THE great church of the neighbourhood, throughout the Middle Ages, was, however, not Dolgelley, but Cymmer Abbey.
Here, one might say, for the benefit of English visitors, who are misled by certain guide-books, that Cymmer is pronounced to rhyme with summer; the initial "C" being hard, like "K".
Gruffydd, the grandson of Owain Gwynedd, had a son named Hywel, a strong supporter of the great Llywelyn. He was lord of Merioneth, and left his mark on the land in two ecclesiastical foundations, the beautiful church of Llanaber, and Cymmer Abbey. In the year 1198, he induced some of the monks of Cwmhir in South Wales to come north, and to lay the foundations of the Cistercian Abbey of Cymmer.
Like Dolgelley church, the Abbey was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, for the Cistercian Order was an order intensely devoted to her memory.
The cult of the Virgin Mary was not a worship; it was an inspiration, one of the noblest that has ever been associated with Christianity, an inspiration exalting purity, sorrow and pity; and it was with this inspiration behind it-an inspiration needed to-day as it was needed then-that the Cistercian Order set out upon its mission of service.
It was a magnificent order; and it considered that it was just as much a part of religion to teach something about arts and crafts, and to look after their social needs, as to impart instruction in dogma to them. They taught the people improved methods of sheep-breeding; and Welsh wool, which before their coming had no great reputation, began to acquire some fame for itself; and it was on the wool-trade-the staple, as it was called to which Wales contributed a great deal, that the commercial strength of these islands in the Middle Ages was built.
Just by the Llanelltyd bridge there are two fields, one on each side of the river, both bearing the name of Cae y Stabal, not the field of the "stable" but the field of the staple and they indicate where the monks collected the bales of wool for shipment. Near to one of them is Cae y Llong, the field of the ship, alongside which probably the river-going vessels, which bore the wool to foreign markets, were moored.
The Cistercians also taught the people much about the smelting of iron and lead and the making of tools and implements, and established forges in the land. The monks of Cymmer had one at Llanfachreth and another up the Ganllwyd Valley, near Dol y Clochydd. They instructed the people as well in the elements of architecture in stone, and they imparted a good deal of secular learning, and, more especially, looked after the interests of the poor.
They were educators in all branches of life, just as much as they were preachers; they handed on to future generations the old written literature which they copied and re-copied in the seclusion of their cloisters; they recorded the events of history as they passed by; and the proceeds of their estates they devoted, in the main, to the glory of God and the benefit of the people at large.
It was just because they paid so much attention to the social work they undertook that the site of Cymmer was chosen for the Abbey. It stands in a central position, giving easy access to the estuary valley, the valley of the Wnion, and the Ganllwyd valley, and within easy reach of the inhabited upland areas.
Moreover, in those days, the main road from Llanenddwyn, or Ystumgwern as it was then called, the residence of the lord of Ardudwy, towards Bala, Dinas Mawddwy, Machynlleth, Towyn, and Talybont, ran through Llanelltyd. There was no bridge over the Mawddach, and travellers, passing to and fro, were frequently compelled to stop the night on the river's bank, when the river spate made it hardly safe to cross.
Now one of the objects of all these monasteries was to afford a resting-place for travellers, with whom thereby the Church could come into contact, and nowhere in Merioneth was a resting-place needed more than by the Mawddach ford.
The landing ground on the bank is still called Marian Rhâd-the strand of grace; and meadows with names like Dol Saesonaeg (the English meadow) and Cae y Meirch (the horses' field) recall the bivouacs for English travellers and for steeds.
The work which the monks of Cymmer were engaged in appealed strongly to Llywelyn the Great, himself an ardent devotee, as they were, of the Virgin Mary; and in 1209 A.D. he granted the Abbey a charter.
That charter, or at least copies of it, has survived to this day, and it is a very interesting document It shows the intense love of peace, which was characteristic of the great warrior-prince, and it passage-a pathetic passage-towards the end, which shows how what we hope to make lasting is apt set aside altogether as the world changes.
It runs:
To all sons of Holy Church, as well present as future, greeting and peace. Since we are bound, with all our power, to preserve the blessings of peace, we ought particularly to provide lest the failure of peace should cause hurt unjustly to those whom religion commends to our care. Wherefore we confirm whatever has been bestowed upon this Abbey ... lest what has been justly given to them shall be unjustly taken from them, through the presumption of people who may come after us."
There is something prophetic in these words, as if the great prince foresaw the years of war which were to come, and the destruction of the monastery which was to be wrought in later days.
This charter of Cymmer Abbey is more than fascinating; it is of an exceptional character, and it is one of the very few legal documents in the Latin of the court of the Welsh princes which have come down to us.
It differs greatly in spirit and in letter from the type of charters in vogue among the Norman rulers of England. The latter were precise, dry, formal; following, as a rule, very strict precedents, and frequently ungrammatical.
The Cymmer charter is on the whole in better, and certainly in more florid, Latin, showing how high the standard of classical knowledge was in the Welsh court; and though there is no mistaking the meaning, it has not got the formal precision of a Norman document. It bursts every now and then into something not far removed from poetry; the final recitation of the privileges secured to the Abbey is extraordinarily beautiful and vivid, and throughout the document there is a vein of high religious feeling running.
The charter recites in detail the land Possessed by the Abbey at the time-roughly, it included all land north of the present road from Bontddu to Llanuwchllyn, and bounded on the north by a more or less straight line drawn from Llyn Cwm-Y-Mynach to the source of the river Lliw. There was some land also belonging to it along the coast at Llanegryn, and north of Barmouth as well, and in addition a considerable area in the Lleyn peninsula of Carnarvon. The monks in later days had granges at Llanelltyd, Llanfachreth, Barmouth andEgryn .
An important additional power granted in the charter was that permitting free clansmen to make partial donations of fields and pools to the Abbey-a most exceptional privilege under Welsh law.
Within the area of its possessions, the Abbey was entitled to all wild animals and birds metals, wood, and other produce above and below the soil, all mills, turbaries and rights of pasturage. It was also entitled to free fishing in all waters within its estates, and was permitted to use any nets or weirs both in the rivers and on the sea-shore; its sea-going vessels were free from all tolls and other exactions, and the right of the Abbey to follow and claim the wreckage and cargo of its vessels, when destroyed by tempest, is a very remarkable interference with the old rights in flotsam and jetsam.
No secular due of any kind or description was to be exacted from the Abbey and its lands, then or at any other time in the future.
It had its own court to deal with disputes among its tenants; and the name Cae Cwrt Mawr, the field of the Great Court, still recalls where this court sat, as all courts did, in ancient Wales, out in the open air.
It has often been stated that the Cistercian monks in Wales were foreigners, and the allegation, which seems, in fact, to have no foundation in so far as North Wales was concerned, has been repeated by polemical writers to make out a case that the Cistercian monks were anti-Welsh.
This charter gives us the name of the first Abbot, Esau, a common enough name in Wales at the time, and also mentions three monks, who were witnesses to the deed, and who bore the names of Llwydiarth, Iorwerth and Madoc. It may be here said that among the few names of monks and abbots of Cymmer, which have come down to us, there is not one which is not purely and entirely Welsh, and on more occasion the than one the monks of Cymmer showed themselves, by their deeds, to be passionately and devotedly Welsh in spirit.
No body of men has been abused so much as the monks of old. The general picture presented has often been that of a gang of fat, lazy, and evil-living rascals, whom it was a good thing to get rid of. That picture is a gross exaggeration.
Here and there there were monasteries, which, in later days, caused deplorable scandals; there grew up, in many places, an air of neglect of religious thought and practice, much as we find to-day, and places in the some of those who occupied high place in the church were very evil indeed; but, on the whole, the monks of old lived as clean and as wholesome live as the clergy and ministers of to-day, and were far less worldly, and much more useful, than the great majority of the clergy immediately subsequent to the Reformation.
As regards the monks of Cymmer, there was never, at any time,, in all the 300 years they dwelt in Llanelltyd, a breath of scandal.
An enquiry was made about the Abbey in the reign of Edward III.; and it was found that Llywelyn's charter had been confirmed by both Edward I. and Edward II. and an allegation, made largely for the sake of form, that t he monks had "evilly used" their privileges, was contemptibly rejected by the Judges, and the Bishop of Bangor came forward to champion them and speak highly of them.
They were poor. The value of their tithes in 1291 was £1/13/4 and the total income amounted to only £20. This income was derived from a few granges, the sale of pasture, a heard of 60 cows and a flock of 25 sheep belonging to the Abbot, offertories and the like.
At the Dissolution, the Valor Ecclesiasticus shows a gross income of £58/15/4, derived from some cash rentals from fields at Cymmer Llanelltyd, Cwmcadian, Llanfachreth, Trawsfynydd, Rhydclriw, Dolgelley, Capel Ceidio and Neigwil, a few rents in kind the rectorial tithes of its three dependant churches-the tithe being levied on corn and lamb's wool-and oblations and offertories at Easter.
Out of this, local bailiffs had to be maintained, and procurations Paid to the Archdeacon of Merioneth and the Bishop of Bangor, leaving a net income of £51/13/14. This would represent not more than say £800/ - to-day; and the Abbey was suppressed on the sole ground that its income did not amount to £200/- a year in the money of the day.
That was the only reason given for the suppression of all the smallest monasteries in the land, many of which were doing excellent work in a humble way; but the sum total of a number of 200 pounds was sufficiently tangible for a man like Thomas Cromwell to seize the lot, without much thought for the people, who were the losers.
The last Abbot, Lewis Thomas, a fervent Welshman, became Suffragan Bishop of St. Asaph, a fact sufficient in itself to refute any unjust charge against the monks. There is no doubt that what Llywelyn the Great wrote of them was true to the end "They are devoutly serving God and the Glorious Virgin Mary, and are living under the rule of St. Benedict, our patron "-the strictest rule of poverty, abstinence and service that any men have ever voluntarily imposed upon themselves.
There was no pride in them. The Abbot was Abbot, in the beautiful language used, " by the sufferance of God"; there was the severest of disciplines. Their garments were a white gown and a white hood over a simple white cassock; and when they went out into the world, they wore a black cloak. These were made of the coarsest and roughest cloth that could be found. Bread and water was their daily fare, relieved only in sickness by fish and a little wine; and they each had their allotted task to do in the fields. Their rigid discipline was reproduced in the churches, for though the spirit that animated them would not offend by the erection of the ugly, they confined their embellishments to the Cross and the vessels of the Eucharist. All else was of the severest simplicity, a simplicity, however, which was always consistent with artistic beauty.
The abbey originally had a big church, remains of which still stand, a side chapel, now occupied as cattle-sheds, cloisters, a frater, a dorter, a chapter-house, and a few other buildings, all of which have now disappeared. Behind, under the slope of the hill rising just behind, lay their burial ground, Cae Fynwent as it is still called, where not so much as a stone remains, and where sheep and cattle graze peaceably. In the spring-time it is white with flowers, like no other field near by is, a tribute, perhaps, by nature to a purity of life led in ancient days. The Abbey spring can still be traced, and the steps leading down to it are covered with the slime of centuries.
The old " angelus" bell, calling people to prayer for the ringing of which the farm of Dol y Clochydd was assigned to the ringer, is silent, and ruin and decay is all round, where once was toil and praise. In the floor of the tower is the trunk of a great sycamore tree, the seed of which fell there long after the abbey fell into ruins. It grew and has been felled; like the thing of beauty in whose ruins it flourished for a time. But there is still some beauty left in the great cast window, festooned now with creeping ivy, in the graceful red sandstone pillars which separate the lancets of it, brought from Chester or Shrewsbury, in the ruins of the three sedilia, near where the altar stood, in the piscina adjoining, and in the arches which led into the side-chapel. It does not require much imagination to forget the farm-yard squalor, the penned-in sheep which occupy the ruins now, and to go back to the days when the altar shone with lighted tapers, the sanctuary lamp was burning, and the monks were reciting the offices of the day from early morn till vespers.
The church was not a great church, as churches went in those days, but it possessed some features of exquisite beauty.
Two of them have survived for us to look upon still. There is the great rood-loft, which now has its home in Llanegryn church, and there is the ancient chalice and paten, deposited by the King in the National Museum at Cardiff.
The church at Llanegryn was served, along with Llanelltyd and Lianfachreth, in ancient days by the monks of Cymmer, and it is probable that they built part of the present building. At any rate, the rood-loft was moved there when the Abbey was suppressed.
In olden days, many churches possessed rood-lofts and screens, on which a crucifix or holy rood stood, and, in the later added gallery behind the crucifix, the minstrels, who accompanied the church service, sat.
Nearly all rood-lofts were destroyed and burnt at the Reformation, when the immemorial sign of Christianity became regarded as pagan and idolatrous; but some few, in out of the way places in Wales, survived; and among the most perfect of all is that which rests in Llanegryn church-as beautiful a piece of carving as is to be found in these islands, a magnificent example of religious ecstasy and allegory expressed in sculptured wood. No illustration, no description, can do justice to it : it must be seen, and seen again, for the full glory of it to be appreciated.
The chalice and paten were found about the year 1890 hidden under a stone in Cym-y-mynach, where, no doubt, they were concealed at the time of the Reformation by some devotee who hoped that better days would dawn again, when the Abbey would be restored to its old glory.
They were made by one Nicholas of Hereford, and it is said of the they form the most perfect examples of XIII century silver-gilt workmanship known.
The chalice is, profusely adorned with foliage, and on the paten is a gorgeous representation of was known as a "Mystery", the figure of Christ surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelist.
We
have delayed long over Cymmer Abbey; but it is within its precincts
that the memory of past days lingers more than anywhere else; and we
shall have to come back to it again and again.
Meanwhile let us turn to other
ecclesiastical foundations which require notice. It is in church of
Wales, after all, that the real story of land lies.
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