Saints and Scholars

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The Irish even borrowed the Roman alphabet so they could translate Latin documents and help themselves to the latest devices. We can deny it all we want, but that’s who we are and that’s what we’ve come from: 1500 years of Christian living.” Piecing the lives together from strictly historical texts and hagiographies – saints’ lives intended to provoke wonder and provide models for holy life – entails some thoughtful and creative work, Fr Ó Ríordáin continues.

Cummian's expertise was shown in letters dating from 633 between him and the abbot of Iona, Ségéne. Cummian had changed his method for calculating the fall of Easter, breaking away from the method adopted by monasteries founded by Colm Cille and adopting the one used in Rome. This caused Ségéne to accuse Cummian of heresy.

Certainly Irish texts on Computus were lodged in Irish monasteries abroad and in the libraries of Germany, France and other countries. But our success in the field, which involved complex mathematics, is not recognised today.

His relevance is really the heart of the Christian message, namely a personal relationship with Christ as distinct from knowing about Christ,” he says, noting that Irish as a language points to different levels of knowledge, where ‘aithne’ means a basic familiarity, but ‘eolas’ and ‘fios’ point to a deeper understanding and an actual relationship. After decades of industrial peat-cutting to fuel Ireland's stoves, the bog was no longer nature's healthy blanket of saturated spongy moss it once was. But, several years since harvesting ended (due to green policies), it was encouraging to see flora gaining confidence over a largely drab landscape. Whereas, what is your relationship with someone like Jesus? Some of the martyrs in Egypt who were beheaded last year, and one of them muttering the name Jesus as they were about to take the head off him: he had relationship there.” But the manuscripts, along with later archaeological discoveries, also show the Irish in the eighth century AD were adept engineers, making improvements in technologies used for metal-working and agriculture, and we even had a reputation as boat-builders. Christianity first came to Ireland between the 3rd and 5th Centuries and while much of Europe was plunging into the Dark Ages, Ireland provided a beacon of light.The absolution side of it was something that developed from the spiritual direction of a person,” he adds. Legacy It is during this period Ireland earned the title Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum, the Island of Saints and Scholars. There is, of course, an abundance of books out there about ‘Celtic spirituality’ that owe rather more to the ‘New Age’ beliefs and practices than the historical Church in these islands, but Fr Ó Ríordáin says it’s important to focus on the Christian character of the Irish saints. Focus During your visit you can visit our reconstructed Irish Celtic round tower. You will walk into and experience early Celtic monastic life, simple and solitary, given to prayer and contemplation by visiting our reconstructed Celtic ‘bee-hive’ cell as well as an early monastic cave dwelling. Moninne was a powerful force and was instrumental in the development of the great monastic movement, founding churches in Ireland and Scotland. These saints were similar in their determination to help and enrich the lives of others, whether through healing or sharing their faith. Would their actions and powers of healing have been interpreted in the same way in a different time or place, for example, Salem, Massachusetts or Mistley, Essex? Thankfully, none of these inspirational women were burned at the stake or thrown into water to see if they would sink or float. Instead, their miracles and deeds were recognised and they were venerated as saints.

The Irish never took too much to that, in the sense that even as I sit here in the monastery garden now I’m looking down at the graveyard and I know several fellows who I pray to as saints but there’d be no question of them ever being canonised,” Fr Ó Ríordáin says, before adding with a laugh: “Whereas if they were in Italy they’d probably be universally known at this stage!” The third member of Ireland’s trio of patron saints is, of course, St Colmcille, sometimes known as Columba, who Fr Ó Ríordáin describes as “one of those magnetic figures that kind of transcends time”. But the fact Ireland escaped the grip of the Roman Empire served to set it apart as a centre of learning and spirituality from all other European countries. It was certainly quite common in the Celtic world,” says Fr Ó Ríordáin. “What happened to the Columban rule is that it was too strict for the continentals, with the result that they moved towards the Benedictine rule, which was more benign. As a result nearly all the Columban monasteries on the continent became Benedictine abbeys.Insulated on the western shores of Europe, Ireland’s institutions could continue to prosper and evolve without interruption leading to a period of intellectual, religious, and artistic superiority that has been called ‘Ireland’s Golden Age’. Hagiography is fascinating, especially Irish hagiography, in particular the lives of early Irish saints. This ancient literary genre was an important way of recording the extraordinary lives of saints and the miracles and incredible feats attributed to them. Springing forward a few centuries, Ireland has contributed to global knowledge of the world around us in many other areas. Robert Boyle, a Waterford man known as "the father of chemistry", was one of the first scientists in the world to suggest that matter was not made of earth, water, air and fire (as was thought at the time) but was instead made up of smaller particles, which we now know as atoms. Maud Delap, a self-taught marine biologist who studied specimens off the shoreline of Valentia in Co Kerry, made major contributions to understanding the complex life-cycles of jellyfish and other marine life. And we are likely all familiar with the story of William Rowan Hamilton who, in a moment of inspiration, inscribed his quaternion equation on Broom Bridge in Dublin – an equation which is now core to programming 3D graphics.