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Gerald of Wales.

The Journey Through Wales.
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Describes a journey made by the author in 1188.

Gerald was the companion of Baldwin, Archbishop of
Canterbury.

'It is a remarkable fact that this church, like so many
in Ireland and Wales, has a layman as what is called
its abbot.......We found the church of Llanbadarn
Fawr reduced to this sorry state.

An old man called Ednywain ap Gweithfoed was
usurping the office of abbot, while his sons
officiated at the altar.

In the reign of King henry I, when the English were
still in control of Wales, Saint Peter's
monastery in Gloucester administered this church in peace and
tranquillity. After Henry's death the English were
driven out and the monks expelled.

As I have explained, laymen took forcible possession
of the church and brought in their own clergy.'

On the devotion of the Welsh.......

When a loaf of bread is put before them, they break off
a piece and give it to the poor.

They sit down three to a meal in honour of the
Holy Trinity.

When they meet a monk or priest, or any religious
in his habit, they stretch out their arms, bow and
ask his blessing.

When they marry, or go on a pilgrimage, or, on the
advice of the clergy, make a special effort to
amend their ways, they give a donation of one
tenth of all their worldly goods, cattle, sheep
and other livestock. This partition of their
property they call the Great Tithe. They give two thirds
of it to the church in which they were baptized and the
remaining third to the bishop of their diocese.

Of all pilgrimages they prefer going to Rome.

They pay greater respect than any other people to
their churches, to men in orders, the relics of the
saints, bishops' crooks, bells, holy books and the
Cross itself.

The more important churches offer sanctuary for as far
as cattle can go to feed in the morning and then return
at night. If any man has earned the hatred of his
prince and is in danger of death, he may apply to the
church for sanctuary and it will be freely granted
to him and to his family.

Many people abuse this immunity. From their place of
sanctuary they sally forth on foraging expeditions,
harassing the whole countryside.

Nowhere can you see hermits and anchorites more
spiritually committed than in Wales.

When she heard that the Archbishop had come, an old woman
of those parts, who had been blind for three years, sent her son to
the place where the sermons were to be delivered, with orders
that he should bring back something belonging to the Arch-
bishop, if only a thread pulled from his vestments. The crowd
was so great that the young man could not come near to the
Archbishop. When everyone had gone home, he carried back to
his mother the piece of turf on which the Archbishop had stood
when he gave the sign of the Cross. She received this gift with
great joy. She knelt down facing the east, prayed to God and
pressed the turf to her mouth and eyes. So great were her faith
and her devotion, and so strong was the miraculous power of the
Archbishop, that she immediately regained the blessing of her
sight, which she had lost completely.

When we were travelling from Carmarthern to the Cistercian
monastery called Whitland, the Archbishop was told by
messengers of how a young Welshman, who was coming to meet
him in all devotion, had been murdered on the way by his
enemies. He turned aside from the road, ordered the bloody
corpse to be wrapped in his almoner's cloak, and with pious
supplication commended the soul of the murdered youth to
heaven. The next day 12 archers from the nearby castle of
St Clears, who had killed the young man, were signed with the
Cross in Whitland as a punishment for their crime.