Celtic Christianity, or Insular Christianity (sometimes commonly called the Celtic Church) broadly refers
to the Early Medieval Christian practice that developed around the Irish Sea in the
fifth and sixth centuries: that is, among Celtic/British peoples such as the Irish,
Scottish, Welsh, Cornish,
Manx (the inhabitants of the British
Isles excepting the Anglo-Saxons and some Picts). By
extension, it may refer to the monastic networks founded as satellite institutions of Celtic communities in Scotland and the Continent, especially Gaul (France). In this sense, Celtic (or Insular) Christianity may be distinguished
by certain unique traditions (especially matters of liturgy and ritual) that were different from those of the greater sub-Roman
world.
The term “Celtic Christianity” is sometimes extended beyond the seventh century to describe later Christian practice in these
areas; however, because the history of Irish, Welsh, Scots, Breton, Cornish, and Manx Churches diverges significantly after the
eighth century (resulting in a great difference between even rival Irish traditions), historians generally avoid this use of the
term in this context.[1] Furthermore, historians do not
employ the term “Celtic Church”, since that entails a sense of there being a unified and identifiable entity separated from
greater Latin Christendom.[2][3]
Identity and terminology
It is easy to exaggerate the cohesiveness of the Celtic Christian communities. Scholars have
long recognised that the term “Celtic Church” is simply inappropriate to describe Christianity among Celtic-speaking peoples, since this would imply a notion of unity, or a self-identifying entity, that
simply did not exist.[4] As Patrick Wormald explained, “One
of the common misconceptions is that there was a ‘Roman Church’ to which the ‘Celtic’ was nationally opposed.”[5] Celtic-speaking areas were part of Latin Christendom as a whole, wherein a significant degree of liturgical and structural variation existed, along
with a collective veneration of the Bishop of Rome that was no less intense in Celtic
areas.[6] Nonetheless, it is possible to talk about certain
traditions present in Celtic-speaking lands, and the development and spread of these traditions, especially in the sixth and
seventh centuries. Some scholars have chosen to apply the term ‘Insular Christianity’ to this Christian practice that arose
around the Irish Sea, a cultural nexus in the sub-Roman period that has been called the
‘Celtic Mediterranean’.[7] The term “Celtic Christianity”
may also be employed simply in the sense of different Catholic practices, institutions, and saints amongst the Celtic peoples, in
which case it could be used meaningfully well beyond the seventh century.
History
St. Patrick, Apostle to the Irish
As the most remote province of the Roman Empire, Britain was reached by Christianity in the first few centuries AD, with the first recorded martyr in
Britain being St. Alban (during the reign of Diocletian). The process of Christianisation intensified following the legalization of the religion under
Constantine in the 4th century, and its promotion by
subsequent Christian emperors. In 407, the Empire withdrew its legions from the province to defend Italy from Visigothic attack. The city of Rome would be sacked in 410, and the legions did not permanently return to
Britain. Thus, Roman governmental influence ended on the isle, and, with the following decline of Roman imperial political
influence, Britain and the surrounding isles developed distinctively from the rest of the West. The Irish Sea acted as a centre
from which a new culture developed among the Celtic peoples, and Christianity acted centrally in this process. What emerged,
religiously, was a form of Insular Christianity, with certain distinct traditions and practices. The religion spread to
Ireland at this time, though the island had never been part of the Roman empire, establishing a unique organization around monasteries, rather than episcopal dioceses.
Important figures in the process were SS. Ninian, Palladius, and Patrick (the "Apostle to the Irish"). Meanwhile, this
development was paralleled by the advent of the Anglo-Saxon (English) migration / invasion
into western Britain from Frisia and other Germanic
areas, resulting in cultural hostility in Britain between the British and the (then pagan) English.
In the sixth and seventh centuries, Irish monks established monastic institutions in parts of modern day Scotland (especially
St. Columba, also known as Colum Cille), and on the continent, particularly in Gaul (especially St. Columbanus).
Monks from Iona, under St. Aidan, then founded
the See of Lindisfarne in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria in 635, whence Celtic practice heavily influenced northern England.
These renewed links with the greater Latin West brought the Celtic-speaking peoples into close contact with other subgroups of
Catholicism. Thus, the issue of certain customs and traditions particular to Insular Christianity became, to an extent, 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) where the Easter question was resolved, resulting in the adoption of
one method for calculating Easter. A degree of variation continued, and to an extent was encouraged, evidenced by the issuance of
a papal privilege by Pope Honorius to the Columbanus’s monastery of Bobbio freeing the institution for Frankish episcopal oversight. Furthermore, the
cultural exchange was mutual, evidenced by the spread of a uniquely Irish penitential system,
eventually adopted as a universal practice of the Church by the Fourth Lateran
Council of 1215.
Other important Celtic saints, or saints who influenced the development of Christianity amongst the Celtic-speaking peoples,
include SS. Dubricius, Illtud,
David, Cadoc, Deiniol,
Samson, Paul Aurelian, Petroc, Piran, Ia,
Brigit, Moluag, and Germanus of Auxerre.
Distinctive Traditions
Because Celtic Christianity is a broad term, it is difficult to define precisely which practices diverged from the remainder
of the Latin West except in a general sense. In any specific area there will be exceptions to the list that follows. [8]
Episcopal structure
By the seventh century, the established ecclesiastical structure for Catholicism on the Continent consisted of one
bishop for each diocese. The bishop would
reside in a “see”, or a city able to support a cathedral. This structure was in part based on the secular administrative organisation of the Roman Empire, which had subdivided provinces into “dioceses” (see Roman
province).
It was after Christianity had spread throughout the Empire, and especially after the advent of the Christian Emperor
Constantine I, that dioceses had acquired an administrative function within the Church.
Most of the Celtic world, however, had never been part of the Roman Empire, and even the notable exceptions of Wales, Devon, and Cornwall were nonetheless
without developed cities. Hence, a much different ecclesiastical structure was needed for Insular Christianity, especially in
Ireland.
What emerged was a structure based around monastic networks ruled by abbots. These abbots were of royal kin. The nobility who ruled over different tribes, and whose sources of power
were rural estates, integrated the monastic institutions they established into their royal houses and domains. Abbots were
monastic, and thus were not necessarily ordained (i.e. they were not necessarily priests or bishops), and so bishops were still needed, since certain sacramental functions were reserved only for the ordained; however, unlike on the
Continent, these bishops had little authority within Celtic ecclesiastical structure.[9]
Liturgical and ritual practices
Easter Calculation
A distinguishing mark of Celtic Christianity was its distinct conservatism, even archaism.[10] One example is their method of calculating Easter. Calculating the proper date
of Easter was (and is) a complicated process involving a lunisolar calendar. Various
tables were produced in antiquity that attempted to calculate Easter for a series of years. Insular Christianity used a
calculation table (Celtic-84) that was similar to one approved by St. Jerome. However, by the
sixth and seventh centuries it had become obsolete and had been replaced by those of Victorius of Aquitaine and, more accurately, those of Dionysius Exiguus. As the Celtic world established renewed contact with the Continent it became aware
of the divergence; most groups, like the southern Irish, accepted the updated tables with relatively little difficulty, with the
notable exception of monks from the monastery of Iona and its many satellite
institutions.[11] For example, the southern Irish
accepted the common Easter calculation at the Synod of Mag Léne around 630, as did the northern
Irish at the Council of Birr around 697, and Northumbria with the Synod of Whitby in 664. Nonetheless, in 716 Iona converted its practice.
The "Roman"
tonsure, in the shape of a crown, differing from the Irish tradition, where the hair
above the forehead was shaved.
Monastic Tonsure
Irish monks kept a distinct tonsure, or method of cutting one’s hair, to distinguish their
social identity as monks (rather than warriors or peasants, who wore different styles of hair). The ‘Celtic’ tonsure involved
cutting away the hair above one’s forehead. This differed from the prevailing custom, which was to shave the top of the head,
leaving a halo of hair (in imitation of Christ’s crown of thorns).
Penitentials
In Ireland a distinctive form of penance developed, where
confession was made privately to a priest, under the seal of secrecy, and where penance was given privately and ordinarily
performed privately as well.[12] Certain handbooks were
made, called “penitentials”, designed as a guide for confessors and as a means of regularising the penance given for each
particular sin.
In antiquity, penance had been a public ritual. Penitents were divided into a separate part of the church during liturgical
worship, and they came to mass wearing sackcloth and ashes in a process known as
exomologesis that often involved some form of general confession.[13] There is evidence that this public penance was preceded by a private confession to a bishop or
priest (sacerdos), and it seems that, for some sins, private penance was allowed instead.[14] Nonetheless, penance and reconciliation was prevailingly a public rite
(sometimes unrepeatable), which included absolution at its conclusion.[15]
The Irish penitential practice spread throughout the continent, where the form of public penance had fallen into disuse.
St. Columbanus was credited with introducing the medicamenta paentitentiae, the
“medicines of penance”, to Gaul at a time when they had come to be neglected.[16] Though the process met some resistance, by 1215 the practice had become established as the norm,
with the Fourth Lateran Council establishing a canonical statute requiring
confession at a minimum of once per year.
Achievement
The achievements of Christianity in the Celtic-speaking world are significant beyond what could be expected. Irish society,
for example, had no history of literacy until the advent of Christianity, yet 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 just Latin, Irish ecclesiastics developed a written language for Old Irish. Likewise,
they adapted the Christian episcopal structure to an environment that was wholly different from the prevailing sub-Roman world.
Irish monks also founded monastic networks throughout Gaul and Northumbria, exerting a
profound influence greater than many Continental centres that could boast much more ancient traditions.[17] One example is the spread of the cult of Peter within Gaul, which was largely the product of Irish influence, and the similar veneration for the
papacy. Hence the first issuance of a papal privilege granting a monastery freedom from episcopal oversight was that of Pope
Honorius I to one of Columbanus's institutions.[18] But
perhaps the best example is the development of the Irish penitential practice.
Myths and anachronisms
The notion of a “Celtic Church”, and its nature, has been a continual source of myth and anachronistic propaganda, beginning especially with the Protestant Reformation, where authors such as George
Buchanan supplied “the initial propaganda for the makers of the Scottish Kirk” by inventing the notion of a national
“Celtic” Church opposed to a “Roman” one.[19] In recent
works published by the leading authorities on early Christian “Celtic” culture, such a notion is completely rejected as without
the slightest support; examples include Dáibhí Ó. Cróinín’s Early Medieval Ireland: 400-1200, T. M. Charles-Edwards’s
Early Christian Ireland, W. Davies’s ‘The Myth of the Celtic Church’, and Kathleen Hughes’s ‘The Celtic Church: is this a
valid concept?’ (her answer was, no).[20] Nonetheless, as
Patrick Wormald stated, “The idea that there was a ‘Celtic Church’ in something of a post-Reformation sense is still
maddeningly ineradicable from the minds of students.” [21] Wormald also observed that, “It is difficult to resist the impression that what Protestant
Confessionalism did for the idea of a ‘Celtic’ church until the 1960s is now
being done by ‘new age’ paganism,” based on notions of some sort of "Celtic spirituality"
supposedly distinguished by a unique ‘closeness to nature’.[22]
See also
References
- ^ Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’’, in The Times of
Bede, ed. Stephen Baxter (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 223-224 n. 1
- ^ Kathleen Hughes, "The Celtic Church: Is This a Valid Concept?",
O'Donnell lectures in Celtic Studies, University of Oxford 1975 (published in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 1
[1981], pp. 1-20).
- ^ Wendy Davies, "The Myth of the Celtic Church", in The Early Church in
Wales and the West, Oxbow Monograph, no. 16, edited by Nancy Edwards and Alan Lane, 12-21. Oxford: Oxbow, 1992.
- ^ Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 (London, 1995); T.
M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christians Ireland (Cambridge, 2000); W. Davies, ‘The Myth of the Celtic Church’, in N. Edwards
and A. Lane, The Early Church in Wales and the West (Oxbow Monograph 16, Oxford, 1992), pp. 12-21; Kathleen Hughes, ‘The
Celtic Church: is this a valid concept?’, in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 1 (1981), pp. 1-20; Kathleen Hughes, The
Church in Early English Society (London, 1966); W. Davies and P. Wormald, The Celtic Church (Audio Learning Tapes,
1980).
- ^ Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’’, in The Times of
Bede, ed. Stephen Baxter (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 207.
- ^ Richard Sharpe, ‘Some problems concerning the organization of the Church in
early medieval Ireland’, Peritia 3 (1984), pp. 230-270; Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’’, in The
Times of Bede, ed. Stephen Baxter (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 207-208, 220 n. 3
- ^ Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2nd edition (Oxford,
Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 16, 51, 129, 132.
- ^ This list includes information from Charles Plummer's essay, "Excursus on
the Paschal Controversy and Tonsure" in his edition Venerablilis Baedae, Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum, 1892
(Oxford: University Press, 1975), pp. 348-354.
- ^ Eric John, ‘The Social and Political Problems of the Early English Church’,
in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp.
32-34.
- ^ Patrick Wormald, Bede and the Church of the English, in The Times of
Bede, ed. Stephen Baxter (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 224 n. 1.
- ^ Eric John, The Social and Political Problems of the Early English Church,
in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 2000), p. 34
- ^ Medieval Handbooks of Penance, eds. John T. McNeil and Helena M.
Gamer (New York, Columba University Press, 1938), p. 28
- ^ Medieval Handbooks of Penance, eds. John T. McNeil and Helena M.
Gamer (New York, Columba University Press, 1938), pp. 7-9
- ^ Medieval Handbooks of Penance, eds. John T. McNeil and Helena M.
Gamer (New York, Columba University Press, 1938), pp. 9-12.
- ^ Medieval Handbooks of Penance, eds. John T. McNeil and Helena M.
Gamer (New York, Columba University Press, 1938), pp. 13-17.
- ^ Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2nd edition (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2003), p. 252
- ^ Eric John, ‘The Social and Political Problems of the Early English
Church’, in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 2000), p.
36.
- ^ Eric John, ‘The Social and Political Problems of the Early English
Church’, in Anglo-Saxon History: Basic Readings, ed. David A. E. Pelteret (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 2000), p.
37.
- ^ Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’, in The Times
of Bede, p. 207.
- ^ Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 (London, 1995);
T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christians Ireland (Cambridge, 2000); Kathleen Hughes, "The Celtic Church: Is This a Valid
Concept?", O'Donnell lectures in Celtic Studies, University of Oxford 1975 (published in Cambridge Medieval Celtic
Studies, 1 (1981), pp. 1-20; Wendy Davies, "The Myth of the Celtic Church", in The Early Church in Wales and the West,
Oxbow Monograph, no. 16, edited by Nancy Edwards and Alan Lane, 12-21. Oxford: Oxbow, 1992.
- ^ Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’, in The Times
of Bede, p. 207.
- ^ Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede and the ‘Church of the English’, in The Times
of Bede, pp. 223-4 n1.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
- Adomnan, Life of Columba, ed. A. O. and M. O. Anderson, 2nd edition (Oxford Medieval Texts, 1991)
- Annales Cambriae, ed. Rev. John Williams ab Ithel (London : Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1860)
- Bede, Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Angelorum, in Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica. ed. C. Plummer (Oxford,
1896)
- Cummian, De controversia paschali and De ratione conputandi, <eds. Maura Walsh and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), pp. 93-5.
- Gildas, De Excidio Brittaniae, ed. J. A. Giles, Six Old English Chronicles (London, 1848)
- Historia Brittonum, ed. J. A. Giles, Six Old English Chronicles (London, 1848)
- Medieval Handbooks of Penance, eds. J. T. McNeill and H. M. Gamer (New York: Columba University Press, 1939)
- Patrick (Saint), Confessio, ed. and trans. John Skinner (Image, 1998)
Secondary Sources
- Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2003).
- Charles-Edwards. T. M. Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000).
- Cróinín, Dáibhí Ó. Early Medieval Ireland: 400-1200 (London, 1995).
- Davies, Wendy. "The Myth of the Celtic Church", in The Early Church in Wales and the West, Oxbow Monograph, no. 16,
edited by Nancy Edwards and Alan Lane, 12-21. (Oxford: Oxbow, 1992).
- Hughes, Kathleen. "The Celtic Church: Is This a Valid Concept?", O'Donnell lectures in Celtic Studies, University of
Oxford 1975 (published in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 1 (1981), pp. 1-20.
- Hughes, Kathleen. The Church in Early English Society (London, 1966).
- Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edition (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd,
1991).
- Sharpe, Richard Sharpe. ‘Some problems concerning the organization of the Church in early medieval Ireland’, Peritia 3
(1984).
- Wormald, Patrick. The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian, ed. Stephen Baxter
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
External links
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