The Saint as Secular Ruler

WELSH saints were, in the main, real men and women living in the fifth and sixth centuries, whose lives took on traditional patterns and who served not simply as the protagonists of religious narrative, but rather as Christianized folk heroes.' The traditions which grew up around them have been recorded in a wide variety of forms, ranging from twelfth-century prose vitae, through the medieval verse of the Gogynfeirdd (the poets of the independent Welsh courts) and the Cywyddwyr (the later fourteenth to sixteenthcentury poets of the Welsh gentry), on through seventeenth and eighteenth-century antiquarians' reports, to modern field collections. Examination of the biographical pattern which emerges in these traditions, particularly when compared with that of the secular hero, reveals that the hagiographical pattern is essentially the same as the basic IndoEuropean heroic pattern, though there are certain differences necessitated by the requirements of both Welsh culture and the sanctity of the hero.2 The basic stages of the pattern are conception and birth; childhood; demonstrating maturity; going out in the world; conflict with secular powers; ruling a territory; and death. Several of these stages involve the saint with the concerns of secular rule, and it is this aspect of the saint's life which will be examined in this study. The Welsh saint has a very ambiguous relationship to secular power. He comes of royal lineage, but as a sanctified figure concerned with the next world, he must shun secular power and the trappings of this world. Saintly children turn away from the affairs of their fathers' courts and berate their elders for continuing their earthly practices; heirs flee their fathers' kingdoms; kings abandon their thrones. For example, Cadog, from earliest childhood, turns from the secular cares of his father's court, desiring to serve God rather than rule men.3 And later, when his uncle Paul Penychen asks him to set aside the service of religion and take on his rightful role as ruler of the kingdom, Cadog refuses, asking only for enough land for a single hut.4 Tatheus, called to his father's deathbed by the court in order to take over the care of govermnent, refuses the kingdom and embarks for Wales.5 Lewis Glyn Cothi records the same decision for Lleuddad: Gwrthodes a gwyrth ydoedd dyrnas ei dad, erns Duw oedd.6

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