Old Irish Christianity was unlike the Roman kind

The Flowering of Ireland: Saints, Scholars and Kings 
by Katharine Scherman 

Katherine Scherman opens with a review of ancient Irish beginnings before a chapter that considers the early development of Christianity. In brief, after several centuries as an  underground and often violently oppressed religion, the Roman Emperor Constantine granted toleration to Christians, and their church acquired significant and growing material and political importance at the expense of its spiritual foundations.  This unsatisfactory development in turn motivated a more spiritual counter-movement, first towards solitary hermits or anchorites, initially in the desert regions, and later this developed into the monastic movements which have always remained somewhat separate from the official administration of the church. It is this monastic tradition which supplied the groundwork for Ireland's unique interpretation of Christianity in the six centuries from St Patrick to the coming of the Anglo Normans.

Irish writing in its early Christian era continues many traditions from the oral culture of the Irish bards. Indeed, Patrick and others did great service by enabling written records to be made of many traditional poems belonging to the pagan times. The bards loved to attribute fantastical feats to the old heroes and the Irish monks adopted comparable tactics in their accounts of the Irish saints, which of course were plentiful. That is a trademark of old Irish storytelling.

We do not know how historically correct Patrick is but we do know there was a dominant figure who may as well be named Patrick as any other name. We also know that before his mission to Ireland, there were successful missions by St Ciaran of Saighir and Ossory, St Ailbe of Emly, St Ibat of Beg Erin and St Declan of Ardmore, all of whom were still around. Nor was the conversion of the Irish complete when Patrick is thought to have died.

Roman Christianity is at one point described as "urban and political." Ireland had no towns before the vikings settled and everyone farmed to live. The extended family and a tradition of cattle raiding was the basis for political life. So while Patrick certainly established a Christian organisation on Roman lines, the reality was that Ireland's bishops were nothing like the Roman model, but lived quiet rural lives amidst self sufficient and small communities. Far more significant was the development of monasteries, for centuries the only substantial settlements in the country, which became centres of learning, and also a trend for solitary hermits, often with a fondness for travelling both within and far beyond Ireland. (When the Vikings reached Iceland they found it occupied by as many as a thousand Irish monks and hermits, who fled and possibly finally settled in North America. )

It was 563 when St Columba established the monastery at Iona in Scotland and commenced the conversion of the Picts, and 635 when Oswald gave the island of Lindisfarne on the coast of Northumberland for St Aidan to establish a famous monastery and set about converting the North of (what is now) England. Both became famous centres of learning of course. So with Augustine at the same time working on converting the South of (what is now) England to the Roman teachings, the two rival versions of Christianity met up in the centre of the island when the pagan king Penda of Mercia was killed in 654, having their critical showdown in the Synod of Whitby, 664, as a result of which the English Church (but not yet the Irish) fell into line with Roman practice.

St Columbanus of Luxeuil was the first of many Irish emissaries taking Irish ideas into Europe. When he came into serious conflict with the bishops, he was unexpectedly protected by Pope Gregory, who was fond of the monastic tradition, and eventually the Irish monks were absorbed successfully into the Benedictine order. Scherman gives several chapters to her account of Irish missions in continental Europe, to which must be added the contribution they made to education and learning. There are chapters later on concerning education, poetry, scholarship, stonework and building, art in metal and stone and, of course, illuminated manuscripts including the book of Kells. Without doubt,  these six centuries of Irish Christianity were a time of impressive cultural achievement and of great significance for all of Europe.

Viking raids devastated the old Irish monasteries, driving a generation of learned Irish scholars and monks to Europe, where for example Charlemagne welcomed many of them as an asset to his secular regime. But the real end to Irish Christianity came with the Anglo-Norman invasion and a four centuries long struggle which reduced Ireland to a colony and, in that context, fully imposed the Roman model of church organisation. Of course there can be no greater evidence of the clash between the Irish and Roman Churches than when the only English pope, Adrian IV, in 1154, gave Ireland to the Plantagenet king Henry II for the good of the immortal souls of the Irish, so that Henry could enforce a reorganisation of the Irish church on Roman lines. By this time the Irish monasteries were largely wrecked by corruption, and although there was a reform process in hand under Irish control, this was led by bishops in the Viking towns, who were associated with the English Church at Canterbury and not the Irish Church. Henry was using this as a pretext (he was more concerned to seize the lucrative fur trade from the Dublin vikings) but the Pope and English bishops were very much available for the pretext. This led shortly to the invasion by Strongbow.

Here is Scherman's account of the key differences between Roman and Irish Christianity at the time of the Synod of Whitby:

"English Christianity as practised in St Augustine's territory was the direct child of Rome. By the seventh century the Roman church, following the reforming dictates of Pope Gregory I, had become a centralized, strongly hierarchical institution demanding absolute conformity of thought and deed. Its rituel was rigid, its standards of obedience to a central organization exacting. No taint of heresy was tolerated and freedom of thought was discouraged. This tight knit establishment was necessary to the proper functioning of the ecclesiastical empire that had in a spiritual sense replaced the military and civil empire of the Romans. 

In Ireland, untouched by Rome, Christianity had grown up outside these rigid boundaries, as had the Irish Celts themselves; the island's creed harked back to an earlier Christianity, at once more austere and more tolerant. There had never been fear in Ireland, as on the continent, that heresy might be the back door to heathen practices - because there was no fear of heathen practices. In Ireland there was no attempt at centralization, no dictation of thought, no persecution for slight differences in rituel, entire freedom of action existed for every monastery in relation to every other (although the strictest obedience obtained within the walls). Irish Christianity was pure, spiritual, intensely personal, dedicated only to the absolute word of God. Rome's was materialistic, tightly organized, intolerantly conformist. Ireland might have continued along her own road, forgotten and harmless like an anchorite immured in a desert cave, but the Irish would not have it so. Their country and their beliefs might have been out of the mainstream, but they themselves were very much in it, bearing their message of pure spirituality to barbarians and Roman Christians alike; ready to fight for it - indeed, eager to fight, like their own heroes of ancient times. 

And herein lay the conflict. Ireland owed allegiance to Rome only as the original source of her conversion; otherwise there was respect but no abject obedience. Subservience had never been a Celtic trait. The ancient ways of the Irish clergy - their asceticism, their love of nature, their instinct towards martyrdom, their uncomplicated acceptance of the Scriptures - were outmoded on the continent and even considered suspect, particularly when coupled with observances of the ritual that were different from those practised by decree from Rome. No one could accuse the Irish of heresy as there were no truer Christians in all of Europe in their time. But the slight differences in observance became a focus for the vast, basic vexation. It was not the people who objected; on the contrary, the generous and purehearted Irish missionaries were loved everywhere by high and low alike. It was the establishment that was galled by these old-fashioned, conservative, exasperatingly positive Celtic saints. Too outspokenly virtuous, they provoked feelings of guilt.pp 166 - 167.

I particularly smiled at this phrase: "bearing their message of pure spirituality to barbarians and Roman Christians alike". The clash between a spiritual and a materialistic / political religious practice is without doubt still relevant today, and not only in Christianity.