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Around the year 1090 the reliquary of Saint David was stolen and the gold and silver removed from it, though the chronicler
who records the fact makes no mention of what became of the saint’s relics. In a detailed essay examining their history, the
ecclesiastical historian F.G. Cowley argues strongly that Saint David’s bodily remains had disappeared by the beginning of
the twelfth century. Nevertheless it was in that century that Bishop Bernard managed to persuade Pope Calixtus that
two visits to St Davids would secure the same blessings for pilgrims as one to Rome. By the end of the twelfth century the
Cathedral also boasted another relic: the ‘Imperfect Gospel’. This was a copy of Saint John’s Gospel which Saint David had
been working on when he was called to prayer. He abandoned the column that he had been writing, and when he returned
discovered that it had been completed in golden letters by an angel. Then, as often seems to have happened with relics,
someone had a vision. John de Gamages was a thirteenth century Prior of Ewenni in Llandaf Diocese, and seems to have been a
rather down-to-earth monk with a gift for administration. Nevertheless, Christ appeared to him and pointed out where he could
find Saint David’s body. It was duly disinterred and removed to St Davids, where a shrine was built for it in 1275.
Cowley suggests that there may have been financial and church political motives behind the unlikely visionary’s fortunate
windfall. Such considerations did not, however, influence the first important visitor to the new shrine. Edward I turned up
in 1284, two years after the death of Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf. The English king had already purloined part of the True Cross
(Y Groes Nawdd) from Gwynedd, now he sought an important relic from West Wales. He set off back to London taking the head of
Saint David and other assorted bones with him. St Davids Cathedral had to make do with what the monarch left behind. In
the fourteenth and fifteenth century these remaining bits of bone were often taken around the diocese on fundraising tours.
The Reformation put an end to such entrepreneurial activities. In 1538 the new ultra-Protestant Bishop of St Davids, William
Barlow, got his hands on the relics, which the Cathedral clergy had rashly exposed on Saint David’s Day. He
lists them as ‘two rotten skulls’ (apparently those of Saint Caradog and Saint Justinian, as Edward I had already stolen that
of David himself ) and two arm bones. There was also ‘a worme eaten booke covered with sylver plate’, which was presumably
the ‘Imperfect Gospel’. No one knows what became of these. They may have been burnt or buried or sent to London to be
destroyed there. However, given that there were major relics of three saints (David, Caradog and Justinian) preserved in St
Davids Cathedral, Bishop Barlow’s haul seems very meagre indeed. One can’t help suspecting that the clergy who so boldly
upset their prelate by displaying the relics, also kept back some smaller items in a safe place.
And that brings us to the wooden casket in the Holy Trinity Chapel. In 1866, while the Cathedral was being restored and
repaired, a niche was discovered behind the High Altar. In the niche were some bones which had been set in mortar. They were
put in a wooden chest and buried in front of the niche (sadly, the often-told story that the then Dean kept them for years in
a cardboard box under his bed turns out to be a myth). However by 1919 the Church in Wales was caught up in the trauma of
Disestablishment. The finances of the church in general and cathedrals in particular were under threat as
ancient endowments were taken away and divided between the University of Wales and the Welsh county councils. William
Williams, the new Dean of St Davids, decided to boost morale by unearthing the bones, declaring them to be the lost relics,
and putting them in the wooden casket in their present position.
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