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Saint Forbadil, also known as Morbadil or Mórbuidéal, was a seventh-century saint of the Celtic Church. He was reported to have been of an enormous size and his name means "large vessel or bottle" in Ancient Irish.
Forbadil founded a hermitage deep in the then marshlands known as The Moggs, near present day Lichfield, Staffordshire. His life and death were suppressed by the later Roman Catholic Church, whose scribes like the Venerable Bede championed the cult of St. Chad. This was to disassociate with the Celtic Church, which had looked to the Irish monastery of Iona, in modern day Scotland, as its source.
St. Forbadil is sometimes represented with the head of a dog.
Early life and the Celtic Church
It is attested that Forbadil, born in 620, was the son of a King of Brega, a petty kingdom north of Dublin, in medieval Ireland. He was educated at Bangor Abbey, in County Down, established by St. Comgall in 588 and famous for its learning and austere rule.
The Celtic (or Insular) Church refers to those commonly held features across the Celtic speaking world during the Middle Ages.
The Celtic Church was less autonomous than the Roman Catholic Church. It was more comfortable in dealing with the ancient Celtic religion, being more connected to nature, friendlier to women and more spiritual.
The Celtic tonsure differed from that of the Roman Catholic Church, being shaved from ear to ear at the front of the head, but grown long at the back. There was also a unique system of penance known as peregrinato pro Cristo (going into exile for Christ). Forbadil chose the remote marshlands near present day Lichfield for his hermitage in 653, within the Kingdom of Mercia, where the Celtic Church remained strong.
The barking of wolves in this lonely area perhaps gave rise to the myth of Forbadil being cynocephalic (dog-headed).
Legends of St. Forbadil
Many of the legends associated with the life and death of St. Forbadil were suppressed by later writers following the Synod of Whitby in 664, where Wilfrid successfully argued the Roman position.
One legend has persisted throughout the centuries. When the sparse local population became sick, Forbadil realised that it was the drinking of the marshy waters of The Moggs that was the cause. Submerging his staff into the marshlands, the water turned into beer, a liquid far safer to drink and much more sustaining.
‘From man’s belief and the love of God, beer came into this world.’
Cynocephaly
To the Roman Catholic Church a dog headed saint evoked an image of magic and brutality. However, Thomas of Cantimpré corroborated the existence of cynocephalus in his Liber de Monstruosis Hominibus Orientis (Book of Monstrous Men of the Orient) in the thirteenth century.
It is also worth noting that St. Christopher was often depicted with the head of a dog.
St. Forbadil in Literature
Forbadilian meant to show compassion or to be empathetic not only to humans, but to all living creatures. It was one of the words that Dr. Samuel Johnson omitted from his dictionary of 1755. The word has not been in common usage since.
Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), the French 'pataphysical writer of Ubu Roi, was aware of the legends of St. Forbadil. Forbadil’s symbol was a spiral, which Jarry called the gidouille and frequently used it in his symbolism.
St. Forbadil in the Twentieth Century
In 1995 Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville arranged for an examination of the bones of St. Chad, enshrined in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham. This was undertaken by the Oxford University Unit. The report concluded that five of the bones are of the mid-seventh century, yet two of the bones were left femurs or thigh bones and so are clearly of two different individuals.
The Society of St. Forbadil has argued that the bones are those of both St. Forbadil and St. Chad. A decree issued in 1997 required that the bones be kept together and venerated collectively.
Recent research has suggested that Forbadil briefly became an interim Bishop of Mercia in 656 at the behest of the Mercian King Peada, son of King Penda. His predecessor was Diuma and after his brief tenure at the See based at Repton, he was succeeded by Ceollach and returned to his hermitage in The Moggs.