Christopher Jobson thought we might be interested in Saint Melangell whose roots are closely aligned with Montgomeryshire. This article was taken from the the Orthodox website (with permission). Please note that although the last couple of paragraphs state the Orthodox understanding of Icons and Saints, it was thought that this might also be of interest to Anglicans.
Melangell (pronounced Melangeth Latin Monacella) was a daughter of Cyfwich who was reputed to have been descended from the Emperor Maximus and her mother was Irish.
The story goes that her father desired to marry her to a chieftain under him, but she ran away at the first opportunity. She hid for fifteen years at Pennant, one of the most lonely and lovely spots in Montgomeryshire, at the head of the Tanat.
One day Brochfael, Prince of Powys was hunting a hare which escaped into a thicket and took refuge under the robe of Melangell. She faced the huntsmen and drove back the hounds. Prince Brochfael was deeply moved by St. Melangell’s beauty and devotion. There and then he suggested that she leave her solitude and become his wife, but she adamantly refused. He was so impressed by her determination and obvious sanctity, he donated a parcel of land, which included a churchyard and valley, to be used by her to found a monastery. He also requested that the land be a place of refuge for people and animals, in particular the hares she had befriended. This she did, and she lived in a cell which still exists although much altered, at the east end of the church.
She was buried in the church, after her called Pennant Melangell. The Welsh antiquarian Thomas Pennant, in his 1810 work Tours in Wales, described Melangell’s association with hares, noting that they were nicknamed “St Melangell’s lamb’s. Until recent times it was believed, that if anyone cried ‘God and St. Malengell be with thee,’ the hare was sure to escape. Understandably she is regarded as the Patron Saint of Hares, and she is usually depicted holding one.
St Melangell’s Church, Pennant Melangell, was first founded in the seventh century to serve a community of nuns led by St. Melangell. No trace of the nunnery survives, and the original wooden church was replaced by one of stone in the second half of the twelfth century. In the years since, it has been subject to numerous re-buildings and restorations most notably by the extensive restoration of 1876-7 by Benjamin Lay.
The cell (cell y Bedd, cell of the grave) of Melangell is to the east of the church in which is the original shrine of St. Melangell (NPRN 306542), which dates to 1160-70, and is the earliest surviving Romanesque shrine in northern Europe. Like many shrines it was destroyed at the Reformation, reassembled from reclaimed fragments in recent times and completed in 1989. Some relics believed to be those of Saint Melangell emerged when the floor was excavated. These, after examination, have been placed in the shrine. The frieze of the fifteenth century carved oak rood screen depicts the story of the saint. The cell itself, a rounded apse, has been rebuilt with recovered stones on the original foundations.
Like Saints Milburga of Much Wenlock and Winefride of Gwytherin (Holywell) Melangell was an abbess of noble birth and like Winefride, a Latin biography was written, the only female Welsh saints so commemorated. St Melangell’s Church at Pennant Melangell is a place of exceptional beauty and peace. Many visitors are drawn here for various reasons, and there are many pilgrimages from various churches. Annual pilgrimages to Pennant Melangell by the Orthodox communities of Saint Barbara in Chester and the Holy Fathers of Nicaea in Shrewsbury have been taking place for over forty years now. Once again representatives and descendants of the pre-schism Church of Saint Melangell can venerate this great saint of Wales. Her beautiful Icon by Aidan Hart in the church of the Holy Fathers, Shrewsbury is a much-venerated treasure. Depicted in her sanctity with the rescued hare it assists worshippers through prayer and the sacramental life of the Church to approach “the throne of the heavenly grace”.
Nowadays it is popular to consign the story of St Melangell to legend. Orthodox Christians do not dispute the veracity of a Saint in this way; “the occupation of a Saint”, as T.S.Eliot put it, is at the frontier between what we know and that which is beyond us. This holy shrine, a place of inscrutable serenity and peace, exists as a meeting of the ‘timeless’ with ‘time’, the kairos that marks the frontier of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist. Here in this holy place the pilgrim apprehends meanings that exceed both language and comprehension, thus the words of Christ are realised in His saints, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Orthodox website, courtesy of Christopher Jobson.
Feature Image: The_church_of_St_Melangell_-geograph.org.uk_-_1267380.jpg (P.D.)