The Cult of Saints in Wales: medieval Welsh-language sources and their transmission

This project is concerned with medieval Welsh-language literature devoted to the veneration of saints. Saints, holy men and women who offered believers a direct link between heaven and earth, were central to the culture of Christian societies in pre-Reformation Europe and beyond, and study of the origins, nature and development of saints' cults is flourishing internationally. The Welsh sources, however, are at best partially known: some texts have never been edited, others languish in inaccessible publications, and many are available only to Welsh-speakers. By producing a freely available online digital resource, with editions and English translations of the 100 or so texts which make up the corpus, we aim to delineate a significant tradition, and to make it widely available for comparative study.

The Welsh tradition is a particularly interesting one. Any visitor to the country knows that it is a 'land of saints' - Padarn, Dewi, Illtud and the rest crowd onto the map in a way quite unlike most parts of Europe. Native Welsh saints are numerous and their stories often colourful and compelling: Beuno, skilled in replacing severed heads; Collen, who holds talks in the castle of the King of the Underworld; Cynhafal, renowned for the slaying of the famous giant Benlli Gawr and praised for his help in soothing rheumatism. Moreover, as elsewhere, international saints are accepted and sometimes given a local setting: Margaret of Antioch suffered martyrdom in Monmouthshire according to one fifteenth-century poet, for instance. Such tales give an insight into the tastes, beliefs, concerns and fears of those who wrote and read or heard them. They also bring to life a detailed medieval landscape because the deeds of the saints tend to be tied to particular churches, landscape features and place-names, many of which can still be recognised.

The body of Welsh-language material consists of three main genres, two of which are highly unusual from an international perspective. The 60 or so poems addressed to saints are apparently a unique response to the phenomenon of cults from within the strongly rooted Welsh institution of praise poetry. Similarly the collections of saints' pedigrees - lists, usually regionally arranged, giving family relationships and occasional further associations - are paralleled in western Europe only in Ireland: again their development must be linked to a pre-existing tradition of secular genealogical collections in both Wales and Ireland. The third text-type is much more international: prose lives of saints, some 34 of which survive in Welsh, many, if not all of them translated or adapted from Latin originals, though in a good number of cases the originals either do not survive, or have not been identified. Here is an opportunity to study in detail how the Welsh tradition assimilated a genre, and indeed individual texts, well-known from elsewhere.

This project, then, aims in the first place to present editions of all of these texts, with extensive bilingual notes and full translations into English (and also, in the case of the verse, into modern Welsh). The introduction to each text will discuss its date, authorship, manuscript context(s), and its relationship to other texts and traditions both in Wales and elsewhere. There will be digital images of many of the manuscripts and separate discussions of the more important codices.

The greater aim is to raise awareness of the interest and importance of these Welsh sources both inside and outside Wales. The website, which will host the digital edition, will also hold a range of related material (such as medieval and modern images of the saints and maps that show dedications and place-name patterns) designed to be of interest to a wide range of audiences. The work will be further advertised by a programme of conferences, open days around the country and an exhibition at the National Library of Wales.

Research into the saints of Wales has the potential to impact on a range of organisations in the country's heritage, education and tourism sectors. We have existing contacts with 3 national bodies which have a stake in history and heritage: CADW, the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments, and the National Museum. All 3 are committed to educational outreach and to promoting an understanding of Welsh history. Their particular interest in the built environment meets, at churches and shrines, our interest in cult and religious practice. Co-I Cartwright has already worked with CADW on their 'Pan-Wales Heritage Implementation Plan: Celtic Saints, Spritual Place and Pilgrimage', and they are interested in building the status of several places associated with Welsh saints. Co-I Lewis and RAs Edwards and Salisbury have worked on outreach events in collaboration with CADW and the Commission, setting medieval verse in original locations, and PI Parsons is working with the Commission to 'crowd-source' information on Welsh place-names. At the National History Museum, the example of Llandeilo Tal-y-Bont, a medieval church rebuilt at the St Fagans site, and reconstructed and decorated in the light of traditions of Teilo and other saints, excellently illustrates how research in this field can reach the public in the heritage/tourism sector.

The project will therefore impact on heritage professionals in these bodies, and via them, their public. We will ensure that our research reaches Visit Wales, part of the Assembly Government's Heritage Department, and the dioceses of the Church in Wales and the Catholic church, especially through the charity Churches Tourism Network Wales. Faith tourism is a growing phenomenon, and like all tourism can bring economic benefit to nearby amenities. Librarians, archivists and teachers - all of those who in professional life offer information on the cultural, social, religious or linguistic history of Wales - will also benefit from, and pass on, an awareness of our work.

A more direct interface with a public that already shares cultural and historical interests will be through contact with local historical societies around the country.

Schoolchildren throughout Wales are taught Welsh, and the Assembly Government has a robust Welsh Language Strategy. We shall aim to promote our work to the offices of the Welsh Language Commissioner and the Education Minister, as our texts can give a local context and relevance to Welsh-language traditions. An association with particular places and feast-dates lends the topic well to focused project-work.

Our research can affect these bodies and people:

1) By offering free and bilingual access to little-known but fascinating medieval texts, most of them with clear links to surviving places, institutions or landscapes. The educational value of this is clear, and a map-interface on the website will offer appropriate access for all whose interests are local, regional or related to tourism.
2) By offering a range of related resources on the saints which relates our specific research to an extensive network of cultural associations across Wales.
3) Traditions of the saints play a central role in the early story of Wales, and have played a significant part in constructing national identity. Our work will affect all who want to understand and/or tell that story.
4) The local nature of cults mean that impact will be particularly felt at that level: the work will foster an appreciation of local heritage and feed into community identity.
5) Disseminating up-to-date research to heritage and IS professionals, no less than to the public, is of particular value in this field in which outdated and incomplete information is widely repeated.

The project will also serve as an exemplar of digital transformation of humanities research, by the development of a state of the art electronic edition integrated with contextual digital content from a variety of sources.