A unique feature of Celtic Christianity was the central role of monasteries throughout the “Celtic Fringe”—Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and of course Ireland. Many of the most important contributions of the Celtic churches, including scholarship, art, and the concept of the soul friend (anam chara), came directly from these monasteries.

Why Monasteries

A good part of the reason for the importance of monasteries came from the political and social structure of the Celtic regions. All were dominated by tribes and clans with petty kingships and lacked a history of centralized government. As a result, the Celtic churches tended to be localized, with communities of celibate monks and nuns integrated with the local clans. The clans provided land for the monastery, protection, and labor in the monastic fields while the monastery provided spiritual services such as mediation, prayer, education, and the sacraments, as well as paying “tribute” (i.e. goods and services) to the clan. The abbots who ran the monastery were usually appointed by the clan leader from members of his family.

In contrast, the Roman Empire was built around city states (i.e. towns which governed the surrounding rural territories). The diocesan structure of the church was based on the city state structure within the Empire: bishops in towns exercised oversight in the churches and monasteries in the surrounding rural areas which made up their diocese. The Celtic territories were not built around city states, so the diocesan structure was weak. As a result, the bishops in Celtic areas were typically under the oversight of abbots rather than the other way around. This would prove to be a problem when Irish missionaries such as Columbanus established monasteries on the continent. We’ll look at that in a later post.

Major Monasteries and Paruchiae

Major monasteries became centers of artistic production. The Book of Kells, for example, was produced at the monastery of Iona. These monasteries also often founded daughter monasteries with liturgical practices and rules based on the mother house. The mother house would also appoint the abbots of the daughter monasteries, again typically drawn from the family of the founder or his clan.

These networks of monasteries would form a paruchia, or monastic family, operating something like its own religious order. The paruchiae of important monasteries such as Iona or Clonmacnoise could wield a great deal of political and economic power in Ireland (and on occasion military power as well).

By the 8th or 9th century, some of these major monasteries emerged as monastic towns, proto-cities that combined religious and economic functions. Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, and Armagh would be prime examples of this.

Hermitages and Skete Monasteries

Alongside the clan-based monasteries and large houses, the Celtic church maintained more primitive monastic structures based on the Desert Fathers in Egypt. These included eremitic monasteries (i.e. hermitages) and Skete monasteries—monks living in their own cells and only coming together for work and worship. These hermitages and monasteries were located in remote areas such as mountains, bogs, islands, or skelligs (i.e. rocky islands emerging from the sea that lacked a beach). These monks sought more severe forms of asceticism in keeping with Celtic approaches to spirituality. The best-known example of this type of monastery is Skellig Michael.

Anam Chara

Another feature of Irish monastic spirituality was the anam chara, or soul friend. Although in popular usage today, the term can mean a soulmate, members of a chosen family, or simply an intimate friend and peer, in Ireland it referred to a mentor and confessor with whom one developed a deep emotional and spiritual bond. The anam chara was typically an older monk whose job it was to disciple a younger monk. The relationship was the ecclesiastica equivalent of the patron-client relationships common in secular society.

The anam chara contributed in significant ways to Celtic penitential practice. The Irish approach to penance was extremely influential and reshaped Roman practice in this area, and so it deserves its own post.

The idea of the anam chara spread to other Celtic lands as well as to the continent through Irish missionary monks. It was opposed by Rome as being outside the formal hierarchy of the church but nonetheless had an influence on Cistercian spirituality and on ideas of spiritual friendship in the Middle Ages. And today, the concepts behind the anam chara have helped shape approaches to spiritual direction and to mentorship in a range of fields.

The Irish monasteries were also centers of education, but that too is a topic for another post.