Culdeer

The Culdeer or Célí Dé ( Old Irish "vassals of God", Anglicised Culdees ) formed a monastic order with settlements in Ireland and Scotland . The Irish abbot Máel Ruain is believed to be the founder of the order, and in early Irish manuscripts the name is Cele De (the "sworn ally of God"). The name was later Latinized to Coli dei , derived from culdei after Hector Boece (1465-1536), which generally referred to monks and hermits .

Culdeer in literature

Protestant and especially Presbyterian writers romanticized the Culdeer for a long time as simple hermits who - free from Roman influences - had preserved a primeval Christianity in a distant corner of Western Europe . This view corresponded to one of Thomas Campbell's view of peace in the book Reullura :

"The pure, first Culdeer were the earliest priests of God in Albyn (England), before one of the islands of their seas was entered by the foot of a Saxon monk."

Another view, also published as that of Hector Boece in his Latin History of Scotland (1516), describes them as the direct successors of the organized Irish monks of Iona (6th-8th centuries) in the 9th to 12th centuries.

Both these and other views have been refuted by William Reeves (1815-1892), Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore.

Very few trustworthy sources of information have survived to this day, but it seems at least likely that the liturgy followed the model of Chrodegangs , Archbishop of Metz († 766). Chrodegang had established rules for liturgical chants and the canonical life of secular priests ( Regula canonicorum ). Its liturgy was taken up by Irish monks from northeastern Gaul and disseminated in their original homeland. The Irish hermits resident there were thus bound to the rules and regulations of the monasteries.

Tasks and communities

The Culdeer lived in a monastic manner, if not under monastic vows, and seem to have taken particular care of the poor and the sick. Apparently they were particularly interested in the musical part of the worship. Each individual monastery was independent and self-sufficient controlled by an abbot at the head, Crínán von Dunkeld , the grandfather of Malcolm Canmore , was even a lay abbot. According to descriptions, the monasteries were divided into a priestly and a secular part, in which unmarried and married members lived together. Their life resembled that of the secular communities of England and the continent, for they lived there together more or less isolated. Tradition goes on to say that even the clerical members were married, but unlike the priests of the Eastern Church, they lived separately from their wives during their time of priestly ministry.

history

General

According to written evidence, the culdeer originated in Ireland around 800 and spread from there via monasteries to Scotland and occasionally to England. The monk and poet Blathmac mac Con Brettan is known from the early Middle Ages and was strongly influenced by Célí Dé. The High Middle Ages are considered to be the most important age in the history of the order. Since the communities as a whole lacked a solid structure in terms of form and leadership, the Culdeer Church generally tended to decline as early as the High Middle Ages.

In the 12th century, the Celtic church was completely redesigned according to the Roman model. In this process, the Culdeer, as an order, also lost those peculiarities and peculiarities that were ascribed to them in earlier times: They, like the secular clergy, were uniformly brought under the canonical rules of Rome, because the images that we receive of their lives in the twelfth century , differ considerably from those of previous centuries.

There is nowhere else such demonstrated partial independence from Rome as that experienced and lived at St. Andrews by the Culdee, perhaps also because the bishop's grant was supported by royal charter.

New canonical rules of Rome became regularly known and some of the Culdeers therefore continuously joined the order established in those new rules. Those of the Culdeer who refused to join were granted a lifelong pension by the abbots of the previous monasteries and they remained as a separate and independent, but steadily declining community until the beginning of the 14th century. In that century they disappeared because they were excluded from the election of the bishop .

Culdeer in Ireland

During the ninth century, nine places in Ireland, including Armagh , Clonmacnoise , Clones , Devenish and Sligo , were mentioned as monasteries where the Culdeer communities were established as a kind of appendix to the usual monastic institutions.

Óengus mac Óengobann , called the Culdee, lived in the last quarter of the 8th century and is known as the author Félire Óengusso with "The Martyrdom of Óengus".

Máel Ruain (Maelruan, d. 792), under whom Óengus lived, wrote a rule for the culdeer of Tallaght with prescribed prayers, fasts, devotions, confession and penance. However, there are no indications that this rule was also generally used in other monasteries. After Maelruan's death, Tallaght was forgotten and the name Celi De disappeared from the Irish annals until 919. There it is recorded in the annals of the four masters that Armagh was sacked by the Danes and only the houses of prayer, the "people of God, these are the Ceile-De "who were spared. Subsequent entries in the annals show that there were also culdeers in Clonmacnoise, clones and in Clondalken around Monahincha in Tipperary and Scattery Island. Secular priests took the name of the Culdeer, lived in the community, and subjected themselves to monastic discipline, though not bound by monastic vows. On Clones, Devenish and Scattery Island, the name "Culdee" and "Kanon" are interchangeable.

Affected by the Danish wars, the Culdee houses Clondalken and Clones disappeared entirely. In Clonmacnoise around the eleventh century, the culdees were lay and married, while those in Monahincha and Scattery Island were regular canons. At Armagh, regular canons were established in the cathedral in the twelfth century, taking precedence over the culdeers, six in number, one prior, and five vicars.

They still led a life together, with the celebration of the service and the maintenance of the church building: They had separate lands and sometimes parish taxes.

When a chapter was formed, around 1160, the prior filled the office of precentor, with his brothers-vicars forming the choir and he himself being in the stage in the chapter next to the chancellor. He was elected and sustained by primacy by his Culdeer brothers and had a vote in the election of the archbishop by his position in that chapter.

Ulster was the last of the Irish provinces to be brought under English rule, so the Culdeer at Armagh long outlived their brothers throughout Ireland. The Armagh Culdeer held out until its dissolution in 1541 and briefly revived in 1627; soon afterwards their old property passed to the choir parishes of Armagh Cathedral.

Culdeer in Scotland

After Scotland the monks of Iona from Pictenkönig Nechtan, the son of Derile, had been expelled in 717, the resulting gaps created not by the Roman monks who spread in the north of Northumbria, but the end of the eighth century Culdees were from Ireland filled.

The main houses of the monasteries in Scotland at that time were at St Andrews , Scone , Dunkeld , Loch Leven , Monymusk in Aberdeenshire , Abernethy and Brechin .

The Lochleven Culdeee lived on St. Serf's Inch , an island given to them by the Pictish Prince Brude around 850. In 1093 they surrendered their island to the Bishop of St. Andrews in exchange for food and clothing, but Robert, who would become bishop in 1144, gave all of their robes, books and other belongings along with the island to the recently established canonical regulations, in to which the culdeers were likely to be united and in which they ultimately merged. About the year 1100 there were thirteen Culdees-held institutions of hereditary tenure at St. Andrews.

In terms of income, the institutions apparently paid more attention to their own prosperity and expansion of the order than to services of the church or even the needs of the people. A reform felt urgently needed by Queen Margaret of Scotland was carried out by her sons Alexander I and David I ; gradually the whole position passed into the hands of Thorgaut , the first bishop of St. Andrews, and his successors in the diocese in the 12th century .

The Culdee of Monymusk were perhaps originally a colony of St. Andrews and were listed as a canonical regulation of the Augustinian order at the beginning of the 13th century and those of Abernethy followed in 1273.

In Brechin, famous like Abernethy for its round tower, the prior of the Culdeer and his monks helped to form the cathedral chapter of the diocese founded by King David I in 1145 , which they occupied until the 14th century.

The name of the Culdee is immortalized to this day in the name of the largest city in the Scottish county of Fife , Kirkcaldy ("the Church of the Culdee"). Culdee Chapel in the same county east of St. Andrews can be seen from the northeast from the ruined cathedral and city walls there. It was dedicated to "St. Mary on the Rock" (St. Mary on the Rock) and is characterized by its cruciform ruins. It was used for their Easter morning service by the local churches of St. Andrews .

Culdeer in England and Wales

Similar integrations are responsible for the disappearance of the Culdees Yorks caused by the canons of St. Peter's Church around 925 and those of Snowdon and the island of Bardsey in northern Wales, mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Speculum Ecclesiae and Itinerarium (around 1190). According to Giraldus Cambrensis, the former community is said to have been harassed by the greedy Cistercians . The above locations appear to be the only ones where the culdees have been found in England and Wales.

Culdeer in the North Atlantic

The Icelandic Landnámabók ("Book of Settlements") mentions that the Normans found Irish priests in Iceland; they would have bells and pastorals features. This is also indicated in the work of Dicuil . The Normans called the priests papar , a term that can be found in many place names in Orkney , Shetland , Faroe Islands and Iceland . The traditional scriptures say that the papars left Iceland with the advent of the Normans. It is conceivable that their influence helped the spread of Christianity in Iceland.

Further speculation sees the culdees as the first Europeans who could have landed in America. The most important reference point for this thesis are the beehive huts made of more than 275 stones in Maine , New Hampshire , and elsewhere in New England. Beehive huts are stone huts built of dry stone with a cantilever roof, typical of the British Isles. Some of these buildings are well preserved to this day and resemble the Culdee architecture in Ireland and Scotland in the early Middle Ages and earlier. However, there is no evidence that medieval "monks" could be responsible for the structures of the famous Gungywamp site in Connecticut, for example .

literature

• Brad Olsen: Sacred Places North America: 108 Destinations. 2nd Edition. CCC Pub, Santa Cruz, California 2008, ISBN 978-1-888729-13-9 .
• William Reeves: The Culdees of the British Islands: As They Appear in History with an Appendix of Evidences. Dublin 1864. (Reprinted by Llanerch Press, 1994, ISBN 1-897853-29-7 )
• W. Revisits: The Culdees of the British Isles. Dublin 1864.
• William F. Skene: Celtic Scotland. especially Volume 2: 1876-1880.
• William Beveridge: Makers of the Scottish Church. 1908. (Reprint: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-150-35918-7 )
• John Jamieson: An Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona, and of Their Settlements in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Nabu Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-141-96615-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Follett, Céli Dé in Ireland , pp. 2-3.
2. ↑ Martyrology of Tallaght. ed. Best and Lawlor, London 1931, pp. 94-95; Félire Óengusso , ed.Stokes , p. 161.
3. ↑ Annals of Ulster, p. a. 792.
4. ↑ Culdees. In: Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913.
5. ↑ Olsen 2003
6. ↑ dpnc.org

This article incorporates texts from the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica in the public domain .