Ireland: The Isle of Saints and Scholars

By Ken Concannon
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of 3/21/02)

Each year during the month of March Irish communities throughout the world celebrate the feast of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, the land once known as "the isle of saints and scholars." The celebrations -- St. Patrick's Day parades, dinner dances, parties, etc. -- are more cultural than religious and stand as witness to the continued existence of an Irish Catholic tradition that began fifteen hundred years ago when Patrick first set foot on Irish soil.

Curiously, the man honored as representative of that tradition was not Irish. Patrick was most probably a Briton, a Romanized Celt from the land that would later become England. And although the Irish have chosen to honor him as their patron, he certainly was not the only saint associated with the Emerald Isle. There have been hundreds of them, all native Irish, and most of them -- men and women like Columcille (Columba), Columbanus, Bridget, Ita, Gall, Kevin, Aiden -- products of Ireland's Golden Age, an era during the latter half of Christianity's first millennium, and one that paralleled what historians have long referred to as the Dark Ages.

It was the era that produced the Irish saints and scholars who introduced both Christianity and literacy to the barbarian peoples who had overrun the European continent. Ireland's conversion to Christianity in the 5th century paralleled the collapse of the old Roman Empire. Continental Europe had become a few walled
cities run by ignorant bureaucrats and surrounded by even more ignorant and often very dangerous barbarians. Ireland during that period became a safe haven for scholars escaping what had become for them a very hostile environment on the continent. With these exiles came the works of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, the languages of Latin and Greek, and the Latin alphabet. The Irish embraced the new scholarship with a reverence previously reserved for their poets.

Did they recognize in the epics of Homer and Virgil traces of their own Celtic past? Did they realize that the Latin alphabet provided a much more efficient vehicle for spreading the good news of Christianity and Irishness than the one they had been using? No one knows for sure. What we do know is that the Irish took to the classical writings, and to the Latin alphabet in particular, like nerds to computers.
In short order the Irish founded universities like Clonmacnoise, Kildare and Glendalough in Ireland, produced the first vernacular literature (Irish) written with the Latin alphabet, and ultimately became the conduit through which Christianity and the literacy of ancient Greece and Rome was conveyed to the continent. The vessels of the Irish conduit were Irish monks, scholars all, who set out to enlighten and convert the pagan tribes who controlled most of the continent. Apparently afraid of nothing, they ventured into the no man's land that was Europe, built monasteries, stood their ground, argued with the Christian establishment (and occasionally each other), and converted the barbarians. The monasteries they founded became centers for learning. Some evolved into cities: Vienna, Salzburg, Bobbio, St. Gall, Trier, Reichenau and Laon are just a few of the continental European cities that began as Irish monasteries.

Their influence was everywhere. It extended from Ireland in the west, through the British Isles, across the Rhine to as far east as Kiev, and as far south as Taranto in the south of Italy, where an Irish monk, Cathal (San Cataldo) was elected bishop. These were the saints and scholars who introduced Christianity to the barbarians who became the people of Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Germany.

There was no formal canonization process in the Church during its first millennium. In the early years of the Church the title saint was bestowed first upon martyrs, and then upon individuals recognized by tradition as
being exceptionally holy during their lifetimes. Consequently these Irish saints, including St. Patrick, were never actually formally canonized -- save one. The exception was Fergal, also known as St. Virgil of Salzburg, an 8th century missionary scholar who was officially canonized in 1233 by Pope Gregory IX. Virgil is one of only four Irish saints to be canonized by Rome.

The other three officially canonized Irish saints were products of different eras. St. Malachy, canonized in 1190, and St. Laurence O'Toole, canonized in 1226, were both 12th century Irish bishops. St. Oliver
Plunkett, the last Irish person to be canonized (1975), was ordained archbishop of Armagh in 1669 and was arrested for treason on trumped up charges by the English 10 years later. In 1681 he was disemboweled, drawn , quartered and beheaded at Tyburn, the last Catholic to be martyred in England, but not the last or the first Irish person to die for his faith during nearly 400 years of religious persecution by the British.

The 21st century should see the addition of several more Irish people to the ranks of sainthood. There are at present 25 Irish-born who were beatified in the twentieth century, six by Pope Pius XI, and 19 by Pope John Paul II in the 1990s. Of the 25 all but two were martyred during the era that witnessed the murder of Oliver Plunkett, and these represented only a token of the thousands of Irish Catholics who died for their faith during that era.

The two non-martyrs were beatified by Pope John Paul II: Blessed Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers, beatified in 1996; and Blessed Abbot Columba Marmion in 2000, the last Irishman thus elevated.

Concannon is a freelance writer from Manassas.

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