There has been a pervasive modern assumption, repeated in many church guide books, that churches dedicated to early saints were a result of their missionary activity and ministry in these places. Successive hagiographers may have made the same assumption, and the stories that they told connecting saints with these disparate locations subsequently provided evidence in support of this supposition. Medieval tales of voyages overseas have supported the idea that churches dedicated to foreign saints in other countries bear their names because of their own travels. Although none of these missionary journeys can be substantiated with certainty, it is clear that people and ideas moved around the western seaways in the early medieval period.
By contrast, however, it has not been assumed that the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Peter, St Martin or St Nicholas travelled to Wales to found the churches dedicated to them in the Middle Ages – even if such traditions seem to have arisen. Saints were chosen as spiritual patrons of churches for their ability to mediate on behalf of the faithful, provide spiritual protection for local communities and attract pilgrims to their altars, shrines and images. The dedications of churches would have been chosen by their founders or benefactors and it is inconceivable that founders of churches consecrated their altars to themselves.
Churches were sometimes rededicated over time or acquired additional patrons. Incoming communities – Irish, English, Norman and Flemish – may have introduced new cults of saints to Wales while also co-opting locally important saints as patrons of their churches and holy wells. Dedications of churches in Wales to St Brigid – often known in Wales as Ffraid – or St Patrick could be explained by the presence of Irish communities or elites, especially during the early medieval period. A similar practice can be observed in the 19th and 20th centuries when areas with strong Irish Catholic communities adopted Patrick as the patron of new Catholic churches in the places where they found themselves.
Most of the rich medieval visual culture of Welsh saints has been lost, but a wealth of modern imagery survives, mainly in the form of stained glass. The uninventive and repetitive work of some commercial studios in the 19th century generally contrasts with a more original approach to style and iconography in the work of artists associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement who were working in the early 20th century. Perhaps inevitably, images of St David, as patron of Wales, outnumber the others. Dozens of images of David in Welsh churches have been made since the mid-19th century, and David was often chosen to accompany local or other diocesan saints in churches across Wales. Churches dedicated to David are found across much of southern Wales and into Herefordshire, most of which were part of the extensive diocese of St Davids, apart from those claimed by the diocese of Llandaff in most of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire.
Standing figures of David are usually dressed in ecclesiastical robes, with a dove at his ear. He is often depicted with a long beard, but is sometimes shown beardless, as in the many windows by Burlison & Grylls, most of those by the studio of CE Kempe, and others by Morris & Co and Shrigley & Hunt.
The Arts and Crafts artisans were more likely to be innovative in their images of saints, although the figure of David by Christopher Whall, a pioneer of the movement, for his set of windows for the Lady Chapel of Gloucester Cathedral was iconographically conventional and reused elsewhere.
By contrast, his image of David in a window at the church in Llanwnda, Caernarfonshire, is unlike any other images of the saint. Paired with St George, David stands holding a scythe amid leeks growing at his feet. Daffodils occupy the border, and although a mitre is shown above the figure he is depicted as neither a monastic nor a bishop, but as a young man with animal furs draped over his shoulders.
Scenes from Lives of David were sometimes depicted, usually in windows beneath standing figures of the saint. The most common of these subjects is David preaching in the open air; in some depictions he is raised above the crowd to signify his pre-eminence at the Synod of Brefi, where the ground rose beneath him as he preached. A set of eight scenes at Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral depict episodes from the Vita Sancti David, beginning with his birth in a storm and ending with Kentigern’s vision of his entry to heaven from the Vita Sancti Kentigerni. Many of these scenes are unparalleled in any other imagery depicting David.
In the third quarter of the 20th century, Celtic Studios made a small number of scenes that included David, such as David receiving the call to visit Jerusalem (at Llangorwen), and his restoration of a sick boy to health (at Pontarddulais). Among other scenes at Christ Church, Ebbw Vale, he is shown embarking on a journey to the Holy Land with St Teilo and St Padarn.
Back at Cardiff, a depiction of the same story shows the three saints with the pope (in later Welsh-language Lives they go to Rome instead) among the sanctuary windows. There David kneels in full episcopal dress above the high altar of the later cathedral that bears his name, which is now Wales’s principal Catholic church.
Martin Crampin is a Welsh artist, photographer and designer. This is an edited extract from his Welsh Saintsfrom Welsh Churches which is published on March 1 (£35, Y Lolfa)
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