Early English perspectives on Gaelic-Irish religion

Early English perspectives on Gaelic-Irish religion It is a matter of some pride that Gaelic-Irish religion from the seventh to the twelfth centuries received the literary attentions of such contemporary historians as the Venerable Bede (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), Bernard of Clairvaux1 (Life ofSt Malachy) and Gerald of Wales (Topography ofIreland and Conquest ofIreland), as well as the judgements of Popes Adrian TV (Laudabiliter, 1155) and Alexander III (Letters to the Synod ofCashel, 1172), even though the resulting effects on English literary perceptions were to prove so condemnatory of Irish religious beliefs and practices, and ultimately so durable in terms of cultural attitudes. Perspectives on Gaelic-Irish religion were predicated upon what these observers considered to be authentic religion; there would be no criticism to be made if the religion observed was identical with that authentic religion. When the early English peoples convertedtoChristianity, they adopted a form of religion that was markedly different from that of their neighbours in the British Isles. Consequently, one of the parameters of religious experience in these islands is the presence of two major conflicting views which assume cultural perspectives. This parameter can be explored from the standpoint of the early English by re-examining the literature mentioned above and by utilizing some findings already published elsewhere but in different contexts. The Venerable Bede, the father of English historiography and welltothe fore in his time as a commentator on the neighbours over the water, had much to say about the Gaelic-Irish monastic foundations of Iona and Lindisfarne, of the Irish Northumbrian mission at a crucial stage of its history, and of Ireland itself as seen from his Northumbrian monastery of Janow in the year 723. One of the aims of his Ecclesiastical History was to show the superiority of the English Church over the Irish, and it is in that context that the monks of Iona are described as ignorant and unlearned, not to say stubborn and verging on the heretical; their very conversion to Roman orthodoxy could be seen as attributable to the teaching of the English Egbert.2 Adomnan, the contemporary abbot of 1 Grounds for including Bernard in this category are given in B. W. O'Dwyer, 'St Bernard as an Historian: The Life of St Malachy of Armagh', in Journal of Religious History 10 (1978), 128^11. 2 The monks of Iona accepted the Catholic ways of hfe under the teaching of Egbert, while Dunchad was abbot, about eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the English. See Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. (and trans.) Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford, 1969, v.22, pp. 554-55. Subsequent references to Bede's History follow this edition, giving book, chapter, and pages for the text and parallel translation. P A R E R G O N ns 10.2, December 1992 126 B. W. O'Dwyer Iona (whom Bede may have known), is accepted as both knowledgeable and wise, and personally Bede admired him. Adomnan, however, had to admit that he had met men more learned than himself in Northumbria; they were the ones who were ultimately responsible for his conversion of many churches in Irelandtothe Roman customs followed by the English Church (v.15, pp. 506-07). Bede's purpose in writing necessarily defined the perspective he adopted towards the Irish religion and culture. He was writing of the formation of a unitary culture among the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain which had emerged out of their conversion, a conversion that identified them as theflag-bearersof that religious culture in the midst of the island's peoples, Britons, Scots-Irish, and Picts. These peoples all identified with the Irish religious culture, which had made the initial running and taken possession of thefield,not only in the homelands but also in English Northumbria, which was, after all, still a tribal society and was basically to remain so. Bede evidendy took great satisfaction from the formation of 'the English', the term itself representing an astonishing transcendence of actuality, based as it was solely on Pope Gregory's reference to the Angli as the object of the Roman mission...