The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage

Abstract

‘I know’, says St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, ‘that if this earthly I tent of mine is taken down, I get a home from God made by no human hands, eternal in the heavens. It makes me sigh, indeed, this longing to be under cover of my heavenly habitation … to have my mortal element absorbed by life…. I know that while I reside in the body I am away from the Lord….’ St. Paul is considering the body as a flimsy tent, which may at any moment be taken down, and St. Columbanus takes up this passage in his eighth sermon on the essential instability, the transitory nature of earthly life. Here and elsewhere he speaks of life as a roadway, where Christians must travel in perpetual pilgrimage as guests of the world (hospites mundi), content with a sort of travelling allowance. The same spirit of detachment and urgency infuses much of the hagiographical literature: “Leave thy fatherland for my sake, and get thee out’, ‘This is not the place of thy resurrection’, or the wandering scholar to Brigid when she asks him to stay a while with her, ‘O nun, I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now, and I fear they may be shut against me’.