Dewi and Pelagius
by Mike Oettle
PICTURE for yourself a post-colonial nation, part of a great empire for
a few hundred years but then abandoned to its own devices. Heathen savages then
invaded the land and drove the Christian inhabitants to a small corner, where
they were better able to defend themselves because of the mountainous terrain.
Meanwhile the Church itself was in danger of self-destructing because of an
insidious teaching, the brainchild of a native son of the land.
No, this is not Africa, America or Asia
in the 20th or 21st century – although the pattern might perhaps be repeated
there. This is Britain in the 6th century AD, beset by German invaders from
across the North Sea. The Romanised Britons had been driven westward and were
to be found in Clydeside, Galloway and Cumbria in the north, in Wales, and in
Cornwall, from where large numbers had also fled to Brittany, or Little
Britain.
The insidious teaching was the work of
one Pelagius, who had questioned the Church’s doctrine of original sin and
denied that sin is the result of human weakness. In a seemingly modern way, he
taught that God made human beings free to choose between good and evil.
Pelagius, who was born around 354 – probably in Britain, although the evidence
is uncertain – was concerned with slack moral standards among Christians and
hoped to improve their conduct.
The great flaw in Pelagius’s teaching,
as Augustine of Hippo pointed out, was the idea that people could attain
righteousness by their own efforts. Man, said Augustine, was totally dependent
on God for salvation.
Although Pelagianism was condemned at
several general Church councils during the 5th century, it survived in a few
odd corners of the Roman world, and Wales was one of them.
Around the year 520 a boy was born to a saintly woman called Non, the victim of rape by a chieftain named Sant. The boy was baptised Dewi, the British form of the name of Israel’s greatest warrior king, the shepherd boy Dawid or David. (The name means “beloved”.)
Very little is known for certain about
Dewi, or Dafydd[1] (the Welsh nickname Taffy comes from this form). It is believed he was born near St Bride’s Bay in the far south-west of Wales and educated at Henfynyw.[2] He then is said to have spent 10 years on an island, studying the Scriptures under St Paulinus, after which he founded 10 monasteries. He made his home at Mynyw, or Menevia, on St Bride’s Bay.
An austere man, he taught his monks to
observe a life of hard physical labour on a diet of bread, vegetables and
water, and is known by the nickname of Aquaticus, apparently because he forbade
all liquor and permitted only water or milk at his monasteries.
Summoned to the synod of Brevi (or
Llanddewi-Brefi),[3] he reportedly refused to go and had to be fetched. Once there, he spoke eloquently against Pelagianism, and at the later Synod of Victory at Caerleon, presided over the defeat of Pelagianism.
Some say he was elected bishop and
afterwards archbishop for his arguments against Pelagianism. Certainly he held
the see of Caerleon, based in a city that had once (under the name of Isca)
been one of Britain’s three legionary bases. (The others were Deva [Chester]
and Eboracum [York].) But Caerleon[4] was dangerously close to the English, and David moved his see to Mynyw, which afterwards came to be called Ty-Dewi, or St David’s.
He died aged around 80 – perhaps 601,
perhaps 589 – and his last words are said to have been: “Be cheerful, brothers
and sisters; keep the faith and observe exactly all the little things you have
learned from me.”
Although David only travelled in South
Wales and Cornwall (and perhaps also to Glastonbury) – there are more than 50
churches of St David in South Wales – he is the patron saint of all Wales. On
St David’s Day, 1 March, Welsh folk wear leeks or daffodils in his memory, although nobody could tell you why.
He
is usually illustrated wearing episcopal vestments, and with a dove on his
shoulder, symbolising his victory over Pelagianism.
