Wales and Monasticism

Extract

Wales, as a separate people of definite historical characteristics, owes its origin under God to the accidental results of an invasion of Britain by pagan peoples from overseas. From statements by Tertullian and Origen, not to mention many other later Christian continental writers, it is safe to say that Christianity had reached Britain before the close of the second century. Its introduction is not to be ascribed to any of the pious personages who figure in the earlier or later fanciful medieval tales of Glastonbury, such as Lucius, but has to be credited in sober fact to innumerable and unknown Christians, travellers and immigrants from the Continent for the most part. These travellers and those religiously influenced by them, gradually, it is clear, formed themselves into Christian communities, each with its own bishop and presbyters and deacons. These communities of simple folk sowed the seeds of the Christian religion in many parts of Britain while Borne was still a power in the land.

The members, and still more the founders, of these British Churches were not monks, for the very simple but cogent reason that the day of continental, much less British, monasticism had not yet arrived. Monasticism was a forward movement within an existing church. It originated in Egypt in the third century; it spread westwards through Italy and Spain into Gaul (modern France), and thence through the disciples of St Martin of Tours and the influence of Larins and Marseilles, it came to Britain about A.D. 420 or soon afterwards. (Cf. Introduction to The History of Wales, A. H. Williams, Vol. I.)