What Rice Rees did in his Essay was to show the value of the pedigrees, and the care with which they had been kept, and how trustworthy they were in determining the stocks and the generations to which the saints belonged. Here and there, owing to identity or similarity of names, errors arose, but this was exceptional. Rees laid great stress on the undoubted fact that in Wales as in Ireland a foundation took its title from its founder. A saint fasted for forty days on a site, and thenceforth it was consecrated to God, and became his own in perpetuity. Dedication during the Age of the Saints meant ownership, and implied therefore much more than is now ordinarily understood by the term. It was " proprietary" dedication. In a poem by the Welsh bard, Gwynfardd Brycheiniog (flor. c. 11601220), written in honour of S. David, in which a number of churches 'dedicated" to him are named, it is repeatedly stated that "Dewi owneth" (Dewi bieu) such and such church, some of which churches, among them, Llangyfelach and Llangadog, had evidently been "rededicated" to him. Thus, all the founded by But although this is certainly true, yet it does not apply to all the churches named after a saint. For a piece of land granted to a saint's church when he was dead also acquired his name. A saint was a proprietor for all ages, whether on earth or in heaven. Teilo, Dewi and Cadoc churches were not personally these three saints, but were, in most cases, acquisitions made by the churches of Llandaff, Menevia and Llancarfan in later times. Nevertheless, in general, the presumption is that a church called after a Celtic saint was of his own individual dedication. It is hardly possible for us to realise the activity and acquisitiveness of the early Celtic saints. They never remained long stationary, but hurried from place to place, dotting their churches or their cells wherever they could obtain foothold. No sconer did an abbot obtain a grant of land, than, dropping a few monks there to hold it for him, he hurried away to solicit another concession, and to found a new church. The Lives of SS. Cadoc, David, Senan, and Cieran show them to have been incessantly on the move. S. Columba is reported to have established a hundred churches. S. Abban Mac Cormaic erected three monasteries in Connaught, then went into Munster, where he founded another; then migrated to Muskerry, where he built a fifth. Next he made a settlement at Oill Caoine; then went to Fermoy and reared a seventh. Again he passed into Muskerry and established an eighth. Soon after he planted a ninth at Clon Finglass; thereupon, away he went and constructed a tenth, Clon Conbruin. No sooner was this Preface IN treating of the Welsh, Cornish, and such Irish Saints as have left their traces in Britain and Brittany, one is met with the difficulty that there is no contemporary record of their lives and labours, and that many of them had no such records left, or if left, they have disappeared. Such Lives as do remain were composed late, at a time when the facts had become involved in a mass of fable, and those who wrote these Lives were more concerned to set down marvels that never occurred than historic facts. In most cases, where this is the case, all that can be done is to sift the narratives, and eliminate what is distinctly fabulous, and establish such points as are genuinely historical, as far as these may be determined, or determined approximately. It is a matter of profound regret that so many of these Saints are nuda nomina, and, to us, little more. And yet what is known of them deserves to be set down, for the fact of their names remaining is evidence that they did exist, and did good work in their generation. In 1330, Bishop Grandisson of Exeter had to lament that the Lives or Legends of so many of the Saints to whom Churches in Devon, and especially in Cornwall, had been dedicated were lost through the neglect of the clergy, and he ordered that duplicates at last of such as remained should be made, under penalty of a mark as fine for neglect. Unhappily the collection then made has since disappeared. Grandisson himself drew up a Legendarium for the Church of Exeter, but into that he introduced hardly any local Saints, contenting himself with such Lives as were inserted in the Roman Breviary. In the Introduction will be found enumerated the principal sources |