Sacred space and the natural world: the holy well and shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys. In recent decades, the received wisdom among landscape historians has been that medieval perceptions of landscape and the natural environment – and indeed medieval understanding of the meaning of words like “landscape” and “natural” – were fundamentally different from our own. In particular, there has been a broad assumption that, while modern Western society values landscapes which we perceive as wild and remote, medieval society valued landscapes which were ordered, tamed and productive. This perspective was outlined in 1967 by Lynn White, who rooted the medieval perception explicitly in the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. 1 In the same year, Roderick Nash provided a fuller discussion of the same themes. 2 While these studies may now seem unduly simplistic, the same ideas were explored in a more nuanced form and for the post-medieval period by Keith Thomas in his seminal Man and the Natural World, 3 and were revisited as recently as 2007 in Gilbert LaFreniere’s The Decline of Nature. 4 1
Transcript
Sacred space and the natural world:
the holy well and shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys.
In recent decades, the received wisdom among landscape historians has been that
medieval perceptions of landscape and the natural environment – and indeed medieval
understanding of the meaning of words like “landscape” and “natural” – were
fundamentally different from our own. In particular, there has been a broad assumption
that, while modern Western society values landscapes which we perceive as wild and
remote, medieval society valued landscapes which were ordered, tamed and productive.
This perspective was outlined in 1967 by Lynn White, who rooted the medieval
perception explicitly in the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition.1 In the same year,
Roderick Nash provided a fuller discussion of the same themes.2 While these studies may
now seem unduly simplistic, the same ideas were explored in a more nuanced form and
for the post-medieval period by Keith Thomas in his seminal Man and the Natural
World,3 and were revisited as recently as 2007 in Gilbert LaFreniere’s The Decline of
Nature.4
By the 1980s, though, the work of these authors was being challenged. David Herlihy’s
1980 overview is normally cited in support of the White/Nash perspective. However,
while the main thrust of his article was that for most of the medieval period nature was
seen as something to be feared and controlled, he did give some weight to the idea of
nature as recreation and refreshment.5 Environmentalist Susan Power Bratton’s
Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife was a more explicit challenge to White and Nash,
rigorously academic but rooted in her own openly expressed Christian beliefs and
spiritual experiences.6 Her main focus was on the Biblical significance of wilderness but
in this book and in earlier articles she also discussed perceptions of the natural
environment in the writings and vitae of the early Irish monks.7 She further developed
this historical perspective in Environmental Values in Christian Art, moving away from
her earlier focus on sacred text to conside what art and material culture can tell us about
1
changing Christian attitudes to the natural world.8 Meanwhile, Joyce Salisbury, David
Salter and Dominic Alexander have discussed the dangers of applying modern
understanding of concepts like “nature”, “the natural world”, “the natural environment”
to medieval perspectives,9 and Aron Gurevich has argued that the conscious antithesis of
nature and human society was foreign to the medieval mind.10
It is within the context of this debate that we need to situate a discussion of attitudes to
the natural environment as exemplified by descriptions of pilgrimage routes and sites.
Studies of medieval pilgrimage, even those based on itineraries and descriptive accounts,
seldom focus explicitly on the pilgrims’ perceptions of the natural landscape. In an
illuminating study of medieval pilgrimage to Rome, for example, Debra Birch discusses
motivation, the actual routes taken, timing, the logistics of transport and accommodation
and the obligations and privileges of the pilgrim, but makes only passing mention of the
natural environment as an aspect of the dangers of pilgrimage.11 Sumption says rather
more about the natural dangers on pilgrimage routes but only discusses attitudes to the
natural landscape in the context of early medieval penitential pilgrimage.12 Describing the
route to Compostela as recorded by medieval pilgrims, Colin Smith simply assumes that
Probably nothing in their intellectual formation would have disposed them to take
much of an interest in the (to us) magnificent scenery they would traverse ...13
Nicole Chareyron says rather more in her study of medieval accounts of the route to
Jerusalem, but references to the landscape are scattered through the book and there is no
explicit analysis.14
As with more general attitudes to landscape, representations by pilgrims have changed
over time. Chareyron suggested a typology of pilgrimage beginning with later Roman
and Byzantine pilgrimage attracted by the asceticism of desert life, followed by pilgrims
in search of miracles, millenarian penitents, crusaders and intellectuals. In particular, she
distinguished between the Crusading purpose to defend the world by force of arms and
the ideal of contemptus mundi.15 Only at the end of the medieval period was this replaced
in some pilgrims by a sense of curiositas, in which “the pilgrimage itself, the motivation
2
underlying the deed, was accompanied by an interest in everything experienced while
making it”.16
Sumption also suggested that contempt for civilised society and a rejection of urban
values as corrupt and worldly was a fundamental strand in earlier medieval Christianity,
inspiring both desert mystics and early pilgrims.17 This, he argued, was particularly
exemplified by St Jerome, who described himself “forsaking the bustling cities of
Antioch and Constantinople so as to draw down upon myself the mercy of Christ in the
solitude of the country”. For him and his followers, the purpose of pilgrimage was to
leave Rome and Antioch rather than to reach Jerusalem. His disciples Paula and Melania
spent most of their pilgrimages wandering in the deserts of Egypt, where they visited the
communities of hermits who had retreated there. 18 However, neither Jerome nor his
followers saw the natural landscape as a place of beauty: rather, it was a place for
penitential austerity and self-exile
Michael Goodich has pointed to a comparable ambivalence in later medieval attitudes to
the natural world: on the one hand it is seen as a threat, on the other hand the rejection of
its beauty is part of the contemptus mundi of the ascetic. But at the same time the desert
or wilderness was still seen as a place of refuge from persecution and retreat for monastic
contemplation.19 He suggests that the natural world was actually perceived as more of a
threat in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as a result of a series of natural
catastrophes, the breakdown of frameworks such as drainage systems by which the
natural environment was controlled and tamed, and the re-encroachment of forest on farm
land (though as he admits, this tendency cannot be precisely correlated with the
demographic crisis of the fourteenth century).20
Modern pilgrimage is perhaps less focused on the penitential and more on spiritual
development, and modern pilgrims are expected to enjoy the natural environment as part
of the experience:
... every beautiful glen and mountain has been photographed by the hikers. From
wild thyme along the Road to T-shirts festooned with pilgrimage motifs for sale
3
in the villages, pilgrims partake of the natural and commercial as they hike their
kilometers.21
As with the literature on medieval pilgrimage, there is little explicit discussion of
responses to the natural landscape in accounts of modern pilgrimage. However, the whole
concept of pilgrimage as sacred space (as distinct from the sacred space at the objective
of the pilgrimage) is still a matter for debate among social anthropologists. If (as Victor
Turner suggests) pilgrimage is a liminal experience, one which takes the pilgrim
completely out of his or her daily experience and even subverts established social
structures,22 then one might expect a wilderness experience – whether idyllic or
penitential – to be part of the liminal process. The natural landscape was an implicit part
of the liminal quality of the pilgrimage to Compostela for Ellen Feinberg:
I was happy to sleep out in the fresh, sweet country air. Away from city lights and
city pollution, we saw the Milky Way, spreading its starry trail like a protective
blanket over us.23
Even the title of Feinberg’s book suggests a radical shift in perspective, one which is
perhaps so deep-rooted that it escapes discussion. It is ironical that so many modern
pilgrims consider themselves to be “getting away from” the modern world and back to a
simpler, more traditional way of life in reconnecting with the natural environment, when
this is not something which most medieval pilgrims would have recognized. But if (as
Michael Sallnow argued in 1981) pilgrimage is “simply a setting in which social
interactions can take place ex novo”,24 then by extension the pilgrimage also becomes a
space for competing perspectives on the natural world.25
The general absence of analysis of attitudes to the natural environment in discussions of
medieval pilgrimage may in part be a reflection of the sources and their purpose.
Itineraries were functional, guides to the route and to the attractions of the destination.
The fourteenth-century Franciscan Niccolò of Poggibonsi made only brief reference to
the natural features he saw – the mountain of the Transfiguration, the mountain where
Noah built the Ark – but gave specific details of the indulgences offered there to
4
pilgrims.26 Inevitably, most of the focal points of pilgrimage were structures rather than
natural features, and the guides to the route tended to focus on problems to be overcome
rather than on scenery which might distract the pilgrims from their purpose.27 Whatever
motivated individual pilgrims to make a record of their experiences, one might expect
their priorities to be the same. The pilgrimage journey was meant to be penitential: as
Jacques de Vitry explained in his famous sermon on pilgrimage, as the pilgrim had
sinned with all his limbs, so he must make reparation with all of them. Nothing was to
distract him from his path; tiredness and sore feet were to be his delight.28
If we consider in detail some of those medieval pilgrimage narratives which do mention
the natural environment, we will find that most seem to belong squarely in the traditional
paradigm of fear of wilderness and, if they mention the natural environment at all, see it
as part of the penitential aspect of the pilgrimage. One of the most detailed of such
descriptions, that of the route to Compostela in the Codex Callixtinus, is full of references
to dangerous rivers, poisonous waters and difficult territory. The land of the Bordelais is
described as
tellus omni bono desolata, pane, vino, carne, piscibus, aquis et fontibus vacua;
villis rara, plana, sabulosa ... faciem tuam studiose custodi a muscis
immanissimis, que guespe vel tavones vulgo dicuntur, qui maxime ibi habundant,
et nisi diligenter pedem obseruaveris, in arena marina que ibi habundant usque
ad genua velociter lapsus fueris.
(a country devoid of all good things, lacking in bread, wine, meat, fish, water and
springs, sparse in towns, flat, sandy … take care to guard your face from the
enormous insects commonly called guespe [wasps] or tavones [horse-flies], which
are most abundant there; and if you do not watch carefully where you put your
feet, you will slip rapidly up to your knees in the quicksand that abounds there.)29
The Basque country is “wooded and mountainous, devoid of wine, bread and bodily
nourishment”, and “all the rivers between Estella and Logroño have water that is
dangerous for men and beasts to drink, and the fish from them are poisonous to eat”.
5
There are a few references to good features in the natural landscape – the Gascon country
is “healthy on account of its woods and meadows, rivers and pure springs”: but the
author’s praise for the landscape is usually on purely utilitarian grounds. Water is good
because it is clear and drinkable; the Gascon landscape is good because it is “bountiful in
white bread and excellent red wine”; Castile and Campos are “full of riches, gold and
silver, blessed with fodder and very strong horses, well-provided with bread, wine, meat,
fish, milk and honey”.30
This contrasts with the rapturous descriptions of the built landscape, particularly (but not
exclusively) Compostela itself and the “perfect beauty” of the great cathedral:
In eadem vero ecclesia nulla scissura, vel corrupcio invenitur ... qui enim sursum
per naves palacii vadit, si tristis ascendit, visa obtima pulcritudine eiusdem
templi, letus et gavisus efficitur.
(In truth, in this church, no fissure or fault is found ... whoever visits the naves of
the gallery, if he goes up sad, having seen the perfect beauty of this temple, he
will be made happy and joyful.)31
Even the mountain pass of Port de Cize, so high that “to him who ascends it, it seems that
he can touch the sky with his own hand”, is notable mainly for what humans have done at
the summit, the Cross of Charlemagne:
... super illum securibus et dolabris et fossoriis ceterisque manubriis Karolus cum
suis exercitibus in Yspaniam pergens, olim tramitem fecit signumque Dominice
crucis prius in eo elevavit ...
(… it is here that, with axes and picks and spades and other implements,
Charlemagne, going to Spain with his armies, once made a road, and he raised on
it the sign of the cross of the Lord …)32
6
A similar focus can be found in descriptions of pilgrimage routes in the Middle East by
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers such as Ogier d’Anglure33 and Pietro Casola.34
Even the River Jordan failed to inspire Casola: it was
not wider than our Naviglio, which comes to Porta Ticinese. It is deep and the
mud is high and sticky, almost like bath mud; and the water is muddy, like that of
the Po. When it is purified it is beautiful to look at. Many drank it from devotion,
and I let them drink.
(In other words, even the Jordan, the river in which Christ was baptized, had to be
improved by human hands before it was really safe or beautiful.)
We returned by the same way by which we had come. It was very clear, and we
could see well and examine the country, which is flat as far as Jericho. There is
not a fruit tree to be seen, nor any other plant save abominable thorns, both large
and small. I made acquaintance with them, for the mule I was riding carried me
off the road among those thorns, and they tore my mantle and doublet.35
D’Anglure said even less about the Jordan: in a brief and prosaic note he described it as
“very turbulent and white, and the current is quite strong”.36 His main concern was to
enumerate the relics he saw on his journey, and to follow in meticulous detail the tour
around the buildings mentioned in Biblical narratives.
Jerome had valued the desert as a refuge from the corruption of human society. However,
most of the later medieval pilgrims who travelled beyond Jerusalem to explore the holy
places of Syria, Jordan and Egypt regarded the desert as a place of deprivation, precisely
because it was devoid of human habitation.37 The thirteenth-century pilgrim Thietmar
saw the desert as a terrifying place to be crossed in search of sacred sites – the place
where Aaron died, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was hidden: but the desert
itself was terrifying, with “dreadful valleys and fearsome depths”, full of wild animals.
He much preferred the domesticated space of a garden.38 For Riccoldo da Monte di
Croce, too, the climb up the Mount of Temptation was of interest for the contrast between
the harshness of the mountain and the lush vegetation of the cultivated plain with its
7
sugar cane, palm trees and roses: this, he thought, was how the Devil tempted Christ in
Matt. 4:9: “All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me”.39
What some of these accounts find of value in the natural environment is linked to the
spiritual meaning of specific features, in the same way that animals were valued as
analogies for spiritual values. Giacomo da Verona travelled with tools to remove rocks
from the Hill of Calvary; an anonymous pilgrim in 1420 found “trees bearing thorns, and
of a like tree and thorn Our Lord was crowned in his Passion”. 40 Even the bananas of the
Mount of Temptation were a sign: “if you cut this fruit crosswise into ten slices ...”, Ogier
d’Anglure wrote, “you will always see the image of the crucifix clearly in each slice”.41
By the late fifteenth century, Chareyron suggested, the spirit of curiositas had become a
component of some pilgrimage narratives, encouraging an interest in natural phenomena
as well as in art, architecture and ethnology. The German Dominican friar Felix Fabri
claimed that the motivation for his pilgrimage was to improve his understanding of
Scripture.42 Describing his two journeys to the Holy Land he chose at first to emphasize
their difficulties and dangers, saving his praise for the towns he visited. On Cyprus,
though, he was enchanted by “the shrubs of that land [which] breathed forth the sweetest
fragrance, for almost all the herbs of that isle are spices of divers sorts, which smell by
far sweetest in the night time, when they are moist with dew”.43 Like most of his
companions he valued cultivated and fruitful landscapes and was disappointed by the arid
hills between Joppa and Jerusalem:
I myself said secretly in my heart: ‘lo, now! this is that land in which is said to
flow with milk and honey; but I see no fields to bring forth bread, no vineyards
for wine, no green meadows, no orchards. Lo! it is all stony, sunburned, and
barren.' While I thus silently communed with myself, ere long the answer came to
me, to wit, that this barrenness, drought, and roughness is the curse laid upon it by
God because of the breaking of His commandments ...44
On his way to Sinai he eventually succumbed to the fascination of the desert: “I confess
that, for my own part”, he wrote, in language reminiscent of Jerome, “I felt more pleasure
8
in the barren wilderness than I ever did in the rich and fertile land of Egypt, with all its
attractive beauty”.45 For most of his account, though, it is the cities and the customs of
their inhabitants which fascinate him.
A more direct contrast with the typical descriptions of pilgrimage routes can be found in
the surviving Welsh poetry to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys in the Rhondda
valleys of south Wales, which has a clear focus on the natural setting of the shrine. The
March 1967), 1203-7.2 Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). 3 Man and the Natural World: changing attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (London: Allen
Lane, 1983)4 Gilbert F. LaFreniere, The decline of nature : environmental history and the Western
worldview (Bethesda, MD; London: Academica Press, 2007).5 ‘Attitudes towards the Environment in Medieval Society’ in Historical Ecology: Essays
on Environment and Social Change, ed. Lester J. Bilsky (Port Washington, New York:
National University Publications, Kennikat Press, 1980), 100-16, esp pp 113-5.6 Susan Power Bratton, Christianity, wilderness, and wildlife : the original desert
solitaire (Scranton, PA; London: University of Scranton Press; Cranbury, NJ: Associated
University Presses, 1993).7 ‘The original desert solitaire: Early Christian monasticism and wilderness’,
and northern forests’, Journal of Forest History 33(1) (1989), 4-20.8 Environmental values in Christian art (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2008)9 Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge,
1994); David Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts: encounters with animals in medieval
literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001); Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in
the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008)10 Aron Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. Campbell (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985 edn.), 45, 56-66.
9
poetry is difficult to interpret and translate: it is written in the traditional Welsh verse
form which involves a fiercely complex structure of rhythm, internal rhyme, alliteration
and assonance called cynghanedd (literally “singing together”). In all but the most skilled
hands this can result in the poetry deteriorating into formulaic repetition as the writer is
forced to choose words to fit the sound rather than the sense – and it has to be said that
none of the poets who wrote about the shrine at Penrhys was of the first rank. The poetic
language can also be obscure, relying as it does on the piling up of metaphor and
reference, language which depends on resonance to create a “thick text” of description by
11 Debra J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: continuity and change
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998); see esp ch 2, ‘The journey to Rome’. 12 Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: an image of medieval religion (London: Faber &
Faber, 1975, republished as The Age of Pilgrimage: the medieval journey to God,
Mahwah, New Jersey: HiddenSprings 2003; page references are to the original 1975
edition), 175-84, 94-7.13 Colin Smith, ‘The Geography and History of Iberia in the Liber Sancti Jacobi’ in
Maryjane Dunn and Linda Kay Davidson, eds., The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the
Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 2000 edn.), 23-41, quote on p 24.14 Nicole Chareyron, Les Pèlerins de Jérusalem au Moyen Age. L'aventure du saint
voyage d'après Journaux et mémoires (Paris, Imago, 2000); trans. W. Donald Wilson as
Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).15 Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 316 Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 2517 Sumption, Pilgrimage: an image of medieval religion, 94-7.18 Sumption, Pilgrimage: an image of medieval religion, 95.19 Michael E. Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: private grief and
public salvation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 106-1020 Goodich, Violence and Miracle, 103-6.21 Maryjane Dunn and Linda Kay Davidson, eds., The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the
Middle Ages (New York and London: Routledge, 2000 edn.), xvi.22 see for example Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture:
allusion - what one of the Penrhys poets, Gwilym Tew, called ei diolch, wead odl a
chywydd, “the woven thanks of ode and poem”.
Nevertheless, this vernacular poetry provides us with an important source for the
mentalité of late medieval Welsh society, and the general meaning is usually discernible.
While one might have expected poetry focused on the shrine rather than the route to
23 Following the Milky Way: a pilgrimage across Spain (Ames: Iowa State University
Press, 1989), 206. 24 Michael Sallnow, ‘Communitas reconsidered: the sociology of Andean pilgrimage’ in
Man 16, 163-82; see also idem, Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cusco
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987).25 for a fuller discussion of these issues see John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds.,
Contesting the Sacred: the anthropology of pilgrimage (Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, paperback ed. 2000); M. Gray, 'The pilgrimage as ritual space' in Holy
Ground: theoretical issues relating to the landscape and material culture of ritual space,
ed. A.T. Smith and A. Brookes (Oxford : BAR Archaeopress, 2001), 91-7
26 T. Bellorini and E. Hoade, ed. and trans., Fra Niccolò of Poggibonsi. A voyage Beyond
the Seas (1346-1350) (Jerusalem:Franciscan Printing Press, 1945), 63, 81.27 Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 14-15.28 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Latin MS 3284 f 129, cited in Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome
1-2, 70; see also idem, ‘Jacques de Vitry and the Ideology of Pilgrimage’ in J. Stopford,
ed., Pilgrimage Explored (York: York Medieval Press, 1999), 79-94 .29 The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela a critical edition. Vol II: the text.
Annotated English translation by Paula Gerson, Annie Shaver-Crandell and Alison
Stones with the assistance of Jeanne Krochalis; Latin text collated, edited and annotated
by Jeanne Krochalis and Alison Stones (London: Harvey Miller, 1998), 22-23. I have
modified the use of u and v in accordance with conventional Latin orthography.30 Gerson et al, Pilgrim’s Guide, 22-25, 30-31.31 Gerson et al, Pilgrim’s Guide, 68-71.32 Gerson et al, Pilgrim’s Guide, 26-27.
11
foreground the built landscape, the reverse is true in this case. When Gwilym Tew
described the shrine –
Ynys yw Pen-rhys yn nhrwyn y fforest
Bara ‘fferen a dŵr swyn46
- by fforest he may have meant a hunting preserve or (more likely) a wooded area. The
word ynys is even more ambiguous: it is cognate with Gaelic Inish/Inch and derives from
the Latin insula but in Welsh it can mean either “island” or “water meadow”. Penrhys is
not an island: but it stands on a high ridge between the two Rhondda valleys which could
be thought of poetically as surrounding it. Nor is there any evidence of water meadows
there, though the shrine in its clearing could be described as being in a meadow.
33 Roland A. Browne , trans. and ed. , The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, seigneur
d’Anglure (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1975).34 Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494. trans. Mary Margaret
Newett. Manchester: The University Press, 1907.35Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage, 268.36 The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 38.37 Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 139.38 Chareyron, 128.39 Chareyron, 105.40 Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 75, 147.41 The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 4042 In his “Epistle Dedicatory”: see Aubrey Stewart, trans. The Book of the Wanderings of
Felix Fabri (Circa 1480-1483 A.D.) (2 vols. London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society,
1892-6), vol I (i), 2.43 Stewart, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, I (i), 194-544 Stewart, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, I (i), 274-545 Stewart, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, II (ii), 512 46 A. E. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew: astudiaeth destunol a chymharol o’i lawysgrif, Peniarth 51,
ynghyd a gyndriniaeth a’i farddoniaeth’ (University of Wales Ph D thesis, 1981), 447
12
The island or promontory monastery is a commonplace of early medieval church history
in the Atlantic region.47 Traditional interpretations of this pattern emphasise the island as
a place of isolation and austerity.48 More recent historians have suggested the possibility
that the Latin insula could mean a small monastery.49 Jonathan Wooding has challenged
this in the context of Caldey but has found a number of later medieval examples
elsewhere of insula/ynys meaning “monastery”.50 The word clearly has a spiritual
resonance, meaning a place which is literally sacred, set apart. But it is a holy place
which is set apart by the landscape, not a building or a walled holy city: it is part of the
landscape through which the pilgrim will travel, an accessible heaven, set apart but not
remote. The remainder of Gwilym Tew’s description is clearer: Penrhys is yn nhrwyn y
fforest, on the nose of the forest (this is still how the modern village appears from a
distance, a cleared area below a wooded ridge) and the landscape is blessed by the
sacraments, bara ‘fferen a dŵr swyn, “the bread of the Eucharist and holy water”.
Some of this imagery is implicit in the nature and history of the shrine. Penrhys was a
grange of the Cistercian abbey of Llantarnam near Cwmbran in Gwent. It may in fact
have been briefly the home of a monastery. At some point in the middle of the twelfth
century, the Welsh lords of upland Glamorgan gave land to the monks of Margam (itself
an emphatically Norman foundation in the lowlands) to found a daughter house. A
47 For a discussion see Jonathan Wooding, ‘Island and coastal churches in medieval
Wales and Ireland’ in Karen Jankulak and Jonathan M. Wooding, eds., Ireland and Wales
in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 201-28. I am grateful to Rachel
Gray for this reference.48 see, e.g., Heinrich Zimmer, The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland, trans. A. Meyer
(London: D. Nutt, 1902)49 e.g. Robert Fawtier, La Vie de Saint Samson: essai de critique hagiographique (Paris :
H. Champion, 1912), 43; Pierre Florent, ed., La vie ancienne de St Samson de Dol (Paris :
CNRS, 1997), 179.50 In discussion at the session ‘Sacred Springs: Natural Water and the Spiritual World’ at
the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2008, and in subsequent personal
communication.
13
charter from the late 1150s granted land to “the brethren of Pendar”, suggesting that the
daughter-house had a brief existence as a separate community. Increasing tension
between Welsh and Anglo-Norman lords probably explains the failure of the foundation.
It reverted to the status of a grange and was eventually passed to the (emphatically
Welsh) community at Llantarnam.51 It has unfortunately been impossible to locate
Pendar: the name means “Oakhead” and could have described virtually any location in
the hills around the Rhondda. However, Penrhys was clearly the location of a major
grange establishment by the beginning of the fourteenth century and could have been the
site of the short-lived monastery.
By the fifteenth century, Penrhys had one of many miraculous statues of the Virgin Mary,
said to have been found in a oak tree and to have refused to be taken from the spot where
it was found.52 Similar stories attached to the statue of Our Lady at Oak, Norwich, and the
possible original, Our Lady of Le Puy. By the time the poets wrote about it, the statue
was accommodated in a chapel on the hill top, presumably either the grange chapel or
(more likely) a chapel built by the monks for their lay tenants. Excavations in 1913 and
1946-7 located a building which was almost certainly the chapel. A little of its stonework
still survives above ground, built into the wall of the car park by the modern statue. This
building had buttresses and a stone cross wall which has been interpreted as the
foundation of a narrow chancel arch. It was damaged by fire and rebuilt, probably in the
fifteenth century, and the cross wall removed and replaced by a timber screen.53 Christine
James has suggested that the archaeological evidence and the folk traditions about the
51 F. G. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066-1349 (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1977), 23-4, 27; D. H. Williams, The Welsh Cistercians (Leominster:
Gracewing, 2001), 4; Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in
Wales, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan. Volume III: Medieval
Secular Monuments. Part ii: Non-defensive (London: HMSO, 1982), 295-6. 52 M. Gray, ‘Penrhys: the archaeology of a pilgrimage’, Morgannwg 40 (1996), 10-32,
and references therein.53 J. Ward, ed., ‘Our Lady of Penrhys’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 6th series, 14 (1914),
357-406; G. J. Jenkins, pers. comm.
14
shrine are consistent with a punitive raid by English forces during the Glyndŵr uprising
(possibly in reprisal for the abbot of Llantarnam’s support for Glyndŵr) and that this
hypothesis might also explain the concealment and subsequent (re)discovery of the
statue.54
By the sixteenth century, the shrine was the focus of a substantial settlement (substantial
in the context of the Welsh uplands, where late medieval settlement was usually
dispersed). As well as the grange farm and the hospice there was what the sixteenth-
century writer John Leland described as a village:55 and Leland was from lowland
England where villages were large and nucleated. A seventeenth-century survey indicates
that the area was still well farmed, though no archaeological evidence has been found for
the actual location of housing.56 There was thus a built landscape around the shrine, and
some of the poets did refer to it by implication. Huw Cae Llwyd, a poet from north
Wales, addressed a poem to “Sir David of Penrhys”, presumably the priest in charge of
the shrine, praising his hospitality. The poem implies the existence of a hospice for
pilgrims at the shriine (and we have evidence of this from other sources) but Huw Cae
llwyd says nothing about the buildings: his interest is in the location and its people.57
Most of the poems to the shrine emphasize the natural as well as divine origins of the
statue. On the one hand, according to Lewys Morgannwg,
Rhondda (Llandysul: Gomer, 1995), 27-71. There are clear parallels with the ‘Shepherd’s
Cycle’ legends discussed by Victor Turner, a series of legends concerning the miraculous
discovery of statues of the Virgin in Spain, centuries after they had been hidden from the
Arab advance in Iberia. Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian
Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, [1978] 1995), 41–42.55 Toulmin Smith, Lucy. The Itinerary in Wales of John Leland ... (London: George Bell,
1906), 19.56 Glamorgan Archive Service, D/D Xcu 5/157 Leslie Harris, ed., Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac eraill (Cardiff : University of Wales
Press, 1953), 37-9. For the hostel see the National Archives (London) E318/2445.
15
Llyna’n wir ei llun o nef
Ni wnâi angel yn nengair
oi ddwylaw fath y ddelw Fair
(There truly is the image from Heaven.
An angel in the Decalogue
would never with his hands make the image of Mary)
but the poet goes on to say that
Fry o’i chuddygl, ferch addwyn,
O fôn dâr ni fynnai’i dwyn 58
(From her shrine of oak trunk
she, gentle maid, would not be taken)
Possibly predating the statue was a holy well, which provides much of the natural
imagery relating to the shrine. There is a clear contrast between Rhisiart ap Rhys’s
description:
Y mrig craig y mae eirw crych
yn iach anaf a’i chwennych 59
(At the top of the rock are foaming waters
Farewell to every defect that desires them!)
and the description of the fountain at Compostela in the Codex Callixtinus:
58 A. Cynfael Lake, ed., Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg. 2 vols. (Aberystwyth: Centre for
Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 1998), ii, no 103 (p 507).59 John Morgan Williams and Eurys I. Rolant, coll. and ed., Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a
Rhisiart ap Rhys (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), no. 5 (p 13).
16
In fine vero graduum eiusdem paradisi, fons mirabilis habetur, cui similis in toto
mundo non invenitur ... Que etiam flumina postquam egrediuntur ab oribus
leonum ilico labuntur in eadem conca inferius, et ab hinc exeuntes per quoddam
eiusdem conque foramen, subtus terram recedunt. Sicut videri nequit unde aqua
venit, sic nec videri valet quo vadit ... In prefata vero columpna he littere scripte
hoc modo ...
EGO BERNARDUS BEATI JACOBI THESAURARIUS HANC AQUAM HUC
ADDUXI ...
(At the foot of the steps is a marvellous fountain which has not its like anywhere
in the world ... the water coming from the lions’ mouths falls into the basin below,
and from there it flows away through an opening in the basin and disappears
underground, Thus it cannot be seen where the water comes from, or where it
goes ... Round the column runs the following inscription ...
‘I, Bernard, treasurer of St James, brought this water here ...’ )
The spring at Penrhys is natural, simple, bubbling up from the rock. The fountain at
Compostela is intricate, constructed, the natural origins of the water hidden in favour of
the human actions of Bernard the treasurer. Of course, much of the difference can be
accounted for by the vastly greater resources and international popularity of the shrine at
Compostela. However, there is no suggestion in any of the poetry that the simplicity of
the shrine and well at Penrhys is anything other than appropriate.
Like so many other Marian shrines, Penrhys was on a mountain.60 The surrounding
landscape forms part of the natural imagery in descriptions of the shrine. In Llywelyn ap
Hywel ab Ieuan’s description,
Lle da yw’r wyddfa o’r all[t]
A lle gwŷr gerllaw gorall[t]
60 For a discussion of this pattern see David Blackbourn, Marpingen: apparitions of the
Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), esp p 397.
17
Llun y trŵn, lle enaid rhydd,
Llannerch i bum llawenydd
(A goodly place is the summit and its wooded slope
and a virgin sanctuary beside the high wood)61
According to Lewys Morgannwg,
Amla’ man ymyl mynydd
Gwrthiau Fair gwrthfawr a fydd 62
(The mountain’s brow is the place where most frequently
Great Mary’s miracles are precious)
and Rhisiart ap Rhys referred to
Miragl waith ym rig y lan 63
(a miraculous work at the top of the bank)
In understanding this imagery we need to bear in mind the highly localised nature of cult
veneration in medieval Wales. As well as the numerous “saints” of the Welsh tradition
(few of them ever formally canonized), saints of the international tradition were ascribed
to sacred locations in Wales. There were legends that both Mary and St Margaret of
Antioch had visited Wales. Mary was reputed to have visited Cydweli, Aberdaron, Rhiw
and Llanfair, on the coast south of Harlech. From Llanfair she was believed to have
walked inland to Hafod-y-llyn, and where she knelt to pray the prints of her knees could
be seen in the rock and a holy well sprang up. At Aberdaron pilgrims on their way to
61 Nest Scourfield, ‘Gwaith Ieuan Gethin ab Ieuan ap Leision, Llywelyn ap Hywel ab
Ieuan ap Gronw, Ieuan Du’r Bilwg, Ieuan Rudd a Llywelyn Goch y Dant’ (University of
Wales, Swansea, M. Phil. thesis, 1992), 53; D. H. Williams, The White Monks in Gwent
and the Border (Pontypool: Hughes and Son, 1976), 80.62 Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, no. 103 (p 507).63 Williams and Rolant, Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, no.5 (p 13).
18
Bardsey Island drank from a well where she was supposed to have left a handprint.64
Penrhys was also presented by the poets as a place where Mary has come to earth – as
Lewys Morgannwg put it,
Yna daethost, fendith fawr,
I’r lle hwn o’r nef i’r llawr65
(Then you came, great blessing,
To this place, from heaven to the ground)
The poets thus use imagery drawn from the shrine’s precise location to construct a clear
sense of place and the natural environment in descriptions of both the route and the
shrine, presenting the natural world as blessing rather than challenge, and sometimes
developing natural imagery to make quite complex theological points. Gwilym Tew links
Mary of the well with Mary Queen of Heaven:
Mae mewn eirw mam y nawradd 66
(She is in foaming water, the mother of the nine spheres)
Lewis Morgannwg draws on the same image to describe the nawnef mewn un ynys (that
problematic word ynys again, “nine heavens in one island/meadow”) at the shrine and
invokes the Virgin as Mair i’m hynys, “O Mary of my island/meadow”.67 After his lines
about the location of Penrhys and the holy bread and water to be found there, Gwilym
Tew offers a complicated and sometimes frankly obscure description of the shrine. The
lines
64 Jane Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2008), 65-6.65 Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii no. 102 (p 503); cf Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity
and Spirituality, 54-5.66 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’, 434.67 Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg , ii, no. 102 (p 504).
19
O’r llwynau gorau eu gwŷdd
Y wyry Fair a’i harferodd
Y wen weddw, nef winwydden,
Brenin hen y brenhinedd 68
(Of groves, its are the best of trees -
The Virgin Mary has used them;
The blessed maid, Vine of Heaven,
The ancient King of Kings)
link Mary’s blessing of the trees with the image of the True Vine (though here it is Mary
rather than Christ himself who is the vine of Heaven): possibly in view of the following
line the reference is to the Tree of Jesse, often depicted in later medieval iconography as
a vine. Rhisiart ap Rhys picks up this imagery of vines and grapes with his description of
the “foaming waters” of the well:
Gwin gwyn drwy’r rhewyn a red
gŵyr lladd gwaewyr a lludded 69
(White wine runs in the stream
that can kill pain and fatigue)
The wine is not precisely Eucharistic since it is white, but there is a clear link with
Gwilym Tew’s bara ‘fferen, Eucharistic bread, and with the dŵr swyn, the holy water of
baptism. The description of the well also resonates with the image of Mary as the fons
signatus of the Song of Solomon.
An even more complex and intractable image seems to refer to Gwilym Tew’s route to
the shrine. He begs the Virgin:
68 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’, 447.69 Williams and Rolant, Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, no.5 (p 13).
20
A’r dail a’r dŵr, famaeth emprwr, fy maith ympryd;
Wrth lân gyffes, galw o’m hanes, gael ‘y mhenyd
Offrwm prif un rhif o eirw rhyd, graean
O aur ac arian ar ei gwryd 70
(With the leaves upon the water, emperor’s nurse, my long fast;
Through holy confession, call forth my history so that I may have as my penance
A chief offering as numerous as the foaming waters of the stony ford
In gold and money upon her fathom rood)
Ward suggests that the leaves may be a divination ritual; there are examples of similar
practices at other holy wells, in Wales and elsewhere.71 The reference to the ford is
probably to the one Gwilym Tew would have crossed on his way from the west. He came
from Tir Iarll, the area around modern Maes-teg. A well-evidenced medieval trackway
ran over the hills above Maes-teg, past Bwlch Garw and Bwlch y Clawdd, to cross the
Rhondda Fawr near the present town of Ystrad Rhondda, the medieval Ystradyfodwg.
Another route from Maesteg led to the same crossing through Llandyfodwg, where the
church still has a medieval stone carving of a pilgrim.72 By 1540 there was a bridge
across the Rhondda Fawr where these two routes met, but the bridge appears to have been
built by the monks of Llantarnam to meet the needs of pilgrims (once the shrine was
destroyed the bridge soon fell into decay) and was presumably on the line of an earlier
ford. Gwilym’s route to the shrine is penitential, but the rituals of penance are suffused
with natural imagery and (I would suggest) nature is seen not as threat or punishment but
as blessing, something to be offered gladly.
Even the wildlife of the hills around the shrine is drawn into the imagery in another very
obscure passage:
70 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’, 448.71 Ward, ‘Our Lady of Penrhys’, 404; cf Francis Jones, The Holy Wells of Wales (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 1992 ed.), 107-14.72 Royal Commission, Glamorgan III (ii), 356-7: RO23.
21
A’i Mab ar ei dwrn, medd swrn a sydd
Ymyl ei hadain mal ehedydd 73
(literally “With her son on her fist, her ankle,
Close to her wing, is like a lark”)
The imagery here is so difficult to interpret that it is tempting to suggest that the text has
actually been corrupted. However, it seems that the infant Jesus is being likened to a
hawk and either Mary or Jesus is compared to a lark. The use of birds as symbols for
holiness was of course a medieval commonplace: the Welsh poet Iolo Goch likened Mary
to an eagle,74 and the goldfinch symbolised Christ’s Passion.75 The range of meanings
suggested for hawks and larks is unfortunately so wide that it is impossible to interpret
Gwilym Tew’s complex image. However, the key point for our argument is that hawks
and larks are specific to the location of the shrine. Wild hawks were common in the
upland woods of south Wales and, if captured, were a prerogative of lordship. And larks
still sing on the moorland above the Rhondda.
Penrhys was a healing shrine and the natural environment is also presented as offering
healing: according to Gwilym Tew,
hon yn dangos yn gnawd effros 76
(she [i.e. Mary] is revealed in euphrasy flesh)
73 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’, 449.74 Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality, 17.75 The goldfinch feeds among thistles and thorns and was believed to have plucked a thorn
from the Crown of Thorns; the red feathers on its head were said to have been stained
with Christ’s blood. H. B. Werness, ed., The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal
Symbolism in Art (New York: Continuum, 2004), 198.76 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’, 448.
22
Effros is eyebright, euphrasia officinalis, which was used as an eye medicine. (This
image of the Virgin Mary manifesting in a healing herb is reminiscent of her appearance
to the Good Empress with the herb which will cure leprosy;77 and some of Lewis
Morgannwg’s claims for her powers also seem to be pointing to lost miracle stories –
something which I hope to explore elsewhere.) The shrine was notable for healing
blindness as well as other illnesses.
Gwilym Tew is clear that it is the natural setting of the shrine at Penrhys which provides
healing:
Ym Mhen-rhys, eiriol mewn rhos irwydd
Y di anafir pob dyn ufydd 78
(At Penrhys is intercession in a moor of green trees
Every man that exists is made whole).
We are getting dangerously close to suggesting that there is something “Celtic” about the
attitudes to the natural world exemplified in these poems. Susan Power Bratton’s
revisionist studies began with an article on Celtic monasticism,79 and her more recent
work also relies heavily on Irish evidence. This raises the very contested issue of “Celtic”
spirituality and identity. Wendy Davies’s demolition job on the whole concept of the
“Celtic” church80 has left some historians reluctant to use the word at all. Oliver Davies
has argued for “common patterns of religious sensibility and belief” in earlier medieval
society in Wales and Ireland, and suggested that one of those common patterns was a
77 C. Heffernan, ed., Le Bone Florence of Rome (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1976); cf Miriam Gill, ‘The Wall Paintings in Eton College Chapel: the making of
a late medieval Marian cycle’ in Phillip Lindley, ed., Making Medieval Art (Donington:
distinctive attitude to the beauty of the natural world. 81 However, more recently, Ian
Bradley has counselled caution and suggested that to identify “Celtic” Christianity as
“green” is both anachronistic and an oversimplification.82
We have unfortunately few “Celtic” pilgrimage accounts to compare with those of the
Codex Callixtinus and the numerous descriptions of the Jerusalem pilgrimage. The
account of the Holy Land which Adomnán of Iona attributed to an otherwise unknown
bishop, Arculf, may not be an account of an actual pilgrimage. Thomas O’Loughlin has
made a convincing case for regarding it as a work geared to explaining sacred topography
in order to facilitate exegesis.83 Nevertheless, as O’Loughlin points out,84 what
distinguishes De Locis Sanctis from its predecessors (such as Eucherius’s De Situ
Hierusolyme) is its appeal to evidence from observation. The description is presented as
being verified by Arculf’s experience of pilgrimage. In this context it does not matter
whether Arculf “really” existed or whether this is a “real” pilgrimage. What matters is
that this is how Adomnán felt a traveller would have experienced the landscape: “it
allows us to see how Adomnán imagined his world at the time, and how he then
presented it to others”.85 This is not necessarily to argue that Arculf is merely a literary
device: but as a character he is elusive and inconsistent and may even be a mosaic of
different travellers.
79 ‘Oaks, wolves and love: Celtic monasticism and northern forests’, Journal of Forest
History 33(1) (1989), 4-2080 In, for example, ‘The Celtic church’, Journal of Religious History 8 (1974-5), 406-11.81 Oliver Davies, Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1996), 1, 60-3, 84-8.82 Ian Bradley, “How Green was Celtic Christianity”, Ecotheology 4 (1998), 58-69; idem,
Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams (New York: St Martin’s Press,
1999).83 T. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places (London: T & T Clark, 2007)84 O’Loughlin, 47, 55-61 85 O’Loughlin, 144
24
Thus, “Arculf’s” emphasis on the built landscape of the Holy Land is entirely consonant
with the purpose of the book, to provide a topographical framework for the Biblical
narrative. While there are occasional references to the natural landscapes of the Bible –
the Mount of Olives, the river Jordan, the Sea of Galilee – the descriptions are generally
brief and practical. The region north of Jerusalem is rough and stony but to the west are
level plains with olive groves. The Mount of Olives has vines and olives and a luxurious
growth of corn and barley.86 The river Jordan, site of Christ’s baptism, is remarkable
mainly for its churches and the bridge by which pilgrims cross; and the waters of the
numinous Sea of Galilee are good for drinking and fishing.87 There is a more lyrical
description of Mount Tabor, “herbosus valde et floridus; in cuius amoena summitate
ampla planities silva pergrandi circumcincta habetur” (exceedingly grassy and flowery,
on whose beautiful summit is a wide plateau surrounded by a very large wood), but the
main part of the description is devoted to a discussion of the monastic buildings and
churches and their relationship to the three taberbnacles of the Transfiguration.88
However, it has to be said that most of Adomnán/Arculf’s descriptions are austerely
factual: this is a handbook of Biblical topography, not an impressionistic description of a
journey. The same factual approach is to be found in the narrative of the fourteenth-
century Anglo-Irish Franciscan Simon Fitzsimmons, who referred briefly to the
mountains between Gaza and Jerusalem “where the country is very beautiful to see” and
“the most beautiful mountains on the most fruitful valleys of Jerusalem” but reserved his
highest praise for the buildings of Egypt and the Holy Land and the relics they
contained.89
86 Denis Meehan, ed., Adamnan’s De Locis sanctis (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, iii;
Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1958), 62-587 Meehan, Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, 86-9388 Meehan, Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, 96-789 Eugene Hoad, ed. and trans., Western Pilgrims: the itineraries of fr. Simon Fitzsimons
(1322-23), a certain Englishman (1344-45), Thomas Brygg (1392), and notes on other
authors and pilgrims (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1952), quotes on p 43
25
One possible explanation for the apparent difference in values and perceptions between
descriptions of Compostela and Jerusalem and descriptions of Penrhys lies in the nature
of the shrine and its sacred landscape, with its focus on the holy well as much as the
chapel and statue. Jim Bugslag has pointed to the importance of chthonic elements – the
grotto, the water source – in many Marian shrines in both Eastern and Western
traditions.90 Eastern examples he cites include the Blachernae church in Constantinople
and the monastery of Mega Spelaion in Greece. Western examples include Chartres itself
with the Puits de Sts Forts and the statue of Notre Dame de Sous-Terre in the crypt of the
church.
Bugslag goes on to discuss the ways in which these natural elements – specific natural
features, the spatial composition of the sacred landscape and its setting – are incorporated
into the built environment of the shrine by a process of socialization and appropriation by
ecclesiastical institutions so that the natural elements become a key part of the distinctive
pilgrimage experience. Nor are these chthonic elements confined exclusively to Marian
shrines, though the tendency is more marked there than elsewhere. However, in most
medieval descriptions, it is the built environment which has priority. Describing the
Virgin Mary’s tomb in the valley of Jehoshapahat, Ogier d’Anglure mentioned the
“beautiful fountain in a beautiful spot” but went on to say
In this place there is a very large and deep vault ... in this vault there is a
very noble, sacred and very worthy place, for the sepulchre of the Blessed
Virgin Mary is enclosed there in a little chapel ... And know that this tomb
is well vaulted and well made, and there is a good fountain within the
vault from which people drink as an act of devotion, and there is also an
altar right in the tomb.91
90 James Bugslag, ‘Pilgrimage to Chartres: the visual evidence’, in Sarah Blick and Rita
Tekippe, eds., Art and architecture of late medieval pilgrimage in Northern Europe and
England (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 135-83, esp pp 182-3.91 The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 25.
26
There is a suggestion in Sumption that valuing of the natural world in the context of
pilgrimage may have parallels elsewhere in the Atlantic tradition. He draws parallels
between the urban-rejecting pilgrimage to the desert of Jerome and his followers and the
religious wandering, peregrination pro amore Dei, of early Irish mystics. This was
recognized by contemporaries as a specifically Irish practice: isolated examples can be
found in England and continental Europe as late as the twelfth century but they are
usually traced back to Irish inspiration.92
Comparable imagery from the natural world can be found in poetry to other Welsh
Marian shrines. An anonymous cywydd to the image of the Throne of Grace at
Llanystumdwy in Gwynedd speaks of
Llys Dduw yn llawes y ddol
Llys bradwys lle ysbrydol
Down i’r lann dirion ar wledd
Mair …
Llann vaen wenn lliw nef waneg
Ystyndwy ywch ystyn deg
(God’s court on the edge of the meadow
Court of paradise, a spiritual place.
We come to the gracious river bank on Mary’s feast …
White stone church, the colour of a heavenly wave
Above the fair meander in the river)93
Much of the imagery is, nevertheless, of a tamed and domesticated landscape: in an
image resonant with the Song of Solomon and its enclosed garden with an orchard of
pomegranates, Gwilym Tew described Mary as berllan bêr, an orchard of pears.94 In a
92 Sumption, Pilgrimage: an image of medieval religion, 95-7.93 Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality, 63.94 Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew’,
27
poem written in English but using strict Welsh metre, the Welsh student poet Ieuan ap
Hywel Swrdwal described Mary as a “fruit-bearing blossom”.95 There may also be a link
between the focus on fruit trees and the image of Aaron’s rod which bore leaves, flowers
and fruit without water, an image which was used to describe Mary’s virginal conception.
Lewys Morgannwg’s image of the “nine heavens in one meadow” may also relate to the
constructed landscape of monastic farming around the pilgrim hospice. The productive
medieval garden was divided into raised beds with paths between. Stephen Briggs has
identified an example of a nine-rig plot at Bwlch-yr-Oerfa, which he suggests was either
the site of Strata Florida’s Cwmystwyth grange or one of its main holdings.96 While the
nine-plot design and Lewys Morgannwg’s image clearly derive from the same symbolic
framework, it is also possible that he was referring specifically to the hospice garden (and
possibly to the plot where euphrasia officinalis was grown for the needs of pilgrims?).
Nor did medieval Welsh religious poetry always present nature as a blessing. According
to an anonymous fifteenth-century cywydd, “Mair a’n tyn o’r mieri” – Mary will pull us
from the briars [of sin and condemnation].97 And poetry to the statue of Mary at Pwllheli
(also Gwynedd) has a little more to say about the built environment: the shrine is
Dinas …Daear i Fair yw’r dre’ wen
95 Raymond Garlick and Roland Mathias, Anglo-Welsh poetry: 1480-1990 (Bridgend:
Seren, 1992), 45.96 Stephen Briggs, ‘Garden archaeology in Wales’, in A. E. Brown, ed., Garden
Archaeology (CBA Research Report 78: London, 1991), 138-59, plan and discussion of
Bwlch-yr-Oerfa on 140 (consulted online at
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaresrep/pdf/078/07811005.pdf on 09.10.08). I
am grateful to Stephen Briggs for drawing this to my attention and discussing its
significance. See also Lewys Glyn Cothi’s poem, possibly about Aberglasney, in E. D.
Jones, ed., Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi: y Gyfrol Gyntaf (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1953), 185, discussed in Briggs, 'Aberglasney: the theory, history and archaeology
of a post-medieval landscape’, Post-Medieval Archaeology 33 (1999), 242-284.97 Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity, 53.
