6 reasons why Ireland was the coolest medieval kingdom

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When it comes to the Middle Ages, the Russian man in the street recalls rather the continental lands of Europe - German, French or Italian. But a special place in the space and culture of medieval Europe was occupied by insular Ireland - the stronghold of the Christian faith in the north and a country of extremely passionate saints. There is a long list of reasons why medieval Ireland is really cool, but for this article, we'll get by with a short one.

Catholics outside the Romanesque world: a truly "special way"

Throughout most of Europe, Christianity spread “along the roads of the Romans,” and Roman culture, even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, dominated the continent. She seemed to "align" local cultures and left her mark on everything. Distant insular Ireland never entered the "Roman world" (Pax Romana) and, despite the fact that early adopted Christianity and in the future has always been faithful to its "Roman" (Catholic) version, it really developed its own roads. Her culture remained distinctive, and Roman influence was only felt in Latin religious texts.

In a way, Ireland became an alternative center for Catholic culture, and Irish saints and Irish monasticism gained special importance in Europe. The most famous saint of Ireland is the baptist Patrick, who, according to legend, rid the island of snakes. Few people in Russia know that the Russian Orthodox Church also venerates him - Patrikov (Patrikeev, Patrikiev) can be congratulated on the name day on March 30. But he himself was born in Roman Britain and came to Ireland only at the age of sixteen - he was brought from a raid among other converted into slavery. Prior to that, Patrick was the son of a wealthy Roman decurion officer. In slavery, Patrick converted to Christianity.

Another famous saint of Ireland, Brigitte, was born in slavery: her father was King Leinster, who, of course, went to bed with his slaves and did not think to protect himself. It is with Brigitte's father that one of her famous miracles is associated. The king had a tame fox who knew how to show different tricks on command. One of the courtiers accidentally killed the king fox, and the king sentenced him to death. Then Brigitte went into the forest, lured a wild fox and, hiding it under a cloak, brought it to her father. To the surprise of the king, the forest beast perfectly performed all the same tricks on command - and the king released the condemned man, having received himself a new fox.

Before the Viking invasion, Ireland could be called a land of monasteries. But the Vikings loved to ravage these establishments so much that Irish monks began to flee en masse to the mainland - and carried with them the Irish version of the monastic Catholic culture. True, only the monasteries on the coast suffered, but in the depths of the island they continued to calmly "work" as centers of education and spirituality.

The Irish did not throw away the achievements of paganism

The early Christian clergy of Europe zealously tried to destroy all the monuments of the previous pagan culture. Even decorative marble statues were obtained from the houses of the Roman officials - each sculpture was considered as a possible depiction of a pagan deity. What can we say about the structures of stone blocks built in the Neolithic (Late Stone Age). The boulders were taken apart for material for churches or simply smashed and scattered.

In Ireland, all or almost all of the holy places for pagan times have survived, although their interpretation has changed. The institution of such important people for the pagan Irish society as the Philids has also been preserved - special keepers of the tradition, who are considered to be closely related to the pagan priests-Druids and even suggest that after Christianization many Druids quietly switched to the Philids, since they were, speaking conditionally, people of the same caste or one test. Compare this with how cautious, after Christianization in other places, people of art were usually treated, who even in a residual form preserved pagan traditions and the memory of pagan history, like buffoons in Russia or storytellers in other places.

As for the pagan shrines, some of them turned into places where famous Irish saints showed miracles, while others became just a place where magical creatures, sids (elves), who also became the old gods, live. The legends about the Seeds were not erased by the Irish Christians, although the image of the Seeds themselves may have received a little negative connotation - but one should not think that these creatures were exceptionally good before the arrival of Christianity on the island.

The Irish legends about the Sids have given us classic fantasy over the centuries. The image of beautiful elves living in a land where there is no imperfection, but constantly seeking and finding contact with people from a less perfect world - and especially elves falling in love with mortal men - can be traced in many works of the twentieth century, including the "main fantasy", Tolkien's trilogy "Lord of the Rings".

In Ireland, they understood the full value of literature

It was here that copyright law was passed in the Middle Ages. True, the king who made the law had to fight because of this and as a result he lost three thousand soldiers on the battlefield - for medieval Ireland that was a large number. All in all, copyright protection with spear and sword turned out to be troublesome.

A special place in Irish society was occupied by the already mentioned Philids, whose name is often translated as "poets" or "harpers". These wandering storytellers with a harp not only wandered about, telling about the exploits and failures of the kings of the past, but also composed new songs, each of which easily ruined the reputation or turned the feat into all-Irish glory, and glory into universal honor and a rapid rise upward in career and public stairs. Everyone, young and old, women, men, servants, and kings, lived with an eye on the Philids and their judgments.

In addition, the Philids kept the memory of what would now be called judicial precedents, so that they could be consulted in difficult cases, kept the old sacred places intact, changing their legend to more acceptable to Christians, and contributed to the preservation of the literary tradition. When Christians made writing more or less common, the Philids also added historical records to their duties, which strengthened their position in society.

Theories have been advanced that the Philids and Druids were to the Irish pagans the same as the Brahman caste in India and, in fact, could hardly be separated from each other, because each Philid was a half-finished Druid and vice versa. In any case, the developed oral literature of the Irish and the fact that its main custodians were not destroyed, influenced the fact that Irish written (completely Christian) literature was also developed in the Middle Ages.

In any case, when the British colonized Ireland and tried to suppress national consciousness with might and main, they tried to ban harps as well - the main instrument of the Philid, the keeper of Irish pride and history. This did not give much effect. And the harp is still, by the way, flaunts on the country's coat of arms.

Ireland was one of the centers of Western scholarship

In the sixth century, while rimocentric Europe was experiencing the recent collapse of the empire against the backdrop of a climatic disaster and plague, and the Germanic and Slavic tribes ravaged everything in their path, Ireland, separated from the continent, felt good: it had its own culture, independent from Rome, the plague, although came, but rather late, monks were added to the country, education and spirituality were cultivated in monasteries, the Philids mastered writing … In general, in the sixth century Ireland turned into an alternative center of Western scholarship and outstripped almost all of Europe in terms of the number of educated people.

Dozens of theologians were brought up in monasteries, who then left for the devastated and feral continent and successfully preached there. Oddly enough, theologians of Ireland also significantly preserved the Latin culture alien to them for Europe and later, when they moved to other countries because of the Vikings, they helped to restore it already there. And Irish books - mostly, of course, of spiritual content - were of the highest quality, including beauty and elaboration of illustrations, in Europe of their day.

The Irish were real mods

Foreigners drew attention to the Irish fondness for bright colors in their clothes and their dislike for trousers in the warm season. In general, the prevalence of trousers among men in Europe was directly related to the spread of horse riding, and in Ireland only small horses survived, suitable for pulling a cart, but not for racing - so it is not surprising that trousers as a daily piece of clothing took root poorly.

In general, Ireland was very poor in resources, and most of the fabrics available for clothing were either black or cream - the color of sheep's wool. Fabrics dyed in bright colors were fabulously expensive. But the Irish were poorer here too: they wore patchwork raincoats made of square patches of different colors. More black, a little cream (there were more black fleece sheep), a couple of areas of green or red. At some point, striped fabrics also spread. And without pants, the Irish felt great even during the Renaissance. To the delight of lovers of muscular male legs, I suppose.

The Irish had their own secret writing

Not that this secret was guarded at the cost of someone's life, but no one seemed to want to delve into a writing that looks like a collection of serifs on a long line. By the way, precisely because of the way the words written in Ogamic script look like, there are theories that they either come from a secret nodular letter, like the one used by the indigenous peoples of South America, or are a memory of Devanagari, an Indian script that also looks like complex knots strung on one thread. Both, however, are very doubtful. In any case, this is a unique, completely independent European writing system.

Ogamic writing appeared, presumably in the fourth century, and was most actively used in the fifth or sixth. Not everything written in this cryptography contains secrets or descriptions of historically significant events. For example, one of the most famous Ogamic writing, made by a monk, says that he feels bad after having gone too far with beer the day before.

Interestingly, the name of the letter coincides in Irish with the name of the tombstones, and Ogamic inscriptions were used most actively on such stones. Instead of spaces, it used the signs of the beginning and end of the phrase. The lines had to be read either from left to right, or from bottom to top, and there were twenty letters in total.

Many facts from the history of Ireland are amazing, for example, how the Soviet Republic of Limerick appeared in Ireland and stood against all of Britain.