A Book of Cornwall. Baring-Gould Sabine
saint went to a spot where a bit of territory had been granted him, and fasted there for forty days and nights, and continued instant in prayer, partaking of a single meal in the day, that plain, and indulging in an egg only on Sundays. At the conclusion of this period the llan or cell was his for ever inalienably, and ever after it bore his name. Moreover, among Celtic saints there existed quite a rage after multiplication of foundations, daltha churches, as they were called. Unless a saint could point to his baker's dozen of churches founded by himself, he was nought. But not all churches bearing a saint's name, say that of Petrock, were founded by him in person. A saint was supposed never to die, never to let go his hold over his territory. And when in after-years a chief surrendered land to a monastery, he gave it, not to the community, but to the saint; and the church built on that land would bear the name of the saint whose property it was.
The reader may like to hear something about the organisation of the Church in Celtic lands. But to understand this I must first very shortly explain the political organisation.
This among all Celtic people was tribal. The tribe, cinnel, clan, was under a chief, who had his dun or fort. Every subdivision of the tribe had also its camp of refuge and its headman.
When the British became Christian, Christianity in no way altered their political organisation. This we may see from the conduct of S. Patrick, who converted the Irish. He left their organisation untouched, and accommodated his arrangements for the religious supervision of the people to that, as almost certainly it existed in Britain, except perhaps in the Roman colonial cities.
Now this was very peculiar, quite unlike anything that existed in the civilised Roman world.
This organisation consisted in the creation of an ecclesiastical tribe side by side with the tribe of the land. The saint was given by the king or chief a certain territory, and at once he set to work thereon to constitute an ecclesiastical tribe subject to his rule, precisely similar to the secular tribe subject to the rule of the chieftain. A rill of water usually divided the two settlements. The idea of the church and the priest in the midst of the tribe of the land, acting as chapel and chaplain did to the Saxon thane or the Norman baron, did not occur to the Celt. The two tribes coexisted as separate units, but tied together by reciprocal rights.
The saint having been given a bit of land, at once constituted his sanctuary. He put up stones or crosses marking his bounds, a thousand paces from his cell, in a circle.
Every noble, arglwyd, or flath exercised rights of sanctuary, and the extent of his sanctuary constituted his llan, or lawn. The lowest grade of noble had the limits of his lawn marked at the distance of three throws of a spear or a ploughshare from his door; the rig or king had his as far as sixty-four pitches.
Now all those who took refuge within the lawn had sanctuary for a limited period, and the noble or the saint employed this time of respite to come to terms with the prosecutor, and furnish the fine (eric) appointed by law for the offence committed by the refugee. If he could not pay the fine he surrendered the man who had come for sanctuary, but if he paid it, thenceforth that man became his client, and he provided him with a bod or both, a habitation, and land to cultivate; he became one of his men. This was an important means whereby the saint recruited his tribe.
Throughout Cornwall a number of sanctuaries, remain, under the name of "sentry fields." If we could find out how many and where they are, we should know what were the mother llans of the early saints.
But a saintly tribe was recruited in another way. Every firstling of the secular tribe was made over to the saint: the first son of a family, the first lamb and calf. The son did not necessarily become an ecclesiastic, but he passed into the ecclesiastical tribe, and became subject to the jurisdiction of the saint.
But it may be asked, What happened when the saint died?
Every chief had his taanist, or successor, appointed during his life, and enjoying certain privileges. So every saint had his coarb chosen to rule in his name, his steward, his representative on earth. Here came in an usage very strange to Latin minds. The coarb must be of the royal or chieftain's race, and the right to rule in the ecclesiastical tribe belonged to the founder's family, and was hereditary, whether he were in ecclesiastical orders or not, to a female as well as to a male. Thus, although in an ecclesiastical establishment there was always a bishop to confer orders, he did not exercise jurisdiction. The rule was in the hands of the head of the sacred tribe. Thus S. Bridget kept her tame bishop, Conlaeth, who was wholly under petticoat government. He did kick once, and was devoured of wolves as a judgment, having strayed, against Bridget's orders, among the mountains. S. Ninnocha had as many as four bishops under her command. Bishop Etchen was subject to the jurisdiction of S. Columba, who was in priest's orders.
The Celtic Church as we know it, till gradually brought under Roman discipline, was purely monastic. The monasteries were the centres whence the ministry of souls was exercised. Within the sanctuary a rampart was thrown up, generally of earth, and within this was the church, and about it the separate circular cells occupied by the monks. Outside the sanctuary and throughout the lands belonging to the saint lived those subject to the rule of the saint or his coarb.
There was a right exercised by the saint which had previously been accorded to the bard. It was that of ill-wishing. The right was a legal one, but hedged about with restrictions. A bard, and after him a saint, might not ill-wish unless he had been refused a just request. If he ill-wished unjustly, then it was held that the ill-wish returned on the head of him who had launched it.
And there can be no doubt that this legal power conferred on the saints inspired terror. If a chief's horse fell under him, or his cows refused their milk, if he got a bad cold or rheumatic pains, he immediately supposed that he had been ill-wished, and sent for the saint, and endeavoured to satisfy him.
That this supposed power may have been employed occasionally for ambitious purposes is likely enough, but in general it was exercised only for good, to release captives, to mitigate barbarities, to stay bloodshed, to protect the weak against the strong.
A cheap and easy way of explaining the exercise of this power by the saints is that of saying that they traded on the credulity of the people. But it is, I am sure, a false appreciation. They were of the people, steeped in their ideas, and did not rise above them. To trade on credulity implies a superiority they did not possess. Besides, it was the exercise of a formal legal right.
There is one rather significant feature in all the missionary work of the Celtic saints which contrasts sharply with that of our modern emissaries into "foreign parts."
What we do is to collect moneys and start a missioner, who, wherever he goes, draws for his supplies on the mother-country, and depends, and his entire mission depends, on the charity of those at home. The Celtic method was absolutely the reverse. The missioner went among strange people, and threw himself on their hospitality. That is just one of the great virtues of a savage race, and these Celtic saints caught at the one noble trait in the characters of the half-barbarians among whom they went, and worked upon that and from that point.
The chiefs and kings felt themselves bound in hospitality to maintain them, to protect them, and to give them settlements. How strongly this feeling operated may be judged by an instance in the life of S. Patrick, who went to Laogaire, the Irish king, without any backing up from behind and without presents. When Laogaire refused Patrick something he wanted, the apostle and his little band refused to eat. The king was so alarmed lest they should be starved to death, and it be imputed to him as due to his niggardliness, that he gave way, and let Patrick have what he desired.
But this system worked on the material interests of the chiefs. They argued in their calculating way, "Here are all these missionaries. We have been feeding them, giving them land and cattle; it is a drain on our resources. We must really get something out of them in return."
And so, out of that frugal mind which was not the exclusive prerogative of Mrs. Gilpin, they accepted the gospel-at least, the ministrations of the saints-as a return for what they had themselves granted them: acres and cows.
There is a story in the life of S. Bridget that illustrates this somewhat sordid view taken of their dealings with the saints.
Bridget's