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Sacred space and the natural world: the

holy well and shrine of the Virgin Mary
at Penrhys
a
Madeleine Gray
a
School of Education, University of Wales , Newport, Caerleon
Campus, Newport
Published online: 15 Apr 2011.

To cite this article: Madeleine Gray (2011) Sacred space and the natural world: the holy well and
shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire,
18:02, 243-260, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2011.555954

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 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire
Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2011, 243–260

Sacred space and the natural world: the holy well and shrine of the
Virgin Mary at Penrhys
Madeleine Gray*

School of Education, University of Wales, Newport, Caerleon Campus, Newport

Landscape historians are still debating medieval perceptions of the natural landscape.
Meanwhile, recent studies of pilgrimage have focused on the pilgrimage as a moving
sacred space, cut off from, and even potentially in conflict with, the cultures through
which the pilgrim passes. A study of natural imagery in Welsh poetry to the shrine of
the Virgin Mary at Penrhys suggests a more engaged approach. There is a clear sense
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of place and the natural environment in descriptions of both the route and the shrine,
presenting the natural world as blessing rather than challenge. This paper does not
suggest anything ‘Celtic’ in the use of nature imagery – the chthonic element
is important in Marian shrines in both Eastern and Western traditions: but there are
parallels in Welsh poetry to other Marian shrines.
Keywords: landscape; natural; environment; pilgrimage; shrines; Penrhys; poetry

In recent decades, the received wisdom among landscape historians has been that medieval
perceptions of landscape and the natural environment – and indeed medieval understanding
of the meaning of words like ‘landscape’ and ‘natural’ – were fundamentally different
from our own. In particular, there has been a broad assumption that, while modern Western
society values landscapes which we perceive as wild and remote, medieval society valued
landscapes which were ordered, tamed and productive. This perspective was outlined in
1967 by Lynn White, who rooted the medieval perception explicitly in the Judaeo-Christian
religious tradition.1 In the same year, Roderick Nash provided a fuller discussion of the same
themes.2 While these studies may now seem unduly simplistic, the same ideas were explored
in a more nuanced form and for the post-medieval period by Keith Thomas in his seminal
Man and the Natural World,3 and were revisited as recently as 2007 in Gilbert LaFreniere’s
The Decline of Nature.4
By the 1980s, though, the work of these authors was being challenged. David Herlihy’s
1980 overview is normally cited in support of the White/Nash perspective. However,
while the main thrust of his article was that for most of the medieval period nature was
seen as something to be feared and controlled, he did give some weight to the idea of
nature as recreation and refreshment.5 Environmentalist Susan Power Bratton’s
Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife was a more explicit challenge to White and Nash,
rigorously academic but rooted in her own openly expressed Christian beliefs and spiritual
experiences.6 Her main focus was on the Biblical significance of wilderness but in this
book and in earlier articles she also discussed perceptions of the natural environment in
the writings and vitae of the early Irish monks.7 She further developed this historical

*Email: Madeleine.Gray@newport.ac.uk

ISSN 1350-7486 print/ISSN 1469-8293 online

q 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2011.555954
http://www.informaworld.com
 244 M. Gray

perspective in Environmental Values in Christian Art, moving away from her earlier
focus on sacred text to consider what art and material culture can tell us about changing
Christian attitudes to the natural world.8 Meanwhile, Joyce Salisbury, David Salter and
Dominic Alexander have discussed the dangers of applying modern understanding
of concepts like ‘nature’, ‘the natural world’, ‘the natural environment’ to medieval
perspectives,9 and Aron Gurevich has argued that the conscious antithesis of nature and
human society was foreign to the medieval mind.10
It is within the context of this debate that we need to situate a discussion of attitudes to
the natural environment as exemplified by descriptions of pilgrimage routes and sites.
Studies of medieval pilgrimage, even those based on itineraries and descriptive accounts,
seldom focus explicitly on the pilgrims’ perceptions of the natural landscape. In an
illuminating study of medieval pilgrimage to Rome, for example, Debra Birch discusses
motivation, the actual routes taken, timing, the logistics of transport and accommodation
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and the obligations and privileges of the pilgrim, but makes only passing mention of the
natural environment as an aspect of the dangers of pilgrimage.11 Sumption says rather
more about the natural dangers on pilgrimage routes but only discusses attitudes to the
natural landscape in the context of early-medieval penitential pilgrimage.12 Describing the
route to Compostela as recorded by medieval pilgrims, Colin Smith simply assumes that:
Probably nothing in their intellectual formation would have disposed them to take much of an
interest in the (to us) magnificent scenery they would traverse . . . 13
Nicole Chareyron says rather more in her study of medieval accounts of the route to
Jerusalem, but references to the landscape are scattered through the book and there is no
explicit analysis.14
As with more general attitudes to landscape, representations by pilgrims have changed
over time. Chareyron suggested a typology of pilgrimage beginning with later Roman and
Byzantine pilgrimage attracted by the asceticism of desert life, followed by pilgrims in
search of miracles, millenarian penitents, crusaders and intellectuals. In particular, she
distinguished between the Crusading purpose to defend the world by force of arms and the
ideal of contemptus mundi.15 Only at the end of the medieval period was this replaced in
some pilgrims by a sense of curiositas, in which ‘the pilgrimage itself, the motivation
underlying the deed, was accompanied by an interest in everything experienced while
making it’.16
Sumption also suggested that contempt for civilised society and a rejection of urban
values as corrupt and worldly was a fundamental strand in earlier medieval Christianity,
inspiring both desert mystics and early pilgrims.17 This, he argued, was particularly
exemplified by St Jerome, who described himself ‘forsaking the bustling cities of Antioch
and Constantinople so as to draw down upon myself the mercy of Christ in the solitude of
the country’. For him and his followers, the purpose of pilgrimage was to leave Rome and
Antioch rather than to reach Jerusalem. His disciples Paula and Melania spent most of their
pilgrimages wandering in the deserts of Egypt, where they visited the communities of
hermits who had retreated there.18 However, neither Jerome nor his followers saw the
natural landscape as a place of beauty: rather, it was a place for penitential austerity and
self-exile.
Michael Goodich has pointed to a comparable ambivalence in later medieval attitudes
to the natural world: on the one hand it is seen as a threat, on the other hand the rejection of
its beauty is part of the contemptus mundi of the ascetic. But at the same time the desert or
wilderness was still seen as a place of refuge from persecution and retreat for monastic
contemplation.19 He suggests that the natural world was actually perceived as more
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 245

of a threat in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as a result of a series of natural

catastrophes, the breakdown of frameworks such as drainage systems by which the natural
environment was controlled and tamed, and the re-encroachment of forest on farm land
(though as he admits, this tendency cannot be precisely correlated with the demographic
crisis of the fourteenth century).20
Modern pilgrimage is perhaps less focused on the penitential and more on spiritual
development, and modern pilgrims are expected to enjoy the natural environment as part
of the experience:.
. . . every beautiful glen and mountain has been photographed by the hikers. From wild thyme
along the Road to T-shirts festooned with pilgrimage motifs for sale in the villages, pilgrims
partake of the natural and commercial as they hike their kilometers.21
As with the literature on medieval pilgrimage, there is little explicit discussion of
responses to the natural landscape in accounts of modern pilgrimage. However, the whole
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concept of pilgrimage as sacred space (as distinct from the sacred space at the objective of
the pilgrimage) is still a matter for debate among social anthropologists. If (as Victor
Turner suggests) pilgrimage is a liminal experience, one which takes the pilgrim
completely out of his or her daily experience and even subverts established social
structures,22 then one might expect a wilderness experience – whether idyllic or
penitential – to be part of the liminal process. The natural landscape was an implicit part
of the liminal quality of the pilgrimage to Compostela for Ellen Feinberg:
I was happy to sleep out in the fresh, sweet country air. Away from city lights and city
pollution, we saw the Milky Way, spreading its starry trail like a protective blanket over us.23
Even the title of Feinberg’s book suggests a radical shift in perspective, one which is
perhaps so deep-rooted that it escapes discussion. It is ironic that so many modern pilgrims
consider themselves to be ‘getting away from’ the modern world and back to a simpler,
more traditional way of life in reconnecting with the natural environment, when this is not
something which most medieval pilgrims would have recognised. But if (as Michael
Sallnow argued in 1981) pilgrimage is ‘simply a setting in which social interactions
can take place ex novo’,24 then by extension the pilgrimage also becomes a space for
competing perspectives on the natural world.25
The general absence of analysis of attitudes to the natural environment in discussions
of medieval pilgrimage may in part be a reflection of the sources and their purpose.
Itineraries were functional, guides to the route and to the attractions of the destination.
The fourteenth-century Franciscan Niccolò of Poggibonsi made only brief reference to the
natural features he saw – the mountain of the Transfiguration, the mountain where Noah
built the Ark – but gave specific details of the indulgences offered there to pilgrims.26
Inevitably, most of the focal points of pilgrimage were structures rather than natural
features, and the guides to the route tended to focus on problems to be overcome rather
than on scenery which might distract the pilgrims from their purpose.27 Whatever
motivated individual pilgrims to make a record of their experiences, one might expect their
priorities to be the same. The pilgrimage journey was meant to be penitential: as Jacques
de Vitry explained in his famous sermon on pilgrimage, as the pilgrim had sinned with all
his limbs, so he must make reparation with all of them. Nothing was to distract him from
his path; tiredness and sore feet were to be his delight.28
If we consider in detail some of those medieval pilgrimage narratives which do
mention the natural environment, we will find that most seem to belong squarely in the
traditional paradigm of fear of wilderness and, if they mention the natural environment at
all, see it as part of the penitential aspect of the pilgrimage. One of the most detailed of such
 246 M. Gray

descriptions, that of the route to Compostela in the Codex Callixtinus, is full of references
to dangerous rivers, poisonous waters and difficult territory. The land of the Bordelais is
described as
tellus omni bono desolata, pane, vino, carne, piscibus, aquis et fontibus vacua; villis rara,
plana, sabulosa . . . faciem tuam studiose custodi a muscis immanissimis, que guespe vel
tavones vulgo dicuntur, qui maxime ibi habundant, et nisi diligenter pedem obseruaveris, in
arena marina que ibi habundant usque ad genua velociter lapsus fueris.
(a country devoid of all good things, lacking in bread, wine, meat, fish, water and springs,
sparse in towns, flat, sandy . . . take care to guard your face from the enormous insects
commonly called guespe [wasps] or tavones [horse-flies], which are most abundant there; and
if you do not watch carefully where you put your feet, you will slip rapidly up to your knees in
the quicksand that abounds there.)29
The Basque country is ‘wooded and mountainous, devoid of wine, bread and bodily
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nourishment’, and ‘all the rivers between Estella and Logroño have water that is dangerous
for men and beasts to drink, and the fish from them are poisonous to eat’. There are a few
references to good features in the natural landscape – the Gascon country is ‘healthy on
account of its woods and meadows, rivers and pure springs’: but the author’s praise for
the landscape is usually on purely utilitarian grounds. Water is good because it is clear
and drinkable; the Gascon landscape is good because it is ‘bountiful in white bread and
excellent red wine’; Castile and Campos are ‘full of riches, gold and silver, blessed with
fodder and very strong horses, well-provided with bread, wine, meat, fish, milk and
honey’.30
This contrasts with the rapturous descriptions of the built landscape, particularly
(but not exclusively) Compostela itself and the ‘perfect beauty’ of the great cathedral:
In eadem vero ecclesia nulla scissura, vel corrupcio invenitur . . . qui enim sursum per naves
palacii vadit, si tristis ascendit, visa obtima pulcritudine eiusdem templi, letus et gavisus
efficitur.
(In truth, in this church, no fissure or fault is found . . . whoever visits the naves of the gallery,
if he goes up sad, having seen the perfect beauty of this temple, he will be made happy and
joyful.)31
Even the mountain pass of Port de Cize, so high that ‘to him who ascends it, it seems that
he can touch the sky with his own hand’, is notable mainly for what humans have done at
the summit, the Cross of Charlemagne:.
. . . super illum securibus et dolabris et fossoriis ceterisque manubriis Karolus cum suis
exercitibus in Yspaniam pergens, olim tramitem fecit signumque Dominice crucis prius in eo
elevavit . . .
( . . . it is here that, with axes and picks and spades and other implements, Charlemagne, going
to Spain with his armies, once made a road, and he raised on it the sign of the cross of the
Lord . . . )32
A similar focus can be found in descriptions of pilgrimage routes in the Middle East by
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers such as Ogier d’Anglure33 and Pietro Casola.34
Even the River Jordan failed to inspire Casola: it was
not wider than our Naviglio, which comes to Porta Ticinese. It is deep and the mud is high and
sticky, almost like bath mud; and the water is muddy, like that of the Po. When it is purified it
is beautiful to look at. Many drank it from devotion, and I let them drink.
(In other words, even the Jordan, the river in which Christ was baptised, had to be
improved by human hands before it was really safe or beautiful.)
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 247

We returned by the same way by which we had come. It was very clear, and we could see well
and examine the country, which is flat as far as Jericho. There is not a fruit tree to be seen, nor
any other plant save abominable thorns, both large and small. I made acquaintance with them,
for the mule I was riding carried me off the road among those thorns, and they tore my mantle
and doublet.35
D’Anglure said even less about the Jordan: in a brief and prosaic note he described it
as ‘very turbulent and white, and the current is quite strong’.36 His main concern was to
enumerate the relics he saw on his journey, and to follow in meticulous detail the tour
around the buildings mentioned in Biblical narratives.
Jerome had valued the desert as a refuge from the corruption of human society.
However, most of the later medieval pilgrims who travelled beyond Jerusalem to explore
the holy places of Syria, Jordan and Egypt regarded the desert as a place of deprivation,
precisely because it was devoid of human habitation.37 The thirteenth-century pilgrim
Thietmar saw the desert as a terrifying place to be crossed in search of sacred sites – the
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place where Aaron died, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was hidden: but the
desert itself was terrifying, with ‘dreadful valleys and fearsome depths’, full of wild
animals. He much preferred the domesticated space of a garden.38 For Riccoldo da Monte
di Croce, too, the climb up the Mount of Temptation was of interest for the contrast
between the harshness of the mountain and the lush vegetation of the cultivated plain with
its sugar cane, palm trees and roses: this, he thought, was how the Devil tempted Christ in
Matt. 4:9: ‘All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’.39
What some of these accounts find of value in the natural environment is linked to the
spiritual meaning of specific features, in the same way that animals were valued as
analogies for spiritual values. Giacomo da Verona travelled with tools to remove rocks
from the Hill of Calvary; an anonymous pilgrim in 1420 found ‘trees bearing thorns, and
of a like tree and thorn Our Lord was crowned in his Passion’.40 Even the bananas of the
Mount of Temptation were a sign: ‘if you cut this fruit crosswise into ten slices . . . ’, Ogier
d’Anglure wrote, ‘you will always see the image of the crucifix clearly in each slice’.41
By the late fifteenth century, Chareyron suggested, the spirit of curiositas had become
a component of some pilgrimage narratives, encouraging an interest in natural phenomena
as well as in art, architecture and ethnology. The German Dominican friar Felix Fabri
claimed that the motivation for his pilgrimage was to improve his understanding of
Scripture.42 Describing his two journeys to the Holy Land he chose at first to emphasise
their difficulties and dangers, saving his praise for the towns he visited. On Cyprus,
though, he was enchanted by ‘the shrubs of that land [which] breathed forth the sweetest
fragrance, for almost all the herbs of that isle are spices of divers sorts, which smell by far
sweetest in the night time, when they are moist with dew’.43 Like most of his companions
he valued cultivated and fruitful landscapes and was disappointed by the arid hills between
Joppa and Jerusalem:
I myself said secretly in my heart: ‘lo, now! this is that land in which is said to flow with milk
and honey; but I see no fields to bring forth bread, no vineyards for wine, no green meadows,
no orchards. Lo! it is all stony, sunburned, and barren’. While I thus silently communed with
myself, ere long the answer came to me, to wit, that this barrenness, drought, and roughness is
the curse laid upon it by God because of the breaking of His commandments . . . 44
On his way to Sinai he eventually succumbed to the fascination of the desert: ‘I confess
that, for my own part,’ he wrote, in language reminiscent of Jerome, ‘I felt more pleasure
in the barren wilderness than I ever did in the rich and fertile land of Egypt, with all its
attractive beauty’.45 For most of his account, though, it is the cities and the customs of their
inhabitants which fascinate him.
 248 M. Gray

A more direct contrast with the typical descriptions of pilgrimage routes can be found
in the surviving Welsh poetry to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys in the Rhondda
valleys of south Wales, which has a clear focus on the natural setting of the shrine.
The poetry is difficult to interpret and translate: it is written in the traditional Welsh verse
form which involves a fiercely complex structure of rhythm, internal rhyme, alliteration
and assonance called cynghanedd (literally ‘singing together’). In all but the most skilled
hands this can result in the poetry deteriorating into formulaic repetition as the writer is
forced to choose words to fit the sound rather than the sense – and it has to be said that
none of the poets who wrote about the shrine at Penrhys was of the first rank. The poetic
language can also be obscure, relying as it does on the piling up of metaphor and reference,
language which depends on resonance to create a ‘thick text’ of description by allusion –
what one of the Penrhys poets, Gwilym Tew, called ei diolch, wead odl a chywydd,
‘the woven thanks of ode and poem’.
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Nevertheless, this vernacular poetry provides us with an important source for the
mentalité of late medieval Welsh society, and the general meaning is usually discernible.
While one might have expected poetry focused on the shrine rather than the route to
foreground the built landscape, the reverse is true in this case. When Gwilym Tew described
the shrine –
Ynys yw Pen-rhys yn nhrwyn y fforest
Bara ‘fferen a dŵr swyn46
- by fforest he may have meant a hunting preserve or (more likely) a wooded area.
The word ynys is even more ambiguous: it is cognate with Gaelic Inish/Inch and derives
from the Latin insula but in Welsh it can mean either ‘island’ or ‘water meadow’. Penrhys
is not an island: but it stands on a high ridge between the two Rhondda valleys which could
be thought of poetically as surrounding it. Nor is there any evidence of water meadows
there, though the shrine in its clearing could be described as being in a meadow.
The island or promontory monastery is a commonplace of early-medieval church
history in the Atlantic region.47 Traditional interpretations of this pattern emphasise the
island as a place of isolation and austerity.48 More recent historians have suggested the
possibility that the Latin insula could mean a small monastery.49 Jonathan Wooding has
challenged this in the context of Caldey but has found a number of later medieval
examples elsewhere of insula/ynys meaning ‘monastery’.50 The word clearly has a
spiritual resonance, meaning a place which is literally sacred, set apart. But it is a holy
place which is set apart by the landscape, not a building or a walled holy city: it is part of
the landscape through which the pilgrim will travel, an accessible heaven, set apart but not
remote. The remainder of Gwilym Tew’s description is clearer: Penrhys is yn nhrwyn y
fforest, on the nose of the forest (this is still how the modern village appears from a
distance, a cleared area below a wooded ridge) and the landscape is blessed by the
sacraments, bara ‘fferen a dŵr swyn, ‘the bread of the Eucharist and holy water’.
Some of this imagery is implicit in the nature and history of the shrine. Penrhys was a
grange of the Cistercian abbey of Llantarnam near Cwmbran in Gwent. It may in fact have
been briefly the home of a monastery. At some point in the middle of the twelfth century,
the Welsh lords of upland Glamorgan gave land to the monks of Margam (itself an
emphatically Norman foundation in the lowlands) to found a daughter house. A charter
from the late 1150s granted land to ‘the brethren of Pendar’, suggesting that the daughter-
house had a brief existence as a separate community. Increasing tension between Welsh
and Anglo-Norman lords probably explains the failure of the foundation. It reverted to the
status of a grange and was eventually passed to the (emphatically Welsh) community
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 249

at Llantarnam.51 It has unfortunately been impossible to locate Pendar: the name means
‘Oakhead’ and could have described virtually any location in the hills around the
Rhondda. However, Penrhys was clearly the location of a major grange establishment by
the beginning of the fourteenth century and could have been the site of the short-lived
monastery.
By the fifteenth century, Penrhys had one of many miraculous statues of the Virgin
Mary, said to have been found in an oak tree and to have refused to be taken from the spot
where it was found.52 Similar stories attached to the statue of Our Lady at Oak, Norwich,
and the possible original, Our Lady of Le Puy. By the time the poets wrote about it, the
statue was accommodated in a chapel on the hilltop, presumably either the grange chapel
or (more likely) a chapel built by the monks for their lay tenants. Excavations in 1913 and
1946/7 located a building which was almost certainly the chapel. A little of its stonework
still survives above ground, built into the wall of the car park by the modern statue. This
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building had buttresses and a stone cross wall which has been interpreted as the foundation
of a narrow chancel arch. It was damaged by fire and rebuilt, probably in the fifteenth
century, and the cross wall removed and replaced by a timber screen.53 Christine James
has suggested that the archaeological evidence and the folk traditions about the shrine are
consistent with a punitive raid by English forces during the Glyndŵr uprising (possibly in
reprisal for the abbot of Llantarnam’s support for Glyndŵr) and that this hypothesis might
also explain the concealment and subsequent (re)discovery of the statue.54
By the sixteenth century, the shrine was the focus of a substantial settlement
(substantial in the context of the Welsh uplands, where late medieval settlement was
usually dispersed). As well as the grange farm and the hospice there was what the
sixteenth-century writer John Leland described as a village;55 Leland was from lowland
England where villages were large and nucleated. A seventeenth-century survey indicates
that the area was still well farmed, though no archaeological evidence has been found for
the actual location of housing.56 There was thus a built landscape around the shrine, and
some of the poets did refer to it by implication. Huw Cae Llwyd, a poet from north Wales,
addressed a poem to ‘Sir David of Penrhys’, presumably the priest in charge of the shrine,
praising his hospitality. The poem implies the existence of a hospice for pilgrims at the
shrine (and we have evidence of this from other sources) but Huw Cae Llwyd says nothing
about the buildings: his interest is in the location and its people.57
Most of the poems to the shrine emphasise the natural as well as divine origins of the
statue. On the one hand, according to Lewys Morgannwg,
Llyna’n wir ei llun o nef
Ni wnâi angel yn nengair
oi ddwylaw fath y ddelw Fair
(There truly is the image from Heaven.
An angel in the Decalogue
would never with his hands make the image of Mary)
but the poet goes on to say that
Fry o’i chuddygl, ferch addwyn,
O fôn dâr ni fynnai’i dwyn58
(From her shrine of oak trunk
she, gentle maid, would not be taken)
Possibly predating the statue was a holy well, which provides much of the natural imagery
relating to the shrine. There is a clear contrast between Rhisiart ap Rhys’s description:
 250 M. Gray

Y mrig craig y mae eirw crych

yn iach anaf a’i chwennych59
(At the top of the rock are foaming waters
Farewell to every defect that desires them!)
and the description of the fountain at Compostela in the Codex Callixtinus:
In fine vero graduum eiusdem paradisi, fons mirabilis habetur, cui similis in toto mundo non
invenitur . . . Que etiam flumina postquam egrediuntur ab oribus leonum ilico labuntur in
eadem conca inferius, et ab hinc exeuntes per quoddam eiusdem conque foramen, subtus
terram recedunt. Sicut videri nequit unde aqua venit, sic nec videri valet quo vadit . . . In
prefata vero columpna he littere scripte hoc modo . . .
EGO BERNARDUS BEATI JACOBI THESAURARIUS HANC AQUAM HUC ADDUXI . . .
(At the foot of the steps is a marvellous fountain which has not its like anywhere in the
world . . . the water coming from the lions’ mouths falls into the basin below, and from there it
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flows away through an opening in the basin and disappears underground, Thus it cannot be
seen where the water comes from, or where it goes . . . Round the column runs the following
inscription . . .
‘I, Bernard, treasurer of St James, brought this water here . . . ’)
The spring at Penrhys is natural, simple, bubbling up from the rock. The fountain at
Compostela is intricate, constructed, the natural origins of the water hidden in favour of
the human actions of Bernard the treasurer. Of course, much of the difference can be
accounted for by the vastly greater resources and international popularity of the shrine at
Compostela. However, there is no suggestion in any of the poetry that the simplicity of the
shrine and well at Penrhys is anything other than appropriate.
Like so many other Marian shrines, Penrhys was on a mountain.60 The surrounding
landscape forms part of the natural imagery in descriptions of the shrine. In Llywelyn ap
Hywel ab Ieuan’s description,
Lle da yw’r wyddfa o’r all[t]
A lle gwŷr gerllaw gorall[t]
Llun y trŵn, lle enaid rhydd,
Llannerch i bum llawenydd
(A goodly place is the summit and its wooded slope
and a virgin sanctuary beside the high wood)61
According to Lewys Morgannwg,
Amla’ man ymyl mynydd
Gwrthiau Fair gwrthfawr a fydd 62
(The mountain’s brow is the place where most frequently
Great Mary’s miracles are precious)
and Rhisiart ap Rhys referred to
Miragl waith ym rig y lan63
(a miraculous work at the top of the bank)
In understanding this imagery we need to bear in mind the highly localised nature of cult
veneration in medieval Wales. As well as the numerous ‘saints’ of the Welsh tradition
(few of them ever formally canonised), saints of the international tradition were ascribed
to sacred locations in Wales. There were legends that both Mary and St Margaret of
Antioch had visited Wales. Mary was reputed to have visited Cydweli, Aberdaron, Rhiw
and Llanfair, on the coast south of Harlech. From Llanfair she was believed to have walked
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 251

inland to Hafod-y-llyn, and where she knelt to pray the prints of her knees could be seen in
the rock and a holy well sprang up. At Aberdaron pilgrims on their way to Bardsey Island
drank from a well where she was supposed to have left a handprint.64 Penrhys was also
presented by the poets as a place where Mary has come to earth – as Lewys Morgannwg
put it,
Yna daethost, fendith fawr,
I’r lle hwn o’r nef i’r llawr65
(Then you came, great blessing,
To this place, from heaven to the ground)
The poets thus use imagery drawn from the shrine’s precise location to construct a clear
sense of place and the natural environment in descriptions of both the route and the shrine,
presenting the natural world as blessing rather than challenge, and sometimes developing
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natural imagery to make quite complex theological points. Gwilym Tew links Mary of the
well with Mary Queen of Heaven:
Mae mewn eirw mam y nawradd66
(She is in foaming water, the mother of the nine spheres)
Lewis Morgannwg draws on the same image to describe the nawnef mewn un ynys
(that problematic word ynys again, ‘nine heavens in one island/meadow’) at the shrine and
invokes the Virgin as Mair i’m hynys, ‘O Mary of my island/meadow’.67 After his lines
about the location of Penrhys and the holy bread and water to be found there, Gwilym Tew
offers a complicated and sometimes frankly obscure description of the shrine. The lines
O’r llwynau gorau eu gwŷdd
Y wyry Fair a’i harferodd
Y wen weddw, nef winwydden,
Brenin hen y brenhinedd 68
(Of groves, its are the best of trees -
The Virgin Mary has used them;
The blessed maid, Vine of Heaven,
The ancient King of Kings)
link Mary’s blessing of the trees with the image of the True Vine (though here it is Mary
rather than Christ himself who is the vine of Heaven): possibly in view of the following
line the reference is to the Tree of Jesse, often depicted in later medieval iconography as a
vine. Rhisiart ap Rhys picks up this imagery of vines and grapes with his description of the
‘foaming waters’ of the well:
Gwin gwyn drwy’r rhewyn a red
gŵyr lladd gwaewyr a lludded 69
(White wine runs in the stream
that can kill pain and fatigue)
The wine is not precisely Eucharistic since it is white, but there is a clear link with Gwilym
Tew’s bara ‘fferen, Eucharistic bread, and with the dŵr swyn, the holy water of baptism.
The description of the well also resonates with the image of Mary as the fons signatus of
the Song of Solomon.
An even more complex and intractable image seems to refer to Gwilym Tew’s route to
the shrine. He begs the Virgin:
A’r dail a’r dŵr, famaeth emprwr, fy maith ympryd;
 252 M. Gray

Wrth lân gyffes, galw o’m hanes, gael ‘y mhenyd

Offrwm prif un rhif o eirw rhyd, graean
O aur ac arian ar ei gwryd70

(With the leaves upon the water, emperor’s nurse, my long fast;

Through holy confession, call forth my history so that I may have as my penance
A chief offering as numerous as the foaming waters of the stony ford
In gold and money upon her fathom rood)
Ward suggests that the leaves may be a divination ritual; there are examples of similar
practices at other holy wells, in Wales and elsewhere.71 The reference to the ford is probably
to the one Gwilym Tew would have crossed on his way from the west. He came from Tir
Iarll, the area around modern Maes-teg. A well-evidenced medieval trackway ran over the
hills above Maes-teg, past Bwlch Garw and Bwlch y Clawdd, to cross the Rhondda Fawr near
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the present town of Ystrad Rhondda, the medieval Ystradyfodwg. Another route from
Maesteg led to the same crossing through Llandyfodwg, where the church still has a
medieval stone carving of a pilgrim.72 By 1540 there was a bridge across the Rhondda Fawr
where these two routes met, but the bridge appears to have been built by the monks of
Llantarnam to meet the needs of pilgrims (once the shrine was destroyed the bridge soon fell
into decay) and was presumably on the line of an earlier ford. Gwilym’s route to the shrine is
penitential, but the rituals of penance are suffused with natural imagery and (I would suggest)
nature is seen not as threat or punishment but as blessing, something to be offered gladly.
Even the wildlife of the hills around the shrine is drawn into the imagery in another
very obscure passage:
A’i Mab ar ei dwrn, medd swrn a sydd
Ymyl ei hadain mal ehedydd73
(literally ‘With her son on her fist, her ankle,
Close to her wing, is like a lark’)
The imagery here is so difficult to interpret that it is tempting to suggest that the text has
actually been corrupted. However, it seems that the infant Jesus is being likened to a hawk
and either Mary or Jesus is compared to a lark. The use of birds as symbols for holiness
was of course a medieval commonplace: the Welsh poet Iolo Goch likened Mary to an
eagle,74 and the goldfinch symbolised Christ’s Passion.75 The range of meanings
suggested for hawks and larks is unfortunately so wide that it is impossible to interpret
Gwilym Tew’s complex image. However, the key point for our argument is that hawks and
larks are specific to the location of the shrine. Wild hawks were common in the upland
woods of south Wales and, if captured, were a prerogative of lordship. And larks still sing
on the moorland above the Rhondda.
Penrhys was a healing shrine and the natural environment is also presented as offering
healing: according to Gwilym Tew,
hon yn dangos yn gnawd effros76
(she [i.e. Mary] is revealed in euphrasy flesh)
Effros is eyebright, euphrasia officinalis, which was used as an eye medicine. (This image
of the Virgin Mary manifesting in a healing herb is reminiscent of her appearance to the
Good Empress with the herb which will cure leprosy;77 and some of Lewis Morgannwg’s
claims for her powers also seem to be pointing to lost miracle stories – something which
I hope to explore elsewhere.) The shrine was notable for healing blindness as well as other
illnesses.
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 253

Gwilym Tew is clear that it is the natural setting of the shrine at Penrhys which
provides healing:
Ym Mhen-rhys, eiriol mewn rhos irwydd
Y di anafir pob dyn ufydd78

(At Penrhys is intercession in a moor of green trees

Every man that exists is made whole)
We are getting dangerously close to suggesting that there is something ‘Celtic’ about the
attitudes to the natural world exemplified in these poems. Susan Power Bratton’s
revisionist studies began with an article on Celtic monasticism,79 and her more recent
work also relies heavily on Irish evidence. This raises the very contested issue of ‘Celtic’
spirituality and identity. Wendy Davies’s demolition job on the whole concept of the
‘Celtic’ church80 has left some historians reluctant to use the word at all. Oliver Davies has
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argued for ‘common patterns of religious sensibility and belief’ in earlier medieval society
in Wales and Ireland, and suggested that one of those common patterns was a distinctive
attitude to the beauty of the natural world. 81 However, more recently, Ian Bradley has
counselled caution and suggested that to identify ‘Celtic’ Christianity as ‘green’ is both
anachronistic and an oversimplification.82
We have unfortunately few ‘Celtic’ pilgrimage accounts to compare with those of
the Codex Callixtinus and the numerous descriptions of the Jerusalem pilgrimage. The
account of the Holy Land which Adomnán of Iona attributed to an otherwise unknown
bishop, Arculf, may not be an account of an actual pilgrimage. Thomas O’Loughlin has
made a convincing case for regarding it as a work geared to explaining sacred topography
in order to facilitate exegesis.83 Nevertheless, as O’Loughlin points out,84 what
distinguishes De Locis Sanctis from its predecessors (such as Eucherius’s De Situ
Hierusolyme) is its appeal to evidence from observation. The description is presented as
being verified by Arculf’s experience of pilgrimage. In this context it does not matter
whether Arculf ‘really’ existed or whether this is a ‘real’ pilgrimage. What matters is that
this is how Adomnán felt a traveller would have experienced the landscape: ‘it allows us to
see how Adomnán imagined his world at the time, and how he then presented it to
others’.85 This is not necessarily to argue that Arculf is merely a literary device: but as a
character he is elusive and inconsistent and may even be a mosaic of different travellers.
Thus, ‘Arculf’s’ emphasis on the built landscape of the Holy Land is entirely
consonant with the purpose of the book, to provide a topographical framework for the
Biblical narrative. While there are occasional references to the natural landscapes of the
Bible – the Mount of Olives, the river Jordan, the Sea of Galilee – the descriptions are
generally brief and practical. The region north of Jerusalem is rough and stony but to the
west are level plains with olive groves. The Mount of Olives has vines and olives and a
luxurious growth of corn and barley.86 The river Jordan, site of Christ’s baptism, is
remarkable mainly for its churches and the bridge by which pilgrims cross; and the waters
of the numinous Sea of Galilee are good for drinking and fishing.87 There is a more lyrical
description of Mount Tabor, ‘herbosus valde et floridus; in cuius amoena summitate ampla
planities silva pergrandi circumcincta habetur’ (exceedingly grassy and flowery, on
whose beautiful summit is a wide plateau surrounded by a very large wood), but the main
part of the description is devoted to a discussion of the monastic buildings and churches
and their relationship to the three tabernacles of the Transfiguration.88 However, it has
to be said that most of Adomnán/Arculf’s descriptions are austerely factual: this is a
handbook of Biblical topography, not an impressionistic description of a journey. The
same factual approach is to be found in the narrative of the fourteenth-century Anglo-Irish
 254 M. Gray

Franciscan Simon Fitzsimmons, who referred briefly to the mountains between Gaza and
Jerusalem ‘where the country is very beautiful to see’ and ‘the most beautiful mountains
on the most fruitful valleys of Jerusalem’ but reserved his highest praise for the buildings
of Egypt and the Holy Land and the relics they contained.89
One possible explanation for the apparent difference in values and perceptions
between descriptions of Compostela and Jerusalem and descriptions of Penrhys lies in the
nature of the shrine and its sacred landscape, with its focus on the holy well as much as
the chapel and statue. Jim Bugslag has pointed to the importance of chthonic elements –
the grotto, the water source – in many Marian shrines in both Eastern and Western
traditions.90 Eastern examples he cites include the Blachernae church in Constantinople
and the monastery of Mega Spelaion in Greece. Western examples include Chartres itself
with the Puits de Sts Forts and the statue of Notre Dame de Sous-Terre in the crypt of the
church.
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Bugslag goes on to discuss the ways in which these natural elements – specific natural
features, the spatial composition of the sacred landscape and its setting – are incorporated
into the built environment of the shrine by a process of socialisation and appropriation by
ecclesiastical institutions so that the natural elements become a key part of the distinctive
pilgrimage experience. Nor are these chthonic elements confined exclusively to Marian
shrines, though the tendency is more marked there than elsewhere. However, in most
medieval descriptions, it is the built environment which has priority. Describing the Virgin
Mary’s tomb in the valley of Jehoshapahat, Ogier d’Anglure mentioned the ‘beautiful
fountain in a beautiful spot’ but went on to say
In this place there is a very large and deep vault . . . in this vault there is a very noble, sacred
and very worthy place, for the sepulchre of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enclosed there in a little
chapel . . . And know that this tomb is well vaulted and well made, and there is a good fountain
within the vault from which people drink as an act of devotion, and there is also an altar right
in the tomb.91
There is a suggestion in Sumption that valuing of the natural world in the context of
pilgrimage may have parallels elsewhere in the Atlantic tradition. He draws parallels
between the urban-rejecting pilgrimage to the desert of Jerome and his followers and
the religious wandering, peregrination pro amore Dei, of early Irish mystics. This was
recognised by contemporaries as a specifically Irish practice: isolated examples can be
found in England and continental Europe as late as the twelfth century but they are usually
traced back to Irish inspiration.92
Comparable imagery from the natural world can be found in poetry to other Welsh
Marian shrines. An anonymous cywydd to the image of the Throne of Grace at
Llanystumdwy in Gwynedd speaks of
Llys Dduw yn llawes y ddol
Llys bradwys lle ysbrydol
Down i’r lann dirion ar wledd Mair . . .
Llann vaen wenn lliw nef waneg
Ystyndwy ywch ystyn deg
(God’s court on the edge of the meadow
Court of paradise, a spiritual place.
We come to the gracious river bank on Mary’s feast . . .
White stone church, the colour of a heavenly wave
Above the fair meander in the river) 93
Much of the imagery is, nevertheless, of a tamed and domesticated landscape: in an image
resonant with the Song of Solomon and its enclosed garden with an orchard of
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 255

pomegranates, Gwilym Tew described Mary as berllan bêr, an orchard of pears.94 In a

poem written in English but using strict Welsh metre, the Welsh student poet Ieuan ap
Hywel Swrdwal described Mary as a ‘fruit-bearing blossom’.95 There may also be a link
between the focus on fruit trees and the image of Aaron’s rod which bore leaves, flowers
and fruit without water, an image which was used to describe Mary’s virginal conception.
Lewys Morgannwg’s image of the ‘nine heavens in one meadow’ may also relate
to the constructed landscape of monastic farming around the pilgrim hospice.
The productive medieval garden was divided into raised beds with paths between.
Stephen Briggs has identified an example of a nine-rig plot at Bwlch-yr-Oerfa, which he
suggests was either the site of Strata Florida’s Cwmystwyth grange or one of its main
holdings.96 While the nine-plot design and Lewys Morgannwg’s image clearly derive
from the same symbolic framework, it is also possible that he was referring specifically to
the hospice garden (and possibly to the plot where euphrasia officinalis was grown for
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the needs of pilgrims?).

Nor did medieval Welsh religious poetry always present nature as a blessing.
According to an anonymous fifteenth-century cywydd, ‘Mair a’n tyn o’r mieri’ – Mary
will pull us from the briars [of sin and condemnation].97 And poetry to the statue of Mary at
Pwllheli (also Gwynedd) has a little more to say about the built environment: the shrine is
Dinas . . . Daear i Fair yw’r dre’ wen
(A citadel . . . this holy town is Mary’s ground)98
We are not therefore looking at a simple contrast between ‘Celtic’ awareness of the beauty
of the natural world and hostility elsewhere in Europe. It could also be argued that we are
not comparing like with like: poetry to a holy well and shrine in the remote Welsh hills will
always have a different discourse from descriptions of the churches in Jerusalem or
Compostela. What this article suggests, though, is that vernacular poetry (where it exists)
may enable us to widen our understanding of the assumptions which underlay medieval
pilgrimage and even to reconsider some of our generalisations about medieval perceptions
of sacred space and the natural environment. A possible next step is a reconsideration of the
substantial corpus of Welsh and Irish poems to the pilgrimage shrines of the international
tradition, in order to explore whether they too reflect appreciation of landscape and the
natural environment.

Notes
1. White, Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,’ 1203– 7.
2. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind.
3. Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500– 1800.
4. LaFreniere, The Decline of Nature.
5. Herlihy, ‘Attitudes towards the Environment in Medieval Society,’ 100– 16, esp. 113– 5.
6. Bratton, Christianity, Wilderness, and Wildlife: the Original Desert Solitaire.
7. Bratton, ‘The Original Desert Solitaire: Early Christian Monasticism and wilderness,’ 31 – 53;
Bratton, ‘Oaks, Wolves and Love: Celtic Monasticism and northern forests,’ 4 – 20.
8. Bratton, Environmental Values in Christian Art.
9. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages; Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts;
Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages.
10. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, 45, 56 – 66.
11. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages; see esp ch 2, ‘The Journey to Rome.’
12. Sumption, Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, 175– 84, 94 – 7.
13. Smith, ‘The Geography and History of Iberia in the Liber Sancti Jacobi,’ quote on p. 24.
14. Chareyron, Les Pèlerins de Jérusalem au Moyen Age. L’aventure du saint voyage d’après
Journaux et memoires.
 256 M. Gray

15. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 3

16. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 25
17. Sumption, Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, 94 – 7.
18. Sumption, Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, 95.
19. Goodich, Violence and Miracle, 106– 10
20. Goodich, Violence and Miracle, 103– 6.
21. Dunn and Davidson, eds, The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages, xvi.
22. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture.
23. Feinberg, Following the Milky Way: a Pilgrimage across Spain, 206.
24. Sallnow, ‘Communitas Reconsidered: the Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage’; see also Sallnow,
Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cusco.
25. For a fuller discussion of these issues see Eade and Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred:
the Anthropology of Pilgrimage; Gray, ‘The pilgrimage as ritual space,’ 91 –7.
26. Bellorini and Hoade, ed. and trans., Fra Niccolò of Poggibonsi, 63, 81.
27. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 14 –15.
28. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Latin MS 3284 f 129, cited in Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome, 1 – 2,
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70; see also Birch, ‘Jacques de Vitry and the Ideology of Pilgrimage’ in Stopford, ed.,
Pilgrimage Explored, 79 – 94.
29. Gerson et al., The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela a critical edition. Vol II:
the text, 22 –3. I have modified the use of u and v in accordance with conventional
Latin orthography.
30. Gerson et al., Pilgrim’s Guide, 22 –5, 30 – 1.
31. Gerson et al., Pilgrim’s Guide, 68 –71.
32. Gerson et al., Pilgrim’s Guide, 26 –7.
33. The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, seigneur d’Anglure, trans. and ed. Browne.
34. Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage, trans. Newett.
35. Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage, trans. Newett, 268.
36. The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 38.
37. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 139.
38. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem 128.
39. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem 105.
40. Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem, 75, 147.
41. The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 40
42. In his ‘Epistle Dedicatory’: see Stewart, trans, The Book of the Wanderings of Felix Fabri
(Circa 1480– 1483 A.D.), vol I (i), 2.
43. Stewart, trans, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, I (i), 194–5
44. Stewart, trans, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, I (i), 274–5
45. Stewart trans, Wanderings of Felix Fabri, II (ii), 512
46. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew: astudiaeth destunol a chymharol o’i lawysgrif, Peniarth 51, ynghyd a
gyndriniaeth a’i farddoniaeth,’ 447.
47. For a discussion see Wooding, ‘Island and coastal churches in medieval Wales and Ireland,’
201– 8. I am grateful to Rachel Gray for this reference.
48. see, for example, Zimmer, The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland.
49. For example, Fawtier, La Vie de Saint Samson: essai de critique hagiographique, 43;
Pierre Florent, ed., La vie ancienne de St Samson de Dol, 179.
50. In discussion at the session ‘Sacred Springs: Natural Water and the Spiritual World’ at the
Leeds International Medieval Congress 2008, and in subsequent personal communication.
51. Cowley, The Monastic Order in South Wales, 1066– 1349, 23 – 4, 27; D. H. Williams,
The Welsh Cistercians, 4; Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales,
An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan. Volume III: Medieval Secular
Monuments. Part ii: Non-defensive, 295– 6.
52. Gray, ‘Penrhys: the archaeology of a pilgrimage,’ 10 – 32, and references therein.
53. Ward, ed., ‘Our Lady of Penrhys,’ Archaeologia Cambrensis; G. J. Jenkins, pers. comm.
54. James, ‘Penrhys: mecca’r genedl,’ 27 – 71. There are clear parallels with the ‘Shepherd’s
Cycle’ legends discussed by Victor Turner, a series of legends concerning the miraculous
discovery of statues of the Virgin in Spain, centuries after they had been hidden from the Arab
advance in Iberia. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, 41 – 2.
55. Toulmin Smith, The Itinerary in Wales of John Leland, 19.
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 257

56. Glamorgan Archive Service, D/D Xcu 5/1.

57. Harris, ed., Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac eraill, 37 – 9. For the hostel see the National Archives
(London) E318/2445.
58. Lake, ed., Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, no 103, p. 507.
59. Williams and Rolant, coll. and ed., Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, no. 5, p. 13.
60. For a discussion of this pattern see Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in
Bismarckian Germany, esp p. 397.
61. Scourfield, ‘Gwaith Ieuan Gethin ab Ieuan ap Leision, Llywelyn ap Hywel ab Ieuan ap Gronw,
Ieuan Du’r Bilwg, Ieuan Rudd a Llywelyn Goch y Dant,’ 53; Williams, The White Monks in
Gwent and the Border, 80.
62. Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, no. 103, p. 507.
63. Williams and Rolant, Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, no. 5, p. 13.
64. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales, 65 – 6.
65. Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii no. 102, p. 503; cf. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and
Spirituality, 54– 5.
66. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 434.
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67. Lake, Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, no. 102, p. 504.

68. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 447.
69. Williams and Rolant, Gwaith Rhys Brydydd a Rhisiart ap Rhys, no. 5, p. 13.
70. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 448.
71. Ward, ‘Our Lady of Penrhys,’ 404; cf. Jones, The Holy Wells of Wales, 107– 14.
72. Royal Commission, Glamorgan III (ii), 356– 7: RO23.
73. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 449.
74. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality, 17.
75. The goldfinch feeds among thistles and thorns and was believed to have plucked a thorn from
the Crown of Thorns; the red feathers on its head were said to have been stained with Christ’s
blood; Werness, ed., The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art, 198.
76. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 448.
77. Heffernan, ed., Le Bone Florence of Rome; cf. Gill, ‘The Wall Paintings in Eton College
Chapel: the Making of a Late Medieval Marian Cycle,’ 173– 201.
78. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew,’ 449.
79. Bratton, ‘Oaks, wolves and love: Celtic monasticism and northern forests,’ 4 – 20.
80. In, for example, ‘The Celtic Church,’ 406– 11.
81. Davies, Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales, v 1, 60 – 3, 84 –8.
82. Bradley, ‘How Green was Celtic Christianity,’ 58 – 69; Bradley, Celtic Christianity: Making
Myths and Chasing Dreams.
83. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places.
84. O’Loughlin, 47, 55 –61.
85. O’Loughlin, 144.
86. Meehan, ed., Adamnan’s De Locis sanctis, 62– 5.
87. Meehan, Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, 86 – 93.
88. Meehan, Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, 96 – 7.
89. Hoad, ed. and trans., Western Pilgrims, 43.
90. Bugslag, ‘Pilgrimage to Chartres: the Visual Evidence,’ 135– 83, esp. pp. 182– 3.
91. The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, 25.
92. Sumption, Pilgrimage: an Image of Medieval Religion, 95 – 7.
93. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality, 63.
94. Jones, ‘Gwilym Tew.’
95. Garlick and Mathias, Anglo-Welsh poetry: 1480– 1990, 45.
96. Briggs, ‘Garden archaeology in Wales,’ 138– 59, plan and discussion of Bwlch-yr-Oerfa on
140 (consulted online at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaresrep/pdf/078/07811005.
pdf on 09.10.08). I am grateful to Stephen Briggs for drawing this to my attention and
discussing its significance. See also Lewys Glyn Cothi’s poem, possibly about Aberglasney, in
Jones, ed., Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi: y Gyfrol Gyntaf, 185, discussed in Briggs, ‘Aberglasney:
the theory, history and archaeology of a post-medieval landscape.’
97. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity, 53.
98. Cartwright, Feminine Sanctity, 65.
 258 M. Gray

Notes on contributor
Dr Madeleine Gray is Reader in History in the University of Wales, Newport. She has a long-
standing interest in pilgrimages and saints’ cults and in the visual imagery of medieval religion. Her
book, Images of Piety, on the iconography of late medieval religion in Wales, was published by BAR
in 2000. More recently, she has published articles on the Last Judgement in medieval Welsh art and
on the politics of medieval hagiography. She is currently working on a study of medieval tombs and
the commemoration of the dead in later medieval Wales. She also leads pilgrimages and has for
many years been involved with the regeneration of the shrine at Penrhys.

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