A Personal Reflection on Translating the Mass

A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON TRANSLATING THE MASS

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

IN 1981, I went to Coláiste na bhFiann for the first time.  This was not in the Gaeltacht, but rather was an Irish-medium summer boarding school operated along modified military regulations.   Though it was not a Catholic institution, Catholic students had to attend daily Mass and rosary in Irish and to know all the Mass responses and mysteries of the rosary in Irish.

I quickly realised that there were differences between the Mass in Irish and in English.  As a 12 year old, I reasoned English was a major international language and Irish was a minority language even on its own turf, so the universal Church would ensure that English was correct, but Irish would probably fall under the radar.

One factor did strike me.  I read Scripture as a schoolboy.  Among my favourite Gospel stories was the healing of the centurion's servant (Matt. 8, 5-13).  I never made any connexion between this and "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed", but the correct Irish, A Thiarna, ní fiú mé go dtiocfá faoi mo dhíon, ach abairse an focal agus leigheasfar m'anam, automatically brought this into my mind.  Even non-goidelophones will probably identify m'anam with anima mea.

I learned Latin in school, but it was a very long time before I attended any Latin liturgy.  However, after school (1986-88), I spent two years in an Augustinian community where a Polish novice announced that the English rendering of the Mass was a poor translation.  Our confreres didn't see the issue, but I took a vinyl recording of a Mozart Mass which gave parallel texts of the ordinary form in Latin and several other languages in its sleeve cover.  I looked at English and French and could see that the French was closer to the Latin than the English and, as far as I could see, this was the case with Spanish and Italian.  My memory of Mass in Irish confirmed that I was mistaken as to which language gave a better translation.
Closer to the Latin
Two years later (1989), I went to Germany for the first time and began to learn German.  I lived in the cathedral parish in Stuttgart and attended Mass there several times a week (work permitting).  I saw that the German Mass was also much closer to the Latin proto-Mass than the English.  I returned to studies in Maynooth where I made the acquaintance of a retired New York businessman, originally from Clones, who had studied for the Pallottine society in Thurles 50 years before.  He frequently made the point that the English translation of the Mass was very poor. This man, now deceased, made many friends among the student body and was very generous towards the college's deacons.  I don't believe I was the only one who heard this argument.

From 1990 to 1991, I was publicity office of Maynooth Students' Uinon and my principal duty was the production of a student journal.  I followed the principle that this magazine was for all Maynooth students rather than just a few vocal, radicalised and promiscuous lay students in the Arts Faculty.  This meant having a religious affairs column.  The English translation of the Mass was one of the first targets in a moderately conservative opinion piece.  This can be seen in St Pat's Chat, Volume 3, No.1 in the John Paul II Library in Maynooth.  This was over 20 years before the emergence of the new English translation.

Over the next decade I became acquainted with the late Proinsias Ó Fionnagáin SJ, a Monaghan-born linguist and historian.  An tAthair Ó Fionnagáin told us that he studied the draft of the English Mass following its publication in 1971 and then wrote to his provincial to tell him that he was prepared to say Mass according to the 1969 Missal in Latin, in French and in Irish, but he was not prepared to do so in English as the translation departed too far from the Latin original.
Ambiguous phrase
At the same time, I did some work on assisting the translation of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom into Irish under the direction of the late Archimandrite Serge Keleher (for reference rather than liturgical use, though the Irish has been used from time to time).  Mgr Keleher insisted that the translation be as literal as possible in regard to the Greek and Old Church Slavonic typical editions.  Translations into English, French, German and Italian were looked at, but none was followed as a model.  The archimandrite's view of the English version of the Roman Mass was that it was a model of how not to do things.

Versions of the Mass in other languages are often far form perfect, but English has been particularly egregious in its departure from Latin.  This has been accentuated by the use of English rather than Latin as a template for new translations in mission territory.  But other versions have their problems.  For example, German renders pro multis as für alle, which is the same as the inaccurate English "for all"; für viele* would be correct.  The committee who drew up the Irish translation of the Mass wished to use ar son chách, which is "for all".  (Father Benedict** used ar son na sluaighte-"for  the hosts"-in the Latin-Irish missal in use before the liturgical changes.  This is ambiguous.***)

At the time the draft Irish missal was in circulation, the then Archbishop of Tuam, Mgr Joseph Cunnane announced he would not permit this version of the Mass to be said in his diocese.  Tuam has the largest Gaeltacht of any Irish diocese and Archbishop Cunnane held a masters of arts in Irish as well as an earned doctorate in divinity****.  The compromise formula was ar son an chine dhaonna which literally is an ambiguous "for the human race", which seems to follow the French pour la multitude.  French is the only major European language which does not translate pro multis as "for all".  One suspects it is more than a coincidence that several translation committees made the same deviation from the Latin.
Impoverished version
After four decades of discussion, the new missal in English is ready and is being rolled out in a piecemeal manner, which varies considerably from diocese to diocese.  In Meath, this has been more progressive than in Armagh or Dublin.  In Meath, one could remark on the similarity between the English and the German Masses at a very early stage.  The translation goes beyond mere accuracy.  The language of the new missal is more sacral and formal than previously.  It has also evoked the anger of an ageing generation of clerics who seem to think nobody wanted this.  I wrote this piece to illustrate how that has never been my experience.l

Anglophones are not renowned for learning other languages, but the monoglot nature of the opposition to the new translation astounds me, especially in a country where there are two vernacular languages, one of which is more faithful than the other to the ordinary form Latin Mass.  A cursory comparison between the Confiteor or Gloria in English with that in Latin or another language will show not only how inaccurate, but also how impoverished the current English version is.  It has been pointed out that the arguments against the new translation have been very patronising towards the majority of the faithful.  However the main issue seems to be the alleged exclusivity of the language.
Inclusive Turkish
This is a case of déjà vu.  Similar arguments were brought out in relation to the tardy English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church nearly 20 years ago.  But the arguments regarding exclusivity/inclusivity are themselves products of a monoglot mentality.  Most other languages have a marked tendency towards so-called exclusivity.  German is particularly "bad".  I am informed Turkish on the other hand is a model inclusive language.  How many people would entertain the argument (which no doubt has been made from time to time) that women in Turkey are in a better position that women in Germany or Austria?  The females among Germany's large Turkish community certainly have not said much about this.

In our own country, one of the most prestigious positions in the Irish public service is that of Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners.  The current Chairman is a woman and there are no deafening cries to call her "chairperson".  I also recall informal situations where females addressed mixed audiences as "guys" or "lads" with no objection, but although "men" was accepted formally in the same sense into the late twentieth century, this is no longer the case.  My own view is that this should not be an issue and the translators might have considered there was little point in allowing an argument to develop.

For all that, there are problems with the new English translation.  It is not one of the glories of the English language.  The proclamations "The Word of the Lord", "The Gospel of the Lord" and "The Mystery of Faith", though common for a long time in the United States, grate on this writer's ears, as the announcement seems to have little connexion with anything.  The flow of the words is not as natural as in the case of Irish or German.

The previous translation was hardly beautiful either, though I suspect that the older translators were more familiar with English literature, especially English poetry, than those who worked on the current version.  The trouble is that the original translators let the English-speaking world down badly.  Much was lost and  in an era where Catholics were allegedly being persuaded to turn more toward Scripture, many of the biblical allusions in the Mass were contorted beyond recognition-even the Anglican communion service was closer to the Latin than the English Mass.  One hopes this is now addressed.
Protestant experience
However, one must understand that it is not at all easy to render the Mass in the vernacular, especially in a language so widely spoken as English.  The more liturgically-focused Protestant denominations have plenty of experience of these problems.  Our experience shows that revising something temporary is not easy and one still hears people using the responses introduced in superseded translations.  It will take a long time to get used to this one.
FOOTNOTES
* This is the translation given in the Schott Missal.  Father Anselm Schott was a Benedictine monk who compiled the most popular German-Latin missal in use prior to the liturgical changes.  Pope Benedict traces his interest in liturgy to receiving his first Schott missal as a young boy.
** Father Benedict of the Mother of God OCD who compiled the Latin-Irish missal in 1958 for Irish-speaking Catholics.
***  The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in Irish, a translation from Greek and Old Church Slavonic, uses ar son móráin, "for many".  This is the most accurate Irish version.  I have not seen any eastern Catholic liturgy of any linguistic origin using any formula other than "for many".
**** I am indebted to John Heneghan for this information.  He has done postgraduate research into the contribution of priests working in Maynooth to the Irish language, which includes the translation into Irish of the Missale Romanum and the Bible.  This was carried out in the years following the Second Vatican Council and merits an academic paper in its own right.  John was also able to tell me that the editor of the Bible translation, Rev Professor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta was dismissive of the Jerusalem Bible as a translation model.  This is typically used for readings at Mass in English in Ireland and Britain.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 117, November-December 2011.

An Bíobla Naofa: The First Catholic Bible in Irish

AN BÍOBLA NAOFA: THE FIRST CATHOLIC BIBLE IN IRISH
By JOHN HENEGHAN

ACOMMITTEE WAS established in 1945 to make an Irish version of the New Testament available. Seán Ó Floinn, Éamonn Kissane and Donnchadh Ó Floinn were on that committee. Donnchadh Ó Floinn was responsible for the translation through the 1950s particularly Mark 1-8. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta and Tómas Ó Fiaich guided Luke through the printing stage. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, Colmán Ó Huallacháin OFM and Tómas Ó Fiaich were appointed to the Committee in 1966.

John was published in Irisleabhar Má Nuad in 1962 and most of the other books were published under the imprint of An Sagart. The basic Hebrew version was used to make the books available. The Jerome Biblical Commentary, and Peakes’ International Commentary were used as these were books with expert knowledge on the bible and they assisted the research that the scholars were undertaking.

Pádraig Ó Fiannachta hadn’t much regard for the English version of the Jerusalem Bible and he didn’t use the King James version either.

The only influence of Bedell (the older Protestant translation of the Bible into Irish) was to be found in the translation work of Joseph Duffy (later Bishop of Clogher). Padraig Ó Fiannachta made sure that each translator was assisted by a bible scholar with an L.S.S. as a basic qualification.
The Advisors
Pádraig Ó Nualláin OCSO: Tobit, Ecclesiastes, the Minor Prophets except Obadiah. He also did Hebrews.
Father Colmcille OCSO: The Psalms.  Máirtín Mac Conmara MSC wrote the forward to these.
Seán de hÍde SJ: Song of Songs.
Gearóid Ó Meachair: Forward to the Prophets.
Brendan Devlin: Isaiah.
Joseph Duffy: Ezechiel
Aibhistín Valkenburg OP: Jeremiah with the forward dedicated to Bedel.
Seán Mac Cárthaigh: Acts of the Apostles and Pauline letters except Hebrews.
Tomás Mac Aodha: 1-3 John.
Pádraig Ó Fiannachta translated : Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Sirach, and Mark cc. 9-16, John, James, 1-2 Peter, Jude, Apocalypse.
Seán Ó Caoinleáin advised Pádraig Ó Fiannachta with the Catholic Letters.

It was Caoimhín Ó Condúin C.M., who was an advisor to Padraig Ó Fiananchta to validate his own work. He was an advisor for Pentateuch, John and the Apocalypse. He had Father Dónall Ó Conchúir for the historical books as well as the information that is in the prefaces to the for the Wisdom books except the Psalms. Ó Fiannachta was also responsible for the Irish language in the General Introduction. He translated some of the introductions too because not everyone had good Irish.

He made an effort to ensure that the language was standardised and consistent throughout the work that started with the De Bhaldraithe Dictionary and reached its climax in 1977 with the Ó Dómhnaill Dictionary. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta was in correspondence with Muiris Ó Droighneáin about the standardisation also on a regular basis.
The other Advisors
Donald Ó Conchúir.
Sean Ó Caoinleáin.
Wilfrid Harrington OP.
Some other scholars were invited to make recommendations to the text as amendments:
Seán Mac Riabhaigh.
Pádraig Ó Nualláin OCSO.
Liam Leader.
Morgan Ó Curráin MSC.
Maolmhuire Ó Fiaich CSSp.

By 1977 there was an Irish version of each book published. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta got a grant from an Irish American Cultural Organisation through Cardinal Ó Fiaich to supply a single volume of the books. He promised do this within three years, he got two copies of each text as a heap of foolscap pages and he attached the text in the middle of the pages, he corrected them, he standardised them with help from other scholars, Muiris Ó Droighneáin particularly.  Then he prepared the text for the printer and went to the printer with IR£14,000 with paper which was bought from Clondalkin Paper Mills that were about to close but that were kept open for a extra few days.

There is a huge tea box in the Museum in Maynooth in which is the copy prepared for the printer and the various proof readings are there. The Bible was printed, bound ready within three years—27 months to be precise. Cardinal Ó Fiaich praised Padraig Ó Fiannachta’s work highly in the preface. It was accepted by the Church of Ireland as an authentic text and Archbishop Caird launched the second edition. A pocket edition was published after that and then it was published on CD-Rom in 1998. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta gave a chance to each of the scholars to read their work in proof format before submitting the final proofed version. He also dealt with the main business selling and commercial business arising from the bible
The Methodology and Analysis
As Pádraig Ó Fiannachta was the main worker on the translation, St John’s Gospel will be examined in detail, as he translated this himself. I chose this method as I don’t have Greek or Hebrew and as I am not a biblical scholar. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta himself recommended the Revised Standard Version (RSV) to me.

Ó Fiannachta adhers to the official standard for the most part; it is a style that is compact and precise that can be seen in it:

Thug Eoin freagra orthu. Déanaim féin baiste le huisce ar seisean ‘ach tá duine in bhur measc nach aithnid daoibh’ an té atá ag teacht i mo dhiaidh, nach fiú mé iall a chuaráin a scaoileadh (John 1: 26-27, An Bíobla Naofa, p. 1075).

The same style is adhered to throughout:

Tá an uair ag teacht—tá sí ann cheana nuair a chluinfidh na mairbh glór Mhac Dé agus iad seo a chluinfidh mairfidh siad. (John 5: 25, ibid. p. 1080)

If Ó Fiananchta’s version is compared to the RSV, some similariites and differences can be seen between them. In the English version the same concise style can be seen, but, as it was published in 1952, the English is somewhat archaic. In addition there are more notes at the foot of the pages in the English one, illustrating where the same stories can be found in the other Gospel stories. An example in critical thinking in biblical research is that of the woman accused of committing adultery which is found in the Irish Bible but is not found except as a footnote in the RSV:
John Eight

They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the Temple. The Scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst they said to him…(John 7: 53-8: 4, RSV)

This was done in the light of the most recent research because the Church at the time wished to deemphasise the merciful Jesus in return to the original scriptural sense—the mercy of God was stressed in the 19th Devotional Revolution in reaction to the Jansenist heresy which all but omitted it. The Irish Bible was published as is known after the Second Vatican Council. In general, the Ó Fiannachta style follows the normal custom of bibles. It must be remembered that Pádraig Ó Fiannachta based his translation on the basic Hebrew version and also on the Greek version. It is an excellent effort and the talents of the translator must be praised.

John Heneghan (also Seán Ó hÉanacháin) has higher degrees in Modern Irish and extensive experience in second and third level Irish language education.  He lectures in the Training College of An Garda Síochána (the Irish national police academy) and also works for the force as a certified legal translator.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 128, September-October 2013

A Meditation on Aidan, Bede and the Saints of Northumbria

A MEDITATION ON AIDAN, BEDE AND THE SAINTS OF NORTHUMBRIA
By HIBERNICUS

For I am very much God’s debtor, who gave me such grace that many people were reborn in God through me and afterwards confirmed, and that clerics were ordained for them everywhere, for a people just coming to the faith, whom the Lord took from the utmost parts of the earth, as He once had promised through His prophets…Hence, how did it come to pass… that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshiped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings… are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?—Confession of St Patrick

FOR SOME YEARS I have been a regular visitor to the North-East of England, especially Sunderland; and grew interested in its early saints, Irish and English, whose story is recorded by St Bede the Venerable. As an amateur of no special expertise I offer some thoughts on what their story–particularly the lives of the early Irish missionary St Aidan and of Bede himself–tell us today.

Bede (672-735) was a monk of the twin monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow (on the Rivers Wear and Tyne). In his Ecclesiastical History of England, completed c.731, he describes the history of the Faith in England, with particular reference to the conversion of his own people, whom we call the Anglo-Saxons. During the collapse of the Roman Empire these arrived in England, driving the native British (the Welsh) westward.  Bede is hostile to the Welsh for a variety of reasons including their failure (unlike the Irish) to evangelise the Saxons; he claimed they wished their conquerors to go to Hell. (I have met people with a similar mind-set in the present day.) Of the many stories he preserves, I tell only a few.  The Saxons were divided into many small kingdoms whose ruling dynasties and their war bands fought wars of mutual extermination. Over time, larger kingdoms emerged; in the early seventh century the Kingdom of Northumbria (northern England and much of the Scots Lowlands) was disputed between two dynasties; one, in the north, associated with the great fortress of Bamburgh where a seam of hard rock jutting into the sea forms a natural stronghold, one in the south very loosely associated with the old Roman settlement of York.

In 563 St Columba founded the monastery of Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland, and after his death in 597 his kinsmen supplied the abbots; from 623-652 Segene was abbot and collected traditions incorporated in the life of Columba written by a later abbot, St Adamnan. In 597 Pope St Gregory the Great sent missionaries to Kent, led by Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury (then the capital of the kingdom of Kent, whose king Augustine converted).  Missionary activity extended (with some setbacks) to the neighbouring kingdoms. In the 620s Northumbria was ruled by Edwin of the southern dynasty (the sons of his ousted northern predecessor fled to the Scots, and were baptised in Iona). Edwin married a daughter of the Christian king of Kent, who came accompanied by Bishop Paulinus; in 627, after some hesitation, Edwin was baptised. Bede depicts the king and his courtiers debating whether to accept baptism, and presents a nobleman comparing human life to a bird flying out of the dark and storm into a lighted dwelling and then flying out none knew where, and suggesting that if the new religion offered knowledge and hope it should be accepted. Quite recently I read a review of a film depicting and implicitly justifying euthanasia for the senile, in which a character suffers delusions that a bird has entered the house; the reviewer noted an odd echo in this new pagan despair of Bede’s story of hope.
Many apostasised
In 634 Edwin was killed in battle with a Welsh king Cadwalla and the pagan Saxon ruler of Mercia (the English midlands), Penda. The evangelisation sponsored by Edwin proved superficial, and many converts apostasised; Paulinus and the surviving members of Edwin’s family fled to Kent, and a bloody struggle ended in 634 with the defeat of Cadwalla by the northern exile, Oswald. Oswald attributed his victory to St Columba, and appealed to Segene for missionaries.

St Aidan was the bishop who led these missionaries.  For reasons we shall see, Bede’s knowledge of him is fragmentary and coloured by his own agenda; but Bede emphasises Aidan’s humility, simplicity of life, and concern for the material and spiritual needs of the poor. He settled at Lindisfarne, an island connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway, its proximity to Bamburgh (across a bay) emphasised his royal sponsorship.  At times Aidan retired to a hermitage on the rocky Farne islands off Bamburgh, where his prayers were said to preserve the royal stronghold. Before Aidan learned Anglo-Saxon Oswald sometimes translated his spoken sermons (a forceful hint to the audience; a story about St Cuthbert later in Bede’s History suggests many ordinary people resented the new religion imposed onthem). Aidan did not, however, simply rely on royal favour. His monks were more like friars or missionary priests of later centuries, travelling the countryside from their base at Lindisfarne, than contemplatives. Aidan travelled on foot, so that he could speak with the ordinary people, rather than on horseback as noblemen did (when St Cuthbert, a later bishop of Lindisfarne, from being a warrior became a monk, it is emphasised that he gave up his horse). Bede emphasises his fasting and humility, his urging Oswald to be generous to the poor, his use of church funds to ransom slaves (many later ordained). Like St Patrick (of whom Bede was unaware) Aidan sponsored women’s religious communities (the first in England) under Hilda, a kinswoman of Edwin. Oswald was a warrior king (Bede’s account of his sanctity includes hints of a more ruthless side); in 642 he died in battle with King Penda (and was venerated as a martyr). His kingdom re-divided. His brother Oswy succeeded in the north; in the south Oswin, a kinsman of Edwin, became king. According to Bede, Oswin was on particularly good terms with Aidan and presented him with a particularly fine horse, which Aidan gave to a poor man. When they next met, Oswin protested, and Aidan asked whether he valued the son of a mare more highly than the son of God.  Oswin spent some time gazing thoughtfully into the fire; then publicly prostrated himself before Aidan, declaring that he would never again value the son of a mare above a son of God. Blessed Frederick Ozanam singled out this story as symbolising the effect of Christianity on the barbarian peoples; but this underplays the continuing violence of Anglo-Saxon politics. For Bede also describes how as bishop dined with the king, one of Aidan’s priests asked in Irish (which Oswin and his men did not understand) why Aidan was sad after Oswin had honoured him. Aidan replied (also in Irish) that he never saw a humble king before and feared Oswin was too good for this wicked world.
War to rescue mankind
In 651 Oswy attacked Oswin. Oswin’s outnumbered army dispersed; Oswin hid but was betrayed by a trusted follower and put to death on 19 August. (The Anglo-Saxons saw Jesus as a king waging war to rescue mankind and the Apostles as a sworn warband, who should die rather than abandon their leader; Bede’s account of Oswin’s fate echoes this.)  Oswy’s wife, a kinswoman of Oswin, persuaded him to found a monastery to expiate Oswin’s death; Bede’s mentor Abbot Ceolfrith began his monastic career there, and may have been Bede’s source.  Because Bede recorded Oswin’s justice and humility, the king was venerated as a saint; until the Reformation his shrine was at Tynemouth, and beside its ruins is a small brick Catholic church dedicated to Our Lady and St Oswin.  Twelve days after Oswin’s death, Aidan died after a long illness, in a tent beside the wooden church near Bamburgh. The spot is marked by a small shrine and stained-glass window in the present church (now Anglican) where pilgrims leave seashells and bits of paper with prayers.

It was said that as a young man watching sheep on the Melrose hills, Cuthbert saw Aidan’s soul ascending to heaven and this determined him to become a monk. This may symbolise how Aidan’s example influenced others.

The figure of this dog who is the angel’s messenger and companion should not be taken lightly… it signifies the Church’s teachers… So the dog ran ahead because the teacher first preaches salvation, and then the Lord as Illuminator cleanses the hearts (St Bede the Venerable, Commentary on the Book of Tobias).

Synod of Whitby
The Northumbrian church underwent many changes between the death of Aidan and the completion of Bede’s History. The greatest concerned differences between Irish and Roman usages, particularly concerning the calculation of the date of Easter. St Columbanus, working on the Continent at the beginning of the seventh century, encountered difficulties because of this discrepancy; in the 630s much of southern Ireland adopted the Roman usage. The leading opponent of this change, who denounced its proponents as heretics, was Segene, the abbot who sent Aidan to Northumbria.

Oswy’s queen, a daughter of Edwin brought up in Kent, followed the Roman usage. Those influenced by her circle included a young monk of Lindisfarne called Wilfrid, who travelled to Kent and then to Gaul and Rome. Observing the Gaulish bishops, who lived in great state, pontificated in great and beautiful churches and wielded considerable power and influence, Wilfrid decided this was more befitting to the glory of the Gospel.

After Oswy crushed the pagan king Penda in 655 the question of which usage should prevail caused political as well as religious tensions. In 664 a synod was held at Whitby, the monastery of Abbess Hilda, to decide the matter. Hilda, Cuthbert and others supported Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne in arguing for the usage of Iona; Wilfrid argued for the Roman observance. Oswy ruled in favour of Rome–because of the primacy of Peter, according to Bede, but political considerations were also involved. Colman, with those Irish and English monks who would not accept the decision, divided the relics of Aidan with those who remained (including Cuthbert) and left Lindisfarne for Iona and then Mayo, where they founded two monasteries. Wilfrid was later nominated bishop of Paulinus’ see at York. Bede had no doubt that the decision of Whitby was correct, but his account of the debate (imaginative rather than literal) allows Colman some cogent arguments and presents Wilfrid as more willing to concede the good faith of Columba and his followers than seems plausible (a biographer states Wilfrid called them heretics, whereas Bede emphasises that Aidan held the same faith as followers of the Roman observance). When describing the final departure of Colman and his monks Bede emphasises the austerity of their lives and their simple wooden dwellings.

The long and stormy career of St Wilfrid, involving many quarrels, exiles, travels to Rome and reinstatements, can only be touched on here. He was a bishop of a type which recurs in church history (there are prominent examples in nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland), more Roman than the Romans, confident of his own authority and righteousness, a great builder of stone churches in Hexham and other places, an amasser of wealth (used to influence kings to assist the church’s work; Wilfrid was personally austere). Wilfrid asserted justice as he saw it even against kings who previously supported him; in one of his exiles he conducted successful missionary work among the South Saxons and assisted them during famine; in his last years he worked with Irish churchmen to send English missionaries to the German pagans. During the great Irish Famine of 1845-49, when the Catholic bishop in York, John Briggs, divested himself of most of his possessions to help the Irish, a priest in Connaught wrote that he had shown himself the true successor of St Wilfrid.
The influence of Rome
Roman influence appears at its most attractive in Benedict Biscop, founder of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow dedicated to SS Peter and Paul.  As a young nobleman Biscop accompanied Wilfrid on his first visit to Rome; as abbot of a monastery founded with a land grant obtained from the king, he returned several times. Biscop brought from Rome a wide range of books, making Wearmouth-Jarrow the greatest library and centre of biblical learning in northern Europe; its scriptorium for the production of biblical and other texts were far-famed. Biscop brought craftsmen who embellished the new stone monastic church with biblical paintings and stained glass (the first manufactured in Northumbria); a cantor from St Peter’s in Rome taught liturgical chant.  His works recall the “devotional revolution” of the nineteenth century in Ireland—the enthusiasm over new and ornate churches replacing smaller and nondescript houses of worship, and the propagation of colourful and intense continental devotions. Bede praises Biscop as one of those who give up earthly possessions to receive the kingdom of God, and a wife and family to foster spiritual children including Bede himself. In the nineteenth century St Benedict’s Catholic church was built to the north of the River Wear in Sunderland, a short distance from the Anglican church which incorporates the few remains of the Wearmouth monastery; for a long time it was served by Redemptorists (many Irish) and I attended it several times before realising that the St Benedict to whom it is dedicated is Biscop.
Ornament of Jarrow
The brightest ornament of Wearmouth-Jarrow was Bede himself. He was born on tenanted land owned by the monastery, and at the age of seven (when a warrior would begin his apprenticeship) was sent to the monastery where he spent the remainder of his life, latterly as deacon and priest; he saw himself as dedicated to God from infancy like the prophet Samuel. Bede is remembered as a historian, but he was above all an expounder of the Bible, writing commentaries on most of its books (several of which had not previously been systematically expounded).  These profoundly influenced later mediaeval commentary, and through English scholars at the court of Charlemagne (late seventh and early eighth centuries) passed into the main tradition of Biblical commentary and the Church’s Office; almost twelve centuries after Bede’s death, Pope Francis took his motto from Bede’s remarks on the calling of St Matthew, incorporated in the Office of that apostle. To the scholars of Charlemagne’s time, the age which had produced a Bede, whose last days had been recorded by a disciple in one of the classic descriptions of a holy Christian death, was truly a golden age.

Bede did not think he inhabited a golden age.  Apart from the endemic warfare of Anglo-Saxon England, the great works of the scriptorium could only be sustained from the labours of tenant farmers, and Bede was deeply concerned that the church should not lose sight of its responsibility to evangelise the people. Some think he himself was the son of tenant farmers, others that he was of noble birth, perhaps a kinsman of Benedict Biscop. Bede supported the efforts of successive abbots (some related to Biscop) to keep the abbacy from becoming a perquisite of the founder’s family. Believing monks should be like Melchisedec with no recorded earthly kindred, Bede did not record his own ancestry. Bede was concerned that the splendour of churches could be bought by laxity (he records a terrifying story of a skilled metalworker employed by an abbey which tolerated his vices because of his skill, who when taken ill cried out that he had seen hell and died in despair to the horror of all) and at the expense of evangelisation (he thought more, hence poorer, bishops, were needed for pastoral effectiveness). Worse still, since land grants to noblemen were generally resumed by the king at their deaths, whereas monastic land was held in perpetuity and exempt from tax, some noble families established bogus monasteries in which a few nominal monks, presided over by a supposed abbot, acted as frontmen for the real owners, thus scandalising religion and weakening the kingdom.
Ezra as model
In his last years Bede took as role-model Ezra the scribe who preached renewed observance to a people who had forgotten the law of the Lord. He reminded them of the missionaries who evangelised the English; he recalled the injunctions of Pope Gregory the Great in his works on the priesthood and his injunctions to Augustine’s missionaries; and Bede held up for imitation, in implicit contrast to contemporary misplaced opulence, the ascetic simplicity of the missionaries inspired by Columba. (Shortly before Bede wrote, Iona accepted Roman usage through a variety of influences, including contact with Northumbria; Bede saw this as a divine reward for Irish evangelisation of the English. Bede probably met Adamnan, who visited Wearmouth-Jarrow twice when Bede was a monk; Adamnan wrote an account of the physical lay-out of the Holy Land after meeting a Gaulish bishop who had visited it, and Bede later rewrote the book for the use of students of the Scriptures.) Bede visited Lindisfarne, still a centre of varied influences and pre-eminent for the cult of St Cuthbert, who after serving as abbot and later being called back from his hermitage to become a bishop, finally returned to Aidan’s former hermitage on the Farne Islands and died there in 687. The discovery some years later that Cuthbert’s body remained incorrupt (possibly through desiccation in dry sandy soil) cemented his cult, and he became the pre-eminent saint of the North of England. Bede wrote two versions of the Life of Cuthbert (adapting a pre-existing text) who is one of several great exemplars of the ideal churchman held up for imitation in Bede’s History; but behind Cuthbert Bede discerned another exemplar, Aidan. Since Cuthbert accepted the decision of Whitby, whereas Aidan died in the Columban usage, Aidan’s memory had been underplayed and the information available to Bede was fragmentary. His
account of Aidan is not just conventional history but resembles a modern brief for canonisation, intended to show how despite his liturgical practices Aidan exemplified the pastoral virtues needed in Bede’s own day.

Without Bede’s history Oswald, Cuthbert and Wilfrid might be remembered; Aidan and others would be mere names, or forgotten. Through Bede their memory spread across Latin Christendom (including Ireland; surviving Irish accounts of Aidan’s mission derive from Bede, with embellishments).  In the long, dark history of the relations between our two islands, the evangelisation of Northumbria and the interaction of its Irish and English saints is one of the brighter spots. The saints were remembered in the later Middle Ages, often in contexts combining devotion and brutal political power; they were remembered in the era of the Reformation, where Catholic controversialists emphasised Bede’s account of Pope Gregory as evangeliser of the English and the links with Rome renewed by Wilfrid and his disciples, while Protestants claimed Aidan and Columba as upholders of a purer Gospel. (Visitors to their shrines will also find copies of Orthodox icons, since they lived before the Schism.) The comfort many Christians outside the sheepfold have drawn from the Northumbrian saints is another fruit of their mission and Bede’s labours.
Work of Irish navvies
The recusant Catholics of Northumbria, when they had not enough priests of their own, preferred to look to the Continent rather than to Ireland, but from the early nineteenth century, as Irish immigrant labourers were drawn to the growing region whose mining industry was the technological seedbed for the invention and development of the railways, Irish missionaries accompanied them. The present cathedral of the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, designed by Pugin, stands near Newcastle Central Station; it was built by Irish navvies, and its inner walls are decorated with the names of saints–on one side, reformation-era martyrs; on the other, the Northumbrian saints (Colman as well as Wilfrid). In the cathedral crypt is buried William Riddell, of a recusant family, Catholic bishop in Newcastle in 1847 when he died of typhoid caught while ministering to famine Irish.

In the 1830s, near the great iron bridge at Sunderland (the present bridge’s motto Spera in Deo once gave me hope at a dark time) an Irish priest built St Mary’s Church to serve the Irish who laboured in the docks and mines. It was consecrated by Bishop Briggs, encountered earlier in this narrative; beside it, where a multi-story car-park now stands, Irish Christian Brothers opened one of their first schools outside Ireland–certainly the first with a majority of non-Catholic pupils, whose parents thought any education better than none. The Irish dimension remained in later decades; there are many Irish names on the war memorial; St Patrick accompanies St Cuthbert and other English saints on the reredos; from the late 1930s to the early 1970s the parish priest was Canon O’Donoghue from Clonakilty in West Cork, who I suspect is responsible for the windows showing SS Martin de Porres and Maria Goretti, Thomas More and John Fisher. In the postindustrial city centre its congregation now come from further afield.

The story of the Catholic Irish on Tyne and Wear, with its hardships and struggles for self-betterment, should not be sentimentalised, just as the history of our own popular Catholicism, which has declined in recent decades as theirs has also declined, should not be sentimentalised. Both here and there many were flawed and some were worse. But those who in earlier life knew Catholics of an older generation and those who have studied accounts of earlier generations (even with all the limitations and selectivity of such accounts) know that some among them, and some of those who ministered to them displayed intense faith and love, and were often ill-rewarded (at least in this life) often by those who should have known better. It is the task of the Catholic present-day historian to seek in these remains (with due regard for truth, and confronting rather than wishing away what was truly false and wicked) exemplars for our own day, as Bede did for his time.
Not to be lost in darkness
It can make no difference to saints in heaven whether they are remembered on earth or not, and many saints will never be known there; but it can make a great difference to us. Through Bede’s labours, Aidan and the other saints preach still, teaching in how many different times and places the living Word shows those tempted to despair that when the bird flies from the hall it is not lost in darkness.

Lindisfarne was abandoned in the early ninth century because of Viking raids (recently depicted in a TV drama series from the Vikings’ viewpoint rather as football hooligans might regard their own rampages, with the monks seen as cowardly wimps). The monastic community settled in Durham, on an easily defended height surrounded on three sides by the River Wear. St Cuthbert is buried in the cathedral, with the skull of Oswald and other miscellaneous bones (some possibly of Aidan). The alleged relics of Bede are in the Galilee chapel (so called because when the cathedral was Catholic, eucharistic processions re-entered the cathedral through it, it was said that Jesus went before the disciples into Galilee). Over his grave a recent Anglican dean placed a quotation from one of Bede’s commentaries on the Gospel:

Christ is the morning star who when the night of this world is past brings to his saints the promise of the light of life and opens everlasting day.

This essay is dedicated to my great-uncle, once a monk of the Cistercian Order and afterwards a secular priest of the Archdiocese of Cardiff, who taught me to love the Extraordinary Form of the Mass; to his sister, a Loreto nun in Cheshire, North Wales and elsewhere in Britain, who gave her life to teaching the children of the poor and instructing converts; and to their brother, a faithful priest of the diocese of Ferns who spent ten years on the New Zealand missions. Pray for them and for all who followed faithfully in the footsteps of St Patrick, St Colmcille and St Aidan, so that through their intercession the flame of faith may re-illuminate our country.—Hibernicus

Hibernicus is a professional historian who has worked in a number of universities and higher institutes in Ireland.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 131, March-April 2014

Has St Brigid Gone the Way of the Enneagram?

HAS ST BRIGID GONE THE WAY OF THE ENNEAGRAM?
By FATHER DÁITHÍ Ó MURCHÚ

From one point of view, the Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type.—The Enneagram Institute, 2004

I REMEMBER in the seminary having to sit through a workshop on the Enneagram as described above; that a Catholic Seminary would engage in an exercise that finds its source in ancient Sufi mysticism is alarming indeed.

That this was seen as beneficial, normal even, is very telling. In the years since I am astounded how so many Catholic Retreat Houses, Convents, Religious Houses and Parish Centres offer not only the Enneagram but a myriad of events that are completely out of sync with and injurious towards Catholic teaching.

Now what has all this to do with Saint Brigid? Let me begin by quoting an article by Brian Wright (2010) in History Ireland:

Brigid, goddess and saint, the second most important Irish saint after Patrick, is well known not only in Ireland but also in many other parts of the world. Thousands of books and articles have been written about this influential figure since the first by Cogitosus c. AD 650. Yet some historians have claimed she did not even exist! Brigid is unique in still being venerated not only as a saint but also as a goddess.

So where does the idea of Brigid as goddess and saint come from? There are both ancient and modern reasons, and the two are interlinked. The ancient reasons date back to the Celtic Feast of Imbolg. The Bath Chronicle (2007) in a features article put it very well:

Our ancestors welcomed Imbolg as the reawakening of life. As the first crocus pushed through the earth, it was seen as the first sign that winter was stirring from her sleep. It is a time to look to the future.

It was common practice for the Christian church to Christianise pagan feasts on the conversion of the populace in a region. This canny piece of marketing and evangelisation meant that the people did not lose their important calendar dates, but had their god/ gods/ idols replaced with the one true God. It also meant that the previous feast days would not be left in situ to tempt the people to return to them. Three classic examples of this would be the Feasts of Christmas, the Annunciation and Saint John the Baptist taking place around the dates of the winter and summer solstice and the spring equinox.
Canny evangelisation
In the case of St Brigid, the Feast of Imbolg became her feast day. It was an inspired choice to Christianise the pagan feast of spring for the woman who would become Ireland’s secondary patron, and to have it as a prelude to the Feast of Candlemas. The life of Brigid was marked by Paschal joy, the fire lit at her monastery in Kildare exemplifying this. She, with Saint Patrick and Colmcille, would become figureheads for the fervour with which the Irish people embraced Christianity and brought it to the ends of the earth. As Irish children the stories of her life that we learnt were indeed the stuff of miracles, from her birth in Faughart, County Louth to Dubhtach a chieftain and Brocca the former slave, her mother, who was baptised by Saint Patrick, to the conversion of the pagan chieftain by picking up the rushes on the floor and weaving them into a cross to tell him the story of Christ and His death on the cross.

We made the crosses every year in school, and brought them home as a beautiful reminder of our nation’s heritage and the ever present power of the cross. We learnt about the principal foundation, mentioned above, of Brigid at Kildare or Cill Dara, the Church of the Oak. This latter event is the basis for my own personal favourite story where Brigid asked the local chieftain for the land and he refused. Eventually she asked him for as much land as her cloak would cover, and, laughing at the supposed ludicrous nature of such a request, he agreed, only to witness Brigid’s cloak spreading and growing, eventually covering the area she desired. We saw St. Brigid’s crosses over doorways, heard of them in rafters of houses, and how, on the eve of St. Brigid’s Day, if you hung the cross over the door of the byre Brigid would bless your land and cattle. There was also the belief that hanging a cloth outside on the eve of the feast would allow Brigid to touch it, and so give it curative powers.

It is very easy to see the fantastical in the above tales, also the rubrics of pagan ritual and Celtic culture. Fire, one of the elements, is an ancient ritualistic symbol predating Christianity. Miraculous events and magical powers are seen in the cloak story, and the invocation of protection on crops, land, houses and livestock garners another facet of the same. The St. Brigid’s cloth has an echo of the clootie tree, which Lyndsay McEwen (2009) describes: In different parts of Britain, Ireland and northern Europe, there is a tradition of fastening a piece of cloth to trees (usually hawthorn) near holy wells. After taking the water people tie a piece of their clothing to the tree. The tree is a symbol of long life and health. In Scotland these are known as clootie (cloth) trees.

These then are the ancient reasons for how Brigid as goddess and saint came to be. We can see the ingredients of both and how they came to be interlinked. We see ultimately how the two were not uncomfortable bedfellows, and how, in the telling, the story of the Christian Brigid was not uncomfortable with the blurring of the demarcation line, but embraced it, Christianised it and cleverly used it to bring a newly converted people along holding ribbons of their past ideology to give them comfort in embracing the new beliefs.

When it comes to the modern reasons, what has happened in the last fifty years is a lot of the old certainties have crumbled, and the structures of Catholicism have been shaken, as the Post-Conciliar Church has sought to engage with the modern world, and examine new ways to live the life of faith. The misinterpretation of this concept has been a fiasco for the church, as the baby has often been thrown out with the bathwater, and the dialogue has led, in many instances, to an abandonment of traditional rituals and an embracing of new points of reference which are not only not compatible with Catholicism but sow confusion and a distrust of all that went before. In the midst of this we have the results of the new moral order which put down roots at the very time of the Second Vatican Council, the permissive society of the 1960s with its promotion of free love and an enthusiasm for eastern philosophies.
Brigid the goddess
Brigid has been a victim of this confusion particularly since, in the last twenty years, there has been a renewed interest in Celtic belief systems, and so we now, tragically, have Brigid, not as Muire na nGael or Mary of the Irish, but Brigid the feminist, the goddess, the Brigid who may not even have existed, the Brigid who the cruel church debased of her Celtic powers and fabricated into a coy and demure nun, rather the same as they are purported to have done with Mary Magdalene in Dan Brown’s infamous novel, The Da Vinci Code. The old tale of St. Mel ordaining Brigid a bishop has surfaced as an argument for the ordination of women, and as proof of a Pre-Roman influenced Celtic church free from ultramontane oppression. In short, Brigid has been stripped of her Christian elements and become a cause célèbre of the confused mentality and belief systems of our time.

In conclusion then, can we say, as we set out to at the beginning, that she has gone the way of the Enneagram? It would certainly seem so. The brassy madam presented to the world today bears no resemblance to the Brigid I learnt about in school who found her strength in the power that came from God alone. This imposter would seem more comfortable consulting her crystals than the Blessed Sacrament. Therein, however, may be the answer or at least the consolation. This Brigid is exactly that, an imposter, wearing the cloak of modernity rather than the cloak of Christ. We need to reclaim her to what she was before this silliness. The Church needs to rescue her and present her anew to a world that needs her gifts now more than ever, particularly her giftedness in confronting a pagan world, not unlike our own in its barbarity, with the truth in Christ, the truth in love.

Brigid, Muire na nGael, pray for us.

Bibliography
McEwen, Lyndsay. Clootie Tree? What is it? (2009)Available: http://www.clootietree.co /whats_a_clootie_tree.htm. Last accessed 15th Nov 2013.

Pontifical Council for Culture/Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (2003). Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection on the “New Age”. Available: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.htmlhttp://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html.. Last accessed 13th November 2013.

The Bath Chronicle. (2007). Light candles for the coming year. The Bath Chronicle. 247 (30), 22.

The Enneagram Institute. (2013). How the Enneagram System Works. Available: http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/intro.asp#.UoOiN3C-06Y. Last accessed 13th November 2013.

Wright, Brian. (2010). “Did St Brigid visit Glastonbury?” History Ireland. 18 (1), p14-17.

An tAthair Dáithí Ó Murchú is a priest of the Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora Diocese currently on loan to the Wrexham Diocese in Wales.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 130, January-February 2014

Flawed Pedigree or Irish Charlemagne: The Legacy of Brian Boru

FLAWED PEDIGREE OR IRISH CHARLEMAGNE: THE LEGACY OF BRIAN BORU
By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

FROM ST PATRICK’S TIME TO the turn of the Millennium, Ireland was dominated by the Uí Néill dynasty. With their power-base in Meath and in Tyrone and Donegal, they effectively dominated the northern half of Ireland for centuries. Their only rivals on the island were based in Cashel. These were the Eóganacht of Munster. A couple of times in the centuries, the Eóganacht would manage to field a champion to rival the Uí Néill, but it did not happen very often. In the early ninth century, this was achieved by Feidlimid mac Crimthainn. Not only was Feidlimid King of Munster; he was also Bishop of Cashel; and he was a monk of the reforming Céle Dé (Slave of God) rule which had its origins in Tallaght in the 800s. Feidlimid was well able to use the secular arm to extend monastic reform. If an abbot proved obstinate, Feidlimid would carry out a raid leading contemporaries to observe that he burned more monasteries than any Norse chief. The presence of Feidlimid in various venues outside Munster at the head of an army was hardly unusual, as he attempted to wrest hegemony from the Uí Néill and almost succeeded. He died in 846.

A century and a half later would bring a more successful challenger from Munster onto a national stage which hardly existed before. One of the sub-kingdoms the Eóganacht maintained were the Déisi in what is now Waterford. Some of these made conquests in East Clare and adopted the moniker the Dál Cais. In 934, Cennétig mac Lorcáin became King of the Dál Cais. The Dál Cais were in the ascendent as their Eóganacht overlords declined. This brought some risk as four of Cennétig’s sons were killed in raids on the Dál Cais from both the Eóganacht and the Uí Néill prior to his own death in 951. But when he died, he was described as king of Thomond. His son Lachtna reigned until he was killed in 953 when he was succeeded by his brother Mathgamain.
Resentful Rivals
Mathgamain mac Cennétig was an extremely able ruler and was aware the kingship of Munster was in his grasp as only one branch of the Eóganachta could rival him. In 964, he occupied Cashel which seriously staked his claim. At this stage, he had allies as far afield as Waterford. Limerick proved a cockpit in the struggle for dominance of Munster and its Norse ruler Ivar was frequently driven out. In 974, Mathgamain was acting as King of Munster, but he had a number of resentful opponents. In 976, he was captured and put to death by his Eóganacht enemy Máel Muad and his allies. He was suceeded by his brother Brian Boruma, known to history as Brian Boru.

Brian’s first target on assuming the kingship of the Dál Cais was the coalition who had killed his brother. The Norse king of Limerick, Ivar was first. Brian killed him with two of his sons in the sanctuary of Inis Scataig (Scattery Island) in 977. Following this, he attacked the Uí Fidgente, an Eóganacht ally based in Co Limerick. In 978, he defeated Máel Muad, killed him and took hostages. At this stage, he consolidated his position in Munster. It would be a mistake to think Brian came from nowhere after his brother’s death. For many years he had been a leading political and martial figure within the Dál Cais and many of the tactics he employed were learned from experience. Brian’s biographer cast him in the light of Alfred the Great of England, fighting Norse here, there and everywhere as a young man. This is unlikely, but there was never any shortage of Norse mercenaries in the forces Brian found himself opposing.
Norse impact
The Norse had made an impact on Ireland in the late tenth century. They were now substantially Christianised and their ports were the centre of trade routes. They minted the first Irish coinage. Irish words for commerce and seafaring are largely derived from Scandinavian languages. Some Irish names betray Viking origin: most people are aware that as Lochlann is the Irish for Scandanavia, O’Loughlin and McLoughlin indicate descent from the Norse or Danes. Less obviously, Doyle is derived from Ua Dubhghaill or “dark foreigner”, as the brown-haired Danes were known (the Norse with the “fionn gall”, the blond foreigner). It is no coincidence that Doyle is most common in Dublin. But consider the name Higgins. In Irish, this is Ó hUiginn. When dealing with a language with neither “v” nor “k” and a people who still turn “ing” into “in’”, it becomes clear that Uiginn disguises the word viking. There are many more. If one were to question the depth of the Christianity of the Irish Norse in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, one might ask the same question about the rest of Ireland or indeed the bulk of Christian Europe. The absorption of the Gospel was a very slow process. Slavery, plurality of wives among the nobility, and other horrors endured a long time. Pre-feudal western Europe was a warrior society barely aspiring to the civilisation of Byzantium. But the Norse left their mark on Ireland. Even without Norse troops, Norse armour and weaponry were adopted. Brian Boru was quite adept at using a naval arm in a lot of his campaigns, often attacking his enemies by land and sea simultaneously. He learned this from the Vikings.

In 982, Brian moved against the Osraige. This corresponds with the present-day Ossory diocese and if considered part of Leinster now, it was in the Munster sphere of influence in the first millennium. As Leinster emerged as a power in its own right late in this era, the buffer kingdom of Osraige wavered between Munster and Leinster. Brian sought to subordinate it to Munster with success that was clear enough to create conflict with the King of Tara, Máel Sechnaill II. The Uí Néill king invaded Clare, but this was no deterrant to Brian who sent a fleet up the Shannon the following year to attack Connaught. He then allied with the Norse of Waterford to attack Dublin and Leinster. Once again, Brian employed a coordinated amphibious attack against his enemies.  This time he invaded Meath in a direct challenge to Máel Sechnaill.

If Brian was going to challenge to the Uí Néill king, he would have to ensure his own position in Munster and in the late 980s, he did just that. He defeated his Déisi kinsmen and took hostages from Lismore, Emly and Cork. Once again, he sailed up the Shannon, attacking Meath and Connaught, though the detachment in Connaught was defeated. Máel Sechnaill invaded Munster, but in 997 he recognised Brian’s dominance over the southern half of Ireland.  At this stage, Leinster was conceded to the Munster sphere of influence. Leinster rebelled, but Máel Morda was captured and the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin, Sitric was exiled. Both were forced to submit to Brian who was now challenging the King of Tara. Máel Sechnaill found a way to counter one of Brian’s favourite tactics: allying with Connaught, he bridged the Shannon making navigation difficult. But the following year, Brian defeated Meath and Connaught.
Emperor of the Irish
In 1005, Brian moved against Ulster. It should be remembered that Brian was a politician as well as a soldier and would take a diplomatic solution where possible. Leaving a donation of twenty ounces of gold in Armagh and recognising the Church of Armagh as the primatial see was an example of this. Brian was probably illiterate; most kings were. So his secretary signed the Book of Armagh for him. Brian was Imperator Scotorum, literally “Emperor of the Scots”, but the Latin Scotus is more accurately translated as “Gael”, and the Gael of Dál Riada had yet to give their name to Scotland, so the title is understood as Emperor of the Irish. Brian thus disclosed his admiration for Charlemagne (and his brass neck). The Church in Armagh were not indifferent to his endeavours as a more centralised kingdom along the lines of the Carolignian empire or Anglo-Saxon England was a logic that appealed to them. The administrative framework of centralisation would make things easier for the Church. The person of Brian Boru was another matter. The monks at Cashel very obligingly furnished him with a noble lineage going back to the legendary Eógain Mór who founded the Eóganachta.  Of course, the abbot of Cashel was himself an Eóganacht with strong feelings about a Dál Cais parvenu masquerading as something he was not, so he retained Brian’s authentic genealogy. Which goes to show that the politics of a flawed pedigree has a long history.

One after the other, Brian subdued the three Ulster kingdoms of the Ulaid, the Cenél Eógain and in 1011, the Cenél Conaill. At this stage, he was the undisputed High King, or in his own words, Emperor, of the Irish. One might ask what this meant. He certainly was not the effective ruler of Ireland. But he did, as an outsider, manage to gain what the Uí Néill dynasts claimed in principle for centuries, but never put into practice. He created the concept of the kingship of Ireland and showed how this could be gained and maintained. He was not an heroic figure, least of all for royalist legitimists among us. He was able, ruthless, cunning, ambitious and he thought strategically.  He exploited the divisions of his enemies. He understood the politics of the Irish Church and used it to his advantage: Armagh appreciated this was in its own interest. His horizons were much wider than the island of Ireland, as seen in the policies he employed. It is inevitable that a man like Brian will raise resentment, and this came from Leinster and Dublin in 1013. Sitric sought reinforcements from Man and the Isles and Brian assembled a coalition to counter them. Initially Brian had the numeric advantage, but a disagreement with Máel Sechnall evened the sides. They met at Clontarf on 23 April 1014, which was Good Friday that year. Irishmen and Norse fought on both sides. The main protagonists were all dead at the end of the day and Brian’s dream of a centralised Irish monarchy survived only as an idea thereafter, itself leading to more wars through the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But the possibility of an effective national kingdom died at Clontarf.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 131, March-April 2014

Clontarf: A Backward Glance

CLONTARF: A BACKWARD GLANCE
By DR NIALL BRADY

THE YEAR OF 2014 a year of anniversaries. Most notably, it is the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, and of the death of that holy pope, St Pius X (of blessed memory). In the Irish context, it is the centenary of the Government of Ireland Act, and of the Howth gun-running incident involving the yacht Asgard. Further back in time, this year also sees the millennial anniversary of the death of Brian mac Cennétig, king of the Munster sept of Dál Cais, who in the course of a lengthy and illustrious political career, had succeeded in imposing his authority not only on the rest of Munster but on the rest of Ireland also, and who is known to history as Brian Boru.

It is fair to say that, insofar as he is remembered at all, Brian and his achievements are viewed much more sympathetically by Irishmen of the present time than they were by his contemporaries. The popular imagination of the past century and a half remembers Brian as something of a national hero, as an Irish patriot who, at the cost of his life, stood up to a despotic foreign tyranny in the course of which he instilled courage and national pride in the Irishmen of his day. This is a comforting and enduring myth, and it appealed especially to nationalist writers in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century; but it is nonetheless a myth, and while it owes a great deal to the nationalist aspirations of the Irish literary and academic elite of a hundred years ago, its origin is to be traced to the year 1867, in which a Trinity scholar, Dr James Henthorne Todd, published the first modern edition and translation of a previously little known Irish prose saga. This saga is entitled Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, or “The War of the Irish with the Foreigners”, and its hero is Brian Boru.

We must keep in mind that, in the 1860s, very little of the primary source material for Early Irish history had been made available in print. The great editions of the various Irish annals by Hennessy and MacCarthy, which have nourished the researches of scholars for over a century, did not then exist; and O’Donovan’s editions of the Four Masters and the Three Fragments had only been printed a few years previously. The exciting narrative of Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, in contrast with the generally dry and terse style of the annals, fired the imaginations of many, and its presentation of the life and career of Brian Boru and of the Battle of Clontarf were received uncritically not only by Irish researchers interested in Irish-Norse relations but by their Scandinavian colleagues also. Consequently, the narrative of the Cogadh dominated historical approaches to the significance of the Battle of Clontarf until in the 1960s a new generation of scholars began to study the text with a more critical eye—whereat the traditionally-accepted nationalist view began to crumble, and with it the pedestal upon which Brian had stood for the previous century.
More or less forgotten
We must also bear in mind that, with the exception of the Cogadh itself, Brian was most emphatically not a heroic figure of saga and poetry at any time between 1014 and 1867, but had been more or less forgotten; he certainly never achieved the fame of legendary literary figures such as Finn mac Cumhaill or Cú Chulainn.

I do not mean that the Cogadh routinely presents as fact details that are demonstrably fictitious, or factually
wrong; but the effect of the author’s profound bias is to lend a colour and significance to Brian’s status and the encounter at Clontarf that would not have been recognised by anyone actually alive in the Ireland of 1014. Todd believed the Cogadh was written by a contemporary and eyewitness of the Battle of Clontarf; in particular, he identified Mac Liaig, Brian’s court poet, as the likely author. Todd’s view held the field for a considerable time, but it was later realised that the text of the Cogadh is not contemporary with Clontarf at all and belongs instead to the twelfth century. Current consensus attributes the composition of the text to the time of Brian’s greatgrandson, Muirchertach Ua Briain (ob. 1119), and in particular to the years between 1103 and 1113. As to the reasons underlying its composition, this much at least is clear: the text was intended to portray Brian as a brave and selfless freedom-fighter who had saved Ireland from being crushed under the remorseless heel of the heathen Norse, and that in order to bolster the political standing of the Uí Briain dynasty in twelfth-century Ireland and their claims to the kingship exercised over the country by their ancestor.

I encourage readers who are interested in this period of Irish history to read the Cogadh for themselves.  It is almost impossible to find in print, unless one enjoys the privilege of access to a university library, but thanks to the internet it is widely available in digital form. Although written in the prolix and somewhat bombastic style popular in the twelfth century and unashamedly political, it is a great read and thoroughly enjoyable, at least to those who have some familiarity with Early Irish literature. It takes itself so seriously it is often unintentionally hilarious; the reader should take note of the contrasting manner in which Brian, his family and his enemies are presented; the language employed to describe the deeds of each and, not least, the manner in which “the foreigners” (i.e. the Norse) and their acts are presented.  These last are so exaggerated and over the top that the Cogadh has given me many a laugh in the course of my studies. The hyperbole and overblown style will both amuse and bemuse a modern readership; the similes and metaphors are all eminently memorable. I will not take up space here offering particularly ripe quotes from the text, although of course I have my favourites; I simply recommend my readers read it for themselves for, despite its flaws, it is a unique product of Ireland’s literary heritage and ought to be better known.
Cruel and heartless
It is perhaps a satisfying incidence of poetic justice that Brian Boru never made it into the literary big-time alongside the likes of Cú Chulainn; for if the latter is an embodiment of the Iron Age/Celtic/Indo-European ideal of the hero, the former is (at least to my mind) more an anti-hero, even an embodiment of the very tyranny the author of the Cogadh so deplores in his depictions of the Norse. The Cogadh presents us with a relentless onslaught of cruel, heartless, heathen barbarians from overseas (fresh in the memories of the twelfth-century Irish as the English were fresh in the memories of Irish nationalists nine centuries later) from whom Ireland needed saving if her civilisation and culture were not to be smashed down and destroyed, and her people enslaved. History, however, shows us that at the turn of the eleventh century, Ireland was not at all in danger of being conquered and utterly dominated by the Norse, either from abroad or those already settled in the country for several generations. Ireland was, however, in danger of being conquered and utterly dominated by Brian himself, and it is this danger—not that of the Norse—that led to the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

I pass over Brian’s early career, how he (and his brother Mathgamain before him) elevated Dál Cais from obscurity to power over of the whole province of Munster, and how he began to expand his power over the other provinces of Ireland. For a consideration of Clontarf it suffices to note that in the early eleventh century Brian is at the apex of his power; that he has clashed with, and subdued, Mael Morda king of Leinster, and Sitric king of Dublin; that he has wrested the kingship of Tara from Mael Sechnaill mac Domnaill the Uí Néill potentate, thus becoming the first non-Uí Néill ruler since the year 482 to hold that office. Not much of a history of warring against Norse invaders there; earlier in his career he had overthrown the Norse king Ívar of Limerick (whom he killed on Scattery Island in 977), but his beef with Ívar was a political struggle for control of Munster; if the unlucky Ívar had been of Irish rather than Norse descent, it would not have made any difference; Brian would still have gone after him. The Cogadh, naturally, makes much of this episode and presents Ívar as a rapacious and usurping marauder who oppressed all Munster but who, thanks to the heroic Brian, in the end got his just desserts.
A bitterly resented ruler
It should be remembered that Brian had no natural right or claim to overlordship over all Ireland, any more than the Norse kings of either Limerick or Dublin could have had. He was not born into the position; he did not inherit it; the position itself, the so-called “High Kingship” of Ireland did not at the time exist, either in law or in fact. Brian, by dint of cunning, influence, ruthlessness and raw military power, clawed his way to being de facto ruler of Ireland—meaning that the other local kings submitted to his authority; but their submission was to Brian personally, not to any such concept as a “King of Ireland” for, without prejudice to Alice Stopford Green, there was no such thing as “the Irish State” prior to 1014 nor for a long time afterwards. The native laws from the seventh century onwards are united in their insistence that the highest grade of king in Ireland is the rí cóicid (the king of a province); the Uí Néill, who monopolised the kingship of Tara from the fifth century to Brian’s time made much of the prestige of that kingship, but could never at any point have been described as “Kings of Ireland”. In the light of this tradition of provincial independence, it becomes easier to see why Brian’s rule was so bitterly resisted outside Munster, and why a rising against him—which is precisely what the Battle of Clontarf was—was inevitable.

The Norse, the perennial antagonists of the Cogadh, played only a minor role in the actual battle itself. There was no invading Viking army such as England had experienced the year before, and which had caused Ethelred II to flee for safety to Normandy.  The battle was in the main a decisive clash between the kings of Munster and Leinster, the latter seeking his rightful independence (and, as a Leinsterman myself, I tend to sympathise with Mael Morda), and the former seeking to retain the overlordship he had won for himself by his own power. The Norse did of course take part in the battle, but only in supporting roles; Sitric, the king of Dublin, imported mercenaries from the Orkneys and the Isle of Man to help him against Brian; and Brian, for his part, brought a contingent of the Limerick Norse to help him against Mael Morda. Norse on both sides; Irish on both sides. This was not the kind of well-defined “us versus them” struggle depicted in the Cogadh.
A family tiff
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the Battle of Clontarf is that, far from being a heroic exercise of nation-building or nation-saving, it is better described as a family tiff, inasmuch as the main participants were all related to one another. They were connected primarily through one woman—Gormflaith ingen Murchada, who was the sister of Mael Morda and the mother of Sitric (thus the Leinster allies, Mael Morda and Sitric, were uncle and nephew respectively) and finally, her third husband (after Olaf Cuarán, Sitric’s father, and the still living former king of Tara Mael Sechnaill mac Domnaill) was Brian Boru himself.  Sitric thus became Brian’s stepson and Mael Morda his brother-in-law; and if this were not already sufficiently complicated, Sitric married one of Brian’s daughters, becoming the Munster king’s son-in-law as well as his stepson. These frankly political marriages were intended to keep a clearly unstable political situation from boiling over, but did not have the desired effect. The Icelandic Njáls Saga, written in the thirteenth century but based upon lost earlier sources and which contains background narrative on the Battle of Clontarf, has a scene in which Gormflaith (now married to Brian) berates and humiliates her son Sitric for having submitted to Brian’s authority, and thus the fatal seed is sown. This scene is not recorded in any contemporary source and while, at the distance of a thousand years I cannot claim to know Gormflaith personally, I am inclined to regard it as the sort of thing she would have done. I am sure she cannot have had great love for or loyalty to Brian; all her history and her family ties were in Leinster, and I cannot fault her for that.

The great confrontation, when it occurred, was catastrophic for everyone who took part in it. It is best to read and enjoy the memorable descriptions of the battle recorded in the Cogadh, and then to put them aside; the Cogadh, which has supplied us with such wonderful details as the aged Brian being slain by  bloodthirsty Viking while praying in his tent (which we all remember from our schooldays) is not reliable history. Of course the Cogadh is going to talk the battle up in language redolent of Homer; this is the dénouement of its hero, after all. A truer picture of the battle, devoid of hyperbole and derring-do, is provided in the bald, unadorned testimony of the annals. I propose one can reliably infer how bloody such an encounter may have been by scrutinising the lists of the important persons who perished on both sides, and in the case of Clontarf, the lists of the slain are prodigious. Brian’s forces are supposed to have been victorious, but how does one measure victory in this instance? Brian’s lordship over Ireland was not maintained.  Brian himself did not survive the battle. Nor did the majority of his sons and grandsons. In fact so many of the leading men of Dál Cais and the fledgling Uí Briain dynasty were killed that their political aspirations were scotched for generations. Is this victory? On the other side, Mael Morda king of Leinster lost his life, but he had achieved what he set out to do—throw off the yoke of the Munster tyrant and win independence for his province. The Norse mercenaries Sitric imported from Man and the Orkneys were destroyed—perhaps this is what is understood as “victory” by the writer of the Cogadh. If so, it may have served his purpose; but in 1014 it did not look that way. There were two real winners of the Battle of Clontarf: Sitric, who did not take part but (at least according to the Cogadh) watched the proceedings from the ramparts of Dublin—let us recall that while Clontarf is part of the modern city, in the eleventh century the Clúain Tarb, the “bulls’ meadow”, lay outside the city limits; and Mael Sechnaill, who after Brian’s death took up the kingship of Tara once more, unopposed, and held it until his death in 1022. And as for Brian? His flame burned bright for a season, but as the Scripture says, He that loveth the danger shall perish in it (Ecclesiasticus 3, 27). God have mercy on all their souls.

Dr Niall Brady has higher degrees in Old Irish and Old Norse, specialising in Viking chiefs in early Irish history. He filed this article from Afghanistan where he is currently serving with the US Army.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 131, March-April 2014

Smashing the Celtic Delusion

SMASHING THE CELTIC DELUSION
By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

The Quest for Celtic Christianity, Donald E. Meek, The Handsel Press, Edinburgh, 2000, 282 pp

CELTIC TIGER MAY BE DEAD, but the Celtic brand still attracts. Seven nations are unequivocally Celtic: Ireland; Scotland; the Isle of Man; Wales; Cornwall; Brittany; and Galicia. One can argue that the basic ethnic stock of northern Portugal; northern Spain; France; Belgium; Switzerland; southern Germany; northern Italy; Austria; the Czech Republic; western Hungary and south-western Poland is Celtic. Evidence for this is seen in artefacts, place names and classical writings. St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is addressed to the descendants of Alexander the Great’s Celtic mercenaries who settled in Asia Minor. In Christ’s day, these people spoke a Celtic language.

Two millennia later a trip to a religious bookshop will turn up any number of titles offering Celtic spirituality, Celtic Christianity or the like. I can name David Adam, Esther de Waal and John O’Donoghue among many. Donald Meek addresses this phenomenon in this book.

My own background is in Celtic Studies; and I see academic Celtic scholars avoid popularised Celtica with good reason. Professor Meek is an exception. He is Professor Emeritus of Celtic in the University of Aberdeen; and is a native speaker of Scots Gaelic from the island of Tiree where his father served as a Baptist minister. His commitment to evangelical Christianity is clear, which adds power to many of his points more. One must commend his patience in carefully reading purported Celtic material written by people with limited, if any, understanding of the Celtic tongues.
Celtic Christianity…therapeutic spirituality
Professor Meek begins with the proliferation of books on Celtic Christianity remarkably compatible with popular therapeutic spirituality. He compares it to other outsider presentation of ethnic spiritualties, quoting reactions of real members of these communities: many Native Americans are not impressed at their depiction in such books. Ireland is the main Celtic country which buys into this, where he cites the late John O’Donoghue. Father O’Donoghue spoke Irish and studied philosophy and theology at advanced levels, but he has not shown much evidence of study of literature in Irish. The market for these
works is strongest in metropolitan England and the United States.

Professor Meek starts in the Highlands. Fifteen years after the 1746 Battle of Culloden, James Macpherson presented his “translation” of Ossian’s (Oisín) poems concerning his father Fingal (Fionn MacCumhaill). Macpherson may have used existing Gaelic poetry here, but no Gaelic original has been found and the work is considered Macpherson’s own, even with Hebridean influence. But as fraudulent we might see this, the Ossian cycle was enormously influential across Enlightened and Romantic Europe. Ossian left an impact on two critics: Ernest Renan (1823-92) and Matthew Arnold (1822-88). Renan and Arnold popularised Celtica, but neither understood any Celtic language. As such, they could not consider Ossian was Macpherson’s original work. While Renan and Arnold were active, there was solid academic work in progress particularly in Germany and early Irish and Welsh works were edited, translated and studied. Serious scholars like Kuno Meyer (1858-1919) and Douglas Hyde (1860-1949) did not distance themselves from the Celtic Twilight. In the Irish case, this study gave impetus to political nationalism, felt in other Celtic countries too.

Celtica moved on in the 1900s, but romanticism remained as it was. In the early twenty-first, Professor Meeks writes to separate the two. Anyone who visiting Glendalough could hear the Roman Church superseded the Celtic Church in the 12th century.  This partly reflects Reformation polemics, but the Celtic Church must be taken on its own terms. It was adamant it belonged to the Great Church. Its liturgy and scripture were Latin and it appealed to the See of Rome. This Church’s features: monasticism; relics; penance, were not proto-Protestant. If there was an eastern connexion, even with Egypt, it was because many early practices common to East and West survived in Celtic regions while declining elsewhere. Irish monks were very conservative regarding the date of Easter as Rome sought uniformity. As St Benedict defined western monasticism, Irish and British (Welsh, Cornish and Bretons) monks retained older models. The term anamchara literally means “soul friend”, was used to mean confessor and Professor Meek believes private confession was a Celtic development. The Hildebrandine reform was driven by Celts themselves in the Celtic nations.
Not unique to Celts
The romanticists emphasise the poetic Celts. But this separates the Celts from contemporary peoples. There are Anglo-Saxon literary visions and dreams.  Celtic Studies is tragically isolated from Mediaeval Studies and cognate disciplines. Many issues the Irish Church dealt with relating to marriage laws and other heathen survivals were encountered elsewhere. Most mediaeval European histories focus on England, France and the Holy Roman Empire rather than fringe nations. Yet the Norman occupation of Ireland, Wales and Sicily; the Teutonic Order’s crusade in the Baltic region; the Reconquista in Spain; and Norman expansion into Scotland offer newer perspectives which might lead us to think Celtic history less unique.

Professor Meek cites many working Celtic scholars; I will refer to three. Cork’s Donnchadh Ó Corráin often states what should be obvious. Celtic popularisers believe monastic hermits waxed lyrical on nature in verse, Professor Ó Corráin pointed out those who chose penitential life in wilderness were unlikely to notice natural beauty, and busy monastic scribes, writing in isolation from nature, were more likely composers. Maynooth’s Kim McCone made the case for reading early Irish literature as Christian work in Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature. Professor McCone refers to analogous studies in other areas (Icelandic sagas come to mind), to back up his thesis. Cambridge’s Patrick Sims-Williams has analysised philosophy and ideology behind Celtic Studies. I find Professor Sims-Williams’ ability to step back and compare trends here to other ideologies fascinating.

As stated above, Professor Meek is a practicing evangelical Protestant concerned with contemporary issues.He writes movingly of the importance of the Celtic saints to Protestantism and how steeped these figures were in Scripture. Much of the material he critiques is used in Protestant services. These are poor substitutes for the Bible. This is balm for the rat race, but is woefully inadequate for inner city underprivileged. Evangelisation is required and ancient saints would not have shirked this challenge; a reality check we have to learn from.

It has been a long time since I read a book on Celtica I enjoyed, as most of what I have reviewed is the dodgy material named and shamed in The Brandsma Review. But Professor Meek is not writing for Celtic Scholars. This is by far the best book on the topic I have read for non-specialists written by a specialist.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 132, May-June 2014

Theology in Stone - Irish High Crosses

THEOLOGY IN STONE–IRISH HIGH CROSSES
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum (John 12,32)

Christ mocked by Pilate’s Soldiers - Muireadach’s Cross, Monasterboice, Co Louth

THE MONASTERBOICE INN in Co Louth would not make a list of world-renowned academic centres, but when I saw Dr Peter Harbison was speaking there on the topic of Irish high crosses, I booked my place. Dr Harbison is an archaeologist working in the Royal Irish Academy with several publications on art and artifacts of early Christian Ireland. This was the Golden Age, a term that Dr Harbison is one of the few scholars to use these days.

Monasterboice is an appropriate venue for such a talk as two of the finest high crosses in Ireland are found at the monastic site there. However, there are several interesting high crosses in counties Louth and Meath alone which Dr Harbison picked for his presentation. Before he began, he dealt with the reasons behind the ring in the Celtic Cross. There are two principal reasons. The first is practical and shows the engineering skills of the Irish monks: the ring supports the arms of the cross. The second is theological.  The circle is a cosmic symbol representing the world, with Christ and His cross in the centre. Ninth century cosmology is an important consideration of the motifs on the crosses, but the model itself is based on the philosophy of history outlined in St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.

The first local cross Dr Harbison brought us to was in Duleek. This cross is about four feet tall and is easy to miss. It is in the grounds of the former Anglican church in Duleek, which is now a restaurant. The cross itself contains scenes from the apocryphal Early Life of the Virgin which is taken from the non-canonical Gospel of James. Though we don’t take any of these as gospel, the apocrypha does leave its impact on us. It is from this that we have the names of Our Lady’s parents.

Not far from Duleek is the Co Meath village of Colpe on the outskirts of Drogheda. A Celtic cross was discovered there in 1981 and was photographed by Dr Harbison. The cross was detached and as the former Anglican church in Colpe has changed hands on a number of occasions since then, the current status of the cross is unknown. The Crucifixion is depicted on this cross.

The next venue on the tour was the former Anglican church in Termonfeckin, Co Louth. The repetition of former Anglican churches in this talk struck me. Most of these are the oldest centres of worship in Ireland and in recent decades, many have passed into profane hands. This is a tragedy. The Termonfeckin cross is unusual in that the Crucifixion is on the east face of the cross. Normally, this appears on the west face, but it seems that the cross was placed the wrong way round. The Last Judgement, another favourite motif, appears on the west face.
Noah’s Ark
One of the best known features on any high cross is the Noah’s Ark from the cross in Killary, near Kells in Co Meath. This is the trade mark of the Allied Irish Bank, trading as First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland. At this point, Dr Harbison came to the crosses at Monasterboice. There is little doubt that few crosses in Ireland rival Monasterboice, in particular Muireadach’s Cross. The monks responsible for the crosses sourced the finest sandstone available to them which was from a quarry near Kells. The crosses have been standing in the open air since the early ninth century and exposed to all the elements. The most sheltered part of the cross is the underarm, which is somehow protected from the weather and looking at this gives a better appreciation of what the cross was originally like.

Muireadach’s Cross: the west face

 

Cross underarm

One of the striking features of the crosses is the fact that the bottom panels are the clearest. The reason for this is that they were constructed to be devotional and worshipers would kneel in front of them, with their fullest attention directed at the lowest panels. The first cross one meets in Monasterboice is Muireadach’s Cross, which is almost certainly named after second Abbot Muireadach, whose term was between 887 and 924. The general rule to these crosses is to have scenes from the Old Testament on the east face and from the New on the west face. Very often, the selection was deliberately paired; the sculptors followed the Patristic approach of seeing stories from the Old Testament as prefiguration of the New. Thus the crosses had both a devotional and an instructive function. At this point, it is worth reminding readers that mass literacy is only a recent historic phenomenon. In ninth and tenth centuries Ireland few outside the monasteries could read and the purpose of the stone crosses was for preaching and teaching. As a result, a lot of thought and prayer went into the content of the panels on any of the high crosses we might admire.

Left: Adam & Eve; Right: Cain & Abel

Beginning from the bottom of the east face on Muireadach’s cross is a panel depicting Adam and Eve (Gen 2,5–3,24), with Cain and Abel (Gen 4,1-16) alongside it. Above this is the story of David and Goliath (1 Sam 17, 32-55). The third panel up shows Moses striking the rock at Horeb (Ex 17,6), allowing the Israelites drink. The fourth jumps to the New Testament and shows the Adoration of the Magi (Matt 2, 1-12), except that there are four Magi rather than the three we are accustomed to seeing. St Matthew is not specific as to how many there were; he only tells us they left gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. On the east face, the head of the cross begins with St Michael the Archangel holding a weighing scales with the devil trying to upset the balance–the archangel is commonly depicted with a balance. Above him, Christ sits in judgement, with the souls of the blessed on His right and those of the damned on His left, being driven into Hell with Satan wielding his trident (Matt 25, 31-46; Apoc 20, 11-15). King David plays the lyre, flanked by the Holy Ghost as an angel notes the judgement and one of David’s musicians plays the flute. Above this, Christ is depicted in majesty. The top of the cross is shaped like a small chapel, reminiscent of the Gallerus oratory in Dingle. The figures here seem to be the Egyptian hermits Ss Paul and Anthony who were very influential in the development of monasticism.
Crowning of the Thorns
The south face has abstract features and animals.  The only human figure is on the arm where Pilate is shown to wash his hands, a scene which clearly marks out the Passion (Matt 27,24) The horseman above may represent the Apocalypse (6, 1-8). On the west face, the most striking panel is probably the bottom panel usually described as the Taking of Chris (seen above). Here Professor Harbison had two interesting observations. Firstly, Christ is carrying a staff. This is not described in the narratives of His arrest. Indeed, given Our Lord’s upbraiding of St Peter for cutting off Malchus’ ear with a sword, the impression is that He is unarmed (John 18,11). On the other hand, when Pilate’s soldiers crowned Him with thorns, they place a staff in His hand (Matt 27, 29) and clothed Him with a military cloak, described as scarlet by St Matthew (27,28) and purple by the other evangelists (Mark 15,17; John 19,2; Luke attributes the cloak to Herod: 23,11). The cloak on the cross is very elaborate and fastened with a brooch in a style one would expect of an early Irish king (the Tara brooch was reputedly found in nearby Bettystown). Further to this, Professor Harbinson believes that the cross was originally brightly coloured, which is hard to imagine right now. The dyes used were unlikely to stand a millennium of Irish weather. Above the Mocking of Christ is the Transfiguration (Matt 17, 1- 13; Mark 9, 2-13; Luke 9, 28-36) which prefigures the Crucifixion and Resurrection and above this, Christ gives the key to St Peter (Matt 16,19) and the Testament to St Paul. Above this in the head is the Crucifixion, with Longinus holding the lance (John 19,34) and Stephaton holding the sponge with the vinegar (Matt 27,48). Figures representing the ocean and the earth are seen in homage behind the cross. On the left is St Peter’s denial and on the right is the Resurrection with the Ascension above. The north face again has abstract figures, but the nature of interlacing which is difficult to appreciate in light grey, reinforces the thesis that the cross was originally brightly coloured. The arm of the cross has the Mocking of Christ by the Sanhedrin (Matt 26, 67-68), often seen as the scourging. Again Ss Paul and Anthony are seen in at the top of the north face.

If Muireadach’s Cross emphasises the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, the Kingship of Christ is also stressed. The crucified Christ is worshiped by sun, moon, ocean and earth; the infant Christ by four Magi representing the four corners of the Earth (just as the three were once seen to symbolise the three known continents; often highlighted by showing a European Melchior on a horse; an Asian Balthaser on a camel; and an African Caspar on an elephant). The Transfiguration shows the elevation of Christ over the earth and the granting of the key to St Peter shows His sovereignty. That He should sit in Judgement over panels representing the sin of our first parents and the slaying of the innocent Abel, while the victory of David over Goliath shows the strength of good over evil and Moses striking the rock represents Divine Providence. All this is woven into the centrality of the Cross in human history.
Ubi Petrus...
The Tall Cross in Monasterboice, at over seven metres high, is the tallest in the country. This allows for more panels, which I will describe briefly. At the bottom of the East Face, which is predominantly Old Testament, the boy David slaying the lion in defence of his flock. Above him, Abraham sacrifices Isaac (Gen 22, 1-19). Once again, Moses is shown to strike the rock at Horeb–this is popular in Irish high crosses. Over Moses, David displays the head of Goliath, with Samuel annointing him as king on the other side (1 Sam 16, 1-13). Over these, Samson pulls down the Philistine Temple (Judges 16, 3) and then Elijah is shown. At the base of the head, we see the three children in the fiery furnace (Dan 3, 1-23), beneath the main picture of Joshua crossing the Jordan (Joshua 3). To the left, St Anthony is tempted in the desert; and on the right, we see the condemnation of Simon Magus by Ss Peter and Paul (Acts 8, 9-25); above, we see Christ saving St Peter from the waves (Matt 14, 23-33), while at the top, a curious figure from the Old Testament, king Mannaseh (2 Kings 21, 1-17) offering a bull, where he has just destroyed a pagan site.  There is an apocryphal work which suggests Mannaseh converted at the end of his life, held to be canonical by the Orthodox churches. The south face shows scenes from the childhood of St John the Baptist. The west face begins with the body of Christ in the tomb. Over this, we see the Baptism of Christ. Above, we see the women at the tomb. Over this, Christ is seen again with Ss Peter and Paul. The panel above is unclear, but over this, we see the soldiers cast lots for Christ’s seemless garment (John 19, 24). In the head, we see Christ flanked by Longinus and Stephaton and the figures of the sun and the moon.  The Denial of St Peter is split in two; on Christ’s left, we see St Peter warming himself at the fire; on the right, we see the cock and the maidservant questioning him (John 18, 16-27). On the right, we see the Scourging at the Pillar (John 19, 1); on the left we see the Arrest of Christ, specifically the kiss of Judas (Mark 14, 45). Above, we see St Peter wielding the sword in Getsemani and above him, what appears to be Pilate washing his hands again. On the north face, we see Daniel in the lions’ den (Dan 6, 2-29) and David as king. There are many legendary creatures on the crosses, including centaurs, but the griffin is taken to represent Christ, being half eagle and half lion–the eagle being the king of the skies and the lion being the king of beasts.

Monasterboice Tall Cross: Crucifixion

It is clear from the foregoing that St Peter features in several of these panels on the Tall Cross. This iconography is that of the Roman Church, seen here in Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries. This means that the Tall Cross in Monasterboice is a standing refutation of the argument that the Irish Church was independent of Rome before the twelfth century. Yet, few places are symbolic of the distinctiveness of the Irish Church before the Hildebrandine reform reached Ireland–Monasterboice decayed as the new foundation at Mellifont flourished. Aside from this, if Muireadach’s Cross emphasises the Eucharist, the Tall Cross emphasises Baptism. If the High Crosses are unique to Ireland (aside from a few in Scotland or the Isle of Man, which were very much part of the Gaelic world at the time and for long after), many of the features are common in contemporary Carolignian art on the continent. The ideology and theology are the same. In the words of Professor Harbison, the stone crosses, of which only a small number are described above, represent Ireland’s greatest contribution to European sculpture and stonework in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries.

There followed a discussion on the preservation of these monuments, which need not concern us here. At present, all are vulnerable to the elements and also, unfortunately, to vandalism. Professor Harbison rightly said that there was never going to be a satisfactory answer to this. However, I cannot state firmly enough how important the high crosses are to Irish and Christian heritage alike. This article, like the lecture, only touched on a few, but thworking in the Royal Irish Academy with severale hope is that any awareness of these great treasures might stimulate further investigation.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 134, September-October 2014