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Fr Conor McDonough: The Untold History of How Ireland Became Catholic · Mahon McCann

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Father Conor McDonough, thank you for joining me the second time on the podcast,
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Return Visitor. Great to be here.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Why the first Return Visitor?
0:09
SPEAKER_01: We've had a couple of other, we've had a few trilogies out there, but we're getting there.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: We're getting there, you might be.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: You're the second most watched of all time as well. Paul Kingsworth
0:17
SPEAKER_00: is coming in.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: Kingsworth beat me. Okay, good to know.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, second most popular.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: So hopefully, I think this one will be just as interesting, to be honest,
0:26
SPEAKER_01: because what I reached out to you about was the question of the origins
0:30
SPEAKER_01: of Catholicism in Ireland, of Christianity.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: How did the Irish become Catholic in the first place?
0:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, big question, but that's what we're going to try and dig into and have
0:41
SPEAKER_01: a think about a little bit.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I suppose, what was the...
0:46
SPEAKER_01: What's the earliest written source?
0:47
SPEAKER_01: I know you study this yourself.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: What's the earliest written source we have on that time going back?
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: The earliest kind of extended text that we have, we have two texts from St. Patrick himself.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So this is a really extraordinary fact
1:06
SPEAKER_00: of Irish history and Irish Christianity.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of astonished that more people don't read this.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in Christianity in Ireland,
1:15
SPEAKER_00: especially if you are a committed Christian,
1:16
SPEAKER_00: you should absolutely read the Confession of St.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Patrick and his equally exciting, maybe more exciting,
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Letter to the Soldiers of Caroticus.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So they're amazing works.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Even the most skeptical of scholars say, yeah, it's his own writing.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: And you get an amazing insight into Patrick the Man.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd love if he said more about his methods in mission and how he shared the gospel with people.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't tell us all that much,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: but we could go into the confession in a bit more detail if you like.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: But that's the earliest extended written source that we have.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: And then for about 150 years, we have almost nothing done.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Kind of composed that comes down to us are very, very little.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And then in the 7th century, so Patrick is 5th century, then in the 7th century,
2:07
SPEAKER_00: things take off and you have all kinds of sources that emerge,
2:11
SPEAKER_00: many of which claim to be, you know, drawing on things that happened earlier,
2:15
SPEAKER_00: but you can't really be sure.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: So for kind of a lot of the fifth century and a good bit of the sixth century,
2:20
SPEAKER_00: there's a black hole and people speculate about how
2:24
SPEAKER_00: the conversion actually happened.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And later sources tell us various stories about how the conversion period kind of unfolded.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: But we're really low on sources, except for these two unbelievably precious sources.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: The Confession of St. Patrick and his Letter to the Soldiers of Carodigus.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting because when I first started thinking about this,
2:45
SPEAKER_01: I did that because I was thinking like, oh, St.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Patrick, he's in the fifth century.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, St Augustine is in the fourth century.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: And we have like so much of St Augustin's writing and so much literature.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: And then I went back and I was Like, Oh, we actually have two things from St.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Patrick that he actually wrote which people would be like,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: I think shocked by it To be honest. Exactly.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Is it difficult because writing kind of came to Ireland with Christianity as well?
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Like our written history kind of seems to begin around.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: I guess there's other, there's Aum and stuff like that,
3:11
SPEAKER_01: but is that an accurate kind of statement?
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's fair.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: And even with Aum, the general,
3:17
SPEAKER_00: the kind of scholarly consensus now is that it wasn't this kind of long kind
3:22
SPEAKER_00: of pre-Christian thing, but that it's actually more or less begins with the arrival
3:28
SPEAKER_00: of Christianity. You know, maybe it's there a little bit before,
3:30
SPEAKER_00: but it's somehow in imitation of Roman style and kind an imitation
3:35
SPEAKER_00: of So it's not like this ancient native tradition
3:41
SPEAKER_00: of writing that had nothing to do
3:42
SPEAKER_00: with the Roman world or the world of Christianity.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: We have a nice little video on that.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: We went to a farmer's field in Rathglass in County Carlow,
3:50
SPEAKER_00: climbed over a load of electric fences with an elderly man who insisted on coming
3:55
SPEAKER_00: with us. It was a great bit of fun.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: But we kind of dig into one of the own stones there.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And how you can date it based on the language that's on the stone.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: And it's just three words, but you can still date it to fifth century
4:09
SPEAKER_00: and its connections then with the Roman world.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Because there was more exchange between Roman Britain and Ireland than we usually realize.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So there was to-ing and fro-ing.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Patrick was just one of probably very many Roman Britons who arrived in Ireland
4:27
SPEAKER_00: and brought their Christian faith with them.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: I think I watched that video.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: One of the guys, it was a Roman guy's name, wasn't it?
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Marianas, exactly.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: So it says Dunaydonas Mackey Mariani.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: So this guy with an Irish name, Dunaydonas, and his father had a Roman name.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's really, really interesting.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: And we went up another, we went up a mountain, Mount Brandon in Kerry, to another Owen Stone.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the hardest climbs of my life
4:54
SPEAKER_00: because you're carrying all this camera equipment on your back.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: But there's actually a It's one of the oldest old stones in the sixth century.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: And there you have a reference to a priest.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Crivather is the kind of primitive Irish word for a priest.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And when I was up there, there were some Americans and Swiss people
5:15
SPEAKER_00: who were climbing at the same time.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And they stopped when we were recording up there in the mist in the mountain.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And they said after the recording, they said they came over.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't hear what I was saying.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: They came over to me and they said, are you are you a druid?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: They were all excited.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: And I said, no, no, no.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Catholic priest.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And this guy was a Catholic priest too.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Like the guy the stone was put up to.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: And they were so disappointed.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: But I think that brings us to just one thing that you mentioned.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned kind of Catholicism coming.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: And then you said on Christianity.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people...
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And react strongly to the use of the word Catholic in this context.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And they say, you know, Catholicism is kind of it's something that's invented
5:53
SPEAKER_00: in contradistinction from Protestantism.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just a 16th, 16th century thing.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: But actually, in a lot of these early sources, they're very willing to use the word Catholic.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: As well as Christian to describe themselves.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: What they mean by Catholic there is Catholic as opposed to heretical. So St.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Augustine in his writings, he talks about the Catholics and the Donatists who are
6:15
SPEAKER_00: a heretical group.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So belonging to the universal church, the great church,
6:19
SPEAKER_00: not just the small little sects of the heretics.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So they would, you know, people like Patrick
6:25
SPEAKER_00: and his successors would have regarded themselves as Catholic Christians for sure.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah. As in the universal church, you know, St.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: Paul uses the same term and everything like that because yeah it's such a good point
6:37
SPEAKER_01: as well.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: So when we're talking about them before Christianity comes to Ireland, prehistory,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: what you're talking about, it's kind of a black hole
6:43
SPEAKER_01: because we don't have written records essentially that have come down
6:46
SPEAKER_01: from that time.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: But I guess we probably have a lot of oral stories, a lot of oral traditions. Yeah.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Around that.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And I guess what kind of picture does that paint of like pre-Christian?
6:56
SPEAKER_01: What does pagan Ireland look like?
6:58
SPEAKER_01: Because we don't really have a Homer or a Hesiod, I don't know, that really,
7:01
SPEAKER_01: you know, depicted it in sharp relief of what their religion was like,
7:05
SPEAKER_01: their practices, you know, but they were obviously religious people.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what was their, what are your thoughts on that?
7:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's such a difficult question to answer with kind of the subtlety that it needs.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a book by Mark Williams called Ireland's Immortals, which is a very,
7:21
SPEAKER_00: very good starting point on this massive thick book,
7:23
SPEAKER_00: but really gets kind of deep in the weeds and it's very careful because a lot of,
7:30
SPEAKER_00: let's say, online commentary about Irish mythology, let's say,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: or pre-Christian beliefs, a lot of it is not careful at all.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of just a merging together of a lot of different sources
7:41
SPEAKER_00: and you could have, you know,
7:42
SPEAKER_00: a folk tale from the 20th century is treated as evidence for what people believed
7:46
SPEAKER_00: in the 4th century.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: So I think caution is kind of advisable, but having said that,
7:55
SPEAKER_00: when There's never just a complete casting off of the cultural world
8:02
SPEAKER_00: that pre-existed the new religion.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: There's always some kind of synthesis that happens.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: And that was certainly the case in Ireland.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And I would say there's good evidence that it was more so the case in Ireland
8:17
SPEAKER_00: than in other countries.
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SPEAKER_00: Context where conversion happened to Christianity.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it seems that all the evidence suggests anyway,
8:25
SPEAKER_00: that there was considerable respect for the cultural institutions,
8:29
SPEAKER_00: let's say not so much for kind of the worship that was going on,
8:33
SPEAKER_00: but for everything else associated with pre-Christian culture seems
8:36
SPEAKER_00: to have been sort of baptized, if you like,
8:40
SPEAKER_00: and brought into the world of Christianity.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that, I mean, you could kind of think of two main areas, let's say.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: One is to do with law and the other is to do with literature.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So firstly, in the case of law, it's clear that there was a fairly, you know,
9:03
SPEAKER_00: well thought system of law that existed in Ireland before the
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And again, this marks out Ireland from other areas.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: We don't always associate Ireland with kind of legalism.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: We think of ourselves as kind of wild and romantic and free.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: But actually all the earliest indications are kind of an obsession
9:22
SPEAKER_00: with social status and an obsession
9:27
SPEAKER_00: with compensation and kind
9:31
SPEAKER_00: of how legal claims are worked out in society.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: So you have this legal system, which is national,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: even though politically the island is divided into roughly 150 kingdoms.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: So this legal system, it comes into light historically.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: In a Christian context.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: But it seems that it probably pre-existed Christianity
9:54
SPEAKER_00: because it's certainly not just an application of the biblical laws, for example.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And it comes into light along with a legend about St.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Patrick confirming the earlier laws of the Irish.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: So this main body of early Irish law, which is kind of compiled in the 7th century,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: is known as the Sianachas Moor.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And it's about 50 different, originally it was about 50 different legal tracts.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Not all of them survive.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: You have a legal tract about beekeeping, you know,
10:21
SPEAKER_00: what to do if your bees go over and, you know, get their honey from somebody else's,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: whatever. I don't know how beekeeping works.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: There was one about cats, a legal tract about cats, about dogs, about medical care.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: What happens if somebody gives you medical care and you don't get better?
10:35
SPEAKER_00: Who pays compensation?
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Really, really detailed stuff.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: But it has a prologue.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And which is probably slightly later than the seventh century,
10:44
SPEAKER_00: in which we're told a story about Patrick gathering all the men of skill in Ireland.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So all the kind of the learned classes and asking them about what they do.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Like what? Tell me your art.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Tell me your skill. You're a poet. You're a historian.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: You're a judge and so on.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And there's a poet called Dovtach who works through, in this legend,
11:03
SPEAKER_00: works through the earlier Irish laws with Patrick.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: And Patrick says, yes, this corresponds to natural law. So another St.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Paul's idea is that in Romans chapter one, verse 19,
11:17
SPEAKER_00: the idea that the pagans could figure out something about right and wrong based
11:21
SPEAKER_00: on the observation of the world around them and their own nature.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: St. Patrick says, yeah, that's how you guys figure this out.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: But there's something else at it.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: In this prologue it says that Ireland had its own prophets who were inspired
11:32
SPEAKER_00: by the Holy Spirit just as the prophets of the Old Testament were.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: So here is in a Christian context there's a projection into the past of the idea
11:40
SPEAKER_00: that some kind of revelation was happening as well
11:43
SPEAKER_00: as Philosophy may be working itself out,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: as well as that there is some kind of activity of the Holy Spirit inspiring
11:50
SPEAKER_00: the poets and judges of pre-Christian Ireland to arrive at really good laws.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's one area of kind of what seems like inheritance.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, you're not dealing with a purely native law.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: It's clearly, by the time we come in contact with it,
12:06
SPEAKER_00: it's clearly been baptized and interpreted in Christian light and kind
12:09
SPEAKER_00: of biblical text woven into it and so on.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And the second area is literature.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: So the kind of stories that people might be familiar with, stories about, you know,
12:17
SPEAKER_00: Cú Chólan and Fionn McCúl and so on.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: So many of these stories only survive in manuscripts from, let's say,
12:27
SPEAKER_00: the 11th at the earliest, early, you know, 12th century.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And many of them survive much later manuscripts.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: So scholars, you know, tear strips off.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, previously, scholars would be very confident in saying,
12:46
SPEAKER_00: this brings us back to the Iron Age.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, it brings us back to the pre-Christian world.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: And generally, today's scholars say, Scholars are more sceptical about that,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: and they're more likely to find elements of Christian theology in stories even
12:59
SPEAKER_00: about Cúchollán or classical inspiration.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: You have kind of classical literature clearly appearing and inspiring
13:07
SPEAKER_00: the Irish legends that actually survive.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: But there's a lost manuscript.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: I think if if I wanted one manuscript to just kind of reappear and be found again,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: it's called the Keen Drummer Schnechten.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And it is thought to have dated to the 8th century.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: It's probably a copy of a manuscript that's even older that was made in Bangor.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And it contains a Bangor Abbey monastery, a place of holiness,
13:30
SPEAKER_00: a place where the Bible was studied.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And in that place in Bangor,
13:34
SPEAKER_00: you have this manuscript containing loads
13:38
SPEAKER_00: of what later survives as this kind
13:41
SPEAKER_00: of literature of pre-Christian Ireland.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: So the idea that monasteries were places of the preservation of, let's say,
13:49
SPEAKER_00: secular literature set in a pagan world.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And again, there, just as with the law, with the literature, there was clearly elaboration.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: There was clearly invention.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: These people aren't, they're not just transmitting something dumbly,
14:05
SPEAKER_00: but it does seem like there's some kind of transmission happening.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And that they are transmitting something.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: It kind of undermines the theory sometimes of this opposition between the pagan
14:14
SPEAKER_01: and the Christian totally, which you see a lot in the Greeks as well.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Like the early church fathers bringing like Plato and Aristotle and the best,
14:22
SPEAKER_01: the philosophers and like saying, oh yeah, no, there was,
14:24
SPEAKER_01: there was revelation going on here as well.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: It just wasn't, wasn't finished.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, we can kind of bring it in, take out the gold and, and leave behind,
14:32
SPEAKER_01: you know, or separate the wheat and the chaff. Exactly.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: And especially with the Irish, I suppose,
14:36
SPEAKER_01: because they preserved the classics in the monasteries after the collapse
14:41
SPEAKER_01: of the Roman Empire like we wouldn't have that pagan tradition if it wasn't
14:45
SPEAKER_01: for those Irish Catholic monks that actually set about copying them which is like
14:50
SPEAKER_01: so clearly they thought it was valuable
14:52
SPEAKER_00: enough to Yeah, I mean,
14:53
SPEAKER_00: it's true generally of any surviving works of ancient literature.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: They survive in monastic libraries in Europe.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: We don't have Virgil or Homer.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: We don't have their original autograph manuscripts.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: What we have is what survives through Christian filters.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: And some stuff was left out, like the great Greek tragedies.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: They survive, but they were always accompanied in actual practice by a satire play,
15:22
SPEAKER_00: which is kind of this like farcical, ridiculous sort of often really lewd play.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: And those tend not to survive.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: So there is a certain filtering that happens.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: But what survives is really fascinating.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And it speaks of a kind of a Christian humanism.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a really important notion.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Christian humanism, not humanism in the sense of atheism,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: but humanism in the sense of valuing Yes,
15:49
SPEAKER_00: we're fallen.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're kind of messed up and complicated.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: But there's a natural goodness there which survives the fall.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: And that means that in any culture,
16:01
SPEAKER_00: we're going to find really good stuff that we can make use of and find God in.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that idea of the church as the crown of the cultures.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't destroy them, but kind of gathers them together into their fullness
16:14
SPEAKER_01: of what they can be.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: And that's such a contrary to this kind of idea of like a colonial kind of church
16:20
SPEAKER_01: or something like taking over and replacing everything.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: It's like the filtering thing, I think, is the right.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: That's a great way to think about it, of like getting out. Yeah.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Filtering out the good stuff.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: But then, of course, people will disagree.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: But yes, I think to not go to too far down to the monastic period.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what about like the Fomerians, the two of the Dana, like this kind of early almost?
16:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't know. I kind of associate them with the Greek,
16:44
SPEAKER_01: like the Titans and then the gods coming from the Titans.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: There seems to be some similarities there.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: But what are your thoughts on that? That early kind of. Yeah.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: Mythology, I suppose.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: So this is, yeah, you're kind of referring to sort of a story about Ireland,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: which is called usually Lever Gavala Aaron, the book of the invasions of Ireland,
17:05
SPEAKER_00: the book of the takings of Ireland.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: And one version of it seems to have been in this manuscript,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: this last manuscript that I that I mentioned, the Kine Drum of Schnechte.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: But it survives in many, many different versions from, you know,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: let's say in the 8th and 9th century,
17:22
SPEAKER_00: you have poems that clearly refer to or kind of hint at a kind of a fuller story
17:29
SPEAKER_00: about who the predecessors on this island were.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And then you have it more elaborated in kind of 11th, 12th century and later.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: So this idea is really, really important.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a history, both of the Gaelic peoples,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: who are also sometimes called the Sons of Meal, the Milesians, the Irish, let's say,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: and then the predecessors of the Gaelic peoples on this island.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: So the idea that there were previous dwellers on Ireland.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's really interesting to think of in terms of immigration, like in this period,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: through the lens of this story about the island of Ireland and the Gaelic peoples.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: The Gaelic people regarded themselves as latecomers, as immigrants,
18:16
SPEAKER_00: and that the island had previously been inhabited by other races,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: some of them kind of semi-magical and so on.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: So as I said, it survives in lots of different versions.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely not something that is just, that can be treated as history.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't treat it as history.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: I would treat it as pseudo-history, as kind of people imagining a past for themselves.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Who knows, there might be like this or that trace of history in it.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to the Tuha Dei, for example, the Tuha De Donal,
18:45
SPEAKER_00: There might be some connections with what religious worship actually happened
18:50
SPEAKER_00: in pre-Christian periods, but there's very little that we can say
18:53
SPEAKER_00: about that for certain.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: What we can say is that this was, in a Christian context, this was people...
19:00
SPEAKER_00: thinking about their own past as a people and then the past of, of the island.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: And they were very complicated stories they were willing to tell.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: It was not a simplistic account at all, at all.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: And it got more and more elaborate, more and less complex.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And so weaving together, as you said,
19:17
SPEAKER_00: of classical sources because at various different periods some
19:21
SPEAKER_00: of these peoples will be in Greece and then they'll come over.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of the first ones I think was a Greek guy, wasn't it? Parthelon?
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Parthelon, exactly.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: So they're studying classical literature and that's feeding into their thinking
19:34
SPEAKER_00: about themselves and who they are.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: And they're studying the Bible.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: So they're placing their own ancestors into biblical stories.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Which is a very common
19:45
SPEAKER_01: thing that people would do in a sense of like tagging,
19:48
SPEAKER_01: like even like Troy and like Emmaus,
19:50
SPEAKER_01: like the Romans see themselves as descended from him from the battle of Troy.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: It's like you kind of link yourself into these origin stories through a kind of figure.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And that ties their kind of identity into a bigger story than just that land.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: And I'd say what marks out Ireland is not so much that they did this,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: but that they did it in such an elaborate and complex way that wove together to such
20:13
SPEAKER_00: an extent that Native or apparently native traditions with biblical
20:16
SPEAKER_00: and classical traditions.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what marks out Ireland.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: But as you say, that kind of imagining a past for people,
20:23
SPEAKER_00: that nation building by means of story, that's not unique to Ireland at all.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yeah.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: It's something that's kind of universal history is Pajot's big thing, isn't it?
20:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: That we're all tied into that kind of broader story,
20:39
SPEAKER_01: which I kind of think with polytheism as well, I tend to think of it as...
20:44
SPEAKER_01: I think that there's a, I don't know, I don't want to go too deep in this,
20:47
SPEAKER_01: but there's a cognitive psychology or a kind of cognitive science of polytheism
20:50
SPEAKER_01: as well.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: I tend to think it comes with a particular personification of forces, of drives,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: of emotions and stuff that can kind of act on the human psyche,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: ways of dealing with them.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: It's a very Peterson kind of motif,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: but I think that the rituals there have particular functions of kind
21:07
SPEAKER_01: of helping them deal with, you see that with the Titans, with Fomerians,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: this kind of Period of strong forces that are influencing people
21:15
SPEAKER_01: that people don't have control over.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And then a kind of progression towards something that's more like
21:21
SPEAKER_01: a city-state religion, like in Greece, like in Athens,
21:23
SPEAKER_01: where they have kind of organized better.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, yeah, would you, like, do you see,
21:29
SPEAKER_01: because there is a progression in those stories, it seems like.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: They're often telling like a kind of pre-chaos and then a slight ordering
21:36
SPEAKER_01: of it slash like challenges. I don't know.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: I'll come back to that question of sort of progress or not in a moment.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: But just on the point about polytheism and monotheism,
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth noting that some
21:49
SPEAKER_00: of these people think monotheism is necessarily iconoclastic
21:52
SPEAKER_00: and just destroys anything in opposition to it.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: But we're talking about this kind of universal history,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: which Christianity is so keen on, tells a different kind of story.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: And it says that monotheism is Because it believes in one providential God
22:06
SPEAKER_00: of all creation, actually is capable of synthesizing things and is interested
22:10
SPEAKER_00: in synthesizing things and fitting all of these elements into one coherent story.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: I've seen that the Annals of Inish Fallon are back in Ireland.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Oxford has given them back to, they're in UCC on display until the end of this month, I think.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: So get to see them if you can.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: It's a rare opportunity.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: But we did another video on the Annals of Inish Fallon about universal history
22:35
SPEAKER_00: and just this desire in these monasteries
22:37
SPEAKER_00: to synchronize all their many different sources and to say, okay,
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Coochollin was around and Crohor Magnes said they were around the same time.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: And this was happening in Greece at the same time,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: or even back into kind of Old Testament kings and kings of Assyria
22:56
SPEAKER_00: and then earlier Irish kings.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: So this synchronicity, this kind of single story that they want to tell,
23:03
SPEAKER_00: that's associated, I think, with their monotheism.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: But just on the question of sort of, Is this a story of progress from kind of,
23:11
SPEAKER_00: you know, a more kind of a darker sort of past to kind
23:15
SPEAKER_00: of more enlightened Christian present?
23:17
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say, well, I wouldn't frame it like that exactly,
23:20
SPEAKER_01: but in terms of learning of how reality works. You know what I mean?
23:24
SPEAKER_01: We're growing and we're learning.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: And monotheism is a discovery of the ultimate reality, classical theism.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: There is a source beyond those kind of fragmented parts that are very much part
23:36
SPEAKER_01: of that reality, but not the ultimate reality in that sense.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really interesting.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think in some of these stories,
23:45
SPEAKER_00: what the earlier figures stand for is kind of knowledge of the particular.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: So I've kind of...
23:52
SPEAKER_00: There's a genre of writing called Jean Hennechus, which is kind of place lore.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And one form that this takes is St.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Patrick meeting with pre-Christian figures who survived, right?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: They survived. They're way bigger than people today.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: They're really kind of strong and so on.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: But when they hear the gospel, they want to be baptized.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And they want to then, what Patrick does
24:18
SPEAKER_00: then is he actually asks his guardian angel, Is it okay to listen to their stories?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm really enjoying their stories. Can I keep listening?
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And the angel says, yeah, write it down because this is important stuff that they know.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting thing. We're reading it
24:30
SPEAKER_01: now, like what?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: And so again, this is, I wouldn't say this is necessarily something that happened
24:38
SPEAKER_00: to Patrick, but it's how Patrick was imagined this, how the encounter happened.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: This is a, especially in a work known as the Colloquy
24:45
SPEAKER_00: of the Elders is somehow how it's translated, Ogil of Nishinore.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's in many different versions.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of slightly later in the medieval period.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: What they do then is they bring Patrick all around Ireland,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: And they tell him how this hill got its name, how that lake got its name,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: how that mountain is related to some other story and so on.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: And Patrick just goes around Ireland with them because remember, he's an immigrant.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: He's new to the place.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And the Gaelic Irish...
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Have a sense of themselves as new to the place and having to learn from, you know,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: previous generations.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: So it's a really interesting account,
25:22
SPEAKER_00: the idea that there's a certain wisdom of the particular,
25:25
SPEAKER_00: which isn't kind of suppressed by a kind of an overarching universal wisdom.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those pagan, you know, pre-existing figures, they stand for that.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: The meeting of heaven and earth in a way,
25:40
SPEAKER_01: the particular and the universal and a proper,
25:43
SPEAKER_01: but it needs to be encapsulated in the particular,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: in the place and that you can't just kind of just force this story on it.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: But I was thinking of Oshina Tirnanog as well, you know,
25:51
SPEAKER_01: I always found the ending of that story.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: So strange of like when he, you know,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: he drops the rock and he becomes old and they're like, oh,
25:58
SPEAKER_01: we better bring him to St. Patrick.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: You're like, wait, why is St. Patrick in this story?
26:01
SPEAKER_01: How did this, it's kind of like a Marvel crossover or something like that.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: He's just, but it makes sense because like the aging,
26:07
SPEAKER_01: like Tiernanog is such an amazing, I like, even just the psychology of it,
26:12
SPEAKER_01: of this kind of pure Eternus becoming trapped in this land
26:16
SPEAKER_01: of endless youth becoming old before your time and then repenting
26:20
SPEAKER_01: and getting baptized is like,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: It makes perfect sense in terms of the transformative element of it.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: But it's almost like a handing over of the paganism to the Christian as well,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: to be like, you know, this is a better way. Absolutely.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: We've realized that.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: C.S. Lewis has the discarded image is his work on medieval literature generally.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And one chapter of that is dedicated to what he calls the long avi, the long livers.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And you could Think of like the relationship in The Lord of the Rings
26:55
SPEAKER_00: between the elves and the humans,
26:57
SPEAKER_00: how they have different kinds of wisdom based on different sort of lifespans.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that turns up in these sources as well.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: You have these figures who've lived for so long and they have a certain kind
27:08
SPEAKER_00: of wisdom that's then given to the short livers, if you like.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes. Okay. Cause they, they've got more experience.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: They can kind of pass it on across time. Yeah.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: But they don't have the gospel.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: They need to learn the gospel.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: They need the grace of the sacraments.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: That's cause there's, there's only so much you can learn from experience.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: I think it's very built into that.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: It's not empirical.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Like the empiricists would say, Oh, it's all just observation,
27:31
SPEAKER_01: but observation is actually quite limited and you can kind
27:33
SPEAKER_01: of do it intergenerationally, but revelation is where that kind of, uh, Exactly.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: And in this early Irish tradition, you have both.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: You have real confidence about what we can know naturally and also real confidence
27:50
SPEAKER_00: that revelation is needed.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: I was just on Iona.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago, doing my retreat, which is an incredible experience.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I recommend everyone go to Iona, where St. Columba was.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And there's two stories in the life of Columba about this,
28:04
SPEAKER_00: where he goes to the Isle of Skye on one occasion and goes to Loch Ness on another.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: And both places he meets a really elderly pagan who has preserved his natural goodness.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: So again, this idea that it's not like a Calvinist thing of kind of, you know,
28:18
SPEAKER_00: total corruption.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: There's this idea that even with the fall,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: these people have preserved a natural goodness and they're brought to Columba.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: And in both cases, Columba shares the gospel with them through an interpreter.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: They're picked and then they're baptized.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: So again, I just love that these two very brief stories,
28:37
SPEAKER_00: but you have that confidence again in kind of natural human powers,
28:41
SPEAKER_00: even after the fall.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Allied with the fact that no, like you need baptism. This is completed.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: It's crowned in sacramental grace.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So, and to see it, yeah, in the narratives as well.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: So interesting, man, that crossover, the conversion kind of between worlds.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: And I guess, yeah, so you have, maybe to go back to St.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Patrick again, like, do you think,
29:04
SPEAKER_01: does Patrick become kind of an icon of this in a way?
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Like he's, you know, a lot of the stories that are probably going on around
29:10
SPEAKER_01: that time are attributed to Patrick and his kind of travels. Around Ireland.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: Because I think of him like gathering all the kings of Ireland and kind of,
29:18
SPEAKER_01: it seemed like there was this like almost top down thing of like converting
29:23
SPEAKER_01: the kings, the view of scale, and then that spread to everybody else. I don't know.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Because there is that question of the Roman Empire and stuff with the early church
29:30
SPEAKER_01: of like, how did that, you know, spread?
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Because it does, it's like, it's so weird.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Somebody said to me, it was like Ireland became Catholic.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: It was like, because they came over with their army.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: I was like, there was no army.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: There was no, it wasn't like an invasion.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: Like it was just like a handful.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Like the Apostles, like just going out and just being like, all right, well,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to die because this is true.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: So there's different versions of Patrick kind of later on,
29:52
SPEAKER_00: but like in his own confession, when he tells us about what he did,
29:55
SPEAKER_00: definitely didn't come over with an army.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: He certainly came with some gifts.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: So there's a certain financial leverage,
30:03
SPEAKER_00: but the financial leverage was to buy security from kings, what he says,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: kings and judges, so that the sons of kings would accompany him as he's traveling
30:14
SPEAKER_00: through different kingdoms and so on and across borders.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: So you have this very like patchwork political setup in Ireland,
30:20
SPEAKER_00: and you might be going from one kingdom into another.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you're in real danger.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: So he's definitely – there's some kind of financial backing maybe
30:33
SPEAKER_00: from the British church, risk.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Quite a few times.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: He says kind of there were 12 times when I was really in danger and also
30:42
SPEAKER_00: then that when people convert, they give him gifts.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: He describes women who convert throwing their jewelry at the altar.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean it would be great if that happened we could do with some of that in the cloud
30:53
SPEAKER_00: if people just started throwing their goods into the altar into the collection box
30:57
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so there was this gift giving,
31:00
SPEAKER_00: which he then used to kind of buy a certain security.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: So that was definitely needed.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: But we don't really know much more about his methods or even where he was.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: The only place name he mentioned is Foclet,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: when he has the dream of the people by the wood of Foklit coming and saying kind
31:21
SPEAKER_00: of come back and walk among us once again Patrick and so on.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And that is probably Fog Hill near
31:28
SPEAKER_00: And it's probable that Patrick went kind of north
31:33
SPEAKER_00: and west and that the south and east maybe were already somewhat kind
31:38
SPEAKER_00: of Christianized or to some extent that there were some Christian communities there,
31:41
SPEAKER_00: but he went to where there were no Christians.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: This was his distinctive.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: But later, a writer like Chirachan, who's writing in the 7th century about Patrick,
31:51
SPEAKER_00: he has him pop up all over Ireland.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's really the sense of Patrick as kind of just a man of the entire island of Ireland.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Whereas, again, other sources will emphasize Armagh,
32:03
SPEAKER_00: which Patrick doesn't mention at all, but they'll kind of focus on our lab.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like Dan Patrick as well or like Sam Patrick's territory and stuff.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: With Dan Patrick that's more complex because when the Normans arrive they want
32:17
SPEAKER_00: to claim The authority of the earlier saints.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And so they discover the tunes of Patrick and Columba and Bridget, which is very useful.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Are they still there to this day?
32:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, they're not.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: I think they're not there now, but it's probable that this is kind of...
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Partly fictional, the association with Don Patrick and to kind of back up the Normans.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: But in any case, Patrick as kind of a man of the whole island,
32:47
SPEAKER_00: that's definitely something that emerges very early on.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: So you have so many places in Ireland named after Patrick or associated with them.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Out in Connemara, you know, we used to go on pilgrimage.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: I was just there actually at Easter to Labaforic, this cave where he supposedly spent the night.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And then you've Crow Patrick and that whole tradition as well.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: So there's different kinds of traditions about where Patrick was and what he did.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to pick apart.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And you would love if he told us in his own writings where he was and what he did
33:17
SPEAKER_00: in more detail, but he doesn't.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. If we had like St. Augustine levels of St. Patrick content.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: But he, yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I guess that would be, but it's an extraordinary feat, I suppose,
33:30
SPEAKER_01: even in that sense to enter into such an unknown,
33:33
SPEAKER_01: And place and encounter such unknown people.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: And to actually achieve such a transformation then that goes on for thousands
33:42
SPEAKER_01: of years. You know what I mean?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Like he must have because in his own writings, he's very down on himself as well.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, the most wretched sinner.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Which I mean, fair enough.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to be a holy person, you probably should be.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't know if you want to lose weight.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: You can't be like, oh, look amazing. Right.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, But he's also
33:59
SPEAKER_00: like, again, that's why I'd really recommend people read it.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: He's so aware of the Holy Spirit.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: He's so aware of his work as basically kind of he's an instrument of God's purposes.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And he really writes like an Paul.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: And if you're, you know, when you pick up Patrick, you kind of say, gosh,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: this is like reading one of St. Paul's letters.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: He has the same urgency that Paul had.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, he has the seem, um, yeah,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: the same kind of energy and the same willingness to talk about himself
34:30
SPEAKER_00: and his own story and his own kind of spiritual experiences way more
34:35
SPEAKER_00: than other sources in the period.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And he talks about what he experiences in prayer, about his own conversion.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: So there's this deeply personal kind of, yeah, deeply personal mission.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think his charism, as you say, his sort of charisma,
34:53
SPEAKER_00: It must have been immensely powerful in order to have had the effect it did.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: But then again, what effect did it have?
35:00
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to quantify because we don't have those sources immediately afterwards.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: So we have Patrick telling us what he did, but he doesn't give us numbers.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: He says a lot of the sons and daughters of the chieftains
35:10
SPEAKER_00: of the Irish are becoming monks and virgins of Christ.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: And later sources will tell us who some of those people were and the kinds
35:16
SPEAKER_00: of numbers that might have been involved.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: But in between, there's a black hole.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: And so it's very hard to know.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: What we can say for sure, I think, is that he wasn't.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't totally solitary.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't completely on his own.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: And he must have been collaborating with others and so on.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: But he was, without doubt, an extraordinary evangelist.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know if this is a rumor, but I heard he slept on a bed of stone.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's rough, man. Yeah.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: What he must have done from time to time.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's probably better sleeping on a bed of stone than sleeping on like a bed of mud.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they are people's lives, man.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: We really have no idea like how much just like a normal life was just unbelievably tough, man.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. We're so pampered by comparison.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: Coddled, exactly. Yeah, for sure.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: But so, OK, so you have Patrick then comes and then so the early church in Ireland, I suppose.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: What what do we know about that?
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, how does that look?
36:17
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that will bring us kind of into monasticism to talk
36:19
SPEAKER_01: about that and how important that is.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, so the early church in Ireland,
36:27
SPEAKER_00: it's definitely a complex story,
36:30
SPEAKER_00: so I don't want to simplify too much.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that does mark it out is the strength of monasticism in the life
36:38
SPEAKER_00: of the church compared to Europe.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And this makes some sense when you think that we didn't have cities,
36:43
SPEAKER_00: we weren't part of the Roman Empire, we didn't have, I mean, in Europe, In Europe,
36:48
SPEAKER_00: the church structures mapped on to secular Roman structures.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have that.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: So what instead you have are kind of monasteries being founded,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: monasteries which are much more than just places of prayer.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: They become little cities in themselves, little monastic cities.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And the...
37:11
SPEAKER_00: What's sometimes the case is sometimes shocking to European visitors
37:14
SPEAKER_00: and some English visitors as well in the period is that abbots sometimes have
37:19
SPEAKER_00: a greater authority than bishops.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's not to say that they didn't have a proper theology of the episcopacy.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: They knew that only bishops could ordain and confirm and so on.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: But in a given monastery, you might have the abbot who's in charge of everything.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And then he has his bishop who's there for the sacramental needs.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: But the abbot seems in some cases to have been kind of the overall ruler.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: You also would say...
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Major prominence of women.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And you see this in a figure like St. Brigid.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: But there are others, St. Eta, St.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Monena, these really early figures, women who are kind of very powerful women.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: And we could talk all day about St.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Brigid, for example, that's going to be a whole other podcast.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I find fascinating is that In our time, whenever St.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Bridget's Day comes along, you'll have people saying, oh no, I mean, St.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Bridget clearly was not a Christian figure.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: She was clearly a pagan goddess turned into a Christian figure.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: How do you know this?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Because she's so funky. She's so cool.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: She's associated with fire.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: She's associated with cows.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: None of that is anything to Christianity.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of say, well, hang on, you're just,
38:33
SPEAKER_00: you're coming with your Preconceived notions of what Christianity is,
38:38
SPEAKER_00: that Christianity couldn't incorporate
38:40
SPEAKER_00: a strong female figure like this who's very associated with animals and the land
38:45
SPEAKER_00: and fire and prophecy and so on.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Why couldn't it?
38:49
SPEAKER_00: So I think a figure like Bridget is...
38:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, really gives us an insight into early Irish Christianity.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, monasteries, female, powerful female figures.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And I would say also an emphasis on asceticism.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Penance and going to very remote places.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: This idea of exile for Christ, Peregrinatio Pro Cristo.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Early Irish monastic figures weren't necessarily interested in building massive stone churches.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: It was small little wooden buildings that they built and then they would just go.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: They would just leave, go elsewhere.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And just let providence guide them.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Often on the sea, the Faroe Islands and Iceland,
39:34
SPEAKER_00: they were settled by Irish monks before anybody else because of this practice
39:38
SPEAKER_00: of just Going in a boat and seeing, well, where will the Lord bring us?
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And then just settling there and praising God with nothing else there.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that, again, that extraordinary courage.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: You find it in Patrick in a different setting.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: And then later on, just this incredible bravery of these monastic exiles
39:58
SPEAKER_00: of whom there are so many.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, that's, I mean, and that, the idea of the green martyrdom, I don't know,
40:05
SPEAKER_01: is that a legit idea from that time?
40:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's white martyrdom, so there's red, white and green.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: So green martyrdom is a life of penance and kind of self-denial.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And then white martyrdom is exile.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: I have to double check this now, I'm doubting myself,
40:20
SPEAKER_00: but I'm pretty sure white martyrdom is exile and peregrinatio for Christo.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: And then red is just straightforward martyrdom.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: Very few martyrs in the early Irish church.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: So you don't have an army coming in.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Which is interesting because the pagan authorities usually would have thought like
40:35
SPEAKER_01: the Romans obviously were just like, you know, Colosseum, chuck them in,
40:38
SPEAKER_01: eat some lions. Yeah.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: So again, like what happened in that dark historical period,
40:45
SPEAKER_00: that kind of dark ages where we don't have any sources, what happened?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: What kind of encounters were there in all of these different kingdoms? Yeah.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we just don't know.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: But what didn't happen was an invading army
40:58
SPEAKER_00: or a kind of persecution of Christians.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: There's no account of that, which is really incredible, I think.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: So the monks, I mean, people now, what is that internet thing, monk mode?
41:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that probably wouldn't compare at all to what those guys were doing in terms of their...
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And practices.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, but there was kind of...
41:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it was Bishop Barrow Varden talked about the monasteries
41:26
SPEAKER_01: as laboratories almost
41:28
SPEAKER_01: where they're trying out these experimental ways like how do we participate
41:32
SPEAKER_01: in personally the path of sanctification?
41:36
SPEAKER_01: They have the biblical tradition and stuff and sacraments
41:39
SPEAKER_01: but then there's still questions of like how do we actually participate in this
41:43
SPEAKER_01: in our way? Do you think that's a fair understanding?
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a good way of thinking about these things as kind of experiments.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, some of the Irish experiments clearly went a little bit wrong
41:57
SPEAKER_00: in that they're probably too severe, too heavily ascetical experiments.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you look at some of the early Irish penitentials,
42:04
SPEAKER_00: the kinds of penances that were imposed for things like biting
42:08
SPEAKER_00: a scab off your thumb, you could be kind of on bread and water for a year.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I'm thinking that I'm pretty sure it's extreme, like yawning,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: yawning during the divine office is like you're kind of beaten.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's...
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was some would say kind of, well, actually, somebody like Benedict,
42:30
SPEAKER_00: a figure like Benedict is much more balanced, much more human,
42:34
SPEAKER_00: much more kind of understanding of the weakness of human nature compared
42:37
SPEAKER_00: to earlier Irish.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: Having said that, there is a certain gentleness in a lot of them.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: Again, with St. Columba, there's a real gentleness there in the life of Columba by Adovnan.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: He has a kind of a vision of his monks being worked too hard in Durham.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: They're building something and they've been worked too hard
42:56
SPEAKER_00: and they're not being given enough rest.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: And he sends a messenger to say to the Abbot of Douro that he needs to be gentler
43:03
SPEAKER_00: with his monks. So there can be a gentleness there,
43:06
SPEAKER_00: but there's definitely a severity and emphasis on penance, on like praying,
43:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, in water up to your neck and with your hands out like that.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: That was a standard way of praying.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Every morning you've got to go out and get in the water.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was intense.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: So that pretty harsh approach,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: but it could be combined with a real love for nature,
43:31
SPEAKER_00: which is expressed in the nature poetry that flourishes in that context as well.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: So you have...
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've kind of surprising combinations of, you know,
43:41
SPEAKER_00: really kind of severe asceticism with this kind of delight in nature and sometimes
43:46
SPEAKER_00: a delight in human nature as well.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I kind of have some sympathy for the severe asceticism.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, because you get like, if you think about it,
43:54
SPEAKER_01: you're trying to figure out where to go and like,
43:56
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's why they produced so many saints as well, that it was so difficult.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: And then you kind of have to walk it back a little bit and be like, oh,
44:02
SPEAKER_01: this is more kind of because they're kind of working that out in real time
44:05
SPEAKER_01: in some sense of trying to figure out what is the what should
44:08
SPEAKER_01: a monastic life be like?
44:09
SPEAKER_01: How do you participate in Christ in this way?
44:13
SPEAKER_00: And one of the signs that it doesn't really work is
44:15
SPEAKER_00: that it becomes corrupt pretty quickly and needs to be reformed pretty rapidly.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: So it's not a very stable kind of thing.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you just get one or two cracks in the system.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to comb.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: And so you have reform,
44:33
SPEAKER_00: reform takes place in the kind of the eighth
44:36
SPEAKER_00: and ninth century, you have the reform that's associated with figures called
44:39
SPEAKER_00: the Cayley Day.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: And this is associated with two very holy places, Tala and Finglas.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: So Tala was like the center where you had St.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: Will Ruin and St. Angus and this whole renewal of monastic life taking place.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: And it was based on a return to total simplicity.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: So St. Will Ruin, he would never drink full fat milk.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: He would always drink like the skimmed milk.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't drink the kind of the full stuff, never drank beer.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, just really, really straight, total vegetarian.
45:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you had to have the reform because...
45:13
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't kind of a very stable system in itself because it was so severe.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes. Okay.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: It was slightly unbalanced.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And so it would have been then in those monasteries as well that they trained
45:24
SPEAKER_01: and then they went off to Europe because obviously this is the famous story
45:27
SPEAKER_01: of the Irish saved Western civilization. Yeah.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: That's just the Instagram title, but, you know, played an important role in that.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I read that book as a teenager and I loved it.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: It got me excited about, this is by Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: It got me excited about the whole period.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: Definitely wildly exaggerated.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: And I definitely would say it's not the case that Virgil survived
45:57
SPEAKER_00: because Irish monks copied him.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, there was like plenty of it was preserved in monastic libraries.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: But what you do have is...
46:06
SPEAKER_00: Irish monks having very high standards of training in the liberal arts.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: So especially kind of grammar and rhetoric and so on.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: Very, very high standards of training associated with this kind of high standard
46:19
SPEAKER_00: of monastic life.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: And then when the Vikings arrive in Ireland...
46:24
SPEAKER_00: and when Charlemagne rises to power and establishes a kind of a renaissance
46:29
SPEAKER_00: of learning and says, I'm now going to patronize lots of scholars, lots of schools.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: This was like the 9th century, wasn't it?
46:36
SPEAKER_00: Exactly. So kind of early 9th -century. Carolingian Renaissance.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: Carolingan Renaissance.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: So you have this coming together of It's a hard time in Ireland in the 9th century
46:44
SPEAKER_00: and it's very good time for scholars in Europe And so you have loads
46:49
SPEAKER_00: of Irish figures who are known as the Scoti,
46:53
SPEAKER_00: that's a name that means Irish in the period The Scoti Peregrini,
46:57
SPEAKER_00: they're kind of the exiled Irishmen They pop up in Europe In the 9nd century
47:01
SPEAKER_00: and you have European sources saying,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Ireland is just dumping boatloads of philosophers on our shores.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And philosophers there means experts in the liberal arts.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: And also, you know, they could apply these liberal arts to the reading of scripture as well.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: So there's so many figures like this.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: John Scotus Ereugena is one.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: That's what I was thinking of.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable figure, incredibly original philosopher.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: And again, we don't know anything about his Irish background,
47:27
SPEAKER_00: what monastery he was from, but he definitely is coming with his Irish training.
47:31
SPEAKER_00: There are loads of other figures like Sedulius Scotus.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: Martin Hibernensis, Joseph Scotus, Clemens Scotus.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: There's two dozen or more of these figures who are prominent in Europe
47:47
SPEAKER_00: and do produce quite important works of literature.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: And they're just regarded as The best of scholars in their time.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: So it's in that sense, it's as kind of teachers and skilled scholars that the kind
48:00
SPEAKER_00: of the saving of Western civilization happens insofar as it does happen.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: But it's not that they preserved works that were lost elsewhere.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't just the copying.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: And I suppose they're innovations as well.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's true in terms of they're adding spaces between words and Greek
48:17
SPEAKER_01: and creating a punctuation and things like that that we still use today.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the grammar of legibility.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: So the way the pages were organized,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: the layout of a page in an Irish manuscript was meant to be more legible
48:33
SPEAKER_00: than older Roman manuscripts.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: Roman manuscripts were designed for native speakers of Latin.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: The Irish were not native readers of Latin or speakers of Latin.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: So they needed to kind of clarify things with spaces and punctuation
48:48
SPEAKER_00: and capital letters and so on.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's certainly the case.
48:54
SPEAKER_00: But it is, I mean, that ninth century is kind of our...
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Our golden age, if you like.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: And again, think of the immigration, emigration.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: The Irish imagine themselves as a nation of immigrants in the Leverganvalla era.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: And here they're at their best when they're kind of emigrating and going out
49:10
SPEAKER_00: to Europe, finding a home collectively.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: Collaborating with English scholars out there, collaborating with Irish scholars out there.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: And you can see why the founders of the European Union were so excited to think
49:21
SPEAKER_00: about figures like Columbanus, who was an earlier period,
49:24
SPEAKER_00: but all these Irish figures who kind of show the unity of Europe and the islands
49:29
SPEAKER_00: and so on. Yeah.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that they actually connected Europe and those various kind of adventures
49:34
SPEAKER_01: within the Catholic Church.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
49:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's the Catholic Church, like that's what kind of enables, I mean,
49:42
SPEAKER_00: so politically it's Charlemagne, religiously it's, It's Catholic Christianity.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's what enables this cultural sharing, which is so significant.
49:52
SPEAKER_00: There's actually one bishop in the ninth century writes to his nephew who's studying
49:59
SPEAKER_00: at a monastery where there's a lot of Irish scholars.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: And he says to him, you need to stop dropping Irish words into your Latin.
50:06
SPEAKER_00: It's not good for your Latin." So in other words,
50:08
SPEAKER_00: it's kind of trendy at the time to use some Irish vernacular words
50:13
SPEAKER_00: in your spoken Latin.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying like, stop it.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: Like this is this kind of hipster generation who are speaking all this Irish.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: They just need to drop it.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: But it was really like this was the intellectual trend at the same time.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Hiberno -Latin, like they're kind of mixing it up. Yeah, absolutely.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: So interesting, man.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: And what do you think, I mean, we've only got a few minutes left here to finish up.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: So maybe to finish, I mean, what can we kind of learn today, I think, from that origin story?
50:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I myself am a convert, so I consider myself,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: I've come from the kind of secular worldview, which has its own assumptions,
50:48
SPEAKER_01: its own ways of doing things, its own mythology and history, story and stuff,
50:52
SPEAKER_01: and kind of, but then is, you know, In a strange way,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: it's totally rooted in the Christian tradition.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: It's quite different almost than the early church as well,
51:01
SPEAKER_01: because they're like going from pagan to Christian.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you'd agree, but going from like post-Christian, I suppose,
51:08
SPEAKER_01: or secular to then post-secular Christian is a weird dream.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: It's a different kind of thing.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: But I wonder, yeah, is there lessons for our current time in that transitionary period?
51:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, one thing that I noticed in our time is that sometimes with converts,
51:24
SPEAKER_00: and it's definitely not your case at all,
51:26
SPEAKER_00: but with let's say the Gen Z that's kind of rediscovering interest in Christianity,
51:31
SPEAKER_00: it's sometimes allied with a kind of a hatred for Other cultures
51:36
SPEAKER_00: or for just secular culture.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: And I think what we could learn from the early Irish conversion period,
51:45
SPEAKER_00: insofar as we can know anything about it, is that actually...
51:50
SPEAKER_00: The Christian gospel loves human culture in all its forms.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: It will judge human culture also and say,
51:56
SPEAKER_00: this needs to be dropped and let go of this and let go of that.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: But it will find goodness in all of these places as well.
52:03
SPEAKER_00: So again, that just like, I think we need to watch ourselves and to preserve
52:10
SPEAKER_00: that spirit of Christian humanism in our time.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, what it can teach us is to be really serious about our reading
52:19
SPEAKER_00: of scripture.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: Our, you know,
52:22
SPEAKER_00: rooting ourselves in Christ and our personal spiritual discipline.
52:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think they're, you know, non-negotiable.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: Again, with online Christianity, the temptation can be that it's all just, you know,
52:36
SPEAKER_00: the world of ideas.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: And the early Irish monastics especially would be saying, okay, but like,
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Go and pray up to your neck in water for a while as well.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: That kind of embodied... Definitely.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: I remember Tommy Tiernan...
52:52
SPEAKER_00: One said he wanted, he didn't want priests to look like bank managers.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: He wanted them to look like wild John the Baptist kind of figures coming
53:03
SPEAKER_00: into town once a week in a donkey,
53:05
SPEAKER_00: looking like they sucked honey out of a bee's arse.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: It was like that kind of image that he wanted.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: And whether we go that far or not.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, I think, just to have, without going to extremes,
53:17
SPEAKER_00: but to have a serious spiritual discipline is so important.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: One that is not just online, but is in the body, serving our neighbor, on our knees,
53:27
SPEAKER_00: in prayer, fasting, and so on.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: That's all part of our following of Christ.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: It's not just notional or whatever else.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: So I'd say those two things, like Christian humanism,
53:40
SPEAKER_00: And seriousness about spiritual disciplines and practices.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, seems like an antidote to a lot of the malaise that we're facing today as well.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the hedonism, the nihilism, I mean,
53:54
SPEAKER_01: prayer and spiritual exercise is pretty much the way.
53:58
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: And so maybe one final thing in theory,
54:01
SPEAKER_01: because there's something I was thinking about there,
54:03
SPEAKER_01: because we have a culture war in theory in the West.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: But what I'm hearing you saying in some sense is that there's,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: it's not so much a culture war,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: it's more of a sorting out of what should be in there and what should not be
54:16
SPEAKER_01: in there according to kind of the rubric of Christ and the gospel.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense? Does that change the idea of a culture war?
54:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: It kind of, it modifies it and nuances it, you know,
54:27
SPEAKER_00: that we shouldn't be kind of perpetually at war.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: So one of the consequences of the fact that there is this, you know,
54:34
SPEAKER_00: there is genuine, you know, attack on Christian values and,
54:38
SPEAKER_00: And Christian culture and so on, like that is a real thing.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: But one of the consequences of it is it can put us in a kind of a defensive or even
54:47
SPEAKER_00: an aggressive crouch so that we're all the time on the edge.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: And that we're in no way interested in what kind of, I don't know,
54:58
SPEAKER_00: Sally Rooney's novels might have to say to us.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: We go, no, no, no, she's part of the enemy.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the thing that needs to be avoided.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: It's not that...
55:10
SPEAKER_00: There's no kind of war. There's no opposition.
55:12
SPEAKER_00: There's no struggle.
55:13
SPEAKER_00: Of course there is.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: But we shouldn't allow ourselves to be kind of,
55:17
SPEAKER_00: allow our souls to be too shaped by that conflict.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's, we can miss out on really golden opportunities
55:28
SPEAKER_00: of evangelization if we're too, Oppositional, I think, in our thinking.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Christ says, you know, love your enemy. Yeah.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: Can't get caught in the us versus them battle. It's bigger.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: It's a third way.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: I think as a Christian, it's not that. Yeah. Tribalism.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: But thank you very much, Father Connor.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: Much to think about.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: We'll have to go for the trilogy at some point. At some point.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: God bless the work.