Unity And Variety: A History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall
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Unity And Variety: A History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall
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Overview
A collaborative history of the Church in a large, diverse and interesting region of England by six historians, ranging from Celtic and Saxon times, through the middle ages, Reformation, rise of Nonconformity and the Victorian era, down to the present day and encompassing all the main Christian denominations.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780859893558 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Exeter Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/1991 |
| Series: | University of Exeter Press - Exeter Studies in History , #29 |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 1.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Unity and Variety
A History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall
By Nicholas Orme
University of Exeter Press
Copyright © 1991 Nicholas OrmeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85989-355-8
CHAPTER 1
From the Beginnings to 1050
Nicholas Orme
What faith was his, that dim, that Cornish saint, Small rushlight of a long-forgotten church, Who lived with God on this unfriendly shore ... (Betjeman, St Enodoc)
Beginnings
To reach the beginnings of Christianity in Britain, we have to think ourselves back past all the well-known landmarks of Church history. Past the Oxford Movement and the Free Churches, past the Reformation and the medieval abbeys, past even the romantic Celtic saints, to a time of which there are few visible remains or even mental images of the faith: the Roman period. The earliest evidence for Christianity in the South West of England is a fragment of coarse black pottery, probably fourth-century, with the sign p pecked on the outside: a form of the well-known 'chi-rho' symbol containing the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ. It was found during excavations in Exeter in 1945–6, in what had been an area of housing near the present-day South Street, and probably belonged to lowly people. 'Great oaks from little acorns grow.' This humble piece of pot marks the emergence of a faith which has filled the region with churches, parishes and clergy, and has shaped the lives of its people for 1600 years.
Christianity had entered Britain earlier than this. By about the year AD200 Origen and Tertullian, Christian writers in the Mediterranean world, believed that their religion had spread all over the Roman Empire including Britain, one of its remotest provinces. During the hundred years after which they wrote, the Roman persecution of Christians reached Britain too, and produced the first British martyrs of whom St Alban is the most famous. Then, in 313, the Emperor Constantine gave Christianity toleration, and in the fourth century there was a development of public Christian worship, with churches and shrines staffed by bishops and clergy. Three British bishops, of Lincoln, London and York, went to the Council of Arles as early as 314. It is possible that similar developments took place at Exeter, the chief Roman centre in the South West, and that the town acquired a congregation, a church and even a bishop, but we do not know, and the existence of churches elsewhere—in the wide rural spaces of the region—is still a mystery.
Roman political authority disappeared from Britain during the early fifth century. The British people of the South West, the Dumnonii, who had long existed as a distinct nation, regained their independence under a series of kings who probably held a loose political control over the modern counties of Cornwall and Devon and possibly other lands further eastwards. Christianity survived in this Dumnonian kingdom, and the evidence for it becomes stronger after AD400. At Exeter, excavations have revealed a cemetery south-west of the cathedral with graves dating from the fifth to the seventh centuries, in part of what had been the basilica (or civic building) of the Roman town. The graves appear to be those of Christians, and their presence at the centre of the town (as opposed to the earlier Roman practice of burying people outside it) suggests the existence of a church nearby, perhaps in part of the basilica. In the countryside, a number of standing stones with Latin inscriptions begin to survive in the fifth century and go on being found until the seventh: memorials to people who had died. Some 40 or so examples can be certainly identified, 11 between the Exe and the Tamar in what is now Devon, and 31 west of the Tamar in present-day Cornwall. Each stone records a person's name in Latin, and three in Cornwall also use variations of the phrase hic iacit ('here lies'), which is found on Christian gravestones in Europe. The people commemorated were mainly men, the size and rarity of their memorials suggesting noble men; the name of one, Rialobranus (on the 'Men Scryfys' in Madron parish), can probably be translated, 'kingly raven'. One or two were erected for women, including Cunaide at Hayle who died aged 33 and Nonnita at Tregony. The stones imply that the local aristocracy had become Christians, and this is confirmed by the earliest literature about the South West. The scholar Gildas, writing in about the mid-sixth century, depicts the contemporary king of Dumnonia, Constantine, as a wicked man but as a Christian rather than a pagan. A hundred years later, the so-called first Life of St Samson mentions a chieftain (comes) called Guedianus from north-east Cornwall who lived at about the same time as Constantine. Guedianus and the people he ruled appear to have been baptised, but were still observing certain heathen practices. Altogether, it looks as though the Dumnonii were Christian by about 550, at least in a nominal sense.
The Christianity of the region may have survived in part from Roman times, but it was powerfully reinforced by the arrival of hermit and missionary saints from other parts of the Celtic world during the sixth century. This was the 'age of the Celtic saints': of Nectan, Paul Aurelian, Petroc, Piran, Samson, and numerous others. Yet though they have left so many traces of themselves in place-names and church dedications, remarkably little is known about them. The first Life of St Samson is the only early written source; it claims to have been set down in about 620 by an author in Brittany who used an earlier written account, and features a saint who was active in Cornwall about a century previously. According to the Life, Samson was the son of a Welsh nobleman of Dyfed (south-west Wales) and his wife who came from Gwent (the south-east). He was handed over as a child to be taught by St Illtyd (probably at the monastery of Llantwit Fawr in Glamorgan), and grew up to be a monk. He became abbot of a monastery on Caldey Island, and then a bishop. He later travelled to Cornwall and Brittany. On his visit to Cornwall he crossed the 'Severn Sea' from Wales with a number of friends and relations, and landed somewhere on the north-east coast. They made their way to a monastery called Docco, which we can identify as Lanow near St Kew, but the monks there would not receive them, ostensibly on the grounds that Samson's high standards would not accord with their lower ones. Samson continued his journey, and while still in the district of Trigg in north-east Cornwall, came across the chieftain Guedianus and his people who were holding games (including horse racing) in honour of a local idol. The saint remonstrated with them, but his words had no effect until a boy fell off a horse and apparently died. Samson restored him to life, and the people repented. They destroyed the idol, Samson confirmed their baptisms, and the boy promised to become a cleric. Further on in his Cornish travels, Samson destroyed a serpent in a cave and commanded his men to build a new monastery at a place which is not named. He left his father Amon in charge of it and ordained his cousin Henoc as deacon. Finally, he went over the Channel to Brittany where he had a further career, founding the monastery at Dol in which he died and was buried.
Unfortunately, the lives of the other saints are very much later than this. The next with relevant information, the Life of St Paul Aurelian, comes from the late ninth century, 400 years after its hero's lifetime, and the rest are further still from the saints they describe. Such works do not portray the saints as they were, but as people visualised them later on, engaging in all kinds of miraculous and tragic episodes. Still, the names of the saints, the places where they were honoured and the traditions associated with them enable us to infer a few general features of their history. They are represented as coming to the South West, chiefly from South Wales. Most were Welsh, but some like Breage, Ere, Germoe, la and Rumon were credited with Irish origins. This is possible, because the descendants of Irish settlers were active in south Wales at the time, and 'Irish' saints could have come to the South West from Wales. Some of the early south-western memorial stones have inscriptions in Irish 'ogham' script. Other saints, though reputedly incomers, may have been Dumnonians who acquired standard missionary legends later on. Most were men, usually portrayed as monks or hermits, but several like Endelient, la, Kew, Keyne, Mabyn and Minver were women, depicted as virgins dedicated to serving God. The later saints' lives claim that their heroes and heroines encountered hostility from pagan local rulers and that many were martyred, but this does not accord with the relatively moderate opposition encountered by Samson. In later times, their popularity varied. Some, notably Nectan, Petroc and Piran, were commemorated in important churches, and had additional churches, chapels or wells dedicated to them in several locations. Others, like Enoder, Enodoc, Ewe and Ladock, were only remembered in a single place, sometimes a chapel which never even acquired the status of a parish church. Yet others, such as Entennin and Felec, were virtually forgotten and became confused with better-known international saints: Anthony and Felicity.
The distribution of the Celtic cults has one very obvious feature. They are plentiful in Cornwall, except for its eastern borders, but in Devon only a handful of places in the north seem to have had early cults of a similar kind: Braunton (St Brannoc), Hartland (St Nectan), Landkey (St Kea), Cheristow in Hartland (St Wenn) and possibly Chittlehampton (St Urith). There are other church dedications in Devon to well-known Celtic saints like David, Nectan and Petroc, but these probably spread from the Celtic world in later centuries, and the vast majority of churches and chapels in Devon bear the names of international or English saints. How did this difference arise? It is possible that Celtic saints were less active in Devon, or were not honoured there as saints and did not have places named after them as they did in Cornwall. But the early Celtic history of Devon has been overlaid, since the seventh century, by a later Saxon culture. The coming of the Saxons may equally well have caused the Celtic religious centres in Devon to become disused, or renamed in honour of saints more familiar to the newcomers. Renaming certainly happened at Landkey where the church dedication was changed from St Kea to St Paul. If this explanation is right, Braunton, Hartland and Chittlehampton (assuming that St Urith was Celtic) stand out as the exceptions where the Saxons kept and continued to honour the shrines of Celtic saints.
The Saxons entered the South West in the early seventh century, in a process partly of conquest, partly of settlement, which went on intermittently for over three hundred years. The leading role in the conquest was played by the kings of Wessex, further east. In 614 and 638 they gained two victories over the Dumnonian Britons at Beandune (probably in Dorset) and Peonna (almost certainly in Somerset), which seem to have opened the way for Saxon penetration into Devon during the second half of the century. In 682 Centwine king of Wessex 'drove the Britons as far as the sea', and there were Saxons in Exeter by about 690 when St Boniface (then a Saxon boy) attended an abbey there ruled by a Saxon abbot, so the Saxon presence was already secure. In 710 King Ine of Wessex fought against Geraint, king of Dumnonia, evidently with success for in the next few years he granted land to Glastonbury Abbey in east Cornwall between the rivers Lynher and Tamar. By this time the Saxons were probably in political control of Devon, but Saxon settlement in the area proceeded more slowly, and there are signs that British communities survived for some time at such places as Charles in north Devon, Dunchideock west of Exeter and Treable near Crediton, whose names are British. In 722, however, a Saxon invasion of Cornwall was repulsed, and the records of conquest cease for almost a hundred years—a period which probably saw the consolidation of the division between Cornwall and Devon. They are first compared as different places by St Aldhelm, who journeyed through them in 700 or thereabouts. The conquest was renewed by King Egbert of Wessex, who subdued the Cornish in three campaigns between 815 and 838, seizing land as far west as Lawhitton and Pawton near St Breock which he granted to the bishop of Sherborne. Dumnonian kings or leaders may have continued in Cornwall as vassals of the Saxons until the end of the century, but after 900 we hear no more of them. Finally, King Athelstan completed the process in 936, after unrest had apparently broken out in the region. He is said to have expelled the Britons who lived in Exeter, and to have fixed the Tamar as the Cornish boundary. From this time onwards Cornwall was probably under effective English rule, and the South West was reunited as two counties within a larger kingdom of England. But as in Devon, it took a long time for Cornwall to become Anglicised, and the Cornish language in particular continued to be spoken until the end of the eighteenth century.
The period of conquest must have involved hostility between the Britons and Saxons, in religion as in politics. True, the Saxons were nominally Christians by the end of the seventh century, but the Britons saw them as alien Christians, and as late as about 700 St Aldhelm (a Saxon cleric) complained to King Geraint that the bishops and clergy of Dumnonia still wore the Celtic tonsure and kept the Celtic date of Easter, rather than the Roman one used by the Saxons. There was some Saxon plundering of the British Church. Egbert's grant of land to Sherborne probably came from Cornish monastic property, and later on the bodies of two Cornish saints—Neot and Rumon—were carried off to England to St Neot's (Cambridgeshire) and Tavistock respectively. Such thefts can also be interpreted, however, as Saxon interest in and respect for British traditions. As we shall see, Alfred and Athelstan both appointed Celts as bishops in charge of Cornish affairs, and Athelstan confirmed the lands of the church of St Buryan. Since the tenth century the two counties have shared a common experience as part of the English Church, but they have also retained certain differences brought about by the Saxon Conquest. Religion in Devon, like that in England, has been based more on church buildings dedicated to national and international saints, with fewer outdoor centres of worship like holy wells. Cornwall, in contrast, has retained large numbers of churches dedicated to local Celtic saints, and for a long time extramural places of worship were important: wells, trees, paths, rocks and islands. More of these differences will emerge as we turn to the history of religious houses and parish churches.
Monasteries and Minsters
The chief centres of religion in the British Isles in the period 500 to 1050 were churches served by groups of clergy, living communally. The Anglo-Saxons called such churches 'minsters' from the Latin monasterium, meaning a monastery. Some minsters were indeed monasteries, staffed by monks who followed a relatively austere and secluded life, observing chastity and sharing their goods in common; others were communities of clergy living a more worldly existence, dwelling in separate houses, owning private property, and even marrying. Clergy of the second kind were generally known as clerks or priests. Monasteries could and did turn into such communities, and even back again, but it is usually difficult to date such changes. The word 'minster' is therefore useful today, because it indicates a large church served by several clergy, without implying exactly what sort of life they were following.
There were monasteries of monks in British Dumnonia by the sixth century. Gildas charged King Constantine with murdering two youths of the royal family under the very 'cloak of a holy abbot', presumably somewhere in his kingdom. The first Life of St Samson, as we have seen, describes two monasteries in Cornwall. One, called Docco at Lanow near St Kew, was named after the Welsh saint Dochou and must have been founded at some time around 500. The other was established in about 530 by Samson himself at an unidentified spot nearer the south coast of Cornwall, possibly at Golant, and still existed eighty years later. Even at this early date, the author of the Life depicts the monks of Docco as having fallen away from their previous way of life, while Samson's monastery is praised as keeping to a better standard. When the Saxons entered Devon in the seventh century, they too established monasteries or similar minster communities. The oldest known, the monastery at Exeter attended by St Boniface in about 690, was certainly monastic to begin with, for it was ruled by an abbot named Wulfheard and Boniface grew up to be a monk. It occurs so early in the Saxon Conquest that the monks may be suspected of having taken over an existing church, itself perhaps monastic. At least two other minsters were envisaged or built in Devon during the eighth century. In 739 King Aethelweard of Wessex granted a large estate at Crediton to the bishop of Sherborne 'to build a minster', though we do not know when the building took place. And a casual mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that a prince named Cyneheard was buried at Axminster in 757 suggests that a church of the type already existed in east Devon.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Unity and Variety by Nicholas Orme. Copyright © 1991 Nicholas Orme. Excerpted by permission of University of Exeter Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations and Text Figures, vi,List of Contributors, ix,
Foreword by Church Leaders, x,
Introduction, xi,
1 From the Beginnings to 1050 Nicholas Orme, 1,
2 From 1050 to 1307 Christopher Holdsworth, 23,
3 The Later Middle Ages and the Reformation Nicholas Orme, 53,
4 The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Jonathan Barry, 81,
5 The Nineteenth Century: The Church of England John Thurmer, 109,
6 The Nineteenth Century: Nonconformity Bruce Coleman, 129,
7 The Twentieth Century,
Part 1: Cornwall, Michael Winter, 157,
Part 2: Devon and General, Nicholas Orme, 175,
Lists of Bishops, 199,
References, 203,
Further Reading, 223,
Index, 231,