One of the unique aspects of Irish Christianity was the practice of peregrinatio, or pilgrimage. To understand this, it is helpful to look at Irish concepts of martyrdom

The Different Martyrdoms

The Irish church distinguished three types of martyrdom.

Red martyrdom is dying or shedding blood for the faith. There are no known examples of this in Ireland, but it was held up as an ideal, the ultimate sacrifice for Christ.

Green martyrdom is living a life of extreme asceticism and self-denial. This often involved becoming a hermit or living in a skete monastery such as Skellig Michael. Green martyrs could attract followers, in which case it could lead to white martyrdom with the founding of a monastery.

White martyrdom involves non-violent but deep sacrifice for God, including rejection of worldly comforts, asceticism, and monasticism, often away from clan and family. In a more extreme version of white martyrdom, some Irish saints went into voluntary exile, and that is where peregrinatio enters the picture.

Peregrinatio

The Irish vision of pilgrimage was this sort of voluntary exile, often with no expectation of ever returning home. This was much like the nineteenth century missionaries who packed their goods in their coffins when the went overseas since they planned to die in the field.

Peregrinatio could take several forms. In some cases, it consisted of getting in a boat and going wherever God’s wind blew them. Or it may not even involve the wind: there was a report of Irish monks landing in Wales in a boat without sails, oars, or rudder that went to sea to go where God took them.

St. Brendan the Navigator

St. Brendan the Navigator is said to have set off to sea to find the Promised Land of the Saints. His voyage may have been inspired by Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth in the west, a spiritual paradise in pre-Christian Irish mythology. The Voyage of St. Brendan is one of the most famous legends of the Middle Ages. In the legend, after many adventures at sea, he found the Promised Land of the Saints and then returned to Ireland.

Some believe Brendan actually made it to the New World. Irish adventurer Tim Severn proved it could be done by sailing across the Atlantic in a reproduction sixth century Irish boat, and in the process had encounters that aligned to some degree with the events in the legend.

St. Columba

More commonly, peregrinatio was taken either as part of penance or for mission (or both). St. Columba, one of St. Brendan’s contemporaries, left Ireland to found a monastery at Iona, an island in the Inner Hebrides near Mull in Scotland. According to one story, Columba left as part of his penance for triggering a war. He was to leave Ireland until he had saved as many people as had died in the battle.

Whether that story is true or not, St. Columba engaged in extensive missionary activity in Scotland. He was a key figure in converting some of the Scottish kingdoms to Christianity. He also founded a number of other monasteries in Ireland and Scotland, as did his successors, forming the paruchia Columbae (i.e. the family of Columban monasteries). These included monasteries at Derry, Kells, and Durrow in Ireland and on Skye, Tiree, and other locations in Scotland.

St. Columba is also one of the three patron saints of Ireland (along with St. Patrick and St. Brigid).

Missionary Monks on the Continent

Other peregrini went further afield, some to red martyrdom. For example, St. Killian, the Apostle to Franconia, was martyred near Würzburg, Germany, after telling the duke that his marriage to his brother’s widow was unlawful under church law. (His wife then ordered Killian and two of his assistants beheaded while the duke was away.) St. Killian is now the patron saint of Würzburg.

Not all peregrini to the continent were martyred, though many faced heavy opposition from corrupt government and ecclesiastical officials. Part of this had to do with differences in practices between the Irish and Roman churches. Celtic churches used an earlier system for determining the date of Easter than the updated system used on the continent. (This was also a problem in Britain, leading to the 664 Synod of Whitby which decided in favor of Roman practice.) Further, in Ireland, abbots were superior to bishops, the opposite of the situation on the continent. In some cases, this led to friction between the monasteries founded by the Irish peregrini and local bishops.

Despite the tensions, the Irish missionary monks had a significant impact on the continent. They spread Irish penitential practice, which then was adapted by the Roman churches. And they were also important in reintroducing education to western Europe. A key figure in this process was Columbanus, the most important peregrinus to the continent. We will look at his career in the next post.

The practice of peregrinatio was the highest expressions of the Irish emphasis on asceticism, self-denial, and white martyrdom. It enabled missionary activities in pagan areas in Scotland and in some areas on the continent, trained church leaders, and revitalized the faith in many nominally Christian parts of Europe.