Pilgrims in Ireland: The Monuments and the People (review)

"The history of a nation," the Irish poet, W. B. Yeats once said, "was not in parliaments and battlefields, but in what the people say to each other on fair-days and high days, and in how they farm and quarrel, and go on pilgrimage," Peter Harbison's book is an excellent summation of the origins and history of the practice of pilgrimage as it was found in Ireland, He states that the practice of pilgrimage within Ireland has been previously "underestimated by scholars," and this book is his very able attempt at remedying the situation. In it he proposes the thesis that a great many of the ruins scattered about Ireland today, such as high crosses, round towers, ogham stones, and beehive huts, came into existence not because of ascetic monks, but because of the activities of early pilgrims. Many of these, of course, were native Irish, but a great many others, he contends, were travellers from Britain and other parts of Europe.

Harbison divides his book into three general sections. The first, "Pilgrimage People," traces Christian pilgrimage back to the time of the patristic church, and to the early fourth-century discovery of the True Cross by Helena, Constantine's mother, in Jerusalem. Some of the earliest accounts which have survived about pilgrimage are those of western visitors to the Holy Land, including Jerome, Evagrius, Cassian, and Egeria. By the seventh century C.E., besides those places associated with Jesus and the heroic figures of the Old Testament, other pilgrimage sites were increasingly popular: Rome, where the relics of Sts. Peter and Paul and countless other martyrs were venerated; Tours in Gaul, where St. Martin had lived; Lindisfarne in Northern England, where St. Cuthbert had ministered as a spiritual guide and hermit. Many of the pilgrims to these places were Irish. Harbison quotes the ninth-century German monk Walahfrid Strabo as saying, "the Irish are a people with whom the custom of travelling to foreign lands has now become almost second nature."

In the second section, "Pilgrimage Places," the author discusses the numerous sites in Ireland itself to which both Irish pilgrims and other Europeans came. Certain of these were specifically identified with the well-known saints Patrick, Brendan, Brigit, and Columcille, while others, whose founders were perhaps less famous, also had numerous pilgrims visiting them. Clonmacnois, founded by St. Ciaran, has the longest history of pilgrimage in Irish history, and is considered to have been one of the most important centers of learning, art, writing, and spirituality. Another site, Glendalough, the home of St. Kevin, was one of the four chief pilgrimage places in Ireland where pilgrims, because of a decree from Rome, were given special spiritual benefits. Croagh Patrick and St. Patrick's Purgatory at Lough Derg are still visited annually by thousands today.

In section three, "Pilgrimage Things," Harbison examines certain objects, artifacts, and natural phenomena, such as tomb-shrines, relics, reliquaries, holy wells, and sacred trees that he says were directly related to the practice of pilgrimage. It is here that his tendency to link almost every Irish building, ruin, high cross, and sundial with pilgrims that his argument wears a bit thin. His overall thesis is weakened, rather than strengthened when he states, for example, that the gatehouse at Glendalough was probably built for an administrator of pilgrimages instead of the traditional monastic gate-keeper, or when he interprets the figures carved on the lintel of the Priest's House as pilgrims rather than, more likely, monks attending St. Kevin who carry his staff and bell. Hestretches the imagination too when he links the beehive cells which are scattered so profusely along the coast of the Dingle Peninsula with pilgrim hostels or, in his words, a system of Christian B & Bs. Unfortunately, the impression is given that there were more people on pilgrimage than those living within the numerous monastic communities of the Celtic Church.

Still, Harbison's book is a very worthy endeavor, rich in scholarship and highly...