> From: Pippin Michelli [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Should have included them perhaps, but I didn't have those other annals to
> hand, and we do have to beware of later interpolations.
>
The Annals of Ulster and The Annals of the Four Masters are
available on line at the CELT site.

> The annals are a
> _mess_ from that point of view. In any case, Irish saints were (on the
> whole) also Irish royalty, eligible to be king of their sept, so my
> omission
> is not disastrous to my point.
>
Well, I guess it's a matter of degree.....

> Well ... ye--ee- ... um, since the monasteries held the territory to which
> local jurisdictional claims were linked, promoting themselves was
> (ideally)
> promoting the kin-groups which sponsored them - of course there were
> disputes and attacks, but the monasteries were not stand-alone entities.
>
Frequently the interests of the monasteries were at odds with the
interests of the kings/chieftains leading the kin-group, for many reasons,
but especially those concerning wealth and control of the offerings made to
the monasteries. Also, I think you're overlooking a complicating factor: the
king was the leader of the tuath which was the legal entity made up of all
the kin-groups and unattached people--including subject peoples--living in a
territory. Usually the king was the leader of the wealthiest and most
powerful kin-group in the area. Such power changed as time passed and some
groups became more powerful. Meanwhile the monastery continued to exist, and
perhaps continued to be governed by representatives of the kin-group that
founded it. In such cases--and they often occurred--the struggle for control
of the monastery--and the dues paid to it--could be bloody.

If you take a look at the coronation ceremonies for kings (such as
those detailed in Byrne's _Irish Kings and High-Kings_), you'll see the
effort made to assert the superiority of the abbot or bishop over the king.
You'll also see that everyone involved in the ceremony--the abbot and the
leaders of the kin-groups in the tuath--gets something from the potlatch
offerings the king makes. The ceremony illustrates that the king can't
survive without the support of all these groups. And if the king did not get
the support of the monastery, he was likely to attack it and replace the
abbot with someone more sympathetic to his cause--provided he was the victor
of the raid, of course.

Also, monasteries often stood in the boundaries between territories
and thus became targets of dispute between kin-groups and tuatha.

> Their abbots were high-status people in their own right, even princes,
> like
> the founding saints whose "successor" they called themselves. I can see
> this discussion getting out of hand and leading me where I'm not entirely
> ready to go, heck.
>
Well, I felt that I should point out why I disagreed with your
generalization and that required giving my evidence.

> Yep, definitely going where I'm not ready to go. I do have theories on
> why
> they were so interested in all of this in Iona and elsewhere - based on
> research of the annals and hagiographies and timing systems. You have to
> be careful about who was making what claim when,
>
That's elementary, isn't it? Political alliances changed constantly
and access to various books varied a great deal. My complaint is that
generalizations are made about Irish stuff without reference to the specific
date and place, as if medieval Ireland and its settlements in what became
Scotland and Wales was a monolith of belief and practice, instead of a
frequently shifting mass of alliances, opinions, and movements.

> and in response to what, but
> with due caution I suggest the Iona monks might have been trumping the
> trump.
>
I don't think such caution is necessary on this point. The
hagiography makes it clear that stories were used to assert the claims of
one saint to superior veneration (and offerings) over another. This
characteristic appears in hagiography from all over Ireland, not just those
of the Columban familia (Iona, Kells, Derry).

> The implications of their anniversaries suggest that they were
> claiming an even more prestigious parallel for Columcille.
>
Definitely!

> I gave a paper
> earlier this year in which I suggested that there was a system for
> calculating important "jubilees" - not in decades or centenaries, but
> cyclic repetitions nonetheless, and the implications of these jubilees
> suggest that the whole hagiographical and annal-keeping system is much
> richer in meaning than we have thought, although less reliable in pedantic
> content. St Columcille was ostensibly born, founded Iona, and died on
> jubilees of the birth and resurrection of Christ - which leaves Moses in
> the
> dust. But it's at least a four-fold calculation and the paper was
> received
> with both excitement and reservations. It needs more work!
>
Interesting idea--and falls in with what is known about ancient
Celtic time-reckoning. Cycles were very important.

You may want to consider whether the positioning of moon and stars
fits into the reckoning for such "jubilees." In addition to the evidence of
the Coligny calendar (Gaulish, 1st. c. CE), there's folk evidence suggesting
that originally Irish seasonal festivals were moveable, based on position of
moon in some cases and specific stars in others. (This may help to explain
why the Irish got so upset about how Easter was calculated.) In the seventh
century, the Irish monks were considered superior to the Gauls in their
ability to calculate from the stars (Marina Smyth has a nice quote on this
point).

Francine Nicholson



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