ILLTUD
(
c.
475
-
c.
525
) a
Celtic saint and one of the founders of monachism in Britain
.
The earliest document that tells us anything about him is the ‘
Vita Samsonis
,’ which was written at
Dol
,
Brittany
, about the year
610
. There we are told that the youthful
Samson
is taken by his parents to the school of ‘
an illustrious master of the
Britons
named
Eltut
.’ We are informed, too, that
Eltut
had been a disciple of
S.
Germanus
of
Auxerre
and that he was ‘
the most learned of all the
Britons
in the knowledge of Scripture, both the
Old Testament
and the
New Testament
, and in every branch of philosophy
— poetry and rhetoric, grammar and arithmetic, and he was most sagacious and gifted with the
power of foretelling future events
.’ From references in the ‘Lives’ of other saints written at a much later date, and from the medieval ‘
Vita Iltuti
’ itself, we gather that this famous school must have been at
Llantwit Major
in the
Vale of Glamorgan
and that other distinguished persons such as
Gildas
,
S.
Paul Aurelian
, and
S.
David
were also pupils of
S.
Illtud
. Similarly, from late sources we are informed that the great
teacher
was of
Armorican
birth, i.e. born in
Brittany
, and that both his parents were of royal lineage. It may well be,
however, that we can afford to disregard all the later material and see in the few pregnant sentences of the ‘
Vita Samsonis
’ a fairly accurate picture of a cultured
Briton
living in the years following the withdrawal of
Rome
from the west, who, nevertheless, had inherited some at least of the classical learning, coupled with some learning still derived from the native priesthood, and to which had been added a knowledge of
Christianity
and its literature.
Modern students recognize that an analysis of church ‘dedications’ and of the toponymy of districts associated with
Celtic
saints must go side by side with a study of the documents which profess to describe their lives. The ancient churches dedicated to
S.
Illtud
are found for the most part in
south-eastern Wales
, especially in
Brecknock
,
South Glamorgan
and
Gower
. There are vivid traditions of him in these parts which possibly may lend authority to the view that he came from the
Welsh
and not from the
Armorican
Llydaw
. Like so many of his contemporaries he seems to have travelled widely by way of the western sea routes, which were reviving after the withdrawal of
Roman
power. This explains the ‘dedication’ to
S.
Illtud
at
Llanelltyd
near
Dolgelley
, as well as the ‘dedications’ in the ancient dioceses of
Léon
,
Tréguier
, and
Vannes
in
Brittany
.
Bibliography:
-
G. H. Doble
,
Saint Iltut
, Cardiff, 1944
(Cardiff 1944);
-
Baring-Gould
and
J. Fisher
,
The Lives of the British Saints
, iii, 303-17;
-
E. G. Bowen
, ‘The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in South Wales,’ in
Antiquity
,
Dec. 1945
, 175 ff.
Author:
Professor Emrys George Bowen, M.A., F.S.A., (1900-83), Aberystwyth
