Celtic Christianity

Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams by Ian Bradley, 232 pages

This is not a book about Celtic Christianity - the form of Christianity that thrived in Ireland and evangelized Scotland in the fifth and sixth centuries - but rather a book about the many attempts that have been made to claim and shape its legacy.  Indeed, near the end the author raises the question as to whether the label refers to any genuine subject at all, or whether "Celtic Christianity" only exists as a succession of constructions made by subsequent eras.

The book begins with the hagiographers of the seventh and eighth centuries, who idealized the not-so-distant past into a golden age as a way of both condemning and inspiring their own era, as well as promoting the preeminence of certain religious and political centers.  A succeeding Celtic revival arose in the first centuries of the second millennium, following the Norman conquest, as Britons, Normans, and Anglo-Saxons all sought to claim the blessings and legacies of the indigenous saints.  It was also during this era that the Arthurian mythos took shape.  When the Reformation was brought to Britain, Protestants appealed to the Celtic saints as indigenous, erastian Anglican or Presbyterian figures, with the otherwise much-maligned monks becoming a claim for the primitive simplicity of the British Church prior to Augustine's arrival in Canterbury.  In the Romantic era, the aura of mystery surrounding the Celts provided fertile ground for an idealized myth of the Druids, who in turn, it was imagined, transitioned into an equally idealized non-Roman Christian priesthood.  The syncretism of the Romantic approach - holding some legendary Druids as the pinnacle of natural religion awaiting only the Christian revelation to be perfected - has characterized "Celtic Christianity" in the popular imagination ever since.  The twentieth century saw some sober criticism by historians and an increasing tendency to view the subject in terms of contemporary social issues such as feminism and environmentalism.

Bradley is not only the author, but is himself one of the mythmaking dreamers, and as a result he tends to treat his subjects with considerable affection - perhaps too much, as he seems unwilling to actually judge any factual claims once he leaves the Middle Ages.  It is possible to question the discontinuity Bradley evidently sees between the "golden age" and his first two, medieval groups of mythmakers, a discontinuity which excises a considerable amount of traditional "Celtic" material but is necessary in order to provide room for certain alternative interpretations of what remains.  He especially perceives a contradiction between the popular image of St Patrick as the fearless evangelist of Ireland and the self-doubting figure revealed in the Confessio, the only writing of Patrick's which survives, but history is filled with individuals (and especially missionary saints, beginning with St Paul, who is clearly Patrick's model in the Confessio) who are both confident and self-effacing.  The sons of St Bernard used the Celtic tradition in the same manner as St Bede had centuries earlier, to urge a return to a stricter, simpler, "purer" form of monasticism.  Likewise, he asserts that the Arthurian legends are essentially non-Christian, which seems like a highly debatable claim.

Celtic Christianity gains energy and coherence when it begins its discussion of the Victorian fad for all things Celtic and the simultaneous Celtic Twilight movement, and the book might have been stronger if it had begun there (or shortly before) and focused exclusively on the modern era.  This, in turn, might have facilitated a clearer presentation of the different distinctive (though interacting) strains within the contemporary Celtic Christian movement - charismatics, New Agers, Western Orthodox, Anglicans, Welsh nationalists, etc.  Bradley is clearly passionate about his subject and an active participant in its development, but his unsuccessful efforts to shed light on the long-ago only serve to confuse matters in the here-and-now.  In the end, he concludes that enlisting the legends of Celtic Christianity in the service of social justice is preferable to medieval relic-collecting contests, which seems to suggest that politics is more important than the quest for holiness, a conclusion which the great saints of the past would surely have denied.  The true conflict is between seeing those saints as models to be imitated or as brand names to be exploited.