СНАР. II. Contro versy between and Latin been summoned before a synod of Frankish bishops to answer for his Celtic heresy with regard to the observance of Easter. In the isolation of their island home, the Irish theologians still maintained the more ancient method of obthe Celtic serving Easter, according to a cycle of 84 years. They knew Churches. nothing, or professed to know nothing, of the cycle of Victorius, published in the year 457, and afterwards accepted, through the labours of Dionysius Exiguus, by almost the entire Latin Church. In the estimation of the English ecclesiastic the question had in no way declined in importance, since the time when it formed the foremost subject of discussion at Whitby. To Bede it appeared a cardinal article of faith-a kind of thirteenth commandment. He tells us of Theodorus, that he taught the right rule of life-and the canonical method of celebrating Easter;' Eanfleda, feasting and keeping Palm Sunday, while Oswy still fasted, seemed to him a grievous scandal.' In Alcuin's view the question wore an equally grave aspect; neither the Adoptionist theory on the one hand, nor the question of Image Worship on the other, could divert his attention from this sad heresy. It presented, in fact, an insuperable difficulty in every attempt to reconcile the Celtic and the Latin Church. The light in which such con The ordinary observer, on a superficial glance, is apt to dismiss such controversies with an expression of pitying controversies tempt. He sees in them nothing more than another proof themselves of the puerility of the mediaeval mind and of the perverse in history. tendencies of theological thought. A wider acquaintance present with history and a closer study of its phenomena can hardly, however, fail to modify an estimate so flattering to modern self-complacency. Without recalling the fact that even in the present age, separated as it is from that of Alcuin by the experiences and research of twelve centuries, disputes concerning the lighting of candles and the colours of vestments are still troubling alike the statesman, the churchman, and the theologian-we may observe that a very cursory investigation will suffice to shew that the questions that have divided Christendom from the second to the nineteenth cen1 Eccles. Hist. IV ii; and III XXV. CHAP. II. tury have rarely been of supreme doctrinal importance. The contests between religious parties often indeed remind us of what may be witnessed in military warfare. A small town, an insignificant fort, owing to a series of strategic movements, suddenly becomes a point of the highest value. It represents the key to a position which the assailing party is bound at any cost to carry, the defending party at any cost to hold. Few, however, are so ignorant as to suppose that either of the contending forces would be ready to expend so large an amount of blood and treasure, were the loss or gain of the position itself the sole result in prospect. It is the same in theological controversy. A minor point of doctrine has often been the ground whereon two great parties have agreed to try their strength, but behind a comparatively unimportant tenet we may generally discern broad and essential principles contending for the mastery. It was so in Alcuin's day. The Celtic and the Latin Church differed in Other their hierarchical principles, in the cast of their whole theo- points of logy, as well as concerning the fashion of the tonsure, the between rite of baptism, and the observance of Easter. The submission so readily yielded by the king of the Franks and the teachers at York to the authority of Rome was refused by the Irish theologian. St. Columban, when rebuking the pretensions of Boniface VIII, declared that he and his countrymen were the disciples of St. Peter and St. Paul, who had written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and had acknowledged only that primitive apostolic teaching of which Rome from the earliest times had been divinely designed to be the conservator.1 It is well known how the learned Ussher, under the combined influence of political and theological sympathies, was thus led to claim for the ancient Irish Church a purely Protestant character—a theory maintained even by so recent and well-informed a writer as Thierry.2 It was in keeping with this repudiation of the autocracy 1 See Columban's Letter ad Bonifacium Papam, Migne, lxxx 274. 2 Ussher, De Christianarum Ecclesiarum successione et statu, pp. 13-21; Thierry, Hist. de la Conquête d'Angleterre, i 324, divergence the Celtic and the Latin clergy. Denial by the former of the authority of Rome. CHAP. Resem blance between and the Eastern spirit. 6 2 of Rome, that the theologian of the Irish monasteries looked with especial favour and admiration upon the writings of the Greek Fathers. Able writers on this period have discerned much in common between the Hellenic and the Celtic minds,the Celtic a certain speculative uplooking quality,'' certainly not very apparent in the writers of the school of York. A further theological resemblance, and one of a less promising character, may be traced in the predilection shewn by both for questions which admitted a display of dialectical subtlety. It was this feature which especially arrested the notice of Benedict of Aniane and aroused his dislike for the Irish theologians. They were distinguished, he tells us, by their fondness for syllogistic mystification. They would often amuse themselves by interrogating some stolid representative of orthodoxy, and compel him, as the logical sequence of his own replies, to admit the existence of three Gods or to disavow his belief in the Trinity. The same tendency led them to admire in Martianus Capella those speculations which rendered his volume a sealed book to the scholars of York; while in the three great monasteries that marked the route of St. Columban's apostolate-Luxeuil, St. Gall, and Bobbio-numerous manuscripts, in the elegant Irish character (Scottice scripta), of Origen and other Greek fathers, long remained to attest the more enquiring spirit in which the studies of their communities were pursued. Other differences, of a more specific character, excited the jealousy and distrust of the Latin clergy. The Irish theologian did not concur in their condemnation and neglect of classic literature; he was not unfrequently acquainted to some extent with Greek; he used a Latin version of the New Testament that was not the Vulgate and which claimed to be anterior to Jerome; his text-book of elementary instruc 1 Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy, p. 32. 'Le génie celtique, qui est celui de l'individualité, sympathise profondément avec le génie grec.' Michelet, Hist. de France, i 121. Compare Alcuin's observation on the Irish scholars of his day: minus illis videtur, auctoritate et consuetudine sola esse responsum, nisi et aliqua ratio addatur auctoritate.' Migne, c 260. 26 6 Apud modernos scholasticos maxime apud Scotos iste syllogismus delusionis.' Baluze, Miscellanea, v 54. tion was more often than not the dangerously speculative CHAP. treatise of Martianus Capella. II. It was from the pages of this writer that Virgilius, the Irish bishop of Salzburg, drew his theory of the existence of an Antipodes, a doctrine which seems to have especially alarmed the earnest but intolerant Boniface and evoked the Boniface and the anathema of pope Zacharias. The eminent reformer, while Irish he saw still stretching before him almost limitless tracts clergy. abandoned to pagan belief and superstition and appealing to Christian philanthropy, had small patience for vague and unsettling speculation. When one of the Irish clergy, named Clement, ventured to broach certain strange notions concerning predestination, Carloman, the brother of Pepin le Bref, at Boniface's advice, sent the heretic to prison; 2 and the injunction which the reformer obtained from Gregory III against not only gentilitatis ritum et doctrinam, but also those venientium Britonum,3 is additional evidence of his unmistakeable hostility to the teaching of this school. That hostility, it need scarcely be added, became a tradition from Boniface's time with Alcuin and nearly all the Latin clergy. One alone, perhaps, in the whole Frankish court, could survey these differences with impartiality, and that one was the monarch himself. There is good reason indeed for inferring that he entertained a genuine and lively curiosity respecting the Irish clergy. The necessity of defending their mode of observing Easter from the objections of their antagonists, had led them to devote particular attention to the subject of Astronomastronomy, and the Irish theologian thus became the better astronomer as well as the better dialectician. It was Charles' 1 'De perversa autem et iniqua doctrina, quæ contra Deum et animam suam locutus est-si clarificatum fuerit, ita eum confiteri; quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sint seu sol et luna-hunc, habito concilio, ab ecclesia pelle, sacerdotii honore privatum.' Jaffé, Mon. Mogunt., p. 191. Zach. to Boniface. 2 Milman, ii 302; Clement and another heretic are here styled 'duos haereticos publicos et pessimos et blasphemos contra Deum et contra catholicam fidem.' The heresies of Clement appear to have included the rejection of the authority of Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory. See Jaffé, Mon. Mogunt., p. 140. 3 Epist. 4; Migne, xxxix 580. ical knowledge possessed by the latter. СНАР. II. Charles' interest in astronomical questions. His relations with Ireland. special delight to study the movements of the heavenly bodies; and we learn from Einhard that he expended no small time and labour in extracting from Alcuin all that the latter could communicate. This, as we have already seen, could have been but little, and Charles' sagacity could scarcely have failed to suggest that it was but a mockery of science when he was told, by way of explanation of the prolonged disappearance of Mars from the heavens, that the planet had been detained by the sun, which had again at last let it go through fear of the Nemean lion; or when he was assured that a comet of singular brightness was probably the soul of Liudger, just then recently deceased! That the scholars of Ireland were well known to Charles by report admits of little doubt. His relations with their native country were eminently friendly, the Irish kings, according to Einhard, styling themselves his subjects and slaves; ' while young Egbert, who was at this time his guest, and the boundaries of whose hereditary kingdom extended to that part of Cornwall known as West Wales, where a Celtic population maintained its ground and preserved frequent intercourse with the Holy Island,3 would hardly fail to tell his royal host something concerning the famous Irish monasteries.4 We can thus readily understand how it was that when 1 'Apud quem . . . praecipue astronomiae ediscendae plurimum et temporis et laboris impertivit.' Caroli Vita, c. 25. Echoed by the poet Saxo 'A quo precipue studuit totam rationem Et legem cursus noscere siderei.'—Pertz, i 271. 2 Scotorum quoque reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per munificentiam inclinatos, ut eum nunquam aliter nisi dominum, seque subditos et servos ejus pronuntiarent.' Caroli Vita, c. 16; Carolina, 523. 3 The close similarity of the stone crosses of Ireland to those of Cornwall is an interesting illustration of this intercourse. See Rimmer's Ancient Stone Crosses of England, pp. 10, 11. 4 Considerations like these seem to justify our rejection of a theory of Clement and his followers 'dropping as it were from the clouds upon the benighted Continent' (Haddan, Remains, p. 281), as derived from the improbable story of the Monachus Sangallensis (Pertz, ii 371), though the story has been accepted by such able enquirers as Mr. Haddan, M. Ozanam, and Dr. Lanigan. Chateaubriand long ago justly observed that the Monk of St. Gall is the father of the fabulous element relating to Charles. |