Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Promotion and Reward

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, c.1100–1500

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

  • 237 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter looks at the ways in which pilgrimage was promoted in Wales: who organised and directed formal promotion; how information was disseminated more informally; how pilgrimage sites developed their offerings in order to make themselves more attractive; and how effective offering indulgences to pilgrims was as a means of getting them to engage in pilgrimage activity. It considers what attractions sites acquired in order to make themselves more desirable to pilgrims, and how this compared to wider European patterns of shrine development.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Ian Reader, Pilgrimage in the Marketplace (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 61–82.

  2. 2.

    Bosnian Croat identity has been preserved, in part, through the construction of a new national shrine. See Mario Katić, “From the Chapel on the Hill to National Shrine: Creating a Pilgrimage ‘Home’ for Bosnian Croats,” in Pilgrimage, Politics and Place-Making in Eastern Europe: Crossing Borders, ed. John Eade and Mario Katić (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 15–36; Giorgios Tsimouris, “Pilgrimages to Gökçeada (Imvros), a Graeco-Turkish Contested Place: Religious Tourism or a Way to Reclaim the Homeland?” in Ibid., pp. 37–58.

  3. 3.

    The Liber Landavenis, Llyfr Teilo, ed. W. J. Rees (Llandovery: Welsh MSS Society, 1840), pp. 282, 286–7; for a discussion of St Elgar, see Karen Jankulak and Jonathan M. Wooding, “The Life of St Elgar of Ynys Enlli,” in Solitaries, Pastors and 20,000 Saints: Studies in the Religious History of Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli), ed. J. Wooding, Trivium 39 (Lampeter, 2010), pp. 15–47.

  4. 4.

    John Reuban Davies, The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), p. 80.

  5. 5.

    David, The Book of Llandaf, p. 39.

  6. 6.

    In the Life of St Teilo, the claim is made that Bishop Teilo had been granted ‘supremacy over all the churches of the whole of southern Britain.’ Liber Landavensis, p. 351; for the claims of Llandaff, see Davies, The Book of Llandaf, pp. 63–75. For the various Lives: Teilo, pp. 92–114, trans., pp. 332–54; Dyfrig, pp. 75–83, trans., pp. 323–31; Euddogwy, pp. 123–32, trans., pp. 370–81; Samson, pp. 9–25, trans., pp. 287–305.

  7. 7.

    Liber Landavenis, p. 354.

  8. 8.

    St Stephen the Protomartyr’s relics (his bones, blood, ashes of his body, a portion of his staff, and a rock used to stone him) were originally taken with those of St David to Glastonbury Abbey under the direction of a woman called Aelswitha in c.962–64. There is no record of when they came to the cathedral, but they were in situ by the time of St Caradog’s translation. The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: A Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, James P. Carley, trans. David Townsend (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985), p. 131; GC, Opera, vi, p. 87; Thorpe, Journey, pp. 144–5; “De Sancto Caradoco Heremita,” in Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. C. Horstman, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), i, p. 176; Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i, pp. 778–81; Rhigyfarch’s Life of St David, ed. J. W. James (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1967), p. 48; Brut y Tywysogyon: The Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version, trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973), p. 33; Brut y Tywysogyon…Peniarth MS. 20 Version, p. 18; Annales Cambriae, ed. John Williams ab Ithel (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860), pp. 28–9; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. B. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), i, p. 810. Bishop Bernard’s decision to develop his cathedral as a major pilgrimage centres was not about the potential primacy of St Davids over the other cathedrals in Wales, as at the time that Bishop Bernard was making his first steps to build up St Davids as a pilgrimage destination. He was also assisting the archbishop of Canterbury in his quest to claim primary over the archbishop of York and, with it, the whole of Britain and Ireland, something that would have precluded the idea of a Welsh metropolitan see. This was not a possibility until 1128 when Pope Honorious decided in favour of York, leaving the way open for a Welsh challenge to primacy in Wales. John Reuban Davies, “Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Wales,” in Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Paul Dalton, Charles Insley and Louise J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), p. 103.

  9. 9.

    Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i, pp. 778–81.

  10. 10.

    “Life of S. Caradoc,” in Nova Legenda Angliae, ed. C. Horstmann, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), i, p. 176; GC, Opera, vi, pp. 86–7; Thorpe, Journey, pp. 144–5.

  11. 11.

    Davies, “Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints,” pp. 104–5.

  12. 12.

    The development of Santiago de Compostela as a pilgrimage site in the twelfth century was largely due to the efforts of Bishop Diego Gelmirez, building on the efforts of his ninth century predecessor, Teodomino, who had ordered the construction of a church at Santiago after the appearance of the relics of St James. Reader, Pilgrimage in the Marketplace, p. 76; see also Ben Nilson, Cathedral Shrines of Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), p. 21.

  13. 13.

    Valor Ecclesiasticus Temporis Henry VIII, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, 6 vols. (London: Record Commission, 1810–25), iv, pp. 376–7; LBS, iv, pp. 240–1; Fred Cowley, “The relics of St David: The Historical Evidence,” in St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation, ed. J Wyn Evans and Jonathan Wooding (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), p. 279; tours of relics undertaken by shrine custodians were common in Europe, and these journeys, sometimes referred to as “quests,” were at times undertaken by professional collectors, though the records from St Davids do not say if this was the case. Adrian R. Bell and Richard S. Dale, “The Medieval Pilgrimage Business,” Enterprise and Society 12 (2011): 607.

  14. 14.

    Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth, trans. J. Fairweather (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), p. 297.

  15. 15.

    Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: Volume 9, the Welsh Cathedrals (Bangor, Llandaff, St Asaph, St Davids), ed. M. J. Pearson (London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 2003), pp. 1–4.

  16. 16.

    The see was described as ‘now vacant, owing to the desolation of the country’ in 1125, suggesting that the appointed of Bishop Richard in 1141 was a re-establishment of an existing see, and not the creation of a new one. Hugh the Chanter: The History of the Church of York, 1066–1127, ed. Charles Johnson (Edinburgh: T. Nelson, 1961), pp. 122–3; Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1867), i, pp. 90–1.

  17. 17.

    In addition to promoting their own cathedrals, the bishops could have worked to promote the merits of pilgrimage to other sites over which they had influence; the church of Llanarmon-yn-Ial, for example, was probably patronised by the bishop of St Asaph and it attracted offerings to its image of the French St Garmon, perhaps at his prompting. The Itinerary in Wales of John Leland in or about the Years 1536–1539, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (London: George Bell & Sons, 1906), pp. 70–1; LBS, iii, p. 77; Taxatio Database, n.1 http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/taxatio/benkey?benkey=AS.AS.IA.02 (date accessed 02.01.17).

  18. 18.

    Godwin, De praesulibus Angliae commentarius: omnium episcoporum, necnon ei cardinalium eivsdem gentis, nomina … per Franciscvm Godwinvm episcopum Landauensem (London, 1616), p. 601. See also Silas M. Harris, “Was St. David Ever Canonized?” Wales (June, 1944): 30–2; for the erroneous modern assertion that St David (and St Non) were both canonised in 1123, see Simon Thomas, “Promoting the Sacred: The Potential for Pilgrimage-Touristic Growth in Wales—A Theoretical and Applied Analysis,” in Heritage and Tourism in Britain and Ireland, ed. Glenn Hooper (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), p. 39.

  19. 19.

    GC, Opera, vi, p. 87; Thorpe, Journey, p. 145.

  20. 20.

    For Innocent III’s letter of instruction, see A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols., in 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869–78), i, p. 412.

  21. 21.

    “De iure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae,” GC, Opera, iii, pp. 63, 182. For Gerald and his relationship with the Cistercians, see Brian Golding, “Gerald of Wales and the Cistercians,” Reading Medieval Studies 21 (1995): 5–30, esp. 21–3.

  22. 22.

    The Autobiography of Gerald of Wales, ed. and trans. H. E. Butler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), p. 200.

  23. 23.

    Helen Birkett, “The Struggle for Sanctity: St Waltheof of Melrose, Cistercian In-house cults and Canonisation Procedure at the Turn of the Thirteenth Century,” in The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Scotland, ed. Steve Boardman and Elia Williamson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), p. 58.

  24. 24.

    For the difficulty of securing canonisation, see PME, pp. 63–4.

  25. 25.

    John Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints in the Early Christian West, c.300–1200 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 16–17.

  26. 26.

    Cormac Bourke, “The Shrine of St Gwenfrewi from Gwytherin, Denbighshire: An Alternative Interpretation,” in The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Churches: Proceedings of a Conference on the Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches, September 2004, ed. Nancy Edwards (Leeds: Many Publishing, 2009), p. 375; Robert E. Scully, “St Winifride’s Well: The Significance and Survival of a Welsh Catholic Shrine from the Early Middle Ages to the Present Day,” in Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World, ed. Margaret Cormack (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), p. 205.

  27. 27.

    Madeleine Gray, “Contested Relics: Winifride and the Saints of the Atlantic Churches,” in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, ed. James Robinson (London: British Museum, 2014), p. 165. GC, Opera, vi, p. 131; Thorpe, Journey, p. 190.

  28. 28.

    Meilyr Brydydd (fl.1100–37) and by the Monmouthshire poet Hywel Dafi (fl.1450–80) both sang of the saints on Bardsey. Gwaith Meilyr Brydydd a’I Ddisgynyddion, ed. J. E. Caerwyn Williams and Peredur I. Lynch (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), p. 102; for a translation of Meilyr’s poem, see Welsh Poems, Sixth Century to 1600, trans. Gwyn William (Berkley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 30; The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, ed. Meic Stephens (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1990), p. 342.

  29. 29.

    Jeremy Knight, South Wales: From the Romans to the Normans: Christianity, Literacy and Lordship (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2013), p. 9; Jeremy K. Knight, “Excavations at St Barruc’s Chapel, Barry Island, Glamorgan,” Reports and Transactions (Cardiff Naturalists’ Society), 1900–1981 99 (1976–78): 58; LBS, iii, p. 240.

  30. 30.

    James Lydon, “Christ Church in the Later Medieval Irish World 1300–1500,” in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin: A History, ed. Kenneth Milne (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), pp. 93–4.

  31. 31.

    David N. Parsons, Martyrs and Memorials: Merthyr Place-Names and the Church in Early Wales (Aberystwyth: Centre for the Study of Advance Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013), pp. 3–12.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 15.

  33. 33.

    VSBG, pp. 264–7.

  34. 34.

    Peter Lord, The Visual Culture of Wales: Medieval Vision (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), p. 216. See also Colin Gresham, Stone Carving in North Wales: Sepulchral Slabs and Effigies of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1968), pp. 230–7; for the image of St Herbot, see Michel Priziac et Michel Mohrt, Bretagne des Saints et des Croyances (Grâces: Kidour, 2002), p. 447.

  35. 35.

    The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor, ed. Thomas Roberts, rev. Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1923), pp. 15–17, 132; MWP, pp. 110–12, 381–3.

  36. 36.

    LBS, iv, pp. 393–5, esp. p. 392 lines 21–4; Elissa Henken, The Welsh Saints: A Study in Patterned Lives (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), p. 151; MWP, pp. 70–2, trans., pp. 341–3 lines 69–72; Dafydd ap Gwilym, “Appealing to Dwynwen,” http://www.dafyddapgwilym.net/eng/3win.htm (date accessed 05.09.17); LBS, ii, pp. 388–92.

  37. 37.

    MWP, pp. 121–3, trans., pp. 392–4, line 6; A small stone reliquary found at Llanidan Church on Anglesey may have housed a relic of St Nidan or Aidan as it contained pieces of bone. Albert Way, “Reliquaries Found in South Wales and Anglesey: Alabaster Reliquary Found in Caldy Island, Pembrokeshire,” Archaeological Journal (1870): 129, 132; Edward Llwyd’s MSS in the Seabright collection gives the response of Rowlands when he visited Llandinan. The importance of graves to pilgrimage and healing is evidenced in a poem of Lewys Glyn Cothi (c.1420–90). When Gwervyl ferch Madog of Abertanad died, he was moved to state that she should be canonised, and her burial site become a focus of pilgrimage, likening her to St Dwynwen. GLGC, pp. 461–2. She was also the subject of an elegy by Guto’r Glyn, “Elegy for Gweurful Daughter of Madog of Abertanad,” ed. Eurig Salisbury http://www.gutorglyn.net/gutorglyn/poem/?poem-selection=088&first-line=%23 (date accessed 16.16.17).

  38. 38.

    C. A. Ralegh Radford, “Pennant Melangell; The Church and the Shrine,” AC 108 (1959): 88. When the grave was excavated in 1958, there was evidence that the site was marked during the high middle ages. W. J. Britnell et al., “Excavation and Recording at Pennant Melangell Church,” AC 107 (1958): 41–102.

  39. 39.

    Ralegh Radford, “Pennant Melangell.” pp. 93–4; Malcolm Thurlby argues that the design of the shrine is ‘unlikely to be later than the third quarter of the century.’ Malcolm Thurlby, Romanesque Architecture and Sculpture in Wales (Little Logaston: Logaston Press, 2006), p. 277; Jeremy K. Knight, “Excavations at St Barruc’s Chapel, Barry Island, Glamorgan,” Reports and Transactions (Cardiff Naturalists’ Society), 1900–1981 99 (1976–78): 57. The effigy of a woman with hares in the church could also be associated with the burial of St Melangell.

  40. 40.

    David Stephenson, Medieval Powys: Kingdom, Principality and Lordships, 1132–1293 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), p. 53.

  41. 41.

    Ian Bradley, Water: A Spiritual History (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p. 65. This is also a common origin story for holy wells in Scotland and France. Anne Ross, “Severed Heads in Wells: An Aspect of the Well Cult,” Scottish Studies 6 (1962): 38–9.

  42. 42.

    John of Tynemouth, “Life of St Justinian,” in Life of St David, ed. Wade-Evans, p. 51.

  43. 43.

    Francis Jones, The Holy Wells of Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1954), pp. 34–5; Janet Bord and Colin Bord, Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland (London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1985), p. 125.

  44. 44.

    Jones, Holy Wells, p. 62.

  45. 45.

    GC, Opera, vi, p. 203; Thorpe, Journey, p. 253.

  46. 46.

    GC, Opera, vi, p. 27; Thorpe, Journey, p. 87.

  47. 47.

    It seems unlikely that the wells were owned by these saints, but they are associated with them probably because of their place of origin. Canon Fisher, “The Welsh Celtic Bells,” AC (1926), p. 325; St David’s Bell: GC, Opera, vi, p. 17; Thorpe, Journey, p. 79; LBS, pp. 374–5, line 22; VSBG, pp. 84, 96; Anthony Thomas, ‘Baglan’, in Parochialia, Archaeologia Cambrensis Supplement, ed. Edward Lhuyd (1911), iii, p. 27; GC, Opera, vi, p. 17; Thorpe, Journey, pp. 78–9; according to Llywelyn Fardd, St Cadfan’s Staff allegedly stopped ‘a man from murdering his enemy’: Ifor Williams, “An Old Welsh Verse,” NLWJ 2 (1941): 71.

  48. 48.

    Trans. Williams, “An Old Welsh Verse,” p. 75. It is possible that this is not the work of Ieuan ap Sulian, and that he is quoting an earlier work. Nora K. Chadwick, “Intellectual Life in West Wales in the Last Days of the Celtic Church,” in Studies in the Early British Church, ed. Nora K. Chadwick, Kathleen Hughes, Christopher Brooke and Kenneth Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 168.

  49. 49.

    For the Gospel Book of Gildas at Llancarfan, see VSBG, pp. 94–7; for Tiboeth, the Book of St Beuno written by St Twrog, see Lord, Visual Culture, p. 25. Meifod has an unidentified relic or image which attracted a ‘great confluence and report of people on pilgrimage’ right up to the Reformation: Records of the Court of Augmentations Relating to Wales and Monmouthshire, ed. E. A. Lewis and J. Conway Davies (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1954), p. 157; CPReg 1404–15, p. 24.

  50. 50.

    Gwaith Hywel Dafi II, ed. A. Cynfael Lake, pp. 460–2 lines 37–54; MWP, pp. 102–5, 373–6 line 37–54, pp. 377–8 lines 46, 48; Ibid., pp. 105–7, 375–88 lines 46–54; Thorpe, Journey, p. 86; GC, Opera, vi, p. 26.

  51. 51.

    William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i, pp. 778–81; Alban Butler, Butler’s Lives of the Saints: March, ed. Teresa Rodrigues, New Full Edition (Collesville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1999), p. 1, gives the date of 1120. Papal indulgences offered often varied depending on how far a pilgrim had travelled. Bell and Dale, “The Medieval Pilgrimage Business,” pp. 603–4.

  52. 52.

    Kassandra Conley has highlighted the relationship between texts describing India, like the letter of Prester John, and those that describe the oddities of Wales like Gerald of Wales’s Itinerarium or Descriptio or Walter Map’s Courtiers’ Trifles, as the places described in each were at the edge of the known world. In Peniarth MS 15, the letter of Prester John (Gwlat Ieuan Vendigeit) is placed with texts that tell of Wales and Welsh miracles, and the miracles found in Gwlat Ieuan Vendigeit are paralleled in the Enwau ac Anryfeddodau Ynys Prydain (Wonders of the Island of Britain?) She concludes: “The differences between the Far East and West begin to blur and fade until we must struggle to distinguish them.” Kassandra Conley, “Various Things of Great Worth: The Wonders of Wales and India in Peniarth 15,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 30 (2010): 79.

  53. 53.

    Gary Waller, Walsingham and the English Imagination (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 33.

  54. 54.

    Diana Webb, “Pardons and Pilgrims,” in Promissory Notes on the treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. R. N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 241.

  55. 55.

    Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), p. 163.

  56. 56.

    Les registres de Boniface VIII, ed. G. Digard, M. Faucon and A. Thomas, 4 vols. (Paris, 1907–39), no 3875; translated in Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West, ed. Diana Webb (London: I. B. Taurus, 2001), p. 76.

  57. 57.

    Stacions of Rome and the Pilgrims Sea Voyage, ed. F. J. Furnivall, (London: Early English Texts Society, 1867), p. 2.

  58. 58.

    CPR, 1422–24, p. 12.

  59. 59.

    Gwaith Iolo Goch, ed. D. R. Johnston, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1988), p. 131, lines 1–8; trans in Dafydd Johnston, Iolo Goch: Poems (Llandysul: Gomer, 1993), p. 118, lines 1–8.

  60. 60.

    For the poem by Ieuan ap Rhydderch (c.1430–70), see MWP, pp. 112–17, trans., pp. 383–8 lines 115–22; J. Wyn Evans, “St David and St Davids: Some Observations on the Cult, Site and Buildings,” in Celtic Hagiography and Saints Cults, ed. Jane Cartwright (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), p. 11.

  61. 61.

    Liber Landavenis, p. 282. See also Roberts, “Enlli’r Oesoedd Canol,” p. 36.

  62. 62.

    This is the interpretation by Baring-Gould and Fisher of a grant made that year to Beddgelert. See LBS, iii, p. 370 n3 and Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, i, p. 584; see also the account of Thomas Williams of Trefriw, who recorded such indulgences in NLW Peniarth MS 225 (1594–1610).

  63. 63.

    Y Drych Cristianogawl (1585), p. 4. Authorship and place of publication uncertain, though it was allegedly printed in a cave on the north Welsh coast. Available online via the National Library of Wales: https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/discover/digital-gallery/printed-material/y-drych-cristianogawl/ (date accessed 10.09.17).

  64. 64.

    For the confident assertion that this is the case in modern works, see, for example, Christopher Winn, I Never Knew that about Wales (London: Ebury Press, 2007), p. 40.

  65. 65.

    Julia M. H. Smith, Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History, 500–1000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 285–6; D. Simon Evans, “The Welsh and the Irish before the Normans—Contact or Impact,” Proceedings of the British Academy 75 (1989), 143–61.

  66. 66.

    St Davids Episcopal Acta, 1085–1280, ed. Julia Barrow (Cardiff: South Wales Record Society, 1998), pp. 50–1; NA C270/29/5; Monasticon Anglicanum, vi, p. 200; a greater number of indulgences were probably granted by the bishops in Wales, but the paucity of medieval Welsh episcopal sources means that they did not survive.

  67. 67.

    Karen Stöber, “The Regular Canons in Wales,” in The Regular Canons in the Medieval British Isles, ed. J. E. Burton and Karen Stöber, Medieval Church Studies, 19 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2011), pp. 97–113; CPReg 1427–47, p. 448.

  68. 68.

    CPReg 1362–1404, p. 65; CPReg 1404–1415, p. 452; Abergavenny also secured an indulgence for penitents visiting on the feast of the Exultation of the Cross.

  69. 69.

    R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 54–5.

  70. 70.

    Pilgrims and Pilgrimage, trans. Webb, p. 69.

  71. 71.

    The hospital in Swansea, founded by Henry Gower, future bishop of St Davids, in 1332, was intended as a place of care for sick priests and laymen, though it was also a place where ‘divers relics of saints’ were kept. For the charter see G. G. Francis, “A brief memoir of Henry de Gower, bishop of St Davids in the fourteenth century with brief notices of his works,” AC 4th Series vii, (1876): 3–7; CPReg 1362–1404, pp. 347–54. The pope granted the same indulgence to several sites in England in the same period.

  72. 72.

    CPReg 1398–1402, pp. 507–8.

  73. 73.

    CPReg 1417–1431, p. 504.

  74. 74.

    CPReg 1398–1404, p. 258.

  75. 75.

    Indulgences on offer at sites in England were also advertised in Wales by Welsh bishops. Llandaff Episcopal Acta, 1140–1287, ed. David Crouch (Cardiff: South Wales Record Society, 1988), pp. 83–4. William de Burgh’s promotion of Westminster may have been the result of his court associations and previous position as keeper of the king’s privy seal. CPR 1232–47, p. 348. There were also easily accessible sites not far from the Welsh border, some possessing relics arguably of particular interest to the Welsh, that offered indulgences. The Register of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter (AD 1420–1455), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randloph, 2 vols. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1909–1915), ii, p. 657; PME, p. 106; R. H. Warren, “The Medieval Chapels of Bristol,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 30 (1907): 207–8; W. J. Pountney, Old Bristol Potteries, being an Account of the Old Potters and Potteries of Bristol and Brislington, between 1650 and 1850, with Some Pages on the Old Chapel of St Anne, Brislington (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., 1920), p. 277; Registrum Roberti Mascall, episcopi Herefordensis, A. D. 1404–1416, ed. Joseph H. Parry (London: Canterbury and York Society, 21, 1917), pp. 15–16. The thirteenth-century church, now abandoned and ruined since a new church was built nearby, is usually described as dedicated to St John the Baptist. Paul R. Davis and Susan Lloyd-Fern, Lost Churches of Wales & the Marches (Stroud: Sutton, 1990), pp. 5–9. Sites offering less than 40 days indulgence were also promoted in Wales. St Davids Episcopal Acta, pp. 103–4, 60; The Cartulary of the Augustinian Friars of Clare, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill, Suffolk Records Society 11 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991), pp. 94–5. Occasionally, a more generous indulgence was advertised, as in 1405 for the Chapel of St Tiriotus near Chepstow in the diocese of Hereford. CPReg 1404–15, p. 24.

  76. 76.

    Emma Rogers, “The Marketing of the Holy Dead in the High Middle Ages: With Special Reference to England and the Cult of St Thomas Becket,” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Reading, 2004), pp. 63–4.

  77. 77.

    The Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of St Davids, 1397 to 1518, ed. R. F. Isaacson, 3 vols. (London: The Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1917–20), i, pp. 63, 69–71, 319; for indulgences gained through prayer, for example, see NLW Peniarth MS 50 f. 145.

  78. 78.

    Adam of Usk, The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, 1377–1421, trans. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 192–3.

  79. 79.

    CPReg 1362–1404, p. 65.

  80. 80.

    CPReg 1431–1447, p. 491.

  81. 81.

    The printed indulgence survives in two copies, both of which used to be kept by the Tollemache family of Helmingham Hall, Norfolk: BL MS. Egerton 2410 f. 3 and NLW Ws1528. The text of the indulgence is transcribed and translated in Edward Owen, “Strata Marcella Abbey immediately before and after its Dissolution,” Y Cymmrodor 29 (1919): 7–13. See also E. D. Jones, “A Form of Indulgence Issued by the Abbey of Strata Marcella,” NLWJ 14.2 (1965): 246–7.

  82. 82.

    Petitions to the Pope, 1342–1419, Volume V, ed. W. H. Bliss (London: H. M. S. O., 1896), p. 114.

  83. 83.

    A list of the liturgical manuscripts and calendars that celebrate the Welsh diocesan saints can be found in Daniel Huws, “St David in the Liturgy: A Review of Sources,” in St David of Wales, pp. 229–32.

  84. 84.

    William Fleetwood, The Life and Miracles of St Wenefrede together with her Litanies, 2nd ed. (London: Sam Bulkeley, at the Dolphin, 1713), p. 113.

  85. 85.

    Colleen M. Seguin, “Cures and Controversies in Early Modern Wales: The Struggle to Control St Winifred’s Well,” North American Journal of Welsh Studies 3 (2003): 2.

  86. 86.

    Liber Landavensis, pp. 92–114, trans., pp. 332–54.

  87. 87.

    J. W. James suggests that it was written sometime between c.1172 and 1176. Rhigyfarch’s Life of St David, p. xxxii; Michael Richter suggests c.1192–94, “The Life of St David by Giraldus Cambrensis,” WHR 4 (1969): 386; GC, Opera, iii, pp. 377–406; LBS, vi, p. 226.

  88. 88.

    GC, Opera, iii, pp. 63, 182. A version of the Life of St Caradog, probably abbreviated from Gerald of Wales’ work, probably kept at St Davids, survives: “De Sancto Caradoco heremita,” Nova Legenda Anglie, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), i, pp. 174–7.

  89. 89.

    Huw Pryce, “A New Edition of the Historia Divae Monacellae,” Montgomeryshire Collections 82 (1994): 31.

  90. 90.

    Luciana Meinking Guimarães, “The Uses of Secular Rulers and Characters in the Welsh Saint’s Lives in the Vespasian Legendary (MS. Cotton Vespasian A. XIV.),” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Freiburg, 2009), pp. 243–5, esp. p. 244.

  91. 91.

    See, for example, Matthew Woodcock, “Crossovers and Afterlife,” in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, ed. Sarah Salih (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 144–5, for the focus on posthumous miracles in the hagiographical material found in late medieval chronicles.

  92. 92.

    NLW MS Llanstephan 27 (The Red Book of Talgarth), ff. 62v.-71v., 71v.-76v., 131r.-131v., 132r.-135v., 136r.-137r. Brynley F. Roberts, “Un o Lawysgrifau Hopcyn ap Thomas o Ynys Dawe,” BBCS 22 (1967): 224.

  93. 93.

    Jane Cartwright, “The Harlot and the Hostess: A Preliminary Study of the Middle Welsh Lives of Mary Magdalene and Her Sister Martha,” in Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults, ed. Jane Cartwright (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 77–8. For a list of the manuscripts containing these lives, see p. 79.

  94. 94.

    Bell and Dale, “The Medieval Pilgrimage Business,” p. 608.

  95. 95.

    Michael J. Curley, “The Miracles of Saint David,” Traditio 62 (2007): 137.

  96. 96.

    “The Anonymous Life of St Winefride,” in Two Medieval Lives of Saint Winifride, trans. Ronald Pepin and High Feiss (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2000), pp. 103–13; Fiona Winward, “The Lives of St Wenefred,” Analecta Bollandia 117 (1999): 90, 115.

  97. 97.

    Three Eleventh Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et Miracula S. Kenelmi, Vita S Rumwoldi, ed. and trans. Rosalind C. Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. cxxx; Richard Sharpe, “Some medieval miracula from Llandegley (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 94 fols. 153v–155r),” BBCS 37 (1990): 166–76; the miracles associated with the Virgin Mary survive in three manuscripts, each with variations. Lewis Haydn Angell, “Gwyrthyeu e Wynvydedic Vier; astudieth gymharol ohonynt fel y’u ceir hwynt llawysgrifau Peniarth 14, Peniarth 5 a Llanstephan 27,” Unpublished MA thesis (University of Wales, Cardiff, 1938).

  98. 98.

    GC, Opera, vi, pp. 17, 18, 25–6, 85–7, 129–30.

  99. 99.

    Ibid., i, pp. 72–3.

  100. 100.

    Thorpe, Journey, p. 49.

  101. 101.

    GC, Opera, i, pp. 409–21 for the text of the letter; the reference to the map is on pp. 414–15.

  102. 102.

    Luke Wadding, an Irish Franciscan who visited a range of European libraries, and who gave the College of St Isidore in Rome 5000 books and 800 manuscripts, claimed to see a manuscript of this work in an unidentified French library in 1670. T. Matthews, “Welsh Records in Foreign Libraries,” Reports and Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists Society 43 (1910): 23.

  103. 103.

    In a Norman context, Samantha Herrick highlighted the way in which Norman clergy were avid consumers of hagiographical works, and that their “knowledge of their local saints was intimate and profound.” Samantha Kahn Herrick, Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 6.

  104. 104.

    MWP, pp. 75–7, trans., pp. 346–8. See also the notes, pp. 149–50; LBS, iv, pp. 395–6; Dafydd R. Johnston, Llên yr. Uchelwyr: Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg 1300–1525, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), p. 215.

  105. 105.

    MWP, pp. 73–5, trans., pp. 344–6.

  106. 106.

    Richard Suggett, “Church Building in Late-Medieval Wales,” in Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths and Phillip Schofield (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011), p. 186. The RCAHMW suggests St Eilian’s was built ‘in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.’ An Inventory of Ancient Monuments in Anglesey (London: H. M. S. O., 1937), p. 61. The wealth accrued by Llaneilian also allowed for the purchase of two local farms. James Rattue, The Living Stream: Holy Wells in Historical Context (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), p. 82.

  107. 107.

    Lewis, Welsh Poetry and English Pilgrimage, p. 21.

  108. 108.

    For an overview of the role of the Welsh monasteries in pilgrimage, see Kathryn Hurlock, “‘Pilgrimage,” in Monastic Wales: New Approaches, ed. Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013), pp. 119–32.

  109. 109.

    Salvador Ryan, “A Slighted Source: Rehabilitating Irish Bardic Religious Poetry in Historical Discourse,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 48 (2004): 79; David Sox, Relics and Shrines (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985), p. 24.

  110. 110.

    F. G. Cowley “Margam Abbey, 1147–1349,” Morgannwg 42 (1998): 1; Records of the Wardrobe and Household, 1285–1286, ed. B. F. Byerly and C. R. Byerly (London: H. M. S. O., 1977), pp. xix, xxxv; James, “Y Grog Ddoluriog Loywrym,” pp. 74–5.

  111. 111.

    NA SC 6 (Ministers and Receivers Accounts) (Hen VIII) 5259; David H. Williams, The Welsh Cistercians (Leominster: Gracewing, 2001), p. 69; Guto’r Glyn, “Meditation at the End of Life,” ed. Ann Parry Owen http://www.gutorglyn.net/gutorglyn/poem/?poem-selection=118&first-line=111 (date accessed 28.09.17), line 59.

  112. 112.

    CPReg, 1398–1404, pp. 257–8.

  113. 113.

    Juliette Wood, “Nibbling Pilgrims and the Nanteos Cup: A Cardiganshire Legend,” in Nanteos: A Welsh House and Its Families, ed. Gerald Morgan (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 2002), pp. 221–2; for the idea that it came from Glastonbury, see NLW MS. 3297B (n.d), “Account of Cup coming from Glastonbury to Strata Florida during the time of Abbot Whiting.” If the monastery did have such an illustrious relic, it seems likely that it would have been referred to in contemporary poetry, or that the monastery would have attracted enough pilgrims (and more importantly, their offerings) to save Abbot Rhys bankrupt himself paying for its restoration in the 1430s. Dafydd Johnston, “Monastic Patronage of Welsh Poetry,” in Monastic Wales, p. 182.

  114. 114.

    The Augustinians were granted Puffin Island (also known as Ynys Lannog, Priestholm, or Ynnys Sieriol) before 1221, replacing an older community of hermits; The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed. Huw Pryce with Charles Insley (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), pp. 411–12, 634–8.

  115. 115.

    Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac Eraill, ed. Leslie Harries (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1953), pp. 106–7 lines 5–10; Ibid., pp. 118–19.; Gwaith Ieuan Brydydd Hir, ed. M. Paul Bryant-Quinn (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies), pp. 65–70; Gwaith Siôn Ceri, ed. A. Cynfael Lake (Aberystwyth: Centre for the study of Advance Welsh and Celtic Studies, 1996), pp. 65–70. For translations, see Parri, “Crog Aberhodni,” pp. 23–4, 26–7, 28–9, 30–2.

  116. 116.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  117. 117.

    Bishop Barlow of St Davids complained to Thomas Cromwell that both statues were still being worshipped, that at Cardigan “used for a great pilgrimage to this present day.” TCL, p. 183. In the same letter, Barlow details relics found at St Davids which he is sending to Cromwell. He also described St Davids as “Lurking in a desolate corner.”

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Kathryn Hurlock

Authors
  1. Kathryn Hurlock
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Hurlock, K. (2018). Promotion and Reward. In: Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, c.1100–1500. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43099-1_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation