IN speaking of the Religious Houses in Wales I shall deal with those which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the period we have hitherto been studying—though it is tempting to go back to the glories of the old Welsh monasteries of the sixth century, such as Llantwit Major and Bangor Iscoed, whose dim memories must always exercise a strong fascination. The monasteries of this early type had fallen on evil days in Wales, as in Ireland and elsewhere, before the twelfth century, many had been wiped out by the Danes; and those that remained seem to have lost the spirit of life (save in a few distant islands or inaccessible mountains), and made no struggle for existence against the vigorous invasion of the new monasticism. We shall be concerned with two kinds of religious houses—namely, the houses of monks and the houses of friars. And, first, let us consider in briefest outline the main course of development of the religious orders in the Roman Church. The Rule of St. Benedict (†541) was adopted by all monks: the essential features of it were prayer, labour, silence, a common life and common property. But among the early Benedictines each monastery was independent and self-governing, though an abbey might have priories in some measure connected with it. The result was that in the course of time the discipline and life of monasteries varied infinitely; and there was no co-operation for self-defence among the various monasteries. Hence in the tenth century arose the Cluniac order—the first attempt at organisation—the Abbot of Clugny became head of a vast number of monasteries in different countries of Europe; the priors of these owed allegiance to the Abbot of Clugny, were appointed by him, and paid revenues to the head abbey and the general fund of the Order. This organisation was thus monarchical—despotic; the Abbot of Clugny was a pope of monasticism. The movement acquired enormous influence on the Church as a whole, getting control of the papacy, insisting that the Church should be independent of the State, and that celibacy of the clergy should be practically enforced. But the Cluniacs instead of withdrawing from the world began to dominate it, losing many of the essential features of monasticism. Hence another reform movement arose about 1100, that of the Cistercian Order, which is associated with the name of St. Bernard. This aimed at reviving the Benedictine rule in all its strictness, insisting especially on manual labour. Cistercian houses were founded in desolate places, as far removed from populous centres as possible. But the Order differed from the early Benedictines in organisation. Each Cistercian house was independent and self-governing, electing its own abbot; but all the abbots were bound to come together at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic development.

But about the time of the Crusades another ideal made itself felt. Hitherto the religious man withdrew from the world: but, as an old chronicler put it, “God found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile religion and the world”—was it not possible to serve God in the world? The knight did it; he went on fighting, but he fought for the Holy Sepulchre. The Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers) combined the life of a monk with the life of a soldier. The Regular or Augustinian Canons combined the life of a monk with the life of a parish priest. And this ideal—new to the Middle Ages—received its highest realisation in the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The monk left the world in order to become religious; the friar aimed at making the world religious. The monk’s main object was to save his own soul; the friar’s, to save the souls of others.

We will now turn to the monasteries in Wales. Of the older Benedictine houses there were about fifteen, almost all in South Wales, and all except one were not abbeys but priories, or cells, i.e., they were dependent on some abbey elsewhere. A number of them belonged to some foreign abbey, especially the earliest. This was the case with the Priory of Monmouth, founded by the Breton Wihenoc, which belonged to the Abbey of St. Florence of Saumur (Anjou); and this was the case too with the priories of Abergavenny and Pembroke. These “alien priories” were simply used by the abbeys abroad as sources of revenue; they were foreign, unpopular, and during the French war in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of them were suppressed and their revenues appropriated by the Crown. The same applies to the three Cluniac cells established in Wales, such as St. Clears, which seems only to have contained the prior and one monk, who did not live with much strictness, though Gerald of Barry says the Cluniacs here were better than they were abroad, and not nearly so bad as the Cistercians. The life of monks in these outlying cells, where they were not under any supervision, and where there was no “public opinion” of the monastery to keep them straight, was generally very lax; they lived liked laymen, looking after the estates (generally wasting them), and without much regard to their vows: “they lived like beasts,” says Gerald. Thus the Lord Rhys had to eject the monks from one cell, because of the charges brought against them by the fathers and husbands of the surrounding district, who declared that they would leave and go to England if the evil was not stopped.

Another class of houses were those founded as priories or cells of English abbeys. Thus the Priory at Brecon was a cell of Battle Abbey, founded by Bernard of Newmarch, and largely endowed by the Braoses; Ewenny, founded by Maurice de Londres, was a cell to St. Peter’s, Gloucester. All these of course, like the alien priories, were founded by the Norman conquerors, and for two purposes: Firstly, for the souls of the founder and his family, a very necessary provision; the Normans were in their way a devout people and made sacrifices to win the favour of heaven. William de Braose used to give his clerks “something extra” for inserting pious expressions in his legal documents. Secondly, these houses also served as castles and stations for garrisons. Take, for instance, Ewenny; it is much more like a castle than a religious house, with its great embattled walls and towers, and magnificent gate-house furnished with a triple portcullis and “shoots,” or holes in the roof above for pouring molten lead on the assailants’ heads. The De Londres family were businesslike as well as pious; Ewenny’s prime object was to help them to gain heaven, it also helped them to gain the earth. The close and constant connection which these houses maintained with their mother abbeys in England and abroad always kept them Anglo-Norman in sympathies—foreign garrisons. But while recognising this aspect of the monastic houses in Wales, one must avoid exaggerating it, as, e.g., Mr. Willis Bund does. He regards all the monasteries as founded solely with this political object: “to represent,” he says, “a Welsh prince as founder of a religious house in South Wales after 1066 is representing him as the worst of traitors. Bad as the Welsh chieftains were, even they would have hesitated to introduce into their country what were really Norman garrisons;” and he rejects the idea of a Welsh prince founding Strata Florida. Now these remarks are only applicable to those religious houses which were dependencies on some English or foreign abbey; they do not apply to the Cistercian monasteries, all of which were practically equal and self-governing; each elected its own head and was not under foreign dictation. While the whole Cistercian Order formed an united body for purposes of monastic life and discipline, each abbey identified itself in a very remarkable way with the local or national aspirations of the people round, from whom its monks were drawn. Some of the Cistercian monasteries in Ireland refused to admit any Englishman. Some of the Cistercian abbeys in Wales were the warmest supporters of Welsh independence.

The Welsh princes felt the need of providing for the safety of their souls just as the Norman barons did, and the souls of both parties needed a great deal of saving. Further, the Welsh were not cut off from the great movements of the world; they felt like every other country in Europe the waves of religious enthusiasm, which resulted in the twelfth century in the spread of the Cistercians, in the thirteenth century in the spread of the friars. In the twelfth century the acts most pleasing to God were generally thought to be taking the Cross and endowing a Cistercian monastery. Again, though many of the Welsh chiefs were mere creatures of impulse, there were others who looked to the future. The Lord Rhys was an acute man of the world, who was not averse to improving his property. He possessed great tracts of mountain land, which was practically worthless; he saw Cistercian monks elsewhere, not exactly making such tracts blossom like the rose, but, at any rate, utilising them for pasture land, keeping flocks of sheep, becoming the great wool-growers for all Europe; why should he not hand over his worthless property to Cistercians, and by so doing lay up for himself treasure in heaven and on earth? Mr. Willis Bund says, “How unnatural for any Welsh prince to found a Cistercian abbey!” Surely it was the most natural thing in the world.

The Cistercians had far greater influence in Wales than any other monastic order. The Cistercian abbeys were Aberconway, Basingwerk, Valle Crucis, Strata Marcella, Cymer, Strata Florida, Cwm Hir, Whitland, Neath, Margam, Llantarnam, Tintern, Grace Dieu, Dore. We have in Gerald a very unfavourable and prejudiced witness on the Cistercians. He tells with pious horror and human satisfaction the story of the abbot of Strata Marcella, who was a great founder of nunneries, and at length eloped with a nun (he soon repented and came back to his abbey, preferring the bread and water of affliction to the nun). Gerald had a personal grudge against the Cistercians; wanting to raise money he had pawned his library to the monks of Strata Florida, and when he tried to redeem the books they declared they had bought them, and would not give them up.

The Cistercians certainly drove hard bargains, and insisted on their rights to the uttermost farthing. In reading the history of any of these Cistercian houses—the history, say, of Margam by Mr. Trice Martin—one’s first feeling is one of disappointment: it is nearly all about property. When one looks through to find evidences of spiritual influence one finds instead prosecutions for poaching. Did they have schools and teach the youth of the country round? I have found no evidence of it. Why should they? Monks never professed to be learned men or to be teachers. Many were both, but it was a disputed question whether they were not in this contravening their rule. At any rate, it was going outside their duty. Their business was to serve God—to perform divine services—and in the intervals to keep out of mischief by manual labour, and to perform works of charity. Margam was specially famous for this last.

Margam Abbey was founded by Robert of Gloucester, in 1147, and the brother of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, the most important man in Europe in his time, came over to arrange about the establishment of the house. It was endowed with lands by both English and Welsh, such as the Earl of Gloucester and the Lord of Senghenydd. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, granted the monks freedom from toll in all his boroughs in Wales and Ireland. The Braoses gave them the privilege of “buying and selling freely all manner of merchandise without toll” in Gower, and they had the right to all wrecks along the coast near Kenfig. We find the abbot asserting his fishing rights sometimes by excommunicating poachers, sometimes by the more effective method of haling them before the Shire Court at Cardiff and getting them fined 3d. a head. The monks of Margam obtained also a footing in Bristol through the Earls of Gloucester, a great commercial advantage to them for the sale of their wool both in England and abroad.

Their lands and privileges were not always, of course, free gifts. Thus in the twelfth century Gilbert Burdin grants land to Margam, and in return the abbot gives 20s. to the grantor, a gold coin to his wife, and red shoes to each of his children. In 1325 John Nichol, of Kenfig, gave his property to the abbey in return for a life annuity. He was to receive daily one loaf, two cakes, and a gallon of beer; also 6s. 8d. for wages, four pairs of shoes (price 12d.), a quarter of oats, and pasture for two beasts.

The annual revenue of Margam was returned as 500 marks in 1383, but before that time the abbey had suffered severely from inundations, sea and sand covering whole villages and much of the best property of the house; and the finances were in a bad way. These were improved by grants of the tithes of parish churches—a favourite form of gift to a monastery, but a great scandal. The rectorial tithes were paid to a monastery, while the monks at best put in some under-paid vicar to look after the parish. Generally, wherever there is a vicar instead of a rector in England or Wales the explanation is the appropriation of the tithes by a monastery.

What did Margam do with its income? The first charge was the support of about forty monks and forty lay brethren. Next there were the construction and keeping in repair of the church and other monastic buildings; and, thirdly, the expense of charity and hospitality. The monasteries were the hotels of the Middle Ages, except that they made no charges, and Margam was celebrated for its hospitality for centuries. Gerald, the enemy of monks, says: “This noble abbey was more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and provisions were divinely increased, like the widow’s cruse of oil.” Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It was placed on the main road between Bristol and Ireland, at a distance from other places of refuge, and so was continually overrun by rich and poor strangers, the poor evidently preponderating. In this connection I will give one instance of wise charity on the part of these monks from the end of the twelfth century. Hugh, son of Robert of Llancarven, gives the abbey some land in return for “four marks of silver and a young ox, given to him in his great need by the Abbot.” The monastery performed some of the services of the modern bank.

Strata Florida presents some different characteristics. Like most Cistercian houses, it lay off the beaten track. It was founded in 1164 by the Lord Rhys, near the site of an older monastery. It was endowed with large expanse of lands, mostly mountain pastures, and the monks soon began building their church and refectory and cloister. The monastery was completed in 1201, when “the monks came to the new church, which had been erected of splendid workmanship.” The architectural details of this church are peculiar and almost unique. Mr. S.W. Williams notices especially the large amount of interlacing work in the carving, which one sees in the old Celtic crosses, and which is so characteristic of Celtic art. The convent seems to have become very soon essentially Welsh. Nearly all the abbots have Welsh names. It was the burial-place of the princes of South Wales; but as they were, after the Lord Rhys, quite unimportant, its political interest is connected with the princes of Gwynedd. When in the thirteenth century the princes of North Wales were attracting the allegiance of the South Welsh also they found Strata Florida a convenient place for important political assemblies. It was here that Llywelyn ap Iorwerth summoned all the Welsh chiefs to do homage to his son David. The monastery suffered damage during the wars of Edward I., who in 1284 granted it £78 for repairs. But it suffered the worst injuries during the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr, when the English troops used it as a barracks, and stabled their horses in church and choir.

The patriotic tone of Strata Florida is expressed in the Welsh chronicles written there. The later part of the Annales CambriÆ was written there, and the Brut y Tywysogion. At Margam also a chronicle was composed which has been preserved. When an abbey decided to begin a chronicle, the first step was to borrow a chronicle from some other house; thus Margam, founded by Robert of Gloucester, copied out the Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, which was dedicated to Robert of Gloucester. The monks of Strata Florida copied out the earlier portion of the Annales CambriÆ. These chronicles of course only became of historical value when they become independent and contemporary. They do not confine themselves to the monastery or local history, but relate events of general interest—to the whole of Britain and to all Europe—intermixed with notices of the burning of a monastic barn or the death of the local abbot. Knowledge of the great world came to an abbey through the travellers who stayed there; through political or ecclesiastical assemblies held there; and through public documents sent to the monks for safekeeping or to be copied. We generally do not know who wrote these chronicles; they were rather the work of the community than of the individual monks. “Every year (so runs a regulation on the subject) the volume is placed in the scriptorium, with loose sheets of paper or parchment attached to it, in which any monk may enter notes of events which seem to him important. At the end of the year, not any one who likes, but he to whom it is commanded, shall write in the volume as briefly as he can what he thinks of all these loose notes is truest and best to be handed down to posterity.” “Thus it was that a monastic chronicle grew, like a monastic house, by the labour of different hands and at different times; but of the heads that planned it, of the hands that executed it, no satisfactory record was preserved. The individual is lost in the community.”

Coming now to the Friaries in Wales, we find ourselves in a different atmosphere. The friars were not troubled with questions of property: they had none; they depended for their livelihood on the alms of the faithful. Again, speaking generally, one may say that while the Benedictine priory is found under the shadow of a castle, and the Cistercian abbey in the heart of the country, the friaries were built in the slums of the towns. As there were few towns in Wales, the houses of the Mendicant Orders were not numerous or important. The Dominicans (or Black Friars) had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff; the Franciscans (or Grey Friars) at Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Llanfaes; the Carmelites (or White Friars) at Denbigh; and the Austin Friars at Newport in Monmouthshire. It is remarkable that the Dominicans had more houses in Wales than the Franciscans; though the Franciscans—the mystic apostles of love—were more in sympathy with the Celtic spirit than the Dominicans, the stern champions of orthodoxy. Francis of Assisi strove to reproduce again on earth the life of Christ—in the letter and in the spirit; and the religious poetry of Wales in the thirteenth century is saturated with Franciscan feeling—full of intense realisation of the childhood and suffering of Christ, the humanity of God. This may be illustrated by the following poem by a Welsh friar of the thirteenth century, Madawc ap Gwallter:—

I do not know the dates of the foundations of the Welsh Franciscan houses; the dates given in Mr. Newell’s scholarly “History of the Church in Wales” are impossible. Llanfaes is said to have been established by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and Franciscan influence would come to Wales through Thomas the Welshman, Bishop of St. David’s (1247), who had been lecturer to the Franciscans at Oxford, and was famous for his piety and learning. Another Franciscan I wish to mention is Friar John the Welshman, who in his old age was employed to negotiate with the Welsh in 1282. He had studied and taught at Oxford and Paris, and made a creditable show beside such intellectual giants as Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, his contemporaries. The widespread and lasting popularity of his works is shown by the large number of manuscripts and early printed editions which have come down to us. But his chief interest and life-work was the popularisation of knowledge in the service of morality. He devoted his energies to training up lecturers who should go to the Franciscan friaries in the chief towns in England and Wales and teach friars and clergy the art of popular preaching. Friar John of Wales was one of the chief inspirers of the “University Extension” movement of the Middle Ages. These popular preachers or lecturers did not do much for the advancement of sound learning, because they did not study any science for its own sake, but only for the moral lessons they could find in it. But, to rouse some intellectual interest in the people at large, and stimulate their moral sense, was a work not unworthy of the universities; and this aim was to some degree attained. One of the favourite ways of spending a holiday in the Middle Ages was to go and hear a friar preach. Here is a summary of a friar’s sermon constructed after the method of Friar John of Wales, on the relative merits of the Ass and the Pig.

“The pig and the ass live not the same life: for the pig during his life does no good, but eats and swills and sleeps; but when he is dead, then do men make much of him. The ass is hard at work all his days and does good service to many; but when he dies, there is no profit. And that is the way of the world. Some do no good thing while they live, but eat and drink and wax fat, and then they are dragged off to the larder of hell, and others enrich themselves with their goods. Whereby I know that those, who for God’s sake live the life of holy poverty, shall never lack substance, because their heavenly Father has pigs to kill. For as the good man before the season will kill a pig or two to give puddings to his children, so will our Lord kill those hardened sinners before their time, and give their goods to the children of God. So the psalmist says: ‘The bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days,’ because they do no work to keep their bodies healthy. Nothing is so healthful for body and soul as honest work. Work is the life of man, the guardian of health; work drives away sin, and makes people sleep well at night. Work is the strength of feebleness, the health of sickness, the salvation of men,—quickener of the senses, foe of sloth, nurse of happiness, a duty in the young and in the old a merit. Therefore it is better to be an ass than a pig.”

One of the most able of these “extension lecturers” was another Welshman—probably a native of Cardiff—Friar John David, whose lectures at Hereford were so successful that after a year both the friars and the clergy of the city declared he was indispensable, and petitioned for his reappointment. He became the head of the Franciscan province of England, and lies buried among the ruins of the church of the Grey Friars in Cardiff.