Saint David

Saint David (Welsh: Dewi Sant) was a sixth-century monastic founder and bishop who is venerated as the patron saint of Wales. Almost nothing about him can be established from contemporary documents. The principal narrative source is the Latin Life written by Rhygyfarch (Ricemarchus), son of Bishop Sulien of St Davids, in the late eleventh century, roughly five hundred years after the events it describes. Rhygyfarch drew on local tradition and on earlier written material now lost, but he also shaped the story to defend the antiquity and metropolitan claims of the see of St Davids against Norman and Canterbury pressure. Brief earlier notices exist: the tenth-century Annales Cambriae mention the death of David, bishop of Menevia, and Irish martyrologies and Welsh calendars already assign him a feast on 1 March. Modern historians therefore accept David as a real abbot-bishop of south-west Wales in the so-called Age of Saints, while treating the colourful episodes of the later vitae as a mixture of memory, folklore, and ecclesiastical propaganda.

Tradition names his father Sant (Sandde), a prince associated with Ceredigion, and his mother Non (Nonnita), herself later honoured as a saint. His birth is placed on the Pembrokeshire coast, often at Caerfai near Porthclais, or alternatively at Henfynyw (Old Menevia) in Ceredigion; a spring and the ruined chapel of St Non mark the coastal site in later piety. He is said to have been educated in Welsh monastic schools, including a period with Saint Paulinus, and to have been ordained priest. David then founded or reorganized a series of monasteries. The most important was at Mynyw (Latin Menevia), on the peninsula where the city and cathedral of St Davids now stand. There he established a community famous for its severity. Monks were described as refusing oxen and ploughing by their own labour, drinking only water—hence the epithet Dewi Ddyfrwr, David the Waterman—and living on bread, herbs, and salt. The rule associated with him belongs to the broader world of early Celtic monasticism rather than to any later named religious order such as the Benedictines.

Later hagiography makes David the outstanding preacher of his generation. At the Synod of Brefi, convened at Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion to combat Pelagian teaching, he is said to have been called from his monastery when other speakers could not be heard. As he preached, the ground supposedly rose into a hill beneath his feet and a dove settled on his shoulder, after which the assembly acclaimed him and, in some versions, he succeeded Saint Dubricius as chief bishop of the Welsh. A still more legendary journey takes him to Jerusalem, where the patriarch is said to have consecrated him bishop. Whatever the historical kernel, David was remembered as bishop of Menevia and as a leader among British churchmen. He died at his own monastery, according to unanimous tradition on 1 March; the year is given as 589 in much later writing and as 601 in the Annales Cambriae. His farewell charge, preserved in Welsh as an exhortation to do the little things, became a lasting proverb of modest, faithful practice.

David's cult was already regional in the early Middle Ages and became national in the high medieval and modern periods. Irish and Breton calendars as well as Welsh ones record his feast. In the twelfth century Bishop Bernard of St Davids obtained from Pope Callixtus II recognition of David's sanctity, conventionally dated about 1120, together with a privilege that two pilgrimages to St Davids equalled one to Rome. English monarchs including William the Conqueror and Edward I visited the shrine. The present cathedral, begun in the late twelfth century, occupies the monastic site; a medieval feretory and a restored shrine commemorate the burial. Relics were scattered at the Reformation, but St Davids remains the focus of the cult. Saint David's Day, 1 March, is observed as the national day of Wales, marked by the leek and the daffodil. He is patron of Wales and of Pembrokeshire; later lists also name poets and vegetarians, the latter in memory of his austere, meatless monastic diet. His emblem is a dove, and he is often shown standing on a hill with a dove on his shoulder, recalling the synod legend.