Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- In memory of David G. Alexander (1939–1980)
- Chapter 1 Reading the Lives of the Saints
- Chapter 2 The Formation of the Tradition
- 3 Monks and Animals in the Medieval Wilderness
- Chapter 4 The Irish Variant
- Chapter 5 Sainted Princesses and the Resurrection of Geese
- Chapter 6 The Hermit and the Hunter
- Chapter 7 The Holy Wilderness: Farne Island and the Cult of Saint Cuthbert
- Chapter 8 Animal Sanctuaries of the Middle Ages?
- Chapter 9 Saint Francis and the Thirteenth Century
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - The Irish Variant
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- In memory of David G. Alexander (1939–1980)
- Chapter 1 Reading the Lives of the Saints
- Chapter 2 The Formation of the Tradition
- 3 Monks and Animals in the Medieval Wilderness
- Chapter 4 The Irish Variant
- Chapter 5 Sainted Princesses and the Resurrection of Geese
- Chapter 6 The Hermit and the Hunter
- Chapter 7 The Holy Wilderness: Farne Island and the Cult of Saint Cuthbert
- Chapter 8 Animal Sanctuaries of the Middle Ages?
- Chapter 9 Saint Francis and the Thirteenth Century
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The western Christian tradition has come under criticism in recent times for having been interested in nature only as a foil to theology, an approach which has been thought to allow the growth of a destructive anti-environmental culture. Our present troubles are, in this argument, at least partly the result of a theology which regarded the natural world as fallen, and essentially separate from a transcendent God. Irish, or ‘Celtic’, culture has often been held to be the exception, and learning from it could restore something lost to western culture. Something in the spirituality of Ireland or its Celtic culture attuned its saints and writers to a more appreciative sense of the place of nature in God's Creation. A famous example of Irish natural spirituality is the probably tenth-century poem in praise of a hermit's hermitage:
… I have a hut in the wood, none knows it but my Lord;
An ash tree this side, a hazel on the other, a great tree on a
mound encloses it …
Tame swine lie down around it, goats, young pigs, wild swine, tall deer, does, a badger's brood.
Peaceful, in crowds, a grave host of the countryside, an assembly at my house;
Foxes come to the wood before it – it is delightful.
This can be read, and it has been, as an example of an author taking ‘nature’ as a ‘subject’ rather than an ‘object’: appreciating nature for its own characteristics rather than for purposeful human needs. This may well be the case, but the interpretation ignores the contemporary theological context. The theme of this piece is the earthly paradise, where there is no antagonism between the social (human) and the wild.
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- Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages , pp. 57 - 84Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008