The British refugees remind us of Æneas whom tradition represents as bringing with him his Lares and Penates to Italy. The Dumnonian immigrants brought with them the cult of their own insular saints. At a later period Brittany was able to make a return in kind. Pol Aurelian, Sampson, Columba, Meriadec, Corentin and others of Breton fame were received into the devotional system of Cornwall.
Not only were the Breton and Cornish people one in origin, tradition, language and religious sentiment, they were one in their Celtic ideal of the priestly and religious life. Theirs no less than that of the Welsh and Irish was the monastic ideal. Every Cornish place-name bearing the prefix lan, together with some place-names bearing the prefix nan, implies a monastic foundation. Lanisley, Landithy, Lanhydrock, Lanherne and Landegy, Nancekuke and Nansladron are a few examples which show that the quasi-monastic foundations of Domesday Book were only modified survivals of what was in the sixth century the accepted ecclesiastical type, a type which continued to exist apparently long after the parochial system made its appearance. A body of celibate clergy, living in community, observing a religious rule and entrusted with the care of souls over an ill-defined area will probably represent the normal, just as an anchorite living solitary with a view to the perfecting of his soul in holiness will represent the abnormal development of the monastic ideal. We have no means of estimating the number of monks whose segregation constituted a Cornish lan. It is probable that the communities were small as compared with those of Wales and Ireland. The great monastery of Bangor Iscoed on the Dee had, according to the Venerable Bede, at the beginning of the seventh century no less than 2100 monks. Clonard, in the county of Meath, founded by St. Finnian about the year 520, is said to have been larger. It may be extravagance on the part of the biographer of St. Patrick to state that the saint enjoined a levy of a tithe of the men as well as a tithe of the land for the support of the Church,[[45]] but there can be no doubt that a very considerable fraction of the Celtic population embraced the religious life. At the same time we shall probably arrive at a false economic inference unless we bear in mind the tripartite division of the monk’s day which required one-third of it to be spent in manual labour.
Professor Loth, as the result of a careful study of Breton toponomastic, has arrived at the conclusion that the Armorican parishes were placed as early as the sixth and seventh century under the invocation of the saints—national, emigrant, or otherwise—whose names they still bear.[[46]] It is therefore possible, I think probable, that the Cornish parish is older than the English. The reforms of Archbishop Theodore (668-690) which resulted in the subdivision of dioceses and the formation of parishes, were begun though not completed a little less than a century later. Cornwall and Wales were unaffected by these reforms, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s jurisdiction not being acknowledged by Cornwall until the days of Egbert (803-839), or by Wales until the beginning of the twelfth century.
In the absence of clear historical evidence it would be rash to assert that every development in Wales, Brittany and Ireland was followed by a corresponding development in Cornwall, but where the same religious influences were at work in every other Celtic-speaking country it may be assumed that those influences were at work in Cornwall, and the receptivity of the Cornish in the matter of religion, when the influence was held to come from the right quarter, is witnessed by the readiness wherewith they admitted Welsh, Irish and Breton saints into their hagiologies.
At the time under discussion it will be borne in mind that the saints reverenced in Cornwall were almost if not wholly Celtic. Even at the present time, in spite of the Saxon conquest and the submission to Canterbury, in spite of the attempt to substitute saints from the Roman Kalendar for the Celtic patrons of Cornish churches in the fourteenth century, and in spite of the ignorant perversion of spelling and the abortive attempts at identification on the part of the English registrars who conducted the business of the bishop’s court at Exeter, it is a matter for wonder and gratitude that so many Cornish churches should still be known by their ancient saints’ names.
If we compare the dedications of Derbyshire with those of Cornwall we find that of the 168 ancient churches in the former county, 72 are under the invocation of Scriptural saints, 18 under St. Michael, 28 under All Saints, 34 under historical saints like Martin, Lawrence and Giles and about 16 under English and Saxonised saints, like Edmund, Oswald, Wilfrid, Werburgh and Cuthbert.
On the other hand, in Cornwall, of the 200 dedications 30 are Scriptural, less than 30 are strangers (either historical and non-English like Martin, German and Clement, or aggressively English, like Morwenna, Werburgh, Swithun and Neot, or Saxonised like Cuthbert, Olave, Odulph and Hugh) and the rest, more than two-thirds of the total number, are Celtic. Nor is it difficult to account for the presence of the Saxon element. The monastic ideal presented by Werburgh the abbess and by Cuthbert the abbot-bishop would appeal to the prevailing monastic temper, while the early settlement of Saxons in the north-eastern portion of the county, of which we have abundant proof in its toponomastic (e.g. in Morwenstow, Jacobstow, Aldestow and Neotstou) and in the will of King Alfred (871-901) whose possessions in Triconshire (the hundred of Trigg which at that time probably embraced the hundred of Stratton) are expressly mentioned, will account for saints like Neot, Swithun and Morwenna who probably displaced the Celtic saints of an earlier period.
Before passing to what is of greatest interest—the Celtic episcopate—a few words are required respecting the two great controversies, which, however trivial in themselves, served the purpose of furnishing records of a period concerning which records are very scarce.
The Easter no less than the Tonsure controversy was one of the results of the isolation of Celtic Christianity. In order to find Easter the Roman Church had, until the year 457, used the old Jewish cycle of 84 years. In that year a cycle of 532 years was adopted. The Welsh and Cornish, who had received their Christianity during the Roman occupation of Great Britain, and therefore long before 457, continued to use the Jewish cycle. They refused to conform to the Roman use and persisted in their refusal for a very considerable period. Ireland, which had also become Christian before 457, was the first to adopt the Roman Easter in 633. Cornwall followed in or about 705, as the result of St. Aldhelm’s famous letter to Geruntius, prince of Dumnonia. North Wales held out until 768 and South Wales until 777.[[47]] Mr. Haddan, who identifies the “errores” of bishop Leofric’s Missal (909) with the “egregium errorem Brittonum” of Bede’s history, is inclined to the opinion that St. Aldhelm’s letter was inoperative outside the Kingdom of Wessex;[[48]] but the opinion is open to dispute.
The shaving of the head does not appear to have been associated with the Christian ministry until the fourth century. The apostolic injunction respecting long hair was observed, but it was the monks who introduced the tonsure which, at first, was a tonsure of the entire head and known as that of St. Paul. St. Peter’s tonsure, which allowed to the shaven ecclesiastic an aureole or crown of hair around the denuded pate, was not introduced until the sixth century. Long before this time, however, the monks of the Celtic world had become distinguished by a tonsure which apparently made bare the fore part only of the head and left a semicircular fringe in front. The Celtic tonsure was taken by the British refugees to Brittany and Galicia. It was as characteristic of the Celtic clergy as the kilt is characteristic of Scottish soldiers to-day. Its origin was almost certainly Druidical, and, if so, it is one of the few shreds of evidence we possess of the presence of Druids in Cornwall. Their presence in Great Britain at an earlier period is generally allowed; their presence and power in Ireland is conclusively proved.