Silin
The Venerable Silin, whom the calendars of Wales commemorate on the first of September
Venerable
Commemorated 1 September — The day of Silin in the Welsh calendars; Wrexham patronal festival
Silin is the saint whom the Welsh calendars commemorate on September 1 and to whom a notable group of Welsh churches is dedicated — the great parish church of Wrexham, Llansilin in Denbighshire ("the llan of Silin"), Letterston and Upton in Pembrokeshire, and Gileston in Glamorgan among them. Who he was is a genuinely open question, disputed since the Middle Ages: the dominant scholarly view holds that "Silin" is simply the Welsh name of St Giles (Aegidius), the abbot of Provence, while the calendar followed here — with Welsh local tradition — treats him as a native sixth-century saint. The churches, the holy wells, the September 1 feast and the dispute itself are the surviving record; no life of Silin is transmitted.
No life of Silin survives. The record consists of calendar entries, church dedications, holy wells and fair-days, and it is given here in full, followed by the identity question that hangs over all of it.
The calendars. Silin stands on September 1 in practically the whole run of the later mediaeval and early modern Welsh calendars — among them those in Peniarth MSS 27, 172, 186, 187, 192 and 219, Jesus College MS 141, Mostyn MS 88 and Llanstephan MS 117, and the calendars of the Welsh Prayer Books (1567, 1664) and Bibles (1588, 1620). He is there usually styled "Saint" (Sain, Sant), a style which, Baring-Gould and Fisher observe, mediaeval Welsh usage reserved for non-Welsh saints — a point in favour of the Giles identification below. The late sixteenth-century calendar in Peniarth MS 172 alone gives him a father, entering September 1 as the festival of "Silin ap Aron." Many of the same calendars enter him again on October 1 in conjunction with Garmon (Germanus), and the Demetian Calendar (Cwrtmawr MS 44) has a "Silin, Bishop" on January 27 who is in all probability Julian of Le Mans — the name Silin also did duty in Welsh for Julian, a further layer of the confusion.
The churches and wells. To Silin is dedicated the parish church of Wrexham, one of the finest churches in Wales, whose tower — one of the traditional "Seven Wonders of Wales" — carries three statues of the saint; the church was formerly given as dedicated to St Silin, though its patron is now recognised as St Giles, and Norden's survey of 1620 records a field by the town called Erw Sant Silin, "St Silin's acre." At Llansilin in Denbighshire, which bears his name, the north aisle held the chapel of St Silin, with his statue on a bracket recorded in 1534 and destroyed in the rough handling of the church in 1646; Ffynnon Silin, his holy well in a field close to the village, was piped to feed the village fountain in 1882. In Pembrokeshire he is patron of Letterston — where there is another Ffynnon San' Silin — and of Upton, with a vanished pilgrimage chapel at Mynachlogddu recorded as both "Capell St. Sylin" and "Capella Sancti Egidii"; in Glamorgan, of Gileston; and in Cardiganshire the long-extinct Capel Sant Silin in Llanfihangel Ystrad held its fair, George Owen (†1613) records, on the first of September. An old Welsh air is called "Caniad San Silin," and the fleabane-wort is Llysiau Silin, "Silin's herb" — small witnesses to a cult that was once thoroughly at home in Wales.
Who is Silin? The identity of this well-dedicated saint has been disputed since scholarship first looked at him, and this entry records the positions without resolving them.
The Giles identification. Baring-Gould and Fisher, following the earlier record, hold that the Silin of the calendars is St Giles (Aegidius), the abbot of Provence whose cult swept Britain in the eleventh century and whose universal Western feast is September 1. The equation is mediaeval, not modern: a document of 1296 in the Red Book of St Asaph calls Llansilin church Ecclesia Sancti Egidii de Kynlleith; Salesbury's Welsh dictionary of 1547 gives Silin as the Welsh for Giles; and the calendar in Allwydd Paradwys (1670) enters September 1 as "Ægidiws, i.e. Silin Abad." On philological grounds they add that Silin cannot be derived from the native name Sulien (Old Welsh Sulgen), and they read the calendars' habit of styling him "Saint" as marking a foreigner. On this view there is no Welsh saint Silin at all: the name is Giles naturalised.
The native-saint tradition. Against this, the calendar which is this entry's witness dates Silin to the sixth century — a dating incompatible with Giles (†early eighth century) and implying a native saint. Local tradition at Llansilin likewise treats its patron as a sixth-century Welsh monastic, of princely birth, formed at Meifod under the abbot Gwyddfarch and associated with Bardsey — though it must be said plainly that this narrative is assembled from the recorded lives of other men (Tysilio of Meifod, whose master was Gwyddfarch, and Sulien of the company of Cadfan, who went to Bardsey), and no early source tells it of Silin. Modern reference works commonly treat "Silin" as a variant of Sulien. The York calendar's "(6th C)" stands in this tradition, and its dating is followed in this entry's frontmatter, with the dispute flagged.
Under either identification the saint commemorated is a monastic — Giles an abbot ("Silin Abad"), the native candidates monks of Meifod and Bardsey — and he is classed venerable accordingly.
Feast and commemoration
September 1 (church date; New Calendar civil September 1, Old Calendar civil September 14). The witness is the calendar of the Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland (St Constantine York feed), whose GB&I layer for this day reads "St. Lythan. St. Silin (6th C)." Independent corroboration of the day is strong on the Welsh side: September 1 is Silin's day in practically all the Welsh calendars named above, the Wrexham patronal festival was kept on it ("their wakes the first Sunday after St Giles," Edward Lhuyd records), and the Capel Sant Silin fair fell on it. Orthodox England does not list Silin at September 1 (its Silin is the Luxulyan abbot, July 29; it lists Giles of Provence separately on September 1) — so the York feed's September 1 placement rests on the Welsh calendar tradition rather than on its usual upstream. No Greek, Slavonic or North American Orthodox calendar consulted carries him (OCA September 1 checked live, absent). No proper service exists; the common of a venerable would be used.
Iconography
No Orthodox icon of Silin is known. The historical imagery is Western and mostly lost: his statue on a bracket in the St Silin chapel at Llansilin, recorded in 1534, was destroyed in 1646; the tower of Wrexham parish church (early sixteenth century) carries three statues of the saint with the attributes of Giles — the hind and arrow of the Giles legend — which is itself evidence for the mediaeval identification. Any future image would have to come from this Western material under the repository's labelled-Western- works ruling; a lead is recorded in the the list of icons still being sought queue.
Disputed questions
- Silin = Giles? The central question, set out above: mediaeval equation and Baring-Gould and Fisher's philology on one side; the York calendar's sixth-century dating, Welsh local tradition, and the modern identification with Sulien on the other. Recorded, not resolved. If the Giles identification is right, the true century is the eighth, not the sixth, and this entry's century: 6 (which follows the witness) is wrong.
- Not to be confused with Silin (Sulian) of Luxulyan, the reputed sixth-century Breton-born founder of a small monastery at Luxulyan in Cornwall, whose feast is July 29 and whom the same York calendar commemorates separately on that day ("St. Silin, abbot of Luxulyan in Cornwall (6th C)"). Orthodox England — the York calendar's named upstream — knows only the Luxulyan saint under this name, and has no Silin at September 1. Whether the two calendar entries are ultimately one man is itself part of the identity question; the calendar treats them as two, and so does this corpus.
- Not to be confused with Sulien of the company of Cadfan, the Breton-Welsh saint who is patron, jointly with Mael, of Corwen in Merionethshire and Cwm in Flintshire, and whose own days in the Welsh calendars are September 2 (alone) and May 13 (with Mael); nor with Tysilio of Meifod (Suliau in Brittany), whose story local tradition has lent to Silin.
- The October 1 entries. Llansilin itself kept its festival on October 1, which Baring-Gould and Fisher explain as one of the festivals of Germanus (Garmon) — two neighbouring churches are dedicated to Garmon — drawing the wake from the first of one month to the first of the next.