ST DERFEL: 6th Century Saint Feast Day 5th April and his connection to St John Forest (whose feast day is 22nd May).

 ST DERFEL:

6th Century saint

Feast Day 5th April (This post ties in to St John Forest whose feast day is 22nd May).

    The Remains of the Statue to St Derfel - the Stag

Derfel Gadarn (“mighty”, “valiant”, “strong”) was a 6th century Welsh monk. His story reads like the mythical tales of the ancient Celts such as the Ulster cycle, and the qualities with which he is described, bravery, valour, chivalry, strength in battle, are those that were particularly prized by the ancient pagan Celts, but in this context, they were coupled with the additional qualities of the Christian code of chivalry: gentleness and grace.

His Feast Day is 5th April, and he was reputedly born around 566 AD. He was said to be one of the 7 warriors who survived the Battle of Camlann –the legendary final battle of King Arthur against Mordred in the 6th century, which is argued by some scholars to have been a genuine battle based on a cattle raid (in similar terms to the Irish legends of Ulster and the heroism of Cuhullain).

The battle of Camlann was described in the histories written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, “Historia Regnum Brittannica”, written circa 1136, which was grounded in tradition, but which Wikipedia says was embellished with “invented details”.

However, it is likely that the Celtic Welsh had an oral history that was simply reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, albeit perhaps embroidered: Derfel is mentioned as a warrior in medieval Welsh poetry. Tudor Penllyn, a Welsh poet of the Middle Ages (1420-1490) wrote:

Derfel mewn rhyfel, gwnai'i wayw'n rhyfedd, Darrisg dur yw'r wisg, dewr yw'r osgedd.

("Derfel in war, he would work his spear wondrously, steel covering is the garment, brave is the appearance.")

And according to Lewis Glyn Cothi, (1420-1490), a 15th century Welsh language poet:

“When there were at Camlann men and fighting and a host being slain, Derfel with his arms was dividing steel there in two,”(1)

The Battle of Camlann was conducted by Arthur on his return from a battle against the Roman leader Lucius Tiberias. When he had embarked upon the battle, Arthur had entrusted Britain to the charge of Mordred, his nephew. His wicked nephew, however, not only took the throne for himself, but secretly married Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, (Guinevere does not seem to be completely free of fault in this – is this some shade of Gertrude in Hamlet?).

Mordred was killed at the battle of Camlann, (which is the river Camel in Cornwell). Arthur was mortally wounded and was taken to the Isle of Avalon where he died. (2)

After the battle of Camlann, Derfel is said to have entered religious life. He became a wandering hermit and then entered the monastery of Lantwit. He founded churches and monasteries throughout Wales, including the monastery at Llandderfel in Gwynedd. He is also said to have served as the abbot of Ynys Enlii, Bardsey Island, succeeding his cousin, St Cadfan.

He died in 660AD of natural causes.

For many centuries pilgrimages to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys stopped at the monastery at Llandderfel, which held a relic of St Derfel. Significantly, the monastery also had a statue of St Derfel in wood, by which he was depicted as a warrior clad in full armour, rather than as an ecclesiastic.

During the Reformation, the Welsh were terribly oppressed and pilgrimages were, of course banned, churches vandalised and stripped of their statues. The Llandderfel statue was removed by order of Thomas Cromwell and it seems that they actually went to the trouble to transport the statue from Gwynedd to London for the purpose of using it as wood to burn St John Forest as a heretic at Smithfield, London on 22nd May 1538. As stated in the post on St John Forest, this was said to be the fulfilment of a prophecy that the statue “would burn down a forest”.

Part of the statue, thought at one time (post reformation), to have been St Derfel’s horse, survived the burning and is at Llandderfel today. In the past it was used at Easter celebrations to cart children around, with a decorated pole, which they called “St Derfel’s staff”. It is actually a stag, and it is a tradition of the Welsh saints to be depicted with a stag, as many of the Welsh saints had stags as companions.

Wales on line described it as:

“The carving of St Derfel was of enormous importance to the people of North Wales, - it was very vividly carved, and parts of it could be made to move. The eyes, for example, could blink. This wasn’t necessarily to deceive people – any more than a modern computer animation is meant to deceive. But it made the statue more lifelike, and gave it more power. We also need to remember that the statue was painted – you can still see traces of the red undercoat on the stag.

“According to Ellis Price, who was sent by Thomas Cromwell to take the statue down at the Reformation, as many as 600 people visited it on the saint’s day in April. Not that this compares with the tens of thousands (many of them Welsh) who went to Rome or Compostela on the great festive days, but it’s still pretty impressive for a little hamlet in the Welsh hills.” (3)

The survival of the stag was because Ellis Price took Cromwell’s instructions literally: told to remove and transport the statue of St Derfel, he separated the statue from the stag and had it transported to London. The Welsh people offered forty pounds to retain the statue, which was refused and they then set out to London to protest at the desecration of their statue (to no avail).(4)

The description of the execution of St John Forest is provided by Wales online as follows:

“The statue made its way to London, where it became the centrepiece of a horrific ritual killing. There was an old prophecy that one day St Derfel’s statue would set fire to a forest. A Franciscan friar called John Forest, who had been Queen Catherine of Aragon’s confessor and had refused to accept Henry as the supreme head of the church, was awaiting execution. Derfel’s statue was chopped up and used as a bonfire to burn the defiant friar to death. This seems to have been Cromwell’s idea of a joke.” (5)

Bearing in mind that Shakespeare was in chronological proximity to the burning of St John Forest and would have therefore been aware of the prophecy, one wonders how much the prophecy influenced the prophecy of the Witches in Macbeth, and, if there was contained a subtle reference for the audience, not apparent to those who were not in sympathy, and, if so, whether the reference resonated with them.

(1) Wikipedia St Derfel

(2) Wikipedia, the Battle of Camlann

(3) Wales online Welsh History of the Month St Derfel, (which article justifies the actions of those who destroyed the statues throughout Wales, specified as, (additional to the statue of St Derfel): the carving of the Virgin Mary at Penrhys and Cardigan, of Mary Magdalene at Uisk and “of local saints in almost every church - all were swept away”. This is excused by the author because, “[w]e may regret the wholesale obliteration of our cultural heritage, but the reformers believed what they were doing was good and important.”

The man who thought it would be a good joke to use a statue to “burn down a forest” was doing things that were “good and important”? I see - the man who maliciously killed a man who merely sought to practise his religion because his religion disagreed with the ideology of the powerful believed that what he was doing was "good and important"? Hmm, where have I heard that before? Sounds familiar.....

(4) Ibid.

IMAGES: Wikipedia, St Derfel's church, and the stag that survived the reformation burning of the statue of St Derfel.