The Roman Period 100-400ad
Summary.
Describes the origin and spread of the Roman Empire patricularly
towards North West Europe. Also the origin and spread of Christianity, and the
nature of its public worship. The origin, nature and spread of monasticism. In
particular Christianity in Britain in the Roman period. Finally, tries to work
out what we can reliably know about Ireland before the introduction of writing.
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The Roman Empire
Origin and Growth of Christianity
Monasticism
Christianity and the Slave
Trade
Christianity in Britain
Ireland in the Roman Period
Ptolemy’s Map
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The Roman Empire
Despite what historians
of the nationalist school tried to prove, almost everything in Irish society in
the historic period was either derived straight from Rome or was largely
modified and developed under Roman influence. Modern writers point out that
even such supposedly ‘Celtic’ works like the Tain were redacted by persons acquainted with classical
scholarship. Roman influence is all-pervading in Ireland.
There was almost
nothing original about Roman culture itself. The inhabitants of
Rome just adopted
from the surrounding peoples what they needed, and in course of time, through
constant conquests, Roman became like one of the great cities of the Middle East and the Roman Empire like one of the
great empires of that region. The Republic became wracked by civil wars, in the
midst of which Julius Caesar, who had been one of the ruling consuls in 59 BC was murdered. Eventually, the Romans decided in 27 BC to
give supreme authority to a single elected emperor, the first being Caesar
Augusts (27 BC to 14 AD). (Centuries later, the Christian monk Dionysius
Exiguus decided to date the Christian era from the birth of Jesus, and not as
the Romans did, from the supposed date of the founding of Rome. Later still the
idea developed of dating events before the birth of Jesus backwards.) The Roman
state lasted from a supposed origin in 753 BC until the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in
1453 AD. But that did not mean the end of its influence, for though the Turks
might be the rulers of the city and the remains of its empire they still
retained much of the culture and skills of the older empire. The influence of
Rome on Ireland
was immense. Christianity was born in the Roman
province of
Judaea, part
of the former kingdom of Israel, and it spread through all the cities of the Roman Empire, adopting the
Roman language and Roman customs as it grew and spread. The Church organised
itself on Roman lines into provinces and dioceses. The hierarchy or holy
government paralleled the civil government. At its head was the Pope, the
religious equivalent of the Roman Emperor. Ireland
is one of those countries in Northern Europe which were never themselves under Roman
rule but which received all their culture and trappings of civilisation from
Rome through the
Church. In this connection it is worth recalling that the Latin language was written,
spoken, and read by the Christian clergy in Ireland
continuously from 432 AD until the Vatican Council in 1962. The authority of
the Pope, the bishop of Rome, is still widely recognised in Ireland.
The
Roman
Republic about
200 BC conquered the Celtic-speaking warriors who had entered Italy and
occupied the Po valley. The Romans then pushed across the Alps and conquered Gaul. This conquest was
completed by 50 AD. They invaded Britain
in 43 AD and gradually conquered the island as far as the Firth of Forth. The
Romans brought their own urban organisation. One of these towns was
London; others York
and Lincoln. The legionary settlement at Caerleon-on-Usk in south east Wales,
which was later to be the great centre for the conversion of Wales,
provided two martyrs in the reign of Diocletian in 303 AD, as did Verulam (now
St Alban'’s)
where St Alban was executed. As elsewhere in the Empire the great development
of Christianity took place after Constantine became emperor in 312 AD. Constantine was
proclaimed emperor by the army at York.
There were almost always more advantages for impoverished northern
warriors to conquer the richer southern regions than the reverse. The expansion
of the Roman Empire to the north is an exception. Partly it was to acquire secure
frontiers, and partly to provide the occasion of conquests to ambitious Roman
leaders. Britain was probably never profitable over-all to the Empire, and even the
metals it supplied could probably have been obtained more easily and more
cheaply by trade. Nevertheless, for individuals there was always the chance to
obtain farms or estates from conquered lands.
The history of western
Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the Middle
East for the next four hundred years was
chiefly a history of the Roman Empire. The Empire continued to grow until about 100 AD and remained with
more or less fixed borders for the following three hundred years. From the
Atlantic seaboard it stretched eastward along both shores of the Mediterranean to include the
Greek and Egyptian Empires, Mesopotamia and northward from the Persian
Gulf to the shores of the Caspian Sea. They did not
conquer the Persian Empire, nor did the Persians conquer them. The language of
Rome, Latin, became
universally spoken in the western half of the Empire, though it did not replace
Greek in the eastern half. There was a large element of religious freedom
within the Empire despite periodic and usually localised persecutions of
Christians. Roman law was everywhere applied. The Roman army was the all-pervading
power that ensured interior peace, though not always protecting the Empire from
raids from outside. Cities grew and with them trade. The city culture that had
been developed in Sumer in the Bronze Age permeated to the boundaries of the Empire even if
in fact most of the people lived in small villages or rural areas. The presence
of cities and peaceful trade routes meant that everywhere surplus agricultural
produce could be traded.
The Romans advanced to
the most northern point in Scotland,
but as the region was thinly populated, had indifferent soils, and few minerals
they did not attempt to retain what has become present day Scotland.
Wales on the other hand had abundant minerals and so was strongly held. England, Wales, Scotland,
and Ireland were not separate countries, but were, as they always had been,
part of Western Europe. At this time the islands were ruled by British-speaking Celts, and
were collectively known as the British Isles. British was a dialect of Gaulish. For a
period of about four hundred years Roman-occupied Britain
was ruled in the Roman fashion.
Roman influence did not
of course stop at the frontiers guarded by legionaries, but spread far over the
borders. There was the influence of trade and of the prestige of Roman things.
There was often the desire of ordinary people to move their families inside the
Empire where life was easier and safer. Young men from the warrior classes
frequently joined the Roman army as auxiliaries.
From the time of the
Emperor Trajan (117 AD) the Empire ceased to expand, and all resources were put
to defending existing frontiers. Increasingly the Roman emperors became
concerned with defending the Greek-speaking eastern half of their empire for it
was the richest part, and also the part most threatened by powerful invaders.
In 330 AD the emperor Constantine shifted the capital of the empire to
Byzantium which he
named Constantinople. The threat from the semi-Romanised tribes in Germany
was regarded as being much less. During a period of civil war in the West, the
Romans withdrew the imperial army from Britain.
(Alaric the Visigoth chief was a Roman cavalry officer displeased with his
failure to achieve promotion.) The withdrawal was supposed to be temporary but
proved permanent. Meanwhile the local Roman administrators were expected to
provide for their own defence, and nobody saw any reason why they could not. In
the fifth century AD when the Pope took a passing interest in Ireland
the Roman Empire was still largely functioning. The death of the last Latin emperor
Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD is regarded as marking the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, and the
beginning of the Middle Ages.
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Origin and
Growth of Christianity
In Palestine during
the reign of Caesar Augustus, when Quirinius was the Roman governor of Syria,
Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Luke 2.1). ‘In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s reign, when
Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother
Philip tetrarch of the lands of Itureae and Trachonitis, Lysanius tetrarch of
Abilene, during the pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to
John son of Zechariah in the wilderness’ (Luke 3.1). This marked the beginning
of the preaching of Jesus who was crucified. After his death Christianity was
preached by the twelve apostles of Jesus and the thirteenth apostle Paul, first
among the Jews in Palestine and in the Diaspora and then among the Greeks. It spread throughout
the Roman world, at first largely in Greek-speaking areas and in the cities,
but later in the Latin-speaking parts and in the rural areas.
When the Jewish temple
was destroyed by the Roman army under Titus in 70 AD the Christians broke
entirely with the ritual of the Jewish temple. By that time it was regarded as
irrelevant. (The Jews had also to abandon temple worship but for a different
reason, namely that there was only one temple on earth where sacrifices could
be offered to God and it was in Jerusalem. The Romans built a temple of
Jupiter on its
site.) Christian worship developed along the lines of that of the Jews of the
Diaspora, namely by appointing houses, and later constructing buildings for
communal worship. The Greek-speaking Jews called their meeting place a synagogue and the Greek-speaking Christians
called theirs an ekklesia. One was
from a Greek word to come together, the other from a Greek word to be called
together. To this day there are many similarities between worship in a
Christian church and in a Jewish synagogue. Christian churches, like the
synagogues, became larger and more ornamented, and the worship more elaborate
and formal. The structure of the mass is derived from that of the Jewish
Passover meal.The distinctive
characteristic of this worship was
that it was indoors. The worship was presided over by men who could read the
scriptures and instruct the believers. The Jews called these rabbis from the
Hebrew rab a master. The Christians
called them bishops from the Greek episcopos
an overseer, and priests from the Greek presbyteros
an elder. Each bishop had a principal church, called his cathedral, in which he
placed his chair (cathedra) or seat (sedes from whence see) He had about him a body of priests called canons, or diocesan
canons, who sang the weekly, and later daily Eucharist. Sacred chants were
composed to accompany the psalms of David from the Bible, which formed the
basis of all Christian worship. Attached to the church were lesser
functionaries like deacons and acolytes.
. Each bishop ruled over a particular town or city, and as
Christianity spread, the villages that surrounded it. There is no need to
assume that in western Europe there was any definite
boundary to a bishopric. The bishopric would just extend into the forests and
wastelands until it met the domain of another bishop. A priest would have to be
ordained by a bishop, get the holy oils from him, and be authorised to preach
and celebrate the sacraments. At one time there was only one bishop for the
whole of Egypt. In the West bishops in the principal towns claimed vast areas as
their diocese. In 446 Pope St Leo the Great ruled that bishoprics should only be established in
large cities. A further grade was being gradually added of priests who were not
bishops in lesser settlements (later called parishes) outside the towns. Some
of the earliest country parishes were administered by deacons, but afterwards
priests were the rule. They were independent of the bishop to a certain extent
because they had their own lands administered by the parish priest to support
them. There were also minor churches dependent on the archpriest of the
diocese. These were often at shrines and were supported by offerings of
pilgrims. Nor is there any need to suppose that establishing churches without
bishops was a peculiarly Irish custom (Catholic
Encyclopaedia; Diocese, Parish).
The Church gradually
organised itself into an hierarchical
structure with three grades, patriarchs in the great cities of Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch, but not Carthage, archbishops in the chief cities of
the Roman provinces, and bishops in the local towns. Each town was presided
over by a bishop. In densely populated parts of the Empire like Italy
there could be hundreds of bishops. Seven (later six) little satellite towns
outside Rome had bishops. All the bishops in a civil province were presided over
by an archbishop. The patriarch of the capital of the Empire, Rome, claimed the
highest status of all, basing the claim of his see on the fact that it was the
city in which Peter the chief of the apostles had settled. When
Constantine
transferred his capital to Constantinople, the bishop of that city claimed the primacy. Later
Jerusalem and Constantinople were given
patriarchal status making five in all.
There does not seem to have been any particular rules for establishing
a new bishopric, though the rules for consecrating new bishops were strict.
Each new bishop had to be consecrated by those who were already bishops. Since
the eleventh century the Popes have reserved to themselves the rights of
creating new dioceses, though from at least the fifth century, the consent of a
provincial synod and metropolitan was required within an existing province.
A characteristic of
Christianity, though it may seem obvious to state it, was that it was based on
personal prayer, which can be described as communicating with the divine, or an
elevation of the mind to God. Prayer can take many forms, and involve the whole
body and mind. In the New Testament, gifts of the Spirit were recognised, but
it was also believed that these gifts could come from an evil spirit, so
Christians were warned to test the spirits to see if they are of God. As St. Paul said, ‘The Spirit too
comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to
pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never
be put into words (Romans 8.26). This passage is echoed in the Declaration of St. Patrick.
When
Christianity was recognised as the true religion by the Roman Emperors, these
latter built enormous churches, which were called basilicas from the Greek word
for imperial. The basilica was originally a Roman version of the stoa
but was walled on all sides and roofed over, used for secular purposes. In
pagan times there was a raised part of the floor at one end on which stood an
altar, and this end terminated with a semi-circular area called an apse, in
which certain official sat. The form was easily adapted to Christian worship.
The bishop'’s
chair was at the very back at the centre of the semi-circular apse, and the
priests and ministers sat on either side of him along the curved walls of the
apse. In front of them was the holy table or altar, and the body of the
worshippers filled the basilica. (In medieval times the altar was placed
against the back wall, and the seats of the bishop and the clergy were placed
in front of the altar. This meant that a gap had to be left between the seats
or stalls as they came to be called to allow the ordinary worshippers to see
the altar. The result was the familiar choir stalls in cathedrals.)
The Church was not
allowed to grow unmolested. Several emperors considered it a threat to the
unity of the Empire and tried to stamp it out. Traditionally there were seven
persecutions, a figure probably derived from the Apocalypse where the number seven
appears repeatedly, but most of them were purely local. The church in
Rome itself was in
particular danger, and the bishop liable to be hunted down and killed on almost
any pretext. All the early popes were venerated in Rome as martyrs.
The essential tenets of Christianity were
summarised at an early stage in the Apostles'’ Creed. This
consisted of three parts. The first stressed belief in one only god, the Father
and Creator. The second part dealt with the fact that the Son of Sod became man
and died on a cross, went up to heaven, and will return to judge the world. The
third part dealt with the Holy Spirit, the Church, the '‘sharing of the holy
things'’
or '‘sharing
with the holy ones'’, the forgiveness
of sin, the resurrection of the dead, and life everlasting in heaven. The
article on forgiveness of sin included the initial repentance, the obligation
of leading a holy life, and the forgiveness of sins committed after baptism.
Those who were being instructed in the Christian faith were called catechumens.
The chief period of instruction was during Lent, and they were allowed to
attend the first part of the mass. It would seem that formal instruction in the
truths of the Christian religion was given in the early parts of the Sunday
mass, called until recently the '‘mass of the
catechumens'’.
(The word mass is derived from the words of dismissal Ite, missa est, depart, it is done.) The
preparation concluded at Easter with instruction in the sharing of the holy
things, baptism, the Eucharist, and confirmation. The sermons
of St Cyril of Jerusalem (313? -387) provide a complete
example. In these latter the mystery of baptism, the mystery of the Eucharist,
and the mystery of the conferring of the Holy Spirit were explained.
The official and public
worship of the Church was spread out over a cycle of one year. This was
called the '‘liturgy'’,
in Greek leitourgia, the ‘work of the
People’ (of God). The worshipping People of God was called the Ecclesia, from the Greek ecclesia, ‘The People of God duly
summoned or called together’. The Church year began in spring with the
celebration of Easter, the great annual commemoration of the death and
resurrection of Jesus. The dates of Easter and Pentecost were based on two of
the great Jewish pilgrimage feasts Pesach
(Passover) and (Shabuoth, seven weeks
plus one day equals fifty, pentecoste,
days). The third Jewish feast was Sukkoth
(tabernacles or tents) and was held in the autumn. The Christians never
celebrated this.
The date of Easter was fixed at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. It
was there appointed to be the first Sunday after the full moon following the
vernal equinox. But if that date should coincide with the
Jewish Passover, then on the following Sunday to clearly differentiate
Christianity from Judaism. The date was to be calculated in advance
following the methods of the astronomers of Alexandria. (In 465
AD the Church in Rome altered the method of calculation and this new method of
calculation was gradually adopted in the Western
Church except
in the British Isles where the old method was adhered to.) In the fourth century a
preparation of forty days was added, or at least fixed at forty days. An annual
cycle of readings from the Bible was observed and it commenced at the beginning
of Lent (and later on Septuagesima Sunday) with the story of the creation of
Adam and the Fall. The church year ended with the
climax of the feast of the Epiphany, the manifestation of Jesus foreshadowing
his final manifestation at the Second Coming, the Parousia. The origin of the feast of the Epiphany is obscure but it
is known to have been celebrated towards the end of the second century AD.
Later in the Sixth Century in Rome and elsewhere a shorter period of preparation called Advent (the
Coming) was added to prepare for the Second Coming. Christmas was celebrated as
a separate feast in Rome from 354 AD and probably came to Ireland
with the adoption of the Roman liturgy.
There would have been a
solemn chanting of the mass, largely in monotone, on each Sunday that all the
faithful had to attend unless reasonably excused. Psalms were sung with the
verses alternated with short responses called antiphons. There would also have
been two daily services of readings and chants in the church attended mostly by
the clergy. The year was articulated by the two great feasts, Easter to
Pentecost, which began it, and the Epiphany which ended it. The periods of
penance were ones of fasting, and this meant that no food could be eaten until
night-fall, and feasting and rejoicing of every kind incompatible with a period
of sorrow were prohibited. Lent was also originally the period of preparation
for those who were to be baptised and confirmed, but these ceremonies may no
longer have been restricted to Easter.
It is necessary to
recall the practices of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire because they were
transferred bodily into Ireland by the first missionaries. Just as in the nineteenth century
Catholic missionaries went into the jungles of Africa and took the mass and
other ceremonies in Latin with them so too did the first missionaries in Ireland.
There was no attempt to adapt it to local culture. That idea came into its own
after the Second World War. Nor did the local people in either case want a
watered-down version of the religion. They wanted all the trappings. In Africa, churches were built as
far as possible in the Baroque style. The converts wanted this for they said
the native architecture reminded them of the paganism they were giving up.
There never was any such thing as a ‘Celtic’ Church or a ‘Celtic’ Christianity.
There are no remains of the first churches built for they were all made of
wood. But the clerics would have constructed them as replicas of the wooden and
thatched churches in rural parts of Gaul. The robes would have been identical, the ceremonies identical, the
ordering of the bishop or priests household identical, and Latin would have
been the language of the clergy among themselves. There were no
significant differences in public worship in the Latin West until about 500 AD.
After that date various modifications were introduced into Gaul, and these formed the
Gallican Rite.
Yet almost as soon as
it was freed by Constantine, the Church was rent by
religious controversies. It split into two factions, the Arians and the Catholics.
Arianisn was named after Arius, a North African priest, who held that Jesus,
the second person of the Trinity was not equal to the Father, the first person.
Though this doctrine was condemned at the
Council of Nicaea (325 AD) it spread widely, largely because it was favoured by
the emperors in Constantinople. It just happened also that the chiefs of
various Teutonic-speaking tribes on the northern borders of the Empire were
adopting Christianity, and they accepted the Arian version. Most of the great
religious controversies that shook the ancient Church were concerned with the
nature of the Trinity, and the relationship of Jesus as man to God. These did
not affect Ireland, for Gaul always adhered to the Church of Rome, so no rival
theories were brought to Ireland
Among
other numerous disputes over doctrine were those on Pelagianism, Donatism,
Monophytism, and Nestorianism. Remnants of these various heretical churches are
still found across the Middle
East, Christianity spread far and
wide from the patriarchate of Antioch, and surprising as it may seem nowadays,
reached as far as north China. Some Nestorian Christians were still to be found
in China when Marco Polo arrived there in the thirteenth century. The first and only Christian penetration of Central
Asia was made by the Nestorians, but these churches were largely wiped out by
the spread of Islam. These Christians were counted as heretics by the Latins
because they accepted the views of Nestorius of Antioch, patriarch of
Constantinople, that there were two persons, one human and one divine, in
Christ. The rival view, espoused by the theologians of Alexandria, said there
was only one person in Jesus, the divine person. The orthodox and Latin view as
defined at the Council of Chalcedon was that there was one person and two
natures, human and divine in Jesus. The Nestorian view was that there were two
persons in Christ, so consequently Mary was the mother of Jesus but not the
mother of God. The Greek word theotokos,
mother of God, became the touchstone of orthodoxy. The Nestorian church was at
first centred on Edessa in Mesopotamia, but later in Persia. It was virtually
wiped out by the medieval Mongol invasions. The Monophysites were especially
strong in Egypt and Armenia and, and still has several million adherents in
Egypt to this day. But by and large the orthodox doctrine prevailed both in the
eastern and western churches. The various tribes in the West who were
originally Arian gradually accepted the teaching of Rome.
One
East. One
consequence
of the growth of heresies was the custom of holding synods
to decide what the doctrine and
discipline of the Church actually was. Many of the disputes arose when attempts
were being made to translate the traditional teachings of the scriptures into
the terms and references of Greek philosophy.
The philosophy was an attempt to
organise all human knowledge in a rational way. Some Christians have always
argued that no attempt should be made to harmonise the Christian revelation
with Greek rationality. But, for others, a concept like 'God' reveals the
problem. Should we use Greek concepts like 'matter', 'spirit', and 'infinity'
to clarify the meaning, or should believers be content with a mental picture of
God as an old man sitting on a throne (anthropomorphism)? Synods
or councils were gatherings of representatives of local churches, not
gatherings of bishops. So the emperor, local rulers, bishops, priests, abbots,
monks, and laymen attended them. Monks had a particular reputation for
extremism and turbulence. Major councils, with representatives summoned by the
Byzantine emperor from all over the Empire, were held at Nicaea in 325, at Constantinople in 381, at
Ephesus in 431, at
Chalcedon in 451,
and at Constantinople in 481. The definitions of these five councils have generally been
accepted as the statement of orthodox doctrine.
Other, more local councils were
also convened, in particular provinces or groups of provinces, but their
authority was regarded as less, and useful chiefly as a witness to what the teaching
was in that region at that time. Such in France
were the Councils of Arles in 314, of Orange in 441, of
Vaison in 442, and Tours in 461. Some bishops from Britain
attended these councils (de Paor, St
Patrick).
Within each diocese
there was always a gathering of the priests and lay persons to elect a new
bishop when the old one died. This was true originally even of the city of
Rome. In the case
of an archbishop, the bishops of the province also attended. The local ruler
was also represented. Many abuses gradually led to the exclusion of the laity.
In the depths of the Dark Ages the papacy became a pawn of the great families
who lived around Rome. Their opinion was still considered, though they could not attend
in person but could only send a message. If the message was from the king it
was usually attended to. The election did not confer the priestly or episcopal
powers; these were conferred by the local bishops.
[Top]
Monasticism
A Christian movement
for personal sanctification spread widely among lay persons. It came to be
called monasticism, from the Greek
word for a person living alone. The monastic life proper began when men went to
live in desert places to lead the Christian life. The earliest known monk is St
Antony who lived in the Egyptian desert c.300 AD. The greatest concentrations
of monks were in central Egypt at
a place called the Thebaid and in the Libyan or
Western
Desert at
Scete not far from the Nile delta in the fourth century when the '‘Desert Fathers'’
flourished. There were raids by barbarians on the southern flanks of the Empire
as well as the northern and gradually the deserts of Egypt
became unsafe, and the heartland of monasticism moved to Palestine and Syria.
One of the problems in
dealing with monasticism is that a strict definition of monasticism is not
possible. Monasticism or monachism, was mode of life
practised by persons who abandoned the world for religious reasons and devoted
their lives, either separately or in community, to spiritual perfection.
Monasticism is not mentioned explicitly in the Bible, but it is found in other
earlier religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. In the centuries immediately
preceding the birth of Christ the religious movement of the Essenes was
established in desert places. John the Baptist lived in the desert. Jesus went
into the desert to fast and pray, and during his ministry took his disciples
aside into a desert place eis eremon
topon (Mark 6.31). Whatever the origin of monasticism, Christians connected
it St John the Baptist in the desert. There is little doubt that some of the
Christians in the early Church gave their goods to the poor, lived unmarried or
widowed, and devoted themselves to good works. But it is also likely that the
practice of Christian monasticism was influenced by developments of Hindu
monasticism. Influences could have come directly to Egypt via
the Red Sea. But the different characteristics of Syrian monasticism could have
come via Persia. (These characteristics of Syrian monasticism that involved certain
afflictions and macerations of the flesh did not reach the West before the
twelfth century, and came via the Byzantine
Empire.) Egyptian monasticism restricted
itself to fasting which was a common expression of grief, mourning, purification
and repentance, and was not aimed at '‘subduing the flesh'’.
Egyptian practice was the common one in western monasticism until the twelfth
century)
Instruction by an older monk in
the ways of the Spirit was an essential part of monasticism. The form of
instruction given by these spiritual fathers was gnomic and of course supposed
that the aspirant to the religious life was already a fully instructed
Christian. Typically, the aspirant would ask an older monk called the abba
(father) to guide him. He would be appointed place where he could build a hut
and shown how he could support himself. This could be done by planting crops,
weaving mats or baskets for sale, or hiring himself as a labourer at seed and
harvest time. He would then be taught the method of singing the psalms, and
this usually involved committing the entire Psalter to memory. Food was the
minimum required for survival, and garments the minimum that shelter and
decency required, the aim being to spend as much time as possible at prayer or
meditating on the truths of the Bibles or the ‘words’ of instruction of the abba.
“Abba Aio
questioned Abba Macarius and said:
'‘Give me a word'’.
Abba Macarius said to him:
'‘Flee from men, stay
in your cell, weep for your sins, do not take pleasure in the conversation of
men and you will be saved'’’’(Ward,
138).
"“Abba
Poemen said to Abba Joseph
'‘Tell me how to
become a monk'’. He said '‘If
you want to find rest here below and hereafter, in all circumstances say, Who am I? and do not judge anyone'’"”
The sayings of the
women in the deserts and monasteries were also included in the collections. "“Amma
Syncletica said,' ‘In the
beginning there are a great many battles, and a good deal of suffering for
those who are advancing towards God, and afterwards, ineffable joy. It is like
those who wish to light a fire; at first they are choked by smoke and cry, and
by this means obtain what they seek (as it is said
"‘Our God is a
consuming fire’ [Heb. 12.24]): so we also must kindle the divine fire in
ourselves through tears and hard work'’"”.
(Ward 231).
'‘Abba'’
(‘father’ in Aramaic or Syriac) became '‘abbas'’ in
Greek and Latin, and abbot in English. '‘Amma'’
(mother) was not used in the West;
'‘abbess'’
is derived from
'‘abbatissa'’ a feminine
form of
'‘abbas'’.
Monasticism was
essentially a lay movement. It was for laymen and women who chose to devote
themselves to a solitary life of prayer. Though they were Christians, and
received the Christian sacraments from time to time, their life did not revolve
around the liturgy of the priests, or preaching, or instructing in religion, or
assisting the poor. Even when spiritual leaders like St Pachomius in the
Thebaid (the region around Thebes, now Luxor on the Nile) gathered aspirants into monasteries with fixed times for prayer,
work, repasts, and instruction, monasticism was essentially a private spiritual
quest. Some of the clergy however, like St
Martin and St Augustine
endeavoured to combine monastic exercises with their public ministry.
Many of the monks were
simple Coptic peasants, but many also were learned men from Alexandria and
other Greek-speaking cities. These had studied philosophy and were trying to
express Christian thought and experience in terms of the current Neo-Platonist
philosophy. The principal Christian philosopher at the time was Origen
(185-254). Evagrius of Pontus (345-400) belonged to the Origenist school. He
spent many years in the Egyptian deserts and, from his experience, wrote
various works on prayer. He stressed the need to attain apatheia (not afflicted by human passions) and hesychia (peace, or tranquillity of
soul). Two books about them called their
'‘Lives'’, and their
''“Sayings'’
became the standard reading for monks. To these were added the
'‘Institutes'’
and ‘Conferences’ of John Cassian. It was the
custom in Benedictine monasteries to read a chapter from Cassian each day. The
house in which this was done was called a chapterhouse. Down the centuries when
public buildings were few, religious and lay lords often used the chapterhouses
of monasteries for their meetings. There were no proper rules for monks, and a
novice found out how to be a monk largely by listening to what advice the
superior of the monastery, the abbot, gave him, or through listening to the
readings in church. The ideas of Evagrius were adopted by Cassian and
recommended by St Benedict for the more proficient monks. (It may be also noted
that in the sixteenth century a Jesuit priest called Rodrigues went through the
old stories of the Desert Fathers and adapted them for the use of novices in
his own day.
'‘Rodrigues'’
became a staple in the formation of novices in nearly every religious order for
the following three centuries.) It is possible to read Cassian and entirely
overlook his teaching on mystical prayer, being beguiled by his tales of the
Desert Fathers. Though the adaptation of Evagrius'’ teaching on prayer
was central to the work of Cassian he had to be circumspect because some of the
teachings of Origen had been condemned. In the Eastern Church, St Basil commended
the care of the poor to monks.
Different
interpretations of monasticism were introduced into the western Empire by
St Augustine, and
St Martin of Tours. These were bishops
and Augustine wrote a brief treatise or Rule for a community of priests. This
Rule was frequently adopted by canons in cathedrals. Canons who
followed a rule were called regular canons. Gradually the diocesan canons
became known as a chapter. In time the monks added the singing of the Eucharist
to their hours of prayer, while the canons added the monastic hours to their
sung Eucharist’s, and all used the Gregorian chant. The two bodies became
virtually indistinguishable, but canons were always priests with the pastoral
duties of priests while monks were mostly laymen. The Rule of St Augustine was
spread widely as a spiritual treatise, and from the tenth century onwards was
used as the basic Rule for many monasteries and Orders. Being short and
flexible it was very adaptable and from the twelfth century onwards it was
widely adopted in Ireland.
St Martin of Tours was
by far the most influential figure in introducing monastic ideals to
Gaul, Britain
and Ireland. He founded a monastery at Ligugé near Tours before 370
AD, the first in Gaul. This was an attempt, like St Augustine'’s
at Hippo to combine a monastic observance with the duties of a bishop. Two
proper monasteries were founded in the south of France
early in the 5th
century, the monastery of Lerins near Cannes by St.
Honoratus of Arles c. 410, and the monastery of SS Peter and Victor founded by Cassian
in Marseilles c. 415. Cassian had lived for many years in the Egyptian desert and
made it his duty to spread the teachings of the Desert Fathers far and wide and
also the hysychasm of Evagrius.
Despite the controversies, and despite the growth of monasticism,
Christianity grew and flourished, now protected by the emperors, grew and
flourished. Popes and bishops were not persecuted but venerated. Christian art
flourished. This is the era of the great basilicas, i.e. great churches built
at the expense of the emperor (basileus).
There was St Peter’s, and Saint Paul’s
outside the walls, St Mary Major, and St John Lateran. St Mary Major remains in
its original glory. St Paul’s is a close replica rebuilt after a fire in the nineteenth century.
There was the church of San Clemente and the Church of Santa Sabina. Christians coming to Rome from that day to this, would go around the basilicas and churches,
and venerate the relics of the martyrs. The mention of walls reminds us that
Rome itself was now
liable to be attacked. In the following centuries came the glorious churches at
Ravenna, and the new churches in Constantinople. Besides the great beauty of the architecture, the churches were
often embellished with mosaics. Sculpture was in decline, and the tendency was
to concentrate on relief work especially on the exterior of sarcophagi. In
simplified forms this was to be taken up in Ireland.
The relief work on sarcophagi was transferred to reliquaries. It was the great
age of the Latin Church Fathers, the great religious teachers, St Jerome,
St Augustine, St
Ambrose, St Leo the Great, St Gregory the Great. The definitive translation of
the Bible into Latin was made by St
Jerome, who studied Hebrew for
that very purpose. St Augustine became the unrivalled teacher of Latin Christianity for a thousand
years, and his Confessions (rather Professions) was one of the most beautiful
books ever written, and helped to form the Western mind. These developments
came to an end in the middle of the sixth century but ever afterwards provided
an ideal of what a Christian civilisation should be.
[Top]
Christianity
and the Slave Trade
Slavery was universal in the ancient
world. In itself, it was a simple economic relationship whereby the slave was
obliged to serve a master all his life, could only marry with his master’s
permission, and all his children continued in his servile state. His master
undertook to provide him with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter while he
lived. The position of a slave was therefore somewhat better than that of a
casual labourer. In Exodus, provision was made for a man to embrace servitude
voluntarily (Exodus 21). The New Testament made no alteration; the freedom
conferred being that of the Spirit. St Paul returned a
runaway slave to his owner. Though slavery could be mild, it does not follow
that all masters were kind, and women slaves could be expect to be
systematically abused, especially by the master’s sons.
In the
eighteenth century, William Wilberforce began his attack, not on slavery as
such but on the slave trade. His argument basically, that the slave trade could
be broken down into slave-raiding, slave trading, and slave owning. With regard
to slave-raiding, this was carried out by sovereign states in Africa about which Britain
could do nothing. With regard to slave-owning, the slaves were largely owned by
American, Spanish, and Portuguese slave-owners in the Americas,
and again Britain could not interfere. But carrying the slaves in ships across the Atlantic was something the
British navy could do something about. When the carrying of slaves across the Atlantic was stopped,
slave-raiding would cease in Africa, for there would be no market for the slaves.
Conditions were no different in the
ancient world. There were slave-raiders, slave-traders, and slave owners. For
the slave raiders, slaves were a valuable currency. You could sell them to buy
wine and other luxury goods. There was always a market for them. There was
always an unending supply of them, if only you were stronger than your
neighbour. All along the borders of the Empire, the pattern of slave-raiding
beyond the frontier, the trading towards the slave markets to the south, and
the slave-owners in the south. The principal source of slaves was among the
Slavic-speaking peoples who gave their name to slavery. They were not the only
peoples raided for slaves. It was recounted that Pope Gregory determined to
convert the Angles, after seeing fair-haired slaves taken from that people in
Rome. But as the
local rulers in Scotland, and Ireland, and later in Scandinavia, found there was an excellent source of slaves within the Roman Empire. The Irish raids
on Britain were recorded in Roman times, and St Patrick was the most famous
slave. There is no need to assume that slave-raiding ceased during the
Anglo-Saxon period. though it may have become more
difficult. We can assume that the British and Anglo-Saxons equally raided each
other to get slaves. For the Irish, slave-raiding was a lucrative extension to
the cattle-raiding.
The consequence of this was that
there would have been quite a few Christians scattered among the pagan peoples
in Northern and Central Europe, both inside and outside the old frontier. Priests from their own
regions could visit them on occasion provided they brought suitable gifts to
the local chief. It is reasonable to assume that the first missions in Ireland, Scotland,
Frisia, Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, Switzerland and Scandinavia were to these scattered groups of slaves.
[Top]
Christianity
in Britain
There are no records
about the origins of Christianity in Britain,
but Tertullian (d. 225 AD) mentioned its presence. According to Tertullian, a
priest from Carthage, Christianity had already spread over the Roman frontiers in his
time. Origen (d. 254) too made vague references to them (Collingwood 270). As
mentioned above Caerleon and Verulam produced martyrs in the persecution of
Diocletian (303-4). According to Gildas the monk writing much later the many
churches which had been destroyed were re-built when the persecution was over,
and many more were built. Three bishops from Britain,
from London, York, and from a colony of Londoners (probably Lincoln), along with a
priest and a deacon, attended the Synod of Arles in 314 AD (Collingwood 271).
It does not seem that any British bishop attended the Council of Nicaea in 325
though its condemnation of Arianism was accepted universally in the British
churches. Three British bishops had their travel expenses paid by the Emperor
Constantius to attend the council of Ariminium in 360. Other bishops from Britain
may have travelled at their own expense.
There are almost no relics of Christianity in the villas of the rich,
showing that it was still a religion of the poorer classes. Even by 400 AD it
was probably a minority religion, and pagan temples were still being built.
Almost certainly too it was confined to the towns. Saint Patrick'’s
father would have been a Roman official in a town, though he may have resided
mostly in a villa outside the town,
having also a casa or town house. Britain
was divided into Roman provinces and each should have had a bishop or
archbishop of its own. Whether there was more than one bishop in each province
in 410 is another matter. After 208 there were two Roman provinces in Britain,
but no attempt seems to have been made to establish metropolitan sees. There
were up to fifty Roman towns, some no more than villages, but twenty with more
than 1,000 inhabitants. Verulam (St Alban’s) could have as many as 5,000.
Twenty bishops might be a reasonable estimate. It would seem that the British
bishops looked to the Roman city of Auxerre as their mother or metropolitan
church, and that Auxerre exercised supervision not only over the churches in
Britain, but also over the Christians in Ireland as well. But the Church was
thriving and there were numerous bishops at the time of the arrival of
St Augustine in 597
AD. Pope Gregory I who sent him was probably badly informed about conditions
beyond the pagan settlements in Kent.
Contacts between Britain and Rome would have be difficult following the conquest of the coasts of
southern Britain by the Saxons around 500 AD.
With the departure of
the Romans the tribal structure of government revived. The upper classes still
retained their Romanised ways. This was especially true of Wales,
where an island of civilisation survived during the barbarian invasions. France
and most of Britannia was over-run but the Roman ways survived in Wales.
The legionary centre at Caerleon and its neighbouring town Caer-went in south
east Wales was to become the great centre of Christianity, and from there it
spread all over Wales. There can be little doubt that the first Irish Christians and
missionaries came from Wales. As Christianity disappeared from eastern and southern Britain
it would have become stronger in northern and western Britain.
At least half of Britannia was still Romanised, and
British-speaking.
The period following the Roman withdrawal from Britain
(410 AD) coincided closely with the first arrival of the first Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes and the spread of Christianity to Ireland.
The first two were connected, for the weakening of Roman power meant that the
barrier to the settlement of peoples from beyond the frontiers could not be
prevented. These peoples from the east had settlement as their primary object.
The raiders from Scotland and Ireland were concerned mostly with plunder though there may have been some
Irish settlement in Wales. The weakening grasp of the Romans facilitated the raiding, and as
Roman Britain was comparatively rich, the raids were profitable. By the end of the Roman
period which was a century after the reign of Constantine (d. 337
AD), Christianity was reasonably well established in Britain.
In the first half of the fifth century, after the official departure
of the Roman legions, and before the large-scale pagan Anglo-Saxon settlement,
we are given a picture of Christianity at the time of the visit of Germanus,
bishop of Auxerre. As often happens there is only one document referring to an
entire episode, in this case a Life of St. Germanus by Constantius of Lyon.
There is also a passing reference in the Chronicles of Prosper of Aquitaine.)
In the year 429 some of the British Christians appealed to the bishops of Gaul seeking help against the
spread of Pelagianism. Pelagius himself may have been British, but the local
bishops evidently did not feel sufficiently confident of their theological
learning to dispute with the Pelagians. Or perhaps the local bishops were
divided on the subject. According to Bede, writing 300 years later the heresy
was introduced by
Agricola son of Severianus a prelate. The point at issue was
whether man was saved solely by grace, or whether he could help to sanctify
himself by his own efforts. The stricter type of Christian, like the heretical
Montanists, condemned the laxity of certain Christians, and practised an
austere form of life. Pelagius believed that Christians should make effort to
sanctify themselves. (The point has never been solved to the satisfaction of
all Christians.) According to Prosper, Germanus through the deacon Palladius,
consulted Pope Celestine I, and received papal authorisation to deal with the
affairs in a different province. Presumably this was not strictly necessary, as
he had been invited to assist.
He visited Verulam (St Alban’s) and found that though it had
suffered from raids by the pagans, it was still ruled by the Romano-British.
When he was there, there was an attack by Picts and Saxons, Germanus who had
previously been a leading magistrate, helped to organise the British and to
drive them off. He made a second visit to Britain
in 438. Gradually Roman urban life was breaking down, and was being replaced
with British chiefdoms. These were still Romanised,
and the change by no means meant a return to the early Iron Age. After 446,
Angles, Jutes, and Saxons came to settle in Britain, after they were given land
in Kent by a British chief called Vortigern who ruled in south east England.
[Top]
Ireland
in the Roman Period (100 to 400 AD)
Irish people of an
older generation will wonder what happened to the Milesians, Nemedians,
Formorians, and such peoples who formed their introduction to Irish history. In
the nineteenth century, when historians were less critical of what was written
in old Irish manuscripts than they are at present the accounts of the first
peoples to come to Ireland were accepted as fact. Some writers expressed
disbelief that the settlers arrived before the Flood (Genesis 6) but others
accepted it. The Parthalonians were commonly held to be the first to land. They
came from Greece 2520 years after the creation of the world and occupied
Ireland for three centuries, and were all wiped out by a plague. (The
chronology of the Bible had been carefully worked out by James Ussher,
archbishop of Armagh, died 1656, and he placed the date of creation in 4004
BC.) Others calculated their arrival in 2200 BC. The land was empty for thirty
years, until the Nemedians, came from the shores of the Black Sea in 1900 BC.
Their leaders, Nemedius, was eleventh in descent after
Noah. The Nemedians were constantly harassed by the Formorians, who were
pirates and sea-robbers. According to some the Nemedians and Formorians all perished
in a great battle, but other hold that the survivors of the Nemedians went to
Greece, and were compelled to dig clay in the fertile valleys and carry it in
leather bags up the sides of the mountains. From this they got their name Fir Bolg, or Men of the Leather Bags.
The Fir Bolg returned to Ireland
around 1300 BC. At the same time another group of the Nemedians, who had gone
to Denmark also returned. This was the Tuatha
de Danann. In a battle between them the Fir
Bolg were defeated and reduced to subjection. Some of the Fir Bolg went to the Aran Islands in
Galway Bay and maintained their independence. According to some they were
responsible for dividing Ireland into five provinces. The fifth colony was
composed of the Milesians. They were supposed to originate in Scythia, to have
lived in Egypt at the time of the pharaohs, to have gone to Spain, and finally
to have arrived in Ireland in 1000 BC. It was supposed by some that they came
through Gaul and Britain, and spoke the same Celtic tongue that was spoken in
those parts. (This summary is taken from Joyce’s school textbook on Irish
history published in 1900. See also D’Alton 1912.)
These legends had been
collected by a Catholic priest in the seventeenth century called Geoffrey
Keating who had an uncritical mind. The Irish scholars in the nineteenth
century, though somewhat sceptical, were however reluctant to dismiss his accounts altogether for they knew he had used sources which
were no longer extant. And so it came about that Irish schoolchildren up to the
middle of the twentieth century were still being taught about Milesians and the
Fir Bolg. It does not appear to have
occurred to any of the scholars that even if there was a basis of truth in any
of the legends, the legends themselves might have been composed elsewhere and
imported by storytellers. For this reason they are unsafe sources for any
conclusions, for example, with regard to the use of chariots in Ireland.
In the succeeding
centuries, the great triennial feis
of gathering at Tara was said to have started. About 300 BC a queen called
Macha was said to have built a palace at Eamhain
Macha near Armagh (Ard Macha, the
Height of Macha), and to have established the ‘Knights of the Red Branch’ who
ruled over Ulster for 600 years. Modern
historians do not waste much time sifting the myths and legends about supposed
people and events before the days of writing. But they do survive especially in
Irish nationalist mythology and most people would be expected to recognise a
reference to them.
About this time there was supposed to be an invasion of Scotland led
by a man called Fergus, who was said to have gained control of the Highlands of
Scotland, and to have become the first king of Scotland. However his biographer
in the Dictionary of National Biography
(1888) dismisses him and the list of forty-five kings who succeeded him on the
throne of Scotland as completely fictional. There was also the story of the
three cousins, called the Three Collas who invaded Ulster and overthrew the
kingdom of Ulster centred on Eamhain
Macha. The Fir Bolg were said to
have occupied Galway, and to have been driven to the Aran Islands by the king
of Tara. There seems to have been no such a thing as a king of All Ireland.
However, as there are no written records we cannot be dogmatic about this. In
the first century AD a king called Conaire was said to have lived from whom
nine Irish saints claimed descent.
There was supposed to be a king called Tuathal (Toole) who imposed a
tribute on the men of Leinster. Tuathal Techtmhar
was supposed to have crossed the Shannon from Connaught in the second century,
and imposed the Boromha (Boru)
tribute on the Laighing. Whatever about tuatha, there was a tribute
claimed and resisted in later times. Some regard Tuatha as the local variation
of the common Celtic god Teutates. Tuatha is said to have been succeeded by
Conn Cead Cathach, (Conn Ked Caha, Conn of the Hundred Battles, or Conn the Hundred Fighter)
though some consider the latter a minor deity. Connacht would appear to be
connected with this Conn, though –acht (an
abstract suffix) is difficult to
reconcile as a tribal ending. To this period too the genealogists assign Eoghan
Mor (Owen More), from whom the Eoganacht, and the division of Ireland
into the two divisions, Leath Mogha and Leath Cuinn (the half of Mogh Nuada =
Eoghan Mor and the half of Conn. Mogh
Nuadat is translated as the Slave of Nuada Nuada himself was the local version
of the Celtic god Nodens, He was supposed to be a king of the Tuatha de Danaan who lost a hand in
battle. The god of medicine, Dian Cecht, made him a silver hand to replace it.
However as the loss of a hand counted as a defect he had to resign the
kingship. It would make more sense if Eoghan and Conn were minor deities around
whose shrines amphictyonies of tribes bonded themselves. Unsurprisingly, we
find later in the historical period a group called the Connacht in the northern half of Ireland and another called the Eoganacht in the southern half. Whatever
the basis for the story, it was true that no king of either half ever ruled in
other half until well into the Christian period. Historians are increasing
sceptical about the amount of historical truth that can be extracted from such
myths.
In this period were set the two mythological cycles of tales, those
of the Tain Bo Cualigne (Toyne boe Coolny - the Cattle Raid of Cooley) and
those of the Fianna. The tales of the
Fianna are very late, being recorded
mostly in the Middle Ages. But there may have been
some historical kernel. About the time
of Christ there was supposed to have been a queen in Connaught called Medb
(Maeve) who fought a campaign against Conor mac Nessa king of Ulster over a
bull called the Brown Bull of Cualigne (Cooley, the tuath of the Cualigne in
the Cooley peninsula in north Louth). The Tain
if it ever had an historical basis must be placed in this time when the Connacht and the Ultonii had a common frontier (Kinsella).
As in the Bible the genealogies would have reflected political
realities not factual records. In the third century was said to have lived
Cormac mac Art, the idealised king, the Irish Solomon, who ruled wisely. He was said to be a grandson of Conn Ced Cathach. He allegedly ruled from Tara,
and there founded three colleges, one for the study of military science, one for
history and literature, and one for law. In his time there was a body of
devoted youths called the Fianna
(Feena). From spring until autumn, so long as there was a danger of invasion
especially by the Romans, they lived in camps and survived by hunting. They
were commanded by Cormac’s son-in-law Finn mac Cumhail (Cool). On Cormac’s
death they rebelled against his son Cairbre
Lifechair (Cairbre of the Liffey),
who fought against them and dispersed them. There was some human occupation of
Tara in the Roman period, with some Roman remains. As Raftery notes, there is
no indication that they were native Irish. (For authoritative speculations see
de Paor, St Patrick’s World, and
Raftery Pagan Celtic Ireland).
Finally, we come to Niall NoiGiallach
on the very verges of the historic period, and who probably did exist around
the time claimed.
Ireland was traditionally divided into five regions or provinces, of
which four survive. They were Ulaid
(Ully or Ulla) in the north, Mumu in
the south, Lagin (Lagin or Line) in
the east (which three later received the Norse termination -ster), Fir nOlmacht in the West, and Mide in the centre. Though Fir nOlmacht (Men of Olmacht)
undoubtedly refers to a people, it is unclear if the other names refer to
people or places. Fir nOlmacht was
re-named Connacht (Connaught. The
word Olmacht has the same formation
as Connacht and Eoganacht, so all three may refer to divinities.) Even in the early
historical period the regions were quite distinct and cut off from each other
by woods and bogs. Mide, present day
Meath and Westmeath, may not have been a geographical region in its own right,
but added because of speculations about the nature of the cosmos or ordered
world (de Paor). Equally, for similar cosmic reasons combined with changes to
overlordship, Mide could have been
shrunk to a nominal province in the centre. Some historians think that Mide, the fifth province, was not county
Meath but a small territory in the middle of Ireland roughly where county
Longford is, but with a sacred significance of being the centre of Ireland Its
shrine would have been at Uisnech (Ushnach)
hill. From its summit twenty of the thirty two counties can be seen. . (A
different ancient tradition gives the provinces as Ulster, Leinster, Connaught,
West Munster, and East Munster.)
Raftery describes four great cultic centres in Ireland in the Iron
Age, one each in Ulaid, Laigin, Mide, and Connacht, and remarked on the absence
of Iron Age material from Mumu. It is therefore possible that it was Mumu that
was added as the fifth province. Eamhain
Macha the great cult-centre of Ulaid
was probably long since abandoned but surviving in the form of an annual royal oenach or fair. The same seems to have
been true of the other three major religious sites. No archaeological remains
of royal palaces have been found. As Raftery remarked it is difficult to
reconcile archaeological evidence with the literary sources when dealing with
royal sites (Raftery 81). The boundaries of these provinces have scarcely
changed from that day to this, though North Leinster or Meath was for a long
time counted as a fifth province) For political reasons in the heyday of the Ui Neill Meath was counted with Ulster
not Leinster, and so remains as part of the ecclesiastical province to this
day. For the purposes of Henry II in 1171 it would have still been counted with
Ulster, and his occupancy of Tara would have given him at least nominal rights
over the whole province. Throughout the Middle Ages
this overlordship was recognised by the Oirgialla
if not by the Ui Neill.
[Top]
Ptolemy’s Map
Around about 100 AD we begin to get scraps of written information
about Ireland. There is one piece of solid historical evidence about the
period, and that is Ptolemy'’s map. Again a lot
has to be built on a single document. Claudius Ptolemaeus,
or Ptolemy was born in Alexandria about 100 AD. He was apparently a Ptolemid
but a Roman citizen, and he wrote in Greek. He is chiefly famous for his theory
of the motions of the stars and planets, Ptolemy’s system. Though later proved
to be incorrect by Copernicus and Galileo it was reasonably accurate for the
purpose of making astronomical predictions, and the date of Easter could be
computed with some accuracy for centuries in advance. He knew that the world
was round, but agreed with the accepted idea that the earth was the centre of
the universe. His very ingenious theories explained the motions of the stars,
the sun, the moon and the planets so well that it was 1400 years before it was
questioned. He first rejected the argument that the apparent motions of the
heavens were caused by the rotation of the earth. One of his arguments was that
if any object were thrown up vertically it would not fall down in the same spot
if the earth were moving. His solution to the movement of the heavenly bodies
was basically a theory of large circles (cycle, kuklos) around the earth, each
with a smaller circle, an epicycle on it. The motion of a planet therefore was
along the circumference of the epicycle, which in turn moved along the cycle.
With certain further refinements the system actually worked so that prediction
regarding the position of a heavenly body became possible. Ptolemy, like most
of the Greeks, was a geometer, so a geometric solution was sought and then
valued. The calculations regarding the date of Easter used the Roman numerals.
He was also a geographer and
drew a map of the world on which he plotted places by degrees of latitude and
longitude. Much of this information about the British Isles he probably
obtained from mariners. The ascertaining of latitude is quite simple while an
estimate of the total size of the earth was made in Egypt by measuring the
length of one degree of latitude and multiplying it by 360. Directions north,
south, east and west are also easy to determine. Longitude could probably be
only estimated by the number of days sailing. Though the positions are given
only relative to each other, they are surprisingly accurate for the north,
east, and south coasts of Ireland, which would indicate a constant traffic of
trading ships.
The positions of the mouths of the Shannon, Boyne, Lagan, and Avoca
are given. The names are given in their P-Celtic form. He lists fifty five
names of peoples and places, only a few of which can be identified with any
certainty. The rivers Logia, Buvinda,
Oboca, and Senos can be
identified as the Lagan, Boyne, Avoca, and Shannon. The Lagan would have led
into the lands of the peoples later called Ulaid
who were always amongst the most open to influences from across the Irish Sea.
The Boyne and Shannon are navigable for a considerable distance inland.
Munster, as usual, is almost a blank except for descriptions of the coast. It
is recorded as being inhabited by a tribe called the Iberni whose name in Latin Hiberni
gave their name to the country Hibernia.
(St Patrick calls it Hiberione, which
looks as if it was taken from a Greek source, and the people Hibernionaces.) Whether the name Ireland
is derived from this or from yet another goddess cannot be determined. Though
the Avoca is a tiny river, it leads to the deposits of placer gold in Wicklow.
Of the names of the tribes given, the Voluntii
(in the Christian period Ultonii)
can possibly be identified with the Ulaid.
(Some prefer to connect them with the Iverni.)
The Brigantes are found in Ireland as
in England. Tribal names could change
from one generation to the next as the four-generation families split on the
death of the head of the family There was a tendency in Ireland to change the
form of the name and to drop terminal syllables, so that Menapii could become Fir
Monaigh (Fermanagh) the Belgae Fir Bolg, Dumnonii Fir Domnann. If these latter were accepted as equivalents
it would be an argument for an actual landing of Celtic-speaking tribes in
Ireland, but not necessarily as dominant tribes.
What the connection was between the tribes of Leinster and those on
the opposite Welsh coasts, and those of Ulster with those on the opposite
English and Scottish coasts is hard to determine. In the days when the existence
of a separate invasion of Q-Celtic speakers was taken for granted it was
concluded that the Q-Celts re-invaded the British coasts as Roman power
declined. On the other hand there is no indication that when the split between
P-Celtic and Q-Celtic occurred it had to be along the line of the Irish Sea.
The fact that certain tribes in Ulster were known as Cruithin or Pretani would
seem to indicate that they spoke P-Celtic for a considerable period after the
rest of the country was speaking Q-Celtic. (In the one ‘c’ occurs where ‘p’
occurs in the other: mac/map a son, ceann/pen a head). Q-Celtic was spoken
as far inland as Breconshire in mid-Wales. In the north of Britain it dominated
the Highlands. No mention is made of interpreters in the stories of St Patrick,
and it is not until St Columcille started speaking to the Picts in Scotland
that their need is mentioned.
We
are lacking information about contacts with Britain during the Roman period.
There should be no doubt that some of the warrior families on either side of
the Irish Sea had close connections with each other, and indeed were closely
related. Nor should it be thought that migration was one way. When the Romans
occupied the west and north of Britannia many warriors may have fled to Ireland
and Scotland. British warrior families may have continued to land during the
Roman period. Some think the name Cashel
is the Latin castellum. They also
point to the resemblance between Laigin
and Lleyn on the opposite Welsh coast. Indeed, some see the rise of aspiring
new groups like the Connacht, the Eoganacht, and the Deisi who were between them to conquer and occupy much of Ireland
to migrations in the later Roman period. These new migrants, it is assumed had
experience in the Roman army. The other theory is that these were Irish tuatha who gained experience in raiding
Britain.
Yet invasions from Ireland were no problem to the
Romans in Britain in the early Roman period unlike attacks from Scotland. This
may have been because the few points at which invading boats could have landed
were too well guarded by the Romans. All sailors in those days, and for long
after, travelled along the coast to the points where the channel was narrowest,
then crossed straight to the opposite shore, and followed the opposite coast to
their destination. In any case the Romans never saw fit to invade Ireland,
though some settlements either of Romans or of Romanised Britons seem to have
been made. Among these presumably were the first Christians. Later,
slave-raiding would have added to the number of Christians.
What was the population
of Ireland about the time of the birth of Christ? The Roman general Agricola
considered that Ireland could be conquered with a single legion of 6,000
troops. This would indicate that he did not expect to meet more than about
10,000 to 12,000 in a pitched battle or in separate skirmishes. As the warrior
class at that time probably did not exceed 5% of the population, and the
warriors themselves not more than 2%, the total population could have been half
a million. But if the free classes were armed and only the unfree deprived of
arms, the population could have been much lower, perhaps 200,000. Among the
Macedonian Greeks, also an Indo-European group, at the time of Alexander the
Great, there was an inner core of the army based on kinship with the ruler, and
an outer core based on political obligations, calculations of self-interest,
pay, and custom (Keegan 34ff). The unfree classes were never armed before the
16th century.
Nothing ever remains the same for long. By the fourth
century the balance of power had changed. Technology had also come to the aid
of the attackers. Ships no longer needed to crawl along the coasts. Invaders
from Scotland could make wide sweeps out into the Irish Sea before turning in
to attack further down the coast (Divine 234). Similarly raiders from Ireland
did not have to aim at the nearest point on the opposite coast. (Divine 234). (Merchants would of course have still followed
to older safer routes)
It is likely too that
there were many of the warrior class in Ireland who had seen service as Roman
legionaries, or as Roman auxiliary troops, and would have been acquainted with
Roman ways. Like all warrior classes they found the lure of plunder in badly
defended rich regions irresistible. Slave raiding was particularly attractive.
One of the many questions that surround the life of Saint Patrick is why he was
never ransomed. We can deduce that he still had relatives in Britain, and there
would have been no difficulty in sending messages through the merchants. It may
be that his family was too impoverished to pay the ransom demanded. It would
also explain why they were annoyed when he chose to spend the revenues of his
office in bribing the local chiefs of the slave raiders.
About 300 AD
Constantius Caesar reorganised the defences so that they faced towards the
west. By mid-century the various clans in Ireland and Scotland were combining
for massive raids. These reached a recorded peak about 400 AD and then declined
while the attacks of the Saxons on the other side grew. There is no obvious
reason for this. As literacy was wiped out, no records were written.
With regard to Irish society at the
time we are equally in the dark. It is not at all clear how far descriptions of
contemporary practice in Britain and the Continent applied to Ireland, apart
from what was common in the Iron Age. Some at least of the practices described
in later tales and law codes were doubtless observed, but it is impossible to
decide which.
The religious year
seems to have been divided into four quarters marked with feasts of four gods.
The first was in February, with the feast of the goddess Brigit, daughter of
the Dagda, the second in May with the
feast of Belenos, (Bealtaine) the
third in August with the god Lug (Lughnasa),
and finally the feast of the dead and the underworld, sacred to the great god,
the Dagda and his mate the Morrigan (Samain) The Dag da said
to mean The Good God and the Mor rigan,
said to mean Great Queen, could have come from either the Indo-European or the
native religious tradition. The names of three feasts are still kept in the
Gaelic calendar. The survival of the cult of the dead and the underworld should
be noticed. But as de Paor notes (de Paor, St Patrick 27ff) there was much not
typically Indo-European in the religion of Ireland when it was finally
committed to writing. Indeed, in the Mor Rigan and the Dag Da we may see a survival of the
myths of Osiris and Isis. Lug was a common Celtic god, and Bealtine is usually
connected with Belenos. The goddess Brigit may be connected with the Brigantes
in Britain. Macha of Eamhain Macha,
and Medb, associated with the Connacht,
may be alternative names for the Mor Rigan
(Cunliffe). Nuada seems to be the same as Nodens,
After the year 300 AD there seem to have been various changes, the
most notable of these being the revival of agriculture. The long period of
decline came to an end and signs of tillage re-appear. Why this was so is
unclear. There was no noticeable change in climate for the rate of bog increase
was unchanged. Nor are there any signs of a decrease in warfare. It is thought that the difference was made by
the introduction of the plough with the coulter drawn by ox-teams, This would have
allowed the farmers to plough deeper and draw up minerals from a lower level,
as much as nine inches. The sour acid soil that favoured the growth of heathers
and birches would have been ploughed again. Even in the fallow periods trees
other than birch could thrive. Some soils in Ireland are permanently fertile,
but there are many soils which need long fallows and indeed become so exhausted
that they return to wasteland and are reclaimed periodically. Such are the
heavy clay soils in south Louth which were reclaimed by the Cistercians in the
Middle Ages, and reclaimed again in the 18th century by Baron Foster who spread
vast quantities of lime to counteract the acidity. By this time iron was quite
common, displacing the bronze tools. Whether or not the ox-drawn coulter plough
was introduced at this time or not, it is reasonable to assume that contacts
between both side of the Irish Sea were numerous.
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