[I wrote the following for the St Dogmael's day service at St Dogmael's church, Mynachlogddu, 2024. A list of sources follows the text.]
The man we remember as “St Dogmael” lived about 1500 years ago; he came from a royal family in what is now West Wales; and he chose to dedicate his life to God. Other than these three relatively reliable facts, we know very little about him; but we can surmise much more.
St Dogmael was born around 500 AD, somewhere near Aberteifi (Cardigan). One of his cousins, Serwyl ab Usai, was the reigning King of Ceredigion. And, according to the monk Gildas (a historian and a contemporary of St Dogmael’s) the reigning King of Dyfed – roughly contiguous with modern Pembrokeshire – was a man called Vortiporius, whom Gildas condemned as a “tyrant” and a “spotted leopard”.
Across the Atlantic Ocean in Central America, the Maya civilization was in the midst of its Classic period; in Arabia, Muhammad was yet to be born in Mecca; and to the north, the frozen volcanic wastes of Iceland had yet to be discovered by Irish monks – let alone by vikings. In Prydain (Britain), this was a turbulent time: the last men who recalled Roman rule were dead, and the petty kingdoms of sub-Roman Britain faced incursions along the Western shores from the Irish, in the Northern borderlands from the Picts, and all across the Southeast from Germanic-speaking pagan tribes migrating from the European mainland.
Welsh genealogies name St Dogmael as a son of Ithel, ap Ceredig, ap Cunedda Wledig. From this we can establish two likely facts: One, that via their grandfather King Ceredig of Ceredigion, Dogmael was first cousin to Dewi Sant (Saint David), now patron saint of Wales. Two: that Dogmael was in the royal line of Cunedda, the warrior-king who came to Gwynedd to fight the Irish from the Kingdom of Ystrad Clud (or “Strathclyde” in what is now Southwest Scotland). We could also guess that St Dogmael was named after his great uncle Dogmael, one of Cunedda’s sons who established a minor kingdom in northeast Wales along Afon Clwyd. (Unless “Dogmael” was a common name then; which it doesn’t seem to have been.)
Historian Emily Pritchard, writing in 1907, suggests the name “Dogmael” was a hybrid of the Latin word “Doctus” (meaning “wise”) and the Welsh “mael” (meaning “mail, or metalwork”), indicating a master artificer or smith – but perhaps the latter syllable “mael” – as in the names Cadfael, and Maelgwn – means “prince”, thus “wise prince”; a rather more natural name to give to the grandson of a king, I think.
Dogmael’s grandfather Ceredig was one of Cunedda’s many sons said to have established small kingdoms across the land now called “Wales”. Celtic-speaking Britons knew themselves then (and still do) as “Y Cymry”; but they would be called “Walhaz” by the Germanic settlers because it meant “foreigners” or “Romans” – and, by implication, “Christians”. Elsewhere, Germanic tribes applied this same term to sub-Roman Christians, and that “Wal” sound is recognizable in Corn-wall, Wall-onia (in Belgium) and Wall-achia (in Romania).
But archaeological remains indicate that neither Roman rule nor Christian doctrine had made a significant impact on the cultural landscape of West Wales by St Dogmael’s time. Our saint seems to have lived most of his life in the Kingdom of Dyfed, which is believed to have been either invaded or settled in the centuries before his birth by several Irish groups, whose leaders may or may not have been Christians. Certainly, our only historical source, the monk Gildas, did not think Vortiporius, King of Dyfed in St Dogmael’s time, a good Christian. In addition to calling him a “spotted leopard” he called him “foolishly stubborn”, “wicked” and “defiled by various murders and adulteries”. In his famous work “On the Ruin of Britain”, Gildas issued a stark warning to this King, which I include some of here, translated (not by me!) from the original Latin:
“Spend not, I beseech thee, the remainder of thy days in offending God … Turn away from evil and do good, seek good peace and follow it … Otherwise the worm of thy agony shall not die, and the fire of thy burning shall not be quenched.”
Certainly it sounds like there was much missionary work yet to be done, inside and outside of the royal courts of West Wales; thus it fell to well-born, educated folk – such as the grandchildren of King Ceredig – to preach the gospel to the people of Ceredigion and Dyfed.
Dogmael, like his cousin Dewi, probably spoke a form of Ancient Welsh that would be unrecognizable to us, as well as Latin, and probably Primitive Irish too. The churches recognized as bearing Dogmael’s name (variously rendered as “Dogmael”, “Dogfael”, “Dogwell”, “Dogmell” and – in France – “Tomel”) suggest much of his life was spent around the Preselis; but also that he travelled, or lived, as far afield as Anglesey and Brittany – perhaps visiting fellow holy men and women, and helping them spread the gospel; perhaps establishing several religious houses in his lifetime.
St Dogmael’s greatest legacy is the enduring settlement bearing his name on the south bank of the Teifi estuary, including the ruins of a Tironensian Benedictine abbey – established by conquering Norman lords, 600 years after Dogmael’s time – now offset by a cafe and a gift-shop. The Normans dedicated their new abbey to St Mary. But they situated it close to where a holy house that St Dogmael himself established was believed to have stood; and in 1191 AD when Gerald of Wales visited, he recorded the place as “the monastery of St Dogmael”. Sadly, the only reliable fact pertaining to the original monastery of St Dogmael, is that in 988 AD, after three centuries of continuity, it was destroyed in a series of Viking raids.
St Dogmael is listed among early Welsh saints as a “confessor”: a missionary who preached the word of God in the face of opposition. So he did not suffer martyrdom, and the process by which he was recognized as a saint is called “local canonization”: he was probably venerated publicly after his death, with approval by the local religious authority: perhaps his own cousin Dewi; or, Dewi’s successor in Tyddewi/St Davids. Since the church in Dyfed at that time had little direct correspondence with the Holy See in the Vatican, and functioned more-or-less independently of a higher (earthly) authority, no record remains of any miracles ascribed to St Dogmael, or of the time or place of his death. I have read online that St Dogmael’s name is invoked to help young children learn to walk, and Emily Pritchard claims that he ordered his monks to bathe daily in the icy waters of the river Teifi – even in midwinter; but the original sources for these claims are not cited.
St Dogmael is also remembered in the dedication of the parish church of Mynachlogddu – most probably because the land upon which it was built (some 750-odd years ago) was gifted by the Norman Lord of Cemais to the second incarnation of St Dogmaels Abbey; but other churches on other land similarly associated do not carry the saint’s name; and, other churches named after him have no such association with the abbey; furthermore, other parishes pertaining to monasteries are not always named after them – as Mynachlogddu seems to be – so perhaps we can entertain the possibility that this dedication was made thanks in part to an oral tradition that the holy man himself once established a monastic cell in this place, well away from the hustle and bustle of the Teifi estuary. We are unlikely ever to uncover much more about the life of St Dogmael from this 1500-year distance; but in commemorating his recorded feast day here, on June 14th, we honour his efforts to bequeath to us a Christian tradition that endures to this day.
A Velky, Mynachlogddu, St Dogmael's Day 2024
Sources:
"Early Welsh Saints" by Daniel J Mullins
"The History of St Dogmael's Abbey" by Emily Pritchard
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogmael
Independent Catholic News: https://www.indcatholicnews.com/saint/175
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