Christianity in Cornwall

Scilly has been identified as the place of exile of two heretical 4th-century bishops from Gaul, Instantius and Tiberianus, who were followers of Priscillian and were banished after the Council of Bordeaux in 384.

There were no known cities (L castrum, OE caester, W caer, Br Ker ) west of Exeter so Cornwall may have remained pagan at least until the 5th century, the presumed period of the mythical Christian King of the Britons, Arthur Pendragon.

The historicity of some of these missionaries is problematic[5] and it has been pointed out by Canon Doble that it was customary in the Middle Ages to ascribe such geographic origins to saints.

Rather than risk the difficult passage around Land's End they would disembark their ships on the North Cornish coast (in the Camel estuary) and progress to ports such as Fowey on foot.

[10][11] In the Domesday Survey the church had considerable holdings of land but the Earl of Cornwall had appropriated a number of manors formerly held by monasteries.

Later records claim that he used his power to grant estates in Cornwall to the bishop of Sherborne, especially Pawton in St Breock and Lawhitton near Launceston.

[22] These British speakers were deported across the Tamar, which was fixed as the border of the Cornish; they were left under their own dynasty to regulate themselves with west Welsh tribal law and customs, rather like the Indian princes under the Raj in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[23] By 944 Athelstan's successor, Edmund I of England, styled himself 'King of the English and ruler of this province of the Britons',[24] an indication of how that accommodation was understood at the time.

The early organisation and affiliations of the Church in Cornwall are unclear, but in the mid-9th century it was led by a Bishop Kenstec with his see at Dinurrin, a location which has sometimes been identified as Bodmin and sometimes as Gerrans.

[25] Three original records relating to the Cornish church which predate the Norman Conquest are the Bodmin Gospels; the Lanalet pontifical (associated with St Germans); and the Codex Oxoniensis Posterior, an anthology which includes a commentary on the mass and two works by Augustine of Hippo and Caesarius of Arles.

The wealthiest families would be able to send some of their sons to Oxford and some others could obtain benefices first and then pay for their education from their income (the bishop would grant them leave of absence to attend the university).

[30][31] Ding Dong mine, reputedly one of the oldest in Cornwall, in the parish of Gulval is said in local legend to have been visited by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin trader, and that he brought a young Jesus to address the miners, although there is no evidence to support this.

[33][34][unreliable source] There had already been dissent in Cornwall from the changes in the church enacted by the government of Edward VI abolishing chantries and reforming some aspects of the liturgy.

Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset on behalf of the Crown, expressed no sympathy, pointing out that the old rites and prayers had been in Latin—also a foreign language—and there was thus no reason for the Cornish to complain.

Lanherne, the Cornish home of the Arundells in Mawgan in Pydar, was the most important centre, while the religious census of 1671 recorded recusants also in the parishes of Treneglos, Cardinham, Newlyn East and St Ervan.

In Cornwall, there were about 50 ejected ministers, some of whom persisted in conducting meetings in out of the way places: these included Thomas Tregosse, formerly vicar of Mylor and Mabe, Joseph Sherwood of Penzance, and Henry Flamank of Lanivet.

[40] George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, visited Cornwall in 1655 and found followers in Loveday Hambly, of Tregongeeves near St Austell, and Thomas Mounce, of Liskeard.

Wesleyan Methodist missions began during John Wesley's lifetime and had great success over a long period during which Methodism itself divided into a number of sects and established a definite separation from the Church of England.

The times were characterized by controversies with the Deists and the official church adopted a position more consonant with appeals to reason and the natural order.

However, an official church preoccupied with great minds and leading families was ill-equipped to retain the loyalty of illiterate miners and labourers such as formed most of the population of Cornwall.

[49][50] The Church of England was in the majority from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I until the Methodist revival of the 19th century: before the Wesleyan missions dissenters were very few in Cornwall.

Samuel Walker of St Columb Major proposed to contribute part of his rich benefice towards the new see but this later became impossible (and the town was of minor importance in the county).

Cowethas Peran Sans, the Fellowship of St Piran, was one such group (now dissolved) promoting practices associated with Celtic Christianity.

Pascon agan Arluth (The Passion of our Lord), a poem of 259 eight-line verses probably composed around 1375, is one of the earliest surviving works of Cornish literature.

The Ordinalia consists of three miracle plays, Origo Mundi, Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini, meant to be performed on successive days.

(This has been studied since the 1890s whereas the only other known Cornish drama portraying events in a saint's legend, Beunans Ke, was only found in the early years of the 21st century.)

Other notable pieces of Cornish literature include the Creation of the World (with Noah's Flood) which is a miracle play similar to Origo Mundi but in a much later manuscript (1611); the Charter Fragment, a short poem about marriage, believed to be the earliest connected text in the language; and the recently discovered Beunans Ke, another saint's play, notable for containing a long Arthurian section.

"Here is an example of continuity in cultural traits extending over many generations: for we can look beyond the medieval cross to the inscribed stone and even farther back to the prehistoric mênhir, and yet bring the custom right up-to-date with the twentieth-century war memorial."

Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, between 1536 and 1545, signalled the end of the big Cornish priories but as a chantry church, Glasney held on until 1548 when it suffered the same fate.

St Michael's Mount may have been the site of a monastery from the 8th to early 11th centuries and Edward the Confessor gave it to the Norman abbey of Mont Saint-Michel.