Engaging the National Patron

ENGAGING THE NATIONAL PATRON
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS
Vivo autem iam non ego vivit vero in me Christus.(Galatians 2, 20)

ONE EXERCISE I did in the New Year was a response to a challenge by Joe McCarroll was to return to the fundamental documents concerning Christianity in Ireland. I am referring to St Patrick’s Confessions and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. I worked through Dr Ludwig Bieler’s Latin text, helpfully provided in Bishop William Philbin’s Mise Pádraig and Bishop Joseph Duffy’s Patrick in His Own Words. Both bishops provided their own translation, Mgr Philbin in Irish and Mgr Duffy in English.  The former Bishop of Clogher, though, provided a free translation and also used The Jerusalem Bible as a model for the numerous scriptural quotes, for which the saint used the pre-Vulgate Latin translations. In this, Mgr Duffy followed the trends in the 1970s which elevated readability over literal accuracy in scripture and liturgy alike. But let me state that the notes in the bishop’s text are also valuable and it is possible to consult the Latin text with the English translation. For those who read Irish, Mgr Philbin’s text is both accurate and elegant and he too provides an interesting commentary.

Irish history begins in 431. This is not to say nothing happened in Ireland before this; there is plenty of evidence that much did. What it does say is that an entry in the Prosper of Aquataine’s Chronicle for this year tells us that Pope Celestine IV sent Bishop Palladius to preach to the Irish believing in Christ.  This was the initial point of a continuum which marked the systematic recording of Irish history since then, which what I mean by the first statement. The sentence itself tells us that there were Irish Christians prior to this date. There are several reasons why this was the case. First of all, there was much commercial interaction between Ireland and what is now Wales. The languages of both were still mutually comprehendible. There was population movement and trade between the two countries. Ireland was a good place to go in periods of persecution when it was still an issue in the Roman Empire. There were conversions of native Irish. And of course, many Christians were brought to Ireland as slaves.

We do not know a lot about Palladius, but the little we know is quite interesting. He was associated with St Germanus of Auxerre. St Germanus was in Britain in 429 to deal with the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius himself was British and though the case is made that he was personally orthodox, he has left his name on a heresy. He met both Ss Augustine and Jerome and made an impression. St Jerome said he was bloated with Scottish (i.e. Irish) porridge (Scotorum pultibus proegravatus). Pelagianism rejects Original Sin and the Grace of God, so Pelagians believe they gain heaven by their own labour alone and Christ is an exemplar rather than a saviour. Palladius went from Britain to Ireland where his mission was probably more successful than we imagine. But he was only the precursor in the story.

Of Welsh, Cornish and Breton stock

Before I even begin on St Patrick, there is much controversy over both his date and place of birth. I have heard a lot of arguments locating Bannava Tabarniae in Scotland, England and France, but as none of the above were yet settled by Scots, Anglo- Saxons or Franks, the location is irrelevant to the saint’s nationality. St Patrick was a Roman citizen and ethnic Celt. His family were well off, had been Christian for a few generations and seemed to have had interests in both Britain and Gaul. Mgr Duffy argues the saint’s Latin had a Gaulish accent, but this may be a product of education rather than upbringing. There was a British colony in present day Scotland, but it seems very far from a Gaulish base. I am convinced by the argument that “Tabarniae” could be the genitive for “Sabarnia”, which could indicate somewhere around the mouth of the Severn (“t” can replace an initial “s” in Celtic genitives, with the pattern crossing into Celtic Latin). Calling the saint a Welshman is an anachronism, but he was certainly of the stock of the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. The saint was born in the late fourth century at the earliest, but I am more persuaded for the theory that his mission began in the 450s rather than the traditional 432 which seems much too close to Palladius’ apostolate. In this regard, I would calculate that the saint was born in the early fifth century.

The young saint had no interest in Christianity. He tells us that before his abduction he was guilty of some sin or other which was sufficiently grave to cause him shame much later in life. It has been suggested by modern commentators that this sin was sexual, but this would not have had particular opprobrium attached among young men of his class in the late Roman Empire, so the suggestion it was murder is a bit more convincing. St Patrick believed his abduction was a punishment for this sin. He was taken to Ireland and sold into slavery, with members of his household and others. He was sold to a farmer to keep flocks and herds, in a place now believed to be Slemish in Co Antrim. The later biographers of St Patrick state he kept pigs, but present day farmers believe only sheep would survive on the higher slopes of Slemish and pigs and cattle would be confined to lower ground. It is possible the saint did a variety of work, but what is clear is that his Christianity came alive on Slemish. Here he prayed one hundred times a day and one hundred times a night. He was eventually guided by a dream to run two hundred miles away to find a ship to take him to Gaul, Mgr Philbin suggests around Killala Bay. Initially, he was not admitted as he refused to compromise his new found Christianity. The captain thought better of it and sent a sailor after him to bring him back. It turned out that his presence was useful.  The ship landed in Gaul and the crew wandered severa lweeks in the wilderness before asking Patrick topray. After which they came upon a herd of pigs. The devastation in Gaul testifies to the barbarian assaults as the Roman Empire was breaking down in the West.

Internalised the Scriptures

St Patrick was reunited with his family at the age of twenty-two. They wanted him to stay, but he knew he had to go elsewhere. He missed out on several valuable years’ in education, which is seen in his Latin, but he did study. If the Confession and the Letter to Coroticus show anything, it is how he internalised the scripture. This is evident after he returned to Ireland.  Though later writings give a developed narrative on St Patrick’s work in Ireland, the saint himself has little to say. A strong case can be made that Letter came before the Confession. The Confession appears to be a justification made afterward. In the Letter, the saint doesn’t mince his words about the raids on Ireland.  Many of his own converts were murdered or enslaved. He attempted to ransom the converts but was rebuffed. He excommunicated all the perpetrators.  This is where the bone of contention appears to have arisen: the Church in Britain were not prepared to recognise this and carried on as if nothing had happened.  At this stage, the saint produced his own apologia.

Unconventional

The Confession is not a conventional autobiography, but does give us most of the reliable biographical information we have about St Patrick. To a large extent it is a reaction against the charges made against him by the British Church. In this respect, he is very defensive. No one can doubt the man’s sincerity, but if there is a recurring theme again and again, it is his refrain that he did not carry out the work, but that God worked through him. This is an assertion of orthodox theology against Pelagianism. It happens too often not to be deliberate. The context of a British church riddled with Pelagianism while denigrating Patrick’s personal integrity occurs to one straight away. Issues such as his lack of polished Latin or the unknown sin of his youth came up at the time, and he justified himself. They also suggested he made money from the apostolate, when in fact he spent the little he had to work with.

Trials like Saint Paul’s

One imagines that St Patrick identified very closely with St Paul. He quotes him again and again. In recounting his own trials at the hands of some more hostile recipients, St Patrick’s list is very similar to that of St Paul. Though he was not martyred, he came close enough to it on a few occasions. In relation to his effect on those he preached to, one upper class lady came to him within days of receiving baptism seeking to take the veil. Though St Patrick’s own writing plays down the miraculous, one is impressed that the saint is living in the wake of the original Pentecost with all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, nowhere more than in the response of the Irish to his preaching.

The Confessions may be termed a working autobiography or apologia, but it lacks finality. This is par for the course in such works. However, at the time of writing, the saint concluded that the substantive work of converting the Irish to Christianity was done. To a certain extent, he seems to have believed himself to be in the end times, because he states that the message of Christ was brought to the world’s edge. This was, and is, one of the conditions which must precede the last times. St Patrick lived through the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. Though he was first taken from his privileged position as a Roman citizen, he later chose to forego it for the greater glory of God.  But he was aware that for a great many people just like him, there was little choice in the matter. In this way, the Confessions has a flavour of the Apocalypse as well as of the Acts. St Patrick did not completely obliterate heathendom in Ireland. It took several centuries after him before this was the case: evangelisation is a slow and drawn out process and our own day shows us it can never be taken for granted and frequently needs renewal. But what the mission of the national apostle ensured was that it would happen. The impression he made on the Irish, particularly on the nobility in the north of the country which had been least touched by pre-Patrician Christian incursions, put the chain of events in motion which would result in the nation embracing the faith in its entirity sooner rather than later.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 137, March-April 2014

St Malachy, Architect of Church Autonomy

SAINT MALACHY, ARCHITECT OF CHURCH AUTONOMY

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Beatus servus, quem, cum venerit dominus, invenerit vigilantem: amen dico vobis, super omnia bona sua constituet eum. St Matthew 25: 46-47

NOT far from Fatima is the fortress monastery of Alcobaça, resting place of many early kings and queens of Portugal and a monument to Portugal's history as a frontier territory between Europe and the Moorish empire.  This is why so many castles appear on the Portuguese flag and arms.  Alcobaça was Cistercian and among the saints particularly venerated by the mediaeval Cistercian order was one Irishman.  His statue is to be seen in the cloister there.  That was St Malachy of Armagh (1094-1148).

St Malachy, like so many historical figure, has a posthumous reputation that represents a distortion of his career.  In the English-speaking world, his is associated with a series of epigrams concerning future popes.  Assuming the present Holy Father is De Labore Solis, we are left with Gloriae Olivitiae and Petrus Romanus prior to the Second Coming.  I plead agnosticism on both authorship and authenticity of these prophecies, but that does not subtract from either the holiness or significance of the saint.

The Church in early 11th-century Europe sank into a mire that would make the Church on the eve of the Reformation seem positively virtuous - with dubious characters such as Benedict IX occupying the Throne of St Peter.  The one beacon that blazed on Continental Europe was at Cluny and from Cluny came a reform unlike any other - unequaled even by the Counter-Reformation.

Though many saints were raised up in this movement, the pontificate of St Gregory VII (Hildebrand) left its stamp on the Church even after Catholic monarchs throughout Europe implemented these reforms - such as St Edward the Confessor in England and St Margaret in Scotland, queen of Malcolm III Canmore, who succeeded Macbeth as King of Scots.

Ireland was on the outer periphery.  Between 1002 and 1014, Brian Boru O'Kennedy usurped the High Kingship and centralised it in a way his predecessors never could have done.  By the end of the 11th century, Turlough O'Brien had instituted attempts to reform a demoralised church.  Monasteries had ceased to be the centres of learning and piety that earned Ireland the title Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum.  The descendents of the Vikings had long been Christian, but the Ostman dioceses of Dublin and later Waterford and Limerick looked to Canterbury for jurisdiction rather than to Cashel or Armagh.

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was problematic in Ireland anyway.  St Patrick instituted the episcopacy but as there were no towns in Ireland before the Viking raids, no diocesan structure evolved.  The monasteries became the centre of ecclesiastical, commercial and even political life.  Monasteries linked by a common founder grouped together into federations called paruchiae to advance a common cause.  So the Columban paruchia, centred first in Iona and later at Kells, represented the interests of its founder St Colmcille (or Columba).  It sought an ecclesiastical primacy consistent with the political primacy of its patrons: the house of O'Neill.  The monastery of Armagh and its paruchia represented the interest of St Patrick, who was clearly venerated as the Apostle of the Irish, but until Armagh was universally accepted as the primatial see, not universally recognised as patron saint.

The Comarba Pátraic (successor of St Patrick) claimed primacy but was not acknowledged as such.  The would-be primate was only definitively an abbot of the monastery in Armagh, was not necessarily a bishop and from time to time may not have been a cleric in major orders.  Many of these officials were lay beneficiaries who were lesser nobility - theoretically in minor orders but essentially living a secular life serving the interests of their families or their superiors in the social order.

Other reforms were needed.  Lanfranc of Canterbury, who claimed Ireland was within his jurisdiction, wrote to Turlough O'Brien on the matter - on one occasion complaining the Irish had a law of fornication rather than of marriage.  The shortcomings in the Irish church delineated by Lanfranc were far from unique to Ireland, and the pace of reform was slow.  In Ireland, as elsewhere, it would take a very powerful personality to implement the Hildebrandine reforms.

There certainly was a mood in favour of reform among some political and religious leaders.  Some were aware of the claims of Canterbury and York.  Some were appalled at the prevailing state of the church within Ireland.  No one could question the high king's commitment to reform, but it would take a supernatural effort to bring order to an unruly Irish Church.

In 1096, St Anselm of Canterbury consecrated Malchus O'Hanvery as the first bishop of Waterford.  During a pilgrimage to Rome, Turlough O'Brien's son Murtagh realised how isolated Ireland had become from the Church and civil society on the continent.  In 1098, he invited the reform-minded Meath bishop, Maelmhuire O'Doonan to become Bishop of Killaloe.  O'Doonan was subsequently appointed Legate to Munster by Pope Paschal II.

Murtagh and O'Doonan together set an agenda for reform in the First Synod of Cashel in 1101 and were later joined by the scholarly Gilbert (previously a monk in Rouen) who became Bishop of Limerick at about the same time as Murtagh made Limerick his capital.
Celsus of Armagh
The drive for reform had its base in the south of Ireland and might have remained there had not an educated layman named Celsus become Successor of St Patrick in 1105 following the death of his great-uncle.  Celsus was a member of the Clann Sinaich, who monopolised the abbacy of Armagh for several generations.  When he succeeded his great-uncle, he was already zealous for reform.  One of his first acts was to receive ordination to the priesthood.  As there was a bishop in Armagh at the time, he waited until his death in 1106 to receive episcopal consecration.

The articulate Gilbert of Limerick outlined the plan for reform not only of the Church, but secular society as well, in De Statu Ecclesiae ("On the State of the Church") while Celsus made circuits of all the provinces in his capacity of successor of St Patrick.  In 1111, Gilbert presided as Papal Legate over the Synod of Rathbrasil (Co Tipperary) where the Irish hierarchy proposed an ecclesiastical map of 26 dioceses.  Though there have been a number of variations in the interim, the number of sees in Ireland remains at 26.
The rise of Malachy
Over the next decade and a half, the pace of reform slowed down and might have come to an end, had not Celsus picked out a gifted protegé.  Mael Maedog O'Morgair was a young man, born in Armagh in 1094.  His father was a teacher and his mother was from a family that had a claim over the abbacy of Bangor similar to that which Celsus' family had over Armagh - her brother, a layman, became successor of St Comgall and Abbot of Bangor.  Mael Meadog felt called to the monastic life from an early age, but in spite of many attempts, it was a vocation he would never realise.  Celsus saw in this young man a reformer like no other.  Mael Maedog became known to history as St Malachy of Armagh.

In 1119, Celsus ordained Malachy to the priesthood and sent him to the monastery of Lismore to study under Malchus O'Hanvery, the Bishop of Waterford, who was previously a monk of Winchester.  In 1124, Celsus recalled Malachy north to set him in the position of Successor of St Comgall, Abbot of Bangor and Bishop of Down.  During the following years, Malachy would introduce the rule of the Augustinian Canons and the Savignac Benedictines into his diocese.  In 1127, he was expelled from Bangor following political upheaval and he brought his monks into exile in Lismore.

In 1129, Celsus died leaving clear instructions that Malachy should succeed him as Successor of St Patrick and Primate.  Clann Sinaich were not going to surrender without a fight and nominated Murtagh to succeed.  Malachy refused to challenge Murtach until he had the backing of Ireland's secular and religious leaders.  Murtagh retained the revenues until his death in 1134, though Malachy was recognised as Primate.  When Clann Sinaich nominated Celsus' brother Niall in 1134, it was clear no one in Ireland was prepared to listen - so the Clann Sinaich pretensions came to an end in 1139.

When Malachy was satisfied the independence of the primacy was secured, he resigned the See of Armagh in favour of Gelasius, the Abbot of Derry and head of the Columban paruchia.  This was a deft political move, as Gelasius was uncompromised politically yet was dedicated to reform.

Malachy went back to Down as bishop.  He thought this was the end of his active life and he could retire to the cloister.  But first, the bishops of Ireland asked him to go to Rome to present their petition to Pope Innocent II to grant pallia to Armagh and Cashel, setting them up as metropolitan sees and guaranteeing the independence of the Irish Church.  Malachy undertook the task.

On his way, he visited Clairvaux where he made friends with St Bernard of Clairvaux.  St Bernard was the most influential churchman of his day and also became the biographer of St Malachy.  Malachy was thoroughly impressed with the Cistercian life and he petitioned Pope Innocent to be released from his obligations as a bishop in order to enter the Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux.  The Pope was not without sympathy but recognised St Malachy's calling was to reform the Irish Church.  The pallia were not to be granted to Cashel and Armagh just yet - and Malachy was ordered to return to Ireland.

The cause of reform prospered.  Malachy established the Cistercian Order in Ireland with monks from Clairvaux, and it spread rapidly.  There were some problems between Irish and French monks, but that did not lesson the Cistercian influence in Ireland.  He also introduced the Arroasian congregation of the Augustinian Canons Regular to Ireland, judging them to be particularly suited to Irish conditions.  The Canons Regular of St Augustine would eventually become the biggest order in pre-Reformation Ireland, but were never re-established after penal times.  St Malachy's legacy is still seen in the Cistercian houses in Ireland.
Wine into water
Though the main influence on the Irish Church form abroad was French, there are German influences to be seen to.  The Schottenklöster (Irish monasteries in Europe - in the early middle ages the Latin Scotus or the German Schotte designated an Irishman) had adopted the Benedictine rule at the time of Charlemagne.  In the mid 12th century, the king of Munster's cousin was the Abbot of the Irish monastery at Regensburg, so Irish Benedictines from Germany came to establish houses in Ireland.

At this time an unknown but rather interesting Irish Benedictine was Abbot of the Irish monastery at Würzburg.  St Macarius (died 1153) was so ascetic that he is said to have changed wine into water.  But the more ascetic discipline of the French Cistercians made a greater impact on Ireland that did the German Benedictines.

In 1148, St Malachy, armed with the authority of Papal Legate, summoned a synod of the Irish church to Inis Pádraig, Co Dublin.  At the time, Blessed Eugenius III was pope and had began his pontificate with two years in exile.  As he was a Cistercian, he asked St Bernard for advice on what he should do.  Bernard told him to model his life on the Irishman, Malachy of Armagh.

Malachy set out on another trip to Rome to petition Eugenius for the pallia.  This time he was not to return.  He died in Clairvaux on the way on the night of November 1-2, attended by St Bernard.  Very soon after St Malachy's death, St Bernard regarded him as a saint.  He was canonised by Pope Clement III in 1190.  His feast day is 3 November.

Though St Malachy never reached Rome, the petition did.  And in 1152, Blessed Eugenius III sent John Cardinal Paparo as Papal Legate to Ireland.  Cardinal Paparo convened the bishops of Ireland at a synod in Kells  where he unveiled the Pope's plans for the Irish Church.

Blessed Eugenius did not grant the two pallia as requested.  Instead he sent four - also recognising Dublin and Tuam as metropolitan sees.  In this way, the pope showed a profound understanding of the political and regional divisions in Ireland.  He also guaranteed the independence of the Irish church and recognised the strides made in its reform over half a century.  The pallia are the legacy of St Malachy of Armagh.

Not long after this triumph, St Bernard died.  He was buried with St Malachy under the high altar at Clairvaux as he requested.  The relics of the two saints are still together and according to some traditions cannot be separated.  They are in death as they willed to be in life.

St Malachy may or may not be the author of the prophecies I referred to at the beginning of this article.  It doesn't matter.  The vocation of St Malachy of Armagh represents the transition of Ireland from being an isolated Church with many distinctive characteristics into one which was definitively part of the Western Church.  The drive for this reform came not from without but from within.  The native Irish monastic rules were eclipsed, but that was an unintended effect of the reform.  Nobody foresaw how readily and completely Irish vocations would drift toward the Cistercians, Augustinian Canons and other continental orders.  Nor did this reform destroy the autonomy of the Irish church - on the contrary, obtaining the pallia from Rome in the manner achieved ensured that the Irish Church would be autonomous.  Had it been otherwise, the Archbishops of Canterbury would have gladly instituted a reform of the Irish Church to their own liking.

The saint's lasting memorial is not in imprecise predictions but in securing the independence of the Irish church and guaranteeing its reform by native Irish ecclesiasticsw.  That Church survived the upheaval of the next few centuries, the Reformation and Penal Laws, onl to be seriously threatened in our own day.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 75, November-December 2004

St Lorcan the Peacemaker

SAINT LORCAN THE PEACEMAKER

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Beati pacifici: quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur - St Matthew, 5:9

A Muire as mor in gním ado ringed in hErend indiu.(Mary, terrible is the deed done in Ireland this day) - A Leinster scribe lamenting the banishment of Diarmait Mac Murchada in 1166)

WE often judge past in the light of subsequent events.  For example, there is a tendency to see the First World War through the prism of the Second.  Notwithstanding nasty Prussian militarism, the Central Powers were not comparable with the Axis Powers a generation later.  The former's defeat was no great triumph for the West - it rather set Europe up for something much worse.

Likewise, we should not look at Brian Boróma through post-Norman invasion spectacles (pardon the anachronism).  A disgruntled, dispossessed Gaelic noble gave his version of events in Cogadh Gaedel re Gallda.  The central thesis was that the Ua Conchobair dynasty was as incompetent against the Norman as the Uí Néill were against the Viking - but Brian Boróma was the Irish military exemplare and ideal king.

The truth was different.  The Vikings were long defeated and baptised prior to Clontarf, in which more of them were allied to Brian's real enemy, Máel Mórda, than to Brian himself.  Contemporary Irish aristocrats regarded Brian as a parvenu of inferior ancestry (the monks of Cashel could even point at two pedigrees - one was obviously flawed).  And Clontarf was a Phyrric victory - it resulted in several generations of internecine warfare preparing the country for the Norman invasion.

For all that, Brian was ruthless and able, and if he allowed his admiration for Charlemagne carry him away (signing the Book of Armagh as Imperator Scottorum), it was his vision of a centralised Irish kingdom which dominated Irish political thought ever since.

Clontarf devastated Leinster.  A ruler with the unlikely moniker of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó attained the kingship of Leinster in 1042 and claimed the high kingship a generation after Brian.  His sept, the Uí Cennsalaig, would dominate Leinster politics in the following centuries (though they hadn't provided a king for several centuries previously).  Many lines vied for the high kingship and the country was beset by intermittent civil war and anarchy.

The former Viking towns looked to Canterbury for spiritual guidance, and Gaelic churchmen recognised Lanfranc and St Anselm's designs on Ireland.  They delivered the reform of the Irish church during the ceasefires.

Blessed Eugenius III approved the Irish Church's reforms by granting the requested pallia to Armagh and Cashel and granting additional pallia to Dublin and Tuam on his own initiative.  Thus he guarranteed the independence of the Irish Church in 1152.  Eugenius was a Cistercian and saw that the reform was Cistercian-driven.  His mentor, St Bernard of Clairvaux, was very close to St Malachy of Armagh.  The black monks and white monks were engaged in a power struggle at the time and Eugenius was succeed by an English Benedictine, Adrian IV.

Young Henry II wanted to conquer Ireland and sent John of Salisbury to get Adrian's approbation.  In 1155, Adrian saw the Irish Church differently to his predecessor (there were few Benedictines in Ireland), so he commissioned Henry to bring Christianity to Ireland in Laudabiliter.  The Empress Mathilda was still alive and had no desire to see her son engage in wasteful adventures.  So Henry neglected his charge for another decade and a half.

Twelfth-century Ireland was dominated by the career of Diarmait MacMurchada.  He became king of Leinster in 1126.  Unable to compete for the high kingship like his great-grandfather, he could and did make it difficult for others.  The year he took the throne, Lorcan Ua Tuathail (Laurence O'Toole) was born in Wicklow.  Until the advent of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó, the Ua Tuathail were a more prestigious family than MacMurchada.  Lorcan's mother was an Ua Brain princess of Uí Faeláin, from North Leinster's second family (Wicklow and Kildare were in north Leinster at the time).  In the Gaelic custom, Lorcan was sent to the Ua Conchobair of Uí Fáilge for foseterage, which aligned him to a third powerful house in Leinster, as befitted a young prince.  All was well until Leinster nobles intrigued against the king in 1141.  Diarmait killed or blinded 17 of the conspirators in anticipatory retaliation.  Muirchertach Ua Tuathail became head of the Uí Muireadaig and his only daughter was married to Diarmait.  As a safeguard against further plots, Diarmait dragged Lorcan with other Leinster princes to Ferns as hostages.
A clear insult
The old Gaelic order was very strict on the treatment of hostages, but Diarmait did not comply.  He sent Lorcan to an inferior household, a clear insult to his wife's family.  Muirchertach seized a few of Diarmait's key officers and threatened to kill them if his son was not released.  Diarmait placed the boy in the custody of the Abbot of Glendalough until Muirchertach let his men go.  Lorcan was tired of politics now and wanted to remain in Glendalough as a monk.  An ironic beginning to a vocation that would place him at the epicentre of a political crisis which would have permanent repercussions in Ireland.

There were doubts about Lorcan in Glendalough.  His education was martial rather than literary.  And there was discontent when his father nominated him as abbot in 1153 (which was in Muirchertach's gift).  Lorcan had already been ordained to the priesthood when younger than the canonical age of 30.  However, it is a tribute to Lorcan that he was the near unanimous choice as Bishop of Glendalough when Gilla na Náemh died in 1157.  He refused on the grounds he was too young.

In 1161, he became Archbishop of Dublin.  There had been eight Bishops of Dublin before his immediate predecessor Gréne (Gregory) got the pallium in 1152.  These were all Ostmen (as the descendents of the Vikings were called) with no love for the Gaelic Irish and until the Synod of Kells, they looked to Canterbury rather than Armagh.  Lorcan's brother-in-law, Diarmait, was overlord of Dublin and he had a hand in the election.  The Primate, Gilla mac Liag MacRuaidri, consecrated Lorcan.

The Dublin Ostmen were not enthusiastic about the appointment.  Christ Church Cathedral was Lorcan's first priority.  He introduced the observantine Arrouasian Congregation of Augustinian Canons into the cathedral and as far as his administrative duties allowed, he took an active part in Christ Church's liturgical life (wearing the Arrouasian habit) and he was known for his prayer, penance and almsdeeds.

The best known Irish twelfth century scandal was Diarmait's abduction of Derbforgall, Tigernan Ua Ruairc's wife in 1152.  Commentators suggest Derbforgall had a role in this, but the king of Breffny became Diarmait's sworn enemy for the insult - even after Derbforgall was returned with her fortune.  The other party to the insult was Mór, Lorcan's sister, who withdrew to a convent in Dublin.  This event would have a disproportionate bearing on subsequent Irish history.

Things came to a head in 1166 when the kings of Ireland combined under Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair to expel Diarmait from Ireland.  They accomplished this and Ua Ruairc drew sinful pleasure form plundering Diarmait's castle in Ferns.

It was a short-lived victory.  Diarmait spent the next year seeking Norman aid.  Though Henry II was too occupied to give him immediate help, he did see the request as a golden opportunity (to rid himself of troublesome vassals).  Diarmait still had a problem persuading the Norman Earls on the Welsh Marches to join him, but they did come, to stay.  Initially Diarmait recovered his own territory.  Then he attempted to take Leinster.  The high king successfully thwarted him, but the worst was yet to come.

Strongbow's advance party camped at Baginbun in 1169.  They were reinforced by the main force and took Waterford, after which Strongbow married Diarmait's daughter (Lorcan's niece) Aífe.  Strongbow turned on Dublin.  The Ostman king, Asgall MacTorchaill's fleet controlled the Irish Sea.  A formidable Irish hosting protected Dublin, but Diarmait and Strongbow avoided them, and when Dublin sought terms, Ruaidrí withdrew.  Lorcan now had to intercede with his in-laws on behalf of his flock as Dublin's finest went with Asgall and the navy (and their valuables) to the Isle of Man.  When Asgall returned with reinforcements, Norman luck again prevailed and Asgall, defiant to the end, was beheaded in the hall of his own palace.  A Manx naval squadron blockaded Dublin for two months and Strongbow got into deeper trouble as Diarmait died, but now Henry arrived in Ireland.
Parallel with Becket?
Henry was an unlikely crusader.  He had been excommunicated for his role in St Thomas Beckett's murder, as England faced an interdict - and he came to Ireland to restore Christianity!  His obsequiousness to the Papal Legate, Christian O Conarchy was in marked contrast to his refusal to admit legates to England at the time.  Henry's main motivation in Ireland  was not its conquest, for religious or secular reasons, but the containment of his own Anglo-Norman subjects.  He didn't want an independent Norman kingdom to his west.  He attended the Second Synod of Cashel in the winter of 1171-1172 to convince the Pope of his fidelity.  The Irish bishops were prepared to accept Henry's lordship if he would bring an end to Ireland's protracted political instability.

Though the Normans were as politically divided as the native Irish, they had a clear military superiority and only mutual rivalry and apathy (the former encouraged by Henry) prevented them from overrunning the whole island.  In 1175, Lorcan was the chief negotiator of the Treaty of Windsor between Henry and Ruaidrí.  As the treaty was not honoured, we can only deduce that Lorcan was more interested in securing a peaceful political settlement for Ireland than in rival political claims.  During the negotiation, an assailant attempted to fell Lorcan with an axe as he said Mass.  Noting the similarities between this and Beckett's martyrdom, most contemporaries cast a suspicious eye on Henry.

After Windsor, Lorcan had another test.  St Malachy of Armagh had achieved autonomy for the Irish Church a generation earlier.  It was now for Lorcan to defend it.  Alexander III broadly endorsed the Norman invasion of Ireland, in spite of his distrust of Henry.  He now angered Henry by naming Lorcan as Papal Legate in Ireland in 1179.  Lorcan had a high standing in the universal church and he participated in the Second Lateran Council that year.

As Papal Legate, Lorcan was concerned that the 12th Century reform should not be undone, as signs indicated it would be.  The role of the Norman in this process was interesting.  If the Bull Laudabiliter commissioned Henry to reform the Irish Church, Lorcan must have sensed some irony.  In slightly more than one year in office, he reported over a hundred Norman clerics holding Irish benefices to Roman ecclesiastic tribunals for sundry offences.

One would suspect that Lorcan would no longer be the best candidate to negotiate with Henry.  But this is exactly what Ruaidrí asked him to do in 1180.  Lorcan undertook to do so, to find that Henry refused to see him and left England for France.  Lorcan followed him to Normandy where he fell ill and died in the Abbey of Eu on the night of November 14.  The Augustinian Canons were convinced of his sanctity and investigated his life; one canon wrote his biography.  The cause for his canonisation is regarded as the first modern ecclesiastical legal process in history.  It received overwhelming support from old adversaries - the Ostmen of Dublin, once opposed to his appointment as archbishop, now wholeheartedly endorsed his sanctity.  Even the Normans attested to the prelate's virtue.  In 1225, he was canonised by Pope Honorius II and his feast is on November 14.  His body lies in Eu, but his heart is in his own cathedral - Christ Church.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 76, January-February 2005

Oliver Plunkett: A Saint Betrayed by his own

OLIVER PLUNKETT: A SAINT BETRAYED BY HIS OWN

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

In proprio venit et sui eum non receperunt-St John, 1, 11

SEÁN Ó RIORDÁIN'S poem Fill Arís contains one memorable line: Dún do intinn ar a tharla ó bhualadh Chath Cionn tSáile (Close your mind to what happened since the defeat at Kinsale).  The Battle of Kinsale in 1602 marks the beginning of the end of the Gaelic Order in Ireland.  Gaeldom, at least in Ireland, was necessarily Catholic.  When Gregory XIII introduced the calendar reform in 1582, this was accepted throughout Catholic Europe, including the courts of the O'Neill and the O'Donnell.  So as Mountjoy's troops fought the Battle of Kinsale in December 1601 under the old style which England would continue to use until 1752, the more advanced Gaelic Irish and their Spanish allies engaged them in January 1602.  The fact that the Julian date of 1601 is impressed upon our minds indicates the extent of the Protestant victory.

In 1607, the Ulster princes left Gaelic Ireland leaderless.  From then on, most initiative would fall to the Sean Gall or Old English, the descendant of the Anglo- and Cambro-Norman who maintained Catholicism and as a result were only now coming to terms with the Irish identity.  These Hiberno-Normans were adept at the law and parliamentary procedure and used both quite well until they found themselves outwitted by Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth.  However, Wentworth was deposed in 1641 due to a temporary coincidence between Irish Catholic and Presbyterian interest which suited an increasingly assertive English Parliament for the time being.  After Wentworth, things got worse.

Confederation of Kilkenny

The Gaels could not bear it and proceeded with the 1641 Rebellion, unfortunately missing their objective of taking Dublin Castle.  This was followed in 1642 by the inaugural meeting of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, better known as the Confederation of Kilkenny.  The Catholic Confederacy was the most incredible gathering of Irish clergy and laity in modern Irish history.  It sat as a parliament, raised an army and even chartered a university in Limerick.  One could dream about the possibilities, but Gael and Norman clashed with each other and no one took the bigger picture of the civil wars raging in England and Scotland into account.  When Charles I was executed in 1649, the Confederacy was doomed.

In 1646, the original papal envoy  Father Scarampi left Ireland to make way for the incoming Nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini.  This was shortly after the great victory of Owen Roe O'Neill at Benburb and Ireland was full of hope.  Scarampi took a number of young men with him to study for the priesthood in Rome.  One of these was Oliver Plunkett.

Oliver Plunkett was born in Meath in 1625.  He came from an old Norman family and many of his relatives were titled nobility, both Catholic and Protestant in persuasion. One of the 19th century Anglican Archbishops of Dublin was a relative, as was George Noble Count Plunkett, the first Foreign Minister and his better known son, the executed rebel Commandant Joseph Mary Plunkett. This was in the future.  The young man was tutored by his cousin, a Cistercian priest named Patrick Plunkett who held the title Abbot of St Mary's (Dublin) and who subsequently served a as Bishop of Clonmacnois and then Bishop of Meath.  At the age of 16, the student was judged to be ready to attend seminary in Rome.
Cromwellian Settlement
The Protestant ascendancy set up Trinity College in 1591 to provide for the education of young men of promise.  The Catholic recusants found the Counter-Reformation seminaries a lot more sympathetic and within a century, several Irish colleges sprung up on the continent.  Oliver Plunkett went to the Irish College in Rome, studying in the Roman Jesuit College, in Propaganda College and in the Sapienza.  His ability was recognised, and he spent most of his early priesthood teaching theology in Propaganda, while holding the office of a consultant on Ireland to the Roman Curia.  Ireland was going  through one of the worse periods in her history.  Cromwell laid waste to the country in his brief military campaign and his generals continued this.  The Cromwellian Settlement, colloquially summarised in the phrase "to hell or to Connaught" saw Catholic ownership of the land fall from 60% to about 20%.  For all that, the settlement was not nearly  as thorough as the Ulster Plantation of 1609.

Cromwell died in 1658 and the Commonwealth fell in 1660, but the restoration of Charles II was not to signal the return to the status quo ante.  In the words of Jonathan Swift:

Those who cut off the father's head, forced the son to fly for his life, and overturned  the whole ancient frame of government...gained by their rebellion what the Catholics lost by their loyalty.

There was to be no significant alteration in Ireland to what it had been under the Commonwealth.

In 1669, Oliver Plunkett was appointed to the vacant primacy.  He returned to Ireland on March 17, 1670 following a clandestine consecration to the episcopacy in Ghent.  The firs duty he had in Ireland was pastoral and over the next four years, he confirmed nearly 50,000 people of all ages - some as old as 60, and often in the open air.  He turned to the topic of education.  At a time when the Protestant establishment was all-powerful and no Catholic order was more despised than the Society of Jesus, he succeeded in establishing a Jesuit college in Drogheda.  Drogheda, notwithstanding the Cromwellian slaughter on 11 September 1649, was the second largest city in Ireland at the time.  Within a few months the school had an enrollment of  150, forty of whom were sons of Protestant gentlemen.  The school lasted a few years until its closure and destruction.

Though it was over a century after the Council of Trent, intermittent persecution in Ireland delayed the effective implementation of the Council decrees.  Archbishop Plunkett found this problem when he came to Ireland and set about correcting it.  This was his undoing.  Laxity in clerical discipline was subject to exaggeration, but nevertheless the conduct of some Irish priests left a lot to be desired.  Secondly, there was an age-old dispute between regular and secular clergy which made church government difficult.  Finally, a dispute arose between Dublin and Armagh in relation to the primacy.
Guerrilla warfare
Disciplinary problems within the Church took place in the background of one grave pastoral problem.  Many of the dispossessed Irish gentry took to the continent to join any of several armies.  Some stayed at home and conducted a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British administration and those who now occupied their lands.  These Rapparees or Tories varied considerably between those who acted from the highest patriotic motives to those who degenerated into simple highwaymen.  However, they uniformly made the lot of the common people worse and present the Irish hierarchy with a problem.

Synod after synod condemned them, but Oliver Plunkett negotiated with the Tories in an effort to resolve the impasse.  Many priests working in the Armagh Archdiocese denounced the Primate for colluding with the authorities while the Archbishop of Dublin, Peter Talbot accused him of drawing too close to the felons.  The Primate had considerable success with his talks - many Tories left the country to join continental armies - but when a notable Rapparee, Patrick Fleming was killed by government agents in 1677 while travelling under Oliver Plunkett's safe conduct, many criticisms were made.

Oliver Plunkett sough to implement the Council of Trent reforms in Ireland.  A century of intermittent religious persecution made this difficult.  A proportion of the clergy led scandalous lives and the Primate went far beyond his diocese.  The Vicar Apostolic of Derry, Terence O'Kelly, was a notable offender, and he successfully used the civil processes to frustrate any attempt to bring him to book through the Praemunire clause.  Here, Archbishop Plunkett used his political skills to outmaneuver the wily prelate. At the same time, several priests - diocesan and religious - were censured for grave deficiencies in their ministry and personal lives.  This made the Primate many enemies.

The relationship between the members of religious orders and the diocesan clergy had been very difficult from the days of St Patrick and this was something Oliver Plunkett did his best to address.  However, there was a dispute between the friars of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders.  The Franciscans argued the Dominicans should not be invited into the Armagh Archdiocese.  The Primate disagreed and extended the invitation, earning him the enmity of the very powerful Franciscan order.

The contemporary Archbishop of Dublin, Peter Talbot, came from a noble family associated with Malahide Castle (his brother, Richard, was later Duke of Tyrconnell and would serve as James II's viceroy).  Archbishop Talbot was aware of the growing importance of Dublin in Ireland and proposed that the Archbishop of Dublin should be primate.  Archbishop Plunkett answered with a tract defending Armagh's position.  Talbot responded to this and both tracts were published on the continent.  This was the beginning of a long-standing dispute between the two metropolitans.
The Popish Plot
If we focus on the internal politics of Irish Catholicism in the 1670s, we should not forget that the overall position of the Church in Ireland was precarious to say the least.  Just how delicate the situation was became apparent when Titus Oates hatched the infamous "Popish Plot".  Oates was a former Anglican minister with a history of trouble-making who had briefly studied in the English Jesuit colleges oin Valladolid and St Omer.  In 1678, he hurled wild allegations against Catholics in Britain and Ireland.  Nothing might have happened had not certain prominent anti-Catholics chosen to use this material.

The Popish Plot unleashed a new persecution against Catholics with saw Archbishops Plunkett and Talbot thrown into prison, with many others.  At this point the two were reconciled as Oliver Plunkett defied the guards to administer the last sacraments to Peter Talbot, as he died a martyr's death.

The Successor of St Patrick was to follow.  It was alleged that Oliver Plunkett had plotted to bring a French fleet into Carlingford Lough with an army of 15,000 men as part of the general conspiracy to overthrow Charles II.  A trial in Dundalk collapsed as a Protestant jury refused to convict the archbishop, so he was brought to London.
Clemency refused
There is one point which must be commented upon in Oliver Plunkett's trial.  Four of the prosecution witnesses were priests active in the Armagh archdiocese, two of whom were Franciscans.  It is a mystery how the Primate did not challenge his accusers, but long incarceration seriously damaged his health.  Following the trial and conviction, it was said he was already dead before he might have suffered from the more brutal elements of execution by hanging, drawing and quartering.

The action of priests against the Primate is a testament of how unwilling many Catholics were to accept the Tridentine reform, particularly priests.  There is a contemporary satire, Comhairle Commissarius na Cléire, which is believed to mock Oliver Plunkett and his work (and the author is believed to have been a priest).  Also there were many demands for clemency which Charles II refused to heed, one coming from the Earl of Essex who originally arrested him.  Charles told Essex he would have done more good by testifying at his trial.

Oliver Plunkett was executed on 11 July 1681 and was canonised by Blessed Paul VI on 10 December 1975.  His shrine at St Peter's Church, Drogheda, Co Louth attracts a steady stream of visitors.  His life and work continue to have revelance to our own day.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 86, September-October 2006

 

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

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