St David at Glastonbury

1st March is St. Davids Day, and has been celebrated as the national day of Wales since the 12th Century. In Medieval tradition he was the nephew of King Arthur.

St David

In Caradoc of Llancarfan’s Life of St Gildas he tells us that Saint Gildas became the most celebrated preacher in Britain. However, there was one occasion when he was lost for words; Gildas was preaching in a church when he found himself unable to speak. He asked all to leave the church but found he was still unable to continue. He asked if anyone was hiding in the church when a woman pregnant with child called out to him “I, Nonnita, am staying here between the walls and the door, not wishing to mingle with the crowd.”

Gildas requested she left the church. After Nonnita had left he called the people back in to deliver his sermon. At the end the Angel of the Lord explained to Gildas that “Nonnita, a saintly woman, remains in the church, who is now with child, and is destined, with great grace, to give birth to a boy whom thou couldst not preach, the divine power withholding thy speech. The boy this is to come will be of greater grace: no one in your parts will equal him.”

The child in Nonnita’s (St Non) womb was Dewi (David); so moved by the experience Gildas bequeathed Wales to St David’s administrations.

According to the Life of St David written by Rhygyfarch c.1090, Glastonbury was the first of twelve monasteries founded by the Saint in the late 6th Century.

This of course conflicts with the Glastonbury legend that claims the church at Glastonbury had been in existence several hundred years before St David’s arrival. When William of Malmesbury produced his history of the Abbey he suggested that St David must have come to Glastonbury to rededicate the Old Church there.

According to William, the night before the rededication of the Old Church St David experienced a vision in which The Lord confirmed that he himself had dedicated the Old Church long ago. St David decided to build a smaller chapel on to the eastern end of the church. According to later tradition, the line of connection of the two chapels was marked by an external pyramid on the northside and a raised step inside. Extending a line on the southern side is where, it is claimed, Joseph of Arimathea lies.

St David is said to have received a wonderful altar stone, “the sapphire”, from the Patriarch of Jerusalem which he took to Wales. However, as with many contradictory claims, a Glastonbury tradition claimed that St David presented this marvellous jewel to the community at Glastonbury. It was apparently hidden during the turbulent Saxon times but rediscovered by Henry of Blois in the 12th Century. The sapphire was richly decorated and then hung in the church where it remained until the Dissolution, when the commissioners of Henry VIII noted “ a super altar… decorated with the great Saphire of Glastonbury.”

St David's Cathedral

Later, Glastonbury was to claim to posses the majority of St David’s physical remains. It wouldn't be the only time the Abbey would pull such a stunt. Glastonbury argued that much of St David’s diocese in South Wales had been devastated by English incursions and that a Holy woman named Aelswitha brought St David's relics to Glastonbury for safekeeping in the 10th century. According to John of Glastonbury the virgin St Aelswitha lies between the High Altar and the tomb of King Arthur. However, the Welsh disputed the Glastonbury claim and continued to display, they argued, the genuine relics at St David’s Cathedral.


Source:
James P Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous, Gothic Image, 1996.

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