The Quest for Celtic Christianity

Below is a review of a valuable work by Professor Donald Meek,  a native Scots Gaelic speaker from the Island of Tiree, on the modern 'Celtic Christianity' movement.  His book exposes the differences between the popular view of the 'Celtic Church' as an anti-authoritarian, eco-friendly, woman-friendly, alternative Christianity and the view of modern scholarship which places it in a very different context. I also appreciated that as a Christian Meek is rightly concerned about some of the dubious undercurrents which flow into 'Celtic Christianity', his chapter on Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica was particularly eye-opening. Some have criticized the polemical tone of the book, but I found the writer's irritation at having his culture appropriated by outsiders who have no understanding of it perfectly reasonable. Whilst they may have been responsible for creating many of the myths which the contemporary movement still embraces, nineteenth-century Celtic enthusiasts at least took the trouble to study the indigenous languages of these islands and were able to engage with the sources at first-hand.  The Quest for Celtic Christianity is now only one of a growing number of critiques on modern 'Celtic Christianity', but for me it is still the best.

Rebutting Spiritual Opportunists

"The Quest for Celtic Christianity" by Donald Meek

review by Dr Michael Newton

One of the difficulties with being a minority culture is that it is hard to correct the misrepresentations which are created by the dominant culture, which has greater prestige, more authority and better means of communicating its ideas. As a result, minority cultures often find themselves the subject of inaccurate stereotypes. Sometimes the false image of the Other is created in order for a people to prove to themselves that they are superior to it, and other times it is an expression of a lost purity still retained by a more "primitive" people. Whatever the agenda that causes such manipulations of facts, it is no excuse for ignoring what can be learned from thorough and objective research.

These are the issues which inform Professor Donald Meek's excellent new book. Most branches of Christianity have seen congregation sizes shrink during the last century, and they are responding to this by making their church experience more appealing. Some of them are borrowing or adapting symbols, texts or rituals from other faiths or places. It is in this way that numerous groups are trying to invoke "Celtic Spirituality" or "Celtic Christianity" in their religious communities.

Meek shows in detail, however, that the truth is usually lost in the Celtic mist. The book works on two chronological fronts, revealing the realities of the Christianity that the leaders of the church actually practised and exposing the creation of the mythical Celts, especially in the 19th century, which is the source of so many modern misconceptions.

He points out a number of ways in which the false image of the Celts is created and sold to the credulous. By constant recourse to images and woolly concepts, the marketers can be highly imaginative in their definition of Celtic. By ignoring the history of the development of Christianity, they forget the bigger picture and ascribe undeserved virtues to the Celts. By selective and dubious use of English translations they avoid contact with primary texts in Celtic languages. Since most of these new sects flourish in far-away societies, they avoid direct contact with real Celts and Celtic communities.

Actually, the earliest abuse of the myth of Celtic Christianity was during the Reformation, when churches wanted to find precedents for their break with the Catholic Church in Rome. This ancient predecessor, they wanted to claim, kept itself "pure" while Rome became corrupt and degenerate. Unfortunately for the myths, which still persist to the present day among many Protestants, early Christianity everywhere adapted to a degree to secular life. There was no united and independent Church in Celtic lands, nor did the Church in Celtic countries differ in crucial matters of doctrine from the rest.

Just as many people are mistaking as "Celtic" many of the common features of pre- industrial Europe, so too are people attributing an unmerited uniqueness to the so-called Celtic Church and to Celtic saints. But these features of Celts and "Celtic Christianity", such as visions and psychic phenomena, can be found in the stories of Saint's Lives throughout Christendom as well as throughout the folk traditions of rural Europe. And just like the British Isles, Christianity as practised at the popular level all around Europe (and the world, for that matter) was a mixture of orthodoxy and pre-Christian practices.

On the other hand, too few are willing to acknowledge aspects of saints or of the church which are not so appealing in modern times. The stories of saints' lives emphasise their asceticism, their ability to destroy enemies through curses and violence, their preoccupation with sin and their uncompromising war against paganism.

It is no surprise that Meek makes comparisons with Native America, whose spiritual traditions have been misrepresented, commercialised and sold by spiritual opportunists. Native communities seldom profit from this business, and instead see outsiders take control of their traditions and proclaim themselves to be more authentic than actual spiritual leaders. Unlike many Native Americans, however, too few qualified Celtic scholars have attempted to present the historical and cultural realities to the general public such as Meek does in this commendable work.

Feastdays of the saints: A history of Irish martyrologies

Below is a book review  by Columban specialist Brian Lacey on a history of Irish Martyrologies by Pádraig Ó Riain. It was first posted in 2009 on my former blog and contains some useful background information on the historic Irish calendars of the saints:

Pádraig Ó Riain FEASTDAYS OF THE SAINTS: A HISTORY OF IRISH MARTYROLOGIES Subsidia hagiographica 86, Société des Bollandists, Bruxelles, 2006. Pp. 416 + xxvii. Price 75 Euro. ISBN 978-2-87365-018-6.

As Pádraig Ó Riain points out, in the early ninth century the monastery of Tallaght was known, along with that other well known Dublin place - Finglas, as one of ‘the two eyes of Ireland’. Tallaght is where we must start to look in any investigation in Ireland of the tradition of writings about saints called martyrologies. A martyrology, as Ó Riain tells us at the outset of this book, ‘is a list of names of saints, arranged according to the days of the year on which they died’. Usually these lists are ‘drawn from all over the Christian world’ and sometimes they have extra details such as the place where the saint is said to have died. These details can be of immense value for the understanding of both religious and political events in a local context.

The earliest text of this kind known to us (the so-called Hieronymian martyrology drawn up either in southern France or northern Italy, but already with several Irish associations) dates to the late sixth or early seventh centuries, although it was clearly based on older lists and information. Having followed a slow and circuitous route, a shortened version of that text arrived in Tallaght around 828, as Ó Riain has newly worked out. However, by then it had accumulated - like a glacier that picks up traces of the landscapes over which it passes - influences from monasteries in Northumbria, Iona and Bangor (Co. Down). The copy that arrived in Tallaght had probably been deliberately requested as Ó Riain suggests, in response to a decision made at a church council in Aachen in 817 that every monastery should have a martyrology from which would be read out the daily list of saints. Once the copy arrived it immediately spawned two other texts, known to us now as the Martyrology of Tallaght and the metrical Maryrology of Óengus, which stand together at the head of the surviving Irish martyrological tradition. These were composed according to Ó Riain’s persuasive arguments in that order between 829 and 833, probably by the same author, Óengus a monk and bishop at Tallaght who is said in some sources to have been the son of Oengoba and the grandson of Oiblén.

The Martyrology of Tallaght was, in origin, what we might call a working document (although it may have been venerated later as a relic, at Lorrha in Co. Tipperary) to which a number of local Irish ‘saints’ names were added, particularly those of figures linked with the contemporary church reform movement associated with the céile Dé. The Martyrology of Óengus was, however, a literary masterpiece: a sophisticated rendering into disciplined verse quatrains in Irish of the main elements of the earlier prose text. It was, as Ó Riain’s book points out, the first text of its kind anywhere in the Christian world. In an Armagh scriptorium in the late twelfth century, the already fairly lengthy text acquired a preface as well as extensive commentary and glosses. Before that, in the eleventh century, a copy of the original poem had been brought to the Irish Benedictine monastery in Regensburg (one of the so-called Schottenkloster) where it continued to influence other continental texts.

Meanwhile, around the year 1000, a copy of a popular continental martyrology (the Martyrology of Ado, composed c. 855) had been made in a monastery in Metz, where, under the direction of its Irish abbot, the names of a number of Irish saints were added. A copy of that text was later made in Cologne (in a church also with strong Irish connections) from where it was brought to Dublin, most probably accompanied by a collection of relics for the foundation of Christchurch cathedral c.1030. It seems that this is ‘Dublin’s oldest known book’, as Prof. Ó Riain explained in a lecture to this Society in January 2004. Ó Riain teases out all the links and connections between these various texts and reconstructs their individual influences on the later Irish martyrologies: the Martyrology of Gorman, the Martyrology of Drummond, the Martyrology of Turin, the Martyrology of Cashel and, last in the series, the early seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal. He also places all these literary works in their appropriate ecclesiastical and cultural settings.

This is a wonderful work of painstaking original and revisionary scholarship. The book, which is aimed in the first instance, of course, at a very specialist readership, nevertheless operates on several levels. It provides us with the first inter-connected history of the entire group of martyrologies from Ireland as well as those relevant places abroad that had strong Irish associations in medieval times. Indeed the book shows us that Irish influence on this genre of writing at a European level was quite extensive. The book also analyses the individual histories of each of the relevant texts. The evidence for Ó Riain’s new ideas and interpretations is presented in the very great detail necessary to explicate the thousand years of that tradition plus the several hundred years of subsequent study by modern ecclesiastical and secular scholars. The setting out of this detail might possibly deter the more general reader who is interested in these texts mainly for the light they throw on local studies, however that would be a great mistake. The excellent structure of the book - with each chapter divided into smaller sub-sections - means that such detailed passages can be passed over, if desired, without the reader having to lose the thread of the main narrative. In addition, throughout the book Ó Riain provides summaries and chapter conclusions, which can be read independently of the close arguments. His final epilogue, in which he summarizes the whole story again, is an epitome of clarity for such a complex subject over such a long period of history. In the appendices he also provides chronologies and diagrams that, once again, simplify and clarify the complex arguments involved in working out his overall thesis.

Some of the chapters in this book are based on material previously published, both in Ireland and abroad. Those individual studies, however, have been revised and updated here. Together with the work being presented for the first time, this means that the book provides us with the first-ever comprehensive account of the whole subject. As Ó Riain points out, new editions are badly needed of several of the main martyrological texts that would take into account the results of modern scholarship. Until such editions appear this book also offers a guide as to how much we can rely on the existing versions.

Pádraig Ó Riain has previously given us many valuable studies in the field of Irish hagiography and hagiology: his important edition of the Irish saints’ genealogies and his analysis of the dossier relating to Saint Finbarr being only two significant examples. The two pages in the bibliography of this book that list Ó Riain’s own relevant works are, again, only a sample of his industry. Paradoxically, for someone who has done so much to explain what the medieval writings about our saints actually mean, Ó Riain’s work can be characterised, in some respects at least, as iconoclastic, in that he frequently deconstructs the engineered medieval images in order to show us what really lies behind them.

New books dealing mainly with the early medieval period in Irish history are relatively rare. In that sense it is, at least, a double pleasure to be able to welcome such a fascinating, readable and erudite account of this subject and to congratulate the Society of Bollandists, which since the seventeenth century has dedicated itself to the scientific study of saints’ Lives, for such an excellent publication.

Brian Lacey

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The Legends of the Saints

I have finally got a chance to read the classic textbook on the hagiographer's art - The Legends of the Saints - in the reissued edition of the Four Courts Press. Below is their description of this seminal work:

The Legends of the Saints

Hippolyte Delehaye; with a new introduction by Thomas O’Loughlin

Legends of the saints, facts about the saints. All too often these two are thought to be, or presented as being, the same thing. From the earliest times the stories of the saints have been a mixture of fact, pious fabrication and myth. Dr Delehaye showed how to strip off this facade with the tools of the impartial and stringently honest historian. Not that he underestimated the power and value of legend: 'There is no question of our waging war on legends. It would be a senseless thing to do ... the work of legend can be numbered amongst the great unconscious natural forces ... As such one cannot ignore it. Only do not mistake it for history.' Delehaye's work was first published in 1905, when it was acclaimed as a classic study. But besides being a true work of scholarship, it is a book full of wit and humanity and a delight to read for sheer enjoyment.

For almost a century Delehaye's Les Légendes Hagiographiques has been the standard introductory textbook for anyone doing work which used Saints' Lives. However, for more than thirty years it has been out of print. This is a reprint of the 1962 English edition, with a new introduction and bibliography of recent materials by Dr T. O'Loughlin (University of Wales, Lampeter).

In his introduction O'Loughlin isolates four points which made this book revolutionary in its day, something that now Father Delehaye's methodology has become standard we may tend to forget:

First, that hagiography constitutes a distinct literary genre with its own rules and dynamics, and that within this category of texts there were specific textual units that repeatedly appear. In short, the vita is a narrative game where certain commonplaces are to be expected and which vary only in details between one life and another....

A second notion central to The Legends is that whatever a vita tells us, it tells us more about the time of its composition - its theology, spirituality, politics - than of the time of the saint, and more about the mind of the hagiographer than of the mind of the saint. Again this seems so obvious as to be not worth stating... but at the time it was a revolutionary idea that took many years to really sink in. For example, it was not until 1962 that anyone in Ireland was prepared to apply this maxim of research to the legends of St Patrick. When it was applied it rendered a century of argument, all trying to link or unlink bits of the legends to the fifth-century Roman bishop, obsolete overnight...

A third concept Delehaye repeatedly brought before the student was to ask why and for what reason did the hagiographer take up his pen? This notion of authorial intent is central to the historian working with texts. We understand a text to the extent that we understand the questions it answers and the points its author wants to make... we should not forget that this approach is recent and these are questions that troubled few before Delahaye's time.

Lastly, Delehaye repeatedly pointed out that the legend develops through the continuity of cultus. It is the repetition of story, the celebration of liturgy, and the pattern around tombs and other shrines that leads to the development of the hagiographical myth. And this cultic recollection is one of the most powerful forces in the development of the religious world that produces vitae with all their wonders.

That is not to say, of course, that Delahaye's work does not show its own age. O'Loughlin also points out that:

the work was conceived in the age of 'historical laws'... So Delahaye unhesitatingly spoke of 'the law' that explains that change, this growth, the adoption of that myth, or this sequence of miracles... Today we have far less trust that in the humanities we can understand our subjects in this way. We may see patterns, we many see phenomena repeatedly, and experienced observers may be able to guess outcomes, or explain what has happened over time, with a moment's acquaintance; but this is not a deduction from a general law.

Another, somewhat irritating, aspect of the work, but common at the time, is the assumption of a radical divide between the the world of the 'scientific' observer and the people observed. Thus we find references to 'the popular imagination', 'the psychology of the crowd', and 'the brain of the multitude'. 'It' is the creator and bearer of superstition, false ideas and confusions; while the scholars are preserved immune from such things.

O'Loughlin finds this model an inadequate one and laments that scholars are perhaps less immune than Father Delehaye imagined.

I will close with another quote, this time from the man himself, in the preface to the third edition of his book. Delehaye recalled how one of his earliest copies was received:

One of my first copies of The Legends of the Saints had a reception I was far from expecting. The friend who had recieved the complimentary copy informed me that he would put it in his library, but that he would never read it. "What do you expect?", he said, "I love the legends of the saints, and I do not want anything to spoil my pleasure in them".

I think this perhaps illustrates the tension between reading the lives of the saints as a scholar and reading them as a believer. Yet, Delehaye was quick to reassure:

All the learned societies can join together and proclaim that St Lawrence could not have been tortured in the way that is said; but till the end of the world the gridiron will be the only recognized emblem of that famous Roman deacon.

Quite.

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Old Irish Wisdom Attributed to Aldfrith of Northumbria

Old Irish Wisdom Attributed to Aldfrith of Northumbria: an edition of Bríathra Flainn Fhína maic Ossu, edited and translated by Colin A. Ireland (Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies).

Although it was published only in 1999, this book is available in full on the Internet Archive here. The text comprises a series of maxims attributed to Aldfrith, King of Northumbria (c.685-705) under his Irish name Flann Fína. The editor provides a general introduction to wisdom literature as a genre and to the specifically Irish texts which survive. He also has a more technical discussion of the various surviving manuscripts of this particular collection, of the style of language used and of its implications for the dating of the work. The reputed author, King Aldfrith, had an Irish mother and Bede tells us that he was educated among the Irish. In this particular case however, King Aldfrith shares the authorship with a legendary figure, Fíthal, said to have been a third-century poet and judge in the time of King Cormac mac Airt. It is thus interesting to see one historical personage and one legendary connected with the same work.

Here's a sample of the sort of pithy maxims to be found in the text:

2.3 Be obliging so that you may be loved.

2.4 Be generous so that you may be renowned.

2.4a Be generous so that you may be charitable.

2.5 Be hospitable so that you may appear decorous.

2.6 Be grateful so that you may experience increase.

2.7 Be humble so that you may be exalted.

The author's love of learning, something which endeared him to the Irish, can also be seen:

7.1 Learning is a beneficial occupation.

7.2 It makes a king of a poor person.

7.3 It makes an accomplished person of a landless one.

7.4 It makes an exalted family of a lowly one.

7.5 It makes a wise person of a fool.

7.6 Its commencement is good.

7.7 Its end is better.

7.8 It is respected in this world.

7.9 It is precious in the next.

7.10 It is not despairing concerning the end,

7.11 i.e. bestowing heaven upon him.

However, as it also says 'The conversation of women is a catalyst for folly' (4.13), I shall say no more!

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