Most books about Celtic saints are based on their legendary medieval lives. This book, however, focuses on the sites where these early Christians lived and worked. Archaeology, combined with early inscriptions and texts, offers us important clues which help us to piece together something of the fascinating world of early Christianity. The book is illustrated with the author's own evocative photographs of the sites where the Celtic saints of Wales worked and prayed. The reader is therefore drawn into the beautiful world which these men and women inhabited. 'Celtic Saints of Wales' includes accounts of most well-known saints, and a number of less famous individuals. It is not, however, exhaustive: lack of historical data means that there are hundreds more Celtic monks and nuns, of whom we know little beyond their names. The book is easy to read, with an Introduction and maps to pinpoint the sites described and photographed. It is aimed at a broad reading public. Since it is both readable and fully illustrated, it will appeal to anyone interested in history, landscape or spirituality, and to Welsh tourists. Based on sound scholarship, it will also be of value to students of history, religion and culture.

Who were the Celtic saints of Britain? Why did them embark on long pilgrimages? Where were they going and what prompted them to make such journeys? Elizabeth Rees recreates the experiences of many of the well-known and lesser known Celtic missionaries, saints, monks, nuns and martyrs, pieced together through archaeological and literary evidence. Furnished with maps of sites mentioned in the text, routes taken and drawings of artefacts and buildings.

This first full-length theological study of sources from early medieval Wales traces common Celtic features in early Welsh religious literature. The author explores the origins of the earliest Welsh tradition in the fusion of Celtic primal religion with primitive Christianity, and traces some considerable Irish influence. These specific Celtic spiritual emphases are examined in the religious poetry of the Black Book of Carmarthen, the Book of Taliesin and the Poets of the Princes, and in prose texts such as The Food of the Soul and the Life of Beuno. Many of these Welsh texts appear here in English translation for the first time.

This group of revised papers, taken from a conference held at the University of Wales in Lampeter in 2000, reflects the diversity of the different forms of saints' cults and hagiography within the Celtic regions of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Cornwall. Written by leading scholars, these fifteen studies focus on evidence from the mid 4th to early 20th century, evidence which includes saints' Lives, poetry and prose narratives referring to saints, holy wells and shrines, songs, relics, church dedications, archaeology and iconograpphy. Among the saints discussed are St Patrick, St David, St Birgit and St Brendan.

They may be coated in layers of myth and pious anecdote but dig deep enough and the pioneering leaders of Celtic Christianity are revealed as reassuringly human individuals, responding to their faith by deliberately living on the edges of society. From the goddess-nun Brigid and absent-minded Cainnech to severe ascetics such as Columbanus and Baldred, together they demonstrate a close connection with the natural world, an astonishing self-discipline and, above all, a rigorous commitment to what it meant to be 'pilgrims for Christ'. Establishing a network of influential monastic communities, they travelled from the territories of the Atlantic seaboard – Ireland, Wales and Cornwall – across Scotland, the north of England and deep into continental Europe, transforming the religious experience of all they encountered.

In the Age of the Saints between the fifth and seventh centuries, early Christian leaders in Wales assimilated the currents of existing faith and indigenous Celtic devotion into the intellectual traditions of the greater European church. The humanist teaching of such figures as papa Dubricius (Dyfrig) in Erging, and of his successor Iltut (Illtud) in Llantwit Major, were followed by the sixth-century saints who turned increasingly to an ascetic monasticism influenced by ideas originating in the eastern Mediterranean. Although the idea of a Celtic Church encompassing the Celtic nations has now been superseded in our understanding of the period, the lives of the saints are squarely set against the backdrop of the lands of their mission. The lives represent medieval Latin scripts in eulogy to the religious leaders of earlier centuries, though rarely achieving great literary invention around only kernels of truth that relate to the individual saints, and should correctly be viewed as embodying a literary form in their own right. This is a newly available edition of G. H Doble s Lives of the Welsh Saints, which was edited by Professor D. Simon Evans in 1984. This volume contains his work on five Welsh Saints Dubricius, Iltut, Paulinus, Teilo and Oudoceus. "

Most books about Celtic saints are based on their legendary medieval lives. This book, however, focuses on the sites where these early Christians lived and worked. Archaeology, combined with early inscriptions and texts, offers us important clues which help us to piece together something of the fascinating world of early Christianity. The book is illustrated with the author's own evocative photographs of the sites where the Celtic saints of north Britain worked and prayed. The reader is therefore drawn into the beautiful world which these men and women inhabited. 'Celtic Saints of Scotland' includes accounts of most well-known saints, and a number of less famous individuals. It is not, however, exhaustive: lack of historical data means that there are hundreds more Celtic monks and nuns, of whom we know little beyond their names. The book is easy to read, with an Introduction and maps to pinpoint the sites described and photographed. It is aimed at a broad reading public. Since it is both readable and fully illustrated, it will appeal to anyone interested in history, landscape or spirituality, and to tourists in Scotland, Northumbria and the Isle of Man. Based on sound scholarship, it will also be of value to students of history, religion and culture.