*3 The Ages of Faith

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Patrick on the Hill of Slane

Patrick lived in the turbulent fifth Century: the century in which the Roman Empire finally dissolved. He was of the generation to witness that collapse. His father was a high Roman official, his mother a Briton. When Patrick had escaped from slavery he resolved to bring the Faith back to Ireland, where he had been a slave. He journeyed to Rome to obtain the Pope’s permission: it was not permitted simply to go out and preach without the Holy Father’s permission, right from the beginning. he was presented with the "Bacall Íosa" The Staff of Jesus, which Our Lord had used on His journeys in the Holy Land. This was one of the foremost relics of Ireland until it was destroyed in the 17th century. Obtaining his mandate, Patrick returned … (but let the ancient Annals speak for themselves)…

Patrick journeyed to the Hill of Slane, overlooking the wide Plain of Meath, north from the great Hill of Tara whereon was the Royal court of Laoghaire the High King. When he reached the Hill, it was the night of Holy Saturday, and Patrick built the Easter Fire on the summit of Slane. Now the morrow was the birthday of the king, and the law of the land was that no fire was to be lit in Ireland until the fire was lit from the Royal Halls of Tara. Patrick indeed was unaware of this law, but had he known of it, he would have despised it. When, therefore, the King looked to the north and saw the fire on Slane, he spoke in great wrath, "Who dares to light yonder fire in defiance of our law?" His Druids, grinding their teeth, replied, "We know who it is that lit that fire, and in whose honour it is lit; and we say to thee, O King, that if it be not extinguished this very night it will never again be extinguished in Erin forevermore".

The Easter fire is re-lit every year, and the dire prophecy of the Druids was indeed fulfilled.

Eithne and Fidelma

Patrick by the Well of Cliabach

One morning early in the Fifth Century – in 432 AD – on a grey, misty dawn of Ireland, the two daughters of King Lóegaire (Leary) of Connacht came down to the Well Of Cliabach on the eastern slopes of the Fort of Cruachan, to bathe, accompanied by their guardians. They were Eithne and Fedhlimidh. Eithne was golden-haired, but Fedhlimidh was auburn. To their surprise they saw at the Well a group of strange figures, clad in grey and chanting with soft sweet singing such as they had never heard before. It was in the strange tongue of Latin. For Patrick and his companions had come to the Well before sunrise, and they were seated beside the well.

“Who are ye?” questioned Fedhlimidh, “When did ye come? Where are ye from? Are ye of the sidhe, the faerie folk?” But their leader, none other than Patrick – correcting her curiosity, replied,

“It were better for you to be asking about the True God than to be enquiring about our race. We are singing His praises."

Fedhlimidh replied with a torrent of questions…

“Who is this God? Where is he to be found? Whose God is he? Where does he live? Has your God sons and daughters, gold and silver? Is he alive and beautiful? Have many fostered his sons, and are his daughters dear and beautiful? Is he in the sky or in the earth, or in the water, in rivers, or mountains or valleys? How can he be seen and loved? Is he in youth or in old age?' Is He rich? Would he welcome the poor to His home? …”

"Sit ye here," replied Patrick. “The True God is the God of all, heaven and earth, sea and rivers, of the sun, moon and all the stars, high mountains, low valleys, above heaven, in heaven, under heaven. He breathes in all things, makes all things live . . . He has a Son, co-eternal with Him. The Son is not younger than the Father nor is the Father older than the Son, and the Holy Spirit breathes in them. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not separate. The Father had only one Son, who suffered and died upon a cross to save His people. He loves and welcomes the poor. And I wish to join you to the Heavenly King since you are daughters of an earthly King.”

Patrick continued with a full account of the True God.

As he spoke, the hearts of the king's daughters were turned irresistibly towards the True God. They wept when they heard of the sufferings of Christ. But their sorrow turned to joy when Patrick told them of His Resurrection from the dead, His Ascension into Heaven, and the wonderful Eternal Kingdom . They knelt on the ground, and begged to be baptised. Patrick asked,

“Do ye believe in the One God, Father of all?”

“We do.”

“Do you believe in His Only Son, God and Man?”

“We do.”

“Do you believe in the One Church?”

“We do”.

And so there, within sight of the palace of Cuachan, Patrick baptised them with the waters of the Well of Cliabach.

Eithne and Fidelma remained for a while on their knees, deep in prayer. A rough stone altar was made ready and Patrick prepared to say Mass. Before the Mass began the two girls came forward again, saying,

"We wish to consecrate ourselves as Spouses of Christ."

Patrick received their vows and placed over them the Veil – the first consecrated virgins in Ireland.

Then they wished to see the Face of Christ. But Patrick replied,

“You cannot do that, until you have tasted the Sacrifice and passed through the Door of Death”.

“We desire these things,” they replied. Patrick offered the Sacrifice and gave them the Holy Eucharist. Then they closed their eyes, and then they died. Patrick buried them in the sweet turf of Ireland, while their souls flew to Heaven to intercede for her conversion.

Feidlimidh is known by her Latin name of Fidelma “The Faithful One”: We know them as S. Eithne the Fair and S. Fidelma the Red. In God's Providence, Fidelma's fair hair represented their purity and Fidelma's red hair represented their Faith.

Their Feast Day is 12 January.

The Conversion of Clovis, King of the Franks

In the depth of the Dark Ages, S. Martin de Porres (S. Patrick's uncle) craftily took the King to the church at midnight, during the actual Easter Vigil - during the 'Lumen Christi' ceremony where each congregant lights a candle from the Easter fire, and a wave of light travels up the church as the Paschal Candle is carried in procession from the back porch. At the end, the entire church is ablaze with the unique warmth and glow of candlelight. Then, by the light of the Paschal candle, the deacon intones the Exsúltet... King Clovis whispered, "Is this, then, the Kingdom of Heaven?" "No," replied Martin with a smile, "but it is the vestible of the Kingdom". The following year, Clovis was in his pew on Good Friday for the reading of S. John's Gospel. When it came to the Arrest at Gethsemane, the King could not contain himself and sprang out into the aisle, sweeping out his sword, and crying out, "By God, if I'd been there with five thousand of my Franks they'd never have got away with that!" He was quietly escorted back to his place and the Liturgy was resumed.

The Golden Age of Ireland

After the conversion of Ireland in the 5th century, the country enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity that has passed into legend as “The Golden Age of Ireland” – “the Land of Saints and Scholars”. This lasted until the Viking invasions of 9th century.

We forget how much more fortunate the island of Ireland was during these times. The two centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century are what is commonly called the Dark Ages in mainland Europe and Great Britain. Almost no historical records remain of these two hundred years, but life settled down at a new, bedrock level that was tolerable and perhaps a happier way of life than the slave empire that it had replaced. Many farming communities were populated by the descendants of slaves, who at first did not necessarily know anything much about farming. Germs were unknown until the nineteenth century, but it was always known that standing water was unsafe to drink. On the continent and in Great Britain, thin beer or wine, depending on the district, was the normal drink from weaning onwards. Grass stopped growing in winter and cattle had to be slaughtered and preserved. This led to a shortage of manure and low yield of crops. The average family could keep only one cow, because of the problems of growing, cutting and storing winter fodder. Barbarian raids at unpredictable times required fortified settlements – all requiring effort and manpower. Ireland by contrast was like a Paradise. The grass grew all year round in the mild climate, so there was plenty of food for cattle. The normal freeman’s family had seven milk cows plus other livestock. There was more than enough milk and cheese, and the normal drink was whey or buttermilk, also used for cooking. Thus there was an abundance of animal (and human!) manure, hence the crops were abundant. There was a culture of peace, and there were probably no large standing armies. Cattle raids were a popular pastime among the youthful lads (and lassies if they were inclined!) but an actual serious injury or death was considered a calamity, leading to a court case and compensation. Outside Ireland, it was the norm for girls to marry from age twelve upward, and the life expectancy was in the early twenties. The Irish population, by contrast, was six inches taller than the European, and the lifespan was twenty years longer. Marriage at age thirty was common in Ireland. There was leisure for music, poetry and prayer: leisure to develop one of the richest civilisations the world has seen.

The Dark Ages of Europe

Introductory Comments

As a very approximate rule of thumb, it may be said that, of the 20 Centuries since Christ, the first five were of the Roman Empire; the next five of the Dark Ages, or of the Early Middle Ages; the next five of the Middle Ages proper; and the next five the development of the post-Mediaeval, or Modern, world.

The period of the Dark Ages is a difficult one to define; it represents the period between the fading away of Central Administration and culture of the Old Roman Empire, and the resumption of the vigorous cultural life of the Mediaeval Period. This process was not simultaneous all over Europe and the former Roman Empire, and in fact Ireland underwent her greatest cultural achievements precisely during the period generally known elsewhere as The Dark Ages.

Were men happier in these ancient ages? This question cannot be answered in any very definite way, for the very important reason that people’s expectations are different in different generations. When we learn of this or that fact of history, it is well to remember that our ancestors might have attached a very different importance to it than do we. Surely there have been happy and unhappy people in every century. Yet I would meintain that the question is not utterly unanswerable - simply more difficult than might meet the eye. Let us leave this problem for the time being.

Let us recall a basic principle of historical study, one that is deceptively difficult to really apply. It is, that the men of the days we study did not know what was going to happen next, any more than we can describe the twenty-second century. Thus the men of the Dark Ages were emphatically not trying to become Modern Twentieth-Century Man. They simply lived their lives as prudently and as wisely as they could, as do we ourselves. We must not read into their actions a prescience that they did not possess.

The Dark Ages

This memorable phrase has not always been applied to the same period of time. Certain hostile writers have tried to extend it from the time of Constantine in the fourth century right up to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, or even later (certain newspapers seem to date it up to about 1992, for example) - a polemical contention that can arise only from a profound ignorance of history.

The fifth and sixth centuries can be seen as the time when the material side of civilisation went into a remorseless decline throughout all the territory of the Roman Empire. (Saint Jerome noted that, had the Empire only embraced the revitalising message of the Catholic Faith in time, her institutions would have survived). There followed a period of three to five hundred years wherein Western civilisation held its own against a series of mortal military threats, while the arts of civilisation went through a prolonged period of stasis. Only from the tenth century is there a re-awakening of the questing and energetic cultural life that has characterised Europe. These four centuries - sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth - may be characterised the Dark Ages. Alternatively, the sixth and seventh centuries are notably deficient in historical records; this time period may rightly be characterised as ‘dark’, in the sense of ‘unknown’, for most of Europe.

The Golden Age of Ireland

Yet, paradoxically, the sixth to eighth centuries marked the Golden Age for Ireland. The Irish experience during these centuries was entirely different from the rest of Europe. With the taming of the pagan warrior heroes, Irish life experienced a Springtime of Christendom that was yet virile and adventurous. The efforts of the Irish missionaries throughout so much of Britain and Continental Europe were directed to preaching, preserving and transmitting “the Faith Once Given”. The arts of penmanship reached a level never equalled before or since in known history, and with the characteristic Irish genius for exquisite clear detail on a small scale, luxurious as a tangle of vines. In Ireland, learning and literature revolved around texts and commentary on Holy Scripture, the recording of the Ancient Irish sagas, and the recording of history. In bringing the Light of the Faith to faraway lands the missionaries were indeed successful. Yet in continental Europe they had to teach the people how to plough as well as how to read.

The fifth century was a turning point for European civilisation.

There was a gradual decline in the power of the central monarchy, an increasing use of auxiliary barbarian troops in the army upon which Roman society was founded, until at last, during the course of the fifth century, authority, though Roman in every detail of its form, gradually ceased to be exercised from Rome or Constantinople, but fell imperceptibly into the hands of a number of local governments. The administration of these local governments usually devolved on the chief officers of the auxiliary barbarian troops, who were also, as a rule, their chieftains by some kind of inheritance. This was the origin of the hereditary kingships of the local states of Christendom. The regional kings were, however, never conceived as absolute monarchs. This did not become an important idea until the sixteenth century.

In Ireland, the introduction of the Faith to an already well-developed culture greatly strengthened its institutions, power and prosperity. Ireland continued to develop the only civilisation in Europe not directly descended from the Roman Empire. It was organised on a different pattern from the rest of Christendom; the Irish language and Irish patterns of government and education were maintained at a very high level, while the Latin and Greek alphabets and languages became common property of the educated.

With the ending of the line of Emperors in the West, the Pope became for a while the de facto secular ruler of Rome, while the Eastern Emperor of Constantinople strove to restore order in the West as well as maintaining continuity in the East.

Thus the Eastern coast of Britain was reconquered for civilisation and the Faith by the efforts of St Augustine, on his mission from Pope Gregory the Great. The Irish expanded into Western Britain, but never established a full-scale conquest.

The Vandal pirate-state in Africa was recaptured for the direct rule of the Emperor, as was Italy and the South of Spain.

By the end of the seventh century the territory of what was in the future to be called Christendom has again been re-united.

What followed was a whole series of generations in which the forms of civilisation were set and crystallised in a few very simple, traditional and easily appreciated types. The whole standard of Europe was lowered, as it were, to the level of its fundamentals. The primary arts upon which we depend for our food and drink, and raiment and shelter, survived intact. The secondary arts reposing upon these failed and disappeared; the less directly they were connected with the necessities of physical survival, the more thoroughly they were forgotten. Thus history became no more than a simple chronicle. Letters, in the finer sense, almost ceased. The vast medical knowledge of Antiquity was utterly submerged, leaving a very few traditional remedies and a mass of superstition. Four hundred years more were to pass before Europe was to reawaken from this sort of sleep into which her spirit had retreated, and the passage from the full civilisation of Rome through this period of simple and sometimes barbarous things may properly be called the Dark Ages.

Those half-hidden centuries may be compared to a lake into which the activities of the old world flowed and stirred and then were still, and from which in good time the activities of the Middle Ages, properly so called, were again to flow.

Again, one may compare the Dark Ages to the leafmould of a forest. It is formed by the disintegration of an antique florescence. It is the bed from which new florescence shall spring.

The Ancient Pagan world had corrupted its own thought with the unclean fantasies of Paganism. The Pagans had grown weary of the world, and there was no refreshment for the spirit even from contemplating the sky, the garden, or the soil, for all these too were wrapped up in unhealthy mythology and memories. Civilisation needed to rest and forget. “That kind is driven out only by prayer and penance”.

Six points are notable:

1. The Dark Ages were a period of intense military action.

Europe was just barely saved. It was saved by the sword and by the intense Christian ideal which gave nerve to the sword arm. The barbarian incursions of the sixth and seventh centuries were from bands few in number and eager to enjoy the benefits of civilisation; to accept the faith and customs of Europe. The mighty struggles of the eighth, ninth, and especially the tenth centuries - of the Dark Ages - were a very different matter.

2. The development of Feudalism.

The feudal system developed naturally from the fading away of the central administration and the disappearance of the Roman troops. It was natural that the inhabitants of a farming community would agree with a local military leader to exchange the promise of farm work and limited military service for the pledge of his own protection of themselves in times of civil disturbance. This relationship was close and personal. the word “lord” itself comes from “loaf-ward”; “he who puts the bread on the table”. The Lord pledged “fealty” to a greater lord, who had under him not individuals but a series of lords and villages.and the chain went upwards to a shadowy overlord, even the Emperor himself.

In Ireland and the parts of Great Britain under Celtic control the equivalent role was played by the development of the Clan system. Originally of common descent, the members of a clan were pledged to mutual loyalty and support. Smaller clans made alliances with larger, and loyalty was owed to a regional Rí (king) who in turn was pledged (in theory) to the High-king or Ard-Rí. In practice the highest levels of authority had only as much support as they could enforce.

3. The curious fixity of morals, of traditions, of the forms of religion, and of all that makes up social life.

The civilisations of the East have always exhibited this fixity. But in the general history of Europe, it has been otherwise. There has been a perpetual flux in the outward form of things, in architecture, in dress, and in the statement of philosophy as well (though not in its fundamentals).

In this mobile surface of European history the Dark Ages form a sort of island of changelessness. There is an absence of any great heresies in the West, and, save in one or two names, an absence of speculation. It was as though men had no time for any other activity but the ceaseless business of arms and of the defence of the West.

Religion settled and consolidated. The last vestiges of the antique and Pagan civilisation of the Mediterranean were absorbed. A habit of certitude and fixity was formed in the European mind. What we have called ‘The Faith’ was taken for granted as the underpinning of all thought and of the action that proceeds from thought.

4. The fourth characteristic of the Dark Ages was a material one. The external forms of things stood quite unchanged. The arts were saved but not increased, and the whole of the work that men did with their hands stood fast in mere tradition. No new town arises. No new roads were laid. The old Roman system of highways was was kept up and repaired, though with declining vigour.

Not only were all these forms enduring, they were also few and simple. One type of public building and church, one type of writing, everywhere recognisable, one type of agriculture, with very few products to differentiate it, alone remained.

5. Yet paradoxically, the Dark Ages constituted the point during which there very gradually germinated and came into outward existence things which still remain among us and help to differentiate our Christendom from the past of classical antiquity. In horsemanship the spur, the double bridle, the stirrup; in letters the codex or bound book instead of the roll.

The ruthlessly straight Roman Roads were modified; waterlogged areas were skirted by a section of new road that keeps to the higher and drier regions, rejoining the Roman road later on. This pattern of roads is the basis of our transport down to the present day.

In matters of the mind, the Dark Ages set a mould wherein the European mind grew. Two forms of legend developed. One was something older than history, older than the Roman order, something Western re-appearing with the release of the mind from the rigid accuracy of a high civilisation - for example, the legend of Tristan; the other was that legend which preserves historical truth in the form of a colourful story, embroidered with fascinating but fanciful details. The Pope was obliged to forbid such story-weaving around the lives of the Saints for fear the real facts would be submerged.

In this closed crucible of the Dark Ages crystallised also - by a process of which we now have but glimpses - that rich mass of jewels, the customs of Europe, and even the local dress which differentiates one place from another, when the communications of a high material civilisation break down. In all this the Dark Ages are a comfort to the modern man, for he sees by their example that the process of increasing complexity reaches its term; that the strain of development is at last relieved; that humanity sooner or later returns upon itself; that there is an end in repose and that the repose is fruitful.

6. The last characteristic of the Dark Ages is that which has most engrossed, puzzled, and warped the judgment of non-Catholic historians of European development: it was the segregation, the homogeneity of and the dominance of clerical organisation.

The hierarchy of the Catholic church remained absolute above the social disintegration of the time. It was the chief institution carrying out civil administration. side by side with it grew up the monastic institution, uniting Celtic fervour with Roman temperance and prudence in the Benedictine monasteries, which formed a framework of living points upon which was stretched the moral life of Europe. The monasteries swiftly took on a life of their own, preserved what could be preserved of arts and letters, drained the marshes and cleared the forests, and formed the ideal economic unit for such a period: almost the only economic unit in which ‘capital’ could then be accumulated and preserved.

Europe did awaken from its long sleep. In the eleventh century, three great forces - Pope Saint Gregory the Seventh, the Race of the Normans, and the Crusades - drew out of the darkness the enormous vigour of the early Middle Ages.

Ref: For this section "The Dark Ages", some material is my own, some is taken and adapted from “Europe and the Faith” Ch.6 the Dark Ages by Hilaire Belloc; “The Church in the Dark Ages” by H. Daniel Rops, and by G.K.Chesterton’s reflections on history, e.g. in his Life of St Francis of Assisi.

I do have a few personal comments on his books. Belloc emphasises the role of the Roman Empire and its aftermath, but shows no knowledge of the role played during this critical period by the Irish missionaries and the Irish culture. Indeed, in his desire to trace every detail of modern civilisation from the Roman Empire, he himself confesses in his writings that Ireland and Poland do not belong in the scheme. Yet he refuses to retreat from his attempt to equate civilisation with the Roman Empire. The reality is that the Catholic Church acted as a civilising influence in its own right. It adapted and borrowed from the Roman Empire, but it was not wholly dependent on or derivative from it. It “baptised” those cultures beyond the Empire that it encountered before the spread of Roman ways into any particular region, and it was already spreading beyond the boundaries of the Empire long before the central authority had faded away.

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