Introduction
Introduction By the second quarter of the twelfth century, when Tintern, Whitland and Margam, the first Cistercian abbeys in Wales, were founded, the Anglo- Norman aristocratic élite from which their founders were drawn had succeeded in establishing firm control over lowland Gwent, Glamorgan, Gower and Pembroke, but Whitland and Margam were located on the fringes of these areas in the frontier zones between them and adjoining territory remaining under de facto Welsh rule, and Anglo-Norman governance in these zones was ‘frequently skeletal, nominal or non- existent’1 and constantly being challenged by the Welsh. They were joined in 1147 by the two Welsh Savigniac abbeys, Neath and Basingwerk, which became Cistercian when the Order of Savigny merged with the Cistercian Order. Like Whitland and Margam, Neath was located in a frontier zone, and the Anglo-Norman hold on the area of north-east Wales in which Basingwerk was located was also tenuous by the time it became Cistercian. Following the assumption of the patronage of Whitland and its first daughter-house, Strata Florida, by Rhys ap Gruffudd, the Lord Rhys (d. 1197), after he had succeeded in re-establishing Welsh hegemony in the kingdom of Deheubarth in the 1150s, the filiation of Whitland, which by 1201 numbered a further six Cistercian abbeys distributed throughout the length and breadth of pura Wallia, became clearly identifiable as native Welsh abbeys with Welsh patrons, choir monks and political sympathies, whereas the other Cistercian foundations in Wales all had French or English mother houses and choir monks, maintained close connections with their Anglo-Norman patrons, and were unable to establish Welsh daughter 1 R.R.
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