Instead of running away from their failures like Luke Skywalker, medieval monks travelled in a small boat seven miles off the coast of Ireland to a destination that fulfilled their deepest longings.
In particular there are three chief motivations. Here is the first.
In the centuries following Saint Patrick’s missionary campaign in Ireland, there grew a religious fervor that took as its motto, peregrinatio pro Dei amore — wandering for the love of the Lord. This single phrase inspired numerous men and women in Ireland to travel distant places in honor of the Triune God.
In a real sense they fulfilled that oft-quoted line from Tolkien: they wandered and were not lost. They knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it.
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This idea took various forms during the early years of Christian faith in Ireland, but the desire to get in a boat and sail away from the mainland in search of God remained a common theme.
One of the most well-known saints who wandered by sea at this time was Saint Brendan the Navigator. He is known as one of the “Twelve Apostles of Ireland,” and numerous legends have become associated with the travels of this adventurous monastic saint.
Throughout his life, Saint Brendan sailed to many distant lands, including Iceland. There is even a story that Brendan made the perilous journey all the way to what is modern-day Florida. However wild that may seem, some scholars believe it could have been possible for Brendan to accomplish that great feat.
So when a small group of monks (some believe they were led by St. Finnian of Clonard, a contemporary of Brendan) travelled to Skellig Michael, they did so to “wander for the love of the Lord.” They believed they were pilgrims, traveling to the ends of the earth for God and Skellig Michael marked for them an island near that point. They didn’t think there was anything beyond that point and so decided to set-up a monastery on an island that no human had ever lived on.
However, there was more to it than simply “wandering” for God.
The monks in Ireland were very familiar with the Life of Saint Anthony, a biography written by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria that described the extreme life of Saint Anthony the Abbot.It was written in 360 and captivated the hearts of the Irish when it was brought to Ireland and copied by the monks in their monasteries.The Irish church has an ancient connection to Egypt, which may be surprising as the two countries are very far apart. Nevertheless, recent archeological evidence further solidifies this connection.
For example, in 2006 an Irish worker discovered an amazing find while digging in a bog with his backhoe at Fadden More. He found an intact manuscript from the 9th century and the most significant find was the original leather cover that protected the psalter. It was found intact and provided an insight into the origins of the Irish church. The inside of the leather cover “is lined with papyrus, a writing material produced from reeds grown in the eastern Mediterranean, famously in Egypt. The papyrus was probably placed inside the cover to act as a stiffener.”
Some scholars believe the “discovery of Egyptian papyrus represents the first tangible connection between early Irish Christianity and the Middle-Eastern Coptic Church.”
Furthermore, there is even a “famous legend of Queen Scotia, an Egyptian princess or queen, depending on which version of the legend you read, who was said to have arrived in Ireland in 1700 BC and was killed by the Tuatha De Danann in a great battle. Her supposed grave is marked by a giant inscribed stone in County Kerry and its importance has led to local politicians calling for its preservation.”
Coincidentally, the stone is not too far from Skellig Michael and only adds to the Egyptian connection.
In any case, the monks of Skellig Michael were very familiar with these Egyptian hermits who gave themselves entirely to God. St. Anthony and these hermits desired to imitate the example of Jesus, who spent forty days in the desert in prayer and freely chose to spend their lives in a remote and harsh location for the glory of God.
Along with a desire to go into the desert and contemplate God, the monks of Ireland held on to the concept of a “green martyrdom.” The Catholic Church has always taught about the possibility of a “red martyrdom,” where one imitates Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross by dying for the sake of the Gospel. Later on there was the belief that if a person wasn’t called to a red martyrdom, they could participate in the same sacrifice with a “white martyrdom,” where someone might endure ridicule for belief in the Gospel, but not suffer death.
Early on, especially in Ireland, there developed a third martyrdom called, “green martyrdom.” An ancient homily in Irish, written around the end of the seventh century, gives a perfect summary of this type of martyrdom.
Now there are three kinds of martyrdom, which are accounted as a cross to a man, to wit: white martyrdom, green and red martyrdom. White martyrdom consists in a man’s abandoning everything he loves for God’s sake, though he suffer fasting or labor thereat. Green martyrdom consists in this, that by means of fasting and labor he frees himself from his evil desires, or suffers toil in penance and repentance.
This new type of “martyrdom” was mainly due to the fact that Christians in Ireland were not persecuted as were they were in Rome or Israel. There did not exist any type of Empire to hunt them down and destroy every last Christian. Christianity in Ireland developed for centuries under (relative) peace. There may have been a few squabbles here and there, but nothing like the persecution of the early Church.
So the Irish needed a different kind of martyrdom that they could freely participate in. The Irish took hold of this type of martyrdom and, not surprisingly, sought out remote “green” places to become green martyrs. They wanted to be as severe as they could in fasting and penance, and preferred the harshest and most remote places possible.
Skellig Michael was the perfect place.
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Photo Credit: CC Tony Webster via Wikipedia
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Philip Kosloski
Philip Kosloski is the founder of Voyage Comics & Publishing and the writer and creator of the comic book series, Finnian and the Seven Mountains.