Chapter III
THE IRISH BETTER PREPARED TO RECEIVE CHRISTIANITY THAN OTHER NATIONS.
The introduction of Christianity gave Europe a power over the world which pagan Rome could not possess. All the branches of the Japhetic family combined to form what was with justice and propriety called Christendom. Ireland, by receiving the Gospel, was really making her first entry into the European family; but there were certain peculiarities in her performance of this great act which gave her national life, already deviating from that of other European nations, a unique impulse. The first of those peculiarities consisted in her preparation for the great reception of the faith, and the few obstacles she encountered in her adoption of it, compared with those of the rest of the world.
Providence wisely decreed that redemption should be delayed until a large portion of mankind had attained to the highest civilization. It was not in a time of ignorance and barbarism that the Saviour was born. The Augustan is, undoubtedly, the most intellectual and refined age, in point of literary and artistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. No country, in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen of her philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of her poets and artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities, and inherited her taste for science and literature.
But art and literature embody ideas only; and, as Ozanam says so well: "Beneath the current of ideas which dispute the empire of the world, lies that world itself such as labor has made it, with that treasure of wealth and visible adornment which render it worthy of being the transient sojourn-place of immortal souls. Beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, lies the useful, which is brightened by their reflection. No people has more keenly appreciated the idea of utility than that of Rome; none has ever laid upon the earth a hand more full of power, or more capable of transforming it; nor more profusely flung the treasures of earth at the feet of humanity . . . .
"At the close of the second century . . the rhetorician Aristides celebrated in the following terms the greatness of the Roman Empire: 'Romans, the whole world beneath your dominion seems to keep a day of festival. From time to time a sound of battle comes to you from the ends of the earth, where you are repelling the Goth, the Moor, or the Arab. But soon that sound is dispersed like a dream. Other are the rivalries and different the conflicts which you excite through the universe. They are combats of glory, rivalries in magnificence between provinces and cities. Through you, gymnasia, aqueducts, porticoes, temples, and schools, are multiplied; the very soil revives, and the earth is but one vast garden!'
"Similar, also, was the language of the stern Tertullian: `In truth, the world becomes day after day richer and better cultivated; even the islands are no longer solitudes; the rocks have no more terrors for the navigator; everywhere there are habitations, population, law, and life.'
"The legions of Rome had constructed the roads which furrowed mountains, leaped over marshes, and crossed so many different provinces with a like solidity, regularity, and uniformity; and the various races of men were lost in admiration at the sight of the mighty works which were attributed in after-times to Caesar, to Brunehaud, to Abelard!"
It was in the midst of those worldly glories that Christ was born, that he preached, and suffered, that his religion was established and propagated. It found proselytes at once among the most polished and the most learned of men, as well as among slaves and artisans; and thus was it proved that Christianity could satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the most civilized as well as insure the happiness of the most numerous and miserable classes.
But we must reflect that the advanced civilization of Greece and Rome was in fact an immense obstacle to the propagation of truth, and, what is more to be regretted, often gave an unnatural aspect to the Christianity of the first ages in the Roman world-- a half-pagan look--so that the barbarian invasion was almost necessary to destroy every thing of the natural order; that the Church alone remaining face to face with those uncouth children of the North, might begin her mission anew and mould them all into the family called "Christendom." "Christianity," to quote Ozanam again, "shrank from condemning a veneration of the beautiful, although idolatry was contained in it; and as it honored the human mind and the arts it produced, so the persecution of the apostate Julian, in which the study of the classics had been forbidden to the faithful, was the severest of its trials. Literary history possesses no moment of greater interest than that which saw the school with its profane --that is to say pagan--traditions and texts received into the Church. The Fathers, whose christian austerity is our wonder, were passionate in their love of antiquity, which they covered, as it were, with their sacred vestments. . . . By their favor, Virgil traversed the ages of iron without losing a page, and, by right of his Fourth Eclogue, took rank among the prophets and the sibyls. St. Augustine would have blamed paganism less, if, in place of a temple to Cybele, it had raised a shrine to Plato, in which his works might have been publicly read. St. Jerome's dream is well known, and the scourging inflicted upon him by angels for having loved Cicero too well; yet his repentance was but short-lived, since he caused the monks of the Mount of Olives to pass their nights in copying the Ciceronian dialogues, and did not shrink himself from expounding the comic and lyric poets to the children of Bethlehem."
We know already that nothing of the kind existed in Ireland when the Gospel reached her, and that there the new religion assumed a peculiar aspect, which has never varied, and which made her at once and forever a preeminently Christian nation.
Among the Greeks and Romans, literature and art, although accepted by the Church, were nevertheless deeply impregnated with paganism. All their chief acts of social life required a profession of idolatry; even amusements, dramatic representations, and simple games, were religious and consequently pagan exhibitions.
We do not here speak of the attractions of an atheistic and materialist philosophy, of a voluptuous, often, and demoralizing literature and poetry, of an unimaginable prostitution of art to the vilest passions, which the relics of Pompeii too abundantly indicate.
But apart from those excesses of corruption and unbelief, which, no doubt, virtuous pagans themselves abhorred, the approved, correct, and so-called pure life of the best men of pagan Rome necessitated the contamination of idolatrous worship. Apart from the thousand duties, festivals, and the like, decreed or sanctioned by the state, the most ordinary acts of life, the enlisting of the soldier, the starting on a military expedition, the assumption of any civil office or magistracy, the civil oaths in the courts of law, the public bath, the public walk almost, the current terms in conversation, the private reading of the best books, the mere glancing at a multitude of exterior objects, constituted almost as many professions of a false and pagan worship.
How could any one become a Christian and at the same time remain a Greek or a Roman? The gloomy views of the Montanist Tertullian were, to many, frightful truths requiring constant care and self- examen. For the Christian there were two courses open--both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, a terrible rigorism, making life unsupportable, next to impossible; on the other, a laxity of thought and action leading to lukewarmness and sometimes apostasy.
Bearing in mind what was written on the subject in the first three ages of Christianity, not only by Tertullian, but by most orthodox writers, St. Cyprian, Lactantius, Arnobius, and the authors of many Acts of martyrs, we may easily understand how the doctrines of Christianity stood in danger of never taking deep root in the hearts of men surrounded by such temptations, themselves born in paganism, and remaining, after their conversion, exposed to seductions of such an alluring character.
Therefore this same "high civilization," as it is called, in the midst of which Christianity was preached, was a real danger to the inward life of the new disciple of Christ.
How could it be otherwise, when it is a fact now known to all, that, even at the beginning of the fifth century, Rome was almost entirely pagan, at least outwardly, and among her highest classes; so that the poet Claudian, in addressing Honorius at the beginning of his sixth consulship, pointed out to him the site of the capitol still crowned with the Temple of Jove, surrounded by numerous pagan edifices, supporting in air an army of gods; and all around temples, chapels, statues, without number--in fact, the whole Roman and Greek mythology, standing in the City of the Catacombs and of the Popes!
The public calendars, preserved to this day, continued to note the pagan festivals side by side with the feasts of the Saviour and his apostles. Within the city and beyond, throughout Italy and the most remote provinces, idols and their altars were still surrounded by the thronging populace, prostrate at their feet.
If in the cities the new religion already dared display something of its inherent splendor, the whole rural population was still pagan, singing the praises of Ceres and of Bacchus, trembling at Fauns and Satyrs and the numerous divinities of the groves and fountains. Christianity then held the same standing in Italy that in the United States Catholicity holds to-day in the midst of innumerable religious sects.
This is not the place to show how far the paganism of Greece and Rome had corrupted society, and how complete was its rottenness at the time. It has been already shown by several great writers of this century. Enough for our purpose to remark that even some Christian writers, of the age immediately succeeding that of the early martyrs, showed themselves more than half pagans in their tastes and productions. Ausonius in the West, the preceptor of St. Paulinus, is so obscene in some of his poems, so thoroughly pagan in others, that critics have for a long time hesitated to pronounce him a Christian. How many of his contemporaries hovered like him on the confines of Christianity and paganism! When Julian the apostate restored idolatry, many, who had only disgraced the name of Christian, openly returned to the worship of Jupiter and Venus, and their apostasy could scarcely be cause for regret to sincere disciples of our Lord.
In the East the phenomenon is less striking. Strange to say, idolatry did not remain so firmly rooted in the country, where it first took such an alluring shape; and Constantinople was in every sense of the word a Christian city when Rome, in her senate, fought with such persistent tenacity for her altars of Victory, her vestals, and her ancient worship.
Yet there, also, Christian writers were too apt to interfuse the old ideas with the new, and to adopt doctrines placed, as it were, midway between those of Plato and St. Paul. There were bishops even who were a scandal to the Church and yet remained in it. Synesius is the most striking example; whose doctrine was certainly more philosophical than Christian, and whose life, though decorous, was altogether worldly. The history of Arianism shows that others besides Synesius were far removed from the ideal of Christian bishops so worthily represented at the time by many great doctors and holy pontiffs.
Such, in the East as well as in the West, were the perils besetting the true Christian spirit at the very cradle of our holy religion.
Nor was the danger confined to the mythology of paganism, its literature and poetry. Philosophy itself became a real stumbling- block to many, who would fain appear disciples of faith, when they gave themselves up to the most unrestrained wanderings of human reason.
The truth is, that Greek philosophy, divided into so many schools in order to please all tastes, had become a wide-spread institution throughout the Roman world. The mind of the East was best adapted to it, and those who taught it were, consequently, nearly all Greeks. Cicero had made it fashionable among many of his countrymen; and although the Latin mind, always practical to the verge of utilitarianism, was not congenial to utopian speculations, still, as it was the fashion, all intellectual men felt the need of becoming sufficiently acquainted with it to be able to speak of it and even to embrace some particular school. Those patricians, who remained attached to the stern principles of the old republic, became Stoics; while the men of the corrupt aristocracy called themselves, with Horace, members of the "Epicurean herd." Hence the necessity for all to train their minds to scientific speculation, converted the Western world into a hot-bed of wild and dangerous doctrines.
In the opinion of some Eastern Fathers of the Church, Greek philosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel, and could be made subservient to the conversion of many. Thus we find St. Justin, the martyr, all his life long glorying in the name of philosopher, and continuing to wear, even after his conversion, the philosopher's cloak so much derided by the scoffer, Lucian.
Still, despite this very respectable opinion, we can entertain no doubt, in view of what happened at the time and of subsequent events, that philosophy grew to be a stumbling-block in the path of Christianity, and originated the worst and most dangerous forms of heresy; that it sowed the seed, in the European mind, of all errors, by creating that speculative tendency of character so peculiar to most branches of the Japhetic race.
Persian Dualism, and, as many think, Pantheistic Buddhism, which were then flourishing in Central and Eastern Asia, infected the Alexandrian schools, and impressed philosophy with a new and dreamy character, which became the source of subsequent and frightful errors. The Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus was intended, in the minds of its originators, to lay a scientific basis for polytheism; and, in Jamblichus finally, became an open justification of the most absurd fables of mythology.
But, though this might satisfy Julian and those who followed him in his apostasy, it could not come to be an inner danger to the Church. With many, however, it assumed a form which at once engendered the worst errors of Gnosticism; and Gnosticism was, at first, considered a Christian heresy; so that a man might be a pantheist, of the worst kind, and still call himself Christian. St. John had foreseen the danger from the beginning, and it is said that he wrote his gospel against it because the doctrine openly denied the divinity of Christ. But the sect became much more powerful after his death, and allured many Christians who were disposed, from a misinterpretation of some texts of St. Paul on the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, to embrace a system which professed to explain the origin of that struggle.
The Alexandrian Gnosticism failed to excite in the minds of the holy monks of the East that aversion which we now feel for its tenets, inasmuch as it did not openly anathematize the Scriptures of the Old Law, nay, even preserved a certain outward respect for them, on account of the multitude of Jews living in Alexandria, and particularly because the open system of Dualism, which afterward came from Syria and in the hands of Manes established the existence of two equal and eternal principles of good and evil, found no place in the teachings of Valentinus and his school.
But even this frightful Syrian Gnosticism, which gave to the principle of evil an origin as ancient and sacred as that of God himself--Manicheism barefaced and radically immoral--so repugnant to our feelings, so monstrous to our more correct ideas, bore a semblance of truth for many minds, at that time inclined toward every thing which came from the East. We know what a firm hold those doctrines took on the great soul of Augustine, who for a long time professed and cherished them. Rome, under the pagan emperors, had received with open arms the Oriental gods and the philosophy which endeavored to explain their mythology; and many gifted minds of the third and fourth centuries lost themselves in the contemplation of those mysteries which from out Central Asia spread a lurid glare over the Western world.
This first danger, however, was warded off by the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them. Gnosticism was prevented from any longer imparting a wrong tendency to Christian doctrines, and it died out, until restored during the Crusades to revive in the middle ages in its most malignant form.
But at the very moment of its decline, philosophy entered the Church; almost to wreck her by inspiring Arius and Pelagius. The teachings of the first were clearly Neo-Platonic; of the second, Stoic: and all the errors prevalent in the Church from the third to the sixth century originated in Arianism and Pelagianism.
In Plato, as read in Alexandria, Arius found all the material for his doctrine, which spread like wild-fire over the whole Church. Many things conspired to swell the number of his adherents: the ardent love for philosophy so inherent in the Eastern Church, to the extent of many believing that Plato was almost a Christian, and his doctrines therefore endowed with real authority; the natural disposition of men to adopt the new and a seeming rational explanation of unfathomable mysteries; the apparent agreement of his doctrine with certain passages of Scripture, where the Son is said to be inferior to the Father; but chiefly the satisfaction it afforded to a number of new Christians who had embraced the faith at the conversion of Constantine on political rather than conscientious grounds, and who were at once relieved of the supernatural burden of believing in a God-man, born of a woman, and dying on a cross. Faith reduced to an opinion; religion become a philosophy; a mere man, let his endowments be what they might, recognized as our guide, and not overwhelming us with the dread weight of a divine nature; all this explains the historic phrase of St. Jerome after the Council of Rimini, "The world groaned and wondered to find itself Arian."
Any person acquainted with ecclesiastical history knows how the Church of Christ would have surely become converted into a mere rational school, under the pressure of these doctrines, were it not for the promises of perpetuity which she had received.
We know also what a time it took to establish truth: how many councils had to meet, how many books had to be written, the efforts required from the rulers of the Church, chiefly from the Roman pontiffs, to calm so many storms, to explain so many difficult points of doctrine, to secure the final victory.
And, after all had been accomplished, there still remained the root of the evil engrafted in what we call the philosophical turn of mind of the Western nations--that is to say, in the disposition to call every thing in question, to seek out strange and novel difficulties, to start war-provoking theories in the midst of peace, to aim at founding a new school, or at least to stand forth as the brilliant and startling expounder of old doctrines in a new form, in fine to add a last name to the list, already over-long, of those who have disturbed the world by their skill in dialectics and sophism.
Pelagius followed Arius, and his errors had the same object in view in the long-run, to strip our holy religion of all that is spiritual and divine.
In the time of St. Augustine and St. Jerome, there existed among Christians an extraordinary tendency to embrace all possible philosophical doctrines, even when directly opposed to the first principles of revealed religion; and, within the Church, the danger of subtilizing on every question connected with well- known dogmas was much greater than many imagine.
From the previous reflections we may learn how difficult it was to establish, in pagan Europe, a thoroughly Christian life and doctrine; and that, after society had come to be apparently imbued with the new spirit, it was still too easy to disturb the flowing stream of the heavenly graces of the Gospel. This resulted, we repeat, from causes anterior to Christianity, from sources of evil which the divine religion had to overcome, and which too often impeded its supernatural action. In fact, the ecclesiastical history of those ages is comprised mainly in depicting the almost continual deviations from the straight line of pure doctrine and morality, and the strenuous efforts assiduously made by the rulers of the Church against a never- ceasing falling away.
Having taken this glance at the early workings of Christianity through the rest of the world, we may now turn fairly to the immediate subject we have in hand, and trace its course in Ireland. From the very beginning we are struck by the peculiarities--blessed, indeed--which show themselves, as in all other matters, in its reception of the truth. The island, compared with Europe, is small, it is true; but the heroism displayed by its inhabitants during so many ages, in support of the religion which they received so freely, so generously, and at once, in mind as well as heart, marks it out as worthy of a special account; and, from its unique reception and adherence to the faith, as worthy of, if possible, a natural explanation of such action beyond the promptings of Divine grace, since its astonishing perseverance, its unswerving faith, form to-day as great a characteristic of the nation as they did on the day of its entry into the Christian Church.
We proceed to examine, then, the kind of idolatry which its first apostle encountered on landing in the island, and the ease with which it was destroyed, so as to leave behind no poisonous shoots of the deadly root of evil.
In order to understand the religious system of Ireland previous to the preaching of the Gospel, we must first take a general survey of polytheism, if it can be so called, in all Celtic countries, and of the peculiar character which it bore in Ireland itself.
Of old, throughout all countries, religion possessed certain things in common, which belonged to the rites and creeds of all nations, and were evidently derived from the primitive traditions of mankind, and, consequently, from a true and Divine revelation. Such were the belief in a golden age, in the fall from a happy beginning, in the penalty imposed on sin, which gave a reason for great mundane calamities--the Deluge chiefly-- the memory of which lived in the traditions of almost every nation; in the necessity of prayer and expiatory sacrifice; in the transmission of guilt from father to son, expressed in all primitive legislations, and to this day preserved in the Chinese laws and customs; in the existence of good and bad spirits, whence, most probably, arose polytheism; in the hope of the future regeneration of man, represented in Greece by the beautiful myth of Pandora's box; and, finally, in the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments.
Each one of these strictly true dogmas underwent more or less of alteration in its passage through the various nations of antiquity, but was, nevertheless, everywhere preserved in some shape or form.
At what precise epoch did mankind begin wrongfully to interpret these primitive traditions? When did the worship of idols arise and become universal? No one can tell precisely. All we know for certain is, that a thousand years before Christ idolatry prevailed everywhere, and that even the Jewish people often fell into this sin, and were only brought back by means of punishment to the worship of the true God.
But if error tainted the whole system of worship among nations, it differed in the various races of men according to the variety of their character. Ferocity or mildness of manners, acuteness or obtuseness of understanding, activity or indolence of disposition, a burning, a cold, or a temperate climate, a smiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to each individual religion its proper and characteristic types, which in after-times, when truth was brought down from heaven for all, imparted to the universal Christian spirit a peculiar outward form in each people, an interior adaptation to its peculiar dispositions, destined in the Divine plan to introduce into the future Catholic Church the beautiful variety requisite to make its very universality possible among mankind.
To enter into details on the Celtic religion would carry us beyond due limits. The question as to whether the ancient Celts were idolaters or not still remains undecided, though in France alone more than six hundred volumes have been written on the subject. Julius Caesar believed that they were worshippers of idols in the same sense as his own countrymen; but he probably stood alone in his opinion. Aristotle, Pythagoras, Polyhistor, Ammianus Marcellinus, considered the Druids as monotheist philosophers. Most of the Greek writers agreed with them, as did all the Alexandrian Fathers of the Church in the third and fourth centuries.
Among the moderns the majority leans to a contrary opinion; nevertheless, many authors of weight, distinguishing the public worship of the common people from the doctrine of the Druids, assert the monotheism of this sacerdotal caste. Samuel F. N. Morus particularly, who, with J. A. Ernesti, was esteemed the master of antiquarian scholarship in Europe during the last century, maintains, in his edition of the "Commentaries" of Caesar, that "human beings, as well as human affairs, fortunes, travels, and wars, were thought by the Celts to be governed and ruled by one supreme God, and that the system of apotheosis, common to nearly all ancient nations, was totally unknown in ancient Gaul, Britain, and the adjacent islands."
The ancient authorities concurring with these conclusions are so numerous and clear spoken that the great historian of Gaul, Amedee Thierry, thinks that such a pure and mystic religion, joined to such a sublime philosophy, could not have been the product of the soil. In his endeavor to investigate its origin, he supposes that it was brought to the west of Europe by the Eastern Cymris of the first invasion; that it was adopted by the higher classes of society, and that the old idolatrous worship remained in force among the lower orders.
The unity and omnipotence of the Godhead, metempsychosis, or the doctrine and the transmigration of soul --not into the bodies of animals, as it obtained and still obtains in the East, but into those of other human beings--the eternal duration of existing substances, material and spiritual, consequently the immortality of the human soul, were the chief dogmas of the Druids, according to the majority of antiquarians.
If this be true, then it can be said boldly that, with the exception of revealed religion in Judea, which was always far more explicit and pure, no system can be found in ancient times superior to that of the Druids, more especially if we add that, in addition to religious teaching, a whole system of physics was also developed in their large academies. "They dispute," says Caesar, "on the stars and their motions, on the size of the universe and of this earth, on the nature of physical things, as well as on the strength and power of the eternal God."
To bring our question home, what were the religious belief and worship of the Irish Celts while still pagans? Very few positive facts are known on the subject; but we have data enough to show what they were not; and in such cases negative proofs are amply sufficient.
It was for a long time the fashion with Irish historians to attribute to their ancestors the wildest forms of ancient idolatry. They appeared to consider it a point of national honor to make the worship of Erin an exact reflex of Eastern, Grecian, or Roman polytheism. They erected on the slightest foundations grand structures of superstitious and abominable rites. Fire- worship, Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship, even human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were, according to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland. But, with the advancement of antiquarian knowledge, all those phantoms have successively disappeared; and, the more the ancient customs, literature, and history of the island are studied, the more it becomes clear that the pretended proofs adduced in support of those vagaries are really without foundation.
In the first place, there is not the slightest reason to believe that the human sacrifices customary in Gaul were ever practised in Ireland. No really ancient book makes any mention of them. They were certainly not in vogue at the time of St. Patrick, as he could not have failed to give expression to his horror at them in some shape or form, which expression would have been recorded in one, at least, of the many lives of the saint, written shortly after his death, and abounding in details of every kind. If not, then, during his long apostleship, we may safely conclude that they never took place before, as there was no reason for their discontinuance prior to the propagation of Christianity.
There was a time when all the large cromlechs which abound in the island were believed to be sacrificial stones; and it is highly probable that the opinion so prevalent during the last century with respect to the reality of those cruel rites had its origin in the existence of those rude monuments. After many investigations and excavations around and under cromlechs of all sizes, it is now admitted by all well-informed antiquarians that they had no connection with sacrifices of any kind. They were merely monuments raised over the buried bodies of chieftains or heroes. Many sepulchres of that description have been opened, either under cromlechs or under large mounds; great quantities of ornaments of gold, silver, or precious stones, utensils of various materials, beautiful works of great artistic merit, have been discovered there, and now go to fill the museums of the nation or private cabinets. Nothing connected with religious rites of any description has met the eyes of the learned seekers after truth. Thus it has been ascertained that the old race had reached a high degree of material civilization; but no clew to its religion has been furnished.
As to fire-worship, which not long ago was admitted by all as certainly forming a part of the Celtic religion in Ireland, so little of that opinion remains to-day that it is scarcely deserving of mention. There now remains no doubt that the round towers, formerly so numerous in Ireland, had nothing whatever to do with fire-worship. For a long time they were believed to have been constructed for no other object, and consequently long prior to the coming of St. Patrick. But Dr. Petrie and other antiquarians have all but demonstrated that the round towers never had any connection with superstition or idolatry at all; that they were of Christian origin, always built near some Christian church, and of the same materials, and had for their object to call the faithful to prayer, like the campanile of Italy, to be a place of refuge for the clergy in time of war, and to give to distant villages intimation of any hostile invasion.
The fact in the life of St. Patrick, when he appeared before the court of King Laeghaire, upon which so much reliance is placed as a proof of the existence of fire-worship, is now of proportionate weakness. It seems, to judge by the most reliable and ancient manuscripts, that, after all, the kindling of the king's fire was scarcely a religious act.
McGeoghegan, whose history is compiled, from the best- authenticated documents, says: "When the monarch convened an assembly, or held a festival at Tara, it was customary to make a bonfire on the preceding day, and it was forbidden to light another fire in any other place at the same time, in the territory of Breagh."
This is all; and the probable cause of the prohibition was to do honor to the king. Had it been an act of worship, Patrick, in lighting his own paschal-fire, would not only have shown disrespect to the monarch, but in the eyes of the people committed a sacrilege, which could scarcely have missed mention by the careful historians of the time.
But the proof that we are right in our interpretation of the ceremony is clear, from the following passage, taken from the work of Prof. Curry on "Early Irish Manuscripts:" "We see, by the book of military expeditions, that, when King Dathi-- the immediate predecessor of Laeghaire on the throne of Ire- land-- thought of conquering Britain and Gaul, he invited the states of the nation to meet him at Tara, at the approaching feast of Baltaine (one of the great pagan festivals of ancient Erin) on May-day.
"The feast of Tara this year was solemnized on a scale of splendor never before equalled. The fires of Lailten (now called Lelltown in the north of Ireland) were lighted, and the sports, games, and ceremonies, were conducted with unusual magnificence and solemnity.
"These games and solemnities are said to have been instituted more than a thousand years previously by Lug, in honor of Lailte, the daughter of the King of Spain, and wife of MacEire, the last king of the Firbolg colony. It was at her court that Lug had been fostered, and at her death he had her buried at this place, where he raised an immense mound over her grave, and instituted those annual games in her honor.
"These games were solemnized about the first day of August, and they continued to be observed down to the ninth century"- therefore, in Christian times-and consequently the lighting of the fires had as little connection with fire-worship as the games with pagan rites.
A more serious difficulty meets us in the destruction of Crom Cruagh by St. Patrick, and it is important to consider how far Crom Cruagh could really be called an idol.
With regard to the statues of Celtic gods, all the researches and excavations which the most painstaking of antiquarians have undertaken, especially of late years, have never resulted in the discovery, not of the statue of a god, but of any pagan sign whatever in Ireland. It is clear, from the numerous details of the life of St. Patrick, that he never encountered either temples or the statues of gods in any place, although occasional mention is made of idols. The only fact which startles the reader is the holy zeal which moved him to strike with his "baculus Jesu" the monstrous Crom Cruagh, with its twelve "sub-gods."
In all his travels through Ireland-and there is scarcely a spot which he did not visit and evangelize-St. Patrick meets with only one idol, or rather group of idols, situated in the County Cavan, which was an object of veneration to the people. Nowhere else are idols to be found, or the saint would have thought it his duty to destroy them also. This first fact certainly places the Irish in a position, with regard to idolatry, far different from that of all other polytheist nations. In all other countries it is characteristic of polytheism to multiply the statues of the gods, to expose them in all public places, in their houses, but chiefly within or at the door of edifices erected for the purpose. Yet in Ireland we find nothing of the kind, with the exception of Crom Cruagh. The holy apostle of the nation goes on preaching, baptizing, converting people, without finding any worship of gods of stone or metal; he only hears that there is something of the kind in a particular spot, and he has to travel a great distance in order to see it, and show the people their folly in venerating it.
But what was that idol? According to the majority of expounders of Irish history, it was a golden sphere or ball representing the sun, with twelve cones or pillars of brass, around it, typifying, probably, astronomical signs. St. Patrick, in his "Confessio," seems to allude to Crom Cruagh when he says: "That sun which we behold by the favor of God rises for us every day; but its splendor will not shine forever; nay, even all those who adore it shall be miserably punished."
The Bollandists, in a note on this passage of the "Confessio," think that it might refer to Crom Cruagh, which possibly represented the sun, surrounded by the signs of the twelve months, through which it describes its orbit during the year.
We know that the Druids were, perhaps, better versed in the science of astronomy than the scholars of any other nation at the time. It was not in Gaul and Britain only that they pursued their course of studies for a score of years; the same fact is attested for Ireland by authorities whose testimony is beyond question. May we not suppose that a representation of mere heavenly phenomena, set in a conspicuous position, had in course of time become the object of the superstitious veneration of the people, and that St. Patrick thought it his duty to destroy it? And the attitude of the people at the time of its destruction shows that it could not have borne for them the same sacred character as the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon did for the Greeks or that of Capitoline Jove for the Romans. Can we suppose that St. Paul or St. Peter would have dared to break either of these? And let us remark that the event we discuss occurred at the very beginning of St. Patrick's ministry, and before he had yet acquired that great authority over the minds of all which afterward enabled him fearlessly to accomplish whatever his zeal prompted him to do.
Whatever explanation of the whole occurrence may be given, we doubt if we shall find a better than that we advance, and the considerations arising from it justify the opinion that the Irish Celts were not idolaters like all other peoples of antiquity. They possessed no mythology beyond harmless fairy- tales, no poetical histories of gods and goddesses to please the imagination and the senses, and invest paganism with such an attractive garb as to cause it to become a real obstacle to the spread of Christianity.
Moreover, what we have said concerning the belief in the omnipotence of one supreme God, whatever might be his nature, as the first dogma of Druidism, would seem to have lain deep in the minds of the Irish Celts, and caused their immediate comprehension and reception of monotheism, as preached by St. Patrick, and the facility with which they accepted it. They were certainly, even when pagans, a very religious people; otherwise how could they have embraced the doctrines of Christianity with that ardent eagerness which shall come under our consideration in the next chapter? A nation utterly devoid of faith of any kind is not apt to be moved, as were the Irish, perhaps beyond all other nations, at the first sight of supernatural truths, such as those of Christianity. And so little were they attached to paganism, so visibly imbued with reverence for the supreme God of the universe, that, as soon as announced, they accepted the dogma.
The simple and touching story of the conversion of the two daughters of King Laeghaire will give point and life to this very important consideration. It is taken from the "Book of Armagh," which Prof. O'Curry, who is certainly a competent authority, believes older than the year 727, when the popular Irish traditions regarding St. Patrick must have still been almost as vivid as immediately after his death.
St. Patrick and his attendants being assembled at sunrise at the fountain of Clebach, near Cruachan in Connaught, Ethne and Felimia, daughters of King Laeghaire, came to bathe, and found at the well the holy men.
"And they knew not whence they were, or in what form, or from what people, or from what country; but they supposed them to be fairies--duine sidhe--that is to say, gods of the earth, or a phantasm.
"And the virgins said unto them: 'Who are ye, and whence are ye?'
"And Patrick said unto them: 'It were better for you to confess to our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.'
"The first virgin said: `Who is God?
"'And where is God?
"'And where is his dwelling-place?
"'Has God sons and daughters, gold and silver?
"'Is he living?
"'Is he beautiful?
"'Did many foster his son?
"'Are his daughters dear and beauteous to men of this world?
"'Is he in heaven or on earth?
"'In the sea?--In rivers?--In mountainous places?--In valleys?
"'Declare unto us the knowledge of him?
"'How shall he be seen?-How shall he be loved?-How is he to be found?
"'Is it in youth?-Is it in old age that he is to be found?'
"But St. Patrick, full of the Holy Ghost, answered and said:
"'Our God is the God of all men-the God of heaven and earth-of the sea and rivers. The God of the sun, and the moon, and all stars. The God of the high mountains, and of the lowly valleys. The God who is above heaven, and in heaven, and under heaven.
"'He has a habitation in the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that are thereon.
"'He inspireth all things. He quickeneth all things. He is over all things.
"'He hath a Son coeternal and coequal with himself. The Son is not younger than the Father, nor the Father older than the Son. And the Holy Ghost breatheth in them. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are not divided.
"'But I desire to unite you to a heavenly King inasmuch as you are daughters of an earthly king. Do you believe?'
"And the virgins said, as of one mouth and one heart: Teach us most diligently how we may believe in the heavenly King. Show us how we may see him face to face, and whatsoever you shall say unto us we will do.'
"And Patrick said: 'Believe ye that by baptism you put off the sin of your father and your mother?'
"They answered him, 'We believe.'
"'Believe ye in repentance after sin? 'We believe . . .' etc.
"And they were baptized, and a white garment was put upon their heads. And they asked to see the face of Christ. And the saint said unto them: 'Ye cannot see the face of Christ except ye taste of death, and except ye receive the sacrifice.'
"And they answered: 'Give us the sacrifice that we may behold the Son our spouse.'
"And they received the eucharist of God, and they slept in death.
"And they were laid out on one bed-covered with garments -and their friends made great lamentations and weeping for them."
This beautiful legend expresses to the letter the way in which the Irish received the faith. Nor was it simple virgins only who understood and believed so suddenly at the preaching of the apostle. The great men of the nation were as eager almost as the common people to receive baptism: the conversion of Dubtach is enough to show this.
He was a Druid, being the chief poet of King Laeghaire--all poets belonging to the order. After the wife, the brothers, and the two daughters of the monarch, he was the most illustrious convert gained by Patrick at the beginning of his apostleship. He became a Christian at the first appearance of the saint at Tara, and immediately began to sing in verse his new belief, as he had formerly sung the heroes of his nation. To the end he remained firm in his faith, and a dear friend to the holy man who had converted him. How could he, and all the chief converts of Patrick, have believed so suddenly and so constantly in the God of the Christians, if their former life had not prepared them for the adoption of the new doctrine, and if the doctrine of monotheism had offered a real difficulty to their understanding? There was, probably, nothing clear and definite in their belief in an omnipotent God, which is said to have been the leading dogma of Druidism; but their simple minds had evidently a leaning toward the doctrine, which induced them to approve of it, as soon as it was presented to them with a solemn affirmation.
In order to elucidate this point, we add a short description of the labors and success of this apostle.
In the year 432, Patrick lands on the island. By that time, some few of the inhabitants may possibly have heard of the Christian religion from the neighboring Britain or Gaul. Palladius had preached the year before in the district known as the present counties of Wexford and Wicklow, erected three churches, and made some converts; but it may be said that Ireland continued in the same state it had preserved for thousands of years: the Druids in possession of religious and scientific supremacy; the chieftains in contention, as in the time of Fingal and Ossian; the people, though in the midst of constant strife, happy enough on their rich soil, cheered by their bards and poets; very few, or no slaves in the country; an abundance of food everywhere; gold, silver, precious stones adorning profusely the persons of their chiefs, their wives, their warriors; rich stuffs, dyed with many colors, to distinguish the various orders of society; a deep religious feeling in their hearts, preparing them for the faith, by inspiring them with lively emotions at the sight of divine power displayed in their mountains, their valleys, their lakes and rivers, and on the swelling bosom of the all- encircling ocean; superstitions of various kinds, indeed, but none of a demoralizing character, none involving marks of cruelty or lust; no revolting statues of Priapus, of Bacchus, of Cybele; no obscene emblems of religion, as in all other lands, to confront Christianity; but over all the island, song, festivity, deep affection for kindred; and, as though blood- relationship could not satisfy their heart, fosterage covering the land with other brothers and sisters; all permeated with a strong attachment to their clan-system and social customs. Such is an exact picture of the Erin of the time, which the study of antiquity brings clearer and clearer before the eyes of the modern student.
Patrick appears among them, leaning on his staff, and bringing them from Rome and Gaul new songs in a new language set to a new melody. He comes to unveil for them what lies hidden, unknown to themselves, in the depths of their hearts. He explains, by the power of one Supreme God, why it is that their mountains are so high, their valley so smiling, their rivers and lakes teeming with life, their fountains so fresh and cool, and that sun of theirs so temperate in its warmth, and the moon and stars, lighted with a soft radiance, shimmering over the deep obscurity of their groves.
He directs them to look into their own consciences, to admit themselves to be sinners in need of redemption, and points out to them in what manner that Supreme God, whom they half knew already, condescended to save man.
Straightway, from all parts of the island, converts flock to him; they come in crowds to be baptized, to embrace the new law by which they may read their own hearts; they are ready to do whatever he wishes; many, not content with the strict commandments enjoined on all, wish to enter on the path of perfection: the men become monks, the women and young girls nuns, that is to say, spouses of Christ. In Munster alone "it would be difficult," says a modern writer, Father Brenan, "to form an estimate of the number of converts he made, and even of the churches and religious establishments he founded."
And so with all the other provinces of the island. The proof's still stand before our eyes. For, as Prof. Curry justly remarks: "No one, who examines for himself, can doubt that at the first preaching in Erin of the glad tidings of salvation, by Saints Palladius and Patrick, those countless Christian churches were built, whose sites and ruins mark so thickly the surface of our country even to this day, still bearing through all the vicissitudes of time and conquest the unchanged names of their original founders."
According to the commonly-received opinion, St. Patrick's apostleship lasted thirty-three years; but, whatever may have been its real duration, certain it is that his feet traversed the whole island several times, and, at his passing, churches and monasteries sprang up in great numbers, and remained to tell the true story of his labors when their founder had passed away.
Nor was it with Ireland as with Rome, Carthage, Antioch, and other great cities of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Not the slaves and artisans alone filled these newly-erected Christian edifices. Some of the first men of the nation received baptism. We have already spoken of the family of Laeghaire. In Connaught, at the first appearance of the man of God, all the inhabitants of that portion of the province now represented by the County Mayo became Christians; and the seven sons of the king of the province were baptized, together with twelve thousand of their clansmen. In Leinster, the Princes Illand and Alind were baptized in a fountain near Naas. In Munster, Aengus, the King of Cashel, with all the nobility of his clan, embraced the faith. A number of chieftains in Thomond are also mentioned; and the whole of the Dalcassian tribe, so celebrated before and after in the annals of Ireland, received, with the waters of baptism, that ardent faith which nothing has been able to tear from them to this day.
Many Druids even, by renouncing their superstitions, abdicated their power over the people. We have mentioned Dubtach ; his example was followed by many others, among whom was Fingar, the son of King Clito, who is said to have suffered martyrdom in Brittany; Fiech, pupil of Dubtach, himself a poet, and belonging to the noble house of Hy-Baircha in Leinster, was raised by St. Patrick to the episcopacy, and was the first occupant of the See of Sletty.
Fiech was a regular member of the bardic order of Druids, a poet by profession, esteemed as a learned man even before he embraced Christianity; and during his lifetime he was, as a Christian bishop, consulted by numbers and regarded as an oracle of truth and heavenly wisdom.
Nevertheless, Patrick encountered opposition. Some chieftains declared themselves against him, without daring openly to attack him. Many Druids, called in the old Irish annals magi, tried their utmost to estrange the Irish people from him. But he stood in danger of his life only once. It was, in fact, a war of argument. Long discussions took place, with varied success, ending generally, however, in a victory for truth.
The final result was that, in the second generation after St. Patrick, there existed not a single pagan in the whole of Ireland; the very remembrance of paganism even seemed to have passed away from their minds ever after; hence arises the difficulty of deciding now on the character of that paganism.
After its abolition, nothing remained in the literature of the country, which was at that time much more copious than at present--nothing was left in its monuments or in the inclinations of the people--to imperil the existence of the newly-established Christianity, or of a nature calculated to give a wrong bias to the religious worship of the people, such as we have seen was the case in the rest of Europe.
May we not conclude, then, that Ireland was much better prepared for the new religion than any other country; that, when she was thus admitted by baptism into the European family, she made her entry in a way peculiar to herself, and which secured to her, once for all, her firm and undeviating attachment to truth?
She had nothing to change in her manners after having renounced the few disconnected superstitions to which she had been addicted. Her songs, her bards, her festivities, her patriarchal government, her fosterage, were left to her, Christianized and consecrated by her great apostle; clanship even penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence of things which might lead to abuse than violently and at once to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very nature of the people, some of which it cost England, later on, centuries of inconceivable barbarities to eradicate.
As to what exact form, if any, the paganism of the Irish Celts assumed, we have so few data to build upon that it is now next to impossible to shape a system out of them. From the passage of the "Confessio" already quoted, we might infer that they adored the sun; and this passage is very remarkable as the only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and the strong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps need only express his fear lest the superstition of the ignorant people might convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all events, there was not a statue, or a temple, or a theological system, erected to or connected with it in any shape.
The solemn forms of oaths taken and administered by the Irish kings would also lead us to infer that they paid a superstitious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why should this feeling pass beyond that which even the Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or lashed his shores: he witnessed these wonderful effects; he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen power which moved them --at his God.
So his imagination peopled his groves and hill-sides, his rivers and lakes, with harmless fairies; but fairy land has never become among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinities; and we doubt much if such innocuous superstition can be rightly called even sinful error.
In fact, the only thing which could render paganism truly a danger in Ireland, as opposed to the preaching of Christianity, was the body of men intrusted with the care of religion--the Druids, the magi of the chronicles. But, as we find no traces of bloody sacrifices in Ireland, the Druids there probably never bore the character which they did in Gaul; they cannot be said to have been sacrificing priests; their office consisted merely in pretended divinations, or the workings of incantations or spells. They also introduced superstition into the practice of medicine, and taught the people to venerate the elements or mysterious forces of this world.
Without mentioning any of the many instances which are found in the histories of the workings of these Druidical incantations and spells, the consulting of the clouds, and the ceremonies with which they surrounded their healing art, we go straight to our main point: the ease and suddenness with which all these delusions vanished at the first preaching of the Gospel --a fact very telling on the force which they exercised over the mind of the nation. All natural customs, games, festivities, social relationships, as we have seen, are preserved, many to this day; what is esteemed as their religion, and its ceremonies and superstitions, is dropped at once. The entire Irish mind expanded freely and generously at the simple announcement of a God, present everywhere in the universe, and accepted it. The dogma of the Holy Spirit, not only filling all--complens omnia- - but dwelling in their very souls by grace, and filling them with love and fear, must have appeared natural to them. Their very superstitions must have prepared the way for the truth, a change --or may we not say a more direct and tangible object taking the place of and filling their undefined yearnings--was alone requisite. Otherwise it is a hard fact to explain how, within a few years, all Druidism and magic, incantations, spells, and divinations, were replaced by pure religion, by the doctrine of celestial favors obtained through prayer, by the intercession of a host of saints in heaven, and the belief in Christian miracles and prophecies; whereas, scarcely any thing of Roman or Grecian mythology could be replaced by corresponding Christian practices, although popes did all they could in that regard. Nearly all the errors of the Irish Celts had their corresponding truths and holy practices in Christianity, which could be readily substituted for them, and envelop them immediately with distrust or just oblivion. Hence we do not see, in the subsequent ecclesiastical history of Ireland, any thing to resemble the short sketch we have given of the many dangers arising within the young Christian Church, which had their origin in the former religion of other European nations.
In regarding philosophy and its perils in Ireland, our task will be an easy one, yet not unimportant in its bearings on subsequent considerations. The minds of nations differ as greatly as their physical characteristics; and to study the Irish mind we have only to take into consideration the institutions which swayed it from time immemorial. They were of such a nature that they could but belong to a traditional people. All patriarchal tribes partake of that general character; none, perhaps, so strikingly as the Celts.
People thus disposed have nothing rationalistic in their nature; they accept old facts; and, if they reason upon them, it is to find proofs to support, not motives to doubt them. They never refine their discussions to hair-splitting, synonymous almost with rejection, as seems to be the delight of what we call rationalistic races. It was among these that philosophy was born, and among them it flourishes. They may, by their acute reasoning, enlarge the human mind, open up new horizons, and, if confined within just limits, actually enrich the understanding of man. We are far from pretending that philosophy has only been productive of harm, and that it were a blessed thing had the human intellect always remained, as it were, in a dormant state, without ever striving to grasp at philosophic truth and raise itself above the common level; we hold the great names of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and so many others, in too great respect to entertain such an opinion.
Yet it cannot be denied that the excessive study of philosophy has produced many evils among men, has often been subservient to error, has, at best, been for many minds the source of a cold and desponding skepticism.
No race of men, perhaps, has been less inclined to follow those intellectual aberrations than the Celtic, owing chiefly to its eminently traditional dispositions.
Before Christianity reached them, the intellectual labors of the Celts were chiefly confined to history and genealogy, medicine and botany, law, song, music, and artistic workings in metals and gems. This was the usual curriculum of Druidic studies. Astronomy and the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge of "the nature of the eternal God," were, according to Caesar, extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements of those intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attention of the Irish student during the twelve, fifteen, or twenty years of his preparation for being ordained to the highest degree of ollamh. But the oldest and most reliable documents which have been examined so far do not allow us to state positively that such was the case to any great extent.
In Christian times, however, it seems certain that astronomy was better studied in Ireland than anywhere else, as is proved by the extraordinary impulse given to that science by Virgil of Salzburg, who was undoubtedly an Irishman, and educated in his native country.
It is from the Church alone, therefore, that they received their highest intellectual training in the philosophy and theology of the Scriptures and of the Fathers. It is known that, by the introduction of the Latin and Greek tongues into their schools in addition to the vernacular, the Bible in Latin and Greek, and the writings of many Fathers in both languages, as also the most celebrated works of Roman and Greek classical writers, became most interesting subjects of study. They reproduced those works for their own use in the scriptoria of their numerous monasteries. We still possess some of those manuscripts of the sixth and following centuries, and none more beautiful or correct can be found among those left by the English, French, or Italian monastic institutions of the periods mentioned.
During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the Irish schools became celebrated all over Europe. Young Anglo-Saxons of the best families were sent to receive their education in Innisfail, as the island was then often called; and, from their celebrated institutions of learning, numerous teachers and missionaries went forth to England, Germany (along the Rhine, chiefly), France, and even Switzerland and Italy.
Yet, in the history of all those intellectual labors, we never read of startling theories in philosophy or theology advanced by any of them, unless we except the eccentric John Scotus Erigena, whom Charles the Bald, at whose court he resided, protected even against the just severity of the Church. Without ever having studied theology, he undertook to dogmatize, and would perhaps have originated some heresy, had he found a following in Germany or France.
But he is the only Irishman who ever threatened the peace of the Church, and, through her, of the world. Duns Scotus, if he were Irish, never taught any error, and remained always an accepted leader in Catholic schools. To the honor of Erin be it said, her children have ever been afraid to deviate in the least from the path of faith. And it would be wrong to imagine that the preservation from heresy so peculiar to them, and by which they are broadly distinguished from all other European nations, comes from dulness of intellect and inability to follow out an intricate argumentation. They show the acuteness of their understanding in a thousand ways; in poetry, in romantic tales, in narrative compositions, in legal acumen and extempore arguments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterly eloquence by which so many of them are distinguished. Who shall say that they might not also have reached a high degree of eminence in philosophical discussions and ontological theories? They have always abstained from such studies by reason of a natural disinclination, which does them honor, and which has saved them in modern times, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, from the innumerable evils which afflict society everywhere else, and by which it is even threatened with destruction.
Thus, among the numerous and versatile progeny of Japhet one small branch has kept itself aloof from the universal movement of the whole family; and, in the very act of accepting Christianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Western nations, it has known how to do so in its own manner, and has thus secured a firm hold of the saving doctrines imparted to the whole race for a great purpose--the purpose, unfortunately often defeated--of reducing to practice and reality the sublime ideal of the Christian religion.
The details given in this chapter on the various circumstances connected with the introduction of our holy faith into Ireland were necessarily very limited, as our chief object was to speak of the nation's preparation for it. In the following we treat directly of what could only be touched upon in the latter part of this.
IV. HOW THE IRISH RECEIVED CHRISTIANITY
For the conversion of pagans to Christianity, many exterior proofs of revelation were vouchsafed by God to man in addition to the interior impulse of his grace. Those exterior proofs are generally termed "the evidences of religion." They produce their chief effect on inquiring minds which are familiar with the reasoning processes of philosophy, and attach great importance to truth acquired by logical deduction. To this, many pagans of Greece and Rome owed their conversion; by this, in our days, many strangers are brought, on reflection, to the faith of Christ, always presupposing the paramount influence of divine grace on their minds and hearts.
But it is easy to remark that, except in rare cases, those who are gained over to truth by such a process are with some difficulty brought under the influence of the supernatural, which forms the essential groundwork of Christianity. This influence, it is true, is only the effect of the operation of the Holy Ghost on the soul of the convert; but the Holy Ghost acts in conformity with the disposition of the soul; and we know, by what has been said on the character of religion among the Romans and the Greeks in the earlier days of the Church, that it took long ages, the infusion of Northern blood, and the simplicity of new races uncontaminated by heathen mythology, to inspire men with that deep supernatural feeling which in course of time became the distinguishing character of the ages of faith. Ireland imbibed this feeling at once, and thus she received Christianity more thoroughly, at the very beginning, than did any other Western nation.
The fact is--whatever may be thought or said--the Christian religion, with all the loveliness it imparts to this world when rightly understood, though never destroying Nature, but always keeping it in mind, and consecrating it to God, truly endowed, consequently, with the promises of earth as well as those of heaven--the Christian religion is nevertheless fundamentally supernatural, full of awe and mystery, heavenly and incomprehensible, before being earthly and the grateful object of sense.
Without examining the various formularies which heresy compelled an infallible Church to proclaim and impose upon her children from time to time, the Apostles' Creed alone transfers man at once into regions supernatural, into heaven itself. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the mission of the Hold Ghost on earth, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the dead, are all mysteries necessitating a revelation on the part of God himself to make them known to and believed by man. Do they not place man, even while on earth, in direct communication with heaven?
The firm believer in those mysteries is already a celestial citizen by faith and hope. He has acquired a new life, new senses, as it were, new faculties of mind and will--all things, evidently, above Nature.
And it is clear, from many passages of the New Testament, that our Lord wished the lives of his disciples to be wholly penetrated with that supernatural essence. They were not to be men of the earth, earthly, but citizens of another country which is heavenly and eternal. Hence the holiness and perfection required of them--a holiness, according to Christ, like that of the celestial Father himself; hence contempt for the things of this world, so strongly recommended by our Lord; hence the assurance that men are called to be sons of God, the eternal Son having become incarnate to acquire for us this glorious privilege; hence, finally, that frequent recommendation in the Gospel to rely on God for the things of this life, and to look above all for spiritual blessings.
That reliance is set forth in such terms, in the Sermon on the Mount, that, taken literally, man should neglect entirely his temporal advantages, forget entirely Nature, and think only of grace, or rather, expect that the things of Nature would be given us by our heavenly Father "who knows that we need them."
Nature, consequently, assumes a new aspect in this system. It is no longer a complexity of temporal goods within reach of the efforts of man, and which it rests with man alone to procure for himself. It is, indeed, a worldly treasure, belonging to God, as all else, and which the hand of God scatters profusely among his creatures. God will not fail to grant to every one what he needs, if he have faith. Thus God is always visible in Nature; and redeemed man, raised far above the beasts of the field, has other eyes than those of the body, when he looks around him on this world.
Had Christianity been literally understood by those who first received it, it would have completely changed the moral, social, and even natural aspect of the universe. The change produced throughout by the new religion was indeed remarkable, but not what it would have been, if the supernatural had taken complete possession of human society. This it did in Ireland, and, it may be said, in Ireland alone.
To begin with the preaching of St. Patrick, we note his care to impart to his converts a sufficient knowledge of the Christian mysteries, but, above all, to make those mysteries influence their lives by acting more powerfully on the new Christian heart than even on the mind.
Thus, in the beautiful legend of Ethne and Felimia, the saint, not content with instructing them on the attributes of God, the Trinity, and other supernatural truths, goes further still; he requires a change in their whole being--that it be spiritualized: by deeply exciting their feelings, by speaking of Christ as their spouse, by making them wish to receive him in the holy Eucharist, even at the expense of their temporal life, he so raises them above Nature that they actually asked to die. "And they received the Eucharist of God, and they slept in death."
Again, in the hymn of Tara, the heavenly spirit, which consists in an intimate union with God and Christ, is so admirably expressed, that we cannot refrain from presenting an extract from it, remarking that this beautiful hymn has been the great prayer of all Irishmen through all ages down even to our own times, though, unfortunately, it is not now so generally known and used by them as formerly:
"At Tara, to-day, may the strength of God pilot me, may the power of God preserve me, may the wisdom of God instruct me, may the eye of God view me, may the ear of God hear me, may the word of God render me eloquent, may the hand of God protect me, may the way of God direct me, may the shield of God defend me, etc.
"Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ in me, Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left; . . . Christ be in the heart of each person whom I speak to, Christ in the mouth of each person who speaks to me, Christ in each eye which sees me, Christ in each ear which hears me!"
Could any thing tend more powerfully to make of those whom he converted, true supernatural Christians--forgetful of this world, thinking only of another and a brighter one?
The island, at his coming, was a prey to preternatural superstitions. The Druids possessed, in the opinion of the people, a power beyond that of man; and history shows the same phenomenon in all pagan countries, not excepting those of our time. A real supernatural power was required to overcome that of the magi.
Hence, according to Probus, the magicians to whom the arrival of Patrick had been foretold, prepared themselves for the contest, and several chieftains supported them. Prestiges were, therefore, tried in antagonism to miracles; but, as Moses prevailed over the power of the Egyptian priests, so did Patrick over the Celtic magicians. It is even said that five Druids perished in one of the contests.
The princes were sometimes also punished with death. Recraid, head of a clan, came with his Druids and with words of incantation written under his white garments; he fell dead. Laeghaire himself, the Ard-Righ of all Ireland, whose family became Christian, but who refused to abandon his superstitions, perished with his numerous attendants.
But a more singular phenomenon was, that death, which was often the punishment of unbelief, became as often a boon to be desired by the new Christian converts, so completely were they under the influence of the supernatural. Thus Ruis found it hard to believe. To strengthen his faith, Patrick restored to him his youth, and then gave him the choice between this sweet blessing of life and the happiness of heaven; Ruis preferred to die, like Ethne and Felimia.
Sechnall, the bard, told St. Patrick, one day, that he wished to sing the praises of a saint whom the earth still possessed. "Hasten, then," said Patrick, "for thou art at the gates of death." Sechnall, not only undisturbed, but full of joy, sang a glorious hymn in honor of Patrick, and immediately after died.
Kynrecha came to the convent-door of St. Senan. "What have women in common with monks?" said the holy abbot. "We will not receive thee." "Before I leave this place," responded Kynrecha, "I offer this prayer to God, that my soul may leave the body." And she sank down and expired.
The various lives of the apostle of Ireland and his successors are full of facts of this nature. Supposing that a high coloring was given to some of these by the writers, one thing is certain: the people who lived during that apostleship believed in them firmly, and handed down their belief to their children. Moreover, nothing was better calculated to give to a primitive people, like the Irish, a strong supernatural spirit and character, than to make them despise the joys of this earth and yearn for a better country.
There are, indeed, too many facts of a similar kind related in the lives of St. Patrick and his fellow-workers, to bear the imputation, not of imposition, but even of delusion. The desire of dying, to be united with Christ; the indifference, at least, as to the prolongation of existence; the readiness, if not the joy, with which the announcement of death was received, are of such frequent mention in those old legends, as matters of ordinary occurrence, surprising no one, that they must be conceded as facts often taking place in those early ages.
And, more striking still, this feeling of accepting death, either as a boon or as a matter of course, and with perfect resignation to the will of God, seems to have been throughout, since the introduction of Christianity, a characteristic of the Irish people. It is often witnessed in our own days, and manifested, equally by the young, the middle-aged, or the old. The young, closing their eyes to that bright life whose sweetness they have as yet scarcely tasted, never murmur at being deprived of it, though hope is to them so alluring; the middle-aged, called away in the midst of projects yet unaccomplished, see the sudden end of all that before interested them, with no other concern than for the children they leave behind them; the old, among other races generally so tenacious of life, are, as a rule, glad that their last hour has come, and speak only of their joy that at last they "go home" to that country whither so many of their friends and kindred have gone before them.
This in itself would stamp the Celtic character with an indelible mark, distinguishing it from all other, even most Christian, peoples.
The second sign we find of the firm hold the supernatural had taken of the Irish from the very beginning is their strong belief in the power of the priesthood. This is so striking among them that they have been called by their enemies and those of the Church "a priest-ridden people." Let us consider if this is a reproach.
If Christianity be true, what is the priesthood? Even among the Greeks, from whom so many heresies formerly sprang before they were smitten into insignificance by schism and its punishment-- Turkish slavery--when the great doctors sent them by Providence spoke on the subject, what were their words, and what impression did they make on their supercilious hearers? St. John Chrysostom will answer. His long treatise, written to his friend Basil, is but a glowing description of the great privileges given to the Christian priest by the High-Priest himself--Christ our Lord.
When the great preacher of Antioch, though not yet a priest, describes the awful moment of sacrifice, the altar surrounded by angels descended from heaven, the man consecrated to an office higher than any on earth, and as high as that of the incarnate Son of God--God himself coming down from above and bringing down heaven with him--who can believe in Christianity and fail to be struck with awe?
Who can read the words of Christ, declaring that any one invested with that dignity is sent by him as he was himself sent by his Father, and not feel the innate respect due to such divine honors? Who can read the details of those privileges with respect to the remission of sin, the conferring of grace by the sacraments, the infallible teaching of truth, the power even granted to them sometimes over Nature and disease, without feeling himself transported into a world far above this, and without placing his confidence in what God himself has declared so powerful and preeminent in the regions beyond?
Such, in a few words, is the Christian priesthood, if Christianity possesses any reality and is not an imposture. Among all nations, therefore, where sound faith exists, the greatest respect is shown to the ministers of God; but the Irish have at all times been most persistent in their veneration and trust. And if we would ascertain the cause of their standing in this regard, we shall find that other nations, while firmly believing the words of Christ, keep their eyes open to human frailty, and look more keenly and with more suspicion on the conduct of men invested with so high a dignity, but subject at the same time to earthly passions and sins; while the Irish, on the contrary, abandon themselves with all the impulsiveness of their nature to the feeling uppermost in their hearts, which is ever one of trust and ready reliance.
But this statement, whatever may be its intrinsic value, itself needs a further explanation, which is only to be found in the greater attraction the supernatural always possessed for the Irish nature, when developed by grace. They accept fully and unsuspiciously what is heavenly, because they, more than others, feel that they are made for heaven, and the earth, consequently, has for them fewer attractions. They cling to a world far above this, and whatever belongs to it is dear to them.
Hence, from the first preaching of Christianity among them, all earthly dignities have paled before the heavenly honors of the priesthood. They have been taught by St. Patrick that even the supreme duties of a real Christian king fall far below those of a Christian bishop.
The king, according to the apostle of Ireland - and his words have become a canon of the Irish Church - "has to judge no man unjustly; to be the protector of the stranger, of the widow, and the orphan; to repress theft, punish adultery, not to keep buffoons or unchaste persons; not to exalt iniquity, but to sweep away the impious from the land, exterminate parricides and perjurers; to defend the poor, to appoint just men over the affairs of the kingdom, to consult wise and temperate elders, to defend his native land against its enemies rightfully and stoutly; in all things to put his trust in God."
All this evidently refers only to the exterior polity and administration. But "the bishop must be the hand which supports, the pilot who directs, the anchor that stays, the hammer that strikes, the sun that enlightens, the dew which moistens, the tablet to be written on, the book to be read, the mirror to be seen in, the terror that terrifies, the image of all that is good; and let him be all for all."
Under this metaphorical style we here discern all the interior qualities of a spiritual Christian guide, teaching no less by authority than example.
And, in the opinion of the converts of Patrick, were not the bishops, abbots, and priests, supported by an invisible power, stronger than all visible armies and guards of kings and princes?
"When the King of Cashel dared to contend against the holy abbot Mochoemoc, the first night after the dispute an old man took the king by the hand and led him to the northern city-walls; there he opened the king's eyes, and he beheld all the Irish saints of his own sex in white garments, with Patrick at their head; they were there to protect Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain of Femyn.
"The second night the old man came again and took the king to the southern wall, and there he saw the white-robed glorious army of Ireland's virgins, led by Bridget: they too had come to defend Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain of Monael." 1
(1 Many quotations in this chapter are from the "Legend. Hist." by J. G. Shea.)
In the annals of no other Christian nation do we see so many examples of the power of the ministers of God to punish the wicked and help and succor the good, as we do in the hagiography of Ireland. Bad kings and chieftains reproved, cursed, punished; the poor assisted, the oppressed delivered from their enemies, the sick restored to health, the dead even raised to life, are occurrences which the reader meets in almost every page of the lives of Irish saints. The Bollandists, accustomed as they were to meet with miracles of that kind, in the lives they published, found in Irish hagiography such a superabundance of them, that they refused to admit into their admirable compilation a great number already published or in manuscript. Nevertheless, the critics of our days, finding nothing impossible to or unworthy of God in the large collection of Colgan and other Irish antiquarians, express their surprise at their exclusion from that of Bollandus.
No one at least will refuse to concede that, true or not, the facts related in those lives are always provocative of piety and redolent of faith. They certainly prove that at all periods of their existence the Irish have manifested a holy avidity for every thing supernatural and miraculous. Do they not know that our Lord has promised gifts of this description to his apostles and their successors? And what the acts of the Apostles and many acts of martyrs positively state as having happened at the very beginning of the Church, is not a whit less extraordinary or physically impossible than any thing related in the Irish legends.
Every Christian soul naturally abhors the unbelief of a Strauss or of a Renan as to the former; is it not unnatural, then, for the same Christian soul to reject the latter because they fall under the easy sneer of "an Irish legend," and are not contained in Holy Writ?
At all events, the faith of the Irish has never wavered in such matters, and to-day they hold the same confidence in the priests' power that meets us everywhere in the pages of Colgan and Ward. The reason is, that they admit Christianity without reserve; and in its entirety it is supernatural. The criticisms of human reason on holy things hold in their eyes something of the sacrilegious and blasphemous; such criticisms are for them open disrespect for divine things; and, inasmuch as divine things are, in fact, more real than any phenomena under natural laws can be, skepticism in the former case is always more unreasonable than in the latter, supposing always that the narrative of the Divine favors reposes on sufficient authority.
It is clear, therefore, that since the preaching of Christianity in Ireland, the world showed itself to the inhabitants of that country in a different light to that in which other men beheld it. For them, Nature is never separated from its Maker; the hand of God is ever visible in all mundane affairs, and the frightful parting between the spiritual and material worlds, first originated by the Baconian philosophy, which culminates in our days in the almost open negation of the spiritual, and thus materializes all things, is with justice viewed by the children of St. Patrick with a holy horror as leading to atheism, if it be not atheism itself.
Without going to such extremes as the avowed infidels of modern times, all other Christian nations have seemed afraid to draw the logical conclusions whose premises were laid down by revelation. They have tried to follow a via media between truth and error; they have admitted to a certain extent the separation of God and Nature, supposing the act of creation to have passed long ages ago, and not continuing through all time; and thus they are bound by their system to hold that miracles are very extraordinary things, not to be believed prima facie, requiring infinite precautions before admitting the supposition of their having taken place; all which indicates a real repugnance to their admission, and an innate fear of supposing God all-powerful, just, and good. It is the first step to Manicheism and the kindred errors; and most Christian nations having, unfortunately, imbibed the principles of those errors in the philosophy of modern times, have almost lost all faith in the supernatural, and reduced revelation to a meagre and cold system, unrealized and not to be realized in human life.
Not so the Irish Religion has entered deep into their life. It is a thing of every moment and of every place. Nature, God's handiwork, instead of repelling them from God himself, draws them gently but forcibly toward Him, so that they feel themselves to be truly recipients of the blessings of God by being sharers in the blessings of Nature.
And must God's ministers, who have received such extraordinary powers over the supernatural world, be entirely deprived of power over the inferior part of creation? Who can say so, and have true faith in the words of our Lord? Who can say so, and truly call himself the follower and companion of the saints who have all believed so firmly in the constant action of God in this, the lesser part of his creation?
And this faith of the Irish in the power of the priesthood is not a thing of yesterday. It dates from their adoption of Christianity, to continue, we hope, forever. It ought, therefore, to be carefully distinguished from that love for every priest of God which beats so ardently in the hearts of them all, and which was so strengthened by a long community of persecution and suffering.
In Ireland, as in every other Christian country, the priesthood has always sided with the people against their oppressors. During the early ages of Christianity in the island, the bishops, priests, and monks, were often called upon to exercise their authority and power against princes and chiefs of clans, accustomed to plunder, destroy, and kill, on the slightest pretext, and unused to control their fierce passions, inflamed by the rancor of feuds and the pride of strength and bravery. Some of those chieftains even opposed the progress of religion; and it is said that Eochad, King of Ulster, cast his two daughters, whom Patrick had baptized and consecrated to God, into the sea.
For several centuries the heads of clans were generally so unruly and so hard to bring under the yoke of Christ, that the saints, in taking the side of the poor, had to stand as a wall of brass to stem the fury of the great and powerful.
Bridget even, the modest and tender virgin, often spoke harshly of princes and rulers. "While she dwelt in the land of Bregia, King Connal's daughter-in-law came to ask her prayers, for she was barren. Bridget refused to go to receive her; but, leaving her without, she sent one of her maidens. When the nun returned: 'Mother,' she asked, 'why would you not go and see the queen? you pray for the wives of peasants.' 'Because,' said the servant of God, 'the poor and the peasants are almost all good and pious, while the sons of kings are serpents, children of blood and fornication, except a small number of elect. But, after all, as she had recourse to us, go back and tell her that she shall have a son; he will be wicked, and his race shall be accursed, yet he shall reign many years.'"
We might multiply examples such as this, wherein the saints and the ministers of God always side with the poor and the helpless; and their great number in the lives of the old saints at once gives a reason for the deep love which the lower class of the Irish people felt for the holy men who were at once the servants of God and their helpers in every distress.
The same thing is to be found in the whole subsequent history of the island, chiefly in the latter ages of persecution. But, as we said before, this affection and love must be distinguished from the feeling of reverence and awe resulting from the supernatural character of their office. The first feeling is merely a natural one, produced by deeds of benevolence and holy charity fondly remembered by the individuals benefited. The second was the effect of religious faith in the sacredness of the priestly character, and remained in full force even when the poor themselves fell under reproof or threat in consequence of some misdeed or vicious habit.
Hence the universal respect which the whole race entertains for their spiritual rulers, and their unutterable confidence in their high prerogatives. In prosperity as in adversity, in freedom or in subjection, they always preserve an instinctive faith in the unseen power which Christ conferred on those whom He chose to be his ministers. This feeling, which is undoubtedly found among good Christians in all places, is as certainly only found among particular individuals; but among the Irish Celts it is the rule rather than the exception.
Well have they merited, then, in this sense, from the days of St. Patrick down, the title of a "priest-ridden" people, which has been fixed on them as a term of reproach by those for whom all belief in the supernatural is belief in imposture.
Another and a stronger fact still, exemplifying the extent to which the Irish have at all times carried their devotion to the supernatural character of the Christian religion, is the extraordinary ardor with which, from the very beginning, they rushed into the high path of perfection, called the way of "evangelical counsels." Nowhere else were such scenes ever witnessed in Christian history.
For the great mass of people the common way of life is the practice of the commandments of God; it is only the few who feel themselves called on to enter upon another path, and who experience interiorly the need of being "perfect."
In Ireland the case was altogether different from the outset. St. Patrick, notwithstanding his intimate knowledge of the leanings of the race, expresses in his "Confessio" the wonder and delight he experienced when he saw in what manner and in what numbers they begged to be consecrated to God the very first day after their baptism. Yet were they conscious that this very eagerness would excite the greater opposition on the part of their pagan relatives and friends. Thus we read of the fate of Eochad's daughters, and the story of Ethne and Felimia.
The whole nation, in fact, appeared suddenly transported with a holy impetuosity, and lifted at once to the height of Christian life. Monasteries and nunneries could not be constructed fast enough, although they contented themselves with the lightest fabrics--wattles being the ordinary materials for walls, and slender laths for roofs.
Nor was this an ephemeral ardor, like a fire of stubble or straw, flashing into a momentary blaze, to relapse into deeper gloom. It lasted for several centuries; it was still in full flame at the time of Columba, more than two hundred years after Patrick; it grew into a vast conflagration in the seventh and eighth centuries, when multitudes rushed forth from that burning island of the blest to spread the sacred fire through Europe.
How the nation continued to multiply, when so many devoted themselves to a holy celibacy, is only to be explained by the large number of children with which God blessed those who pursued an ordinary life, and who, from what is related in the chronicles of the time, must have been in a minority.
Of the first monasteries and convents erected not a single vestige now remains, because of the perishable materials of which they were constructed; yet each of them contained hundreds, nay thousands, of monks or nuns.
But, even in our days, we are furnished with an ocular demonstration of what men could scarcely bring themselves to believe, or at least would term an exaggeration, did not standing proof remain. God inspired his children with the thought of erecting more substantial structures, of building walls of stone and roofing them in with tiles and metal; and the island was literally covered, not with Gothic castles or luxurious palaces and sumptuous edifices, but with large and commodious buildings and churches, wherein the religious life of the inmates might be carried on with greater comfort and seclusion from the world.
At the time of the Reformation all those asylums of perfection and asceticism were of course profaned, converted to vile or slavish uses, many altogether destroyed to the very foundations; a greater number were allowed to decay gradually and become heaps of ruins.
And what happened when the English Government, unable any longer to resist public opinion, was compelled to consent that a survey be made of the poor and comparatively few remains still in existence, in order to manifest a show of interest for the past history of the island; when commissioners were appointed to publish lists and diagrams of the former dwellings of the "saints," which the "zeal" of the "reformers" had battered down without mercy? To the astonishment of all, it was proved by the ruins still in existence that the greater portion of the island had been once occupied by monasteries and convents of every description. And Prof. O'Curry has stated his conviction, based on local traditions and geographical and topographical names, that a great number of these can be traced back to Patrick and his first companions.
It is clear enough, then, that, from the beginning, the Irish were not only "priest-ridden," but also very attached to "monkish superstitions."
Yet we could not form a complete idea of that attachment were we to limit ourselves to an enumeration of the buildings actually erected, supposing such an enumeration possible at this time. For we know, by many facts related in Irish hagiology, that a great number of those who devoted themselves to a life of penance and austerity, did not dwell even in the humble structures of the first monks, but, deeming themselves unworthy of the society of their brethren, or condemned by a severe but just "friend of their soul," as the confessor was then called, hid themselves in mountain-caves, in the recesses of woods or forests, or banished themselves to crags ever beaten by the waves of the sea.
Yes, there was a time when those dreadful solitudes of the Hebrides, which frighten the modern tourist in his summer explorations, teemed with Christian life, and every rock, cave, and sand-bar had its inhabitant, and that inhabitant an Irish monk.
They sometimes spent seven years on a desert islet doing penance for a single sin. They often passed a lifetime on a rock in the midst of the ocean, alone with God, and enjoying no communion but that of their conscience.
Who knows how many thousands of men have led such a life, shocking, indeed, to the feelings of worldlings, but in reality devoted to the contemplation of what is above Nature--a life, consequently, exalted and holy?
Passing from the solitudes to the numerous hives where the bees of primitive Christianity in Ireland were busy at work constructing their combs and secreting their honey, what do we see? People generally imagine that all monastic establishments have been alike; that those of mediaeval times were simply the reproduction of earlier ones. An abbot, the three vows, austerity, psalmody, study--such are the general features common to all; but those of Ireland had peculiarities which are worthy of examination. We shall find in them a stronger expression of the supernatural, perhaps; certainly a more heavenly cast, a greater forgetfulness of the world, its manners and habits, its passions and aims.
Patrick had learned all he knew of this holy life in the establishment of Lerins, wherein the West reflected more truly than it ever did subsequently the Oriental light of the great founders of monasticism in Palestine and Egypt.
The first thing to be remarked is the want, to a great extent, of a strict system. The Danes, when Christianized, and the Anglo- Normans, introduced this afterwards; but the genius of the Irish race is altogether opposed to it, and the Scandinavian races in following ages could hardly ever bring them under the cold uniformity of an iron rule.
Did St. Patrick establish a rule in the monasteries which he founded? Did St. Columba two centuries later? Did any of the great masters of spiritual life who are known to have exercised an influence on the world of Irish convents? Not only has nothing of the kind been transmitted to us, but no mention of it is made in the lives of holy abbots which we possess.1 (1 The "Irish Penitentials," quoted at length in Rev. Dr. Moran's "Early Irish Church," are not monastic rules, although many canons have reference to monks.) St. Columbanus's rule is the only one which has come down to us; but the monasteries founded by him were all situated in Burgundy, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy--that is to say, out of Ireland, out of the island of saints. He was compelled to furnish his monasteries with a written rule, because they were surrounded by barbarous peoples, some of whom his establishments often received as monks, and to whom the holiness of Ireland was unfamiliar or utterly unknown. But why should the people of God, living in his devoted island, redeemed as soon as born by the waters of baptism, be shackled by enactments which might serve as an obstacle to the action of the Holy Ghost on their free souls?
According to the common opinion, each founder of a monastery had his own rule, which he himself was the first to follow in all its rigor; if disciples came, they were to observe it, or go elsewhere; if, after having embraced it, they found themselves unable to keep it to the letter, the abbot was indulgent, and did not impose on them a burden which they could no longer bear, after having first proved their willingness to practise it.
Thus, it is reported that St. Mochta was the only one who practised his own rule exactly, his monks imitating him as well as they could. St. Fintan, who was inclined to be severe, received this warning in a vision: "Fight unto the end thyself; but beware of being a cause of scandal to others, by requiring all to fight as thou doest, for one clay is weaker than another."
Thus, every founder, every abbot even, left to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, practised austerities which in our days of self- indulgence seem absolutely incredible, and showed themselves severe to those under their authority. But this severity was tempered by such zeal for the good of souls, and consequently by such an unmistakable charity, that the penitent monk carried his burden not only with resignation, but with joy. This, in after- ages, became a characteristic feature of Irish monasticism.
The life of Columba is full of examples of this holy severity. In St. Patrick's life we read that Colman died of thirst rather than quench it before the time appointed by his master.
How many facts of a similar nature might be mentioned! Enough to say that, after so many ages, in which, thanks to barbarous persecutions, all ecclesiastical and monastic traditions were lost to Ireland, through the sheer impossibility of following them up, the Irish still show a marked predilection for the holy austerity of penance, though the rest of the Christian world seems to have almost totally forgotten it.
But if the Irish convents lacked system, there was at the same time in them an exuberance of feeling, an enthusiastic impulse, which is to be found nowhere else to the same extent, and which we call their second peculiar feature after they received Christianity. This is beautifully expressed in a hymn of the office of St. Finian: "Behold the day of gladness; the clerks applaud and are in joy; the sun of justice, which had been hidden in the clouds, shines forth again."
As soon as this primitive enthusiasm seemed to slacken in the least, reformers appeared to enkindle it again. Such was Bridget, such was Gildas, such were the disciples of St. David of Menevia in Wales, such was any one whom the Spirit of God inspired with love for Ireland. Thus the scenes enacted in the time of Patrick were again and again repeated.
And when a monastery was built, it was not properly a monastery, but a city rather; for the whole country round joined in the goodly work. As some one has said, "it looked as if Ireland was going to cease to be a nation, and become a church."
With regard to the question of ground and the appropriation of landed property, what matters it who is the owner? If it be clan territory, there is the clan with nothing but welcome, applause, and assistance. If it be private, the owner is not consulted even; how could he think of opposing the work of God? Thus, we never read in Irish history - in the earlier stages at least - of those long charters granted in other lands by kings, dukes, and counts, and preserved with such care in the archives of the monastery. It seems that the Danes, after they became Christians, were the first to introduce the custom; after them, the Anglo- Normans, in the true spirit of their race, made a flourishing business of it. The Irish themselves never thought of such at first. There was no fear of any one ever claiming the ground on which God's house stood. The buildings were there: the ground needed to support them: what Irishman could think of driving away the holy inmates and pulling the walls about their ears?
The whole surrounding population is busy erecting them. Long rows of wattles and tessel-work are set in right order; over them a rough roof of boards; within small cells begin to appear, as the slight partitions are erected between them. Symmetry or no symmetery, the position of the ground decides the question; for there is no need of the skill of a surveyor to establish the grade. Does not the rain run its own way, once it begins?
How far and how wide will those long rows reach? They seem the streets of a city; and in truth they are. The place is to receive two, three thousand monks, over and above the students committed to their care. And, in addition to the cells to dwell in, there are the halls wherein to teach; the museums and repositories of manuscripts, of sacred objects; the rooms to write in, translate, compose; the sheds to hold provisions, to prepare and cook them, ready for the meal.
For the most important edifice--the temple of God--alone stones are cut, shaped, and fitted each to each with care and precision. A holy simplicity surrounds the art; yet are there not wanting carven crosses and other divine emblems sculptured out. Within, the heavenly mysteries of religion will be performed. Should you ask, "Why so small?" the answer is ready. That large space empty around holds room enough for the worshippers, whose numbers could be accommodated in no edifice. The minds of Irish architects had not yet expanded to the conception of a St. Peter's. Inside is room enough for the ministers of religion; without, at the tinkling of the bell, in the round tower adjoining, the faithful will join in the services.
Nor was it only in the erection of those edifices that a cheerful impulse, which overlooked or overcame all difficulties, was displayed. The monastic life was not all the time a life of penance and gloomy austerity, but of active work also and overflowing feeling, of true poetry and enthusiastic exultation. We read in the fragments we still possess how, on the arid rock of Iona, Columba remembered his former residence at Derry, with its woods of oaks and the pure waters of its loughs. In all the lives of Irish saints we read of the deep attachment they always preserved for their country, relatives, and friends; what they did and were ready to do for them. And though all this was at bottom but a natural feeling, the extent to which it was carried will make us better acquainted with the Irish character, and explain more clearly that extraordinary expansion of soul which, in the domains of the supernatural, surpassed every thing witnessed elsewhere.
"In a monastery two brothers had lived from childhood. The elder died, and while he was dying the other was laboring in the forest. When he came back, he saw the brethren opening a grave in the cemetery, and thus he learned that his brother was dead. He hastened to the spot where the Abbot Fintan, with some of his monks, were chanting psalms around the corpse, and asked him the favor of dying with his brother, and entering with him into the heavenly kingdom. 'Thy brother is already in heaven,' replied Fintan, 'and you cannot enter together unless he rise again.' Then he knelt in prayer, the angels who had received the holy soul restored it, and the dead man, rising in his bier, called his brother: 'Come,' said he, 'but come quickly; the angels await us.' At the same time he made room beside him, and both, lying down, slept together in death, and ascended together to the kingdom of God."
This anecdote may tend better than any thing else to show us how Nature and grace were united in the Irish soul, to warm it, purify it, exalt it above ordinary feelings and earthly passions, and keep it constantly in a state of energy and vitality unknown to other peoples. For, in what page of the ecclesiastical history of other nations do we read of things such as these?
With regard to their country, also, grace came to the aid of Nature; the supernatural was, therefore, seldom absent from the natural in their minds, and something of this double union has, remained in them in every sense, and has, no doubt, contributed to render their nationality imperishable in spite of persecution. How ardent and pure in the heart of Columba was the love of Ireland, from which he was a voluntary exile! Patrick, also, though not native born, yielded to none in that sacred feeling; one of the three things he sought of God on dying was, that Erin should not "remain forever under a foreign yoke:" Kieran offered the same prayer, and their reason for thus praying was that she was the "island of saints," destined to help out the salvation of many.
Religion has been invariably connected with that acute sentiment ever present in the minds of Irishmen for their country; and it is, doubtless, that holy and supernatural feeling which has preserved a country which enemies strove so strenuously to wrest from them.
But it was not love of country alone, of relatives and friends, which enkindled in their hearts a spirit of enthusiasm; their whole monastic life was one of high-spirited devotedness, and energy, and action, more than human.
We see them laboring in and around their monastic hive. How they pray and chant the divine office; how they study and expound the holy doctrine to their pupils; how they are ever travelling, walking in procession by hundreds and by thousands through the island, the interior spirit not allowing them to stand still. There are so many pilgrimages to perform, so many shrines to venerate, so many works of brotherly love to undertake. Other monks in other countries, indeed, did the same, but seldom with such universal ardor. The whole island, as we said, is one church. On all sides you may meet bishops, and priests, and monks, bearing revered relics, or proceeding to found a new convent, plant another sacred edifice, or establish a house for the needy. The people on the way fall in and follow their footsteps, sharers of the burning enthusiasm. Many-how many!- were thus attracted to this mode of life, wherein there was scarce aught earthly, but all breathing holiness and heavenly grace!
Thus the island was from the beginning a holy island. But zeal for God in their own country alone not being enough for their ardor, those men of God were early moved by the impulse of going abroad to spread the faith. Volumes might be written of their apostleship among barbarous tribes; we have room only for a few words.
They first went to the islands north of them, to the Hebrides, the Faroe Isles, and even Iceland, which they colonized before the Norwegian pirates landed there. Then they evangelized Scotland and the north of England; and, starting from Lindisfarne, they completed the work of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, which was begun by St. Augustin and his monks in the south.
Finally, the whole continent of Western Europe offered itself to their zeal, and at once they were ready to enter fully and unreservedly into the current of new ideas and energies which at that time began to renew the face of that portion of the world overspread by barbarians from Germany. Under the Merovingian kings in France, and later on, under the Carlovingian dynasty, they became celebrated in the east of France, on the banks of the Rhine, even in the north through Germany, in the heart of Switzerland, and the north of Italy. This is not the place to attempt even a sketch of their missionary labors, now known to all the students of the history of those times. But we may here mention that at that time the Irish monarchs and rulers became acquainted with continental dynasties and affairs through the necessary intercourse held by the Irish bishops and monks with Rome, the centre of Catholicity. Thus we see that Malachi II corresponded with Charles the Bald, with a view of making a pilgrimage to Rome.
We learn from the yellow-book of Lecain that Conall, son of Coelmuine, brought from Rome the law of Sunday, such as was afterward practised in Ireland.
Over and above the Irish missionaries who kept up a constant correspondence from the Continent of Europe with their native land, it is known that many in those early ages went on pilgrimages to Rome; among others, St. Degan, St. Kilian, the apostle of Franconia; St. Sedulius the younger, who assisted at a Roman council in 721, and was sent by the Pope on a mission to Spain; St. Donatus, afterward Bishop of Fiesole, and his disciple, Andrew. St. Cathald went from Rome to Jerusalem, and on his return was made Bishop of Tarento. Donough, son of Brian Boru, went to Rome in 1063, carrying, it is said, the crown of his father, and there died.
It has been calculated that the ancient Irish monks held from the sixth to the ninth century thirteen monasteries in Scotland, seven in France, twelve in Armoric Gaul, seven in Lotharingia, eleven in Burgundy, nine in Belgium, ten in Alsatia, sixteen in Bavaria, fifteen in Rhaetia, Helvetia, and Suevia, besides several in Thuringia and on the left bank of the Rhine. Ireland was then not only included in, but at the head of, the European movement; and yet that forms a period in her annals which as yet has scarcely been studied.
The religious zeal which was then so manifest in the island itself burned likewise among many Continental nations, and lasted from the introduction of Christianity to the Danish invasion. What contributed chiefly to make that ardor lasting was, that every thing connected with religion made a part even of their exterior life. Grace had taken entire possession of the national soul. This world was looked upon as a shadow, beautiful only in reflecting something of the beauty of heaven.
Hence were the Irish "the saints." So were they titled by all, and they accepted the title with a genuine and holy simplicity which betokened a truer modesty than the pretended denegation which we might expect. Thus they seemed above temptation. The virgins consecrated to God were as numerous at least as the monks. These had also their processions and pilgrimages; they went forth from houses over-full to found others, not knowing or calculating beforehand the spot where they might rest and "expect resurrection." Such was their language. Sometimes they applied at the doors of monasteries, and if there was no spot in the neighborhood suitable for the sisters, the monks abandoned to them their abode, their buildings and cultivated fields where the crops were growing, taking with them naught save the sacred vessels and the books they might need in the new establishment they went forth to found elsewhere.
Who could imagine, then, that even a thought could enter their minds beyond those of charity and kindness? Were they not dead utterly to worldly passions, and living only to God? It would have been a sacrilege to have profaned the holy island, not only with an unlawful act but even with a worldly imagination. Had not many holy men and women seen angels constantly coming down from heaven, and the souls of the just at their departure going straight from Ireland to heaven? Both in perpetual communication! Had the eyes of all been as pure as those of the best among them, the truth would have been unveiled to all alike, and the "isle of saints" would have shown itself to them as what it really was-a bright country where redemption was a great fact; where the souls of the great majority were truly and actually redeemed in the full sense of the word; where people might enjoy a foretaste of heaven-the very space above their heads being to them at all times a road connecting the heavenly mansions with this sublunary world.
True is it that there were ever in the island a number of great sinners who desecrated the holy spot they dwelt on by their deeds of blood. The Saviour predicted that there should be "tares among the wheat" everywhere until the day of judgment.
It was among the chieftains principally, almost entirely, that sin prevailed. The clan-system, unfortunately, favored deadly feuds, which often drenched all parts of the island in blood. Family quarrels, being in themselves unnatural, led to the most atrocious crimes. The old Greek drama furnishes frightful examples of it, and similar passions sometimes filled the breasts of those leaders of Irish clans. Few of them died in their beds. When carried away by passion, they respected nothing which men generally respect.
It would, however, be an exaggeration to suppose on this account a distinct and complete antagonism to have existed between the clan and the Church, and to class all the princes on the side of evil as opposed to the "saints," whom we have contemplated leading a celestial life. We know from St. Aengus that one of the glories of Ireland is that many of her saints were of princely families, whereas among other nations generally the Gospel was first accepted by the poor and lowly, and found its enemies among the higher and educated classes. But in Ireland the great, side by side with the least of their clansmen, bowed to the yoke of Christ, and the bards and learned men became monks and bishops from the very first preaching of the Word.
The fact is, a great number of kings and chieftains made their station doubly renowned by their virtues, and find place in the chronicle of Irish saints. Who can read, for instance, the story of King Guaire without admiring his faith and true Christian spirit?
It is reported that as St. Caimine and St. Cumain Fota were one day conversing on spiritual things with that holy king of Connaught, Caimine said to Guaire, "O king, could this church be filled on a sudden with whatever thou shouldst wish, what would thy desire be?" "I should wish," replied the king, "to have all the treasures that the church could hold, to devote them to the salvation of souls, the erection of churches, and the wants of Christ's poor." "And what wouldst thou ask?" said the king to Fota. "I would," he replied, "have as many holy books as the church could contain, to give all who seek divine wisdom, to spread among the people the saving doctrine of Christ, and rescue souls from the bondage of Satan." Both then turned to Caimine. "For my part," said he, "were this church filled with men afflicted with every form of suffering and disease, I should ask of God to vouchsafe to assemble in my wretched body all their evils, all their pains, and give me strength to support them patiently, for the love of the Saviour of the world. "1 (1 This passage is given in Latin by Colgan (Acts SS.). In the original Irish, translated and published by Dr. Todd--Liber Hymn--there are more details.)
Thus the most sublime and supernatural spirit of Christianity became natural to the Irish mind in the great as well as in the lowly, in the rich as well as in the poor. Women rivalled men in that respect.
"Daria was blind from birth. Once, whilst conversing with Bridget, she said: 'Bless my eyes that I may see the world, and gratify my longing.' The night was dark; it grew light for her, and the world appeared to her gaze. But when she had beheld it, she turned again to Bridget. 'Now close my eyes,' said she, 'for the more one is absent from the world, the more present he is before God.'"
Even though one may express doubt as to the reality of this miracle, one thing, at least, is beyond doubt: that the spirit of the words of Daria was congenial to the Irish mind at the time, and that none but one who had first reached the highest point of supernatural life could conceive or give utterance to such a sentiment.
That more than human life and spirit elevated, ennobled, and, as it were, divinized, even the ordinary human and natural feelings, which not only ceased to become dangerous, but became, doubtless, highly pleasing to God and meritorious in his sight. An example may better explain our meaning:
"Ninnid was a young scholar, not over-reverent, whom the influence of Bridget one day suddenly overcame, so that he afterward appeared quite a different being. Bridget announced to him that from his hand she should, for the last time, receive the body and blood of our Lord. Ninnid resolved that his hand should remain pure for so high and holy an office. He enclosed it in an iron case, and wishing at the same time to postpone, as far as lay in his power, the moment that was to take Bridget from the world, he set out for Brittany, throwing the key of the box into the sea. But the designs of God are immutable. When Bridget's hour had come, Ninnid was driven by a storm on the Irish coast, and the key was miraculously given up by the deep."
Where, except in Ireland, could such friendship continue for long years, without giving cause not only for the least scandal, but even for the remotest danger? In that island the natural feelings of the human heart were wholly absorbed by heavenly emotions, in which nothing earthly could be found? Hence the celebrated division of the "three orders of the Irish saints," the first being so far above temptation that no regulation was imposed on the Cenobites with respect to their intercourse with women.
"Women were welcome and cared for; they were admitted, so to speak, to the sanctuary; it was shared with them, occupied in common. Double, or even mixed monasteries, so near to each other as to form but one, brought the two sexes together for mutual edification; men became instructors of women; women of men."
Nothing of the kind was ever witnessed elsewhere; nothing of the kind was to be seen ever after. Robert of Arbrissel established something similar in the order, of Fontevrault in France; but there it was a strange and very uncommon exception; in Ireland for two centuries it was the rule. This alone would show how completely the Christian spirit had taken possession of the whole race from the first.
It is this which gives to Irish hagiology a peculiar character, making it appear strange even to the best men of other nations. The elevation of human feeling to such a height of perfection is so unusual that men cannot fail to be surprised wherever they may meet it.
Yet far from appearing strange, almost inexplicable, it would have been recognized as the natural result of the working of the Christian religion, if the spirit brought on earth by our Lord had been more thoroughly diffused among men, if all had been penetrated by it to the same degree, if all had equally understood the meaning of the Gospel preached to them.
But, unfortunately, so many and so great were the obstacles opposed everywhere to the working of the Spirit of God in the souls of men, that comparatively few were capable of being altogether transformed into beings of another nature.
The great mass lagged far behind in the race of perfection. They were admitted to the fold of Christ, and lived generally at least in the practice of the commandments; but the object proposed to himself by the Saviour of mankind was imperfectly carried out on earth. The life of the world was far from being impregnated by the spirit which he brought from heaven.
In the "island of saints" we certainly see a great number open out at once to the fulness of that divine influence. Herein we have the explanation of the deep faith which has ever since been the characteristic of the people. "Centuries have perpetuated the alliance of Catholicity and Ireland. Revolutions have failed to shake it; persecution has not broken it; it has gained strength in blood and tears, and we may believe, after thirteen centuries of trial, that the Roman faith will disappear from Ireland only with the name of Patrick and the last Irishman."
NOTE.-It is known that F. Colgan, a Franciscan, undertook to publish the "Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae." He edited only two volumes: the first under the title of "Trias thaumaturga " containing the various lives of St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget:-the second under the general title of "Acta SS."- Barnwall, an Irishman born and educated in France, published the "Histoire Legendaire d'Irlande," in which he collected, without much order, a number of passages of Colgan's "Acta," and Mr. J. G. Shea translated and published it. We have taken from this translation several facts contained in this chapter, the work of the Franciscan being not accessible to us.
Dr. Todd, from Irish MSS., has given a few pages showing the accuracy of Colgan, although the good father did not scruple occasionally to condense and abridge, unless the MSS. he used differed from those of Dr. Todd. The whole is a rich mine of interesting anecdotes, and Montalembert has shown what a skilful writer can find in those pages forgotten since the sixteenth century. Mr. Froude himself has acknowledged that the eighth was the golden age of Ireland.
V. THE CHRISTIAN IRISH AND THE PAGAN DANES
For several centuries the Irish continued in the happy state described in the last chapter. While the whole European Continent was convulsed by the irruptions of the Germanic tribes, and of the Huns, more savage still, the island was at peace, opened her schools to the youth of all countries--to Anglo- Saxons chiefly--and spread her name abroad as the happy and holy isle, the dwelling of the saints, the land of prodigies, the most blessed spot on the earth. No invading host troubled her; the various Teutonic nations knew less of the sea than the Celts themselves, and no vessel neared the Irish coast save the peaceful curraghs which carried her monks and missionaries abroad, or her own sons in quest of food and adventure.
Providence would seem to have imposed upon the nation the lofty mission of healing the wounds of other nations as they lay helpless in the throes of death, of keeping the doctrines of the Gospel alive in Europe, after those terrible invasions, and of leading into the fold of Christ many a shepherdless flock. The peaceful messengers who went forth from Ireland became as celebrated as her home schools and monasteries; and well had it been for the Irish could such a national life as this have continued.
But God, who wished to prepare them for still greater things in future ages, who proves by suffering all whom he wishes to use as his best instruments, allowed the fury of the storm to burst suddenly upon them. It was but the beginning of their woes, the first step in that long road to Calvary, where they were to be crucified with him, to be crucified wellnigh to the death before their final and almost miraculous resurrection. The Danes were to be the first torturers of that happy and holy people; the hardy rovers of the northern seas were coming to inaugurate a long era of woe.
The Scandinavian irruption which desolated Europe just as she was beginning to recover from the effects of the first great Germanic wave, may be said to have lasted from the eighth to the twelfth century. Down from the North Sea came the shock; Ireland was consequently one of the first to feel it, and we shall see how she alone withstood and finally overcame it.
The better to understand the fierceness of the attack, let us first consider its origin:
The Baltic Sea and the various gulfs connected with it penetrate deeply the northern portion of the Continent of Europe. Its indentations form two peninsulas: a large one, known under the name of Norway and Sweden, and a lesser one on the southwest, now called Denmark. The first was known to the Romans as Scania; the second was called by them the Cimbric Chersonesus. From Scania is derived the name Scandinavians, afterward given to the inhabitants of the whole country. Besides these two peninsulas, there are several islands scattered through the surrounding sea.
The frozen and barren land which this people inhabited obliged them from time immemorial to depend on the ocean for their sustenance: first, by fishing; later on, by piracy. They soon became expert navigators, though their ships were merely small boats made of a few pieces of timber joined together, and covered with the hide of the walrus and the seal.
It seems, from the Irish annals, that they belonged to two distinct races of men: the Norwegians, fair-haired and of large stature; the Danes dark, and of smaller size. Hence the Irish distinguished the first, whom they called Finn Galls, from the second, whom they named Dubh Galls. By no other European nation was this distinction drawn, the Irish being more exact in observing their foes.
It is the general opinion of modern writers that they belonged to the Teutonic family. The Goths, a Teutonic tribe, dwelt for a long period on the larger peninsula. But whether the Goths were of the same race as the Norwegians or Danes is a question. Certain it is that the various German nations which first overwhelmed the Roman Empire bore many characteristics different from those of the Danes and Norwegians, though the language of all indicated, to a certain extent, a common origin.
The Swedes, the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Scania, do not appear to have taken an important part in the Scandinavian invasions; nor, indeed, have they ever been so fond of maritime enterprises as the two other nations. Moreover, they were at that time in bloody conflict with the Goths, and too busy at home to think of foreign conquest.
For a long time the Scandinavian pirates seem to have confined themselves to scouring their own seas, and plundering the coasts as far as the gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At length, emboldened by success, they ventured out into the ocean, attacked the nations of Western and Southern Europe, and in the west colonized the frozen shores of the Shetland and Faroe Islands, and soon after Iceland and Greenland.
For several centuries the harbors of Denmark and Norway became the storehouses of all the riches of Europe, and a large trade was carried on between those northern peninsulas and the various islands of the Northern and Arctic Seas, even with the coast of America, of which Greenland seems to form a part.
Those stern and mountainous countries and the restless ocean which divides them were for the Scandinavian pirates what the Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain and Africa had long before been for the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. These peoples were clearly destined to introduce among modern nations the spirit of commerce and enterprise.
But here it is well to consider their religious and social state from which nations chiefly derive their noble or ignoble qualities. We shall find both made up of the rankest idolatry, of cruel manners and revolting customs.
Their system of worship, with its creed and rites, is much more precise in character and better known to us than that of the Celts. If we open the books which were written in Europe at the time of the irruption of these Northmen, and the poems of those savage tribes preserved to our own days, and comprised under the name of Edda, besides the numerous sagas, or songs and ballads, which we still possess, we find mention of three superior gods and a number of inferior deities, which gave a peculiar character to this Northern worship.
They were Thor, the god of the elements, of thunder chiefly; Wodan or Odin, the god of war; and Frigga, the goddess of lust; the long list of others it is unnecessary to give. Their religion, therefore, consisted mainly: 1. In battling with the elements, particularly on the sea, under the protection of Thor; 2. In slaying their enemies, or being themselves slain, as Odin willed --the giving or receiving death being apparently the great object of existence; 3. In abandoning themselves at the time of victory to all the propensities of corrupt nature, which they took to be the express will of Frigga manifested in their unbridled passions.
Such was Scandinavian mythology in its reality.
Modern investigators, principally in Germany and France, find in the Edda a complete system of cosmogony and of a religion almost inspired, so beautiful do they make it. At least they have made it appear as profound a philosophy as that of old Hindostan and far-off Thibet. By grouping around those three great divinities, which are supposed to be emblematical of the superior natural forces, their numerous progeny, that of Odin especially, together with an incredible number of malicious giants and good- natured ases--a kind of fairy--any skilful theorist, gifted with the requisite imagination, may extract from the whole an almost perfect system of cosmogony and ethics. Then the disgusting legends of the Edda and the sagas are straightway transformed into interesting myths, offsprings of poetry and imagination, and conveying to the mind a philosophy only less than sublime, derived, as they say, from the religion of Zoroaster.
It is, as we said, in Germany and France chiefly that these discoveries have been made. The English, a more sober people, although of Scandinavian blood, do not set so high a value on what is, in the literal sense, so low.
Pity that such pleasing speculations should be mere theoretical bubbles, unable to retain their lightness and their vivid colors in the rude atmosphere of the arctic regions, bursting at the first breath of the north wind! How could sensible men, under such a complicated system of religion and physics, account for the uncouth pirates of the Baltic?
As useless is it to say that they brought it from the place of their origin--Persia, as these theorists affirm. To a man uninfluenced by a preconceived or pet system, it is evident at first sight that no mythology of the East or of the South has ever given rise to that of Scandinavia. There is not the slightest resemblance between it and any other. It must have originated with the Scandinavians themselves; and their long religious tales were only the bloody dreams of their fancy, when, during their dreary winter evenings, they had nothing to do but relate to each other what came uppermost in their gross minds.
Saxo Grammaticus, certainly a competent authority, and Snorry Sturleson, the first to translate the Edda into Latin, who is still considered one of the greatest antiquarians of the nation --both of whom lived in the times we speak of, when this religious system still flourished or was fresh in the minds of all-- solved the question ages ago, and demonstrated beforehand the falsehood of those future theories by stating with old-time simplicity that the abominable stories of the Edda and the sagas were founded on real facts in the previous history of those nations, and were consequently never intended by the writers as imaginative myths, representing, under a figurative and repulsive exterior, some semblance of a spiritual and refined doctrine.
We must look to our own more enlightened times to find ingenious interpreters of rude old songs first flung to the breeze nine hundred years ago in the polar seas, and bellowed forth in boisterous and drunken chorus during the ninth and tenth centuries by ferocious, but to modern eyes romantic, pirates reeking with the gore of their enemies.
Because it has pleased some modern pantheist to concoct systems of religion in his cabinet, does it become at once clear that the mythic explanation of those songs is the only one to be admitted, and that the odious facts which those legends express ought to be discarded altogether? At least we hope that, when philosophers come to be the real rulers of the world, they will not give to their subtle and abstract ideas of religion the same pleasant turn and the same concrete expression in every-day life that the worshippers of Odin, Thor, and Frigga, found it agreeable to give when they were masters of the continent and rulers of the seas.
No! The only true meaning of this Northern worship is conveyed in the simple words of Adam of Bremen, when relating what still existed in his own time. (Descript. insularum Aquil., lib. iv.) He describes the solemn sacrifices of Upsala in Sweden thus: "This is their sacrifice; of each and all animals they offer nine heads of the male gender, by whose blood it is their custom to appease the gods. The dead bodies of the victims are suspended in a grove which surrounds the temple. The place is in their eyes invested with such a sacred character that the trees are believed to be divine on account of the blood and gore with which they are besmeared. With the animals, dogs, horses, etc., they suspend likewise men; and a Christian of that country told me that he had himself seen them with his own eyes mixed up together in the grove. But the senseless rites which accompany the sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood are so many, and of so gross and immoral nature, that it is better not to speak of them."
We have here the naked truth, and no meaning whatever could be attached to such ceremonies other than that of the rankest idolatry. To complete the picture, it is proper to state that Thor, Odin, and Frigga, were frightful idols, as represented in the Upsala temple, and the small statues carried by the Scandinavian sailors on their expeditions and set in the place of honor on board their ships, were but diminutive copies of the hideous originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existed as a leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatry resolved itself into hero-worship.
Having spoken of their gods, we have only a word to add on their belief in a future state, for every one is acquainted with their brutal and shocking Walhalla. Yet, such as it was, admittance to its halls could only be aspired to by the warriors and heroes, the great among them; the common herd was not deemed worthy of immortality. Thus aristocratic pride showed itself at the very bottom of their religion.
Of their social state, their government, we know little. They lived under a kind of rude monarchy, subject often to election, when they chose the most savage and the bravest for their ruler. But blood-relationship had little or nothing to do with their system, so different from that of the Celts. The sons of a chieftain could never form a sept, but at his death the eldest replaced him; the younger brothers, deprived of their titles and goods, were forced to separate and acquire a title to rank and honor by piracy; and that right of primogeniture, which was the primary cause of their sea invasions, stamped the feudal system with one of its chief characteristics, a system which probably originated with them. Some, however, entertain a contrary opinion, and suppose that at the death of the father his children shared his inheritance equally.
Of their moral habits we may best judge by their religion. All we know of their history seems to prove that with them might was right, and outlawry the only penalty of their laws.
A man guilty of murder was compelled to quit the country, unless his superior daring and the number of his friends and followers enabled him, by more atrocious and wholesale murders, still to become a great chieftain and even aspire to supreme power. Iceland was colonized by outlaws from Norway; and the frequent changes of dynasty in pagan times prove that among them, as among barbarous tribes generally, brute force was the chief source of law and authority.
That outlawry was not esteemed a stain on the character is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that the mere accident of birth made outlaws of all the children of chieftains with the exception of the eldest born; the necessity for the younger sons abandoning their home and native country, and roaming the ocean in search of plunder, being exactly equivalent, according to their opinion and customs, to criminal outlawry of whatever character. This, at least, many authors assert without hesitation.
Their domestic habits were fit consequences of such a state of society. There could exist no real tie of kindred, no filial or brotherly affection among men living under such a social system. The gratification of brutal passions and the most utter selfishness constituted the rule for all; and even the fear of an inexorable judge after death could not restrain them during life, as might have been the case among other pagan nations, since the hope of reaching their Walhalla depended for its fulfilment on murder or suicide.
With their system of warfare we are better acquainted than with any thing else belonging to them, as the main burden of their songs was the recital of their barbarous expeditions. It is, indeed, difficult for a modern reader to wade through the whole of their Edda poems, or even their long sagas, so full is their literature of unimaginable cruelties. Yet a general view of it is necessary in order to understand the horror spread throughout Europe by their inhuman warfare.
As soon as the warm breeze of an early spring thaws the ice on his rivers and lakes, the Scandinavian Viking unfurls his sail, fills his rude boat with provisions, and trusts himself to the mercy of the waves. Should he be alone, and not powerful enough to have a fleet at his command, he looks out for a single boat of his own nation--there being no other in those seas. Urged by a mutual impulse, the two crews attack each other at sight; the sea reddens with blood; the savage bravery is equal on both sides; accident alone can decide the contest. One of the crews conquers by the death of all its opponents; the plunder is transferred to the victorious boat; the cup of strong drink passes round, and victory is crowned by drunkenness.
But if the two chieftains have contended from morning till night with equal valor and success, then, filled with admiration for each other, they become friends, unite their forces, and, falling on the first spot where they can land, they pillage, slay, outrage women, and give full sway to their unbridled passions. The more ferocious they are the braver they esteem themselves. It is a positive fact, as we may gather from all their poems and songs, that the Scandinavians alone, probably, of all pagan nations, have had no measure of bravery and military glory beyond the infliction of the most exquisite torture and the most horrible of deaths.
Plunder, which was apparently the motive power of all their expeditions, was to them less attractive than blood; blood, therefore, is the chief burden of their poetry, if poetry it can be called. It would seem as though they were destined by Nature to shed human blood in torrents--the noblest occupation, according to their ideas, in which a brave man could be engaged.
The figures of their rude literature consist for the most part of monstrous warriors and gods, each possessed of many arms to kill a greater number of enemies, or of giant stature to overcome all obstacles, or of enchanted swords which shore steel as easily as linen, and clave the body of an adversary as it would the air.
Then, heated with blood, the Northman is also influenced with lust, for he worships Frigga as well as Odin. But this is not the place to give even an idea of manners too revolting to be presented to the imagination of the reader.
Cantu's Universal History will furnish all the authorities from which the details we have given and many others of the same kind are derived.
We do not propose describing here the horrors of the devastations committed by the Anglo-Saxons and Danes in England, by the Normans in France, Spain, and Italy. All these nations, even the first, were Scandinavians, and naturally fall under our review. The story is already known to those who are acquainted with the history of mediaeval Europe. The only thing which we do not wish to omit is the invariable system of warfare adopted by this people when acting on a large scale.
Arrived on the coast they had determined to ravage, they soon found that in stormy weather they were in a more dangerous position than at sea. Hence they looked for a deep bay, or, better still, the mouth of a large river, and once on its placid bosom they felt themselves masters of the whole country. The terror of the people, the lack of organization for defence, so characteristic of Celtic or purely Germano-Franco society, the savage bravery and reckless impetuosity of the invaders themselves, increased their rashness, and urged them to enter fearlessly into the very heart of a country which lay prostrate with fear before them. All the cities on the river-banks were plundered as they passed, people of whatever age, sex, or condition, were murdered; the churches especially were despoiled of their riches, and the numerous and wealthy monasteries then existing were given to the flames, after the monks and all the inmates even to the schoolchildren, had been promiscuously slaughtered, if they had not escaped by flight.
But, although all were slaughtered promiscuously, a special ferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror toward the unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They took a particular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty; and not without reason did the Church at that time consider as martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry showed its hatred of truth and holiness in always manifesting a peculiar atrocity when coming in contact with the Church of Christ and her ministers. And, our chief object in speaking of the stand made by the Irish against the pagan Danes is, to show how the clan-system became in truth the avenger of God's altars and the preserver of the sacred edifices and numerous temples with which, as we have seen, the Island of Saints was so profusely studded, from total annihilation.
Knowing that, when their march of destruction had taken them a great distance from the mouth of the river, the inhabitants might rise in sheer despair and cut them off on their return, the Scandinavian pirates, to guard against such a contingency, looked for some island or projecting rock, difficult of access, which they fortified, and, placing there the plunder which loaded their boats, they left a portion of their forces to guard it, while the remainder continued their route of depredation. In Ireland they found spots admirably adapted for their purpose in the numerous loughs into which many of the rivers run.
This was their invariable system of warfare in the rivers of England; in Germany along system Rhine; along the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne, in France, as well as on the Tagus and Guadalquivir in Spain, where two at least of their large expeditions penetrated. This continued for several centuries, until at last they thought of occupying the country which they had devastated and depopulated, and they began to form permanent settlements in England, Flanders, France, and even Sicily and Naples.
When that time had arrived, they showed that, hidden under their ferocious exterior, lay a deep and systematic mind, capable of great thoughts and profound designs. Already in their own rude country they had organized commerce on an extensive scale, and their harbors teemed with richly-laden ships, coming from far distances or preparing to start on long voyages. They had become a great colonizing race, and, after establishing their sway in the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, they made England their own, first by the Jute and Anglo-Saxon tribes, then by the arms of Denmark, which was at that time so powerful that England actually became a colony of Copenhagen; and finally they thought of extending their conquests farther south to the Mediterranean Sea, where their ships rode at anchor in the harbors of fair Sicily.
We know, from many chronicles written at the time, with what care they surveyed all the countries they occupied, confiscating the land after having destroyed or reduced its inhabitants to slavery; dividing it among themselves and establishing their barbarous laws and feudal customs wherever they went. Dudo of St. Quentin, among other writers, describes at length in his rude poem the army of surveyors intrusted by Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, with the care of drawing up a map of their conquests in France, for the purpose of dividing the whole among his rough followers and vassals.
Of this spirit of organization we intend to speak in the next chapter, when we come to consider the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland; but we are not to conclude that the Northmen became straightway civilized, and that the spirit of refinement at once shed its mild manners and gentle habits over their newly- constructed towns and castles. For a long time they remained as barbarous as ever, with only a system more perfect and a method more scientific--if we may apply such expressions to the case-- in their plunderings and murderous expeditions.
Of Hastings, their last pagan sea-kong, Dudo, the great admirer of Northmen and the sycophant of the first Norman dukes in France, has left the following terrible character, on reading which in full we scarcely know whether the poem was written in reproach or praise. We translate from the Latin
According to Dudo, he was--
"A wretch accursed and fierce of heart, Unmatched in dark iniquities; A scowling pest of deadly hate, He throve on savage cruelties.
Blood-thirsty, stained with every crime, An artful, cunning, deadly foe, Lawless, vaunting, rash, inconstant, True well-spring of unending woe!"
Hastings never yielded to the new religion, which he always hated and persecuted. But, even after their conversion to Christianity, his countrymen for a long time retained their inborn love of bloodshed and tyranny; they were in this respect, as in many others, the very reverse of the Irish.
Of Rollo, the first Christian Duke of Normandy, Adhemar, a contemporary writer, says:
"On becoming Christian, he caused many captives to be beheaded in his presence, in honor of the gods whom he had worshipped. And he also distributed a vast amount of money to the Christian churches in honor of the true God in whose name he had received baptism;" which would seem to imply that this transaction occurred on the very day of his baptism.
We may now compare the success which attended the arms of these terrible invaders throughout the rest of Europe with their complete failure in Ireland. It will be seen that the deep attachment of the Irish Celts for their religion, its altars, shrines, and monuments, was the real cause of their final victory. We shall behold a truly Christian people battling against paganism in its most revolting and audacious form.
But, first, how stood the case in England?
"It is not a little extraordinary," says a sagacious writer in the Dublin Review (vol. xxxii., p. 203), "that the three successive conquests of England by the Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, were in fact conquests made by the same people, and, in the last two instances, over those who were not only descended from the same stock, but who had immigrated from the very same localities. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, were for the most part Danes or of Danish origin. Their invasion of England commenced by plunder and ended by conquest. These were overthrown by the Danes and Norwegians in precisely the same manner.
"In the year 875, Roll or Rollo, having been expelled from Norway by Harold Harfager, adopted the profession of a sea-kong, and in the short space of sixteen years became Duke of Normandy and son-in-law of the French king, after having previously repudiated his wife. The sixth duke in succession from Rollo was William, illegitimate son of Robert le Diable and Herleva, a concubine. By the battle of Hastings, which William gained in 1066, over King Harold, who was slain in it, the former became sovereign of England, and instead of the appellation of 'the Bastard,' by which he had been hitherto known, he now obtained the surname of 'the Conqueror.'
"Thus both the Saxon and Danish invaders were subdued by their Norman brethren."
All the Scandinavian invasions of England were, therefore, successful, each in turn giving way before a new one; and it is not a little remarkable that the very year in which Brian Boru dealt a death-blow to the Danes at Clontarf witnessed the complete subjection of England by Canute.
The success of the Northmen in France is still more worthy of attention. Their invasions began soon after the death of Charlemagne. It is said that, before his demise, hearing of the appearance of one of their fleets not far from the mouth of the Rhine, he shed tears, and foretold the innumerable evils it portended. He saw, no doubt, that the long and oft-repeated efforts of his life to subdue and convert the northern Saxons would fail to obtain for his successors the peace he had hoped to win by his sword, and, knowing from the Saxons themselves the relentless ferocity, audacity, and frightful cruelty, inoculated in their Scandinavian blood, he could not but expect for his empire the fierce attacks which were preparing in the arctic seas. All his life had he been a conqueror, and under his sway the Franks, whom he had ever led to victory, acquired a name through Europe for military glory which, he dreaded, would no longer remain untarnished. His forebodings, however, could not be shared by any of those who surrounded him in his old age; his eagle eye alone discerned the coming misfortunes.
Seven times had the great emperor subdued the Saxons. He had crushed them effectually, since he could not otherwise prevent them from disturbing his empire. The Franks, who formed his army, were therefore the real conquerors of Western Europe. Starting from the banks of the Rhine, they subjugated the north as far as the Baltic Sea; they conquered Italy as far south as Beneventum, by their victories over the Lombards; by the subjugation of Aquitaine, they took possession of the whole of France; the only check they had ever received was in the valley of Roncevaux, whence a part of one of their armies was compelled to retreat, without, however, losing Catalonia, which they had won.
Nevertheless, we see them a few years after powerless and stricken with terror at the very name of the Northmen, as soon as Hastings and Rollo appeared. Those sea-rovers established themselves straightway in the very centre of the Frankish dominion; for it was at the mouth of the Rhine, in the island of Walcheren, that they formed their first camp. From Walcheren they swept both banks of the Rhine, and, after enriching themselves with the spoils of monasteries, cathedrals, and palaces, they thought of other countries. Then began the long series of spoliations which desolated the whole of France along the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne.
Opposition they scarcely encountered. Paris alone, of all the great cities of France, sustained a long siege, and finally bought them off by tribute. The military power of the nation was annihilated all at once, and of all French history this period is undoubtedly the most humiliating to a native of the soil.
And now let us see how the Irish met the same piratical invasions.
We are already acquainted with the chief defect of their political system, namely, its want of centralization. The Ard- Righ was in fact but a nominal ruler, except in the small province which acknowledged his chieftainship only. Throughout the rest of Ireland the provincial kings were independent save in name. Not only were they often reluctant to obey the Ard-Righ, but they were not seldom at open war with him. Nor are we to suppose that, at least in the case of a serious attack from without, their patriotism overcame their private differences, and made them combine together to show a common front against a common foe. In a patriarchal state of government there is scarcely any other form of patriotism than that of the particular sept to which each individual belongs. All the ideas, customs, prejudices, are opposed to united action.
Yet an invasion so formidable as that of the Scandinavian tribes showed itself everywhere to be, would have required all the energies and resources of the whole country united under one powerful chief, particularly when it did not consist of one single fearful irruption.
During two centuries large fleets of dingy, hide-bound barks discharge on the shores of Erin their successive cargoes of human fiends, bent on rapine and carnage, and altogether proof against fear of even the most horrible death, since such death was to them the entry to the eternal realms of their Walhalla.
But, at the period of which we speak, the terrible evil of a want of centralization was greatly aggravated by a change occurring in the line which held the supreme power in the island.
The vigorous rule of a long succession of princes belonging to the northern Hy-Niall line gave way to the ascendency of the southern branch of this great family; and the much more limited patrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dynasty rendered its personal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, and consequently lessened the influence possessed by the ruling family in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or less numerous, by blood relationship with the great families, always exercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation in rendering it docile and amenable to the will of the Ard-Righ.
Mullingar, in West Meath, was the abode of the southern Hy- Nialls, and Malachy of the Shannon, the first Ard-Righ of this line, succeeded King Niall of Callan in 843. The Danes were already in the country and had committed depredations. Their first descent is mentioned by the Four Masters as taking place at Rathlin on the coast of Antrim in the year 790.
But the country was soon aroused; and religious feelings, always uppermost in the Irish heart, supplied the deficiencies of the constitution of the state and the particularly unfavorable circumstances of the period. The Danes, as usual, first attacked the monasteries and churches, and this alone was enough to kindle in the breasts of the people the spirit of resistance and retaliation. Iona was laid waste in 797, and again in 801 and 805. "To save from the rapacity of the Danes," says Montalembert in his Monks of the West, "a treasure which no pious liberality could replace, the body of S. Columba was carried to Ireland. And it is the unvarying tradition of Irish annals, that it was deposited finally at Down, in an episcopal monastery, not far from the eastern shore of the island, between the great monastery of Bangor in the North, and Dublin the future capital of Ireland, in the South."
Ireland was first assailed by the Danes on the north immediately after they had gained possession of the Hebrides; but the coasts of Germany, Belgium, and France had witnessed their attacks long before. Religion was the first to suffer; and as the Island of Saints was at the time of their descent covered with churches and monasteries, the Scandinavian barbarians found in these a rich harvest which induced them to return again and again. The first expedition consisted of only a few boats and a small body of men. Nevertheless, as their irruptions were unexpected, and the people were unprepared for resistance, many holy edifices suffered from these attacks, and a great number of priests and monks were murdered.
We read that Armagh with its cathedral and monasteries was plundered four times in one month, and in Bangor nine hundred monks were slaughtered in a single day. The majority of the inmates of those houses fled with their books and the relics of their saints at the approach of the invaders, but, returning to their desecrated homes after the departure of the pirates, gave cause for those successive plunderings.
But the Irish did not always fly in dismay, as was the case in England and France. A force was generally mustered in the neighborhood to meet and repel the attack, and in numerous instances the marauders were driven back with slaughter to their ships.
For the clans rallied to the defence of the Church. Though the chieftains and their clansmen might seem to have failed fully to imbibe the spirit of religion, though in their insane feuds they often turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances and reproaches of the bishops and monks, nevertheless Christianity reigned supreme in their inmost hearts. And when they beheld pagans landed on their shores, to insult their faith and destroy the monuments of their religion, to shed the blood of holy men, of consecrated virgins, and of innocent children, they turned that bravery which they had so often used against themselves and for the satisfaction of worthless contentions into a new and a more fitting channel--the defence of their altars and the punishment of sacrilegious outrage.
The clan system was the very best adapted for this kind of warfare, so long as no large fleets came, and the pirates were too few in number and too sagacious in mind to think of venturing far inland. When but a small number of boats arrived, the invaders found in the neighborhood a clan ready to receive them. The clansmen speedily assembled, and, falling on the plundering crews, showed them how different were the free men of a Celtic coast, who were inspired by a genuine love for their faith, from the degenerate sons of the Gallo-Romans.
So the annals of the country tell us that the "foreigners" were destroyed in 812 by the men of Umhall in Mayo; by Corrach, lord of Killarney, in the same year; by the men of Ulidia and by Carbry with the men of Hy-Kinsella in 827; by the clansmen of Hy- Figeinte, near Limerick, in 834, and many more.
But the hydra had a thousand heads, and new expeditions were continually arriving. In the words of Mr. Worsaae, a Danish writer of this century:
"From time immemorial Ireland was celebrated in the Scandinavian north, for its charming situation, its mild climate, and its fertility and beauty. The Kongspell--mirror of Kings--which was compiled in Norway about the year 1200, says that Ireland is almost the best of the lands we are acquainted with although no vines grow there. The Scandinavian Vikings and emigrants, who often contented themselves with such poor countries as Greenland and the islands in the north Atlantic, must, therefore, have especially turned their attention to the 'Emerald Isle,' particularly as it bordered closely upon their colonies in England and Scotland. But to make conquests in Ireland, and to acquire by the sword alone permanent settlements there, was no easy task.... When we consider that neither the Romans nor the Anglo-Saxons ever obtained a footing in that country, although they had conquered England, the adjacent isle, and when we further reflect upon the immense power exerted by the English in later times in order to subdue the Celtic population of the island, we cannot help being surprised at the very considerable Scandinavian settlements which, as early as the ninth century, were formed in that country."
These are the words of a Dane. We shall see what the "very considerable Scandinavian settlements" amounted to; the quotation is worthy of note, as presenting in a few words the motives of those who at any time invaded Ireland, and the stubborn resistance which they met.
The Irish were not dismayed by the constant arrivals of those northern hordes. They met them one after another without considering their complexity and connection. They only saw a troop of fierce barbarians landed on their shores, chiefly intent upon plundering and burning the churches and holy houses which they had erected; they saw their island, hitherto protected by the ocean from foreign attack, and resting in the enjoyment of a constant round of Christian festivals and joyful feasts, now desecrated by the presence and the fury of ferocious pagans; they armed for the defence of all that is dear to man; and though, perhaps, at first beaten and driven back, they mustered in force at a distance to fall on the victors with a swoop of noble birds who fly to the defence of their young.
This kind of contest continued for two hundred years, with the exception of the periods of larger invasions, when a single clan no longer sufficed to avenge the cause of God and humanity, and the Ard-Righ was compelled to throw himself on the scene at the head of the whole collective force of the nation in order to oppose the vast fleets and large armies of the Danes.
The country suffered undoubtedly; the cattle were slain; the fields devastated; the churches and houses burned; the poets silenced or woke their song only to notes of woe; the harpers taught the national instrument the music of sadness; the numerous schools were scattered, though never destroyed; as centuries later, under the Saxon, the people took their books or writing materials to their miserable cottages or hid them in the mountain fastnesses, and thus, for the first time in their history, the hedge school succeeded those of the large monasteries. So the nation continued to live on, the energetic fire which burned in the hearts of the people could not be quenched. They rose and rose again, and often took a noble revenge, never disheartened by the most utter disaster.
On three different occasions this bloody strife assumed a yet more serious and dangerous aspect. It was not a few boats only which came to the shores of the devoted island; but the main power of Scandinavia seemed to combine in order to crush all opposition at a single blow.
When the knowledge of the richness, fertility, and beauty of the island had fully spread throughout Denmark and Norway, a large fleet gathered in the harbors of the Baltic and put to sea. The famous Turgesius or Turgeis--Thorgyl in the Norse--was the leader. The Edda and Sagas of Norway and Denmark have been examined with a view to elucidate this passage in Irish history, but thus far fruitlessly. It is known, however, that many Sagas have been lost which might have contained an account of it. The Irish annals are too unanimous on the subject to leave any possibility of doubt with regard to it; and, whatever may be the opinion of learned men on the early events in the history of Erin, the story of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries rests entirely on historical ground, as surely as if the facts had happened a few hundred years ago.
Turgesius landed with his fleet on the northeast coast of the island, and straightway the scattered bands of Scandinavians already in the country acknowledged his leadership and flocked to his standard. McGeoghegan says that "he assumed in his own hands the sovereignty of all the foreigners that were then in Ireland."
From the north he marched southward; and, passing Armagh on his route, attacked and took it, and plundered its shrines, monasteries, and schools. There were then within its walls seven thousand students, according to an ancient roll which Keating says has been discovered at Oxford. These were slaughtered or dispersed, and the same fate attended the nine hundred monks residing in its monasteries.
Foraanan, the primate, fled; and the pagan sea-kong, entering the cathedral, seated himself on the primatial throne, and had himself proclaimed archbishop.--(O'Curry.) He had shortly before devastated Clonmacnoise and made his wife supreme head of that great ecclesiastical centre, celebrated for its many convents of holy women. The tendency to add insult to outrage, when the object of the outrage is the religion of Christ, is old in the blood of the northern barbarians; and Turgesius was merely setting the example, in his own rude and honest fashion, to the more polished but no less ridiculous assumption of ecclesiastical authority, which was to be witnessed in England, on the part of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.
The power of the invader was so superior to whatever forces the neighboring Irish clans could muster, that no opposition was even attempted at first by the indignant witnesses of those sacrileges. It is even said that at the very time when the Northmen were pillaging and burning in the northeast of the island, the men of Munster were similarly employed in Bregia; and Conor, the reigning monarch of Ireland, instead of defending the invaded territories, was himself hard at work plundering Leinster to the banks of the river Liffey--(Haverty.) But, doubtless, none of those deluded Irish princes had yet heard of the pagan devastations and insults to their religion, and thus it was easy for the great sea-kong to strengthen and extend his power. For the attainment of his object he employed two powerful agents which would have effectually crushed Ireland forever, if the springs of vitality in the nation had not been more than usually expansive and strong.
The political ability of the Danes began to show itself in Ireland, as it did about the same period (830) in England, and later on in France. Turgesius saw that, in order to subdue the nation, it was necessary to establish military stations in the interior and fortify cities on the coast, where he could receive reinforcements from Scandinavia. These plans he was prompt to put into practice.
His military stations would have been too easily destroyed by the bravery of the Irish, strengthened by the elasticity of their clan-system, if they were, planted on land. He, therefore, set them in the interior lakes which are so numerous in the island, where his navy could repel all the attacks of the natives, unused as they were to naval conflicts. He stationed a part of his fleet on Lough Lee in the upper Shannon, another in Lough Neagh, south of Antrim, a third in Lough Lughmagh or Dundalk bay. These various military positions were strongholds which secured the supremacy of the Scandinavians in the north of the island for a long time. In the south, Turgesius relied on the various cities which his troops were successively to build or enlarge, namely, Dublin, Limerick, Galway, Cork, Waterford, and Wexford. This first Scandinavian ruler could begin that policy only by establishing his countrymen in Dublin, which they seized in 836.
Up to that time the Irish had scarcely any city worthy of the name. A patriarchal people, they followed the mode of life of the old Eastern patriarchs, who abhorred dwelling in large towns. Until the invasion of the Danes, the island was covered with farm-houses placed at some distance from each other. Here and there large duns or raths, as they were called, formed the dwellings of their chieftains, and became places of refuge for the clansmen in time of danger. Churches and monasteries arose in great numbers from the time of St. Patrick, which were first built in the woods, but soon grew into centres of population, corresponding in many respects to the idea of towns as generally understood.
The Northmen brought with them into Ireland the ideas of cities, commerce, and municipal life, hitherto unknown. The introduction of these supposed a total change necessary in the customs of the natives, and stringent regulations to which the people could not but be radically opposed. And strange was their manner of introduction by these northern hordes. Keating tells us how Turgesius understood them. They were far worse than the imaginary laws of the Athenians as recorded in the "Birds" of Aristophanes. No more stringent rules could be devised, whether for municipal, rural, or social regulations; and, as the Northmen are known to have been of a systematic mind, no stronger proof of this fact could be given.
Keating deplores in the following terms the fierce tyranny of the Danish sea-kong:
"The result of the heavy oppression of this thraldom of the Gaels under the foreigner was, that great weariness thereof came upon the men of Ireland, and the few of the clergy that survived had fled for safety to the forests and wildernesses, where they lived in misery, but passed their time piously and devoutly, and now the same clergy prayed fervently to God to deliver them from that tyranny of Turgesius, and, moreover, they fasted against that tyrant, and they commanded every layman among the faithful, that still remained obedient to their voice, to fast against him likewise. And God then heard their supplications in as far as the delivering of Turgesius into the hands of the Gaels."
Thus in the ninth century the subsequent events of the sixteenth and seventeenth were foreshadowed. The judicious editor of Keating, however, justly remarks, that this description, taken mainly from Cambrensis, is not supported in its entirety by the contemporaneous annals of the island; that the power of the Danes never was as universal and oppressive as is here supposed; and that though each of the facts mentioned may have actually taken place in some part of the country, at some period of the Danish invasion, yet the whole, as representing the actual state of the entire island at the time, is exaggerated and of too sweeping a nature.
It is clear, nevertheless, that the domination of the Northmen could not have been completely established in Ireland, together with their notions of superiority of race, trade on a large scale, and a consequent agglomeration of men in large cities, without the total destruction of the existing social state of the Irish, and consequently something of the frightful tyranny just described.
But the people were too brave, too buoyant, and too ardent in their nature, to bear so readily a yoke so heavy. They were too much attached to their religion, not to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, in order to put an end to the sacrilegious usurpations of a pagan king, profaning, by his audacious assumptions, the noblest, highest, purest, and most sacred dignities of holy Church. A man, stained with the blood of so many prelates and priests, seated on the primatial throne of the country in sheer derision of their most profound feelings; his pagan wife ruling over the city which the virgins of Bridget, the spouses of Christ, had honored and sanctified so long; their religion insulted by those who tried to destroy it--how could such a state of things be endured by the whole race, not yet reduced to the condition to which so many centuries of oppression subsequently brought it down!
Hence Keating could write directly after the passage just quoted: "When the nobles of Ireland saw that Turgesius had brought confusion upon their country, and that he was assuming supreme authority over themselves, and reducing them to thraldom and vassalage, they became inspired with a fortitude of mind, and a loftiness of spirit, and a hardihood and firmness of purpose, that urged them to work in right earnest, and to toil zealously in battle against him and his murdering hordes."
And hereupon the faithful historian gives a long list of engagements in which the Irish were successful, ending with the victory of Malachi at Glas Linni, where we know from the Four Masters that Turgesius himself was taken prisoner and afterward drowned in Lough Uair or Owell in West Meath, by order of the Irish king.
This prince, then monarch of the whole island, atoned for the apathy and the want of patriotism of his predecessors, Conor and the Nialls. He was in truth a saviour of his country, and the death of the oppressor was the signal for a general onslaught upon the "foreigners" in every part of the island.
"The people rose simultaneously, and either massacred them in their towns, or defeated them in the fields, so that, with the exception of a few strongholds, like Dublin, the whole of Ireland was free from the Northmen. Wherever they could escape, they took refuge in their ships, but only to return in more numerous swarms than before." - (M. Haverty.)
It is evident that their deep sense of religion was the chief source of the energy which the Irish then displayed. They had not yet been driven into a fierce resistance by being forcibly deprived of their lands; although the Danes, when they carried their vexatious tyranny into all the details of private life - not allowing lords and ladies of the Irish race to wear rich dresses and appear in a manner befitting their rank - when they went so far as to refuse a bowl of milk to an infant, that a rude soldier might quench his thirst with it - could have scarcely permitted the apparently conquered people to enjoy all the advantages accruing to the owner from the possession of land. Yet in none of the chronicles of the time which we have seen is any mention made of open confiscation, and of the survey and division of the territory among the greedy followers of the sea- kong. We do not yet witness what happened shortly after in Normandy under Rollo, and what was to happen four hundred years later in Ireland. The Scandinavians had not yet attained that degree of civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition of mere serfs and dependants.
What they did see, beyond the possibility of mistake or deception, was their religion outraged, their spiritual rulers, not merely no longer at liberty to practise the duties of their sacred ministry, but hunted down and slaughtered or driven to the mountains and the woods. They saw that pagans were actually ruling their holy isle, and changing a paradise of sanctity into a pandemonium of brutal passion, presided over by a superstitious and cruel idolatry. For surely, although the Irish chronicles fail to speak of it, the minstrels and historians being too full of their own misery to think of looking at the pagan rites of their enemies - those enemies worshipped Thor and Odin and Frigga, and as surely did they detest the Church which they were on a fair way to destroy utterly. This it was which gave the Irish the courage of despair. For this cause chiefly did the whole island fly to arms, fall on their foes and bring down on their heads a fearful retribution. This it was, doubtless, which breathed into the new monarch the energy which he displayed on the field of Glas Linni; and when he ordered the barbarian, now a prisoner in his hands, to be drowned, it was principally as a sign that he detested in him the blasphemer and the persecutor of God's church.
Thus did the first national misfortunes of this Celtic people become the means of enkindling in their hearts a greater love for their religion, and a greater zeal for its preservation in their midst.
Ireland was again free; and, although we have no details concerning the short period of prosperity which followed the overthrow of the tyranny we have touched upon, we have small doubt that the first object of the care of those who, under God, had worked their own deliverance, was to repair the ruins of the desecrated sanctuaries and restore to religion the honor of which it had been stripped.
The Danes themselves came to see that they had acted rashly in striving to deprive the Irish of a religion which was so dear to their hearts; they resolved on a change of policy, as they were still bent on taking possession of the island, which Mr. Worsaae has told us they considered the best country in existence.
They resolved, therefore, to act with more prudence, and to make use of trade and the material blessings which it confers, in order to entice the Irish to their destruction, by allowing the Northmen to carry on business transactions with them and so gradually to dwell among them again. Father Keating tells the story in his quaint and graphic style:
"The plan adopted by them on this occasion was to equip three captains, sprung from the noblest blood of Norway, and to send them with a fleet to Ireland, for the object of obtaining some station for purpose of trade. And with them they accordingly embarked many tempting wares, and many valuable jewels -- with the design of presenting them to the men of Ireland, in the hope of thus securing their friendship; for they believed that they might thus succeed in surreptitiously fixing a grasp upon the Irish soil, and might be enabled to oppress the Irish people again . . . . The three captains, therefore, coming from the ports of Norway, landed in Ireland with their followers, as if for the purpose of demanding peace, and under the pretext of establishing a trade; and there, with the consent of the Irish, who were given to peace, they took possession of some sea-board places, and built three cities thereon, to wit: Waterford, Dublin, and Limerick."
We see, then, the Scandinavians abandoning their first project of conquering the North to fall on the South and confining themselves to a small number of fortified sea-ports.
The first result of this policy was a firmer hold than ever on Dublin, once already occupied by them in 836. "Amlaf, or Olaf, or Olaus, came from Norway to Ireland in 851, so that all the foreign tribes in the island submitted to him, and they extracted rent from the Gaels." - (Four Masters.)
From that time to the twelfth century Dublin became the chief stronghold of the Scandinavians, and no fewer than thirty-five Ostmen, or Danish kings, governed it. They made it an important emporium, and such it continued even after the Scandinavian invasion had ceased. McFirbis says that in his time - 1650 - most of the merchants of Dublin were the descendants of the Norwegian Irish king, Olaf Kwaran; and, to give a stronger impulse to commerce, they were the first to coin money in the country.
The new Scandinavian policy carried out by Amlaf, who tried to establish in Dublin the seat of a kingdom which was to extend over the whole island, resulted therefore only in the establishment of five or six petty principalities, wherein the Northmen, for some time masters, were gradually reduced to a secondary position, and finally confined themselves to the operations of commerce.
Since the attempt of Turgesius to subvert the religion of the country, they never showed the slightest inclination to repeat it; hence they were left in quiet possession of the places which they occupied on the sea-board, and gradually came to embrace Christianity themselves.
Little is known of the circumstances which attended this change of religion on their part; and it is certain that it did not take place till late in the tenth century. Some pretend that Christianity was brought to them from their own country, where it had already been planted by several missionaries and bishops. But it is known that St. Ancharius, the first apostle of Denmark, could not establish himself permanently in that country, and had to direct a few missionaries from Hamburgh, where he fixed his see. It is known, moreover, that Denmark was only truly converted by Canute in the eleventh century, after his conquest of England. As to Norway, the first attempt at its conversion by King Haquin, who had become a Christian at the court of Athelstan in England, was a failure; and although his successor, Harold, appeared to succeed better for a time, paganism was again reestablished, and flourished as late as 995. It was, in fact, Olaf the Holy who, coming from England, in 1017, with the priests Sigefried, Budolf, and Bernard, succeeded in introducing Christianity permanently into Norway, and he made more use of the sword than of the word in his mission.
With regard to the conversion of the Danes in Ireland, it seems that, after all, it was the ever-present spectacle of the workings of Christianity among the Irish which gradually opened their eyes and ears. They came to love the country and the people when they knew them thoroughly; they respected them for their bravery, which they had proved a thousand times; they felt attracted toward them on account of their geniality of temperament and their warm social feelings; even their defects of character and their impulsive nature were pleasing to them. They soon sought their company and relationship; they began to intermarry with them; and from this there was but a step to embracing their religion.
The Danes of Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were, however, the last to abandon paganism, and they seem not to have done so until after Clontarf.
It is very remarkable that, during all those conflicts of the Irish with the Danes, when the Northmen strewed the island with dead and ruins; when they seemed to be planting their domination in the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and even the Isle of Man, on a firm footing; when the seas around England and Ireland swarmed with pirates, and new expeditions started almost every spring from the numerous harbors of the Baltic--the Irish colony of Dal Riada in Scotland, which was literally surrounded by the invaders, succeeded in wresting North Britain from the Picts, drove them into the Lowlands, and so completely rooted them out, that history never more speaks of them, so that to this day the historical problem stands unsolved-- What became of the Picts?-- various as are the explanations given of their disappearance. And, what is more remarkable still, is, that the Dal Riada colony received constant help from their brothers in Erin, and the first of the dynasty of Scottish kings, in the person of Kenneth McAlpine, was actually set on the throne of Scotland by the arms of the Irish warriors, who, not satisfied apparently with their constant conflicts with the Danes on their own soil, passed over the Eastern Sea to the neighboring coast of Great Britain.
During the last forty years of the tenth century the Danes lived in Ireland as though they belonged to the soil. If they waged war against some provincial king, they became the allies of others. When clan fought clan, Danes were often found on both sides, or if on one only, they soon joined the other. They had been brought to embrace the manners of the natives, and to adopt many of their customs and habits. Yet there always remained a lurking distrust, more or less marked, between the two races; and it was clear that Ireland could never be said to have escaped the danger of subjugation until the Scandinavian element should be rendered powerless.
This antipathy on both sides existed very early even in Church affairs, the Christian natives being looked upon with a jealous eye by the Christian Danes; so that, toward the middle of the tenth century, the Danes of Dublin having succeeded in obtaining a bishop of their own nation, they sent him to England to be consecrated by Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for a long time the see of Dublin was placed under the jurisdiction of Lanfranc's successors.
This grew into a serious difficulty for Ireland, as the capital of Leinster began to be looked upon as depending, at least spiritually, on England; and later on, at the time of the invasion under Strongbow, the establishment of the English Pale was considerably facilitated by such an arrangement, to which Rome had consented only for the spiritual advantage of her Scandinavian children in Ireland.
And the Irish were right in distrusting every thing foreign on the soil, for, even after becoming Christians, the Danes could not resist the temptation of making a last effort for the subjugation of the country.
Hence arose their last general effort, which resulted in their final overthrow at Clontarf. It does not enter into our purpose to give the story of that great event, known in all its details to the student of Irish history. It is not for us to trace the various steps by which Brian Boru mounted to supreme power, and superseded Malachi, to relate the many partial victories he had already gained over the Northmen, nor to allude to his splendid administration of the government, and the happiness of the Irish under his sway.
But it is our duty to point out the persevering attempts of the Scandinavian race, not only to keep its footing on Irish soil, but to try anew to conquer what it had so often failed to conquer. For, in describing their preparations for this last attempt on a great scale, we but add another proof of that Irish steadfastness which we have already had so many occasions to admire.
In the chronicle of Adhemar, quoted by Lanigan from Labbe (Nova Bibl., MSS., Tom. 2, p.177), it is said that "the Northmen came at that time to Ireland, with an immense fleet, conveying even their wives and children, with a view of extirpating the Irish and occupying in their stead that very wealthy country in which there were twelve cities, with extensive bishopries and a king."
Labbe thinks the Chronicle was written before the year 1031, so that in his opinion the writer was a contemporary of the facts he relates.
The Irish Annals state, on their side, that "the foreigners were gathered from all the west of Europe, envoys having been despatched into Norway, the Orkneys, the Baltic islands, so that a great number of Vikings came from all parts of Scandinavia, with their families, for the purpose of a permanent settlement."
Similar efforts were made about the same time by the Danes for the lasting conquest of England, which succeeded, Sweyn having been proclaimed king in 1013, and Canute the Great becoming its undisputed ruler in 1017.
It is well known how the attempt failed in Erin, an army of twenty-one thousand freebooters being completely defeated near Dublin by Brian and his sons.
From that time the existence of the Scandinavian race on the Irish soil was a precarious one; they were merely permitted to occupy the sea-ports for the purpose of trade, and soon Irish chieftains replaced their kings in Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, and Cork.
The reader may be curious to learn, in conclusion, what signs the Danes left of their long sojourn on the island. If we listen to mere popular rumor, the country is still full of the ruins of buildings occupied by them. The common people, in pointing out to strangers the remains of edifices, fortifications, raths, duns, even round-towers and churches, either more ancient or more recent than the period of the Norse invasion, ascribe them to the Danes. It is clear that two hundred years of devastations, burnings, and horrors, have left a deep impression on the mind of the Irish; and, as they cannot suppose that such powerful enemies could have remained so long in their midst without leaving wonderful traces of their passage, they often attribute to them the construction of the very edifices which they destroyed. The general accuracy of their traditions seems here at fault. For there is no nation on earth so exact as the Irish in keeping the true remembrance of facts of their past history. Not long ago all Irish peasants were perfectly acquainted with the whole history of their neighborhood; they could tell what clans had succeeded each other, the exact spots where such a party had been overthrown and such another victorious; every village had its sure traditions printed on the minds of its inhabitants, and, by consulting the annals of the nation, the coincidence was often remarkable. How is it, therefore, that they were so universally at fault with respect to the Danes?
A partial explanation has been given which is in itself a proof of the tenacity of Irish memory. It is known that the Tuatha de Danaan were not only skilful in medicine, in the working of metals and in magic, but many buildings are generally attributed to them by the best antiquarians; among others, the great mound of New Grange, on the banks of the Boyne, which is still in perfect preservation, although opened and pillaged by the Danes-- a work reminding the beholder of some Egyptian monument. The coincidence of the name of the Tuatha de Danaan with that of the Danes may have induced many of the illiterate Irish to adopt the universal error into which they fell long ago, of attributing most of the ancient monuments of their country to the Danes.
The fact is, that the ruins of a few unimportant castles and churches are all the landmarks that remain of the Danish domination in Ireland; and even these must have been the product of the latter part of it.
But a more curious proof of the extirpation of every thing Danish in the island is afforded by Mr. Worsaae, whose object in writing his account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was to glorify his own country, Denmark.
He made a special study of the names of places and things, which can be traced to the Scandinavians respectively in the three great divisions of the British Isles; and certainly the language of a conquering people always shows itself in many words of the conquered country, where the subjugation has been of sufficient duration.
In England, chiefly in the northern half of the kingdom, a very great number of Danish names appear and are still preserved in the geography of the country. In Mr. Worsaae's book there is a tabular view of 1,373 Danish and Norwegian names of places in England, and also a list of 100 Danish words, selected from the vulgar tongue, still in use among the people who dwell north of Watling Street.
In Scotland, likewise--in the Highlands and even in the Lowlands- -a considerable number of names, or at least of terminations, are still to be met in the geography of the country.
Three or four names of places around Dublin, and the terminations of the names of the cities of Waterford, Wexford, Longford, and a few others, are all that Mr. Worsaae could find in Ireland. So that the language of the Irish, not to speak of their government and laws, remained proof against the long and persevering efforts made by a great and warlike Northern race to invade the country, and substitute its social life for that of the natives.
As a whole, the Scandinavian irruptions were a complete failure. They did not succeed in impressing their own nationality or individuality on any thing in the island, as they did in England, Holland, and the north of France. The few drops of blood which they left in the country have been long ago absorbed in the healthful current of the pure Celtic stream; even the language of the people was not affected by them.
As for the social character of the nation, it was not touched by this fearful aggression. The customs of Scandinavia with respect to government, society, domestic affairs, could not influence the Irish; they refused to admit the systematic thraldom which the sternness of the Northmen would engraft upon their character, and preserved their free manners in spite of all adverse attempts. In this country, Turgesius, Amlaf, Sitrick, and their compeers, failed as signally as other Scandinavian chieftains succeeded in Britain and Normandy.
The municipal system, which has won so much praise, was scornfully abandoned by the Irish to the Danes of the sea port towns, and they continued the agricultural life adapted to their tastes. Towns and cities were not built in the interior till much later by the English.
The clan territories continued to be governed as before. The "Book of Rights" extended its enactments even to the Danish Pale; and the Danes tried to convert it to their own advantage by introducing into it false chapters. How the poem of the Gaels of Ath Cliath first found a place in the "Book of Rights" is still unknown to the best Irish antiquarians. John O'Donovan concludes from a verse in it that it was composed in the tenth century, after the conversion of the Danes of Dublin to Christianity. It proves certainly that the Scandinavians in Ireland, like the English of the Pale later on, had become attached to Erin and Erin's customs--had, in fact, become. Irishmen, to all intents and purposes. Not succeeding in making Northmen of the Irish, they succumbed to the gentle influence of Irish manners and religion.
As for the commercial spirit, the Irish could not be caught by it, even when confronted by the spectacle of the wealth it conferred on the "foreigners." It is stated openly in the annals of the race that their greatest kings, both Malachi and Brian Boru, did not utterly expel the Danes from the country, in order that they might profit by the Scandinavian traders, and receive through them the wines, silks, and other commodities, which the latter imported from the continent of Europe.
The same is true of the sea-faring life. The Irish could never be induced to adopt it as a profession, whatever may have been their fondness for short voyages in their curraghs.
The only baneful effects which the Norse invasion exercised on the Irish were: 1. The interruption of studies on the large, even universal, scale on which, they had previously been conducted; 2. The breaking up of the former constitution of the monarchy, by compelling the several clans which were attacked by the "foreigners" to act independently of the Ard-Righ, so that from that time irresponsible power was divided among a much greater number of chieftains.
But these unfortunate effects of the Norse irruptions affected in no wise the Irish character, language, or institutions, which, in fact, finally triumphed over the character, language, and institutions of the pirates established among them for upward of two centuries.