Nothing is known of the real St Eliud, but the widespread occurrence of the hypochoristic form of his name, ‘Teilo’, in place-names across south Wales (especially of the ‘Llandeilo’ type) implies that he was once the subject of a major cult. Excellent evidence for Teilo’s cult in the eighth and ninth centuries may be found in the Old Welsh charters preserved in the Lichfield Gospels. Though this early Insular gospel book has been resident in Lichfield in the west midlands of England since the tenth century (Charles-Edwards and McKee 2008), in the ninth century it seems to have been in the possession of the church of Llandeilo Fawr, now in Carmarthenshire. During that time, several memoranda were entered into the margins of the gospel book, three of which (1, 3, 4) record donations to God and St Teilo (that is, to Llandeilo Fawr) (Jenkins and Owen 1983–4). Another of the memoranda (2), the so called ‘surrexit memorandum’, was witnessed by ‘Teilo’, not as a living person, but as the saint whose continued ‘presence’ in the church where the agreement was confirmed was ensured by the religious community venerating him there.

By the twelfth century the status of Llandeilo Fawr seems to have declined dramatically, and the cult of Teilo had been re-appropriated by the diocesan centre of south-east Wales, which was located at Llandaff no later than 1119. It has been argued that Llandaff may have become the seat of the diocese during the episcopacy of Bishop Joseph between 1022 and 1045, and it may also have been during Bishop Joseph’s time that rights and properties pertaining to St Teilo’s cult were first granted to Llandaff (Davies 1978: 21–2, 155, 160; Davies 2002: 368–9; 2003: 16–18). The importance of the cult of St Teilo for Llandaff’s identity in the twelfth century is apparent in the Liber Landavensis, in which the Life of St Teilo and other Teilo documents are given a prominent place.

The text edited here as the Life of St Teilo consists of the Life proper (§§1–18), a list of kings contemporary with St Teilo (§19), a document recording the privileges of St Teilo’s church (i.e. Llandaff), written in both Latin and Welsh (§§20–1), and seven charters allegedly recording grants of land to Teilo and Llandaff (§§22–4, §§26–9), accompanied by a list of twenty-four further Teilo properties granted to Llandaff (§25). This collection of texts is unique to the Liber Landavensis, and it was undoubtedly assembled at Llandaff during the compilation of the contents of the manuscript in the 1120s and early 1130s.

The Life of the saint, with which the Liber Landavensis collection of Teilo texts begins, is the only part of the collection that may be found in some form outside the manuscript. The Life of St Teilo is one of three Liber Landavensis Lives that were also incorporated into the large collection of saints’ Lives in Vespasian A. xiv. The other two are the Lives of SS. Dyfrig and Clydog, which appear, along with their attendant charters, in Vespasian A. xiv in almost exactly the same form as in the Liber Landavensis. However, the relationship between the two versions of the Life of St Teilo is not so straightforward. The Vespasian version is shorter than the Liber Landavensis version, and unlike the latter it is not accompanied by privileges and charters that claim rights for Llandaff. The greater length of the Liber Landavensis version is accounted for not by the same episodes having been told more verbosely, but rather by the appearance of isolated phrases and even whole sections that are absent from Vespasian A. xiv. It would thus appear that either the Vespasian version is an abbreviation of the Liber Landavensis version, or the Liber Landavensis version is an expansion of the Vespasian version. All indications point to the latter possibility (LWS 164–6; Hughes 1980: 61–2; Davies 2003: 118). On the whole, the additional passages and episodes in the Liber Landavensis version exhibit features of compositional methods and strategies for Llandaff’s self-aggrandisement which are typical of the Liber Landavensis overall (considered below) but which are almost entirely absent from the text shared by the two versions, which encompasses almost all the text of the Vespasian version (see the introduction to VSTeliaui(Vesp)). Had the text originally been written with the political purposes of the Liber Landavensis in mind, and only later abbreviated into the more neutral, homiletic form found in Vespasian A. xiv, one would have expected the political content to be more thoroughly integrated into the Liber Landavensis version, meaning that the text would have needed rewording more comprehensively by the Vespasian abbreviator in order to remove it. That no such major rewording took place strongly implies that the Vespasian version most closely resembles the common exemplar of the two, and that the Liber Landavensis version is an augmented and interpolated copy of the common exemplar, prepared especially for incorporation into the Liber Landavensis.

The additional passages interpolated into the Liber Landavensis version of the Life of St Teilo range from single sentences to entire episodes. The majority of the insertions were intended to emphasise the superiority of Llandaff over neighbouring ecclesiastical institutions. Thus, in the account of Teilo, David and Padarn being raised to the status of bishop in Jerusalem, the Liber Landavensis adds the claim that Teilo was the successor of Apostle Peter and David the successor of the Apostle James, highlighting Teilo’s superiority over David (§8). Again, additional sentences were added to the account of the dispute between the clerics of Penally, Llandeilo Fawr and Llandaff concerning who had the right to claim Teilo’s body, in order to proclaim the superiority of Llandaff over the other two churches and announce that, despite the multiplication of Teilo’s body into three, only Llandaff possessed Teilo’s true body (§18). Other material was added to overcome the reluctance of the Vespasian version to name any specific churches associated with St Teilo. In the rubric, Teilo is called ‘archbishop of the church of Llandaff’ rather than simply ‘bishop’, as in the rubric of the Vespasian version. Upon the return of Teilo, David and Padarn from Jerusalem, the Vespasian version does not claim that Teilo took up any particular office, whereas the Liber Landavensis says that ‘St Teilo received the pastoral care of the church of Llandaff, to which he was consecrated, together with the whole diocese adjoining it which had been his predecessor Dyfrig’s’ (§9).

The most substantial addition to the Liber Landavensis version is the story of Teilo’s sojourn in Brittany while the Yellow Pestilence was raging in Britain (§§10–14). This account was ultimately inspired by the Breton Life of St Turiau of Dol, with whom the compilers of the Liber Landavensis evidently wished to equate St Teilo (LWS 182–6; Davies 2003: 117–19). The account includes the surprising promotion of Teilo to the bishopric of Dol, despite the facts that Samson, bishop of Dol, was still alive and Teilo was still archbishop of Llandaff. Similarly, the story about Teilo vanquishing a dragon (§12) while he was in Brittany was probably inspired by the First Life of St Samson, a version of which was incorporated into the Liber Landavensis (cf. VSSamsonis(LL), §52). Reliance on Breton saints’ Lives is a typical feature of the hagiographical work of the compilers of the Liber Landavensis, and so it is notable that Breton sources are apparent only in the portions of the Life of St Teilo that are unique to the Liber Landavensis, and not in the portions of text shared with the Vespasian Life.

The other major additions to the Liber Landavensis Life occur following Teilo’s return from Brittany. A list of Teilo’s alleged ‘disciples’ is given, culled mostly from various parts of the Liber Landavensis (§16). The claim is made that one of these disciples, Ishmael, was consecrated by Teilo as bishop of St Davids following David’s death, in a bid to show that Llandaff once exercised archiepiscopal authority over St Davids. Following this is a selection of miscellaneous short miracle stories (§17) concerning Teilo churches that are claimed as possessions of Llandaff in the list of Teilo properties appended to the Life (§25).

It is likely that the majority of documents appended to the Liber Landavensis version of the Life of St Teilo were composed especially for incorporation into the Liber Landavensis. An exception may be some part of the privileges allegedly granted to St Teilo and Llandaff. Two statements of privileges have been appended to the Life: the first in Latin, known as Priuilegium sancti Teliaui (§20), and the second in Welsh, known as Braint Teilo (§21). That they were not part of the original conception of the collection of Teilo documents in the Liber Landavensis is shown by the fact that they are written on a discrete leaf that was inserted into the manuscript after the surrounding leaves had received their texts (Huws 2000: 132), causing the charters (§§22–9) to become separated from the list of kings (§19) that should preface them (Davies 2003: 68). However, the two Teilo privileges are clearly related to other formulaic statements of Llandaff’s privileges in the Liber Landavensis, especially those associated with the Lives of SS. Dyfrig and Euddogwy (VSDubricii(LL/Vesp), §1; VSOudocei(LL), §4). Wendy Davies (1974–6) argued that the Welsh Braint Teilo was the original privilege, and that the three Latin privileges (Priuilegium sancti Teliaui and the privileges of SS. Dyfrig and Euddogwy) ultimately derive from that, but it has more recently been argued by Paul Russell (2016) that Braint Teilo was translated from a Latin privilege similar to, but not necessarily identical with, the three extant Latin privileges. This latter scenario would be comparable with the use made of the Life of St Teilo by the Liber Landavensis Life of St Euddogwy, because in certain respects the extracts from the Life of St Teilo incorporated into the Life of St Euddogwy resemble the earlier Life of St Teilo preserved in Vespasian A. xiv more closely than the Life of St Teilo incorporated into the Liber Landavensis itself. Another suggestion offered by Wendy Davies was that Braint Teilo may be divided into two parts, the first having been written as the Liber Landavensis was being compiled in the 1120s and early 1130s, but the second having been composed somewhat earlier, perhaps in the late tenth or eleventh centuries. John Reuben Davies (2003: 17–18, 70) suggested that the ascendency of Rhydderch ab Iestyn (1023–33) would be a plausible early context for the composition of Braint Teilo , though he also voiced doubts about whether the two ‘parts’ of the text really originated separately. If the second part of Braint Teilo does preserve an earlier composition, it would seem that the probable Latin original from which it was translated has not been preserved in full, because this section was truncated in the Latin Priuilegium sancti Teliaui (partly because the latter was designed to look like a papal privilege) and does not appear at all in the Dyfrig or Euddogwy privileges.

Most of the charters appended to the Life of St Teilo were concocted by Llandaff in order to claim properties formerly associated with the cult of St Teilo. The exceptions are the first two charters (§§22–3), which have credible witness lists, but the original versions of these charters probably recorded grants of property to a church of St Dyfrig in Ergyng rather than to St Teilo and Llandaff (Guy 2018: 22–3, 33–4). The other charters appended to the Life of St Teilo include elaborate narrations and lack credible witness lists; they are likely to have been composed by the compilers of the Liber Landavensis. Their primary purpose was to claim for Llandaff properties that had come to lie in the diocese of St Davids. This is why four of them (§§26–9) claim to have involved kings of Dyfed. Despite their probable inauthenticity, these charters do include some interesting narratives involving St Teilo, including King Iddon’s defeat of a Saxon army (§24), the drunken revelry of King Aergol’s court (§27), the martyrdom of St Tyfai of Penally, alleged brother of St Euddogwy (§28; cf. VSOudocei(LL), §1), and the origin of the watermen of Llanddowror (§29). All of these stories end with grants of property to St Teilo and Llandaff (see the map in Hughes 1981: 16).

Finally, it is notable that, sandwiched among these charters, is a list of twenty-four properties that were allegedly granted to St Teilo in the time of the kings listed in §19 (§25). All of these properties are located west of the Towy, and the majority of them contain Teilo’s name (Davies 2002: 366; 2003: 88). Coe (2002: 71) suggested that this list was originally a list of Penally’s properties, whereas Doble (LWS 194) suggested that the list was written in Llandeilo Fawr. Most of the properties are repeated in the similar but longer list of properties apparently confirmed to Bishop Joseph of Llandaff by Rhydderch ab Iestyn in c. 1025, found later in the Liber Landavensis (LL 254–5). The confirmation of privileges and properties that contains this longer list may derive from a genuine document (Davies 1979: 126; Davies 2003: 17), and it is conceivable that the latter could have recorded the act by which the cult of St Teilo was first introduced to Llandaff.