houses of monks and the houses of friars. And, first, let us consider in
briefest outline the main course of development of the religious orders
in the Roman Church. The Rule of St. Benedict (+541) was adopted by all
monks: the essential features of it were prayer, labour, silence, a
common life and common property. But among the early Benedictines each
monastery was independent and self-governing, though an abbey might have
priories in some measure connected with it. The result was that in the
course of time the discipline and life of monasteries varied infinitely;
and there was no co-operation for self-defence among the various
monasteries. Hence in the tenth century arose the Cluniac order--the
first attempt at organisation--the Abbot of Clugny became head of a vast
number of monasteries in different countries of Europe; the priors of
these owed allegiance to the Abbot of Clugny, were appointed by him, and
paid revenues to the head abbey and the general fund of the Order. This
organisation was thus monarchical--despotic; the Abbot of Clugny was a
pope of monasticism. The movement acquired enormous influence on the
Church as a whole, getting control of the papacy, insisting that the
Church should be independent of the State, and that celibacy of the
clergy should be practically enforced. But the Cluniacs instead of
withdrawing from the world began to dominate it, losing many of the
essential features of monasticism. Hence another reform movement arose
about 1100, that of the Cistercian Order, which is associated with the
name of St. Bernard. This aimed at reviving the Benedictine rule in all
its strictness, insisting especially on manual labour. Cistercian houses
were founded in desolate places, as far removed from populous centres as
possible. But the Order differed from the early Benedictines in
organisation. Each Cistercian house was independent and self-governing,
electing its own abbot; but all the abbots were bound to come together
at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general
assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was
established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order
was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic
development.
But about the time of the Crusades another ideal made itself felt.
Hitherto the religious man withdrew from the world: but, as an old
chronicler put it, "God found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile
religion and the world"--was it not possible to serve God _in_ the
world? The knight did it; he went on fighting, but he fought for the
Holy Sepulchre. The Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers)
combined the life of a monk with the life of a soldier. The Regular or
Augustinian Canons combined the life of a monk with the life of a
parish priest. And this ideal--new to the Middle Ages--received its
highest realisation in the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The monk
left the world in order to become religious; the friar aimed at making
the world religious. The monk's main object was to save his own soul;
the friar's, to save the souls of others.
We will now turn to the monasteries in Wales. Of the older
Benedictine houses there were about fifteen, almost all in South
Wales, and all except one were not abbeys but priories, or cells,
_i.e._, they were dependent on some abbey elsewhere. A number of them
belonged to some foreign abbey, especially the earliest. This was the
case with the Priory of Monmouth, founded by the Breton Wihenoc, which
belonged to the Abbey of St. Florence of Saumur (Anjou); and this was
the case too with the priories of Abergavenny and Pembroke. These
"alien priories" were simply used by the abbeys abroad as sources of
revenue; they were foreign, unpopular, and during the French war in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of them were suppressed
and their revenues appropriated by the Crown. The same applies to the
three Cluniac cells established in Wales, such as St. Clears, which
seems only to have contained the prior and one monk, who did not live
with much strictness, though Gerald of Barry says the Cluniacs here
were better than they were abroad, and not nearly so bad as the
Cistercians. The life of monks in these outlying cells, where they
were not under any supervision, and where there was no "public
opinion" of the monastery to keep them straight, was generally very
lax; they lived liked laymen, looking after the estates (generally
wasting them), and without much regard to their vows: "they lived like
beasts," says Gerald. Thus the Lord Rhys had to eject the monks from
one cell, because of the charges brought against them by the fathers
and husbands of the surrounding district, who declared that they would
leave and go to England if the evil was not stopped.
Another class of houses were those founded as priories or cells of
English abbeys. Thus the Priory at Brecon was a cell of Battle Abbey,
founded by Bernard of Newmarch, and largely endowed by the Braoses;
Ewenny, founded by Maurice de Londres, was a cell to St. Peter's,
Gloucester. All these of course, like the alien priories, were founded
by the Norman conquerors, and for two purposes: Firstly, for the souls
of the founder and his family, a very necessary provision; the Normans
were in their way a devout people and made sacrifices to win the
favour of heaven. William de Braose used to give his clerks "something
extra" for inserting pious expressions in his legal documents.
Secondly, these houses also served as castles and stations for
garrisons. Take, for instance, Ewenny; it is much more like a castle
than a religious house, with its great embattled walls and towers, and
magnificent gate-house furnished with a triple portcullis and
"shoots," or holes in the roof above for pouring molten lead on the
assailants' heads. The De Londres family were businesslike as well as
pious; Ewenny's prime object was to help them to gain heaven, it also
helped them to gain the earth. The close and constant connection which
these houses maintained with their mother abbeys in England and abroad
always kept them Anglo-Norman in sympathies--foreign garrisons. But
while recognising this aspect of the monastic houses in Wales, one
must avoid exaggerating it, as, _e.g._, Mr. Willis Bund does. He
regards all the monasteries as founded solely with this political
object: "to represent," he says, "a Welsh prince as founder of a
religious house in South Wales after 1066 is representing him as the
worst of traitors. Bad as the Welsh chieftains were, even they would
have hesitated to introduce into their country what were really Norman
garrisons;" and he rejects the idea of a Welsh prince founding Strata
Florida. Now these remarks are only applicable to those religious
houses which were dependencies on some English or foreign abbey; they
do not apply to the Cistercian monasteries, all of which were
practically equal and self-governing; each elected its own head and
was not under foreign dictation. While the whole Cistercian Order
formed an united body for purposes of monastic life and discipline,
each abbey identified itself in a very remarkable way with the local
or national aspirations of the people round, from whom its monks were
drawn. Some of the Cistercian monasteries in Ireland refused to admit
any Englishman. Some of the Cistercian abbeys in Wales were the
warmest supporters of Welsh independence.
The Welsh princes felt the need of providing for the safety of their
souls just as the Norman barons did, and the souls of both parties
needed a great deal of saving. Further, the Welsh were not cut off
from the great movements of the world; they felt like every other
country in Europe the waves of religious enthusiasm, which resulted in
the twelfth century in the spread of the Cistercians, in the
thirteenth century in the spread of the friars. In the twelfth century
the acts most pleasing to God were generally thought to be taking the
Cross and endowing a Cistercian monastery. Again, though many of the
Welsh chiefs were mere creatures of impulse, there were others who
looked to the future. The Lord Rhys was an acute man of the world, who
was not averse to improving his property. He possessed great tracts of
mountain land, which was practically worthless; he saw Cistercian
monks elsewhere, not exactly making such tracts blossom like the rose,
but, at any rate, utilising them for pasture land, keeping flocks of
sheep, becoming the great wool-growers for all Europe; why should he
not hand over his worthless property to Cistercians, and by so doing
lay up for himself treasure in heaven and on earth? Mr. Willis Bund
says, "How unnatural for any Welsh prince to found a Cistercian
abbey!" Surely it was the most natural thing in the world.
The Cistercians had far greater influence in Wales than any other
monastic order. The Cistercian abbeys were Aberconway, Basingwerk,
Valle Crucis, Strata Marcella, Cymer, Strata Florida, Cwm Hir,
Whitland, Neath, Margam, Llantarnam, Tintern, Grace Dieu, Dore. We
have in Gerald a very unfavourable and prejudiced witness on the
Cistercians. He tells with pious horror and human satisfaction the
story of the abbot of Strata Marcella, who was a great founder of
nunneries, and at length eloped with a nun (he soon repented and came
back to his abbey, preferring the bread and water of affliction to the
nun). Gerald had a personal grudge against the Cistercians; wanting to
raise money he had pawned his library to the monks of Strata Florida,
and when he tried to redeem the books they declared they had bought
them, and would not give them up.
The Cistercians certainly drove hard bargains, and insisted on their
rights to the uttermost farthing. In reading the history of any of
these Cistercian houses--the history, say, of Margam by Mr. Trice
Martin--one's first feeling is one of disappointment: it is nearly all
about property. When one looks through to find evidences of spiritual
influence one finds instead prosecutions for poaching. Did they have
schools and teach the youth of the country round? I have found no
evidence of it. Why should they? Monks never professed to be learned
men or to be teachers. Many were both, but it was a disputed question
whether they were not in this contravening their rule. At any rate, it
was going outside their duty. Their business was to serve God--to
perform divine services--and in the intervals to keep out of mischief
by manual labour, and to perform works of charity. Margam was
specially famous for this last.
Margam Abbey was founded by Robert of Gloucester, in 1147, and the
brother of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, the most important man in
Europe in his time, came over to arrange about the establishment of
the house. It was endowed with lands by both English and Welsh, such
as the Earl of Gloucester and the Lord of Senghenydd. William
Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, granted the monks freedom from toll in all
his boroughs in Wales and Ireland. The Braoses gave them the privilege
of "buying and selling freely all manner of merchandise without toll"
in Gower, and they had the right to all wrecks along the coast near
Kenfig. We find the abbot asserting his fishing rights sometimes by
excommunicating poachers, sometimes by the more effective method of
haling them before the Shire Court at Cardiff and getting them fined
3d. a head. The monks of Margam obtained also a footing in Bristol
through the Earls of Gloucester, a great commercial advantage to them
for the sale of their wool both in England and abroad.
Their lands and privileges were not always, of course, free gifts.
Thus in the twelfth century Gilbert Burdin grants land to Margam, and
in return the abbot gives 20s. to the grantor, a gold coin to his
wife, and red shoes to each of his children. In 1325 John Nichol, of
Kenfig, gave his property to the abbey in return for a life annuity.
He was to receive daily one loaf, two cakes, and a gallon of beer;
also 6s. 8d. for wages, four pairs of shoes (price 12d.), a quarter of
oats, and pasture for two beasts.
The annual revenue of Margam was returned as 500 marks in 1383, but
before that time the abbey had suffered severely from inundations, sea
and sand covering whole villages and much of the best property of the
house; and the finances were in a bad way. These were improved by
grants of the tithes of parish churches--a favourite form of gift to a
monastery, but a great scandal. The rectorial tithes were paid to a
monastery, while the monks at best put in some under-paid vicar to
look after the parish. Generally, wherever there is a vicar instead of
a rector in England or Wales the explanation is the appropriation of
the tithes by a monastery.
What did Margam do with its income? The first charge was the support
of about forty monks and forty lay brethren. Next there were the
construction and keeping in repair of the church and other monastic
buildings; and, thirdly, the expense of charity and hospitality. The
monasteries were the hotels of the Middle Ages, except that they made
no charges, and Margam was celebrated for its hospitality for
centuries. Gerald, the enemy of monks, says: "This noble abbey was
more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order
in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the
monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers
and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and
provisions were divinely increased, like the widow's cruse of oil."
Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known
and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It was placed on the
main road between Bristol and Ireland, at a distance from other places
of refuge, and so was continually overrun by rich and poor strangers,
the poor evidently preponderating. In this connection I will give one
instance of wise charity on the part of these monks from the end of
the twelfth century. Hugh, son of Robert of Llancarven, gives the
abbey some land in return for "four marks of silver and a young ox,
given to him in his great need by the Abbot." The monastery performed
some of the services of the modern bank.
Strata Florida presents some different characteristics. Like most
Cistercian houses, it lay off the beaten track. It was founded in 1164
by the Lord Rhys, near the site of an older monastery. It was endowed
with large expanse of lands, mostly mountain pastures, and the monks
soon began building their church and refectory and cloister. The
monastery was completed in 1201, when "the monks came to the new
church, which had been erected of splendid workmanship." The
architectural details of this church are peculiar and almost unique.
Mr. S. W. Williams notices especially the large amount of interlacing
work in the carving, which one sees in the old Celtic crosses, and
which is so characteristic of Celtic art. The convent seems to have
become very soon essentially Welsh. Nearly all the abbots have Welsh
names. It was the burial-place of the princes of South Wales; but as
they were, after the Lord Rhys, quite unimportant, its political
interest is connected with the princes of Gwynedd. When in the
thirteenth century the princes of North Wales were attracting the
allegiance of the South Welsh also they found Strata Florida a
convenient place for important political assemblies. It was here that
Llywelyn ap Iorwerth summoned all the Welsh chiefs to do homage to his
son David. The monastery suffered damage during the wars of Edward I.,
who in 1284 granted it L78 for repairs. But it suffered the worst
injuries during the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr, when the English troops
used it as a barracks, and stabled their horses in church and choir.
The patriotic tone of Strata Florida is expressed in the Welsh
chronicles written there. The later part of the _Annales Cambriae_ was
written there, and the Brut y Tywysogion. At Margam also a chronicle
was composed which has been preserved. When an abbey decided to begin
a chronicle, the first step was to borrow a chronicle from some other
house; thus Margam, founded by Robert of Gloucester, copied out the
Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, which was dedicated to Robert of
Gloucester. The monks of Strata Florida copied out the earlier portion
of the _Annales Cambriae_. These chronicles of course only became of
historical value when they become independent and contemporary. They
do not confine themselves to the monastery or local history, but
relate events of general interest--to the whole of Britain and to all
Europe--intermixed with notices of the burning of a monastic barn or
the death of the local abbot. Knowledge of the great world came to an
abbey through the travellers who stayed there; through political or
ecclesiastical assemblies held there; and through public documents
sent to the monks for safekeeping or to be copied. We generally do not
know who wrote these chronicles; they were rather the work of the
community than of the individual monks. "Every year (so runs a
regulation on the subject) the volume is placed in the _scriptorium_,
with loose sheets of paper or parchment attached to it, in which any
monk may enter notes of events which seem to him important. At the end
of the year, not any one who likes, but he to whom it is commanded,
shall write in the volume as briefly as he can what he thinks of all
these loose notes is truest and best to be handed down to posterity."
"Thus it was that a monastic chronicle grew, like a monastic house, by
the labour of different hands and at different times; but of the heads
that planned it, of the hands that executed it, no satisfactory record
was preserved. The individual is lost in the community."
Coming now to the Friaries in Wales, we find ourselves in a different
atmosphere. The friars were not troubled with questions of property:
they had none; they depended for their livelihood on the alms of the
faithful. Again, speaking generally, one may say that while the
Benedictine priory is found under the shadow of a castle, and the
Cistercian abbey in the heart of the country, the friaries were built
in the slums of the towns. As there were few towns in Wales, the
houses of the Mendicant Orders were not numerous or important. The
Dominicans (or Black Friars) had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon,
Haverfordwest, and Cardiff; the Franciscans (or Grey Friars) at
Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Llanfaes; the Carmelites (or White Friars) at
Denbigh; and the Austin Friars at Newport in Monmouthshire. It is
remarkable that the Dominicans had more houses in Wales than the
Franciscans; though the Franciscans--the mystic apostles of love--were
more in sympathy with the Celtic spirit than the Dominicans, the stern
champions of orthodoxy. Francis of Assisi strove to reproduce again on
earth the life of Christ--in the letter and in the spirit; and the
religious poetry of Wales in the thirteenth century is saturated with
Franciscan feeling--full of intense realisation of the childhood and
suffering of Christ, the humanity of God. This may be illustrated by
the following poem by a Welsh friar of the thirteenth century, Madawc
ap Gwallter:--
"A Son is given us,
A kind Son is born ...
A Son to save us,
The best of Sons.
A God, a man,
And the God a man
With the same faculties.
A great little giant,
A strong puny potentate
Of pale cheeks.
Richly poor
Our father and brother,
Exalted, lowly,
Honey of minds;
With the ox and ass,
The Lord of life
Lies in a manger;
And a heap of straw
As a chair,
Clothed in tatters;
Velvet He wants not,
Nor white ermine--
To cover Him;
Around His couch
Rags were seen
Instead of fine linen."
I do not know the dates of the foundations of the Welsh Franciscan
houses; the dates given in Mr. Newell's scholarly "History of the
Church in Wales" are impossible. Llanfaes is said to have been
established by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and Franciscan influence would
come to Wales through Thomas the Welshman, Bishop of St. David's
(1247), who had been lecturer to the Franciscans at Oxford, and was
famous for his piety and learning. Another Franciscan I wish to
mention is Friar John the Welshman, who in his old age was employed to
negotiate with the Welsh in 1282. He had studied and taught at Oxford
and Paris, and made a creditable show beside such intellectual giants
as Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, his contemporaries. The widespread
and lasting popularity of his works is shown by the large number of
manuscripts and early printed editions which have come down to us. But
his chief interest and life-work was the popularisation of knowledge
in the service of morality. He devoted his energies to training up
lecturers who should go to the Franciscan friaries in the chief towns
in England and Wales and teach friars and clergy the art of popular
preaching. Friar John of Wales was one of the chief inspirers of the
"University Extension" movement of the Middle Ages. These popular
preachers or lecturers did not do much for the advancement of sound
learning, because they did not study any science for its own sake,
but only for the moral lessons they could find in it. But, to rouse
some intellectual interest in the people at large, and stimulate their
moral sense, was a work not unworthy of the universities; and this aim
was to some degree attained. One of the favourite ways of spending a
holiday in the Middle Ages was to go and hear a friar preach. Here is
a summary of a friar's sermon constructed after the method of Friar
John of Wales, on the relative merits of the Ass and the Pig.
"The pig and the ass live not the same life: for the pig during his
life does no good, but eats and swills and sleeps; but when he is
dead, then do men make much of him. The ass is hard at work all his
days and does good service to many; but when he dies, there is no
profit. And that is the way of the world. Some do no good thing while
they live, but eat and drink and wax fat, and then they are dragged
off to the larder of hell, and others enrich themselves with their
goods. Whereby I know that those, who for God's sake live the life of
holy poverty, shall never lack substance, because their heavenly
Father has pigs to kill. For as the good man before the season will
kill a pig or two to give puddings to his children, so will our Lord
kill those hardened sinners before their time, and give their goods to
the children of God. So the psalmist says: 'The bloodthirsty and
deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' because they do no
work to keep their bodies healthy. Nothing is so healthful for body
and soul as honest work. Work is the life of man, the guardian of
health; work drives away sin, and makes people sleep well at night.
Work is the strength of feebleness, the health of sickness, the
salvation of men,--quickener of the senses, foe of sloth, nurse of
happiness, a duty in the young and in the old a merit. Therefore it is
better to be an ass than a pig."
One of the most able of these "extension lecturers" was another
Welshman--probably a native of Cardiff--Friar John David, whose
lectures at Hereford were so successful that after a year both the
friars and the clergy of the city declared he was indispensable, and
petitioned for his reappointment. He became the head of the
Franciscan province of England, and lies buried among the ruins of the
church of the Grey Friars in Cardiff.
VI
LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR
Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the history of England
and the history of Wales are so closely bound up together that it is
impossible to study either apart from the other. In illustration of
this general statement I will ask you to consider briefly the history
of twelve years, from 1255 to 1267--a period of special interest to
us, because these are the years in which Llywelyn's power was founded
and built up.
In 1255 occurred three events of great importance to Wales: (1)
Llywelyn overthrew his brothers in battle; (2) Edward Longshanks took
possession of his Chester estates; (3) Edmund Crouchback was formally
proclaimed king of Sicily.
1. David, younger son of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, died in 1246, leaving
no descendants, and the Principality was seized by the three sons of
his elder brother Gruffydd--Owain the Red, Llywelyn, and David. For
some years they held together, because Henry III. opposed the
accession of any of them, claiming the Principality as a lapsed fief
under a treaty made with the last prince, David ap Llywelyn. But after
a time the king accepted the homage and recognised the rights of the
sons of Gruffydd. Being thus freed from direct hostility of the
English king, the joint rulers soon quarrelled, and came to open war
in 1255. "By the instigation of the devil," says the Brut y
Tywysogion, "a great dissension arose between the sons of
Gruffydd--namely, Owain the Red and David on the one side, and
Llywelyn on the other. And thereupon Llywelyn and his men awaited
without fear, trusting in God, at Bryn Derwin the cruel coming of his
brother accompanied by a vast army, and before the end of one hour
Owain was taken and David fled, after many of the army were killed and
others captured, and the rest had taken to flight. And then Owain the
Red was imprisoned; and Llywelyn took possession of the territory of
Owain and David without any opposition." Thus Gwynedd was united under
one ruler.