Summary of the first episode of Dan Snow's new history programme How the Celts Saved Britain, where he "blows the lid on the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages".
At the start of the 5th century, the southern part of Britain had been under Roman rule for 300 years. The Roman superpower had brought civilisation to iron-age, pagan Britain - centralised political authority, towns, roads, commerce/trade, money, technology, art, literacy/books, law and christianity. The Roman garrisons protected the Britons from their unruly, uncivilised, pagan, iron-age, tribal, illiterate, uncultured neighbours - the Picts in the north on the other side of Hadrian's Wall, and Irish across the sea to the West.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the consequent departure of the Roman legions from Britain, anarchy and lawlessness returned (i.e. the 'Dark Ages'). During the ensuing chaos, a 16 year old British christian boy from the area around the Severn estuary, named Patrick (390-460), son of a deacon and grandson of a priest, was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in pagan Ireland (called by the Romans 'Hibernia', or 'Land of Winter'). For six years, he worked as a shepherd in the west of Ireland, with only his christian religion for comfort. After his escape, he returned to Britain, only to discover that his homeland had changed beyond recognition, and centralised political authority had disappeared completely. Patrick chose to return to Ireland, inspired by a dream to bring the christian faith and civilisation to the pagan Irish.
At the time, the Ireland was still under the influence of the pagan religion that once had held sway over all of western Europe - a religion, presided over by druids, of sacred trees, woods and lakes, of animal and human sacrifice. Patrick set about converting the Irish to christianity, reinterpreting their traditional beliefs in christian terms, in the face of hostility from the native druids. Sacred places were turned into christian alters, traditional festivals were coopted.
Patrick then decided to directly confront both the 'high king' of Ireland, and the chief pagan priests, by lighting a fire at the Hill of Tara during the Beltana festival. The king was so impressed by Patrick's christian message (and presumably by the accompanying gifts of literacy and culture), that he converted. Thus was Patrick's christianisation of Ireland cemented.
Back across the Irish Sea, the British had employed continental Germanic mercenaries (Angles, Saxons, Friesians and Jutes) to protect them from the invading Picts. Unfortunately, the pagan mercenaries decided that they liked the look of Britain and they decided to stay, taking over the land and throwing out the Britons (or forcing them to adopt Anglo-Saxon language and culture). Thus the last vestiges of christianity, literacy and civilisation was forced to the western peripherary of Britain, to Wales and Cornwall.
Meanwhile, christianity had transformed Ireland. Monasteries appeared all over the country, little islands of modernity and technological innovation, built of stone and mortar, with hospitals and libraries. During the sixth century, Irish monasteries were the only places in western Europe where literacy was still practised, and manuscripts were being produced in scriptoria. This social and cultural revolution brought with it new contact between the Irish monasteries and their counterparts in North Africa and the Atlantic seaboard, providing the springboard for the re-christianisation of western Europe. Irish monks went on to found monasteries all over Europe, e.g. Luxeuil (founded 585), Bobbio (founded 614), St Gallen (founded 719). Ireland's monasteries formed the cradle of a new European civilisation, "every bit as great as Rome's".
See also: Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda fort, the Groans of the Britons, West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, Croagh Patrick, Kevin of Glendalough (498-618), Glendalough Monastery (the 'Monastic City'), Nendrum Monastery, velum, the Stowe Missal.
Episode 2 here.
No comments:
Post a Comment