Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory (review)

This is a marvelous book. It is big and beautiful, with many full or half-page photos of churches and other monuments (obviously taken on Ireland’s few sunny days). Although there are plenty of archaeological and architectural details in its pages, the text is no mere catalog of digs and ruins. Instead, in a persuasive and lively analysis of Christian architecture in early-medieval Ireland, Ó Carragáin fearlessly tackles some of the big questions of Irish medieval history—the kind that used to cause fistfights at Celtic studies conferences. One of the biggest is: Why did the Irish build the same kind of tiny, primitive-looking houses of worship over seven centuries? Tomás Ó Carragáin not only answers this question but also explains how the Irish built their religion, why they chose to build and practice as they did, and how their version of Christianity changed in some ways but not in others during the early Middle Ages.

Ó Carragáin begins in the fifth century when Britons such as St. Patrick first began to preach in Ireland. Previous scholars assumed that the earliest founders of Irish ecclesiastical communities relied on indigenous technologies such as the drystone corbelling used in prehistoric tombs, to build sturdy little stone churches in native style. For instance, the strangely boat-shaped Gallarus oratory in County Kerry, well-known to tourists and recipients of their postcards, was assumed to be a relic of the earliest days of Christianization. As Ó Carragáin shows, however, Christian builders first peppered the island with wood, turf, and wattled churches that they constructed in (what they imagined to be) Roman forms and according to (what they interpreted as) biblical principles. Then, beginning in the seventh century or so, the most prosperous and powerful church settlements (such as Armagh and Kildare) replaced wood churches with mortared stone structures or added new stone churches to the collection of monuments already standing within their circular enclosing walls. Yet even when working in stone, builders stuck to the same familiar rectangular shape, adding steep roofs and old-fashioned antae, because these features recalled the golden age of conversion and saintly foundation. Although other European Christians constantly updated their church architecture, the Irish remained stubbornly attached to their small, unicameral, rectangular buildings well into the second Christian millennium. They favored “authenticity over innovation” (p. 165) in architecture as well as the doctrine behind it. Even when they began experimenting with the Romanesque style in the eleventh century, the patrons and makers of Irish churches remained “faithful to the lineage of structures” that they believed originated with “a simple wooden edifice built by the [founding] saint and his followers” (p. 296).

Ó Carragáin thus completely rewrites the old evolutionary scheme of Irish religious architecture. He further elaborates on this evolutionary scheme in discussions of the royal politics of church building; the social memory at/of holy places; ritual practices in material contexts; and the organization of religious settlements or civitates, which were so unlike both parochial churches and monasteries elsewhere in Christendom—although the Irish thought their ecclesiastical centers were little Romes and Jerusalems. In each of these chapters, Ó Carragáin demonstrates his mastery of diverse textual evidence and several secondary literatures as well as his archaeologist’s eye for shape, space, traffic, and venue. His major points are built on multiple little gems of interpretation such as his examination of baptismal fonts and their use, the placement of subsidiary churches within enclosures, or the plumbing at St. Mullins. Sometimes he strains too hard to promote his larger theses with these interesting discussions. A few examples: the assumption that Christianity was the “dominant religion” in Britain by the fifth century (p. 6); an argument for parochial functions of very small buildings by resorting to Gallican Eucharistic liturgies, when a much simpler explanation might have sufficed (pp. 169–71); and the suggestion that traveling Irish...