David of Wales (Dewi of Wales) (d. 601 or 589), monk and bishop of the 6th century. From the 12th century he has been regarded as the patron of Wales; he is also the only Welsh saint to be canonized (equipollently) and culted in the Western Church. It is regrettable that very few details about his life are known.
What seems certain is that he was primarily a saint of Pembrokeshire (Dyfed), whence his cult spread through South Wales by dedications well before the 12th century; there are almost none in North Wales, but some are found as far afield as Brittany, Cornwall, and Herefordshire. The oldest written evidence about him, however, comes from Ireland where the Catalogue of the Saints (c.730) says that they ‘received the Mass from bishop David and the Britons Gillas (= Gildas) and Teilo’, and the earliest Irish Martyrologies (c.800) place the feast on 1 March and locate his monastery at ‘Menevia’, i.e. St. David's. On this firm but rudimentary basis is built later information, such as his nickname Aquaticus as the leader of reformed monks who drank neither wine nor beer but only water (from the 9th-century Life of St. Paul Aurelian), that calendars and litanies of 10th-11th century Wessex mention him (following the spread of his cult by Alfred's bishop Asser), and that Glastonbury claimed him as its patron. It may well be too that his original monastery, inherited from his father, was at Henllan from where he removed to Menevia; from there he could have made foundations in an eastward direction and may have travelled to Brittany (and Cornwall) after the plague of 547.
The earliest Life of David was written by Rhygyvarch, son of Julien, bishop of St. David's c.1090; its motive was to further Welsh independence of Canterbury. Hence it should be treated as propaganda, which may, however, contain some elements of true tradition. According to this David was educated first at Hen Vynyw, then for ten years as a priest in Scripture studies on an island under Paulinus the scribe. After this he founded ten monasteries, among them Menevia and Glastonbury, where the monks lived in extreme hardship, imitating the monks of Egypt in their regime of heavy manual labour and study, sustained by a diet of bread, vegetables, and water. David devoted himself to works of mercy and practised frequent genuflexions and total immersion in cold water as his favourite austerities. He was called to the Synod of Brevi where he preached to such effect that ‘with the consent of all he was made archbishop and his monastery was declared the metropolis of the whole country, so that whoever ruled it should be accounted archbishop’. This latter claim and the story that he was consecrated bishop at Jerusalem are pure fables.
The cult was approved by Callistus II in 1120: two pilgrimages to St. David's were worth one to Rome. The relics were translated in 1131, and again in 1275 by Richard Carew, bishop of St. David's, who rebuilt the cathedral largely from offerings at the shrine. English kings who made this pilgrimage include William I and later Henry II on his way to and from Ireland.
David is usually depicted in episcopal vestments, standing on a mound with a dove at his shoulder, in memory of his share in the Synod of Brevi. The custom of Welshmen wearing leeks or daffodils on St. David's Day is described by Shakespeare as ‘an ancient tradition begun upon an honourable request’, but no satisfactory explanation of it has yet been made. His name is often spelled Dafydd, whence ‘Taffy’, colloquial for any Welshman. Feast: 1 March.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- Rhygyvarch's Life of St. David was edited by J.W.James (1967) in Latin and English; also in N.L.A., i. 254–62 and in A. W. Wade-Evans, Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae (1944), pp. 150–70. See also [W. Morgan], Catalogue of Manuscripts, Book Engravings etc. relating to St. David (1927); S. M. Harris, St. David in the Liturgy (1940); C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Archbishops of St. Davids, Llandaff and Caerleonon-Usk’ in Studies in the Early British Church (ed. N. K. Chadwick, 1958). For the canonization cf. M. R. Toynbee, St. Louis of Toulouse and the process of canonization in the XIVth century (1929), pp. 239–40 and Anal. Boll., xlix (1931), 211–13; S. M. Harris, ‘Was St. David ever canonized?’ in Wales ( June 1944); E. G. Bowen, The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in Wales (1956), esp. pp. 50–65; Baring-Gould and Fisher, ii. 285–322; P. Grosjean, ‘Notes d'hagiographie celtique’, Anal. Boll., lxxv (1957), 413–18. See also M. Carver, In Search of Cult (1993), pp. 105–11
