A rather charming twitter post from here, about a saint unknown to me:
In Wales, the 27th of May is the feast day of St Melangell, the patron saint of hares.
St Melangell’s patronage of hares is attributed to a story of how she protected a hare (under her dress) from a pack of snarling hunting dogs belonging to a Welsh prince, named Brochwel. After hearing how she came to be in Wales (she was an Irish princess who had fled an arranged marriage in Ireland) Prince Brochwel granted her the land on which she was standing.
There, St. Melangell founded – and became abbess to – a community of nuns. She lived out her life in this place and community, until her death, 37 years later.
Hares and other wild animals behaved as though tamed in St. Melangell’s company, and miracles were attributed to them.
Her church still stands today at Pennant Melangell in the Berwyn Mountains, and remains a place of pilgrimage.
Art by Jemima Jameson
St Melangell, by Jemima Jameson
This led me to wonder how we know all this, and what the literary source for it might be.
St Melangell appears to be a Welsh-only saint. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints gives her feast day as May 27.
Her legend is preserved in a 15th century Latin text, the Historia Divae Monacellae, – the use of “divus” itself indicating a 15th century date or later. This is not included in the Acta Sanctorum. There is a well-referenced Wikipedia article about the text.
The most recent text and translation of the Historia is H. Pryce, “A New Edition of Historia Divae Monacellae”, in: Montgomeryshire Collections 82 (1994) p. 23–40. Montgomeryshire Collections is the journal of the Powysland Club, who have a web page about it here.
I rather despaired of locating the Pryce article, but I was quite wrong. The National Library of Wales have a collection of Welsh Journals Online. The interface is a bit awkward, but if you drill down the Montgomeryshire Collections are here.
Volume 82 is here, with one of those useless online browsers that civil servants try to foist on us and that neither they nor anybody else uses. More usefully there is a text version of the material also, although I did not look at this.
There is a direct permalink to the article at hdl:10107/1271085.
It does not seem possible to download the whole volume. But there is a way to download individual articles, which is easy to miss, easier to forget, and hard to find. I’ve done it twice now, and am struggling to remember how right now. Poking at the site…
Oh yes… found it. There’s a list of volumes on the left. But if you scroll that list down, until vol. 82 is visible, there’s a list of articles in the current volume off-screen underneath! Then click on it, get the article, and then click on the download link at the bottom.
The PDF contains the whole article, although it is not searchable. But no matter.
I must say that I am deeply impressed with the National Library of Wales. I suspect they operate on a shoestring budget, but if you want access to Welsh sources, they are very much your friends and allies. The glitches here do not matter. The great thing is that this obscure journal is accessible!
Let’s give the translation by Huw Pryce of the text here.
THE HISTORY OF ST MONACELLA
Once upon a time there was in Powys a most illustrious prince by the name of Brochwel Ysgithrog, also earl of Chester, who was living in the town called at that time Pengwern Powys, now in fact Shrewsbury, and whose residence or dwelling stood where the College of St Chad the bishop is now situated. But the same excellent prince gave in alms, and conceded in perpetuity for himself and his heirs, his aforesaid residence or manor by his own pure generosity for the use and service of God.
When at length on a certain day in AD 604 the said prince had gone hunting to a certain place, called Pennant in Welsh, within the said principality of Powys, and where the hunting dogs of the same prince had aroused a hare, he and the dogs pursued the hare until they came to a certain large and thorny bramble bush. In that bramble bush indeed he found a certain virgin beautiful in appearance praying as devoutly as possible, and given up to divine contemplation, together with the said hare lying down under the hem or girdle of her garment, with its face turned towards the dogs boldly and calmly. Then as the prince [camel shouting, ‘Catch it, pups, catch it!’, the more he shouted to urge them on, the more distant and farther away the dogs retreated and fled from the little animal howling. Finally the prince, totally astonished, asked the virgin for how long she had lived on his lands alone in such a wilderness. The virgin said in reply, ‘For the past fifteen years, nor have I looked at the face of a man at all during that time.’
Afterwards he asked the same virgin whose [daughter) she was, and where she had been born and come from. And she replied with all humility that she was from Ireland, the daughter of the king of lowchel, ‘And because my father had decided [that I should be given) as a wife to a great and noble man of Ireland, fleeing my native soil, God leading, I came here to serve God and the spotless Virgin with my heart and a clean body for as long as I remain.’ Then the prince asked the name of the virgin, to which she said in reply that her name was Monacella.
Then the prince, considering from the depths of his heart the well-being of the virgin in her solitude, broke forth into these words: ‘O most worthy virgin Monacella, I have discovered that you are a true handmaiden of God and the most truthful worshipper of Christ. Whence inasmuch as it pleased the highest and greatest God to bestow on a courageous hare, by your merits, safe conduct to this place and protection from the attack and pursuit of tearing and biting dogs, I give and donate these my lands to you with as willing a mind as possible for the service of God, and so that there shall be a perpetual asylum, refuge and protection in honour of your name, excellent virgin. And let no king nor prince be so rash or foolhardy towards God that he presume to drag out to anywhere any man or woman fleeing thither desiring to delight in and enjoy your protection in these lands, as long as they do not contaminate or pollute your sanctuary or asylum. If, on the other hand, any guilty person enjoying your sanctuary shall go out to do any kind of wrong, then let the free tenants called abbots of your sanctuary (who alone have cognizance of the crimes of those persons), if they shall find them to be guilty and culpable in this regard, endeavour to hand over and deliver them for punishment to the officials of Powys.’
This virgin Monacella most pleasing to God lived a solitary life, as mentioned before, in the same place for thirty-seven years and the hares, wild little animals just like tame or gentle beasts, were friends with her every day throughout her life, through whom even, with the assistance of divine clemency, miracles of different kinds are not lacking to those invoking help and the favour of good-will with the deepest feeling of heart.
After the death of the said illustrious Brochwel, his son Tysilio held the principality of Powys, then Cynan, Tysilio’s brother, afterwards Tambryd, then Curmylk and Durres the lame. All of these decreed that the said place of Pennant Melangell should be a perpetual sanctuary, asylum or most secure refuge of the wretched, confirming the acts of the said prince. The same virgin Monacella took pains with all care and diligence to institute and establish certain virgins in the same region so that they might live holily and chastely, persevering in the love of God; intent upon divine services, they used to spend their days and nights doing nothing else.
Then, as soon as the virgin Monacella herself departed from this life, a certain person by the name of Elise came to Pennant Melangell, who, desiring to ravish, seize and defile the same virgins, came to an end most wretchedly and perished suddenly.
Whoever has violated the aforementioned liberty and protected holy place of the said virgin has rarely been seen to avoid divine vengeance in this region, as one can perceive every day.
Praises to the most high God and his virgin Monacella!
“Once upon a time” is a rather loaded translation of “olim”, I think! The text is rather notably concerned with property rights, as monastic texts so often are.
Welsh saints are something about which few of us know much. Still interesting to see, however.
