the golden age of ireland - a land of saints and scholars
DESCRIPTION
This was the most incredible period of history for Ireland. It lasted for 500years from the beginning of the 5th century to the end of the 9th. One greattragedy about all of this is that the majority of the Irish People are not awareof what took place in these centuries and what Ireland contributed toWestern civilisation. This is the equivalent of the Greeks deciding to ignorethe time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, thinking it to be an irrelevant periodin Greek history. What madness and neglect that would be? Even worse, it ismy belief that that which produced that greatness has not been lost to theIrish people but lies dormant within our hearts and minds. With the rightenvironment, there is no reason that Ireland could not rise to that greatnessagain. By studying this period we can be inspired and more importantly cometo understand the factors which facilitated its flourishing thus allowing for thepossibility of creating these factors again so that, in the best context, historymight repeat itself.TRANSCRIPT
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THE GOLDEN AGE OF IRELAND - A LAND OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS
1) INTRODUCTION
This was the most incredible period of history for Ireland. It lasted for 500
years from the beginning of the 5th century to the end of the 9th. One great
tragedy about all of this is that the majority of the Irish People are not aware
of what took place in these centuries and what Ireland contributed to
Western civilisation. This is the equivalent of the Greeks deciding to ignore
the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, thinking it to be an irrelevant period
in Greek history. What madness and neglect that would be? Even worse, it is
my belief that that which produced that greatness has not been lost to the
Irish people but lies dormant within our hearts and minds. With the right
environment, there is no reason that Ireland could not rise to that greatness
again. By studying this period we can be inspired and more importantly come
to understand the factors which facilitated its flourishing thus allowing for the
possibility of creating these factors again so that, in the best context, history
might repeat itself.
Firstly, let us hear what certain respected foreign commentators have said
about the Golden Age of Ireland.
Renan, the French commentator, said, ‘Nowhere, perhaps, has God been
worshipped in spirit and in truth more than in the Great Communities of Iona,
Bangor, Clonard and Lindesfarne.’
Nora Chadwick said, ‘A golden age of innocence and piety which has never
been surpassed and perhaps been equalled only by the ascetics of the eastern
deserts’.
Kenneth Clarke wrote, ‘It is hard to believe that for quite a long time – almost
a hundred years (late 5th century to late 6th century) – western Christianity
survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, a pinnacle of rock eighteen
miles from the Irish coast, rising seven hundred feet out of the sea’.
This was a period in which great characters lived on earth. Pope Leo the
Great was elected about a dozen years after St. Patrick landed in Ireland. St.
Augustine of Hippo died about two years before St. Patrick started his
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mission. St. Columbcille was born in 521, 8 years before the inauguration of
the Benedictine order, the success of which order eventually brought about
the cessation of the Irish way of monastic living. Emperor Justinian died close
to when Columbcille went to Iona. St. Kevin predeceased Mohammed by 14
years. St. Fintan remained in his hermitage in Schaffhaussen on the Rhine for
27 years, a period which saw the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman
Emperor in 800 and his death in 814 and also the period in which Europe
enjoyed a brief renaissance.
Early medieval Ireland offers something unique and interesting to students of
history: the record of a people untouched by the Roman Empire. Ireland
alone of all the modern countries in Western Europe enjoyed a period of a
1000 years and more – until the first Viking raiders – during which she
evolved and developed an indigenous and unbroken culture different in many
ways from any that existed on the continent. The Roman Church romanised
most of Europe but the Irish took Christianity in its purity and gave it a unique
Irish flavour. So long before theological and political conflicts tragically
divided Christianity, one of the most ancient and creative churches grew to
prominence. During its time it kept classical learning alive while the so called
Dark Ages were casting their shadows across Europe.
2) BEFORE CHRISTIANITY
Ireland was rural in an almost absolute sense. There were no villages even. It
was still a country of isolated holdings, organised in a tribal, familial culture –
kinship binding these holdings together.
Irish society was divided into four classes. It was aristocratic, a hierarchical
system of individual, autonomous units. No single nation or state confronted
Patrick as there was no state, or nation, or king over all. There were,
however, kings, tribal chieftains; and under them warriors and as their equals,
"men of special gifts," - druids, bards, doctors, historians (for the most part in
one) - and finally there were ordinary freemen. The Druids whole system of
belief was based on the wonder of nature and so they were very much in
touch with the earth. The Druids were effectively the priests of their religion.
They were well educated, usually literate and had an excellent grasp of
matters environmental and astrological. The Druids used nature to see into
the future by reading signs. The bards were historians, legislators, judges,
poets and warriors. So great a force were they that they were able to
challenge the authority of the king himself.
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In the sixth century, the great Welsh bard Taliesin claimed: "Christ, the Word
from the beginning, was from the beginning our Teacher, and we never lost
his teaching. Christianity was in Asia a new thing; but there never was a time
when the Druids of Britain held not its doctrines.
Legend also tells us, for instance, that Irish sages attended the events on
Golgotha "in the spirit" and felt, by what means we cannot tell, "the groans
and travails of creation cease." Yeats notes a similar story in which on the day
of the Crucifixion King Conchubar and Bucrach the Leinster Druid are sitting
together. Conchubar notices "the unusual changes of the creation and the
eclipse of the sun and the moon at its full"; he asks the Druid the cause of
these signs, and Bucrach replies, "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is now
being crucified by the Jews.
Though the society was an oral one, it nevertheless by any standards
embodied a “high” culture. There were schools, and a great body of
traditional knowledge and lore.
As Ludwig Bieler commented: “Ireland is unique in the medieval western
world in having not only a native literature but also a native tradition of
professional learning.” Thus, once having acquired a written script, the Irish
were culturally well prepared to preserve not only their own traditions, but
those of classical Greek and Latin literature also. This they did, thereby
ensuring the continuity of European culture.
3) ST. PATRICK’S MISSION
This thirty-year span of Patrick’s mission in the middle of the fifth century
encompasses a period of change so rapid and extreme that Europe will never
see its like again. By 461, the likely year of Patrick’s death, the Roman Empire
is careering in chaos, barely fifteen years away from the death of the last
western emperor. For as the Roman lands went from peace to chaos, the
land of Ireland was rushing even more rapidly from chaos to peace.
The origins of Christian Ireland are highly mysterious and we do not know
when or how Christianity was introduced into the island. When Saint Patrick
reached Auxerre in 415, he found an Irishman among the clerics of St.
Amator. There must then have already been Irish Christians, who had
perhaps been converted by the slaves captured on the shores of Britain.
Historically speaking, the Christian origins of Ireland go back to PALLADIUS who
came in 431 and died the following year. His mission was restricted to the south
of the country. Five bishops are often mentioned who were certainly of Irish
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birth and belonged to the days before Patrick – Ibar and his disciple Abban,
Declan, Ailbe and Ciaran the elder. It seems almost certain that SAINT IBAR,
whose activities were of a local kind, and did not stretch beyong the town of
Wexford, was consecrated bishop before Saint Patrick.
Patrick is calculated to be around 47 when he came to Ireland. He refers to a
sin he committed and this was probably around age 15. Let us say this was
400. He was kidnapped the following year and escaped perhaps in 407, but
was not ordained till about 430, since he did not return to Ireland till about
432, when he would have been-at least, according to this reckoning-forty-
seven.
It was Germanus who decided to consecrate Patrick as Bishop for Ireland,
who had been preparing for this hour in retreat, study and prayer for not less
than fifteen years. His mission initially concentrated on the north of the
country. The traditional chronology in regard to Saint Patrick is that died in
A.D. 461. There are however a number of objections to this which cannot be
easily set aside. Thus the Irish Annals, a document which in general deserves
to be accepted, tells us of the death of Patrick in 461, and then mentions him
again as living in 492! It has been thought that there may have been two
Patricks in succession to each other, and that legend may in consequence
have mixed up the facts about the two men and their actions, in order to
produce the fictitious figure of one, single Patrick, which would thus account
for his long life!
What is strikingly different about Patrick’s missionary activities is the fact that
he went, as he himself put it, ‘even to outlying regions beyond which no man
dwelt, and where never had anyone come to baptize or ordain clergy, or
confirm the people’.
By the time of his death Ireland had been fundamentally Christianized. What
is remarkable is that it is the only country in the history of Christianity in
which no blood was shed in its establishment. Why was this so?
Patrick’s main work, of course, was, that of conversion, establishing bishops,
churches and the seeds of monasticism. His success in this seems to have
resided in his willingness to accept the indigenous traditions and conform his
teaching to them. His description of God which follows is very much the God
of Nature which would have appealed to a people with a Druidic culture.
There is the story of the conversion in Connaught of the daughters of the High
King of Tara. When these questioned him as to who the New God was, and
where he dwelt, Patrick replied:
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“Our God is the God of all men, the God of Heaven and Earth,
of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountain and the
lowly valley,
the God above Heaven, the God in Heaven, the God under Heaven;
He has his dwelling round Heaven and Earth and sea and all that in them is.
He inspires all, he quickens all, he dominates all, he sustains all.
He lights the light of the sun; he furnishes the light of the light;
He has put springs in the dry land and has set stars to minister to the greater
lights.”
Patrick’s view is that reality is a continuum, and all God’s creatures are
theophanies of God himself, for God speaks in them and through them. St.
Patrick would have been impressed by the natural mysticism of the Irish
which told them that the world was holy – all of it, not just parts of it. For St.
Patrick God was both transcendent and immanent. This was in contrast to
Rome where increasingly God was only a transcendent God.
Everywhere in Celtic Ireland we find a holy intimacy of human, natural and
divine. In hermitages and monasteries, on rocky promontories and lonely
hillsides, we find everywhere a tremendous proximity of the human and
divine in nature, an abandonment to spiritual work and simultaneously a
cultivation of the earth.
Because Patrick established a church in perfect conformity with the existing
spirituality of Ireland, the Druids and Bards, being converted, learnt Latin and
incorporated their own traditions into the existing Christian ones. Like all
aristocratic societies they had set great store on memory, learning,
genealogy. Thus the bards now became synchronizers and so, by the seventh
century as Robin Flowers notes, “the monks had accepted the pagan
traditions and put it on one level with the historical material which came to
them from the Church.
We know that St. Patrick destroyed nothing in the national traditions save the
little that was vicious and erroneous. He had a tender regard for what was
genuinely human and natural in his converts, except in so far as it was
opposed to the faith he came to teach. And his fellow saints and their
successors followed suit, so that it is one of the glories of Irish monasticism
that it was tolerant and broadminded in the best sense of the words. Thanks
to this deep understanding, the heroic literature of the ancient regime was
never destroyed.
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Patrick held out to these warrior children, in his own person, that it is possible
to be brave-to expect "every day ... to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved-
what- ever may come my way" -and yet be a man of peace and at peace, a
man without sword or desire to harm, a man in whom the sharp fear of death
has been smoothed away. He was "not afraid of any of these things, because
of the promises of heaven; for I have put myself in the hands of God
Almighty."
Patrick's gift to the Irish was his Christianity-the first deRomanized Christianity
in human history, a Christianity without the sociopolitical baggage of the
Greco-Roman world, a Christianity that completely inculturated itself into the
Irish scene. Through the Edict of Milan, which had legalized the new religion
in 313 and made it the new emperor's pet, Christianity had been received into
Rome, not Rome into Christianity! Roman culture was little altered by the
exchange, and it is arguable that Christianity lost much of its distinctiveness.
But in the Patrician exchange, Ireland, lacking the power and implacable
traditions of Rome, had been received into Christianity, which transformed
Ireland into Something New, something never seen before-a Christian culture,
where slavery and human sacrifice to a large degree became unthinkable, and
warfare, though found impossible for humans to eradicate, diminished
markedly.
Indeed, the survival of an Irish psychological identity is one of the marvels of
the Irish story. Unlike the continental church fathers, the Irish never troubled
themselves overmuch about eradicating pagan influences. The pagan
festivals continued to be celebrated, which is why we today can still celebrate
the Irish feasts of May Day and Hallowe'en. As late as the twelfth century-
seven centuries after the conversion of the Irish to the Gospel-a husband or
wife could call it quits and walk out for good on February 1, the feast of
Imbolc, which meant that Irish marriages were renewable yearly, like t.v.
licences or insurance policies.
This broadmindedness was, of course, in line with the attitude of official
Christendom; but, whereas, even in Rome, the important principle at stake
had to fight long and fight hard for recognition, its acceptance in Ireland
seems to have been as peaceful as it was widespread.
Celtic spirituality was very much the child of the pagan culture which
preceded it. It valued learning, science, literature, poetic imagination and
artistic creativity. It was spiritually profoundly affected by nature and its
beauty
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No race adopted Christianity with so much originality as did the Irish. The
fundamentals of the faith they received from outside like the rest of the
nations, but from the first they grafted this stem on the national stock with
extraordinary thoroughness. This is why Renan remarked that “the Irish
family of Christians drew everything out of itself; it lived entirely on its own
capital.”
From an initially standard administrative system adopted from the western
church, in which bishops ruled over dioceses whose territorial boundaries
were clearly defined, the Irish churches appear to have been transformed into
a quite different but distinctive organization in which most of the important
churches are monastic houses, united to lesser daughter houses in a
confederation or paruchia under the overall control of the abbot of the
mother church. In stark contrast to the earlier continental pattern, the
paruchia was not a territorial unit with fixed boundaries, for the monastic
churches comprising it might be widely scattered. This and another
distinctive feature marked off the Irish church as different: administrative
power was in the hands of the abbot, not the bishop. Bishops there were still,
of course, since the ecclesiastical dignities and sacramental functions of the
bishop could never be dispensed with. But his administrative jurisdiction was
apparently a thing of the past; that now rested in the hands of the
abbot.There were, of course no archbishops in the Celtic Church, and a bishop
had no authority in the economy or organization of the monastery which was
ruled by an abbot. There was nothing like this on the continent.
There is no denying the crucial importance of the fact that Ireland was never
a province of the Roman Empire and never acquired the apparatus of the Late
Roman government and administration which has left its stamp on Western
Europe and Christianity to this day.
3) THE MONASTIC SCHOOLS
"The Church has known days more resplendent and more solemn, days
better calculated to raise the admiration of sages; but I knew not if she has
ever breathed forth a charm more touching and pure than in the springtime
of monastic life."
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Thus said Montalembert in his great work “The Monks of the West”.
Nowhere, with the possible exception of Egypt, did the monastic idea develop
so rapidly or produce types so singular as in Ireland. For this we must take
into account that Ireland was evangelised, in the first instance, by one who
had been trained in a monastery and secondly, the liveliness and
independence of the Celtic temperament. Although St. Patrick was able to
speak of the multitude of his converts who had retired from the world, Irish
monasticism was not properly established until some fifty years after his
death. From that time onwards, dedication to a life of seclusion and prayer
was the chief feature of the national religious life.
St. Patrick's influence was established earliest in the north, the monastic
movement first entered the country from the south. There is reason to think
that whereas the Patrician Church passed directly from Britain to Ireland,
perhaps under stimulus from the Church in Gaul, the monastic Church
penetrated from Munster, where powerful monasteries were founded at an
early date. This area, and in particular the monastery of Lismore and others
on the Blackwater and the Barrow, were evidently in direct intellectual
intercourse with the Continent in the sixth century, especially with Aquitaine
and most probably with Spain also. It is from these progressive Munster
centres that the prominent anchorite foundations of the following period,
notably Tallaght, Finglas, and Terryglas, drew their founders and their origin.
There were both external and internal factors which brought about
manasticism in Ireland.
Externally, after Patrick, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Irish
experienced an influx of anchorites and monks fleeing before the barbarian
hordes. "All the learned men on this side of the sea," claims a note in a
Leyden manuscript of this time, "took flight for transmarine places like
Ireland, bringing about a great increase of learning"-and, doubtlessly, a
spectacular increase in the number of books -"to the inhabitants of those
regions." But not a few of these men were ascetics from such Roman
hinterlands as Armenia, Syria, and the Egyptian desert. The Ulster monastery
of Bangor, for instance, claimed in its litany to be "ex Aegypto transducta"
("translated from Egypt"); and the convention of using red dots to adorn
manuscript initials, a convention that soon became a mark of Irish
manuscripts, had first been glimpsed by the Irish in books that the fleeing
Copts brought with them.
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The primary internal factor which facilitated the flourishing of monasticism in
Ireland was that the Irish of the late fifth and early sixth centuries had a thing
which they called the Green Martyrdom, opposing it to the conventional Red
Martyrdom by blood. The Green Martyrs were those who, leaving behind the
comforts and pleasures of ordinary human society, retreated to the woods, or
to a mountaintop, or to a lonely island-to one of the green no-man's-lands
outside tribal jurisdictions-there to study the scriptures and commune with
God. For among the story collections Patrick gave them they found the
examples of the anchorites of the Egyptian desert, who, also lacking the
purification rite of persecution, had lately devised a new form of holiness by
living alone in isolated hermitages, braving all kinds of physical and
psychological adversity, and imposing on themselves the most heroic fasts
and penances, all for the sake of drawing nearer to God.
The monasteries emerged because of an impulse for religiously-minded men
to escape from the real world. They wanted time by themselves, and started
living as hermits. In many cases these hermits developed a popular following,
and these groups often formed the basis of the monastery and thus, the
wished-for extremes of the Green Martyrdom were largely-and quickly-
abandoned in favor of monasticism. Since Ireland had no cities, these
monastic establishments grew rapidly into the first population centers, hubs
of unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning.
These austere ascetics, without intending it, conferred a boon upon their age
which has no parallel in the history of any other country. This boon was the
establishment of the Termons ( from which we have nameplaces such as
Termon feckin today) or districts recognised alike by law and custom as
sacred, immune from legal imposts, and from all invasion even in the course
of a civil war. Termon was a sanctuary and these sanctuaries were so
revered by the body of the Irish nation that they were unmolested for three
hundred years, their violation being regarded as infamous as well as unlucky.
To this" Truce of God," Ireland owed the comparative repose that enabled
students and scholars from every land to come and go at their pleasure.
Monasteries of a thousand men were no rarity and three thousand was not
unknown. St. Finnian found his famous monastic school near the Boyne and
became known as the Tutor of the Irish Saints and at one period had three
thousand pupils. Many of these left him in order to set up monasteries of
their own, so that Clonard became " a mighty tree with innumerable
branches." In Glendalough, there were said to be 2000 monks at one stage.
On a plain to the east of the Lower Lake, the monks built what would become
in time a kind of university city, to which came thousands of hopeful students
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first from all over Ireland, then from England, and at last from everywhere in
Europe. There was certainly no family in the country which had no monks
amongst its sons, and the women rivalled the men in their pious ardour.
One of the first famous monasteries was established by Enda. Enda was born
in Meath, and had been a military man until his sister St Fanchea convinced
him that he should give his life to God. Enda founded his first monastery in
Ireland on the Aran Islands, and his followers would spread out and set up ten
further monasteries in his name. He had many disciples who would be key
figures in Irish religious life, such as Colum Cille, Brendan, Ciaran, Kevin and
Finnian.
The big three monasteries, and the most famous, appeared during the sixth
century: Clonard, Clonmacnois, and Clonfert. These became famous as the
leading educational monasteries that trained Irish men (and foreigners) to be
brilliant scribes, artists, and thinkers. These were the religious equivalents of
the Ivy League Colleges: only the best and brightest went there, and once
trained, they went round the world to spread the word. The great
monasteries were headed by remarkable and powerful abbesses or abbots,
such as Brigit of Kildare, Columcille of Iona, Finnian of Clonard, Ita of Killeedy,
Brendan of Clonfert, Kevin of Glendalough, Ciaran of Clonmacnois, and David
of Wales. Many of the first male founders and abbots of these monasteries,
as the early hagiographies maintain, were probably celibate priests and
bishops. Women founders and abbesses also lived celibate lives within
religious communities. The male monastic leaders who followed the early
pioneers might have been either ordained or lay. Many were evidently
married, since the marriage of priests throughout the entire early church was
commonplace and the Celtic church was no exception. In some Irish
monasteries, in fact, the abbacy descended from father to son.
The monasteries were estates, small farms with livestock and fields. They
were publishing houses, with scriptoria; and finally they were schools.
Thus the work of compilation, and spiritual investigation, were both carried
out in the monasteries. Whereas Egyptian monasticism produced nothing but
naked sanctity, its Hibernian counterpart from first to last clothed itself in the
graceful garment of art, and became a veritable citadel of culture throughout
the Dark Ages again reflecting the belief in both a transcendent and
immanent God as opposed to a God who was only transcendent. The primary
purpose of these, of course was contemplation and the practice of the
presence of God but more "scholarly" activity was not seen to conflict with
this. "Live in Christ, that Christ may live in you." Columbanus told his students:
"Taste and see, how lovely, how pleasant is the Lord." Continuous prayer was
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the ideal, to "pray in every position." A gloss asks, "What is prayer without
ceasing?" and it replies: "The answer is not difficult. Some say it is celebrating
the canonical hours, but that is not the true meaning. It is when all the
members of the body are inclined to good deeds and evil deeds are put away
from them.
Though ascetic, then, the Irish monks were hostile to neither learning nor
nature and practised greatly the contemplation of both of these. Indeed,
these two - Scripture and nature - were according to John Scottus Eriugena
the two shoes of Christ, whose latchet John the Baptist was not yet ready to
undo. Without over emphasising it, this reflects once more the transcendent
and immanent God.
Here, the Seven Liberal Arts were practised while the rest of Europe was still
in the "dark ages" of transition; the Trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic
(which in practice meant Latin and Greek) and the Quadrivium of arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy and music. These, however, were not ends in
themselves, but were merely the preliminaries and prerequisites for the study
of Scripture and theology.
"What is best in the world?" asked Columbanus, author of the most severe
and ascetical Rule, and he answered: To do the will of its maker. What is this
will? That we should do what he has ordered, that is, that we should live in
righteousness and seek devotedly what is eternal (note: righteousness to
have the proper relationship with the immanent God and seeking devotedly
the eternal so that we may have the true relationship with the the
transcendent God). How do we arrive at this? By study. We must therefore
study devotedly and righteously. What is our best help in maintaining this
study? The Intellectus, which probes everything and, finding none of the
world's goods in which it can permanently rest, is converted by reason into
the one good which is eternal.
Thus, the monasteries assimilated and superseded the ancient bardic and
druidic foundations. They welcomed people into the monastery who wanted
to learn from the resident monks. The picture of native scholars imparting
their learning to foreign students from Britain and the Continent, free of
charge, is one of the most oft-cited passages in the Venerable Bede's History
of the English Church and People:
“The Irish welcomed them all gladly, gave them their daily food, and also
provided them with books to read and with instruction, without asking for
any payment.” From the careful Bede we learn, therefore, that the Irish
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monastic universities accepted commoners as well as noblemen and those
who wished for learning but not the cloister.
From the top to the bottom of the social scale, all ranks and classes are
represented. St. Cormac of Cashel was a king as well as a bishop. Adamnan
was eighth in descent from the immortal Niall himself. Fintan could make a
similar though not quite so strong a claim. St. Columcille, had royal blood in
his veins. On the other hand, St. Dichu, Patrick's first convert, was originally a
swineherd. Tassach, who gave St. Patrick the Last Sacraments, had been a
sort of smith or mechanic.
Padraic Pearse wrote of these schools:
“It seems to me that there has been nothing nobler in the history of
education than this development of the old Irish plan of fosterage under a
Christian rule, when to the pagan ideals of strength and truth there were
added the Christian ideals of love and humility. And this, remember, was not
the education system of an aristocracy, but the education system of a people.
It was more democratic than any educational system in the world today. At
Clonard Kieran, the son of a carpenter, sat in the same class as Columcille, son
of a king. To Clonard or to Aran or to Clonmacnoise went every man, rich or
poor, prince or peasant, who wanted to sit at Finian's or at Enda's or at
Kieran's feet and to learn of his wisdom.”
Most of the monasteries and convents had a bard attached to the
community, and St. Brigit used to make him play and sing whenever her nuns
showed signs of depression. Not infrequently these monastic singers and
players were to be found amongst the members of the community. St.
Colman of Cloyne was a bard before becoming a monk, and the oldest bardic
composition extant is the Psalter of Cashel which was compiled by Cormac
MacCullenan, bishop of Cashel and king of Munster. As for Columcille, he was
the Troubadour of Ireland, who made music and poetry an integral part of
religion.
The plain historical fact is that the monastic enclosures of these detached
ascetics became the sanctuaries of cultivation at a time when it stood in
desperate need of an asylum in which to recuperate its failing energies. It
was by means of their culture that the spiritual susceptibilities of the ancient
Greeks were prepared for the reception of the Gospel. The same may be said
of Ireland, whose accomplishments earned for her the title of the Christian
Greece. When all seemed lost, salvation was imminent; and it came chiefly
through the monasteries, and first of all through the Irish monasteries. When
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the walls of the Eternal City were being breached by the battering rams of the
barbarians, either destroying culture or bringing it to a standstill, the Muses
sought and found an asylum in Ireland.
These teachers left a lasting impression on their own and succeeding
generations. Not only were they the chief professors of grammar, poetry,
astronomy, music and geography, when these branches had no other, or
scarcely any representatives elsewhere, but also they profoundly influenced
the course of thought in matters of philosophy and theology. Of course, the
two oldest of Europe’s universities, Paris and Pavia, may almost be said to
have been founded by Irishmen.
As Christopher Dawson says: "If the culture of the Dark Ages was a culture of
schoolmasters, they were the schoolmasters of Europe." The work
accomplished was educational rather than literary, the transmission of the
classic and patristic literature to the new peoples. Ireland is the outstanding
instance of this work. Before her conversion she possessed a very vigorous
native culture, a vernacular culture which she did not lose in her contact with
Latin Christianity. Moreover the Irish missionaries started the ball of
vernacular culture rolling elsewhere-in Northern England and in Germany.
The monks were among the first people to start researching and writing a
history of Ireland.
The suddenness and vigour with which monasticism took root in the newly-
converted island is usually traced in some part to the clan system. Irish
society had been organised on a tribal basis under paganism, and it remained
so organised for more than ten centuries after the country had been
Christianised. Very wisely, the first missionaries exploited this organisation
for their purposes, addressing themselves first of all to the head of the clan,
and through him getting at the people. Usually, when a chief was converted,
he set aside part of his territory as a monastic enclosure which was recruited
from the clan. These new monks found themselves living under much the
same social condition, the abbot being the chieftain to whom they swore
obedience and allegiance. When later new communities branched off from
the mother house, they were grouped under the name of the original founder
in a free federal union identical with that of the clan system.
The monasteries in Ireland advanced a rational and reasoned approach to
understanding the Bible that had previously been lacking. There are some
things that might have raised a flutter in continental circles, for the Irish were
still using biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha long since lost or forgotten
in the rest of Europe. They had a deep love for St. John’s gospel considered to
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be the mystical gospel and containing the highest teachings of Christ. As
unconcerned about orthodoxy of thought as they were about uniformity of
monastic practice, they brought into their libraries everything they could lay
their hands on. They were resolved to shut out nothing. Not for them the
scruples of Saint Jerome, who feared he might burn in hell for reading Cicero.
Once they had learned to read the Gospels and the other books of the Holy
Bible, the lives of the martyrs and ascetics, and the sermons and
commentaries of the fathers of the church, they began to devour all of the old
Greek and Latin pagan literature that came their way. These monks respected
the classics, especially Virgil. The writings of St. Columban are enlightened by
classical quotations and allusions. He seems to have been particularly fond of
the poems of Sappho.
In their unrestrained catholicity, they shocked conventional churchmen, who
had been trained to value Christian literature principally and give a wide berth
to the dubious morality of the pagan classics.
It was not that the Irish were uncritical, just that they saw no value in self-
imposed censorship. To John T. McNeill, the church historian, it was precisely
"the breadth and richness of Irish monastic learning, derived from the
classical ... authors" that was about to give Ireland its "unique role in the
history of Western culture."
Though these early Irish literates were intensely interested in the worlds
opened up to them by the three sacred languages of Greek, Latin, and-in a
rudimentary form-Hebrew, they also loved their own tongue too much ever
to stop using it. Whereas elsewhere in Europe, no educated man would be
caught dead speaking a vernacular, the Irish were very happy to do so.
The Irish in the sixth century were in a position unique in the history of
western Europe: their conversion to Christianity had forced upon them the
necessity for learning a foreign language with which they were not in
frequent contact'." Unlike their continental counterparts, who at least spoke
Vulgar Latin as their everyday language, the Irish were confronted with an
entirely new language: 'an Italian or Spaniard who had studied no grammar
would write bad Latin; an Irishman without grammar could write no Latin at
all'.
A knowledge of Latin was essential for the understanding of church liturgy
and ritual, for reading and interpreting the Scriptures, as well as for the day-
to-day business of ecclesiastical administration in a church which saw itself as
part of the international community of western Christendom. But with the
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exception of the occasional British clerics they might come into contact with,
the Irish had no regular exposure to spoken or written Latin; they had to start
from scratch. In these circumstances the only available source of information
about Latin grammar was in books.
There was no such thing as a latin grammer (so far as we know) at the
beginning of the sixth century. By the end of that century, however, a new
kind of Latin grammar, the elementary grammar designed specifically for
beginners with no previous knowledge of Latin, had come into being, and the
credit for producing it is due in large part to the Irish.
The monks of the time were recognised as some of the best people at writing
and speaking Latin. They developed a set of new graphic conventions
designed to make it easier for non-Latin-speakers to read manuscripts written
in that language. This 'grammar of legibility', as it has been called led them to
introduce for the first time word-separation, capitalization of initial letters,
and punctuation, together with a system of signs which they used to indicate
the grammatical relationship of the words in Latin.
Latin literature would almost surely have been lost without the Irish and
illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literature
without the example of the Irish who, as said before, were the first to write
down their literatures in their native tongue. Beyond that, in the West, there
would have most likely perished not only literacy but perhaps all the habits of
mind that encourage thought. And when Islam began its medieval expansion,
it would have encountered scant resistance to its plans – just scattered tribes
of animists, ready for a new identity. The title of the book “ How Ireland
saved civilisation” may, in fact be not too off the mark.
The only alphabet the Irish had ever known was prehistoric Ogham, a
cumbersome set of lines based on the Roman alphabet, which they incised
laboriously into the corners of standing stones to turn them into memorials.
These rune-like inscriptions, which continued to appear in the early years of
the Christian period, hardly suggested what would happen next, for within a
generation the Irish had mastered Latin and even Greek and, as best they
could, were picking up some Hebrew. As has been said, they devised Irish
grammars, and copied out the whole of their native oral literature.
In terms of writing, the Irish combined the stately letters of the Greek and
Roman alphabets with the talismanic, spellbinding simplicity of Ogham to
produce initial capitals and headings that rivet one's eyes to the page and
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hold the reader in awe. Although the art of illumination was foreign to
Ireland, they brought it to as high a degree of perfection as it attained
anywhere. As late as the twelfth century, Geraldus Cambrensis was forced to
conclude that the Book of Kells was "the work of an angel, not of a man."
Even today, Nicolete Gray in A History of Lettering can say of its great "Chi-
Rho" page that the three Greek characters-the monogram of Christ-are "more
presences than letters.
This sense of balance in imbalance, of riotous complexity moving swiftly
within a basic unity, found its most extravagant expression in Irish Christian
art-in the monumental high crosses, in miraculous liturgical vessels such as
the Ardagh Chalice, and, most delicately of all, in the art of the Irish codex.
Astonishingly decorated Irish manuscripts of the early medieval period are
today the great jewels of libraries in England, France, Switzerland, Germany,
Sweden, Italy, and even Russia.
THE MONASTIC RULES
The practice of penance was one of the most definite contributions which the
puzzling spectacle of Irish monasticism brought to the Church and to
Christianity. In order to fix the customs, the leaders of the Irish Church had
special treatises drawn up, regular catalogues of sins and faults and the
necessary acts of expiation, the famous Penitentials, which have always been
proverbial for their severity. It is certainly true that the penances laid down
were heavy and bear no relation to the ten Hail Marys with which the
confessors of our day are satisfied! For being drunk once the penalty was a
forty days' fast on bread and water, and one lustful look at a pretty woman
had to be paid for in the same way!
For the monastic rules of the period which follows let us turn to that of
Luxeuil, which owes its direct inspiration, under the guidance of Saint
Columbanus, to the Rule of Bangor. The latter, which has disappeared, seems
to have been a synthesis of the best Irish Regulae of the sixth century. It is
dominated by the three fundamental requirements of prayer, manual labour
and study, with the addition of fasting and various ascetic practices. The aim
of the Rule is to support souls who are seeking after perfection; the idea
underlying it all the time is that self-denial is the most certain road to sanctity.
Herewith are three examples from the Rule of Luxeuil.
1) the food be frugal and taken in the evening; it should never lead to over-
eating or the drink to inebriation; the object is to restore one's strength, not
to make oneself ill.
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2) The perfect monk should live in the monastery, under the rule of one
Father, in the company of numerous brothers, so that he may learn his
examples of humility or of patience from others, of silence from one, of
gentleness from another; he should never follow his own will; he should eat
what is set before him and not withhold for himself that which is entrusted to
his care; he should complete his tasks with exactness; he should be subject to
one whom he has not chosen; by the hour of rest he should be dropping with
fatigue; at the hour of waking he should still have the desire to sleep, rather
than be driven from his bed by excessive slumber; he should bear in silence
any injuries he receives; he should respect the superior of the monastery as
his master and love him as a father, and should have confidence in him that
he has good reasons for the orders which he gives; he should never permit
himself to pass judgement on the commands of his superiors; his duty is to
obey, to do that which is right.
3) He who, when he has received the blessing, has not made the sign of the
cross, and has not turned towards the cross, shall be punished with twelve
strokes. In the same way, he who has forgotten to pray before or after work,
deserves to receive twelve strokes. He, who eats without asking a blessing,
shall receive twelve strokes. He, who, at the beginning of the psalm, does not
adequately control his cough, deserves to receive six strokes. In the same
way, he who touches the Chalice of salvation with his teeth, shall have six
strokes. He, who does not respect the order of the Sacrifice as it should be
followed, shall receive six strokes. The priest who has not clipped his nails
properly before celebrating, and the deacon who is not well shaved, shall
receive six strokes. He who replies to a remark from one of his brothers 'this
is not true' (except in the case of a senior monk saying it gently to one of the
young men) shall be sentenced to silence or to fifty strokes. "
THE PENITENTIALS
Alongside the Rules strictly so called, the Penitentials came to have a
recognized status, the famous Irish penitentials, which exerted an influence
throughout the whole of Christendom, and also provoked violent reactions on
the Continent, to the point of being met with strongly worded interdicts. The
Councils of Chalon in 813 and of Paris in 829 formally condemned them.
Professor Gabriel Le Bras concluded that with these writings "the Irish have
contributed more than any other people in the Dark Ages to the progress of
the moral conscience in the West."
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The earliest of these penitentials is that of Finnian of Clonard, which takes us
back to the first half of the sixth century. Closely connected with it are the
directions attributed to two companions of the holy Abbot, Gildas and David.
These three monks directly inspired the celebrated Regula Coenobialis, which
was drawn up at Luxeuil by Saint Columbanus. This penitential, which is
divided into two parts, is of the first importance, since he it was who
introduced the Irish penitential customs to the Continent, where penalties for
fairly serious offences were concerned. Below are a translation of extracts
from various penitentials.
"35. If a layman is converted to the Lord from evil deeds, and if he has
formerly committed some grave sin, such as fornication or murder, he shall
do penance for three years and shall travel without arms, though he may
carry a stick in his hand; and he may not live with his wife. Only during the
first year must he live on bread and water, but he may not live with his wife.
After three years' penance, he must give some money for the redemption of
his soul, placing the price of his repentance in the hands of the priest, and he
shall give a feast for the servants of God on the day when his penance ends.
He shall then receive Holy Communion and may resume relations with his
wife.
"47. If a child dies without Baptism, owing to negligence, great is the guilt of
those who have caused the loss of its soul. Expiation by penance is possible,
however, for there is no guilt which penance cannot expiate. The parents
must do penance for a whole year on bread and water, and may not sleep in
the same bed. "
From the Penitential of Columbanus , we have:
"12. Gossips shall be sentenced to silence, disturbers of the peace to gentle
behaviour, gluttons to fasting, sluggards to keeping vigil, the proud to
imprisonment, the unjust to banishment: all as they deserve, in proportion to
their offences, so that they may make good and live once again in the right
way.
"31. If a layman steals an ox, a horse, a sheep, or any other animal: should
this offence have been committed once or twice, he must compensate his
neighbour for the loss he has undergone, and do penance for three periods of
forty days on bread and water. If, however, he has been guilty of more
frequent thefts, and is not in a position to make restitution, he must do
penance for a year and three periods of forty days, and then promise to steal
no more. He will then be able to receive Holy Communion once in two years;
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he must give alms to the poor, and give an offering to the priest who acts as
judge in his case; he will then be given absolution.
"32. If a layman has committed perjury: if he has acted out of covetousness,
he must sell all his property, distribute the money among the poor, offer
himself to God, receive the tonsure, and serve God in a monastery for the rest
of his life. If he has not acted out of covetousness, but under the threat of
death, he must go into exile for three years and live on bread and water; for
the next two years he must abstain from meat and wine; then, for two further
years (when he may eat anything except meat), he must set a soul at liberty in
payment for his own, that is to say he must free a male or female slave, and
at the same time distribute alms. At the end of seven years he may receive
Holy Communion.
5) THE WANDERING SCHOLARS
Irish spirituality spread throughout Western Europe. This happened because,
instead of remaining confined within their enclosures of bare stones, the
Celtic monks were from the start, and throughout the centuries, great
travellers, the most astonishing wanderers for Christ. "The monasteries",
says Georges Goyau, "were mission stations. Scarcely were men baptized
than they wished to become monks, and this was in order to preach, to bring
in more candidates for Baptism, to raise up more monks." This was certainly
a feature of the Irish character, a people in whom one cannot fail to see a
wandering tendency but with whom the spirit of the apostolate was also very
strong. For six centuries these Irish monks can be seen engaged in endless
adventures, setting up their crosses everywhere, first in the islands near their
own, then moving further and further from their bases, always tireless,
always fearless, real heroes of legend, bearing a likeness to the prophets of
Israel and to Saint John the Baptist, whose dress they wore.
From the fifth century to the ninth, Celtic monks travelled to seek in the
unknown after solitude for their prayer. On Achill and the Arans, on the
Great Skellig of St. Michael and the Great Blasket, on countless islands and
lonely rocks off Ireland's western coast; on the Hebrides and the Orkney Isles
of northern Scotland; on the English islets of the Bristol Channel, Steepholm
and Flatholm; off England's northern shores, on the Farnes and on the Isle of
Man; on tiny islands in the English Lakes; on islets near the coast of Wales,
they made hermit homes, their cells with rounded roofs, like old-fashioned
beehives, their distant communities. As late as the ninth century, when Irish
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wandering saints were turning into Irish wandering scholars and the ascetic
life of solitude was giving way to resounding debate and controversy on
matters of doctrine and of grammar, we find three Irishmen drifting over the
sea from Ireland for seven days in a boat without any oars ( so that they could
not direct its course but surrendered to the will of God), its framework made
secure by hides tightly drawn, coming to shore in British Cornwall and going
thence to King Alfred of Wessex, to tell him that" we stole away because we
wanted for the love of God to be on pilgrimage, we cared not where."
For the Celtic peoples the primary impulse, the depth of the spirit of
wandering is reached in the word peregrinatio. To become a peregrinus, a
stranger and an exile, was " for the love of Christ" to leave one's home, to
strip oneself of family and possessions, to root out from heart and mind all
one's own aims and desires, and - for a Celt the uttermost self-denial-to
forsake one's native land for some lonely, far remote spot, there to abide
with no thought of return, with no plan, not even a plan of mission of
penance or of pilgrimage. It was to hear in one's own ears the words spoken
by the Lord to Abraham: "Go forth from thy land and thy kin and thy father's
house into a land which I shall show thee of." Nothing must stay the
adventurer; not even his entire ignorance of the time or place at which his
wandering was to end. Such wandering into exile was, it was said, born in the
Irish spirit so common was it among their men of sterner discipline. The Irish
had never known the constraint of Roman governors and their officials and
cohorts; the Celtic British developed their monastic life in its fullness amid
their mountains, valleys, and moors in Wales and Cornwall, after the Romans
had abandoned Britain. The monk trained in Roman ways of order and
government, in Italy, in Gaul, might well attain what he sought for his life in a
community disciplined by a common rule. The Celt dedicated to religion felt
himself, instead, an individual free to wander. And not only was he free. He
was inspired by the voice of God Himself, bidding him to travel from place to
place, over earth and sea, pursuing new knowledge, new love of things
spiritual. Release from the world; solitude for the following of the ways of
prayer; a lively seeking after knowledge; a passion for sacrifice and self-
denial; a driving concern for the souls of their fellow-men-these were the
marks of early medieval saints. For these ends they wandered wherever their
time called them.
Heiric of Auxerre exclaimed in 870, “Almost all Ireland, despising the sea, is
migrating to our shores with a herd of philosophers." Decade after decade
the stream of learned immigrants continued, bringing with them "divine and
human wisdom." "White martyrdom" was when a man for God's sake parted
from everything he loved, and suffered and fasted thereby. Thus came into
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being the consuetudo peregrinandi. The kings and chieftains of Europe loved
these peregrini; they were as welcome at court as at church or in the
monastery. Their habits of thought in science, music, literature, as well as
theology, were to have far-reaching and profound effects. Alcuin and John
Scotus Erigena are only the brightest of these lights and the lesser lights were
probably equally effective in the immediate transformation of European
culture. "If anyone desires wisdom, we have it to sell," announced two
peregrini arriving at the court of Charlemagne, who called them into his
presence and inquired the price of their wisdom. The two's answer was
"suitable places and ready students, and food and clothing without which our
peregrination cannot continue." These two are described as "incomparably
erudite both in secular matters and in Holy Scripture.
Dicuil, an Irish scholar of this same ninth century, dwelling in France at the
Court of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, tells that he himself knew of
anchorites who had made their way to the islands of northern Europe before
the Vikings of Scandinavia descended upon these to plunder and to settle.
These islands near the Arctic Ocean allowed them the solitude for which they
longed. When at last the coming of the Vikings drove them out, Dicuil writes
that" they left behind them books and bells and pastoral staffs, from which
one could conclude that they were Irishmen." The Celtic heritage formed the
Golden Age of Europe - monasteries, cathedrals, universities - upon whose
riches we all still feed.
The western empire was scarcely a memory now. The last Latin emperor had
fallen just a few years after Patrick died all the great continental libraries had
vanished. The first three public libraries had been established at Rome under
the reign of Augustus, and by the time of Constantine there were twenty-
eight. By the end of the fourth century, if we are to believe one writer,
Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote "The libraries, like tombs, were closed
forever". By the end of the fifth century, at any rate, the profession of copyist
had pretty much disappeared, and what books were copied were copied
personally by the last literate nobles for their own dwindling libraries. In the
sixth century, Pope Gregory established a kind of library at Rome. His library
was a poor one. Even so, the resentful, illiterate mob tried to destroy its few
books during a famine, for by now the Catholic bishops had become like
islands in a barbarian sea. In Italy and Gaul, some book trading continued-
much of it with wandering Irish monks-and by century's end Isidore was
building a real library in Seville, which consisted of about fifteen presses (or
book cabinets), containing perhaps some four hundred bound codices, an
amazing number for the time. The only other continental library known to us
in this period was in Calabria at Cassiodorus's monkish estate, which he called
22
Vivarium, but the fate of this library is lost in the blood and smoke of the sixth
century. Gregory of Tours wrote this sad epitaph on sixth-century literacy: "In
these times when the practice of letters declines, no, rather perishes in the
cities of Gaul, there has been found no scholar trained in ordered
composition to present in prose or verse a picture of the things which have
befallen."
Ireland, at peace and furiously copying, thus stood in the position of
becoming Europe's publisher. While Rome and its ancient empire faded from
memory and a new, illiterate Europe rose on its ruins, a vibrant, literary
culture was blooming in secret along its Celtic fringe. It needed only one step
more to close the circle, which would reconnect Europe to its own past by
way of scribal Ireland. St Columba or Columcille, perhaps the greatest of
these or at least the best loved of these, provided that step. Columcille was
born in 521, in Donegal, probably on December 7, a Thursday, for tradition
holds Thursday to be the day of Columcille. His father was the local chieftain,
his grandmother the daughter of King Ere, his mother the daughter of the
ruling house of Leinster. Columbcille was thus of royal blood, and it is always
said that he could have been King of Ireland. But he was great in other ways
also; Patrick had prophesied his coming while baptizing a chieftain of his tribe:
A manchild shall be born of his family,
He will be a sage, a prophet, a poet,
A loveable lamp, pure, clear.
Who will not utter falsehood.
He will be a sage, he will be pious,
He will be King of the royal graces,
He will be lasting, and will be ever good,
He will be in the eternal Kingdom for his consolation.
Just before he was born, his mother was visited by an angel bearing a
beautiful coloured mantle; she took it from him, but the angel took it back,
and it seemed to expand until it crossed and covered valleys, mountains and
even seas. Columcille's mother was sad at losing such a gift, but the angel
comforted her, saying she would have a son who would "blossom for heaven
and lead innumerable souls into heaven's own country. "
Though he could have been a king, maybe even high king, Columcille chose to
become a monk. His real name, Crimthann, or Fox and he was probably red-
haired. The name Columcille, or Dove of the Church, was his later monastic
nickname. It was, in any case, romanized as Columba, the name under which
he usually appears in accounts written outside Ireland.
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After studying reading and writing with a local teacher, Columcille went to
Finian of Clonard, one of the masters of Scripture and the saintly life at that
time; thence to Gemman, Bard of Leinster, master of the ancient ways.
Indeed, in his youth, Columcille was as much poet as monk. But then he
travelled to Clonard on the Boyne where he was ordained. He journeyed as
far as Gaul to visit the tomb of St. Martin of Tours. Returning to Ireland, he
founded a monastery in 545, at Derry: prayer, fasting, charity, agriculture
were the order of the day. But Columcille realized that the times required
something more. He began to travel, preaching, healing, teaching and
founding churches at Durrow, Kells and many other places- about three
hundred are ascribed to him. And so he continued until his fortieth year took
him across the sea
to Scotland.
Why exactly he went is unknown. One tradition is as follows: Columba was a
great scribe and lover of sacred writing. Finian of Clonard, returning from
Italy, brought with him a rare and beautiful book - perhaps a manuscript of
Jerome - and kept it to himself. However, finally Columcille managed to
obtain permission to read it - and not only read it, but surreptitiously made a
copy. When Finian found out about this, he demanded the copy as his by
right. But Columcille refused to comply. Thereupon, Diarmait, King of Meath,
ruled: "To every cow her calf, to every book its copy." But Columcille still
would not return the copy he had made and war broke out. The men of
Ulster slew three thousand men of Meath at the Battle of Cooldrevny with
the loss of one on their side..
But Columcille's victory had less pleasant consequences for him. For a time
he was excommunicated, the customary punishment for a monk who takes
up arms, and his penance was permanent exile from his beloved Ireland: he
must now reach heaven by a voyage of no return, and in his exile he must
save as many souls as perished in the battle he precipitated. Columcille set
out with twelve doughty companions, sailing north beyond the horizon and
finally reaching the island of Iona, off the west coast of the land we call
Scotland - just far enough north so that (as Columcille insisted) there is never
a view of Ireland. By stepping into the coracle that bore him beyond the
horizon, he entered the Irish pantheon of heroes who had done immortal
deeds against impossible odds. As he sailed off that morning, he was doing
the hardest thing an Irishman could do, a much harder thing than giving up
his life: he was leaving Ireland. All who followed Columcille's lead were called
to the White Martyrdom, they who sailed into the white sky of morning, into
the unknown, never to return.
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Columcille arrived on Iona on the eve of Whitsun in 563 with his twelve
companions. His first act on landing was to climb to high ground to make sure
that Ireland was no longer visible. Seeing that it was not, the monks then dug
a deep tomb and buried their coracle. Upon this rock Columcille and the
twelve built their monastery, church and guest - house, and set about
cultivating the earth. The fame of the place grew, and soon Columcille's
family contained upwards of 150 souls. These were of three ranks: the
seniors, who transcribed, chiefly, and studied; the working brethren, who
tilled the fields and took care of the animals; and the juniors, who were still
on probation. There was no personal property, and humility and compassion
were continuously exercised in both human and natural companionship.
The most perfect story of Columcille, however, is the telling of his death.
Columcille knew he was to die, and he knew when. And on the day that he
was to die, he told the brothers he was about to leave them, and then went
out onto the road to return to the monastery, stopping to rest halfway back:
And while the Saint, feeble with age, as I said before, sat down for a little'
while and rested in that place, behold! there comes up to him the white
horse, that faithful servant, mark you, that used to carry the milk-pails
between the cow-pasture and the monastery. This creature then coming up
to the Saint, wonderful to say, putting its head in his bosom, as I believe
under the inspiration of God, in Whose sight every animal is endowed with a
sense of things, because the Creator Himself hath so ordered it; knowing that
his master would soon depart from him, and that he would see his face no
more, began to utter plaintive moans, and, as if a man, to shed tears in
abundance into the Saint's lap, and so to weep, frothing greatly. Which when
the attendant saw, he began to drive away that weeping mourner; but the
Saint forbad him, saying, "Let him alone! As he loves me so, let him alone;
that into this my bosom he may pour out the tears of his most bitter
lamentation.
Behold! thou, even seeing that thou art a man, and hast a rational soul,
couldest in no way know anything about my departure, except what I myself
have lately shown to thee; but to this brute animal, destitute of reason, in
what way so ever the Maker Himself hath willed, He hath revealed that his
master is about to go away from him." And, so saying, he blessed his
sorrowing servant the horse, then turning about to go away from him.
Columcille then went and blessed the Island; blessed the granary; blessed the
animals, blessed the monks and passed away, by the altar:
Then, in the next place, in the middle of the night, at the sound of the ringing
of the bell, he rises in haste and goes to the church; and, running more
quickly than the rest, he enters alone, and on bended knees falls down in
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prayer beside the altar. Diarmit his attendant, following more slowly, at the
same moment sees from a distance that the whole church is filled within, in
the direction of the Saint, with angelic light. But when he approaches the
door, the same light that he has seen, which was also seen by a few other of
the brethren, as they were standing at a distance,
quickly disappeared. So Diarmit, entering the church keeps on asking, in a
lamentable voice, "Where art thou, father?" And feeling his way through the
darkness, the lights of the brethren not yet being brought in, he finds the
Saint prostrate before the altar; and, lifting him up a little and sitting beside
him, he placed the holy head in his bosom. And meanwhile, the congregation
of monks running up with the lights, and seeing their father dying, began to
weep.
And, as we have learnt from some who were there present, the Saint, his soul
not yet departing, with his eyes opened upward, looked about on either hand
with a wonderful cheerfulness and joy of countenance; doubtless seeing the
holy angels coming to meet him. Then Diarmit lifts up the holy right hand of
the Saint so that he may bless the choir of monks. But also the venerable
man himself, so far as he could, at the same time moved his hand, so that,
mark you, he might still be seen, while passing away, to bless the brethren by
the motion of his hand, though he was not able to do so with his voice. And,
after his holy benediction thus expressed, he immediately breathed out his
spirit. Which having left the tabernacle of the body, his face remained ruddy,
and wonderfully gladdened by an angelic vision; so that it appeared not to be
of one dead, but of one living and sleeping. Meanwhile, the whole church
resounded with mournful lamentations.
In the way of Columcille, the Irish monastic tradition began to spread beyond
Ireland. Already, the Irish monasteries had hosted many thousands of foreign
students, who were bringing back Irish learning to their places of origin. Now,
Irish monks would themselves colonize barbarized Europe, bringing their
learning with them. Scotland, their first outpost, was peopled by indigenous
Picts and Irish colonists who had already established themselves in Patrick's
time. Never interested in impressive edifices, Irish monks preferred to spend
their time in study, prayer, farming - and, of course, copying. So the basic
plan of the Iona monastery was quickly executed: a little hut for each monk;
an abbot's hut, somewhat larger and on higher ground; a refectory and
kitchen; a scriptorium and library; a smithy, a kiln, a mill, and a couple of
barns; a modest church-and they were in business. Soon they found they
needed one more building, the surprising addition of a guesthouse, for the
never-ending stream of visitors had begun - Scots, Picts, Irish, Britons, even
Anglo-Saxons-attracted by the reputation of the larger-than-life abbot of lona.
26
They began to pour into this remote island, and many of them never went
home again.
From here Columcille himself effected the conversion of the Picts and had his
famous contests with the Druids. Among the rugged Scots and the scary Picts,
especially, Columcille's reputation spread like wildfire. There were one
hundred and fifty monks in the Iona community, and after they had exceeded
that, twelve and one monks would set off to establish another foundation in a
new setting. Fresh applicants kept arriving in droves. Typical among these
was Cormac, who was the first to bring the Gospel to the wild people of the
Orkneys.
Later, in the eighth century, other monks from Iona, according to Dicuil,
reached the Shetlands or even the Faroe islands. Finally, we are told by the
same geographer, there were once again monks from Ireland who discovered
Iceland about the year 795, some three-quarters of a century before the date
claimed by the Scandinavians for its discovery. Whatever the true facts may
be, the presence of Irishmen in Iceland is confirmed by Icelandic documents.
Meanwhile the victorious pagan princes had brought ruin to Christianity in
England. From the time of their arrival, Oswald, who was in exile with the
Scots and had been baptized by the monks of Iona, had set his heart on
restoring Christianity in his states. When he was finally able to return to
Northumbria, therefore, his first act was to send to lona for a bishop. Corman
came first, but he was too hard; so Aidan, an Irishman, went, a gentle,
beautiful figure, who was immediately consecrated Bishop. Dom Gougaud
says of Aidan's monastery that it "was the most powerful centre of religious
influence in England." When Aidan died in 651 another Irishman, Finan,
succeeded him. Aidan in a way is the last pure Celt: his successors were
already part of the Roman-European venture.
On the day of his death a young boy herding sheep on a lonely hillside had a
vision of a great stream of light breaking through the sky, and a choir of
angels descending and gathering up a soul of exquisite brightness. The boy
was Cuthbert. Cuthbert, in fact, was the first Roman Bishop of Lindisfarne,
presiding over the monastery in the period of adjustment following the Synod
of Whitby. Though he took little part in ecclesiastical disputes, his position
seems to have been that the unity of the Church was primary.
St Augustine of Canterbury, the missionary from Rome, landed the year
Columcille died, AD 597. By 664 and the Synod of Whitby, the Celtic Church
as a visible entity was over. But this is not to say that its work was done.
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The Irish monks launched a spiritual invasion of England from their island
monastery of Lindisfarne in the northeast corner of Northumbria, establishing
new monasteries in brisk succession. On account of this activity, Aidan,
Columcille's beloved disciple and first abbot of Lindisfame, has far better
claim than Augustine of Canterbury to the title Apostle of England, for, as the
Scottish historian James Bulloch has remarked, "All England north of the
Thames was indebted to the Celtic mission for its conversion." Lindisfarne in
its turn sent its monks across England. The monasteries of Coldingham,
Mailros, Lastingham, Ripon, Whitby and Saint-Bees in Northumbria, Burgh
Castle in East Anglia, Basham, founded by Dicul, in Sussex, Malmesbury,
founded by Maeldub, and Glastonbury "of the Gaels" in Wessex, are usually
placed to its credit.
The Irish monks were on good terms with the British Celts and began to set
up bases in the western territories as well.
After Scotland and England, monks from Ireland began to set off in every
direction, bent on glorious and heroic exile for the sake of Christ. They were
warrior-monks, of course, and certainly not afraid of whatever adversities
they might meet. Where did they go? Better to ask where did they not go?
Some went north, like Columcille. Others went northwest, like Brendan the
Navigator, visiting Iceland, Greenland, and North America, and, as it is asaid in
legend, supping on the back of a whale in mid-ocean…. St. Brendan of course
went here, there and everywhere. Fordun, the chronicler, says that the Island
of Bute derives its name from the old Gaelic word for a cell, the cell being the
one erected by Brendan. At Eassie in Forfarshire there is a church dedicated
to him.
One of these amazing travelers was Columbanus (c. 543-615), twenty years or
so the junior of Columcille, born in the province of Leinster about the year
543, and subsequently a monk at Bangor for twenty-five years. About 590 he
departed, with the requisite twelve companions, for Gaul, where he founded
in quick succession three forest monasteries among the barbarous Sueves-
Annegray, Fontaines, and Luxeuil, one of the most important foundations of
the early Middle Ages. Such astounding activity could only mean that
Columbanus was having similar success to Columcille in attracting local talent.
But before long he clashed with the region's bishops, who were upset by his
presence. Still employing the old Roman episcopal pattern of living urbanely
in capital cities and keeping close ties with those who wear crowns, the
bishops tend their local flocks of literate and semiliterate officials, the ghostly
remnants of the lost society. These churchmen never ventured beyond a few
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well-tended streets into the rough-hewn mountain settlements of the simpler
Sueves. To Columbanus, however, a man, who took no step to proclaim the
Good News beyond the safety and comfort of his own elite circle, is a poor
excuse for a bishop.
In 603 the bishops summon the saint to appear before them in synod at
Chalon-sur-Saone. Columbanus, who cannot be bothered to take part in such
a travesty, sends a letter in his stead “To the holy lords and fathers-or, better,
brothers-in Christ, the bishops, priests, and remaining orders of holy church, I,
Columba the sinner, send greeting in Christ
I give thanks to my God that for my sake so many holy men have gathered
together to treat of the truth of faith and good works, and, as befits such, to
judge of the matters under dispute with a just judgment, through senses
sharpened to the discernment of good and evil. Would that you did so more
often!”
The Irishman goes on to take the bishops to task for their worldly laxity and
lack of industry and for trifling with his mission. He couches his criticisms in
the language of deference ("if you are willing for us juniors to teach you
fathers"), but there is no mistaking his meaning. He recommends his own
way of life to their reverences ("if we all choose to be humble and poor for
Christ's sake") and urges them, after "the Gospel saying," to become as little
children: "For a child is humble, does not harbor the remembrance of injury,
does not lust after a woman when he looks on her, does not keep one thing
on his lips and another in his heart." It almost sounds as if the saint knows
each bishop's secret sin-and means to reveal it to him.
Columbanus and his Irish monks are forced to bid farewell to their thriving
communities, now populated with local Germanic monks, and to travel under
royal escort to Nantes, the port from which they will be put on board a ship
bound for Ireland. On their way to Nantes, one of their number, the aged
Deicola, finds that he cannot keep up. He drops behind and builds himself a
hut in the wilderness at a place called Lure, which will become in time
another historic monastery. When Columbanus's party is at last put on board
the ship at Nantes, the ship sinks, and Columbanus and four companions
escape. Now a double exile (from Burgundian Gaul as well as Ireland),
Columbanus means to make his way to northern Italy to convert the
Lombards. But while journeying over the Alps, he is forced to stop at Arbon,
near Bregenz on Lake Constance, because Gall, his expert in Germanic
languages, falls ill with fever and refuses to go farther. After a heated
altercation, Columbanus leaves Gall behind, and with his remaining
companions heads for the plain of Lombardy, where they will build at Bobbio
the first Italo-Irish monastery. Vigorous Columbanus, now in his early
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seventies, takes his part in the construction, happily carrying wooden beams
on his shoulders.
At Columbanus’s death in 615 he left behind a considerable body of work-
letters and sermons, notable for their playful imitation of such classical
writers as Sappho, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, Martial, and even Ausonius;
instructions for the brethren; poems and lyrics, including a jolly boat song;
and the even larger legacy of his continental monasteries, busily engaged in
reintroducing classical learning to.the European mainland. At this great
distance in time, we can no longer be sure exactly how many monasteries
were founded in Columbanus's name during his lifetime and after his death. If
we may believe Jonas, the biographer of Saint Columbanus, no less than 620
missionaries must have left Luxeuil, in Germany, to concentrate on Bavaria
alone! They naturally would not all have been Irish, but a large number of
them must have been.
At least, two hundred abbeys owed their existence to his labours, and we
cannot tell how many souls were brought to Christ. In France alone, more
than two hundred places of worship, mountains and local populations bear
the name of the great Irishman. And how many more throughout Western
Europe!
One monastery on which we have some information is that of Saint Gall in the
Alps, founded by the monk Columbanus had quarreled with and' who went
on to become the central figure in the founding of the Swiss church. Finding
himself, after Columbanus's departure, alone among wolves, bears, and
illiterate Alemans, Gall, a more patient man than Columbanus, went about
visiting his neighbors, instructing them in faith and letters. We possess only
one work from his hand, a sermon of such honesty, simplicity, and generosity
that we can still grasp what touched the Germans. In 615, as Columbanus lay
dying, there came a knock on Gall's door: brethren from Bobbio had arrived
with Columbanus's abbatial staff, Columbanus's apology and implicit
acknowledgment that Gall was the greatest of all his spiritual sons. In 616,
Gall, whose labors were becoming well known, refused the offer to become
bishop of Constance and in 627 the invitation to return to flourishing Luxeuil
as its abbot. Thinking no doubt of his Irish home, the scribe also writes down
this sentence from Horace: "Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare
current" ("They change their sky but not their soul who cross the ocean"). A
good maxim for all exiles and, in this context, a reminder of the constancy of
the Irish personality.
On the Continent there were scores of Irish settlements reaching from
Cologne in Germany to Taranto in the south of Italy. The White Martyrs,
fanned out cheerfully across Europe, founding monasteries that would
30
become in time the cities of Lumieges, Auxerre, Laon, Luxeuil, Liege, Trier,
Wiirzburg, Regensburg, Rheinau, Reichenau, Salzburg, Vienna, Saint Gall,
Bobbio, Fiesole, and Lucca, to name but a few. "The weight of the Irish
influence on the continent," admits James Westfall Thompson, "is
incalculable."
According to St. Bernard's testimony, given six centuries later, St. Luan, the
Irishman, a contemporary of St. Colomcille, lived to establish no fewer than
one hundred monasteries in Scotland. Saint Fursa the Visionary went from
Ireland to East Anglia, then to Lagny, just east of Paris, then to Peronne,
which would be known in time as Peronna Scottorum, Peronne of the Irish
and City of Fursey. Virgil the Geometer, an Irish satirist, became archbishop of
Salzburg. Saint Cathal (or Cahill, to use the modern spelling), widely venerated
to this day in southern Italy as San Cataldo, was surprised on his way back
from pilgrimage in the Holy Land to find himself elected bishop of Taranto, a
city on the arch of Italy's boot.
Brittany received numbers of them and at their behest was converted. So,
also, did the Champagne of Saint Tresain, the Poitou of Saint Fridolin, the Ile
de France of Saint Fursy, the Brie of Saint Fiacre, the Picardy of Saint Algis and
Saint Gobain. But they went further yet, Saint Fridolin set out for Baden,
Saint Killian for Thuringia, Saint Foillan for Belgium, Saint Donat for Tuscany,
St. Sunnifa, daughter of a 10th
century Irish king, for Norway,
while Saint Cathaldus (Cathal) from Lismore went as far as Taranto.
St. Findan went to Rome, returning, stopped at Schaffhausen on the Rhine
and tarried there for twenty-seven years until his death in 878. St. Gunifort
got as far as Pavia, St. Fiacre as far as Meaux, St. Kilian as far as Arras; while it
is said of St. Cathal that his effigy was painted on one of the pillars of the
Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. If St. Begh did not actually make her
way to Norway, her cult reached that country alright. There and elsewhere
she was famed in folk-lore for her charity to the poor St. Briach was born in
Ireland, was a monk in Wales, built a monastery in Brittany and died at
Bourbiac. St. Colman met his death near Vienna and is venerated yet as one
of the martyr patrons of Austria. The memory of St. Erentrude is still
cherished at Salsburg, that of St. Erkemloden at St. Orner, and that of St.
Fintan on the island in the Rhine which he sanctified with his presence. St.
Malachy died at Clairvaux; and the village of Ecclefechan, where Thomas
Carlyle was born, derives its name from the Irish abbot St. Fechin. Boys in
Scotland are still christened Angus, thanks to St. Aengus, and Adam, thanks to
St. Adamnan.
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Of Italy, Fra Tomassini writes that, even in remote and obscure villages,
traditions and legends of the Irish Saints still linger. No fewer than thirty-four
parishes in that country are dedicated to St. Columbanus.
Women exiles went forth as well; and though we know even less about them
than we know about the men, the continental churches dedicated to Brigid in
France, Germany, Austria, and Italy offer some evidence of their presence.
More than half of all our biblical commentaries between 650 and 850 were
written by Irishmen. Before the end of the eighth century, the exiles had
reached Modra in Moravia ( in the Czech Republic), where an old church has
been dug up that looks just like the little church at Glendalough; and there
are traces of the White Martyrs as far as Kiev. But an adequate list of
missionaries and their foundations would fill another chapter.
By the second half of the seventh century the Irish missionary impulse was at
high tide, supplemented in its force by fresh waves of English missionaries,
who in imitation of their elder brothers burst upon the Germanic lands
whence their ancestors had once come. Wilfrid, the leader of the winning
party at Whitby, turned his zeal on Frisia. Willibrord founded the monastery
of Echternach in Luxembourg (whence the Echternach Gospels, spectacular
companion to the Lindisfarne Gospels, would spring), and he and Boniface
established sees at Utrecht, Wiirzburg, Erfurt, Eichstadt, and Passau. Boniface
founded the great abbey at Fulda, established other monasteries at
Disbodenburg, Amoenaburg, Fritzlar, Buraburg, and Heidenheim, and
restored the see of Mainz, of which Boniface became archbishop. By the
middle of the eighth century most of Frisia, Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, and
part of Denmark had received the Gospel.
To many of these new foundations came the books of the insular scribes.
Boniface and Alcuin (the Northumbrian monk at Charlemagne's court who in
782 took over direction of the Palatine School, which would one day turn into
the University of Paris) could never find the books they needed on the
continent and were always sending urgent requests to British foundations for
basic works. In truth, the art of the scriptorium was virtually unknown in the
indigenous monasteries of Italy and Gaul. Monastic manuscript art had
traveled from the workshops of Syria and Egypt by way of Ireland and Britain
and, at last, to the continent of Europe. But now, the depleted store of
continental codices rose steadily. By the middle of the eighth century, Fulda,
in Germany, for instance, was employing forty full-time scribes.
32
The Irish connections of these English monks were not incidental. Besides
having profited substantially from the intellectual atmosphere that the Irish
foundations had established in Britain, many had studied in Ireland
(Willibrord had spent twelve years there) or were assisted in their labors by
Irish monks (such as Kilian and his eleven companions, who evangelized
Franconia and Thuringia). Alcuin's first master, Colgu, had been Irish, as was
his best friend, Joseph, who accompanied him to France and died beside him;
and he was succeeded at the court school by the Irish scholar Clement Scotus.
Charlemagne, after his surprise coronation by the pope on Christmas Day 800
as Holy Roman Emperor, presided over medieval Europe's first Renaissance, a
short-lived cultural flowering that barely outlasted his reign. His enduring
influence lay in the gradual revival of literacy, for he repeatedly urged (and
supported) the raising of standards in the few poor continental schools that
remained. That he himself was an illiterate, who late in life laboriously
learned to decipher some simple texts but could never get the hang of
writing, is proof enough of the standards of the age. Without the previous
(and continuing) influx of Irish codices, the Carolingian Renaissance would
have been impossible. For this reason, as Charlemagne's biographer Einhard
tells us, Charlemagne "amabat peregrines" ("loved the wandering monks").
6) CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CELTIC CHURCH
The nature of the Irish is perhaps excellently epitomized by the spirits of
Newgrange. “There is no circle; there is only the spiral, the endlessly
reconfigurable spiral. There are no straight lines, only curved ones. For the
Romans there were only straight lines and circles. And so, by the seventh
century a distinct form of Christianity had emerged. While there was much
diversity within the universal church from its earliest days - differences rooted
in racial, cultural, and historical developments which affected the leadership
of the local churches and their understanding of Christianity-the early Celtic
church was unique.
The Celtic church was made up of a great variety of churches in such places as
northern England, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Brittany, the Isle of Man, and of
course, all of Ireland. Although these churches were never united
administratively into one externally visible church, they experienced a large
measure of unity among themselves through their monastic lifestyle,
33
friendship among the early saints, respect for women's gifts, and common
spirituality.
Renan admitted that in losing the monastic institution the world had lost a
great school of originality. Certainly Irish monasticism was original in the
fullest sense of the word. Columba, Kevin, Finnian, Aidan, Gall and Columban
were all originals.
Influenced greatly by the values of the Celtic pagan culture that preceded the
arrival of Christianity on its shores, as well as the ideals of the early desert
Christians who valued simplicity of life and the equality of all in the eyes of
God, this Celtic church frequently found itself in conflict with other churches,
including the church in Rome, over issues specifically related to church
governance and sexuality.
1) Many of the other Western churches, adopting the social structures of
the declining Roman Empire as their own, divided church territory into
dioceses, headed by bishops who lived primarily in urban areas. The early
Celtic church, however, was located more often in rural or remote areas and
influenced by the tribal system of the pagan Celts. Monastic leaders who
emerged at the great Celtic monasteries were eventually more powerful than
the bishops who lived in their midst.
2) Education, pastoral care, and liturgical leadership were provided by the
monks or religious women; in turn, lay people and their families helped the
monasteries grow their crops, manage their farms, fish, plant trees, and keep
their bees. All benefited from this mutual sharing of gifts, including those who
only came for a short stay.
It was largely owing to the example and precepts of the great national saints
that hospitality came to be regarded throughout Ireland as one of the first of
virtues. In all the monastic writings it is inculcated as a religious duty.
One of the Brehon laws states that the reception of strangers is incumbent on
'every servant of the Church, and an old poem in one of the Irish manuscripts
preserved at Brussels conveys a warning note to the churlish and the
34
inhospitable.
"0 King of Stars!
Whether my home be dark or bright,
Never shall it be closed against anyone,
Lest Christ close His home against me."
As one of the earliest hagiographers, Cogitosus, writes about those who
visited the monastery of St. Brigit at Kildare: "Who can list the chaotic crowds
and countless folk who flock in from all the provinces: some for the
abundance of food, others who are feeble seeking health, others just to look
at the mobs, and still others who come with great gifts to the festival of Saint
Brigit."
3) While other ecclesial bodies came to value large churches and basilicas
for their communal liturgies, the Celtic church’s noble austerity was
manifested even in their building activities-a particularly heroic exercise of
restraint. The new-born monasteries of the Irish were of the greatest
simplicity. Walls of withes or branches supported upon wooden props
formed the chief element in their architecture; and, to serve the purpose
alike of protection and of ornamentation, creepers were planted, particularly
ivy. Celtic monastic construction in general disdained the use of stone, at any
rate for a long time.
Even when the membership in the monasteries increased, the Celtic
Christians, wanting to maintain greater intimacy among their members,
continued to build more numerous and smaller church dwellings rather than
larger structures for worship e.g. Glendalough.
4) Also, as the continental churches grew increasingly more materialistic,
dressing their bishops in fine vestments and having them ride on golden
thrones, the Celtic church valued a more ascetic lifestyle. Inspired by the
stories of the desert father St. Antony (251-356) and of the anchorite bishop
of Tours, St. Martin (316-97), the Celtic church was characterized by intense
missionary outreach, a pastoral ministry among the common people, and
leaders who ate sparsely and spent long hours in prayer, sometimes
immersed nightly in the ocean's frigid waters. The early Celtic monastic
35
bishops themselves, such as David of Wales and Aidan of Lindisfarne, dressed
simply, clad in coarse robes in the manner of St. John the Babtist, usually
carrying with them on their pastoral visits only a walking-stick and a bell,
which, as they approached, would be rung loudly to alert the local people.
5) Differences between the churches related to sexuality arose. While the
other Christian churches increasingly isolated women from positions of
authority and relationships of friendship with males, the Celtic church,
influenced by the pagan Celts' belief that women were equal to men and had
similar legal rights, encouraged their leadership. Contrary to the prevailing
dualistic tendencies found among desert Christians and the inhabitants of
countries bordering the Mediterranean, the early founders of the Celtic
church "did not reject," according to a ninth-century manuscript, Catalogue of
the Saints in Ireland, "the service and society of women." Women were
valued and not ignored, judging from one of the earliest Irish martyrologies,
that of Gorman, which lists over two hundred female saints. Monastic
communities, which arose in Ireland shortly after the death of Patrick in 461,
were also headed by women. The oldest and best known of the monasteries
of women recorded in Ireland are those of Brigit of Kildare, Moninne at
Killeavy, and Ita at Killeedy.
Many of these women leaders held powerful ecclesial positions in
communities consisting of both women and men. These "double
monasteries" were evidently a normal feature of the earliest monastic life in
Ireland and England. The most well-known abbesses over these double
monasteries were Brigit of Kildare, Ireland, and Hild of Whitby, Northumbria.
(Hild, of Anglo-Saxon origins, received her religious formation from Aidan of
Lindisfarne). The origins of these double monasteries of monks and nuns is
unclear although Cogitosus, the seventh-century biographer of Brigit,
describes the one at Kildare as a double monastery that must have originated
at least one hundred years before he wrote. There the monks and nuns lived
in separate quarters, but worshipped together in a common church in which
the lay people joined them for liturgies.
St. Moninna went first of all to submit herself to the spiritual direction of
Saint Ibar at Wexford; several years later, however, followed by fifty nuns, she
36
left Leinster and established herself at Killeavy, near Newry, in the County
Armagh. It was at the very time when Brigid had just founded Kildare; in the
course of her journey Moninna visited her young imitator who was to become
so famous. The story of Moninna does not come to an end there, because
after Killeavy, where "the rule was strict," she is said to have founded at least
six more monasteries in Ireland, seven in Scotland, and again others in Great
Britain, notably at Calvechif near the Trent.
6) The power of the druids, who had lived and worshiped in sacred groves,
had been easily handed over to the Green Martyrs, who also lived and
worshiped in sacred groves. But the access of the new, literate druids (the
monastic successors of the Green Martyrs) to the books of the Greco-Roman
library - that is, to the whole of the classical sciences and the wisdom of the
ancients - gradually created new centers of knowledge and wealth such as
Ireland had never known. Christian Ireland, in particular, was the place where
monastic schools flourished and where the original pagan Celtic legends and
stories of the saints were first written down in the monastic scriptoria. We
can see this respect for study and yearning for wisdom in the frequent
references to books in the hagiographies of the early Celtic saints. We also
find those characteristics in specific stories; for example, in Aidan's
encouraging all those who travelled with him to study for some time each
day, and in Columcille's spending so much time alone in his cell to study and
write. Irish missionaries, like Columbanus (c. 543-615), brought this love of
learning to France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, where they founded
other great monastic schools that kept Celtic wisdom alive for generations
after the deaths of the original saintly pioneers.
6) Respect for differences was written into the rule books of the Irish
monasteries. And though the abbacy often passed from father to son,
another irregularity that would have alarmed the Romans, the Irish balanced
the aristocratic preoccupation with lineage by a refreshingly democratic
principle: "A man is better than his descent," insists a law of this period, thus
asserting the primacy of individual spirit over common blood. Perhaps
nothing would have distressed the Romans as much as the way these monks
shrugged off the great Roman virtue of Order. In an instruction to his
brothers, Columbanus, whom we shall soon meet, affirmed the great Gospel
37
virtue over all else: Love has nothing to do with order".
7) The Celtic Church is especially remarkable for the austere form of its
discipline. In those days monks everywhere claimed to be Christ's Standing
Army - Milites Christi. Of these soldiers, the Irish were the Spartans par
excellence. St. Kiaran of Clonmacnoise slept on the bare clay with a stone for
his pillow. He would wear nothing soft next his skin, drank neither ale nor
milk, and his daily bread was one-third sand - a kind of permanent war-time
ration. The Rule of St. Columbanus required even the sick to thresh the corn,
and no one was allowed to rest until he actually fell asleep from exhaustion.
His followers were bound to an almost perpetual silence, to restrict
themselves to one meal taken each evening and to confine their diet to pulse,
meal, bread and water. This one meal a day seems to have been the common
practice in the Irish monasteries, an exception being made in favour of the
farm labourers. Of St. Columcille we are told that his weekly allowance
collected on one plate was just about enough to make a square meal for a
pauper. This was in his palmy days; towards the end his sole nourishment
was nettle soup, a restriction which he imposed upon himself in consequence
of his meeting with an old woman gathering the herb, who assured him that
her poverty was such as to forbid her all other food. Burning with shame, he
returned to tell his startled monks that they were living in luxury.
St. Finnian added a chain around the body until it sank into the flesh. We do
not know what sort of pillows St. Brigit favoured, but the metrical Life,
written by St. Breccan Cloen remarks in passing that" she was not given to
sleep." "Persuade the angels to go to sleep," was the reply of a monk to
those who advised him to take just a little nap. Of St. Kevin the chronicle says
that no man knew what he lived on for none had ever seen him eat, and he
kept the secret to himself. St. Aengus made three hundred prostations daily
and there was the custom of praying with arms wide outstretched. St. Kevin is
supposed to have remained in this difficult posture for seven years without
closing an eye, while the birds nested in his open palms-a legendary tit-bit
which indicates the importance attached to this form of penance, the" Cross
Figell."
As for the practical side, here are a few items from the so-called Rule of St.
Columcille:
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"Forgiveness from the heart for everyone.
Follow almsgiving before all things.
Take not food till thou art hungry.
Sleep not till thou hast to.
Speak not except on business.
Thy measure of prayer shall be until thy tears come.
Thy measure of labour shall be until thy sweat comes.
Three labours in the day-prayer, work, reading."
It was to one of the greatest extremists amongst them, St. Dicuil, that
Columbanus addressed the question:
"What makes you be always smiling?" The answer was: "Because no one can
take God from me."
It is important to note that all this discipline within the Celtic Church was
directed not to the detriment of nature, but rather to the healing of its
wounds, to its perfecting.
8) The Irish are also distinctive in their liking for Pelagius, the 'reluctant
heretic'. Pelagius, after all, was Morgan, a Welshman; he was the first English
Christian to write a book, his Commentary on Romans; and the Irish always
provided, as did the Orthodox east, something of a refuge for Pelagianism in
its semi-Pelagian form. Best known for his views on predestination and
original sin, Pelagius was the last of the great heresiarchs, doing battle in
titanic struggle with Augustine, Jerome, and their followers. Jerome indeed
appears to have thought that his arch-rival was Irish, and snorted that
Pelagius was 'stuffed with Irish porridge'. But Pelagius's belief that children
are born innocent without the stain of original sin; that baptism is
consequently not necessary for salvation, but that man's inherent good
nature and reason could lead him to God (so that even pagans might be
saved) proved too much for St. Augustine of Hippo. With Pelagius finally
succumbing to the combined blows of his opponents, his writings and
doctrines were condemned in AD418, but his commentary on the Letters of St
Paul was still widely read and highly regarded by Irish scholars, and in fact he
retained his popularity in Irish schools from the seventh century to the
39
twelfth; this is striking evidence of the Irish ability to see the good and useful
elements in a work which was doctrinally suspect.
In addition,, there are some things that might have raised a flutter in
continental circles, for the Irish were still using biblical apocrypha long since
lost or forgotten in the rest of Europe.
In many ways this Celtic spirituality has a great affinity with the spirituality of
the Eastern Orthodox. Thus, the spirituality of the Christian Celts has great
ecumenical value, for it transcends the differences which have divided
Christians in the East and the West since before the Reformation. It also has
special appeal for those today that are concerned about the ecological
survival of our planet, the revitalization of the churches, and the quality of
spiritual life.
9) Love of and respect for the physical environment.
Their daily life was lived in close proximity to nature, and their spirituality
reflected a sense of wonder and awe at the divine residing in everything.
Their pagan ancestors had a deep respect for nature, regarding the earth as
mother. Their spiritual leaders, the druids and druidesses, believed that the
spiritual pervaded every aspect of life: in ancient trees and sacred groves,
mountaintops and rock formations, rivers, streams, and holy wells. Influenced
by that pagan spiritual heritage, Celtic Christians found it natural to address
God as "Lord of the Elements," and to experience communion with God in
their natural surroundings. In the stories of the saints, they are often found
establishing their monasteries and oratories in places where the druids and
druidesses had once taught and worshipped - in the midst of oak groves or
near sacred springs, on the shores of secluded lakes, or on misty islands far
out at sea.
And in a little poem traditionally ascribed to a poet who died in 665 we have a
picture of the ideal monastery as he conceived it:
I wish, 0 Son of the living God, 0 ancient, eternal King,
For a hidden little hut in the wilderness that it may be my dwelling.
An all-grey lithe little lark to be by its side,
40
A clear pool to wash away sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
A southern aspect for warmth, a little brook across its floor,
A choice land with many gracious gifts such as be good for every plant
A pleasant church and with the linen altar-cloth, a dwelling for God from
Heaven;
Then, shining candles above the pure white Scriptures
This is the husbandry I would take, I would choose, and will not hide it:
Fragrant leek, hens, salmon, trout, bees.
Raiment and food enough for me from the King of fair fame,
And I to be sitting for a while praying to God in every place.!
For all the poetry that was in him, Columba loved still better the things that
inspire poets. At Derry he rose up in wrath and forbade them to lay the axe
to the roots of his precious oaks, on the plea, no doubt, that
"A poem is made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree."
Speaking alike of the legends and the authentic facts connected with St.
Brendan, the Frenchman Renan declared in a fine outburst of admiration:
"never has a gaze so gentle and tender been cast upon
this earth of ours. All is lovely, pure and innocent."
As for St. Patrick’s breast- plate:
"I bind unto myself to-day
The virtues of the star-lit heaven;
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even;
This attitude of deep respect for the environment was also manifest in their
quiet care for all living things. As we will see, the Celtic saints seem to have
had a special affinity and reciprocal relationship with animals: Kevin shelters
in his hands a blackbird which probably sang for him; Ciaran meets a wild
boar that helps him clear land for his monastery; Animals are portrayed as
41
fellow creatures of the earth, and once befriended, they become helpers to
the saints.
Again, as said previously, Columcille's white horse sheds great tears at his
master's approaching death.
This white horse which had been employed to carry milk from the dairy to the
monastery, came towards him and put its head upon his shoulder as if to take
leave of him. The eyes of the old horse had an expression so pathetic that
they seemed to be bathed in tears. Diarmid would have sent the animal
away, but the good old man forbade him. "The horse loves me," he said,
"leave him with me : let him weep for my departure. The Creator has
revealed to this poor animal what He has hidden from thee, a reasonable
man." Upon which, still caressing the faithful brute, he gave him a last
blessing.
Fra Tommassini remarks the similarity of the story of St. Gall's encounter with
the bear to that of St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio. The former had chosen
a place of solitude in the forest and proceeded to pass the first night in
prayer. Towards morning a bear descended from the mountain to collect the
remains of the hermit's meal. Gall threw him a loaf, and on the strength of it
entered into a compact with him. "Do you in Christ's name withdraw from
the valley. As for the mountains, we shall share them in common, but on
condition that you do no further harm to man or beast." So well was the
compact observed that the bear fetched and carried all the wood needed for
the winter's fire which, no doubt, explains the presence of this animal in
pictures of the Saint.
Tradition has it that St. Domnoc or Modomnoc, who died at Kilkenny, brought
the bees from the East and over the sea to Ireland- his feast is kept on
February 8th. His life, we are assured, was spent between the chapel and the
garden, where he had care of the hives. This was in Wales. When he was
ordered back to his own country, he blessed each hive and took leave of his
charges with a heavy heart. When the boat was far out at sea, however, the
sky suddenly became dark. The bees had followed and alighted on the boat.
Three times the Saint returned to Wales and discharged the contraband
42
cargo; three times the bees got the better of him. At last the abbot, like a
sensible man, told him to be off bees and all. And so they reached the Irish
coast and lived happily together ever after.
Never surely was the choice or selection more strange than that of St.
Colman. His pets were a cock, a mouse, and a fly-the cock to waken him for
matins, the mouse to bite his ear in case he over-slept, and the fly to settle on
the line of the Psalter where he had left off and so serve as a book-marker.
The three departed this life together it seems; and what does Colman do? He
sits down, takes a sheet of paper - whether black-edged or no is not stated -
and writes to break the sorrowful news to St. Columba. At Iona the far-famed
abbot receives the doleful tidings, and with good-humoured sarcasm pens a
reply more or less to the effect that human nature is a mystery, since here is a
man who renounced all the ties of this world breaking his heart over a cock, a
mouse, and a fly.
10) Innate yearning to explore the unknown.
As said before, in the Celtic Church there are three kinds of martyrdom which
are counted as a cross to man, that is to say, white martyrdom, and green
martyrdom, and red martyrdom. White martyrdom is when when he
separates for the sake of God from everything he loves, although he suffer
fasting or labour thereat. Green martyrdom is when by means of them
(fasting and labour) he separates from his desires, or suffers toil in penance
and repentance. Red martyrdom is when he endures the cross or destruction
for Christ's sake, as has happened to the apostles in the persecution of the
wicked and in teaching the law of God.
Perhaps this wanderlust was due to the migratory nature of their pagan
ancestors, who in the third century B.C.E. had been the dominant race of all
of Europe; perhaps it was their living in such close proximity to the sea and
the natural rhythm of its tides; perhaps their Christian spiritual heritage
unconsciously inspired them with its own stories of of Abraham and Sarah's
travel to a foreign land, of Moses' exodus out of Egypt, and of Peter's and
Paul's missionary journeys. Whatever the reason, many of them shared the
43
desire to travel and, in contrast to the" red martyrdom" of giving one's life up
for Christ or the" green martyrdom" of participating in severe penitential
practices, they faced the "white martyrdom" of living far from home and
hearth for the sake of the gospels. (The Celts had a specific word, hiraeth, for
the extreme yearning for home associated with this latter form of
martyrdom; because of their deep love of family, it was considered the
hardest of all to endure.) Beginning with St. Patrick, Celtic missionaries
(called peregrini) chose this way of life out of deep devotion to Christ, but
also perhaps because of their own desire to see the holy places and meet
people different than themselves.
Whatever the reasons for their travel, the theme of pilgrimage is one of the
key elements of the early saints' spirituality. For them, to make a journey for
Christ brought - despite the hardships - unexpected blessings, increased
intimacy with God, and the healing of body and soul.
11) Love of silence and of solitude.
Considering the widespread travel of so many peregrini and the extensive
pastoral work of all the Celtic saints, it is intriguing and somewhat paradoxical
how much the early Christian Celts also valued solitary places and times of
silence. An atmosphere of silence was encouraged within their monasteries
and certain quiet times were strictly observed-as we find in the stories of
David of Wales. It may be that they sought out places of solitude precisely
because of their intense involvement with people.
Many of the Celtic monasteries also had a place apart - a cell, retreat, or
dysert-in which a monk or nun could retire when he or she needed to be
alone. Sometimes the Celtic saints chose a cave for shelter and reflection, as
did Columban and Ninian of Whitham (362-432). Others moved to a hill or
mountaintop to fast and pray. Many, as is clear in the stories of Aidan,
Columcille, and Cuthbert, seemed especially drawn to be near the ocean's
waves. Whatever their reasons for treasuring silence and seeking the solitary
life, the early Christian Celts shared what the scholar John Ryan calls a
"surprising" combination of" apostolic and anchoretical ideals."
44
The Rule of Columban calls silence "the practice of justice," a curious
definition which provides abundant food for thought. It adds, that this
"practice of justice" must be preserved at every task and in every place, and it
requires even the abbot, when he has to speak, to do it sparingly and without
beating about the bush.
"It seems to me," Carlyle lamented, "that the finest nations of the world are
going all away into wind and tongue," through repudiation of that reticence
which is "the eternal duty of man."
Here is a quaint record found in the Silva Gadelica. Three penitents, it seems,
resolved to dedicate themselves to this life of solitude. After one year of
silence the first whispered to the other: "This is a good life we lead."
However, it took Number Two twelve months to make up his mind to answer.
"That is so," he whispered a year later. Another twelve months pass and this
time the silence is broken by Number Three: "If I can't find peace here, I shall
go back to the world."
The distant places to which they had been first led by a love of solitude
changed rapidly into rural colonies and served as centres of culture and
civilisation. "To this day," says Dr. Healy, "the land about a monastic site is
known to be the greenest and best in the district." Like many another town,
Cork originated in the cells the monks built on piles in the marshes of the river
Lee.
12) Understanding of time.
The early saints appreciated time as a sacred reality blessed and already
redeemed by God's overflowing compassion. This awareness of the sacred
dimension to time is not the same as modern Western culture's frantic
preoccupation in which" every minute counts." Rather, the Celts' perception
was that there is a fullness now to all of time. With this perception of time as
a gift from God, time in a chronological sense (with one historical event
following another) was disregarded by the early Celts. For them, the present
contains within itself both past events, which continue to live on, as well as
the seeds of future events waiting to be born.
45
Without clear demarcations between past, present, and future, Celtic
Christians interpreted history differently than we do. They made
contemporaries of those who historically could never have been. In some of
the early legends, for example, Brigit and Ita are portrayed as midwives to
Mary, the mother of Jesus. As soul friends they help bring Jesus to birth and
they nurse him. In certain stories Brigit and Patrick are described as intimate
friends-when in fact they probably never met. (If the traditional dates of their
lives are relied upon, Brigit would have been about six years old at the time of
Patrick's death.) That did not matter to the early Christian Celts, for, from
their point of view, people with the qualities and holiness of Patrick and Brigit
would naturally be friends - even if they lived at different times in the
chronological sequence of history.
In many ways Celtic Christians saw the larger truths of myth and the lasting
effects of relationships of love standing outside of time, having an eternal
quality that certainly cannot be understood fully by considering chronological
time alone.
13) Appreciation of ordinary life.
The Celtic saints valued the daily, the routine, the ordinary. They believed
God is found not so much at the end of time when the reign of God finally
comes, but now, where the reign is already being lived by God's faithful
people. Theirs was a spirituality characterized by gratitude, and in their
stories we find them worshipping God in their daily work and very ordinary
chores.
Another quality, their joy, is apparent in the last words of David of Wales to
his friends: "My brothers and sisters, be joyful, keep your faith and belief, and
perform the small things which you have learned from me and have seen in
me."
14) Belief in the great value of kinship relationships, especially the spiritual
ties of soul friends.
The pagan Celts in Ireland and throughout Europe valued their families and
their tribal affiliations. They developed a fosterage system in which children
46
of one family were brought up by another family or tribe. They believed that
such exchanges not only strengthened alliances but introduced each child to a
wider world of learning. The pagan Celts' druids and druidesses also acted as
teachers of the tribes and advisers to the kings. They functioned as mediators
between the tribes and the spiritual realm: the world of tribal gods,
goddesses, and spirits. These types of mentoring relationships survived when
Christianity arrived.
The hagiographies tell numerous stories about younger people being guided
and educated by the Celtic saints at their monasteries or cells. As the story of
Ciaran of Clonmacnois and his mentor Enda shows, each of the early saints
seems to have had at least one personal mentor, a wiser, more experienced,
sometimes older teacher, confessor, or spiritual guide. Holiness, not age, was
a more important criterion of such a person. This soul friend was not
necessarily male or ordained. Some of the greatest and most well-known of
the soul friends in the early Celtic church were women, such as abbesses Ita,
Brigit, Samthann, and Hild. Not only were these women teachers,
administrators, guides, preachers, and confessors who, as in the stories of Ita,
did not hesitate to give out penances, but at least two of them, according to
early hagiographies, had in their possession religious articles traditionally
associated with a bishop. Brigit, in Cogitosus's Life, receives a pallium (a
bishop's mantle), and in a later hagiography, she is said to have been
ordained; Samthann had a marvelous crozier (a bishop's staff), which was
able to perform miracles.
One of the greatest discoveries of the Christian Celts, according to scholar
Nora Chadwick, is "the range and significance of individual experience, and
the interest and the humor of little things, and how exciting and valuable it is
to share them with one another." This, of course, is what many would equate
with the value and joy of having a soul friend, a person with whom we can
share the significant and often insignificant experiences of our lives and
discover, often in the telling, that the seemingly insignificant events are really
the most important of all, the times when and places where God speaks.
15) The Irish also developed a form of confession that was exclusively
private and that had no equivalent on the continent.
47
In the ancient church, confession of one's sins - and the subsequent penance
(such as appearing for years by the church door in sackcloth and ashes) - had
always been public. Sin was thought to be a public matter, a crime against the
church, which was the Mystical Body of Christ. Some sins were even
considered unforgivable, and the forgivable ones could be forgiven only once.
Penance was a once-in-a-lifetime sacrament: a second theft, a second
adultery and you were "outside the church," irreversibly excommunicated,
headed for damnation. By Patrick's day, a kind of private confession was not
entirely unknown, but it was still linked to some form of public revelation and
liturgical penance. The Irish innovation was to make all confession a
completely private affair between penitent and soul mate-and to make it as
repeatable as necessary. This adaptation did away with public humiliation
out of tenderness for the sinner's feelings, and softened the unyielding
penances of the patristic period so that the sinner would not lose heart. But
it also emphasized the Irish sense that personal conscience took precedence
over public opinion or church authority. The penitent was not labeled by
others; he labeled himself His sin was no one's business but God's.
Though one's confession was made to a human being, he or she was chosen
by the penitent for qualities of true priestliness - holiness, wisdom,
generosity, loyalty, and courage. So one did not necessarily choose one's
"priest" from among ordained professionals: the act of confession was too
personal and too important for such a limitation. One looked for an
anmchara, a soul-friend, ·someone to be trusted over a whole lifetime. Thus,
the oft-found saying "Anyone without a soul-friend is like a body without a
head," which dates from pagan times. The druids, not the monks, had been
the first soul-friends.
In a discipline where eremitism and penance played so large a part it is not
surprising to find that as early as the seventh century- a system of private
penance had already developed, though it is believed that it was not
instituted on the Continent till much later. In the Celtic Church, as a part of
this system of private penance, a monk living an eremetical life had as a
companion sharing his cell his anmchara, or 'soul-friend' to whom he made
his confession and who prescribed his penance.
48
The system, which does not appear in the Roman Church of the period, would
seem to be a natural development among the desert solitaries of the East,
and may possibly be related to the syncellus, 'one who shares a cell' in the
Greek Church.
To the Irish, the pope, the bishop of Rome who was successor to Saint Peter,
was a kind of high king of the church, but like the high king a distant figure
whose wishes were little known and less considered. Rome was surely the
ultimate pilgrim's destination-especially because there were books there that
could be brought back and copied! But if your motive was holiness:
To go to Rome
Is little profit, endless pain;
The Master that you seek in Rome,
You find at home, or seek in vain.
7) THE END OF THE CELTIC CHURCH
The stricter Roman Christianity of St. Augustine of Canterbury was slowly
spreading north and west through the English territories, and was bound
eventually to meet Celtic Christianity, marching in the opposite direction. A
clash of custom and sensibility was as unavoidable as it had been between
Columbanus and the Burgundian bishops. The "Romans" did not even trouble
to draw up an extended list of charges, as would once have been the case in
the church's great councils – but confined themselves to such issues as when
Easter should be celebrated and what form of tonsure or hairstyle should be
worn by the ordained.
The Romans had adopted the tonsure of St Peter, which left a circle, symbolic
of the crown of thorns, around the top of the head. The Irish, however, used
what they took to be the tonsure of St John, from ear to ear, which their
opponents called the tonsure of Simon Magus, perhaps because it was
associated with the Druids who were, in Latin, called Magi. Then there were
differences in baptism and rites of episcopal confirmation, but all these,
though of symbolical importance, were not what really counted.
However, the overall ethos, which was reflected in organizational habits
arising from the tribal background, was the true bone of contention. These
made the Celtic Church independent. threatening the growing organizational
49
power of the Romans. In Ireland the spiritual adviser or soul friend
(anamchara) was primary, rather than the ecclesiastical authority of the
bishops. The authority of the bishops was threatened further by the fact that,
though the bishops still held all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. the actual power lay
with the abbots. Connected to this, Irish monasteries had a large lay, and non-
celibate, family population attached to them.
Also, the Irish had many peculiar customs, encouraged diversity, enjoyed
pagan literature, were unconcerned about uniformity of monastic rule, and,
perhaps worst of all, sometimes allowed a woman to rule over them. Most
important, however, was the fact that these habits gave extreme autonomy
and individuality to each foundation: they were more like Zen monasteries,
one-pope Churches. Rites, customs and so forth differed locally, and there
was no central organization.
The clash between the two Churches was bound to come. The form of
Christian organization introduced into Kent by St. Augustine was unlike that
of the Celtic Church. It made no claim to be either independent or self-
governing. It was in all matters directly under obedience to Rome. But while
the Celtic countries shared to the full the orthodox views of the Church of
Rome, their remote position made them conservative. They were failing to
keep pace with modifications in the Continental Church.
It came to a head at a synod, held in 664 at the Abbey of Whitby in
Northumbria, at which the Northumbrian king ruled in favor of the "Roman"
party-that is, the party who were heirs to Augustine's papal mission. This
ultimately resulted in the submersion of the Celtic church in Ireland by the
Roman ecclesial system in the twelfth century.
Still, despite that" reform," which was a triumph for ecclesial administrators
but a tragedy for Irish culture and creativity, Celtic Christian spirituality
survived in various geographical locations where the saints had once lived or
journeyed. It is said to have deeply affected directly or indirectly certain
religious traditions and wisdom figures, including Hildegard of Bingen, Francis
of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Joan of Arc, Evelyn Underhill, and Thomas
Merton.
8) THE GREAT IRISH THINKERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE
A section needs to be dedicated at this stage to those Irishmen who have had
a definite influence on medieval thought and have really contributed
50
something of value to learning in the eighth and ninth centuries. Irishmen
were in fact to be found among the most brilliant minds of that time. From
the first days of Christianity in Ireland, bishops and priests gave a high place
to study. We must above all remember that the majority of the native Irish
clergy mainly belonged to the class of the filidh, who were the learned men of
the country. Saint Patrick, as if with a magic wand, had transformed their
druids and the filidh, into priests of the true faith. These filidh were already
well versed in the sciences and the arts, at least as much as the druids. They
preserved the tradition and, from the time of Saint Patrick, the earliest
monastic foundations had a school attached.
As men of their age, the great Abbots of Ireland, Finnian of Clonard, Ciaran of
Clonmacnois, Fintan of Clonenagh, Comgall of Bangor, Brendan of Clonfert,
Columcille of Iona, all have a high reputation as men of learning. It was in the
schools of these men that Clement Scotus, Joseph Scotus, Dunchad, John
Scotus Eriugena, Sedulius Scotus and other Irishmen who emigrated to the
Continent and soon became celebrated, received their formation. The Anglo-
Saxons and the Continentals were quite ready to attend these schools, such
as Agilbert the Frank, who became Archbishop of Paris.
Charlemagne did not fail to include several Irishmen among the foreign
masters whom he collected together in order to restore studies.
VIRGIL
Among these learned men from Ireland there are six whom we specially have
in mind. The Irishman Fearghal, his name had by then been latinized to
Virgilius became Abbot of a Bavarian monastery, then Administrator of the
diocese of Salzburg, and eventually becoming Bishop. His disputes with
Boniface, the apostle of Germany, are quite famous; the least we can say is
that the two prelates never agreed with each other.
In any case, Virgil appears on the scene as a forerunner. In the middle of the
eighth century he seems to have already had an idea that the earth is round,
at least that it has another side, which is inhabited, from which the sun and
moon are also to be seen.
DICUIL
Dicuil belongs both to the eighth and the ninth centuries, for he died in 825.
He came of completely Irish stock, and had received his formation in the
school of Clonmacnois under the rod of Abbot Suibhne. His great work,
written in Latin, as may be imagined, bears the title De Mensura Orbis
51
Terrarum. It is a treatise on geography. He makes use of the works of the
ancient geographers, both in Greek and Latin, and also the accounts given by
the Irish monks who had been travellers and navigators. He is the first writer
to mention Iceland, which he calls Thule, and of which he gives a description.
He is also the first to provide us with reliable information about the Faroe
Islands.
This geographer, astronomer and poet, who died as Abbot of Pahlacht, had a
wide influence on the revival of education in the Carolingian age.
DUNGAL
Not much is known of the life of Dungal, another Irish master of the ninth
century. He probably came from the school of Bangor. He was an
astronomer of distinction, and in 811 wrote a letter to Charlemagne
announcing a double eclipse of the sun and explaining the process by which
this took place. In 825 the Emperor Lothair placed Dungal at the head of the
great school of Pavia, the ancestor of the famous university, which was
attended by students from all over Northern Italy. He is still celebrated for his
controversy with Claudius, the Spanish Bishop of Turin, who was an
iconoclast. With spirit and also with authority, Dungal came forward as the
defender of the holy images, and in doing so gave proof of his sound
theological learning.
SEDULIUS THE YOUNGER
Sedulius the younger belonged to the Irish colony at Liege, in the reign of
Lothair. A talented prose-writer, he was also a poet and a grammarian. His
chief work, De Rectoribus Christian is, is a treatise on the theory of political
government which prepares the way for Saint Thomas, Colonna and Dante. It
was written at Liege in 855. With Lothair II in mind, he explains his views as
to the duties of every Christian sovereign.
JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA
There can be no question that the most famous of these Irish thinkers and
learned men in the Middle Ages is the man known as Iohannes Scotus
Eriugena. His name means John the Irishman who was born in Ireland. He
was a great philosopher, well in advance of the ideas of his age and at the
same time very bold in his conceptions. He was born about the year 807 or
808 and is said to have died in 877. From 845 onwards he was to be found at
the court of Charles the Bald, who placed him in charge of the palace school.
52
Charlemagne's grandson also wished to follow in the footsteps of his
renowned ancestor, and he greatly encouraged the immigration of scholars
from Ireland. Colonies of Irish were so numerous on the Continent in those
days that hostelries, and even monasteries, had to be built in order to house
them. Eriugena had made his mark from the start owing to his remarkable
knowledge of languages and of palaeography. He was able to translate,
without difficulty the works of the Pseudodionysius the Areopagite, which
nobody up to then had succeeded in doing. His translation was so elegant
and so exact that the pontifical librarian, Anastasius, wrote specially to the
king of France expressing his admiration. He was, in fact, wondering, not
without some amazement, how this "barbarian", born at the far ends of the
world, could be so well versed in the subtleties of the Greek language!
John Scottus first came to fame in his use by the church to refute of the
teachings of Gottschalk. Gottschalk boldly claimed that men were
predestined not only to good but also to evil. There was consternation
among the bishops and in the ensuing uproar scholars across Europe took
sides, some for some against. Faced with the prospect of victory for
Gottschalk's party Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims commissioned John, who
had been teaching at the palace school, to refute the heresy, but 'before the
Irish philosopher could be checked, he had refuted Sin and Hell'. John Scottus
said that as everything arises from the One it is predestined to return to the
one. Thus, there was no eternal damnation. Also, the concept of heaven,
where man returned to the presence of God but did not fully unite with Him
remaining separate from him and worshipping him, was rejected by John
Scottus. He said that it did not make sense that man would stop just short and
not complete the journey by uniting with That from which he had originated.
There followed further writings: a commentary on Luke and another on John,
poems in Greek and Latin, a commentary on Martianus Capella and extracts
from Macrobius. It was not in philology, however, but in philosophy that
Eriugena was to excel. His chief work, written in 866, bears the title De
divisione naturae and consists of fIve books. He wrote another treatise, De
egressu et regressu animae ad Deum, of which only a fragment remains to us
and a commentary on the De nuptiis Mercuri et philologiae of Martianus
Capella,.
It was his chief work, De divisione naturae, which provoked most discussion,
and in this he really gives us what we may call his philosophic doctrine. In
Book I he lays out a plan, proposing a division of nature into four parts: nature
which creates and is not created (which means God who is both uncreated
and creator); created nature which creates (primary causes, ideas); created
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nature which does not create (creation); un created nature which does not
create (God, seen as the end of all things, to which they all return).
His wine soaked dinners with the emperor were full of parrying wit. When
sitting opposite John Scottus at the the dining table, the emperor asked
playfully “What seperates a fool (sottum) from an Irishman ( scottum)?
“Only the table” came John Scottus’s reply.
9) THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF IRELAND
The standard answer given for the reason for the ending of the Golden Age of
Ireland is the relentless attacks of the Vikings on the monasteries and it
certainly was severe in its effects.
Attacks on magical Lindisfarne began in the last decade of the eighth century.
Monks were stripped and tortured; and the raiders came again in 801 to set
the buildings afire, in 806 to kill scores of monks, in 867 to burn the rebuilt
abbey. In 875 the harried survivors left Lindisfarne for good. In the first
decade of the ninth century it was the turn of Columcille's lona, where "a
great number of layfolks and clerics were massacred" in repeated raids. The
great foundation had at last to be abandoned. Inis Murray was destroyed in
802, never to rise again. Even remote Skellig Michael was raided repeatedly,
its harmless abbot Etgal carried off for ransom but dying "of hunger on their
hands." Glendalough was pillaged on countless occasions and, between 775
and 1071 , destroyed by fire at least nine times. Bangor, Moville, Clonfert,
Clonmacnois, Brigid's Kildare-each was laid waste in turn. In 840, even the
extensive buildings of Patrick's Armagh were burned to their foundations.
As a second reason for the end of the Golden age of ireland, it is also said that
the lack of organisation, uniformity and centalised power as compared to the
Roman church is what cost the Celtic church its existence.
However, if that was true, then both Hinduism and Buddhism which have
these same features as the Celtic church would also have ceased to exist.
I have a personal theory, for which I have no evidence, that the end of the
Golden Age has to have been for more subtle and powerful reasons: that the
extinction of something so great must have occurred not by physical causes
but because of some deep hidden spiritual flaw. The theory is that, because
of the belief in both the transcendent and immanent God, the Irish had in
effect one eye on the transcendent ( the formless spirit) and one eye on the
immanent (the creation) which is obviously excellent. However, with the
passage of time, the eye on the transcendent began to weaken and more
value was given to the immanent. This is intimated in how “White Martrdom”
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was valued by the Irish as the supreme sacrifice. I cannot believe that with
both eyes equally on the transcendent and the immanent such a valuation
would have come about. The one who finds the transcendent finds Him
everywhere and equally everywhere and not more in Ireland than in any
other place on earth. If what is proposed is true, as the source of the
immanent is the transcendent, the Irish thus lost their strong contact with the
source of all which they had enjoyed and it is this spiritual and not physical
reason that the Golden Age of Ireland came to an end. If true, the significnce
of this is that it shows the way back for the Irish to re-establish a new Golden
Age of Ireland in today’s modern world. What a contribution this would be to
the world.
10) WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN?
1) A church that was individual centred rather than Rome centred with the
strength in the individual and not the institution of the church.
2) A mystical based religion where direct experience or communication
with God was the emphasis rather than a relationship with clerics or the
church. Thus, a spirituality based on experience much more so than
faith.
3) Through the belief in both a transcendent and immanent God, the
absence of a division between God and the creation.
H.J. Massingham wrote, ‘If the Celtic Church had survived, it is possible
that the fissure between Christianity and nature widening through the
centuries would not have cracked the unity of western man’s attitude
to God and the world.
4) The love of mother earth, the strong value of ecology, etc, etc. The
state of the earth, the level of greed and excess might have been
markedly different.
5) The practice of everybody having an anamcara or spiritual direction
(somewhat like the guru/disciple relationship) with which to find one’s
way back to God.
6) A spirituality/religion that was absolutely in harmony with the
fundamental nature of the Irish people, where spirituality mattered
more than loyalty to the institutional aspect of a church.
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7) Ireland may have remained a leading spiritual light and a living example
to the rest of the world as to how man might live on this earth in
harmony with mother earth, his fellow man and in union with his
Creator.
There is no reason why a new Golden Age of Ireland should not come into
being. It is my belief that this is our destiny as yet unfulfilled. We will never be
an economic giant: we will never be a political giant but it is our destiny to be
a spiritual giant, an educational giant and a cultural giant in this world.