Christianity in Devon, before A.D. 909 - Part 3

Sundays are going to see a change for the moment in a rather different direction on this blog. I shall be posting sections from "Christianity in Devon, before A.D. 909" by John Frederick Chanter. This was originally published in 1910, and forms source footnotes on many publications on that subject. It is probably one of the best collations of source material out there, but it is difficult to track down.
 
Why Devon? The reason is simple. We have, in Jersey, one Saint from that part of the world, St Brelade, or Branwallader, as he was also known.
 
In this final extract we see how Chanter brings the three streams of Christianity together. The Goedelic Church in the West of Damnonia, and the smaller, and in some ways weaker Brythonic Church based around Exeter and to the East of Exeter, and finally the encroaching Saxon Church, which absorbed the Goedelic Church of Exeter.
 
Because Branwallader belonged to the Exeter Church, which stretched East into Somerset and Glastonbury, and may well have had ancient Roman roots, it is his remains which, after his death, are taken to Milton Abbas as part of the absorbion of that Celtic Church into the Saxon one.
 
It was a Brythonic church, which explains why Branwallader's name, in the form of Brelade, is found in Brittany and Jersey. And it explains why there is no mention of Brelade in the Life of Sampson.
 
The "Life of Sampson of Dol" is given in detail in Vita Sancti Samsonis, written sometime between 610 and 820 and based on earlier materials, as Guernsey is referred to as Lesia, the ancient Roman name for the Island. While he too is associated with Britanny, in that case as a Bishop, ordained 521 AD by Bishop Dubricius, there is a singular absence of St Brelade, despite the much cited statement that Sampson and Branwallader went on joint missions. As Chanter shows, the Welsh Church in Damnonia and later in Britanny was quite separate from the Celtic one based around Exeter, and the evidence points to Brelade being Bishop there, not where St Sampson was based, at Dol. A life that early should show evidence of St Brelade, but this shows none.
 
That is not to say he was not responsible for the foundation of the community which gave its name to the Church at St Brelade, because as Chanter also mentions, it was the habit of Celtic Christianity for dedications to be made to Churches commemorating founders.
 
But the story of St Brelade, as the last of a line of Celtic Bishops based around Exeter is very different from that, and Chanter provides a plausible case for this being likely. This was the church which connected Winchester, Sherborne, and Glastonbury and Exeter, and on whose lists we find his name. It may not be the pedigree that has gone into the guide books, but it is an ancient provenance, and makes him of considerably more significance that a similar sounding Celtic Martyr with whom his name has been confused.
Sundays are going to see a change for the moment in a rather different direction on this blog. I shall be posting sections from "Christianity in Devon, before A.D. 909" by John Frederick Chanter. This was originally published in 1910, and forms source footnotes on many publications on that subject. It is probably one of the best collations of source material out there, but it is difficult to track down.
 
Why Devon? The reason is simple. We have, in Jersey, one Saint from that part of the world, St Brelade, or Branwallader, as he was also known.
 
In this extract we see how Chanter brings the three streams of Christianity together. The Goedelic Church in the West of Damnonia, and the smaller, and in some ways weaker Brythonic Church based around Exeter and to the East of Exeter, and finally the encroaching Saxon Church, which absorbed the Goedelic Church of Exeter.
 
Because Branwallader belonged to the Exeter Church, which stretched East into Somerset and Glastonbury, and may well have had ancient Roman roots, it is his remains which, after his death, are taken to Milton Abbas as part of the absorbion of that Celtic Church into the Saxon one.
 
It was a Brythonic church, which explains why Branwallader's name, in the form of Brelade, is found in Brittany and Jersey. And it explains why there is no mention of Brelade in the Life of Sampson.
 
The "Life of Sampson of Dol" is given in detail in Vita Sancti Samsonis, written sometime between 610 and 820 and based on earlier materials, as Guernsey is referred to as Lesia, the ancient Roman name for the Island. While he too is associated with Britanny, in that case as a Bishop, ordained 521 AD by Bishop Dubricius, there is a singular absence of St Brelade, despite the much cited statement that Sampson and Branwallader went on joint missions. As Chanter shows, the Welsh Church in Damnonia and later in Britanny was quite separate from the Celtic one based around Exeter, and the evidence points to Brelade being Bishop there, not where St Sampson was based, at Dol. A life that early should show evidence of St Brelade, but this shows none.
 
That is not to say he was not responsible for the foundation of the community which gave its name to the Church at St Brelade, because as Chanter also mentions, it was the habit of Celtic Christianity for dedications to be made to Churches commemorating founders.
 
But the story of St Brelade, as the last of a line of Celtic Bishops based around Exeter is very different from that, and Chanter provides a plausible case for this being likely. This was the church which connected Winchester, Sherborne, and Glastonbury and Exeter, and on whose lists we find his name. It may not be the pedigree that has gone into the guide books, but it is an ancient provenance, and makes him of considerably more significance that a similar sounding Celtic Martyr with whom his name has been confused.

Christianity in Devon, before A.D. 909 - Part 3
Rev. J. F. Chanter

Let me now try to read the traces and records of Celtic Christianity in Devon which I have given, in the light of these Celtic dedications, and see what story they tell us of the work of the Celtic missionaries in Devon; and try to trace their footsteps, and what we can reconstruct of the history of Christianity m Devon before AD 909.
 
And first let me remark that many of our difficulties are caused by the frequent recurrence of the same name, borne by different individuals, and the difficulty of deciding to which individual of that name a record refers. Thus, there were three Kings of Damnonia who bore the name of Geraint, or Gerontius, as it appears in Latin; first, the Geraint of AD 530, who was killed at Longoborth, probably near Lyme Regis ; then the Geraint mentioned in the Life of St. Teilo, who probably died about AD 596 ; and thirdly, the Geraint of Aldhelm's letter at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century. So, also, with the Constantines, or Cystennins, as they are called in the Welsh records; we have first the Constantine, the contemporary of Gildas, in AD 549 ; he is most unlikely to be the same person as the Constantine whose conversion took place in AD 589, the interval of forty years, although possible, makes it improbable that they were one and the same ; then there is a third Constantine, the contemporary of St. Petrock.
 
The next noticeable point is that while the lives of the Welsh saints and the Welsh records contain many allusions to saints and missions associated with Damnonia, they are entirely silent about the saints and bishops who are associated with Exeter and the district east of it, and, on the other hand, the traditions and legends associated with Exeter and Glastonbury show no knowledge of such people as St. Petrock, St. Brannock, St. Nectan, and other famous Devonshire missionaries who came from South Wales. How are we to explain this ? The answer seems obvious to me, and it is this : that Christianity in Devon had its origin in two distinct sources who knew little of each other, who did not even speak the same language ; each has its own traditions and saints, each has its separate line of bishops.
 
The first of these, and the oldest, was the Christianity which centred round Exeter and the districts east of it, a Christianity which was at first was mainly confined, as Roman civilization was, to the towns and districts round them ; a Christianity that may have gone back to the time of the Roman occupation, and which gradually spread among the Brythonic-speaking people of Eastern Damnonia ; a Christianity whose association would have been with Sherborne, Glastonbury, and Silchester, and other Brythonic-speaking places in the south-west of Britain, but not with South Wales. And when we turn to the early records and traditions of Winchester, Sherborne, and Glastonbury, we do find these allusions and traces of intercourse and connection between them and Exeter.
 
Thus, for instance, we find a sister of the Exeter martyr, St. Sidwell, at Sherborne ; again, in the list of founders and benefactors of Sherborne, we find '' Gerontius Rex dedit Macner. de V hid Juxta Thamar " (Cott, Faust, A. ii. 23, British Museum). This Brythonic Church of Eastern Damnonia, small and weak at first, was prevented from expanding westward by difficulties of language ; but reinforced later by the Brythonic-speaking Celts, who retired westward before the Saxon Conquest, it acquired additional position and strength. It was this Christianity with which the Saxon invaders of Devon first came into contact ; it was the Christianity that lent its bishops to share in the consecration of St. Chad, though it is possible that the more western, or Goidelic Church, to which I shall allude presently, may also have shared in that act.
 
It was this Christianity to which St. Aldhelm's letter was addressed, and which, according to all accounts, by his influence, adopted the western use of Easter and its tonsure ; a Christianity accordingly, with which the Saxons who had settled in Devon in the early part of the eighth century, found no difficulty in having friendly intercourse, though considerations of language must have kept them to a certain extent apart. It was a form of Christianity that, preserving the traditions of the old Roman city, had not become tribal, as so much of the Celtic Christianity had, and so the difficulties of intercommimion were not so great. It is to this Church that St. Conoglas, St. Coventinus, and other bishops, such as Mawom, belonged, and the last of this line seems to have been Branwallader, probably at the end of the eighth century, a bishop who observed, as I have said, the Catholic practices, and was obeyed and respected by Celt and Saxon alike ; hence, when the Celts were finally driven out of Exeter by Athelstan, the memory of St. Branwallader was still honoured and kept alive by the remaining inhabitants of the city, and the remaining Celts east of it. His remains were translated with honour by an English king, but further east, that there might be no danger of his shrine being a rallying-point of the dispossessed Celts ; and so on through the succeeding ages his intercession was still invoked by the English Church. It is to this Church that I would also assign St. Kierrian, a Brythonic bishop from the east or midlands, driven west by the English invaders ; doubtless, there was more than one bishop of Eastern Damnonia.
 
There are traditions of a see at Congresbury , possibly there was one at Dorchester, and the name of one Bishop of Congresbury has been handed down to us. Of the actual buildings in which they worshipped no parts remain, but on the sites of at least four or five of the old British churches in Exeter the Christian worship has been continuously carried on from pre-English days to the present. The British part of modem Exeter was the central portion of the northern half of the city, and there are still the Churches of St. Petrock, St. Kierrian, St. Pancras, and St. Paul. Mr. Kerslake, in his Celt and Teuton in Exeter, adds to these All Hallows and St. Mary Arches, but the former is, as Davidson in his paper on the Saxon Conquest of Devon points out, plainly a Saxon one. St. Mary Arches may be either Celtic or Saxon. The present age, in its dedications, has sought to revive the names of the older saints of the west, and I trust that in the future a place may be found for St. Branwallader, the last Celtic Bishop of the Exeter and East Devon district, and reverenced there for nearly eight hundred years.
 
On Branwallader's death the English, who were then a majority at Exeter, would have transferred their allegiance to the West-Saxon Bishop of Sherborne, the Celts passing to the other branch of the Danmonian Church, which had become Brythonic-speaking at that time.
 
The second source of Devonshire Christianity, and the more important one, was the Welsh Missions directed to the Goidelic-speaking race in Damnonia. Probably, the first in point of date was that of St. Brannock or Brynach, as he is called in the Welsh records. I do not propose to enter into his life here, as it can be read as fully as existing data will allow in a recent publication, the first volume of the lives of Cambro-British Saints, of which one of our ex-Presidents, Rev. S. Baring-Gould, is co-editor, and we are only concerned with the Devonshire part of his life. St. Brannock was, as we are distinctly told in all his Lives, a Goidel, and his work in Devon centred around the Hundred of Brannton, and dates from about AD 540 to 570. It was the period when the yellow plague in Wales had scattered the Christian teachers, and so given birth to a great outburst of missionary zeal.
 
The district in which St. Brannock began his work in Devon was at the time almost perfectly uncivilized, and we have still remaining there the traces of the first civilization introduced by him. Much disappeared in AD 1298, when there was a re-settlement of affairs in Brannton, of which we have a record in an early D. and C. MS. (No. 705), but the custom of Borough English, which was part of the law of Wales in its most primitive form, and is found in the Demetian Code of Howel the Good, survived till recently.
 
Many other curious customs also survived there till the last century. All the traditions and legends of Brannock's work in Devon speak more of his introducing civilization than of his religious work. Mr. Kerslake, in his Celt and Teuton in Exeter, speaks of Barnstaple, the capital of North Devon, as being also a sphere of St. Brannock's work, and traces a connection between the names Brann and Barum.
 
I am unable, however, to follow him in this, although Barnstaple is within the Brannton Hundred, which was by far the largest in North Devon, containing thirty-nine tithings ; it perhaps shows the extent of Brannock's work, though it must be remembered that the Hundred of Hertesberry has been merged in it.
 
The next Welsh Mission was that of St. Nectan and his kindred, the children of Brychan. Leland gives a long list of these, and names twenty-four sons and daughters of King Brychan by his wife Gladwisa, who were all martyrs and confessors in Devon and Cornwall. The list, he tells us, was taken from the Life of St. Nectan then existing at Hartland ; it does not, however, agree with the Welsh lists. This, again, was a Goidel-speaking mission to a Goidel-speaking people, the children of Brychan being the only one of the three saintly families of Wales that were mainly Goidelic. The work of the children of Brychan would seem to have been mainly confined to the Hundred of Hartland and North Cornwall, with perhaps an outlier or two.
 
The third, and by far the most important'Welsh mission, was that of St. Petrock, who might worthily be called the Apostle of Devonshire, for it affected not only one portion, but almost the whole of Devon, as well as parts of Cornwall.
 
It has left its marks in all parts of the county, his churches are still to be found north, south, and west, his religious houses were the nursing-mothers of Devonshire Christianity, and veneration for him led a Saxon King to found the see of St. Germans in Cornwall ; fifteen of the existing parish churches of Devon owe their foundation to him ; in three - Exeter, Totnes, and Lydford - out of the four ancient boroughs of Devon his name still survives, not to speak of those which have been annexed by his better-known namesake, St. Peter the Apostle, who probably annexed his dedication in the fourth - Barnstaple. As he occupies so important a place I propose to give a short account of him, as his legendary life as given in Capgrave's Nova Legenda, is late and worthless.
 
Petrock is Pedr-oc,  "oc " being a diminutive, so it is equivalent to " Little Peter." According to the Life of St. Cadoc, he was a son of Glwys of Gwent, brother of Gwynllyw the Warrior, and uncle of St. Cadoc. The Welsh genealogists say he was son of Clement, a Damnonian prince, and first cousin of St. Cadoc. John of Tynemouth says he was "Natione Cumber," and is followed by William of Worcester ; others call him a Camber, but as Professor Rhys points out, Cumbria and Cambria are in point of origin one and the same word ; the fashion of distinguishing between the two was later.
 
We may conclude that he was a native of Wales, with perhaps some Damnonian connections. Setting out from Gwent, or Morganwg, he would have crossed to the nearest Damnonian harbour, and I would suggest Combe Martin as the place of his landing, where the group of three Peter churches, Berrynarbor, Combe Martin, and Trentishoe, may mark three of his earliest cells. From there he would seem to have left the Brannock district on his left, as already occupied by a mission, and have skirted the great wild Exmoor forest in his efforts to get in touch with the natives, the four foundations of Parracombe, Charles, West Anstey, and Bampton, marking his footsteps. From Bampton, meeting perchance with some traces of Christianity among the Brythonic people, he turned down the Exe Valley to Exeter, where he has left his mark again.
 
Soon leaving this as already Christianized, he turned to the Goidelic people, and passing westward along the southern coast, past Kenton, he came to the head waters of the estuary of the Dart, where he established himself and founded a monastery at Buckfastleigh, just above the ancient settlement of Totnes. All round here we may trace his work : Tor Mohun, Totnes, Dartmouth, South Brent, Harford, still remain of his foundations faithful to their founder. It would seem that the Celtic population clung long round this district, of which we have an existing mark in the name Ashburton- ancient Esse Briton.
 
After some years spent there, with the restlessness of the Celtic missionaries he moved to the north of the wild Dartmoor region, which had with its solitudes shut in his work on one side, and at Lydford, last of the four ancient Devon towns - Exeter, Totnes, Barnstaple, and Lydford - we again meet with him ; and around this centre we find Zeal and Clannaborough on the east, Hollacombe on the west, Petrockstow and Newton St. Petrock on the north, still retaining their allegiance to their founder, and even as far north as Westleigh lying, perhaps still unevangelized, between the Nectan and Brannock Missions
 
Such seem to have been his steps in Devon, the scene of his greatest labours, his latter life and work being still further west, at his second great settlement of Bodmin - a corruption of Bosmanach, the home of the monks, often called also Petrockstow. From this place, according to the legends, his longer journeys were made, some taking him to Ireland, where his Life says he spent twenty years, St. Coemigen being his pupil there ; others taking him to Rome, and even to Jerusalem and India, travelling over the seas on a shining bowl that came floating over the waves to him, living for seven years on a single fish, which is, of course, either mythical or mystical, for, like many of the legends, it is patient of a simple explanation - the fish is the symbol of Christ, his sustentation in all things.
 
On his return he finds a wolf guarding the staff and cloak he had left before his voyage, and which ever after accompanied him, and a wolf is always one of St. Petrock's symbols, meaning his faithful dog.
 
Finally, he returns to die at Bodmin, where his memory was cherished and his relics preserved, and where the silver casket that contained them may still be seen. Of the theft of these relics and their recovery by the King's efforts in AD 1177, I need not speak. And just as round Glastonbury there have been gathered all the famous saints of the Celtic Church (for according to the legends, St. Patrick, St. Bridget, St. David, King Arthur were all buried there), so round St. Petrock's, at Bodmin, were gathered all the famous churchmen of the Damnonian kingdom, both before and after his days. The generally accepted date of his death is AD 568, though Baring-Gould places it in AD 580.
 
Such, I suggest, were the footsteps of St. Petrock in Devon ; of his Cornish work I would leave others to tell. Over how long a period they were spread we have no manner of ascertaining. His house at Buckfastleigh became later a Benedictine establishment, and in Domesday it is mentioned as holding several manors in Devon.
 
How and when it was dissolved we have no means of discovering, but in 1137 the site was granted to a colony of Cistercian monks from Waverly, and they also obtained possession of most of the property of the older foundation.
 
But his house at Bodmin remained until the dissolution of the monasteries, with the body of St. Petrock reposing in a beautiful shrine before the Chapel of St. Mary, at the east end of the conventual church, though, alas, not a vestige of it now remains. It is as a Cornish saint that he is generally thought of in the present day, but Devon was undoubtedly the scene of his chief labours, and it is as the Apostle of Devon that he should find a chief place in western hagiology.
 
Other missions were those of St. Hergyth, who has been identified with la, though more probably a native of Devon and disciple of Petrock, and called after an older saint ; St. Budoc, an unknown saint, and perhaps our Devonian David and Bridget, were namesakes of the famous Menevian bishop and the Abbess of Kildare.
 
Lastly, there remains St. Constantine, generally identified with the Constantine of Gildas, though as there were several of that name it is doubtful, and perhaps Gildas' estimation of the characters of Constantine, Vortiper, and Maelgwyn needs revision. Gildas pours out his wrath upon them as incarnations of evil ; in all other records they appear as leaders of patriotic movements and nursing-fathers of the Church. Vortiper was the patron of St. David, Maelgwyn the founder of the See of Bangor, and our Damnonian Constantines are in one case the patron of St. Petrock, in another the famous saint of the Aberdeen Breviary, in the third case a religious at St. David's. It is of the second of these, who went as a servant to an Irish monastery, and of whom the quaint story is told that when working at grinding the com he was overheard asking himself the question : "Is this King Constantine ? " and to answer : " Yes, it is the same, yet not the same."
 
Of these old saints of Devon we have nothing remaining but their names, their dedications, their legends, and the stones erected and inscribed by their disciples. There is nothing in any ecclesiastical building in the county, or for the matter of that, in Wales or Cornwall either, to indicate any great antiquity, except simplicity of ground plan and rudeness of architecture ; probably the oldest work does not go back to the tenth century.
 
The churches of St. Brannock, St. Nectan, and St. Petrock were no doubt gradually Brythonized under the influence of the Brythonic Church at Exeter and immigrants from the Saxonized parts of Damnonia. If any distinctions ever existed between the Goidel and Brython parts they quickly disappeared, and after the adoption of the new cycle for Easter there was little bar between them and the English colonists who, after Cynewulf's campaign, began to flock into Devon. Of the bishops of this Goidelic Church in Devon, as I will call it to distinguish it from the older Exeter branch, we have a few names preserved in some of the legends ; probably the last who exercised any jurisdiction in Devon was St. Rumon, whose date I should be inclined to fix as the early part of the ninth century. At this time a common danger had drawn together Celt and Angle, for both were exposed to the ravages of the black pagans, or black Normans, as the Welsh chroniclers call them - better known to us as the Danes - and so the Celtic bishop was reverenced alike by both races. And it was an Englishman, Ordgar, Earl of Devon, who founded the religious house in Rumon's honour at Tavistock, which afterwards became the most famous and magnificent abbey in Devon. And it is this connection of Rumon with both Celt and Angle that would seem responsible for the somewhat peculiar circumstance of the submission of Kenstec to the Durovernian throne.
 
Rumon had been accepted as their bishop by both Celt and English for personal reasons, being held in honour by both, but on his death there may have been difficulties felt by the English as to their accepting Kenstec, who had been elected as his successor in Cornwall ; and it was to appease this feeling that Kenstec was willing to come into the scheme of one Church for the whole island and submit to the Durovernian primacy. However this may be, there was yet one more last stage of transition from Celtic to English in our Devonshire Church, which was the episcopate of Asser. Himself a Celtic monk, and nephew of a Celtic bishop, he was in AD 884 given by King Alfred the pastoral care of Celt and Saxon in Devon.
 
Some sixteen years after he was translated to Sherborne, but still retained the episcopal oversight of the Devonshire Church, which thus became annexed to the see of Sherborne. A very few years showed the arrangement to be impossible, and in 909 Eadulf was consecrated first Bishop of Crediton. And with that the last chapter of the Celtic Church in Devon may be said to have closed.
 
This attempted sketch of the history of the Church in Devon before AD 909 is, I am aware, all too slight and imperfect. There are many points I have not touched on, such as the intercourse between Saxon and Briton, the story of Sidwell the Martyr without the walls of Exeter.
 
It is, I know, open to much criticism and charges of being mere conjecture, but it is at least an attempt, feeble it may be, but still an attempt, to piece together in some way the traces, faint though they be, of a Christian Church which had a separate existence for at least five hundred years in our county before our present organism commenced, and whose children we still claim to be.
 
Just as the present Church of England is the confluence of three streams, the original native Church, the missions from Iona, and the missions from the Continent, so the Church in Devon is a confluence of three streams, the remains of the Romano-British Church, the Goidelic missions, and the later Anglo-Saxon Church ; and we Devonshire folk may claim for it that it is the only portion of the Church in England proper that has an uninterrupted existence for more than fifteen hundred years.
 
There was a time when the cities of Canterbury, London, and York lay waste and desolate as the cities of Anderida, Verulamium, and Uriconium do now. There was a time when the voice of Christian worship was hushed throughout nearly all England, as it is at Glastonbury, Ford, and Cleeve now ; but throughout these times the Church in Devon and its capital city never ceased to lift the sound of prayer and praise, and may we and our descendants ever preserve and cherish a heritage which is priceless and unique.
 
Chronological Table of Principal Events.
 
AD
 
314. First mention of British Bishops.
410. End of Roman occupation.
480 (circa). Dyvnal Moelmyd organizes Damnonin.
638 (circa). Consecration of St. Kierrian.
646. Constantine of Gildas.
660 (circa). St. Brannock, St. Nectan.
680 (circa). Death of St. Petrock.
687. Conversion of St. Constantine.
696. Geraint of Dingerrin.
600. Gwrgan Vartrwch King of Damnonia.
601 . Mauron Bishop.
666. Consecration of Chad by Wini and Damnonian Bishops.
700. Geraint King of Damnonia.
707. Part of Damnonian Church adopts Catholic usages.
780 (circa.). St. Branwallader Bishop of E. Damnonia.
790. Danish raids lead to coalition of English and British.
800. Egbert consolidates conquest of Devon.
803. Primacy of Canterbury accepted by West Saxons.
820 (circa). St. Rumon Bishop of W. Damnonia.
833. Submission of Bishop Kenstec.
884. Asser Bishop of Devon.
900. Asser translated to Sherborne.
909. Foundation of see of Crediton.
926. British driven out of Exeter.
936. Conan last Celtic bishop in the West of England.