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The Deep and Perilous Sea of Sacred Narrative The deep and perilous sea of sacred narrative On Peter Brown and the role of saints in Early Christian Ireland Reseach Paper ‘Holy men and women’ Instructor: Claudia Rapp (visiting professor UCLA) June 2002 Marian Hellema [email protected] This document is made available under the terms of Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1 Table of contents 1Introduction..........................................................................................................................3 2At the edge of the world: Early Christian Ireland................................................................4 Christianity in Ireland.......................................................................................................5 3Patrons, dead saints and exemplars: the models of Peter Brown........................................8 Patrons and dead saints....................................................................................................8 Exemplars and Ireland......................................................................................................9 4Brigit, Patrick and Columba: the sources...........................................................................11 Cogitosus’ Life of St. Brigit...............................................................................................11 Muirchú’s Life of St. Patrick............................................................................................14 Adamnán’s Life of Columba.............................................................................................15 5Peter Brown as exemplar: analysis of the sources..............................................................18 Conventional and Irish hagiography...............................................................................18 Irish saints as patrons, dead saints and exemplars.........................................................19 Peter Brown as exemplar................................................................................................20 6Conclusion..........................................................................................................................22 7Bibliography.......................................................................................................................24 Primary sources...............................................................................................................24 Secondary literature........................................................................................................24 2 1 Introduction The seventh century Irish hagiographer Muirchú starts his Life of St. Patrick with an image of himself as a writer: ‘I have taken my little talent - a boy’s paddle boat, as it were - out on this deep and perilous sea of sacred narrative, where waves boldly swell to towering heights among rocky reefs in unknown waters’1. This paper may convey the same feeling by trying to apply the ideas of Peter Brown to Irish saints. Brown is widely acknowledged as a founding father of the historiography of ‘holy men’ in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His work on the role of holy men in society is innovative and has generated much debate and new research. His ideas have evolved over time, but can be summarized in two images of holy men. The first image is the holy man as ‘patron’, who mediates, arbitrates and protects. This notion was broadened to include the cult of dead saints, particularly in the West. The second metaphor is the holy man as ‘exemplar’, who plays an important role in christianizing the pagan world by acting as an example and as an embodiment of Christianity. Ireland, however, was a special case in the Early Christian world, because it was never part of the Roman Empire. This raises the question whether Peter Brown’s models can be applied to the saints of Ireland. In this paper three Irish Saints’ Lives will be analysed, all dating from the late seventh century: Cogitosus’ Life of St. Brigit, Muirchú’s Life of St. Patrick and Adamnán’s Life of St. Columba. Despite all difficulties surrounding the interpretation of the primary sources, an attempt will be made to establish whether Peter Brown’s models fit these Saints’ Lives. The analysis of the texts will be preceded by a short exploration of Early Christian Irish society and of Brown’s work. 1 Muirchú, Vita S. Patricii (VP), preface (1), ed. and tr. Ludwig Bieler, The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin 1979) 63. 3 2 At the edge of the world: Early Christian Ireland In the early seventh century the missionary Columbanus called the Irish ‘the inhabitants of the edge of the world’1. This view of Ireland as one of the furthest regions of the world was general. Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire and its society differed in many ways from the Roman world. It was not exposed to the same Roman influence of trade, culture, cities, centralized government, bureaucracy, roads and military camps as most of the known world. Knowledge about pre-Christian Ireland is scarce and is mainly based on archaeological research. The evidence seems to indicate an important transition in the fourth century, leading to more economic activity, more settlements and agricultural changes. After the crumbling of the Roman administration in Britain, Irish seamen started to control the Irish Sea, establishing trading relations with Britain, and occasionally conducting raiding parties. There was much exchange of goods, ideas and people between the lands around the Irish Sea and Northern Channel, which came to form a ‘Celtic Mediterranean’ in the phrase of Peter Brown2. In this period (fourth and fifth century) the Irish also established settlements in Wales and Scotland3. In the period of the fourth to eighth century Ireland was an agrarian society without cities. Power lay with the kin-groups, who formed ‘petty kingdoms’ (túatha). The petty kings can be seen as a military aristocracy, but they did not form a consolidated class with political power. There was no centralized government, although there were overkings, who were overlords over several petty kings. Each petty king maintained order within his own kingdom and his power was based on his kinship ties and his clients. The population can be classified in three broad categories: the aristocracy, the clients and the slaves. In the patronage system the aristocratic lord granted livestock to his clients in return for services, rents or hospitality. Contrary to the Frankish patronage system, the land was not owned by the lords but by the clients and was kept within the kin-group through inheritance. Next to the aristocrats, the clients and the slaves, there was a separate group of ‘people of skill’. They were the learned poets and keepers of the Irish tradition (filid); the judges and lawyers; and, after Christianization, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and scholars. Ireland was very much an heroic society, where physical power, courage, honour, gift-giving and hospitality were important virtues4. 1 Quoted from T.M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge 2000) 182. 2 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity AD 200-1000 (Malden, Oxford 1996; paperback 1997) 81. 3 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland 152-158. Harold Mytum, The Origins of Early Christian Ireland (London, New York 1992) 21, 25, 34-36. 4 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland 69-80, 125. Kathleen Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (Londen 1966) 3-7. 4 Christianity in Ireland According to tradition Ireland was christianized in the fifth century by St. Patrick, a Briton from a clerical family, who was captured as a slave by Irish raiders. After several years in Ireland he escaped, was consecrated a bishop back in Britain and returned to Ireland as a missionary. His missionary work took place in the fifth century, but when exactly is not clear1. In fact there were probably already some Christian communities in the south of Ireland at the time he arrived, in areas that had contact with Britain and the Roman world. This can be deducted from the fact that pope Celestine sent Palladius as a bishop to the Irish Christians in 431, which implies that some Christianization had taken place before that. It seems likely that Christianity was first introduced in the Irish society at the beginning of the fifth century2. Ireland developed its own specific brand of Christianity. To understand this, first some words on the development of the institutional church in the western part of the Roman Empire. The ecclesiastical organization mirrored the administrative organization of the Roman Empire since Christianity had become the state religion in the fourth century. The geographical boundaries of the dioceses were the same as those of the Roman administration and the episcopal sees were in the Roman cities. In the fifth century the western Roman empire collapsed, but the ecclesiastical organization remained and even took over some of its administrative powers. Ecclesiastical power lay with the clerical hierarchy of archbishops and bishops. A separate strand of Christianity was formed by monasticism, which took either the form of eremiticism or of monastic communities. This type of church, with its episcopal hierarchy and its monasticism, was brought to Ireland when its church started to develop in the fifth and sixth century. An important difference was that Ireland had no obvious sees for the bishops because there were no Roman cities. It seems that
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