"Alone with None But You"

Today, we give thanks for the life of the Orthodox saint, Columba of Iona, and, in so doing, remember an ancient Christian people, who for centuries have been shrouded in mystery. But in our own time, the fog begins to lift.

These nascent Christians avoided Roman legions and missionaries but were gladly evangelized by St. Andrew near the Black Sea and then by St. Paul as they passed through Asia Minor on their migration westward (recorded in the Letter to the Galatians).

What shall we call a Christian people who practiced their faith for centuries before the First Council of Nicaea, who took extreme measures to avoid all Roman influences, whose lives were governed by Apostolic principles? Certainly, they were bold — sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, called the Ne plus ultra ("beyond which there is nothing"). And they landed along the rugged coasts of modern-day Ireland. That they continued to repel Romans is attested by the fact that Ireland was never invaded.

Archaeologists have discover their artifacts tracing back, thus far, to third century. In particular, the subfield of paleography has yielded a detailed picture of their lives, for they were prolific writers (and continue to be so). And what has survived tells us much: that they embraced the Gospel ideals taught them by the Apostles and especially to avoid riches and the ways of the world. According to a leading historian of the Irish, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín

What?! No money! No land deeds! But only the teachings of Christ. That is all they need: the teachings of Christ. Here, truly is an Apostolic lifeworld, continuing for centuries and centuries, splendidly isolated. A major feature of this lifeworld would be the monastery: worship, teaching, and the copying of holy books. Their willful isolation from the world is obvious, as Ó Cróinín points out. Historians who try to master the Irish system of chronology found in their Annals are "baffled .... hopelessly at sea."

We understand chronology in the Gospels by the reigns of emperors and kings. But in this world, there were no kings, no reigns, and therefore no eras. They simply lived and wrote about their daily lives.

Taking all into account, historians conclude that there is no counterpart in all European history for this ancient people and culture. Ó Cróinín concludes

.... a perfect Apostolic world .... preserved in amber we might say.

Nor did they have any part in the Roman Church, preceding St. Patrick (his name was actually Patricius, meaning patrician, or "upper class." They were inclined to build monasteries, not diocesan chanceries. They organized in monastic communities, not in hierarchies of bishops, priests, and deacons. Mindful of the Lord's teaching not to lord over one another (Mk 10:42-43), they were repelled by subordinate hierarchy and strove for equality in all things. Historians comment on shape of their buildings, which were round, and notice a similar preoccupation with circles and spirals in their graphic arts and sculpture — revealing their preoccupation with unity. Everything is knitted together toward the center which is Christ. For the credo of their lives was comprised by the Two Great Commandments: to be at-one with each other and, together, to be at-one with the Lord Jesus Christ. That is all that was needed.

But where did these Apostolic people come from? They are utterly unlike any of the peoples around them! Did they come from outer space?! The language they spoke was in no way continuous with the language groups around them, which gives away that they were different and that they did not mix with anybody else. Indeed, their language lies on the opposite end of the Indo-European spectrum, more akin to Sanskrit than to the Germanic languages that would develop into Old English. Sanskrit?! Absolutely absolutely astonishing! They would be dubbed "Celts" meaning "foreigners you ought to avoid," from the Greek term Keltoi referring to distant, fierce tribes in central and western Europe, which the Romans translated as Celtae.

Previously, the puzzle pieces that we had pointed to Ukraine and southern Russia as the region of their origin. For eighth-century sources located the Picts (now understood to be an indigenous tribe) as migrating from Scythia. ⁴ Elsewhere, the Declaration of Arbroath, one of Scotland's ancient founding documents, asserts that their forebears "journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of ... the Pillars of Hercules" (Gilbralter) manifestly bringing the Cross of St. Andrew with them. Where else would St. Andrew's Cross have come from?

Linguists have traced the migration route from the Asian Steppe to Ireland by studying languages spoken along the way. But this centuries-long mystery has finally been solved, not on the basis of linguistic evidence or archaeological artifacts or paleography (which are always subject to debate), but on the indisputable evidence of genes, DNA.

In 2015 a group of researchers led by Prof. Dan Bradley of Trinity College, Dublin, reported,

In particular, the genetic marker, or mutation, the team settled on "is so frequent in people of Irish descent that it is sometimes referred to as a Celtic disease."

So it seems the legends and myths were true. The Celtic people of Ireland and Scotland descend from ancestors living near to and beyond the Black Sea, even to Kiev, the traditional capital of Russia. Once established in Ireland they set out in a northern and then eastward direction, led by St. Columba, famous for his fiery spirit. This besetting passion brought Columba to the point of murdering a man who had seized a psalter Columba had made in the scriptorium. The sentence pronounced upon him was banishment to the north, to land of the warlike Picts. He, in effect, was told why don't you take that anger of yours into the darkness where it might do some good and convert the ferocious Picts.

The more general background was St. Finnian building a monastic cell and other buildings that would develop eventually into Clonard Abbey in County Meath around 520. This center of Irish Christianity maintained a steady population of 3,000 students, producing the Twelve Apostles of Ireland including St. Brendan, St. Columba, and St. Aidan. And these monks would build the religious thoughtworld of ancient Britain becoming educators of Anglo-Saxon nobles and kings.

Meantime, back in Rome, Pope Celestine I alarmed to hear of "the Scotti believing in Christ," sent Benedictine missionaries to this Apostolic lifeworld. His aim, he said, was to spread "Christianity" giving away his belief that any Christianity which was not Roman, was no Christianity at all. For example, a few decades earlier, Pope St. Gregory the Great, hearing that Benedictine missionaries were destroying any and all prayers and orders of worship that did not not conform to Roman use. He wrote sternly, "Beware, brothers! This what the Holy Spirit has done." But these zealous shock troops were not to be restrained. Things finally came to a burning point in Britain at the Synod of Whitby called in 664 by High King Oswiu, who had been educated by the Irish monks, as had everybody for centuries.

Today, the Synod of Whitby is rightly understood to be nothing less than a final, decisive conflict between two opposing thought-worlds — the Apostolic faith preserved by these Scythian migrants in the tradition of St. John and the Roman faith which had been formed by the imperial and military ideals of Rome.

You know, when Constantine the Great set up the Roman Church, he housed its officials in basilicas, which had been used for judicial institutes. He began a tradition of canon law after the example of the Empire. None of these things occurred in Ireland.

But back at the Synod of Whitby, the High King turned to his own bishop, Colman of Lindisfarne (who had succeeded St. Aidan thirteen years earlier):

Centering on the question of dating Pascha, an obvious difference between the Irish and Romans, Colman said that the traditions of his Fathers came to down to them from St. John the Apostle:

By contrast, the Roman position, outlined by a Fr. Wilfred, a recent Anglo-Saxon convert to the Church of Rome, adduced the provenance of St. Peter:

Significantly, Wilfred lays before King Oswiu an imperial chronicle of military conquests:

.... that is, the world subdues by Rome. In effect, Wilfred asks, who are the obstinate dissenters, belittling the religion of the Irish. They are ....

Here is the operative word: fight. For the Romans present not a theological position, but an imperial threat. Let us put aside the inaccuracy of Fr. Wilfred's claims, for most the world in the seventh century used the dating of Easter in the tradition of St. John. But the world that mattered to Oswiu is the one crowding in on his eastern border: the Roman Legions and their spiritual shock troops, the Benedictine missionaries.

The real subject prompting the Synod of Whitby was power. At length, King Oswiu stated the case plainly. He turned to the Irish bishop and asked bluntly,

This is the only question that really mattered. It is the most important question always before any king. Which is his vassalage? For a king must constantly scan the world-scene deciding which lesser kingdoms to subdue in order to force their vassalage under him or which more powerful kingdoms he must swear fealty to. And now he contemplated not kingdoms but the Roman Empire.

This question is incalculably amplified when it is set in an eternal frame. All his life Oswiu had scaled his thoughts to fiefdoms and tribes. He was at the top as the Overlord, or High King, uniting these. But now he must come to terms with a world empire. And, as if that were not enough, he must contemplate God as emperor and St. Peter has His High King. To get a feel for this I have dug out a Benedictine illumination:

This plate (which is posted in our written reflection) depicts the Divine judgment. At center we see St. Peter holding a man in the handclasp of vassalage, who by that fact is saved from a demon of Hell. His diminutive stature does not denote a boy (children never appear in illuminations) but rather his lower social status. (In medieval art diminuitive figures represent the lower class.) An angel to the left holds an open book recording the deeds of his life. The question is obvious: who can save him? He has done what he has done. But, in the end, it is St. Peter who holds the keys to the Kingdom no matter what it says in the Book of Life.

On the right hand side of the illumination stand a nobleman and noblewoman (judging from their attire and greater physical stature). But for all their earthly power and connections, an angel of death (we see his claws) claims them holding a book which records their life deeds. Their appear downcast and despairing, for they have arrived to the moment of judgment, and there is no one who can save them. They are patently distant from St. Peter's reach. They have made a horrible miscalculation in discerning their alliances and their fealty. All along, it was only St. Peter who mattered. For he alone who decides who will enter the gates of Heaven.

From early on, this was the narrative of the Roman Church and, by the way, still circulates at ground level and still today. A friend of mine who "abandoned the Roman Communion," becoming a priest of another communion, was told by his bishop and chancellor point blank that there was no remedy: he would burn in Hell.

In the most ancient Benedictine illuminations, Peter is prominently drawn with his keys referring to the Roman interpretation of Matthew 16, verses 18-19:

I am obliged to point out that the pronoun "you" refers to all of the Apostles not just Peter, as I mentioned in last week's reflection discussing the Gospel of John. And "the rock" signifies an unswerving faith in Christ as the Son of God.

But theology and exegesis of Scripture are not on Oswiu's mind. Yes, for centuries his lifeworld had been what we would call Orthodox — the Apostolic faith preserved by the Irish monks. But other things are on his mind now, which have occasioned this famous Synod. One one side, he sees his teachers and nurturers and their holy sacraments — a centuries-old lifeworld of unity-seeking, Christ-following, and eirenic saints. Has there ever been a whole lifeworld of saints, going on for centuries, and thriving under the teachings of the Apostles. On the other side, he casts his mind over a vast empire of dioceses and bishop-kings and the vast military strength of Rome. And he chooses for power and the world.

In this he is a prophet. For not only will these Orthodox monks suffer conquest, with their holy books and orders of worship destroyed and venerable monasteries burned, but the whole lifeworld they nurtured and educated and formed will be crushed by those same Roman Catholic bishops and priests and monks. Nary a single holy book or manuscript survived.

Five hundred years later, following the earth movements at Hagia Sophia in 1054, Roman contempt for the Orthodox Church would bare its teeth in the form of military conquest. People often do not think, when they hear the famous date 1066, what the Great Schism occurred only a dozen years earlier. And the fate of Anglo-Saxon Britain, which was all that remained of the Irish Orthodox lifeworld, would be sealed. In the same interval that was required to wage war on this scale during the eleventh century is represented by two dates: 1054 to 1066, the interval required to build those ships and amass those armies and supply weapons and food and other materiale. That this campaign was engineered in concert with Pope Alexander II is a matter of historical record. ¹¹ Norman armies held aloft a papal banner crossing the English Channel announcing the pope's blessing — a banner which would later appear in the Bayeux Tapestry. And papal indulgences were granted to all soldiers fighting on the Roman Catholic side. Finally, a letter from Pope Gregory VII, to the newly enthroned King William I of Britain, confirms that no less an advocate than William's kinsman, Pope Alexander II, had secured the Roman Church's approval for the invastion .... not without curial opposition. ¹²

But enough history! Let us stop here. The rest of the story is well-known. Yes, there is much more to say, but not on a Sunday morning. And perhaps you will not begrudge me this long reflection on St. Columba Day. For today is my birthday on the Julian Calendar — a fact I did not know when I chose Columba as my religious name. I did not know, as a Franciscan monastic in the care of a Franciscan bishop, that my religious name fell on my birthday on the Old Calendar. But, you see? I did not choose it, but it chose me (Jn 15:16).

Withal, I have a special duty to remind our Hermitage readers and followers that our Orthodox forebears thrived in the far West — Ireland, Scotland — almost a thousand years before the baptism of Holy Rus'. And if we peel the onion one more layer, we find that those forebears came from the region of Kiev, the place of Russia's Orthodox baptism.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

¹ Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200. Second Edition. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 7.
²   Ó Cróinín, 13.
³   Ó Cróinín, 7-8.
⁴   Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, "Of the Situation of Britain and Ireland, and Their Ancient Inhabitants" Loeb Classical Library. Trans. J.D. King. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1930), 1.
⁵   Dan Bradley (Professor of Population Genetics), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 2015.
⁶   Bede, 301.
⁷   Bede, 301.
⁸   Bede, 301.
⁹   Bede, 301.
¹⁰   Bede, 301.
¹¹   Catherine Morton, "Pope Alexander II and the Norman Conquest," Le Revue Latomus (34) (Bruxelles, 1975), 362-382.  
¹³   Morton, 362.