Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

Religion was an essential element in Welsh national identity throughout the early modern period. Over the course of this period, the majority of Welsh people transferred their allegiances from the Catholic to the Protestant Anglican Church, with large numbers later being recruited by the emerging nonconformist groups. Each variant on the Christian faith in turn became an intrinsic element in a shifting sense of national identity.
This module explores the evolution of increasingly radical Protestant ideology in Wales, along with the interplay between religious belief, language and identity. This will be achieved by focussing on a series of key individuals, whose ideas were not always widely accepted in their own age, but who, thereafter, have been hailed as religious pioneers. Students will engage with these ideas through the writings of each individual, in translation from the original Welsh in some cases. The module will examine the various ways in which these figures interpreted the perceived association between the Christian faith, the Welsh language and the Welsh nation and how these interpretations, in turn, affected the development of religion and national identity in early modern Wales. These ideas and themes will be set in the wider context of religious developments in the British Isles during the early modern period.

Introductory seminar, plus six from the following:
William Salesbury and Protestant humanism
Bishop Richard Davies: the `Protestant Theory of the Church'
John Penry: the first Welsh Nonconformist martyr?
Morgan Llwyd: Puritanism, Wales and the Welsh language
Vavasor Powell and seventeenth-century Puritanism
Griffith Jones: faith, education and the Welsh language
Theophilus Evans: a Biblical history for Wales
Howel Harris and the Methodist movement
William Williams and the Methodist view of history
Dr Richard Price and radical Dissent
Iolo Morganwg: the search for a new identity

Individual tutorials for essay feedback