Celtic Christianity and the Cult of Saints in Wales
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- When the Romans left Britain to its own defences, they left an island full of early Christians (and a few Celtic druids and pagans) without direct access to the Pope, the Roman Catholic Church, or the rulebook! The Celtic Church was born! It started as a small Irish, Welsh, and Scottish cult and grew into a new sub-church full of saints, colourful legends, beautiful manuscripts, cathedrals and monasteries filled with treasure!
But how and why did this happen? Who were these saints? And why did the Britons and Irish have so many of them?
Join me as we look at an overlooked piece of British history and talk fun Welsh Celtic saints of Anglesey, my ancestral home, relics, the Pope, and some interesting Welsh place names!
(And we'll eat some cake, because it was my birthday right before I filmed this!)
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Reading:
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Rees, Elizabeth, 2015, "The Celtic Saints of Wales".
Cornwall also had the cult of the saints, there’s a lovely story that as the Devil travelled across Britain he got to the Tamar and stopped, after thinking a moment he said “No, I won’t go yonder, everything over there gets turned into an oggy (pasty) or a saint, and I don’t feel qualified for neither!”
I wonder how a devil oggy would taste...
This is cool, where did you find this? :)
Kernow/Cernyw and Cymru/Kymry was on the same country back then. The Kymry were one nation made up of many kingdoms/states. Cornwall and before that Dumnonia (Greater Cornwall including modern day Devon and at it's height western Somerset) were kingdoms of the Kymric nation.
Jimmy decides to do a video on saints, the Sun hears him & decides to make him glow “saintly”. 😆
Story time: I once went to a concert of Loreena Mckennitt, who is not only an outstanding musician, but also a wonderful story teller. And she told this story about the skull of Brian Boru, high king of Ireland:
Several decades ago, she visited Ireland, landig on Shannon airport. As she left the building to look for a cap, she noticed an odd merchant with some interesting things to sell. He came up to her and they chatted for a while and she examinded the items for sale. Then he proclaimed to still have something very special and rare to sell: The skull of Brian Boru. He went on to tell the story and presented it to her. She was delighted, humoured him and actually bought the skull to place on her mantlepiece at home to remember her first journey to Ireland.
A couple of years later, she visited Ireland again, just as the last time landing on Shannon airport and looking for a cab - and sure enough, the same merchant was there, coming up to her. Again, they chatted for a while and he praised his items. After a while he waved her closer and whispered: "And now I have something very special and rare for you: The skull of Brian Boru." And again he produced the skull, only a smaller one this time. She let him talk for a while until she said: "You might not remember me, but I came here five years ago and I already bought the skull of Brian Boru at that time. It's also bigger than this one. I wonder how that can be?"
Without missing a beat he said: "Well dear, what you have at home is the skull of Brian Boru as an adult - this is the skull of Brian Boru as a child!"
Irish gift of the gab....😉
Oh, dear heavens.
I came across a great medieval saint story. Saint Thomas de Cantilupe was an Archbishop of Hereford who died in Italy in 1282 whilst travelling to petition the Pope to resolve a legal dispute with a rival Bishop who had excommunicated him. He was by all accounts pretty popular and holy, so his body was boiled and his bones returned to Hereford, but he didn't get upgraded to saint status until after some pretty weird events. In 1290, a Welsh rebel called William Cragh or 'William the Scabby' was arrested by a Norman Baron called William de Briouze, and sentenced to death for 13 murders. He was hanged near Swansea castle. The gallows broke. So they hanged him again and he was declared dead. Meanwhile, de Briouze's wife had taken a shine to William Cragh. I don't know for sure whether it was the murders, the scabs or the fact he was a man who implacably resisted her husband's tyrannical rule over a large stretch of southern Wales that made him seem so attractive to her. She begged her husband to spare Cragh, and when he refused, she prayed to Thomas de Cantilupe. William Cragh was miraculously returned to life, despite apparently being all kinds of gruesomely dead according to witnesses. Everybody just went nuts because they thought they'd witnessed an act of divine intervention, including William de Briouze. So rather than de Briouze trying to hang Scabby Bill again, they all went on pilgrimage to Thomas de Cantilupe's grave in Hereford together, as a merry little crew. It must have been a really weird journey- the Welsh freedom fighter and desperado, miraculously restored to life, the merciless local despot who'd executed him, and the despot's wife with her serious un-hangable scabby Welsh bad boy fixation. The conversations along the way must have been interesting, to say the least. The whole incident was recorded by Papal investigators at Thomas de Cantilupe's canonisation hearing in 1307. Thomas de Cantilupe is still in Hereford Cathedral, but William the Absolute Scabby Legend's resting place is unknown.
Wow, that's really fascinating! Thanks for sharing. And yes, the conversation on their pilgrimage must have rivalled that of the Canterbury Tales!
@@laamonftiboren4236 I went to Hereford, and they really downplay the 'William Cragh' angle, which would be the very first one I'd emphasise. Then again, they've got the Hereford Mappa Mundi, which is one of the absolutely most amazing medieval objects in the whole of Europe, so they can afford to be fussy. If you get the chance, go to Hereford and see the incredible Mappa Mundi, but leave a complaint about the lack of love for Scabby Bill. Eventually, everyone will be afforded due respect.
Haha, I will certainly do that at some point!
34 seconds into this video i paused it and ran to the kitchen to grab the last left over croissant. My husband sees me and for the kids not to find out, i bribe him with half of it
Whereas I had to pause it at 0:57 because "PhD faeces" killed me and I couldn't hear the video over my own choking noises. 🤣
Best relic I ever heard of was the head of Saint John the Baptist as a 12 year old!
That one's a corker. I think the monastery that holds that also has permission from the Italian govt to boil down the bodies of deceased monks to make furniture out of them. Yes. That's real.
I literally just came here to leave that comment. I heard about it in 1982.
The ultimate hipster- "I was christian before it was cool. I ran the risk of being fed to lions, but these days even emperors are christians geeze."
"Go get some cake," you say, almost as if you know I just finished my birthday cake and thus have none to eat...lol, just joking. Great video as usual, and happy almost-the-same-as-mine birthday! :)
I am so grateful that my introduction to Wales and Welsh saints was through Ellis Peter (Edith Pargeter) who was not only a good historian but an excellent story-teller.
Happy Birthday (surely that should have been the phrase of the week? ;p ) - nice Discworld poster Editing Jimmy has there.
As a Catholic, we prefer the term venerate as opposed to worship when it comes to saints. Worship is reserved for God. Also I got to see the heart of St. John Vianney a couple years ago.
Happy belated birthday! If you've never seen the 1990 Patrick Bergin/Uma Thurman Robin Hood film, Friar Tuck has a whole delightful scene about how he buys chickens, eats the chickens, turns the bones into relics like St Peter's Pinky, and uses the proceeds to buy more chickens and make more relics. I always think of it when talking about saints' relics of any sort.
I totally forgot about that! Amazing little scene!
That’s a great version of Robin Hood!!!
I am pausing at the beginning to order cake. Thank you for uplifting society.
I baked chocolatines this morning, does that count? Happy late birthday! . . .
[hides the basket in the corner with your still-unfinished present]
*hisses in French*
@@Loweene_Ancalimon L'hisse!
(Sorry, I had to!)
@@laamonftiboren4236 hisser is actually to hoist, in French !
Irish here! Very interesting how Welsh words have phonetic similarities to gaelige (like your eglwys and our eaglais).
Happy late birthday!
Me too! O'Neill clan here.
Pretty sure its derived from Latin?
Eglise in French, in English something can be Ecclesiastical etc
Although 'celtic' cognates are hugely interesting and indicate ancient and possibly Indo-European origins, I usually disregard any words connected with religion because they all come from Latin or Greek anyway. You may also see false cognates in the realms of money or sailing that actually originate in the Norse tongue.
Well, they're both derived from Proto-Celtic, although Welsh has a substantial amount of Latin loanwords, I don't know if Irish has
Wales was a colonial colony of Ireland ( was apart of Munster., and Leinster from around) 200 AD- 500AD depending on where exactly. So Celtic was reintroduced as Irish as Welsh language was largely unlawful in Roman Briton as it wasn't Latin, so around 1/3 the words are Gaelige from this time period. Southern Wales was defacto part of Ireland till around 700AD.
Happy late birthday! I had some pavlova while watching this. I made it in celebration of Norwegian constitution day today (Yay Norway 🇳🇴).
Just a comment. Relics and saints have never (officially) been worshipped, but revered.
Anyway, thanks for yet another interesting video.
I paused the video when you said I needed cake but then the text popped up about other baked goods and I am in fact eating little fig pastries so I proceed.
Saint Winifred was pinched by the English and ended up in Shrewsbury, didn't she? A pleasant light medieval-flavoured novel on the subject is Ellis Peters' "A Morbid Taste for Bones".
Happy Birthday, Jimmy. I'm in the library so I can't eat cake. I had some marzipan chocolate earlier, though. Do chocolate burps count?
Oh absolutely! That's now on the reading list :3
@@TheWelshViking Add the whole of the Cadfael book series to the list. :-)
Jimmy, your hair looks so good in this video! That cut/style is absolutely dreamy on you! Happy birthday and thanks for another lovely/funny/interesting video! 🤗🎉🎂🌹
Happy Birthday! Does this mean that we are in the Cult of the Welsh Viking? Or is it the Cult of Jimmy....
Joining a cult has never been one of my life goals, but if this is the Cult of the Welsh Viking, I'm ok with that :D
...So long as we don't have to get Jimmy martyred so we can worship his bones, that is!
Jimmytarians.
@@beth7935 no martyring of the Jimmy!!!!!
@@codename495 Exactly!
@@tetchedistress Absolutely not!!!!! The NON-martyrdom of Jimmy must be guaranteed before I'll join any such cult!
I settled down with freshly baked pão de queijo and a Ghia to watch this video! Very happy birthday to you! Also, I greatly admire your iguana impression.
I'm a new sub and love your channel. I'm fascinated by Saint stories and artwork/depictions. There is a whole subcategory of Saints called "cephalophores" which is Greek for "head carriers". These Saints were martyrs who were beheaded but instead of laying down like a proper dead person the Saint's body gets up and grabs its head then proceeds to walk somewhere before finally expiring. Some examples are St. Denis of Paris and St Aphrodisius of Alexandria who was accompanied by his camel. A story about that most popular of Irish saints, St Patrick, is that he was a Bishop and had converted an Irish Chieftain. The Chieftain's "clan" gathered to witness his baptism. St Patrick had a huge , heavy crosier which had a very pointed end so he could stick it in the ground so he didn't have to carry it constantly when he needed to preach, etc. The story goes that while Patrick is preaching to the clan and preparing the Chieftain for Baptism he sticks the crosier into what he thinks is the ground between he and the Chieftain, BUT he inadvertently shoved the pointed end through the poor man's foot! Well, the crowd doesn't flinch nor, surprisingly, does the Chieftain. When Patrick realizes, to his horror, what he's done he apologizes profusely, but the Chieftain is puzzled. He thought that since Christ had been crucified that this was part of the Baptism ritual! I've seen this documented in different places but still can't say it is absolutely true but it makes an interesting story!
This reminded me of how Japanese Christianity also developed into a unique kind of Christianity while it was outlawed and lost contact to west. Isolation can have very interesting effects on religious culture. With the absence of direction from a central source, people start interpreting religion through their own cultural lens, giving it a distinct local flavor.
Its not a soft focus, its just letting us enjoy the details of all those happy plants in the sun
The Irish Catholic Church was fascinating. In the late medieval period, they got married, and didn't do many of the sacraments properly. The continental Catholic Church tried to get them to behave. Many of the people who were sent to the Monasteries to sort them out got chased out my angry monks. With weapons.
Yes- priests etc fighting in wars confused the hell out of me when I first read about it!
I don't know why this made me chuckle lol..my family are Irish Catholics 😂
Keep up the basking and we'll have Jimmy Melyn before long. Happy belated birthday!
I'm off to angelsey in a few weeks ! Favourite place ever to go for my holidays
Proudly proclaims "I love Birthdays" and then turns of camera, now that's an ending!!
OBSESSED with your sweater, Jimmy. Happy Birthday. "obsessed" not employed lightly.
I’m pretty sure I nicked it off a mate of mine…0000ps
Two enjoyable asides in today’s video. 1. Love editor Jimmy’s comment on the tome you’re needing to produce. 2. Love the jumper-soft focus doesn’t let me see the stitch definition, but it looks really nice.
Yep, I agree. I was thinking that it's too bad he lives so far away or I would steal his cake and his jumper.
Second vote for the jumper - sweater to us on the other side of the pond! Lovely...
Fascinating vid topic and great Pope pop-up pics!
Happy belated birthday Jimmy. I hope you enjoyed the cake. I enjoyed some to as your released this lovely video on my birthday.
Happy Birthday Week! Wishing you fast progress on your doctorate
Yom Huledet Sameach! to your late birthday anyway haha. Thanks for this Video!
Happy Birthday, Jimmy !
Happy Belated Birthday! Great video. Off the reread A Morbid Taste for Bones and enjoy integrating the new information.
Love your Discworld poster,Editing Jimmy 👌
Happy birthday, and I paused to get cake before continuing.
happy birthday!
Happy late birthday Jimmy! It sounds like traveling around California, everything is a San-someone. Always interesting to see how Christians have crept around the world.
Happy birthday Jimmy.
Happy belated birthday! Listening with some Oreos because I am too lazy to bake after being at work all day.
Happy birthday, Jimmy! Love how 'church' in Spanish is 'iglesia', which sounds just like the Welsh! In Mexico, we have the Virgin of Guadalupe who just came into being and nothing the Spanish conquistadors (who had the Inquisition with them, mind you) could do ever got rid of her.
Cramming a piece of corn bread into my mouth just when I heard you say only people who are eating baked goods can watch the video
belated birthday greetings from Glasgow (its breakfast time so I haven't got any cake, but I have got Glengettie tea)
I found your videos on here cos I'm a volunteer guide at The Govan Stones, the Govan Sarcophagus is thought to be the shrine of St. Constantine and back in ancient times "Strathclyde" was "North Wales" so being half Welsh, its kinda cool that historically I am still in Wales (sort of)
not for nothing but Jimmy constantly sipping on a beverage of any kind always reminds me to keep up my own fluid intake 😅 bless 🙌🏻
I'm sat here catching up on RUclips and crocheting a dragon and that feels quite appropriate for this episode, somehow...happy belated birthday!
Happy belated birthday! Best wishes.
Happy super late birthday! Hope it was a good one. Super interesting video.
Oh and happy birthday!
Since I've discovered your channel. I've had and near-perpetual earworm of Sosban Fach. :)
Love the lesson. Thanks for teaching something new everytime I visit.
Happy birthday!!! I won’t get my cake till Wednesday but I will think of you while enjoying it!
A very late happy birthday from Germany. I hope you had a great day!
Seconded!
@@aenorist2431 Seconded!
Happy birthday!
My roommate and I are writing an Arthurian tale and Camelot is set on an old Roman villa.
Merlin makes the hypercaust work because “he’s magic” but mostly he wants warm feet.
Look up the town of Caerleon - its a potential camelot according to historians. Tennyson also probably wrote the lady of shallot in the pub up the river (built out of the remains of a castle destroyed by Glyndwr).
AHHHH, I thought I loved you before, but you have a Great A'Tuin/ Discworld poster (at least Editing Jimmy does!) GNU STP
Dwynwen is my confirmation name 😇 I guess our priest didn't mind she wasn't in the official book
Happy Birthday 🥳🥳🥳
I am always fond of Madonna lactans, and of course the hair and nail clippings of St Claire. Love the kings who sent the hearts on ahead when they died travelling in case they became saints. Thomas Aquinas was rendered down on death, his sister (on request) got his right hand, and Toulouse his bones. Only, his head went missing somewhere on the trip to France.
I'd argue (and have at length) that well and truly up until the 12th century there was lots and lots of variety in catholic practices in Europe, in addition to the Celtic Church. Looking at you, southern France. :)
Happy birthday Jimmy! I'm sadly allergic to cake, I hope it's OK I watched anyway 🖤
Happy belated birthday! Also, your videos are the perfect example to me that a video can be perfect even if there are sirens and sun and whatnot. Also very interesting topic! I'd love to get to know more of Welsh history :D
Happy late birthday Jimmy!! Ah yes of course, the cult of saints is one of my favorite branches of necromancy....and of course medieval history 🤣😂
Happy Birthday! Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag!🎂🫖
Happy (late) Birthday! Great hair in this video
This was such a random, interesting video! Thank you, Jimmy! I hope I can come to visit Wales at some time, sounds like an awesome and epic place!
also, why do I love the tonsur haircut so much?! And even more the Norman haircut?! Goddammit, why won't my girlfriend let me look like a god damn norman?!
Happy belated birthday Jimmy! It was my birthday recently and I am also eating cake!
This is so fascinating!! And happy birthday!
Happy belated birthday, Monsieur!
I hadn't really thought that my French degree component would help me learn Welsh, until Duolingo decided to teach me the word "eglwys" :D
the French got it from Latin but later than the Welsh and independently
@@cadileigh9948 And the Latin word comes from a Greek word, which pre-dates Christianity and just means assembly/congregation.
Aren't words fun!
@@lucie4185 Words are wonderful. Without a love of language, and a wish to create his own, Tolkien would never have produced his legendarium.
@@lucie4185 they are 😄 Because French is a Romance language, I knew it t would help with Italian and Spanish, but the connection (through Latin and Greek) was just a surprise 😂
Happy birthday. I have eaten lots of cake today. So much I had run out of it by the time I got to your video. Hope that is OK.
Happy Birthday from Germany, Lower Saxony...🎂🥃☕
I love the editing! Actually laughed out loud a few times.
Happy Birthday 🥳
Happy birthday! I have no cake. I have no baked goods (this is sad). But I have chocolate. I ate some chocolate instead. Thank you for another wonderful video!
Happy late Birthday 🥳
Love your videos , and thanks for Alex' FB page about the Kemathen warrior. Bajuwaren stuff is not easy to find
As someone who spent many an hour watching Puffin Rock on Netflix with my son I'm kinda devastated to learn about Puffin Island!
Also I don't have a cool story about relics, but I vaguely remember an interesting episode of Cadfael I watched growing up concerning a murder and some relics.
Because of all the Irish accents on puffin rock, I assumed puffin rock was based on rathlin Island of the top of northern ireland/the North of Ireland.
Still lots of puffins :) feels like being in a David Attenborough documentary. Well worth the visit if you get chance.
❤️
Happy belated birthday! Looks like a lovely day. Also a very interesting topic, keen to learn more about Celtic Christianity now.
And i very much enjoyed my Jimmy mandated cake.
You did mention briefly that the the Celtic cult of saints arose from being left to their own devices, but I would be interested in knowing of any and all evidence for syncretism. The idea of bone worship and multiple gods (or saints) seems to me would be a direct result of the influence of the previous culture and religion of the area, rather than some purely new idea. It's interesting and important imo because so much of Christianity is built off of this continued evolution through syncretism. It's roots even coming from older works. And I think it's important to make these distinctions. Maybe this wasn't so much the focus of this video in particular but was hoping that you would expand on it (if there is knowledge of it, and if not what speculation you might have).
Happy belated, Jimmy!! I hope you had a wonderful day. I will celebrate with you while watching, not with cake but with boiled eggs and a side of Jarlsburg cheese. Take care.
Ooh, that sounds just as tasty!
Happy birthday, Jimmy! Cake. Yum. And I noticed your train mug as well. Ha! Choo choo! Another interesting video. Sounds like they were stretching to make some local saints, but they made it work.
When I went to Chartres I was proudly shown the birth robes of the Virgin, which I was told was definitely the birth robes of the Virgin as it was spotless. I was more impressed by how fashion forward she was for a 1st C Palestinian woman.
The inplication that bleeding or shitting yourself during labor is a sin.
Hmmm that picture made me wonder if they maybe removed some bits as well as turning St Sebastian into a pincushion.....these are the things I wonder about....now THAT would make an interesting relic. Also, no baked goods here and.........dah dah DUHHHH!!! I’m STILL watching!!! I’m an iconoclast by nature lol big red buttons are my kryptonite.
I was in Bangor for the Celtic Congress in late July/early August of 2019, and we came and went via Holyhead. I loved it! (Both places...including what we were able to see of Anglesey!)
On the way back, we stopped for a little bit at St. Cybi's before getting on the ferry, and had a walk around, but the interior bits were inaccessible to us because they were closed (I can't remember what day of the week it was, but anyway...!?!). On the way to Bangor, we did stop in Llanfawr...gogogoch and got the obligatory photos by the sign at the train station, though there was a slightly better-visible one on a Mercedes dealership, if I recall correctly, so we got that as well!
Mentioning Jesus' foreskin: so, two "unexpected places" it turns up as well, though not so much as a relic as perhaps a "wonder," I suppose, are in the life of St. Catherine of Siena, who had one of the first "divine marriages" in Christian female religious visions, where she was given Jesus' foreskin as her wedding ring, and in the earliest version of her account of this vision, it was placed in her mouth (!?!) rather than directly on her finger (though she did have a kind of rash around her finger for the rest of her life after that, which she attributed to the divine marriage and its peculiar ring); and the other was the belief by some that the rings of Saturn, which could be seen from telescopes in the Renaissance, was actually Jesus' foreskin in celestial form. So, given the size we know Saturn is, that means Jesus was one well-hung baby! ;)
Happiest of Birthdays! Great video!
Happy belated birthday 🎉 it was my birthday the other day too... not that I need another excuse to eat some cake but I'll gladly join in
Love learning the changeover to Christianity in those times- so helpful!
Happy belated birthday 🎂 and thanks for sharing your knowledge Jimmy 🥰
Great installment--I find Celtic Christianity very interesting. Also now I need cake.
Ach, another delight! Thank you..
Happy belated birthday (and cool poster!).
Makes me think of the various villages I lived in/near as a child; lots of saint's names that nobody outside North Wales has probably ever heard of... like Llangynhafal, Llandyrnog, and Llangwyfan! Then later in Henllan; which suggests that there's been a sacred site there for a long time! (Church of St Sadwrn).
Happy birthday!!
Editing Jimmy! Is that Great A'Tuin in the background there?!?! Also, HBD!
Happy belated birthday Jimmy! 🎂🎁🎉🎊🎈
Wow!! Best explanation I’ve ever heard of the development of the cult aspects...thanks!!
Happy birthday! cake ftw
Happy birthday Jimmy!! Hope it was a lovely one😄❤️🎉🎉
Happy belated birthday!
Happy Belated Birthday!
Dammit Jimmy, you convinced me. I was gonna save my peach cake for after dinner but breakfast cake it is
Panics for a second because I can't think of whether I have any baked goods and spots the one single blueberry muffin left and breathes a sigh of relief
Grew up down in Pembrokeshire and remember St Govan's Chapel - which is a tiny hermit's cell built into the cliff at St Govan's, near Bosherston. Also - Cake is Good ^*^ - Lemon Drizzle is my favourite (Belated Happy Birthday too!!)