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Provided by the author(s) and University College Dublin Library in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title A Sailor on the Seas of Faith: The Individual and the Church in the Voyage of Mael Dúin Authors(s) Johnston, Elva Publication date 2003 Publication information Devlin, J. and Clarke, H.B. (eds.). European Encounters: Essays in memory of Albert Lovett Publisher UCD Press Link to online version http://www.ucdpress.ie/display.asp?K=9781900621878&sf1=eh_cat_class&st1=B100&m=53&dc=135 Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/8328 Downloaded 2021-09-29T11:11:46Z The UCD community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters! (@ucd_oa) © Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. A SAILOR ON THE SEAS OF FAITH: THE CHURCH IN THE VOYAGE OF MÁEL DÚINi The early medieval Irish imagined a landscape that came into being through names, names that formed an historical palimpsest.ii Throughout the island ecclesiastical names coexisted, overlaid and sometimes replaced those of the pre-christian past.iii But naming the land was not enough for, obviously, the island was surrounded by an ocean, one that was only partly known and whose limits receded far and away. Ireland lay at the gates of the unknown. The familiar world of classical geography, the globe made up of the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, was enclosed by uncharted waters and Ireland lay on their boundaries.iv These boundaries were open to exploration and Irish christians assiduously set out to know and to name the seascape surrounding their island. Knowledge and naming went hand in hand. They did so in at least two separate but inter-connecting ways: one empirical, the other imaginary. Thus, Irish clerics physically explored the north Atlantic. For example, the ninth-century Irish geographer Dicuill gives an important insight into the motivations and accomplishments of Irish clerical voyagers in his Liber de Mensura Orbis Terrae.v In a famous and memorable passage, he depicts Irish monks on a scientific expedition to the then unsettled Iceland closely observing what they regarded as unusual physical and astronomical data.vi These and similar empirical observations fed into intellectual speculations and into explorations that took place in the imaginations of writers. Such writers constructed narratives that transmuted real events and actual maritime experiences. They wove together actuality with urgent religious and social concerns. These included, very broadly, the organisation of Irish 1 society, the role of the church within it and the duties of individuals and their kindreds towards the secular and ecclesiastical. From as early as the seventh century, tales known as immrama, literally rowings- about, began to be developed in response to these concerns. Immrama, unlike many other Irish tale types, are of patently christian origin and the exploits of their heroes are set in the christian era.vii As a genre it draws on a variety of influences. Thus, the literary geography of the overseas paradise is influenced to some degree by christian apocrypha,viii and, in a very general way, by classical examples such as the Aeneid and, less directly, the Odyssey,ix as well as by native Irish otherworld tales known as echtrai.x In the immram the intrepid monastic voyager, not the pagan warrior, is usually the hero. The outlines of the immram genre can be clearly seen in Adomnán’s tale of the cleric and voyager, Cormac, in the late seventh-century Vita Columbae.xi Cormac’s quest for a terra secreta on the ocean is a deft blend of the believable and miraculous. Similarly, full-scale immrama drew creatively on the known and the imagined, albeit in very individual measures. The voyagers of these tales, starting from Ireland, ‘row about’ several islands before, generally, returning once again to Ireland. The structure is usually circular, the voyage bound in by a shared point of departure and destination. While most of the extant voyage tales are written in Irish, the single most influential example is the Latin Nauigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis.xii This polished narrative was probably written in Ireland during the second half of the eighth century, or at the latest towards the beginning of the ninth.xiii The Nauigatio is a speculum monachorum, a mirror for the ideal monastic life. Brendan visits islands that explore the best way for an abbot to create, and a monk to live in, the ideal monastic community. The saint’s journey is measured by the canonical hours and the paschal 2 cycle. The text is structurally unified but appears to draw on a rich tradition. Beneath the apparently naïve surface, the Nauigatio treats land and ocean as allegorical and as essentially religious in nature: the voyagers’ adventures point towards religious ideals and states.xiv This treatment of land and sea is a common feature of the voyage tale genre. Over time, the seemingly realistic element, which is prominent in the Nauigatio, was largely replaced by the fantastic and the obviously symbolic. The Naugiatio’s masterful mix of the real with the imaginary was replaced by one where the latter became dominant. Different islands came to stand in for differing social and/or religious experiences in ways that were clearer but not subtler. Through their idealised utopias or extreme dystopias, the writers of the immrama were able to express their ideologies and set up mirrors to the ordering of contemporary society. Islands were states of mind and cultural statements. They could also exist at the borders of this known world and other worlds. They faced at once towards earth, and towards heaven and hell. Immram Curaig Maíle Dúin ‘Voyage of Máel Dúin’, the tale that I wish to examine, uses its ocean and ocean islands as a social laboratory.xv As its title suggests, Immram Maíle Dúinxvi is written in Irish. It more than likely dates from towards the end of the ninth century or the first part of the tenth.xvii Like other typical examples of its genre Immram Maíle Dúin draws on a variety of sources. The allusions to earlier tales within its narrative are often skilful and suggest a target audience that was familiar with the tales that generated these allusions. Its author was clearly steeped in christian texts, knew at least some classical literature and was very familiar with vernacular tales. Immram Maíle Dúin contains references to the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Psalms, as well as the Aeneid, Nauigatio Sancti Brendani and the Irish tale Immram Brain mac Febail. These references range from the integral to the 3 superficial. The central role of borrowing and allusion combined with the episodic nature of the tale, something implicit in its very genre, may lead to a dismissal of the narrative as a hodgepodge. This is misleading, for Immram Maíle Dúin is well- worked out and thematically consistent. Despite verbal and thematic echoes of other works, it manages to avoid being merely slavish.xviii The narrative is profoundly textual and, in many ways, demonstrates the maturity of the genre. The author is confident enough to play with its topoi and he frequently subverts the expectations of his audience. Within its episodic framework, Máel Dúin’s adventure is cleverly structured. This revolves around a series of opposing categories, usually expressed as different islands, very much in the structuralist mode. For instance, warfare is opposed to peace and virginity to sexual licence. The tale takes its eponymous hero through many otherworld islands that vary from the fairly unremarkable to the outright fantastic. These disparate scenes are united by the intention of the author. This voyage tale articulates different ways of organising society, with Ireland as the always-implied point of comparison. Thus, it is no surprise that the narrative covers many aspects of early medieval Irish life, for this is a text that is pre-eminently concerned with society and the correct ordering of the communities within it. These aspects include the role of women, the relationship of the warrior to those in authority, and the place of the church. Its otherworld islands are not, in the main, places of mystical experience, but are the sites of social experiment. They exist on the borders between the real and the otherworldly; text and context are not collapsed but brought into a form of dialogue. This dialogue is externalised into an otherworldly island landscape. The tale itself is long as well as episodic. It is not repetitious, for its conservative, almost certainly clerical, author had a large number of concerns. It is hardly surprising 4 then that Máel Dúin visits an almost Polynesian number of islands during his adventures. The theme that holds the tale together, however, is the role of the church in Irish society and here, the author shows himself to be both highly critical and deeply idealistic. It is useful to summarise the main points of the tale before looking in greater depth at the author’s treatment of this theme. Its hero, Máel Dúin, is the son of a nun raped by Ailill, a member of Eóganacht Ninussa. The latter were a branch of the ruling dynasty of Munster and were associated with the Aran islands.xix Ailill is eventually killed in battle, fulfilling the dictum that those who live by the sword die by it. The nun, however, is a friend of the wife of the king of Munster. The queen takes the child and raises him as one of her own children. A typical Irish hero, the young Máel Dúin outdoes the other young men at the royal court in prowess and appearance during his youth.