Patrick left a distinctly Celtic church. In contrast to the rest of Europe, which was concentrated in towns, the Irish were spread throughout tens of thousands of farmsteads. Patrick established his bishops next to capitals, such as Cruachan, where they could limit royal deprivations. (Within a generation of his death, they virtually eradicated slavery, though they were unable to prevent its’ return during the Viking era.) Yet the heart of Celtic Christianity was found in the nation’s innumerable monasteries, and is expressed in an anonymous poem from the 9th century entitled “The Hermit’s Song”:
I wish, O son of the living God
O ancient, eternal king
For a hidden little hut in the wilderness
That it may be my dwelling
An all grey lithe little lark
To be by its side
A clear pool to wash away sins
Through the grace of the Holy Spirit
Quite near, a beautiful wood
Around it on every side
To nurse many voiced birds
Hiding it with its shelter
And facing the south for warmth
A little brook across its floor
A choice land with many gracious gifts
Such as be good for every plant
A few men of sense
We will tell their number
Humble and obedient
To pray to the King
... Six pairs
Besides myself,
Praying forever to the King
Who makes the sun shine
A pleasant church with the linen alter-cloth
A dwelling for God from Heaven
Then, shining candles
Above the pure white Scriptures
One house for all to go to
For the care of the body
Without ribaldry, without boasting
Without though of evil.
This is the husbandry I would take
I would choose, I would not hide it
Fragrant leek,
Hens, salmon, trout, bees.
Raiment and food enough for me
From the King of fair fame
And I to be siting for awhile
Praying God in every Place
Irish Missionaries
“Into foreign lands these swarms of saints poured as though a flood had risen,” the great French monk St Bernard of Clairvaux would explain centuries later. They converted Scotland, and the Northern English. They spread through France, Germany and even Italy. Everywhere they went, they exhibited the same independent disregard for central authority that had marked their existence at home. While St Columbanus (543-613) was acknowledged as one of the foremost scholars of his generation, in typical Irish fashion he “railed at bishops, upbraided kings, and scolded popes”.
Scolarship
The previously illiterate Gaels became a dominant force in Europe’s intellectual world. The Irish found the very forms of letters magical, and their lettering became such an art form that even such an anti Gaelic authority as Gerald of Wales concluded that the famous BOOK OF KELLS was “the work of an angel, not of a man.” England’s venerable Bede notes that:
“At this period there were many English nobles and lesser folk in Ireland who had left their own land during the episcopates of Bishops Finan and Colman, either to pursue religious studies or to live a life of stricter discipline. Some of these soon devoted themselves to the monastic life, while others preferred to travel, studying under various teachers in turn. The Scots (as the Irish were then called) welcomed them all kindly, and, without asking for any payment, provided them with daily food, books, and instructions.”
Clonmacnois
The most famous of these Irish universities was Clonmacnois, eight miles south of Athlone. St Cairan (515-548) is said to have founded it after dreaming of a tree whose branches spread out to the four corners of Ireland. His teacher then told him that: "You are the tree and all Eireann shall be filled with your name and sheltered by the grace within you. Many men from foreign lands will be fed by your prayers and fastings so go, in the name of God, and found your church on the banks of the Shannon in the centre of our island." Cairan perished in a plague only months after he and seven companions built their monastery, but Dr Arnold Toynbee marks its’ founding as the beginning of Ireland’s five century long domination of European scholarship. Alcuin, the foremost scholar behind the Holy Roman Empire’s renaissance during the time of Charlemagne, was among those educated at Clonmacnois. Fifty continental religious between Brittany and Austria, are known to have been under Irish influence during his generation.
The temptations of Irish scholarship
In contrast to continental scholars, like St Jerome who feared he might burn in hell for reading Cicero, the Irish grasped hold of every available text. This led one British authority to warn one of his students against the temptations of an Irish education: “What advantage does it bring to the sacrament of the orthodox faith to sweat over reading and studying the polluted lewdness of Proserpine, or Hermione, the wanton offspring of Menelaus and Helen, or the votaries of Priapus?”
“Excesses”
The Irish allowed “excesses” that were unknown in the more centralized nations that had once been under Roman rule. St Patrick’s open admiration of a “blessed woman - Irish by birth, noble, extraordinarily beautiful – a true adult – whom I baptised” finds no parallel among contempoorary literature. It is from the Irish that we have derived Celtic holidays such as May Day (a Spring Festival) and Hallowe’en (the beginning of winter: when ghosts were allowed to walk among the dead). Up until the coming of the Normans, Irish couples could freely dissolve their marriages on February 1st. And as late as the 19th century naked men (and sometimes women?) raced bareback through the surf in Clare.