Cornwall.[42] A graduate of Missouri University, visiting the
Plain-an-gware at St. Just, informed the writer that in New York, with
the assistance of wealthy patrons, the Cornish plays had been
successfully rendered by members of the University. In Brittany there
has been of late years a notable revival of the mysteries on modern
lines in the Breton language. Under the direction of an enlightened
clergy, encouraged by eminent Celtic scholars, the plays are attracting
the attention of many besides those for whom they have been written. The
marked histrionic ability of the players, most, if not all, of them
simple country folk, the atmosphere of reverent adoring faith, and of
robust inspiring patriotism, the utter absence of anything like vanity
or pretence, the intense reality of the Gospel story which, too often,
in the case of ordinary Englishmen, has, under the soothing influence of
an inimitable authorised version of the Holy Scriptures, become an
idyllic, poetical and idealistic presentment of Scriptural truth, when
proclaimed by the living voice and the impassioned fervour of believing
hearts amid circumstances not very dissimilar to those which gave it
birth: all this is irresistibly pathetic and convincing.
No one who has been present at St. Anne d’Auray and who has followed,
even by means of a French translation, the Boéh-er-goèd (the Call of the
Blood), in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is unfolded strictly on
the lines of the sacred narrative, can ever forget it. In the words of
Abbé le Bayon, the writer of the libretto, it is “par delà ce pauvre
père qui souffrit un jour, dans quelque coin ignoré, de l’abandon
inqualifiable de son fils—que chacun des spectateurs veuille bien
entrevoir; le cœur de Dieu éternellement blessé des abandons humains;
mais aussi, la vieille Bretagne toute déchirée au délaissement des siens
et confiante encore, toujours aimante, rappelant à sa vieille langue, à
ses croyances anciennes, les fils oublieux en qui repose l’espoir de la
race.” The appeal “à sa vieille langue” for Cornishmen comes too late,
but that “à ses croyances anciennes” should meet with a response from
those at least who are zealous for the traditions of their Cornish
forefathers.
-----
Footnote 34:
_Romans de la Table Ronde_, p. 110.
Footnote 35:
The Roll was printed by the Royal Institution of Cornwall in 1887.
Extracts from some of the later rolls are given by Mr. J. H. Matthews
in his _History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor_, pp.
133-42; and by Dr. W. J. Stephens in his _Collections for a History of
Crantock_.
Footnote 36:
I am indebted to Professor Loth for the identification of these
surnames.
Footnote 37:
Some further light would doubtless be thrown on the subject if the
Camborne registers were searched for the children of the above
marriages and for the burial of their parents. It is noteworthy that
Carthew marriages were solemnised at Camborne in 1583 and 1588. They
may have been, and probably were, those of John Carthowe’s children.
Footnote 38:
As late, however, as 1599 we meet with Bretons at Redruth, who
contributed handsomely to the subsidy of that year. Six may be noted
in the St. Ives district in 1571, but none in 1593 or after that date
(Lay Subsidies, 87 (218)).
Footnote 39:
The trève is described by Dom Gougaud as a parochial subdivision still
recognised in certain cantons of Brittany (_Chrétientés_, p. 124).
Footnote 40:
Loth’s _Les Saints bretons_, pp. 92, 93.
Footnote 41:
Peter, _Old Cornish Drama_, p. 34.
Footnote 42:
After the above was written, Mr. Thurstan Peter, President of the
Royal Institution of Cornwall, announced that under the ægis of that
institution the _Beunans Meriasek_ would be performed in the year
1915. The great war has necessarily caused the postponement of the
enterprise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL
By comparing the development of Christian institutions in the various
portions of the Celtic world and observing those elements which were,
for three centuries at least, characteristic, common and permanent, it
ought to be possible to arrive at some very definite and useful results.
It ought to be possible to supplement the evidence, supplied by writers
like Gildas and the venerable Bede, and, from the common store of Celtic
learning, acquired in Wales, Ireland and Brittany, to remedy our
defective knowledge of Cornwall and of Cornish Christianity. Obviously
the closer the relations between the four Celtic families the stronger
the presumption in favour of an identity of ecclesiastical organisation.
Until the Saxon raids, which began in the year 428, Cornwall and Wales
were integral portions of Great Britain; the inhabitants, though
differentiated into kingdoms, were bound together by a common religion
and by a more or less common language.
The Roman occupation which in Armorica had changed the vernacular from
Gaulish to Latin (which in the fifth century was, in that country,
already giving rise to a romance language) achieved no such marked
result in Britain. Latin may have been spoken in the centres of
population and in places where the Roman influence was exceptionally
strong; it may have been spoken, as Professor Haverfield contends, in
the eastern counties; but the absence of any trace of a romance language
goes to prove that it was never the vernacular.
The Saxon invasion which, during the fifth and sixth centuries, reduced
the Britons to a state of servitude, or drove them to the more
inaccessible and remote regions of Wales and Cornwall, was the immediate
cause of a great exodus to Armorica. No event in British history proved
more fruitful in results: no event is more suggestive for the purpose of
elucidating Cornish Church history. How large was the share taken in
that emigration by the people of Dumnonia (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and
Somerset) may be gathered from the fact that the language which the
emigrants introduced into Armorica—a language which speedily superseded
Latin just as Latin had superseded Gaulish—was Cornish rather than
Welsh, the language, in short, which survived in some parts of Cornwall
until the eighteenth century and which is, with some slight
modification, still spoken in Finistère and to some extent in Morbihan
and Côtes du Nord. Professor Loth, whose eminence as a Celtic scholar no
one will dispute, has written, “it is certain that linguistically the
Britons of Cornwall were nearer of kin to the emigrants than the Welsh:
they doubtless occupied the nearer neighbourhood of ancient Dumnonia.”
“The Breton language forms with Cornish a closely compacted unity as
opposed to Welsh, although the three languages were assuredly very near
neighbours at this period” (the fifth century).[43]
Armorica itself became known as Brittany in the sixth century. Cornwall
(Cornouaille) was adopted as the name of that portion of it between the
Elorn and the Ellé soon afterwards. Dumnonia was the name given to the
northern portion between the Elorn and the Cuesnon in the ninth century.
The settlers in Armorica introduced their own form of Christianity, and
the object of the British and Irish missionary saints who flocked
thither soon afterwards was not, as ancient writers have supposed, in
order to convert the pagan Gauls, but rather to administer to the
spiritual needs of their compatriots. To these missions our Dumnonia
contributed little in comparison with Wales. Cornwall after the
foundation of the kingdom of Wessex in 519 became isolated: its
relations with Brittany were doubtless closer than with Saxonised
Britain. But it never became, like Wales and Ireland in the fifth and
sixth centuries, a great missionary centre. The founders of the Breton
monastery-bishoprics—Pol Aurelian, Lunaire, Magloire, Mewan and Malo
were all Welsh: Tutwal only, the founder of Tréguier, was of British
Dumnonia. Of the British saints whose names are found in the parishes,
fractions of parishes and holy places of Brittany, from 80 to 90 are
Welsh; about 60 appear in Cornwall; from 30 to 40 appear only in
Brittany and in Cornwall and Devon, and a few in Somerset.[44]
The British refugees remind us of Æneas whom tradition represents as
bringing with him his Lares and Penates to Italy. The Dumnonian
immigrants brought with them the cult of their own insular saints. At a
later period Brittany was able to make a return in kind. Pol Aurelian,
Sampson, Columba, Meriadec, Corentin and others of Breton fame were
received into the devotional system of Cornwall.
Not only were the Breton and Cornish people one in origin, tradition,
language and religious sentiment, they were one in their Celtic ideal of
the priestly and religious life. Theirs no less than that of the Welsh
and Irish was the monastic ideal. Every Cornish place-name bearing the
prefix _lan_, together with some place-names bearing the prefix _nan_,
implies a monastic foundation. Lanisley, Landithy, Lanhydrock, Lanherne
and Landegy, Nancekuke and Nansladron are a few examples which show that
the quasi-monastic foundations of Domesday Book were only modified
survivals of what was in the sixth century the accepted ecclesiastical
type, a type which continued to exist apparently long after the
parochial system made its appearance. A body of celibate clergy, living
in community, observing a religious rule and entrusted with the care of
souls over an ill-defined area will probably represent the normal, just
as an anchorite living solitary with a view to the perfecting of his
soul in holiness will represent the abnormal development of the monastic
ideal. We have no means of estimating the number of monks whose
segregation constituted a Cornish lan. It is probable that the
communities were small as compared with those of Wales and Ireland. The
great monastery of Bangor Iscoed on the Dee had, according to the
Venerable Bede, at the beginning of the seventh century no less than
2100 monks. Clonard, in the county of Meath, founded by St. Finnian
about the year 520, is said to have been larger. It may be extravagance
on the part of the biographer of St. Patrick to state that the saint
enjoined a levy of a tithe of the men as well as a tithe of the land for
the support of the Church,[45] but there can be no doubt that a very
considerable fraction of the Celtic population embraced the religious
life. At the same time we shall probably arrive at a false economic
inference unless we bear in mind the tripartite division of the monk’s
day which required one-third of it to be spent in manual labour.
Professor Loth, as the result of a careful study of Breton toponomastic,
has arrived at the conclusion that the Armorican parishes were placed as
early as the sixth and seventh century under the invocation of the
saints—national, emigrant, or otherwise—whose names they still bear.[46]
It is therefore possible, I think probable, that the Cornish parish is
older than the English. The reforms of Archbishop Theodore (668-690)
which resulted in the subdivision of dioceses and the formation of
parishes, were begun though not completed a little less than a century
later. Cornwall and Wales were unaffected by these reforms, the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s jurisdiction not being acknowledged by
Cornwall until the days of Egbert (803-839), or by Wales until the
beginning of the twelfth century.
In the absence of clear historical evidence it would be rash to assert
that every development in Wales, Brittany and Ireland was followed by a
corresponding development in Cornwall, but where the same religious
influences were at work in every other Celtic-speaking country it may be
assumed that those influences were at work in Cornwall, and the
receptivity of the Cornish in the matter of religion, when the influence
was held to come from the right quarter, is witnessed by the readiness
wherewith they admitted Welsh, Irish and Breton saints into their
hagiologies.
At the time under discussion it will be borne in mind that the saints
reverenced in Cornwall were almost if not wholly Celtic. Even at the
present time, in spite of the Saxon conquest and the submission to
Canterbury, in spite of the attempt to substitute saints from the Roman
Kalendar for the Celtic patrons of Cornish churches in the fourteenth
century, and in spite of the ignorant perversion of spelling and the
abortive attempts at identification on the part of the English
registrars who conducted the business of the bishop’s court at Exeter,
it is a matter for wonder and gratitude that so many Cornish churches
should still be known by their ancient saints’ names.
If we compare the dedications of Derbyshire with those of Cornwall we
find that of the 168 ancient churches in the former county, 72 are under
the invocation of Scriptural saints, 18 under St. Michael, 28 under All
Saints, 34 under historical saints like Martin, Lawrence and Giles and
about 16 under English and Saxonised saints, like Edmund, Oswald,
Wilfrid, Werburgh and Cuthbert.
On the other hand, in Cornwall, of the 200 dedications 30 are
Scriptural, less than 30 are strangers (either historical and
non-English like Martin, German and Clement, or aggressively English,
like Morwenna, Werburgh, Swithun and Neot, or Saxonised like Cuthbert,
Olave, Odulph and Hugh) and the rest, more than two-thirds of the total
number, are Celtic. Nor is it difficult to account for the presence of
the Saxon element. The monastic ideal presented by Werburgh the abbess
and by Cuthbert the abbot-bishop would appeal to the prevailing monastic
temper, while the early settlement of Saxons in the north-eastern
portion of the county, of which we have abundant proof in its
toponomastic (e.g. in Morwenstow, Jacobstow, Aldestow and Neotstou) and
in the will of King Alfred (871-901) whose possessions in Triconshire
(the hundred of Trigg which at that time probably embraced the hundred
of Stratton) are expressly mentioned, will account for saints like Neot,
Swithun and Morwenna who probably displaced the Celtic saints of an
earlier period.
Before passing to what is of greatest interest—the Celtic episcopate—a
few words are required respecting the two great controversies, which,
however trivial in themselves, served the purpose of furnishing records
of a period concerning which records are very scarce.
The Easter no less than the Tonsure controversy was one of the results
of the isolation of Celtic Christianity. In order to find Easter the
Roman Church had, until the year 457, used the old Jewish cycle of 84
years. In that year a cycle of 532 years was adopted. The Welsh and
Cornish, who had received their Christianity during the Roman occupation
of Great Britain, and therefore long before 457, continued to use the
Jewish cycle. They refused to conform to the Roman use and persisted in
their refusal for a very considerable period. Ireland, which had also
become Christian before 457, was the first to adopt the Roman Easter in
633. Cornwall followed in or about 705, as the result of St. Aldhelm’s
famous letter to Geruntius, prince of Dumnonia. North Wales held out
until 768 and South Wales until 777.[47] Mr. Haddan, who identifies the
“errores” of bishop Leofric’s Missal (909) with the “egregium errorem
Brittonum” of Bede’s history, is inclined to the opinion that St.
Aldhelm’s letter was inoperative outside the Kingdom of Wessex;[48] but
the opinion is open to dispute.
The shaving of the head does not appear to have been associated with the
Christian ministry until the fourth century. The apostolic injunction
respecting long hair was observed, but it was the monks who introduced
the tonsure which, at first, was a tonsure of the entire head and known
as that of St. Paul. St. Peter’s tonsure, which allowed to the shaven
ecclesiastic an aureole or crown of hair around the denuded pate, was
not introduced until the sixth century. Long before this time, however,
the monks of the Celtic world had become distinguished by a tonsure
which apparently made bare the fore part only of the head and left a
semicircular fringe in front. The Celtic tonsure was taken by the
British refugees to Brittany and Galicia. It was as characteristic of
the Celtic clergy as the kilt is characteristic of Scottish soldiers
to-day. Its origin was almost certainly Druidical, and, if so, it is one
of the few shreds of evidence we possess of the presence of Druids in
Cornwall. Their presence in Great Britain at an earlier period is
generally allowed; their presence and power in Ireland is conclusively
proved.
The Celtic tonsure appears to have been abandoned at the time when the
Roman Easter was accepted.
-----
Footnote 43:
_Les Noms des Saints bretons_, p. 143.
Footnote 44:
Loth, _ibid._, p. 124, n. 1.
Footnote 45:
Quoted by Dom Gougaud, _Les Chrétientés celtiques_, p. 82.
Footnote 46:
Gougaud, _ibid._, p. 107.
Footnote 47:
Haddan and Stubbs, _Councils_, etc., i, 201.
Footnote 48:
_Ibid._, i, 674 and 676.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL
The chief interest of Celtic Christianity gathers around the
monastery-bishopric and the abbot-bishop who ruled it. In the sixth
century the religious life had become much more than a counsel of
perfection. In Ireland the Church was almost exclusively monastic. In
Wales St. German is said to have founded a monastery during his second
visit. Iltut, whom he ordained priest, was the founder of Llantwit, the
great school of monks whence came Sampson, Paul Aurelian and possibly
Gildas and David.
At the outset it is necessary to guard against the undercurrent of
thought which connects Celtic monasticism with one or other of the great
religious orders. The earliest of these orders—that of St. Benedict—was
not established until about A.D. 529, and was not introduced into
Britain until St. Augustine’s arrival in A.D. 597. At the interview
between Augustine and the Welsh bishops in 603 Dinoot abbot of Bangor
Iscoed was among the strongest opponents of compromise. Celtic
monasticism owed nothing to St. Benedict or to St. Augustine. When
therefore we read the statement of a shrewd and learned writer like Sir
John Maclean that “St. Petrock founded his monastery at Bodmin adopting
the rule of St. Benedict” and when we recall an admission by the same
writer that Petrock was educated at the great monastery of Clonard
towards the end of the fifth or at the beginning of the sixth century,
i.e. presumably between 490 and A.D. 510 and therefore before the
Benedictine order was founded, we realise how mischievous this
undercurrent of thought may prove.
There is no evidence that any early monastic foundation in the Celtic
world was established in accordance with the Benedictine discipline.
Celtic monasticism was quite definitely _sui generis_. The mission of
St. German in 429 and 447 probably laid the foundations of it in
Britain.
It had achieved some of its greatest victories before St. Augustine of
Canterbury was born. Paul Aurelian, the Welsh monk, established the
monastery-bishopric of Léon in A.D. 530: Sampson, a compatriot, the
similar foundation at Dol in A.D. 565: Tutwal of British Dumnonia was
abbot before he became abbot-bishop of Tréguier in the same century. In
Ireland the monastery of Clonard was founded before the Benedictine
order came into existence. St. Patrick was a contemporary of St. German.
Celtic Christianity, while it was practically independent of Rome,[49]
became intensely monastic. There is nothing therefore to lead us to
regard the canons of St. Petrock, St. Piran, St. Stephen, St. Keverne
and St. Probus, mentioned in Domesday Book, as subject to the discipline
of St. Benedict. Such evidence as we possess tends to confirm the
contrary opinion. What has been said of the order of St. Benedict
applies with greater force to that of St. Augustine, the Black Canons,
whose earliest foundation in England dates from A.D. 1108, that is, 22
years after Domesday Book was compiled. Cardinal Gasquet truly says the
clergy of every large church, as being subject to rule, were called
canons. The rule of St. Augustine was not introduced at Bodmin until the
time of Bishop William Warelwast (1107-36).[50]
Under the strong pressure exerted by monastic expansion the governmental
character of episcopacy became attenuated. This was especially the case
in Ireland and in those churches which owed their foundation to Irish
missions. The multiplication of bishops tended to degrade the office. It
is impossible to read the accounts of monastic rule as developed by St.
Bridget at Kildare and by the Irish mission at Iona, and of the
mechanical and subsidiary part which the bishops were called upon to
play in the drama, without being aware of the subversion of one of the
fundamental marks of episcopacy. The present writer has found but slight
evidence of this disastrous policy in Wales and Brittany. There the
abbot-bishop is seen as the ruler of a monastery or of a tribe.
Innumerable monasteries had no bishop at all. The presence of a bishop
gave to the monastery the elements of permanence and priority. The
Breton and Welsh monastery-bishoprics have in many instances survived as
bishoprics up to the present time solely, as it would seem, owing to
their early episcopal character.
The distinction between the Irish and British conception of episcopacy
must be borne in mind when we attempt to reconstruct the ecclesiastical
institutions of Cornwall. It has been shown that the relation between
Cornwall and Brittany was that of mother and daughter. Between Wales and
Cornwall the relation, though probably less close, was far closer than
that between Ireland and Cornwall. It is therefore more than probable
that while the abbot-bishop was everywhere a distinguishing feature of
Celtic Christianity there was here (in this county) no such perversion
of the episcopal office as to give rise to a body of _episcopi vagantes_
of whom we read in connection with Ireland and Irish missions.[51]
That Cornwall possessed bishops is certain, and that they ruled
monasteries is equally certain, diocesan bishops being, during the
period under consideration, practically unknown to the Celtic world.
History helps us little as regards Cornwall. We know that in A.D. 664
two British bishops (duobus de Brittonum gente episcopis), whom Mr.
Haddan considers to have been Cornish, assisted Wini, the Saxon bishop
of Wessex, in the consecration of St. Chad.[52]
Gildas, the Jeremiah of Britain, whose _De Excidio_ is stated to have
been written in the sixth century, introduces us to an ecclesiastical
system which, in respect of its main features, differs hardly if at all
from that with which we are familiar, but which both surprises us by the
evidence of its progress and alarms us by the extent of its
perverseness. Gildas speaks of the clergy “intruding themselves into the
preferments of the Church, yea, rather buying the same at a high rate”
and “after the example of Simon Magus buying the office of a bishop or
of a priest.” There was, therefore, already in the sixth century, if the
traditional date of the _De Excidio_ be accepted, a gradation not only
of dignity but also of office and emolument, for which, without Gildas’
evidence, we should hardly have been prepared. The denunciations of
Gildas have been held to apply to the civil rulers and the secular
clergy only,[53] but there seems to be no good reason for accepting this
hypothesis unless we read into the sixth century conditions which are
found at a later period. It is important and sufficient for us to know
that the British Church was highly organised and comparatively wealthy
at this time.
To suppose, however, that Celtic monasteries were large, solid
structures of stone with cloisters, refectories, dortors and the like is
to mistake the economic conditions of the period and of the countries
under review. To associate the Celtic bishop with a durable and spacious
cathedral church is almost as grotesque an anachronism as to represent
St. Lucy (who died in the year 303), as they do in the sailors’ church
at Naples, apparelled in a modern court dress with a tiara of gems and a
necklace of beautiful pearls.