Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  By the eighth century, the plain statements of individuals who believed that they were witnessing the last days had given way to more elaborate literary expositions. The legends about Patrick that had developed in the centuries after his death, for example, illustrate this point. Part of the reason for the heightened interest in Patrick was the increasing power of the church of Armagh, whose head declared himself to be the saint’s “heir” (comarbae) and for whom claims were being made, in virtue of that relationship, of primacy over all the churches in Ireland as well as Patrick’s paruchia in Britain. Unadorned statements of faith made by the historical figure would be abandoned in favor of fictional incidents that demonstrated the power of the legend. The brief account of Patrick found in the early ninth-century History of the Britons attributed to the British historian Nennius ends with three petitions sought from God, the third of which was that the Irish would perish seven years before the Day of Judgment.16 A century later, there was further elaboration on this theme in the hagiographical collection known as the Tripartite Life of Patrick, composed under the patronage of several of his “heirs,” in the famous episode in which Patrick, now behaving like a hero from ancient sagas rather than a humble ecclesiastic, fasts against God in order to allow the Irish to escape the Last Days. The idea of ritual starvation is not unique to the Irish, and it was intended to force the opponent to grant a request or otherwise have his honor besmirched by the death of the one fasting. Patrick carried out his fast in order to receive a series of blessings from God that included his salvation of some of the damned, the assurance that he would be the advocate for the Irish, and the promise that Ireland would perish in a sea-flood seven years before the final Judgment, so that the Irish would not witness the terrors of the Last Days.17 Similar claims would be put forward for other individuals, and for Finnian of Clonard it was asserted that he too would judge the Irish at Doomsday and anyone buried at his church would not be tormented in hell after Doomsday.18 The desolation of Ireland prior to the end seems to have been a popular idea and is found in other works not associated with Patrick, such as the Colloquy of the Two Sages (Immaccalam in dá Thuarad), which claims that Ireland would be abandoned seven years before the Day of Judgment.19 The approach of that day was considered so horrific and so painful that an early death was to be preferred to its terrors and suffering. The destruction of the Irish before Doomsday, then, was considered to be a divine mercy.

  Voyages and the Otherworld

  When Bede was writing his account of the vision of Fursa, considerations of the last times were finding their way into secular literature, as heroic elements would later be introduced into theological speculations. Examples of this are found in the so-called voyage literature, which provides evidence for popular beliefs about the Day of Judgment and the nature of souls. There might have been a tradition of voyaging in theological thought long before it appears in the surviving texts, and voyage imagery can be found in the writings of Columbanus.20 One of the features that distinguished the stories of “voyages” (immrama) from the tales of mere “adventures” (echtrai) was that the former included journeying to islands that had connections with the otherworld, often as a way station for divine and human beings awaiting the Last Day.21 At first the eschatological influence in secular literature is implied rather than explicit, which has led to some interesting speculations about the survival of pagan Celtic legends of the “Happy Otherworld.”22 One aspect of this otherworld was the land of eternal youth (Tír na nÓg), which in the popular mind could become confused with heaven.23 Others have suggested to the contrary that remnants from a Celtic “Book of the Dead” have been added to Christian elements.24 Still others have suggested that the otherworld elements are Christian in inspiration.25 The surviving literature does show, however, how theological speculations were understood by the laity, and the way(s) in which those speculations were then incorporated into secular literature.

  Connections of chronological freedom with the condition of the body are found in the voyage of Bran son of Febal (Immram Brain meic Febail), composed in the late seventh or the early eighth century. Bran and his company visit several islands of wonder, including an island of Joy and an island inhabited solely by women. An eschatological element is implied in the idea of perpetual youth while he is afloat, for when he leaves the island of women against the advice of the inhabitants and returns to Ireland, Bran discovers that centuries have passed and all that is remembered of him are merely some old tales.26 Bran and his companions remain at the age they were at the time of their departure so long as they do not disembark on Irish soil, but when one of the crew leaps from the ship and touches the shore he immediately turns to dust. The idea of a chronological state-of-grace for humans who left their own land in order to travel on these journeys seems to have enjoyed some success with its audience and found its way into hagiography. A ninth-century litany of Irish pilgrim saints composed circa A.D. 800 states: “Twenty-four men of Munster who went with St. Ailbe on the ocean to visit the Land of Promise, who are there alive until Doom.”27 The famous Voyage of St. Brendan (Navigatio Sancti Brendani), now extant in an early tenth-century version, claims that the saint and his monks visited the community of St. Ailbe and his comrades during their voyage.28 The origin for Brendan’s association with Ailbe probably came from an earlier episode in the vita of Brendan, where he and his followers celebrate Christmas day on the island of the family of Ailbe.29 More elaborate descriptions of Ailbe’s community are given in the story of the Voyage of Uí Chorra (Immram curaig húa Corra). The Uí Chorra were three brothers who were consecrated to the devil and destroyed the churches of Connacht.30 When they converted to Christianity and wished to make amends for their previous destruction, they rebuilt all they had destroyed and then, as a final act of contrition, sailed away on the sea. One of the islands they visited was the Land of Promise, where Ailbe and his monks awaited the Last Judgment. The brothers are forced to depart before sunrise because it would not be the place of their resurrection (i.e., the place of their burial); therefore they would be tormented if they saw the land and then had to depart from it. Before they leave, the Uí Chorra are told that the saint and his fellow travelers sing requiems for all who are dead in the sea.

  The image of a community of mortals waiting for the end of time in a Land of Promise would enjoy a considerable longevity, and it is found in other materials that will be discussed later, such as the Vision of Adomnán, the Two Sorrows of Heaven, and the Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla. The Land of Promise was an earthly version of Paradise, where rivers of milk and honey flow past a land filled with gold, silver, and gems.31 Not surprisingly, the distinction between the Land of Promise and Paradise is not always obvious.32 More startling, however, was the occasional effort to imply that Ireland was the earthly paradise by listing the similarities between the two.33 This might explain why it was believed that a sea-flood would overwhelm the Land of Promise prior to the Last Days.34 The divine mercy in destroying the body in order to spare the mind the terror of the Last Times that had, in the legends of St. Patrick, been granted to Ireland would be extended to an earthly paradise.

  Those who waited for the Day of Judgment on islands in the sea were not always as saintly as Ailbe and his followers. In the Voyage of Uí Chorra the travelers journey to an island where they meet a disciple of Jesus who fled from Him until he came to the isle in the ocean where he remains until the end of time.35 The figure of the penitent hermit awaiting judgment is found in two voyage tales, the Voyage of Máel Dúin (Immram curaig Máildúin) and the Voyage of St. Brendan. The story is essentially the same in both tales. A penitent, who is known as the hermit of Tory (an island off the coast of Donegal with a community dedicated to St. Columba) to Máel Dûin and Paul the hermit to Brendan, lives on a rock in the midst of the ocean with no visible supply of food.36 In the story of Máel Dúin the hermit had been the community’s cook, but later he became a thief and fled from the church with his stolen goods. He repented of his cr
imes, however, and went into exile. In Brendan’s voyage there is no mention of any crime and the hermit simply leaves Ireland. A theme found in both episodes is that his spiritual progress is marked by changes in diet. The hermit of Tory initially is given seven cakes and a cup of whey water that sustain him for seven years. Then for another seven years he is given salmon. When Máel Dúin and his troop meet him, the hermit is living on a morsel of fish and a small loaf with a cup of good liquor, a ration also provided for the visitors. Paul the hermit is sustained by a slightly different diet for ninety years before he meets Brendan.

  A penitential voyage and sojourn on an island in order to gain salvation was not limited to individuals but could be extended to entire groups of people, a prospect described in the Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla, composed in the tenth century.37 The story begins when a king named Fiachru son of Máel Coba is slain by the people of the kingdom of Ross, over whom he rules as a consequence of victory in battle. In order to prevent his kinsmen from avenging his death by a slaughter of those people, two clerics named Snedgus and Mac Riagla are sent from Iona by St. Columba to pass sentence. They judge that sixty couples are to be set adrift as punishment, and afterward the clerics decide to follow suit in order to be pilgrims for God. Their adventures are similar to those found in the voyages of Brendan, Uí Chorra, and Máel Dúin. At the conclusion of the tale, they visit an island that happens to be the one where the sixty couples from Ross are found, who tell the clerics that they will remain there until the Day of Judgment, living without sin and in the company of the prophets Elijah and Enoch. When Snedgus and Mac Riagla ask to see Enoch, they are told that he is in hiding until all go to the great battle on the Day of Judgment. There are parallels with secular tales that might contain survivals of the legend of the “Happy Otherworld,” where beings live without blemish. For example, among the stories associated with an early Irish king named Connla the Fair, there is an adventure in which he is seduced by a fairy woman, who comes from a land where there is no sin, no mortality, and no hunger or thirst.38

  Celtic literature frequently employs animals as substitute humans, and animals play an important rôle in voyage tales and other works with an eschatological interest. The purveyor of food to the hermit of Tory/Paul, for example, is an otter, a creature of mysterious powers in the Celtic literary canon. More frequently, however, the animal encountered in connection with eschatological themes is the bird. The image of the bird was used by Nennius, who claimed that when St. Patrick prayed, flocks of birds of all colors came to him in the same way that the Irish would come to him on the Day of Judgment, when he would lead them to the final reckoning.39 The importance of birds in Irish eschatological works is emphasized in the Evernew Tongue (discussed below), in which the seventy-two flocks of birds created on the fifth day of Creation are described in elaborate detail. The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla describes a giant bird with a head of gold and wings of silver who recites human history from the beginning to Doomsday.40 The story goes on to claim that a memento of this episode is a leaf from the tree that is preserved at Kells (then the head of the Columban paruchia in Ireland). In other tales, the bird is the form assumed by a soul after death as it awaits judgment. In the Voyage of Uí Chorra, the travelers sail to an island where they encounter birds that are the new bodily form for the souls of holy individuals. The bird-souls wait for the Day of Judgment in the company of a disciple of St. Andrew named Dega.41 In the late tenth/eleventh-century tract known as the Vision of Adomnán (Fís Adomnáin), there is a description of three birds facing the Godhead, singing his praise.42 Later in the same work, the prophet Eli preaches under the Tree of Life to souls in the shape of pure-white birds; among his topics are the perils of the Day of Doom, which leave his audience in fear.43 Sometimes the form of the bird is a prison, as in the Voyage of St. Brendan, in which a flock of white birds announce that they are fallen angels who had approved Lucifer’s rebellion without taking an active part in it. Their punishment is to wander the earth tormented by the absence of the divine presence, but on Sundays and holy days they are allowed to assume the form of birds and sing to the praise of God.44 The place of birds within the eschatology of the Celtic world has some interesting parallels with the tradition of shape-shifting that is found in secular tales. In the Old Irish tale known as the Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, the hero Conaire learns that his father is one such bird/man and therefore one of his taboos (gessi) is the hunting of birds.45 In Welsh literature, the tale of Math son of Mathonwy, found in the Mabinogion, has an episode in which two men are transformed into different animals as punishment for a crime.46 Confusion in the popular imagination between shape-shifting and resurrection could be the reason why the subject is addressed directly in an eleventh-century text called the “Tidings of the Resurrection” (Scéla na hEsérgi).47 The “Tidings” is concerned mainly with the question of the body after the resurrection, and it describes in detail the bodily appearance of the resurrected individuals, both normal and abnormal. The narrative takes great care to distinguish the resurrection at Doomsday from other forms of so-called bodily change, such as metaformatio (transfiguration into other forms such as werewolves).

  At an early date the question of the soul was not confined to the bodily form taken after death or, in the case of the fallen angels, after disgrace. There was also the idea that souls rested and visited places on, or above, earth. A description of souls resting prior to the Last Judgment is found in the compilation that has been given the modern title Catechesis Celtica.48 This is a collection of materials for sermons composed, if the extant manuscript is a guide, in the late ninth/early tenth century. In its present form the Catechesis Celtica is a product of a scriptorium in a Brythonic-speaking area (locations in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany have all been suggested), but the text apparently is based on Irish materials.49 Five places are enumerated where souls rest as they await the Day of Judgment: heaven for the saints and apostles; Paradise for patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs; Hades for the completely wicked; the light for the not entirely wicked; and a dark fog or mist for the more, but not totally, evil.50 The Catechesis Celtica shows the connections among the Celtic intellectual centers through the avenue of the Latin language.

  The kind of material found in the Catechesis Celtica seems to have had a wide circulation throughout the Celtic lands. The idea of the soul resting while awaiting judgment is found in later eschatological works, although there are different interpretations of it.51 By the tenth century, rest was considered a divine gift for the damned, an example of Christ’s infinite mercy. The Voyage of St. Brendan gives an example of rest for a damned soul in connection with Judas Iscariot.52 When Judas is met by the saint, he is perched on a rock, lashed by sea and wind, but he says that his position is one of rest—provided through divine mercy—compared with the torments that await him in the evening. A different interpretation of rest is given in the Voyage of the Uí Chorra, where damned souls assume the shape of birds on Sunday and are allowed to leave hell.53 The time of rest for the damned was reduced to three hours release on a Sunday in the Vision of Adomnán.54

  Development of Eschatological Themes

  The material from earlier tracts would be incorporated into later works, giving a continuity to eschatological speculations among the Irish. Beginning in the second half of the tenth century, texts appear that either are entirely devoted to the theme of the end of the world or consider the topic of the Day of Judgment at length. Not unexpectedly, much of the discussion revolves around the theme of the signs preceding Doomsday. There is, however, little indication of any special significance attached to the first millennium, in contrast with the general panic at the approach of the year 1096. Some of the texts from this period can be dated fairly closely, such as the Psalter of the Quatrains (Saltair na Rann) (composed in the fourth quarter of the tenth century), Vision of Tnúdgal (composed circa 1149) and the Fifteen Tokens of Doomsday (composed sometime after 1170). The date of composition for others is less o
bvious, although their word forms suggest a chronological range from the second half of the tenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century. These works include the Day of Judgment, Tidings of Doomsday, Evernew Tongue, Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven, Dispute of Body and Soul, and the first and second Visions of Adomnán. The latest date of composition for several of these texts—Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven, the first Vision of Adomnán, Tidings of Doomsday, and the Tidings of the Resurrection—is provided by the manuscript in which they appear, the Book of the Dun Cow (Lebor na hUidre), a Clonmacnoise manuscript compiled by Máel Muire mac Célechair (d. 1106), a scion of a family of hereditary clergy who had served that church for generations.55 Also found in that manuscript are two of the early voyage tales, the Voyage of Máel Dúin and Voyage of Bran.

  Consideration of Last Things within the context of a general overview of history is found in the Psalter of the Quatrains (Saltair na Rann).56 This work was composed in the fourth quarter of the tenth century and is a vernacular summary of biblical history that concludes with an enumeration of the fifteen signs that will occur in the week preceding Doomsday.57 In common with other Irish tracts, the Day of Judgment is placed on a Monday, so the poem begins with the previous Sunday and describes the events of the following week. On the Wednesday preceding the Last Day, all humanity is scourged by terrors, and on Friday all living creatures are slain. The earth is destroyed and reshaped on Saturday. The resurrection begins on Sunday with seven distinct risings, beginning with the apostles and ending with the seventh group, which includes everyone not included in an earlier group. Humanity will be separated into the saved and the damned, in accordance with Matthew 25: 32, although there is no indication of the nature of these groups as there is in Bede’s description of the vision of Drythelm. The Psalter of the Quatrains uses ideas found in earlier works for its own narrative, such as the week of signs and terrors preceding the end of time that is noted in the Catechesis Celtica.58 The fifteen signs of that week mentioned in the Psalter of the Quatrains are similar to the outline of signs that will be visible on the fifteen days leading to the final judgment presented in a work known as the Collectaneum Bedae.59 Despite its attribution to Bede, the Collectaneum seems to be an Irish composition of the early Middle Ages; the study of it is hindered by the work’s survival only in an early modern transcript.60 The Collectaneum Bedae gives only the briefest notice of events, but it claims that all those still alive in the Last Days will die on the fourteenth of the fifteen days, so that they may arise with all the dead.61