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 remarkable thing is that a fifteenth-century writer should have
recorded two facts which were as little known at the time when he wrote
as they are to the generality of English readers to-day; the first, that
in the days of St. Petrock a bishop might have been found occupying a
cell, living as a monk or hermit, though not necessarily living alone;
and the second, that there was in pre-Norman times a place bearing the
name of Languihenoc, both of which are placed beyond dispute by the
evidence given us in the chapter on Monastery-Bishoprics and by the
testimony of Domesday Book. It surely requires an imagination of wider
scope to believe that the writer was not transcribing or interpreting an
authentic document than to accept the most fantastic legends of Celtic
saints. The service rendered to research is twofold: it witnesses to the
historicity of the Life even if it does not establish the reputation of
its writer, and it adds one more to our list of Celtic bishops in the
person of Guethnoc, who as Gwethnoc is honoured in Finistère and
elsewhere in Brittany.
At this point it seems convenient to summarise the results of our
survey. It has been maintained that coincidence and resemblance have
been invested with an importance disproportionate to their real value,
that where coincidence has been claimed for the purpose of discrediting
traditional doctrine it has often proved as illusory as the rainbow,
that resemblance unsupported by other evidence has proved to be
imaginary or superficial, that in the case of the Cornish saints, whose
names have been supposed to resemble place-names, there is nothing to
warrant the suspicion that they are eponymous, that the Lives of the
Saints as they have come down to us must be estimated in the light of
the mentality of the writers and readers of them, that, however ornate
or barbaric they may be considered to be, when they record ordinary
events the statements are worthy of investigation and often of
historical value, and that a comparatively modern life of a saint may
afford evidence of the substantial accuracy of the facts which it
records.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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