S. CADOC, AB.
(BETWEEN A.D. 522 AND 590.)
[English and Gallican Martyrologies. Through a strange confusion, S. Cadoc of Wales has been identified with S. Sophias of Beneventum in Italy; because S. Cadoc appears in the Martyrologies as S. Cadoc, at Benavenna (Weedon), and S. Sophias or Sophius Bishop of Beneventum being commemorated the same day, the life given by Bollandus, with hesitation, is a confused jumble of these two saints into one. The best account of S. Cadoc is in Rees "Lives of the Cambro-British Saints;" and in La Ville-marqué's La Légende Celtique. There is also a poem composed in honour of S. Cadoc, by Richard ap Rhys of Llancarvan, between 1450 and 1480, published in the Iolo MSS., p. 301, and the sentences, proverbs and aphorisms of S. Cadoc are to be found in Myvrian Archæology, iii. p. 10. The following epitome of his life is from M. de Montalembert's Monks of the West, with additions from M. de Ville-marqué and corrections from Rees.]
Immediately after the period occupied in the annals of Wales by King Arthur and the monk-bishop David, appears S. Cadoc, a personage regarding whom it is difficult to make a distinction between history and legend, but whose life has left a profound impression upon the Keltic races. His father Gwynllyw Filwr, surnamed the Warrior, one of the petty kings of South Wales, having heard much of the beauty of the daughter of a neighbouring chief, had her carried off by a band of three hundred vassals, from the midst of her sisters, and from the door of her own chamber, in her father's castle. The father hastened to the rescue of his daughter with all his vassals and allies, and soon overtook Gwynllyw, who rode with the young princess at the croup, going softly not to fatigue her. It was not an encounter favourable for the lover: two hundred of his followers perished, but he, himself, succeeded in escaping safely with the lady. Of this rude warrior and this beautiful princess was to be born the saint who has been called the Doctor of the Welsh, and who founded the great monastic establishment of Llancarvan. The very night of his birth, the soldiers, or, to speak more justly, the robber-followers of the king, his father, who had been sent to pillage the neighbours right and left, stole the milch cow of a holy Irish monk, who had no sustenance, he nor his twelve disciples, except the abundant milk of this cow. When informed of this nocturnal theft, the monk got up, put on his shoes in all haste, and hurried to reclaim his cow from the king, who was still asleep. The latter took advantage of the occasion to have his new-born son baptized by the pious solitary, and made him promise to undertake the education and future vocation of the infant. The Irishman gave him the name of Cadoc, (Cattwg,) which means warlike; and then, having recovered his cow, went back to his cell to await the king's son, who was sent to him at the age of seven, having already learned to hunt and fight. The young prince passed twelve years with the Irish monk, whom he served, lighting his fire and cooking his food, and who taught him the rudiments of Latin grammar. Preferring the life of a recluse to the throne of his father, he went to Ireland for three years, to carry on his education at Lismore, a celebrated monastery school, after which he returned to Wales, and continued his studies under a famous Roman rhetorician, newly arrived from Italy. This doctor had more pupils than money; famine reigned in his school. One day poor Cadoc, who fasted continually, was learning his lesson in his cell, seated before a little table, and leaning his head on his hands, when suddenly a white mouse, coming out of a hole in the wall, jumped on the table, and put down a grain of corn; then Cadoc rising, followed the mouse into a cellar, one of those old Keltic subterranean granaries, remains of which are found to this day in Wales and Cornwall. There Cadoc found a large heap of corn, which served to feed the master and his pupils for many days.
Having early decided to embrace monastic life, he hid himself in a wood, where, after making a narrow escape from assassination by an armed swineherd of a neighbouring chief, he saw, near a forgotten fountain, where a white swan floated, an enormous wild boar, white with age, coming out of his den, and make three bounds, one after another, stopping each time, and turning round to stare furiously at the stranger who had disturbed him in his resting place. Cadoc marked with three branches the three bounds of the wild boar, which afterwards became the site of the church, dormitories, and refectory of the great abbey of Llancarvan. The abbey took its name, "The Church of the Stags," from the legend that two deers from the neighbouring wood came one day to replace two idle and disobedient monks who had refused to perform the necessary labour for the construction of the monastery, saying, "Are we oxen, that we should be yoked to carts, and compelled to drag timber?"
The rushes were torn up, the briars and thorns were cut down, and S. Cadoc dug deep trenches to drain the morass formed about the fountain he had discovered. One day, when the chapel he was building was nearly completed, a monk came that way, bearing on his back a leather pouch containing tools for working metal, and some specimens of his handicraft. His name was Gildas. He was the son of a chief in Westmoreland, and his brother, Aneurin, was one day famous among the bards of Britain.[122] Gildas opened his bag and produced a bell. Its form was that of a tall square cap, and it was made of a mixture of silver and copper, not molten, but hammered.
Cadoc took the bell and sounded it, and the note was so sweet that he greatly desired the bell, and asked Gildas to give it him. "No," said the bell-maker; "I have destined it for the altar of S. Peter at Rome." But when Gildas offered the bell to the Pope, the holy father was unable to sound it; then Gildas knew he must give it to the Welsh monk; so he returned to Britain, and offered it to Cadoc, and when he held it, the bell rang sweetly as heretofore.
Llancarvan became a great workshop, where numerous monks, subject to a very severe rule, bowed their bodies under the yoke of continual fatigue, clearing the forests, and cultivating the fields when cleared; it was besides, a great literary and religious school, in which the study of the Holy Scriptures held the van, and was followed by that of the ancient authors, and their more modern commentators. Cadoc loved to sum up, chiefly under the form of sentences in verse and poetical aphorisms, the instructions given to his pupils of the Llancarvan cloister. A great number of such utterances have been preserved. We instance a few. "Truth is the elder daughter of God. Without light nothing is good. Without light there is no piety. Without light there is no religion. Without light there is no faith. The sight of God, that is light." "Without knowledge, no power. Without knowledge, no wisdom. Without knowledge, no freedom. Without knowledge, no beauty. Without knowledge, no nobility. Without knowledge, no victory. Without knowledge, no honour. Without knowledge, no God." "The best of attitudes is humility. The best of occupations is work. The best of sentiments, pity. The best of cares, justice. The best of pains, peacemaking. The best of sorrows, contrition. The best of characters, generosity." When one of his disciples asked him to define love, he answered, "Love, it is Heaven." "And hate?" asked his disciple. "Hate is hell." "And conscience?" "It is the eye of God in the soul of man." "The best of patriots," said S. Cadoc, "is he who tills the soil."
When a chief at the head of a band of robbers, came to pillage Llancarvan, S. Cadoc went against him with his monks armed with their harps, chanting and striking the strings. Then the chief recoiled, and left them unmolested. Another chief, enraged at Cadoc receiving his son into his monastery, came with a force to reclaim the youth and destroy the cloister. Cadoc went to meet him, bathed in sunshine, and found the chief and his men groping in darkness. He gave them light, and they returned ashamed to their homes.
Cadoc had the happiness of assisting in the conversion of his father. In the depths of his cloister he groaned over the rapines and sins of the old robber from whom he derived his life. Accordingly he sent to his father's house three of his monks, to preach repentance. His mother, the beautiful Gwladys, was the first to be touched, and it was not long before she persuaded her husband to agree with her. They called their son to make to him a public confession of their sins, and then, father and son chanted together the psalm, "Exaudiat te Dominus"—"The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble." When this was ended, the king and queen retired into solitude, establishing themselves in two cabins on the bank of a river, where they worked for their livelihood, and were often visited by their son.
The invasion of the Saxons obliged S. Cadoc to fly, first to the island of Flat-holmes in the Bristol Channel, and then into Brittany, where he founded a new monastery, on a little desert island of the archipelago of Morbihan, which is still shown from the peninsula of Rhuys; and to make his school accessible to the children of the district, who had to cross to the isle and back again in a boat, he threw a stone bridge four hundred and fifty feet long across this arm of the sea. In this modest retreat the Welsh prince resumed his monastic life, adapting it especially to his ancient scholarly habits. He made his scholars learn Virgil by heart: and one day, while walking with his friend and companion, the famous historian Gildas, with his Virgil under his arm, the abbot began to weep at the thought that the poet, whom he loved so much, might be even then perhaps in hell. At the moment when Gildas reprimanded him severely for that "perhaps," protesting that without any doubt Virgil must be damned, a sudden gust of wind tossed Cadoc's book into the sea. He was much moved by this accident, and, returning to his cell, said to himself, "I will not eat a mouthful of bread, nor drink a drop of water, till I know truly what fate God has allotted to one who sang upon earth as the angels sing in heaven." After this, he fell asleep, and soon after, dreaming, he heard a soft voice addressing him, "Pray for me, pray for me," said the voice, "never be weary of praying; I shall yet sing eternally the mercy of the Lord."
The next morning a fisherman brought him a salmon, and the Saint found in the fish the book which the wind had snatched out of his hands.
After a sojourn of several years in Brittany, Cadoc left his new community flourishing under the government of another pastor, and to put in practice that maxim which he loved to repeat to his followers:—"Wouldst thou find glory? march to the grave." He returned to Britain, not to find again the ancient peace and prosperity of his beloved retreat of Llancarvan, but to establish himself in the very centre of the Saxon settlements, and console the numerous Christians who had survived the massacres of the Conquest, and lived under the yoke of a foreign and heathen race. He settled at Weedon, in the county of Northampton;[123] and it was there that he awaited his martyrdom. One morning, when vested in the ornaments of his priestly office, as he was celebrating the Divine Sacrifice, a furious band of Saxon cavalry, chasing the Christians before them, entered pell-mell into the church, and crowded towards the altar. The Saint continued the sacrifice as calmly as he had begun it. A Saxon chief, urging on his horse, and brandishing his lance, went up to him and struck him to the heart. Cadoc fell on his knees; and his last desire, his last thought, were still for his dear countrymen. "Lord," he said, while dying, "invisible King, Saviour Jesus, grant me one grace,—protect the Christians of my country!"
S. Paul, after a Bronze in Christian Museum in the Vatican.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] 2 Tim. iii. 14.
[118] 1 Thess. iii. 2; 1 Cor. iv. 17.
[119] Acts xviii.
[120] Rev. ii. 1, 7.
[121] Hist. Eccl. v. c. 19: also Socrates, Eccl. Hist. iii. 19.
[122] The Gododdin, a poem descriptive of the massacre of the British chiefs at Stonehenge by Hengest, was composed by Aneurin whilst in prison.
[123] The ancient name of Weedon having been Benavenna, this has helped to cause the confusion which arose between S. Cadoc and S. Sophias of Benevento in Italy.
[January 25.]
Conversion of S. Paul.
S. Artemas, M., at Puteoli.
SS. Juventine and Maximus, MM., at Antioch, a.d. 362.
S. Publius, Ab. of Zeugma, in Syria, 4th cent.
S. Apollo, Ab. in Egypt, circ. a.d. 395.
S. Mares, Ab. in Syria, 5th cent.
S. Præjectus, B., and Companions, at Clermont, a.d. 674.
S. Poppo, Ab. of Stavelot, in Belgium, a.d. 1048.
B. Henry of Suso, O.S.D., at Ulm, in Germany, a.d. 1365.