Deiniol of Bangor

What is known of Deiniol is fragmentary. A short Latin Life — a legenda of nine lessons for his feast — survives in a single early-seventeenth-century transcript (Peniarth MS 226, copied in 1602 from an "ancient" manuscript) and has never been published; beyond it stand the Welsh genealogies, a line of the Annales Cambriae, a passage of Rhygyfarch's Life of St David, and the witness of dedications and calendars. The Life below states what those sources state, and stops.

Origins and early life

The Welsh genealogies of the saints (Bonedd y Saint, in Peniarth MSS 16 and 45 and related copies) make Deiniol a son of Dunawd Fwr ("the Great"; Latin Dinothus), son of Pabo Post Prydyn, by Dwywai, daughter of Lleenog — a family of the British North displaced from its territories, which withdrew to Wales and was received by the kings of Powys. His father Dunawd, embracing the religious life, founded the monastery of Bangor Iscoed (Bangor-on-Dee, Bangor in Maelor), the house whose monks Bede later counted in their thousands. Deiniol is given as brother of SS Cynwyl and Gwarthan, and as father of Deiniolen — Deiniol the Younger; his wife's name is nowhere transmitted. He is often styled Deiniol Wyn, "the Blessed." The name itself is the Hebrew Daniel in a duly naturalised Welsh form, earlier Deinioel.

A late Glamorgan tradition printed in the Iolo MSS makes Dunawd's sons disciples of Cadoc at Llancarfan; this material passed through the hands of the forger Iolo Morganwg and is not independently attested, so it is set aside here.

Ministry

Deiniol did not remain in Maelor. He passed from Powys into Gwynedd, where he founded the monastery of Bangor Fawr yn Arfon — the present city of Bangor in Caernarfonshire — under the patronage of Maelgwn Gwynedd, who endowed it with lands and privileges and is said to have raised it to the rank of an episcopal see conterminous with the principality of Gwynedd. There Deiniol spent the remainder of his days as abbot and bishop, the first of the see that still bears the name of Bangor.

The Book of Llandaff states that Deiniol was consecrated bishop by Dubricius (Dyfrig); a later marginal note in the same book claims the consecrator was Teilo — a claim made in the interest of Llandaff's own pretensions, and dismissed by Baring-Gould and Fisher as preposterous — while the older scholarship of Rice Rees conjectured consecration by St David. The sources disagree and the question stays open.

Deiniol's one appearance in the early hagiography of another saint is at the Synod of Brefi (held some time before 569; c. 545 in the usual reckoning). Rhygyfarch's Life of St David (late eleventh century) relates that when repeated messengers had failed to bring David to the synod, "at length the most holy and faithful brethren Daniel and Dubricius were sent," and it was they who overcame his scruples and brought him. This notice is the earliest datable literary mention of Deiniol.

Martyrdom or repose

The A-text of the Annales Cambriae (Harley MS 3859) enters under the year 584: a battle against the Isle of Man, and the dispositio Danielis Bancorum — the death (or burial) of Daniel of the Bangors. Tradition, reported by Gerald of Wales in his Itinerary through Wales, buries him on Bardsey Island, the island of the saints off the Llŷn peninsula; a later legend of the hermit Elgar of Bardsey mentions him there.

Veneration and later cultus

Deiniol's cult is measured chiefly by dedications, which lie thickest in north Wales. He is patron of the cathedral church of Bangor and of the diocese. To him are dedicated Marchwiel near Wrexham, Worthenbury in Flintshire (long a chapelry of Bangor Iscoed), and Llanuwchllyn and Llanfor near Bala — at Llanfor with a holy well, Ffynnon Ddaniel, by the churchyard. Hawarden in Flintshire keeps a double dedication, one festival being St Deiniol's Day (it was there that W. E. Gladstone founded St Deiniol's Library in the saint's name). In the south are Llanddeiniol in Cardiganshire, once a prebend of the collegiate church of Llanddewi Brefi; the chapel of St Daniel south of Pembroke; Itton in Monmouthshire, formerly Llanddeiniol (the Lann Diniul of the Book of Llandaff); and Llangarran in Herefordshire; with holy wells of the saint at Penally in Pembrokeshire and Penbryn in Cardiganshire. The mediaeval Welsh bards invoke him — Dafydd ap Gwilym swears "Myn Delw Deinioel!", "By Deiniol's image!"

His festival is given in the Welsh calendars on September 11, in a good number of them from the fifteenth century downwards. A few late lists give December 1 or December 10 instead, but no early calendar enters him in December.

Miracles and traditions

The unpublished Latin legenda and a poem of 1527 by Sir David Trevor, parson of Llanallgo, preserve the only miracle-traditions; Baring-Gould and Fisher alone report their contents, from the manuscripts. Trevor's poem calls Deiniol "one of the seven blessed cousins," says he spent part of his early life as a hermit in Pembrokeshire, and that God called him to be a bishop though his education was deficient; when thieves stole a ploughman's oxen, Deiniol yoked stags to the plough in their stead. The legenda tells of a poisoned woman of Carew near Pembroke, past the physicians' help, who drank of the water of St Daniel's well and before the church door was delivered of the poison. The record of these traditions is late and thin, and is given here for what it is.