Imaging the Saints of Wales

Images of saints were plentiful in medieval Wales, and were found in all churches and private chapels. Although the vast majority were lost after the Reformation, images of saints continued to be cherished by Recusant communities and were increasingly commissioned for churches again from the nineteenth century. New Catholic churches were furnished with images of a wide variety of saints, although imagery of saints in Protestant churches was usually restricted to those found in the Bible, such as the disciples and evangelists. Larger numbers of images of local saints were commissioned for churches from the 1880s and throughout the twentieth century, as an interest in Welsh Christian tradition flourished.

The ‘Imaging the Saints in Wales’ database contains hundreds of images of saints in Wales that can be searched by location, type of artwork, date and by saint or by combinations of saints. Most of the images on the database are found in places of worship, but there are also records of various kinds of images known in public and private collections in Wales, and illustrative material from books and manuscripts. More work is being added to the resource.

Imaging the Saints of Wales Database

A study of the imagery of Welsh saints, Welsh Saints from Welsh Churches, was published by Martin Crampin in 2023, and an additional volume, Depicting St David, includes many more images of the patron saint of Wales.

Additional detail on the imagery of St David was published in Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses (2022). An introduction to, and a listing of, all known images of saints from medieval Wales is published the same volume.

A further article focussed on the imagery of Welsh saints produced by the Welsh firm Celtic Studios in the second half of the twentienth century.

Martin Crampin, Welsh Saints from Welsh Churches (Talybont, Y Lolfa, 2023), 256 pp + xvi.

Martin Crampin, Depicting St David (Talybont, Y Lolfa, 2020), 76 pp + iv.

Martin Crampin, ‘A Dove at his Ear: Imaging St David’, in David N. Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Astudiaethau ar Seintiau Cymru / Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2022), 187–208.

Martin Crampin, ‘The Imagery of Saints in Medieval Wales’, in David N. Parsons and Paul Russell (eds), Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Astudiaethau ar Seintiau Cymru / Studies in the Saints of Wales (Aberystwyth, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2022), 345–79.

Martin Crampin, ‘Welsh Saints in Stained Glass by Celtic Studios’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, new series, vol. 29 (2023), 11–23.