The title of the Ian Bradley book I referenced yesterday is Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams. It's a clever debunking of the Celtic Christianity fad, which among mainline Christians is a close second to the Emergent fad, and is something of an overlapping phenomenon.
In short, Yes the Irish celebrated Easter on a different date than they did on the continent. And yes, Irish ecclesiology, which developed outside the Empire, vested authority in the abbot, whereas on the Continent, a diocesan structure modeled on Roman administration lodged authority with the bishop. And yes, the continental (Roman) ways prevailed. And yes, Brigit was probably a Celtic goddess whose powers got attributed to the founder of a convent at Kildaire. And yet, Pelagius was a Briton (perhaps), and Augustine was a Mediterranean Catholic.
But to then conclude that an egalitarian, pluralistic, free-spirited, "green" Christianity not hung up on sin thrived in the northwest corner of the known world until Rome crushed it does not necessarily fly. Such a romanticized view of Christianity in the British Isles has to ignore a lot of data. Like how their monastic rules prescribed severe corporal punishment for any whiff of insubordination. Like how Saint Columba forbade cattle on Iona because "Where there's cows there's women, and where there's women there's trouble." And how Columbanus' sermons describe our nature as depraved. And much else that won't fit into a blog post--primary sources that our professors are having us read because they want the MDivs especially to use this stuff responsibly once they're in a parish.
What's interesting about Bradley's book is that he shows how Celtic Christianity has always been romanticized. He compares Saint Patrick's Letter and Confession, the only extant writings we have of the saint, to the Life of Saint Patrick composed a couple of hundred years later. In his own voice, Patrick is a defensive and admittedly poorly educated man, who frankly doesn't like the Irish all that much. But the Patrick of his biographer goes from strength to strength, sitting at the feet of the great Germanus, and then sailing to Ireland to smack down druids and dull-witted kings with signs and wonders. The transformation of Patrick is certainly due to the author's wish to play up Patrick's town of Armagh over against Kildaire (home of Saint Brigit) as an ecclesiastical and pilgrimage center.
And so it goes. Scottish Presbyterians lauded the Celtic saints as proto-Protestants, those who'd fought the good fight against Rome in days gone by. Patrick became a symbol of Irish nationalism, despite the aforementioned fact that he was only in Ireland under duress--a divine imperative to evangelize those who'd once enslaved him.
Bradley admits to letting himself get swept up in some of the current romanticizing of the Celtic past, and even contributing to it a bit in earlier writings. But he wryly concludes that, If you're going to write hagiography, and that's what much of the pulp Celtic devotional stuff is, better to write it for the sake of cleaning up the environment than because you're engaged in some kind of locker room conversation about the relics at your cathedral versus the cathedral down the road.
Put differently, it's time once again for me to link to Elliot's cautionary tale about lapsarian myths.
Wow, you've linked to that three times?! Thanks! I'm flattered. I'm also impressed that both a left-wing blogger (you) and a right-wing blogger have linked to it approvingly.
In regards the matriarchy/witchcraft theme, I recently came across a reference to a feminist author who argues that a mythic matriarchal prehistory is not helpful to the feminist cause. Apparently this has been a contested issue in the history of socialist feminism.
Posted by: Elliot | 04 February 2009 at 07:46 PM