Saints, Mermaids & Phoenicians Contents
Cornish Legends
Saints, Mermaids & Phoenicians
The founding of the Celtic Church
As
stated on a previous page, Cornwall’s
history like that of other Celtic nations, was handed down verbally for hundreds
of years. The Celtic church was in place for almost 800 before the coming of the Saxons
and the Church of Rome. Even then it would be a further hundred years before
Athelstan created the first monastery of the Roman church at St Germans and the stories started to be recorded in documentary form.
(Ref.
1) So almost half the total history of the Cornish Church relied upon it
being passed on by word of mouth. There were lots of legends and we have already
examined a number of
these including the visits of the Phoenician traders and the stories of the
mermaid. We have also looked at those that tell of how Jesus visited
both Cornwall and Glastonbury with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, and how Joseph had
later returned to found the Celtic Church shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus.
Tacitus, the Roman chronicler, tells us that Caractacus and his daughter Euergain had been captured and taken to Rome. He appeared before the Senate and Emperor Claudius where he gave an understanding that he would never take up arms against the Romans again and in return they were allowed to return to Caerleon-on-Usk where the ancient palace of the King was situated. (Ref.2.)
Shortly after their return, Caractacus and his daughter were visited by their old friend Joseph of Arimathea, who was fleeing from persecution in Judea. Joseph told them what had happened and the king agreed to give protection to Joseph, Mary and the other followers of Jesus. There would have been no animosity between Joseph's party and the Druids or teachers of the established religion as they had known Jesus and looked upon him as one of their own. In fact, according to the legend, it was the Druids who made the decision that the refugees be given admittance to their order, to enable them to spread the word of what had happened to Jesus.
Every
member of the Druidic order was entitled to one hide of land, free of
tax. One hide of land equals 160 acres which was enough to enable a family to be
self-sufficient. The land given them by the king was on the islands of
Avalon. Today the area around Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels is widely
believed to have been the site of ancient Avalon.
The grant of this tax free gift to the founders of the church is recorded in the Doomsday Book.
(Ref.3)
Avalon is where Jesus is reputed to have lived and studied during his
time in Britain, if the old oral traditions are to be believed. He may have built a
simple wattle and daub hut to live and study in. Other teachers, wise men and
students may have come to visit him there and to hear him speak. Much as
at the Temple in Jerusalem at Pass-over feast, when his parents had thought him
missing, was he attracting followers to himself and his teachings of the one
Lord God ? Was this the beginnings of the first Christian church and study
center? (Ref. 4.)
Joseph and the other disciples fitted into the life around Avalon creating the community within a Lan or enclosure. (Ref.5.) From this small monastic style community they ministered to the spiritual needs of the people in the neighbourhood, living by cultivating the land which had been given to them by the king. The above photo is a faithful reconstruction of an early Celtic Irish Monastery and Glastonbury would have looked very similar.
But the members of the early Druidic / Christian church were there to transmit the teachings of Jesus and would have journeyed through Celtic Briton using the huts which had been given to the Druid order by local chieftains. These huts were generally by the spring or well which was used as part of the Druids religious ritual.
I
suppose one of the main changes that Jesus' teaching made to the Druidic order
was in regard to human sacrifice. As
quoted previously, Julius Caesar writing
of the Druids in, 54BC. said -
"They [i.e. the British, and in particular the Druids] make the
immortality of the soul the basis of all their teaching, holding it to be the
principal incentive and reason for a virtuous life. Believing in the immortality
of the soul they were careless of death."
Joseph and the others had been brought up in the Jewish church with its teachings of the ten commandments. Somehow they must have persuaded the Druids that the sacrifices had to come to an end. they had an ally in King Caractacus as it was the practice for the Druids to pick the king and they also decided when to appoint a new one with the old king being sacrificed.
Euergain and her brother Cyllin embraced the Christian faith under the baptismal names of Claudia Rufina and Linus. Later Claudia Rufina endowed a new college at Llan-Iltyd in what is now Glamorgan to enable the word to be spread in West Briton. (Ref. 5). This was to become the place where St Patrick was taught.
Whilst Claudia Refina was in Rome she had met a Roman noble named Pudens. After her release he traveled to West Briton were he also embraced the new faith and the couple were married. A Roman poet, Martial, in his epigrams addresses one 'Pudens of Rome' whom he congratulates upon his marriage with a British princess. He gives her name as Claudia Rufina, whose Celtic name was Euergain. Sometime later they may have visited Rome again as Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy sends greetings from Pudens, Claudia and Linus, whom he had met in Rome. (Ref.6)
All of these things took place in the first fifty years following the crucifixion of Jesus and whilst the Christian message was growing in strength it was still a part of the old religion. However, things were changing. Under the Roman occupation of Britain, which was to last until 443A.D., the Celts in the west seem to have been free to get on with their own way of life. They retained their own chieftains and contracted to trade tin and other metals with Roman armourers. Although the Druids still had power as both law makers and religious leaders, the king was becoming more of a force in the land and was less subservient to the druid hierarchy who in the past could have brought a kings reign to an end with his execution. (Ref.7) The Romans now protected the kings who co-operated with them and the Celtic Church and its Christian precepts became the accepted religious foundation in Britain. Following this declaration the Celtic Church flourished and although the Church of Rome spread throughout the Roman Empire it was always accepted that the church in Britain was an older and separate entity "The British National Church was founded AD 36, 160 years before heathen Rome confessed Christianity.". (Ref.9)
Christianity was legitimized by the Roman state during the reign of Emperor Constantine (306-37), however, the problem of the Roman church was not moralism but rather moral laxness. Not only the common Christians but also many leaders in the Roman church lived carnal lives. Except for a few ascetics, there was not much emphasis on the teachings of Jesus or on discipleship. Magnus Clemens Maximus commander of the Roman army in Britain decided to rise up against The Emperor Gratianus by proclaiming himself as emperor. Following the declaration Maximus and his British army invaded Gaul to try and seize power.. (Ref.10)
At the time Gratianus ruled the Roman Empire jointly with his young half brother Valentinian. Gratianus was a firm supporter of the Roman church, and he had initiated the long process of disassociating the Roman state from the old pagan religion. Refusing the traditional imperial title of pontifex maximus (chief priest) he ordered the shrine of the goddess Victory set up by Julian, removed from the Senate house and ended financial support for the pagan cults, even expropriating the riches (and Vestal virgins) of the Temple of Vesta for the state treasury. The British church must have seen him as a threat and have been happy with the action taken by Maximus.
When the rebel army invaded Gaul, Gratianus found himself on the defence. The two armies skirmished outside Paris, but the desertion of Gratian's Moorish cavalry compelled him to flee. On his way towards Italy, at Lyons, he was overtaken and, while attending a banquet with his captors under promise of safe conduct, murdererd on August 25, 383AD. This left Maximus as ruler of Britain, Gaul, Spain and Africa, a position he could have kept had his ambition not gotten the better of him. (Ref.11)
In 388, Maximus crossed the Alps and invaded Italy in order to overthrow Gratianus' half brother Valentinian. His excuse for invading was suppressing heresy, although he had the distinction of being excommunicated by St. Ambrose at Milan for the execution of the heretic Priscillian. A battle took place in which Theodosius won a decisive victory over his fellow countryman Maximus who was captured and imprisoned. Valentinian was restored as Roman emperor of the West. On 28th July, 388, the usurper was executed near Aquileia. (Ref.12)
That the dispute between the Celtic and Roman churches continued is shown in an illuminating account written by Victricius of Rouen's in 396AD. He is explaining his delay in arriving back in Rouen from Britain to greet the arrival of relics from Milan. "(My delay) is pardonable, and you will forgive me for it; if I have gone to Britain, if I have stayed there, it is to carry out your own orders. The bishops, my brothers in the priesthood, called on me to make peace there. Could I, your soldier, have refused them?" (Ref.13)
Tacitus, “Annals xii, 37”.
Doomsday Survey, folio p. 249b.
Bede (Ecclesiastical-list., Bk. Ill. c. xxiii)
Saxon Chronicles
Printed sermon given by the Rev. C Arthur Le Geyt, M.A. at the Parish church of Perranuthno, 5th March 1911. Copy in Morrab Library, Penzance.
The Bible. ( King James), St Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy ch. 4, v 21.
The Druids, (Magicians of the West) by Ward Rutherford p.38
ibid Bede (Ecclesiastical-list., Bk. Ill. c. xxiii)
Catholic Archbishop Ussher, (1550 - 1613) writing in his Brittannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates.Catholic Encyclopaedia
B.R. Rees, The Letters of Pelagius and His Followers (The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1989), p. 2.