor Freeman writes as follows; "The whole series of buildings at Llantwit Major is one of the most striking in the kingdom. Through a succession of civil and domestic structures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the traveller gradually approaches the grand group composed of the church and the buildings attached to it; lying as they do in a deep valley below the town, they present a miniature representation of the unequalled assemblage at St David's." And no doubt the Professor is quite justified in what he says. The church itself is most remarkable, and in the churchyard there are relics witnessing to a far distant past. There is a cylindrical pillar, described by Mr. J. Romilly Allen in the Archeologia Cambrensis for 1899; there is a fragment of a cross, erected, as its legend tells us, by one Abbot Samson-not our saintfor his soul's weal, and for the souls of King Juthael, and Arthmael the Dean; there is a cross, long buried out of sight, but found and re-erected in 1793; and there is yet another monument, which bears the inscription: "Samson placed this cross for his soul." There was also an ancient tithe-barn to be seen until quite recently. It was a structure of huge size, which dated from the thirteenth century. And there were other buildings which have disappeared. And we still have a fragment of the medieval monastery, and a dovecot of the thirteenth century, cylindrical in shape, and covered by a domical vault, such as we find at Angle and at Manorbier in Pembrokeshire. And to this secluded spot there came, in the sixth century, one Iltyd, called the Knight. He was a native of Armorica, which we to-day call Brittany, and was great-nephew of Germanus of Auxerre, who had in his time, with his companion Lupus, come to Wales to combat the Pelagian heresy; and he was also pupil of St. Cadoc, Cadoc-Doeth, the famous Abbot of Llancarvan, five miles north of Cowbridge, who, with a more than princely hospitality, was wont, it is said, to feed each day one hundred clergy, and one hundred workmen, and one hundred men-at-arms, as well as one hundred widows and one hundred poor, together with servants, squires, and guests almost innumerable. But Iltyd, Iltyd "Farchog," or the "Knight," preferring poverty and self-denial to a rough soldier's life, established in this sequestered spot a monastic College, erecting, not of course a noble pile of buildings such as we find to-day at Oxford or at Cambridge, but, as the manner was, a square enclosure with a mound and palisades, and in the enclosure bee-hive huts for his monks, and seven churches, which are said to have been built of stone, though this, in the sixth century, appears incredible. And by degrees this quiet and remote community became a school for learning, nay, a University, which lasted, little as men now remember it, for certainly not less than a thousand years. And amongst St. Iltyd's early pupils were David, patron saint of Wales, Paulinus, Gildas, Padern, Teilo and Oudoceus, famous men each one of them, and last, not least, St. Paul de Léon, whose tapering spire is now the glory of the north of Brittany. 1 And to this seat of learning and of prayer there was attached an island known as Ynys-y-pyr, an island to whose shores, the wind being fair, one tide would take This island must be certainly identified with Caldey. Archbishop Usher did indeed suggest that it coincided with a part of the present town of Llanelly, called Machynnis, formerly an island; and, as the matter seemed of little importance, the suggestion was, until quite recently, accepted without question. It was, however, only an obiter dictum, resting on no evidence; whilst, on the other hand, not only do we find in Caldey Island a site more easy of access for the Llantwit monks, and with clear evidence upon it of early ecclesiastical occupation, but, in the Life of St. Paul de Léon, written by one Wromac "moine de l'Abbaye de Landavensis," in the year 884, we are expressly told that there was a certain island, Pyr by name, within, it is said, the border of Demetia, in which St. Iltyd spent much of his time, and where he was associated with, amongst others, St. Paul de Léon, St. David, St. Gildas, and St. Samson. And this decides the matter, for Pyr (see Dugdale's Monasticon, Camden, Leland, and others) was most indubitably the former name of Caldey. |