Martin Crampin: 'St Aidan in Ireland and Wales' (2023)

Description

Lede
There are many traditions of saints crossing the sea between Ireland and Wales. One Irish saint who had close associations with Wales was Aidan of Ferns, also known as Madog.

Story
One of the disciples of St David in the Latin Life of St David is named sanctus Aidanus. According to text, written late in the eleventh century by Rhygyfarch ap Sulien at his scriptorium in Llanbadarn Fawr, Aidan left David’s monastery and travelled to Ireland where he established a monastery at Ferns.

Several miracles relating to St Aidan are mentioned in the text, and these are elaborated in another Latin text of a similar date that was known to the Welsh writer Rhygyfarch. The Latin Life of St Aidan is titled Vita S. Aidiui siue Maidoc, implying the two names were used for the saint, and Rhygyfarch also says that Aidan was named Maidoc since his infancy. The names are linked through the basic name Aedd, which was modified with different prefixes and suffixes in Irish and Welsh to produce Maedóc, Maodhog or Moeog, as well as Aidan. Stories in the Latin Lives relate further connections between the two saints, and additional traditions can be found in seventeenth-century Lives of St Aidan written in Irish. These stories include some miraculous journeys across the sea. Aidan walks across the sea when boatmen refuse to take him, and on another occasion an unnamed ‘wild animal’ brings Aidan back to Ferns from the Welsh coast. A bell given to Aidan by David in Wales is miraculously restored to Aidan after he forgets to bring it back to Ireland with him.

The site of Aidan’s monastery is probably marked by the remains of an Augustinian Priory in Ferns and the small Church of Ireland cathedral, dedicated to St Edan. Ruins of the medieval building stand to the east of the present cathedral, which mostly dates to the early nineteenth century.

The large Catholic church in Ferns has an extensive set of modern stained glass made by Lua Breen in 1976. In addition to abstract works expressive of a journey of faith, a window shows St Aidan in a boat bidding farewell to St David, and a companion window either shows Aidan being greeted by a local king or Diarmait Mac Murchada, a twelfth-century king of Leinster, granting land for the Augustinian Priory. As patron of the Catholic diocese of Ferns (whose cathedral at Enniscorthy is also dedicated to Aidan), images of Aidan are often found in churches across the south-eastern corner of Ireland.

Aidan seems to have been more commonly known as Madog in Wales, and churches in Pembrokeshire have been associated with him. Images of Madog in modern stained glass can be seen in churches at Haroldston West, Talbenny and Roch, all of which are located around St Bride’s Bay to the south of St Davids. A window made in 1985 by the Welsh stained glass firm Celtic Studios shows him with St David at Roch. Madog is shown with bees, as in the four-volume work on British saints by Sabine Baring-Gould and John Fisher, published between 1907 and 1913, the authors state that he should be depicted with a hive of bees.
However, nothing in the either the medieval Latin or seventeenth-century Irish texts associates Aidan with bees, and in the Life of St David it is Modomnóc who is associated with beekeeping. Modomnóc also travels to Ireland and the bees follow him. After crossing the sea with him several times he, and the bees, settle permanently in Ireland.

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