A Brief History of Irish Monasticism

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRISH MONASTICISM

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

ST PATRICK was trained as a monk in Gaul.  Christian Gaul was under the influence of the old Greek colonies in south-eastern France and the monasticism of Gaul was of a similar character to the monasticism of Egypt - in the spirit of St Anthony.  The popularity of St Anthony is seen in the copies of St Athanasius' Life of St Anthony in the monastic libraries and more concretely in his image on many high crosses.

St Patrick was particularly influenced by his Gaulish monastic exemplar - St Martin of Tours.  Sulpicius' Life of St Martin was also widely available in Irish monasteries.  The Irish monastic communities followed the spirituality and practice of desert monasticism.  This was ascetic and altogether different from the monasticism that would develop on the continent under the Rule of St Benedict.  Benedictine monasticism paralleled the cenobitic  monasticim of Cappadocia influenced by St Basil.

Egyptian monasticism tended to be eremitic; this phenomenon, beloved of the Irish, was later common in Orthodox Russia.  The great Irish monasteries began as hermitagesw.  Anchorites such as St Enda attracted huge followings and thus laid the foundations of influential monasteries - St Kevin's in Glendalough was a good example of this.

When St Colmcille - whether voluntarily or otherwise - went to Iona in 563, he set a very important precedent in the development of the Irish church.  Ever after, Irish monks would seek to preach the Gospel overseas.

Very soon afterwards, Irish monks left their mark all over the continent.  St Columbanus was particularly influential in France and Italy, and his disciple St Gall established a monastery in a canton that still bears his name in Switzerland.  St Fiachra became particularly associated with Paris taxi-drivers.  All over the German-speaking world, the phenomenon of the Schottenklöster or "Scottish monastery" is indicative no of the Scots, but of the Irish.  Scotus was Latin for Gael.  There is a district in Vienna called Schottentor which is indicative of this Irish invasion.  Irish monks went as far east as Kiev and perhaps Novgorod.  St Brendan the Navigator may well have reached Newfoundland.

In time, the Irish monasteries in Europe adopted the Benedictine rule, but continued to be Irish in character until the Reformation.  The Schottenklöster were known for the asceticism of their monks; St Macarius was the prior of the Schottenkloster in Würzburg in the 1100s and he was said to have changed wine into water.  Würzburg is at the heart of the Franconian wine producing region along the Main.
Strict asceticism
Irish monasteries, as remarkable for their distinctive craftsmanship and scholarship as for their asceticism, fell into disarray due to the political instability of the following centuries.  The Viking raids maid a well-publicised impact; but many monasteries suffered at the hands of Irish nobles.

A reform movement was already in place at this time.  In around 800, the Céle Dé (Slaves of God) were established in Tallaght, Co Dublin, principally by the anchorite St Óengus.  The Céle Dé, also known as Culdees and currently fêted among New Agers, were an incredibly strict monastic movement, analogous to orders which developed later.  Their concept of stabilitas loci was very literal and they lived on a very meagre vegetarian diet - they seem to have anticipated the Carthusians.

The movement spread rapidly and soon had foundations all over Ireland - some more questionable than others.  The ninth century king-bishop of Munster and Cashel, Feilimid mac Crimthaind, was a Céle Dé.  Feilimid was both very able and politically astute.  He set about claiming the high kingship and nearly succeeded until he was killed in battle against the Uí Néill in 847.  During Feilimid's reign, the cause of reform had a momentum unlike at any other period.  Not many abbots would risk taking on his wrath at the time.
Malachy and Bernard
The political upheaval that began after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 was damaging to the Church in Ireland.  Clontarf was no great victory; when Brian Boru died, the notion of a country under a single high king was established, but it was at least another century before a given dynasty established a claim to the high kingship.

In the late 11th century, the Irish Church faced another threat as the Archbishops of Canterbury began claiming jurisdiction over Ireland.  A movement of Irish Churchmen  saw it was important to for Irishmen to reform the Church here before others would come to reform it.  The star of this movement was St Malachy of Armagh - and the most significant element was the relationship of St Malachy to the most influential churchman of the day - St Bernard of Clairvaux.  The relics of Ss Malachy and Bernard are kept together before the high altar in the monastery of Clairvaux - and it is said they cannot be separated.

St Malachy introduced the Cistercians and the Augustinian canons regular into Ireland, and other orders followed.  When the Cistercian Pope Blessed Eugenius III was in exile, he asked St Bernard for advice and St Bernard told him to model his life on St Malachy.   Blessed Eugenius perhaps made the most significant contribution to the Irish Church in its whole history in 1152, when he sent John Cardinal Paparo as his legate to the Synod of Kells.

The embryonic Irish hierarchy erectic dioceses and petitioned for pallia for Armagh and Cashel.  This was not what Blessed Eugenius granted.  Cardinal Paparo delivered not two, but four pallia to Ireland - recognising Dublin and Tuam as metropolitian sees in addition to Armagh and Cashel.
English Pope's role
It is a tragedy of Irish history that there was rivalry between the Cistercians and Benedictines.  The more ascetic Cistercians held the upper hand in Ireland as they do today.  Blessed Eugenius had difficulties with King Stephen of England who retained the throne after a civil war against the Empress Matilda.  Eugenius was succeeded by the English Benedictine Adrian IV who had no sympathy for Cistercians and a better relationship with Matilda's son Henry II (who was later excommunicated for the murder of St Thomas Beckett).  Adrian issued the Bull Laudabiliter to Henry granting him Ireland as a papal fief, on the condition he would reform the Church.

So, within the space of a few years, a Cistercian pope saw the Irish church as being in such a good condition that it deserved four metropolitans, rather than just the two it had requested; and then a Benedictine pope came to the conclusion that the only hope for the Irish church was to entrust its reformation to a foreign monarch who happened to be a fellow countryman of his!

However, there is no doubt that the post-Norman invasion Irish Church maintained its vigour and continued to journey far afield.  To mention two examples, the tutor of the young St Thomas Aquinas was a teacher called Petrus de Hiberniae (Peter of Ireland).  One imagines he did a good job.  And when the Franciscans sent a mission to China in the mid-13th century, among the friars was Jacobus de Hiberniae (James of Ireland).  The Mongol dynasty was quite amenable to external ideas, including Christianity; and an archdiocese was erected in Beijing.  The Mongols were overthrown by the more inward looking Ming dynasty around the time the Black Death wreaked havoc with the Western Church.  And thus a tremendous opportunity was lost.
The Great Schism
In the later Middle Ages, the Irish Church suffered the decadence that was the lot of the Western Church after the Black Death.  Religious communities were particularly affected - and devastated.  The Great Schism of the West happened soon aftertwards.  It is well worth noting that two canonised saints of the Dominican Order, St Vincent Ferrer and St Catherine of Siena disagreed as to which purported Pope was legitimate.  Every order had at least two claimant superiors-general, based in Avignon and Rome.  And after the schism, there was still much disagreement as to the balance of power between a Council and a Pope.

The fifteenth century saw three of the mendicant orders - the Augustinians, Dominicans and Franciscans - develop reform movements within themselves.  These observantine congregations went back to their original rule, constitutions, spirituality and purposes, and also depended directly on the superior general rather than a local provincial who might have had political biases injurious to the interest of the order.  The observantine Augustinians particularly established themselves in the west of Ireland and principally among the Irish-speaking population.  This one bright spark offered a hope to the church which was standing on the brink of chaos.
Disaster on disaster
One immediate consequence of Henry VIII's schism was the suppression of religious houses in Ireland simply to gratify the avarice of the king's henchmen.  Some houses lasted as late as the reign of James I, but excepting a respite during Mary I's reign, the so-called Reformation led to one disaster after another for Ireland, culminating in the Penal Laws which lasted into the 19th century.

However, attempts were made to run religious houses in Ireland during penal times.  My favourite story relates to the presence of incognito Dominican nuns in Drogheda in the 17th century.  The local sheriff called to the house to discuss rumours of "Popish nuns" living there.  The prioress, an aristocratic Irishwoman, received him in her finest gown and put on all her airs and graces, dispelling the suggestion with the truthful statement: "Sir, the women in this house are no more Popish nuns than I am."
All over Europe
All this time, Irish religious houses were established all over the continent, many to parallel the Irish colleges there.  To this day, there is still an Irish Dominican convent in Lisbon and until the First World War there was an Irish Benedictine convent in Ypres (now Kylemore Abbey).  There were Irish religious houses in Paris, Louvain and Salamanca, all now tragically closed.  At one stage, there was an Irish college in Prague, associated with Charles University.

There were several other centres throughout the Catholic world which also provided Catholic gentlemen with education for vocations in the world.  A relative of Daniel O'Connell once said their clothes, their wine, their education and their religious were all contraband.  O'Connell and his brother were students at Douay at the time of the French Revolution and witnessed the bloodshed first hand - and the anti-religious nature of the revolution.  The Napoleonic era marked much upheaval for the church in Europe, so the relaxation of the penal laws afforded the Irish on the continent an opportunity to come home.

The 19th century was marked not only by the re-establishment of older religious orders in Ireland, or those founded on the continent in the interim, but by the foundation of new religious orders specifically for Irish needs: Blessed Ignatius Rice's Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers; Nano Nagle's Presentation Sisters; Mother Catherine McCauley's Sisters of Mercy; and Mother Mary Aikenhead's Sisters of Charity.  As Cardinal Cullen dominated the Irish church in the mid-nineteenth century, convents and monasteries dotted the country.

Once again the Irish took to the missions, building up the Church throughout the English-speaking world, prior to moving into more difficult territories.  Three endeavours arose from Maynooth  alone in the early 20th century.  Following the failure of the Maynooth Mission to India, the Maynooth Mission to China and the Maynooth Mission to Africa became the Society of St Columban and the Society of St Patrick.
A sudden drought
Religious life continued to expand in Ireland until the late 20th century, when it suddenly slowed down and went into reverse.  Religious houses closed.  Religious were no longer visible.  Religious spokesmen and women sent out mixed messages in a confused age.  The source of religious vocations suddenly dried up where only a short time ago they had been plentiful.

This is not altogether new in the Irish church.  Religious life in Ireland had many dark and bleak periods.  These coincided with a general decline in the health of the Church.  When the Church recovered, religious life was strong - but such a strengthening was evident in the fervour of the religious; the pride in which they wore their distinctive habits, practiced the ascetic life, proclaimed the teaching of the Church  in and out of season, and stuck to the original intention of their founders.

The world is not without such religious houses - more in France than anywhere else.  So when are we going to look once again to continental Europe for guidance?

The Brandsma Review, Issue 65, March-April 2003

St Fergal - Unconventional Apostle

SAINT FERGAL - UNCONVENTIONAL APOSTLE

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Nihil est opertum, quod non revelabitur;et occultum quod non scietur - St Matthw, 10, 26

One of the consolations of Pope Zachary's life...was the filial friendship of Saint Boniface...Among their correspondence..of especial interest...in the light of all the conjecture...over the past few years...of the possibility of "inhabited planets" other than our own...in answer to Saint Boniface's complaint that an Irish priest named Virgilius was disturbing men's minds by teaching that there was another world, other men on another planet beneath the earth, another sun, and another moon...[Pope Zachary] ordered Saint Boniface to reprimand Virgilius, and...to send him to Rome so that his doctrine might be examined...[I]t was not necessary...to condemn Virgilius, for the priest completely yielded to correction...of his Holy Father and went on...to sanctify himself.  He became Bishop of Salzburg, and lived such a life of holiness....that he was canonised by Pope Gregory IX.  (The above piece of papolatrous fantasy comes from Our Glorious Popes by "Sister" Catherine MICM of the Feeneyite Slaves of the Immaculate Heart, itself condemned by St Zachary's more recent successors)

I ONCE attended Mass in a German city on September 24, feast of Ss Rupert and Virgil, the patrons of Salzburg.  German-speakers principally know Salzburg at the birthplace of Mozart.  For most Anglophones, it is better known as the setting of The Sound of Music.  The city has ancient roots: its archbishop is the Primate of the Germans.  Salzburg was Bavarian until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and rigid distinction between Germany and Austria only dates from 1945.

Ireland has an old association with Salzburg.  Some claim its first archbishop, St Rupert, Apostle of Bavaria and Austria, was an Irishman named Robartach, but more reliable sources say he was Frankish.  However, Irish monks largely provided his education and he brought many with him to Salzburg.  The pre-eminent had yet to come.  This was Rupert's successor, St Virgil or Fergal.
Abbot in Salzburg
Fergal was born in the south of Ireland around 700 and little is known of his early life.  He became a monk and was educated on the Aran Islands, returning to the mainland to succeed St Canice as Abbot of Aghaboe, Co Laois in the Ossory diocese.  In 739, he left Ireland for the Holy Land with two companions, Dobdagrecc and Sidonius.  At first, they worked under King Pepin in France.  In 745, Pepin commended them to his brother-in-law, Duke Odilo of Bavaria, who sent them to St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg.

 Fergal became Abbot of St Peter's.  He declined the episcopacy on the grounds of humility - Dobdagrecc, now Abbot of Chiemsee, was consecrated instead.  Actually, Fergal implemented an Irish hierarchical model where the bishop was subject to the abbot.  In Irish Church politics, Fergal was a conservative with little time for Roman innovations regarding the Easter date or ecclesiastical jurisdiction.  The liturgy in Salzburg under Fergal included commemoration of the 15 Abbots of Iona from St Colmcille down to the contemporary abbot; and he brought relics of St Brigid and St Samthann of Clonbroney with him, inspiring devotion to the two in what is now Austria - the latter virtually forgotten in her own country.

St Boniface was unimpressed by Fergal's arrival in Salzburg.  Odilo had promoted Fergal over Boniface's candidate.  This was a challenge to Boniface's acknowledged German primacy.  Boniface has been accused of racism in his opposition to Fergal and some have suggested this clash of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic temperaments foreshadows future enmity between Ireland and England.  Boniface (né Wynfrith) came from Crediton, Devonshire, not far from the border between Celtic Cornwall and Saxon Wessex and he displayed no affection for his Cornish neighbours.  But he had many Irish monks working under him, two of whom were martyred with him in 754.

We might call Boniface an ultramontanist today.  Fergal may have had Gallican tendencies, but he was so from traditionalist grounds.  Tháinig idir Pheadar agus Phól - the Irish proverb tells us even the apostles Peter and Paul quarrelled.  The two had inevitable disagreements: each suspected the other of heresy.  Boniface knew of Fergal's leanings, but needed something more substantial to go to Rome.

The first occasion Boniface went to Pope St Zachary I concerned the sacrament of baptism.  Two Bavarian priests under Fergal's jurisdiction baptised catechumens with this apparently feminine formula: Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et spiritu sancta.  This was ignorance, but when Boniface insisted the candidates be re-baptised, Fergal and Sidonius upheld the validity of the sacrament.  Boniface denounced them to Zachary.  The pope confirmed the baptisms were valid and rebuked Boniface instead.
Clash over geography
Fergal had been known for his interest in the natural sciences even in Aghaboe and he engaged in some scientific speculation.  Boniface believed Fergal overstepped the mark, as he appeared to suggest men inhabited the Antipodes.

The confrontation between Boniface and Fergal over geography is still relevant to Catholic apologetics as it deals with the relationship between faith and science.  Anticlerical polemicists hold the Church was staffed by flat-earthers until Columbus' day, by geocentrists until Galileo's and that now, at best, we grudgingly accept evolution (less of a problem for Catholics than sola scriptura Protestants, but this writer needs to see more evidence for macro-evolution). 

Adherents of scientism put the Columbus and Gallileo cases very disingenuously. The objection to Columbus was not that the world was flat but that the round world was a lot bigger than he thought it was.  Columbus extimated Japan was 2,800 miles from Spain.  It is in fact 14,000 miles distant.  Were it not for the hitherto unknown Americas, Columbus and his crew would have died at sea.  As Luther and Calvin's attacks on Father Copernicus trouble nobody, the anticlerical faction point at Gallileo, omitting some details.

Firstly, the Church wrongly accepted the consensus of leading contemporary scientists that the universe was geocentric.  Secondly, Gallileo unwisely strayed into philosophy and theology in self-defence.  This implied the Church herself was heretical and thus brought the Inquisition on to his own case.

Regarding evolution, the only facet of the subject I know anything about is linguistic evolution.  Asked to believe our complex languages developed from animal grunts when all the evidence shows language simplifies over time, I apply Occam's razor and find the Tower of Babel story more credible.  However Occam's razor was first wielded not by the English Francisan William of Occam but by his contemporary, the Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Armagh, Richard Fitzralph, formally canonised by the Church of Ireland in Henry VIII's day as St Richard of Dundalk.  But all this was in the future.
Excommunication threat 
The showdown between Boniface and Fergal anticipated some aspects of the Gallileo case.  Even in the eighth century, thinking people accepted the world was round.  This proposition went back to Greek times.  The problem was to state that men lived in the Antipodes.  Pope Zachary told Boniface that if Fergal taught there were another sun, another moon and another race of men on the other side of the Earth, he would convene a council to investigate Fergal - and if it found him guilty of teaching heresy, he would be deprived of his priesthood and excommunicated.

Greek science held the world was round, but that the equator was in the Torrid Zone, a region of uncrossable heat.  The intelligentsia held this view, and also that no descendent of Adam could have traversed this divide.  This made the premise appear unbiblical: if there were a race of men on the far side, from whom were they descended?

To bring this into the 21st century, many people have an uninformed belief about the possibility of life on other planets.  As it is highly improbable (I gave up using the term impossible a long time ago) that sons of Adam reached hypothetical life-sustaining planets elsewhere in the universe, one must conclude that any alien race differs in lineage.
The shots in Fergal's locker
C.S. Lewis, Irish Anglicanism's foremost apologist, suggested there might be life on other planets, which had not experienced the Fall.  This was the challenge facing Fergal now.  Did he posit there was another race of men on the other side of the world?  Did they experience the Fall and Redemption?  Simply put, the problem was not scientific but theological, though it only arose in the context of accepted science.

So Fergal had to account for this problem before the Pope.  This is where the saint's erudition came into play.  When Ptolomy insisted Africa could not be circumnavigated, he was reacting to an account in Heredotus that Phoenician sailors had already achieved this in the reign of Pharoah Necho, an adversary of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  Modern research has confirmed both the possibility and plausibility of Heredotus' account of this incredible seventh century BC voyage.  Other accounts hinting at undiscovered countries south of the equator exist in Greek and in the eighth century, Ireland led the west in its knowledge of Greek.

Someone of Fergal's learning and interests would have been aware of this corpus as well as extensive writings in Irish and Hiberno-Latin on the same topic.  The Navigatio Brendani is the best known, but it is not unique.   Like the tale from Heredotus, it was only conclusively shown to be possible in the 20th century.  The Venerable Bede, St Isidore of Seville and St Jerome all mention the Antipodes.  It was on the authority of the latter that St Fergal based his defence.

There was a work in circulation at the time named the Cosmographia by Aethicus Ister.  This alluded to life in the Antipodes in sections attributed to St Jerome, though Jerome's authorship of any of the book is now disputed.  Fergal returned to Salzburg vindicated, but many now hold he was the sole author of the Cosmographia, which is also unlikely. 
First Austrian school
Fergal was eventually consecrated as Archbishop of Salzburg in 766.  He astonished his contemporaries by undertaking a 33 by 66 metre cathedral in 769 which was completed in 774.  Following Irish practice, he established a cathedral school.  This was the first known school on what is now Austrian territory and its foundation precedes the Bavarian Council's decree on schools in 774.

At this stage, Fergal was well advanced in what proved to be his life's work: the conversion of the Slavs in the Carinthian Alps.  This area, inhabited by peoples we now call Slovenes, extended from southern Austria to Slovenia to northeastern Italy.

The Slavs came into contact with Christianity as they moved westward.  St Columbanus preached to them in the seventh century.  Fergal began his earnest mission.  He baptised Duke Chetimar in Chiemsee.  He consecrated Modestus and sent him with 13 companions to Carinthia.  Modestus established his diocese at Maria Saal, dying in 763, but Fergal continued to supervise the missionary work until his own death.

After that, not even a heathen rebellion following Chetimar's death could reverse evangelisation.  Fergal's successor Arno came to an agreement with Patriarch Paulinus II of Aquileia on diocesan boundaries enabling the completion of this work, but Fergal was known as the Apostle of Carinthia ever after.  He also sent missionaries to many unknown parts - including what is now Hungary.

Fergal maintained an active life into old age, falling ill while preaching near the River Dravo in Carinthia.  He died on November 27, 784.  He might well have been forgotten as Bavaria was absorbed into the Frankish kingdom in 788.  However, St Fergal's tomb was rediscovered when the cathedral was destroyed in 1181.  This renewed interest and devotion to the dead archbishop who was canonised by Pope Gregory IX in 1233.  More relics of St Fergal were discovered after the Allied bombing of Salzburg during the Second World War.  His feast is on 27 November, though some Germany dioceses commemorate him with St Rupert on September 24.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 77, March-April 2005

Judging Latin Book by "Coptic" Cover

JUDGING LATIN BOOK BY ‘COPTIC’ COVER
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Ex Aegypto vocavi filium meum (Matt 2, 15, cf Num 23, 22)

Treasure from the Bog: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Fadden More Psalter. RTÉ/National Museum of Ireland. 52 Minutes

ONE OF THE most remarkable discoveries of the past decade was the Psalter uncovered in the bogin Fadden More, North Tipperary in July 2006. The Psalter is dated from approximately 800 and is one of the very few books of its age preserved with its original binding intact. The conservation of the manuscript is largely down to the painstaking labour over a few years of John Gillis of Trinity College, Dublin. The television film under review was very interesting and showed the identification and the preservation of the psalter in an entertaining manner. From this point of view, it is well worth a viewing. The contributions of the various scholars are enlightening, though I wonder why Thomas Cahill, author of the feel-good book How the Irish Saved Civilisation was chosen as an interviewee.

It was necessary for the programme to contextualise the discovery in the Irish Church of the day. Though I would have differences in emphases with some of the scholars who spoke, there was nothing misleading presented in the course of the show by any of the academics or Museum archaeologists interviewed. I would have more problems with the type of conclusion drawn by the producer voiced by the narrator.
The first papyrus
To come to the point, the attention focussed on one very important feature. When the bulk of the work was done, it was discovered that the inside of the binding was the first discovery in Ireland of papyrus. This was not to be expected given the climate in Ireland. Egypt’s dry climate is ideal for papyrus; this is found less commonly and in poor condition on the continent; and in Ireland, it was never found at all until this one case. In the course of his conservation work, Mr Gillis visited San Gallen to view similar manuscripts. Following the confirmation that the cover of the psalter did indeed contain papyrus, he went to the Coptic museum in Egypt to examine their book-binding practices, which were remarkably similar. Which prompted the deduction that definite proof connected the early Irish Church with the Coptic Church of Egypt.
 

First we need to be careful about the noun Copt.  It is derived from the Arabic qubt, which is based on the Greek word for Egyptian, Αἰγύτιοι. The Copts are ethnic Egyptians where as most Egyptian Moslems are Arabs in origin. In time this came to have a particular denominational meaning. The Coptic Church is monophysite: it holds that Christ has one nature. There is some diversion as to whether this means that Christ was solely divine or whether by nature was a fusion between the divine and the human, but essentially it believes Christ has no separate human nature. It is noteworthy that the Director of the National Museum, Dr Patrick Wallace was much more nuanced in his approach and spoke of the “monastic church of Egypt”. Though the monophysite position was defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 450 and debated long before that, it took centuries to take shape and it was some time before it was a unanimous position among Egyptian Christians. Likewise, RTÉ uses the term “Roman Catholicism” to refer to a denomination which has never described itself as Roman Catholic. Initially the Church used the designation “Great Church” and after the Great Schism, the western Church referred to itself as Latin Christendom. The term Roman Catholic seems to have been invented by Anglican theologians to designate the Catholic Church as it became after the reformation.  So the application of either term in the context of either Ireland or Egypt in the early ninth century can be misleading.
Desert Fathers
Even without the trace of the papyrus in the manuscript, we can say that there was an Egyptian influence on the early Irish church. The early Church in Egypt left a mark on all Christianity, or at least on any Christian denomination with a role for monasticism. This would exclude most of the Protestant world, but from the High Church wings of the Anglican and Lutheran communions through to the Assyrian Church of the East, there is a plethora of churches in which monasticism has a central importance.  This has been the case since St Anthony of Egypt became the first monk in the third century, following the example of St Paul of Thebes, who was the first acknowledged hermit. Both men were venerated in Ireland, appearing in literature, on high crosses and in many other contexts which marks their special significance. There is no doubt that the spirituality of the Desert Fathers made a deep impression on the Irish Church, which developed as a strongly monastic church to an extent that it took until the 12th century to set up an universally accepted diocesan structure, paving the way for the episcopal church we are acustomed to now. In this way, one appreciates the claims of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (i.e. Churches which reject the Council of Chalcedon on various grounds, and who are not in communion with Constantinople nor Moscow; nor necessarily with each other) that the early Irish church was one of them more than similar assertions from Anglicans or Presbyterians.

Of course the development of the Irish Church, and the Egyptian influence on it, was a lot more complex. Firstly, geographical and political factors played a part. In the absence of towns, Ireland was more suited to the development monasteries associated with the tribal federations who ruled Ireland. The Desert Fathers provided a tremendous inspiration in the absence of a cult of martyrs. But the most important source of this influence was not directly from Egypt, but through the Church in Gaul. Gaul was a centre of Greek and Alexandrian influence up to and after the evangelisation of Ireland and figures such as St Martin of Tours bowed to the example of Ss Paul and Anthony. The life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus was as widely read as the life of St Anthony by St Athanasius. St Patrick was considered the nephew of St Martin, as he was also believed to be St Mel’s uncle. To understand this, we have to understand the importance of the nephew in Irish ideology, specifically the “sister’s son”. Cú Chulainn was the son of Conchobair MacNessa’s sister, as many of the heroes had this relationship with the kings they served, so the poetry of Bláthmac, an eighth century monk, explains the incarnation in terms of Christ being the “sister’s son” of all mankind, the nephew of Man.  The early Irish monks did not literally believe St Martin was St Patrick’s uncle, but rather used the relationship to stress the spiritual descent of the first patron. In other words, that Irish Christianity was derived from Gaul.
Egyptian influence in perspective
This is not to deny the Egyptian influence, but rather to put it in perspective. As Gaul suffered the barbarian assaults (already evident in St Patrick’s lifetime), Gaul became less important and the Irish Church developed a life of its own which would gradually spread through the whole of Europe. It continued to take inspiration from Egypt and elsewhere, Syria and Armenia included. But this appeal was not unique to Ireland. St Anthony was venerated across Europe at the time. St Augustine, mentions both Ss Paul and Anthony in his Confessions and very much imitates them in his monastic legacy. Many centuries after the decline of the Coptic Church, the Russian monastic pioneers imitated the desert spirituality in Russia’s vast wilderness. Though Ireland had no desert, the old Irish dísert came to mean a retreat away from population. But we would get a wrong impression to think this was unique to Ireland, even n the Latin West.

The Egyptian church found other ways of expanding its influence. First of all, Egyptians who accepted the hypostatic union had to go elsewhere. Secondly, Egypt’s monasteries became the prey of multiple attacks from pre-Islamic Arab raiders from the fourth century on. Finally, the Islamicised Arabs supplanted Egyptian autonomy and very soon, the Copts were a minority in their own country. All this meant that there was a steady stream of refugees from Egypt and some of these found there way to Ireland.
Oriental influences
The appearance of a Coptic cover on an Irish psalter is nothing which should cause surprise. The blue pigmentation in other manuscripts is lapis lazuli, which is imported from the Middle East. No one suggests a strong Persian influence in Irish Christianity though. The more important point is that the Fadden More Psalter, like the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, is written in Latin, as are all texts of the canonical scripture or liturgical importance, together with a great deal of sacred and secular literature in contemporary Ireland. One could argue about the knowledge of Greek in Ireland of the time. There is no doubt that it was known and that it was probably more widely known here than elsewhere in the West, but it never assumed anything near like the importance that Latin had. In this context, it is harder to make a strong case for a particularly close link between Ireland and the Churches of the East, exclusive of any relationship with our sister Churches in the West.

Nevertheless, the programme made one important point. Christianity was established in the Middle East and in its early centuries was divided over three continents. As such it was far from a uniform body, which meant that a church in the far West such as Ireland could absorb oriental influences in addition to the Latin and Gallican stamp that was left on the church. But the programme makers were unable to bring the consequences of this home. In the first place, building so much around the fall of Rome in 476, when the eastern Christian world would say that the Roman Empire continued to exist until 1453, was very much in keeping with the western view of history.  It is interesting nonetheless that everyone accepts the decline of Rome in secular terms from the late fifth century and few correlate this to the increasing importance of the Roman Church through the same period. Secondly, though the programme stated the Coptic Church is thriving, it did not acknowledge the difficulties faced by Copts in their home country right up to the recent martyrdoms in Libya nor the even worse situation of Christians of ancient churches in other Islamic countries. A Christianity which flourished while our own ancestors worshipped idols was to disintegrate due to internal dissension and external persecution over many centuries. It is certain that these churches, particularly that of Egypt, left a mark on the Irish Church among other churches. But it would be a mistake to assume that this was a pre-eminent influence above all others. That is what the programme tries to do.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 136, January-February 2015