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Irish Christianity in Wales
pus Scotiae Pictus" is also mentioned. If any
considerable area remained at that time Irish it had
remained such for over four centuries.
Wales had an Irish ruler as late as 1080. He was
GrufTyd, the son of Cynan, or Caionain, or assuming the
name was actually a surname, for surnames were then being
established in Ireland, he is in Irish, GrufTyd Mac
Caionian, and in Welsh, GrufTyd ap Cynan. He is so presented
in the annals, and is styled King of Gwynedd or
north Wales by right of inheritance. He left, among
other donations, "a gift of twenty shillings to Dublin, that
city being his native place," and like gifts to other
churches in Ireland.
The international connections of Irish schoolmen are
indicated in the case of Gildas (not to be confounded with
the earlier historian of the Britons), who was born in 820
in Wales, "Whose parents were Irish," and who went to
get
his education in Ireland. He blossomed out as an
author and one of his works is dedicated to Rhabanus
Maurus of Fulda, who had studied under Alcuin at
Tours. 1
Briton and Gael were often confounded. Pelagius, to
give a well known instance,
and an Irishman. Mochta, described as disciple of St. Pat-
is described both as a Briton
rick and as a Briton, studied in Rome. Being taunted in
the city about Pelagius, he replied: "If for the fault of
one man the inhabitants of a whole province are to be
banned let .... Rome be condemned, from which not
one but two, three or even more heresies have started."
iThe earlier Gildas, who wrote the Epistola, had many Irish connections
and lived part of his life in Ireland. He is said by some authorities to have
had an Irish mother, and was at Armagh, both as student and professor.
Irish schoolmen visited him in Wales. St. Cadroc, who is a distinguished
figure in Welsh history and legend, is described by Colgan as an Irish Scot,
in other words as an Irishman born in Ireland. Mabillon, the Bollandists, and
Lanigan judge him to have been a British Scot, that is, an Irishman born in
Britain.
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