He banished snakes from Ireland — standing on top of Croagh Patrick, a hill in County Mayo, he rang a bell, and all the snakes in Ireland fled.
He used the Irish shamrock, a three-leafed clover, to teach his converts about the Trinity, the one-in-three union of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
He argued with High King Laoghaire at Tara and won for the side of Christianity.
He was on speaking terms with both God and an angel, and once climbed Croagh Patrick to speak with God.
He wrote the lovely prayer known as “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.”
None of these myths can be verified, at least not as they are described today. The shamrock story appeared centuries after Patrick’s death, and the “Breastplate” was probably written in the seventh or eighth century. It is possible that Patrick did face down a king over some issue of Christianity, but probably not as it is told in the famous story about Laoghaire.
27 { St. Brigid the Generous
Brigid of Kildare was one of Patrick’s converts to Christianity. She became abbess of a huge monastery that admitted both men and women. Some historians say she was actually a bishop. Most of what we know about St. Brigid is not historical fact, but it is fairly certain that Brigid was an immensely powerful woman who did a lot to advance Christianity in Ireland.
Brigid’s father was an Irish nobleman. She converted to Christianity while still living at home. The first thing she did was to start handing out her father’s food and goods to beggars. Her father was furious; he tossed her into his chariot and drove off to see the king of Leinster, to offer him Brigid as a wife.
When they got to the king of Leinster’s palace, Brigid’s father went in alone to see him. Out of respect, he first took off his sword and left it in the chariot with Brigid. While her dad was in the castle negotiating her marriage, a leper came up to Brigid and asked her for help. The only thing available was her father’s sword, so she gave him that.
Her father and the king of Leinster then came back out. Of course, her father immediately noticed that his sword was gone and wanted to know what Brigid had done with it. When he found out, he flew into a rage and beat her.
The king of Leinster, intrigued by this unusual young woman, stopped her father from hitting her and asked her why she gave away his things. She replied that if she could, she would steal all of the king’s wealth and give it away to the poor. Not surprisingly, the king decided not to marry her after all.
Brigid’s monastery was huge; it contained a school of art and a scriptorium that produced gorgeous religious manuscripts. Brigid never abandoned her desire to help the poor, and her monastery was famous for its hospitality. After her death it turned into a center of pilgrimage, almost as big as a city. It became a place of refuge for anyone in Ireland, where people fleeing invaders could find safety and where kings could store their treasures.
Brigid was radical in more ways than one. She admitted both men and women to her monastery, and she seems to have performed all the duties of a priest. This was an outrage for the Catholic Church, which has never approved of female leadership, though people broke many rules in far-flung Ireland in the early medieval days.
Brigid is sometimes called the Mary of the Gael. In one legend, she shaped a cross out of reeds to teach people about Christianity, much like St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity; today, Irish people still keep St. Brigid’s crosses. Brigid’s feast day is celebrated on February 1.
February 1 is also the Celtic feast of Imbolc, dedicated to the Irish fertility goddess Brigid. Coincidence? Certainly not — the Irish incorporated many aspects of their pagan Celtic religion into their version of Christianity. Another pagan-Christian combo associated with Brigid was St. Brigid’s fire, which was started in ancient times and burned into the Middle Ages.
28 { St. Columcille, Felonious Monk
Columcille, usually called Columba by non-Irish writers, converted thousands of Celts to Christianity and founded a plethora of monasteries. But he didn’t do this simply out of love of God; he committed some serious sins and then threw himself into God’s work as a form of atonement. Part of his penance was permanent exile from Ireland, which turned out to be the key to his impressive missionary accomplishments.
Columcille’s real name was Crimthann, which means “fox” in Irish. He was the son of a nobleman of the Conaill clan, and was well educated in his youth. When he had finished his secular education, he went to study with Bishop Finian in Clonard, Gaul.
Finian owned a beautifully decorated Psalter, and Crimthann fell in love with it. He wanted to copy it, but Finian wouldn’t let him. So Crimthann stole into the darkened church at night and copied it in secret. He had no candle, but the fingers of his left hand shone with lights to illuminate his work. Sadly for Crimthann, he got caught, and King Diarmait (or Dermot) made him give the copy back to Finian.
Crimthann became a monk and took the name Columcille (“Dove of the Church”). He made a pilgrimage to the grave of St. Martin of Tours, a legendary founder of monasteries. Inspired by Martin’s work, he returned to Ireland and began founding monasteries right and left. By the time he was forty-one, he had founded forty-one monasteries.
But Columcille wasn’t a good, peace-loving Christian. King Diarmait had one of Columcille’s followers killed, and Columcille got angry; he persuaded all his warrior relatives to go fight the king. They defeated Diarmait, and Columcille took this opportunity to reclaim the Psalter he had copied from Finian years earlier. It was thereafter called the Cathach (“warrior”).
But a monk is not supposed to go to war. Columcille was excommunicated and told that he must leave Ireland forever. Three thousand enemy soldiers had died in the conflict, and Columcille set himself a penance of converting 3,000 pagans to Christianity. With this daunting task ahead of him, Columcille enlisted twelve followers and sailed away to the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland.
Columcille and his followers had embraced the White Martyrdom, the sacrifice of leaving behind the land they loved best and moving to an unknown territory, there to fast and do penance in a monastery they built. Soon, they found themselves unaccountably popular. People from all over Ireland, Scotland, and Britain heard about this new monastery with the famous abbot, and they came to visit. Many of them decided to become monks themselves.
Columcille decided that Iona could only hold 150 monks. When there got to be too many men on the island, he would send off groups of thirteen monks to found new monasteries elsewhere in Scotland. Would-be monks kept coming, so Columcille kept sending off new groups of monastery founders. By the time he died, more than sixty monastic communities had been founded by his men all over Scotland, and he had met his goal of 3,000 conversions many times over.
29 { St. Columbanus, Missionary to Europe
Columcille had spread Christianity through Scotland; Columbanus (or Columban) took it even further. He took his mission to Gaul, through Switzerland, and into northern Italy, converting barbarians everywhere he went.
Columbanus was born in Leinster around 540. As a young man, he traveled to Ulster to study and then entered a monastery in Bangor, County Down. He worked and prayed there for twenty-five years.
Around 590, Columbanus and twelve companions went to Gaul to found a monastery there. He was so successful that he actually founded three: Annegray, Fontaines, and the important Luxeuil. He worked with the uncivilized barbarians living in the forest, trying to convert them to Christianity.
This went against the practice of the local bishops, who preferred to stay in larger towns and cities and preach to their local believers. The bishops disapproved of Columbanus and summoned him, but he refused to go; instead, he sent them a letter in which he basically told them that they weren’t doing their jobs. In Columbanus’s opinion, a bishop ought to be out in the countryside trying to reach the pagans.
The bishops conspired with the evil queen Brunhild of Burgundy to have Columbanus deported. He and his followers went to Nantes
to catch a ship back to Ireland, but it sank. Columbanus and four companions survived and headed for northern Italy. In the Alps, his German translator, Gall, got sick and refused to go on. Columbanus had a big fight with him, and then left him behind.
By 612, Columbanus and his companions were in Bobbio (in Lombardy, Italy). There they built the first-ever Irish-Italian monastery. Columbanus spent the rest of his years writing outrageous letters to his fellow churchmen. He is best known to us through his extraordinary correspondence, written in impeccable Latin and thoroughly grounded in Scripture. He never stopped criticizing his colleagues, and he seemed to have had no sense of humility or respect for rank. He even sent letters of scathing criticism to two popes. Columbanus died in Bobbio in 615.
30 { Wild and Crazy Irish Saints
You can’t swing a cat in Ireland without hitting a saint. Most towns and professions have their own patron saints who take a special interest in their affairs. For example, St. Mac Dara is patron saint of fishermen in the Aran Islands. Other saints became famous by founding monasteries or teaching other saints. St. Enda from the Aran Islands taught many holy men, including St. Ciaran. Others became famous for their miraculous deeds, great wisdom, and courage, or their unbelievable love of discomfort.
KEVIN OF GLENDALOUGH, THE TREE-HUGGER
Kevin was a member of the royal house of Leinster. He was born around 498. As a boy, he was taught by three holy men, and when he grew up, he moved to Glendalough, a spectacular site in a valley surrounded by sheer cliff faces and between two lakes.
Kevin is said to have taken up residence in a tree. He was very close to the animals — once a bird even laid an egg in his hand. He later moved into a tiny cave called St. Kevin’s Bed. He spent his days either standing naked in one of the frigid lakes or hurling himself naked into a patch of nettles.
Kevin’s fame spread, and he soon had a number of followers who persuaded him to let them build a monastic community on the shore of one of the lakes. They got him to move out of his cave into a little stone hut that they built for him.
ST. DECLAN
Declan brought Christianity to southeast Ireland in the fifth century. It’s said that he was adrift at sea, praying, when a stone floated by with his bell and vestments. He vowed that he would land wherever the rock landed and would there find his resurrection. He and his stone washed ashore at Ardmore, County Waterford, and there his stone still sits on the beach today. It would cure the rheumatism of any believer (except a sinner) who could manage to crawl under it, a feat that would be difficult for anyone afflicted with that ailment.
ST. CIARAN
Ciaran (or Kieran) was born in Connacht in 512 and became famous for founding the great monastery of Clonmacnoise in County Clare. Clonmacnoise was exceedingly isolated — it was surrounded by bog and could only be reached by river or by walking along a ridge called the Pilgrim’s Road. (Bogs notwithstanding, this is another beautiful site.) This monastery flourished for 600 years as an international center of learning. It produced many illuminated manuscripts, including the Book of the Dun Cow, the earliest known manuscript in the Irish language; it was named after Ciaran’s cow, which might have supplied the hide that bound it.
ST. BRENDAN THE NAVIGATOR
Brendan was a very popular saint in medieval Europe. According to legend, he set out with twelve disciples in search of the land promised to the saints. At Clonfert, County Galway, he founded a monastery around 512. His adventures along the way, which included an encounter with a crystal column on the ocean and a passage through a curdled sea, thrilled generations of people in Ireland and Europe.
31 { Irish Blend: Christian Traditions
The early Middle Ages in Europe are often called the Dark Ages. But in Ireland, this period was a Golden Age, at least for Christian monks. The Irish Christians lived a peaceful existence, devoted to scholarship and prayer. A group of Irish monasteries became a destination for scholars from all over the Continent; they produced a body of astonishingly beautiful works of art and preserved classical learning for posterity.
Ireland is a long way from Rome. As a result, the Irish developed a form of Christianity that didn’t follow Rome’s rules to the letter. The Irish were much more open to different beliefs and accepting of nonbelievers. They didn’t set as much store in the infallible authority of the church fathers, and they were more willing to allow women a say in how things would be run.
Early Irish Christians built their religion on top of a pre-existing culture and set of religious beliefs. The Celtic gods and the druidic traditions were still present, and everywhere people looked they saw the prehistoric mounds that were supposedly inhabited by the old deities. People still celebrated the old festivals, but put a new Christian veneer on them.
For example, Samhain turned into All Hallows’ Eve, better known as Halloween; All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day are still celebrated by the modern Catholic Church.
After St. Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland, many new Christians in the fifth and sixth centuries wanted to show how dedicated they were to their new religion. Patrick had told them stories of early Christian martyrs, men and women who were thrown to lions or murdered for their faith in other glorious, horrible ways. But Ireland was now peaceful, and no one was persecuting Christians there. So how could an Irish person match that level of commitment? Ever resourceful, they found a solution: leaving society and its comforts to commune with God alone.
The Irish came up with an intriguing theory of the kinds of martyrdom available to them, now called the “threefold martyrdom”:
Red Martyrdom: Red because the martyr sheds blood for faith’s sake — this is the conventional martyrdom by torture and death.
Green Martyrdom: Leaving the comforts of home to live in some isolated spot in the wilderness, studying Scriptures and communing with God.
White Martyrdom: Leaving Ireland to lead a monastic life in some foreign land, the most extreme form of sacrifice.
For most serious Irish Christians, the Green Martyrdom was the most likely plan of action. They had read stories about Egyptian and Middle-Eastern hermits who had lived alone in the wilderness, fasting and doing penance, and they decided to adopt this model for themselves. They gave up material pleasures; in return, they hoped for grace in the next life. But they didn’t count on becoming the most popular phenomenon to hit Ireland in the early Middle Ages.
32 { Monasteries in Ireland
One of the most notable features of medieval Ireland was its absence of cities. The Irish lived in the countryside, farming little plots of land and grazing their cattle, and they never settled down in large groups. On the Continent, cities served as gathering places for educated people and as nuclei for cultural exchange; bishops had their headquarters in cities and spent their time preaching to their local, relatively wealthy, urban flocks. In Ireland, monasteries began to serve this purpose, with predictably different results.
The earliest Irish monks went off to live by themselves as solitary hermits. But they didn’t stay alone for very long. Word got out about their wonderful isolation and ascetism, and people with their own aspirations toward monasticism would come and ask to become their students.
Before long, a solitary ascetic would become the head of a small community. These groups built themselves little enclosures containing huts for the monks, a church for believers to hear Mass, and often a library. Many monasteries also included a guesthouse, where visitors could stay to learn about Christianity and pray with the monks or nuns. The hospitality of Irish monasteries was famous; visitors were always welcome, and monks and abbots were always willing to baptize new believers.
Monasteries actually looked like small towns. Many of them contained a number of small buildings surrounded by a wall. The most distinctive type of architecture from this period was a kind of hut shaped a little like a beehive, constructed of stones held together without mortar. The skill involved in building one of these was extraordinary, because the technique req
uired balancing all the rocks perfectly; the monks grew so good at this job that some of their beehive huts remain standing today.
Medieval monastics’ primary purpose was to worship, and worship they did — several times a day! The following is an outline of the traditional monastic services, or “offices”:
Matins, sung before daybreak (in the middle of the night)
Lauds, sung at sunrise
Prime, sung at about 6 A.M.
Terce, sung at 9 A.M.
Sext, sung at noon
Nones, sung at 3 P.M.
Vespers, sung at sunset
Compline, sung right after Vespers
Monks had to get up twice in the night to walk over to the chapel and sing their offices. They complained about it, but that was the point — monastic life was supposed to include some suffering. But there would have been some reward even for people dragged out of their beds at midnight in midwinter — their prayer services were often done musically. The monastic offices are the origin of the famous Gregorian chants, beautiful a capella musical arrangements of psalms and other pieces of Scripture.
Latin, the language of the former Roman Empire, became the language of the Christian church. All religious documents and correspondence, including the Bible, were written in Latin, and the Mass was performed in Latin. The Irish monks who entered the Church in the sixth century spoke the Irish language, but all of them had to learn Latin in order to write.
The Irish had to start from scratch in learning their new language. New Christians in other parts of Europe had been in contact with the Romans and their traditions and often knew the basics of Latin; French and Spanish are largely derived from it. But the Irish language is not closely related to Latin. The Irish needed a book that taught Latin starting with the absolute basics.
The Myths, Legends, and Lore of Ireland Page 5
