She was my 47 x great aunt.
The Life of St David, a vita written around 1095 by Rhigyfarch, is our main source of knowledge for both St David (died c. 589) and his mother. Rhigyfarch was a Norman cleric whose father had been Bishop of St David's for 10 years.
Tradition holds that Nonita was raped and that the product of that rape was David - she was "unhappily seized and exposed to the sacrilegious violence of one of the princes of the country".
Rhigyfarch recounts the tradition that the rapist was Sanctus, King of Ceredigion, who came upon Non while travelling through Dyfed (in South Wales). After conceiving, Nonita, who remained celibate both before and afterwards, lived on bread and water alone. When a preacher found himself unable to preach in the presence of her unborn child, this was taken as a sign that the child would himself be a great preacher. A local ruler learned of this pregnancy and feared the power of the child to be born. He plotted to kill him upon birth, but on the day of her labour a great storm made it impossible for anyone to travel outdoors.
Only the place where Nonita groaned with birth- pangs was bathed in light. The pain was said to have been so intense that her fingers left marks as she grasped a rock and the stone itself split asunder in sympathy with her. A church was built in the place of David's birth and this stone is now concealed in the foundations of the altar.
