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Celtic Christianity
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Celtic Christianity, or Insular Christianity (sometimes called the Celtic Church or the British Church or Irish Church) broadly refers to the Early Medieval Christian practice that developed in Britain and Ireland before and during the post-Roman period, when Germanic invasions sharply reduced contact between the broadly Celtic populations of Britons and Irish with Christians on the Continent until their subsequent conversion in the 5th and 6th centuries.
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Celtic Christianity, or Insular Christianity (sometimes called the Celtic Church or the British Church or Irish Church) broadly refers to the Early Medieval Christian practice that developed in Britain and Ireland before and during the post-Roman period, when Germanic invasions sharply reduced contact between the broadly Celtic populations of Britons and Irish with Christians on the Continent until their subsequent conversion in the 5th and 6th centuries. Then through the works of Columba and Aidan it was spread to others on Great Britain, such as the Picts and Northumbrians respectively. Celtic (or Insular) Christianity may be distinguished by its organisation around monasteries rather than dioceses, and certain traditions, especially in 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. 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 Western Christendom.
This article discusses only historic Celtic Christianity. It does not address the modern forms of Christian doctrine and practice which call themselves "Celtic Church".
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. As Patrick Wormald explained, “One of the common misconceptions is that there was a ‘Roman Church’ to which the ‘Celtic’ was nationally opposed.” 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. 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’. 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
As the most remote province of the Roman Empire, Britain was reached by Christianity in the first few centuries of the Christian era, 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 eastern 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 from 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, Brigid, Moluag, Kentigern (aka Mungo), 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.
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.
Liturgical and ritual practices
Easter calculation
A distinguishing mark of Celtic Christianity was its distinct conservatism, even archaism. 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. 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.
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, or corona (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. 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. 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. Nonetheless, penance and reconciliation was prevailingly a public rite (sometimes unrepeatable), which included absolution at its conclusion.
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. 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. 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. But perhaps the best example is the development of the Irish penitential practice.
Myths and symbolism
Folk legend claims that Christianity in Britain was founded by St. Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury in whose ruined abbey legend also states that King Arthur is buried. According to legend, Joseph was a tin merchant who was often coming and going to the tin mines of Roman Britain. Legend continues to say that he may have taken his nephew, Jesus, with him on some of these trips. This legend 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. By the 12th century, Joseph of Aramathea found a place in the Arthurian Cycle as the first keeper of the Holy Grail in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie.
The notion of a "Celtic Church," and its nature, has been a continual source of disagreement and symbolism, beginning especially with the Protestant Reformation. Building upon older Benedictine claims regarding the age of Glastonbury Abbey, Reformists put forth that the native British Church founded in Apostolic times preceded the Church of Rome. Some Roman Catholic apologists portray the idea of a separate tradition from that of Rome as an anachronism and mythological, for example, authors such as George Buchanan are suggested to have 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. Any notion of a Celtic Church or unique tradition is completely rejected within the writings of some of these scholars. Patrick Wormald also stated 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" allegedly distinguished by a unique ‘closeness to nature’.
However, what might be debated as historically factual does not detract from the symbolic nature of a Celtic Church which was overtaken by Romanised Christianity such that the Reformation and related political events could be interpreted as return to true and original Christian traditions. Ultimately, we know a Celtic church tradition did exist and that a decision was made at Whitby to support the Roman church which resulted in its suppression. In varying degrees since the Reformation, the basis for an equally historical, but temporarily suppressed, Protestant church based on Celtic traditions has been asserted. The historical legitimacy of this is debatable, but its symbolism is clear and was used by previous anti-Roman movements such as the Lollards and followers of John Wyclif.
See also
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,
- 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).
- Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization (Anchor, 1996). ISBN 0385418493
- 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).
- Dillard, John R. "The Celtic Apostolic Church - Brief History" (North Carolina, 2007).
- Dillard, John R. "The Celtic Apostolic Church - Church History" (North Carolina, 2005).
- Dillard, John R. "Purpose of Liturgical Worship" (North Carolina, 2005).
- Dillard, John R. "What is Celtic Christianity?" (North Carolina, 2007).
- 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).
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