Why you may ask, does a story from a remote valley in Wales appear in a blog that is mainly concerned with Italy? The answer is that pilgrimage is one of the great links between these two countries.
Italy is blessed with countless places of pilgrimage. They are often ancient, beautiful and deeply moving, and many of them have continued their traditions for centuries without interruption. Living in Italy, one constantly encounters these sacred landscapes: churches, sanctuaries and holy places that remain part of everyday life.
The situation in Britain is rather different. The Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries caused a profound rupture in the old pilgrimage tradition. Shrines were destroyed, monasteries were closed, and many places of devotion disappeared. Some were later revived, particularly by Catholics in England, but often only after centuries of interruption. Their very survival or reconstruction therefore gives them a special poignancy.
Wales has an especially fascinating story. It had once been a deeply Catholic land, filled with saints’ churches, holy wells and places of pilgrimage. But the religious changes of the sixteenth century brought enormous destruction, and later the rise of the Nonconformist chapel tradition created a very different expression of Welsh religious identity. This movement was enormously important in preserving Welsh language, culture and confidence, but it was not always associated with the colourful, joyful traditions of pilgrimage that had existed in earlier centuries.
That is why Pennant Melangell is so remarkable. Hidden away in a beautiful valley, surrounded by ancient yew trees, it represents not simply an old church but a rediscovered world. A medieval shrine, apparently lost after the Reformation, has been reconstructed from its carved stones reused for other buildings and the original rounded apse rebuilt. Pilgrims have returned, and the valley has once again become a place of prayer, peace and celebration.
I remember visiting Pennant Melangell by motorbike before the restoration was complete. I remember the quietness of the valley and the little building at the back of the church used as an old schoolroom before it was transformed. Years later, rediscovering my old photographs and the ballad I wrote about St Melangell, I felt that the story deserved to be told again.
And there is another link with Italy. Some years ago, while visiting Castelfiorentino in Tuscany, we discovered the shrine of Santa Verdiana, another extraordinary example of popular devotion. Her story is quite different from that of Melangell — instead of a gentle hare, she was associated, according to legend, with two snakes that became her unlikely companions — but both saints reveal the richness and imagination of pilgrimage traditions.
Whether in the valleys of Wales or the hills of Tuscany, these places remind us that pilgrimage is not only about religion. It is about memory, landscape, stories and the human search for meaning. Each shrine carries the history of the people who have loved it, lost it and sometimes brought it back to life.
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