Early Celtic Christianity

by Brendan Lehane

This lively and original account of early Celtic Christianity - which was of far greater importance in the development of Western culture than we commonly realize - is told against the background of European history of the first seven centuries A.D. It focuses on the lives of Saints Brendan, Columba, and Columbanus, who lived active and effective lives in the cause of the early Church. Brendan, one of the founding fathers of Christianity in Ireland, was known in legend as a voyager and was thought to have reached the Western Hemisphere long before the Vikings. Columba took Celtic Christianity to Scotland and helped to re-establish it in Wales and in the North and West of England. Columbanus was the great Irish missionary to continental Europe, where he and his followers helped to convert the heathen invaders from the East. When Rome, in the person of St. Augustine, Pope Gregory's apostle to the Angles, penetrated again to England, a showdown between Roman and Celtic Christianity was inevitable. The dramatic confrontation occurred at the Council of Whitby in 664. Rome, with its organization and authority, won, and Celtic Catholicism went into eclipse. But some of its influence persisted all over Europe, and it had a large share in shaping the culture that ultimately emerged from the dark ages. This book's fascination is the picture that it gives of the movements of peoples, the shaping of new countries, and the development of ideas during those too-little-known centuries.

Genres: History, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Marie De Coster · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. It is not too heavy in the historical content that overwhelmes the reader who has not got an in-depth knowledge of the subject. A really nice read and explanation of the political backdrop of the centuries causing the development of church and religion. The book is a little disorganised but do not be deterred from reading. Ot is a hood starter to the subject.

[Zach Hollifield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very difficult to read and get through; and I love reading all kinds of history. Insights into early Irish mission to the continent show up here and there and are interesting. Other than that, not much gold to be mined.

[Stephen Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lehane's account of Irish Christianity in the 200-odd years between St. Patrick and the Synod of Whitby employs some masterful prose along a meandering way, a subconscious hat-tip if not an intentional tribute to his subject, which was so often bent upon undertaking the patterns of pilgrimage with passion and the highest possible attention to beauty. Some of Lehane's more insightful analysis comes in his contrast of Benedictine stability and Celtic wayfaring in each tradition of monasticism, implying that only Celtic monastic fire could have established the necessary beachheads for Christianity in Europe, while Benedictine plodding was necessary for Christianity's long-term presence on the Continent.

"Where Brendan, Columba, and Columbanus crossed seas and climbed mountains on pilgrimages that lasted years, Benedict of Nursia travelled scarcely more than a hundred miles in his lifetime... Life in [Benedict's] monastery was neither too strict nor too lax... [taking] the middle course between sybarite and beggar.

"The Irish were worlds apart. Their instinct was for the dramatic and the extreme. Benedict, according to Gregory, 'drew back his foot lest, entering too far in acquaintance with the world, he might have fallen into that dangerous and godless gulf.' The Irish lost tempers and risked lives, climbed mountains, interfered, found joy in nature and dejection in sin, took subtlety too far and were led by blatancy into error... The Irish brought the spirit of the early Church into an age that had seen it and watched it decay... [and] when they had gone, the gentler nature of the Benedictines laid more lasting foundations."

[Zane Griggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent content, poor organization.