The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 12

According to the commonly-received opinion, St. Patrick's apostleship lasted thirty-three years; but, whatever may have been its real duration, certain it is that his feet traversed the whole island several times, and, at his pa.s.sing, churches and monasteries sprang up in great numbers, and remained to tell the true story of his labors when their founder had pa.s.sed away.

Nor was it with Ireland as with Rome, Carthage, Antioch, and other great cities of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Not the slaves and artisans alone filled these newly-erected Christian edifices.

Some of the first men of the nation received baptism. We have already spoken of the family of Laeghaire. In Connaught, at the first appearance of the man of G.o.d, all the inhabitants of that portion of the province now represented by the County Mayo became Christians; and the seven sons of the king of the province were baptized, together with twelve thousand of their clansmen. In Leinster, the Princes Illand and Alind were baptized in a fountain near Naas. In Munster, Aengus, the King of Cashel, with all the n.o.bility of his clan, embraced the faith.

A number of chieftains in Th.o.m.ond are also mentioned; and the whole of the Dalca.s.sian tribe, so celebrated before and after in the annals of Ireland, received, with the waters of baptism, that ardent faith which nothing has been able to tear from them to this day.

Many Druids even, by renouncing their superst.i.tions, abdicated their power over the people. We have mentioned Dubtach ; his example was followed by many others, among whom was Fingar, the son of King c.l.i.to, who is said to have suffered martyrdom in Brittany; Fiech, pupil of Dubtach, himself a poet, and belonging to the n.o.ble house of Hy-Baircha in Leinster, was raised by St.

Patrick to the episcopacy, and was the first occupant of the See of Sletty.

Fiech was a regular member of the bardic order of Druids, a poet by profession, esteemed as a learned man even before he embraced Christianity; and during his lifetime he was, as a Christian bishop, consulted by numbers and regarded as an oracle of truth and heavenly wisdom.

Nevertheless, Patrick encountered opposition. Some chieftains declared themselves against him, without daring openly to attack him. Many Druids, called in the old Irish annals _magi_, tried their utmost to estrange the Irish people from him. But he stood in danger of his life only once. It was, in fact, a war of argument. Long discussions took place, with varied success, ending generally, however, in a victory for truth.

The final result was that, in the second generation after St.

Patrick, there existed not a single pagan in the whole of Ireland; the very remembrance of paganism even seemed to have pa.s.sed away from their minds ever after; hence arises the difficulty of deciding now on the character of that paganism.

After its abolition, nothing remained in the literature of the country, which was at that time much more copious than at present--nothing was left in its monuments or in the inclinations of the people--to imperil the existence of the newly-established Christianity, or of a nature calculated to give a wrong bias to the religious worship of the people, such as we have seen was the case in the rest of Europe.

May we not conclude, then, that Ireland was much better prepared for the new religion than any other country; that, when she was thus admitted by baptism into the European family, she made her entry in a way peculiar to herself, and which secured to her, once for all, her firm and undeviating attachment to truth?

She had nothing to change in her manners after having renounced the few disconnected superst.i.tions to which she had been addicted. Her songs, her bards, her festivities, her patriarchal government, her fosterage, were left to her, Christianized and consecrated by her great apostle; clanship even penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence of things which might lead to abuse than violently and at once to subvert customs, rooted by age in the very nature of the people, some of which it cost England, later on, centuries of inconceivable barbarities to eradicate.

As to what exact form, if any, the paganism of the Irish Celts a.s.sumed, we have so few data to build upon that it is now next to impossible to shape a system out of them. From the pa.s.sage of the "Confessio" already quoted, we might infer that they adored the sun; and this pa.s.sage is very remarkable as the only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and the strong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps need only express his fear lest the superst.i.tion of the ignorant people might convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all events, there was not a statue, or a temple, or a theological system, erected to or connected with it in any shape.

The solemn forms of oaths taken and administered by the Irish kings would also lead us to infer that they paid a superst.i.tious respect to the winds and the other elements. But why should this feeling pa.s.s beyond that which even the Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of the mighty ocean which laved or lashed his sh.o.r.es: he witnessed these wonderful effects; he knew not whence the tempests or the lightnings came, or the voice of the ocean; he trembled at the unseen power which moved them --at his G.o.d.

So his imagination peopled his groves and hill-sides, his rivers and lakes, with harmless fairies; but fairy land has never become among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinities; and we doubt much if such innocuous superst.i.tion can be rightly called even sinful error.

In fact, the only thing which could render paganism truly a danger in Ireland, as opposed to the preaching of Christianity, was the body of men intrusted with the care of religion--the Druids, the _magi_ of the chronicles. But, as we find no traces of b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices in Ireland, the Druids there probably never bore the character which they did in Gaul; they cannot be said to have been sacrificing priests; their office consisted merely in pretended divinations, or the workings of incantations or spells. They also introduced superst.i.tion into the practice of medicine, and taught the people to venerate the elements or mysterious forces of this world.

Without mentioning any of the many instances which are found in the histories of the workings of these Druidical incantations and spells, the consulting of the clouds, and the ceremonies with which they surrounded their healing art, we go straight to our main point: the ease and suddenness with which all these delusions vanished at the first preaching of the Gospel --a fact very telling on the force which they exercised over the mind of the nation. All natural customs, games, festivities, social relationships, as we have seen, are preserved, many to this day; what is esteemed as their religion, and its ceremonies and superst.i.tions, is dropped at once. The entire Irish mind expanded freely and generously at the simple announcement of a G.o.d, present everywhere in the universe, and accepted it. The dogma of the Holy Spirit, not only filling all--_complens omnia_- - but dwelling in their very souls by grace, and filling them with love and fear, must have appeared natural to them. Their very superst.i.tions must have prepared the way for the truth, a change --or may we not say a more direct and tangible object taking the place of and filling their undefined yearnings--was alone requisite. Otherwise it is a hard fact to explain how, within a few years, all Druidism and magic, incantations, spells, and divinations, were replaced by pure religion, by the doctrine of celestial favors obtained through prayer, by the intercession of a host of saints in heaven, and the belief in Christian miracles and prophecies; whereas, scarcely any thing of Roman or Grecian mythology could be replaced by corresponding Christian practices, although popes did all they could in that regard. Nearly all the errors of the Irish Celts had their corresponding truths and holy practices in Christianity, which could be readily subst.i.tuted for them, and envelop them immediately with distrust or just oblivion. Hence we do not see, in the subsequent ecclesiastical history of Ireland, any thing to resemble the short sketch we have given of the many dangers arising within the young Christian Church, which had their origin in the former religion of other European nations.

In regarding philosophy and its perils in Ireland, our task will be an easy one, yet not unimportant in its bearings on subsequent considerations. The minds of nations differ as greatly as their physical characteristics; and to study the Irish mind we have only to take into consideration the inst.i.tutions which swayed it from time immemorial. They were of such a nature that they could but belong to a traditional people.

All patriarchal tribes partake of that general character; none, perhaps, so strikingly as the Celts.

People thus disposed have nothing rationalistic in their nature; they accept old facts; and, if they reason upon them, it is to find proofs to support, not motives to doubt them. They never refine their discussions to hair-splitting, synonymous almost with rejection, as seems to be the delight of what we call rationalistic races. It was among these that philosophy was born, and among them it flourishes. They may, by their acute reasoning, enlarge the human mind, open up new horizons, and, if confined within just limits, actually enrich the understanding of man. We are far from pretending that philosophy has only been productive of harm, and that it were a blessed thing had the human intellect always remained, as it were, in a dormant state, without ever striving to grasp at philosophic truth and raise itself above the common level; we hold the great names of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and so many others, in too great respect to entertain such an opinion.

Yet it cannot be denied that the excessive study of philosophy has produced many evils among men, has often been subservient to error, has, at best, been for many minds the source of a cold and desponding skepticism.

No race of men, perhaps, has been less inclined to follow those intellectual aberrations than the Celtic, owing chiefly to its eminently traditional dispositions.

Before Christianity reached them, the intellectual labors of the Celts were chiefly confined to history and genealogy, medicine and botany, law, song, music, and artistic workings in metals and gems. This was the usual _curriculum_ of Druidic studies.

Astronomy and the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge of "the nature of the eternal G.o.d," were, according to Caesar, extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements of those intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attention of the Irish student during the twelve, fifteen, or twenty years of his preparation for being _ordained_ to the highest degree of ollamh. But the oldest and most reliable doc.u.ments which have been examined so far do not allow us to state positively that such was the case to any great extent.

In Christian times, however, it seems certain that astronomy was better studied in Ireland than anywhere else, as is proved by the extraordinary impulse given to that science by Virgil of Salzburg, who was undoubtedly an Irishman, and educated in his native country.

It is from the Church alone, therefore, that they received their highest intellectual training in the philosophy and theology of the Scriptures and of the Fathers. It is known that, by the introduction of the Latin and Greek tongues into their schools in addition to the vernacular, the Bible in Latin and Greek, and the writings of many Fathers in both languages, as also the most celebrated works of Roman and Greek cla.s.sical writers, became most interesting subjects of study. They reproduced those works for their own use in the _scriptoria_ of their numerous monasteries. We still possess some of those ma.n.u.scripts of the sixth and following centuries, and none more beautiful or correct can be found among those left by the English, French, or Italian monastic inst.i.tutions of the periods mentioned.

During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the Irish schools became celebrated all over Europe. Young Anglo-Saxons of the best families were sent to receive their education in Innisfail, as the island was then often called; and, from their celebrated inst.i.tutions of learning, numerous teachers and missionaries went forth to England, Germany (along the Rhine, chiefly), France, and even Switzerland and Italy.

Yet, in the history of all those intellectual labors, we never read of startling theories in philosophy or theology advanced by any of them, unless we except the eccentric John Scotus Erigena, whom Charles the Bald, at whose court he resided, protected even against the just severity of the Church. Without ever having studied theology, he undertook to dogmatize, and would perhaps have originated some heresy, had he found a following in Germany or France.

But he is the only Irishman who ever threatened the peace of the Church, and, through her, of the world. Duns Scotus, if he were Irish, never taught any error, and remained always an accepted leader in Catholic schools. To the honor of Erin be it said, her children have ever been afraid to deviate in the least from the path of faith. And it would be wrong to imagine that the preservation from heresy so peculiar to them, and by which they are broadly distinguished from all other European nations, comes from dulness of intellect and inability to follow out an intricate argumentation. They show the acuteness of their understanding in a thousand ways; in poetry, in romantic tales, in narrative compositions, in legal ac.u.men and extempore arguments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterly eloquence by which so many of them are distinguished. Who shall say that they might not also have reached a high degree of eminence in philosophical discussions and ontological theories?

They have always abstained from such studies by reason of a natural disinclination, which does them honor, and which has saved them in modern times, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, from the innumerable evils which afflict society everywhere else, and by which it is even threatened with destruction.

Thus, among the numerous and versatile progeny of j.a.phet one small branch has kept itself aloof from the universal movement of the whole family; and, in the very act of accepting Christianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Western nations, it has known how to do so in its own manner, and has thus secured a firm hold of the saving doctrines imparted to the whole race for a great purpose--the purpose, unfortunately often defeated--of reducing to practice and reality the sublime ideal of the Christian religion.

The details given in this chapter on the various circ.u.mstances connected with the introduction of our holy faith into Ireland were necessarily very limited, as our chief object was to speak of the nation's preparation for it. In the following we treat directly of what could only be touched upon in the latter part of this.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE IRISH RECEIVED CHRISTIANITY.

For the conversion of pagans to Christianity, many exterior proofs of revelation were vouchsafed by G.o.d to man in addition to the interior impulse of his grace. Those exterior proofs are generally termed "the evidences of religion." They produce their chief effect on inquiring minds which are familiar with the reasoning processes of philosophy, and attach great importance to truth acquired by logical deduction. To this, many pagans of Greece and Rome owed their conversion; by this, in our days, many strangers are brought, on reflection, to the faith of Christ, always presupposing the paramount influence of divine grace on their minds and hearts.

But it is easy to remark that, except in rare cases, those who are gained over to truth by such a process are with some difficulty brought under the influence of the supernatural, which forms the essential groundwork of Christianity. This influence, it is true, is only the effect of the operation of the Holy Ghost on the soul of the convert; but the Holy Ghost acts in conformity with the disposition of the soul; and we know, by what has been said on the character of religion among the Romans and the Greeks in the earlier days of the Church, that it took long ages, the infusion of Northern blood, and the simplicity of new races uncontaminated by heathen mythology, to inspire men with that deep supernatural feeling which in course of time became the distinguishing character of the ages of faith.

Ireland imbibed this feeling at once, and thus she received Christianity more thoroughly, at the very beginning, than did any other Western nation.

The fact is--whatever may be thought or said--the Christian religion, with all the loveliness it imparts to this world when rightly understood, though never destroying Nature, but always keeping it in mind, and consecrating it to G.o.d, truly endowed, consequently, with the promises of earth as well as those of heaven--the Christian religion is nevertheless fundamentally supernatural, full of awe and mystery, heavenly and incomprehensible, before being earthly and the grateful object of sense.

Without examining the various formularies which heresy compelled an infallible Church to proclaim and impose upon her children from time to time, the Apostles' Creed alone transfers man at once into regions supernatural, into heaven itself. The Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the mission of the Hold Ghost on earth, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the dead, are all mysteries necessitating a revelation on the part of G.o.d himself to make them known to and believed by man. Do they not place man, even while on earth, in direct communication with heaven?

The firm believer in those mysteries is already a celestial citizen by faith and hope. He has acquired a new life, new senses, as it were, new faculties of mind and will--all things, evidently, above Nature.

And it is clear, from many pa.s.sages of the New Testament, that our Lord wished the lives of his disciples to be wholly penetrated with that supernatural essence. They were not to be men of the earth, earthly, but citizens of another country which is heavenly and eternal. Hence the holiness and perfection required of them--a holiness, according to Christ, like that of the celestial Father himself; hence contempt for the things of this world, so strongly recommended by our Lord; hence the a.s.surance that men are called to be sons of G.o.d, the eternal Son having become incarnate to acquire for us this glorious privilege; hence, finally, that frequent recommendation in the Gospel to rely on G.o.d for the things of this life, and to look above all for spiritual blessings.

That reliance is set forth in such terms, in the Sermon on the Mount, that, taken literally, man should neglect entirely his temporal advantages, forget entirely _Nature_, and think only of _grace_, or rather, expect that the things of Nature would be given us by our heavenly Father "who knows that we need them."

Nature, consequently, a.s.sumes a new aspect in this system. It is no longer a complexity of temporal goods within reach of the efforts of man, and which it rests with man alone to procure for himself. It is, indeed, a worldly treasure, belonging to G.o.d, as all else, and which the hand of G.o.d scatters profusely among his creatures. G.o.d will not fail to grant to every one what he needs, if he have faith. Thus G.o.d is always visible in Nature; and redeemed man, raised far above the beasts of the field, has other eyes than those of the body, when he looks around him on this world.

Had Christianity been literally understood by those who first received it, it would have completely changed the moral, social, and even natural aspect of the universe. The change produced throughout by the new religion was indeed remarkable, but not what it would have been, if the supernatural had taken complete possession of human society. This it did in Ireland, and, it may be said, in Ireland alone.

To begin with the preaching of St. Patrick, we note his care to impart to his converts a sufficient knowledge of the Christian mysteries, but, above all, to make those mysteries influence their lives by acting more powerfully on the new Christian heart than even on the mind.

Thus, in the beautiful legend of Ethne and Felimia, the saint, not content with instructing them on the attributes of G.o.d, the Trinity, and other supernatural truths, goes further still; he requires a change in their whole being--that it be spiritualized: by deeply exciting their feelings, by speaking of Christ as their spouse, by making them wish to receive him in the holy Eucharist, even at the expense of their temporal life, he so raises them above Nature that they actually asked to die. "And they received the Eucharist of G.o.d, and they slept in death."

Again, in the hymn of Tara, the heavenly spirit, which consists in an intimate union with G.o.d and Christ, is so admirably expressed, that we cannot refrain from presenting an extract from it, remarking that this beautiful hymn has been the great prayer of all Irishmen through all ages down even to our own times, though, unfortunately, it is not now so generally known and used by them as formerly:

"At Tara, to-day, may the strength of G.o.d pilot me, may the power of G.o.d preserve me, may the wisdom of G.o.d instruct me, may the eye of G.o.d view me, may the ear of G.o.d hear me, may the word of G.o.d render me eloquent, may the hand of G.o.d protect me, may the way of G.o.d direct me, may the shield of G.o.d defend me, etc.

"Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ in me, Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left; . . . Christ be in the heart of each person whom I speak to, Christ in the mouth of each person who speaks to me, Christ in each eye which sees me, Christ in each ear which hears me!"

Could any thing tend more powerfully to make of those whom he converted, true supernatural Christians--forgetful of this world, thinking only of another and a brighter one?

The island, at his coming, was a prey to preternatural superst.i.tions. The Druids possessed, in the opinion of the people, a power beyond that of man; and history shows the same phenomenon in all pagan countries, not excepting those of our time. A real supernatural power was required to overcome that of the _magi_.