Pan-Celtic traditions

Definition

"Celtic Christianity" has been conceived of in different ways at different times. Some ideas are fairly consistent. Above all, Celtic Christianity is seen as being inherently distinct from – and generally opposed to – the Catholic Church.^[9] Other common claims are that Celtic Christianity denied the authority of the Pope, was less authoritarian than the Catholic Church, more spiritual, friendlier to women, more connected with nature, and more comfortable dealing with the ancient Celtic religion.^[9] One view, which gained substantial scholarly traction in the 19th century, was that there was a "Celtic Church", a significantly organized Christian body or denomination uniting the Celtic peoples and separating them from the "Roman" church of continental Europe.^[10] Others have been content to speak of "Celtic Christianity" as consisting of certain traditions and beliefs intrinsic to the Celts.^[11]

However, modern scholars have identified problems with all of these claims, and find the term "Celtic Christianity" problematic in and of itself.^[1] The idea of a "Celtic Church" is roundly rejected by modern scholars due to the lack of substantiating evidence.^[11] Indeed, there were distinct Irish and British church traditions, each with their own practices, and there was significant local variation even within the individual Irish and British spheres.^[12] While there were some traditions known to have been common to both the Irish and British churches, these were relatively few. Even these commonalities did not exist due to the "Celticity" of the regions, but due to other historical and geographical factors.^[10] Additionally, the Christians of Ireland and Britain were not "anti-Roman"; the authority of Rome and the papacy were venerated as strongly in Celtic areas as they were in any other region of Europe.^[13] Caitlin Corning further notes that the "Irish and British were no more pro-women, pro-environment, or even more spiritual than the rest of the Church."^[9]

Corning notes that scholars have identified three major strands of thought that have influenced the popular conceptions of Celtic Christianity. The first arose in the English Reformation, when the Church of England declared itself separate from the Catholic Church. Protestant writers of this time popularized the idea of an indigenous British Christianity that opposed the foreign "Roman" church and was purer (and proto-Protestant) in thought. The English church, they claimed, was not forming a new institution, but casting off the shackles of Rome and returning to its true roots as the indigenous national church of Britain.^[14] Ideas of Celtic Christianity were further influenced by the Romantic movement of the 18th century, in particular Romantic notions of the noble savage and the intrinsic qualities of the "Celtic race". The Romantics idealized the Celts as a primitive, bucolic people who were far more poetic, spiritual, and freer of rationalism than their neighbors. The Celts were seen as having an inner spiritual nature that shone through even after their form of Christianity had been destroyed by the authoritarian and rational Rome.^[15] In the 20th and 21st centuries, these ideas were combined with appeals by certain modern churches and neo-pagan and New Age groups seeking to recover something of ancient spirituality that is felt to be missing from the modern world. For these groups Celtic Christianity becomes a cipher for whatever is lost in the modern religious experience. Corning notes that these notions say more about modern desires than about the reality of Christianity in the Early Middle Ages, however.^[16]

History

Britain

Christianity reached Britain by the third century of the Christian era, the first recorded martyrs in Britain being St. Alban and Aaron and Julius, citizens of Carlisle, during the reign of Diocletian. Gildas dated the faith's arrival to the latter part of the reign of Tiberius.

Christianisation intensified with the legalization of the Christian religion under Constantine in the early 4th century and its promotion by subsequent Christian emperors, but in 407 the Empire withdrew its legions from the province to defend Italy from Visigothic attacks in which the city of Rome would be sacked in 410. The legions did not permanently return to Britain, Roman tax and army influence ended on the isle and, with the decline of Roman imperial political influence, Insular Christianity retained distinct traditions and practices through the era of Church Councils. Clerics such as Germanus of Auxerre accused some British bishops of the heresy of Pelagianism and sought their removal from office.

According to hagiographies written some centuries later, Illtud and his pupils David, Gildas, Paul Aurelian, Samson and Deiniol from the next generation, were leading figures in sixth-century Britain. Some of them were also active in Brittany. Others who influenced the development of British Christianity include Dubricius, Cadoc, Petroc, Piran, Ia and Kentigern (also known as Mungo).

A monastery-centred establishment seems to have grown up in sixth-century Britain, though our knowledge of this period there is limited. There may have been interaction with Ireland at this time, perhaps partly brought about by a very severe plague in Ireland in 548/9,^[17] only a few years after the extreme weather events of 535–536. However, Bede speaks of "the monastery of Bangor, in which, it is said, there was so great a number of monks, that the monastery being divided into seven parts, with a superior set over each, none of those parts contained less than three hundred men, who all lived by the labour of their hands."

Saint John, evangelist portrait from the Book of Mulling, Irish, late 8th century

At the end of the 6th century, the face of Christianity in Britain was forever changed by the Gregorian mission. In this endeavour, Pope Gregory I sent a group of clerics headed by the monk Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity and to establish new churches and dioceses in their territory. Gregory intended for Augustine to become the metropolitan archbishop over all of southern Britain, including over the bishops already serving among the Britons. Augustine met British bishops in a series of conferences in which he attempted to assert his authority and persuade them to abandon certain customs that conflicted with Roman practice. However, these conferences failed to reach any agreement.

The only surviving account of Augustine's meetings with the British clergy is that in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of the Northumbrian writer Bede. According to Bede, some bishops and other representatives of the nearest province of the Britons met Augustine at a location at the border of the Kingdom of Kent, which was thereafter known as Augustine's Oak. Augustine tried to convince the delegates to join his proselytizing efforts, and to reform certain of their customs, particularly their Easter computus. Though impressed with the newcomer, the Britons asserted that they could not agree to his demands without conferring with their people. They then withdrew until a fuller assembly could be arranged.^[18]

Bede relates an anecdote that the British bishops consulted a wise hermit as to how to respond to Augustine when he arrived for the second council. The hermit replied that they should make the decision based on Augustine's own conduct. If he should rise to greet them at the council, they would know him as a humble servant of Christ and should submit to him, but if he arrogantly kept his seat, they should reject him. As it happened, Augustine did not rise at the council, causing outrage. Augustine offered to allow the Britons to maintain most of their customs if they made three concessions: they should adopt the Roman method of calculating Easter's date, reform their baptismal rite, and join the missionary efforts among the Saxons. The Britons rejected all of these, and, adds Bede, refused to recognize Augustine's authority over them.^[18] Bede reports that Augustine is said to have then delivered a prophecy that the British church's failure to proselytize the Saxons would bring them war and death at their hands. He gives the Battle of Chester, at which many British clergy were said to have been killed by the pagan King Æthelfrith of Northumbria, as the fulfillment of this prophecy.^[19][20][21]

Thereafter, "Celtic" customs were often seen as conflicting with the Roman customs adopted in most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The most significant contention was over the Easter dating, which of all the points of disagreement would have produced the most obvious signs of disunity for observers.^[22] Under the two systems Easter did not generally coincide, and as such it would be matter of course for Christians following one system to be solemnly observing Lent while others were celebrating the feast of the Resurrection. Indeed, this is noted as occurring in the household of King Oswiu of Northumbria, whose kingdom had been evangelized by both Irish and Roman missionaries.^[23] The other custom that consistently drew the ire of adherents to Roman custom was the Celtic tonsure. There is no indication that Augustine himself raised this issue, but it does appear in several other sources, which invariably connect it to the Celtic dating for Easter. John Edward Lloyd suggests that the primary reason for the British bishops' rejection of Augustine, and especially his call for them to join his missionary effort, may have been his claim to sovereignty over them.^[24] It may have been difficult for them to accept the supremacy of a see so deeply entwined with the power of Anglo-Saxon Kent.^[24]

A sense of the independent apostolic succession of the British church endured in the Norman era as the claim that Christianity in Britain had been founded by Saint Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury and that King Arthur, supposedly buried in Glastonbury Abbey, had been the sole upholder of the faith after the fall of Rome. The legend that Jesus himself visited Britain is referred to in "And did those feet in ancient time", by William Blake in 1804, and in the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by C. Hubert H. Parry in 1916. Such ideas were used by mediaeval anti-Roman movements such as the Lollards and followers of John Wyclif.^[25]

Ireland

St. Patrick, Apostle to the Irish

By the early fifth century the religion had spread to Ireland, which had never been part of the Roman Empire. The highly successful 5th-century mission of Saint Patrick established churches in conjunction with civitates like his own in Armagh; small enclosures in which groups of Christians, often of both sexes and including the married, lived together, served in various roles and ministered to the local population.^[26]

Within a few generations of the arrival of the first missionaries the monastic and clerical class of the isle had become fully integrated with the culture of Latin letters. Besides Latin, Irish ecclesiastics developed a written form of Old Irish. During the late 5th and 6th centuries true monasteries became the most important centres: in Patrick's own see of Armagh the change seems to have happened before the end of the 5th century, thereafter the bishop was the abbot also.^[27] Finnian of Clonard is said to have trained the Twelve Apostles of Ireland at Clonard Abbey.

In the sixth and seventh centuries, Irish monks established monastic institutions in parts of modern-day Scotland (especially Columba, also known as Colmcille or, in Old Irish, Colum Cille), and on the continent, particularly in Gaul (especially Columbanus). Monks from Iona under St. Aidan founded the See of Lindisfarne in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria in 635, whence Celtic practice heavily influenced northern England.

The achievements of insular art, in illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells, high crosses, and metalwork like the Ardagh Chalice remain very well known, and in the case of manuscript decoration had a profound influence on Western medieval art.^[28] The manuscripts were certainly produced by and for monasteries, and the evidence suggests that metalwork was produced in both monastic and royal workshops, perhaps as well as secular commercial ones.^[29] Irish monks also founded monasteries across the continent, exerting influence greater than many more ancient continental centres.^[30] The first issuance of a papal privilege granting a monastery freedom from episcopal oversight was that of Pope Honorius I to Bobbio Abbey, one of Columbanus's institutions.^[31]

At least in Ireland, the monastic system became increasingly secularised from the 8th century, as close ties between ruling families and monasteries became apparent. The major monasteries were now wealthy in land and had political importance. On occasion they made war either upon each other or took part in secular wars - a battle in 764 is supposed to have killed 200 from Durrow Abbey when they were defeated by Clonmacnoise.^[32] From early periods the kin nature of many monasteries had meant that some married men were part of the community, supplying labour and with some rights, including in the election of abbots (but obliged to abstain from sex during fasting periods). Some abbacies passed from father to son, and then even grandsons.^[33] A revival of the ascetic tradition came in the second half of the century, with the culdee or "clients (vassals) of God" movement founding new monasteries detached from family groupings.^[34]

Others who influenced the development of Christianity in Ireland include Brigid and Moluag.

Unification

Saxon connections with the greater Latin West led to papal preferment and brought the Celtic-speaking peoples into closer contact with the orthodoxy of the councils. The customs and traditions particular to Insular Christianity became a matter of dispute, especially the matter of the proper calculation of Easter. Synods were held in Ireland, Gaul, and England (e.g. the Synod of Whitby) but a degree of variation continued in Britain after the Ionan church accepted the Roman date.

The Easter question was settled at various times in different places. The following dates are derived from Haddan and Stubbs: South Ireland, 626-8; North Ireland, 692; Northumbria (converted by Celtic missions), 664; East Devon and Somerset, the Celts under Wessex, 705; the Picts, 710; Iona, 716-8; Strathclyde, 721; North Wales, 768; South Wales, 777. Cornwall held out the longest of any, perhaps even, in parts, to the time of Bishop Aedwulf of Crediton (909).^[35]

A uniquely Irish penitential system was eventually adopted as a universal practice of the Church by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

Pan-Celtic traditions

Caitlin Corning identifies four customs that were common to both the Irish and British churches but not used elsewhere in the Christian world.^[36]

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