Saint Melangell

Melangell , Latin: Monacella, lit. 'little nun') was a Welsh hermit and abbess. She possibly lived in the 7th or 8th century, although the precise dates are uncertain. According to her hagiography, she was originally an Irish princess who fled an arranged marriage and became a consecrated virgin in the wilderness of the Kingdom of Powys. She supernaturally protected a hare from a prince's hunting dogs, and was granted land to found a sanctuary and convent. Melangell's cult has been closely centred on her 12th-century shrine at St Melangell's Church, Pennant Melangell, which was founded at her grave. The church contains the reconstructed Romanesque shrine to Melangell, which had been dismantled in the aftermath of the Reformation. Since the medieval period, she has been venerated as the patron saint of hares; for many centuries, her association with hares was so strong that locals would not kill a hare in the parish of Pennant Melangell. Melangell's primary hagiography is the Historia Divae Monacellae, written in the 15th century. The Historia survives in three complete and two incomplete manuscripts, with the earliest dating from the late 16th century, along with one printed copy of a 17th-century manuscript. Melangell's chronology is unknown, with some evidence pointing to the 7th or 8th century. Although the Historia gives a date of 604 AD, this date is suspect due to its likely origin in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, which is viewed as historically unreliable by scholars. Jane Cartwright, a professor at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, draws a parallel between Melangell's hagiography and Welsh apocryphal legends about Mary Magdalene; both having become penitents deep in the woods and not seeing men for many years. In their respective tales, men who attempt to approach them in the wilderness are struck by their divinity. The Historia depicts Melangell's life with heavy emphasis on her virginity, placing it as the essence of her sanctity.