The Semi-Mythical Maelgwn Gwynedd Pt 3

St Cybi was another beneficiary of Maelgwn's spiritual largesse. When he sailed onto the shores of Anglesey, after a journey that had taken him through Rome, Brittany and Eire, the ruler was happy to bestow upon him the crumbling ruins of a Segontium outpost.

Cybi quickly resurrected the small Roman fortress to something approaching its former glory, then turned it into one of the most important monasteries of the Celtic world. They called it Caer Gybi. We know it as Holyhead.

Other Catholic land bequests reveal just how powerful Maelgwn had become in North Wales. When Saint Kentigern (aka Mungo) arrived in 545, he was presented with a land donation alongside the River Elwy. It was signed, sealed and witnessed, with the grant surviving into the present day.

The large monastery of Llanelwy, thus founded there, held a community several hundred strong. Within their ranks was a boy called Asaph, who grew to be its bishop and the saint that gave us Llanelwy's modern name - St Asaph.  (It's details like this which prove the historical inaccuracy of fish and golden ring legend recounted in part two. Asaph wasn't even born when Nesta ferch Sawyl was killed. Nor had Llanelwy been founded.)

Yet St Asaph is a city in Flintshire. It would have been in Rhos in 545, therefore part of the territory ruled over by Cunglas. But it's not his name on that ancient grant. It's Maelgwn Gwynedd, who appeared to be at liberty to give away his cousin's land, merrily supported by all those important people who signed their names as witnesses.

Among the signatories was Sanctus Gwrst. The same St Gwrst who lent his name to today's Llanrwst, in Denbighshire, and another who founded his monastery through Maelgwn's generosity.

His witness on the grant nestles alongside the signature of St Trillo, whose eponymous monastery later lent its name to the town where it sat - Llandrillo-yn-Rhos (Welsh) or Rhos-on-Sea (English). Both of which give clues to where these neighboring monasteries were situated. It was Maelgwn once again donating land belonging to his chieftain cousin Cunglas ap Owain.

The final saintly signatory was St Deiniol, whose Bangor sanctuary was at least in Gwynedd proper!

These were just some of the Christian holy people provided with a living. Most weren't even saints. Some were simply sustained as hermits, or clustered in tiny communes, or acting as the guardians of ancient shrines made Christian because the locals wouldn't abandon those blessed sites.

In an age where the notion of the sacral king was not yet fully consigned to memory, it might even be a matter of life and death. Proof that they were the source of their tribe's prosperity, and still Sovereignty's foremost champion.

The fact that so many of Maelgwn's bequests occurred in Rhos territory plays into this consideration. He was basically saying - so loud and clear that we still get the message now - that his power was such that he was able to distribute another chieftain's wealth without censure. 

There's also something rather suspect in the fact that he was the benefactor of so many saints, clerics and monasteries, yet the recipient record is silent.

By their very nature, monasteries were where the great works of literature were created, copied and preserved. Monks were the literate ones of the Medieval period. We should be swimming in eulogies singing Maelgwn's praises; sanitized biographies of their benefactor; prayer books, which name him in glowing terms in their dedications or prologues. But we're not.

The majority of documents didn't survive the centuries, but only because no-one wished to copy tattered manuscripts, or they were lost. St Deiniol's Library preserved a great deal of literature. His monastery - so close to Maelgwn's home at Deganwy - remained, developed into a massive cathedral and created the whole city of Bangor today.  Documents there tended to survive.

Such silence therefore speaks volumes.

What too are we to make of the fabled donations to Welsh saints nowhere near Gwynedd's borders?  They're often quoted as examples of the ruler's pious generosity, with wealth so vast that he could afford to support monks as far afield as Dyfed and Glamorgan in South Wales.

It might be true. Such high-profile bequests would be the ultimate testimony to the chieftain's riches and reach. But it might indicate too that the boot was on the other foot. Two could play the game of using another man's mighty reputation to boost their own, and so could several.

Maelgwn self-aggrandizement may well have backfired, as evidenced by a close look at the legends that spring up in the lives of far-flung saints.

The people were terrified. Maelgwn and his war-band were camped near the Fountain of Brutrou, close to the town of Gwynllwg. There was no doubt that tomorrow the tyrant would ride down upon them, slaughter all the men and take their land.

St Cadoc heard the plea for assistance from his steward in Gwynllwg, and immediately began to pray. As he did so, a heavy mist began to form, shielding the town from view. St Cadoc waited until the fog was at its thickest, then walked on through it to the enemy camp.

Maelgwn cowered in terror, perceiving at once that the mists came from God. As Cadoc appeared before him, the ruler begged forgiveness, asking leave to return home to Gwynedd with his men. Upon his oath that he would never again bother Gwynllwg, St Cadoc raised the fog.

In thankfulness, Maelgwn Gwynedd announced that Cadoc was blessed amongst all the men of South Wales. Furthermore, in his capacity as Pendragon of all Britain, Maelgwn ruled that Cadoc was now the region's foremost holy leader.

However, these were largely just side-notes. Gildas's main attack zoned in on five British rulers, addressing them as the point of the whole fiery manuscript. Chief amongst these targets, and the focus of Gildas's greatest expressions of ire, was Maelgwn Gwynedd.

What of you, dragon of the island, you who have removed many of these despots from their country and even their life? You are last on my list, but first in evil, mightier than almost all in both power and malice, more profuse in giving, more extravagant in sin, strong in arms but stronger still in what destroys a soul, Maglocunus.'

Maglocunus is the contemporary Latin name for Maelgwn. It's here, and in other writings of Welsh saints, that we learn for certain that the ruler of Gwynedd was the Celtic Pendragon, or High King of Britain, by 540 CE.

'The King of all kings has made you higher than almost all the generals of Britain, in your kingdom as in your physique: why do you not show yourself to him better than the others in character, instead of worse?'

Gildas then cherry picks various sins to level against Maelgwn - killing his uncle; leaving the monastery after taking holy orders; committing adultery with Sannan; killing her husband and his own wife Nesta etc. Laced with plenty more insults comes what must be seen as the main message and therefore the impetus behind Gildas's venomous tract, 'Do not, I beseech you, reject the unspeakable mercy of God.'

There are two versions of Gildas's life, which contradict each other. But they both keep bringing him together with Maelgwn.

In one, Gildas is sent as a child to study under St Illtyd in his monastery. It's the same establishment which received Maelgwn during his own ill-fated period of living under holy orders. Therefore, Gildas and Maelgwn were briefly fellow monks.

No doubt the son of Gwynedd's ruler was invaluable in facilitating any messages passing between the child and his Mum and Dad, back home on Ynys Mon. Could the sudden severing of that channel, when Maelgwn left the monastery, have left a lingering bitterness on the part of Gildas?

In the second version, Gildas didn't become a monk until he was in his thirties. He spent his childhood and young adult life on Ynys Mon, getting married and having children.

Except during Maelgwn's sojourn in the monastery, the two would have continued to live as neighbors. Gildas would have sworn fealty to Maelgwn, when the latter became ruler of Gwynedd and Ynys Mon, perhaps a decade or two before Gildas left to become a monk upon his wife's death.

Both versions explain how Gildas knew so much about Maelgwn's life, which he utilized to such searing effect in his sermon. He must also have been fully aware of the ruler's reputation, as a fierce and brutal warrior, used to enforcing his will.  Being so far away in Brittany, the monk must have reasoned that he was safely out of reach from any retribution.

But Gildas was one of twenty-three children. Many of his siblings had established deep roots on Ynys Mon, raising their own families there, still under the protection of Maelgwn Gwynedd.

The eldest brother, Huail ap Caw, was dragged to Ruthin where he was beheaded over a large stone (Maen Huail), which can still be seen in the town's St Peter's Square.

The most commonly told version of the legend is that King Arthur executed him in a fight over a woman. Gerald of Wales wrote that Gildas then destroyed every document in Britain that mentioned Arthur, which is why none of them exist to verify his existence now. The lesser told story is that Maelgwn Gwynedd decapitated Huail - who had succeeded his father, upon the latter's death, as the head of his people - in lieu of his younger brother, following the publication of Gildas's sermon.

It's believed that another brother was captured by a band of Maelgwn's men and killed outright. They didn't deem it necessary to take him before their ruler for judgment.

Meanwhile, at least two more brothers were forced to flee Ynys Mon, with their families and any possessions that they could carry.  Though history hasn't recorded any further details, I think we can assume that no descendant of Caw remained in Gwynedd in the aftermath of that.

Gildas's attack on Maelgwn Gwynedd made refugees of them all once more.

The more copies there are, the higher the chance that a Medieval document will survive. It lessens the likelihood of a sole remaining version being destroyed by fire, washed away in a deluge, captured and trampled into the mud by a conqueror or disintegrating into dusty air through the passage of the centuries.

Moreover, the fury of the piece meant that it continued to be copied, long after Gildas and his chief protagonists were dead and buried.

The Celts didn't win. The Saxons did. 

Germanic Pagan chieftains might not get much out of the vicious ramblings of a Catholic monk, but they could certainly appreciate the implied compliment to their military prowess. A Celtic holy man had practically stated outright that a) the Celts couldn't defend their territory against Saxon might; and b) the Christian God was so awed by Woden, that He'd simply abandon His people to the All-Father for the asking.

Even when Anglo-Saxon England became Christian, there was still much to enjoy in the work of St Gildas. Monks like the Venerable Bede went out of their way to castigate the subjugated Celts, ignoring their historic victories in the struggle for Britain, and denigrating their faith.

They might have been Christians, but Gildas proved that they were corrupt ones. Plus they hadn't even attempted to evangelize the Pagans over-running their lands. Weak, morally suspect and emotionally childlike, the Celts couldn't be trusted with governing Britain when they held it. They certainly shouldn't have influence now.

Hence Gildas's On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain continued to be copied; preserved by those who used it to justify the oppression of all things Celtic in an Anglo-Saxon country. 

All this because Maelgwn Gwynedd and friends had seriously upset a fellow Briton and monk. But what had they actually done?

The lists of crimes and sin leveled against Maelgwn and the others are obviously mere aperitifs, added in to underpin and/or demonstrate symptoms of an over-arching degeneracy. Gildas wouldn't have bothered recalling the history of the entire Celtic nation, nor bringing in his issues with its clerics, if he was just trying to condemn Maelgwn for murdering his wife.

The trouble is that Gildas never tells us or them. He manages to waffle on through thousands of words without once clarifying what precisely triggered his ire.

We can only assume that the context would have been obvious to those reading at the time. For the rest of us, there are two main ways that historians interpret Gildas's tirade:

Of course, it could have been a mixture of the two, as they're not mutually incompatible. Though most Arthurian scholars opt for the former, while the majority of historians - in general terms - subscribe to the latter.

This might seem strange. After all, Pelagius and his teachings are not mentioned, nor does Gildas make any statements that blatantly lead us back to that particular Catholic heresy. However it's the most obvious conclusion reached by reading what he does say, and applying it within the wider context of Christianity at the time.

Gildas refers constantly to God and the teachings of the Catholic Church. He's a monk, so that's only to be expected. But the emphasis is not on correcting sinful behavior in Christian men, but those sins being evidence of something much greater - the denial of God Himself.

The crux of Gildas's address to Maelgwn Gwynedd lies in the plea, 'Do not, I beseech you, reject the unspeakable mercy of God.' This is a theme running through the saint's condemnation of the other rulers too.

• Constantinus in Dumnonia is accused of killing two young princes and their guardians, while wearing the robes of a holy abbot. He's called upon to answer this charge under the auspices of the Church.
• Aurelius Caninus, in Gildas's view, is 'shutting the gates of heavenly peace and consolation to your soul' alongside his constant war-mongering.
• Vortiporius of the Demetians is never actually charged with rejecting God, just committing a host of sins against Him (rape of his own daughter; murdering people to advance his power etc);
• Cuneglasus of Rhos most certainly is though. To Gildas, Maelgwn's cousin is a 'despiser of God and oppressor of his lot', who wages 'war against men and God', the latter with 'infinite sins'.

Inherent in the sermon is the threat that this rejection of God will be answered by divine retribution, in the form of Saxon invaders. Though he never makes explicit why the Christian deity would seek to enact His almighty revenge by sending in a Pagan horde.

Presumably there are sound theological reasons - at least in the tortured mind of St Gildas - allowing for such a possibility. That God might be so enraged by the sins of a Christian land, that He would deem it irretrievable, and hand it over wholesale to Woden. Perhaps He was all out of floods. Or Hell was full.

How about if Pelagianism isn't named, because Gildas was reacting to the resurgence of another religion?  God might not be induced to turn a Christian nation over to the Pagans, but what if He no longer viewed it as a Christian nation?

Those five British rulers, with Maelgwn Gwynedd at their helm, were already Pagans. Each one rejecting Christianity - quite literally - by reaching for the old religion of Druidism. They needn't even have converted in reality, or may have merely flirted with some parts of it. As long as Gildas thought that they had disdained God for the Celtic deities, then his sermon would still have been written.

Read in that context, it would render Maelgwn Gwynedd public enemy number one to the Welsh saints. They could thwart him in their legends, with the ruler filling the antagonistic position that later Christians might ascribe to the devil.

Accusations of Druidry would make him equally suspect in the view of clerics closer to home, who we would otherwise expect to be sympathetic towards him. It would account for the dearth of praise filled prologues and biographies. People like St Deiniol, St Cybi and St Gwrst might even have felt justified in quietly disposing of anything fitting that description, once Maelgwn Gwynedd was dead.

But only if there was some basis in fact. Those saints with churches and monasteries in Gwynedd were ideally located to know precisely what was happening. They didn't need a distant ex-pat to fill in the blanks.

In the fourth part of this Maelgwn Gwynedd series, we examine what accusations Gildas was actually making against the North Welsh chieftain, and explore some startling conclusions based on references made by the saint.