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Saint David (c. 520-c. 601) is the patron saint of doves, poets, and Wales. One source calls him "perhaps the most celebrated of British saints." Another gives him credit for evangelizing much of Wales. The body of information available about him today is thin in substantiated fact but rich with tradition, including even King Arthur and a sea monster. Saint David's mere existence may provide evidence that Christianity in Wales persisted in tact and uninterrupted since Roman times.
Rhygyfarch Embellished Story
Most information about Saint David comes from the writings of an eleventh-century monk named Rhygyfarch (also Rhygyvarch, Rhigyfarch, and Ricemarch), son of Bishop Sulien, of Saint David's Cathedral, Saint David's favorite of the churches he established. Rhygyfarch claimed to have gathered his information from old written sources, but those have not survived. Rhygyfarch's life of Saint David is regarded by many scholars as suspect because it contains many implausible events and because he had a stake in enhancing Saint David's history so as to support the prestige of the Welsh church and its independence from Canterbury, the center of the English church (still Catholic at the time).
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