The Irish Matryoshka: A History of Irish Monks in Medieval Europe 0615148018, 9780615148014

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The Irish Matryoshka: A History of Irish Monks in Medieval Europe

James J. Harkins

Séamus S. OhEarcain

Contents Title: Page waa: Sic paced oe een 1 Brera ee Liles 1Regen re Acknowledgements: PLETACS

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ene Serer

a ae ar ae does 30 os Sao nie oe ele ee gr ne

rere SURE

cciccua even cote pice Casa ak eS

Introit: Taproots\of aNation

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Orn

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re Sno aks Mab nodognreticce il

eos aren sce nae eto neat oe ee eens il ed ote eas con cele

ox. .s.82 ecco 3s oe

2.Patraic of Armagh:Apostie of All-Ireland

222... ..921-. 2-5-4

3. Columeille of Donegal? The lona Paruchias

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ee Seeree

1. Familiae Connections: Monasticism and the Early Church

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i345 eee ee

eee ee

30 64

............ 80

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est: Rome Has Spoken, the Case is Closed

6. Fergil of Salzburg: Irish monk scholars and diplomats

1

...................... 6

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great: Irish Exiles on the Continent

Bibliography. (2320. 3) ex ass eet cae

i

..... 99

.....................00: 116

re

ee

147

ILLUSTRATIONS Front Cover: Stained glass window of St. Columba, St. Columba’s Church,

Long Tower, Derry with permission.

Dedication: Heraldic Bearing of OhEarcdin, registered in the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, Volume W, folio 25.

Back Cover: Statue of Saint Columbanus, picture taken at Bobbio, Italy, by the author.

The Irish Matryoshka: A History of Irish Monks in Medieval Europe

First Edition

©James J. Harkins

Séamus S. OhEarcdin 2007

Printed July 2007 M&M Printing Ruskin, Florida

ISBN

97

5-14801-4

9 || | 148014

>

Nihil Obstat:

Rev. Msgr. Harold Bumpus Dr. Theol. Censor deputatus

Imprimatur:

+ Most Rev. Robert N. Lynch Bishop of St. Petersburg, FL

The Irish Matryoshka: A History of Irish Monks In Medieval Europe Dedication

a oe ae

= To my Son Jim - Séamus Og

Numquam bonum ex ratione mala nec malum ex ratione bona

Never do the right thing for the wrong reason, Nor the wrong thing for the right reason

Acknowledgments He who believes is never alone.

(Pope Benedict XVI ') Over the past three decades, many people have given me advice and counsel regarding writing this book—happily; the constructive outweighed the destructive criticisms. Firstly, I want to thank the Reverend Father Desmond Patrick Gill, my Galway Aman Cara, who prodded me to write this book. To Dr. Mary Katharine Simms of Medieval Studies Department at Trinity College, Dublin, I owe a debt of sincere gratitude. Mary was always willing to assist me with her expertise and to ‘keep me from straying’ regarding some of my hypothesis. To my wife, Chris, who justifiably complained about my endless hours, with numerous books open throughout the house or working at the computer — a machine that I have yet to master. She was always there for me whether giving me moral support in my fight with cancer or letting me indulge myself browsing through the dusty shelves of libraries in Ireland, Germany, and Italy. As the manager for Military Engineer Markets at 3M Germany, I had the corporate responsibility to liaise with SHAPE, the military arm of NATO); and advisor to the European Region of the Society of American Military Engineers. For decades, I traveled extensively in Eastern and Western Europe, using my free time visiting national libraries to compile data for this book. In Ireland, when not researching at the National Archives-An Chartlann Ndisiuinta or the Royal Irish Academy, I was busy in Ireland with my cousins, Joe, John, Bernie, and Eileen Coggins — the Honourable Ladies Captain of Clontarf GC. To Eileen, I owe very special thanks. She always made a home for me during my usually unannounced flying-visits to Ireland, racing with me to Donegal to stay with cousin Peggy Cleary at the Coast Road Hotel in Mount Charles; to argue Irish history and politics with authors Michael Cunningham and Eamon Monaghan. Afterwards drinking tea with my cousin Kathleen Griffin nee Harkin, at my former property “at the top of town”, before praying at the Harkin family grave, at Frosses. To ‘stop-in’ with Tommie and Annie Daly, Frances and Ann-Marie Gillespie; before racing onto Ballyliffin and Malin Head, at the top of Ireland. My last stop before driving back to Germany was always at Ballyshannon and a ‘debriefing’ with Kathleen and Louis Emerson, of the Donegal Historical Society.

ill

Fortunately, I had a twin brother, Peter Damien Aloysius, alias Pedar, to argue family and Irish politics during my stays in America. If he was not available, there were always my sisters, Mary Ellen Elizabeth Dougherty and Anna Kathryn Teresa Cahill. I broke the rule of Irish immigrant families by marrying a non-Irish Catholic; Chris is a German Lutheran. My mother, Catherine (Kathryn) Teresa, was delighted with “Chris from Germany”. On the archconservative Irish Catholic side of our family, my father James Joseph (b. 1880) and his maiden sisters, Anne and Sarah, would not have been enthusiastic, had they been alive.

In Ireland, my special appreciation to Dr. Mary Katharine Simms, Department of Medieval History, Trinity College Dublin, who for many years has kept me from straying’ while researching this project. Thanks to Oonagh, Saint Columba parish, Longtower, Derry City, for providing the cover graphic of this book. I appreciate the critical review and suggestions of Rev. Mark Tierney OSB, Glenstal Abbey, Murroe in Limerick.

In Germany, my thanks to Monsignor Dr. Werner Kathrein OSB, Professor of Church History at Fulda Seminary, for our discussions on Patrick’s tenure at [les de Lérins and the research support given to me by Dr. Berthold Jager and his staff: Helmut and Ursula Winterer and Claudia Windrisch

at

Bibliotheca

des

Bischéflichen

Priesterseminars,

Fulda

Germany. Thanks also to Jorit Wintjes, son of my old friend Eberhard, for his oft-counterarguments. In Austria, my

thanks

to Pralat Johannes

Neuhardt

OSB,

Saint

Peters Cathedral in Salzburg, who counseled me on the importance of the great Irish Saint Virgilus to the history of our church, and to many other scholars,

in Europe,

too numerous to mention,

that aided me

in this

undertaking . . . over the last thirty years.

After retiring to Florida I was elected to the board of trustees of the Tampa Bay History Center, and gained an appreciation of early American history. This experience motivated me, as Florida State Historian of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, to set aside the manuscript of this book to found, and lead the “Florida Catholic Heritage Trail” — a project that documented the 500 year old contributions of the Catholic Church, as a significant and positive force in the cultural history of the United States. iV

After this successful project ended, I became a member of the Hillsborough Library Board. There Andrew Breidenbaugh and Tom Causey assisted me in some esoteric Irish research. Ms. Robin Rogers MA, English Department, University of South Florida, edited my manuscript using due diligence to reconstruct my English/German syntax into readable prose — she takes the recognition for the readability of this book Next I sought the help of my fellow Irishman and writer, Tod McGinley, to proof read my drafts and helps me divine how to publish in America. My special thanks to Rev. James Hoge OSB, St. Leo Abbey, for his candid criticism. To my pastor at Prince of Peace parish, the Rev. Msgr Harold Bumpus, dr. theol. Censor deputatus, Saint Petersburg Diocese, Florida, who is striving for a nihil obstat — nothing obstructs declaration for this book from our Ordinary.

Acknowledgements Notes:

1 Speaking at Sts. Mary and Corbinian Cathedral, in Freising, Germany, on 14 September 2006. 2 Both my parents are buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Philadelphia. Due to the number of Irish buried there, many call it the “Donegal Race Track” — a sobriquet that only the Irish understand. .

Preface Naturally, my motives for writing these monographs are suspect, being a Catholic and Irish Nationalist is a central part of my Donegal heritage. A heritage was reinforced in the late 1960s, when I walked the troubled streets in Armagh, Cookstown, Crossmaglen, and Derry; then praying at the Harkin family grave beside the Saint Mary’s church in Frosses, where my

mother, nee Clerkin, ! and father married before leaving for a

better life in America. Small wonder why I always return to Donegal. As Steward of the Arms of OhEarcdin,” I have devoted much of my

free time to study of our family history. During one of my many visits, I met with two historians, Brian Bonner, Fahan, Donegal, and later with C. E. F. Trench, Killrain, Slane, Meath—one a Catholic, the other a Huguenot—both

loved Ireland. They encouraged me to reach deeply into Irish history to understand my heritage. I took their advice and was amazed at the plethora of data available, thanks to the Irish monks. Living in Europe for many decades, [ had the opportunity to visit numerous libraries, always astonished at the corpus of (often-spurious) Irish history written in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, never translated into English, which proved a challenge to assess. That said, I ask those whom I have read and not cited in my notes for their clemency. I have made an effort to write these essays without chauvinism—unlike those that never pass up the opportunity to present an unfair image of the Irish, through either ignorance or bad faith. James J. Harkins (Séamus S. OhEarcdin)

Fulda, Germany 2006

Preface Notes:

1

Born in Rockcorry, near Clones, County Monaghan.

2

Registered in the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, Volume W, folio 25

vi

Introit: Taproots of a Nation A half of pathos is the past we know, A half the future into which we go: Or present joy broken with old regret, Or sorrow saved from hell by one hope yet. (Tomas MacDonagh') I chose the enigmatic Russian Matryoshka” as the metaphor for a series of monographs written for independent reading or for reference. This book articulates a series of events that replicates the story of Ireland as an essential part of the European historical scene and not as some backwater island on the periphery of the then-known world. Each monograph is a highly detailed history for separate reading. Thus the reader has the option to start with any monograph, not forgetting that collectively these monographs tell of early Euro-Irish monasticism in the context of those events that shaped western ideals in the Middle Ages. The first monograph is complex reading because it addresses the modus of familiae connection in the Early Catholic Church, a crucial piece of realpolitik that enabled the church to expand into those areas where powerful Gallic, Germanic, and Irish warlords held sway. The reader must bear in

mind that a tradition of great ecclesiastical families were an integral part of the early church before its westward expansion because the papacy needed the assistance of these powerful families to establish monastic foundations; thus evolved a modus Vivendi tradition of hereditary church offices to support the concept of a universal church. Naturally, no later than the Treaty of Milan, powerful magnates sought to control the church and its wealth by manipulating the election of bishops and abbots. As the church expanded, this realpolitik compounded itself with kings selecting their bishops and seizing monastic lands of other suzerains; this had nothing to do with evangelizing or church unity and usually resulted in war. In this respect, the Irish dynasts were no different from their continental counterparts. The second monograph tells of Martin of Tours, the great saint that introduced an Egyptian Catholic (Coptic) eremitical monastic ideal into Gaul, which became the ideal for monasticism in Armorica (Brittany) and, most

certainly, Auxerre. It is legitimate to conclude that these ideals were brought to Ireland either by Saint Patraic or by one of his disciples/ successors, which

may answer why the Irish Catholic church evolved as an abbatial church. © This eastern ideal would have a profound and lasting effect on the Irish monastic church that became the basis for a unique form of Irish Catholicism promoted by the conservative Iro-Columban-familiae on the island of Iona. When the Iona Paruchia expanded into Angle-Saxon England and Brittany, and finally into Frankish Europe, the Roman Curia viewed it as a parallel Catholic culture that could threaten the unity of the Latin Church. It could certainly jeopardize the realpolitik of papacy with a volatile Merovingian dynasty whose ferocious pagan warriors had overrun West Europe, forcing the Roman bureaucrats to flee to the safety of the Mediterranean periphery. The violence-prone Germans, the new masters of the West, had no clue how

to administer the territories and people they had conquered, so they adopted the corporate social order of the Catholic Church to administer their empire.

During this chaos, slave traders abduct a young Romo-Briton aristocrat named Succat and sailed to Ireland. After years of captivity, Succat escaped to Gaul and eventually enters the monastery” on fles de Lérins, in the Mediterranean where, as a part of his novitiate, he “surrenders his name to

Christ” and receives the monastic name of Patraic, alluding to his patrician background. The monk Patraic then returns to Armorica and is consecrated a deacon, in the service of Duke Germanus: the Bishop of Auxerre. Patraic’s ability to speak Romo-Brythonic and Irish qualified him to the GermanusLupus delegation to England and also the ill-fated Pallidus mission to Southeast Ireland. After the failure of Pallidus, Patraic became the primary

missionary (he was probably not a bishop) to the Irish and, with the help of Brigid and other great saints, converted the heathen Gaels to Catholic Christianity.

The third monograph articulates that in the early 5” century, warlords from the kingdom of D4l Riata, in Ulster, crossed the North Channel to establish a second Dalraidic kingdom at Argyll (an eastern province of the Gael), the Irish proto capital of what would later become the kingdom of Scotland. Until the 12™ century the Irish were called “Scots”. ColumCille and his twelve monks sailed as Exiles for Christ (perigrinare pro Christo) to land on the tiny island of Iona (Hy) off the western coast, of contemporary Scotland, to establish a teaching monastery, which became the epicenter for spreading the biblical Good News to the pagan Northern Picts in Alba (Scotland). Later “Iona Exiles” move southward to convert the Germanic

tribes that had settled on the island of Britain; while other perigrinare pro Christo sail to Bretagne, in Gaul; to convert the Germanic pagans there, bringing the modus of hereditary abbots. The fourth monograph tells of Columbanus of Leinster, who, also with twelve monks, sailed to the continent to evangelize the decadent

Merovingian Empire. The intrepid Columbanus and his monks were uncompromising in their orthodoxy before princes and prelates, who often accused them of being contumacious as they expanded Irish monasticism to Southern Italy. During the early 7" century, Pope Boniface IV called a synod to reform the monastic church in Southern Italy — this synod agreed that the centralized ideals of the Order of Saint Benedict could be the monastic standard to preserve church unity — this would have a great impact on the Irish church The fifth monograph is critical to understanding Irish monasticism and its relation to Rome. The 664 Synod of Whitby held at the double abbey at Streaneshalch* (Whitby), is one of the most important meetings in the history of the Church, it concerned obedience to papal authority, i.e. Romo locuta est; causa finita est — Rome has spoken; the case is closed! It brings into perspective the canonical reforms of the Angle-Saxon Church, a.k.a. the 673 Synod at Hertford, instituted under the auspices of by Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus. Hertford substantiated the Order of Saint Benedict, as

the monastic standard within the Latin Church. The archconservative Irish monks were out-of-step, with this Benedictine Reformation, thus their ideals

became a dead letter. Sadly, Whitby whetted the appetite for Archbishopric of Canterbury to control all ecclesiastics on the islands of Britain and Ireland. Whitby was one of the great events in the history of church unity because it brought the Angles, Britons, Irish (Scots), Jutes, Picts, and Saxons into

harmony with the unifying goal of the church. It established the Order of Saint Benedict as the ideal organization to promote Catholicism and centralize the power of the papacy as the ethical sinews of Western civilization. Conversely, the papacy faced a recurring dichotomy: the reality of acquiring great secular power at the correspondent risk of losing its moral sovereignty.

The sixth monograph examines the wandering Irish monk-scholars, who, in spite of the Whitby débdcle, remained a significant and positive force

in the cultural development of Europe. They spoke and wrote in an ~ uncorrupted Latin and thus ideal tutors and interpreters for the new dynasts in Europe, who trusted their diplomatic acumen. Fearless in evangelizing pagan tribes, the monks built their abbeys, which served the religious and educational needs of the population. Abbeys became European cultural centers. These monks motivated wandering tribes to settle by teaching them how to cultivate arable lands, plant fruit trees, and vines, to raise domestic

animals. Irish monks instituted bee keeping and the brewing of beer. Next, wandering artisans settled in these farming communities, which eventually became proto-towns and a catalyst for the developing trading centers. In other words, the Irish monks were the societal architects of Europe. One of the enduring problems of the church was the concept of the divine right of princes, (naturally) abetted by nationalistic prelates” eager to exploit this issue. Naturally, Rome was not blameless; it allowed itself to become a client of the Carolingians, dutifully serving as the point-of-thespear for expansionist policies of ruffians, such as Charlemagne. By the 11" century, the church had immersed itself into politics so thoroughly that, by the 16" century, abuses of power caused a number of disenfranchised nobles to hijack the good intentions of a much-needed Reformation to further their own ambitions. Instead of reforming the obvious ills of the church, they created a parallel non-Roman Catholic Christian Church, not unlike the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose secular ruler was also the titular head of the national church—a revival of Cesaropapism.

The ancients wrote on papyrus, a material that did not grow outside of the Nile Valley. The enterprising Irish perfected a technique of making vellum from hides of calves or sheep, allowing them to replicate church Psalters. In effect, monks became history’s first copying machines. Nevertheless, copying the Bible or a Psalter was a costly endeavor, taking about 400 hides to copy the Old and New Testaments. Irish monkcalligraphers® used a writing concept called uncial and later the half-uncial or minuscule—the birth of the lower case alphabet.’ The primary job of a monkscribe was to keep track of religious dates, especially the paschal fest, and critical events concerning the monastery. An ancillary benefit involved the recording of societal events, the beginning of western historical writing.

One of the benefits in researching, compiling, writing, and editing

much competing information for this book is that my pre-conceived prejudices were either reinforced or discredited. The Germanic monk-scribes were

‘non-objective’

in recording events

of their secular masters;

their

conduct is best described as “wessen Brot ich esse, dessen Lied ich singe— whose bread I eat, whose song I sing”’. Sifting through often quite innovative histories, e.g., Carolingian Royal Frankish Annals- Annales regni Francorum, | concluded that by the 9" century, medieval “‘spin-doctors” were already hard at work ‘inventing’ history, more than a millennium before this twentieth-century phrase was invented. At the start of this historical journey, I was unaware that it would provide me a different perspective on the whyfor of other Catholic

Christian traditions,

such as Anglican,

Lutheran,

and

Calvinist. I hope that the reader will have charity with my turgid ramblings in the spirit of George Eliot. That said; I alone am responsible for this narrative.

Introit Notes: 1 Inscription of Ireland by Tom4s MacDonagh (b. 1878; d. 1916). MacDonagh was an Irish patriot who was executed on 3 May by an English firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol after the failed Easter Monday Uprising of 1916, in Dublin. 2 A wooden doll containing a series of nesting dolls, one inside the other, alluding that each doll is an entity in itself and still part of the whole. Such dolls are made in Khotkovo and Zagorski, near Moscow. Source: 1984 Russian-English dictionary by

Marcus Wheeler. 3. Monastery, a term derived from the Greek word povaotiptov. 4 After the 9" century Viking invasion, it was renamed Whitby. 5 Their venality is reminiscent of the line from the 1878 HMS Pinafore operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan: “Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream”. 6 “Calligraphy” is from the Greek kali and graphia, meaning “beautiful writing”. 7

8

From aleph and bet, the first two letters of the ancient Phoenician alphabet.

“An exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes”

1.

Familiae Connections:

Familiae Connections:

Monasticism and the Early Church The first law of history is not dare to utter falsehood. The second not fear to speak the truth.

(Pope Leo XIII’) Ireland’s ancient Brehon Laws interfaced so thoroughly with its monastic culture that they became an almost seamless garment. The expansion of Catholic Christianity had a profound effect on the history of Western ideals and thought. In Ireland, Catholicism would be a continuing positive force and an integral part of its culture. In Ireland’s darkest hours, her people found refuge for their national identity in their ancient faith: e.g., on 18 November 1534, the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy appointing Henry VIII, and his successors, as “Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England””. Ireland’s rejoinder was reaffirming her “Obedience to the Pope” as a nationalistic maxim. Such testimony would cost the Irish dearly. To present a valid word picture of early Ireland, it is prudent to articulate the rise of the Catholic Christianity which, I am convinced, is

essential to understanding the mindset of Irish monasticism whose monks would shape the ideals that freed European society from the doldrums of ignorance — a.k.a. the Dark Ages. This monograph addresses those multifaceted events that shaped the early history of the Catholic Christianity — therefore, I ask the reader indulgence for often-detailed explanations of crucial events that motivated the church’s hierarchy to make their long lasting decisions — for better or for worse. For those not interested in Catholic Church history they should begin their reading with another monograph, but assuredly, they will eventually return to this one — either out of a need for background information or simple curiosity.

The majority of medieval churchmen, nobles, serfs, and beggars shared a common emotional bond: Catholic Christianity. They accepted the articles of faith more out of fear of eternal damnation than love for their fellow man. Preaching forgiveness of sin in lieu of “the fires of hell” underpinned this manorial mindset where bad churchmen were as common as

1. Familiae Connections:

bad princes. That said the finite number of bad popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests are lost in the sublime infinity of Catholic Christian doctrine. To the church’s credit, exceptional men and women embraced this religion solely out of their love of God. Some became Fathers of the Church; others aided

the church during her many hours of indigence. During the 16" century Protestant Reformation, thousands would die a martyr’s death for their faith. The foundation of Catholic Christianity is the Holy Trinity and belief in the Gospel of Matthew 16: 18-19° where Jesus Christ appointed Peter as his vicar on earth. This biblical passage is the basis of the Petrine authority, found in the Code of Canon Laws (331-335 AD). The Aramaic word for

“rock” is kapa; in Greek, kephas. In Matthew’s lifetime, Greeks translated the kephas as Petros, the masculine form of the feminine noun Petra. Hieronymus of Stridon,* alias Jerome, translated the Bible in Vulgate Latin using the word Petrus. The English transliterated the name in Matthew as Simon-Peter. Peter took leadership of the church at Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Harvest (Succah) fifty days after Passover (Pesah). Peter, as leader of the Jewish-Christian movement, chose Mathias to replace Judas Iscariot, sent Matthew to Ethiopia, Mark to Egypt, Andrew to India, Luke to Macedonia,

and John to Ephesus. He appointed James the Less to supervise the work of the Apostles at the Mother Church? of Jerusalem. The seventh Canon at the first Council of Nicaea (325) confirmed the ecclesiastical honour of the

Bishop of Jerusalem. One must not forget that Jesus Christ and His apostles were Nazarenes or Galileans — not Roman citizens. Roman citizenship came to the populace of Jerusalem in 212 when Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius Caracallus, issued his Edict Constitutio Anotoninana de Civatate, declared

all free inhabitants of the Empire citizens of Rome. Thus, Civis Romanus Sum —1 am a Citizen of Rome. The best known of all second-generation Apostles is Paul (Saul) an

anti-Christian Rabbi, born at Tarsus in Cilicia (contemporary Turkey), who

worked as a tentmaker. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, Peter

gave him the mission of converting the Galatians® to Judeo-Christianity where he became the Apostle to the Gentiles. Paul’s major problem with the Galatians was they refused a principal requirement for Christian baptism,

1. Familiae Connections:

namely that they had to first convert to Judaism by undergoing a ritual bath and circumcision. This issue confronted all early evangelists attempting to convert pagans to Judeo-Christianity. This meant that the circumcision prerequisite had to be eliminated if the preaching of the Good News was to succeed among non-Jews - a direct challenge to the fledging Judeo-Christian church. Paul, with Barnabas and Titus, returned to Jerusalem to discuss the issue with Peter, James, and John. Peter, a designated head of the church,

resolved the issue at Joppa by personally baptizing the pagan Centurion Cornelius of Caesarea — who previously refused the circumcision precondition for conversion. A similar account of this event is found in Acts 15: 1-2.22-29.Thus the baptizing of gentiles (pagans) was established in Ephesians 3: 5-6.

The Greek Jews of Antioch called the pagans whom Paul baptized Christians, hence the name of the new religion. In 62 AD, after Marcus Julius

Agrippa, the strongly pro-Jewish Tetrarch of Galilee, had James’ stoned to death for blasphemy — at the behest of the High priest Ananus II — Peter released the Apostles from their restriction of the Jewish dietary law. The biblical obligation to confess one’s transgressions and the power to absolve the offender are anchored in Matthew 18:1 8,8 John 19: M1393, and

James 4:16'° — becoming part of the Syrian Didache-Teaching of the Apostles, written about 60 AD. The public confession and absolution problematic were not resolved until the 16" century Council of Trent (154563).

In Jerusalem, Peter proved his apostolic leadership by defining the religious ceremony of the Last Supper, appointing seven deacons for Jerusalem, and having the apostles compose a Credo (I Believe) specifying the divinity of Jesus,'’ His resurrection and ascension, the virginity of Mary, the (Catholic) universality of Christianity, and the necessity of baptism and confession. The Jewish High Priest saw this Good News religion as a threat to his religious values. In the first century

AD,

'2 adherents

of new

Middle

Eastern

monotheism, called Christianity, established a community in the Jewish dominated suburbs of Rome, the epicenter of political power in the western world. They were unwelcome. The Jews considered them apostates and

1. Familiae Connections:

blasphemers. While the civil establishment considered them a subversive, and potentially insurrectionist, Jewish sect because their leaders were blood’? or marriage related. This situation was exacerbated when, in 55, Peter left

Antioch'* for Rome where he asserted himself as the Bishop of Rome’s burgeoning Judeo-Christian community. He personally established Rome as the seat of Catholic Christian authority by appointing a deaconate that rose to eighteen in number. The deaths of Peter and Paul allegedly took place in Rome (c. 64-67), when the lunatic Emperor Nero’ blamed them, among others, for a panoply of Rome’s communal ills and ordered their executions. Peter was crucified head-down on what is now Vatican Hill, and Paul beheaded at Aquae Salviae, east of Via Ostia. Upon the death of Peter, members of the Roman

episcopos elected Linus of Tuscany, whom Peter had consecrated as his successor bishop. Thus began the unbroken chain of successors to the Pope of Rome.'® Jerusalem continued to play a significant role in Jewish-Catholic life in spite of the 66-70 uprisings, against Herod’’ Agrippa II, that resulted in the destruction of the Temple, abolishment of the Jewish National Council (Sanhedrin), and the direct rule of Rome. As a preventative measure, Herod

decreed the dispersion, or Diaspora, of the Jews. Thereafter, the Jews could only enter Jerusalem once a year. This decree radically diminished the impetus of Judeo-Catholicism after the second century. In the year 70, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, renaming the city Aelia Capitolina. In its aftermath, a fledgling Christian church embarked upon two distinct and mutually complimentary paths. It became a church for the city dwellers and established an embryonic diocesan system. Its monasteries became learning centers of the church, evolving as the

conscience of its dogmas. The spread of Christianity was neither spontaneous nor harmonious, as most people are inclined to accept. It emerged as a religion of middle-class urban society, and conversion came generally through marriage of a nonChristian to a Christian. As an oft-despised sect, Christians adopted the sign of the fish, whereby a member could identify himself or herself to another. The five letters of the Greek word for fish was an insiders-code meaning,

1. Familiae Connections:

Jesus Christ, Son of God, and Savior. With the death of the apostles, a second

generation undertook the role as apostolic missionaries.

In the beginning of the second century, as Christianity spread through the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, schisms challenged church dogma:

i.e., the trinity, divinity

of Jesus,

transubstantiation,

apostolic

succession, and clerical celibacy leading to ecclesiastical disunity.

It is suggested that the origins of Catholic Christian monasticism began half-century before the birth of Christ, when ascetics were in the Egyptian desert fasting, praying, waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Early Christian monasteries included separately housed female and male ascetics who spent most of their days at work and prayer. They prayed the Pater Noster- Our Father three times daily, as commanded in the Didache, a

sixteen-chapter summary of Christian moral teaching framed in terms of two ways of life and death, instructions concerning liturgical practice, and a set of disciplinary norms.

The basic rule in every monastery was chastity, an issue that still haunts the history of the church. The roots of clerical celibacy can be traced to the year 107, when Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, wrote to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna: “If anyone is able to honor the flesh of the Lord by remaining in virginity, let him do so without ostentation and self-conceit. If he prides

himself thereon, he is lost; if he places himself above the Bishop, he is

deceiving himself.” Saint Cyprian speaks of virgins who pledged themselves to Christ. When made by a female, this vow was considered a form of

nuptials with Christ, hence the sobriquet “Bride of Christ” and its violation

spoken of as adultery. Marriage contracted after this vow was still valid, though scandalous. According to the thirteenth Canon of the Council of

Elvira (c. 300), penance included severe corporal punishment. Further, this

council addressed the issue of married clergy, requiring married bishops, priests, and deacons to remain celibate: “abstinere se a conjugibus Suis et non generaee filios'® - abstain yourself from your spouse and do not produce children”. Additionally, no one of illegitimate birth could enter Holy Orders. Men and women contemplating entering Holy Orders could not marry and were forbidden!” from eating meat.

Women have played a continuing and crucial role throughout the

10

~

1. Familiae Connections:

history of the Catholic’? Church. Ascetic females lived in a separate community, known as Parthenon, from their male counterparts. Their rules dictated that they should dress in black; wear a veil of the same color, placed on their head solemnly by the Bishop at their consecration to God; cover their arms to the fingers; and keep their hair cropped close to their head. Monastic Christianity spread from Alexandria, in the lower Nile valley, from Carthage to contemporary Turkey; westward across both coasts of the Mediterranean into Balkans — contemporary Croatia, Albania, Romania,

Hungary — to Rome,

Gaul, the Iberian peninsula; from Syria

westwards, along the North African coastline, including contemporary Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. Circa 111-12, the Satraps” in Asia Minor initiated their own pogrom to rid the empire of this contumacious Christian

sect. The fifth Pope Evaristus (97-105) named the seven parishes - tituli nearest Rome—Albano, Frascati, Ostia, Palestrina, Porto, Santa Rufina, and

Velletri—as Suburbicarian Sees, appointing these seven Bishops as his trusted advisors. Bishop of Ostia~” was dean of this stratagem to act as papal hinges” on the political doors of ecclesiastical authority, thus the College of Cardinals was established. Important Cardinals become members of the Curia, the papal cabinet.’ There are three types of Cardinals: 1.) Cardinal Bishops, heads of Suburbicarian Sees; 2.) Cardinal Priests, administrators of urban parishes; and 3.) Cardinal Deacons, administrators within the Roman

Curia. The oldest evidence of the word Catholic”-Katholikis is the letter written in 115, by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, admonishing the Christians in Smyrna to rally to their Bishop. Ignatius wrote: “Flee from division as the source of mischief. You should all follow the Episcopos (Bishop) as Jesus Christ did his Father, Follow, too, the presbytery as you would the apostles;

and respect the deacons as you would God’s law. Nobody must do anything that has to do with the Church without the Bishops’ approval. You should regard that Eucharist as valid that is celebrated either by the Bishop or by someone he authorizes. Where the Bishop is present, there let the congregations gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the *°Catholic Church.”

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Unsurprisingly, Greek was the language of the early church, leaders were called Episcopos”’ (bishop or overseer) and presbyters (elders), and deacons (servants), assisted the Episcopos. The early church adopted the Roman provincial administrative structure called Diotkésis - hence Diocese. By the 4" century, there were twelve Diofkésis in the emerging Catholic Church: Rome, Iberia, Gaul, Britannia, Italia, Dacia, Trhacia, Asia, Pontus,

The East, Aegyptus, and Africa. The Pope, as chief Episcopos, designated the Episcopos of all Diotkésis in the church—the origin of the diocesan system.

By 200, the fathers of the church unity strove to resolve the many of the conflicts of the New Testament, written between 40 and 125 A.D. It was

during this era that Pope Calixtus I (217-22) decreed that there was no such thing as unforgivable sin.

In the third century, two Egyptian saints, Anthony the Great (b.c.251 — d.356) and Pachomius (b. c.292 — d.346), founded two distinct forms of

monasticism that had a profound and lasting effect on Catholic Christianity.

Anthony is the Father of Anchorite, or Eremitical (hermitic), monasticism.

The champion of hermitic monasticism was Athanasius the Great, the Father of Orthodoxy. Saint Pachomius*® is known as the Father of Cenobite, or Convent, monasticism. The champion of this form of monasticism, for all western monastic foundations, was Basil the Great (b. c. 330 — d. 379), the

Aa century Bishop of Caesarea and Doctor of the Church.

Tertullian”, a leading ecclesiastical writer in the early Church, observed that: “The blood of martyrs was the seed of the church”, since so many of the early popes met a violent death.

Pre-dating the better-known Latin Church martyrs was the Roman general Maurice, commander of the Theban Legion of Upper Egyptian

Christians. In 286, he and his legion, including saints Victor, Candidus, and. Innocent, refused to slaughter Christian peasants in Gaul. This resulted in the

entire legion being slain by loyal pagan soldiers at Agaunum — contemporary

Saint-Maurice-en- Valais, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Following the Battle of Milvain Bridge*’, on 28 October 312, the

societal status of despised Christians changed irreversibly when Valerus Aurelius Constantinus, one of six rival claimants to the Roman Emperorship,

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and his Mithraic®' mercenaries defeated the superior force of Emperor Marcus Aurelius Maxentius, after the emperor drowned, during the third and final battle for control of the Roman Empire of the West.*” Allegedly on the eve of this crucial battle, Constantine had a heavenly vision of the Chi-Rho,> complete with a celestial monogram, Touto Nika or, in Latin, in hoc signo

Vinces- in this sign thou shalt conquer. It is suggested that the vision motivated Constantine to order his legionaries to paint the Chi-Rho symbol on their shields before combat. They were victorious. One can imagine the apprehension of the barely tolerated Catholic Christian minority when they saw the sign of their crucified savior carried through the streets of Rome by the triumphant pagan legions of anew Roman Emperor, the forty-first in 130 years. A good estimate of Christians in the city of Rome about the time of Constantine’s baptism, in 317, is 15 percent of the populace, almost all were middle-class

urban

elite,

and

there

were

few

co-religionists

in the

countryside. Constantine and his Eastern Roman Empire rival, the anti-Christian Valerus Licinianus Licinius, issued a joint proclamation known as the Edict of Milan*’, granting religious emancipation to all Roman citizens in the Western Empire. A plausible rationale is that Constantine needed political allies’, and the oppressed Catholic Christian middle class was the ideal group to seek rapprochement. In any case, Constantine ordered the restoration of confiscated Christian property. According to legend, Helena, Constantine’s mother, granted African-born Pope Miltiades the confiscated Laterernus family palace, granted by Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (193-211) to equestrian general Titus Sextius Laterernus, prior to the 205-211 campaign against the Caledonians of northern Britain. Unfortunately, the Lateranus family was an ally of Constantine’s defeated enemy, Marcus Aurelius Maxentius. On this site, the palace-church of Saint John the Baptist as the Cathedral Church for Bishop of Rome, or Mater et Caput- Mother of

all churches in the world, was erected. Saint John Lateran or simply “the Lateran” is called the “Popes’ church” as it is his seat as the Bishop of Rome. It served as venue for important church councils and as the official residence of the Roman Pontiff, until the Avignon interregnum.

It is easily overlooked that in 322 Constantine, to ensure a permanent

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land tax base for his empire, promulgated a decree binding all tenant families ~ on the lands owned by Rome’s power brokers to hereditary servitude, thus condemning a vast portion of society to a thralldom that centuries later underpinned the so-called Manorial Establishment. After a thousand years of feudal mayhem, serfs*° slowly improved their status to villeins and métayers (sharecroppers). In 1917, the final vestiges of Constantine’s inspired serfdom vanished when the communists’ annihilated the Russian Empire that had held millions of people in one-sixth of the world’s area in serfdom, since Ivan the Terrible became Czar of all the Russians on 17 January 1547, in exchange for an inhuman dictatorship of the proletariat. Oddly, we honor Constantine with the sobriquet: the Great. During this time, the Eastern Syrian Christian Catholicate had a brief respite from religious persecution, similar to the relief Roman co-religionists found by the Edict of Milan. In 409, after years of persecution, Patriarch _ Isaac of Persia persuaded Yazdegerd I the Wicked (b.399-d.422), King of the Sassaninans’’, to issue a firman-edict, allowing the rebuilding of Catholic Christian churches and permitting worship. Yazdegerd allowed Isaac to convene the Council of Seleucia at Antioch where the Apostles Creed and the canons of the Council of Nicaea were adopted. Unfortunately, after Isaac died in 410, Yazdegerd reneged on his promises and Catholic Christian persecutions resumed.

Like all autocrats before and after him, Constantine considered himself the rightful heir of Alexander the Great. After consolidating the Roman Empire of the East and West, he set about creating a Hellenistic New Rome at Byzantium on the Bosporus, allowing his new capital to be called Citivas Constantinus® '-Gity of Constantine, hence Constantinople. At his

new capital, he began assuming all the trappings of Cesaropapism: granting himself the vainglorious title: Isapostolos-Equal to the Apostles, and decreeing Citivas Constantinus a Patriarchship second only to Rome in ecclesiastical power and prestige.

One easily disremembers that in 314, Constantine, while still a pagan, chaired the Arles Synod of Bishops that substantiated the Petrine Doctrine and the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

In the early centuries, the church was fraught with lasting (and often

14

1. Familiae Connections: strange) heresies, such as the Millenarianisms, an offshoot of the Gnostic

movement that had a large following. They believed that one thousand years after the crucifixion there would be a universal resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Jesus Christ. As the millennium of the anniversary of the death of Christ neared, Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor of the Germans,

declared that on New Year’s Day 1000, the reigning Pope, Sylvester ie would lead everyone to heaven. Incongruously, the Germans still call their New Year “Sylvester” —a silent tribute to the longevity of an imperial decree. On 2 October 313, the first Lateran Synod met, comprised of eighteen bishops to argue the Donatists schism and the validity of the election of Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage. The Donatists were ethnic Berber Catholic Christians, analogous to 16" century Anglican Catholic Christians. Their quarrel with the papacy was the pope’s refusal to expel prelates who had surrendered holy books and vessels to lay authorities, thereby denying the authority of the Roman Patriarch as prima inter pares vis-a-vis the Patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.

Two heterodoxies—Donatist and Monophysites—dominated the politics of the African church and by the 7th century it was so weakened by internal dissension that many of its adherents embraced Islam, a monotheism

that includes some tenets of Judeo-Catholic Christianity.

Before the 17" century counter-Reformation, the primary dispute within the church was centered on two basic issues: unification and papal jurisdictional authority. In the early years, a plethora of disputes between Rome and Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem ignited a series of ecumenical councils at Arles, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Nicaea,

Constantinople, and Rome.

The persistency of heresies about the Divinity of Christ and His relation to the Virgin Mary were part of the 16" century Reformation. Fausto Sozzini”” and his uncle Lelio Sozzini*' repudiated the doctrine of the trinity; the divinity of Christ, and original sin, holding that Christ was miraculously begotten and salvation given only to those who imitate the virtues of Christ. After executing his last rival, Licinius, Emperor Constantine ordered

the 300 eastern bishops meeting on the Arian Christianity at Ancyra-Ankara

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to move their venue to Nica (near Nicomedia) so that he could be present. Many historians overtly ignore that Constantine was still a practicing pagan (Mithrain?) when he chaired the Council of Nica, where the Bishops issued many significant canons, including one dictating that the faithful must stand while praying to God. They also declared the trinity to be the universal (hence catholic) doctrine of the Catholic Christian church. All present accepted the canons — although some with grave reservations.

Nicea was also a negative watershed in Catholic Christianity; it established the precedence of lay interference in its internal affairs. Intriguingly,

Eusebius,

Arian

Bishop

of Nicomedia,

baptized

Constantine on his deathbed, on 22 May 337, as an Arian Christian, thus

launching a political and ecclesiastical crisis challenging church unity, which lead to a series of synodal councils comprised of Catholic and Arian Christian bishops. They met at Serdica (contemporary Sofia, Bulgaria), in

342-43, at Arelate-Arles in 353; and “* Mediolanum-Milan in 355.

In 381, Spanish-born Emperor Theodosius I the Great decreed the catholic creed of the Council of Nicaea as the established orthodox religion within the empire and that an ecumenical council be held at Constantinople. This synod of 150 eastern prelates approved seven canonical decrees. For Theodosius, only Canon 3 was significant. It decreed that “The Bishop of Constantinople has the honour after the Bishop of Rome _ because Constantinople is the New Rome.” Upstart Constantinople now ranked in honour and dignity before Alexandria, an affront to the Patriarch of Alexandria since the Egyptian church always considered itself second only to Rome. Au gustine of Hippo, along with Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, is one of the four great Fathers of the Latin Church. A Berber, the son

of a pagan father and Christian (Monica) mother, Augustine married at an early age and became a Manichean, a sect he later vilified with the Donatists and Pelagians calling them Scots — a pejorative expression of disdain to the Christians. During his tenure as a professor at Milan, he was baptized, in 386,

by Ambrose at Eastertide. He returned to Tagaste, where, in 391, he became a

priest and later the Bishop of Hippo“. An unrelenting champion of church orthodoxy, he clashed with the British monk Pelagius on infant baptism,

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igniting a church-wide conflict that was only resolved at the Second Synod of Orange in 529. A prolific writer, his treatises include De vera religione (390), Ordo Monasteri (397-99), De doctrina Christiania (397-428), De Trinitate (400-16), Confesiones (400), and De Civitate Dei (413-26). Augustine died

on 28 August 430, as the Vandals were storming the gates of Hippo. The appraisals of Augustine’s works by Gottschalk of Fulda and Orbais, and Johannes Scottus Eriugena® -scion of Ireland, one of the most

respected scholars in the Middle-Ages suggest that they were the spiritual godfathers of French lawyer Jean Cauvin — alias John Calvin, who selectively used Augustine’s

De

Civitate Dei-the

City of God, to substantiate

fundamentalist theories, a crucial part of the Born-Again movement within Protestant-Catholic tradition.

his

evangelical

Pope “Damascus I, a partisan Romanist, eager to secure the primacy of the See of Rome over the ambitions of Constantinople, encouraged his secretary’ Jerome, to learn Hebrew from “SGregory of Nyssa at Constantinople, in order to replace Greek with Latin as the canonical language of the Roman Church. After the death of Damascus, Jerome settled in Bethlehem, founding a double monastery where he translated the Bible into Latin Vulgate. The Eastern Church fought back, claiming that Greek was the only authentic language of the Bible and church canons, condemning Rome’s action as hubris. Thus two distinct traditions: the Roman (Latin), and Eastern (Orthodox), Catholic Churches. The Rome-Frankish axis would,

guarantee that the Latin Church would eclipse the Orthodox Church as the ecclesiastical power in Western Europe. Under powerful personalities such as Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, the Roman Church would evolve into a societal institution of great magnitude and clerical authoritarianism and the dominant political force in the European world until the 1789 demise of ancien régime. That said, the papacy did not become an actual secular power until the initial triumph of Pope Gregory VII over the German Emperor Henry IV during the 1076 Investiture Struggle over ecclesiastical appointments.

In 390, the pious Emperor Theodosius humiliated himself before Bishop Ambrose of Milan as penance for his massacre of civilians in

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Thessalonica.

Although the Eastern and Roman Church supported the Nicene Creed, there was no mutual agreement on the date of Easter, the most important Christian event. Rome’s hubristic approach in insisting the African Patriarchs approve the new universal Easter table resulted in their refusal. This set off an age of mutual inflexibility that by the 11 century lead to the first great rift between Rome and Constantinople and the reciprocal excommunications during the reign of Pope.**Leo IX During the 13 century pontificate of Pope °° Innocent III, this mutual obstinacy culminated in The Great RomeConstantinople Schism. In 1965, Pope >'Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras finally resolved this animosity at a meeting Jerusalem. In a later century, Pope Gregory the Great stated that he accepted and venerated the four councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon) “in the same way as . . . [he does] the four holy books of the holy

Gospel.”

The church dispute that influenced the history Ireland was paschal*” controversy, whose origins go back no further than the year 120, when Sixtus I decreed that Easter shall be celebrated on Sunday only. About 160, Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, an Apostolic Father of the Church, disputed the Easter Sunday-only restriction of Pope Anicetus. This lead to turmoil in the Asia Minor churches as their bishops chose to ignore the “dictates of the Roman Patriarch” and continued the ancient Hebrew custom of calculating the day of Easter, which often fell on a weekday. Their defiance earned the Asia Minor churches the sobriquet Quartodecimans. Three decades later, Pope Victor decreed that all churches must celebrate Easter on a Sunday. The 325 Council of Nicaea substantiated the pope’s decree by commanding all churches to adopt Alexandrine rule®’, based on the 19-year lunar cycle. Rome declared Easter should not be celebrated before March 25 or after April 21, basing the lunar calculation on the 84-year lunar cycle of the ancient Jewish 14% of Nissan modus used to compute the day of the Hebrew Pesach, with “Easter celebrated only on Sunday. Both the Gallic and

Irish churches used the ancient 14" of Nissan

astrological reckoning to compute the date of the Jewish Passover Meal, the biblical basis of the Last Supper celebrating the resurrection of Christ

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(Easter) on the following Sunday. Conservative monks in Gaul, Ireland, and the British Isles continued to calculate the beginning the paschal fest using the Alexandrian rule, even after Rome change the celestial reckoning (again)

in a later century. In other words, Rome willfully abandoned the Alexandrian Rule. This resulted in Easter Sunday being celebrated different from the Irish — that remained faithful to the Alexandrian Rule. This issue began in the 6" century during the pontificate of Pope John I (523-26). In 525, the papacy deviated from the accepted tradition by adopting the calculations of Dionysius” Exiguous for Cyclus Paschalis, the Paschal cycle. Dionysius recommended a continuation of the table of Cyril of Alexandria for paschal dates up to the year 626, with the caveat that the year of the Incarnation be used as the point of departure for lunar calculation. This modification of the Alexandrine

cycle became

known

as Anno Domini

(AD), the accepted

modern chronology system of the Christian era. In the 7" century, the Easter controversy was resolved for the Latin Church, at the Northumbrian monastery at Streaneshalch on the island of Britain. It seems that the underlying issue that set off the Easter debate concerned royal connubial relations, forbidden during the Lenten season, between Northumbrian king Oswui and his Frankish queen Eanfled. The Easter debate was exacerbated because Oswui followed the Irish original Alexandrine Rule of Nicaea while Eanfled followed the Roman modus, thus

Lent ended on different days of the week. To resolve this dispute, Oswiu ordered Abbess Hild to host a synod at the Irish Double-Abbey at Streaneshalch to debate the issue, setting-the-stage for a showdown on obedience to the papal decree on Easter celebration within the Latin Church. The year 664 is significant for papal discipline within the Roman Church as its results affected the future of Angle-Saxon and Latin Church unity and lead to the adoption of monastic reforms initiated by Pope Boniface IV, a half century earlier. The issue of tonsuring at Streaneshalch (Whitby) was a diversion since monks had been using different styles of tonsure for centuries. The only real question was if the Poesy had been consistent with the Bible when it jettisoned the ancient 14" of Nissan modus to compute the paschal fest. One of the unanswered questions is that if the date of Easter was so crucial to the unity of the church, why did the papacy select Greek prelate Theodore of Tarsus, whose church refused Rome Easter admonishments, contending they

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1. Familiae Connections:

were not consistent with the Bible, to reform the Anglo-Saxon Church? Was Whitby was a ‘show-down’ regarding obedience to the papacy on a matter of dogma or was it a red-herring to justify the dismemberment of the IroColumban Paruchia, a Metropolitan-system that ignored political boundaries — thus seen as a threat to the emerging a Benedictine influence in the AngleSaxon church as part of the Roman-Merovingian ecclesiastical-politico orbit. That said, no struggle was more central to the unity of the early church than the Arian controversy that challenged the validity of the Trinity as a Rule of Faith. This conflict began in the Egyptian church between Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and his presbyter Arius. The real villains seem to be Eusebius of Palestinian-Caesarea and Eusebius Bishop of Nicomedia. Eusebius of Nicomedia ordained a Cappadocian” ° Arian prelate, Wulfila, as missionary Bishop to the Arian Visigoths beyond the Danube. Extremely talented Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic and was singularly successful in converting Alani, Alamans, Burgundians, Frisians, Gepids, and Lombards,

Ostrogoth, Suveves, Thuringian, Vandals, and Visigoths tribes to Arianism as they formed their agricultural confederations in conquered territories. Historically, Roman emperors perceived Persia as the greatest threat to their empire. To counter this menace, they filled the ranks of their vaunted

legions with the Germanic Eindringlinge—some rose to the rank of general. By the 5" century, the Germans displaced the Persians as the major threat to Rome’s European hegemony. Before the ascendancy of the Franks, the Greeks were the protectors

of Roman Catholic Christianity. This all changed with the ascendancy of the Merovingian Empire. In less than a century this Germanic Empire would supplant the Rome-Constantinople axis, with profound political-ecclesiastical consequences.

Since the Treaty of Milan, but certainly not later than, the Council of Nicaea, the papacy had become hostage to the most powerful thug that could protect its interests. Compounding this issue was that after Constantine the Great, no Roman Emperor resided in Rome — by default the papal curia was the real power in the eternal city.

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Providentially,

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the Franks,

the most

powerful

Germanic

tribe,

converted directly to Roman Catholic Christianity, which had a dramatic and long-term effect on European history. However, the ferocious Germanic warlords who regarded themselves descendants of gods were singularly incapable of administrating the vast territories that their warriors had won. Nonetheless, they were intuitive enough to recognize that the Catholic Church bureaucrats possessed these needed skills. It is therefore reasonable to deduce that practical necessity—not divine intervention—motivated the Franks to embrace Roman Catholicism. In other words, their guid pro quo for accepting baptism was access to the organizational skills of the Catholic Church. These warlords also replicated the church’s hierarchical pyramid to establish authority over their subjects. They granted lands to their trustworthy allies in return for their absolute loyalty and pledge of military service. The Vassi dominici had ranks similar to their ecclesiastic>’ counterparts. For renouncing his pagan gods and embracing Catholic Christianity, Pope Stephens II, a the Vicar of Christ, anointed Pépin II the Short, Suzerain by Divine Right’* the de facto apex of me temporal pyramid. On the other hand, the much-touted Donation of Pépin®’ amounted to the German King stealing land from the Greek Emperor and giving it to the Pope.

Underpinning this Hellenistic notion is the Book of Genesis”: “Melchizedek, King of Salem, is a Priest of God on High” became part of the

Roman Canon of the Mass and the Eucharistic Prayer giving an ecclesiastical surety that the sovereign are appointed by God. Thus, regicide was not only a grave societal crime but also a sacrilege against the Will of God. This nonsense evolved into the megalomania of the Divine Right of Kings, justifying challenging the Pope for the supremacy of the church. With the death of Emperor Charles®'V in the 16" century, the Middle Ages were replaced by the age of the emerging national states, as Europe’s princes defied the political authority of the papacy and confiscated church property under the guise of Reforming the Church. Underpinning this idea was a notion of Cesaropapism: powerful princes declared themselves as temporal and ecclesiastical heads of their own national states and their concomitant established church (not unlike an Islamic Caliphate), ignoring the fact the Council of Trent instituted the much needed reformation of the church.

Frustrated by the ineptness of Rome’s leadership in repelling the

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1. Familiae Connections:

Germanic invaders, in the early 5“ century, the Roman legions in Gaul mutinied. In the turmoil, Rome’s intelligentsia in Gaul fled to the Mediterranean periphery. To pacify his unstable frontier provinces, Flavius Honorius, Emperor of the West, appointed six imperial Duces-Dukes to lead all Roman troops serving outside of Italy. One of the newly created dukes was the nobleman Germanus of Auxerre, whom Honorius sent to contain an

insurgent Armorica (Bretagne). In 404, the Emperor moved his imperial capital from Milan to Ravenna and his Préfectiira Pretoria Gallia-Imperial Viceroy of Gaul, Britain, and Spain, at Augusta Treveroru-Trier to Arelate-

Arles, a city on the Rhéne River delta in south Aquitaine. The move of the Emperor to Milan was a blow to the power and prestige of the prelacy in the archbishopric of Milan, who regarded themselves better qualified to oversee the Bishoprics of Gaul than the Roman Curia. On 22 March 417, a second blow followed. Newly elected Pope Zosimus seized the opportunity to thwart any pretensions of the Milan archbishopric. He created the Archbishopric of Arles as a Papal Vicariate and named Archbishop Patroclus as Metropolitan over the Gallic provinces of Viennensis and Narbonensis I and II, including Marseilles, Norborne, Vaison, Autun, Rouen, Paris, Bordeaux, Trier, and Rheims. This meant that

no ecclesiastic could travel to Rome without the written permission of the Papal Vicar of Gaul. This buffer ensured Papal supremacy and Rome as the seat of the church. With the 426 assassination of Patroclus, Pope Celestine I chose Honoratus, Abbot of fles de *Lérins, as new Archbishop of Arles. Honoratus chose his protégée nephew Hilary, a monk™ companion of Saint Patraic, as Abbot of Lérins. One of the unanswered questions is whether Honoratus and Hillary were in Holy Orders during their tenure at Lérins before becoming Archbishops of Arles. Among the many saints of Lérins were Hilary and Vincent, who wrote Conference as counterpoint to Augustine’s “On Rebuke and Grace” — the most famous of the [les de Lérins alumni was Saint Patraic Apostle of All Ireland. Legend tells that Honoratus chased the snakes from [les de Lérins, a common metaphor used in by religious hagiographers in the Middle Ages to describe the eradication of paganism. Symbols have been used as evangelization tools throughout church history; therefore it is quite absurd

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1.

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that some historians” scoff at the idea of Patraic’s use of the shamrock to explain the Trinity. Perhaps they disremember that church policy adopted at the Council of Constantinople included Christianizing old pagan traditions.

Another unanswered question is did the papacy choose the day of Mithras (Sunday) as the day to worship Jesus Christ to thwart the reemergence of sun worshiping? In the fifth and six centuries, a weak emperor ensured that anarchy would reign supreme on the Italian peninsula. Emperor Libius Severianus Serveus

was

incapable, thus the Suevian born General Flavius Ricimer

became the de facto ruler of the Western Empire, as much of the territory of the old empire came under the rule of Arian kings. In southern Gaul, Euric, the Visigoth king of Toulouse, codified his first laws to the antipathy of the Gallo-Roman population. The Vandals ruled in Africa. In Rome, Pope Celestine I championed the Petrine theory, found in Matthew 16: 18-19, that all popes were heirs of Peter. Episcopus inter Episcopos turned into episcopus episcoporum—the “power of the keys.” An admirer of Augustine of Hippo, Pope Celestine played a key role in the lives of the great ecclesiastical families, such as Honoratus™ and Hilarius of Lérins, Germanus of Auxerre, Lupus of Troyes, Eucherius of Lyons, Pallidus and Patraic of Ireland. In the words of Professor Francis J. Byrne,”

“Christianity triumphed in Ireland with the active support of kings, though without meeting violent hostility from many of them.” The familiae connection modus probably arrived in Ireland with Saint Patraic. Its powerful chieftains embraced it, since poets and druid priests were usually family relatives. In other words, a culture of hereditary abbacies would not have been a revolutionary idea to the Irish.

The Irish monks brought this modus to the island of Briton where it was also readily accepted. Familiae connections evolved in Gaul and were openly supported by the papacy. The Franks, after converting to Catholic Christianity, promoted this societal modus. It later became a significant part of the Norman culture in France and England, and later in Ireland.

Over the centuries, Ireland was to produce numerous women saints

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including Brigit of Kildare-Cill Dara, Samthann of Clonbroney-Cludin Bronach, Longford and [te of Killeedy Hy Conaill Limerick, Moninne of Killeavy (near Newry), Caireach Deargan of Cluain Burren, RoscommonRos Commdin, and Safann of Cludin Bronaigh. However, the great triad of Irish saints remains Patraic, Columcille,

and Columbanus. Traditionally, Patraic (b. c.373 — d. 461) brought the Light of Christ to the heathen people of Ireland. Columcille (b. c.521 — d. 597) is the model of Ireland’s missionary spirit and founder of Irish cenobitic monasticism. His followers were to re-Christianize the island of Britain. Columbanus (b. c.543 — d. 615) brought Christ back to continental Europe

and into the heart of Southern Italy, raising the veil of the Dark Ages.

In the Latin Church, important heretical doctrines included Arianism, Gnosticism, Manicheism, Diocletian, and Pelagianism. In the Greek Church, Arianism, Montanism, Nestorians, Monophysite, and Eutychianism, were

heretical doctrines. Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum denounced the theological teachings of 68 archimandrite Eutyches, on the nature of Christ; who, in 399,

was condemned and deposed, by Patriarch Bishop Flavian, at the Council of Constantinople. The Council of Ephesus a.k.a. Robber Synod, reinstated Eutyches. After the council adjourned, his advocates beat Bishop Flavian to death. Finally, in 451, the Council of Chalcedon re-condemned Eutyches and

his teachings as heterodoxies.

After the 413 Council of Ephesus, Nestorians evolved as the Assyrian Church

of the East;

in the wake

of the 451

Council

of Chalcedon,

Monophysites evolved as the Coptic Orthodox Church. These traditions remain active, an authentication of their resiliency. Monophysites repudiated the Council of Chalcedon doctrine that Christ had two-natures: God & Man. This repudiation led to the first intense rift between the Latin and Greek Churches by Patriarch Serguis of Constantinople agreeing, in 638, to a compromise that “Christ had one will in two natures’, and this was proclaimed by Emperor Heraclius as church doctrine. The goal of this compromise was to garner Monophysite support against the ambitions of Islamists—it failed. By 643, Islam controlled Syria and Alexandria.

The Greek Church, however, was not deterred. In 648,

Emperor Constans II, an ally of Patriarch Peter of Constantinople, set this

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1. Familiae Connections: policy forth with his edict of Typus. In 649, Pope Martin I convened a council at the Lateran to repudiate the Emperor’s edicts reaffirming the 451 Chalcedon condemnations. The situation intensified when Archbishop Maurus of Ravenna sought independence from the papacy. Constans II then issued an edict absolving Ravenna from Roman Patriarchal authority. Pope Martin declared Maurus contumacious. Maurus replied by excommunicating the Pope. The two successors

of Maurus,

Reparatus

and Theodorua,

also maintained

their

independence. In a show of independence, Reparatus received his Archbishop’s Pallium from Emperor Constans II, in concert of three suffragan Bishops; Cesaropapism ruled the Greek Church”. This is the taproot of all Investiture Controversies in the Latin Church, left unresolved until the 1122 signing of the Concordat of Worms”. It was only during the pontificate of Pope Donus (676-78), jurisdictional obedience was reestablished. Naturally, ambitious dynasts did not hesitate to claim themselves as

Protectors of the Papacy, with the caveat to oust any pope they regarded as detrimental to their political ambitions. The great “Christian” princes of Western Europe unhesitatingly supported the twin columns of the Vassi dominici and a culture of serfdom as the royal arch of medieval society and by the ruthless use of the sword. This societal modus was liquidated in the aftermath of the French Revolution in the 18" century. It is curious that many of the early church heterodoxies kept reemerging to bedevil the champions of 16" century New Reformation Religion.

Familiae Connection Notes:

2

1.

1

Familiae Connections:

Alias Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, on the opening of the

Vatican Archives, 18 August 1883.

2 After 1542, Henry VIII also styled himself as “King of Ireland”. Source: Alison Weir, Britain’s Royal: The Complete Genealogy (1996). 3 Christ said, “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in

heaven.” 4 A village now known as Strigova in contemporary Croatia. 5 Under Emperor Hadrian, Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina. 6 The La-Téne culture: Q Celts tribes from Armorica (Bretagne) settled in Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland; the P Celts crossed into northern Britain

(Scotland). Celts also settled in Spain, Portugal, northern Italy, the Balkans, Delphi, and Galatia in Asia Minor. The Galatians were Celts. 7 According to the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 20, 9, 1 §§200-300), ref: “The Catholic Letters” in the Catholic Study Bible (New American Bible).

8 “Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 9

[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so

I send you. And when He has said this, He breathed on them and said to them. Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you retain are retained.” 10 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.” 11 The divinity of Christ is anchored in Matthew 16:13-17: When Jesus went into the region of Cesarea Philippe, He asked His disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” The divinity of Jesus is also articulated in Peter’s speech at Pentecost, found in the

Acts 2:36: Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. 12 All dates are Anno Domini (in the year of our Lord).

13 In the aftermath of the 16" century, New Religion nobility jettisoned many Roman Catholic customs. They kept familia tradition of ecclesiastical office appointments since it provided societal positions for their children. 14 Suggesting that Peter was either the Chief Rabbi or Bishop of Antioch. 15 A nephew of Caligula, his full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Druss

Germanicus. He also ordered the murder of his mother, Agrippinia.

26

1. Familiae Connections:

16 In Greek, Papas means guardian. Christians organized themselves under a single leader called a Bishop (Greek: episcopos, which means overseer.) Assisting the Bishop were presbyters (elders) and deacons (servants). 17 He feared a repeat of the 132-35 revolt of the Jews of Judea that commemorated the 168-64 insurrection led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, Jonathan and Simon. 18 Church in Early Irish Society, page 42. 19 Ref. I Corinthians 7: 32-38: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. Nevertheless, a married man is anxious about things of the world, how he

may please his wife and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about things of the world, how

she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction. 20 John Ryan, S. J., Irish Monasticism: Origins and Early Development, page 15. 21 The 2° century letter of Roman Consul Gaius Plinius Caecilius, alias Pliny

the Younger, to Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trainus alias Trajan. 22 The Cardinal Bishop of Ostia has the privilege of consecrating a new pope and, historically, is the Dean of the College of Cardinals. 23 Cardo is Latin for “hinge,” the root word for Cardinal. 24 The most important and authoritative agencies of the Curia are the ten congregations, each directed by a Cardinal prefect. 25 Of the seven biblical “Catholic Letters,” three are attributed to John, two to Peter, and one each to James and Jude (termed “universal” since they are

addressed no specific group). Before the 2™ century, followers of Christ were “Nazarenes.” The Antioch church, founded by Peter, is the first place that the term “Christian” was used. 26 Smyrna 8: 20. 27 From the Greek, méteyn from Irish captivity. Which may answer the vexing question of how much did familiae connection played a part in Patraic becoming a monk in the monastery of Iles de Lérins, since both Abbot Honorius, the founder of this illustrious abbey, and Germanus of Auxerre were aristocrats. Both had been students at Arles,

although Germanus was not in Holy Orders until 418. Thus, it is likely that Germanus of Auxerre encouraged Patraic to enter the Lérins monastery.

4]

2. Patraic of Armagh About 410, Saint Honoratius founded a cenobite foundation on the’

Iles de Lérins on the Céte d' Azur based on the vow of piety and chastity set forth by the African soldier-saint Pachomius.”* This monastery became the fountain of numerous ecclesiastic Gallic bishops, earning it the sobriquet: nursery of bishops.” Two years after the founding of Lérins, John Cassian, the mentor of Honoratus, founded St. Victor, a double monastery for men and women at Marseilles based on the Rules of Saint Pachomius.”°

Doubtlessly the monasteries of [les de Lérins and St. Victor at Marseilles were familiae connected. Greek was the language of their Psalters and liturgy — a widespread Gallic practice that certainly influenced the preevangelizing life of Patraic. Some suggest that a crypto-Coptic mindset may have been present at Lérins, Marseilles, Auxerre, and Armorica, giving rise to the (later) denunciation that the Gallic-Bretagne and Irish churches were hotbeds of semi-Pelagain activists if they disagreed with papal actions. Rome often rebuked them as Pelagians”’ such as ina letter from Pope John IV elect, and the Roman Curia, to the Northern Irish churches.

It is no mystery that this correspondence was generated in 640, a generation before the Synod of Whitby. Other times they indicted the Irish as “closet-” or semi-Pelagain.

Predictably, Irish monasteries would replicate its Afro-Mediterranean roots. It is suggested that Patraic’s hagiographers, Tirechén and Muirchii moccu Machténi, chose Saint Victor as Patraic’s Guardian Angel to position him with the winning-side of the Whitby 664 event. In an early act of papal obedience, Pope Victor (189-99) decreed that the Patriarchs of Antioch and

Alexander must celebrate Easter on the first Sunday pre-Alexandrine Rule of

Nicaea with calculations based on the Jewish lunar month (14" of Nissan) to

avoid conflict with the Jewish Passover. Victor threatened the African

Church with excommunication if it failed to conform, and the patriarchs of

Antioch and Alexander submitted forthwith to the supremacy of Rome, as did

all monastic foundations in the western Mediterranean. However, churches of

Asia Minor, sustained by Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus, continued to celebrate Easter on the actual day of the Jewish lunar 14" of Nissan, when they slaughtered a Paschal lamb, earning them the sobriquet

42

2. Patraic of Armagh Quartodecimans.

A prerequisite for entering the monastic life at Iles de Lérins was that novices had to surrender their worldly assets. If a person had no wealth, he

forfeited his only possession—his name—and the abbot gave him a new one. Is this how Succat, the scion of a landless Patrician familiae, got the name Patraic?

In 410, fearing the same fate as *’Stilicho, Visigothic King Alaric took Galla Placidia, the sister of Emperor Honorius, hostage while allowing his troops three days to sack Rome but forbade them to loot churches. Honoratus fled to Ravenna, and by default, the Papal Curia became the de facto government of Rome with familiae connection providing continuity in the early church.”” For instance, Abbot Honoratus of Lérins chose his nephew Hilarius as

his secretary and protégé. Lupus of Toul married Pimeniola, a sister of Hilarius. In 426, Honoratus became Archbishop of the papal vicarage of Arles; he chose Hilary as his successor at Lérins. Honoratus, as Metropolitan

of Gaul, played a role in Lupus’s election as the eighth Bishop of Troyes. The story goes that Lupus was returning to Lérins from his home in Magon (Burgundy) when Bishop Ursus of Troyes died. Lupus became the new Bishop of Troyes. A folktale relates that when Attila’s Huns overran Rheims, Cambray, Besancon, Auxerre, and Langres, Lupus persuaded Attila to spare Troyes, and in gratitude, he aided Attila escape. This tale belies the fact that

Roman General Aétius decisively defeated Attila at Troyes (misidentified as Chalon), forcing Attila south for his famous confrontation with Pope Leo the Great.

Abbot Hilarius succeeded Honoratus (d. 430) as Archbishop of Arles and Metropolitan of Gaul. In the Middle Ages, prominent ecclesiastics studied at fles de Lérins©? and at the Papal vicarage at Arles, a city that Constantine the Great decreed as a privileged trade center.

The popular myth of Patraic’s banishing the snakes from Ireland may early be a clue to his association with Honoratus and Iles de Lérins, since

g hagiographers used many allegories to eulogize saints (e.g., banishin of on demons, chasing snakes, slaying dragons), alluding to the eradicati

43

2. Patraic of Armagh territorial paganism or heresies. An early praise poem to Honoratus tells of his banishing snakes from Lérins. How did this metaphor find its way into the story of Saint Patraic? On the Iberian Peninsula, Isidore, the last Latin Doctor of the Church,

succeeded his brother Leander®' as Metropolitan of Gothic Seville. On 1 July 418, Duke Germanus became Bishop” of Auxerre, and

Patraic was ordained a Deacon, over the objection of a false friend. A credible suspect is Lupus of Troyes, Patraic’s companion at Lérins. In 429, British Bishops sought papal assistance to combat the unorthodox teachings of Pelagius,®’ a British monk claiming that children were born innocent, thus did not need baptism to cleanse them of Original Sin.™ In answer to Pelagius’s heterdoxy,” Pope Celestine enjoined a synod of Gallic Bishops - perhaps at Troyes where Lupus was Bishop — to refute the contention of Pelagius. The Council of Bishops agreed that Archbishop Germanus of Auxerre and Bishop Lupus of Troyes should lead a delegation to St. Albans in Britain to quell this heretical doctrine. If Patraic were a deacon at Auxerre, he would have been an obvious member of the entourage,

since he spoke Brythonic, it benefited the mission. There is also a suggestion that papal archdeacon Pallidus® was the architect behind this mission of Germanus and Lupus to Britain. There are many theories about Saint Patrick and Ireland—and they are worth articulating.

In 431, Pope Celestine I consecrated his archdeacon Pallidus as bishop to the Irish believing in Christ, Scottos in Christum credentes, in the southeast of Ireland. This suggests that there may have been a substantial Catholic population and Pelagianism was present on that part of the island. This consecration was unusual since Pope’s did do not consecrate missionary bishops for a region normally under the purview of the Archbishopric of Arles. The only plausible explanation is Pallidus was the first bishop to go outside®”’ that part of the (old) Roman frontier. In any case, and for some unrecorded reason, Pallidus obtained the services of deacon Patraic from

Bishop Germanus of Auxerre — perhaps for his knowledge of Irish. Oddly, no historian has researched in depth the facts behind why the Irish mission of

44

2. Patraic of Armagh Pallidus ended in a fiasco.

That said Pallidus was the first documented Bishop of Ireland! A widely repeated legend tells that Pope Celestine I (d. July 432) consecrated the 53-year-old deacon Patraic, as missionary bishop to Ireland, in the same year”. This premise is very problematic because Patraic would have had little time between departing for to Ireland in 431, as part of the Pallidus failed mission, and returning to Rome for consecration by Celestine I before the pope’s mid-year death. In addition, he would have little time to organize and equip a new missionary effort for a return trip to Ireland. This story contradicts the report of Prosper of Aquitaine, who recorded that Palladius was still active in Ireland during 433-34, after the death of Celestine.’’ Furthermore, the idea that Patraic was a solo missionary bishop is ludicrous, since an entourage of priests, deacons, monks, and servants

accompanied all bishops on their journeys. Patraic’s consecration as bishop by Pope Celestine is highly suspect. The archbishopric at Auxerre was under the auspices of the Archbishop Hilarius of Arles, the Papal Vicar of Gaul, thus Primus over all ecclesiastics in Gaul. In other words, all ecclesiastical

actions had to have the consent of Hilarius, especially the consecration of a bishop or any travel to Rome. Thus Patraic was consecrated as missionary bishop by either Hilarius of Arles (probably) or Germanus of Auxerre (possibly). In other words, it is highly unlikely that Pope Celestine” consecrated Patraic to the dignity of a bishop and sent him to Ireland to finish the job given to bishop Pallidus.

A second (unlikely) hypothesis suggests that there may have been a tradition in the early church where missionary bishops were given special names (e.g., Willibrod was renamed Clemens; Wynfrid was renamed Boniface). Following this line of thinking, Pope Celestine may have given Palladius the missionary name of Patricius, alluding to his patrician background, hence Patraic. Therefore, Patraic’s abduction, escape, salvation,

and his evangelization of the pagan Irish are historical metaphors used to highlight Palladius/Patraic as the unifying figure for Ireland’s conversion to Catholic Christianity. This would certainly reinforce the claim of Prosper of Aquitaine that Pope Celestine was the Apostle of the Irish. A more plausible hypothesis suggests that Patraic was part of the

45

2. Patraic of Armagh Pallidus entourage and sent to Northern Ireland, a territory where he was’ familiar with its people, their customs, and their Irish dialect. This may have enabled him to be successful in evangelizing key personalities to Catholic Christianity, while Pallidus failed because he did not speak Irish, thus the indigenous Catholics in South Ireland rejected him. The Lérins monastery, where some scholars claim Patraic was a monk, evolved as a prestigious source of numerous ecclesiastical luminaries: Fastus of Riez, Eucherius of Lyons, Benedict Biscop, Saints Hilary and Vincent of Lérins. In later years, Pope Leo the Great suspected the archbishopric of Arles was becoming a threat to the prestige of the papacy just as Milan had been to Pope Zosimus. Leo may have used the dispute between Archbishop Hilarius and Bishop Chelidonus over the metropolitan dignity of Besancon as the pretext to purge Arles of its Papal Vicarage. In 444, Archbishop Germanus of Auxerre participated in the conclave at Arles to reconcile the authority 2 Archbishop Hilarius of Arles. Unsurprisingly, Emperor Valentinianus III” (at Ravenna) supported Leo against Hilarius.

One of the key intriguers, in this era was Prosper” of Aquitaine (b. 390), secretary to Pope Leo I the Great. He was supposedly educated in Marseilles, perhaps at the Saint Victor monastery founded by John Cassian. In any case, his later antipathy toward Cassian may have had something to do with his rise in status during the pontificate of Celestine and his later influence during the reign of Pope Leo the Great, where he evolved as an ardent advocate of Saint Augustine of Hippo. When Vincent of Lérins wrote his Conference treatise, Prosper saw it as an affront to Augustine’s On Rebuke and Grace and vilified Vincent and his “Mediterranean monks — Read: Lérins and Saint Victor Monks — as purveyors of Semi-Pelagianism.” More than a few anti-Irish ecclesiastics gratuitously accused the early Irish church of being rife with varying degrees of semi-Pelagianism. Muircht and Tirechan excluded [les de Lérins from their vocabulary lest the poltergeist of semi-Pelagianism taint their Armagh maneuverings.

Patraic eventually built churches in Meath, Ulster, and Connaught. He established Ireland's most important foundation, Ard Macha (Armagh), near the Ui Niall stronghold of Emain Macha, after founding a church at Trim” (Troim) in Meath (Mide). It is worth repeating that early church leadership

consisted of interconnected upper and middle class Catholic Christian

46

2. Patraic of Armagh families. According to John Hennig, the eminent German scholar in Irish exile, the sae of formally dedicating a church to a saint not personally connected’” with the locality was unknown in Ireland until the 12" century. By tradition, a royal page by the name of Erc, or Earc, was the first person to render Patraic homage as he entered the court of the pagan King of Tara (Ri Temair).

Patraic’s ability to speak the Irish language enabled him to communicate with the Chieftain (Taoiseach) in various parts of Ireland to establish religious foundations not dedicated to a particular saint —the exception was those foundations dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. In 439, according to the 9" century Leabhar Breac, Secundinus Sechnaill’® (b. 375, d. 447), was supposedly the son of Patraic's sister Liamania.”’ He traveled from Gaul with Auxilius and Iserninus to assist Patraic in his missionary ® labors. Patraic also consecrated Aedh Mac Cairthinn Macartan as Bishop of Clogher (Clochar) and allegedly left with him the Domhnach Airgid—that is now in the national museum of Ireland. Note: At the northwestern end of the Clogher diocese is Lough Derg, world renowned pilgrimage venue for its “Saint Patraic Purgatory.” According to memoirs of Tirechan in the Book of Armagh, Patraic consecrated many of his entourage as bishops, including two nephews with the identical name

of Mel (Melti).Tradition tells us that in 450, Patraic

baptized Brigit,” a member of the Ui Bressail sept, part of the Leinster race of Fothairt. Alternatively, there is an oft-told tale that she “took the veil of the virgin” at the hand of Mac Caille, instead of Patraic or Bishop Mel in Ardagh (Ardachadh), who had been consecrated by Patraic. Liber Angeli (Book of Armagh) mentions a Patraic connection®’ to her convent at Kildare (Cill

Dara). Brigit is also associated with Bishop Conlded, since Cogitosus supported the hegemonic ambitions of the Ui Failgi in Kildare. The political quid pro quo between Armagh and Kildare: Armagh accepted the ecclesiastical primacy of the Kildare Bishop throughout Leinster®’ (Laigin) in exchange for Kildare’s recognizing Armagh as Ireland’s primatial see

In Brigit in the Seventh Century: A Saint with Three Lives?” by Kim McCone,” Brigit was described in Bishop Ultan’s Hymn as “one of the two

47

2. Patraic of Armagh

pillars of sovereignty preeminent with Patrick” (lethcholbe flatha la Patricc primed*’). Did Armagh accept Brigit as Mary of the Gael 8* in the pantheon of Irish saints in exchange for the Leinster Kings accepting a Lay Abbot successor to Patraic as Comarba Pdtraic Na Ard Macha — thus primus inter pares with the Bishops of Ireland, thus Brigit’s interment at Downpatrick (Dun Pdtraic) alongside Patraic and Columcille? Nevertheless, the cult of

Saint Brigit found its way to the continent via the wandering Irish monks, with numerous altars and villages commemorating her name. According to Bieler, Donatus the Irish Bishop of Fiesole wrote the only known hagiographical epic to Brigit in Carolingian France. Irish exiles for the Love of Christ, peregrine pro amore Christ, carried the cult of Saint Brigid to the heartland of the northeastern German tribes: Am6neburg, Biiraburg, Buchonia (Schotten), Fulda, Grabfeld, and

Hersfeld.®°

According to Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich, the great Irish monk Fergil®® or Ferghil, an aristocrat of Clann Enna®’ became monk®™ at Agahaboe in Ossory (Osraige) in Leinster and most likely studied at Iona prior to arriving on the continent. After serving as advisor to the Frankish king, Fergil was given the abbacy of Saint Peters at Salzburg, *’ the capital of Agilolfing Bavaria, and later Abbot-Bishop when the monastery church became a cathedral. He translated relics of Saint Brigid to Bavaria. In Austria, the cult of Brigit was widely practiced — for example, in the 20" District in Vienna, there is a Brigit’s meadow (Brigittenau) ””. In the village of Oelling, near Henndorf, a few kilometers from Salzburg, is a small church honoring Brigid. Patraic consecrated Ciannén of Duleek®! (Daimliag) as a bishop. Oddly, the word Daimliag means House

of Stone; however, the earliest

evidence of a stone church in Ireland dates from the year 788.”

In 438, Patraic supposedly persuaded King (Ri) Léeguire (heir of Niall Noi nGiallach), to revise the anthology of Brehon Laws to assist the spread of Catholic Christianity in Ireland. If this is true, why did Léeguire die a pagan’? A more realistic explanation is that laws were changed with the writing of the Books of Rights (Lebor na cert) around the 12" century and remained an integral part of Brehon Law, especially land tenure, until the ancient Irish society was destroyed in the aftermath of the Williamite War in

48

2. Patraic of Armagh

1690. Dalis the Irish word for a territorial division, and tuath land consisted

of hereditary familiae lands (fintiu). Mountainous drumlin” lands, often used for pasture, were communal within the ddl and under the custodianship of the chieftain. This concept of hereditary land was unique in 5" century Europe. On the island of Britain, and on the continent, land had changed hands many

times throughout the centuries by conquest. The only concept of land ownership was that it belonged to the person with the mightiest sword—in other words; the person who inherited, either through election or through seizure, the king was the territorial suzerain. When

the Germanic

tribes

invaded Western Europe, their chieftains (kings) remained as tribal leader

until death in battle or he was murdered. Upon the demise of a chieftain or king, his surviving sons or close relatives split-up his patrimony. This naturally encouraged a significant amount of bloodshed. The Catholic Church encouraged the manorial system with its primogeniture”’ succession caveat, since it brought stability to Europe. Conquerors of land normally granted the territory back to the original owner in a vassal modus known as Surrender and Regrant, alluding to the fact that the person held his territory at the pleasure of his suzerain. This created the so-called landed families that became the bedrock of medieval Europe. Ecclesiastical property (called a benefice) under Germanic-ruled territories on the island of Britain and the continent were under the absolute control of the ruling suzerains; thus,

churchmen were de facto vassals of temporal overlords. The 12" century Norman invaders failed to supplant Tanaisteacht with the primogeniture system because the Irish dynasts, especially in the north, refused to abandon their ancient succession modus,. Further, Brehon

Law prohibited the confiscation of hereditary or familiae lands.

The building of ecclesiastical foundations on Irish lands belonging to a ruling familiae was a contentious issue because lands were hereditary. To circumvent this issue, the church accepted a property trust modus that satisfied both the needs of the church and the tenets of Brehon Law. Thus, a

cadet branch of the ruling family became the hereditary lay trustee of the all church property with the title of Airchinnech (Latin: Princeps). Further, to ensure political continuity, the ruling familiae branch retained the hereditary privilege of naming the founding abbot and his successors, called coarbs.

49

2. Patraic of Armagh

There is much discussion about the title Airchinnech being unique to the ecclesiastical landscape of Ireland and that it came into existence about the 10" century or perhaps later. This is poppycock! The Airchinnech was part of the Irish church since its earliest days and canonically mandated. This mandate goes back to the first Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), conducted under the auspices of Pope Leo the Great. At Chalcedon” , 500 to

600 bishops unanimously passed 28 ecclesiastical canons. One of these, Canon 26, required bishops to have an administrator for their religious foundations. This requirement was set forth under ecclesiastical Canon 11 of the second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) and extended for all bishops

and abbots. Noteworthy is that in the Frankish Empire, founding families supplied hereditary bishops, abbots, and administrators — Griindersippenreservat modus (Founders Rights).

coarb,

In later centuries, the Airchinnech became interchangeable with the with succession based on Tédnaisteacht. These hierarchies of

hereditary offices” were part of the Irish church until the 17" century. The Irish word parochia,”’ pairche,”® paruchia alludes to abbeys belonging to a network of lay and church foundations, regardless of their location — encompassing large geographic areas, without consideration of territorial rulers — connected to a mother abbey as an integral part of an ecclesiastical familiae. This Irish paruchia modus suggests it may have been inspired by the Mediterranean and Galician church; in any case, it supplanted the initial bishops’ system. The best-known Irish paruchia is that of Colum Cille of Iona, this abbatial paruchia included large parts of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, practically speaking the Abbot of Iona was Metropolitan of the British Isles. Predictably, the territorial strongmen preferred the Roman diocesan system whereby they could control the local ordinary (bishop).

In “Ireland: Harbinger of the Middle Ages”, Ludwig Bieler alludes that the a tradition of a special guest house (hospitia) for visitors to Irish monasteries at Jona and Lismore was somehow unique and later brought to the continent in the seventh century. I disagree; the tradition of hospitality was firmly anchored in Brehon law that pre-dated the arrival of Christianity to Ireland. In other words, Irish monks incorporated those ‘Christian-like’ customs found in Brehon law into their monastic tradition.

50

2. Patraic of Armagh

Tradition holds that Patraic died” on 17 March 461. Besides his Confessions, he supposedly wrote his “Letter of Excommunication,” misnamed “Epistle to Coroticus’”” to the Imperator of Strathclyde for the slaying of Christianized Irish, thus establishing the moral precedence of the intrinsic religious obligation to speak out against human rights violations by secular, and often ecclesiastical,

authority. Again, Alcuith (Dumbarton)

played a major role in the lives of Patraic and Coroticus.

In the centuries after Pdtraic’s death, dynastic warlord families manipulated the election of hereditary church offices to ensure their control over the monastic foundations erected on their property by electing a member of the sept using the Tanaisteacht modus. Only those persons that renounced polygamy and practiced monogamy could reside on monastic lands, known as manaig. It is suggested that they became the cadre of the 8" century Companions of God (Céiles De), a purist movement that lost its ecclesiastical power in the 17" century. According to Professor Byrne’s Jrish Kings and High-Kings, by the 8th century, ecclesiastical familiae chronologists began using surnames to document their patrimonial holdings, the historical basis of surname usage in later centuries (e.g., the diminutive of Erc, or Earc, is Ercdin, or Earcain).

When the Irish alphabet added the aspirate “‘h,” the name became hErcdin; hEarcain with the hereditary surname prefixes Ui hErcain, Ua hErcain, or OhEarcdin, later anglicized as Harkin, Harkan, or Harkins. This Airgrialla

surname

is mentioned

in Kathleen

Mulchrone’s

Bethu

Phdtraic:

The

Tripartite Life of Patraic, Vita Tripartita (1939). A tract composed c. 820", testifies that this familiae certainly belonged to the ancient nobility, suggesting them as descendants of Dallan, Ri na Tir Bhréadach in Inis nEogain, part of the Kingdom of Ailech that later intermarried with the family of Ardri na Erinn Domnall mac Lochlainn.’”

The legend that the Airchinnech'® was the bishop’s hierarchal superior does not stand up to scrutiny, since Canon 8 of the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, reads that the hierarchal ranking of a bishop is the ecclesiastical superior to an abbot. In the secular world, the hereditary Coarb/ Airchinnech leaders of the monastery controlled their lands and resources, on

Dil

2. Patraic of Armagh behalf of the ecclesiastical family; thus, in a practical world, they were more powerful. Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich pointed out that priests founded most churches in early Ireland, and these foundations likely came under the control of lay abbots, although there were often priest-abbots and bishops-abbots. This had more to do with the availability of a metropolitan and requirement of three bishops to consecrate a new member of the church hierarchy. On the other hand, a significant number of cleric king-abbots in early Ireland and some bishops held the title of Airchinnech.

Hereditary lay-abbots were territorial lay-lords within the sept who were responsible for the operation and supervision of the abbey and its worldly contacts. Even though a bishop’s position was supposed to be strictly ecclesiastical, they all too often meddled in the politics of the day. On the continent, a significant number of lay persons were named bishops for political purposes, and the papacy appointed auxiliaries to assist in carrying out canonical obligations, such as the creation of diocesan hospitals, schools, and orphanages that require the raising of funds. Were these functionaries the taproots of modern auxiliary bishops? Purportedly, Benedict of Nursia used Lex Patricii (Law of Patraic) to create the rules for the religious order of monks that bear his name. It is unknown if Benedict’s twin sister, Abbess Scholastica, introduced a form of

Lex Patricii at her Plombariola foundation. The majority of Benedictine monks were laymen with a small cadre of monks ordained in Holy Orders as bishops in residence, before the 12" century Clunic reform. Communal living organized by the Benedictines differed from the monastic living practiced by the monks

of Iona. In the 7" century, the major difference between the

Benedictines and Columbans is that the former calculated Easter in accordance with the new edict from Rome. While the latter continued to follow the 19-year Afro-Mediterranean cycle by celebrating Easter on the Sunday following the vernal equinox, the astrologic calculation called the Alexandrine Rule adopted by the 325 Council of Nicaea to celebrate the Passover Meal and the Paschal fest. The date Irish celebrated Easter does

support the claim that Patraic was at [les de Lérins. The archconservative Irish monasteries founded after Patraic retained the ancient method of tonsuring: shaving the head completely from the forehead to the crown, allowing the rest of the hair to grow long. They apparently used Greek in

3p

2. Patraic of Armagh some of their rituals as well as studied and copied ancient Greek classics. The Benedictine tonsure was shaving the crown of the head, alluding to the crown of thorns of Christ as symbol of their papal fidelity. The only language permitted was Vulgate Latin, and except for a few selected monks, they deliberately avoided the study of the ancient classics. In 664, the Columban and Benedictine monks would meet at Streaneshalch in Northumbria to debate monastic tonsuring and obedience to the decree of Pope John I to adhere to a standardized celestial calculation for Easter, the all-important date in the Church calendar. The real issue at debate was obedience to the successor of Saint Peter, in other words, the Petrine discipline! The Irish, and indeed the entire world, honor Patraic as the Apostle of All Ireland, albeit Ciaran of Saigr, Declan of Ardmore, Ailbe of Emly, and

conceivably others perhaps preceded him. Annually thousands pilgrimage to his burial place at Down Cathedral (Duin Lethglass). The sin qua non, or reason why, Patraic is so revered on the island of Ireland is multidimensional. The premise of his legitimacy as Apostle of All Ireland is that all political and ecclesiastical authorities accepted him as the unifying symbol of ireland’s conversion to Catholic Christianity. Irish Saint Fursa established the cult of Saint Patraic on the continent by bringing his relic to the great abbey of Péronne in contemporary France. About 700, Irish Abbot Cellanus of

Péronne had the following Latin verse inscribed for his church: This hall perpetuates Saint Patrick’s fame, Whom humbly we revere, as his due. He bathed us in the sacramental bath,

He taught us how to worship God in heaven, Bright’ ning our darkness with the light of faith. Calporinus’ son, in Britain he was born,

Gaul reared him, happy Ireland gave him rest. Thus heaven’s blessing shines on either land.‘ In practicable terms, the Ui Néill’® dynasts only abandoned their pagan Tara!” as the sacral capital of Ireland, after achieving hegemony over Catholic Christian Armagh. No doubt, they had a vital political interest in Armagh as the primus inter pares of all religious foundations and Lex Patricii for monastic discipline on the island of Ireland.

53

2. Patraic of Armagh

A probable clash between the brokers of the Brehon law and Catholic monks likely occurred when the warlords had to seek absolution of their transgressions by the use of public confessions'”’ because the church forbade its converts from appealing to the pagan Brehon. Politics probably exacerbated this issue because the pagan Brehon correctly thought that this biblical requirement was an infringement on their ancient laws. This situation did not remain static. The Irish church introduced a private confession modus called Soul friend (anam Cara), which led to modifying the Brehon law to conform to ecclesiastical doctrine. In realpolitik terms, the Ui Néill jettisoned Columcille after the Whitby débacle to bear witness to Patraic as the Unifying Apostle of All Ireland. Thus, it is practical to articulate the story of the Columban familiae as a parallel monastic movement to the Order of Saint Benedict. The foremost distinction between these two religious communities was operational supervision of their monasteries. Columban foundations were similar to the Mediterranean abbeys in calculating the feast of Easter, private confessional Soul Friend (anam Cara), and rigid rules of penance, including mortification and living in individual cells in a very austere environment. Furthermore, the dual mantra of studying and copying the philosophy of the ancients (e.g., Plato, Aristotle) and hermitage were integral parts of the Columban mystique. The abbatial succession modus at Iona was similar to the ancient Irish Tanaisteacht, with the Comarba

na Columcille a blood

relative to the founding saint. Furthermore, the most educated person in Irish abbeys was usually the monk in charge of the scriptorium. Latin was unknown in the north of Ireland prior to the time of Patraic; hence, it became

the language of Catholic Christianity. On the other hand, monks of the Order of Saint Benedict lived in a communal environment under the motto “Pray and Work” (Ora et Labor), which took absolute precedence over the study of

classics.'”® Thus, the lector became the only learned person in the abbey; his principle function was to read Latin scripture to his fellow monks. In the Cold War between the Latin and Greek churches, the Benedictines were the

champions of Vulgate Latin only. Furthermore, the Abbot of Monte Cassino supervised all abbeys of the Order of Saint Benedict, and members of that order saw their tonsure as a visible symbol of undeviating loyalty to the papacy and the monastic ideal for the glorification of God and the unification of His Catholic Church. The Benedictines became the chief proponents of

54

2. Patraic of Armagh Patraic as the Unifying Apostle of All Ireland—to the detriment of the advocates of Columcille.

The turning point in Columban-Benedictine relations came about in the aftermath of Pope John I’s'” decree that the entire western church accept the computations of the monk Dionysius Exiguous in calculating the Paschal moon. Besides the obvious reason for the confrontation was obedience to a papal decision regarding Easter'!°. This suggests that the papacy may have been apprehensive that the Irish paruchia was a potential threat to the unity within the universal church — an impediment to the Roman diocesan system, especially in the realm of it geo-political goals with the Frankish empire. The 664 Synod of Whitby was a crucial turning point in the abbatial church. Frankish prelates at Canterbury viewed the archconservative Irish champions at Lindisfarne (part of the Iona paruchia) as an obstacle to their ambitions for jurisdictional authority of all territorial bishoprics on the islands of Britain and Ireland.

35)

2. Patraic of Armagh Patriac of Armagh Notes: to 1. After the Irish adopted the letter “p” in their alphabet. Patraic later changed Padraig and anglicized as Patrick. the 2. Saint Paul, called the Apostle to the Gentiles (pagans), was born in Tarsus,

ancient capital of the Roman Province of Cilicia, on the Cydnus River. Greeks called this area Syria-Cilicia-Poenice (Phoenix). 3. Another son of Tarsus was a 66-year-old (Saint Peter tonsured) Greek monk the named Theodore. On 26 March 668, Pope Vitalian (657-72) consecrated him as

first Archbishop of Canterbury and sent him to England with Abbot Hadrian and Benedict Biscop — who studied at fles de Lérins. On 27 May 669, Theodore came to Britain (post Whitby) to initiate the Benedictine Reformation of the Anglo-Saxon church, as the Latin Church was still reeling from the 643 loss of the African Catholic Church (Syria and Alexandria) to Islam. 4. A generation after Aurelius Augustinus, alias Augustine of Hippo, was born. 5. This Roman fiasco took place south of the Danube River in Thrace, where the Visigothic cavalry of warlord Fritigern annihilated the vaunted legions of Rome and killed Emperor Valens. The Battle of Adrianople marked the first successful use of foreign cavalry against the much-feared Roman infantry—a revolution in the art of mounted warfare comparable to the 26 August 1346 Battle of Crecy, when the English introduced the first military use of canons. 6.Succat transliterates to “Brave in Battle.” 7. I agree with Fr. John Ryan S. J., Ludwig Bieler, and Kathleen Mulchrone, among others, that he was born near northeast Ireland, where “P” Celts of Dal Riata (Glens of Antrim) displaced the “Q” Celts. 8 .C. 142, Titus Aurelius Flavius Boionius Arrius Antoninus, alias Antoninus Pius,

adopted son-successor of Emperor Hadrian, built a turf as a defensive wall against raiding Picts and Scots. Damnonii, (Fir Domanann) were a Celtic tribe of agriculturists and with Fir Bolgs from Greece, settled in Ireland and Scotland. 9. General of the Roman Field Army in Britain. 10. The Apostle of Gaul (b. 316? or 336) in Sabaria, Pannonia (Hungary). Sulpicius

Servius, his principle hagiographer, tells us that he acted as agent for Hilarius Bishop of Poitiers in the Arian dispute of Milan. Martin went into exile on Gallinara Island and later Bishop of Tours (350-80). He founded the monastery Marmoutiers on the Loire River, instituting the eastern form of eremitical monasticism that was embraced by the Gallo-Roman nobility as a higher structure of religious contemplation. It became the leitmotif of the churches in Auxerre, Armorica, and the Irish monastic church, suggesting a reliance on abbatial leadership. 11. Supporter of Ithacius and accuser of Priscillian against the Spanish-GnosticManicheans. 12. In 212, Emperor Caracalla, or Carracallus, issued the Edict of Caracalla, or Constitutio Antoniniana, giving Roman citizenship to all except the Egyptians and some others. Civis Romanus sum (I am a Roman Citizen) meant that a Roman

56

2. Patraic of Armagh citizen could not arbitrarily be enslaved or imprisoned without proper adjudication. 13. A senior administrator of a Roman occupied area. 14 .Apparently, the father of Calpurnius had been a priest. 15. A Romano-Gaulish pejorative noun denoting raider, brigand, or Viking. 16. Descendant of King Amalgaid a quo Tir nAmalgado, brother of King Nath I mac Fiachrach. 17 .The only place name mentioned in Patraic’ sConfession. 18. Patraic made Muirceartaig Murtagh first bishop of Cille Ala. 19. Suspiciously the number seven appears in the hierarchy of early church offices and status within royal familiae structures. 20. Some major ones had a population of up to 12,000 people. The Normans renamed the ancient Tuatha as a Barony, which later became the basis for modern diocesan boundaries (The Bishops’ Synod: the First Synod of St. Patrick, page 20). 21. Some suggest that Milesius and his sons came from the northern Iberian Peninsula in the general area extending from Minho to Galicia to Asturias; there is a Celtic site at Citania de Briteiros. 22. Other Erinn settlers probably came from the Kingdoms of Dal nAraide (Belfast), Ui Echach (Dromore), and Dél Fiatach (Down).

23. Collective name for ring stone forts: 1) rath: a dug trench with earthwork walls: some had stone or palisade walls; and 2) cashel, or cathair, was entirely of stone. 24. From the word “brethem,” meaning judge. 25. Honey was the sugar industry. Bee keeping, along with salt trades, was a jealously guarded commercial enterprise — its theft was a capital offense. The courts of Anglo-Saxon kings and Charlemagne adopted the Brehon Law on Bee Keeping. 26. Brehon Law forbade the nobility to own or possess swine. 27. Itis speculated that Brehon Laws may have been enacted before the 6" century but were probably in force no later than the reign of High King (Ardri) Cormac mac Airt, son or grandson of the legendary Conn of the Hundred Battles (Conn Cétchathach), progenitor of the Ui Néill. 28. An ancient saga tells of Pictish warriors who were allowed to take Irish wives under the proviso that tribal succession would be through the female line. The Norse adopted a similar modus. 29. The Irish genealogies mimicked Matthew 1: 1-17, i.e., Adam and Eve. 30. Male surname prefixes: son (mac); son of the son or grandson (mac meric); great-grandson (hua); and great-great grandson (indau); male descendant (O);

female descendant (Ni). 31. Ogham (Ogam), a runic script based on the Latin alphabet using a series of linear marks to represent the sound values of B, L, F,S, N, D, T, C, M, G, R, A, O, U, E, I, P. Later, H was added as an aspirate as possible use for surnames, usually

found on stone crosses and carvings until the 10" century. Of far greater importance, with the rise of the great Irish Monastic learning centers in the seventh century, was

57

2. Patraic of Armagh Ys S, a Latin alphabet containing the letters AsB¢CsD Ean: G, HoIAL, MaN O.

T, U—used in manuscripts that are now referred to as “Old Irish.” 32. The entire kin-group was responsible for murder within their joint-familiae. The perpetrator made restitution to the victim’s familiae by a paying blood fine (éraic). If the slayer failed to pay the éraic — the sept was liable. 33. Katharine

Simms,

in her essay,

“The

MacMahon

Pedigree:

A Medieval

Forgery” (Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100-1650, ed. David Edwards) clarified this matter. She writes, “The MacMahon themselves were not Anglo-Norman in origin; they were collateral relatives of the O Cearbhaill Kings of Airgialla, whose later medieval genealogies falsely stated that they were directly descended from Donnchadh O Cearbhaill, the twelfth-century ‘High-King of Airgialla’ (d. 1168). The territory of Fearnmhagh anglicized as the barony of Farney, co. Monaghan, not the county of Fermanagh or Fir Manach. By a further falsification, some MacMahon seem to have begun to claim Anglo-Norman origin in the sixteenth century (translating Mac Mathghamhna 'son of the Bear' into Norman French as 'Fitz Urse’), at a time when degenerate Anglo-Normans like the Burkes of Connacht were being re-admitted to full rights under English law, while Gaelic chiefs were still at a disadvantage. On the other hand, as Catholic Anglo-Irish families increasingly made common cause with Gaelic rebels, they devised false Gaelic pedigrees for themselves in the early 17" century, thus the Barnewalls of Meath claimed descent from the 13™ century Connacht royal official Imhar O Beirn (see S. Pender, ed., The O'Clery Book of Genealogies, Analecta Hibernica 18, and N. O Muraile, ed., The Great Book of Genealogies, comp Dubhaltach Og Mac Firbhisigh, c. 1650, 5 vols, De Burca Rare Books). The Dillons of Westmeath claimed descent from Niall of the

Nine Hostages (The Dillon Origin legend was edited by Brian O Cuifv in an article, mentioned in Simms’ 'Bards and Barons' in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay). 34. Cousins of Muiredach Tirech, King of Tara

35. In the aftermath of the 12" century Cambric-Norman invasion, a struggle for control of the patrimonies of the heirs to Niall Noi nGiallach ensued, and Airgrialla

was renamed Oirghialla, later anglicized as Oriel. The Race of Eégan (Cenél nEégain) in Tir Eoghain and Conaill (Cenél Chondill) in Tir Chonaill resisted the

Anglicization of Ireland until the destruction of the Gaelic order in the aftermath of the Treaty of Limerick (Inis Sibton), signed on Sunday, 3 October 1691, and ratified by William

and Mary.

Nevertheless,

in 1697, a Protestant-only

Irish Dublin

Parliament swept the civil and religious rights of Ireland’s Catholic away. 36. These two kingdoms held ancient Ireland’s two most important sites: Tara and Uisnech, the former the pagan sacral epicenter and the latter often called the umbilical cord of Ireland. 37. Apparently, Neill became the first High-King after he conquered the Breg territory, becoming King of Mide as well as Ulaid. 38 In mid-19" century in Germany and England, this suzerain privilege survived.

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2. Patraic of Armagh 39. Coinage was introduced in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) c. 650 BC. 40. About 995, they minted coins in Dublin (Early Christian Ireland, page 38). 41. The House of Hohenzollern solely financed the office of the Kaiser. 42. English: prerequisite. 43. F. J. Byrne, King and High-Kings. 44. English translation: virtue. 45.The blacksmith was a revered hereditary occupation and Ireland was a seafaring nation. Blacksmiths made rivets (nails) for shipbuilding, but more important, they were makers of ploughs and weapons. Blacksmith families became stonecutters and shipwrights. Horseshoes (probably bronze) probably came to Ireland with the 12" century Cambric-Norman invaders. 46. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

47. O Cronin, page 129. 48. On 17 March 1858, Irish nationalists launched the Fenian society, claiming the legacy of Fianna Na hEirann, whose goal was independence from England. 49. Purportedly the Ardri at Tara allowed the use of Lia fail in the coronation of the Irish King of Dal Riata; the stone was never returned. 50. Later, Honorius declared Armorica and Britain independent of Rome.

51. That migrated from north and east of the Rhein River. 52. Gallia Autissiodurum. 53. A possible escape route: Antrim to Derry through Barnesmore Gap, a strategic pass between Connall’s mountain (Croaghconnelagh) and Owens’s mountain (Croaghonagh), into Donegal (Tir Chondill), south through Sligo (Sligeach), thence on to the Wood of Fochoill (Silva Focluti) and Killala Bay (Béal Cille) in Mayo (Maigh Eo), to flee to Armorica. 54. Early monk-saints sought hermitage on Mediterranean islands. The Egyptian-

oriented Martin of Tours was an eremitical on the Island of Gallinaria in the Bay of Genoa. 55. K. Hughes, The Church in Early Ireland, observed that liturgy in the early church was similar to Armorica suggesting, by association, Patraic was at Lérins. 56. Born near the Black Sea (Romania), John Cassian was a disciple of the Syrian John Chrysostomus of Antioch, the Bishop of Constantinople, and Doctor of the Church; thus, he was a proponent of Egyptian (Coptic) eremitical monasticism. 57. Daibhi O Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200, page 206. 58. Son of a Vandal chieftain, later commander in chief of the Roman army and

father-in-law of Emperor Honorius, executed him for alleged conspiracy. 59. Up to the 4" century, the church accepted a mix of married and unmarried clergy but championed voluntary celibacy. After the c.300 Council of Elvira decreed the disciplinary canon abstinere se a conjugibus suis et non generare filos, the church shifted to a policy of celibate bishops, priests, and deacons. This decree was continually reinforced by numerous subsequent synods (Kathleen Hughes, The

59

2. Patraic of Armagh Church in Early Irish Society). 60. In the 19" century, it was renamed “Isle St. Honorat” as a Cistercian monastery.

61. Brother was Saint Fulgentius, Bishop of Astigi; their sister Saint Florentine. 62. He was elected when Bishop Atamor of Auxerre died.

63. Pelagius was a British monk, however, Jerome damned him as being “full of

Scotch (Irish) porridge” (Scottorum pultibus proegravatus). The word Scot was a pejorative expression in Jerome’s time. Thus, he damned Pelagius as both a heretic and marauder. See E. A. Thompson, “Who was Saint Patrick?” 64. There was no need for grace since man could live without sinning. A durable heresy and part of the 16" century Reformation baggage. 65. At the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus, at the urging of Berber Saint Augustine of Hippo, Pelagianism was condemned. 66. Scion of Experantius of Poitiers, who ruled parts of Auxerre. 67. In the late 4" century, Saint Ninian (d. 432) went beyond the Roman frontier and, in 397, founded a monastery dedicated to Saint Martin at Whitehorn (Ad Candidam Casam) to convert the heathen southern Picts. This was when the all of Britain was considered part of the Roman Empire. 68. Founding churches at Fordun and Mearns in Scotland. One intriguing theory is that Pallidus was really Patraic and that, after his failure in southern Ireland, he traveled to Northern Ireland and successfully evangelized the pagans of Ulster. 69. T. F. O’Rahilly’s Early Irish history and mythology expounded a theory that Patraic may have been sent to Ireland generations after the papal archdeacon Pallidus-Patricius. If O’ Rahilly’s hypothesis is true, either Patraic was an old man when he went to Ireland as a missionary bishop or his birth date is erroneous. 70. Lexikon fiir Theologie und Kirche, Volume 7 71. During St. Patraic’s lifetime, there were nine popes: Siricus (384-99); InnocentI (399-401); Zosimus (417-18); Anti-Pope Eulalius (418-19): Boniface I (418-22); Celestine I (422-32); Sixtus III (432-40); Leo I (440-61); and Hilarius (461-468). 72. Flavius Placidus Valentinianus reigned from 425 to 455. 73. Alias Prosper Tiro. 74. In 1172, the Cambric-Norman Hugh deLacy built Trim Castle. 75. Iren und Europe, page 268. 76. First Bishop of Dunslaughlin, or Domhnach-Sechnaill-the Church of Sechnaill near Tara, he was later auxiliary bishop of Armagh and allegedly wrote the

alphabetical hymn “Audites, omnes amantes Deum,” Ireland’s oldest written Latin hymn in honor of Patraic and Sancti, venite, Christi corpus sumite (Attwater 2, Benedictines, Coulson, Delaney, Husenbeth). 77. Others claim her name was Darerea. 78. Founded Killashee (Cill Usasilli) church near Naas (Nas), a Laigin royal site. 79. Legend contends that she was born at Faughart, near Dundalk (Din Dealgan), in Louth (Lugh) or that she was the daughter of Cremthann, the pagan King of double Leinster (ri Diabul-Laigen) responsible for defeating High King (Ardri) Léeguire

60

2. Patraic of Armagh mac Néill, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, at the 461 Battle of Ath Dara. 80. Tirechan, Patraic’s hagiographer, mentions Mel and alludes to contact with Bishop Erc and a meeting between Brigit and Patraic at the Fair of Teltown. 81. St. Kevin (Céemgein) of Glendalough (Glenn-da-Locha) belonged to Uf Garrchon. 82. Department of Old Irish, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare.

Ultan was a Bishop of the Southern Uf Néill thus a quid pro quo logical political motive. 83.Ultan was Bishop of Dal Conchobair and “Brigit bé bithmaith” is the correct title of the hymn. Was the initial hagiographer the monk Aileran Rector of Clonard? 84. Did Cogitosus plagiarize Ultan’s book for his hagiographic “Bethu Brigte” adulation hymn? 85. Werner: “Iren und Angelsachsen in Mitteldeutschland: Zur vorbonifitianischen Mission in Hessen und Thiiringen,“ Die Iren und Europa, Vol. 1. 86. Latin Virgilius; German Virgil. 87. Born at or near Trim in Cenél Logaire, thus kindred of king Loeguire of Tara. 88. Perhaps abbot. 89. This is now an Austrian city. 90. Ingeborg Meyer-Sickendiek, Gottes geleherte Vaganten: Auf den Spuren der irischen Mission und Kultur in Europa. 91. (b. c. 488). 92. Peer Harbison, “Early Irish Churches,” Die Iren und Europa, Vol. 2. 93. Small steep hills. 94.Primogeniture, or the practice of the first born son as sole inheritor, was

never recognized in German lands. 95.A year prior to the Council of Chalcedon, Attila the Hun and his horde crossed

the Rhein River and destroyed Mainz. In June of the following year, he was defeated at Chalon by Roman general Flavius Aétius (d. 454), aided by Visigothic Theodoric I. Attila then turned south and invaded Italy for his famous confrontation with Pope Leo I. Emperor Valentinianus III rewarded Aétius by strangling him with his own hands. The murder of Aétius marked the end of the Roman control of Gaul and Germania. Note: two of Aétius’s loyal bodyguards revenged their leader by murdering Valentinianus on 21 September 455. 96 The Coarb and Airchinnech were usually cadet branch princes of the local ruling dynast. The Coarb was an ecclesiastic lord, and Airchinnech was a lay lord. Séamus Pender, “Coarb, Airchinnech, and the organization of Church Lands,” Irish also Katharine Simms, From Ecclesiastical Records, Vol. XLI (1933). See

Warlords to Kings. 97. Die Iren und Europa, page 306. 98. The Bishops’ Synod: The First Synod of Saint Patrick, page 19. 99. Prosper of Aquitaine, the papal archdeacon and secretary to Pope Celestine I, credits his pope with Ireland’s conversion to Catholic Christianity; this is analogous

61

2. Patraic of Armagh to crediting Pope Gregory the Great with re-conversion of the island Britain, when the real heroes were two monk-bishops: Patraic and Augustine. 100. Ceretic Guletic of “Wales,” a possible Saxon word for “Foreigners Place” in the west, where many displaced Romo-Celts migrated. 101. “But he did no evil to them. Moreover, he inflicted a curse upon Laiges, namely on Laiges of the son of Finn, in the place in which Main Column (‘Columba’s bog’) is to-day. Patraic said that of them there would be neither King nor bishop and it is a foreign prince that will be over them forever. Habit, Brig, daughter of Ferina son of Cobthach, of the Hui Earcain, had gone and declared to

Patraic the wrong intended for him. Patraic bestowed a blessing upon her, upon her father and her brothers, and upon all the Hui Earcain. And Patraic said that they would never lack distinguished laymen and clerics. Then Patraic alighted on the hill that was then named Bile Macc Cruaich (‘the tree of Criach’s Sons’): today,

however, it is called Forrach Patraic (‘Patraic’s meeting-place.’) And Patraic then said that over them there never would be King or a foreign reeve. Should a cow be divide by the King of Laigin in his palace, one of the two forks (two of the four quarters) goes to the King, the other to the King of Hui Earcain. Patraic’s meetingplace they have; Patraic’s measure they have; dignity of laymen and clerics they have; wealth and lastingness are unto them. Eight princes they had till the reign of Conchobar son of Donchad in Tara. Laiges, however, was the tribe

of the boys who did evil. Of them, there will never be King or bishop: a foreign prince should rule them: persecution and complaint shall never cease from them. Patraic went from Tara, and he and Dubthach Macculugair met at Domhnach Mor Maige Criathar in Hui Ceinselaich, Dubthach believed in Patraic. Patraic asked him for a comely youth who should be well born; ‘I desire a man with one wife [1 Tim 3.2], unto whom hath been born only one child.’ ‘Verily,’ saith Dubthach, ‘this is not fortunate for me. Fiacc son of Erc, he, I think, is a man of that description: (but)

he is gone from me into the land of the Connaught-men with bardism for the Kings.’ At these words, Fiacc arrived. Through Dubthach’s cleverness, it is proposed to tonsure him for the clerical order. “What is proposed by you?’ said Fiacc. ‘To make a bishop Dubthach,’ [Latin: cozier] say they. ‘Verily this will be a blemish to the commonwealth,’ saith Fiacc. ‘It is a grief that I am not taken in his place.’ ‘Truly thou wilt be taken,’ saith Patraic. His is tonsured; his is baptized; and alphabet is written for him. He reads his psalms in one day, as hath been handed down to me. He is ordained in the Episcopal rank and the bishopric Laigin is given to him by Patraic; and his only son Fiachri is ordained. So Patraic gives a case of Fiacc (containing) to wit, a bell, a credence-table, a cozier, (and) tablets (one of the names of the tube through which sacramental wine was imbibed, or writing-tablets); and he

left seven of his household with him to wit, My-Catéc and Inis Fail, Augustin of Inish-becc, Tecan, and Diarmait and Naindid and Paul and Fedelmid. He set up after

this at Fiaee’s Church (Domnach Féiee) and he dwelt there till threescore men of his community had fallen beside him. Then came the angel to him and said to him, ‘To

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2. Patraic of Armagh the west of the river (Barrow) in Cuil-maige is they resurrection.’ The place in which they should find the doe, that is should be there that they should set a church (pages 189-91). 102. Some have speculated that this family was descended from Dallan Forgaill, a champion of Columcille, who may have written the famous “a Lament for Columcille” (Amra Colum Cille) in the 7" century; see O Créinin, page 192. On the other hand, Fergus Gillespie: Fearghus Mac Giolla Easpaig in his “Gaelic Famines of County Donegal” (Donegal History & Society, page 806) argues that they were descended from Dallan, son of Eégan, son of Naill Néigiallach, and their original homeland was in Bredagh in Inishowen. 103. Historians have debated the position of the Airchinnech within the Irish monastic system, suggesting his position was often transposable with the Coarb. 104. Ludwig Bieler, Ireland: Harbinger of the Middle Ages, page 99. 105. In the 5th century, the Ui Néill sept from Connaught defeated the Red Branch Knights that resided at Emain Macha and ruled Ireland before the birth of Christ. 106. They abandoned pagan Ailech when they became Kings of Tara 107. John 20: 19-23. 108. In 529, Emperor Justinian the Great claiming that the accepted wisdom of the ancient was detrimental to Catholicism, ordered the closing of the Platonic academy

of Philosophy in Athens, thus bringing to an end twelve centuries of Greek scholarship. 109. Reigned 523-26. The first Pope to journey to Constantinople, at Hagia (Holy) Sophia celebrated Mass in Latin, not Greek, in the presence of Emperor Justin. 110. By 716, the Irish at Iona accepted the new Easter calculation methodology.

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3. Columcille of Donegal

Columcille of Donegal: The Iona Paruchia Let us praise illustrious men, our ancestors in their successive generations. The Lord has created an abundance of glory and displayed his greatness from earliest times. Some wielded authority as kings and were renowned for their strength, others were intelligent advisers and uttered prophetic oracles... (Book of Ecclesiastics 44:1-4) The story of Columcille and the Iona experience is complicated. Thus, before we delve into the story of this great saint we should apprise ourselves with the expansion politics of the northern and southern Irish warlords, especially as they influenced the geo-political situation of Ireland’s closest neighbor, on the northern half of the island of Britain that

embraced Ireland’s name: Scotland. Before 470, Irish Prince Fergus’ Mor mac Eirc, with his two brothers, Loarn and Angus, led an invasion force from the kingdom of Dal Riata, in the Glens of Antrim in Ulster, to the Inner Hebrides islands to

expand their Irish patrimony to contemporary western Scotland”. Their warriors took possession of the Isles of Kintyre, Little Bay (Loarn Oban), Argyll, Angus, Islay, and Jura, becoming part of a greater Irish Ddlraidic kingdom. Within a century, the descendants of Fergus’s brothers, Cenél:

Loairin, nOengusa, and nGabrdin, ruled the twin Irish kingdoms of Dél Riata from Argyll’ and their patrimony expanded on the northwest side of the mainland of the area formerly known as Alba.

In the 9" century, these western isles came under Norse suzerainty and only returned to Scotland as part of the 1266 Treaty of Perth — thus the Scottish link with Norway and Denmark. The

Convention

of

Druim

(Ard

Fheis

Na

Druim

Cett)

acknowledged the Irish settlements in D4l Riata as Scotia Minor‘. Zur Spiritualitét des friihen irischen Ménchtums? lists seven® successes that Columcille achieved at Druim Cett — including Scotia Minor. He brokered an armistice between Ireland and Dal Riata and peace for the sept in their

64

3. Columcille of Donegal

new kingdom. He obtained security for Irish poets and freedom for the hostages held by the son of the Irish Ardri. He freed a priest of demons and made peace with Cumméne. For a thousand years, peoples on both sides of the North Channel traveled to and from Larne (Lathrna) in Antrim or Stranraer in Galloway, Inishowen, Islay, the Western Isles of Arran and Kintyre (Cenn Tire), and

the South Isles. For eons, these peoples often raided, traded, fought, and intermarried with each other before Fergus and his followers established the second Irish kingdom of Dal Riata (contemporary Argyllshire). Irish settlers displaced the native Picts on the Isles of Jura, Islay, and Kintyre, whose chief town, Kilkerran (named after the tha century Saint Ciaran),

was renamed Campbelltown after the notorious Clan Campbell, whose leader became the powerful Earl of Argyll. Clan Argyll was a key player in the history of Scotland and 17" century Ireland. In the 6" century, Irish-Scot war parties expanded the kingdom of Dal Riata to the east and south. The displaced Picts began raiding south of Hadrian’s Wall into the Lowland areas inhabited by Romo-Celts. By the 7” century, control of the northern part of the Island of Britain (Scotland) splintered. Britons ruled Strathclyde, south of Dumfries

and Glasgow,

in the southwest.

The

Irish-Scots

of Dal Riata ruled

Glasgow, Isles of Arran, Kintyre, Islay, Jura, Mull, Glencoe, and all the

isles and highlands west of the Grampian Mountains. The northern Picts of Fife ruled Tayside and east Grampian Mountains in the northwest. The Germanic Angles ruled from the Firth (Edinburgh, Lothian) to the Tweed

River in the southeast.

In southern Ireland, the Déisi crossed the channel trying to colonize Devon. Others crossed the Ictian Sea English Channel, to land near the Gulf

warlords of Laigin and Mumu Dyfed in Wales, Cornwall, and (Muir nIcht), the contemporary of Saint Malo and settle on the

Armorica (Bretagne) coastal plain near Dol and Dinan, where in a future

century, a Seneschal, Flaad fitzAlan was born, the progenitor of the Royal Scottish House of Stewart.

After the departure of the Romans, the Britons faced continuous invasions from Northern Scots and Picts. From the east, the Britons faced

65

3. Columcille of Donegal incursions from scattered tribes of Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and Franks from the continent.

In 834, Cinded mac Ailpin — Kenneth Mac Ailpin succeeded his father as King of Galloway. In 841, Cinded, as King of Dal Riata, defeated the Picts and about 846, forced the Picts of Alba into a single kingdom with his Scots of Ireland. He accepted the Pictish succession modus by right of female lineage, thereby establishing the kingdom of Scotland, with its royal capital at Scone. In the same century, Norse invaders began settlements in the Western Isles and intermarried with the Dél Riata Gaels. Their descendants returned to Ireland as axe-wielding mercenaries’ gall-6glaigh’ fighting on behalf Ulster’s Gaelic chiefs against the ambitions of the Anglo-Norman-Irish dynasts. Columcille

was

born

about

521° near

Gratan

Lough,

in Tir

Chondill,’ the scion of a royal house of Cenél Chondill, descendants of

Niall Noi nGiallach.'° Thus, he was a blood relative of the powerful Northern Ui Néill dynasts. The name Columcille transliterates from Irish as “Dove of the Church” (Latin: Columba). Some historians add the Elder to distinguish him from Columbanus, whom they call the Younger. The

historical standard on the life of Columcille remains Vita Colum Cillee", written in 697 by Adomnan,

a descendant of Colum Cille’s uncle Sétna,

on Iona. This hagiography, may have been written, for the Synod of Birr, to commemorate the centenary of Columcille’s death. Muircht, a hagiographer of Saint Patrick, also attended the Synod of Birr. He is on the list of guarantors of the Law of the Innocents!* — Céin Adomnan, forbidding the harming of clergy, women, and children during wars. In 679, the 52-year old Adomndn became the ninth Comarba Columcille. A skilled churchman and diplomat who, in 687, on behalf of the Southern Ui Néill, negotiated with the Iona-educated Northumbrian

king Aldfrith'’ (685-704) for the release of sixty hostages taken by king Ecgfrith'* during a 685 pre-emptive raid on Brega. The purpose of this raid put the Ui Néill “on-notice” not to support the Ddlraidic kings against Northumbrian interests. This relationship between Adomnén and Aldfrith, led to Northumbria again becoming part of the Délraidic-Ui Néill politico orbit and thus a member of the Columban familiae paruchia.

66

3. Columcille of Donegal

During Adomn4n’s early tenure, Arculf, a Frankish bishop from Gaul, shipwrecked on Iona while returning to Europe from the Holy Land. Alfred P. Smyth’? wrote that Arculf provided Adomnén a history of the Holy Places written on wax tablets about the Near East and Byzantine Empire. This history did not mention Ephesus, where Mary — the mother of Jesus — was supposed to have spent her last days on earth. Adomndn copied Arculf’s history and provided it to his ally, king Aldfrith of Northumbria. Smyth relates that this was the basis of a Coptic influence within the Columban familiae, perhaps ignoring that within the Gallic and Irish church—and certainly at Iona—there had traditionally been an undercurrent of Coptic, Syrian, and Byzantine stimuli, especially with the veneration of Mary. The Book of Iona, also known as Book of Kells and on stone monuments within the Columban paruchia articulated these motifs. A key element of the Irish monastic movement in the British Isles and on the European continent was propagating the veneration of Mary. In later centuries, the great Irish learning centers at Bobbio, Corbie, Freising, Jumiéges, Luxeuil, Péronne, Reichenau, Saint Gall, and Salzburg

propagated the veneration of Mary. Reputedly, Ireland’s oldest hagiographic praise poem is the Life of Saint Brigit — Vita Brigitae, written c. 660, by Cogitosus of Ui Failgi (Kildare). Tirechan and Muirchi moccu

Mochtheni

(Down) wrote their

praises of Saint Patraic, in 675 and 690 respectively. This is a curious claim since an unknown author wrote in 597 the oldest surviving praise poem, Amra Coluim Cille, in the year of the saint’s death. Others suggest that Adomn4n plagiarized an earlier praise poem, “Liber de virtutibus Columbae,”

written between 657-69, by Cumméne

Ailbe (Find), the 1

Coarb Columcille, to pen his “Vita Colum Cillee” in an attempt to shield Familiae Columcille in the aftermath of the 664 Synod of Whitby débdacle. It is unsurprising that the hagiographies of Patraic, Brigit, and Columcille materialized within decades of each other, during an age of political and ecclesiastical conflict in Ireland, in the late 7" century. The Armagh primacy advocates accused Columcille’s early biographers of promoting his saintliness as counterpoint to doggerels of praise about Saint Patrick and Brigit. There may be a grain of truth to these accusations, suggesting that the Armagh — Cenél gEdgan — advocates of

67

3. Columcille of Donegal Patraic likely ‘huckstered’ disinformation about Columcille Derry — Cenél gConaill — advocates were their political rivals.

since their

Throughout the century, a quarrel raged between the Kildare (Leinster) champions of Saint Brigit’® and their Armagh (Ulster) counterparts for the recognition of Patraic as Ireland’s patron saint. This dispute was about the ecclesiastical supremacy over the churches of Ireland. Finally, Kildare accepted the primacy of Patraic and Armagh recognized Brigit as the primary saint of Leinster. Thus, Patraic became de facto the patron saint of a united Catholic Ireland.

In the 7" century, the papacy had big problems: the African church in the face of the Islam onslaught disintegrated — angst reverberated across the southern Mediterranean. Catholic Christianity was in retreat! The

four

bishop-tutors

of Columcille

were

members

of Ui

Cruithnechén: Finnian'’ of Moville, followed by Gemméan, Finnian of Clonard, and finally Moébhi of Glasnevin, who consecrated Columcille a

deacon. Some suggest that the two Finnian'® bishops were one person. In addition, Finnian'’ of Clonard was the teacher of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise

(Clud4in moccu N6is) and Columcille of Iona (Hy). It is speculated that

Finnian of Moville introduced the letter of James 5:16°° as the biblical

basis for the Irish concept of private confession between monks, called Soul Friend (Anam Cara). Columcille initiated Anam Cara to Dél Riata,

later the wandering monks of Europe, such as Columbanus introduced Anam Cara into Merovingian Europe, where it was condemned by the Frankish as profane. The influence of James’ letter and the establishment of Anam Cara suggests a reason why many continental ecclesiastical sites founded by Irish monks were dedicated to Saint James the Elder. In any case, the church adopted the Irish modus of aural confession as its universal tenet of “Reconciliation with Christ.”

One legend claims that Aéd”' mac Ainmerech of Tir Chonaill, heir designate to the king of Ailech (Ténaiste rig na Ailech), offered his cousin Columcille a fortress at Derry (Daire Calgach) to use as a monastery. Upon receiving this gift, Columcille set the fortress on fire to purge the site of its worldliness. Could the original fortress be the site of the Black Abbey of Derry? Is this proof that Columcille was the actual the founder

68

3. Columcille of Donegal

of Derry? Other annals (post Whitby) credit Fiachrach mac Ciaran mac Ainmerech as the founder of Derry. In another legend, the monk Finnian,

a member of the West Meath

Clann Cholméin” was involved in the accusation that Columcille of Cenél Chondill”* clandestinely copied a Psalter written by Martin of Tours that Finnian allegedly brought from Whitehorn.” Columcille claimed that he obtained the Psalter during a visit to Tours. Finnian brought the matter

before the Southern Ui Néill dynast Diarmait mac Cerbaill” king of West Meath and Tara, for adjudication. Diarmait decided in favor of his kinsman, Finnian, with the judgment, “To every cow its calf, to every book its copy” (Le gach a boin, le gach Leabhar a Leabhrdn), thus equating the copying of the book to the rustling of cattle — a heinous offense under Brehon law — it was history’s first copyright litigation. The Northern Ui Néill warlords saw Diarmait’s iniquitous judgment as a politically motivated affront to their race and grounds for hostilities purportedly urged on by Columcille’s admonishment, “The wrong decision of the judge is a raven's call to battle.” This resulted in the 561 Battle of Cul Dreimne, fought near Benbulben in contemporary County Sligo, where a Northern Ui Néill alliance (relatives of Columcille) defeated High-King Diarmait mac Cerbaill and his allies. It is tidy to think of Cul Dreimne as defending the honor of the Northern Ui Néill; its political overtones cannot be set aside in an age when the kings of Cenél gConaill and Cenél gEégan were vying to expand their power base in Ailech to control all of Northern Ireland, a struggle that lasted centuries.

Columcille’s’ alleged copyright misdeed and his subsequent incitement to war were prime issues at the 562 fair of Teltown (Oenach Tailten), in Meath (Mide). The fair was an annual event hosted by the Irish High Kings of the Northern and Southern Ui Néill, with all Irish sub-kings and their loyal clergy in attendance. Its purpose was to adjudicate significant domestic, as well as political (and ecclesiastical”°?), disputes with decisions based on Brehon law. Teltown was a venue for trading and payment of debts among various septs. Apparently, at Teltown, Columcille’s only ecclesiastical ally was Brendan of Birr (Bréndan Birra). Unsurprisingly, Clann Cholmfin, ecclesiastics supported their king in all allegations brought against Columcille. Adomnan_ relates how the

69

3. Columcille of Donegal eloquence of arguments put forth by Saint Brendan convinced the synod to impose banishment on Columcille as an alternative to excommunication. In 563, Columcille, along with twelve companions” and near relatives, sailed in coracles, first to Rathlin Island and thence to the Isle of

Hy (Iona), near the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides” off the west coast of Scotland. There they established a monastic foundation of ascetic monks not unlike the Lérins abbey. This is reminiscent of the legend that describes Honoratus sailing the Mediterranean Sea with his close companions, landing on [les de Lérins and founding his illustrious monastery, whose monks would have a profound impact on the Roman church throughout the Middle Ages.

Obviously, Columcille’s enterprise to evangelize the Northern Picts had the approval of his kinsmen in the dual Délraidic kingdom.” Noteworthy is that Saint Comgall of Bangor, Patron of Dal nAraide, and Columcille were friends.

During this period, King Lothair and seven Cruthin kings were killed in the Battle of Moneymore (Méin Dairi), devastating their dynasty. This permitted the Northern Ui Néill alliance to expand its hegemony to west of the Bann River. In 565, Ulaid king Aéd Dub mac Suibni slew High King Diarmait mac Cerbaill. On

Iona,

Columcille

established

a

scriptorium

that

served

multipurpose duties. The monks maintained astrological reckoning tables to compute the Féilire (calendar) date of the paschal fest of Easter, Christendom’s most important day. They copied important Psalters-the biblical books of Psalms—the monks were the copying machines of the monastery.

They

also

maintained monastic

records,

such

as

abbatial

succession and other significant events. Thus began the systematic recording of history. After the Abbot and Airchinnech, the most important and probably the most learned monk in the monastery was the chief scribe (scriba) that became the primary teacher within the Abbey — the origins of “Man of Letters.” Monks carried small knives to trim their quills — these ‘pocket knives’ are still called ‘pen knives.’

The archconservative Columban

ideals spread from Iona to the

chain of islands in the Hebrides, such as Tiree and Hinba in Dél Riata and

70

3. Columcille of Donegal

Applecross, Deer, Eigg and Skye. This ideal spread eastward into the Pictish territories on the mainland, and into southern Ireland. On the island

of Britain, these ideals found acceptance among the Romo-Britons

in

Wales, the Germanic Angles north of Umber River (Northumbria), and the

Germanic Heptarchy””’ on the island. Tona was the Mother Abbey matrix ecclesia’ of the Iro-Columban familiae monastic ideal that manifested itself in Irish monks becoming Exiles for Christ-perigrinare pro Christo” with a mission to spread the biblical Good News, following the calling cited in Luke 9:23; 14:33; 14:27

and Matthew 16:24. Irish monks left Ireland, just as Abraham left Chaldea*’, to re-evangelize Frankish-Europe. In their piety, they imitated the Eastern founding father of monasticism, frequently retiring to an isolated hermitage, reminiscent of the desert fathers in ancient Egypt. Hence, the word disert found its way into the Irish vocabulary. On Iona, as in all religious foundations during this age, Mass (Irish: Oifrend) was celebrated on Sunday only with the liturgy of Easter. Bieler states that Irish monks celebrated three types of Mass: One for feast of the saints, one for penitents on earth and one for the dead. Further, after

marauding Picts slew Saint Donnan and fifty-one monks on Hebridean Isle of Eigg, during or after the celebration of the Mass. Abbot Fergna-Virgno commemorated this martyrdom with a special Mass for All the Saints of Europe on 17 April 617 at Iona — the first instance of All Hollows Day. There is also the suggestion that the 1 November Feast of All Saints is of Irish origin. Columcille and his monks did not live in a communal environment but in individual cells. Mortification of the flesh was part of their penitential practice. Irish Penitential became a part of all ecclesiastical foundations founded by Irish monks on the island of Britain and the European continent. In addition, the Irish monks wore a distinctive tonsure

(corann), completely shaving their head, from the forehead to the crown, and allowing the hair to grow long at the back of the head.

Augustine of Hippo authored Ordo Joti. (Monastic Order) between 397-99, known as Regula Secunda™ in the Middle Ages. This influenced the later hierarchal order of the church including the he century, Spanish and Gallic ecclesiastical writers had an enduring Tt

3. Columcille of Donegal influence on the hierarchal ranking of church offices—from doorkeeper to bishop—influencing the ordinals of the Latin Church in Ireland and Britain as well as Germanic hegemonic ambitions as far as Rome. In the 7" century, the great Spanish prelate Isidore of Seville (b. 560, d. 636) wrote a twenty-volume treatise called Origines® and a sixvolume De ecclesiasticis officiis dealing with the hierarchal order of grades in the chronological Order of Christ: doorkeeper, exorcist, acolyte, lector-psalmist, including cantor, precentor, and succentor, sub-deacon,

deacon, presbyter, and bishop. Isidore wrote Etymologiae, the etymology of the names of the officers and the description of the origins, duties, and requisite qualities of the ordinands. This complemented the earlier pseudoHieronymian De Septem Ordinibus Ecclesiae, a bogus Jerome tract written in the early 5" century and later used to challenge the decrees of the second

Council

of Seville

(618-19)

on establishing

seminaries

to

combat the reappearance of Arianism in Spain. Seemly the hierarchal position of the acolyte was contentious. It is suspected that Isidore probably authored De officiis vii graduum, re-identifying seven*® grades of hierarchal church offices—doorkeeper, lector, exorcist, acolyte subdeacon, deacon,>’ presbyter, and bishop—that list the acolyte above the

lector during a clerical argument on the positions of the lower and higher ecclesiastical grades in life of the church. The Hiberno-Hispanic linkage concerning monastic hierarchal positions might predate Isidore,” leaving an interesting and unanswered question: Did the disciplinary, doctrinal, and ordinal canons written by Gennadius of Marseilles (d. 492 or 505) in his c. 470 eight-volume Latin treatise Adversus omnes haereses and Liber sive diffinito ecclesiasticorum dognatum serve as the basis fpr the Irish canonical Collectio hibernensis (Irish Penitentials) became a template for the very important protoPontificals Penitentials, Pontificale romano-germanicum, and Ordinals of Christ? In the Irish monastic

movement,

Collectio hibernensis

was the

basis for appointing offices, listing the doorkeeper as the person responsible for ringing the bell to mark the canonical hours, and listing the exorcist below the lector.

Later Egbert of York used Collectio hibernensis

to write his

Pontifical. Egbert’s pupil, Alcuin, Deacon of York (b. 735; d. 804), met

Charlemagne (b. 768; d. 814) in Rome in 781 and accepted the position as Te

3. Columcille of Donegal principal teacher at the imperial court at Aachen. Alcuin used Collectio hibernensis because of their European-wide distribution. Abridged in the 9 and 10™ centuries, they were the ecclesiastical matrix for revaluating hierarchal ordinals, leading to a renaissance in the Latin Church known as the Carolingian Renaissance,” or more accurately the Carolingian Romanization of the Western Eucharistic Rite, suggesting their use in compiling the thirty-four canons of the 813 Council of Mainz. They almost certainly provided the foundation of the subsequent Lex Baiuwariorum used by the churches in Bavaria (Austria) and Bohemia.

The Italo-Hibernian Ordinals of Christ probably developed after the construction of the Monastery of Bobbio, founded by Saint Columbanus. Saints Columbanus greatest Irish saints.

and

Virgilus

of Salzburg

were

Europe’s

One of the great papal challenges in the medieval church was persuading Angle-Saxon, Germanic, Hispanic (Léon-Castile), Irish, Romano-Gallic, and Southern Italian clerics accept a universal modus regarding hierarchal orders and ordination rites within the Roman Catholic Church. Besides the offices of Coarb Columcille and Airchinnech*, Maire

Herbert identified the hierarchal order*' in the Iona paruchia, e.g., Kells, and Derry”. Hereditary abbot comarba; lector fer léiginn, priest sagart; resident administrator or superior fo Airchinnech; porter aistire; head of

the hermitage disert; superior of students taisech na scoldc/ toisech na macc légind; chief celebrant of canonical hours taisech celebarta, superior of the guest house airchinnech thige oeigid; and prior secnab. Tdnaisteacht was the electoral basis for office of prior Tdnaiste abb.

Contrary to the Order of Saint Benedict, Iona did not closely supervise its Columban familiae paruchia” thus abbeys operated semiautonomously, resulting in a common monastic deficit throughout 6" century Europe that unfavorably affected church unity. Thus, in the 7” century, when the Order of Saint Benedict with it modus of centralized supervision was introduced, the papacy endorsed it because it provided a monastic stability complementing the unrelenting goal of maintaining (f

3. Columcille of Donegal church unity. However, it was only in the 9" century, during the reign of Emperor Charlemagne that an imperial edict was issued from Aachen, decreeing that the Order of Saint Benedict became a church-wide monastic standard.

Aside from their absolute loyalty to the papacy, the Benedictines had an organizational profile distinctive from Columbans. All Benedictine foundations were under the centralized supervision of the Archabbot of Monte Casino. Prior to the Synod of Whitby, all Columban foundations

were ostensibly under the guidance of the Iona paruchia. One of the endemic weaknesses in the Irish social order was a profound lack of a centralized authority in their ecclesiastical and political sphere. The inability to organize under a single leader would have dire consequences for Ireland, making it prototypical for the politics of divide & conquer. Towards the late Middle Ages, historians divided Ireland’s five provinces into two competing socio-political spheres: the territorial hegemonies of Leth Cuinn and Leth Moga”. Politically and ecclesiastically, Columban monasticism was a Leth Cuinn phenomena, while Benedictine monasticism was supreme in Leth Moga. As monastic foundations grew in power and prestige, they evolved as political and ecclesiastical power centers, becoming a much-soughtafter prize by foreign and homegrown aggressors. Naturally, provincial kings and their clients had no qualms about manipulating abbatial succession to ensure that monastic foundations remained under control of their familiae. The cadet branch of a regal familiae usually became its monastic branch, occupying abbatial positions of religious foundations under patrimonial control. However, if a monastery was rich, a powerful taoiseach, or king, had no qualms of assuming the title of abbot. In 635, an Irish monk

named Aidan, from Iona, established the

monastery on the island of Lindisfarne. He persuaded Hilda of Hartlepool, a kinswoman of King Oswiu of Northumbria, to become a nun and later abbess of the great double abbey at Streaneshalch”’, alias Whitby.

74

3. Columcille of Donegal Other important Columban monasteries on the island of Britain were at Glastonbury (Glasimpere na nGéedel) on the Ouse River in York; Jarrow

on the Tyne River; Wearmouth,

Ripon on the Ure River; and

Melrose on the Tweed River. By the mid-7" century, most of the monasteries in Britain were Columban. The late Sir Frank Stanton accurately described the Irish contribution thus: “The strands of Irish and continental influences were interwoven in every kingdom, and at every stage of the process by which the English became Christian.” Jona-trained, wandering Irish Monks brought the Columban ideal to Germanic-Europe and all the way to the gates of Rome. To the exasperation of those studying Irish history, Columban related foundations built in territories under the suzerainty of Germanic warlords are Schottenkldsters. Perhaps the Germans are still unaware that the Irish were called “Scots” up to the Tie century. Ethnically, the people of Dal Fiatach and D4l Riata were of the race of Erainn. Béetén

mac

Cairill, King of Ulaid, sought to exert his

suzerainty over Dal Riata and the Isle of Man*’. The 12™ century Annals of Ulster records that in 575, Baetan mac Ninnedo, the Cenél gConaill King of Ailech and High King of the Norther Ui Néill, hosted the great Convention of Druim Cett at Mullagh.*® Apparently, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, King of Clann Cholmdéin and Mide, was present. Adomnan relates that before Druim Cett, Columcille OSS his cousin Aedan mac Gabrdin as King of Dél Riata at Iona*’. This was the first recorded sacral Christian ordination of an Irish king. Evidently, the Druim Cett venue was the site of numerous important events: 1. Aedén mac Gabrdin, the King of Scottish Dal Riata hosted Fiachnae mac Bdetdan, the Dal Fiatach King of Ulster in order to discuss military obligations; 2. Aedén mac Gabrdin had done homage to Bdetén mac Cairill at Island Magee-Rinn Seimne, near Larne. This may have prompted Aedan and Aed mac Ainmuirech to use the Druim Cett opportunity to conclude an alliance between Cenél gConaill and Dal Riata thus marginalizing the military prowess of mac Béetdn; the Cenél gConaill—Dal Riata alliance lasted until the 637 Battle of Moria (Mag Roth) in County Down; and

75

3. Columcille of Donegal 3. King Aed mac Ainmuirech threatened to banish all Irish poets (filid), a decision probably instigated by the church, which viewed poets as the last vestige of Tara paganism. Columcille effectively defended the poets, and in gratitude, Dallan Forgaill wrote a praise poem (Amra) that gave Columcille the sobriquet the Poet Saint. Logically his defense of poets laid the foundation for the establishment of the great Irish scriptoriums. About 600 Latin manuscripts of Psalms, called the Cathach”® of

Columcille, at Ilona, penned (probably) by this great saint. Sadly, only 58 of estimated

110 vellum leaves have survived the centuries, the oldest

surviving text in Ireland. Of the surviving Iona, these manuscripts are the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

During the 9" century, Viking raids devastated Iona several times. The monks took this manuscript to the safety of the Columban monastery at Kells (Meath) on mainland Ireland. Consequently, the famous Book of Kells is in reality the Book of Iona.

Apparently, Columcille did not speak the language of the Northern Picts and had to use an interpreter. In addition, his relation with the Pictish and Gallo-Roman warlords appears to have been limited. Nonetheless, all abbots of the Iona used their close relationship with the Irish warlords in the Dalraidic power base to support their evangelization of the Pictish and Gallo-Roman tribes in Scotland. Upon the death of Columcille, his first cousin Baithin became the first Comarba Columcille of Iona.

The greatest legacy of the intrepid Irish monks of Iona is that they reclaimed the Island of Britain for Catholic Christianity.

76

3. Columcille of Donegal ill D J 1. One of the six sons of King Erc of Dal Riata. 2. Historians discount Irish seafaring competence, ignoring that the island nation of Ireland used their sea skills to invade foreign areas, to plunder or to establish settlements. 3. Argyll transliterates to “Eastern province of the Gael”. A geographic footprint of the Dalraidic kingdom encompassed: a line from Loch Lomond, at the end of Firth of Clyde — northwest to Loch Linne (Fort Williams) — westwards to the Ardnamurchan peninsula and Isles of Coll and Tiree — south, including Isles of Mull, Iona, Colonsay, Jura, Islay, Texa, the Kintyre peninsula, and Isle of Arran — up Firth of Clyde, including the Isle of Cumbrae to Loch Lomond. Subsequently other Ulaid warlords sent settlers to inhabit the northern chain of islands of the Inner Hebrides. 4. Ireland: “Scotia Major.” 5. Hermann J. Vogt, Die Iren und Europa, page 36. 6. The number seven appears frequently in early Irish history. 7. Two most powerful gall-6-glaigh clans were Clan Mac Sweeny of Kintyre, alias Mac Sweeny of the Territories (MacSuibhne na dTuath), the hereditary gall6-glaigh captains of the O'Donnell (O Domnaill) Princes of Tir Conaill. By intermarriage, they became Lords of Fanad in Tir Chonaill. Clan MacDonnell (Mac Domhnaill) of Islay were hereditary gall-6-glaigh captains to the O'Neill

(ONéill) Princes of Tir Eéghain.

8. A generation after Saint Benedict died, but before the birth of Columbanus. 9. Contemporary northwest Donegal. 10. He was also a related to the royal house of Dal Riata. 11. Other

significant works

include

the following:

Manas

O Dénaill,

Betha

Colaim Chille: Life of Colum Cille (1918), ed. and trans. A. O’ Kelleher and G. Schoepperle (rated as the best modern work); Maire Herbert, Jona, Kells, and Derry (1988); Brian Lacey, Colum Cille and the Columban Tradition (1998); William Reeves, The Life of St. Columcille, founder of Hy; Father John Colgan, Tiadia Thaumaturgae seu divorum Patricii Columbae et Brigade trium veteris et maioris Scotiae, seu Hiberniae, sanctorum insulae, communium patronorum.

12. Lex innocentium. 13. His mother was supposedly an Irish princess. 14. A natural son of Oswui, King of Bernicia (Northumberland

and Durham),

and a Ui Néill princess. On the 641 death of his brother Oswald, he gained the throne, defeating and killing King Penda in 655. Mercia and Deira (Yorkshire) as were united as Northumbria under one king (655-70). Oswui suzerainty included Deira, Mercia; South and East Angles; East Saxons and the Britons, and the

Scots. He presided at the 664 Synod of Whitby. 15. “The World of Adomnan,” Warlord and Holy Men.

i

3. Columcille of Donegal 16. Father (Ulster); mother (Leinster). She was born in the disputed area of Mide-Lagin. 17. He probably studied at the Whitehorn (Candida Casa), a monastery founded by Saint Ninian in Galloway.

18. Alias Finnbar or Vinnian.

f

19. At Llancarfan, he studied under Cadog the Wise (497-580), later Oengus Nic (or Oengus Ailche) of Lagin.

20. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed the fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.” 21. Some refer to him as king but the kings list refers to Baetan mac Ninnedo as King of Ailech and High King of the Northern Ui Néill. 22. A member of the Southern Ui Néill. 23. A member of the Northern Ui Néill. 24. Saint Ninian preached to the Picts, a century prior to Columcille. 25. He was the great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages; his moniker was “crooked mouth.” Dal Fiatach fell within the patrimony of Mide. 26. It is doubtful that a formal church synod at the annual fair of Teltown took place since the 6" century Irish church was organized. 27. These twelve men formed the nucleus of what is called White Martyrdom, a sobriquet alluding to Irishmen that left Ireland to serve the Catholic Christian Church, never to return. Some cousins accompanied Columcille.

One of these

was Baithéne as Tanaiste Abb, who became the first Coarb Columcille. 28. These islands were part of the kingdom of Dal Riata. 29. Rivals of Clann Cholmdin. 30. Angles, Saxons, Jutes (Frankish allies) patrimonies: Wessex, Sussex; Kent,

Essex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria; separate kingdoms. 31. Word used by Adomnan

Deira & Bernicia were often

to describe Iona, ref: Das Kloster Iona und seine

Verbindung mit dem Kontinent in siebten und achten Jahrhundret. 32. The spirit of Matthew 28: 16-20 were considered Deorad De — God’s Exiles 33. Genesis 12: 1. 34. Vita Regularis: Ordnungen and Deutingen religiosen Lebens in Mittelalter, Albrecht Diem Das Monastische Experiment, Vol. 24. 35. Roger E. Reynolds, Clerical Orders in the Early Middle Ages. And die irische Kononensammlung (1885),:Dr. Frederich Wilhelm Hermann Wasserschleben, Prof. of Canon Law and Chancellor, University of Giessen, Germany.

36. Obviously eight - but strangely they are always called the seven ordinals. 37. In at least one (sixth? or seventh? century) tract, the position of gravedigger is listed, but later the burial of the dead became one of the principal duties of the deacon. One of the chief duties of the bishop was baptizing converts.

78

3. Columcille of Donegal 38. Accused of semi-Pelagianism and compared to Jerome (b. 343; d. 420), a.k.a. Hieronymus of Stridon (Prof. D. G. Kriiger, “De Viris Inlustribus,“ sammlung ausgewdhlter kirchen-und dogmengeschichtlicher Queellenschriften, 1895).

39. Pépin and Charlemagne sanctioned the imposition of the Roman rite in the Frankish church as a means of jettisoning all Gallic ecclesiastical influences. 40. In Latin, these lay lords administrators of monastery lands were princeps. 41. Maire Herbert, “Iona Kells and Derry: the History and hagiography of the monastic familiae of Columcille,” pages 98-100. 42. The history and hagiography of the monastic familiae of Columba. 43. An abbey network supervised by a central foundation — an abbatial diocese. 44. Leth Cuinn was comprised of Tara (Temair), its capital; Connaught Connachta, Ulster Ulad; and Meath Mide. Leth Cuinn was ruled by the descendants of Conn of a Hundred Battles Conn Cétchathach, an ancestor of the

Ui Néill. The Leth Cuinn religious houses belonging to the Iona paruchia were: Derry Daire; Raphoe Rdith Both; Drumhome Duim Thuama; Swords Sords; Skreen Scrin; Monasterboice Mainistir Buite,; Drum Cliff Druim Cliab; Tory

Island Oiledn Toraigh; Assylin Ess mac nEricc; and Druim Monach (Fermanagh?). Leth Moga was comprised of Cashel Caisel Muman, its capital; Munster Mumu; and Leinster Laigin. Munster was divided into five regions: Killaloe and Kilfenora (North Munster or Thomond — Tuadmumu); Cashel, Ossory,

Waterford, and Lismore (East Munster or Ormond — Aurmumu); Limerick and Emly (Mid-Munster — Medén Muman,; Cork, Cloyne, and Ross (South Munster

or Desmond — Desmumu; and Ardfert or Kerry (West-Munster — Jarmumu). Ossory Osraige — a buffer Kingdom between Munster and Leinster. Leth Moga was ruled by Mug Nuadat, descendants of the Race of the Eéganachta. The principal Columban foundations in Leth Moga were Durrow Dairmag; Kells Cenannas; Moone Mden; Clonmore Cludin Mor, and Lambay Island Rechra; Aed man Brénainn, king of Tethbae, gave Durrow to Columcille.

45. Where the Columban church submitted to papal obedience. 46. Anglo-Saxon England, page 125. 47. Francis J. Byrne, Irish Kings and High Kings. 48. Alias Daisy Hill near Limavady in County Derry. 49. When Aed was taoiseach, Columcille was his Anam cara (confessor). Aed, a great-grandson of Fergus Mor macEaraca, purportedly wed a Pictish princess. 50. Brian Lacey amends Adomndn, arguing that Columcille founded only Durrow (Offlay) and Drumhome (Duim Thuama) in south Donegal.

1.

4, Columbanus and Gregory the Great

Columbanus and Gregory the Great: Irish Exiles on the Continent In the fullest sense of the phrase, Columban was Ireland’s first European. Poet, scholar, abbot, preacher, saint, cofounder of western monasticism, associate of kings,

correspondent of popes, he was the centre of controversy in his own day and has gone on generating argument ever . since. (Monsignor Tomas O Fiaich’ “Columbanus in His Own Words”) About three years after the death of Saint Columbanus’, Jonas of Susa°

joined the Columban monastery at Bobbio. Between 639 and 643, this same monk—now called Jonas of Bobbio—wrote the hagiography Vita Columbani abbatis dicipulorumque eius, not unlike Adomnan’s doggerel of praise to Columcille to commemorate the greatest of all European saints’. Intriguingly, the name “Dove” in Hebrew is Jonas; in Irish: Colm, Colmén and in Latin: Columba, Columban and Columbanus. According to

Albrecht Diem’, Jonas had contact with the illustrious abbey of Iles de Lérins. Columbanus’s late 6th century quest to re-conquer the European continent for Christ would prove to be a daunting task because, a century prior, Germanic warlords had become the new aristocracy of Gaul, and this former Roman province was in a continuous state of political chaos caused by competing Germanic tribes preoccupied with consolidating their newly won territories.

This all began in 406, when the Rhein River froze, allowing the Alamanni

warlord

Crocus

to lead hordes

of Alans,

Suevi,

and

other

Germanic tribes across this natural barrier into Gaul, destroying the Roman citadel at Mainz°-castrum Moguntiacum, pillaging the area, and killing all its inhabitants, including Bishop Aureus, whom Crocus personally murdered. Next, the city of Trier, the Roman administrative center of Gaul, suffered the same fate. It was not long before inter»

80

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great

Germanic warfare began for supremacy of Gaul. Finally, the Salian’ Franks led by their warlord Merovech, defeated the Alamanni and their allies,

emerged

as

dominant

in Gaul.

That

said

it was

Merovech’s

grandson Clovis‘I, son of Childeric, King of Austrasia at Tournai’, who is the founder of the Merovingian Empire. At twenty, this hooligan, with his fierce warriors, invaded northern Gaul (Armorica) to fight Syagrius the Gallo-Roman strongman at Soissons-Suessiones. During the ensuing battle, Syagrius’ Frankish mercenaries deserted and joined Clovis. Syagrius fled to Alaric II, King of the Visigoths, who had promised him protection. Cross and double-cross. In 487, Alaric II delivered Syagrius to Clovis, who promptly had him murdered. Seven years later, the duplicitous Clovis defeated the Visigothic army and personally killed Alaric II, becoming the Master of Gaul — with the exception of Burgundy and Provence. However, Clovis had many wars to fight and victory was never a sure thing. Legend tells us that before resuming hostilities against the Alamanni, Clovis swore to convert to Catholic Christianity if he were victorious. He defeated the Alamanni, forcing them south, where they began settling along the lower Neckar-Rhein valley in a geographical area encompassing Breisgau (Black Forest area), Bregenz, Lake Constance (Bodensee), Allgau, Vosges, and lower Danube (Donau) valley. This area is contemporary Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland.

This is a polite political yarn. The probable truth is that Clovis was perceptive enough to realize that he needed an alliance with the Catholic Church to retain control of his territory. In practical terms, realpolitik — not divine intervention — goaded Clovis to embrace Catholicism. It probably involved a nuptial stipulation that he had to embrace Christianity in order to marry Clotilda, the Catholic niece of Gundobald and Godegesil, joint-kings of Burgundy. In any case, on Christmas day 496, Remigius, the Metropolitan of Belgica Secunda (Reims), baptized Clovis and 3,000 of his ruffians. Remigius hailed this thug as the New Constantine'® for having the Franks collectively accept baptism. This was a significant victory for the Church of Rome; its new ally was the most powerful of all Germanic tribes. Moreover, the Franks were the only German tribe to convert directly to Catholic Christianity — other tribes remained Arian Christians.

81

4, Columbanus and Gregory the Great

Before his death in 511, Clovis apparently instituted the Salic LawLex Salica’', the “male only” legal underpinning for kingly succession. In the same year, the Council of Orléans decreed Clovis Defender of the Church. A millennium later, in 1521, Pope Leo X conferred the papal title fidei defensor (Defender of the Faith) to Harri ap Tudur, alias King Henry VIII of England, for his Assertio Septem Sacramentorum'*-Defense of the Seven Sacraments, a rebuttal to Luther’s thesis. To the present day, all English monarchs have continued to wear this papal decoration as part of the Anglican Catholic mystique. With the death of Clovis I, his patrimony was divided among his four homicidal sons, who continuously warred against each other in alliances of shifting collusions and sibling carnage’. Eventually two major Frankish kingdoms emerged: Teutonic Austrasia and Gallo- Roman Neustria. Burgundy was later incorporated into Neustria. By the g” century, the Merovingian Empire included two kingdoms, Austrasia and Burgundy, and three dukedoms, Bavaria, Lombardy, and Aquitaine. Ultimately, territorial Austrasia and Neustria-Burgundy formed the basis of contemporary France, the Benelux and significant parts of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Italian peninsula was

also the scene of constant political

turmoil. In 493, the Pannonia-born Theodoric II the Great (b. 454-d. 526),

King of the Arian Ostrogoths, became dictator of Italy. He established his capital at Ravenna, and later expanded his Ostrogothic kingdom to include Sicily, Dalmatian, and parts of Frankish Gaul. Mistrustful of his kinsmen,

Theodene ase Rome’s apparatchiki as his administrators, capriciously executing’ scores of them for a myriad of predictable reasons. During the disorder that followed Theodoric’s’® death, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, the Praetorian Prefect-Praefectus Pretorio, of the kingdom, quit politics to build a series of Benedictine monasteries in Calabria, near the Ionian

Sea,

and

Beneventum,

thereby

establishing

the Order

of

Benedict in Southern Italy. His monks copied and translated the Christian and pagan works from Greek to Latin to preserve the culture of ancient Rome, lionizing the Gothic kings and queens. His Chronicon is a history of Rome to the year 591.

82

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great

emerge

For the papacy, a double unknown: which new strongman would as the protector the Latin Church against the Arian King

Theodoric of the Goths that ruled Italy from his fortres s at Ravenna; and,

how would his politics impact the Latin Church, vis-a-vis Greek Emperor Justinian’ the Great, the champion of the Synod of Chalcedon. Pope Leo the Great convened this meeting in 451 to debate the pro-Monoph ysite theology of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople. The synod ended in a

fiasco — after Chalcedon, tensions between the Latin and Greek Church

were ever-present and eventually caused the Acacian'’ Schism in 484. In 526, Pope John I'° attempted to resolve the crisis between the papal curia and Arian prelates at Constantinople. He failed simply because too many of his predecessors abandoned their ecclesiastical unity pledge to Justinian and openly pandered to Arian King Theodoric at Ravenna. Ultimately, Justinian wrested control of Italy from the Goths.'® Unfortunately, the downside of expelling the Goths was that another tribe of Arians, the Lombards of Pannonia (Hungary). This proves axiom that the solution created a more perilous situation than the original problem. This probably provoked the mandarins within the papal curia to seek détente with the violence prone Merovingian dynasts. In Ireland,

about

520, Prince

Eudo

of Airgialla”” founded

the

monastery of Aranmore-Arainn Mhor at Clonard-Cludin Iraird on the Boyne-Boand River, launching four centuries of the Golden Age of Monastic Learning in Ireland, which became Europe’s epicenter of intellectual scholarship. One of the important features of these great Irish monastic schools was they taught the sacral languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin as well as astronomy, genealogy, geography, ancient Irish oral sagas and the classical philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Cato, and Augustine were studied and copied. The Irish exiles for the Love of God,

peregrine pro amore Deo, brought these texts with them to re-Christianize a Europe that had fallen into the long, dark night of ignorance. From Clonard, the Twelve Apostles of Erinn—two Ciardns, two Brendans, two Colums, Mobi, Ruadan, Lasserian, Ciannech, Senach and Ninniad of Loch

Erne—raised the veil of the dark ages as Irish Catholic monastic thought swept across Europe, rivaling that of Roman and Greek monasticism.

three

In 529, the Nursia monk Benedict”!, after living as an anchorite for years at Subiaco, a suburb of Rome, founded a coenobitic

community atop a mountain overlooking the Liri valley, between Rome

83

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great and Naples, renowned as municipum Casinum or Monte Casino. In his Dialogues, Gregory the Great, Benedict’s hagiographer, tells us that on the Monte Casino mountaintop were pagan altar ruins dedicated to the Roman gods Apollo and Jupiter, and Benedict replaced these with oratories dedicated to saints John the Baptist and Martin of Tours.

In the same year as the founding of Monte Casino, the archconservative Greek Emperor Justinian the Great deemed the study of the ancient pagan classics as profane and against the Will of God. He ordered the closing of the Plato Academy at Athens, thus launching the socalled Dark Ages. Although a scholar, Gregory the Great was an admirer of the Code of Emperor Justinian and distrusted learning for the sake of gaining knowledge only. He praised Benedict for being skillfully ignorant and wisely unlearned.” At Monte

Casino,

Benedict

established

his famous

rule: ora

et

labore’ (prayer and work). The tonsure worn by the monks suggested Christ’s crown of thorns. Isidore of Seville and Bede identified this as tonsura in coronam, allegedly worn by Saint Peter™*. Such claim is absurd, as monks had worn different forms of tonsure for centuries. This begs the question of whether the Benedictine monks’ practice of communal eating, sleeping in the abbey and electing a permanent magister (abbot) to govern them, was

an original innovation in monasticism. Then again, the idea of

central supervision over a network of newly organized abbeys coincided with Rome’s ambitions to propagate a diocesan system subordinate to the pope. The papacy supported the Order of Saint Benedict as the monastic hierarchal standard for Latin Church unity. As the Benedictine ideal spread, and new abbeys were organized, they came under the supervision of the Monte Casino archabbot.

Ireland had never been a part of the Roman Empire, its mainland and Iona monks, simply ignored Justinian’s imperial decree, choosing instead to follow admonishments of the Old Testament regarding the pursuit of intellectual enlightenment. They continued to teach the ancient classics establishing the Golden Age of Learning — Ireland became the epicenter of European scholarship. During this period, Ireland’s wandering monk-scholars emerged on the continental scene as the foremost tutors in the Frankish empire — creating the Germanic intelligentsia in Europe. In

84

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great other words, the monks of Ireland tore away the veil of cultural ignorance called the Dark Ages. At seventeen,

Columbanus

(b. 5297 ) entered the monastery

at

Clonard, on the island of Cleenish (Cludin Inis) on Upper Lough Erne, as a novice to study under Sinell”° of Airgialla.”’ He next joined the austere monastery at Bangor-Bennchor’ in Dal nAraide, under Cruthin Comgall in Laois. Comgall had been a pupil of Fintan of Clonenagh, a disciple of Colum” of Terryglass-Tir-dda-Glass. After studying at Iona, Columbanus began his self-imposed Exile for Christ — perigrinare pro Christo. One of the most important personages in the life of Columbanus was Gregory the Great who became pope shortly before this middle-aged Irish monk left his Bangor monastery and arrived on the continent. In 575, Gregory? the 35-year-old Prefect of Rome, and devotee of

Benedict of Nursia, renounced his position to become a monk. He converted his family residence on Caelian hill into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew, and it became the principal Benedictine monastery in Rome. Pope Pelagius II ordained him as a papal deacon and sent him (579-84) as apocrisiary-Anoxptoipioc to the court of Byzantine Emperor Tiberius II, who asked Prelate Gregory to godfather of his oldest son. This cordial relationship continued with Emperor Maurikios (Maurice), who acclaimed Gregory for his political adroitness. In 602, Phocas, a Thracian centurion, led an army mutiny, murdered Maurikios,

and assumed the emperorship. Gregory’s early fame came when he assisted Pope Pelagius II in resolving the Istrian schism that resulted in the Sees of Milan and Aquileia to breaking away from Rome. Eamon Duffy points out that the villain of this story was Pope Virgilius (537-55) who betrayed Catholic orthodoxy by supporting Byzantine Empress Theodora and the Three Chapters-tria kephdlaia, the writing of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus,

and the letter of Ibas to Marispro that propagated Monophysite ideals. Emperor Justinian, the real hero for Chalcedon

orthodoxy,

condemned

Virgilius’ duplicity: “non sed, sed sedentem — not the see itself, the one who sits in it”.

85

4, Columbanus and Gregory the Great Upon the death of Pelagius II in 590, Gregory became the first the Benedictine pope. He earned his sobriquet the Great for reorganizing acy. order of the church and as the first real defender of papal suprem oxy orthod for allies Columbanus of Bobbio, one of Gregory’s staunchest and papal loyalty, helped ensure the return of Milan to the “Roman fold.” The year Gregory became pope, Authari, the Arian king of the Lombards died at Milan. His Catholic wife Theudlinde’ next wed her Arian stepson Agilulf (d. 616), the King of Turin, who in 591, became King of the Lombards at Milan. Duchess Theudlinde (d. 628) was a key player in the realpolitik in northern Italy. She supported her subjects in the Three Chapter schism and acted as liaison for a 602-3 peace treaty between Rome and Constantinople. King Agilulf granted Columbanus land in the Apennines to build his Bobbio monastery. In turn, Gregory the Great openly supported Agilulf in the creation of a viable Lombard State. Gregory founded six additional Benedictine monasteries in his Sicilian patrimony. However, the chair of Saint Peter faced turbulent times the city of Rome was in a steady decline since the army of the Ostrogothic King Totila devastated it 34 years before. Since the days of Constantine the Great, no emperor resided in Rome. This resulted in a loss of eighty percent of the city’s population within 150+ years. Notwithstanding that in 476, the Roman emperorship ended. The strongman on the Italian peninsula remained the Greek Exarch (imperial governor) at Ravenna

The cult of Martin of Tours throughout the Middle Ages cannot, and should not, be underestimated. In 576, Gregory of Tours dedicated the

Rouen Basilica to this great saint who brought Egyptian monasticism to Western Europe. It is suggested that the Irish Saint Ninian was a pupil of Martin before his evangelization of the southern Picts. Italy and Hungary were also place of the cult of Martin. After deacon Symmachus (d. 514) was selected pope over his rival archpriest Laurence, in 498, by Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great at Ravenna. The Pannonia-born king of Italy had Symmachus to build a church to Saint Martin in Rome. Thus a Martin cult developed along a Rome-Ravenna- Verona axis. Thanks to the promotion of Pope Gregory the Great, Martin became the Patron of the Merovingian Empire, with the epicenter of this reverence between the Loire and Maas Rivers. In a later century, the Lombards chose Martin as their patron. By the 8" century, churches of Saint Martin were found from

86

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great Rome in the south to Linz, to Mellrichstadt in Bavaria, the best known

foundations were Trier, Mainz, and Bingen am Rhein. In 587, Archbishop

Leander

of Seville converted Reccared,

the

Arian King of the Visigoths of Spain, to Catholic Christianity. This triumph hardly compensated for the loss of Christianity in North Africa, in the following century. The issue was that the African patriarchy had been in disarray following centuries of internecine warfare between Catholics,

Donatists, and Monophysites over the “Nature of Christ”. Although the reasons for the loss of Christianity were numerous, the most important flaws were the lack of theological leadership and central organization. In other words, this lack of church unity allowed militant Islam to displace Catholicism as the moral tenet in North Africa. This new monotheistic religion began at Mecca, by Abii al-Qasim Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abd al-Mutttalib ibn Hashim alias Muhammad (b. c. 570). In less than a century, the Scimitar and Crescent swept away the great Catholic centers of North Africa**: in 637, Antioch and Damascus,

638, Jerusalem; 642,

Alexandria; and in 698, Carthage. Islam became the major religious and political power on the southern Mediterranean rim.

Gregory the Great was the antithesis of Columbanus in temperament and style. This virtue was sorely tested the good relations between Gregory and Brunhild, the mercurial Merovingian dowagerqueen mother, and grandmother. The pragmatist Gregory sought conciliation rather than confrontation. On the other hand, this conciliatory attitude ceased when it came to church unity or papal supremacy, especially vis-a-vis the Exarch at Ravenna.” Conversely, Columbanus was an intrepid idealist®, in the spectrum of hardliners, somewhere between Presbyter Novatian and Thomas Aquinas. Gregory sustained the quarrel with the Greek Church begun by Pope Pelagius II over the Eastern synod of 588 that granted John IV, alias John the Faster of Constantinople, the lofty title of Ecumenical Patriarch. The rejoinder given by Pelagius was that as pope he was only Servus servorum Dei — Servant of the servants of God. The quarrel over titles surfaced

five

centuries

later,

achieving

ecclesiastical relations”®.

87

a

nadir

in

Latin-Greek

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great were Eastern Emperors Since the time of Constantine, ed upon Cesaropapists—analogous to the Caliph of Islam—who bestow The themselves the lofty title of Isapostolos (Equal of the Apostles). Greeks also granted to all Orthodox Church saints Isapostolos. The Roman vice papacy began styling itself as Vicarius Christi-Vicar of Christ, as His ’. regent on earth and not merely primus inter pares -first among equals’ h, Antioc dria, This was seen as papal hubris ® by the Patriarchs of Alexan Constantinople, and Jerusalem!

Vita

Columb

states

that,

in 591,

Columbanus

obeying

the

admonishment of his abbot, Comgall of Bangor, sailed from Ireland with

twelve Irish peregrini, including a bishop named Aidus,”” to the coast of Bretagne (Armorica), most likely landing at Saint Malo. They probably traveled

east

on

the old Roman

road

via Rouen,

or Rotomagus,

to

Neustria. In Burgundy, King Guntram granted Columbanus the ruins of an old temple of the Roman goddess Diana at Auinigray-Annegray in the Vosges Mountains*’ to build an abbey free of diocesan control, which Columbanus dedicated to Martin of Tours. In 615, at Luxovium-Luxeuil"’,

west of Annegray, Columbanus built his primary monastic foundation. Its school developed along the lines of the great Irish learning center at Bangor, creating a “Luxeill Circle of Scholars” in the Merovingian Empire. Its illustrious Iro-Frankish alumni were a positive impact on Catholic Christianity in the territories controlled by the Franks. Historian Friedrich Prinz identifies these prelates in “Die Rolle der Iren beim Klosterkultur*””: North of Luxeuil, Aufbau der merowingischen Columbanus built a third abbey at Fontaine-lés-Bains. Twenty years after he and his monks were expelled from Burgundy, one of his Irish monks named Deicola stayed in Burgundy and founded Lure abbey. In the aftermath of the 587 Treaty of Andolet, Merovingian kings fought each other in alliances of expediencies. The Frankish church was in disarray and rife with simony* — the buying and selling of church offices. This political and ecclesiastical climate unfavorably influenced the Papal Vicarage of Gaul in its dealings with the mission of Saint Columbanus. The kingdom of Guntram (d. 592) of Burgundy was inherited by his nephew Childebert ne the King of Austrasia. However,

Brunhild 2

the dowager queen mother of Austrasia and regent. In 593, she induced the young king to go to war against his cousin Lothair II, King of Neustria.

88

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great Childebert

decisively

lost. His sons

Théudebert

II became

King of

Austrasia at Metz, and Theodoric II, became King of Burgundy, inherited

the dual kingdom of Childebert (d. 595). To no one’s surpri se, dowager queen Brunhild remained the foremost troublemaker in this Frankish drama. Columbanus’s difficulties began because the strong willed Brunhild was not without connections — and one of them was Gregory the Great, who needed the Franks for protection vis-a-vis persistent Greek aspirations. However, Brunhild’s immediate allies were her loyal Frankish clergy who regarded Columbanus and his monks as interlopers on “their turf”. Exacerbating this situation was the excellent reputation these austere Irish monasteries enjoyed with the noble families of Burgundy, who sent their scions to the Luxeuil for educations, creating a foundation for a Frankish intelligentsia. Many young nobles embraced the Rules of Columbanus: Regula Coenobialis and Regula Monachrum, which reversed the Rules of John Cassian by making the vow of chastity higher than the vow of piety. Columbanus established a rigorous penitential that included mortification of the flesh. Further, they followed the Irish concept that an abbot was secularly equal to a bishop. Columbanus observed Easter Sunday, using the time- honored Alexandrine Rule of Nicaea and not the new Roman modus decreed by Pope John (d. 526). Although Columbanus seems to have had rapport with the local Ordinary”, it is obvious that the royally appointed Frankish bishops were unhappy that the Irish abbey was granted independence from bishopric supervision. They were infuriated that Columbanus openly snubbed them for obtaining their offices either through simony or through marriage. The Frankish clerics objected to the Irish monks’ introducing the ancient custom of Soul friend (Anam éara). Private auricular confession, between

a monk and a layperson, resonated with the populace, known in German as Ohrenbeichte.

There is an oft-told tale that as a Cardinal, Archdeacon Gregory saw English captives in Rome’s slave market whom he thought would be ideal as missionaries to Britain. Upon election as pope, Gregory tried to ransom some — but failed.

89

4, Columbanus and Gregory the Great In 596, Pope Gregory commissioned Augustine the Benedictine Prior of Saint Andrew Abbey in Rome to head a delegation of 40 monks to evangelize Fthelberht*” (560-616), King of Kent, whose wife Bertha, a daughter of Frankish King Charibert I of Paris, a Catholic Christian, who had a church of Saint Martin built in southeast Kent. This is Bede’s story; still it is legitimate to hypothesize that the underlying 1issue may have been to halt the spread of Irish abbot-bishop modus*® in Northumbria.”. In any case, territorial safe passage was needed for Augustine and his monks to travel through the territory of Burgundy. Pope Gregory needed help from Brunhild, the Frankish dowager queen grandmother. Furthermore, he had to coordinate these plans with the Papal Vicar of Gaul, Archbishop Virgilius of Arles, a former Abbot of Tles de Lérins. The story is told that upon entering Gaul, Augustine and his band of monks where accosted by fierce Germanic tribesmen. Prior Augustine, and his monks, lost courage and returned to Rome. Gregory raised Augustine to Abbot, which re-motivated him to continue the English mission.

It appears that the route Augustine and his monks traveled in 596 took them near Luxeuil, where they heard the Frankish accusations of unorthodoxy against Columbanus. Laurence succeeded Augustine as Bishop of Canterbury, later noted the alleged defiance in a letter to Irish bishops. Bede” reports that after Laurence succeeded Augustine (c. 604609), he expressed the need to extend his pastoral care over Briton (Wales),

Scotland,

and

Ireland.

In other

words,

his goal

was

that

Canterbury should become the Arles of the British Isles—perchance a nachspiel of his confrontation with the Irish monks of Columbanus? This hegemonic ambition was carried forth by all successors of Laurence, in the post-1066 Norman Conquest of England and likely used to justify the 1172 Invasion of Ireland. In early 597, upon landing on the pagan sacral island of Thanet, King Athelberht received Augustine and his monks, granting permission to reside at Canterbury to evangelize the people of Kent. In 598, Augustine baptized king A2thelberht, and Archbishop Virgilus of Arles, the Papal Vicar of Gaul, consecrated Augustine as Bishop of Canterbury. In 601, Prior Laurence,

Augustine’s

designated

successor,

traveled

to

Rome to inform Gregory the Great of the Aithelberht conversion. Gregory raised Augustine with the dignity of a Metropolitan Archbishop and

90

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great Canterbury to a Metropolitan See, with two ecclesiastical provinces: South (London)

and North

(York).

Gregory

also sent an admonishment

to

Augustine not to interfere in the affairs of the Metropolitan See of Arles, because of a crisis of simony — a problem endemic throughout the Merovingian Empire. Augustine’s task was daunting. In England, he would have to deal with an Irish-trained conservative clergy that maintained the old Alexandrine Rule of Easter calculation instead of the new 525 Roman Rule for Easter. The Irish wore a different tonsure and regarded Jona their ecclesiastical center. Thus, the primatial goal of Augustine was unifying the English church with Canterbury as its Metropolitan See. To do this required the displacement of Northumbrian Lindisfarne with KentishCanterbury as the epicenter of the church on the island of Britain and the mandating of the Rules of Benedict, including tonsuring for all clerics on the island as a visible sign of papal obedience. Further, the entire English clergy had to adopt Rome’s celestial tables as the method for calculating the date of the Paschal fest. In other words, he had to discredit the Irish

monastic movement. This endeavour took almost a century to succeed.

The struggle between Columbanus and the Frankish clergy continued: he accused them of purchasing their offices in his writings to Pope Gregory in 600. In retaliation, after Childebert, the sponsor of Columbanus,

convened

died

a synod

in 603,

council

Aredius,

the

new

archbishop

at Chalon-sur-Saone,

of Lyons,

in the diocese

of

things, the Besancon, to censure Columbanus and to debate, among other celebrated Irish calculation of the paschal fest. In 603, the Franks and Irish fest on paschal the Easter on the same date (31 March), thus both observed

It the same date as the last four years” — reigniting the 600 controversy. Frankish The date. was only in 591 and 608 that Easter fell on the same Jews, not clerics accused the Irish of wanting to celebrate Easter with the the Romans.

To the Franks,

it was

irrelevant for Christians

when

the

of Catholic Jewish paschal fest began, denying the Jewish roots as his Lérins de Iles of Conon Christianity. Pope Gregory deputized Abbot before appear personal representative to arbitrate these issues. Rather than — a threeposition of summary the synod, Columbanus sent them his following the volume epistle! His discourse to Gregory the Great used of St. Peter and nexus: it affirms the supremacy of the pope as coarb (Alexandrine Rule) defends the Irish anam Cara and the orthodox

91

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great methodology used in paschal reckoning as being pure and unsullied in contrast to the new Roman custom used in most Frankish lands. The Gregorian pragmatic rejoinder — qui in una fide nil officit santae ecclesiae consuetuda diversa, difference in customs in holy church does destroy the unity of faith — alluding to the 381-382 Council of Constantinople and 451 Council of Chalcedon. The argument did not go away with the demise of Pope Gregory in 604. It was ‘put-off’ until Papal-Merovingian realpolitik dictated enforcing ecclesiastical discipline 60 years later at Whitby abbey. The nadir of Iro-Frankish relations came when Brunhild, the queen mother of King Theuderic II, asked Columbanus to bless the four offspring”” of her son’s de concubine, saying, “These are the king's sons; give them thy blessing." Never a champion of tact and disregarding the fact that his abbeys were in Burgundian territory, Columbanus answered: "Know that these boys will never bear the royal scepter, for they were begotten in sin." Jonas tells us that after additional confrontations, Columbanus and his monks were placed in military custody and taken on an odyssey from Bobbio via Besancon, Autun, Avallon, Auxerre, Orléans, Tours, Angers, to the harbor of Nantes at the mouth of the Loire River for

deportation to Ireland. However, a storm drove the ship aground and it became impossible to re-float the vessel — an act of divine providence? Next, Columbanus journeyed to the court of King Lothair II of Neustria at Soissons and to King Théudebert II at Metz seeking allies against Theuderic II. Afterwards, he and his monks sailed north from the Vosges,

up the Mosel River to Koblenz, then southwest on the Rhein River to Strasbourg, and onto Basel, where one of his monks named Ursicinus built a hermitage, later known as the Abbey of Saint Ursanne. In 610, at Bregenz, on southeast corner of Bodensee (Lake Constance), in Alamanni

territory, between the Rhein and Danube rivers, Columbanus rebuilt a chapel dedicated to Saint Aurelia in Schwabisch Allgadu. Agilius and Eustasius, two companions of Columbanus, established the Irish peregrini link in the territory of the Bavarians.

In 612, in a sibling struggle, Theuderic II was deposed and Théudebert II of Austrasia became ruler of both Austrasia and Burgundy. Columbanus lost a protector, and his nemesis queen mother Brunhild was now in Metz. Jonas tells us that Columbanus had a vision that he should go to Italy.

92

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great At Cellach, he quarreled with Gall, one of his monks, who wanted

to stay and proselyte to the Arian Alamanni. Gall had built a hermitage cell on the Steinach River in the Alps, which became the monastery of Saint Galen Apostle to the Alamanni.

In 613, Lothair II slew Theuderic II and his son Sigibert. Columbanus’s chief protector was now King of All Franks. Too late, Columbanus was already in the Duchy of Lombardy in northwest Italy, where the Arian Duke Agilulf of the Lombards, whose Catholic wife Theudlinde® an ally of Gregory the Great, ruled. Agilulf gave Columbanus a hilltop site for his Bobbio monastery in the Apennines near the Trebbia River between Genoa and Piacenza.

The Columbian Movement continued through the 12" century. Irish monks establishing 200+ monasteries, these became the proto-towns of West Europe. Unluckily, these Irish foundations were mislabeled Schottenklésters. In the 21% century, towns such as Schotten in the Wetterau of Hesse, Germany, annually celebrate their founding with Scottish fests: townspeople wear kilts, play bag pipe music, and wave the flag of Saint Andrew.

Irish monks retained the ancient Alexandrine Rule for the Sunday

nus as date of Easter, their tonsure, and the rules established by Columba

Irish they established additional foundations in Italy. At no time did the under Church seek to exclude itself from the unity of Catholic Christianity that decreed ), the papacy. Pépin the Short’, King of the Franks (751-768 . all monks in the Merovingian Empire must follow the Rules of Benedict In 910, the Clunic Reformation

of the Order of Saint Benedict

This Clunic began at the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundian Sa6ne-et-Loire. of Arles, Reformation merged the rules of Burgundian-born Cesarius

of Bobbio, and Romo born Patraic of Ireland, Irish-born Columbanus that became the Italian-born Benedict of Nursia into a common rule

European monastic standard.

t 1923, Pope Pius X1> wrote of Columbanus in his, 6 Augus hed and nguis disti pontifical brief: “He is to reckoned amongst those to raise up in the most exceptional men whom Divine Providence is wont almost lost. . “As difficult periods of human history to restore causes

93

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great

scholarship throws increasing light upon the obscurity of the Middle Ages, the more clearly it is manifest that we renaissance of all Christian science and culture in many parts of France, Germany and Italy is due to the labors and zeal of Columbanus—a demonstration to the glory of the whole church and more particularly of Catholic Ireland.” Columbanus

of Bobbio,

Columcille

of Iona,

Nursia are co-founders of West-European monasticism.

94

and

Benedict

of

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great mbpan

1.

r

r

:

Monsignor Tomas O Fiaich (b. 11 March 1923; d. 5 August 1990). Professor

of History, and president of Maynooth Pontifical College. On 11 February 1977, O Fiaich succeeded William Cardinal Conway as Archbishop of ArmaghArdeaspag na Ard Macha, and Primate of All Ireland, thus becoming the 1128 Coarb of Saint Patraic. In 1979, Pope John Paul Il, alias Karol Jozef Wojtyta, elevated Archbishop Tomas O Fiaich to cardinal priest. 2. 23 November 615. 3. Susa: a village in the Piedmont a region of northwestern Italy. When Dagobert succeeded his father Clovis as King of All Franks, he established Mainz as his residence and rebuilt its citadel as the anchor of the Merovingian Empire on the Rhein River. 4. Robert Schumann, the French architect of the European Union, is quoted as stating that “If the day comes when there will be a United States of Europe, then surely Columbanus will be its patron saint.” 5. Das Monastische Experiment: Die gallischen und frankischen Klosterregelen. 6. Built c. 13 BC by Roman General Drusus. 7. “Salian” translates as German tribes living by the sea. 8. Alias Chlodovech, or Louis or Ludwig(b. c. 466; d. 511). 9. Geographically this area included the area of modern northwest France, died that western Germany, and Belgium. Paradoxically, Pope Gelasius (492-96) the both from independence proclaim same year. He was the first pope to powers two that decreed and faith emperor and any church council in matters of Sacerdotium ruled the world: Sacerdotium and Imperium. He decreed that since This papal was the instrument of human salvation, it was superior to Imperium. decree had significant political ramifications in later centuries. would utter, “Paris 10. A millennium later, Huguenot leader Henry of Navarre IV of France. Henry crowned and Mass, a vaut bien une messe,” Paris is worth pretext for the the as used kater and 11. First Frankish law is written in Latin, Succession (1730-48). Hundred Years War (1337-1453) and the War of Austrian in 1534) as Privy Counselor 12. Historians agree that Sir Thomas More (executed at Calais or Bruges, while wrote Defense of the Seven Sacraments either

of Henry’s daughter accompanying Thomas Cardinal Woolsey on the marriage Mary to the French Dauphin. (511-24), King of Orleans; 13. Theodoric I (511-54), King of Metz; Chlodomer (511-61), King of Soissons. From Childebert (511-58), King of Paris; and Lothair

558 to 561, Lothair was King of All Franks. Anivius Manluis Severianus 14. Notable was the 524 execution of philosopher of classical Aristotle Boethius, one the last great Roman philosophers of medieval intellectualism. intellectualism; his death marked the beginning became regent for his 15. When Theodoric died his daughter Amalasuntha ruled chose Amalasuntha in 354, grandson Athalaric. When the young king died

95

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great her cousin Theodahad as co-regent — in 534 she was banished and subsequently murdered. Her murder marked the twilight of the Ostrogothic rule in Italy 16. Alias Flavius Anicius Julianus Justinianus. 17. Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople championed a_pro-Monophysite theology this caused the first serious rift between the Orthodox and Latin churches. It was only in 519 that Pope Hormisdas was able to reconcile the differences of East and West churches, ending the schism 18. He was the first Roman Pontiff to travel to Constantinople. 19. They originated from Scandinavia. 20. b. c. 450; d. 540. 21. Benedict (b. 480; d. 543) was born at Nursia, a village near Spoleto in Umbria, northeast of Rome; he died the same year as Brigid of Kildare. 22. Saints and Sinners, page 49. 23. “Refined” Rules of Cassian and Lex Patraic became the “Benedictine Rule.” 24. Donald A. Bullough, “The Missions to the English and Picts and their Heritage (to c. 800),” Die Iren und Europa, Vol. 1. 25. Some contend that he was born in 543, the year Saint Benedict died. 26. That reportedly studied under Finnian at Clonard. 27. Throughout the 6 century, Airgialla was venue of many monasteries. Saint Ninniad founded his monastery on Inishmacsaint Island on Lower Lough Erne. 28. Bangor one of the largest monasteries with over 1,000 monks and scholars. 29. Colum was a member of the Ui Chrimthainn An. 30. A member of a great ecclesiastical family, he was likely great-grandson of Pope Felix III. His father Gordianus was the Administrator of Temporalities in the Roman See. 31. Papal ambassadors are now called nuncio. 32. Also called Theodolinde, the daughter of Garibald I, Duke of Bavaria: her mother was Walderada, daughter of Wacho, the Gepidin Duke of the Lombards and Austrigusa. In 588, Theudlinde married Authari and mother of Adaloald. Authari created her brother Gunoald as Duke of Asti, the father of the Agilolfinger dynasty in Bavaria. 33. Islam actually replaced Persian domination. In 613, the forces of Persian

King Khosrow, alias Chosroes II (d. 628), called the Victorius, extended the Sasanian Empire by conquering Antioch in 613, Damascus and Jerusalem in 614. and Chalcedon in 617. By 619, the entire Holy Land was conquered. in 627, Khosrow began his siege of Constantinople, and in 628, he was defeated at Nineveh by Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (d. 641). 34. A later champion of papal supremacy, Cardinal Archdeacon Hildebrand of Soana, Abbot of Monte Casino, leader of the fateful 1054 papal delegation at Constantinople. He wrote a treatise called Dictatus: “The Roman Church never erred, can never err. The Pope is supreme judge and may be judged by none. There is no appeal from him. No synod may be called a general one without his

96

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great order. He may depose, transfer, and reinstate bishops. He alone is entitled to the homage of all princes. He alone may depose an emperor.” This treatise caused dire political consequences when he became Gregory VII. 35. In the early church, persons of illegitimate birth could not enter Holy Orders. Columbanus believed that illegitimately born children should not become kings, a mindset that got him into severe political trouble with the Merovingian nobility. 36. In 1054, with Patriarch Michael Kerularios, all the clergy assembled at Hagia of Sophia, in Constantinople. Three ex-legates of Pope Leo IX (Bruno of Eigsheim)

strode

to

the

High

Altar,

laid

down

a

solemn

Bull

of

Excommunication, and departed. This was predictable: Kerularios opposed the Latinization of the Byzantine church. In turn, Kerularios excommunicated Leo

IX as the climax of centuries of Latin-Greek mutual distrust. 37. In the early church, patriarchs were considered as pope in their jurisdiction. 38. After the papal débacle at Civitate, a seismographic shift occurred between the Greek and Latin churches. On 17 June 1053, the Normans took the unfortunate Pope Leo IX as their prisoner at the débacle at the Fortore riverbank, near Civatate. They ingrained themselves with the papacy by bringing Byzantine Southern Italy, including Sicily, into the Roman orbit, unfortunately, this area was under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Constantinople! Despite the Norman predilection for switching allegiances, the papacy needed them as a bulwark against the persistent German. This Rome/Constantinople intransigence degenerated into a litany of real and/or perceived injustices. The boiling point was

reached during the fourth Crusade, when the Normans,

Protectors of the

Papacy, sacked and burned Constantinople and massacred its residents. 39. “Columbans

Wirken

in Frankenreich“

(591-612),

Die

Iren und

Europa,

Volume 1. Alsace. 40. South of Faucogney-et-la-mer, in east Burgundy; contemporary to conquer tried Hun the 41. Luxeuil had seen its share of troubles. In 451, Attila River. In n Orléans and destroyed the ruins of this Roman fortress near Breuchi had it rebuilt, 732, Saracens pillaged it before the battle of Tours. Charlemagne Empire. In the and the Abbot of Luxeuil became Prince of the Holy Roman ins and -les-Ba Luxeuil as zed seculari aftermath of the French Revolution, it was n. Besango of diocese is presently part of Haute-Saone in Franche-Comté on; Chagnoald of 42. Die Iren und Europa, Vol. 1, page 203. Donatus of Besanc her of Augst/Basel, Laon, Acharius of Vermandois, Noyon and Tournai; Ragnac Toul; Mummolenus of Audomar of Boulogne and Thérouanne, Leudoin/Bodo of Cambrai and Amenfred of Noyon; and likely Theofried of Amiens; Autbert of I, including Audoenus of Verdun. Also the closest advisor of King Dagobert Desiderius of Cahors, Nivardus Rouen; Ansbert of Rouen, Eligus of Noyon and

Verdun, Burgundofaro of and Reims; Abbo and Arnulf of Metz, Paulus of Kunibert of Koln. Meaux, Sulitus of Bourges, Lodegar of Autun and Bishop in 5. Und 6. Jahrhundret.” 43. Georg Langgirtner, “Die Gallienpolitik Der Papste

oF)

4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great 44. King

(c. 575)

after his father

Sigibert

I was

assassinated

by Queen

Fredegund, wife of his brother King Chilpéric of Soissons. Queen Brunhild had induced Sigibert to go to war against Chilpéric for murdering his wife Galswintha (the sister of Brunhilde) in order to marry his mistress Fredegund. Sigibert’s brothers were Charibert I (561-567), King of Paris; Guntram (561-

592), King of Burgundy; and Chilpéric I (561-584), King of Soissons. 45. This daughter of Athanagild, King of the Visigoth — a first rank intriguer. 46. A canonical term identifying a person having executive power; a bishop is the local ordinary of a diocese; general and episcopal vicars are ordinaries. 47. #thelburh, daughter of AEthelberht and Bertha, married King Edwin of Northumbria. He was killed in 633, at the Battle of Hartsfield.

48. The Bangor monks of County Down, Twelve Apostles of Ireland, spread the gospel on the continent to Bregenz, St. Galen, Wiirzburg, Salzburg, and Bobbio in Lombardy, Rome and Tarentum in Calabria. 49. In 635,

Aidan,

a monk

of Iona,

founded

a monastery

on

the Isle of

Lindisfarne, off the English northeast coast. 50. Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book 2. 51. Die Iren und Europa, pages 182-83. 52. They ranged in age between three and eight years. 53. The daughter of Garibald I, first Agilolfinger Duke of Bavaria. In 588, she

married Authari (d. 590), King of the Lombards, the father of Agilulf, who was

that time King of Turin. 54. Alias le Bref.

55. Alias Ambrogio Damiano, born Achille Ratti in Desio, Province of Milan; he

reigned from 6 February 1922 to 10 February 1939.

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Roma locuta est, causa finita est: Rome Has Spoken, the Case is Closed Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni coelorum' — Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock, I will build my Church, and I will give thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

No other incident affected the Irish monastic movement greater than the Synod held at Abbey of Whitby in the year 664. Its decisions on the acceptance of papal authority set the hallmark of church unity that has survived until the present day.

Since the founding of the Catholic Christian church, unity has been one of its two basic goals. In the violence- prone 3 century, Bishop Cyprian of Carthage” wrote a treatise entitled The Unity of the Catholic Church, in which he articulates that the primary duty of the papacy is the glorification of God and the unity of His Church. During the 251-53 pontificate of Cornelius, presbyter Novatian’ proclaimed himself Bishop age of of Rome, causing an unneeded rupture in church unity during an Gaius Christian persecution. In 258, the anti-Christian Roman Emperor, and Cyprian Publius Licinius Valerian, ordered the beheading of Bishop anti-pope Novatian, during the papacy of Sixtus II. Abbey in The 664 Synod at Streanaeshalch’ a.k.a. Whitby Double arguments Northumbria must be seen in the context that the basic and not some concerned Petrine obedience for the sake of church unity that all parties heretical perception on church dogma. One must not forget were papal loyalists!

the island of After abandoning paganism, the Germanic kings on by an implicit devotion Britain strove to achieve a degree of respectability successors of Peter as a to the tenets of the Catholic Church and the Pope Gregory the catalyst for their self-esteem. Their two heroes were the Regular Order that Great and Saint Benedict of Nursia, founder of that in the year 37 or bears his name. An English medieval folklore claims brought Christianity to 63 of the first century, Joseph of Arimathea’ y-Glasimpere na nGdedel. Britain, founding the monastery of Glastonbur

99

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Another medieval myth relates that Joseph was the brother of Mary, and yet another claims that he was a brother of Jesus. Serious scholars ignore these thinly veiled attempts at Angle-Saxon self-aggrandizement. The most widely read tract during the Middle Ages was the partisan “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, written in 731, by a Benedictine monk known as Venerable Bede-Beda®, who spent most of his life cloistered at the monastery of Saint Paul at Jarrow, on the Tyne River, near the North Sea.

In Gaul, Gregory of Tours’, a Merovingian prelate, penned a similar myopic praise called the “History of the Franks-Historica Francorum’, the “Royal Frankish Annals-Annales regni Francorum’’, set this creative history forth. That said they all have historic value — comparable to the encyclopedic “History of Rome — Origines’’ the first Latin history written, c. 172 BC, by Marcus Porcius Cato alias Cato the

Censor.

It is important to understand that in the 6" century, three distinct Germanic tribes: Angles, Saxon and Jutish Franks, on the island of Britain constantly warred with each other and with the Britons, Scots, and Picts.

By the end of the century, dynastic ties between the Frankish kings on the continent and their counterparts in southeast Britain became a fact. In 588,

AEthelberht, King of Kent, suzerain of the Germanic confederation, which included King Althelfrith® of Bernicia, married Princess Bertha’, the

daughter of Charibert I, Frankish king of Paris!’ This marriage was likely arranged by Bertha’s cousin Childebert II, King of Austriasia!!, and is significant because it dynastically linked Germanic Britain with the Merovingian Empire. Pope Gregory the Great saw this nuptial union as an excellent opportunity to convert the pagan ruler south of the Humber River to Catholic Christianity. The oft-told story that Gregory commissioned Augustine the Prior of Saint Andrews Benedictine Abbey, in Rome, to lead a mission of 40 monks to evangelize the pagan kingdom of Kent. It seems that after Augustine and his monks entered Gaul, they heard harrowing tales about the fierce Germanic tribes of Britain, and fled to the safety of the Archbishopric of Arles — where they purportedly introdu ced

100

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

the Rules of Saint Benedict — before returning to Rome, aborting their mission to Kent. In a letter dated 23 July 596, Gregory elevated Prior Augustine to the dignity of an Abbot, thus motivating him to restart the Kent mission. In a second letter, Gregory informed Archbishop therius of Lyons”, in the capital of Burgundy, to facilitate the safe passage of Augustine and his monks through Frankish territory. In the spring of 597, Abbot Augustine and his monks landed on the Jutish sacral Isle of Thanet!* on the northeast coast of Kent. King thelberht granted them permission to reside in his imperial city of Canterbury and preach within his realm. The first step in Frankish south England accepting Christianity, earning Augustine the sobriquet: Bishop to the English. At Canterbury, Augustine rebuilt the old Romo-Celtic church of Saint Martin, where Queen Bertha prayed. Saint Martin was the Patron of the Merovingian Empire. Augustine also began building the monastery of Saint

Peter

and

Paul

as

his Episcopal

seat,

but

he

died

before

its

completion.

Venerable Bede'* erred in reporting that Aitherius, a Bishop of Gaul, was the one who consecrated Augustine as bishop. Such action was the exclusive prerogative of the Archbishopric of Arles, Papal Vicar of Gaul.

Thus,

Archbishop

Virgilius

of Arles, not Atherius, consecrated

led the Augustine as bishop — as Bishop of Lyons, #therius, could have ceremonial rite.

was Athelberht acceptance of baptism, in the following year; he ine August anity. the first southern English king to embrace Catholic Christi Great of this sent two monks, Laurence and Peter, to inform Gregory the baptism of the to important conversion, hailing the event as analogous of a Metropolitan Clovis. Pope Gregory raised Augustine to the dignity authority over astical Archbishop, instructing him that he had no ecclesi sent his envoys any bishop of Gaul. On 22 June 602, Pope Gregory present Augustine with his Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus to

n and York as archbishops’ pallium, and instructions to create Londo s. The important ecclesiastical provinces, with twelve suffragan bishop of York; Mellitus for bishoprics’ were Paulinus for the Anglian Province

for the western Jutish area at the East Saxon Province of London; Justus

Peter and Paul Abbey at Rochester!®. Rufinianus became Abbot of Saint the promulgation of Canterbury. Complementing these foundations was 101

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

the law of A2thelberht on the status of priests; this first English law was not in Latin — the language of the church — but in German! In 603, Athelfrith, an ally of Athelberht, fought Irish king Aedan mac Gabrain of Dal Riata, a relative of Columcille, at Degsastan against

Prince Méel Umai mac Béaetan'® of Cenél nE6gain, an ally of Aedan. He slew A2thelfrith’s brother Eanfrith in the battle. However, Athelfrith won

the battle, and this victory permitted him to unite the petty kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira south of the Tees River into a powerful Northumbrian kingdom. Prior Laurence succeeded Augustine (d. 604) as archbishop.

With the death of Gregory the Great in the same year there began a succession of Benedictine Pontiffs, beginning with Sabibian (d. 606), his apocrisus to Constantinople, noted for his attempts to reconcile Greek Patriarch John IV the Faster with Rome. The pontificate of Sabibian is worthy of mentioning since he reversed his predecessors’ predilection of appointing i/litterati, regular clergy to the papal bureaucracy. The litterati secular clergy, in the curia, supported Sabibian contending that the regular abbots, monks, canons, and nuns were impeding the goals of establishing a secular pyramid of bishops, priests, and deacons: a diocesan system that ensured church unity. Succeeding Sabibian was Pope Boniface III’ (d. 607), whose brief

pontificate was hallmarked by his lobbying of Phocas, a Athenian general who had murdered his way to the Emperorship, to issue an imperial edict acknowledging the pope as the head of all Greek and Latin Churches. Columbanus of Bobbio sent Boniface a brusque missive alluding to the machinations of Pope Vigilius (d. 555).

Boniface III was followed by Pope Boniface IV (d. 617), whose pontificate brought stability and church unity by restoring monastic discipline, on 27 February 610, Boniface convened a council of Italian bishops to establish standardized monastic rules, including discipline. Mellitus, the Benedictine Bishop of London, represented the English church. He doubtlessly told the council of the unorthodoxy of the BritishWelsh and Irish churches regarding tonsure, paschal calculation, their study and use of Greek ancient classics, and flouting the Rules of Saint

102

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Benedict. A confrontation between the followers Benedict, a half-century later, was now unstoppable.

of Columcille

and

In 616, Athelberht died and his pagan son, Eadbald, succeeded him, as King of Kent. Upon becoming king, Eadbald married his stepmother Queen Bertha'®, an act that contravenes Catholic Church doctrine. The ensuing uproar negatively influenced the reign of Archbishop Laurence, but before dying in 619, Laurence was able to convince Eadbald to abandon Bertha, embrace Catholic Christianity, and

marry another Frankish noblewoman. Was Eadbald’s conversion genuine or realpolitik? In any case, Eadbald gave his Catholic Christian sister AAthelberga in marriage to his pagan northern ally King Edwin” of Northumbria. After rejecting his wife, Edwin married Aithelberga, who came to Northumbria with her personal chaplain, Paulinus, Bishop of York. In 627, King Edwin accepted baptism after Paulinus saved his life during a war against the Irish king Fiachnae mac Béetan of Dal nAraide.

In southern England, the Order of Saint Benedict was now the most important clergy and they used the (new) Roman calculation for the paschal feast in all churches. In the north and west of the island, Ionatrained Irish monks continued to dominate the church, using the Alexandrine Rule for the Easter calculation. An anomaly, two distinct monastic movements co-existed on the island of Britain. In 631, an Irish delegation traveled to Rome, to debate their use of

the Alexandrine Rule for calculating the date of the paschal feast before Pope Honorius.””

This debate raged within the Irish church for the next few years the with synods at Offlay (Mag Léne) and Carlow (Mag nAilbe) under at ery auspices of Cumméne Fota!, Abbot of Saint Brendan’s Monast the area Clonfert (Cludin Ferta Brénainn). In the early seventh century, Roman the known a Leth Moga (hegemony of Cashel) accepted s in the calculation for Easter. Thus in the mid-seventh century the churche

the south of Ireland accepted the (new) Roman Rule, while in the north handed down archconservatives remained loyal to the Alexandrine Rule

t should not from the early church. Note: Abbot Cumméne Fota of Clonfer

be confused with Cumméne Ailbe, the 7" Abbot of Iona.

103

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

In 632, Cedwalla, Welsh King of Gwynedd, with Penda, King of Mercia, invaded Northumbria and killed King Edwin and his son” in the battle at Heathfield. Edwin’s widow Queen Atthelberga and daughter Eanfled, Bishop Paulinus, and the entire court fled the Bamburgh fortress. Edwin’s pagan nephew, Oswald of Bernicia, sought refuge among the Irish monks on the island of Iona, where the monk Aidan baptized him as a Catholic Christian. Another person who fled Edwin’s court was Hild, or Hilda, 23 of

Hartlepool”, the most remarkable Abbess in English history. An East Anglian by birth, she was baptized in 627, by Bishop Paulinus, and likely educated at the Irish led monastery of Chelles, near Paris, during the reign of Lothair II King of All Franks. In the winter of 633, Prince Oswald left his Iona exile, and, at the Battle of Hexham, slew Cadwallon”> , thus becoming Suzerain of Bernicia,

ergo the King of Northumbria. In 635, Oswald convinced Aidan to leave Iona to become the first bishop of the Northumbria kingdom, with an abbatial

monastery

on

the

tidal

island

of Lindisfarne,

north

of the

Bamburgh fortress. Within a generation, Aidan and his Irish monks restored Catholic Christianity in the north England, a feat that earned Aidan the sobriquet The Apostle of England. However, the Benedictines consider Augustine The Apostle of England, and Aidan The Apostle of Northumbria — the Columbans disagree.

Oswald was the most powerful king on the island of Britain, and Lindisfarne was now prima inter pares with Canterbury. Aidan convinced Hild to stay in Northumbria, and in 657, she founded the great double abbey~® at Whitby on the river Esk near Saltwick Bay. A champion of Irish monasticism, Hild would host the 664 debate on clerical obedience.

After Eadbald died in 640, the kingdom of Kent lost its power and prestige, eventually relegated to a minor role in future historical event.

In 640, Pope-elect John IV answered a letter, sent by the northern

Irish church leaders, to his predecessor,

Pope Severianus

(d. 640), on

discipline regarding Easter. In his replys Pope John admonished the Irish to observe Easter Day between the 15™ and 21° days of the moon — the

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

letter also alluded to a (falsely assumed) resurgence of Pelagain heresy — Rome’s standard red-herring allegation against the contumacious Irish.

In 641, Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed King Oswald of Northumbria.

Oswald’s

brother,

Oswiu,

succeeded

him

King

as

of

Bernicia. To secure all patrimonial rights, Oswiu married Eanfled, the daughter of Edwin, former king of Northumbria.

Winwed

River, Oswiu

Northumbria,

killed Penda of Mercia

At the 655 Battle of

becoming

king over

Mercia, the South and East Angles, the East Saxons, the

Britons, and the Dal Riata (Irish) Scots. These areas adhered to the ancient

celestial reckoning system used by the Irish monks to establish the date of Easter. In other words, the north and south of England celebrated the paschal feast, the most important day in the church year, on different Sundays, and this brought disunity within the church. This issue was so significant that in 664, even though a plague was ravaging most of England, Oswiu convened

a synod, at the double Abbey of Whitby, to

reconcile the differences between the Roman and Celtic churches regarding tonsure and celestial calculation tables regarding the date of Easter. Exacerbating this issue was the church prohibition of conjugal relations during Lent. Oswiu followed the Irish and Eanfled followed the Roman tule: therefore, Lent began and ended on different days, not an ideal basis for marital bliss. The Synod of Whitby protagonists in support of Queen Eanfled and King Oswiu are as follows. On the Pro-Roman side of Queen Eanfled:

he 1. Agilbert, Bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames, a Frank by birth, the and , was educated in southern Ireland and only spoke German Paris senior prelate present. After Whitby, he became Bishop of behind power and advisor to Ebroin, Mayor of the Palace, the real the throne of Theuderic III, King of Neustria. ented the 2. Wilfrid of Ripon. A protégé of Bishop Agilbert, he repres

and an Ui king’s son, Ecgfrith, a child of a liaison between Oswiu

in 648, and Néill princess. Wilfrid had been a monk at Lindisfarne he became the in 658, he became Abbot of Ripon. After Whitby, Hexham. Bishop of York, 669, and in 705, Bishop of

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Wilfrid’s

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

traveling companion was Biscop Baducing, a young Bamburgh noble who received the name Benedict Biscop at on Iles de Lérins. Benedict returned to England with Greek prelate Theodore of Tarsus, the Reformer of the English church, consecrated him as Abbot of Saint Augustine monastery at Canterbury. Ecgfrith”’ of Northumbria. As king, he annexed northern Pictish areas, thus suzerain over the Dal Riata Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh-Britons. After the synod, Abbot Colman left Lindisfarne, Ecgfrith promoted Cuthbert, the Anglo-Saxon Prior of Melrose, as

the new Prior of Lindisfarne to introduce the Roman custom. Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus elevated Cuthbert Bishop of Hexham, he later exchanged it for the bishopric of Lindisfarne. . An enigmatic southern Irish monk R6éndén. On the Pro-Irish side of King Oswiu:

‘ Colman**A bbatial-Bishop of Lindisfarne; the most powerful churchman in Northumbria, ergo in all of England. As a direct result of the synod, Canterbury became England’s ecclesiastical center.

In 735,

Lindisfarne,

Hexham,

and

Whitehorn

became

suffragan sees of the Archbishop of York. Bishop Cedd. An Anglian educated by Aidan and Finan at Lindisfarne. His overlord Oswiu sent him to King Sigibert of the East Saxon (Essex), where he was successfully evangelized them,

becoming the Apostle of the East Saxons. In 653, Abbatial-bishop Finan consecrated him as bishop. Cedd acted as an interpreter during the synod and died of the plague shortly thereafter. Hilda of Hartlepool, Abbess of the great double abbey at Whitby, and, host of the synod.

The atmosphere at Whitby varied with the advocate. Would this corporate debate end in the spirit of the Formula of Hormisdas?? Alternatively, would the decision be similar to the advice Gregory the Great gave to Leander’”, Archbishop of Seville: “where there is one faith,

a diversity of usage does not harm the Church.” Or, perhaps Gregory’s advice to Augustine on the question of Gallic or Roman usage at Mass: “My brother, you know the customs of the Roman Church in which, of course, you were brought up But . . . things are not to be loved for the sake of a place, but places are to be loved for the sake of their good things.”

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

The debate had nothing to do with church doctrine or dogma; it was all about obedience and the unity of the church. Ostensibly, it involved four main issues: 1. Abbots were the Ordinary of the clergy and others only within their ecclesiastical purview, abbacy nullius, set aside by the territorial suffragan bishop. Secular bishops were the Ordinary of all clergy and faithful within their ecclesiastical See. The obvious: bishops were the ecclesiastical and jurisdictionally superior to independent abbots. The Irish tonsure was not a sign of obedience to Columcille or to the papacy. The Benedictines insisted that the Irish adopt their tonsure — the Irish refused. 2. The Romanists saw the Irish insistence in adhering to the Alexandrine Rule of Nicaea as an obstinate impediment to their ambition of presenting a unified church vis-a-vis pagan Europe. Exacerbating this issue was the Irish monks’ practice of using Greek and following some Gallic liturgical practices as well as insisting on educating their brethren in the ancient classics. 3. Rome had become unreasonably alarmed that the Irish paruchia system that cut-across political borders, thus a danger to the Roman dioceses that were co-terminus with political borders. The papacy apparently did not understand that the early Irish church

Romans — was pro-Roman, its motto being, “Be Christians like the against Ut Christiani sitis, sicut Romani’. The Benedictines were

the cult of Columcille, suggesting that the Canterbury-Kentish an faction was propagandizing a perception that the Columbi Isles, British the in church movement was emerging as a parallel was thus jeopardizing the unity of the church. This mindset Mother plausible in the aftermath of the Islamists seizure of the d. implode Church in Jerusalem, in 638 — as the African church

the Keys” The climax came when Wilfrid played the “Power of

hence his successors, card, alluding to the teaching that Christ gave Peter, ! Matthew 16: 18-19 the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Not Columcille opus inter Eptscopos attests that all popes were successors of Peter: episc r of the keys.” Citing turned into episcopus episcoporum, or the “powe African bishop Cyprian Matthew 16 is reminiscent of the unity avowal by lius and Stephen (251of Carthage during of clash between Popes Corne Iona-trained Irish and 57) with arch-traditionalist Presbyter Novatian. British monks were similarly ultraconservative.

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Oswiu declared, “Since he is the doorkeeper, I will not contradict

him; but I intend to obey his commandants in everything to the best of my ability, otherwise when I come to the gates of the kingdom, there may be no one to open them, because he who holds the keys has turned his back on me.” In other words, Roma locuta est, causa finita est — Rome has spoken the case is closed. . The debate ended in an atmosphere best described as submission at

the sword’s point®'-gillad fri claideb, with the losers humiliated and stripped of their dignity, which prompted Abbess Hilda to declare, “the Roman Church gives laws; the Irish Church gives love — Tugann an Romanach na dLithe; Tugann Eaglais na nGael gra’. Nevertheless, the die was cast. Bishop Colman and many Irish and English monks left for Ireland. Colman built a monastery on Inishbofin in Galway it became a refuge for Irish and Anglo-Saxon monks wishing to retain the ancient liturgical custom of Easter reckoning. East and southeast Anglo-Saxon England and southern Ireland adopted the Roman custom. West and northwest of the island to include England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern

Ireland stayed with the ancient custom for the next several generations. As the old guard died out, the Benedictine custom became the standard in the British Isles. During the ascendancy of the West Saxon” Boniface would ensure that the Roman would replace the Alexandrine Rule in Iro-Frankish Europe. On 20 May

685, Ecgfrith of Northumbria

led an invasion

into

Scotland and was defeated at Forfar Germanic, Nechtanesmere, halting the Roman custom at the Firth of Forth.

In 716, the last bastion of Irish “hold-outs” on the island of Iona

adopted Roman liturgical custom.

The Eastern Church refused to claim that it was not consistent with the Bible. Perhaps this circumstance provoked Pope Vitalian to ask the violence-prone Byzantine Emperor Constans II°? to ask the 66-year-old Greek theologian Theodore of Tarsus to reorganize the English church. Assisting Theodore was the African born prelate Adrian, a member of the Byzantine abbey at Nerida, by Naples, independent of Constantinople. He

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

accompanied Theodore to Britain; afterwards becoming Abbot of the Saint Peter and Paul Monastery. Thus, Greeks led the British church.

Oddly, Theodore’s tonsure issue delayed his consecration because he wore the Saint Paul tonsure, a completely shorn head, worn by all Greek churchmen. He had to wait four months until his hair grew before traveling to England. On 26 March 668, the consecration of Theodore took place at Rome, without coordination with Arles. A warning that the Papacy would disallow reintroduction of the Eastern-Gallic-Irish Alexandrine Rule for celestial Easter reckoning? In any case, Theodore’s principal task was to reorganize the Angles-Saxon church in the likeness and in concert with the Frankish church, sans simony.

Theodore began the reorganization of the English church by establishing Canterbury as the metropolitan church with a centralized diocesan system at two key synods: Hertford, on 26 September 672; and Hatfield, on 17 September 679. Hertford and Hatfield can be seen as the precursors to the later reform synods of the Irish church. He renamed the principal monastery church of Northumbrian on the island of Lindisfarne (Holy Island) as the Church of Saint Peter—to underscore the Petrine doctrine and the primacy of Canterbury!

In “Ecclesiastical History of the English People™*,” the Venerable These Bede documented the ten canonical chapters of the Hertford synod. of ate apostol the for e are worth repeating because they became the templat Irish ing Saint Boniface, especially in his confrontations with the wander monks, on the continent: of Easter Chapter 1: “That we all unite in observing the holy days first month.” on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the moon of the r, but Chapter 2: “That no bishop intrude into the diocese of anothe to his charge.” confine himself to the guidance of the people committed any way with in Chapter 3: “That no bishop shall interfere them forcibly.” monasteries dedicated to God, nor take anything from to place, that Chapter 4: “That monks shall not wander from place dimissory from their is, from monastery to monastery, except with letters which they made at the abbot: and that they keep the promise of obedience time of their profession.” bishop and Chapter 5: “That no clergy shall leave their own wander

about

at will,

nor

be received

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anywhere

without

letters

of

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

commendation from their own bishop. And should such a person, once received, refuse to return when so directed, both receiver and received

shall incur excommunication.” Chapter 6: “That bishops and clergy when traveling shall be content with whatever hospitality is offered them; and that it shall be unlawful for any of them to exercise any priestly function without permission from the bishop in whose diocese they are known to be.” Chapter 7: “That a synod be held twice a year.” Chapter 8: “That no bishop claims precedence over another out of ambition: seniority of consecration shall alone determine precedence.” Chapter 9: “That more bishops shall be consecrated as the number of the faithful increases.” Chapter 10: That lawful wedlock alone is permissible; incest is forbidden; and no man may leave his lawful wife except, as the gospel provides, for fornication. And if a man puts away his own wife who is joined to him in lawful marriage, he may not take another if he wishes to be a good Christian. He must either remain as he is, or else be reconciled to his wife.” These councils broke up the large and powerful Mercian diocese, not to the liking of the anti-Irish faction. They would complain to the pope, to little avail. This occurred prior to the 27 March 680, Council of Rome on the Monotheist heterodoxy, where Pope Donus sought allies to confirm his papal authority.

The significance of these two synods is that they confirmed the Order of Saint Benedict as the champions of papal obedience and ecclesiastical unity as the religious foundations in Britain came under the control of pro-Frankish clergy. Whitby was a watershed in the history of the Roman Catholic Christian Church in England. It ensured the primacy of the papacy, standardized the date of Easter in the church, defined the role of the regular clergy as a part of the emerging diocesan system, and established the dominance of the secular clergy as the principal religious order in the church. Most important of all it ensured the unity of the Latin Church under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome.

As the Kentish-Canterbury leadership replaced NorthumbrianLindisfarne as the prime ecclesiastical see on the island of Britain, the archbishopric of Canterbury began considering itself as metropolitan over 110

5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est all the churches on the islands of Britain and Ireland. Thus, the mutual

enmity of Whitby became endemic in Irish-English relations analogous to fallout resulting from the treaties of Verdun, in 843, and Mersen, in 870,

the taproots of French-German reciprocal animosity.

After Whitby, many Frankish noblemen in Jutish Kent were motivated to join the Order of Saint Benedict® and studied in southern Ireland. Nevertheless, their tonsure was a gesture of obedience to Monte

Casino—hence, the papacy. More notable is that after Whitby, the Irish readily fused their rules and penitential into a unique Irish Order of Saint Benedict, they became the

archetypal

Benedictine

monks,

nevertheless,

the

Cistercian

reformation had a greater appeal to the conservative ideals of the Irish Catholics — the Cistercian movement flourished in Ireland.

The Irish influence on the English church did not go away— whether within the East or Middle Angles or the Jutish center of Kent— even after the Angles and Saxons assumed their distinctive Catholic identities. The monastery of Malmesbury founded by Maildubh’® remained the Irish midwife of English Catholicism. Sir Frank Stanton, “The certainly no friend of the Irish, wrote in Anglo Saxon England, every in en strands of Irish and continental influence were interwov became kingdom, and at every stage of the process by which England Christian.””” of The 7" century events at Whitby and Hertford marked the Order ing follow the Saint Benedict ascendance as the primary regular order for n with the oratio collab their by millennium.” This was only possible ted the exploi Merovingian dynasts. The Franks leaders readily ” the northwestern Benedictines sending them as missionaries to pacify Utrecht. Radbod was Frisian territories ruled by the pagan king Radbod of st.”° So Pépin II a threat to the expansion of their hegemony in the northea Serguis I to Pope ed of Hérstal, Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria, extort n monk Willibrord*! consecrate the 38-year-old Irish-trained Angle-Saxo t of Utrecht for the as Archbishop Clemens and metropolitan at the seapor t the Frisians under the entire Frisian territory. His mission was to conver . age-old sobriquet: The Sword Follows the Cross

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

However, their victory was short-lived. When they smashed the fleets of these northern Germanic seafarers, they destroyed the only military buffer between the coast of Western Europe and the southern expansionist ambitions of the Scandinavia warlords. This political miscalculation would change the face of Western Europe once again — it launch the era of Viking invasions. To its eternal illustriousness, the Order of Saint Benedict in Medieval Europe was singularly responsible for propagating the Magisterium of the church and an apostolic papacy as the unifying final authority of Christ’s church on earth, thus the sobriquet, Roma locuta est,

causa finita est—Rome has spoken, the case is closed.

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est

Roma locuta est, causa finite est Notes: 1. These words of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16, and are painted in 1.8-meter-high letters around the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome as biblical testimony to the legitimacy that the pope is the rightful successor to the Apostle Peter. 2. Alias Thascius Cecilius Cyprianus (b. c.200; d. 258). 3. Founded his own sect that spread through the empire, until the 7th century. 4. Streanaeshalch is the Angle name for Bay of the Beacon and was changed to Whitby after the Danish/Norse invasion. 5. According to Matthew 27: 57-58, “When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who himself a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over.”

Confusingly Mark 15: 42-47 identifies him as “A distinguished member of the Sanhedrin

[the council

of chief priests, elders, and scribes that attempted to

obtain false testimony against Jesus] who was himself awaiting the kingdom of God came out and courageously went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was amazed that he was already dead. He summoned the centurion and asked him if Jesus had already died, he gave the body to Joseph.” While Luke 23: 50-52 relates, “Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph who, though he was a member of the council, had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.” 6. b.c. 673, at Wearmouth, at the mouth of the Northumbria River Wear. 7. Georgius Florentius, Bishop of the Saint Martin at Tours monastery. 8. Bthelfrith had his fortress at Bamburgh on the North Sea to control the area north of the Tees River, known as Bernicia. 9. Her mother Brunhild was the daughter of Athanagild, King of the Visigoth. Her personal Frankish chaplain, Bishop Liudhard accompanied her to England. 10. Charibert I was a grandson of Clovis and one of the four sons of Lothair, King of All Franks. Charibert (d. 567) also had three brothers: Sigibert I (d. 575), King of Austriasia (at Metz); Chilperic (d. 584), King of Neustria, (at Soissons);

Guntram (d. 592), King of Burgundy. After much warfare, Lothar II, son of Chilperic I, became in 613, King of All Franks. Again, the Merovingian Empire was intact with dynastic ties to the island of England. 11. The only other suspect is Lothair Il, who was overlord of the Jutish tribe remnants in the Rheinland. 12. Latin: Lugdunum. 13. Thanet is peninsula, a shrine for Jutish thunder-god Thunor. 14. Bade was clearly a Frankish patriot. 15. Jutish name was Hrofescestir. 16. Son of Bdetén mac Muirceartaig, High King of Ailech. 17. In 610, Heraclius Exarch of Africa overthrew this thug.

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est 18. Perhaps for patrimonial rights on the Frankish continent. 19. He slew Athelfrith of Bernicia, King of Northumbria.

20. On 11 June 634, he sent to Metropolitan Pallium, one for Archbishop Honorius of Canterbury, the second for Archbishop Paulinus of York. 21. Cumméne Fota (b. 592; d. 662) had powerful credentials; he was one of the twelve sons of Fiachnae Find, King of West Munster (Iarmumu). 22. His youngest son is taken prisoner and later murdered.

23 b. 614; d. 680. 24 Hartlepool Bay of the North Sea, leading to River Tees in SE Bernicia. 25. Often

mistaken

for another

violent

thug,

Czdwalla,

King

of Wessex,

baptized in 689, by Pope Serigus I 26. An abbey complex for women and men. 27. In 684, Ecgfrith invaded the kingdom of Meath (Mide) in Ireland, taking hostages. He was killed on 20 May 685, during the battle of Forfar on the border of Dal Riata. 28. The successor of Finan, who succeeded Aidan.

29. The 519 modus used to reconcile the Latin and Greek Churches. 30. He

was

the older brother

of Saints

Isidore

of Seville,

Florentina,

and

Fulgentius. He organized the Spanish church. 31. Irish Kings and High Kings: “Ui Néill Diarmait mac Aedo Sldine, the HighKing of Sil nAedo Sldine (Tara) and Guaire Aidne the Uf Fiachrach king of Connaught where Diarmait as victor literally placed the point of his spear or sword between the teeth of his supine opponent. . . . At the end, Guaire is allowed to rise to take off his shirt that is all that is left of him and he gives it to a Culdee [Céle Dé]” (page 241). 32. In 635, King Cynegils, the son of “old king Ceol” of nursery rhyme fame, was the first West Saxon to be baptized, by Birinus, the first bishop of Wessex. Cynegils was the father of Cyneburga, who married Oswald, King of Northumbria. 33.While bathing, his Chamberlain (Cubicularius) murdered him (15 Sept. 688). 34. Book Four. 35. German kings appointed relatives, not necessarily ecclesiastics, to the offices of bishop, abbot, cardinal, and even pope. A practice that had grave future consequences. 36 Meldubesbury (Maildulf Burgus). Malmesbury after Maildubh (Maildulf). 37. Angle Saxon England, p 125. 38. It would dominate the policy of the church over the centuries by providing it with 5,000 saints, 24 popes, 200 cardinals, and 15,000+ writers and scholars.

39. In 795, Vikings raided Rathlin Island (Reachrann)—the Norse response to

Frankish expansionism. 40. An historical parallel can be drawn to the destruction of Rhodes, the bulwark against piracy in the Mediterranean.

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5. Roma locuta est, causa finita est 41. Although he did not meet the canonical age of 50 to be consecrated bishop, Pope Serguis I elevated Willibrod on 21 November 695, renaming him Archbishop Clemens to the Frisians. His efforts proved unsuccessful since he was actually a Wandering Bishop who traveled from Frisian to Thuringian, a vorbild for Saint Boniface.

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6. Fergil of Salzburg

Fergil of Salzburg: Irish monk scholars and diplomats Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. (Gospel of Mark 16:15) Since the 5" century, gangs of illiterate Germanic warlords, that terrorized Europe, were in an identity crisis. They longed to bask in the splendor of a Roman culture their ancestors ruthlessly destroyed, but lacked those essential skills needed to administer the territories and peoples their hordes had conquered. | Their first mistake was confiscating two-thirds of the land,

from

its previous

owners,

thus

ensuring

a continual

crisis

in

territorial control. Their second mistake was devastating the municipal infrastructure, built and maintained by the Roman in bygone centuries. Thirdly, they reduced much of the skilled artisan and merchant classes to a proletarian level. The conqueror’s sole redeeming quality was intuitively realizing that they needed the bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church, more than they needed their pagan gods. Thus, they jettisoned their old cosmology for the secular benefits of Roman Catholicism. Quo Vadis! In the early Middle Ages, Ireland, the island on the edge of the then-known world, was the epicenter of intellectual enlightenment, producing eminent monk-scholars who strode boldly across the stage of European history re-igniting a renaissance of Catholic pehistan ethos, on a lapsed continent. These Irish Exiles for Christ” —perigrinare pro Christo—were confidants of Germanic dynasts who attempted to escape the stigma of the Dark Ages, except for recurring episodes of Teutonic mayhem. Sadly, these monks never persuaded these Germanic rulers to correct the fundamental flaw in their succession modus—dividing the royal patrimony among surviving male heirs—which more often than not lead to destructive upheavals, not that the ancient Irish practice of maiming their sibling rivals to disqualify them from kingship was better, though just as effective. In the late 6" century, a middle-aged monk named Columbanus, from the great Irish monastery at Bangor, lead a group of Irish Exiles, in an imitation of the apostles, to the Frankish Europe, to preach the Good

116

6. Fergil of Salzburg News of the Bible. Their mission was straightforward: to re-evangelize those areas overrun by the pagan Germanic tribes. Columbanus was unbending before kings and scornful of a Frankish bishopric ripe with simony, a metaphor for those that followed. The Ehrenkodex of these intrepid Irish Exiles clashed with the curia’s realpolitik. Not shy of corresponding directly with, or traveling personally’ to, Rome to seek redress for real or perceived grievances, fearlessly walking in the footsteps of Columbanus — Europe’s greatest Irish Saint. By the 7" century, the bishoprics of Gaul were no longer the domain of the great Gallo-Roman senatorial families; instead, these ecclesiastical offices came under the control of the new FrancoBurgundian nobility, influenced by the Irish peregrine. Hence, an IroFrankish culture led the Catholic Church in Western Europe. On the island of Britain throughout the 7th century, the petty kings of Deira and Bernicia fought a series of deliberating wars similar to the mayhem of their Germanic kin on the continent. This changed in 633, when Prince Oswald returned from his exile on the island of Iona to unite Deira and Bernicia into the kingdom of Northumbria. During Oswald’s stay on the island Iona, he rejected paganism and embraced Catholicism. Some of these monks accompanied him on his journey home. As Northumbrian suzerain, Oswald was the most powerful king on the island of Britain, and the influence of his Irish monks grew proportionately. Successor Northumbrian kings (e.g., Alhred* and A2lfwald) sent Irishtrained Angle-Saxon missionaries to Christianize the Germanic tribes on the continent, especially to areas seen as a threat to the interest of their

had preceded Irish monks Nonetheless, relatives. Merovingian Frisians and the to Apostle Willibrord’ as such missionaries Northumbrian when Abbey Willehad. Willibrord was a 20-year-old monk at Ripon Bishop Egbert® called him to Ireland, where he spent 12 years before going to Bremen and Utrecht to proselytize the Germanic Frisians on the northwestern coastal plain of Europe, for his intrepid work, he was given the sobriquet: Apostle to the Frisians. Irish monks were active in Gaul and in the tribal territories of the Suevi, Alamanni, Bavarian, and Slovaks’, east and southeast of the Frankish citadel town of Mainz.

1d?

6. Fergil of Salzburg

Two of the first significant Irish exiles were 6" century monks named Fursa® (or Fursey) and Gobain. They went to East Anglia to assist the Burgundian Bishop Felix in proselytizing pagan Kent. Upon hearing his successes, Clovis invited Fursa to Paris and granted him land to build a monastery at Lagny that became the Irish gateway into the Frankish Empire. This monastery was the first of numerous Iro-Frankish Schottenklésters.

Another of the first Irish Exiles was

Fridolin, whom

Clovis allowed to establish a monastery on the island of Sackingen in the Black Forest of the Rhein River valley; there, he evangelized to the Alamanni. Saints Columbanus and Gall followed Fridolin’s example. The great teaching abbeys of Luxeill, Annegray, and Fontaine-lésBains, founded by Columbanus, formed the illustrious “Luxeill Circle of

Scholars” that influenced ecclesiastical realpolitik during the Merovingian Empire, thus breaking the “Gallo-Roman monopoly” within the Catholic episcopacy. Dagobert I (d. 639), King of All Franks, appointed his Burgundian Chancellor,

Faro, as Bishop of Meaux,

in 628; the king also allowed

Fiacre, the Irish ascetic, to build a strategic monastery at Breiul, 40 kilometers east of Paris, the seat of the Merovingian Empire. The story of how the Irish monks established themselves as preeminent teachers and advisors to the Frankish kings is part of a convoluted intrigue, and, is worth repeating. The crisis began with the death of Dagobert I and the division of his patrimony between his two minor sons, Sigibert III and Clovis II:

1.)

Nine-year-old Sigibert II] (d. 656) is made King of Austrasia, at

Metz, on the Moselle River,

2.)

Five-year-old Clovis II (d. 657), King of Neustria & Burgundy;

3.)

Count Pépin (d. 643) of Landen and Bishop Arnulf? (d. 641) of Metz

serve as co-regents for both young kings.. In 643, Count Pépin dies and his son, Count Grimoald (d. 676) becomes the sole regent;

4.)

In 656 Sigibert III dies, and his six-year-old son, Dagobert II, is

crowned king of Austrasia at Metz, with Grimoald as regent; 5.) In 657, Clovis II dies and, his son Lothair III becomes

King of

Neustria & Burgundy. In 656 Clovis becomes King of All Franks, and his brother Theodoric III King of Neustria;

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6. Fergil of Salzburg

6.) In 662, Lothair III, in collusion with Grimoald, usurps the patrimony of Dagobert II. They have him deposed, tonsured and exiled to Ireland — Dagobert spent the next decades at the Slane monastery at Meath (Mide) in the patrimony of the Southern Ui Neill. Lothair gives the vacant throne to his younger brother, Childeric’’, who was crowned King of Austrasia. 7.) In 673, Childeric is crowned King of All Franks, with Grimoald and Dagobert’s mother, Himmechilde, as regents — but, in 675, he dies and the throne of Austrasia became vacant;

8.) Grimoald and Himmechilde allow Dagobert II’’ to return to Metz after a 20 years exile in Ireland, and reign as king of Austrasia. Irish monks accompany Dagobert, as his trusted advisors and confidants — this event marked the transition of Irish monks from missionaries to the preeminent role as trusted advisors to Frankish kings.’

Europe

In the late 7” century, the political landscape of southeastern was (again) unstable. In November 680, Byzantine Emperor

Constantine [V summoned

the Sixth General Council at Constantinople,

where the Greek Church finally acknowledged the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures of Christ, a victory for Pope Agatho (d. 681) and a defeat

for

his

monotheistic

opponents.

However,

in 692,

Emperor

Justinian II summoned a new council called the Quinisext to complete the work of the pervious councils because Agatho had refused to attend the 680 event. Quinisext was strictly an Eastern affair; it passed 102 canons, such as permitting priests and deacons to marry and outlawing a number of western devotional and iconographical conventions—including the representation of Christ as a Lamb. Instead of signing the hubristic Quinisext Canons, Serguis ordered that the Syrian custom of singing Agnus Dei’ as part of the Breaking of the Bread during the Roman Mass. Emperor Justinian ordered Serguis’s arrest; however, his Italian troops rebelled, and protected the pope. This marked the factual end of Byzantine power in northern Italy.’ In 686, the Irish Saint Cilléne-Kilian, at Castellum

Virteburch —

Wiirzburg, baptized Duke Gozbert of Thiiringia’” and fearlessly forbade him to marry Geilana, his brother's widow. In 689, Gozbert retaliated by ordering the beheading of Kilian and his Irish companions, the priest Coloman and the deacon Totnan. In the 9" century Martyrology of Saint Hrabanus Maurus'®, the monk-abbot-archbishop-scholar of the citadel town of Mainz memorialized the intrepid Kilian. Unfortunately, Maurus

19

6. Fergil of Salzburg

was not an astute politician. He openly supported Emperor Lothair I against the ambitions of Louis, King of the Germans, even after Louis defeated his older brother. To show his displeasure, Maurus resigned his

abbatialship and went into exile rather than swear an oath of fealty to

Louis.

and

Maurus

In 824,

reconciled

Louis

at Rasdorf

near

Fulda,

motivating Louis to ensure that Marcus would succeeded Archbishop Otgar (d. 847) to the archbishopric of Mainz. Aside from his proclivity for dynastic meddling, Maurus worthily earned the title Preceptor Germania

—

Teacher

Germans,

of

for

De

his

institutione

clericorum,

which

contributed to unity within the Latin Church. In 689, Pope Serigus’” baptized King Cadwalla of Wessex, who had traveled from the island of Britain to Rome for the ceremony. He died shortly thereafter in the Eternal City. Cadwalla’s death would influence the history of the British Isles. In early 711, Islam’s most successful general, Musa ibn-Nusayr,

ordered his Berber Freedman Tariq to take a mixed force of 7,000 Arabs and Berbers across the straits to raid the Visigothic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. Tariq’s ships landed near a huge mountainous rock that his followers called Gebel al Tarig — Gibraltar. On 19 July 711, at the Battle on Rio Barbate (Gaudalete River), the 12,000-man army of Tariq routed

the 25,000-man army of Roderick, the last Visigothic King. This sudden victory caused Misa ibn Nusayr to assume the command of all Islamic forces on the European continent. The success of this enterprise provoked the oppressed Jewish community into betraying Toledo, the Visigothic capital, to the Saracens. Revenge for the aggressive decrees issued in 612, by the Council of Gundemar’® to quell the violence perpetrated against Jewish converts by their former co-religionists — that accused these New Christians of apostasy against the God’s Mosaic Laws’. Saracens

drove

the

Christians

from

Cdérdoba,

Seville,

and

Sargasso. Spain became al-Andalus province of the Omayyad Caliphate. By 719, an unstoppable Moslem army crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into

Europe.

Thirteen

years

later,

in 732,

Karl

Martel’s

immovable

defensive wall of mostly Austrasischen infantry, supported by equally ferocious Frankish cavalry, halted the Islamic conquest of Gaul at the Battles of Tours and Poitiers. In the battle ‘Abd ar-RahmAn was killed, and the Caliph’s light cavalry was annihilated, ensuring that Gaul was spared

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6. Fergil of Salzburg

the same fate as Visigothic Spain, which would be dominated by an Islamic oligarchy until the Moors were driven from Granada in 1492. The Saracens sporadically raided cities in Gaul and occupied Avignon, in 734, and Lyons, in 743. Finally, in 759, the last Saracens were driven from

Narbonne, a significant See in the Papal Vicarage of Arles.

The Mediterranean became a Saracen lake.

By the second decade of the 8" century, the Benedictine Reformation on the islands of Ireland and Britain were complete. In Germanic Gaul, these needed reforms were just beginning and benefited the universal church by establishing a coherent diocesan hierarchy. As expected, realpolitik adroitness ensured that most of these reforms were set forth — with bias.

Pépin of Héristal” (d. 714), the Merovingian Strongman, was succeeded by his natural”' son Karl Martel*”, who continued to prosecute wars

against the Frisians, Saxons,

Burgundians,

and Alamanni.

In the

conquered territories, the Franks used Benedictine missionaries to pacify the pagan tribes. The realpolitik of sword & cross meant recruiting AngloSaxon missionaries from Saint Paul’s Cathedral at London, the principal East Saxon town founded by King #thelberht of Kent. Duplicitous like his father, Martel was not above double-crossing his allies; he betrayed King Liutprand of the Lombards in exchange for the title of Consul that Pope Gregory III (d. 741) offered him in return for protection of the expansion ambitions of Liutprand. Nevertheless, Martel needed Liutprand as an ally against the Saracens — so nothing happened. Both Gregory III and Martel died the same year. Pope Gregory was succeeded by Zacharias prelate from Calabria and former papal nuncio” to the 751, Zacharias anointed Martel’s son Pépin III the Neustria, as King of All Franks at Soissons, the first the papacy as a Frankish client.

(d. 752), a Greek Byzantine court. In Short, Mayor™ of steps in converting

In 754, Pope Stephen II, the successor to Zacharias, crossed the Alps seeking an alliance with Pépin to halt Lombard King Aistulfs’s expansionist policy into Emperor Constantine V’s patrimonies of Ravenna

121

6. Fergil of Salzburg

and southwards. On 28 July, Stephan anointed Pépin as King of All F' ranks

and anointed his wife Bertrada and their two sons, Karl and Karlmann, as

the only rightful heirs to the Frankish throne. Stephen also named the Bishop Chrodegang of Metz, Pépin’s ambassador to Rome, successor to Boniface as Archbishop of Mainz. In 756, Pépin seized Ravenna and the Duchy Pentapolis,”” giving the Exarchate of Ravenna to Pope Stephen, an act of larceny known as “Donation of Pépin — Patrimonium Petri’. The papacy was now a temporal power; unfortunately, in later centuries it became a venial copy of Melchizedek,

King of Salem, a Priest of God on High, leading the

church into disrepute until the 16" century Tridentate reforms of the Council of Trent.

In the seventh and eight centuries, the idea of national identify was taking root among the Germanic peoples, on the island of Britain and on the continent. During the ascendancy of the Wessex, a young West Saxon named Wynfrith”®, or Wynfrid, entered the Exeter (Caster) monastery and joined the monastery of Nursling in Saxon Hampshire, rising to become the rector of its monastic school. About 716, he traveled to Frisa to assist

Willibrord’’, but the mission failed and Wynfrid returned to England. King Ina of Wessex chose him as envoy to the Canterbury Archbishopric. In 718, his Abbot

Winbrecht

died, but Wynfrid

was

not elected

his

successor. Next Wynfrid obtained a letter of introduction to Pope Gregory II from Wessex Bishop Daniel of the Winchester. At Rome, Gregory II entrusted Wynfrid with the mission to evangelize the pagan German tribes in Thiiringia and, in 719, consecrated him as Bishop Legate. Three years later, Wynfrid obtained permission from Karl Martel to preach in Hesse and Thiiringia. In 723, Wynfrid chopped-down the Saxon sacral oak tree to the pagan god Donner (Donareiche) at Geismar (Gaesmare) and used the lumber to build the abbey of Saint Peter. In 732, Gregory III sent his missionary-archbishop’s Pallium, without permanent See, and power to consecrate bishops beyond the Rhein.

The significance of the palladium alluded to the fact that the bishop wore his first loyalty to the pope, not the king. In the following centuries, this would create grave problems because Frankish kings were unequivocal in controlling their church—an institution notorious for simony.

122

6. Fergil of Salzburg

Unlike the sobriquet Clemens, which Gregory III gave to Willibrord for his mission to Frisia, Gregory re-named Wynfrid Boniface, honoring an early Roman martyr and designating him as the ranking ecclesiastic to carryout the monastic reforms of 610, established by Pope Boniface IV, throughout the Frankish empire. In 739, politics dictated the

first reform appointment as Karl Martel designated the Frankish Abbot Grimo* as Bishop of Rouen. Perhaps this explains Boniface’s apparent ambivalence towards reforming the Frankish church, suggesting that he really sought to establish an Anglo-Saxon church on the continent by replacing Iro-Frankish monks with his kin group. In addition, his hubristic attitude towards non-Anglo-Saxons did not endear him with the Frankish clergy. Not unlike the papal commission of Greek prelate Theodore of Tarsus, whose job it was to reform the churches in Angle-Saxon England, Boniface was entrusted to reform the churches in Frisa, Hesse, Bavaria,

and Thiiringia. In 739, Boniface began Sduberung, i.e., purging, Iroecclesiastical abbeys in the duchy of Bavaria, appointing pro-Frankish, anti-Agilolfing, Anglo-Saxon relatives as bishops for the newly founded dioceses of Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, and Passau. The dioceses of Eichstatt and Wiirzburg

were

created later. After the death of Martel,

Boniface rose to great influence, until the Pope Stephen-Pépin alliance. On 21 April 742, at the Councilium Germanicum — Council of the Germans,

Boniface

and

Karlmann

tried

to

introduce

a

Frankish

Metropolitan system, and in 744, Pépin agreed. Because of distances, Boniface probably did not take part (or may have not been invited to attend) in all three Frankish church reform councils held in 743-744.”

These synods set the “ground-rules” for the first German Landeskirchen — territorial church, involving taxation and disposition of expropriated church wealth and ecclesiastical properties in time of war. It decree explicitly forbade ecclesiastics from actively participating in wars, admonishing all abbots, monks, and nuns to adhere to the Rules of Saint Benedict — with the caveat that monks holding royal appointments were free of ecclesiastical supervision. It also addressed the sanctity of marriage.

123

6. Fergil of Salzburg Boniface, as de facto Metropolitan of Neustria, met resistance from

the Frankish old school prelates, such as archbishops Milo of Trier and Rheims” and Gewilib of Mainz*', who preferred the “good life,” instead

of being “good shepherds” to their successful in replacing Milo with Carolingian ecclesiastical reformation, were reformed, including the province

flocks. Boniface was singularly Anglo-Saxon Abel. During the most of the Austrasia churches of K6ln and its suffragan Sees of

Liittich, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and Utrecht. For more than a millennium, German clerics flouted clerical celibacy rules. As late as 1581, Julius-Echter von Mespelbrunn, ” the

Counter-reformation Bishop of Wiirzburg’’ complained that clerical concubines were still a German problem. It was not until 1619, that this practice finally disappeared. Boniface was abrasive and regularly unjust; he preferred West Saxon or Anglo-Saxon monks to Irish or Frankish clerics. This did not resonate in the political circles of the Frankish empire. Boniface set about replacing or creating bishops and abbots with Wessex-born clerics such Burchard, his 749 envoy™ to the pope, whom he elevated as the first diocesan bishop of Wiirzburg in Franconia.

Boniface was unafraid to grant near relatives ecclesiastical appointments, suggesting a West Saxon familiae tradition. He made his cousin Lioba® abbess of Tauberbishofsheim. Other Franconia locations were Ochsenfurt and Kitzingen. Lullus, another cousin, succeeded him as

archbishop of Mainz. In 741, Boniface continued his Wessex preference by creating his nephews, Willibald, Bishop of Eichstatt, and Burchard, of Wirzburg. Bishop Winnibald, with his sister Walburga as abbess, founded a double abbey at Heidenheim. Boniface rewarded Wigbert Frankish castellum at Biiraburg-Fritzlar, for his 723 success at Ordruf in Thiiringia. Other relatives received offices at Saint Michael’s at Améneburg on the River Ohm

— founded by Boniface

in 721. Politically astute, Boniface

chose Sturmi’®, the (736) founder Hersfeld in Hesse, as abbot to build the

great abbey of Fulda in Hesse, that became known as the Rome North of

the Alps, in 744. Nevertheless, within the empire, Boniface did not achieve the prestige as Fulrad>’, the abbot of Saint Denis in Paris who received the

same imperial immunity as Fulda. The apex of Boniface’s career came in 751, when he crowned Pépin III as King of All Franks. After Pépin III and

124

6. Fergil of Salzburg Pope Stephan joined in a common cause his influence, on both of these personalities faded, Boniface was given the Mainz Archbishopric, remaining universalis ecclesiae legatus Germananicus — the universal ecclesiastc legate to Germany, answereable only to Rome. Abbot Sturmi*™® evangelized the Saxons. In 774, Charlemagne granted Fulda imperial immunity and the right to elect its own abbot. Fulda received papal privilege status and established Saint Michael’s chapel graveyard adjacent to the abbey. It is now the second oldest church in Germany. Within a century, Fulda abbey grew to over 400 monks, and by the year 1000, its library boasted 10,000 manuscripts. Boniface*’ chose Fulda as his final resting place. The Wessex-born pro-Frankish Boniface met his nemesis, an Irish

Abbot-Bishop named Fergil*® (Latin: Vergilius - German Virgil) (b. c. 710) Saint Peter Abbey church, Salzburg, capital of Ducal Bavaria’.

Boniface was not his intellectual equal. Fergil was a scholar and philosopher — Boniface was an ideologue and an ecclesiastical bully.

Fergil was a member of the cadet branch of the royal house of Clann Enna; a descendant of Léeguire, King of Tara, son of Naill of the Nine Hostages — Niall Noi nGiallach. He was a monk at the Agahaboe abbey, in Ossory and his interest in astronomy and geography, strongly suggests that he studied at Iona”.

Two Irish monks, Dub Da Chrich and

Dub Litir*?, accompanied Fergil to the continent. There is a distinct possibility that Fergil was a member of the Irish delegation that met with Karl Martel (d. 741). In 743, Pépin the Short, appointed Fergil as Royal

Stewart the Irishman was now the second most powerful person, after the

king. In 745, Pépin designated Fergil as his peace envoy to Odilo™ (d. 748), the Agilolfing Duke of Bavaria’. Impressed by his candor, Odilo appointed him Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Salzburg. In 739, Odilo and Pépin ensured his elevation as Abbot-Bishop of Salzburg. Fergil had brought with him relics of Saint Brigid, the patron of Leinster. After the death of Abbess Samthann of Clonbroney*°Cludin Bronaigh, Longford-Longfoirt in 739, Fergil included her in the Bavarian Libellus precum of Fleury, he was a friend of this Irish saint.

123

6. Fergil of Salzburg Boniface considered Fergil disloyal for circulating “The Life of Columcille’—“Vita Columbae’—a _ heterodox to this inflexible Benedictine, who preferred Fergil distribute “The Rule of Saint Benedict,

Roman Abbot — Regula sancti Benedicti abbatis Romensis.” He criticized Fergil to Pope Zachary for failing to use canonical words in a baptismal ritual, reigniting the old red herring of semi-Pelagianism. According to Heinz

Lowe,

it was

one

of Fergil’s

unlearned

priests who

used

the

wording, In nomine patria et filia et spiritus sancti.’’ However, Padraig P. O Néill states that the wording was Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et spiritus sancti.*® In any case, Pope Zachary rejected Boniface’s grievance. The differences between Fergil and Boniface were clear. Boniface never hesitated to confront Irish priests over a baptism ritual. It must have been galling to Boniface when Pope Zacharias elevated Fergil to the dignity of a bishop.

On 24 September 767, Fergil consecrated a cathedral and translated the relic of Saint Rupert to a crypt within the Salzburg church, whose paruchia expanded to include Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia Saxony,

Carinthia, and Pannonia.” Fergil died on 27 November 784. On 10 June 1233, Pope Gregory IX” canonized him as Apostle to the Carinthia. Fergil was the classical Irish perigrinare pro amore Christi in 8" century Europe. His Irish predecessors had introduced their ancient abbatial traditions into the Frankish empire, and Fergil became cause célébre of Boniface’s goal to reform the Iro-Frankish church. This daunting task for the following reasons: 1. The Iro-Frankish abbeys adopted the Irish custom whereby the ruling family retained territorial control of abbey property and naming the abbot, usually from their cadet branch as part of their Griindersippenreservat, or founders’ privilege. In practical terms, the bishop was the ecclesiastical superior of the abbot, but the abbot was his territorial superior, thus more powerful. This system was alien to Boniface, who became a monk after Theodore of Tarsus and his successors initiated the Benedictine reforms on the island of Britain. This modus changed after Pépin decreed that the mandatory adoption of the Rules of Saint Benedict, which incorporated the Rules of Saint Columbanus of Bobbio.

126

6. Fergil of Salzburg 2. The Irish monks were fluent in the sacral languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and philosophies of the ancient classics; thus,

they served as sought-after tutors to the landed families of Europe. The Benedictines, forbidden to study Hebrew, ancient classics, spoke only Latin.

and Greek or the

3. The Irish had a rich tradition of oral history, including genealogies and ancient sagas that they used to develop their philosophies. They were supremely conscious of a national identity that was ancient before the birth of Christ. On the other hand, the AngloSaxons were still striving to achieve a national conscious, in the early 8"" century. 4. The Irish monks fostered a Gallic-Irish liturgy and used GreekGallic Psalters; the Latin part of their Eucharist celebration included

Saint Jerome

Eusebius

Hieronymus

(d. 420) original

translation of Origenes Adamantius”’ Hexapla™ the textual studies of the Old Testament. They were also well versed in the works of Isidore of Seville. The ecclesiastical training of their Anglo-Saxon counterparts narrowly focused on a Roman ritual. 5. The abbot rigidly controlled the behavior of the monks. The supervision of diocesan bishops, priests, and deacons was in far-off Rome, resulting in rampant simony and concubinage — thus monks enjoyed in high esteem. Politically, the life of Fergil is intertwined with the reign of Tassilo III (b. 741) of Bavaria, who succeeded to his father’s Odilo dukedom as a minor, with his mother Hiltrud (d. 754) as regent. His half-uncle Grifo>’, the half-brother of Pépin the Short, King of All F. ranks’, and Karlmann

Mayor of Austrasia, invaded Bavaria, challenging Tassilo’s suzerainty until Pépin’s troops defeated him. In 751, Duke Waifar” of Aquitaine granted Grifo asylum. This incited a 17-year war against Waifar. After Tassilo’s mother Hiltrud died, Pépin became Bavarian regent. In 757, Tassilo came of age and had to swear fealty to Pépin” ° in order to assume the ducal patrimony of Bavaria. He married Liutbirg, the daughter of Desiderius’’, the last King of the Lombards and an ally of Waifar. The upshot of this marriage was Tassilo’s refusal in 763 to join Pépin’s expedition against Waifar. In 768, Pepin had Waifar assassinated in the Forest of Ver in Perigord, bringing most of Aquitaine under Frankish control.”®

127

6. Fergil of Salzburg

With the death of Pépin in 768, the kingdom was again divided between his two sons: Karl, alias Charlemagne (d. 814), became King ofNeustria; and Karlmann, (d. 771) became King of Austrasia. After

Karlmann died, Charlemagne emerged as the warfare-prone King of All Franks. In 768, he divorced his wife Himiltrud to marry Desiderata, the

sister of Tassilo’s wife Liutbirg; therefore, Charlemagne and Tassilo”” were not only cousins but also brothers-in-law. In 771, Charlemagne divorced Desiderata to marry Tassilo’s cousin Hildegarde (d. 783), the

daughter of the Duke Childebrand® (d. 751) of Swabia. Charlemagne next married Fastarda, whom some suggest urged him to wage a campaign of

extermination against the Saxons using mass executions®to motivate their conversions.

After Charlemagne came to power, his territorial ambitions grew. Although an intrepid Iro-Alamanni, clergy challenged his genocidal savagery

against

the

Saxons,

Moravians,

Bohemians,

Pannonians™,

Carinthians, and Slavs. After Charlemagne crossed the Drava River, seizing Croat territory as far as the Serb border, he marched through Patrimonium Petri, which his father had donated to the papacy, into the Duchy of Benevento in Italy.

In 772, Tassilo traveled to Rome to have Pope Adrian I (d. 795) baptize his son Thedo, on Whitsuntide. The pope became the godfather — compaternitas to the heir to the Bavarian throne. With the death of Hildegard (d. 783), Charlemagne had no further allegiance with his cousin, especially after the death of Bishop Fergil. A 784 clash between Frankish and Bavarian soldiers in the Alps at Bozen and Vintschgau resulting from and alliance between Tassilo and the Bavarian-Avars exacerbated their estrangement. Charlemagne saw the alliance as a threat to Frankish interests comparable to the 768-76 Bavarian-Lombard-Papal alliance. After defeating the Lombards, it was time to neutralize his cousin Tassilo. In 787, Charlemagne crossed the Lech River, forcing Tassilo™ to

surrender his Bavarian dukedom. Charlemagne then regranted it to him as a vassal. As surety, Tassilo gave Charlemagne twelve hostages™, with his son Theodo as the thirteenth. Since Tassilo’s son was the godson of the pope, Charlemagne needed to manufacture an excuse to expropriate the Bavarian dukedom. In July 788, Charlemagne summoned a Meeting of the Empire at his Palatinate palace on the Rhein River — Reichsversammliung his Pflaz zu Ingelheim am Rhein, to court marshal Tassilo for refusing to

128

6. Fergil of Salzburg join the 763 war against Waifar — a twenty five year old vengeance. To no one’s surprise, the council found Tassilo guilty of deserting a 25-year-old Frankish campaign. The verdict: Lifetime banishment of Duke Tassilo, his wife Liutbirg, and son Thedo,

and forfeiture of the Bavarian throne to

Charlemagne. Charlemagne conquered the Lombards of Italy and assumed the Iron Crown of its king, and warred in northeast Spain. He united Germany with the ruthless use of the sword, and on Christmas day 800, crowned by

Pope Leo I® as Carolus Augustus — Emperor of the Romans.© The start of the Holy Roman Empire — it would last a thousand years. Theoretically, this papal coronation reestablished the Holy Roman Empires of the East and West (Theodosius I at Constantinople and Charlemagne at Aix-laChapelle). In 781, Pope Leo III crowned the two sons of Charlemagne: Pépin, as King of Italy; and Louis, as King of Aquitaine. Thereafter, Charlemagne and his successors came to regard the pope as just another German bishop and were unafraid to march over the Alps and unseat the successor to Peter and replace him with a German bishop—if it benefited their body politick. Charlemagne used Irish, Iro-Frankish, Northumbrian, and Hiberno-

Saxon monk-scholars in his administration and development of his palace schools — schola Palati, tradition that really began with Otto the Great®”’ (d. 973). It would remain an integral part of the German Empire’s administration until the 16" century Reformation. In 775, Charlemagne asked the Irishman Clemens Scottus to be Regent of the Royal School of Paris, and in 781, Alcuin of York® to be the Regent of the palace school at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Irish monk Dungal at the monastery of Saint Denis in Paris became Charlemagne’s royal astrologer, and later became Bishop of Pavia.

Rhein

In 719, Abbot Benedict of Irish abbey to Saint Michael, on the River island of Honau, near Strasbourg, led a mission into the

eastern Wetterau and built a church (honoring Saint Brigid) at the site of the the old Roman castellan at Améneburg. Decades later, Boniface built Irishman church of Saint Michael on its ruins. Additionally, in 778, the

Beatus™, 6" abbot of Saint Michael on Honau, established eight churches in Mainz diocese, including churches in northeast Hessen: Wetterau and,

29

6. Fergil of Salzburg

most likely, in the area of Schotten-Lich and along the Lahn River valley as a paruchia of Saint Michael’s abbey. : The first wave of Viking raids on Ireland began about 795; the blond-haired Norse raiders “White Pagans,” as opposed to dark-haired Danish “Black Pagans.” They attacked and pillaged monasteries on northern Rathlin Island and Inismurray and Inishbofin on the west coast. Between 786 and 802, Vikings raided coastal England, and c. 793, they plundered the great Northumbrian abbey of Lindisfarne. In 794, Vikings also raided the Abbey of Jarrow, where Bede had been a monk. The local warlords controlled most religious foundations, the Irish did not need outsiders to teach them how to plunder monasteries and maltreat their clerics. A musterbiespiel — prime example, of this chicane was the Munster-Eéganacht-Chaisil King Friedlimid mac Chrimthainn” (d. 847) who distinguished himself by burning and plundering at Kildare, Gallen, Durrow, Clonfert, and Clonmacnoise,

capturing and abusing the

abbots of Armagh and Cork. The Vikings were resolute in their attacks on Ireland, Scotland, and

England. In England, the Danish incursions in the late 9" century were as uncoordinated as the Anglo-Saxon raiders/settlers of former centuries. The shallow draft of their dragon ship afforded them the ability to travel up rivers and establish colonies on the island of the Hebrides and on the Isle of Man. By the 10" century, the island of Britain was irrevocably in the Danish political orbit. Norse colonies were established in several ways, the two primary ones being: through the loss of resources (ships and men) that prevented them from returning to their native land; and the establishment of power bases, from which to launch further raids. These power bases eventually became proto-towns for trade. The greatest Norse settlement in Ireland was established when they first sailed up the Liffey River in the territory of Brega to establish a raiding base in 841.

By 914, they had established a trading center at Dublin’!-Ath

Cliath. Other Norse trading proto-towns followed Wexford,

Strangford,

Carlingford, and Limerick. These Norse settlements had a profound impact on the Irish social order. Their cultural integration incited the Irish to institute the use of surnames, distinguishing old families from new

130

6. Fergil of Salzburg

th ones. By the 11° century, the use of surnames had spread to the continent for comparable reasons. Vikings raids ravaged Iona several times, forcing the relocation of books and relics—specifically Columban foundations at Kells and Durrow—to mainland Ireland. As previously noted, the Book of Iona was thus “transformed” into the Book of Kells. The devastation of Ilona marked the end of Irish monasticism.

Forgotten is the fact that Irish monks made a significant impact in Italy. One of the great Irish monks of Italy is worth note: Saint Donatus. In 829, while returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, Donatus passed through the Tuscan town of Friesole, near Florence. Upon entering a church, all the candles lit themselves, which led the townspeople to acclaim him as their bishop. Donatus stayed 47 years and became a mentor to Carolingian Emperor Lothair I (840-55) and his son Louis II (855-875). He freely

placed the supervision of Friesole under the Irish monastery at Bobbio, authored a book on Saint Brigid, and founded a church at Piacenza that bears her name. In 814, the five-times-married Charlemagne died, and his only surviving son, Louis, the Pious King of Aquitaine, succeeded him. In 816,

the anointing of Louis as Emperor took place at Rheims

with Pope

Stephen IV, who died within a year, officiating. The new Pope, Paschal I,

shortly after his 25 January 817 coronation, had Louis the Pious (d. 840) issued a pactum Ludovicianum. A concordat between Louis and Stephen IV recognized all papal domains and bound the Emperor — in contrast to his father, Charlemagne — not to interfere in the papal territories unless invited. The concordat also guaranteed papal elections free from imperial interference, with the Emperor being notified only after the consecration

of a new Pope.

In 817, naive Louis the Pious partitioned his empire among the

ror sons of his first marriage. His eldest son Lothair I, became co-Empe

Pépin over Italy, Burgundy, Francia, and all German and Gallic Provinces, y; Burgund and became sub-king of Aquitaine and parts of Septimania’ Pépin Louis the German became sub-king of Bavaria and East Marches. his of son Bald, the Karl died in 838, and his patrimony was given to the second marriage, who also received Neustria. Karl the Bald became

131

6. Fergil of Salzburg new strongman as King of the West Franks. In 856, in order to secure an alliance with Wessex, he arranged for his daughter Judith to marry King -

Aithelwulf” (d. 858).

Upon becoming emperor, Lothair I attempted to deprive his siblings of their patrimonies; this led to the 841 Battle of Fontenoy and his defeat. By the terms of the 843 Treaty of Verdun, Lothair retained an empty title of emperor whose patrimony stretched from the North Sea (Scheldt and upper Meuse) to the Middle of Italy, including the royal seat at Aix-la-Chapelle and the papal vicarage of Arles — which, became part of the kingdom of Provence. On the other hand, Louis II the German became King of the East Franks

that were

Teutonic

(except for Frisa) and the eastern

frontier,

afterwards called Germany. Karl the Bald™ became King of the West Franks, including Gascony, Septimania—the Romance-speaking peoples—afterwards known as France. Lothair II succeeded his father as King of Lorraine, and when he died in 855, his uncles Karl the Bald and

Louis II Mersen. division Germany

the German divided Lorraine according to the 870 Treaty of A pact based on land revenue that pleased neither side, the gave rise to the maxim that the mutual animosity between and France goes back no further than the Treaty of Mersen.

Charlemagne’s expansionist policies were too successfully shortsighted! He destroyed the Frisians as a sea power, exposing the entire Atlantic seaboard of Europe for Danish expansion. This situation worsened under the naive policies of Louis the Pious and the murderous rivalries of his villainous descendants. The Carolingian dynasty planted the seeds of its own downfall. The first Danish “Black Pagan” raids on Frankish territory began about 834.” This hallmarked the end of the beginning of the Norman rise that would eventually displace the Franks and the Danes as the foremost military power in Western Europe.

By 837, the Scimitar and Crescent in southeast Italy. Two centuries later, in George Maniakes and Varangian’”®, the Hard Ruler’’, ejected the Saracens from

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had overrun Sicily and Apulia, 1038, a Byzantine army led by chieftain Harold Hardraade — southeast Italy. Abetting this

6. Fergil of Salzburg enterprise was William Bras-de-Fer — Jron Arm’®, scion of the Tancred

deHautville family of Normandy with his Lombardy and Italian vassals. The dying Carolinian Empire accelerated the rise of an agrarian societal pyramid called the manorial system, built on the success of chevaliers (the word “cheval” means “horse”) at the 732 Battle of Tours. Subsequently, mounted service was an obligatory perquisite for all holders of West Frankish fiefs (German: freos, meaning property). Fiefs were lands the king granted to his loyal retainers, and usually confiscated from the church, hence benefice — beneficium. The basis of the manorial system

was the feudal premise that all lands belonged to the king and that any persons holding fiefs were vassals of the suzerain. A noble would surrender his land to the king in a ceremony whereby he knelt in submission before his suzerain, in a laying-of-hands ritual, swearing his fealty to the king as his vassal. The king, as his suzerain, would re-grant the land to the noble, and, as a outward symbol of his new

vassalage,

present him with a lance, sword, or banner signifying that as a vassal he held this fief at the grace of his suzerain. This “surrender and re-grant” investiture ceremony and had all the trappings of holy orders consecration. Later, in imitation of a sacral coronation, the king crowned his vassal with

a distinctive cornet of his rank. Suzerains strove to exercise complete

control over their nobles and their families; thus, family members had to

have the concurrence of the overlord to marry, and if a marriage took place without the suzerain’s approval, it was punishable by death. The twin pillars of the manorial system were continuity of land titles in concurrence with the church. Vassals were also obligated to provide military service—and a specified number of chevaliers, foot soldiers and supplies—to the suzerain for a specified number of days per year. The escheat control mechanism to keep disloyal or rebellious vassals was to a titles and patrimonies back to the crown, wherein the king would appoint the until patrimony loyal retainer as steward to oversee the confiscated recreation of the title and patrimony to another person. This soldier-client called Frankish modus, complete with a hierarchy of nobility, mawkishly centuries of the Manorial Society ° It spread across Europe, leading to senseless butchery. dukes—were In reality, these nobles—chevaliers, barons, counts,

s ruffians, whose nothing more than a group of ruthless, amoral, and viciou raping, and avocation was plunder. When they were not murdering,

159

6. Fergil of Salzburg generally intimidating the countryside, these thugs were fighting either among themselves or intriguing or in open revolt against their overlords, ° while openly avowing the ethics of Christianity. The nobility never permitted the twin virtues of honor and loyalty to prejudice their ambitions. The elegant and flowery pageant heroes depicted on the Hollywood screen would have been hard to find in the world of feudalism.

Comprehending the doctrines of the feudal system is crucial in grasping the sequence of events that constituted the norm in the 12" century conquest of Ireland when the “surrender and re-grant” and primogeniture regulam that was in contradiction to Tdnaisteacht of the ancient Irish Brehon Law. The idea primogeniture evolved haphazardly over three bloodspattered centuries, within the structural leadership of Germanic tribes, whose warlords considered themselves the rightful heirs of the Nordic gods. The church preferred primogeniture to the Germanic modus of dividing a patrimony among heirs, since it brought relative stability to Europe’s social order. That said the most ruthless person capable of seizing power was a good client since medieval Europe was a merciless society. .

By the 12" century, Irish Benedictines had established religious communities on the European continent from Gaul to Rome. The following is a list of selective locations: Paris (Saint Denis);

Metz (Saint Clement, Saint Symphorian and Saint Felix); Verdun (Saint Vitus); Wiirzburg (Saint James); Fulda (Saint Michel);

KG6ln (Saint Pantaleon and Saint Martin); Ratisborn (Saint James); Reichenau, Erfurt (Saint James); Eichstatt, and Constance;

Vienna (Our Lady of Ireland); Salzburg (Saint Peter); and, in the Lombard patrimonies of Italy to one of the Seven Hills of Rome (San Trinitas-Scotorum). The Saint James

foundations were part of the mother abbey of Saint James founded, in

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6. Fergil of Salzburg 1078,

by Blessed

Marianus

(Muiredach)

McCarthy dynasts built a sister Saint

Scottus

of Ratisborn.

The

James Abbey in Ireland.

The Irish monk Mael Brigte (Servant of Brigid), better known as Marianus Scottus (1028-82), became a monk at Moville about 1052, with

the Latin name of Marianus. In 1056, he entered the Irish monastery of Saint Martin at Kéln (Céln), and in 1059, ordained a priest by Fulda Abbot Sigifrid von Eppstein at Wiirzburg. On 7 December 1059, Archbishop Luitpold of Mainz died. In 1070, Pope Nicholas 11°’, at the behest of Empress Agnes of Poitou, through Emperor Henry IV, elevated Abbot Sigifrid to that See. Marianus accompanied his friend Sigifrid to Mainz, later writing a chronological history of the world ("Universal Chronicle") from the birth of Christ to 1082. Its publication caused uproar since it challenged the accepted birth date of Christ determined by Dionysius Exiguous.

It is noteworthy that the cult of Saint Brigid was widespread throughout the Frankish Empire and there were a significantly large number of churches and shrines built to honor this great Irish saint.

Confusingly, the word Scottus meant Irish: thus, Muiredach Mac Robartaig of Cenél Chondill — Latin Marianus Scottus. On a 1067 pilgrimage to Rome, he arrived at Ratisborn, the chief town of Bavaria, and entered its Benedictine monastery, eventually becoming its abbot. His calligraphic copies of parts of the Bible, with accompanying commentaries, brought fame to Ratisborn as it grew into a large community of Irish Benedictines and a great center of Christian learning similar to the Irish monasteries at Bobbio in Italy and Saint Gall in Switzerland. On 9 February 1098, the Blessed Marianus Scotus died. Heinz Lowe suggests that Irish monks, upon entering their chapel to dipped their hand in Holy Water, making the sign of the cross— aighe mbeann commemorate their baptism, greeted one another saying “go each other Dia dhuit-God’s blessing to (on) you”. Irish speakers still greet on as lives tradtion with these words, and in contemporary Germany, this in the form the populace of Bavaria, repeat this old Irish greeting, saying of: “Vergelt’s Gott, Grup di Gott, or Grup Gott”.

135

6. Fergil of Salzburg On the Italian peninsula, there are 140 dioceses, as well as 220

parochial churches and 221 place of veneration dedicated to Irish saints.*’’ These include St. Patrick; St. Brigid of Kildare; St. Gall; St. Urus of Aosta; St. Guinfort of Pavia; St. Columban of Bobbio; St. Cummian of Bobbio; St. Emilian of Faenza; St. Fredian of Lucca; St. Silaus of Lucca; St. Donatus of Friesole; St. Andrew of Fiesole; St. Brigid of Opaco; St.

Cathaldus of Taranto and Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy. In 1937, Friar Anselmo M. Tommasini OFM

wrote Irish Saints in

Italy. Conceivably his motivation was to honor the Ireland’s fidelity to the order of Saint Francis, since it elects its leader in the same manner as the Irish sept elect their Taoiseach. In any case, Saint Patrick, although not born in Italy, considered himself Civis Romanus Sum — I am a citizen of Rome — even when he declared his Irishness. In his mind, being a Catholic was to be Roman. Furthermore, Patrick had probably visited Milan in an attempt to trace the spiritual journey of his supposed relative, Saint Martin of Tours, who had spent time on the islet of Gallinara near Genoa. Perhaps this explains the devotion of the citizens of Nola near Genoa to Ireland’s greatest saint. During the 12" century, the area of the Lombard League was the epicenter of veneration to the saints of Ireland. Some churches were originally named Sobbogro St. Patrizio; there is also a St. Patrick’s Well and frescoes of Our Lady and the Child with St. Patrick kneeling on the walls of some churches. In the diocese of Imola, province of Ravenna, there is a village called San Patrizio, and in the church of the same name, there is a picture of St. Patrick, the Holy Trinity, and Melchfsedech. In the parish of Tirli in Firenzuola, in the province of Florence, also stands a San Patrizio church. A shrine to St. Patraic, near Vertova, in the province of

Bergamo, is located on the way between Vertova (Cal Seriano) to Gorno

(Valle del Riso), as is a St. Patricks’ Well. Lastly, in the church of San

Giovanni, in Monte in Bologna, exists a fresco of St. Patrick; and in the

diocese of Fermo, province of Ascoli Piceno, between Monte Giorgio and

Monte Gramaro, is the commune of Torre San Patrizio. Naturally, there is

a St. Patrick’s church in Rome.

After years of preaching in the land of the Franks, Saint Columbanus crossed the Alps into Italy, arriving in Milan in 612. The Franks were still fighting the twin heresies of Arianism and Nestorians,

136

6. Fergil of Salzburg which Columbanus successfully refuted by his preaching and writing. In gratitude, Agilulf, King of the Lombard in Italy (590-616), granted Columbanus the land of Bobbio, between Milan and Genoa, where, on the

site of the half-ruined church of Saint Peter, he built an abbey that became the source for evangelization throughout northern Italy for the next several centuries. In 615, Saint Columbanus died at Bobbio. The relics of Saints Columbanus, Attala, Bertulf, Cummian, and others repose in a nearby

parish church®’, and the altars and the sarcophagi

in the crypt are

characteristic of Irish art. In the Cathedral of Bobbio, there is a beautiful

tabernacle in the Ravenna style.

Saint Brigid of Kildare and Saint Ursus of Aosta are the patrons of Piedmont

as well as the cities and dioceses

of Fossano

and Pinerolo,

Rocca Ciglié, and several others. Naturally, Pavia remains the seat of veneration to Irish saints, and many parishes are named San Brigida in such dioceses as Como and Trent. Saint Gall, died 16 October 646, was one of Saint Columbanus’s twelve apostles, and his feast is kept in Switzerland, Alsace, Germany,

Austria, and Italy, especially in the Piedmont diocese of Alba and San Gallo parishes, Lombardy, and in Padua (Trentino), and Udine.

The list and locations are very long and it would be tedious to cite them all.°? However, the following saints are certainly worth mentioning:

Saint Ursus of Aosta, a 6" century Irish monk who is venerated in the

Province of Vicenza and in the area of Venice with many parish churches bearing his name.

In 910, Duke William the Pious (d. 918) of Aquitaine founded the both Benedictine abbey in Cluny, France, with the goal of freeing placing by churchmen and church property from vassalage to the king; reforms prelates under the direct control of the Holy See. These basic 2) Cluny; at included: 1) establishment of priories under a single abbot enforcement of clerical celibacy; and 3) abolition of simony.

Simple In 911, King Charles III of France, nicknamed Charles the

the last Carolingian (d. 929), son of Louis Il the Stammerer (d. 879) and

ian Vikings king with any real authority, was unable to expel the barbar he made these from the mouth of the Seine, so he did the next best thing:

137

6. Fergil of Salzburg marauding Norsemen his vassals. In 912, Charles secured their cooperation at St-Clair-sur-Epte by granting their leader, Hrélf the Ganger ° (d. c. 932), alias Rollo, and a large part of the French northwest coast

under the condition that Hrélf convert to Roman Catholicism and assume the name Robert. To tie Hrdélf to the French crown, the newly christened Robert married Poppa, Charles’s daughter, and in turn, Charles named his new son-in-law the Duke of the Norsemen. Thus, the concept of Normandy came into being. In 924, Robert acquired middle Normandy and, in 933, the western part of the duchy of Cotentin and Avranche. Robert’s heir, William I

Longue-Epée (d. 942), acquired domination of Rennes and Vannes. William’s heir, Richard I the Fearless (d. 966), and English King Althelroed II Unreed — the Unready (d. 1016) agreed to an anti-Danish policy. In 1001, Athelrced married Richard’s daughter Emma; they were

the parents of Edward the Confessor (d. 1066). In 1002, the pro-Norman Athelroed, conspiring with his royal council, called the Witan and ordered the annihilation of all Danes in England. When Athelroed died, Emma married Canute (d. 1035), King of Denmark and England; they were the parents of Hardcanute (d. 1042), King of Denmark and England. Her stepson, King Harold Harefoot (d. 1040), natural son of Canute, banished

Emma to the court of Baldwin V called the Pious (d. 1067), the Count of Flanders. Her other son, Edward

the Confessor, seized her wealth upon

ascending the throne. This is the linkage between Normandy and the kingdom of England.

the Dukedom

of

In Germany, the nobility regarded the clergy as their vassals, not the church’s, and vehemently opposed ecclesiastical reforms. Notwithstanding German obstinacy, the new diocesan system and monastic reforms spread by a series of church synods throughout Europe:

Augsburg, in 952; Poitiers, in 1000; Seligenstadt, in 1023; Bourges, in

1031, and Lorraine. These reforms came to Ireland in a series of synods at

Cashel,* in 1101; Rath Breasail

and Fiash-mac-Aengusa,

in 1110-11;

Terryglass (Tir Da Ghlas), in 1144; Inis Padraig, in 1148; Kells-Mellifont,

in 1152; and a second synod at Cashel, in 1172.

Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick I a.k.a. Barbarossa “Italian ambitions” compelled Pope Alexander III (Ronaldo Bandeineli), who also needed allies against three anti-popes, to seek an accommodation with

138

6. Fergil of Salzburg Henry II of England. Did Alexander pander the Plantagenet king in exchange for Henry recognizing papal supremacy by pre- or postjustifying the Norman invasion of Ireland? In 1172, prior to the Synod of Cashel, Alexander III, sent a letter to his papal legate condemning the Irish with the following words: “Gentem illam barbaram incultam et divine legis ingnaram®»- that barbarous people, uncivilized and ignorant of divine law.” Was this denunciation a harbinger to the (1179) Third Lateran Council that enacted 27 Canons as regards to clerical celibacy, obedience and hereditary offices? By the end of the 12" century, the diocesan system based on the patrimonies of Ireland’s ancient kingdoms was firmly integrated on the island. At

the

time

of the

Synod

at Rath

Breasail,

there

were

no

Benedictine abbeys outside of Holy Trinity in Dublin and the Clunic Abbey of Saint Peter and Paul at Athlone, on the Shannon,

under the

protection of Turlough O’Connor. However, in 1142, the great Cistercian Abbot Malachy of Armagh founded the famous abbey of Mellifont. The monastic ideals of the Cistercians appealed to the archconservative Irish,

and within a half-century, there were 23 more abbeys. In 1100, Domhnaill Ua Lochlainn and his army annihilated a Dublin-based Norse amphibious force that attacked Derry and the Cenél nEégain powerbase at its Griandn nAilech fortress on the Inishowen peninsula.

The reform-minded German Emperor Henry III (d. 1056) held the Irish monks in high esteem for their piety. Thus, when a resurgence of heathenism occurred in Poland in the a century, Aron, the Benedictine Abbot of Saint James Abbey in K6ln, was chosen, in 1048, as the reform

Archbishop of Krakow. From the Cistercian mother abbey at Boyle, founded 1148, Roderick O'Cananan or O'Muldorry built the Abbey of Assaroe, called

river Erne The Abbey of the Morning Star, on 17,128 acres of land, on the

ll near Ballyshannon in Tir Chondill, near the main castle of the O'Donne

Our Lady Princes, 1179 or 1184. Its dedication was exceptional: “To God,

ed to Mary and Saint Bernard of Clairveux.” At first, this abbey attempt

159

6. Fergil of Salzburg

follow the Cistercians’ instructions of the 1096 Council of Nimes, by excluding a lay administrator Airchinnech and rejecting the payment orreceipt of tithes. They built a castle — clogh for their lay brothers, along with a grange (for the storing of tithes, in kind) at Tamhnach an tSaldinn®® (green pasture and salt). One branch of the OhEarcdin®’ sept had their patrimony north of the area where the felspathic grit rock, which bleaches white after a few years of exposure, used to build Assaroe®® was quarried from Magroartyland north of Tammnach an tSaldinn and transported by boat over 20 miles of Donegal Bay to build the abbey. However, by the 12" century, Irish monastic rule was passé. Regular Orders and a diocesan system governed the church in Ireland, even though in 1157, King Donnach UaCerbhal of Airgialla gave the land for a Cistercian abbatial church of Mellifont (Honey Fountain) in the Boyne valley.*”

England had very wealthy monastic foundations. Needing money, King Henry VIII used the 1534 Act of Succession to justify the looting of these facilities. His troops took 40 ox carts of treasure from Canterbury Cathedral and confiscating the Sion House and the wealthy Glastonbury monastery”. In 1538, he ordered the destruction of 200 friaries and the butchering of their inhabitants marked the start of a wholesale confiscation of wealth and property. More than 655 monasteries and nunneries, 2,374 chantries and free chapels, and 110 hospitals were plundered to create patrimonies for Henry’s new religion nobility. Sadly, this meant the slaughter of a significant portion of the English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish population. Such crimes against humanity were repeated on the European continent, in the lowlands, in Germany and Scandinavia resulting in the Thirty Years War (1618-48).

140

6. Fergil of Salzburg

1. The public fails to comprehend that Hollywood filmmakers mischaracterize these vicious thugs as heroes for their entertainment business hype. 2 Thomas Cahill, in How the Trish Saved Civilization, colored-coded martyrdom: white represented leaving Ireland, never to return; red represented dying for the faith; green represented self-exile hermits. Does this mean that Kilian of Wiirzburg is a white, green, and red martyr? 3

Monsignor

Dr.

Patrick

J. Corish,

the distinguished

historian

at NUI,

Maynooth, noted to me that secular or ecclesiastic authorities did not intimidate Irish monks; they went directly to the pope on real and/or plausible grievances, hence their sobriquet Rome-Runners. 4 Apparently, Karl Martel was his suzerain. 5 In 695, Pope Serguis consecrated Willibrord a bishop as Clemens. 6 According to Herman Moisl, Egbert (d. 729), as resident bishop on Iona, was instrumental in persuading the Irish monks, in 716, to embrace the Roman Rule

for Easter calculation. 7 On both sides of the Moravian River, extending into Italy and Hungary. 8 Born at or founded the abbey of Rathmat and educated by Saint Brendan in Munster. 9 Arnulf’s daughter Begga married Pépin’s son Ansegisal. 10 The thirteen-year-old heir of King Clovis II of Neustria and Burgundy. 11

In 679, Childeric’s younger brother, Theodoric III (d. 691), had Dagobert

assassinated to become King of All Franks and re-consolidate the empire. 12 The number of Irish monks in the Merovingian Empire is remarkable. Fursey

and his brother, Faelan and Ultan; Fiachra of Meaux; Kilian of Aubiny; Fobain of Laon; Bishop Falveus of Aquitaine; Aran of Cahors; Caidoc and Fricor of St.

Riquier; Abbot Sidonius of Rouen; Bishop Toimene of Angouléme; Abbot Ronan of Mazerolles; Abbot Elque of Lagny; Abbot Ceallan of Péronne; and numerous others. Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich, Archbishop of Armagh, Virgil Werdegang in Irland und sein Weg auf den Kontinent. 13 Eamon

Duffy, Saints

& Sinners: A History of the Popes, page 67 — an

excellent book on the history of the papacy.

14 Southern Italy and Sicily had to wait four centuries before being the liberated by the Normans. The Italian situation was brighter after ersy, Lombard king Cunipert helped Serguis end the Aquileian controv thus unifying of the church in Italy. Lothair (d. 15 King Herminafind (d. 531) submitted to Merovingian King ndence by 581) of Soissons. In 641, Duke Radulf got Thiiringia indepe defeating King Sigibert III of Austrasia. the fifth (822-42) 16 Maurus, after studying under Alcuin at Tours, became

sobriquet was Rome Abbot at the 600 monks Benedictine Abbey at Fulda, whose

141

6. Fergil of Salzburg North of the Alps, was justified since its paruchia extended from Utrecht in Friesland to the Alamanni territory of Churratien (contemporary Switzerland). In ° 828, he accompanied Louis the German on his campaign against the Bulgars. 17 In 691, he ordered the restoration of Bishop Wilfrid to his See of York. 18 The council had decreed that all Jews had to accept baptism within one year or face banishment and confiscation of all property. 19 Mobs of orthodox Jews accused those among them that converted to Christianity, causing continual rioting, destruction of property, and civil disorder. 20 Pépin was Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria and Dagobert III (d. 716) was only the King of All Franks. 21 A result of the liaison with Chalpeida, historians are hostage to the ‘natural’

nicety in lieu of the more accurate “bastard” to identify illegitimate offspring. 22

Alias the Merovingian

Shadow

or the Hammer,

a result of his Tours and

Poitiers victories against the Arabs; he deemed all vassals must provide armored chevaliers to their suzerain. Is Martel the father of Christian knighthood? 23 Apocrisiary (Greek: Anoxptodiptos). 24 The Chief Stewart of the realm, thus second in power to the King. 25

These

included

the five cities of Ancona,

Senigallia,

Fano,

Pesaro,

and

Rimini (Saints & Sinners, page 62). 26 His parents were pagans and converted to Catholicism prior to his birth. 27 In 689, Pépin of Hérstal invaded Friesland, defeating Duke Radbod at Dorestad, thus establishing Frankish control on Rhein River from Mainz to the North Sea. In 695, Pépin had Pope Serguis appointed Willibrord as Bishop of Utrecht, and Radbod fled to Helgoland. In the succession struggle after the 714 death of Pépin, Radbod returned and expelled Willibrord and his monks. He invaded Frankish K6ln, but in 716, Karl Martel defeated him. A century later,

Dorestad became the Viking Capital of Western Europe. 28 Grimo had been of Martel’s envoy to the Holy See and was rewarded with the abbacy of the double abbey of Corbie (for men) and Chelles (for women) in Picardy. The abbey was founded in 657, by Saint Bathilde, the widow of Clovis

II, and staffed with Columban

monks

of Luxeill.

Naturally,

Theodifrid, was a Frank.

the first abbot,

29 The Councils of the Germans; Council of Les Estinnes; and Council of Soissons. Karlmann, Mayor of Austrasia, at Lobbes Abbey hosted the first two,

and Pépin III the Short, Mayor of Neustria, hosted the third. It is speculative if Chilperic III, King of All Franks, was present at these events. 30

Of noble Austrasia-birth, Milo was the son of Liutwin, the Archbishop of

Trier, whom he succeeded. Karl Martel later appointed him as Bishop of Reims. 31

Similar to Milo, Gewilp was the son and successor

Mainz, who was killed in 738 while accompanying against the Saxons.

142

of Bishop Gerold of

Martel on his campaign

6. Fergil of Salzburg 32 for 33 34

He replaced Bishop Gebhard II von TruchseB, who converted to Calvinism his love of Agnes von Mansfeld. 1573-1617. To support the claim of Pépin the Short as King of the Franks.

35

She is buried at Petersberg, not far from Boniface’s grave at the Fulda Dom.

36 Born of Upper Bavarian Moosburg nobility, a relative of Agilolfing Duke Tassilo. 37 He was the personal Chaplin to Pépin. 38 In 1139, at the second Lateran Council, Pope Innocent II canonized him as Apostle of the Saxons. 39 On 5 June 754, at Dokkum in Frisa, robbers slew Boniface. He was interred at Fulda Cathedral, which remains the venue for the National German Bishop

Conference. 40 Fergil mac Méel Duin mac Colman mac Feradach mac Aed mac Colman. 41 Duke Theodo (d. 716) married Alamanni princess Folchaid at his Ratisborn capital. He also assisted Liutprand, who married his daughter Guntrude, to

reclaim the Lombard Iron Crown. A patron of Saints Rupert, Erhard, Emmeram and Corbinian, he fell into disgrace after his son Lantpert murdered Bishop Emmeram in the Aie, episcope et gener noster (bishop and brother in-law) affair. Upon his death, his dukedom was divided among his four sons: Theobert (d. 7190, Grimoald (d. 725), Theobald (d. 719), and Tassilo (d. 719). 42 A clue that gives this suggestion credence is that Cilléme Droicthech, a descendant of Connall Cremthainne, of the Southern Uf Neill, thus a kinsman of

Fergil, was Abbot of Iona from 726-752. The Verbriiderungsbuch (Fraternity Book) of Saint Peter’s Cathedral underpins the hypothesis that a close association between Salzburg and Jona existed. 43 They either traveled with him or met him while he was the Chancellor for Pépin. In any case, they were two of his evangelizing monks at Salzburg. 44 Son of the Alamanni Duke Gottfried, Odilo and champion of the OSB he built: Benedictbeuen, in 739; Niederaltaich, in 741; and Mondsee, in 748. Odilo married Hiltrud, the daughter of Karl Martel. His brothers-in-law Pepin and Karlmann defeated him. 45 The first Agilolfing Duke was Garibald I (d. 591), who married Walderada, daughter of the Lombard Wacho, widow of Frankish King Theudebald, and divorced wife of Chlotar I . 46 d. 19 December 739. She led the abbey founded by Saint Patraic. 47 Religiositét im friihen Mittelalter. 48 Bonifaz und Virgil: Konflikt zweier Kulturen. Austria, 49 Contemporary Czech and Slovak Republics, German Saxony, Serbia. of Hungary, and Carpathian areas of Romania and Croatia to the border

50 Alias Ugolino di Segni. 51 One of the Greek Fathers of the Church (d. 254).

143

6. Fergil of Salzburg 52 Padraig P. O Néill, Bonifaz und Virgil: Konflikt zweier Kulturen in Virgil von Salzbirg: Missionar und Gelehrter. ; 53 His father was Martel and his mother was the Agilolfing princess Swanahilt. 54 He was Mayor of Neustria since 741; and King of the Franks since 747. 55

In 745, his father Duke Hunald, or Hunold, became a vassal of Karl Martel

and 56 57 58

later was deposed to a cloister. Pépin’s sons, Karlmann and Karl; this probably took place at Compiégne. The origin of the Agilolfing lineage was ducal Lombardy — traditional allies. Except for ducal Gascony, ruled by the son of Waifar.

59

Arichis, the powerful Prince of Benevento, was a brother-in-law of Tassilo.

60 61 62 63

Son of Pépin II. By 20" century standards, this heinous conduct is condemned as genocide. Contemporary Hungary, alias the territory of the Avars. Tassilo’s allies were dead: Fulda Abbot Sturmi (d. 779); Charlemagne’s

mother and wife Hildegard (d. 783); and Fergil (d. 784), whose successor Arn

was pro-Frankish. 64 Alluding to the twelve apostles. 65

Leo III crossed the Alps thrice: in 799, to Paderborn; in 804, to Rheims; and

in 805, to Aachen. 66 He established his imperial court at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen).

67 Son of Henry I the Fowler, in 962, revived the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne. 68 Alcuin and Joseph (his Irish companion at Aix-le-Chapelle) had studied under

Colcu,

the resident

Irish scholar

at York

(Eboracum)

which,

in 732,

achieved metropolitan status, eclipsing Lindisfarne in ecclesiastical rank. Alcuin maintained contact with the enclave of Anglo-Saxon monks at Inishbofin in Mayo and Irish at Iona and Dungiven. 69 Die Iren und Europa, page 297. 70 Irish Kings and High-Kings, page 211. 71

Places of ecclesiastical

foundations

near to Dubhlinn

(Blackpool),

hence

Dublin. 72 West of Arles, known as Narbonne, part of the old Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse. 73. When AEthelwulf died, his second son Athelberht married his stepmother Judith to secure alliances. 74 There is a famous tale that during a drinking bout with the Irish monk

Johannes Eriugena, Karl, sitting across the table, asked John, “What is there between, a sot and a Scot (Irish)?” “The width of the table,” was John’s reply.

Daibhi O Croinin, Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200, page 227. 75 The year the Danes raided Kent, allies of the Franks. 76 Danish mercenaries fighting on behalf of the Byzantine emperor.

144

6. Fergil of Salzburg 77 Later King Hardraade III of Norway. Killed on 25 September 1066, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. 78 In September 1042, the Normans unanimously proclaimed William Bras-de-fer the hero of the siege of Syracuse, as leader of all the Normans in Apulia with the title of Count. So began the kingdom of Norman Sicily. 79

In the 11" century, the leader of the Norman ruffians, Tranced deHautville,

head of a militia of 10 knights serving Robert the Devil (who sired William the Bastard), the Duke of Normandy, was elected by knight adventurers in southern Italy as their leader. Tranced was the progenitor deHautville dynasty, yielding to ruffians as Barbarossa. 80 Alias Gerhard of Burgundy. 81

In 1937, Friar Anselmo

M. Tommasini

OFM

wrote Irish Saints in Italy,

trans. Joseph Francis Scanlon. 82 In 1803, Napoleon became the president of the Italian Republic (old Cisalpine Republic), and during the annexation of Piedmon, French soldiers seized the abbey and church of St. Columbanus church at Bobbio, from its Benedictine monks. Today the old abbey is a public school. 83 A partial listing includes Guinfort of Pavia, Cummian of Bobbio, Fulco di Piacenza “Ex Gente Scota” a descendant of Solvatius, King of Scotland in 767,

Emilian of Fraenza, Pellegrino Delle Alpi di Garfagnana, Fridan of Lucca (who

is mentioned in the Dialogue of Pope Gregory the Great), Silalus (San Sillao) of Lucca, Donatus of Friesole, Andrew of Friesole, Cathal (San Cataldo) of Taranto,

and, Blessed Tadhg Machar (Thaddeus McCarthy) of Ivrea. 84 The Synod passed eight decrees:, “that neither ex-layman nor ex-cleric shall practice simony in God’s church for all time [Gan ceannach eaglaise Dé do athloachaibh

nd do aithchléirc [h]ibh go brdth\.that neither king nor lord is

entitled to levy rent or tax on the church in Ireland forever. [Gan cios na cain do righ nd do thaosiseach 6n eaglais 1 nErinn go brdth].that a layman shall not be superior in it [the church][Gan tuata do beith in’ oircheanneach innte; that there

shall not be two superiors in one church, except in a church where two provinces

i march. [Gan] dd oircheannach do beith I n-aencholl acfht ar in gcill do bheith

gcomhrac dd chéigeadh), that no superior of a church should have a woman who [Gan bean do bheith a oircheannach cille. that there be no sanctuary for one commits theft there [I church] and no sanctuary for a man who kills in treachery goid ann or commits kin-slaying.[Gan coimirce do bheith ag in té dhéanfadh or poet cleric the of due the that ; agus gan coimirce ag fea fill na fionghail[e] thabhairt do fhile an no should not be given to a lay person.[Gan cion chléirigh

in Ireland shall have to don tuata —Gan ben a athar nd a senathar] that no man

daughter, or wife his father’s wife or his grandfather’s wife, or her sister or her

[ nd a siur no a [hhis brother’s wife, or any other woman so near related. dhearbhrathar, no Jinghean, do beith ‘na mnaoi ag fear i nEirinn, n6 beana of Cashel, 1101: Synod The bean ar bith chomh fogus sin i ngaol do}

145

6. Fergil of Salzburg conservative or innovative? Donnachadh O Corrdin, Regions and Rulers of Ireland 1100-1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (2004), ed. David Edwards. ;

85. The Irish Church in the 11" and 12" centuries , p313 86 Later anglicized to Mount Charles or Tantalion. 87 In the 16" century, OhEarcd4in swords escorted O’Donnell and ODoherty in their wars in Connaught. O’Donnell’s Din na nGall Bailte controlled the route through Barnesmore Gap to Stranorlar in Finn Valley to Donaghmore to Ailech. 88 Geraldine Carville, Assaroe: Abbey of the Morning Star (1984), page 56. 89 On 24 March 1603, ancient Ireland’s fateful day, at the ruins at Mellifont Abbey in Meath, Baron Mountjoy (later Earl of Devonshire) negotiated with the Great O'Neill and his allies the terms of their submission to Queen Elizabeth. Sadly, this “Treaty of Mellifont’” is more famous than its dedication. 90 Beatrice Saunders, Henry the Eight.

146

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lee

>

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154

“Wie K6énnten wir die Insel Irland vergessen, von der so grofen Lichtes Glanz fiir uns ausging- how can we forget the island of Ireland, from there shone before us such a great light” Written (850) by the Benedictine monk Ermenrich von Ellwangen and der Jagst (+874) to his Abbot Grimoald about Saints Columbanus and Gall. Ermenrich was later Bishop of Passau.

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