Greek Versions of the Bible.

The Hellenistic Jewish literature is the best evidence of the influence exercised by Greek thought upon the “people of the book.” The first urgent need of the Hellenistic Jews in Alexandria was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

The strange legends which are connected with the origin of this translation, and which go back to the Letter of Aristeas, are discussed under Aristeas and Bible; it is sufficient to say that the whole translation was probably completed by the middle of the second century B.C. It was highly esteemed by the Hellenistic Jews. Philo (“De Vita Moysis,” ii., § 67) calls the translators not merely ἑρμηνεῖς [translators], but ίεροφάνται καὶ προφῆται [priests and prophets], who partook of the spirit of Moses. Even the prejudiced Palestinian teachers accepted it and praised the beauty of the Greek language (Soṭah vii. 3; Meg. i. 9). They permitted girls to study it, and declared it to be the only language into which the Torah might be translated (Yer. i. 1).

The Jews called themselves Palestinians in religion, but Hellenes in language (Philo, “De Congressu Quærendæ Erud.” § 8), and the terms ἡμεῐς (“we”) and Ἑβραῖοι (“the Hebrews”) were contrasted (idem, “De Confusione Linguarum,” § 26). The real Hellenes, however, could not understand the Greek of this Bible, for it was intermixed with many Hebrew expressions, and entirely new meanings were at times given to Greek phrases.

On the other hand, Judaism could not appreciate for any length of time the treasure it had acquired in the Greek Bible, and the preservation of the Septuagint is due to the Christian Church, which was first founded among Greek-speaking peoples. The mother church [Israel] did not altogether give up the Greek translation of the Bible; it merely attempted to prevent the Christians from forging a weapon from it.

After the second century it sought to replace the Septuagint with more correct translations. Aquila, a Jewish proselyte, endeavored to put an end to all quarrels with the Christians by slavishly following the original Hebrew in his new translation; Theodotion, following the Septuagint, sought to revise it by means of a thorough collation with the original.

As it became evident that the controversy could not be ended in this way, the Jews ceased to dispute with the Christians concerning the true religion, and forbade the study of Greek. They declared that the day on which the Bible had been translated into Greek was as fateful as that on which the golden calf had been worshiped (Soferim i.); that at the time when this translation was made darkness had come upon Egypt for three days (Ta” />

Fr. Deiniol of All Saints of Wales Orthodox Mission, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales.

Hieromonk Deiniol, the sole native Welsh Orthodox priest, the founder of the Wales Orthodox Mission, and pastor of the Church of All Saints in the North Wales mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, traveled with Road to Emmaus magazine in 2009 to ancient and little-known pre-schism shrines of the Welsh countryside. Along the way we talked of early Welsh Christianity, the effects of post-Reformation Calvinism, and the state of the Welsh Church today.

RTE: Father, how did a native Welshman end up as an Orthodox priest in Blaenau Ffestiniog?

Fr. Deiniol: I originate from Anglesey, an island off the coast of North Wales, and I became Orthodox at the age of twenty, when I was living and studying in London. I became a monk in 1977, and was ordained a priest in 1979 by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourouzh, who gave me the task of opening an Orthodox church in North Wales. At that time, the nearest church was in Liverpool, which was very far for people from north-west Wales. After ordination I moved a few miles from where I was living to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where I’ve been for twenty-six years.

RTE: And what can you tell us about this remote and beautiful town?

Fr. Deiniol: The town of Blaenau Ffestiniog is a depressed post-industrial town in the middle of the mountains. It was a very busy town while the slate industry flourished, one of three or four such areas in north Wales, and in the 19th century, it employed many thousands of people. Unlike the other slate-mining areas in north Wales, extraction of the slate in Blaenau Ffestiniog took place underground. In other locations it was above ground, or at least in open pits, but here the slate was mined beneath the earth, and the conditions were terrible. Mines were often full of dust from blasting the slate, and smoke from the explosives. The men worked in the dark with candles on their helmets. They were answerable to the mine’s steward and if they arrived at work a minute late they were sent home. They worked chained. A chain was fastened around their upper leg, and they were suspended from this chain, which was attached to a rod hammered into the slate face. In other countries, these working conditions are considered penal conditions, for example, in the old salt mines in Siberia. In the winter, the slate miners wouldn’t see the light of day. They started work before dawn and finished after dark.

Blaenau Ffestiniog

Nevertheless, there was a sort of vibrant cultural life in those mining towns, partly due to the fact that these miners didn’t want bright young men to have to work in the same conditions. They would save money, for example, and gather pennies and subscriptions to send bright youngsters to the university. Many young men from that time owe a lot to their mining families and friends, who made sure that they didn’t have to go into the mines. In fact, those miners paid to set up the University of Wales.

In just such a way they built their nonconformist chapels, of which at one time there were forty-two in our town which, at its height, had a population of 12,000. Having all of these sectarian chapels was characteristic of Welsh society at the time.

That was the formative period for Blaenau Ffestiniog, but we have to realize that because the town is located very high up in the mountains at the end of a valley, in the normal course of events, no one would have thought of building a town there. It came into being only because of the slate mining industry, and is built in the shape of an inverted horseshoe—so you can be on one side of the town and look across the valley to the other side.

In addition to valuing culture, many people, of course, also valued their religious heritage, but as in most other places in North Wales, this was a very Calvinistic form of Protestantism. In the South Wales valleys, where coal mining was the dominant industry, Calvinism didn’t dominate in the same way. This is something we should return to when we analyze the logistics of what Orthodox mission involves in a post-Calvinist society.

RTE: When did the slate mining stop?

Fr. Deiniol: It hasn’t stopped; it continues, but on a much-reduced scale. People sometimes compare the North Wales slate-mining areas with the South Wales coal-mining valleys. If you go to a place called Tylotrstown in the Small Rhondda Valley, you wonder where does Tylotrstown end and where does the next town, Ferndale, begin? These villages run into each other in a row, whereas in North Wales slate-mining towns were quite separate communities, particularly Blaenau Ffestiniog, and there is a certain air of isolation here. Also, of course, after the decline of the industry, it became a post-industrial town, which means that this town, which produced an income of millions of pounds from which the local people never benefited, then became a place of unemployment. We have all the characteristics of the postindustrial communities of north-east England that are one hundred times our size, and the Pennsylvania coal-mining areas in the States: high degrees of social exclusion, substance abuse, family breakup, the break-down of social cohesion.

So this is the town I live in, a very poor town, high levels of unemployment and many people with a sense of hopelessness. Nevertheless, they wouldn’t think of turning to church, because the Calvinist legacy is a very negative one. I’m not saying that everything was bad about the chapels; the Nonconformist tradition produced a genuine Christian spirituality with a real love of Scripture, a real love of God, and very fine hymnography, but it had a shadow side, and this shadow side was Calvinism and its censoriousness, being very judgmental and placing people in categories. It wasn’t known for its compassion for the frail and vulnerable, or for those whose lives took a negative turn.

RTE: Scotland also has many adherents of Calvinism, doesn’t it?

Fr. Deiniol: It does, and Calvinism was also strong in parts of South Africa, but the form of Calvinism there is not as extreme as the form that dominated in Wales, where the belief in ‘Double Predestination’ was adhered to.

RTE: What is ‘Double Predestination’?

Fr. Deiniol: The Calvinist doctrine is that God has predestined people from before the creation of the world for redemption. ‘Double Predestination’ is the belief that God has predetermined and preordained not only who shall go to heaven, but who shall go to hell. In other words, He has brought some human beings into existence, having already determined that they shall go to hell for eternity. They maintain that He has done this in His infinite Wisdom and that the logical contradiction between that and God’s infinite love is not for us to question and understand. So, the God of love becomes, in their theology, a tyrannical and arbitrary monster, whose excesses are far worse than the worst tyrants of human history, who only tormented people for a limited period of time. The God of Calvinism creates some people in order that they should suffer for eternity.

RTE: And this not only severs any notion of free will, but I imagine that you would have to take care to appear “good” to prove that you are one of the saved, or is that too simplistic?

Fr. Deiniol: No, that’s very accurate. “How do we know who is saved?” “Oh, by their fruits you shall know them.” Accordingly, observable behavior becomes very important, and at a certain stage in the evolution of things, when conviction and faith are no longer so strongly present, this preoccupation with appearances becomes a very distinctive characteristic of these societies. That is certainly what I think happened in Wales. Also it means that people don’t look at the darker side of themselves, and don’t encounter their shadow. Darkness is then projected onto other people, so you have groups that are the scapegoats, the lowest of the low. Communities are very hierarchical and there are people right at the bottom of the pile. In Wales, this emphasis on behavior also got linked up with the Temperance Movement, which, much as it may have been needed, divided the society into two—those who went to the chapel and those who went to the pub, those who drank and those who didn’t (or at least said they didn’t drink.) To this very day, many Welsh people who go to the pub will not visit a church or chapel. The two locations are thought to be mutually exclusive locations, and those who frequent one of these places will usually hold the other place and its frequenters in contempt and think they will not be welcomed there! By now almost everybody does visit the pub, but the dichotomy persists and it is almost impossible to persuade people to visit a church. Furthermore, because every family was a ‘member’ of a Non-conformist chapel or of the Anglican parish Church, it means that people are still aware of their family ‘Church allegiance’. They may still pay an annual fee for their family seat in a particular chapel, but never attend that chapel or any other place of worship, other than for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. However, they will use their ancestral allegiance to a particular denomination as a reason not to attend any other Church. An invitation to attend the Orthodox Church will therefore usually be met with a negative response. Typically, they might say ‘‘my ‘ticket’ (i.e. membership card which they maintain by payment of the rent for their seat in the chapel!) is in such and such a chapel.” Yet they may not have been there for 25 years.

St. Tanwg’s Church, Llandanwg

Of course, as you’ve mentioned, Calvinism undermines any doctrine of free will. In fact they don’t believe in free will. Free will and predestination are opposing doctrines. This is perhaps what happens when you eliminate the role of the Mother of God from your theology, because it was of her own free will that she said, “Be it unto me according to Thy will.” At that point she was free to say, “No.” The redemption of the human race was in the balance at that moment. She could have said, “This is too much, I can’t take this on,” but instead she said, “Be it unto me…” So when you remove the Mother of God, and the very pivotal nature of her response, then the door is open to do away with the idea of free will in Christian theology, and the way is open for Calvinism. The Mother of God is our protection against Calvinistic doctrine. The Calvinistic doctrine that some are chosen for heaven, and others for hell, not only makes God seem very arbitrary, but it undermines any idea that God is the God of love and that our response to Him is a free and voluntary response.

RTE: In that case, you couldn’t possibly love Him yourself.

Fr. Deiniol: Yes—love is voluntary, not compulsory. We can only love God if we have free will. We might be frightened of Him, perhaps, or feel duty towards Him, but without free will we cannot love Him. Without free will our relationship with Him is not reciprocal. This attitude has created antipathy, and although people now don’t go to church, they know something—not theology, but the feel of Calvinism that permeates their culture. They keep their distance because they think they know what Christianity is, but it’s often a negative impression. For this reason, it would be easier to undertake a mission in Tibet than in a Calvinistic culture.

I imagine it will take a generation or two for people not only to consciously reject specific Calvinistic perspectives and teachings, but to rid themselves of its influence on their mentality. It has left behind a certain fatalism. These chapels have died very quickly. They are closing at the rate of one a week in Wales, which is a small country, and it’s as if people are glad to shake off the whole thing.

RTE: Do you think that after these generations pass, people will be ready to reconsider Christianity?

Fr. Deiniol: Because people free themselves doesn’t actually mean they will come to church, but that particular obstacle won’t be there. There will be other obstacles then. When people begin asking questions about the meaning of life, about the significance of things, they begin to touch on religious questions, but in general, people are not asking these questions, and I say this as one who has taught religious education for fifteen years here in Wales, and who has lived in this society most of his life.

RTE: Perhaps it’s a recovery period.

Fr. Deiniol: If it acts as a recovery period that would be very good. Of course, this is an attempt to provide some sort of diagnosis or analysis, and I’m not saying that I have answers as to what the strategy of the Orthodox Church in Wales should be. God does things in His way and His time, and it would be foolish of me to say, “This is what we must do.” But I think we won’t go far wrong if, for example, as Orthodox people in Wales, we try to demonstrate some care for people in their situations in life. for example, in our town there are high rates of unemployment. If our church can be instrumental in improving people’s lives so that they aren’t plagued by constant problems, this may be a way to show that God loves them and cares about them, and cares about their situations.

RTE: Do you have ideas as to how your parish can participate in that?

Fr. Deiniol: To be honest, although we are not numerous, many of us have been very actively involved in work in the community and for the regeneration of Blaenau Ffestiniog from the inception of our church. Orthodoxy believes not only in life after death, but in life before death. The quality of people’s lives is important. We are incarnate beings, not just souls, and we can’t be happy if we see people hungry or in anguish. We have to be concerned about people’s situations as a whole, in their totality.

RTE: Yes, and this approach has other 20th-century precedents. After World War II and the Greek civil war, there was massive unemployment and many Greeks were depressed and disillusioned with the Church. Fr. Amphilochius Makris, the well-known spiritual father of Patmos, said that the words of preachers and politicians were like throwing turpentine on the fire, and that only love and works of charity would bring them back to Christ.

Fr. Deiniol: Well, the Gospel actually says that, doesn’t it? Why should I consider preaching at people to be the main strategy? Why should they listen to me? For two centuries, they’ve listened to other preachers who didn’t make them feel good. I have no mandate from them. They didn’t ask me to come here and preach to them. On what basis would I assume that these people want to hear what I’ve got to say? That’s the first thing.

Abandoned church, Llandudno, North Wales.

The second thing is that people do not go to church in Wales. I remember asking a young person, “What would it take to get you to go to church?” He said, “A great deal of courage to actually be seen coming into the building by my friends.” This is very different from many countries, even from the States, as I know from my visits there. But we have to be aware of what things are like in the United Kingdom and what things are like in Wales. And as I’ve tried to explain in giving this Calvinistic background, I’m not surprised that people don’t want to come to church.

This not to say we don’t get any people coming into church. In fact, we get many visitors and my parishioners are a mixture of nationalities. For Christmas we were ten nationalities, and there are also foreign Orthodox students at the universities and colleges where I am chaplain. We conduct our services in a number of languages, according to the need on any particular Sunday. We’ve been very fortunate in the support we receive from our hierarch, Bishop Andriy of Western Europe, who is a member of the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Church of the Diaspora, within the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

We are officially called The Wales Orthodox Mission, of which I am the administrator. In fact, the term “mission” is not used very much in the U.K. by the Orthodox Church, but I think it is very important to state what we are. We are not a chaplaincy looking after a separate ethnic minority, nor are we a well-established church full of people who have become Orthodox (although there are increasing numbers). We are a mission. And I think that any church in Wales, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican or anything else, should at this point call themselves a mission, because that is the nature of the situation.

The Wales Orthodox Mission is the contact point between the Orthodox Church and Welsh institutions. If Welsh organizations wish to be in touch with the Orthodox Church, they contact us, and we get many groups visiting us from churches and societies. I’m often asked to give talks and if subjects such as Eastern Europe or certain theological or social issues are being discussed on the radio or TV, they sometimes ask me for an interview on these topics as well. So our church is present and active, but I hope in a way that corresponds to the needs, realities, and possibilities that exist at this stage in Welsh cultural history.

RTE: We were told that you were invited to lead a prayer at the opening of your national parliament, the Welsh Assembly.

Fr. Deiniol: This is quite an interesting history. Wales lost its independence in government 700 years ago, and approximately six years ago, we received our own government again, not completely independent, but with certain powers. There was an ecumenical service to celebrate the opening of the Welsh Assembly Government, which took place at the Anglican cathedral in Llandaff, Cardiff. The Orthodox Church, amongst other churches, was invited to make a contribution to the format of the service. I prepared two prayers. Each prayer had a response, and as the response I included, “All you saints of Wales, pray to God for us.” The ecumenical organizers came back and said that they didn’t think this was acceptable. (Invocation of the saints, of course, had been outlawed during the Protestant period.) My response was, “If you invite an Orthodox priest, you get an Orthodox response and an Orthodox contribution. If this is not acceptable, why do you ask us in the first place?”

Fr. Deiniol blessing St. Engan’s Well, Llanengan.

At that point I felt that the ghost of Thomas Cromwell was striding rampantly through Wales. Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII’s henchman and operator who closed all the monasteries throughout Britain, wrecked the shrines and relics, and destroyed the altars. I thought, “Well, they are still unwilling to invoke the saints,” and was about to write a fax that evening to say words to this effect, but at the moment I was about to send this letter, another fax arrived saying that the prayer was alright. So this prayer was used and the response was used.

Now the interesting part is this. on that occasion, the Queen of England, her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, and her son, Charles, Prince of Wales, were all present at the service. Normally, for security reasons, the three do not travel or appear together. So when that prayer was said, and the whole congregation responded, “O, all you saints of Wales, pray to God for us!”, this was the first time such a phrase had been used in that cathedral since the Reformation—with the successor of Henry VIII, the king who had originally made such an invocation illegal, present and taking part in the service. That was not an insignificant event, I think.

RTE: Wonderful. Can we go back some centuries and talk about how Wales, as we know it now, came into being?

Fr. Deiniol: The process was complicated. We first had the Celtic-speaking native British, who were pushed west as the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes gained ascendancy. In some places the original population of Britons probably mixed with them, in other places not. In Strathclyde, now in Scotland, for example, the Welsh language was spoken until the twelfth century, and the first Welsh poetry is found in Catterick in northern Yorkshire in England. Even to this day, when we speak in Welsh of the “old North,” we mean the area around Strathclyde.

At a certain point, various of these invading tribes developed kingdoms, such as in Mercia, where a wall was built separating the Brythonic-speaking Britons who had gone west, from the conquering tribes. In about the 7th century, the word “Welsh” began to be used by the English Anglo-Saxons, meaning “foreigners,” and the Welsh called themselves Cymry, which means “the brethren” or “compatriots.” We cannot speak of a separate England, Wales, and Scotland until that point.

So, the original Brythonic-speaking people in the old North, in Devon, Cornwall, and Wales, were now physically separated from one another. The Welsh language was eventually lost from the “old North,” and so it is no longer possible to identify the descendants of the ancient Britons who lived there. The Scots are not their descendants, but descendants of Irish migrants who settled there. That is why Scottish and Irish Gaelic are almost the same language. The Cornish language died in the 18th century. The only descendants of the ancient Britons who can still be identified are the people of Wales, and this is because we have preserved our ancient language. What we now call “the Welsh” is the identifiable remnant of the original people of the British Isles.

RTE: We tend to think of centers of early Romano-British Christianity as being near such places as York. When the Romans pulled out in the fifth century, did Wales also have a fully-established hierarchical church?

Fr. Deiniol: of course. They say that Bangor-in-Arfon in North West Wales was a diocese in the sense that we use the word now, as a territorial area from the sixth century. Bede talks about a monastery in Bangor-on-Dee (another Bangor) with 2,000 monks. Certainly, there were Celtic bishops as well.

Of course, we can’t speak about “The Celtic Church,” as if it was an organized entity that incorporated what we now call Brittany, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland into an identifiable independent body. It was part of the worldwide Church. It was catholic—but not in the contemporary sense of “Roman Catholic”—in faith and doctrine. There was coming and going, and there was much interest on the Continent about what was happening in Britain. Many writers speak of early Christianity here, and early fathers of the Church mention it as well—origen, Lactantius, Tertullian, Eusebius.

They knew of the Christian Church in Britain, and monks used to travel to the East from the Celtic-speaking lands on pilgrimage. There was evangelization along the trade routes, and our monks certainly went to see monastic life in Egypt, the Holy Land, Rome, and Constantinople. Monasticism here seemed to resemble more the Lavra system than the classical coenobitic monasteries that evolved in the West. There is also a tradition that the Celtic bishops St. David, St. Teilo, and St. Padarn were all consecrated by the patriarch of Jerusalem. According to tradition, one was given a sakkos, the bishop’s vestment, another, a portable altar, and the third, a bishop’s staff.

So there were connections with the East, but we don’t have to show a connection with the East to prove that this church of the Celts was Catholic and Orthodox in faith and doctrine. Yes, they had their local customs, such as shaving their head in a certain way for the monastic tonsure, as we find local customs today in various local Orthodox churches. And, as within Orthodoxy today, they had different calendars. After the Synod of Whitby, when the Church of the Celtic peoples adapted its local customs to conform to those of Rome, it came under Canterbury and thereby under Rome. So when the Great Schism came about, it was part of the patriarchate of the West, and went with the western Churches. Canterbury remained the primatial see of Britain.

RTE: How did the 11th-century Norman invasion affect Christian Wales?

Fr. Deiniol: In Wales, the Normans established many monasteries. In fact, all the big abbeys were established by them. The most significant thing about this was that, while previously the monasteries had followed the Orthodox tradition of being independent and generally self-ruling, now each monas­tery had to belong to one of the Western religious orders. The Welsh often chose the Augustinians, as being perhaps the nearest to the way of life they were accustomed to. There were also many Cistercian foundations in Wales, such as the monastery in Strata Florida. This is where the history of Wales, called “The Chronicles of the Princes,” in Welsh, Brut-y-Tywysogion, was written. The history of Wales begins with the death of St. Cadwaladr, the last Briton—i.e. Celt, to be king of Britain before the Saxons obtained the crown. He is the patron saint of The Wales Orthodox Mission. He was known for his compassion, otherworldliness, and generosity—giving away his possessions to those who had lost theirs and caring for the multitudes who were afflicted by a terrible plague which visited the land in those days.

RTE: With such a rich heritage, what allowed the Welsh and Scots to make such a radical change from traditional Catholicism and a Reformation-imposed Anglicanism, to Calvinism?

St. Hywyn’s Church, Aberdaron.

Fr. Deiniol: By the 18th century, the Anglican Church in Wales was pretty moribund. It was led by English, non-Welsh-speaking absentee Anglican bishops. Many of the clergy were also absentee and did not speak the language of the people (by no means everyone in Wales could speak English in those days).

When the Methodist Revival broke out in the U.K. and spread to Wales, John Wesley and Whitfield, his colleague, came to an agreement that Wesley would have England as missionary territory and Whitfield would take Wales. Methodism spread in Wales through the efforts of great “revivalists” like Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and especially the magnificent hymnographer, William Williams of Pantycelyn, whose hymns are, by any measure, classics comparable to the great hymnographers of any Christian tradition, East or West. Thus, the people of Wales were offered a vibrant and rich religious life, in their own language.

Methodism became a popular movement—unlike the highly Anglicized Anglican Church in Wales which was essentially the Church of the landowners and to which the ordinary Welsh people may never have been very attached since the Reformation. The ordinary, poor Welsh people now had a form of Christianity of their own which flourished and produced some good fruit.

However, Whitfield was a Calvinist and so the form of Methodism that spread in Wales was Calvinistic Methodisim. When a Welsh person speaks of Methodism, he or she generally means this Calvinistic variety also known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales (the title they prefer these days). Methodism in England followed Wesley’s theology which was based on the teaching of Jacobus Arminius,which emphasizes free will as opposed to Calvin’s predestination.

Later on, Wesleyan Methodism also came to Wales, but it was a minority denomination here and strong only in certain specific areas. However, the Calvinists maintain (and I have heard this point being made by a Calvinist minister in my house a few years ago) that the ‘Wesleyans’ have no right to be in Wales owing to the agreement between Whitfield and Wesley.

I must say that the ethos of each of the two forms of Methodism was very different. They had very different cultures from each other. There was even a ditty about the Calvinists: ‘Nasty, cruel Methodists (i.e. Calvinists) who go to chapel without any grace….’

RTE: Have the Catholic and Anglican Churches returned in any force since?

Fr. Deiniol: The Roman Catholic Church, which was illegal for hundreds of years, only returned in the 19th century, although a few “recusant” families who could afford to pay the fines, remained Catholic. Accordingly, most Roman Catholics in Wales are not Welsh, but are usually partly of Polish or Irish extraction. There are some Welsh Roman Catholics but they aren’t numerous.

After the rise of Protestant Calvinism, the Anglican Church became a minority church compared to the Non-conformist denominations such as Baptists, Congregationalists, and Calvinists. only a small proportion of Welsh-speaking or culturally Welsh people belonged to it. This may still be true to some degree. It was only in the 20th century that the Anglican Church in Wales gained its independence from Canterbury and became disestablished.

So, we can say that this is a good time for Orthodoxy as a continuation of the Undivided Church, to be in Wales. None of the other churches dominate Welsh religious and cultural life, and people are not so sectarian in their mentality—it doesn’t mean as much to them now that they are Baptists or Calvinists. There is a very friendly atmosphere. Also, the prejudices against saints and their veneration (customs such as praying at shrines and holy wells, which reflect the sacramental understanding of life) are now more acceptable. At least we aren’t in the position of confrontation, and that is helpful.

RTE: Are people becoming more interested as they see your attempts to recover their heritage?

St. David of Wales, St. David’s Cathedral.

Fr. Deiniol: No, I don’t think so. The awareness of the saints is too lost. They are mostly remembered in place-names—for example, a majority of places in Wales begin with the prefix “Llan.” This can mean the church building, but it also means a Christian settlement, usually founded by a Christian saint. In many cases we are talking about the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, when the original Celtic-speaking British peoples began moving west. A saint might land on a coastal area, as did St. David, the patron saint of Wales, who went to a place called Vallis Rosina, “Valley of the Roses,” to live as a monk. The pagan tribes are at first hostile to him but eventually people are attracted by the holiness of his life and become Christian; a community forms, and around the community, a village. This is almost identical to what St. Sergei of Radonezh did in Russia, founding new hermitages and monasteries as he moved deeper into the forest.

These new communities that came into being because people were attracted by the saint who lived there, are called Llan, and very often in Welsh place-names, the name that follows Llan is the name of a saint: Llandanwg—the Christian settlement and Church of St. Tanwg, or Llandudno—the Church of St. Tudno.

What is this country that we now call Wales? It is the sum total of the Llans, these places created by saints, communities that didn’t exist before they came. As we travel these roads we go through one Llan after another, and each one is a saint’s name. This is why I use the expression, “Wales is a nation created by saints.”

But, even with such a rich history, we need more to awaken us than an understanding of place names. The young people in Russia, for example, still have a link with their spiritual past after the collapse of Soviet atheism—their grandmothers were still Orthodox Christians—but what we’ve had here was a much longer break. of course, after the Great Schism, I’m sure that very little changed, and much in Roman Catholic practice would have been indistinguishable from Orthodoxy for a very long time afterwards.

Even that break, however, goes back a thousand years, and the Reformation, which was largely destructive of tradition, goes back 400 years.

When we acquired our church, the Metropolitan suggested that we dedicate it to “All the Saints of Wales.” The idea is that when the church is finished with icons and frescoes, a person from any part of Wales will be able to come here and find his saint. This is part of our task, recreating this link with history, and this is done by things like the service to mark the opening of the Welsh Assembly, and the opportunity to give talks and welcome visitors to the church. our mission exists on various levels and different fronts.

RTE: And the interest will not only be local. We come across many interesting accounts of the strong appeal that the Celtic culture has, especially for young people, in many parts of the world.

Archimandrite Deiniol

Fr. Deiniol: of course, wonderful things have survived, such as The Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. The art and imagery are amazing. The Christian Celts had developed a profound and deeply Christian culture. It’s not surprising that this should be of interest to people in other countries.

Orthodox youth in former Soviet countries or the emigration often think of their ancestral churches as something rather ethnic or old-fashioned. other things appear more interesting to them. But it’s a little bit like the Trojan Horse isn’t it? If they become interested in Celtic history and culture, they will soon find that inside, at the very core, is their own Christian faith.

The question for us is how we can encourage our own young people to be remotely interested in anything Christian whatsoever. As an old colleague of mine, Archimandrite Barnabas—the first Welsh Orthodox priest—used to say, the cultural legacy of Calvinistic teaching seems to have provided an immunization against all religious search and questions.

RTE: May God give the blessing.

From: Road to Emmaus, Winter 2009, No. 36. Reprinted at pravoslavie.ru

Lost for 1,600 years, the royal quarters of Cleopatra were discovered off the shores of Alexandria. A team of marine archaeologists, led by Frenchman, Franck Goddio, began excavating the ancient city in 1998. Historians believe the site was submerged by earthquakes and tidal waves, yet, astonishingly, several artifacts remained largely intact.

Amongst the discoveries were the foundations of the palace, shipwrecks, red granite columns, and statues of the goddess Isis and a sphinx. The Egyptian Government plans to create an underwater museum and hold tours of the site.

Stunning photos and more sunken cities at Sunken Cities of the Ancient World.

(via thefuzzydave: rrick: sitasays)

Keep reading!

This excellent essay that reflects why I like my Bible and liturgy to require a little bit of effort, and not be so easy to read that we miss what the writer meant and how he said it.

Likewise this essay is not too easy to read; you’ll want to follow his hyperlinks, and Google or Wiki the scholars he names.

In the latter half of the fourth century, a nun named Egeria, from what is now Spain, went on a pilgrimage to the sites of Biblical history in Egypt and Palestine. Her observations are especially of interest because she brings an outsider’s viewpoint to everything she sees – coming as she does from possibly the farthest outpost of Christianity in the West, she compares the worship of the Eastern Church to her own experience.

Palm Sunday

“Today let us all be ready to assemble at the seventh hour at the Eleona.”

Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem

When the dismissal has been given in the Martyrium, or major church, the bishop is led with the accompaniment of hymns to the Anastasis¹ and there all ceremonies are accomplished which customarily take place every Sunday at the Anastasis following the dismissal from the Martyrium. Then everyone retires to his home to eat hastily, so that at the beginning of the seventh hour everyone will be ready to assemble in the church on the Eleona², by which I mean the Mount of Olives, where the grotto in which the Lord taught is located.

At the seventh hour all the people go up to the church on the Mount of Olives, that is, to the Eleona. The bishop sits down, hymns and antiphons appropriate to the day and place are sung, and there are likewise readings from the Scriptures. As the ninth hour approaches, they move up, chanting hymns, to the Imbomon, that is, to the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven and everyone sits down there. When the bishop is present, the people are always commanded to be seated, so that only the deacons remain standing. And there hymns and antiphons proper to the day and place are sung, interspersed with appropriate readings from the Scriptures and prayers.

As the eleventh hour draws near, that particular passage from Scripture is read in which the children bearing palms and branches came forth to meet the Lord, saying: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. The bishop and all the people rise immediately, and then everyone walks down from the top of the Mount of Olives, with the people preceding the bishop and responding continually with Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord to the hymns and antiphons. All the children who are present here, including those who are not yet able to walk because they are too young and therefore are carried on their parents’ shoulders, all of them bear branches, some carrying palms, others, olive branches.

And the bishop is led in the same manner as the Lord once was led. From the top of the mountain as far as the city, and from there through the entire city as far as the Anastasis, everyone accompanies the bishop the whole way on foot, and this includes distinguished ladies and men of consequence, reciting the responses all the while; and they move very slowly so that the people will not tire. By the time they arrive at the Anastasis, it is already evening. Once they have arrived there, even though it is evening, vespers is celebrated; then a prayer is said at the Cross and the people are dismissed³.

Monday

On Monday, the following day, they carry out in the Anastasis whatever ceremonies are customarily performed from the first cockcrow until dawn, as well as whatever is done at the third and sixth hours throughout Lent. However, at the ninth hour everyone comes together in the major church or Martyrium, and until the first hour of the night they continually sing hymns and antiphons, and read passages from the Scriptures fitting to the day and the place, always interrupting them with prayers. Vespers is celebrated in the Martyrium, when the hour for it is at hand. The result is that it is already night when the dismissal is given at the Martyrium. As soon as the dismissal has been given, the bishop is led from there to the Anastasis to the accompaniment of hymns. When he has entered the Anastasis, a hymn is sung, a prayer is said, first the catechumens and then the faithful are blessed, and finally the dismissal is given.

Tuesday

On Tuesday they do everything in the same way as on Monday. Only this is added on Tuesday: late at night, after the dismissal has been given in the Martyrium and they have gone to the Anastasis, and a second dismissal has been given at the Anastasis, they all go at that hour in the night to the church which is located on Mount Eleona. As soon as they have arrived in this church, the bishop goes into the grotto where the Lord used to teach His disciples. There the bishop takes up the book of the Gospels and, while standing, reads the words of the Lord which are written in the Gospel according to Matthew at the place where He said: Take heed that no man seduce you. Then the bishop reads the Lord’s entire discourse. When he has finished reading it, he says a prayer and blesses the catechumens and then the faithful.

The dismissal is given, and they return from the mountain, and everyone goes to his own home, for it is now very late at night.

Wednesday

On Wednesday everything is done throughout the day from the first cockcrow just as on Monday and Tuesday. However, following the dismissal at night at the Martyrium, the bishop is led to the accompaniment of hymns to the Anastasis. He goes immediately into the grotto within the Anastasis, and he stands within the railings. A priest, however, standing in front of the railings, takes up the Gospel and reads that passage where Judas Iscariot went to the Jews to set the price they would pay him to betray the Lord. While this passage is being read, there is such moaning and groaning from among the people that no one can help being moved to tears in that moment.

Afterwards, a prayer is said, first the catechumens and then the faithful are blessed, and finally the dismissal is given.

Holy Thursday

On Thursday whatever is customarily done from the first cockcrow until morning and what is done at the third and sixth hours takes place at the Anastasis. At the eighth hour all the people gather as usual at the Martyrium, earlier, however, than on other days, because the dismissal must be given more quickly. When all the people have assembled, the prescribed rites are celebrated. On that day the oblation is offered at the Martyrium, and the dismissal from there is given around the tenth hour. Before the dismissal is given, however, the archdeacon raises his voice, saying: “At the first hour of the night let us assemble at the church which is on the Eleona, for much toil lies ahead of us on this day’s night.” Following the dismissal from the Martyrium, everyone proceeds behind the Cross, where, after a hymn is sung and a prayer is said, the bishop offers the oblation and everyone receives Communion. Except on this one day, throughout the year the oblation is never offered behind the Cross save on this day alone? The dismissal is given there, and everyone goes to the Anastasis, where a prayer is said, the catechumens as well as the faithful are blessed, as is customary, and the dismissal is given.

Everyone then hurries home to eat, because, immediately after having eaten, everyone goes to the Eleona, to the church where the grotto in which the Lord gathered with His disciples on that day is located. And there, until around the fifth hour of the night, they continually sing hymns and antiphons and read the scriptural passages proper to the place and to the day. Between these, prayers are said. Moreover, they read those passages from the Gospels in which the Lord spoke to His disciples on that day while sitting in the same grotto which lies within this church. And from here, around the sixth hour of the night, everyone goes up to the Imbomon, singing hymns. That is the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven. There also they sing hymns and antiphons and read scriptural passages proper to the day; and whatever prayers are said, whatever prayers the bishop recites, they will always be proper to the day and to the place.

Great and Holy Friday

As soon as it begins to be the hour of cockcrow, everyone comes down from the Imbomon singing hymns and proceeds toward the very place where the Lord prayed, as it is written in the Gospel: And He went as far as a stone’s throw and He prayed, and so forth. On that spot stands a tasteful church? The bishop and all the people enter there, where a prayer fitting to the day and the place is said, followed by an appropriate hymn, and a reading of that passage from the Gospel where He said to His disciples: Watch, that you enter not into temptation. The whole of this passage is read there, and a second prayer is then said. Next, everyone, including the smallest children, walk down from there to Gethsemane, accompanying the bishop with hymns. Singing hymns, they come to Gethsemane very slowly on account of the great multitude of people, who are fatigued by vigils and exhausted by the daily fasts, and because of the rather high mountain they have to descend. Over two hundred church candles are ready to provide light for all the people.

On arriving in Gethsemane a suitable prayer is first said, followed by a hymn, and then the passage from the Gospel describing the arrest of the Lord is read During the reading of this passage there is such moaning and groaning with weeping from all the people that their moaning can be heard practically as far as the city. And from that hour everyone goes back on foot to the city singing hymns, and they arrive at the gate at the hour when men can begin to recognize one another. From there, throughout the center of the city, all without exception are ready at hand, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, everyone; and on this day especially no one withdraws from the vigil before early morning. It is in this fashion that the bishop is led from Gethsemane to the gate, and from there through the whole city to the Cross. When they finally arrive before the Cross, it is already beginning to be broad daylight. There then is read the passage from the Gospel where the Lord is led before Pilate, and whatsoever words are written that Pilate spoke to the Lord or to the Jews, all this is read.

Veneration of the Wood of the Cross

Afterwards, the bishop addresses the people, comforting them, since they have labored the whole night and since they are to labor again on this day, admonishing them not to grow weary, but to have hope in God who will bestow great graces on them for their efforts. And comforting them as he can, he addresses them saying: “Go, for the time being, each of you, to your homes; sit there awhile, and around the second hour of the day let everyone be on hand here so that from that hour until the sixth hour you may see the holy wood of the cross, and thus believe that it was offered for the salvation of each and every one of us.

From the sixth hour on we will have to assemble here, before the Cross, so that we may devote ourselves to prayers and scriptural readings until nightfall.

After this, following the dismissal from the Cross, which occurs before sunrise, everyone now stirred up goes immediately to Zion to pray at the pillar where the Lord was whipped. Returning from there then, everyone rests for a short time in his own house, and soon all are ready. A throne is set up for the bishop on Golgotha behind the Cross, which now stands there. The bishop sits on his throne, a table covered with a linen cloth is set before him, and the deacons stand around the table. The gilded silver casket containing the sacred wood of the cross is brought in and opened. Both the wood of the cross and the inscription are taken out and placed on the table. As soon as they have been placed on the table, the bishop, remaining seated, grips the ends of the sacred wood with his hands, while the deacons, who are standing about, keep watch over it. There is a reason why it is guarded in this manner. It is the practice here for all the people to come forth one by one, the faithful as well as the catechumens, to bow down before the table, kiss the holy wood, and then move on. It is said that someone (I do not know when) took a bite and stole a piece of the holy cross. Therefore, it is now guarded by the deacons standing around, lest there be anyone who would dare come and do that again.

All the people pass through one by one; all of them bow down, touching the cross and the inscription, first with their foreheads, then with their eyes; and, after kissing the cross, they move on. No one, however, puts out his hand to touch the cross. As soon as they have kissed the cross and passed on through, a deacon, who is standing, holds out the ring of Solomon and the phial with which the kings were anointed. They kiss the phial and venerate the ring from more or less the second hour; and thus until the sixth hour all the people pass through, entering through one door, exiting through another. All this occurs in the place where the day before, on Thursday, the oblation was offered.

And when the sixth hour is at hand, everyone goes before the Cross, whether it be in rain or in heat, the place being open to the air, as it were, a court of great size and of some beauty between the Cross and the Anastasis; here all the people assemble in such great numbers that there is no thoroughfare. The chair is placed for the bishop before the Cross, and from the sixth to the ninth hour nothing else is done, but the reading of lessons, which are read thus: first from the psalms wherever the Passion is spoken of, then from the Apostle, either from the epistles of the Apostles or from their Acts, wherever they have spoken of the Lord’s Passion; then the passages from the Gospels, where He suffered, are read. Then the readings from the prophets where they foretold that the Lord should suffer, then from the Gospels where He mentions His Passion. Thus from the sixth to the ninth hours the lessons are so read and the hymns said, that it may be shown to all the people that whatsoever the prophets foretold of the Lord’s Passion is proved from the Gospels and from the writings of the Apostles to have been fulfilled.

When the sixth hour is at hand, everyone goes before the Cross, regardless of whether it is raining or whether it is hot. This place has no roof, for it is a sort of very large and beautiful courtyard lying between the Cross and the Anastasis. The people are so clustered together that there is no room to move. A chair is placed for the bishop before the Cross, and from the sixth to the ninth hours nothing else is done except the reading of passages from Scripture. First whichever Psalms speak of the Passion are read. Next, there are readings from the Apostles, either from their Epistles or from their Acts, wherever they have spoken of the Lord’s Passion. Next, the texts of the Passion from the Gospels are read. Then the readings from the prophets where they foretold that the Lord should suffer, then from the Gospels where He mentions His Passion. And so, from the sixth to the ninth hour, the Scriptures are continuously read and the hymns are sung to show the people that whatever the prophets had said would come to shown, both through the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, to have taken place.

And so, during those three hours, all the people are taught that nothing happened which was not first prophesied, and that nothing was prophesied which was not completely fulfilled. Prayers are continually interspersed, and the prayers themselves are proper to the day. At each reading and at every prayer, it is astonishing how much emotion and groaning there is from all the people. There is no one, young or old, who on this day does not sob more than can be imagined for the whole three hours, because the Lord suffered all this for us. After this, when the ninth hour is at hand, the passage is read from the Gospel according to Saint John where Christ gave up His spirit. After this reading, a prayer is said and the dismissal is given.

As soon as the dismissal has been given from before the Cross, everyone gathers together in the major church, the Martyrium and there everything which they have been doing regularly throughout this week from the ninth hour when they came together at the Martyrium, until evening, is then done. After the dismissal from the Martyrium, everyone comes to the Anastasis, and, after they have arrived there, the passage from the Gospel is read where Joseph seeks from Pilate the body of the Lord and places it in a new tomb. After this reading a prayer is said, the catechumens are blessed, and the faithful as well; then the dismissal is given. On this day no one raises his voice to say the vigil will be continued at the Anastasis, because it is known that the people are tired. However, it is the custom that the vigil be held there. And so, those among the people who wish, or rather those who are able, to keep the vigil, do so until dawn; whereas those who are not able to do so, do not keep watch there. But those of the clergy who are either strong enough or young enough, keep watch there, and hymns and antiphons are sung there all through the night until morning. The greater part of the people keep watch, some from evening on, others from midnight, each one doing what he can.

Great Sabbath

An Orthodox priest baptizing new Christians in the Jordan River (Photo credit: UPI)

Paschal vigil at the Anastasis (the original structure is fully enclosed within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre)

On the following day, which is Saturday, there is as usual a service at the third hour and again at the sixth hour. There is no service, however, at the ninth hour on Saturday, for preparation is being made for the Pascha vigil in the major church, the Martyrium. The Pascha vigil is observed here exactly as we observe it at home. Only one thing is done more elaborately here. After the neophytes have been baptized and dressed as soon as they came forth from the baptismal font, they are led first of all to the Anastasis with the bishop. The bishop goes within the railings of the Anastasis, a hymn is sung, and he prays for them. Then he returns with them to the major church, where all the people are holding the vigil as is customary.

Everything is done which is customarily done at home with us, and after the oblation has been offered, the dismissal is given. After the vigil service has been celebrated in the major church, everyone comes to the Anastasis singing hymns. There, once again, the text of the Gospel of the Resurrection is read, a prayer is said, and once again the bishop offers the oblation. However, for the sake of the people, everything is done rapidly, lest they be delayed too long. And so the people are dismissed.

On this day the dismissal from the vigil takes place at the same hour as at home with us.

The eight days of Pascha are observed just as at home with us. The liturgy is celebrated in the prescribed manner throughout the eight days of Pascha just as it is celebrated everywhere from Pascha Sunday to its octave. There is the same decoration, and the same arrangement for these eight days of Pascha, as for the Epiphany, both in the major church and in the Anastasis, in the Cross as well as the Eleona, in Bethlehem, and in the Lazarium, too, and indeed everywhere, for this is Pascha time.

Pascha

On that first Sunday, Pascha, everyone assembles for the liturgy in the major church, in the Martyrium, and on Monday and Tuesday also. But it always happens that, once the dismissal has been given from the Martyrium, everyone comes to the Anastasis singing hymns. On Wednesday everyone assembles for the liturgy in the Eleona; on Thursday, in the Anastasis; on Friday, at Zion; and on Saturday, before the Cross. On Sunday, however, on the octave that is, they go once again to the major church, to the Martyrium. During the eight days of Pascha, everyday after lunch, in the company of all the clergy and the neophytes – I mean those who have just been baptized – and of all the aputactitae⁴, both men and women, and of as many of the people as wish to come, the bishop goes up to the Eleona. Hymns are sung and prayers are said, both in the church which is on the Eleona and where the grotto in which Jesus taught His disciples is located, and at the Imbomon, the place, that is, from which the Lord ascended into heaven.

After Psalms have been sung and a prayer has been said, everyone comes down from there, singing hymns, and goes to the Anastasis at the hour for Vespers. This is done throughout the eight days. On Pascha Sunday, after the dismissal from vespers at the Anastasis, all the people singing hymns conduct the bishop to Zion. When they have arrived there, hymns proper to the day and the place are sung, and a prayer is said. Then is read the passage from the Gospel describing how on this day and in this very place where there is now this same Church of Zion, the Lord came to His disciples, although the doors were closed, at the time when one of the disciples, namely, Thomas, was not there. When he returned, he said to the other apostles, who had told him that they had seen the Lord: I will not believe, unless 1 see. After this passage has been read, a prayer is again said, the catechumens and then the faithful are blessed, and everyone returns to his home late, around the second hour of the night.

Then on Sunday, on the octave of Pascha, immediately after the sixth hour all the people go up to the Eleona with the bishop. First of all everyone sits down for a time in the church which is there; hymns are sung as well as antiphons proper to the day and to the place, and prayers also that are proper to the day and the place. Then, everyone, singing hymns, goes from there up to the Imbomon above; and what was done in the Eleona is done in like manner again here. When it is time, all the people and all the aputactitae, singing hymns, lead the bishop to the Anastasis. They arrive at the Anastasis at the hour when Vespers is customarily celebrated, and the vespers service is held both at the Anastasis and at the Cross.

From there, all the people without exception, singing hymns, lead the bishop as far as Zion. When they have arrived there, hymns proper to the place and to the day are sung as usual. Then they read the passage from the Gospel where, on the octave of Pascha, the Lord came into where the disciples were, and He reproved Thomas because he had not believed? The whole passage from Scripture is then read. After a prayer has been said and the catechumens and the faithful have been blessed according to custom, then everyone returns to his home at the second hour of the night, just as on Pascha.

From Pascha to the fiftieth day, that is, to Pentecost, absolutely no one fasts here, not even the aputactitae. During the period the customary services are held at the Anastasis from the first cockcrow until morning, as is done throughout the year, and likewise at the sixth hour and at vespers. On Sundays they assemble as always for the liturgy in the Martyrium, the major church, according to custom; then, from there, singing hymns, they go to the Anastasis. On Wednesdays and Fridays, since absolutely no one fasts here on these days, they assemble for the liturgy at Zion, but in the morning. The divine service is celebrated in the prescribed manner.

Footnotes:

1. Anastasis – Literally “the Resurrection” – the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
2. Eleona – Like the name Gethsemane [oilpress] the Greek Eleona refers to the oil produced by the olive grove.
3. The Dismissal as Egeria refers to it is the prayer of blessing over the people, prayed by the priest at the end of a liturgical service. In Egeria’s time the term dismissal is coming to refer to the entire service; this is the origin of the later Latin word missa [Mass] i.e. the Eucharistic service, which Egeria here calls the oblation.
4. Aputactitae – ascetics who vow to abstain from nearly all food during Lent.

Translated by Ludwig Biehler

I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement [vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven.

For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the Spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name.

He himself said through the prophet: ‘Call upon me in the day of’ trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.’ And again: ‘It is right to reveal and publish abroad the works of God.’

I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul’s desire.

I am not ignorant of what is said of my Lord in the Psalm: ‘You destroy those who speak a lie.’ And again: ‘A lying mouth deals death to the soul.’ And likewise the Lord says in the Gospel: ‘On the day of judgment men shall render account for every idle word they utter.’

So it is that I should mightily fear, with terror and trembling, this judgment on the day when no one shall be able to steal away or hide, but each and all shall render account for even our smallest sins before the judgment seat of Christ the Lord.

And therefore for some time I have thought of writing, but I have hesitated until now, for truly, I feared to expose myself to the criticism of men, because I have not studied like others, who have assimilated both Law and the Holy Scriptures equally and have never changed their idiom since their infancy, but instead were always learning it increasingly, to perfection, while my idiom and language have been translated into a foreign tongue. So it is easy to prove from a sample of my writing, my ability in rhetoric and the extent of my preparation and knowledge, for as it is said, ‘wisdom shall be recognized in speech, and in understanding, and in knowledge and in the learning of truth.’

But why make excuses close to the truth, especially when now I am presuming to try to grasp in my old age what I did not gain in my youth because my sins prevented me from making what I had read my own? But who will believe me, even though I should say it again? A young man, almost a beardless boy, I was taken captive before I knew what I should desire and what I should shun. So, consequently, today I feel ashamed and I am mightily afraid to expose my ignorance, because, [not] eloquent, with a small vocabulary, I am unable to explain as the spirit is eager to do and as the soul and the mind indicate.

But had it been given to me as to others, in gratitude I should not have kept silent, and if it should appear that I put myself before others, with my ignorance and my slower speech, in truth, it is written: ‘The tongue of the stammerers shall speak rapidly and distinctly.’ How much harder must we try to attain it, we of whom it is said: ‘You are an epistle of Christ in greeting to the ends of the earth … written on your hearts, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.’ And again, the Spirit witnessed that the rustic life was created by the Most High.

I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.

Therefore be amazed, you great and small who fear God, and you men of God, eloquent speakers, listen and contemplate. Who was it summoned me, a fool, from the midst of those who appear wise and learned in the law and powerful in rhetoric and in all things? Me, truly wretched in this world, he inspired before others that I could be — if I would — such a one who, with fear and reverence, and faithfully, without complaint, would come to the people to whom the love of Christ brought me and gave me in my lifetime, if I should be worthy, to serve them truly and with humility.

According, therefore, to the measure of one’s faith in the Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God’s name everywhere with confidence and without fear, in order to leave behind, after my death, foundations for my brethren and sons whom I baptized in the Lord in so many thousands.

And I was not worthy, nor was I such that the Lord should grant his humble servant this, that after hardships and such great trials, after captivity, after many years, he should give me so much favour in these people, a thing which in the time of my youth I neither hoped for nor imagined.

But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time.

And it was there of course that one night in my sleep I heard a voice saying to me: ‘You do well to fast: soon you will depart for your home country.’ And again, a very short time later, there was a voice prophesying: ‘Behold, your ship is ready.’ And it was not close by, but, as it happened, two hundred miles away, where I had never been nor knew any person. And shortly thereafter I turned about and fled from the man with whom I had been for six years, and I came, by the power of God who directed my route to advantage (and I was afraid o nothing), until I reached that ship.

And on the same day that I arrived, the ship was setting out from the place, and I said that I had the wherewithal to sail with them; and the steersman was displeased and replied in anger, sharply: ‘By no means attempt to go with us.’ Hearing this I left them to go to the hut where I was staying, and on the way I began to pray, and before the prayer was finished I heard one of them shouting loudly after me: ‘Come quickly because the men are calling you.’ And immediately I went back to them and they started to say to me: ‘Come, because we are admitting you out of good faith; make friendship with us in any way you wish.’ (And so, on that day, I refused to suck the breasts of these men from fear of God, but nevertheless I had hopes that they would come to faith in Jesus Christ, because they were barbarians.) And for this I continued with them, and forthwith we put to sea.

And after three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: ‘Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being.’ In fact, I said to them, confidently: ‘Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds.’ And with God’s help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly. They discovered wild honey, besides, and they offered a share to me, and one of them said: ‘It is a sacrifice.’ Thanks be to God, I tasted none of it.

The very same night while I was sleeping Satan attacked me violently, as I will remember as long as I shall be in this body; and there fell on top of me as it were, a huge rock, and not one of my members had any force. But from whence did it come to me, ignorant in the spirit, to call upon ‘Helias’? And meanwhile I saw the sun rising in the sky, and while I was crying out ‘Helias, Helias’ with all my might, lo, the brilliance of that sun fell upon me and immediately shook me free of all the weight; and I believe that I was aided by Christ my Lord, and that his Spirit then was crying out for me, and I hope that it will be so in the day of my affliction, just as it says in the Gospel: ‘In that hour’, the Lord declares, ‘it is not you who speaks but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you.’

And a second time, after many years, I was taken captive. On the first night I accordingly remained with my captors, but I heard a divine prophecy, saying to me: ‘You shall be with them for two months. So it happened. On the sixtieth night the Lord delivered me from their hands.

On the journey he provided us with food and fire and dry weather every day, until on the tenth day we came upon people. As I mentioned above, we had journeyed through an unpopulated country for twenty-eight days, and in fact the night that we came upon people we had no food.

And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents [kinsfolk], and the welcomed me as a son, and asked me, in faith, that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go an where else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’, and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and the were crying as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many ears the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

And another night — God knows, I do not, whether within me or beside me — … most words + … + which I heard and could not understand, except at the end of the speech it was represented thus: ‘He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.’ And thus I awoke, joyful.

And on a second occasion I saw Him praying within me, and I was as it were, inside my own body , and I heard Him above me — that is, above my inner self. He was praying powerfully with sighs. And in the course of this I was astonished and wondering, and I pondered who it could be who was praying within me. But at the end of the prayer it was revealed to me that it was the Spirit. And so I awoke and remembered the Apostle’s words: ‘Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we know not how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for utterance.’ And again: ‘The Lord our advocate intercedes for us.’

And then I was attacked by a goodly number of my elders, who [brought up] my sins against my arduous episcopate. That day in particular I was mightily upset, and might have fallen here and for ever; but the Lord generously spared me, a convert, and an alien, for his name’s sake, and he came powerfully to my assistance in that state of being trampled down. I pray God that it shall not be held against them as a sin that I fell truly into disgrace and scandal.

They brought up against me after thirty years an occurrence I had confessed before becoming a deacon. On account of the anxiety in my sorrowful mind, I laid before my close friend what I had perpetrated on a day — nay, rather in one hour — in my boyhood because I was not yet proof against sin. God knows — I do not — whether I was fifteen years old at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, nor had I believed, since my infancy; but I remained in death and unbelief until I was severely rebuked, and in truth I was humbled every day by hunger and nakedness.

On the other hand, I did not proceed to Ireland of my own accord until I was almost giving up, but through this I was corrected by the Lord, and he prepared me so that today I should be what was once far from me, in order that I should have the care of — or rather, I should be concerned for — the salvation of others, when at that time, still, I was only concerned for myself.

Therefore, on that day when I was rebuked, as I have just mentioned, I saw in a vision of the night a document before my face, without honour, and meanwhile I heard a divine prophecy, saying to me: ‘We have seen with displeasure the face of the chosen one divested of [his good] name.’ And he did not say ‘You have seen with displeasure’, but ‘We have seen with displeasure’ (as if He included Himself) . He said then: ‘He who touches you, touches the apple of my eye.’

For that reason, I give thanks to him who strengthened me in all things, so that I should not be hindered in my setting out and also in my work which I was taught by Christ my Lord; but more, from that state of affairs I felt, within me, no little courage, and vindicated my faith before God and man.

Hence, therefore, I say boldly that my conscience is clear now and hereafter. God is my witness that I have not lied in these words to you.

But rather, I am grieved for my very close friend, that because of him we deserved to hear such a prophecy. The one to whom I entrusted my soul! And I found out from a goodly number of brethren, before the case was made in my defence (in which I did not take part, nor was I in Britain, nor was it pleaded by me), that in my absence he would fight in my behalf. Besides, he told me himself: ‘See, the rank of bishop goes to you’ — of which I was not worthy. But how did it come to him, shortly afterwards, to disgrace me publicly, in the presence of all, good and bad, because previously, gladly and of his own free will, he pardoned me, as did the Lord, who is greater than all?

I have said enough. But all the same, I ought not to conceal God’s gift which he lavished on us in the land of my captivity, for then I sought him resolutely, and I found him there, and he preserved me from all evils (as I believe) through the in-dwelling of his Spirit, which works in me to this day. Again, boldly, but God knows, if this had been made known to me by man, I might, perhaps, have kept silent for the love of Christ.

Thus I give untiring thanks to God who kept me faithful in the day of my temptation, so that today I may confidently over my soul as a living sacrifice for Christ my Lord; who am I, Lord? or, rather, what is my calling? that you appeared to me in so great a divine quality, so that today among the barbarians I might constantly exalt and magnify your name in whatever place I should be, and not only in good fortune, but even in affliction? So that whatever befalls me, be it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives.

But it is tedious to describe in detail all my labours one by one. I will tell briefly how most holy God frequently delivered me, from slavery, and from the twelve trials with which my soul was threatened, from man traps as well, and from things I am not able to put into words. I would not cause offence to readers, but I have God as witness who knew all things even before they happened, that, though I was a poor ignorant waif, still he gave me abundant warnings through divine prophecy.

Whence came to me this wisdom which was not my own, I who neither knew the number of days nor had knowledge of God? Whence came the so great and so healthful gift of knowing or rather loving God, though I should lose homeland and family.

And many gifts were offered to me with weeping and tears, and I offended them [the donors], and also went against the wishes of a good number of my elders; but guided by God, I neither agreed with them nor deferred to them, not by my own grace but by God who is victorious in me and withstands them all, so that I might come to the Irish people to preach the Gospel and endure insults from unbelievers; that I might hear scandal of my travels, and endure man persecutions to the extent of prison; and so that I might give up my free birthright for the advantage of others, and if I should be worthy, I am ready [to give] even m life without. hesitation; and most willingly for His name. And I choose to devote it to him even unto death, if God grant it to me.

I am greatly God’s debtor, because he granted me so much grace, that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon a after confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the earth, just as he once promised through his prophets: ‘To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited naught hut lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.’ And again: ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of’ the earth.’

And I wish to wait then for his promise which is never unfulfilled, just as it is promised in the Gospel: ‘Many shall come from east and west and shall sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’ Just as we believe that believers will come from all the world.

So for that reason one should, in fact, fish well and diligently, just as the Lord foretells and teaches, saying, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,’ and again through the prophets: ‘Behold, I am sending forth many fishers and hunters, says the Lord,’ et cetera. So it behoved us to spread our nets, that a vast multitude and throng might be caught for God, and so there might be clergy everywhere who baptized and exhorted a needy and desirous people. Just as the Lord says in the Gospel, admonishing and instructing: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always to the end of time.’ And again he says: ‘Go forth into the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned.’ And again: ‘This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached throughout the whole world as a witness to all nations; and then the end of the world shall come.’ And likewise the Lord foretells through the prophet: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days (sayeth the Lord) that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams; yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy.’ And in Hosea he says: ‘Those who are not my people I will call my people, and those not beloved I will call my beloved, and in the very place where it was said to them, You are not my people, they will be called ‘Sons of the living God’.

So, how is it that in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things, they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children of God; the sons of. the Irish [Scotti] and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ.

And there was, besides, a most beautiful, blessed, native-born noble Irish [Scotta] woman of adult age whom I baptized; and a few days later she had reason to come to us to intimate that she had received a prophecy from a divine messenger [who] advised her that she should become a virgin of Christ and she would draw nearer to God. Thanks be to God, six days from then, opportunely and most eagerly, she took the course that all virgins of God take, not with their fathers’ consent but enduring the persecutions and deceitful hindrances of their parents. Notwithstanding that, their number increases, (we do not know the number of them that are so reborn) besides the widows, and those who practise self-denial. Those who are kept in slavery suffer the most. They endure terrors and constant threats, but the Lord has given grace to many of his handmaidens, for even though they are forbidden to do so, still they resolutely follow his example.

So it is that even if I should wish to separate from them in order to go to Britain, and most willingly was I prepared to go to my homeland and kinsfolk — and not only there, but as far as Gaul to visit the brethren there, so that I might see the faces of the holy ones of my Lord, God knows how strongly I desired this — I am bound by the Spirit, who witnessed to me that if I did so he would mark me out as guilty, and I fear to waste the labour that I began, and not I, but Christ the Lord, who commanded me to come to be with them for the rest of my life, if the Lord shall will it and shield me from every evil, so that I may not sin before him.

So I hope that I did as I ought, but I do not trust myself as long as I am in this mortal body, for he is strong who strives daily to turn me away from the faith and true holiness to which I aspire until the end of my life for Christ my Lord, but the hostile flesh is always dragging one down to death, that is, to unlawful attractions. And I know in part why I did not lead a perfect life like other believers, but I confess to my Lord and do not blush in his sight, because I am not lying; from the time when I came to know him in my youth, the love of God and fear of him increased in me, and right up until now, by God’s favour, I have kept the faith.

What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, [he] who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.

Thus, I should give thanks unceasingly to God, who frequently forgave my folly and my negligence, in more than one instance so as not to be violently angry with me, who am placed as his helper, and I did not easily assent to what had been revealed to me, as the Spirit was urging; and the Lord took pity on me thousands upon thousands of times, because he saw within me that I was prepared, but that I was ignorant of what to do in view of my situation; because many were trying to prevent this mission. They were talking among themselves behind my back, and saying: ‘Why is this fellow throwing himself into danger among enemies who know not God?’ Not from malice, but having no liking for it; likewise, as I myself can testify, they perceived my rusticity. And I was not quick to recognize the grace that was then in me; I now know that I should have done so earlier.

Now I have put it frankly to my brethren and co-workers, who have believed me because of what I have foretold and still foretell to strengthen and reinforce your faith. I wish only that you, too, would make greater and better efforts. This will be my pride, for ‘a wise son makes a proud father’.

You know, as God does, how I went about among you from my youth in the faith of truth and in sincerity of heart. As well as to the heathen among whom I live, I have shown them trust and always show them trust. God knows I did not cheat any one of them, nor consider it, for the sake of God and his Church, lest I arouse them and [bring about] persecution for them and for all of us, and lest the Lord’s name be blasphemed because of me, for it is written: ‘Woe to the men through whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed.’

For even though I am ignorant in all things, nevertheless I attempted to safeguard some and myself also. And I gave back again to my Christian brethren and the virgins of Christ and the holy women the small unasked for gifts that they used to give me or some of their ornaments which they used to throw on the altar. And they would be offended with me because I did this. But in the hope of eternity, I safeguarded myself carefully in all things, so that they might not cheat me of my office of service on any pretext of dishonesty, and so that I should not in the smallest way provide any occasion for defamation or disparagement on the part of unbelievers.

What is more, when I baptized so many thousands of people, did I hope for even half a jot from any of them? [If so] Tell me, and I will give it back to you. And when the Lord ordained clergy everywhere by my humble means, and I freely conferred office on them, if I asked any of them anywhere even for the price of one shoe, say so to my face and I will give it back.

More, I spent for you so that they would receive me. And I went about among you, and everywhere for your sake, in danger, and as far as the outermost regions beyond which no one lived, and where no one had ever penetrated before, to baptize or to ordain clergy or to confirm people. Conscientiously and gladly I did all this work by God’s gift for your salvation.

From time to time I gave rewards to the kings, as well as making payments to their sons who travel with me; notwithstanding which, they seized me with my companions, and that day most avidly desired to kill me. But my time had not yet come. They plundered everything they found on us anyway, and fettered me in irons; and on the fourteenth day the Lord freed me from their power, and whatever they had of ours was given back to us for the sake of God on account of the indispensable friends whom we had made before.

Also you know from experience how much I was paying to those who were administering justice in all the regions, which I visited often. I estimate truly that I distributed to them not less than the price of fifteen men, in order that you should enjoy my company and I enjoy yours, always, in God. I do not regret this nor do I regard it as enough. I am paying out still and I shall pay out more. The Lord has the power to grant me that I may soon spend my own self, for your souls.

Behold, I call on God as my witness upon my soul that I am not lying; nor would I write to you for it to be an occasion for flattery or selfishness, nor hoping for honour from any one of you. Sufficient is the honour which is not yet seen, but in which the heart has confidence. He who made the promise is faithful; he never lies.

But I see that even here and now, I have been exalted beyond measure by the Lord, and I was not worthy that he should grant me this, while I know most certainly that poverty and failure suit me better than wealth and delight (but Christ the Lord was poor for our sakes; I certainly am wretched and unfortunate; even if I wanted wealth I have no resources, nor is it my own estimation of myself, for daily I expect to be murdered or betrayed or reduced to slavery if the occasion arises. But I fear nothing, because of the promises of Heaven; for I have cast myself into the hands of Almighty God, who reigns everywhere. As the prophet says: ‘Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you.’

Behold now I commend my soul to God who is most faithful and for whom I perform my mission in obscurity, but he is no respecter of persons and he chose me for this service that I might be one of the least of his ministers.

For which reason I should make return for all that he returns me. But what should I say, or what should I promise to my Lord, for I, alone, can do nothing unless he himself vouchsafe it to me. But let him search my heart and [my] nature, for I crave enough for it, even too much, and I am ready for him to grant me that I drink of his chalice, as he has granted to others who love him.

Therefore may it never befall me to be separated by my God from his people whom he has won in this most remote land. I pray God that he gives me perseverance, and that he will deign that I should be a faithful witness for his sake right up to the time of my passing.

And if at any time I managed anything of good for the sake of my God whom I love, I beg of him that he grant it to me to shed my blood for his name with proselytes and captives, even should I be left unburied, or even were my wretched body to be torn limb from limb by dogs or savage beasts, or were it to be devoured by the birds of the air, I think, most surely, were this to have happened to me, I had saved both my soul and my body. For beyond any doubt on that day we shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him and for him and in him.

For the sun we see rises each day for us at [his] command, but it will never reign, neither will its splendour last, but all who worship it will come wretchedly to punishment. We, on the other hand, shall not die, who believe in and worship the true sun, Christ, who will never die, no more shall he die who has done Christ’s will, but will abide for ever just as Christ abides for ever, who reigns with God the Father Almighty and with the Holy Spirit before the beginning of time and now and for ever and ever. Amen.

Behold over and over again I would briefly set out the words of my confession. I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from which I had previously escaped with difficulty.

But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.

A great deal of foolishness goes by the name “Celtic.” Anything that features harps, knotwork, and a starry-eyed “creation spirituality” is claimed as part of popular “Celtic” spirituality. For a refreshing contrast, in this article, Father Richard Woods looks at the history of the real Christians who actually lived in ancient Ireland and Britain.

The Celtic church, which flourished for many centuries, was a vigorous expression of Christian faith and offers us lessons for dealing with today’s critical issues.

Only in relatively recent years have scholars been able to recover the history of the Celtic churches in what should be called Early Christian Britain and Ireland rather than simply the Dark Ages. For the centuries between the fall of the Roman empire and the so-called Middle Ages were hardly dark for the millions of Christians living at the periphery of northwestern Europe. In many respects, the Renaissance began there six hundred years before the reflowering of scholarship, art, and literature in Italy and France.

If the rich history of the Celtic churches is a fairly recent discovery, their spirituality may be an even more surprising resource for a life-affirming, holistic, and faithful way of life for Christians in this “postmodern” world and, more importantly, the world of the future. Celtic spirituality may in fact be “newer” and more valuable than many better known spiritual traditions of later ages.

The word keltoi was first used by historians of the sixth century before Christ to describe a welter of people sharing a family of languages rooted in a lost ancestral tongue remotely related to Greek. Perhaps significantly for understanding Celtic character, Professor John T. McNeill notes that “Plato mentions them in a list of nations addicted to drunkenness, and Aristotle notes their reckless indifference to danger, even of earthquake and raging seas.” ¹

By the beginning of the Christian era, Celtic tribes had migrated west, occupying Gaul and part of Spain. There were British tribes, Irish tribes, and the outlandish Picts of the north. But with the partial exceptions of the short-lived alliances formed in the first century before Christ by Vercingetorix, and in the first, fifth, and eleventh centuries afterwards by Caradoc (Caracticus), Arthur, and Brian Boru, there never developed a pan-Celtic movement or even much national sentiment.

Celtic peoples have never been much taken with system and structure. The Christian churches they established reflected that irreducible independence of spirit as long as they endured. And by any standards that was a very long time, ending officially with the Synod of Kells in 1152 following the Norman invasion of Ireland. Even at the time of its absorption into full Anglo-Roman character in 664, the British church was older than any Protestant denomination today and claimed to be as venerable as any patriarchate of East or West. By the Middle Ages, it was commonly held that the faith had been established there by none other than Joseph of Arimathea.

Yet the Celtic churches did come to an end and in that respect can be considered the only fully extinct Christian tradition in the world. Such a distinction would be misleading, however, if it failed to recognize two perhaps startling facts. First, the missionaries and scholars from Ireland and Britain who revitalized the continental church after the barbarian invasions thereby inaugurated the chain of events that not only ended their own tradition but ushered in the great era of Christendom in the High Middle Ages. Second, the Celtic churches did not simply die out. They melded fairly smoothly, if not without resistance, into the mainstream church of Western Europe, once again whole and now embraced in a precariously fragile spiritual and political body called The Holy Roman Empire.

Celtic Christianity

In 410 the last legions were withdrawn from Britain to protect Italy from the Vandals and Huns, leaving that largely Christian Britain open to increasing attack from the pagan Irish, Saxon, and Picts. And to no avail: with the deposition of the Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, the Western empire came to its inglorious end. The Western church also began a long winter of organizational decline, largely because it had adopted the legal and governmental structures and even the territorial divisions of the empire. ² The term diocese itself originally referred to an administrative unit of civil government.

But the ensuing ecclesiastical disintegration, political chaos, and disrupted communication indirectly brought about two events which were to transform the Celtic churches structurally and forever change the history of Western Europe. In 431, as an aspect of a counteroffensive against heresy in the British church, Pope Celestine sponsored a minor mission to Ireland. Shortly afterwards, monasticism was introduced into the Celtic churches.

Like other Western churches of the ancient world, the Celtic churches had their differences with Rome. Only one heresy gained much of a following, however, and then only in Britain. It took its name from an itinerant teacher, lay preacher, and pamphleteer living in Italy, a well-born Briton who had come to the study of theology from law.

Pelagius’s teachings were propagated in his native church by influential friends and were finally extirpated only through the evangelical efforts of papal emissaries, Sts. Germanus and Lupus, in 429 and 447. The decision, or even the afterthought, of Pope Celestine to authorize a simultaneous but less ambitious mission to Ireland also produced success — one far more spectacular than he could have expected.

There were Christians and possibly even bishops in Ireland before Palladius, the first Roman missionary bishop, arrived there around 431. But there was as yet no recognizable church. At that time Patrick was still a half-educated expatriate British monk living in Gaul. Having been a captive in Ireland for many years as a teenager, he had become obsessed with the desire to return as a missionary. When Palladius’s mission faltered, Patrick was presented by sympathetic British clergy to St. Germanus, who had been commissioned to oversee the Celtic churches.

Even though Patrick still lacked much of even the rudimentary theological training of the clergy of his time, Germanus ordained him deacon, priest, and finally bishop. At first his mission, like that of Palladius, was hardly a triumph. But with the assistance of several companions, probably monks ordained and functioning as secular clergy, he eventually managed to organize a stable community.

Eventually Patrick set up diocesan structures, including a hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons.³ He did not found monasteries. Nevertheless, within a century, the dominant form of Irish and British Christianity was not diocesan but monastic in form. As a consequence, its spirituality was more familial, personal, and democratic rather than curial, legal, and republican. This was not only because of the direct influence of the Gallican monks, but because their monastic spirituality was more richly compatible with the structure and values of Celtic culture than was the legalistic diocesan form.

Although monastic spirituality came to Britain and then Ireland from Gaul, particularly Lérins, Tours, and Auxerre, its original home and character were Egyptian. ⁴ The familial, democratic, and decentralized character of African Christianity surely endowed its monasticism with some of its particular appeal to the Celts. And for six hundred years, their churches would be typified by this distinctive monastic spirit.

Elements of Early Celtic Spirituality

At the height of their development in the eighth and ninth centuries, Celtic monasteries extended from Iceland to Italy. More like settlements or small villages, many monasteries admitted both men and women, married lay persons as well as celibates, and a variety of support personnel. Many abbots were married, and leadership was often handed down through families for generations. ⁵

The life-style tended to be cenobitical, that is, the monks lived in separate cells or huts but participated in common prayer, meals, and other functions. However, there was also a tendency among the more austere ascetics to become hermits in the strict sense, separating from others to undergo what came to be called the “green martyrdom,” living in remote, isolated places alone with God.

This quest for an intense, self-sacrificing form of testimony was further expressed by the “white martyrdom,” voluntary exile and death in an alien land out of love for the homeless Christ. In its extreme form, the white martyrdom meant a life of perpetual pilgrimage. The renunciates who undertook such a discipline came to be known as peregrini. Sometimes these wanderers would set themselves adrift at sea in rudderless boats to go where the winds and fates would carry them. ⁶

Because the roots of British and Irish monasticism were largely Eastern, it contained rich philosophical and theological elements as well as a profound mystical tendency. It is not surprising that in the ninth century an itinerant Irish scholar, John Scottus Eriugena, would introduce the mystical theology of Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite into the Latin west.

This mystical and scholarly tradition produced other outstanding figures in medieval theology, philosophy, and spirituality: Alcuin, Sedulius Scottus, Duns Scottus, and Richard of St. Victor among them. Their spirituality, like that of their predecessors, was nevertheless first and foremost a biblical spirituality.

All the early literature of the Celtic churches, particularly in Ireland, is filled with biblical citations. For instance, St. Patrick’s confessional apologia is heavily punctuated with quotations and allusions.⁷ Primarily, however, Scripture was used for liturgical celebration, private devotional purposes, and especially study.

The great Gospel Books, undisputed masterpieces of the world’s greatest art, may have been used for liturgical celebrations, although missals were created for this purpose at a very early period. At any rate, the magnificently illuminated Gospels of Kells, Durrow, Lindisfarne, and elsewhere not only represent the artistic genius of the Celtic church at its pinnacle, but testify to the outstanding importance of the word of God in their calligraphy, portraiture, and abstract designs.

In addition to the role of Scripture as the liturgical and artistic focus of Celtic spirituality, there were several forms of private devotional use. One of the most interesting of these uses was the development of small Pocket Gospels which could be taken on journeys or pilgrimage. Finally, and importantly, Scripture was also subject to critical study, exegesis, and commentary by the monks, for whom love of study was next only to love of God. “it is beyond doubt,” Fr. Martin MacNamara writes, “that the study of the Bible was intensely pursued in the early Irish monastic schools.” ⁸ James Kenney states that Bible study was in fact their chief subject. ⁹

Public and private prayer was hardly of less importance in Celtic spirituality than devotion to Scripture. The formal liturgy consisted of the Mass, the sacraments, and, at least in the monastic settlements, psalmody-the divine office.¹⁰ In addition to official books, there is a vast literature illustrating the private, intensely personal devotion and informal liturgies of the monks and people at large. ¹¹ Long litanies or loricae were composed, for instance, probably for processional usage. A superb and famous example is the lorica attributed to St. Patrick. It begins:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

Devotion to the angels and saints, and in particular to Mary, seems always to have been of cardinal importance in Celtic spirituality, especially in Ireland, where Jesus was often referred to simply as “the Son of Mary.” Its own great saints appeared in the beginning, during its flowering, and at the decline of the Celtic church, among them Patrick, Illtyd, David, Bridget, Ita, Brendan, Kevin, Columcille, Columban, Malachy, and hundreds more.

Much of our knowledge of the early period of the Celtic church comes from the many biographies of these saints written from the sixth to the tenth centuries. Place names in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland still testify to the enduring importance of areas associated with favorite saints. In fact, often little else is now known of these revered men and women but their names, thousands of which have been preserved in various lists and especially the Celtic martyrologies. ¹²

In its most developed form, the vigorous asceticism that typified the spirituality of many of the early Celtic saints may strike us now as extreme. In those heroic and demanding times it would have appeared less so. While the majority of Celtic Christians did not, engage in severe austerities, some ascetical practice was a common feature of everyday spirituality. Significantly for our times, such asceticism was more a willing acceptance of poverty and natural hardship than a pursuit of refined artificialities in the social and psychological orders.

The Celtic Monks

While often attracted to the wilderness and “disearts” of solitary communion with God, the monks were hardly antisocial and even their fiercer forms of asceticism accomplished an evangelical function by the force of its example. The great missions to pagan areas of Pictland, England, and the Continent began as a form of solitary witness rather than attempts at direct evangelization.

As Christianity spread northwards and eastwards from Ireland and Wales, however, a true missionary impulse developed. By the ninth century, wandering scholars with a different kind of discipline had succeeded the missionaries, returning the light of learning as well as faith to much of postimperial Europe.

Monastic scribes and court scholars did not only copy, study, and comment upon Scripture, but also pursued grammar, rhetoric, and even the works of classical pagan poets, especially Virgil and Horace. While they copied and preserved the writings of the Latin Fathers — Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Cassian , and Gregory, among others — the monks also recorded the pre-Christian myths and sagas of the Celts from the oral versions of the bardic schools. Thus they preserved for subsequent generations in the Book of Invasions the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the earliest of all nonclassical European mythologies. ¹³

The monks’ great scholarly achievements were matched by an equally great love of beauty, especially in nature, which was brilliantly expressed in a variety of artistic forms. There the mystical element of Celtic spirituality became manifest with its paradoxical tensions between the sense of the nearness and farness of God, the melancholy fleetingness of all life, and the vanity of the world, yet the grandeur and wonder of creation in all its ecstatic and myriad loveliness. Such opposition may reflect a fundamental ambivalence in the Celtic temperament as well as the character of the land itself: uncommonly beautiful yet frequently harsh, poor, rocky, and sea-washed, blessed with a mild but wet climate, and therefore also boggy.

The earliest Christian Celtic art is poetry, the bardic elegies and lyrics of the poets of the British courts in the sixth century. In Ireland, scarcely later, epigrammatical poems by often anonymous scribes begin to appear in the margins of Gospels and other books:

To go to Rome
is much of trouble, little of profit:
The King whom you seek there,
Unless you bring him with you,
you will not find. ¹⁴

Even the more severe saints are known for their poems. Four are ascribed to Columban, and many more to the lyrical favorites such as Columcille. The scribes also sometimes broke through their scholarly tedium to etch the margins of their manuscripts:

A stream of wisdom of blessed God
Springs from my fair-brown shapely hand:
On the page it squirts its draught
Of ink of the green skinned holly.¹⁵

Artistic accomplishment soon extended far more brilliantly to graphic and plastic expression, such as the great stone crosses that punctuate Ireland like rubrics and are found to a lesser extent in all the Celtic lands. But surely the greatest of all artistic achievements of the Celts are the illuminated manuscripts of the seventh and eighth centuries and the metalcraft from the same period.

As mentioned earlier, the calligraphy, illuminations, and portraiture of the famous Gospel Books rank among the supreme art treasures of the human race. Perhaps even greater works were irretrievably lost to time, piracy, and the deliberate destruction of ancient materials by fanatical Puritans in the seventeenth century. Great masterpieces of metal art which have been preserved or recovered likewise testify eloquently to the genius of the craftworkers who expressed their native genius by concentration and miniaturization rather than by expansion to heroic proportion. Typically, neither architecture nor civic design were of interest or perhaps even possible to the Celtic artist in a land where necessary materials were scarce.

Music was also part of the spirituality of the Christian Celts, some little of which was recorded on paper or even in stone.¹⁶ Later hymnals and antiphonaries exist, however, some describing examples of instruments developed by the Celts, the favored being the harp. St. Patrick’s own bell and several other handbells have been preserved as well.

Social Action

An outstanding feature of Celtic spirituality concerns its active political character, which is to say, its commitment to social justice. Because of the tribal nature of the monastic settlement and indeed of Celtic life in all aspects, involvement in social life was as inescapable for the monks as it had been for the druids before them. This social dimension of Celtic spirituality was largely expressed in its devotion to pastoral care and spiritual development.

Such active ministry included extensive preaching, sacramental administration, and spiritual direction. Fully thirteen sermons of St. Columban survive in manuscript.¹⁷ According to legend, preachers often summoned congregations at bridges and crossroads by their enticing playing on the small harp.

The emergence in Irish monasticism of the anamchara, the “soul-friend,” was an important step in the evolution of the practice of spiritual direction. Both confessor and advisor, the spiritual authority of the soul-friend approached that of the abbot or abbess. It was a role earned by dedication and could be exercised by both women and men.

The Irish monks’ development of penitentials, more or less uniform codes of penances and ecclesiastical penalties, similarly advanced common spiritual welfare. For, rather than a legalistic mortmain, they represented a liberal effort to ensure some measure of equality in pastoral practice. But even the penitentials were characterized by the irreducible Celtic tendency toward independence of spirit.

Justice and charity were the main hinges of Celtic social action. Despite exceptions, distributive justice was especially prominent in the Celts’ dealings with one another. Social justice was no less important. Thus, women occupied a position not only equal to that of men but, in some instances, such as those of Bridget and Ita, far surpassing it. Irish deaconesses and abbesses exercised ecclesial authority, sometimes unimpeachably so. Children, too, were not only highly valued, but fostering was widely practiced lest orphans or the poor lack access to material and spiritual benefits. Prisoners and hostages were normally treated with sacred respect, and warfare among the tribes was conducted with surprising equanimity.

Similarly, a strong emphasis on kindness and hospitality pervades early Christian literature. Fr. Diarmuid O. Laoghaire describes an ancient series of proverbs which begin with the word eochair, “key.” There we learn that if the key to justice is distribution, the key to miracles is generosity. ¹⁸ He cites two short poems that treat typically of the importance of hospitality:

O King of Stars!
whether my house be dark or be bright
it will not be closed against anybody;
may Christ not close his house against me. ¹⁹

Again, with regard to an unfit guest house:

Great the sorrow!
Christ’s guest-house is fallen into decay;
if it bears the name of Christ the renowned,
it means that Christ is without a home. ²⁰

Lessons for Our Times

The uniqueness of our own era is not so much challenged by comparison with earlier ages as it is demonstrated, even when we are able to find striking similarities. Even a brief survey of Celtic spirituality suggests both theological and spiritual implications for our own time and time to come.

In an age dominated by war and militarism, increasing global poverty, social injustice, and environmental deterioration, we will learn, for example, that no nation which relies primarily on military strength for its security will endure long nor will it leave to coming civilizations a heritage much worth preserving. We will likewise learn that justice for some is ultimately injustice for all, and that to ignore the intimate implications of the social, biological, and physical systems that constitute our environment, and the delicate balance that prevails between them to make this a habitable planet, is to court disaster for life on earth.

And perhaps most significantly, we will learn that it is possible to live peaceably in the face of terror.

Beginning in 795, coping with terrorism became a recurrent, almost routine challenge for Celtic Christians as, for over two hundred years, Viking raiders plundered the coasts and navigable river areas. Sometimes the Irish, British, and Christian English were able to repel pirate attacks. The Scandinavian thrust westwards was even temporarily halted by military resistance led in Saxon England by Alfred the Great in 878 and again in 895, and in 1014 by Brian Boru in Ireland. However, Christian Celtic and Anglo-Saxon realms still remained prey to raids, whose major targets were usually the monasteries. Overall, tens of thousands of monks and nuns as well as countless lay persons were massacred by the Vikings, for whom terrorism operated as an informal but highly effective policy.

Terrorism has of course become a major, almost formal policy of revolutionary guerillas as well as established and often dictatorial governments throughout the world. Directly or indirectly, even the major powers, while themselves often the target of terrorist attacks, support political terrorism by supplying arms, ammunition, mat6riel, training, and money to terrorist groups of the right and the left. So widespread and entrenched has terrorism become in world politics that it has not only grown into a major industry but even, as Clare Sterling has argued, a professional international network.

What can a Celtic spirituality teach us about living with terrorism? Fundamentally, that the resort to terror ultimately defeats itself if met with patience, firmness, and nonviolence. The Vikings were not ultimately stopped by the armies of Brian Boru and Alfred, but by the force of civilization, enculturation, and conversion. Intermarriage and relative harmony among Scandinavian settlers and their unwilling hosts eventually came to prevail. Significantly, the last and most sophisticated period of Celtic art in Ireland incorporated the enriching influence of both Saxon and Scandinavian design.

In a word, the important lesson we can learn from our Christian brothers and sisters of that far distant time is one far older yet: not to render evil for evil. For it is only in patience that we shall possess our souls.

Originally published in Spirituality Today, Fall 1985, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 243-255

Fr. Richard Woods teaches at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and Loyola University Chicago.

Notes

1. John T. McNeill, The Celtic Churches [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974], p. 1.
2. “The organization of the Gallic Church of the fourth century was based on the orderly system of Roman civil administration: bishops had their sees in important provincial centres; ecclesiastical law and administration took as their models the imperial legal code and civil service procedure”[J. F. Webb, Lives of the Saints [New York: Penguin Books, 1965], p. 11].
3. For the existence of deaconesses in the Irish church, see Père Grossjean, Analecta Bollanda, LXXIII, 298, 322.
4. Cf. Webb, Lives, p. 11.
5. For a concise history of Celtic monasticism, see Jeremiah O’Sullivan, “Old Ireland and Her Monasticism,” in Robert McNally, ed., Old Ireland [New York: Fordham University Press, 1965], pp. 90-119; and Kathleen Hughes and Ann Hamlin, Celtic Monasticism [New York: Seabury, 1982].
6. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 891 recounts the story of three Irish peregrini who may be taken as a possibly typical example: “And three Scots came to King Alfred from Ireland in a boat without oars. They had left home bent on serving God in a state of pilgrimage, they cared not where. Their boat was made from two and a half hides and contained enough provisions to last them seven days, and within a week they landed in Cornwall and shortly afterwards came to King Alfred. They were called Dubslane, Macbeth and Maelinmum” [Webb, Lives, p. 19].
7. Patrick relied largely on the translation known as the Vetus Latina, which was eventually replaced by St. Jerome’s superior version of 384, commonly called the Vulgate. Significantly, as Charles Thomas observes, “the oldest extant MS of the complete Vulgate is British, the early eighth century Codex Amiatinus, written around 700 at Jarrow-Monks-wearmouth, sent as a gift by Abbot Coelfrith to the pope. Its textual standing is such that it has formed the basis of post-medieval recensions of the Vulgate” [Christianity In Roman Britain to AD 500 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 19811, p. 82].
8. Martin MacNamara, “The Bible in Irish Spirituality,” in Michael Maher, ed., Irish Spirituality [Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1979], p. 35.
9. Cited, ibid. So important was scriptural study, that the following epigrammatical protest usefully reminds us that, by the eighth century, most people could neither read nor write, particularly Latin, but were not on that account to be accorded second-class status among the saints: ” ‘Tis sad to see the sons of learning/ in everlasting Hellfire burning/ While he that never read a line/ Doth in eternal glory shine” [Robin Flowers translation, in David Greene, ed., An Anthology of Irish Literature [New York: Modern Libraru. 1954], p. 14].
10. For a variety of reasons, British liturgical documents are almost wholly lacking. On the other hand, early Christian Irish liturgical sources include the Stowe Missal, the Book of Armagh, the Book of Deer, the Book of Dimma, and the Book of Mulling. One of the treasures of the continental church is the famous Sacramentary, of Rheinau, ca. 800. Less a source for the Irish liturgy, it rather testifies to Celtic influence on the development of liturgy elsewhere, mainly through the work of missionaries such as St. Columban. See also J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, eds. and trans., The Irish Liber Hymnorum, 2 vols., [London: Harrison and Sons, 1898] and Hugh Jackson Lawlor, ed., The Rosslyn Missal [London: Harrison, 1899]. For an overview of this subject, see John Hennig, “Old Ireland and Her Liturgy,” in McNally, ed., Old Ireland pp. 60-89.
11. Some of the earliest sources, all from about the year 800, include the Book of Nunnaminster, the Book of Cerne, the Hadeian Prayer Book, the Royal Library Prayer Book, and the Durham Ritual.
12. Several of these fascinating books have been edited and translated since the turn of the century, including the Martyrology of Oengus [Félire Óengusso], ed. Whitley Stokes [London: Harrison, 1880, 1905]; the Martyrology of Gorman [Félire Húi Gormáin], ed. Whitley Stokes [London: Harrison, 1895]; the Psalter and Martyrology of Ricemarch, ed. H. J. Lawlor, 2 vols. [London: Harrison, 1914]; the Martyrology of Tallaght, ed. R.I. Best and H.J. Lawlor [London: Harrison, 1931], and the Martyrology of St. Jerome, ed. Dom Henry Quentin, O.S.B. [London: Harrison, 1931]. For lives of the saints, see W. W. Heist, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Subsidia Hagiographica 28 [Brussels, 1965]; the now classic editions by Charles Plummer of the Latin and Irish versions, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910] and Bethada Náem nÉrenn, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; repr. 1922 ed.]; Sabine Baring-Gould and John Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints; The Saints of Wales and Cornwall and Such Irish Saints as Have Dedications in Britain, 4 vols. [London: C. J. Clark, 1907-13]; and J. F. Webb, Lives of the Saints [New York: Penguin Books, 1965].
13. Nora Chadwick, The Celts [New York: Penguin Books, 1971], p. 255. See among other versions, H. d’Arbois de Jubainville The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology trans. from the French with additional notes by Richard Irvine Best [New York: Lemma Publishing Corp., 1970; original: Dublin, 1903].
14. Meyer’s translation modernized, in Green, ed., Anthology, p. 18.
15. Eleventh century. Meyer’s translation, in Greene, ed., Anthology, p. 33.
16. See James Travis, Miscellanea Musica Celtica, Musicological Studies 14 [Brooklyn N.Y.: The institute of Mediaeval Music, Ltd., 1968], and Séan O’Boyle, Ogam: The Poet’s Secret [Dublin: Gilbert Dalton, 1980].
17. See G.S.M. Walker, ed., Sancti Columbani Opera, Scriptores latini Hiberniae 2 [Dublin, 1957].
18. “Old Ireland and Her Spirituality,” in McNally, ed., Old Ireland, p. 47.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 48.

Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context

I’m pleasantly surprised by this book. From excerpts I knew she would be discussing the grey zone between liturgical, sacramental, material Christian blessings and prayers, and frankly pagan magical beliefs. But I hadn’t anticipated the historical breadth of vision and the cultural and ecclesiological perspective she brings to the topic. This is not just a book about elf charms in context, it’s actually a very readable overview of the state of the Church before the Norman conquest. She addresses the political and ecclesiastical complications that Germanic property laws and private chapel ownership imposed on the clergy of the period.

The author draws on the episcopal counsels and sermons of Anglo-Saxon bishops, especially Wulfstan and Aelfric.

This book would be especially profitable when read together with Benedicta Ward’s excellent High King Of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality, which discusses spiritual and pastoral issues of the early Irish and Latin mission to the Anglo-Saxons.

Three Kings?

We’re all familiar with the image of three men on camels, traveling trackless sand dunes by starlight: “Field and fountain, moor and mountain, / Following yonder star.” But how accurate are our Hallmark greeting cards?

Snopes.com is famous for debunking urban legends and popular misconceptions. Their entry for Three Wise Men begins:

Claim: The Bible says that three wise men traveled from afar on camels to visit the infant Jesus as he lay in the manger.
Status: False.
Origins: As Santa Claus and his reindeer are to the secular celebration of Christmas, so the three wise men and the creche are to the religious celebration… it depicts the biblical account of three wise men from the east who rode atop camels and followed a star to Bethlehem… The truth is, the Bible contains virtually none of these details. They have all been added over the years from sources outside the Bible. More…

Our modern account of three wise men dates back to the sixth century, and the three or more names vary considerably among the legends. The Syrians have Larvandad, Hormisdas, Gushnasaph; the Armenians, Kagba, Badadilma and Badadakharida. The fanciful third-century Syriac Revelation of the Magi names twelve Magi.

St. Matthew doesn’t define Magi for us. But the word was old when he used it. Matthew’s Greek word μάγοι comes from Persian maguŝ. The Magi were the priestly caste of the Zoroastrian faith, which before Islam was the national religion of Persia and remains so among Parsis outside Iran. In the Eastern Christian churches, the ancient troparion [festal hymn] for the Nativity of Christ is:

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, dawned upon the world the light of knowledge; for by it, those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory be to Thee.

When those led by Nehemiah and Ezra returned to Jerusalem., a significant, influential Jewish community never left Babylon. Governed by princes of the line of David, this community prospered in Persian Mesopotamia; five hundred years after Christ, they produced the important Babylonian Talmud.

Jewish scholars have never been shy about practicing and discussing their distinctive faith, and it was during the Babylonian captivity that the fierce, exclusive monotheism of later Judaism was forged. While Jews in first-century Alexandria were interacting with Hellenic thinkers, what kind of dialogue were their contemporaries in Babylon and Persepolis getting up to with Parsi philosophers? If nothing else, the strictness of Jewish dietary, funeral and household laws ensured that food merchants, house builders, and animal vendors would all be learning how to sell to the growing Jewish demographic. And the Jews’ monotheism, in contrast to the Parsis’ dualism, must have made for fascinating debates.

Meanwhile Messianic expectation was growing in the centuries nearer the time of Christ – especially among nonconformist Jewish communities like Qumran, who, like the Persians, awaited a last great war between sons of light and darkness. And at the same time the Parsis had their own prophecies of a coming savior, Saoshyant, who was to be born of the virgin they called Eredat-fedhri. If the Magi learned – through divination, astrology, or divine revelation – that the Savior was about to be born in the far west, might they have hoped the Jews in Judaea, who also expected a Savior, would know where He’d been born?

How about the Star? Every year, around Christmas, reports appear in the papers or on television which claim to give an astronomical explanation of the Star of Bethlehem: It was a comet, or a supernova, or a reading in an astrological horoscope. These speculations miss the early Christian understanding of the Star that led the magi. Fourth-century master preacher John Chrysostom notes the impossibility of an actual star leading anybody to the Child:

You know that a spot of such small dimensions, being only as much as a shed would occupy, or rather as much as the body of a little infant would take up, could not possibly be marked out by a star… the moon, which being so far superior to the stars, seems to all that dwell in the world to be near to each and every one of them. How then, tell me, did the star point out a spot so confined, just the space of a manger and shed, unless it left that height and came down, and stood over the very head of the young child?

Chrysostom insists the magi had to have been following a divinely-provided guide, a manifestation like the pillar of fire that led Israel through the desert. Many other teachers from Origen to Gregory of Nyssa link the star to Balaam’s prophecy and insist the star was a revelation of Christ himself.

What about the camels? Can’t we at least keep them? The camel had of course been domesticated millennia before, but Persian VIPs didn’t need to ride those nasty, vicious, stinky, ungainly animals; the Persians’ pride was their horses. At Carrhae it was Persian horsemen that routed the Roman army. What we know today as Arabian horses only developed in large numbers when the conversion of the Persians to Islam in the 7th century AD brought knowledge of horse breeding to the Bedouin.

The trip from Persepolis to Bethlehem is just over 1,000 miles as the crow flies; more than 1200 miles via Aleppo and Palmyra to Judea; at least a few months travel. Our band of Parsi priests is not about to travel that distance alone, or across a trackless waste; a journey of this length for men of importance meant hiring a caravan for protection, provisions, and negotiating lodging on the way. Caravans regularly traveled the established trade routes of the Silk Road through Hellenized Mesopotamia and Syria, to the cities of Roman Judaea.

So picture a significant caravan with guards, carters, merchants and fellow-travelers accompanying a delegation of Parsi priests along the west end of the Silk Road, finally arriving after months of travel in Caesarea, at the court of the Edomite King Herod, whom the Romans had made King of the Jews.

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

A review by Rev. Dr. Charles Erlandson

Peter Leithart’s latest book, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, is a stunning work of scholarship on a closely related collection of issues that are among the most important in Christianity: the life of Constantine, the meaning of Constantinianism, and the radical transformation of the world that took place while he was Emperor. Leithart’s work is especially impressive because he has taken on a host of scholars who have so thoroughly denigrated Constantine and “Constantinianism” that it is a truism among most Christians that Constantine was bad for the church and still is. In this scholarly contest, Leithart clearly has proven himself to be the more careful and insightful scholar. It is a work that particularly appeals to me as an Anglican priest, school teacher, and professor of Religious Studies, but it should also be read by every thinking Christian. Despite the lofty themes Leithart tackles, he writes in wonderfully clear English prose.

If you read one book on Christian history, Christianity and politics, or Christianity and culture this year — this book should be the one: it’s that good! Don’t let the academic topic of the book fool you: this book has radical implications for every thinking Christian and every church.

“Constantine,” as Leithart reminds us, “has been a whipping boy for a long time, and still is today.” His name is identified with tyranny, anti-Semitism, hypocrisy, apostasy, and heresy. While experts in the field of early Christianity now believe that Constantine was a genuine Christian who earnestly tried to apply his faith to his role as Emperor, many other scholars and laymen incorrectly continue to claim otherwise.

In Defending Constantine, Leithart audaciously sets out to redeem the reputation of both Constantine and Constantinianism. In both of these tasks, Leithart succeeds admirably. He defines his tasks, more specifically, as being four-fold: to write a life of Constantine, to rebut the popular caricatures of Constantine, to redeem the notion of Constantinianism, and to demonstrate that Constantine provides a model for Christian political practice. It is safe to say that anyone who succeeds to a large degree in these tasks has written a magisterial work. Defending Constantine is just such a work.

Leithart’s history of Constantine is good, but the real virtuoso nature of the book begins with his discussion of whether or not Constantine was a genuine Christian or not. Leithart’s unequivocal (and correct) answer is “Yes.” One of the reasons we misunderstand Constantine is that we import our own cultural and historical expectations into Constantine and his time. This is an important and recurring theme throughout “Defending Constantine.” In this case, false views of the way conversion really works have led some to deny that Constantine was ever a Christian. But Leithart demonstrates how Constantine constantly appeals in his writings to the Christian God who is the heavenly Judge and who, in history, opposes those how oppose Him. Constantine also demonstrated a genuine and sustained desire to protect the Church — not from political motivations (although they were likely also present) — but from a genuine desire to see the Church remain pure and united.

Another common damnation of Constantine is based on the notion that he meddled terribly in ecclesiastical matters and acted, apart from the bishops, as the defender of Christian orthodoxy. Once again, Leithart has done his homework and dramatically, though graciously, dismantles Constantine’s critics. There is no evidence, contrary to assertions by scholars such as Burckhardt and Carroll, that Constantine ever acted as the final authority in church matters. In dealing with the Donatist controversy, Constantine deflected responsibility to the bishops assembled in Rome. Constantine refused to be seated at the Council of Nicea until he was invited by the bishops. It’s true that he facilitated the work of the Church’s councils by calling them and providing venues, but these and the legal recognition of the conciliar decisions were unavoidable in the political and cultural situation of the time. Constantine not only did not dominate the discussions at Nicea: he also did not formulate the final creed nor sign off on it.

Leithart’s discussion of Constantinianism is also excellent. He defines it as “a theology and ecclesial practice that took form when the church assumed a dominant position in Roman society. Constantinianism is “the wedding of power to piety, the notion that the empire or state, the ruler of civil government rather than the church, is the primary bearer of meaning in history.” Leithart reserves his most withering and sustained attack for the Anabaptist theologian, John Howard Yoder, on this point. He shows that Yoder misrepresents the facts and has an axe to grind that comes from his presupposition as an Anabaptist that the church had been in a state of apostasy from the fourth to seventeenth centuries.

If this popular hypothesis were true, we would expect to see dramatic evidence of decline in the lives of Christians and their godly effect on Roman culture. But the opposite is true. In the first place, the bishops refused to be reduced to mere chaplains of the Empire. Second, it was at the instigation of Constantine that the gladiatorial shows and other immoral public entertainments were reduced and eventually abolished. Constantine’s legislation looks very much like the kind of legislation Christians should desire the civil magistrates to enact. Constantine removed previous Roman penalties against the celibate and the childless. He extended the rights of women, removing deprivations such as loss of property and double standards for divorce. He discouraged sex with slaves and was the first in Roman history to legislate against rape. In turn, all of these reforms fostered a new kind of Christian masculinity that relied less on sexual prowess, victory in battle, and political power. Constantine also provided for many laws that elevated true justice and protection for the poor, including children who were exposed, orphans, outcasts, and slaves. He issued laws that enabled slaves to be liberated, as well as those to ameliorate slave conditions (for example, trying to keep slave families together). Finally, in the area of law, Constantine began the “Christianization” of the law, not by legislating for the Church but by giving the Church freedom to be itself, build its own buildings, erect its own legal structures, organize its own system of conflict resolutions, and to carry out its own sanctions.

Leithart concludes his magnum opus by refuting three related errors concerning Constantine and Constantinianism: the early church was uniformly opposed to Christians serving in the Roman army; the earliest Christians opposed the Roman Empire; the Roman Christians so identified the Church with the Empire that they ignored or despised the barbarians. In each of these three cases, Leithart demonstrates conclusively that the attitudes of early Christians were ambiguous and not uniformly anti-Empire as Yoder and others have assumed.

As if all of this weren’t enough, Leithart saves the best for last. He argues brilliantly that what Constantine actually did was to “desacrifice” Rome in order to establish it upon the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Constantine enacted a “baptism” out of the world of Rome, and so he eliminated the competing Roman sacrifices: those associated with senatorial decisions, military victories, and the emperor. Instead, it was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that became the founding sacrifice of the new city, the eschatological city. As with our individual baptisms, the consistent and holy implications of this baptism of the Empire would have to be worked out, imperfectly, in history.

“Through Constantine, Rome was baptized into a world without animal sacrifice and officially recognized the true sacrificial city, the one community that does offer a foretaste of the final kingdom.” Breathtaking stuff!

Leithart is a fair and careful scholar; however, I wish he’d offered more evidence for the negative sides of both Constantine and Constantianism. Both are present in the book, but only in minor ways. This is a forgivable oversight, due to the complexity of the task Leithart has already taken on.

Leithart skillfully and artfully articulates a more edifying way of thinking about Constantine, the church, culture, and our lives.

On the opening day of my class on Jesus of Nazareth, I give a standardized psychological test divided into two parts. The results are nothing short of astounding.

The first part is about Jesus. It asks students to imagine Jesus’ personality, with questions such as, “Does he prefer to go his own way rather than act by the rules?” and “Is he a worrier?” The second part asks the same questions of the students, but instead of “Is he a worrier?” it asks, “Are you a worrier?” The test is not about right or wrong answers, nor is it designed to help students understand Jesus. Instead, if given to enough people, the test will reveal that we all think Jesus is like us. Introverts think Jesus is introverted, for example, and, on the basis of the same questions, extroverts think Jesus is extroverted.

Spiritual formation experts would love to hear that students in my Jesus class are becoming like Jesus, but the test actually reveals the reverse: Students are fashioning Jesus to be more like themselves. If the test were given to a random sample of adults, the results would be measurably similar. To one degree or another, we all conform Jesus to our own image.

Since we are pushing this point, let’s not forget historical Jesus scholars, whose academic goal is to study the records, set the evidence in historical context, render judgment about the value of the evidence, and compose a portrait of “what Jesus was really like.” They, too, have ended up making Jesus in their own image…

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In fact, I find illusory “cycles” far less rewarding than the notion of “attractor states” … or pitfalls that seem relentlessly to pull in cultures, because of repetitive traits in human nature.

Oligarchic feudalism is one such attractor. (Find the exceptions: agrarian societies that avoided this trap. I can name only eight.) Another attractor is fear-driven xenophobia. Machismo is one more. Put a dozen or so of these together and you start getting a really good picture of our tragic history. (And yes, because these themes keep recurring, matters can thus look a bit cyclical. But that’s like saying the fundamental reason that a car moves is because the wheels turn.)

But leadership also matters, e.g. Athenian democracy did not fail till Pericles died, and then just barely. And that is where miracles keep happening to America. here America finds NEW attractor states … bad presidents are followed by good ones, citizenship triumphs (barely) over anomie and cynicism, and seminal decisions transform the world.

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The dedication of the Oratory of All Saints in Rome, on November 1, c.750, is the occasion of the Christian commemoration of All Saints’ Day. At that time there hadn’t been any pagan Celts in Rome for quite a few centuries, and the pagan Romans had wiped out most of the druids back around the time of Christ.

At this time, the mid eighth century, the continental Gauls had long been Christian (150 years earlier Gregory of Tours wrote his Vita Patrum about the many saints of Gaul in his day) and the Celts who had once lived in England were now mostly Christian Welshmen; England was a patchwork of Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms following a mix of Roman and Irish Catholic usage (The synod of Whitby had been over for a century by then.)

Later, in the 840s, Pope Gregory IV declared All Saints to be a universal feast. The commemoration spread from Italy to Ireland.

In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in Southern France, added a celebration on Nov. 2. This was a day of prayer for “the souls of all the faithful departed.” This feast, called All Souls Day, spread from France to the rest of western Europe, and is celebrated in North America as El Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. (The Christian East, meanwhile, celebrates a feast of All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost, and sets aside a number of Saturdays throughout the year to remember the souls of all the departed.)

So much for the Christian commemoration of All Hallows, of which Hallowe’en is the “eve” or Vespers the night before the feast.

What’s Samhain? Samhain (the Irish word is pronounced about like sow-ween) is the cross-quarter day between the equinox and solstice, which happens this year on November 8.

If modern Neo-Pagans now choose to fix their celebration of Samhain on the same day as the Christian feast of All Saints so they can claim Hallowe’en, that’s their business. But let’s not get too bent out of shape over an allegedly pagan/satanic celebration. Spooky Hallowe’en doings have more to do with late 19th century American East-coast urban working class mischief and begging, with Protestant fibbing to smear Catholicism, and with Hollywood’s unerring sense for making a buck.

The golden age of Northumbria in the seventh and eighth centuries, one of the most amazing flowerings of culture known, was based on a Northumbria filled with Irish and with Roman missionaries… It is a false dichotomy to see English and Irish in opposition in these early centuries. The true picture is of a pagan culture, that of the Anglo-Saxons, in touch with Christian culture in two ways, namely from Rome through Gaul, and from Rome through Ireland…

There were clashes between the Roman missionaries and the British, that is to say, the Welsh, Christians. Augustine wrote to ask advice from Gregory about his relationship with them and received the reply:

“we commit to you, my brother, all the bishops of Britain, that the unlearned may be instructed, the weak strengthened by your counsel, and the perverse corrected by your authority.” (Bede, “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” book 1 ch 27)

Augustine therefore invited the Welsh bishops to a conference, and urged them “that they should preserve catholic peace with him and undertake the joint labour of evangelizing the heathen for the Lord’s sake.” (ibid, bk 2 ch 2)

After a long dispute “they were unwilling, in spite of the prayers, exhortations, and rebukes of Augustine and his companions, to give their assent… They would not preach the way of life to the English nation…”

But with the Irish it was quite different, and any conflict over jurisdiction and the authority of Augustine did not flare up in his lifetime. In 664, over a hundred years after the coming of both Augustine and the Roman mission and Aidan and the Irish, a point of disagreement about the date at which Easter should be celebrated each year was seen to divide them… but it had in no way prevented joint evangelization earlier.

It is often supposed that there was an irreconcilable difference between Irish and Roman missionaries about the date of Easter, but it was in no way an anti-Irish, pro-Saxon tussle… Nor was it a quarrel between different styles of Christianity, an institutional Roman and a free-spirited Celtic; both were concerned with the same problem and went about solving it in the same ways…

There was good reason for the different datings of Easter to come to a crisis in Northumbria in the mid-seventh century. On Easter Day 627, Edwin of Northumbria received baptism with his thanes and their followers at York from Paulinus, one of the companions of Augustine sent by Pope Gregory from Rome; it was 12 April 627, a date for Easter calculated according to the Roman method. In 633, six years later, Edwin was killed in battle at Hatfield Chase and Paulinus fled with the queen to Kent. James the deacon remained behind near Catterick, and when peace was restored a year later, James (who was later preset at the Council of Whitby) “instructed many in singing after the manner of Rome and the Kentish people.” (ibid, bk 2 ch 20) After a year there was bitter warfare between the pagan invaders and the new Christian claimant to the throne, Oswald, who had been in exile and received Christian baptism from monks on Iona. He became king in Northumbria and at once introduced missionaries from Iona, who followed the Irish customs. In one year, and with Roman Christians still alive and active, the Roman calculation for the date of Easter was surely still assumed to be correct in Northumbria.

The difference came with the new missionaries, friends of the king, who knew his Christianity first from the Irish, who kept Easter on a different day from the Roman missionaries, and indeed from the rest of the Church.

The second stage of the conversion of Northumbria, therefore, accidentally differed from the first in this one matter. Paulinus, Edwin, Ethelburgh, and their daughter Eanflaed, the wife of Oswiu, naturally calculated according to the modern Roman revised dating; Aidan and Oswald and Oswiu equally naturally according to the unrevised dating which had also originally come from Rome. An unconscious difference, but confusing for the Northumbrians…

For the first Anglo-Saxon Christians, Easter was the central point of the year, the moment when by baptism they entered the new life in Christ about which they had heard from the missionaries sent from Rome and from Ireland. it was not to them an arbitrary date but the pivot of the whole of the cosmos, the central moment when reality was revealed in the face of Jesus Christ… That the missionaries who preached the Gospel to them should differ about the date on which this Paschal mystery should be celebrated was both confusing and scandalous; where external practice was not something separate from internal faith, the implications of such division were not trivial…

“Easter-month, which is now called the paschal month, was formerly so called from a goddess of theirs [the English] called Eostre and since her festival was celebrated then it had that name. By that name they now call the time of pascha, customary observance giving its name to a new solemnity.” (Bede, “De Temporum Ratione, ch 15)

…

“Queen Eanflaed and her people… observed [Easter] as she had seen it done in Kent… Hence it is said that in these days it sometimes happened that Easter was celebrated twice in the same year, so that the king had finished the fast and was keeping Easter Sunday, while the queen and her people were still in Lent and observing Palm Sunday.” (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, bk 3 ch 15)

…

Easter, the moment of attention to the passion and resurrection of Christ, was not just a fest on its own that could be celebrated at a whim. on it hung the whole of the Christian year, with Lent and Pentecost around it. It was also, for Edwin of Northumbria, one of the rare moments for the entry of new members into the Church by baptism in which they, personally, after instruction, put on the living and dying of the Lord Jesus…

In his first book on the calculation of time, [Bede] linked the calculation of the date of Easter with the created world in detail: the pasch, he says, is celebrated “when the equinox is passed, that the shadow of death may be vanquished by the true light… at the turn of the moon, to show how the glory of the mind is turned from earthly things to heavenly ones… on the Lord’s Day, when the light shows the triumph of Christ and our own resurrection.” (Bede, “De Temporum Ratione” ch 59)

In his letter to Nectan [king of the Picts] he adds, “We are commanded to keep the full moon after the vernal equinox, the object being that the sun should first make the day longer than the night and then the moon can show to the world her full orb of light because the ‘Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings’ (Mal 4:2), that is, the Lord Jesus, overcame all the darkness of death by the triumph of his resurrection.” (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, bk 5 ch 21)

There was nothing there that any Irishman would object to. Why some of the Irish and also some of the English differed from the new Roman missionaries was not a matter of alternative symbolism or theology or biblical study, but of calendric calculation. It was not, as Wilfrid suggested at Whitby, because they were Quartodecimians… The Irish calculated Easter in a perfectly orthodox manner; the problem was that they were using lunar tables which had reached them from Rome and were made by Victorius of Acquitaine on a 95-year cycle, and were less accurate than those which had replaced them, that is, those of Dionysius the Small… Other differences caused the date sometimes to coincide, sometimes to be a week apart, sometimes four weeks apart. To Anglo-Saxon Christians such differences were intolerable and after 664 they, and most of the Irish, agreed to observe the new Roman Easter; by 731, even the conservative Iona had followed suit.

That was the point of discussion at Whitby. When we look at who said what and why, it was all more mixed-up than at first appears. It was not a matter of the arrogant men from Rome baring their teeth at the simple Irish at all. At the Council of Whitby, who supported each side? There was no clear-cut division in terms of nationalism.

An epitome of the mingling of traditions was seen in Hilda, the hostess of the occasion. (ibid, bk 4 ch 23) Hilda was an Anglo-Saxon princess (614-680), younger daughter of Heretic, nephew of Edwin of Northumbria… Hilda was brought up at the court of the Saxon Edwin. One sister, Hereswith… married the Saxon king of East Anglia, and then became a nun at the convent of Chelles in Gaul. Hilda was baptized with Edwin and his court on 12 April 627, aged thirteen, in the new church dedicated to St. Peter in York by Paulinus… She was thus by birth one of the Saxon invaders, and her first experience of Christianity was of that brought by the Roman missionaries. In 647, twenty years later when she was 33, Hilda decided to be a nun and went to her nephew in East Anglia for a year, planning to go join her sister in the Gaulish convent at Chelles. But she came to know and revere the missionary from Iona, Aidan, and he persuaded her to stay in England, first as part of a new group at Hartlepool. Then when the abbess Heiu left for a life of greater seclusion, Hilda became abbess. She was given charge of Aelfflaed, one-year-old daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria, after his success at the battle of the Winwead. Two years later Oswiu gave her more land at Whitby, where she ruled a new monastery…

Hilda was hostess to the Council of Whitby where, under the influence of Aidan and Colman, she inclined at first toward the Irish side. Possibly there was a personal antagonism between her and Wilfrid, since she later accused Wilfrid to Rome in the last year of her life. Hilda died in 680, the year in which Bede entered Wearmouth. In her life there is a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Irish elements which blended together imperceptibly.

No clear line can be drawn about others, either: Cedd of the East Saxons had been consecrated by the Irish but acted as a careful and impartial interpreter at Whitby; King Oswiu, who called the council, had been baptized by the Irish and spoke Irish but accepted in the end without hesitation the new Roman calculation. Wilfrid himself, the architect of the Roman arguments and the first Englishman to appeal to Rome, had been educated in the Irish monastery of Lindisfarne. Agilbert, who ordained Wilfrid priest, though born in Gaul had been educated in Ireland. Prince Aldfrith, who was a friend of Wilfrid, gave him the abbey of Ripon, but only after offering it to Cuthbert and Eata of Melrose, ‘who followed the Irish ways’… Aldfrith, son of a Saxon king, was a learned man, educated in Ireland, who exchanged land with Benedict Biscop in order to have a book of cosmology…

So almost everyone at Whitby had close and friendly contact with both Roman and Irish missionaries; it was not a clash of opposites, but an argument between friends on a matter the importance of which united them far more than the details divided… In this matter of the Easter date, what needed sorting out were errors of calculation, whoever did it. And likewise with conduct: no one was to be judges as Roman, English, or Irish: such divisions were not appropriate.