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Celts and Christians: New Approaches to the Religious Traditions of Britain and Ireland by Mark Atherton, ed. Univ. of Wales Press, 2002 224 pp., $39.95  Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams by Ian Bradley Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1999 258 pp., $31.76 |
In the year of our Lord 603, perhaps in the early spring, Augustine, the first Bishop of Canterbury, prepared for the encounter that may have precipitated his mission to Britain in the first place. He was about to receive a contingent from the British, or Celtic, Church.
Augustine had come as a missionary to Britain under special appointment by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. As one story has it, the pope was moved to evangelize the British after learning the provenance of fair-haired youths he had glimpsed in a Roman market. Or, he may have been seeking to learn more about a segment of the Church, a representative of which, Columbanus, had begun sending Gregory what he must have regarded as impertinent letters of complaint and advice. In a series of bold missives from the south of France, the Irish missionary argued the superiority of certain Celtic Christian traditions over those being insisted upon by what he described as rather undisciplined bishops of the Roman Church in his vicinity. (Columbanus would later flatly refuse an invitation by those same bishops to attend a synod where they hoped to set him straight on certain matters of ecclesiastical order and practice.) Gregory's sending of Augustine to the British was perhaps motivated as much by curiosity concerning these Celtic Christians and their nonconforming ways as by compassion for blue-eyed pagans.
The meeting for which Augustine now waited in his episcopal chair was actually his second with the "Britons." The first had been a less-than-successful introduction between the two parties. Doubtless he hoped this larger meeting would go better. The Venerable Bede, writing one century after the event, picks up the story:
Those summoned to his council first visited a wise and prudent hermit, and enquired of him whether they should abandon their own traditions at Augustine's demand. He answered, "If he is a man of God, follow him." "But how can we be sure of this?" they asked. "Our Lord says, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart," he replied. "Therefore if Augustine is meek and lowly in heart, it shows that he bears the yoke of Christ himself, and offers it to you. But if he is haughty and unbending, then he is not of God, and we should not listen to him." Then they asked, "But how can we know even this?" "Arrange that he and his followers arrive first at the place appointed for the conference," answered the hermit. "If he rises courteously as you approach, rest assured that he is the servant of Christ and do as he asks. But if he ignores you and does not rise, then, since you are in the majority, do not comply with his demands." The British bishops carried out his suggestion, and it happened that Augustine remained seated in his chair. Seeing this, they became angry, accusing him of pride and taking pains to contradict all that he said.1
Thus began the romance of Western Christianity with that of the Celtic tradition, an ambivalent relationship that has endured for nearly 1500 years.
From the time of this failed face-to-face encounter with Celtic Christians, the Church in the West has not quite known what to make of this strain of our common tradition and faith. In his Celtic Christianity, Ian Bradley provides a concise overview of the period of Celtic Christianity's flourishing—roughly the middle of the 5th century to the end of the 8th—together with a well-documented history of the Western Church's centuries-long romance with the people of this period. He nicely summarizes the achievement of Patrick and his spiritual heirs—without the myth and hyperbole that often accompanies such accounts—and traces the history since then of Catholic and Protestant scholarship and other involvement with Celtic Christians.
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