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Madley
- Matle or Lann Ebrdil - is said to be
the birthplace of St Dyfrig or Dubricius, the premier
saint of Ergyng.
The Book of Llandaff relates that Dyfrig was the illegitimate
son of Ebrdil, who was herself the daughter of King
Peibio of Ergyng. This relationship to Peibio
is almost certainly a spurious hagiographic device.
It may be that the tale reflects an earlier story in
which Ebrdil is an earlier (male) saint whose spiritual
inheritance passed to Dyfrig (Coplestone-Crow, 1989).
The church at Madley, where Dyfrig is recorded as having
been born, seems to have had an early dedication to
St Ebrdil - Lann Ebrdil - (Coplestone-Crow).
Madley may have been a prehistoric religious site which
needed to be associated with the premier local saint.
Whatever Madley's original sacred nature may have been,
the association with Dyfrig's mother probably led to
its subsequent strong cult of the Virgin Mary.
The rebuilding of what had been a 12th century
aisleless church was carried out in the 13th
century in response to a pilgrim interest in a figure
of the Virgin there (Brown, S, 1985, p122). Any
pilgrim activity at Madley is likely to have been developed
as a spin-off from the cult of St Ethelbert at Hereford.
A now missing north chancel window was described by
Thomas Blount in about 1675 - 'In the North Window
we see a Picture of St Ethelbert holding a Church in
his Hand,and a Queen standing by Him, with the Arms
of England - in another window a crosse and by it the
effigies of a Woman under whom it is written 'Sta.
Mildburga pray for the (blank) and for the souls of
all Christians''. The figure might
have been St Mildburg, and the statue that of the Virgin
Mary, but the likelihood is that an earlier cult was
being remembered here - that of Ebrdil and her son Dyfrig,
in the premier church of the land once named after her,
Ynis Ebrdil. |
