Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qs9v7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T21:27:29.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sanctity and secularity in the early Irish church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Kathleen Hughes
Kathleen Hughes*
Affiliation:
university of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Ireland was odd in the early middle ages. She lay on the outer edge of the world, the survivor of that Celtic civilisation which had once covered much of the west. She had never immediately known the pervading influence of Rome, which continued in so many ways for so long after the Roman empire collapsed. Christianity had reached her rather early (there were enough christians to make it worth while to send a continental bishop, Palladius, in 431) and it came before many of the developments which determined the nature of monasticism in early medieval Europe. Ireland’s political and social organisation were somewhat different from those of the Germanic peoples of the west; and though the early church in Ireland had an episcopal, diocesan structure, within two hundred years or so of its inception it had been fundamentally modified by native Irish laws and institutions. It is therefore not surprising to find that both Ireland’s sanctity and her secularity had peculiar features.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 10: Sanctity and Secularity: The Church and the World , 1973 , pp. 21 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 I am taking this word in its moral sense, as meaning worldly, material standards.

2 Irische Texte, ed E. Windisch (Leipzig 1880) 1 pp 165-96; Lebor na Huidre, edd Best, R. I. and Bergin, O. (Dublin 1929) pp 67–76 Google Scholar for LU text only. Translated in Stokes, W., Adamndn’s Vision (Simla 1870)Google Scholar; Boswell, C. S., An Irish Precursor of Dante (London 1908)Google Scholar; and, in part, Jackson, K., Celtic Miscellany (London 1972) pp 290 ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Murphy, [G.], [Early Irish Lyrics] (Oxford 1956) no 9 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid no 12.

5 Ibid nos 18, 26.

6 Asceticism is one of the Irish expressions of martyrdom.

7 Hughes, [K.], [The Church in Early Irish Society] (London 1966) pp 57 ffGoogle Scholar.

8 [The Monastery of Tallaght, edd Gwynn, E. J.] and Purton, [W. J.], PRIA 29 (1911) C pp 115-79Google Scholar.

9 Ibid cap 6, pp 129-30.

10 Eclaise, Ed Mac, IER, 4 series, 27 (1910) p 510 Google Scholar.

11 Gwynn and Purton, cap 63, p 152.

12 [The Penitential of] Vinnian, in [The Irish Penitentials, ed Bieler, L.] (Dublin 1963) PP 74–95 Google Scholar.

13 Columba’s Rule in Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, edd Haddan, A. W. and Stubbs, W., II (Oxford 1878) p 120 Google Scholar; Strachan, J., Ériu 1 (Dublin 1904) p 194 Google Scholar; Bergin, O., Ériu 2 (1905) p 224 Google Scholar.

14 Penitential of Cummean, cap 5, Bieler p 120.

15 Vinnian, cap 29, Bieler p 84.

16 Murphy nos 8, 9.

17 Ibid no 4.

18 Ibid no 9.

19 Hughes, K., ‘The changing theory and practice of Irish pilgrimage’, JEH 11 (1960) pp 143-51Google Scholar.

20 Edd R. I. Best and H. J. Lawlor, HBS 68 (1931).

21 Ed W. Stokes, HBS 29 (1905).

22 Greene, Trans D. and O’Connor, F., A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry (London/ Melbourne/Toronto 1967) p 65 Google Scholar.

23 For the archaeological evidence for the cult of relics see O’Kelly, M. J., ‘The Belt Shrine from Moylough’, JRSAI 95 (1965) pp 149-88Google Scholar; Henry, F., Irish Art in the Early Clmstian Period to AD 800 (London 1965) pp 99 ffGoogle Scholar; Thomas, C., The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain (Glasgow 1971) pp 132-66Google Scholar.

24 [Adamnán, , Life of Columcille, edd , O. A. and Anderson, M. O.] (Edinburgh/London 1961)Google Scholar.

25 PL 62 (1863) cols 777 ff.

26 Ibid col 777D.

27 Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, 14 (Naas, Kildare 1970) pp 507-17.

28 Tripartite Life [of St Patrick, ed Stokes, W.] (London 1887) 11 pp 269–300 Google Scholar.

29 Ed and trans Stokes, Tripartite Life; ed Mulchrone, K., Bethu Phátraic (Dublin 1939)Google Scholar.

30 Ancient Irish Histories. The Works of Spencer, Campion, Hanmer and Marleburrough (Dublin 1809) p 25 Google Scholar.

31 For evidence see Hughes cap 5.

32 Bieler p 54.

33 Nash-Williams, V. E., The Early Christian Monuments of Wales (Cardiff 1950) pp 61-3Google Scholar.

34 Ibid p 63.

35 There is a considerable amount. See H. Wasserschieben, Die irische Kanonensammlung (Leipzig 1885) for the volume of canons known as the Collectio Canonum Hibemensis; see also Bieler. There are also, usually later, monastic rules.

36 I take it that they must have been the laymen for whom some of the penitentials legislate. It is difficult to see how the church could hope to impose these sexual restrictions on the lay population at large where, if we are to believe the secular laws, polygamy was still recognised.

37 Book of the Angel, Book of Armagh, ed Gwynn, J. (Dublin/London 1913) fol 21a 1 Google Scholar. For translation see Hughes p 277.

38 See Hughes cap 7, and [Hughes, K.,] Early Christian Ireland[: Introduction to the Sources] (London 1972) pp 71-5Google Scholar.

39 II.5, Anderson p 336.

40 We also hear of grants of land made to the church with the dependants who inhabited the land.

41 Hughes p 162 for the family tree.

42 Ibid p 163.

43 See Féil-sgrbhinn Eóin mie Néilt, ed Ryan, J. (Dublin 1940) pp 490–507 Google Scholar.

44 See J. Kelleher, Ériu 22 (1971), genealogy opposite p 126.

45 With two short and doubtful intervals. See Ó Fiaich, [T.], [‘The Church of Armagh under Lay Control’,] Seanchas Ardmhacha 5 (Armagh 1969) pp 75–127 Google Scholar.

46 The poems from which these phrases are extracted may all be read in Murphy.

47 This was Flower’s view. See Flower, R., ‘The Two Eyes of Ireland’, The Church in Ireland 432-1932, edd Bell and Emerson (Dublin 1932) pp 66–74 Google Scholar. It was accepted in its main features by Jackson, K., Early Celtic Nature Poetry (Cambridge 1935)Google Scholar and by Murphy. More recently, however, D. Greene has regarded nature poetry as a tenth-century development, while J. Carney wishes to date some of the poems considerably earlier.

48 The erenaghs who are in hell for this in the Vision of Adamndn.

49 Rule of Patrick, ed J. G. O’Keefe, Ériu 1 (1904) p 218; compare the Rule of the Céli Dé, ed Gwynn, E. J., Hermathena, second suppl vol (Dublin 1927) p 80 Google Scholar; Adomnan’s Life of Columba, edd , O. A. and Anderson, M. O. (London 1961) p 280 Google ScholarPubMed.

50 Ed K. Meyer (London 1892) p 73.

51 Gwynn, A., IER, 5 series, 66 (1945) p 82 Google Scholar: ‘Gan cennach egailse Dé do athlaochaib na do aithcleirchib go brath’, where ‘cennach’ means bargain, transaction, reward, recompense.

52 This is missing from the Rule of Patrick, which seems to be a different version of the Rule of the Céli Dé.

53 This point has been made by Ó Fiaich.

54 See Ó Fiaich p 106; Hughes pp 169-72.

55 Walker, G. S. M., Sancti’ Columbani Opera (Dublin 1957) p 28 Google Scholar.

56 This is best expounded by Ó Fiaich.

57 For the evidence see Early Christian Ireland pp 148-59. Compare Ó Corráin, D. , Ireland before the Normans (Dublin/London 1972) pp 85-7Google Scholar for an interpretation of the evidence which is rather different in emphasis.

58 I have discussed this much more fully in a paper to be published in the New History of Ireland.

59 Gwynn, A., ‘The first synod of Cashel’, IER, 5 series, 66 (1945) pp 81–92 Google Scholar; 67 (1946) pp 109-22. Compare Hughes pp 263 ff.

60 For these letters see EHD II pp 776-80.

61 Murphy p 68.