oaks, wolves and love - celtic monks and northern forests

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Oaks, Wolves and Love: Celtic Monks and Northern Forests Author(s): Susan Power Bratton Source: Journal of Forest History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 4-20Published by: on behalf of and Oxford University Press Forest History Society American

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Oaks, Wolves

anb [ove: Celtic monks

an floRtheRn

Susan poweR BRatton

History and Controversy

In 1967 Lynn White, Jr., published a controversial paper, "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis'1 which suggested that part of the blame for Western culture's

abuse of nature lay at the door of Christian tradition. Through the long scholarly battle precipitated by White's analysis, historians, theologians, and environmental managers have both lauded and condemned Christian writings and attitudes concerning nature. In the field of environmental history, the academic squabble over the worth of Christianity as an ethical basis for environmental management has unfortunately resulted in sweeping summaries of hundreds of years of European and Middle Eastern religious thought and technological development. Dedicated to extracting an overall evaluation of Christian ecotheology, such summaries have paid very little attention to differences among individual religious sects or to the social milieus in which they arose. The literature has tended to rely on a few well-known texts, such as the first chapters of Genesis, and to dwell on the best-known figures and groups, such as Saint Francis of Assisi. The result has been a historiography that dabbles in the most accessible literatures and then summarizes information from widely disjunct sources and eras.

Most modern students of environmental history are familiar with Saint Francis's The Canticle of Brother Sun and with such stories as "The Wolf of Gubbio" from the Little Flowers of St. Francis.2 Fewer are familiar with Saint Antony of Egypt, despite available translations, and only those very conversant in folklore, archaeology, medieval art, or Celtic history are likely to have studied Saint Coemgen (Kevin) or Saint Columban. Eclectic scholarship and lack of interest in primary sources have given the false impres- sion that early Christian appreciation of wild nature was isolated and strongly suppressed throughout the church.

In Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Nash addresses the common misconception that early Christian and monastic interest in nature was limited to a handful of insightful saints. Although Nash recognizes Christian monasticism as a possible exception to the supposed early Christian antagonism to wilderness, he suggests, however, that the monks paid little attention to their environment and had few, if any, aesthetic concerns. He distinguishes Saint Basil's fourth-century written description of "the forested mountain on which he lived" as unusual for the time because it seems to acknowledge natural beauty in wilderness.3 Nash concludes, "On the whole monks regarded wilderness as having value only for escaping

1. Science 155 (10 March 1967): 1203-7. 2. Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius C. Brady, trans., Francis and

Clare: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1982); and E. M. Blaiklock and A. C. Keys, trans. (most of the original text by Brother Ugolino), The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Books, 1985).

3. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3d ed. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 20.

4 JOURNAL OF FOREST HISTORY / JANUARY 1989



corrupt society. It was the place in which they hoped to ignite the flame that would eventually transform all wilderness into a godly paradise.'4

Like White before him, Nash attributes a unique environmental sensitivity to Saint Francis: "Among medieval Christians St. Francis of Assisi is the exception that proves the rule. He stood alone in a posture of humility and respect towards the natural world.''5 These conclusions overlook the continual interest of Christian monks in wild nature from the time of Antony of Egypt (about 270 C.E.)

to the time of the biographers of Saint Francis (about 1200 C.E.), a span of nearly one thousand years.

The literature of Christian monasticism is perhaps one of the richer and one of the more poorly studied sources of religious environmental writings. The literature of the first Christian monks, the desert fathers, is full of tales of preda- tory beasts and praise for the desert life. This literature, in turn, influenced monasticism in northern Europe, including the Celtic church in the British Isles. The Celts sent missionaries back to the continent, and these missionaries influenced the Italians, and eventually the Franciscans. The Irish saint Columban, for example, traveled in France and crossed the Alps. In 612 C.E., he established a monastery at Bobbio in Italy, "which in subsequent generations came to house a library of manuscript collections scarcely rivaled during the Middle Ages and Renaissance."6

Irish writings were widely circulated in the Middle Ages, and some, such as The Voyage of Brendan, were translated into other European languages.7 Edward Armstrong, in Saint Francis: Nature Mystic,8 has shown that almost all the Franciscan legends have precursors in Irish saints' tales and other monastic sources. Francis was very sensitive to nature but was hardly an isolated example; rather, he was the ultimate expression of traditions that had been growing and interweaving for centuries.

This paper investigates the attitudes of early Celtic monasticism toward wild nature. Both Nash, in Wilderness and the American Mind, and George Williams, in Wilder- ness and Paradise in Christian Thought,9 ignore the Celts, yet Celtic Christianity, one of the most influential forces in the development of Christian arts and literature in the Middle Ages, has provided ample materials for evaluating its environmental attitudes. Based on an analysis of records left by the monks and saints who were the leaders of the Irish Celtic church, and on related literature from Britain, the paper summarizes the Celts' own writings on forests,

4. Nash, Wilderness and American Mind, p. 18. 5. Ibid., p. 19. 6. Paul R. Lonigan, The Early Irish Church (Woodside, New York:

Celtic Heritage Press, 1985), p. 69. 7. Anselmo M. Tommasini, Irish Saints in Italy (London, England:

Sand and Company, 1937), pp. 157-89. 8. In a review of the Franciscan nature legends, Edward Armstrong,

Saint Francis: Nature Mystic: The Derivation and Significance of the Nature Stories in the Franciscan Legend, Hermeneutics Studies in the History of Religions vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), includes extensive discussion of Irish material.

9. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962).

wildlife, and noncultivated landscapes; extracts the basic themes in these works; determines possible sources for these themes, such as Eastern Christian and pre-Christian thought; and investigates the roots of northern monastic attitudes. These same Celtic materials also make it possible to begin to map the evolution of monastic thought about the wild from the birth of monasticism to the late Mid- dle Ages.

The Love of Nature: Cultural Influences on Celtic Monasticism

Celtic peoples were among the earliest Christian converts, and the Celts' already-established love of nature adapted very well to the new spiritual state of affairs. Celtic monks produced hagiographies (saints' lives) full of natural imagery, and decorated some of the finest Christian poetry ever written with descriptions of wooded landscapes and native wildlife. The probable sources for the environmental attitudes of Celtic Christianity include pre-Christian traditions, the actual events and locations in the saints' lives, the Bible and the writings of Eastern monasticism, and the ongoing landscape change surrounding Celtic culture.

It is impossible to separate a historic continuum into its numerous threads and declare one to be all-important. Some authors, however, have tried to isolate such a thread in Celtic culture. Jay Vest, for example, writes off Celtic Christianity as an interference with more ancient environmental ideals and practices, such as maintaining sacred groves.'0 As astute a Celtic scholar as Charles Plummer attributes much of the natural imagery in the Irish saints' lives to old solar worships"

Such narrow focuses ignore the great diversity of influences on Celtic culture, although Celtic religious literature certainly had secular parallels and in many cases incorporated pre-Christian themes or mythology. Christian poetry borrowed natural imagery from secular poetry. The hagiography reworked older sagas and conspicuously included pre-Christian religious motifs and magic. The Celtic saints' lives were spiritual adventure stories. Unlike the works of the desert fathers, which were strongly influenced by Hellenistic culture, the saints' lives did not emphasize wise sayings or examples of ascetic endurance. Rather than gaining holiness through training and self-discipline (both Greek values), the Celtic saint was born to be holy, was

10. Jay Vest, "Will-of-the-Land: Wilderness among Primal Indo- Europeans' Environmental Review 9 (Winter 1985): 323-29.

11. For a discussion of pre-Christian mythologies and Irish hagiography, see Charles (Carolus) Plummer, "Heathen Folklore and Mythology in the Lives of Celtic Saints," Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1968), 1:cxxix-clxxxviii. Plummer produced two major works on Irish saints. The one just cited includes the Latin saints' lives, and the other includes lives in the Irish language: Carolus Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, Lives of Irish Saints, 2 vols. (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1968). The second volume of the latter work is English translations. For a discussion of old solar worship see Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 1:cxxxiii-cxlvii.

CELTIC MONKS 5



recognizable as exceptional even in childhood, and could be involved in miraculous acts before assuming any public religious role.

In the ancient Celtic world, a person's identity was tied very closely to family membership and land ownership. The pre-Christian themes of the importance of land and a sense of place continued into the monastic era of Celtic literature. Celtic hagiography taught transfer of spiritual power by association with the elect of God, or by association with their families or the lands they occupied. Celtic hagiography frequently asserted, for example, that people buried in the cemeteries established by certain saints could not go to hell2

Celtic monks were not completely withdrawn from the rest of society. They involved themselves not only in establishing churches, but also in politics and clan business. Some of the geographic description in the hagiography reflects territorial interests and spheres of influence. Many of the events in the Celtic saints' lives actually happened and many of the places described are real. Even the fantas- tic sites of Brendan's voyages probably represent actual geographic locations. Brendan's fiery island may well have been an Icelandic volcano, and his crystal column may have been an iceberg.'3

The Hebrew scriptures and the purposes and literature of the Eastern church also influenced Celtic Christians, by way of Celtic Gaul. The first important Eastern influence was in establishing monasticism. The Life of St. Antony, with its desert ideals, reached Gaul a mere twenty years after it was written14 The first monastery in Gaul was founded in about 360 C.E. by Martin of Tours, and others soon followed his example, including John Cassian, who arrived from Palestine to live in what is now southern France in the early fifth century. In 432 C.E., less than eighty years after the death of Antony, a cleric named Patrick set out to convert the people of Ireland (some of whom were already Christian). Contrary to legend, Patrick did not live to see the entire island become Christian, but he did establish an Irish church with an episcopal system of government that incorporated monastic elements. By 550 C.E. monasticism had become a major force in Irish Christianity.j5 The flowering of Celtic monasticism ended

12. See, for example, Plummer, "The Life of Mochuda,' and "The Life of Maedoc of Ferns," Bethada naem nErenn, 1:286,217. In the former, a man reports a burial place at Lismore, and says to Mochuda, "Thou wilt find a sign that a mound and burial-place has been consecrated by angels. And let it be built and blessed by thyself, for it is there that thy resurrection shall be, and no one shall be doomed to hell if he enters therein." In the latter, Maedoc asks four boons from God and one of these is that "hell should not be closed upon any one who should be buried in any one of his churches to the end of the world."

13. D. D. C. Pochin Mould, Ireland of the Saints (London, England: B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1953), pp. 153-56.

14. Robert T. Meyer in the introduction to St. Athanasius: The Life of Saint Antony (New York: Newman Press, 1950), p. 14.

15. Thomas Gannon and George Traub, The Desert and the City (Chicago, Illinois: Loyola Press, 1969), pp. 56-57; and John Ryan, Irish Monasticism: Origins and Early Development (Dublin, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 1986), pp. 59-96. There is historic uncertainty concerning the exact year of Patrick's arrival. It is also unclear if Saint Patrick was

about 660 C.E., but the monasteries continued to be a center of Irish religious life until the Tudors attempted to dissolve them during the sixteenth century.'6

Eastern influences can be clearly documented in litur- gical and hagiographical works from the British Isles and Gaul7 Bede's "Life of Cuthbert, for example, mentions the similarity between Cuthbert driving the birds from his garden and Saint Antony of Egypt exhorting wild asses.'8 In 600 C.E., the Irish saint Columban not only composed a letter to Pope Gregory the Great in passable Latin but discussed the writings of Saint Jerome, one of the desert monks.9 The Celts, with their indigenous and loosely structured monasticism, became the Western heirs of the desert fathers.

Under Northern Oaks: Celtic Monks and the Landscape

When Christianity arrived in Ireland, there had already been several periods of major forest clearing. Frank Mitchell suggests that all the woodland may have been gone from parts of the Boyne valley by the Megalithic period. Farming expanded during the Neolithic. There were major intervals of woodland removal during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, as dated by the pollen record. Grazing stock had begun to take a toll on species such as elm as early as 5500 B.C.20 The expanding population during the Iron Age left some oak woods standing, "but large well grown trees were beginning to command a premium; well-grown hollies . . . and yews were also becoming rare,"'21 and degraded secondary woodland began to dominate the landscape.22 By 800 C.E. legal tracts indicate there was a penalty of two milk cows for cutting down a valuable tree such as an oak.23

Irish tales that are probably pre-Christian in origin describe forest clearing well before the time of the monks. Queen Medb, in her pursuit of an Ulster bull, had a forest cut to facilitate a prophecy.24 The foster mother of King

one person or two. Very little is known about the roots of Irish monasticism and the first monastic communities. Most of the monastic literature concerns the great flowering of the monasteries from 520 to 660 C.E.

16. Karl S. Bottigheimer, Ireland and the Irish: A Short History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 80-82.

17. Nora Chadwick, The Celts (New York: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 211.

18. Bertram Colgrave, trans., Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cam- bridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1940), p. 233. See also Susan Bratton, "The Original Desert Solitaire: Early Christian Monasti- cism and Wilderness," Environmental Ethics 10 (Spring 1988): 31-53, for a review of the relationship between the desert fathers and wilderness.

19. Lonigan, The Early Irish Church, p. 66. 20. Frank Mitchell, The Irish Landscape (London, England:

Collins, 1976), pp. 131, 135, 117; and F. H. A. Aalen, Man and the Land- scape in Ireland (London, England: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 66, 69.

21. Mitchell, The Irish Landscape, p. 178. 22. Aalen, Man and the Landscape in Ireland, p. 92. 23. Mitchell, The Irish Landscape, p. 177. 24. Thomas Kinsella, trans., The Tain (Dublin, Ireland: Dolmen

Editions, 1969), pp. 71-72.




Lugh bade her husband "to clear away the wood of Cuan, the way there could be a gathering of people around her grave. So he called the men of Ireland to cut down the wood with their wide-blade knives and bill-hooks and hatchets, and within a month the whole wood was cut down.'25

Two periods of forest removal early in the Common Era were due to major agricultural innovations. The first, about 300 C.E., occurred when the vertical knife or coulter was added to the Irish plow. The second, about 600 C.E., came with the introduction of the moldboard plow.

The moldboard plow was probably brought to Britain by pagan Anglo-Saxons who were converted by Christian missionaries, many of whom were Irish.26 Although the new plow probably would have eventually arrived in Ireland without the monks and was not a "Christian inven- tion,' the monks did encourage expanded land clearing by bringing "productive activity into many hitherto unsettled areas, especially as many of the early communities deliber- ately selected sites of extreme remoteness such as off-shore islands and inaccessible mountain glens. Scores of monastic settlements were also built in lowland areas which previously had been forested and little occupied.'27 Thus, the impassioned saints, in their search for solitude, acci- dentally helped to open the wildlands to agriculture, and the great flowering of monasticism accompanied a large expansion of cultivation.

The previous waves of forest clearing meant that the Celtic monks, unlike the desert monks of the Levant, had no large consolidated "wilderness" available for solitary withdrawal. An important theme in the Celtic religious literature, however, is the use of wild sites for devotions and establishing monasteries. Showing strong preferences for certain types of natural features, including oak forests, lakes, and islands, the northern monks sought isolation. Although the Celts sometimes ascended mountains for prayer, this practice seems to have been surprisingly infre- quent considering the availability of open mountaintops in the British Isles. The monks do not seem to have associated God with the heights.

In investigating the relationship of Celtic Christianity to wild landscapes, we must first look at pre-Christian Celtic sanctuaries, which "were found frequently in sacred woods and near lakes, including it would seem, what are now bogs and swamps.?28 Nora Chadwick suggests the Celts did not care for life in towns and had "a ritual preoccupation with the natural environment.?29 Classical authors report sacred oak groves, untouched by the woodsman's ax, where "every tree was sprinkled with human gore."30 Archaeological

25. Lady Isabella Gregory, trans., from "The Book of Invasions,' in Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland (London, England: John Murray and Company, 1919), p. 62.

26. Mitchell, The Irish Landscape, p. 166, 172. 27. Aalen, Man and the Landscape in Ireland, p. 102. See also E. G.

Brown, Saints, Seaways and Settlements in the Celtic Lands (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1969), p. 225.

28. Chadwick, The Celts, p. 146. 29. Ibid. 30. Lucan cited in Chadwick, The Celts, pp. 146-47.

Swiurces andl fJ ~Dating he interest in nature was present from the beginning of the Christian period and con-

tinued undiminished through the height of monastic development and the Middle Ages until the dissolu- tion of the monasteries. Although the literature discussed in this paper extends from about the seventh century to the twelfth century, precise dating is difficult, especially for the Celtic literature, and correlations between agricultural events and the religious literature are difficult to verif

In addition, the hagiographies, although they supposedly record the lives of saints, were never intended to be detailed historic commentaries or even accurate records of land exchanges or family rela- tionships, although they served as the latter to some extent. The hagiographies were intended to verify the spiritual and territorial claims of a saint's followers. They therefore contain heroic tales, follelore, information on property acquisition, religious teach- ings, and theological material as well as biography Some of the people in the documents probably never existed, and many of the events are exaggerations. Material is sometimes borrowed between manuscripts, and it is difficult to discern the origin of some segments of text. Most of the hagiographies now available to us are from manuscripts copied or composed long after the death of the saint worthy of a biographer's attention. It is therefore difficult to enow which portions of a text represent attitudes or events contemporary with the saint and which are later additions.

The English translations used in this paper may have modified the tone or changed the emphasis of the originals. The translations by Lady Gregory and Helen Waddell are less literal than those by Thomas Kinsella, for example, and may reflect some modern ''nature romanticism.''

The reader should note that an Irish saint may have more than one name and two saints may have the same name. Saints' names appear in Latinized forms, as well as in various spellings from the Irish. Two saints with the same name are usually distin- guished by their places of residence (e. g., Ciaran of Clonmacnois versus Ciaran of Saigher). The name most commonly found in the cited references will be used in this paper.

CELTIC MONKS 7



evidence supports the theory that these were religious sites-excavators have recovered many Celtic votive offer- ings tossed into the water in ancient times.31

Written descriptions of the Celts' pre-Christian practices were largely authored by Romans, who saw the Celtic sanctuaries but were not privy to the rites, or by Christian monks, who were not contemporary with the druids. Because of this, our knowledge of the Celts' pre-Christian beliefs is minimal. The sacred groves and lakes may have had spirits associated with them. Lucan, a Roman, reported a wood near Marseilles where "subterranean hollows quaked and bellowed, . . . yew trees fell down and rose again, . . . the glare of conflagration came from trees that were not on fire, and. .. serpents twined and glided around the stems.' Lucan suggested that even the priest would not enter the grove at night and that the people feared "the lord of the grove."32

To attribute the Celtic Christians' use of woodlands and lakes solely to pre-Christian traditions, however, overlooks some other considerations. The precedents for the use of isolated sites are found in the Scriptures and in the writings of the Eastern church. The search for isolation was part of the monastic movement that spread through all Europe. The Celts lacked deserts but had other possible wild locations: deep oak forests, mountain lakes, the mountains themselves, caves, swamps, bogs, and rocky seacoasts. Of these, swamps and bogs are very difficult to occupy and poor places to construct churches (although Berach placed his sanctuary between a bog and a lake). But the other types of available wild locations were used for devotions or as the sites of chapels or monasteries.

The Irish hagiographies mention caves and mountains less frequently than woods. A. P. Forbes notes, however: "The custom of retiring for a time to a cave was very common among the British and Scottish saints.'33 And Saint Brendan is said to have founded a small beehive chapel on the top of Mount Brandon on the Dingle penin- sula (Ireland). In the stories of Brendan's voyages Brendan saw the promised land from a mountain (as did Moses). The summit of Mount Brandon, at 3,217 feet, can offer a view up to a hundred miles, as far as the peaks of Conne- mara.34 Celtic monasteries, such as Cashel, were some-

31. Chadwick, The Celts, pp. 147-49. See also Stuart Piggott, The Druids (New York: Praeger, 1968), pp. 76-77.

32. Chadwick, The Celts, p. 147. 33. Alexander Penrose Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern

(Edinburgh, Scotland: Edmonston and Douglas, 1874), p. 345. Nora Chadwick suggests in The Druids (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966) that druidic use of oak groves and caves did occur in response to Roman repression of their schools. Since the Romans never invaded Ireland, the druids' schools could presumably have functioned openly there. In the tales of the Ulster cycle the druids freely travel the countryside. It is possible that druidic use of caves or other locations for teaching did influence the saints, but it remains to be seen if the druids held these protected locales to be sacred.

34. Interestingly, in Plummer's translations of Irish saints' lives, "The Life of Berach" twice reports druids using mountains. Cainech went with her band of "women of power" to Glendalough to destroy the boy Faelen, Berach's foster child. Berach saw "Cainech on the summit of the mountain, worshipping the devil, and practising druidism." Berach cursed her and the

times built on hills or promontories, but usually not on mountain peaks.

The limited use of mountains may not have been in preference for druidic oak groves, but rather a response to the climate of the British Isles. Though ridges afforded expansive vistas, the summer season was short, and during the other seasons the mountain tops were difficult places to grow vegetables or maintain cattle. The peaks of Ireland are shrouded in mist and sleet a good deal of the time. In the isolated mountain ranges, the valleys of the lakes are more sheltered than the peaks and provide easy access to water. The oak groves are even more protected from the elements, often have richer soil, and provide wood. Living on the islands was probably difficult in early Christian times, but the offshore sites had several ready sources of sustenance, including fish, birds, and seaweed. Island climates were moderated by the low elevations and the surrounding ocean.

At the time of the Celtic monks most of the mature low- elevation forests on dry ground in the kingdoms of the British Isles were oak forests. By 200 C.E. pines were extinct or nearly so in Ireland.3s About 300 C.E., just prior to the Christian era in Ireland, there was a "devastating clearing away of the elm and the ash.' 36 Thus, to love the ancient forest was to love oaks.

The site selected for a monastery was very important to the Celts. Some of these wild sites were places of resurrection, thereby deemed suitable residences for eternity. When Maedoc and his party went to his place of resurrection at Rossinver, they "drew near to the fair shining Cuillin [meaning wood] and the beautiful wooded forest which was near the mighty lough, [and] they heard the sweet harmonious singing, and the melodious words of chanting, and the loud musical voice and heavenly shouts of fair wondrous angels above the Cuillin."37 When Coemgen chose Glen da Loch, with its lakes and wild crags, for his monastery, he was also choosing his place of resurrection.

A number of authors have accused Christians of purpose- fully removing pre-Christian natural sanctuaries and of cutting sacred groves,38 a practice that actually began with the Romans well before the time of Christ.

Indigenous Irish clerics were more interested in occupying oak forests than in destroying them, however. The Celtic monastic literature suggests the monks found the forests peaceful, except for an occasional confrontation with a wild boar or disruption by hunts. The saints cut trees to build churches and provide firewood,39 but they

earth swallowed her at a place called Cainech's swamp. Diarmait the druid's son Cu-allaid was going to curse Rathonn, the land Berach had taken over from Diarmait. He was injured on the way, however, and asked to be carried to the top of a nearby mountain so he could see the land to curse it quickly. "They carried him up to a bluff of the mountain, and Cu-allaid died there; and he could see nothing from it but a worthless oak grove, and that has been unfruitful ever since" from Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:29, 37.

35. Mitchell, The Irish Landscape, p. 177. 36. Ibid., p. 135. 37. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:228. 38. Nash, Wilderness, p. 17. 39. Molua had wood cut for a church, Plummer, Bethada naem

nErenn, 2:230.




often left the forest standing at the sites of their sanctuaries and hermitages. According to legend, when Aedh, King of Ireland, gave a piece of land in Doire (Derry) to Columba (Columcille), Columba positioned his sanctuary so that he could preserve some particularly fine oaks, even though this meant that the sanctuary could not stand in the tradi- tional position, facing east:

And [Columba] had so great a love for Doire, and the cutting of the oak trees went so greatly against him, that he could not find a place for his church the time he was building it that would let the front of it be to the east, and it is its side turned to the east. And he left it upon those that came after him not to cut a tree that fell of itself or was blown down by the wind in that place to the end of nine days, and then to share it between the people of the town- land, bad and good, a third of it to the great house and a tenth to be given to the poor. And he put a verse in a hymn after he was gone away to Scotland that shows there was nothing worse to him than the cutting of that oakwood: "Though there is fear in me of death and of bell, I will not hide it that I have more fear of the sound of an ax over in Doire."40

Another hymn attributed to Columba praises Doire for its quiet and its oaks:

It is the reason I love Doire, for its quietness for its purity; it is quite full of white angels from the one end to the other.

It is the reason I love Doire, for its quietness for its purity; quite full of white angels is every leaf of the oaks of Doire.

My Doire my little oakwood, my dwelling and my white cell; 0 living God in Heaven, it is a pity for him that harms it!41

Columba's wish to protect his woods was taken one step further by Coemgen, who with an authority modern preservationists should envy, "promised hell and short life to any one who should burn either green wood or dry from this wood [where the trees bowed down for him] till doom"42

The manuscripts frequently mention saints praying or conducting devotions in the forest. Mochuda walked through the woods singing psalms,43 and Maedoc prayed "in the recesses of a wood."44 It is therefore not surprising that the sites for monasteries were chosen much as were devotional sites. Patrick, in selecting a site for Berach, "ordained that it should be in the meadow on the brink of the lake.... And he ordered that the sanctuary ground should be all that lies between the bog and the lake, that is the plain with its wooded meadows and boggy oak-groves"45 "The Life of Berach" called this location "the sacred glen.?46

40. Lady Isabella Gregory, A Book of Saints and Wonders Put Down Here by Lady Gregory According to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of Ireland (Shannon, Ireland: The Irish University Press, 1971), p. 17-18.

41. Ibid., p. 20. 42. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:123. 43. Ibid., p. 283. 44. Ibid., p. 177. 45. Ibid., p. 24. 46. Ibid., p. 30.

Saint Patrick predicted of Maedoc's coming to Druim Lethan (Drumlane) that "though marvellous in your eyes be the number of trees on the ridge on which ye are, Druim Lethan, not more numerous are they than the prayers and hymns, the psalms and genuflexions, the alms and Masses which will be performed on it in time of the noble angelic saint (Maedoc)."47

Most interesting of all is Coemgen's choice of Glen da Loch (Glendalough, or the glen of the two lakes). Patrick prophesied thirty years before Coemgen's birth that Coemgen would build a monastery on the site. The glen with its cliffs is supposed to have pleased Patrick.48 Coemgen has to overcome a monster in the lower lake before he can occupy his divinely chosen home. He spends a long period in solitude there and prays standing in the lake or lying on the stones at its edge. A "Life of Coemgen" relates:

Seven years in tangled deserts Wert thou [Coemgen] in gentle sort, Dwelling beside thy people, Without food, except (the fruits of) Cael Faithe.

Coemgen (was) for length of years Among deserts in the woods, And he saw no man, Nor did any man see him there.

Far from his friends was Coemgen Steadfastly among the crags; Nobly and alone he saw the order Which was brought to the brink of the fair lough.

At night he would rise without fear To perform his devotion in his fort; There he would early recite his hours (Standing) habitually in the lough up to his girdle.49

Coemgen's love of the landscape of Glen da Loch expresses itself most fully in his negotiations with an angel. The angel comes to Coemgen to show him his place of resurrection at the east end of the lesser lake. Coemgen, in Irish style, objects to the angel's suggestion on the grounds that the valley is hemmed in by mountains and the monks will not feel comfortable there. The angel promises that if Coemgen brings fifty monks to the site, as each one of these dies he will be replaced by a new monk until the Day of Judgment. Coemgen objects again. Fifty is too few. The angel then offers to make the number of monks many thousands and to raise a great city. Then the angel closes by proposing, 'And verily if thou shouldst will that these four mountains which close this valley in should be levelled into rich and gentle meadow lands, beyond question thy God will do it for thee." Coemgen declines even this offer of a

47. Ibid., pp. 187-88. 48. Ibid., p. 127. 49. Ibid., p. 132.

CELTIC MONKS 9



great following in favor of leaving the mountains as they were created by God. He replies, "I have no wish that the creatures of God should be moved because of me: my God can help that place in some other fashion. And moreover, all the wild creatures on these mountains are my house mates, gentle and familiar with me, and they would be sad of this that thou [the angel] hast said.'50 To turn down such a religious honor in favor of preserving the mountains and their wildlife makes Coemgen truly a saint of the wilderness.

L ike Coemgen, several other saints prayed in water: Cuthbert (of Britain) prayed standing in the sea, and

other saints sought out shores or rocky islands. Ciaran would go with his foster mother to pray "on a flood- surrounded rock, which was in the sea amid the waves to the south of Ross Banagher.''5 Declan built "a great monastery by the south side of the stream which flows through the island [Ait-mBreasail] into the seas.''52 Columba established his mission on the island of Iona, and Cuthbert chose the solitary life on an island, "shut in on the landward side by very deep water and on the seaward side by the boundless ocean.''53

Islands may have been chosen as monastic sites largely for their isolation; they do not seem to have been pre- Christian sanctuaries. However, pre-Christian associations between islands and Tir na nOc (the "Land of the Blessed" or the "Land of the Forever Young") play a role in the heroic voyage sagas of the Christian saints. The narratives of the voyage of Brendan, for example, depict paradise as an island. Brendan was searching for Tir Tairngiri, the promised land,54 which owed as much to Celtic myth and landscape preferences as it did to imagery from the Scriptures. The old Celtic tales of the Land of the Forever Young, combined with Christian concern for praise and worship, produced some descriptions of ideal monastic retreats.

Brendan first finds the Paradise of the Birds (which is not Tir Tairngiri):

And when they reached the island they landed there. And the island was extraordinary in appearance, for there were many excellent fruits there, and marvelous birds discours- ing joyously from the tops of their trees, and little bees gathering and collecting their harvest and household store for their dwellings, and strangely beautiful streams flowing there, full of wondrous jewels of every hue. And there were many churches there, and a monastery in the middle of the island full of an excellent variety of things of every hue; and a venerable wise decorous and devout order in it.S5

The narrative describes a beautiful natural setting and then provides a parallel discussion of the religious institu-

50. Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints (London, England: Constable and Company, 1934), pp. 134-36.

51. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:105. 52. From the "Life of St. Declan of Ardmore" translated by P. Power,

Life of St. Declan of Ardmore and Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore (London, England: Irish Texts Society, 1914), p. 215.

53. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 214-15. 54. Mould, Ireland of the Saints, p. 155. 55. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:58-60.

tions at the site. Even the singing of the birds and the activities of the bees provide a subtle comparison to the monks, who do not speak except to praise God and who busy themselves with the affairs of the church. Though idealized, the Paradise of Birds was probably not dissimilar to some actual offshore monasteries, such as Skellig Michael, where birds (likely raucous seabirds) flew constantly about.56

Symbolic of Brendan's relationship to God and God's provision for the voyage was the annual Easter celebration. During the first year, as Easter drew near, Brendan's company began to encourage him to land so they could celebrate the holy day. Brendan replied, "'God is able ... to find a land for us in any place He pleases.' When Easter came, a great whale raised its shoulders high above the surface of the waves, so that it formed dry land. And then they landed and celebrated Easter on it. And they were one day and two nights. When they had entered their boats, the whale dived into the sea at once."57 The practice of celebra- ting Easter on a whale continued for seven years. As a sanctuary for a heroic wanderer, the whale's back represents the extreme in the Celtic use of natural areas for devotions.

Brendan's eventual arrival at paradise is anticlimactic. The hagiographer does not describe the land in detail but rather tells the story of an elder who has not aged since he arrived at the island. Having waited sixty years for Brendan's arrival, the elder promptly sends Brendan and his party home to "instruct the men of Erin" and then departs for heaven himself. At first glance, Brendan seems to have found the place where all men would wish to reside:

An island rich, everlasting, undivided, Abounding in salmon, fair and beauteous.58

Brendan, however, dutifully goes home and establishes a monastery at his place of resurrection, Clonfert. The disjunction here may result from a mixture of the legends of the pre-Christian Land of the Forever Young with the Christian concepts of heaven and resurrection. "The Life of Brendan of Clonfert" does not indicate that Brendan will ever return to Tir Tairngiri.

Compassion for Wolves: Celtic Monks and the Protection of Nature

Another major theme in the Celtic hagiographies is the care and protection of animals and plants.59 Many of the

56. Chadwick, The Celts, p. 215. 57. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:60, 68-69. 58. Ibid., p. 77. 59. Another source discussing Celtic attitudes toward wildlife is

Richard J. Woods, "Environment as Spiritual Horizon: The Legacy of Celtic Monasticism, in Philip N. Joranson and Ken Butigan, eds., Cry of the Environment, Rebuilding the Christian Creation Tradition (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear and Company, 1984), pp. 62-84. This article includes a long footnote on wolves. A more detailed source is Sister Mary Donatus MacNickle's "Beasts and Birds in the Lives of Early Irish Saints"' Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1934.




stories concern feeding starving animals or protecting animals from hunters. Again the question of pre-Christian influence arises. The hagiographers favor wolves and stags. Does this reflect the sacred nature of these animals or the influence of pre-Christian cults such as that of the horned god? The answer is difficult to determine because the druids left no written documentation of their practices.

There are several weaknesses in Plummer's argument that frequent mention of wolves in the lives of the saints implies a pre-Christian cult. First, the literature of the desert fathers emphasizes lions. If the Celtic monks were influenced by Saint Antony, Saint Jerome and others, they may have simply substituted wolves, the only large predator in the western isles, for lions. Second, the lives of the Celtic saints discuss other large conspicuous animals, such as wolves, deer, and whales, suggesting that the repeated use of spectacular beasts is related to the "heroic" nature of some of the stories. Sister Mary Donatus MacNickle may be posing a better question when she writes: "One can understand the inclusion of the deer and wolf, but why not such common animals so familiarly known as the hare, rabbit, squirrel, even if not the hedgehog, weasel, stoat, vole, polecat, bat?"60 Smaller beasts, such as mice, foxes, and even flies are incorporated, but they are a select few.

The natural histories of the animals themselves may be part of the key. The animals most frequently included are not only the largest but also those best known by their behavior, and thus the most likely to provide certain services such as bringing a fish to a saint. Some animals, particularly the hare, may have been avoided because they had sinister reputations in folklore61 or some association with magic. Such a stigma may also apply to plants. The rowan, for example, a very beautiful plant, was important to the druids but is rarely mentioned in the lives of the saints. The one reference to rowans in Plummer's translations of the lives of the saints from Old Irish into English is when the druids of King Aedh use hurdles of rowan to prophesy.62 Although the Celtic hagiographers certainly mention many plants and animals formerly sacred or employed in magic, perhaps some species had such nega- tive or pagan associations they could not properly be associated with the saints.

Celtic saints frequently rescue animals from natural disasters, such as the attack of a predator or a fall into a crevice. The most frequent motifs, however, are relief from starvation and hunters. A repeated theme is the caring saint feeding starving wolves. Saint Maedoc of Ferns, for example, fed wolves more than once. When, as a boy, Maedoc was minding the sheep of his foster mother, eight wolves came fawning, "poor, weak and starving." Maedoc, "seized with pity," took eight wethers from the flock and fed the wolves. When his foster mother heard of his charity, she was livid. Before she could accuse him of losing the sheep,

60. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds' p. 127. 61. Ibid., p. 127. 62. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:33.

however, eight wethers miraculously appeared to replace those given to the wolves.63 Years later, at a church Maedoc had built:

Maedoc was one day alone there indoors in his cell. He saw some wolves coming to him, and they went round him gently and fawning. Maedoc understood they were asking for food. He was moved to compassion for them; he gave [his brothers'] calf to them, and bade them eat. When the woman came in the afternoon [at milking time], she looked for the calf to let it in to them. Maedoc said to her: "Do not look for it, for I have given it to the wolves." One of the brothers said: "How can the cows be milked without their calf?" Maedoc said to the brother: "Bend thy head towards me" said he, "that I might bless it; for when the cows see it, they will give their milk humbly and obediently.' And so it was whenever the cows saw the head of the brother, they would suddenly lick it and so give their milk.64

This tale not only presents compassion for wild animals as a virtue but uses Irish humor to teach humility as well.

The saints also cared for animals fleeing from hunters. Saint Coemgen once had a wild boar rush to him for protection. The dogs chasing the animal found their feet bound to the ground and were unable to pursue the boar while it was under the spiritual power of the saint.65 There are several stories of saints rescuing hunted deer. Saint Godric (of Britain, from a literature related to Irish hagiography) found a stag, pursued by hounds. The animal, "shivering and exhausted; seemed "by its plaintive cries to beseech [the saint's] help." Godric let the stag into his hermitage where it dropped at his feet. When the hunters arrived, they questioned Godric about the stag, but "he would not be a betrayer of his guest and he made the prudent answer, 'God knows where it may be."' The hunters, recognizing the saint as holy, asked his pardon and departed. The stag remained with Godric until the evening, when the saint released it. The stag "for years thereafter, would turn from its way to visit [Godric] and lie at his feet, to show what gratitude it could for its deliverance?'66

Maedoc, who cared for the wolves, was "praying in the recesses of a wood, when he saw a stag pursued by hounds, and the stag stopped by him. Moeog (Maedoc) threw the corner of his plaid over the horns, to protect it from the hounds; and when these came up, they could not find trace or sight of it; and it afterwards betook itself to the wood in safety.'67 In another version of this story, Maedoc puts his rosary on the stag's horns so that the hounds perceive the stag as a man and cease to pursue it.68 In the first version it is the saint's compassion that provides the protection; in the second, it is the power of the rosary extended to wild nature.

63. Ibid., pp. 189-90. 64. Ibid., p. 206. 65. Ibid., p. 124. 66. From Reginald's Libellus de Vita ... S. Godric, in Beasts and

Saints, by Waddell, pp. 90-91. 67. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:178. 68. Ibid., pp. 190-91.

CELTIC MONKS 11



In some stories the protection is not from hunters, but from the monk's own party. Saint Patrick, for example, was climbing a hill in Ard-Macha to look at a grant of land the king had given him. On the hill "they found a roe deer and a little fawn lying on the very spot where the altar of the great northern church of Ard-Macha now stands." Patrick prevents his companions from killing the fawn. "Tenderly he took up the fawn and carried it on his shoulders, the doe following close at his heels, until he laid it down on another height at the north side of Armagh." Patrick, in the image of the good shepherd of the Hibernian mountains, carries the fawn the way he carried the Irish church.69

A number of the animals mentioned in the hagiographies were eventually hunted to extinction (i.e., the wolf) or had their numbers severely depleted in the British Isles. The rarity of stories in which saints kill vicious animals and the abundance of protection stories may reflect the saints' unconscious recognition that the animals were in peril, partly because their habitat-the forests-was being eliminated. Although wolves can starve due to natural depletion of prey, human interference with forest cover and the supply of prey can also leave them "weak and fawning." The monk who fed a calf to a starving wolf may well have recognized a problem in wildlife conservation, but probably did not comprehend its ultimate cause.

Although they wore animal skins, sometimes ate flesh, and cut firewood, the saints were interested in preserving the creatures and habitat on the holy ground around their hermitages. In "The Life of Maedoc of Ferns" the saint commands the family of Ragallach not to trespass on his land (the land of the church), "and of any living creature not to kill so much as a hare or an angled trout within the terri- tory of his church or sanctuary.' The punishment for disobedience was "a short life and hell, and disease and famine.?70 Although this passage may do no more than assert property rights to the fullest, it also implies that animals should be left alone on holy ground.

The Christian literature clearly discourages the monks from coveting the products of nature. An otter, "great in its kindness;' each day brings a salmon to some monks of Saint Coemgen. One of the brothers decides the otter would look better as a glove. The otter recognizes his danger and ceases to come, which leaves the monks without the salmon. In the story, the brother realizes his mistake and repents.71 The monks' protectionist attitude toward wildlife may have been fostered by their diet, which was primarily, if not absolutely, vegetarian.72 The overt motive for protection in the literature, however, was usually compassion.

Jrotection of animals was also a virtue among the pre- 1 Christian Celts but probably had a different motive, such as avoiding interference with the spiritual power of the

69. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds;' p. 146. 70. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:237. 71. Ibid., p. 145. 72. Mitchell, The Irish Landscape, p. 172.

animal. Was the protection of animals by Christian monks a carryover from druidic cults? A short investigation of Irish tales and histories most likely to contain primarily pre- Christian materials produces frequent references to druids and nature magic but very little evidence to parallel the protectionist activities of the saints.

In such sources as the Ulster Cycle, a series of heroic tales including "The Tain, "The Tragedy of Deirdriu (Deirdre)' and "The Feast of Bricriu' druids are presented as advisors to the warrior class.73 They have large schools for teaching their arts and frequently serve as seers, prophets, or inter- preters of dreams. The druids do change shape, turning themselves into wild animals, and in many tales a druid rod is used to turn a person into an animal of some type (usually a deer or wild boar, but sometimes a swan, salmon, wolf, or hunting dog). Unlike the saints, the druids in these stories are not invincible; they are frequently killed by the heroes. The saints acquired, in fact, more of the characteristics of the heroes than of the druids, and some heroic acts may actually have influenced the hagiographers' animal stories. The great Ulster hero Cuchulain catches a stag, for example, and has his charioteer step out on the stag's antlers.74 Other practices of the saints are, however, rooted in druidic myth, including cursing and turning people into animals.

The old tales are also full of hunting. Finn, perhaps the greatest of the hunter heroes, was also "a king and a seer and a poet; and a druid and a knowledgeable man."75 Abstaining from hunting seems most frequently a response to the fear that the animal might actually be a person. Finn, for example, protects his son Oisin's mother who had been changed into a doe.76 The opposition of saints to hunters is an interesting motif and does not seem to have a precursor among either the ancient heroes or the druids. In the tales of Oisin, which date from after the Christian conversion of Ireland, the hero goes to the Land of the Forever Young and returns several hundred years later to meet Saint Patrick. Oisin argues against Saint Patrick's attempts to convert him and laments the loss of the Finna (Finn's men), their hunting dogs, and "the noise of the hunt on Slieve Crot, the sound of fawns round Slieve Cua; the great deer of Slieve Luchra, the hares of Slieve Cuilinn." Rejecting Patrick's call to faith, Oisin claims that "the leap of the buck would be better to me, or the sight of badgers between two valleys, than all your mouth is promising me, and all the delights I

73. Kenneth H. Jackson suggests in The Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1964) that the Ulster cycle represents pre-Christian culture. The social-class structure, armaments, and descriptions of warfare, as well as the discussion of the druids are probably little influenced by later Christian culture, although monks recorded the tales in works such as the Book of the Dun Cow.

74. Kinsella, The Tain, pp. 84-92. 75. Gregory, trans., from "The Fianna,' in Gods and Fighting Men,

p. 168. Note the tales of the Fianna are much later than the Ulster cycle. The druid in these stories is more of a magician. The tales of Finn probably originated largely during the Christian era.

76. Ibid., "The Fianna,' pp. 177-78, 430.




could get in your heaven."77 This tale portrays the hunter as the appreciator of nature, and the saint as a killjoy.

A countertheme to the lament of Oisin is the Christian saints' rescue of people turned into animals. In the famous tragedy, "The Children of Lir,' Lir's four children were turned into swans by a jealous stepmother. After nine hundred years in the wild, the swans were living on Inis Gluaire, the Lake of the Birds, when Saint Mochaomhog found them. The saint had silver collars made for them and "brought them to his own dwelling place, and they used to be hearing Mass with him." When someone tried to take them from the saint, they turned back into very aged human beings and asked for baptism before they died.78

Other poetic works such as "Guiare and Marban" imply that the hermit rather than the hero lives in true contact with nature. Certainly the later literature attributes to the monk many of the enjoyable experiences once associated with the itinerant warrior. The stories of the children of Lir and of Oisin may be answers to or dialogues with older values and traditions. The lack of a well-developed "protection theme" in what remains of the Iron Age literature, and the increasing pressure on wildlands through the Iron Age and into post-Roman times suggest that most of the "protection tales" originated after the Christian conversion of the Celts.

The Diversity of Creation

Growing out of ancient Celtic poetic traditions, Celtic religious literature uses a much greater diversity of natural imagery than does the earlier monastic literature of the desert fathers. Celtic attention to biota may also reflect natural differences between the British Isles, with their forests, heaths, and rocky coasts, and the barren deserts of Palestine and Egypt. The Celts, for example, had a special love for birds, which are rarely mentioned in the Christian writings of the Levant. The Celtic saints associated birds with angels and the souls of the departed and showed compassion for these delicate creatures, from the diminu- tive wren to the tall, graceful crane. Several saints were thought to have birds light on them or fly around them. When asked why birds were not afraid of him, Columba of Terryglass answered "that his thoughts ceased not to fly like birds to the sky."79

As Saint Coemgen was praying one Lent, kneeling in a little solitary hut with hands outstretched toward heaven, "a blackbird settled on [his hand], and busying herself as in her nest, laid in it an egg. And so moved was the saint that in all patience and gentleness he remained, neither closing

77. Ibid., pp. 447-53. Note here the emphasis on heaven rather than on a place of resurrection. This may be due to more Latin influence in the church during the later monastic period.

78. Ibid., pp. 140-58. For other translations of these old tales see Tom P. Cross and Clark H. Slover, Ancient Irish Tales (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1936); P. W. Joyce, Old Celtic Romances (Dublin, Ireland: The Talbot Press, 1961; originally printed by David Nutt in London, 1879); and Lady Isabella Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, The Story of the Red Branch of Ulster (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

79. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," p. 161.

nor withdrawing his hand: but until the young ones were fully hatched he held it out unwearied, shaping it for the purpose."80 Coemgen was also said to pray with flocks of birds circling around his head.8"

Saint Columba showed the same care for a crane. Since Columba was in exile on Iona off the coast of Scotland, the crane symbolized his wish to return home to Ireland. Columba instructed a brother to go and sit above the shore and look "for a stranger guest, a crane, wind tossed and driven far from her course in the high air: tired out and weary." Predicting that she would fall on the beach, Columba told the brother to "tenderly lift her and carry her to the steading near by; make her welcome there and cherish her with all care for three days and nights" and then to release her. The brother found the crane and did as Columba had instructed him, and "when her three days housing was ended, and her host stood by, she rose in the first flight from earth into high heaven, and after a while at gaze to spy out her aerial way, took her straight flight above the quiet sea, and so to Ireland through the tranquil weather."82

An ultimate sign of saintliness was never to have molested a bird. Saint Molua was said to have "never killed a bird or any other living thing." When a cleric saw a bird lamenting at Molua's death, he wondered about it. An angel spoke to him and said, "Molua MacOcha has died, and therefore all living creatures bewail him, for never has he killed any animal, little or big; so not more do men bewail him than the other animals, and the little bird thou beholdest." When Saint Cellach was dying, all the birds of the forest waited in hushed reverence.83

Birds appear in Celtic hagiography as messengers and as spiritual beings, as in the Fis Adamnain, an eighth-century account of a vision of heaven and hell: "Three stately birds are perched upon that chair in front of the King [God], their minds intent upon the Creator throughout all ages, for that is their vocation. They celebrate the eight [canonical] hours, praising and adoring the Lord, and the Arch- angels accompany them. For the birds and the Archangels lead the music, and then the Heavenly Host, with the Saints and Virgins, make response." Over the head of God "six thousand thousands, in the guise of horses and birds, surround the fiery chair."84

From very early in the history of the Christian church, figures such as Saint Ambrose have interpreted the songs and activities of birds as offering praise to God. In the voyage of Bran, the hero discovers a blessed island where birds sing the praises of God as canonical hours.85 In the Paradise of Birds discovered by Brendan, not only do the

80. Waddell, Beasts and Saints, pp. 137. See also Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:123-24, 136-37.

81. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," p. 162. 82. Waddell, Beasts and Saints, pp. 44-45. See also Wentworth

Huyshe's translation of Saint Adamnan, The Life of Saint Columba (London, England: George Routledge and Sons, 1908), pp. 86-87, for a more literal translation of the Latin.

83. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," p. 162. 84. "Fis Adamnain" (or Adamnan) in An Irish Precursor of Dante, by

C. S. Boswell (London, England: David Nutt, 1908), p. 32. 85. Armstrong, Saint Francis: Nature Mystic, p. 67.

CELTIC MONKS 13



birds sing joyously all day long, but the human occupants speak only to praise God.86

Although the Celtic monastic literature adheres more closely to the style of the pre-Christian heroic tales, some of the Celtic hagiographies converge with those of the desert fathers in having animals show Christian virtues or become "monks." One of the best examples is from the life of the hermit Ciaran:

And Ciaran settled himself [at the Well of Uaran], and he alone, and a great woods all around the place; and he began to make a little cell for himself, that was weak enough. And one time as he was sitting under the shadow of a tree a wild boar rose up on the other side of it; but when it saw Ciaran it ran from him, and then it turned back again as a quiet servant to him, being made gentle by God. And that boar was the first scholar and the first monk Ciaran had; and it used to be going into the wood and to be plucking rods and thatch between its teeth, as if to help towards the building.87

Ciaran did not stop with one animal but added several to his flock. He found the natural characteristics of some of these creatures troublesome, but he proved that the monastic life can overcome even inherited evil, an important matter to the Celts:

And there came wild creatures to Ciaran out of the places where they were, a fox and a badger and a wolf and a doe; and they were tame with him and humbled themselves to his teaching the same as brothers, and they did all he bade them to do. But one day the fox, that was greedy and cunning and full of malice, met with Ciaran's brogues and he stole them and went shunning the rest of the company to his own den, for he had a mind to eat the brogues. But that was showed to Ciaran, and he sent another monk of the monks of his family, that was the badger, to bring the fox back to the place where they all were. So the badger went to the cave where the fox was and he found him, and he after eating the thongs and the ears of the brogues. And the badger would not let him off coming back to Ciaran, and they came to him in the evening bringing the brogues with them. And Ciaran said to the fox, "O brother," he said, "why did you do this robbery that was not right for a monk to do? And there was no need for you to do it," he said, "for we all have food and water in common, that there is no harm in. But if your nature told you it was better for you to use flesh, God would have made it for you from the bark of those trees that are about you." Then the fox asked Ciaran to forgive him and to put penance on him; and Ciaran did that, and the fox used no food till such time as he got leave from Ciaran; and from that out he was as honest as the rest.88

86. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:56-57. 87. This version of the story is from a modern translation from the

Irish by Gregory, Book of Saints and Wonders, p. 71. A more literal translation of the ancient texts may be found in Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:99-120.

88. Gregory, Book of Saints and Wonders, pp. 72-73. Lady Gregory may have combined stories about two saints named "Ciaran": Ciaran of Saigher, who kept animals around his cell; and Ciaran of Clonmacnois, who had a fox that carried his book of Psalms. Several lives of the latter Ciaran may be found in R. A. Stewart Macalister, The Latin and Irish Lives of Ciaran (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1921).

- - ~Ot theHermit's Song

ne of the best lenown of the hermitage poems is "The Hermit's Song." The

verses describe the pleasant environment of the monk's forest retreat. Referring to his wood as "beautiful," the mone places his hut to face south and near a stream. He ends by thanking God for His wonderful provision:

I wish, 0 Son of the living God, 0 ancient, eternal King, For a hidden hut in the wilderness That it may be my dwelling.

An all grey lithe little lark To be by its side, A clear pool to wash away sins Through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Quite near a beautiful wood, Around it on every side, To nurse many-voiced birds, Hiding it with its shelter

And facing the south for warmth; A little brook across its floor, A choice land with many gracious gifts Such be good for every plant.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This is the husbandry I would take, I would choose, and will not hide it: Fragrant leek, Hens, salmon, trout, bees.

Rainment and food enough for me From the King of fair fame, And I to be sitting for a while Praying God in every place.

Notes The ellipsis indicates the omission here of five verses on a church and other mones. Translation by Kuuno Meyer, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry, ed. Kathleen Hoa gland (New pork: Devin-Adair Company, 1947), pp. 28-30.




When an animal misbehaved, the saint usually commanded the animal to cease or to make reparation. Saint Cainnic, for example, was staying on an island but the constant noise of the birds bothered the saint. He rebuked them and they "got together and set their breasts against the ground, and held their peace, and until the hour of matins on Monday morning they stayed without movement and without a sound, until the Saint released them by his word."89 In a number of stories a wolf kills a calf or fawn, and a saint orders the wolf either to bring another, or to take the place of the lost juvenile in comforting or suckling the mother.90

Occasionally animals voluntarily seek forgiveness or do penance, indicating Christian virtue. When Cuthbert found ravens tearing thatch off his guest house, "he checked them with a slight motion of his right hand, and bade them cease from injuring the brethren. When they ignored his command, he said: 'In the name of Jesus Christ, go away forthwith, and do not presume to remain any longer in the place that you are damaging."' The ravens left at once, but in three days one returned. "With its feathers sadly ruffled and its head drooping to its feet, and with humble cries it prayed for pardon, using such signs as it could; and the venerable father, understanding what it meant gave it permission to return." The raven came back with its mate, and brought "a worthy gift, namely a portion of hog's lard" to the saint.91

The Control of Nature

Another theme running through the Celtic hagiographies is the control of nature through spiritual power. The saint does not employ spiritual power routinely but uses it to provide food or shelter in emergencies, to aid the poor (Columba gave a poor man a special stake for hunting),92 to defeat druids, to expedite passage, or to prove the power of God. The druids in the stories use power in a very similar way, although they are not as benevolent. Saint Berach deals with Diarmait, a poet and "chief master of druidism" through miracles a druid would understand. Berach, for example, at Diarmait's challenge turns two mounds of snow into fires.93 This confrontation is reminiscent of Elijah's igniting the wood in front of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.94

Celtic saints used spiritual power directly for their own protection and had no qualms about cursing an enemy or his land. An interesting case of an animal helping to execute a saint's judgment concerns Saint Berach and Diarmait. Diarmait is occupying land that Patrick had bequeathed to Berach. After a long series of magic contests and tests of power, Berach is awarded the land and says that Diarmait will die on a specific day at the end of the year. On

89. Waddell, Beasts and Saints, p. 121. 90. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," pp. 130-32. 91. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 222-25. 92. Adamnan, Life of St. Columba, pp. 153-56. 93. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:32-37. 94. I Kings 17:20-40.

that day Diarmait, still living, begins to revile Berach. A bishop rebukes Diarmait and suggests he go shut himself up in a church until the day is over. A stag pursued by hunters stops by the east window of the church. On hearing shouting, Diarmait goes to the window and looks out, whereupon one of the hunters throws a spear, which hits Diarmait in the throat. Diarmait dies on the floor of the church, and the stag escapes unharmed.95

In an even more direct example of magic, Saint Brendan takes revenge on a man called Dobarchu who has killed the saint's oxen. Brendan prays that Dobarchu be turned into an otter, which happens when Dobarchu falls into a lake.96 The tales of both Berach and Brendan recall the frequent "shape changing" in pre-Christian mythology.

Animals and other elements of wild nature frequently offer assistance to Celtic monks. A major theme is the working of the hand of God through providence. Animals sometimes offer themselves up to be eaten, and the sea frequently provides sustenance. An anonymous life of Saint Cuthbert (of Lindisfarne in Britain, from a tradition related to the Irish) reports that the holy man kept his nightly prayer vigil while visiting a monastery. After soaking in the sea up to his armpits, he withdrew to the shore to pray, and "immediately there followed in his footsteps two little sea animals (otters), humbly prostrating themselves on the earth; and licking his feet, they rolled upon them, wiping them with their skins and warming them with their breath. After this service and ministry had been fulfilled and his blessing had been received, they departed to their haunts in the waves of the sea."97 Here the response of the animals identifies the man as holy.

On another occasion Cuthbert needs flooring for his chamber and the sea delivers timber exactly the length required to complete his hut and places it on the exact spot where he intended to place the structure.98 While Cuthbert is on an evangelizing trip, an eagle provides for him and becomes a part of the saint's teaching:

On a certain day, he [Cuthbert] was going along the river Teviot and making his way southward, teaching the country people among the mountains and baptizing them. Having a boy walking with him in his company he said to him: "Do you think that someone has prepared you your midday meal today?" He answered that he knew of none of their kindred along the way and he did not hope for any sort of kindness from unknowing strangers. The servant of God said again to him: "My son, be of good cheer; the Lord will provide food for those who hope in him, for he said, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you' in order that the saying of the prophet may be fulfilled: 'I have been young and now am old, yet have I not the righteous

95. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:32-37. 96. Ibid., p. 79. 97. From an anonymous life of Saint Cuthbert by a monk of

Lindsfarne, translated by Bertram Colgrave, see Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, p. 81.

98. From Bede's life of Cuthbert in Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 225-27.

CELTIC MONKS 15



forsaken, and so forth. 'For the labourer is worthy of his hire."' After some such words he looked up to heaven and saw an eagle flying in the sky and said to the boy: "This is the eagle which the Lord has instructed to provide us with food today." After a short time, as they went on their way, they saw the eagle settling on the bank of the river. The boy ran towards the eagle in accordance with the command of the servant of God, and stopping, he found a large fish. The boy brought the whole of it to him, whereupon Cuthbert said: " Why did you not give our fisherman (the eagle) a part of it to eat since he was fasting?" Then the boy, in accordance with the commands of the man of God, gave half the fish to the eagle while they took the other half with them, and broiling it in the company of some men, they ate it, and gave some to the others and were satisfied, worshipping the Lord and giving thanks. Then they set out according to God's will to the mountains, as we have said, teaching and baptizing the people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.99

Here, wild nature provides for the saint and several others, but Cuthbert does not neglect the needs of the eagle. The story is reminiscent of Christ's loaves and fishes and of Saint Peter's fishing adventures.

Animals volunteer for other services, including finding missing items and carrying things. When Coemgen acci- dentally drops his psalter into a lake, an otter returns it to him, dry and readable.'00 A stag comes daily and lies down before Saint Ciaran so that the saint might use his antlers as a reading stand.01l When Columba once forgets his books, a stag returns them to him on his back.'02

Celtic saints frequently order animals to provide services or otherwise exercise control over them. Such passages prove the spiritual power and influence of the saint. Abban, for example, orders wolves to tend his sheep103 and Coemgen, needing milk for a foster child, commands a doe to provide it. When a wolf comes and kills the doe's fawn, Coemgen orders the wolf to take the place of the fawn so the doe will continue to provide milk.'04 Mochuda provides two deer to pull a poor man's plow.j05 Coemgen puts a stag to pull a chariot106 as does Saint Declan when his horse becomes lame.'07

The saints' power extended beyond animals to plants, the tides, and even the winds. In his contests with Diarmait, Berach prays and causes a thorn tree to rise into the air.'08 The hagiographies frequently depict Celtic saints as crossing rivers on dry ground or withstanding storm tides. Maedoc has horses cross the sea without wetting their feet'09 and Brendan's prayer calms a sea full of whirlpools."0

99. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 85-87. 100. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:123. 101. Ibid., p. 215. 102. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," p. 144. 103. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:8. 104. Ibid., p. 125. 105. Ibid., p. 285. 106. Ibid., p. 31. 107. Power, Life of St. Declan and St. Mochuda, p. 55. 108. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:35. 109. Ibid., p. 207. 110. Ibid., p. 61.

Broichan, a druid, declares he will interfere with a voyage of Saint Columba and stirs up the elements against him. Columba puts to sea anyway and causes the adverse winds to change direction, pushing his boat to the desired portP1'

The saints also prove their power by making their way through forests and bogs, or over mountains. Maedoc, forced by an enemy to fetch firewood, drives a team of oxen and a cart over a bog where "God made a smooth and easy road, and a firm level path through the soft and yielding surface of the bog.?'112 When some admirers of Saint Coemgen attempt to carry him on a litter through a thick wood, the trees bow to allow him to pass and then stand up againY'3

In a few cases the saints exercise a destructive power over nature. Saint Columba, for example, kills a wild boar by praying that it will die3'4 More typical, however, are Saint Brigit and other holy personages who tame boars, lions, or wolves3l5 Cuthbert is gentle when driving the birds away from his crops. Cuthbert asks, "Why . .. do you touch the crops that you did not sow? Or is it perchance, that you have greater need of them than I?" He then challenges them: "If, however, you have received permission from God, do what He has allowed you; but if not, depart and do not injure any more the possessions of another." The birds leave and do no further damage.16

The Celtic saints had a passion for destroying or driving out two types of organisms-monsters and venomous reptiles. Many of the saints have a victorious encounter with a monster or snake of some kind, and some saints, like Abban and Brendan, are credited with disarming, exiling, or killing several. A few of the monsters live on land, like Abban's lionlike enemy117 but most live in lakes or in the ocean.

The part played by this theme of control or confrontation within the Celts' attitudes toward wilderness and wild nature is difficult to determine. First, most of these creatures are clearly mythological. Unlike wolves, neither lake monsters nor snakes lived in Ireland in late pagan or early Christian times. The monsters seem to be evil personified through nature, and the purpose of the stories is to prove the saints' power. The author who describes Abban repel- ling a monster on Lough Garman thought it was "the devil who caused the monster to come to them in that form to destroy the saints.?'118

The monsters' association with water could stem from oceangoing sailors' encounters with real sea creatures. Celtic seafarers, however, would have had little reason to attack sharks, whales, or other ocean giants in self-defense. And if it was heroic to fight maritime giants, then why not

111. Ibid., pp. 148-50. 112. Ibid., p. 202. 113. Plummer, "The Life of Coemgen (I)," and "The Life of Coemgen

(II), Bethada naem nErenn, 2:123, 134. 114. Adamnan, Life of St. Columba, p. 136. 115. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," p. 149. 116. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, pp. 221-23. 117. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:5. 118. Ibid., p. 6.




terrestrial wolves? Perhaps the sheer size of many marine creatures put them beyond the reach of the common fisherman or warrior. Wolves, on the other hand, could be easily killed with a spear. The ocean monsters may have symbolized the unknown and unconquerable. The hero needed a worthy adversary, and his points of iron had along ago defeated the native wildlife.

The tales of monsters in inland lakes are even more difficult to explain. The lakes were often sacred sites in pre- Christian times, and the saints frequently chose their shores for monasteries. The accounts of battles with lake monsters may reflect an intrusion of pre-Christian Celtic myth, representing either the defeat of the ancient religion or a concession to its remaining power. When the saints force the monsters from the lakes, they make their shores "spiritually" safe and reduce the fear of dark things hidden in the murky depths.

When a saint commands an animal to provide a service, the animal is usually released afterward or left unharmed (except when it becomes food for the saints). When inanimate natural objects or landscape features are involved, however, the changes can be more permanent. Declan, for example, causes the sea to recede for a mile around the island where he established a monasteryj19 Ciaran of Clonmacnois removes a lake because the rowdy occupants of an island in its center are disturbing his prayers. Ciaran, however, does not destroy the lake but merely has the Lord shift it "far away to another place."'120 The saints do not usually employ their spiritual power to alter the wild character of sites, except for removing monsters. The wildlife are not driven forth but are encouraged to stay.

Like the tales about the druids, one intention of the Celtic hagiographies was to demonstrate power over nature. MacNickle points out that many of the stories concerning wild animals pulling plows and wolves tending flocks suggest a lingering interest in domesticationY'1 Some of the stories, therefore, may reflect folk concern for the development of agriculture and the slow conversion from a society of hunter-gatherers at the mercy of natural forces to a society that planted its own food. Tales of saints causing trees to bloom or planting ordinary forest trees but reaping a spectacular fruit harvest also suggest attempted domestication.

Despite numerous "natural miracles' however, the hagiographies do not tout nature worship. The saint almost always uses the power of the creator God operating through nature. If the stories encourage idolatry, it is worship of the saints rather than worship of natural objects. The saints' lives do occasionally show the saints abusing power. Saint Brendan does penance for turning Dorbarchu into an otterY22 An angel rebukes Maedoc for attempting to go without a ship from Ireland to Britain to seek a confessor. The angel says, "Presumptuous is thy deed:' Maedoc replies, "Not out of presumption was I minded to do

119. Power, St. Declan and St. Mochuda, pp. 32-33. 120. Macalister, Latin and Irish Lives of Ciaran, pp. 30-31. 121. MacNickle, "Beasts and Birds," pp. 133-34. 122. Ibid., p. 135.

it, . . . but through the power of God." The angel tells him he needs no confessor "but the God of the elements." If, however, he wants one, Molua MacOcha would do.Y23

Related to the Celtic interest in power in or over nature is the repeated reference to God as the creator, in contrast to God as savior, judge, help, or righteousness (all aspects of God emphasized in other Hebrew-Christian writings). The saints' lives call God "the Creator," "King of the elements," "dear Creator," "God, the Creator of all things,' and "King of the stars.''124 The early Celtic church may not have wrestled as strenuously with questions about the person of God and the means of salvation. The Celts emphasized the aspect of God most interesting to them, the Lord as the wellspring of the universe.

Conclusion: A Thousand Years in the Wilderness

There was a gradual evolution in monastic attitudes toward wilderness and wildlife from the time of the church fathers to the Middle Ages. Comparing the Celts with other early Christian monastic traditions - the desert fathers and the Franciscans - can help to sort out what was generally Christian and what was peculiarly Celtic about the attitudes of the Irish monks. A review of the desert fathers is available in my article, "The Original Desert Solitaire: Early Christian Monasticism and Wilderness,''125 and Edward Armstrong reviews the Franciscan nature legends in his book, St. Francis: Nature MysticY26 In constructing a comparison, it is necessary to identify not only those values common to all three groups, but also those values and attitudes that changed through time or were adapted to specific regional (cultural or physical) environments. This three-way analysis does not cover the entire range of the monastic movement, but it does high- light some historic trends in the relationship between Christianity and nature.

All three traditions preferred wilderness sites for contemplation. Withdrawal into the wilderness was idealized from the time of the desert fathers. Saint Antony of Egypt found his inner mountain with its arid surroundings, rock out- crops, and spring. The biography of Antony by Athanasius says Antony "loved" his desert retreatY27 The Celts prayed in forests and in the cold water of mountain lakes. They set up residence on the outer islands and in quiet, oak-canopied glens. Antony's attachment to his site appears again in Columba's love for Doire and Coemgen's respect for the mountains and wild creatures of Glendalough.

Franciscan selection of wild sites for meditation was very much in the Celtic pattern. The medieval hagiographies describe Francis and his followers as repeatedly, if not by

123. Plummer, Bethada naem nErenn, 2:205-206. 124. Ibid., pp. 1, 52, 60. 125. Environmental Ethics 10 (Spring 1988): 31-53. 126. Armstrong, Saint Francis: Nature Mystic. 127. Saint Athanasius, The Life of Saint Antony, trans. Robert T.

Meyer (New York: Newman Press, 1950), p. 62.

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open preference, pursuing prayer and contemplation outdoors. The Italian saint's biographers most frequently mention woods, although Francis prayed by lakes, on mountains, and in caves. At one point an angel came to Brother Masseo and asked him to disturb Francis while the saint was "meditating in the wood.1U"28 In another encounter with the divine, Brother Bernard was "in a wood totally lost in divine contemplation and united with God,'129 and Francis, seeking a quiet place for a Lenten fast, crossed over to an island in a lake and "crawled into a dense thicket where the vines made a kind of a shelter, and stayed there through the whole forty days, without eating or drinking2'30

A second characteristic common to the three monastic traditions is respect for wild creatures. Monastic interest in "the beasts of the field" went beyond humane treatment into companionship. The desert fathers made friends with gazelles, wild asses, and wild goats. Hermits kept wolves in their cells and slept with lions."3 The Celts had wild boar, deer, and foxes roaming about their huts. Like the desert fathers, they fed wolves. Saint Francis spoke to a cricket or to swallows on a roof. All three literatures present mercy and compassion toward wildlife as an important Christian virtue -the mark of a gentle and humble saint.

A third common theme is the favorable response of the wildlife or of wild nature to the true saint. This motif is repeatedly used either to verify a saint's holiness or to teach lessons about Christian behavior. The concept began with the desert fathers, among whom living at peace with wild nature was symbolic of the monk's role as the "new Adam." Even a lion could recognize a monk as a man of God and respond, in fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah, by protecting and serving this messenger of the "new kingdom." A similar pattern is found in the Celtic literature, where birds fly around the saints without fearing them, or otters come to warm the feet of a holy man at prayer. Animals appreciated Francis and responded by leaping or flying around him, or by jumping into his arms.

The three literatures differ, however, on an idea of key importance to modern environmental ethics: the protection of the wild. Protection of animals or other wilderness features from humans is not an important motif in the work of the desert fathers. The stories of the desert fathers mention feeding and healing animals, but most of these incidents concern natural events or conditions, such as a reed in a lion's paw, a cub born blind, or a shortage of water in the desert. The literature of the Celts, in contrast, mentions protection from humans. The Celtic saints save animals from hunters, worry about axes in oak groves, and otherwise concern themselves with forest protection. On the point of protection from humans, Saint Francis is closer to the Celts than to the desert monks: on more than one occasion he releases a hare or a rabbit caught in a trap, and he also frees fishes and waterfowl from the hands of fisher-

128. Blaiklock and Keys, Little Flowers, p. 8. 129. Ibid., pp. 5-6. 130. Ibid., pp. 16-17. 131. See Bratton, "The Original Desert Solitaire.'

men132 Francis also talks a boy from Siena into releasing a flock of turtle doves the boy has trapped and is planning to seI133

The intrusion of human technology and harvest, especially through cultivation, is always a threat to the wild. Rising to prominence during the decline of Roman power in the Levant, the desert fathers came from countries that had maximized their agricultural productivity and their urban development during the preceding centuries. The wilderness home of the desert monks was not really available for large-scale agriculture, however. Roman technology had not thrust its way into the drier deserts, even with the construction of sophisticated aqueducts and water- holding systems. To the first monks, the desert must have seemed unconquerable and unchanging. Part of the holiness of the hermits depended in fact on the premise that the desert belonged to the wild beasts and was difficult to occupy. The Hebrew Scriptures treat the wilderness as a constant presence, to be converted into tillable land only by a mighty act of God. The early Eastern monastic literature, which portrays God protecting monks from lions and crocodiles and lions protecting monks from human marauders, betrays the real concerns of the time. But the perils of the desert offered a minor threat to the hermit; the Saracens and Persians offered a major one. The social disorganization following the demise of the Romans probably benefited the lions and endangered the monks.

The Celtic monks, on the other hand, witnessed the last major intrusions of agriculture into lowland forests. The golden age of Celtic monasticism coincided with a major period of forest clearing. Legal documents from 800 C.E. indicate judicial protection of individual trees, so it is not surprising to find preservationist sentiments expressed in the Christian literature (which unfortunately is difficult to date). There is no direct evidence that the monks thought deer, boar, or wolves were threatened as species, or that they recognized phenomena such as overhunting or habitat destruction. Yet their literature clearly presents hunting and mass starvation as threats to individual animals. Furthermore the "protection incidents" seem to concen- trate on the elements of the wild landscape that were the most threatened: the large mammals and oak forests. The ancient Celts probably held some animals and trees sacred, but the monks in the monastic literature extend their protection in response to the natural world's needs rather than to its divine qualities. Saints like Coemgen can be considered the first Christian preservationists.

In contrast to the Celtic saints, Francis explicitly understood some basic principles of conservation and explicitly tried to preserve natural diversity:

He forbade the brothers cut down the whole tree when they cut wood, so that it might have hope of sprouting again. He

132. Thomas of Celano, St. Francis of Assisi: First and Second Life of St. Francis, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago, Illinois: Franciscan Herald Press, 1963), pp. 55-56; Saint Bonaventure, Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 257-58.

133. Blaiklock and Keys, Little Flowers, pp. 63-64.




commanded the gardener to leave the border around the garden undug, so that in their proper times the greenness of the grass and the beauty of the flowers might announce the beauty of the Father of all things. He commanded that a little place be set aside in the garden for sweet-smelling and flowering plants, so that they would bring those who look upon them to the memory of the Eternal SweetnessW34

But Francis's primary deviation from the Celts was in deciding who or what deserved his protection. Despite the fame of the wolf of Gubbio, very few of the Franciscan legends as a group deal with large animals. Francis had little to do with wild boar and deer and met with wolves only a few times. He protected cold-blooded fishes, picked up worms "from the road and placed them in a safe place, lest they be crushed by the feet of the passerby, . . . [and] would see to it that bees would be provided with honey in the winter, or the best wine, lest they should die from the cold."'135 The care Francis showed for wild nature could hardly exceed that of Coemgen, who allowed a blackbird to incubate her egg in his hand. Francis did, however, stretch the net of active nature protection to cover smaller and more ordinary creatures.

This shift in the principal objects of protection is related to another difference among the monastic literatures. The desert fathers concerned themselves almost entirely with larger and more "noble" beasts, except for an occasional misadventure with a scorpion. The Celts greatly expanded the list of creatures that deserved inclusion in the monastic literature; while continuing to emphasize the larger mammals, they also paid attention to birds and plants. Saint Francis, on the other hand, appreciated the diminu- tive; with the exception of a few incidents concerning wolves, he spent his time with rabbits and doves.

These differences reflect the state of the natural environment that gave birth to each monastic tradition, but they also reflect theological developments and cultural back- grounds. The desert monks saw themselves as warriors for God, and the animals with which they consorted had the same heroic character. In the domain of the Biblical wilderness and following the precedents of the Old Testament prophets, a positive (or survivable) interaction with a powerful beast demonstrated the favor of God.

The Celts were less tied to the Biblical models and less restricted to one type of wilderness habitat. The conven- tions of Celtic poetry encouraged aesthetic attention to all major components of the natural landscape. The Celts retained a taste for the heroic and an interest in larger animals, but they deserve the credit, often given to Saint Francis, for calling Christian attention to the broad spec- trum of nature.

Saint Francis was the product of a medieval European city. His surroundings were cultivated countryside, tamed by plows and feudal agriculture. Medieval farmers pushed into every corner they had the means to cultivate. The Apennine forests had been cut down first by the Romans, and then Italian shipbuilders. Sheep and goats foraging on

134. Celano, St. Francis of Assisi, p. 270. 135. Ibid., pp. 72-73.

the Umbrian mountains since ancient times had turned forests into meadows;136 and wild boar and wolves had been driven back into the higher, more rugged mountain ranges.'37

Celano, Francis's first biographer, reports that "among all the animals he [Francis] preferred the gentle.?1"38 This preference may be partially the result of Francis's strongly Christocentric theology. Francis was very taken with the idea of Christ as the lamb of God. He encouraged meek- ness, humility, and submission among his followers. But the importance of the more defenseless wild creatures in the Franciscan legends and biographies may also reflect his exposure to landscapes that had long been dominated by humans. Unlike the Celtic monks, Francis probably had little contact with large, dangerous forest creatures. The Franciscan attention to songbirds and insects may be the result of his primary exposure to cultivated countryside.

The structure of the few Franciscan tales about wolves may also be a result of the differences between Irish and Franciscan attitudes and environments. Both the wolf of Gubbio and the wolves of Greccio were bothering towns or farmers, and the medieval hagiographers cast them as unrelenting villains. According to The Little Flowers of St. Francis, the wolf of Gubbio

was a fearful wolf, enormous in size and most ferocious in the savagery of his hunger. It had devoured not only animals but men and women too, so much that it held all the people in such terror that they all went armed whenever they went into the countryside as if they were off to grim war. Even armed, they were not able to escape the tearing teeth and ravening rage of the wolf, if by mischance they met him. Such terror gripped them all that scarcely anyone dared to go outside the city gate339

This description is hardly accurate natural history. Unless rabid or cornered, wolves rarely attack people and are no match for an armed adult who knows how to use a weapon. In graphic contrast to all the meek animals in the Franciscan stories, the wolf of Gubbio appears as a wanton killer. Some critics have, in fact, suggested the wolf of Gubbio was originally a human robber, and not an animal at all. The wolves of Greccio, equally evil, were also "devouring not only animals but even men."'140

The ferocity of the wolf of Gubbio is in marked contrast to the animals of the older monastic literature. Although the desert fathers do mention animals attacking people, most of their stories describe a single attack on an individual doing something dangerous (i.e., the leopard clawing the monk who threw stones at him), or the behavior of animals that really do attack people (i.e., crocodiles or a lioness with cubs). There are depictions of a few extreme

136. Carol Field, The Hill Towns of Italy (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), p. 66.

137. For range maps of large mammals and birds remaining in Umbria see Fulco Pratesi and Franco Tassi Guida alla natura della Toscanna e dell' Umbria (Milan, Italy: Libri Illustrati Mondadori, 1976).

138. Celano, St. Francis of Assisi, p. 270. 139. Blaiklock and Keys, Little Flowers, p. 60. 140. Saint Bonaventure, Bonaventure, p. 260.

CELTIC MONKS 19



instances of wildlife threatening humans, such as a boa who supposedly devoured farmers, but these are rare. In the desert literature, the most vigorous attacks of the large predators were in defense of the monks. Both the desert fathers and the Celts seem to have had a better knowledge of the behavior of large predators than did Francis's biographers. The Celtic literature describes wolf attacks, but these attacks are on domestic stock and deer, not on local farmers. In proving their heroic character, the Celts preferred to slay monsters, not wolves.

Francis rebuked but also offered to pardon the wolf of Gubbio as if the wolf were a violent human criminal, then promised the wolf that the townspeople would feed him in return for more peaceable behavior. The townspeople agreed to care for the wolf forever, and the penitent wolf went from house to house begging. Francis's conversion of the wolf of Gubbio was in the best monastic tradition, and the wolf, following the example of the Franciscans, became a humble, mild-mannered mendicant. The wolf also became a worthy citizen of the town, something not found in the literature of either the desert or the Celtic monks.

The wolves and lions of the desert fathers stayed with them in their cells. The Celtic monks had no towns in which to leave a wolf, and in most of the Celtic stories, the wolves apparently departed after they were fed. The wolf of Gubbio did not return as a penitent to the wild, nor did he remain with Saint Francis; instead, he adjusted to urban life. The medieval hagiographer may have thought it "unsafe" for the wolf to return to a heavily managed countryside, where an unfed canid would always find live- stock a temptation. The importance of the farmers and townspeople in the Franciscan wolf legends points to a landscape where large animals could easily conflict with human interests.

Nor do the three literatures treat the wild landscape in the same way. For the desert fathers, isolation was extreme- ly important, so the desert became a great "cell" to shelter them from human influence. They loved the desert for its silence and austerity. For the Celts nature was more a companion and an indication of God's blessing. Rather than sit in silence, they listened to the songs of the forest birds. They did not rest in eternity on an unchanging rock outcrop; they enjoyed the passing of the seasons. While seeking God within, they sought the work of God without- full of color, music, and diversity. Saint Francis, on the other hand, was more consciously concerned with what nature "says" about God. To Francis, many natural objects suggested qualities of Christ, or were reminders of the Scriptures. Francis's attention to small and gentle animals expanded the sphere of Christian ministry and was related to his care of those in the lower strata of human society. He was "filled with compassion not only toward men in need, but even toward dumb animals, reptiles, birds and other creatures, sensible and insensible."14' Francis's actions called both for an interest in nature and mercy for the poor.

Of the three schools of monasticism, the Franciscans certainly tried hardest to integrate care for nature within

141. Celano, St. Francis of Assisi, p. 69.

the Christian mission. Francis had less interest in power over nature than the Celts, perhaps because he lived in a tamer milieu. Nature became not only brother and sister but part of Francis's flock. This theme is also found in the Celtic literature, but Francis developed it more completely and related it in theological language in his poetry.

Francis also differed from the Celts and desert fathers in terms of the intensity of his commitment to the wilderness. Antony and Coemgen were more completely wilderness saints; they dwelled in the wilderness that Francis only visited. Francis had no inclination to stay in one place and he never completely withdrew to the contemplative life. Francis found his first retreat in a cavern among "the black firs"'142 on Mount Subasio outside Assisi. For Francis, these initial periods of withdrawal were not for a lifetime, or for seven long years, like Coemgen's stay on the lough, but rather for a few hours of prayer. Even while in the grip of his growing religious fervor, he always balanced these forays into solitude by returns to the harsh social realities of the medieval world. Francis would pass a leper hospital on his walks or encounter the beggars at the city gates. For Francis, wilderness was never a permanent residence, but a relief and source of inspiration.'43 Francis's break from the cloister made wilderness living less a complete lifestyle and more a place for periodic mystical contact with God. The Celtic saints really lived in nature. Francis, surrounded by growing urbanization, stepped into the modern dichotomy between ministering to the needs of humankind (in the city) and feeding one's own spirit in solitude (in the wilderness).

In the march of the monastic tradition, the desert fathers directed attention to the wild, while the Celts glorified the diversity in nature and sought to protect it. The Franciscans began to look at nature in detail and thereby encouraged the careful observation that helped to develop the visual arts of the Renaissance and laid the foundations for modern biologyj44 Through time, changes in the landscape interacted with religious convention. Celtic natural ideals, confined in an increasingly agricultural and town-dominated countryside, may have influenced Francis's view of the wild almost as much as Francis's own theological innovations. The Celts thus may have served as a bridge from the Hebraic and heroic values of the desert fathers to Francis's love for the small and gentle. Furthermore, Celtic literature represents not only an important expansion of Christian interest in nature, but also an aesthetic peak in its expression. More extensive study of the Celts and of Christian monasticism should further elucidate the development of Western attitudes toward nature and provide better insights into the sources of preservationist and protectionist models for human interaction with the wild. A

142. Julien Green, God's Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi (San Francisco, California: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 69.

143. Johannes Jorgensen, Saint Francis of Assisi (New York: Double- day, 1955), pp. 240-75.

144. See, for example, the discussion in Earthkeeping: Christian Stewardship of Natural Resources, ed. Loren Wilkinson (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), p. 122.




oaks, wolves and love - celtic monks and northern forests

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