4 - Beyond empire II: Christianities of the Celtic peoples

Summary

The inheritance

For this chapter, the Celtic peoples are those which still, in 600 CE, spoke a Celtic language. The continental Celts of antiquity are thus excluded, leaving only the Britons, who inherited their Christianity from Roman Britain, the Irish, who received theirs mainly from the Britons in the fifth and early sixth centuries, and the Picts. By 600 the initial constructive phase of Irish Christianity was over. It was three years since Columba died on Iona; Columbanus had already left Bangor for Burgundy. The great churches of the Irish were nearly all founded in the sixth century. There remained, however, many traces of that earlier period when, because of Irish settlements in Britain and British missionaries in Ireland, the church of the smaller island had been formed in the image of the church of the Britons. The insular scripts, shared by Britons and Irish, are only one especially obvious sign of the connection. The years about 600 were also, however, the time at which the younger Irish Church began to overshadow its British foster-parent. On the one hand, the British Church was suffering territorial loss and impoverishment from the English advance. On the other hand, Columbanus’s letters to the papacy betray a pride in the flourishing Christianity of his homeland.

Not only had the British Church suffered from English advance, it was also threatened by the implications of the Gregorian mission to the English. Moreover, its Breton offshoot had, by 600, been instrumental in driving a wedge between the Christianity of “the Romans” of Gaul, those whom we call Gallo-Romans, and the Christianity of the Britons.