Saints Seaways And Settlements In The Celtic Lands

Elizabeth Rees, using this archaeological and literary evidence, has produced a guidebook to major sites in the British Isles where the Celtic saints lived and worked. Most biographies of the Celtic saints are filled with legends and were written centuries after they lived. But the places where they lived and worked, generally in the more remote parts of their home or adopted countries can still be visited. Their chapels and huts are often placed in beautiful landscapes: sheltered valleys, sacred springs, peaceful lakeshores, sea caves, headlands and offshore islands. Archaeology, the study of sites and place-names, inscribed stones, and early texts can bring us closer to how these men and women lived and to the unique ideals they held. Brigid and Patrick in Ireland, David in Wales, Columba in Scotland, and Aidan in Northumbria are among those who have left monasteries and hermitages, chapels and holy wells dedicated to them. The 250 sites examined here are listed alphabetically by area, with some fifty described in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and the rest of Britain. Accurate descriptions are given, with a history of each site, directions how to find it, and, where relevant, useful directions such as sailing times or where to find the key. A final section gives an outline of the lives of the saints with whom these places are associated.

The world of Celtic Christianity explored.

Most books about Celtic saints are based on their legendary medieval lives. This book, however, is based upon our earliest surviving information: an examination of the sites where these early Christians lived and worked. Archaeology, combined with the study of place names, inscribed stones and early texts, offers us important clues which help us to piece together something of the fascinating world of early Irish Christianity.Elizabeth Rees, an acknowledged authority on Celtic Christianity, has produced this insightful history which is the first in an exciting new series. Illustrated throughout with her own evocative photographs of where these saints resided and worked, the reader is drawn into the beautiful world which these men and women inhabited.

Isle of the Saints recreates the harsh yet richly spiritual world of medieval Irish monks on the Christian frontier of barbarian Europe. Lisa Bitel draws on accounts of saints' lives written between 800 and 1200 to explain, from the monks' own perspective, the social networks that bound them to one another and to their secular neighbors.

The popular notion that sees the Anglo-Saxon era as “The Dark Ages” perhaps has tended to obscure for many people the creations and strengths of that time. This collection, in examining many aspects of pre-Norman Britain, helps to illuminate how Anglo-Saxon society contributed to the continuity of knowledge between the ancient world and the modern world. But as well, it posits a view of that society in its own distinctive terms to show how it developed as a synthesis of radically different cultures. The Bayeux Tapestry is examined for its underlying political motivations; the study of Old English literature is extended to such works as laws, charters, apocryphal literature, saints’ lives and mythologies, and many of these are studied for the insight they provide into the social structures of the Anglo-Saxons. Other essays examine both the institution of slavery and the use of Germanic warrior terminology in Old Saxon as a contribution towards the descriptive analysis of that society’s social groupings. The book also presents a perspective on the Christian church that is usually overlooked by historians: that its existence was continuous and influential from Roman times, and that it was greatly affected by the Celtic Christian church long after the latter was thought to have disintegrated.

A clear-eyed exploration of Celtic spirituality that enriches the Christian experience. Every Earthly Blessing delves into the rich, earthy Celtic heritage and traditions to bring lyricism and charm to Christian worship. It presents the reader with scholarly research and context, along with beautiful Celtic poetry and songs. The topics Esther de Waal explores include monasticism, pilgrimages, creation and healing, sin and sorrow, and salvation, in the previously mystical and romanticized backdrop of Celtic Christianity. “Esther de Waal writes with perceptive insight about the beauty and richness of the Celtic Christian world, especially its poetic tradition, but without romanticizing it. Every Earthly Blessing remains one of the best books in its field.”—Cintra Pemberton, O.S.H., author of Soulfaring: Celtic Pilgrimages Then and Now

For humans the sea is, and always has been, an alien environment. Ever moving and ever changing in mood, it is a place without time, in contrast to the land which is fixed and scarred by human activity giving it a visible history. While the land is familiar, even reassuring, the sea is unknown and threatening. By taking to the sea humans put themselves at its mercy. It has often been perceived to be an alien power teasing and cajoling. The sea may give but it takes. Why, then, did humans become seafarers? Part of the answer is that we are conditioned by our genetics to be acquisitive animals: we like to acquire rare materials and we are eager for esoteric knowledge, and society rewards us well for both. Looking out to sea most will be curious as to what is out there - a mysterious island perhaps but what lies beyond? Our innate inquisitiveness drives us to explore. Barry Cunliffe looks at the development of seafaring on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, two contrasting seas — the Mediterranean without a significant tide, enclosed and soon to become familiar, the Atlantic with its frightening tidal ranges, an ocean without end. We begin with the Middle Palaeolithic hunter gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean building simple vessels to make their remarkable crossing to Crete and we end in the early years of the sixteenth century with sailors from Spain, Portugal and England establishing the limits of the ocean from Labrador to Patagonia. The message is that the contest between humans and the sea has been a driving force, perhaps the driving force, in human history.