The final command of Christ just prior to His Ascension was "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” [fn1] Within less than two hundred years, the message of Jesus Christ had spread right across Europe, being brought to the far distant shores of Britain by Roman travellers. By A D 350 the first Christian community was born in Cornwall in the area of the Hayle Estuary.
Until this time, the established religion of Cornwall was Druidism. This was initially a belief in one god, but most Druids believed in the plurality of gods, gods of mountains, lakes, rivers, trees, fountains, etc. With their teaching of the immortality of the soul, their religious rites consisted chiefly of sacrifices, which on occasions were of human victims. Despite the fact that many Britons, especially those living in the rural areas of Britain, clung onto their pagan beliefs, Christianity was spreading throughout the land; especially in the towns and cities developed and/or expanded by the Romans. By the time of the Council of Arles [A D 314], the British Church was able to send three Bishops, each of whom were accepted into full communion by the Continental Church.
When the last of the Romans left Britain in A D 410 in order to defend Gaul and Italy, a huge power vacuum was left in their place. However in A D 429, the first Saxons invaded Britain, and within a matter of decades, Jutes, Angles and Saxons were pouring from their pagan lands in northern Germany into Britain, conquering as they came. The Britons either submitted to the pagan invaders, or withdrew with their Christian beliefs to the western lands of Cornwall and Wales; or else emigrated to Arntorica, which they renamed Little Britain or Brittany. This Church "being separated from the Churches in Europe by the pagan belt established in the east of the country, was preserved from much of the decline in spiritual fervour and culture which characterised continental Christianity during this period.” [fn2]
In fact, while the Continental Church was being torn apart by the Arian heresy, great happenings were going on in Cornwall. There is an old saying that "there are more saints in Cornwall than in Heaven" - for during the time that the Celtic Church had to remain isolated from the rest of the Church, it grew and strengthened, being unaffected by the divisions, heresies and corruptions of the Continental Church. "Long before Augustine brought the established Roman Christianity to England, there was a Christian Church strongly established in Cornwall; a Church that held firmly to the primitive and apostolic traditions of faith and order; that withstood the impact of Saxon heathenism and confronted Augustine with a sturdy nonconformity." [fn3]
This was the age of Saints and Missionaries - especially with Welsh and Irish evangelists strengthening the proclamation of the Gospel Message in Cornwall, to keep aflame the faith that was being extinguished elsewhere in the islands of Britain. In about A D 450 a large party of evangelists landed in the Philack district to preach the Good News, but many were martyred. Altogether there are about 170 of these martyred saints honoured in Cornwall. But there were many more who came to build up and strengthen the witness, in this far corner of the world.
In the Sixth Century, a Welshman called Gluvias, came to Cornwall as an evangelist to preach to the Cornish. He was the son of a Welsh Prince, Gwyallyw, who had seized and married the "modest Virgin Gladys" against her father’s wishes. Gluvias accompanied his uncle, Petroc, who was later recognised as the Patron saint of Devon and Cornwall.
Whereas Petroc spent most of his time preaching to the Celts in northern Cornwall; Gluvias turned south to the English Channel coast. For by navigating westwards from his Uncle’s mission, Gluvias reached the far tip of Cornwall and then sailed eastward along the southern coast until he reached a river mouth and upon sailing up it a little way he found a Druid place of worship, and decided that this would be the site for his mission.
Preaching from nearby caves to the few people living near this spot, he began to share about the Good News of the Christian Gospel. Very soon, with his small congregation of converts, he began to build a smal' monastic chapel that was to be the beginnings of "The Church in Penryn". For the spot he had arrived at, was the site of the ancient borough of Penryn - and this was its first Christian Church.
H Miles Brown [The Church in Cornwall] draws an illustrative picture of what the Chapel and indeed St Gluvias himself: The settlement of Penryn at this time "would most likely have been a group of beehive-shaped huts surrounded by a stone enclosure". In the middle of this would be the little chapel and also within the enclosure, there might have been a well and a crudely carved granite cross. St Gluvias "would most likely have been clad in a white tunic with a rough coat of fur over it", hanging at his side he would have a wallet in which "there would be a beautifully illuminated service book or Psalter. He would carry a staff with a curved spade-like top, and a small belt formed of metal sheets bent round and riveted. The head was shaved in front of a line drawn from ear to ear, the hair hanging down long behind" and he also had a long beard."
It is believed that Gluvias himself was one of those martyred. James Mitchell, a Canon of Glasney, left in his will of 1438, "One pound of wax to the light of St Gluvias, the Martyr." However the nature of his death; he was most likely buried in his chapel, the common custom amongst foundling churches; with his good work being carried on by his followers and converts. !t seems that St Gluvias' witness was fruitful, for according to Elliott-Binns [fn4], Penryn was the site of one of the oratories in Cornwall that became a Ian or monastery and acquired the immense territories that later drew Penryn close into the bosom of the See of Exeter.
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One day, during the time when Petroc and his Celtic missionaries were preaching to the Cornish, a small group of English children, far from home, and just standing innocently in the forum of Rome, caused a happening that changed the position of the Church not only in Saxon Britain, but also in Celtic Cornwall and the other Celtic lands. For these children had been espied by the Archdeacon of Rome, later to become Pope Gregory the Great.
Upon his succession to the Papacy in 590, Gregory was determined to do something about this pagan land, whose people "would not only be Angles, but Angels, if they were Christians." So in 596, he sent Augustine to christianise the Anglo-Saxons of England. Within nine months of Augustine arriving in the Isle of Thanet with his forty monks, the King of Kent with about ten thousand of his people professed conversion.
Within the next few decades, Northumbria, Essex and East Anglia also professed conversion; although by the time of Augustine's death, many had slipped back into paganism. Despite this, Augustine had done a mighty work during his lifetime. He also attempted to unite the various Christian Churches of Britain under the jurisdiction of Rome; and at the Conference with the British bishops at Augustin's Oak, he invited them to adopt Catholic uses, and to join him in preaching to the heathen of Britain. But despite his efforts, his attempt failed completely, because of their passionate clinging to their own independence.
With more and more missionaries and monks coming to the kingdoms of Britain from Rome and the Continental Church, one by one, the kingdoms either returned to or adopted the Christian faith, so that by 636A.D. only the Southern Saxons remained pagan; and within just a matter of a few years they also accepted Christianity as their religion.
There was therefore now two Churches in Britain : the independent Church of the Celtic lands, and the newly formed Saxon Church, a daughter Church of the See of Rome. In order to unite the two C hurches, the Synod of Whitby was held in 644. The Synod was successful in establishing a uniform dating for Easter; but as regarding the matter of whether the Celtic Church should remain independent or bring itself under the influence, guidance and supremacy of Rome. All, with one exception, chose the latter - and that one exception: the Celtic Church of Cornwall.
However, by gathering all her strength under the flag of Rome, Saxon England began to push westwards, so that by 850 the Cornish Bishop, on behalf of the whole of the Cornish Church, made his submission to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The struggles did not really end there, and it wasn't until about 940 that the religious strifes over Celtic differences really came to an end.
Throughout this period, Penryn and its Church remained very quiet, growing steadily under the influence of the Cornish See and the Celtic Monastery that was situated nearby. And when the Saxons invaded Cornwall, bringing their Roman Christianity with them, they built more permanent buildings, including a Parish Church to replace the monastic chapel of St Gluvias - one that was dedicated to his name and memory.
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1 Matthew 28:19f [N.I.V.]
2 Taken from "The Story of the Church" A M Renwick
3 L A Fereday, from "The Story of Falmouth Baptists"
4 “Medieval Cornwall” by L E Elliott-Binns
