Early English perspectives on Gaelic-Irish religion

Abstract

It is a matter of some pride that Gaelic-Irish religion from the seventh to the twelfth centuries received the literary attentions of such contemporary historians as the Venerable Bede (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), Bernard of Clairvaux (Life of St Malachy) and Gerald of Wales (Topography of Ireland and Conquest of Ireland), as well as the judgements of Popes Adrian TV (Laudabiliter, 1155) and Alexander III (Letters to the Synod ofCashel, 1172), even though the resulting effects on English literary perceptions were to prove so condemnatory of Irish religious beliefs and practices, and ultimately so durable in terms of cultural attitudes. Perspectives on Gaelic-Irish religion were predicated upon what these observers considered to be authentic religion; there would be no criticism to be made if the religion observed was identical with that authentic religion. W h e n the early English peoples converted to Christianity, they adopted a form of religion that was markedly different from that of their neighbours in the British Isles. Consequently, one of the parameters of religious experience in these islands is the presence of two major conflicting views which assume cultural perspectives. This parameter can be explored from the standpoint of the early English by re-examining the literature mentioned above and by utilizing some findings already published elsewhere but in different contexts. The Venerable Bede, the father of English historiography and well to the fore in his time as a commentator on the neighbours over the water, had much to say about the Gaelic-Irish monastic foundations of Iona and Lindisfarne, of the Irish Northumbrian mission at a crucial stage of its history, and of Ireland itself as seen from his Northumbrian monastery of Janow in the year 723. One of the aims of his Ecclesiastical History was to show the superiority of the English Church over the Irish, and it is in that context that the monks of Iona are described as ignorant and unlearned, not to say stubborn and verging on the heretical; their very conversion to R o m a n orthodoxy could be seen as attributable to the teaching of the English Egbert. Adomnan, the contemporary abbot of