Manylion a Disgrifiad y Llyfr | Book Details & Description
- ISBN: 9780863818004
- Author: Daniel J. Mullins
- Publication March 2003
- Adapted/Translated by Harri Pritchard Jones.
- Format: Paperback, 210x148 mm, 68 pages
Handy booklet with an introduction to the Age of the Welsh and Celtic Saints and comprising short biographies of 50 saints together with notes reflecting on their contribution to the spiritual life of the Celtic countries. 33 black-and-white photographs.
Gwales Review
Daniel Mullins is an Emeritus Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Wales. This book was first published in Welsh in 2002, and has now been translated by Harri Pritchard Jones. The Preface is a little misleading, as the Bishop begins with a reference to the 'Saints and Stones Tour' signposted at Fishguard and adds, 'As we follow the trail of these ancient churches today', so it seems that he intends to describe a pilgrimage visiting ancient dedications. However, this is not so.
The first chapter is an interesting reminder of desert monasticism with an account of the lives of St Anthony and Pachomius and traces the movement's approach to Britain via St Martin of Tours and Vitricius, whose visit to Britain in 398 AD was seminal in the development of monasticism here. The second chapter studies the 'Continuation of the Christian Faith in Britain', describing the position after the departure of the Romans. Then follow chapters entitled 'Teacher of the saints' (St Illtud) and 'The Patron Saint of Wales', in which the Bishop analyses the lives of these saints mainly as ploys to increase the authority of the sees of Llandaff and St David's respectively, in the Norman era.
The fifth chapter, in fact, is unambiguously entitled 'Manipulating the Traditions of a Saint', and looks in some detail again at the Book of Llandaff. The foregoing chapters are summed up in Chapter 6, 'The Lives of the saints', which considers the literary form of the standard 'Vita'. The remainder of the book is given up to 'A Short Calendar' with holy men and women (not all saints) described under the appropriate month on their festival days. Each one is accorded at least a brief paragraph, but some are allocated a page or more and they include several who are scarcely remembered outside the liturgical calendar, such as Euddogwy, Marchell and Crallo. Particular emphasis is laid on the 'single religious commonwealth' which Wales and Ireland shared in the past. There are 29 black and white photographs and a short bibliography.
Sue Passmore