117c: Early Irish Christianity – Palladius First

Episode 117c: Early Irish Christianity – Palladius First

Description: •Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow continues to guide us through the history of Christianity in Ireland in the British Isles. Notice I didn’t say the Celts. That’s because there are certain problems with the word Celt. Dr. McNamara will explain how this word Celt really doesn’t capture who these people really were. We will begin to zoom in on the situation in Ireland and how a certain bishop named Palladius was bishop in Ireland well before the venerable St. Patrick.

About Today’s Guest:
Dr. Carolyn McNamara
On Twitter: @MedievalCarly
Education Evolved: @EducationEvolvd www.educationevolvedltd.com/
Links for Further Reading:
The Deskford Carnyx - includes a video which has the sounds that it could have produced, as played on a reconstruction www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/deskford-carnyx/
Jane Webster, ‘Ethnographic barbarity: colonial discourse and “Celtic Warrior Societies”’. In Roman Imperialism: Post-Colonial Perspectives, edited by J Webster and N Cooper. Leicester: Leicester Archaeology Monographs 3, pg. 111-123.
Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts
Bernhard Maier, The Celts
John Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia

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Music Provided by:
"Danse Macabre" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite Kevin MacLeaod (incomptech.com)
"Folk Round" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Celtic Impulse" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Begin Transcript:
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•Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow continues to guide us through the history of Christianity in Ireland in the British Isles. Notice I didn’t say the Celts. That’s because there are certain problems with the word Celt. Dr. McNamara will explain how this word Celt really doesn’t capture who these people really were. We will begin to zoom in on the situation in Ireland and how a certain bishop named Palladius was bishop in Ireland well before the venerable St. Patrick.
•With that, here is the next piece of the mosaic of the history of the Popes of Rome and Christian Church.
Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome back to our next episode in a series on the Celts and Christianity and early medieval, Ireland and Northern Britain. We are going to dive into the fascinating story of a group of people that lived all over Europe. The counts have grabbed the interest of history fans throughout. History, we will explore the history of the Celts and how that history helped them put a unique spin on Christianity.
And I am so happy to be joined again by our guy that Dr. Carly McNamara of the university of Glasgow, Scotland, Dr. McNamara completed her PhD and Celtic with a focus on early medieval, Ireland and Scotland. Now, um, we have a previous episode. Our last episode was. Very broad overview of the kelp. So if you're really interested in that and you want to hear the background, definitely go back and listen to this.
But I think a lot of these standalone, even though they do build on each other, but again, it's always up to [00:01:00] you or how you want to listen to them. We discussed this a little bit in that last episode, if you listened to, but we're going to talk a little bit more about those. And the term Cal was originally a language term that reference people who spoke a Celtic language, but it has come to be used in an extremely broad way that doesn't precisely line up with the evidence who can we consider a calc.
And why is that term calc? Uh, kind of problematic? Yeah, this is a great question. And one, I think. Good to go over again. And again, just because of how widespread this term CELT is. So as you said, it was first considered a language marker. And we got into a little bit last time about kind of, we don't know exactly where it originated.
We know the Greeks and the Romans used it, but we don't know what it was originally intended to mean or where exactly it came from. But these [00:02:00] days. It means so much to so many different people, so we can consider it as we already said a language marker. So does that mean that anyone who speaks a Celtic language is a CELT.
So if I lived in Japan, but I spoke fluent well, Would that make me account? Um, another question is, is anyone who makes Celtic art a CELT, but then we have the question. What do we understand as Celtic art that which is seen in the modern viewpoint today with all of the network and stuff like you see in the book of Kells is actually a medieval style that was influenced by sex and artistic styles.
So there's even questions there. We can also ask is anyone who lives in a Celtic land? Uh, CELT, you know, we talked about how widely spread the Celts were in the last episode. And today we consider Ireland and Scotland Celtic lands, but our early Greek and Roman sources never call these areas. Celtic, not, not even Wales or [00:03:00] Cornwall or the isle of man, all of these places we think of as Celtic today, weren't called that by our original sources.
They had their own terms. How far back. Can we go on these as well? So we can think about Celtic music. Um, what, what might we consider Celtic music? And we have this as a broad theme, and you can think of all of the heirs and, and really beautifully moving pieces that we have as Celtic music today. But where does that come from?
Where do we find the very beginnings of it? So at this point, it seems that for as imprecise and unwieldy as the term Celtic is we have to recognize that it's not going away in popular history and that we just have to work with and around it. So if we can't really posit a single cohesive definition of Celtic, how then are we to consider the possible existence of a quote [00:04:00] Celtic Christianity?
So my short answer is that we, can't not really to add to that a bit. When we talk about, you know, quote Celtic, Christianity, we're really just talking about Christianity in Ireland or Christianity as practiced by the Irish, regardless of their location, such as in Scotland or on the continent. I mean, that, that's really how this term has come to be understood, even though it's such a broad term.
Caltech. So we see the term further being coined to imply a lack of orthodoxy and the Christianity of Ireland or in other places like Scotland, which is further a problematic position to take, considering that the powers of the church and the papacy specifically during the early medieval period were not nearly so codified and strong as it later becomes.
And as we view it today. So when we think of the papacy. You know, as it is today, we have a tendency to kind of take [00:05:00] this modern conception and place it in the earlier times that we're thinking about and that's incorrect. So we have to try to avoid that. So all that to say, basically that you won't find me using the term Celtic Christianity at all.
And I recommend that it be retired from our vocabulary and replaced with more specific references to the church in Ireland or the church in Britain or whatever we're actually talking about. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. It seems like it's a convenience that works and really, really, really broad strokes.