Spirituality has until recently been an incredibly strong aspect of Irish culture. Five centuries before Patricus came
to organize the indigenous Christian community, as opposed to convert them, there was already a flowering of
Christian thought in Ireland. At several points the Irish form of Christianity had the opportunity to alter the course
and form of Continental Christianity, for the better in my opinion. Little did the early Irish Christians know though
that their idiosyncrasies of worship and ideology would open the door enough for a schism to ensue; a war of cultures
which would subvert some of the ideas that Christianity desperately needed in order to form a healthy and ecstatic
theology. Perhaps the difference in their worldviews had more to do with the environment in which they lived, where
one is abundant and rich the other is barren and dry.
The Irish had not yet separated themselves from the natural world as Augustine and his fellow Romans had. There
environment was still full of life and vitality, consequently their own indigenous form of Christianity modeled itself
on the Druidic spiritualism of Nature reverence. It is possible that the Irish Celts were in connection with or
influenced by the Indian Hindus, one of the other world cultures which escaped the greedy hands of Rome. The
Gunderstrap Cauldron is a beautifully ornamented cauldron made specifically for sacrifice; it was never intended to
be used instead, it was a gift to the Gods. One of the images on it is a Homed God seated in yogic stance with
various animals at him. In his hand he holds the emblem of the Goddess which in many matrifocal cultures the
world over is the serpent.
This deep respect for the natural world can be seen in the writings of Palaegis and John Scotus who attempted to
introduce these naturalistic concepts into the core of Christian theology. Succeeding only for a time, until the
Roman Church eventually branded them as heretical. What could these most pious fathers in Rome find threatening
in the 'good news' being shared with the other denizens of the planet? Perhaps it was the connection with the
serpent and the Goddess, for there was only room for Man and his Sons at God's table, and the woman and her
serpent were to be the cause of humanity's downfall into sin.
Like Bridget of Kildare, Hildegard of Bingen is a woman who managed to offer mediation between these worldviews.
In combining their communities with those of their masculine fellows they were showing a model for the interaction
which should have been the rule. Both of these women were noted for their healing miracles, which was itself a
reflection of the older pre-Christian role of 'wise women'. It is remarkable that we still have the stories of their
highly functional interactions with power. Inspiring material for young women today to be introduced to. Instead of
Descartes and his rational science we could have profited more by looking closely at the text Physica, in which
Hildegard intuitively associated the humors with psychosomatic causes for disease; an idea that only recently has
been introduced in medicine.
It is the separation of body from spirit that has caused the most damage in regards to what the Irish form of
Christianity had to offer as alternative. Indeed Hildegard obviously had a healthy respect for the body and sexuality
as well. In characterizing sexuality as a regulated behavior, using guilt and fear of punishment the Christian
tradition triumphed most singularly in the name of masculine dominance of both women and the environment. If
the animism is taken out of the environment and its constituent elements, then the body in turn can be dissected
and classified and controlled. Like the Tower of Babel where deity subverts a will towards unity, in taking the magic
out of the sexual union cooperative creativity becomes the continuous conflict of the sexes.
This animism of the environment, nay of all the cosmos, including woman, allowed the Irish to develop the Green
Martyrdom out of the earlier Druidic traditions. This would in turn insure the survival of much of classical culture
and Christian learning through the White Martyrdom, when the Irish love of hospitality and community overwhelmed
the activity of the hermits. One can see the image of it plainly in the animal motifs of the Illuminated manuscripts.
As the 'Homed One' on the Gunderstrap Cauldron is surrounded by animals so too now are the Evangelists and their
Gospels. In the preChristian tradition of Ireland these animals were taken as omens or were the forms which the
sidhe took when they visited this world. Vegetarianism was practiced at many of the Irish monasteries,
sometimes because of the respect the animals were accorded in this animistic worldview, and sometimes because
they represented these pre-Christian traditions, thus being anathema to the pious fathers. Another aspect of this
reverence for the natural world can be seen in the oldest Nature poetry being Irish.
So it is the Augustinian dichotomy that rests at the segregation of here to fore connected principles. The Irish
worldview maintained the connectivity of these, for in essence it is this connectivity which maintained the
spiritual health of the people. In separating I and Thou, Self and Spirit, Man and Woman, Humanity and Creation
a living cooperative relationship was disturbed. The difference in these two worldviews can be seen in the idea of
the anmchara where the interrelationships of men and women was viewed in relation to friendship and trust instead
of power. It was this friendship which allowed for the polyandry/polygamy which was at the heart of the Roman
suppression of indigenous Christianity in Ireland. The stigmatizing of sexuality was the most effective tool the
Church had at their disposal to control people's actions, and could not be surrendered to the perverse costumes of
the 'pagani' of Ireland.
The centralized Saxon church at Canterbury was unable to recognize the indigenous Irish Christianity because of
this reverence of the natural world and the egalitarian sexual mores. Where the Irish Druids and Bards had
succeeded in blending their own Gaelic worldview onto the Christian tradition, the British would now undo it in the
name of Roman hegemony. It did not matter that the Irish had saved most of the classical and spiritual material
from out of Europe's darkness. It did not matter that between Paul and Patricus their had been no missionary, or that
their were no Red Martyrs in Ireland's conversion; unless you count the serpents which didn't exist anyway. More
importantly still that for over three hundred years the Irish were the dominant commentators on the emerging
Christian Bible. The central authority of Rome had to be preserved and the Augustinian tool of dualistic separatism
had to be maintained. The Irish like all good heretics who stood at the crossroads of spirituality and theology and
called the Rock of Peter a blasphemy to God's good urge.