- Early Christianity and its Monuments -
endowed with healing properties. Bells, books and croziers were important
secondary relics characteristic of Celtic areas, and oaths sworn on holy books,
bells and the remains of saints (often head, arm or hand bones) in particular were
considered to have great power. Many cults were centred on churches promoted by
the royal house, unifying royal and saintly power.
Groups of monks living in one fixed community, subject to regular rule and under
an abbot were in existence by the sixth century. The concept of such a 'communal
hermitage', closely linked to eremitical monasticism of the solitary monk (the
distinction between the two was not always sharp) may have arrived as a result of
contact with the Mediterranean and Gaul.
Recent work has shown that there was no institutional church structure encom-
passing all Celtic countries, but rather regional differences and regional synods
where bishops met and decided church affairs. There was no universally recognized
'Celtic church', and the lack of unity is illustrated well by the disputes concerning
the differing methods of calculating the date of Easter, and the gradual adoption of
the nineteen-year cycle of Dionysius. Following the Frankish Council of Orleans in
541, it was adopted by different regions at different dates: in southern Ireland in the
630s, some parts of Britain by 703, in others by 731, on lona and in Pictland in 716,
and in Wales in 768 (Davies 1992: 14).
Church and monastic organization in Ireland have been shown to be complex,
with arguments for mother-churches or head churches of the tuath ('people' or
small kingdom), staffed by pastorally active communities (Sharpe 1992: 81). Similarly
the distinction formerly made between 'monastic' and pastoral roles is no longer
possible in Wales, where monasteries had a variety of royal, episcopal and
proprietary origins (Blair and Sharpe 1992: 6).
The evidence from authors such as Gildas for the presence of these Christian
leaders and thinkers in the fifth century is complemented by the presence in Wales
of early inscribed stones of Christian association. From the sixth century religious
establishments are attested there under a variety of terms.^3 While churches in Celtic
areas were largely without archbishops and metropolitan provinces, occasionally
honorific titles were held, and prominent bishops sometimes behaved as if they
sought archiepiscopal authority (Davies 1992: 14), though authority in most areas lay
with bishops and abbots. It appears that monastic communities contained both
secular and monastic clergy, some under a bishop, as at St Davids, some under an
abbot, who could in the later period be a layman as at Llanbadarn Fawr in II88
(Pryce 1992: 53). Up to the eighth century, the term monasterium was in use in Wales,
but later the word clas (pI. clasau) was used for a mother-church. Unlike England,
Benedictine monasticism did not take root in Wales until the eleventh century.
Ecclesiastical centres were established in Cornwall certainly by the mid-tenth
century, and probably earlier (possibly by the sixth century, indicated by the Vita
Samsonis). In Ireland, some monasteries were established by the middle of the sixth
century, such as Clonmacnois by Ciaran (d. 549), and c.s63 lona in western Scotland
was founded by Columba. The new institutions of the church appear to have been
absorbed successfully into Irish society, though the structure known elsewhere in
western Europe was less suited to Irish social and political life, which lacked a
Roman administrative precursor. The result was the growth of monastic churches
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