Slike strani
PDF
ePub

Welsh traditions and records abound in localities, the notices of which are generally precise; among these the situations of churches are not the least distinguished. A vast number of churches are called after the names of native saints, and therefore may be considered as so many undoubted monuments of existence of those persons; but Welsh tradition proceeds further and asserts, that the churches were so called, not so much because they were dedicated to the saints, as because they were founded by them.

If the assertion be true, it follows that many churches exist in the Principality, the origin of which must be dated from the fifth and sixth centuries, for in those ages most of the saints alluded to flourished. That churches, though frequently rebuilt, should continue uninterruptedly in the same situations. from such high antiquity, will not be deemed extraordinary, when it can be proved by authentic testimony that the ground, on which the church of St. Martin at Canterbury stands, has been the site of a church, bearing the same name, from a date prior to the departure of the Romans. The cathedral in that city is another instance of equal antiquity, which also shows that wherever, from war or other causes, a sacred edifice had been demolished or had been for some time in ruins, such was the veneration attached to a spot once consecrated, that a new edifice was erected in the same situation; and it should be remembered that the Christianity of Wales did not, like that of Kent, suffer an eclipse from the intervention of paganism.

In the first three sections of this Essay it is shown by principles of induction that the churches, presumed to have been founded by the saints whose names they bear, are more ancient than those which are dedicated to the Apostles and the saints of the Romish Calendar; and therefore that the current opinion of their foundation is confirmed by existing circum

stances. They were founded at a time when the Britons were not in communion with the Church of Rome, and before the practice of dedicating to saints according to the usual mode had become customary. From the testimony of Bede, it appears that the mode of consecration, practised by the Primitive Christians of this island, was peculiar. Wherever a church was intended to be erected, a person of reputed sanctity was chosen to reside on the spot, where he continued forty days in the performance of prayer, fasting, and other religious exercises; at the expiration of the time, the ground was held sacred, and a church was erected accordingly.—It would naturally follow that the church should be called after the name of the person by whom the ground was consecrated, and in this sense the word "founder," as applied to the subject under consideration, must be understood. It remained for subsequent generations to regard the founder in the character of patron saint.

Popular opinion seems to maintain that all churches, which are named after Welshmen, were founded by them. An exception, however, should be made with respect to such as are, or may be proved to have been, chapels, which, for reasons that shall appear, cannot claim so early an origin; and with respect to parent churches the proposition may not indeed be true in every instance, but is assumed as a general fact, there being no criterion by which its exceptions may be distinguished. Edifices as they now exist, being purely an architectural question, constitute no part of the enquiry. The original churches of the Britons were all of them built of wood and covered with thatch, and it is singular that this circumstance was made a ground of objection to them by the Catholics.

So numerous are the Welsh saints, that their history is in a manner the ecclesiastical history of their time; but it must be

confessed that nothing further is known of many of them than their genealogy and their churches. The question of the celebration of Easter, and other points, on which the Primitive Christians of Britain differed from the Romanists, have been ably discussed in other publications; the object of this treatise is, if possible, to add to the stock of information from materials which have been but partially investigated. To his predecessors, whose works have facilitated these researches, among whom may be named the authors of "Hora Britannica" and "Hanes Crefydd yn Nghymru," the writer acknowledges his obligations; and though he has sometimes differed from their conclusions, he has done so with diffidence, and is aware that the same fate will in turn befal the present undertaking. Knowledge is the accumulation of past experience, and all that the best informed writer can expect to accomplish, is to contribute but a trifle to the general heap, leaving its amount to be estimated by his successor.

St. David's College,

Nov. 24, 1836.

« PrejšnjaNaprej »