The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall: Divers Sketches and StudiesTaylor, Thomas
History
The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall: Divers Sketches and Studies
Taylor, Thomas
Cornwall (England : County) -- Church history
The British refugees remind us of Æneas whom tradition represents as
bringing with him his Lares and Penates to Italy. The Dumnonian
immigrants brought with them the cult of their own insular saints. At a
later period Brittany was able to make a return in kind. Pol Aurelian,
Sampson, Columba, Meriadec, Corentin and others of Breton fame were
received into the devotional system of Cornwall.
Not only were the Breton and Cornish people one in origin, tradition,
language and religious sentiment, they were one in their Celtic ideal of
the priestly and religious life. Theirs no less than that of the Welsh
and Irish was the monastic ideal. Every Cornish place-name bearing the
prefix _lan_, together with some place-names bearing the prefix _nan_,
implies a monastic foundation. Lanisley, Landithy, Lanhydrock, Lanherne
and Landegy, Nancekuke and Nansladron are a few examples which show that
the quasi-monastic foundations of Domesday Book were only modified
survivals of what was in the sixth century the accepted ecclesiastical
type, a type which continued to exist apparently long after the
parochial system made its appearance. A body of celibate clergy, living
in community, observing a religious rule and entrusted with the care of
souls over an ill-defined area will probably represent the normal, just
as an anchorite living solitary with a view to the perfecting of his
soul in holiness will represent the abnormal development of the monastic
ideal. We have no means of estimating the number of monks whose
segregation constituted a Cornish lan. It is probable that the
communities were small as compared with those of Wales and Ireland. The
great monastery of Bangor Iscoed on the Dee had, according to the
Venerable Bede, at the beginning of the seventh century no less than
2100 monks. Clonard, in the county of Meath, founded by St. Finnian
about the year 520, is said to have been larger. It may be extravagance
on the part of the biographer of St. Patrick to state that the saint
enjoined a levy of a tithe of the men as well as a tithe of the land for
the support of the Church,[45] but there can be no doubt that a very
considerable fraction of the Celtic population embraced the religious
life. At the same time we shall probably arrive at a false economic
inference unless we bear in mind the tripartite division of the monk’s
day which required one-third of it to be spent in manual labour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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