RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Celtic Church
begins to pervade the Irish Church in the seventh century is indicated by the unprecedented extension of the cult of relics. Ireland had no martyrs There is no reason to believe that relics were known or honored in any part of
5. Relics, the Irish Church before contact with Rome. In 633 the embassy sent to Rome because of the Easter contest (see above, p. 475) returned laden with books and relics. And the next year Cummian writes to Seghine: " And we have proof that the virtue of God is in the relics of holy martyrs and the writings which they have brought. We have seen with our own eyes a girl totally blind open her eyes before these relics and a paralytic walk and many demons cast out" (col. 978b). Everything here, even to the wording {reliquiae), is Roman, not Irish. Muirchu Maccu-Machtheni's life of Patrick witnesses the progress of the cult of relics in South Ireland during the seventh century. Speaking for his own time (before 697), the author mentions with emphasis that in three different places in the Roman- Irish territory relics are worshiped and he even makes Patrick prophesy such worship (Tripartite Life, ii. 281, 11. 1-2; 283, 11. 3-5; 497, 11. 14-19). To Adamnan, writing his life of Columba in North Ireland at the same time and before he had joined the Roman party, relics are utterly unknown. But no sooner did Roman influence find entrance in the North through the yielding of Armagh (697) and Iona (716) on the Easter question than the same change of attitude took place which had occurred seventy years earlier in the South. The Annals of Ulster give much information on the history of the Church, but in the sixth and seventh centuries they contain not a single entry respecting relics. In 726, however, occurs the first of a long series of entries recording the transference or enshrining of relics, and a little later Armagh exhibited at the great fairs of Ireland the relics of Patrick, supposed to have been found at Downpatrick in 733, and took them to Connaught and Munster.
Enough has been said to show that the spirit which animated the Celtic Church about 600 was quite different from that which the emissaries of the Roman Church brought to the British Isles. Both had the same dogmas. But on the one side was a striving after individual freedom and personal Christianity, on the other side a bigoted zeal for rigid uniformity and systematizing. The Celt emphasized a Christianity manifesting itself in word and deed, the Roman Catholic valued a formal Christianity above all else. As has been said, there is no reason to believe that the Celtic Church greatly resembled the Apostolic Church in institutions or doctrines. But the practical results of its teaching as seen in the life of such men as Aidan and Finan (cf. Bede, iii. 17) unquestionably come nearer the popular conception of the Apostolic Age than does the spirit manifested by the representatives of Rome.
(H. Zimmer.)
Bibliography: A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, a convenient collection of the sources with valuable notes, vol. i., Oxford, 1869, dealing with the British Church
in Roman time? and the period of Anglo-Saxon conquest, the Church in Wales and Cornwall; vol. ii., part i., 1873, with the Church in Cumbria or Strathclyde, branches of the British Church in Armorica and Gallicia, the Church of Scotland till declared independent of York; vol. ii., part ii., 1878, with the Church in Ireland and the memorials of Patrick; vol. iii., 1871, with the English Church during the Anglo-Saxon period. Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, ed. W Reeves, Dublin, 1857, Edinburgh, 1874 (see Adamnan). Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. A. Holder, Freiburg, 1890, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols., Oxford, 1896. Cummian's letter to Seghine, abbot of Iona, in MPL, lxxxvii. 969-978. Gildas and Nennius, 'Historia Britonum, ed. T. Mommsen, in MGH,. Auct. ant., xiii., Chronica minora sceculorum iv.—vii., iii.f 1898. Prosper of Aquitaine, Chronicon, ed. idem, ib. i. Auct. ant., ix., 1892. The Tripartite Life of Patrick with Other Documents Relating to That Saint, ed. Whitley Stokes, in Rolls Series, no. 89, 2 vols., 1887 (see Patrick, Saint). The Lives of the C ambro-British Saints cf the Fifth and Immediate Succeeding Centuries, ed. W J. Rees, Llandovery, 1853, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which is also true in part of the material in the socalled Liber Landavensis (" Book of Llandaff," ed. W. J. Rees, Llandovery, 1840; ed. J. G. Evans, Oxford, 1893). The Acta sanctorum Hibernice ex codice Salmanticensi, ed. C. de Smedt and J. de Backer, Edinburgh, 1888, and Lires of Saints from the Bock of Lismore, ed. Whitley Stokes, in Anecdota Oxoniensia, 1S90, also present only relatively late material. The various annalistic works give important data for ecclesiastical history, viz.: for the British and Welsh Church, the Annates Cambria, ed. J. W. ab Ithel, in Rolls Series, no. 20, 1860; the oldest part also in Y Cymmrodor, ix., 1888; for the Irish-Scotch branch, the Annals of Tigernach, ed. Whitley Stokes, in Revue Celtique, xvi.-xviii., 1895-97; the Annals of Ulster, ed. W. M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy, 4 vols., Dublin, 1887- 1901 ; the Chronicon Scotorum, ed. W. M. Hennessy, in Rolls Series, no. 46, 1866; Annals of Ireland, Three Fragments, ed. J. O'Donovan, Dublin, 1860; Annals of the- Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, ed. idem, 7 vols., 1848-51; Annals of Clonmacnoise, ed. D. Murphy, Dublin, 1896; Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, ed. W. F. Skene, Edinburgh, 1867. The oldest of the Irish collections is that of Tigernach (d. 1088). Since the sources upon which they are based are all lost, and the sources themselves appear in part to have been compilations of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries from older monastic annals, it is clear that statements concerning Irish church history of the fifth century have no decisive value when they coincide with the views concerning the earlier period current after 750. In using the collections of Welsh and of Irish laws (Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, London, 1841; Ancient Laws of Ireland, 6 vols., Dublin, 18C5- 1902) it must be remembered that the former dates from the tenth century and the latter can not be much older. Other sources are: the Stowe Missal, ed. F. E. Warren,. in The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, pp. 198-268, Oxford, 1881 ; the Antiphonary of Bangor, ed. idem, and the Irish Liber Hymnorum, ed. J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson for Henry Bradshaw Society, iv., x. and xiii., xiv., lgQ3_98- F. W. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendlandischen Kirche, Halle, 1851; idem, Die irische Kanonensammlung, Leipsic, 1885; the Felire of Oengus ed Whitley Stokes, Dublin, 1881; the Martyrology of Tallagh ed M Kelly, Dublin, 1857; the Martyrology of Donegal, ed. J. H. Todd and W. Reeves, Dublin 1864; the Martyrology of Gorman, ed. Whitley Stokes, for Henry Bradshaw Society, ix., 1895.
The father of Celtic church history was Archbishop TJssher whose work, Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates Dublin, 1639; 2d ed., enlarged, London, 1687, however has now only historic interest. The monograph of C Scholl, De ecclesiastics Britonum Scotorumque historic fontibus, Berlin and London, 1851, and the introduction and notes of Reeves's Adamnan, U.S., were pioneer work in the critical investigation and appreciation of the sources; it is to be regretted that not all their sue cessors have continued in the same spirit. The legends of the Celtic Church are briefly but fully told in Cardinal ^ewman Life of St. Augustine, chaps, i.-v., London, 184o VVorKs dealing with the Celtic Church in both Britain and Ireland are J H A Ebrard, Die iroschottische Ahssronsknche disseisin siebentenund achten Jahrhunderts, Gutersloh,
Celtic Church Cemeteries