Honor Et Gloria: Poetry of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis

Copyright © 2012 Sharon Pelphrey

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-3598-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3597-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3599-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963333

WestBow Press rev. date: 9/27/2012

CONTENTS

PREFACE

SCENE STRUCTURE

A FRESH LOOK AT THE NAVIGATIO

AUTHOR

PARS 1

SPES TERRAE

I INSPIRATIO

II PRAEPARATIO

III AULA MAGNA

IV INSULA PROCURATORIS

PARS II

CURRICULUM ANNORUM

V PARADISIO AVIUM

VI INSULA FAOTILIAG ALBGI

VII AQUAE CAPTIOSAE

VIII CURRICULA PASCHAE

PARS III

EXCURSIONES

IX INSULA PLUVIUM ET GRANDINIS

X ORATIO SINE CESSACIONE

XI AVIS VIGILANS

XII MARE CLARUM

PARS IV

SECRETA DEI

XIII IN CONFINIBUS INFERNORUM

XIV JUDAS

XVI FINES TERRARUM

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

It is a pity to squander any treasure and a greater pity to let a truly noble heritage languish. This study of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis is a first attempt at linguistic and literary rehabilitation of the original text of this long-misunderstood tale. My purpose has been salvage, but along the way something in me has begun to cheer for this little poem and the sturdy charms by which it has so long endured assaults from friend and foe.

SCENE STRUCTURE

The Navigatio’s structure, based in factors and squares, suggests Pythagorean roots, which ancient writers ascribe to druids.

for

father Brendan

far seeker

A FRESH LOOK AT THE NAVIGATIO SANCTIBRENDANI ABBATIS

For Lent of 1163 CE, Pope Alexander III invited a poet to lead his annual retreat. Alexander had just left Italy in exile during a battle over his papacy—a battle which was to last seventeen years. ¹ He had turned for inspiration to the tale of another exile, St. Brendan of Clonfert, recounted in an ancient Latin poem. Knowing little but the poem’s reputation for greatness, Alexander sent to Chátillon for the finest poet of the north, where the verses were known.

Not all minds of the papal court were impressed with his Holiness’s choice. Some found the poet presumptuous in daring a mountain. Like an ox, he would leave a mark, but not something to step into. Predictably, this joke made the rounds until it came to the poet’s own ears. For his part, Walter of Chátillon was a pious man, honest and learned, but no pushover. Only twelve verses into his performance, he revealed the insult to Pope Alexander (editor’s translation): ²

4 This pious standard-bearer ³ at whose will I dare, asks I be piously served by serving pious fare; for the course of piety I pursue is true fare.

5   Yet how should I, so small, brave heights so rare?

A string of mysteries I delve randomly, ⁴ yet Brendan’s voyage warrants scrutiny. Presumptuous, I proffer rhythm’s beauty.

6   A runt, presuming much—this startles even me!

Presumptuous, as you say, I parse odds and ends. Like a bull, I relieve myself upon a mountain,

though, one worthy to stone is master of scorn.

When empty, I expand to take the Great within.

7   Humility is an effective weapon, and Walter enjoys fencing:

What seer stands ready? Who assumes my work? He makes my presumption mere harmless lark.

I will be his ears. My own awl shall press his mark.

I am his for all I owe, without dislike.

8   Having humiliated his detractors, Walter turns to method:

To the lines—as asked, I explain the plan. In changing Latin meter to Roman rhythm

9   I freshen the fashion. Though new in vision, the ancient governs as I chant of Brendan.

Thus, the first remains pattern of the project, but

should these lines fail and mock their object, that

may be. Still I know, past any logic, what rings beyond my skill, God has perfected.

Despite these words, Walter holds two strands for weaving Brendan’s song. One he has described as Latin, ancient, mountain, and pattern. That text does not guide him. That role goes to Benedeit’s Anglo-Norman poem Le Voyage de Saint Brendan. Written only thirty-eight years earlier, Benedeit’s version is neither old, nor a text to humble Walter. He begins:

10 Born in Ireland—as a boy, flower of flowers:

11   a boy—but the man within mirrored his elders; a boy delicate in age, a man in honors; for what favors a boy, complete in favors.

Brendan by name, sprouted from royal seed among a brood less noble than his steed. He shunned the evil of days evil indeed,

12   and folk marveled, Such matchless man is he!

In such decay, as his thoughts matured they stood at odds with the withering world. What flourished there, to him appeared impure. Galled, he would not lead his soul to failure.

Through the next one hundred forty-one stanzas, Walter sails effortlessly on Benedeit’s breeze before turning to the Latin:

154 The Latin text is an exemplar of its craft, yet its sequence is but sequence by lot. I would delve dactyl’s delights for you devout—pious to your piety—but the text is too taut.

For his scheme, Walter selects an episode with three choirs. Benedeit omits the story, but the oldest Latin text, Navigatio SanctiBrendaniAbbatis, dedicates a

full scene to it. In its turn, the Navigatiomatches Walter’s descriptions. Datable to 900 CE at the latest, by tradition it was composed in the sixth century by St. Columba of Iona (Tuffrau 18). This ancient account sets out events and characters with thematic symmetry, and so its sequence indeed differs from Benedeit’s chronology.

Why should Walter abruptly turn to labor with the Latin’s tautness and nonlinear account? Why but audience demand? Clearly some in Alexander’s court realize that the Latin has not been Walter’s paradigm and have complained. I would preserve the meter’s pleasure for you devout, he satirically protests, but takes a detour only to bring a fatal indictment.

By day, the choirs Walter targets practice field singing, rising by turns to chant among their crops. At night, hidden in a numinous cloud, they sing in unison. Into this idyll, Walter intrudes a shocking detail: the liturgical slaughter of a lamb.

163 At sunrise as brilliant light and tumult end, the folk at once sacrifice and roast a lamb.

They commune with meat! as bread divine, these professors of faith, in guise sacred Christian.

so perplexing is this note that Walter returns to it:

169 What congregation? Who the choirs were or where?

What their rite or heritage implies? I read neither

precedent nor subsequent in literature. Let the tale be forgot, now reported here.

Walter is openly disingenuous. He knows the lamb sacrifice at Passover follows Moses’ Law and seems aware that paschal sacrifice was practiced at Brendan’s abbey, Clonfert. In the final stanza of Vita S. Brendani, Walters admits his artifice:

312 Completing his length of days, this Nazareus,

5

carried away with piety, turns Hebrew—from whose

piety may God spare both me and you!

Thrive, my Alexander! Be well your life through.

Amen.

Walter, indeed, construes the relevant phrase immolabant agnum immaculatum with strict sense, but by doing so, turns personal prejudice against Jews into an ecclesiastical side-show. Only promiscuous scholarship grants him this triumph. The phrase specific for Eucharist, agnum immaculatum, applies when Brendan breaks the bread and then interrupts

himself to speak of holiness and joy (VIII.60-61). When he actually suggests the non-liturgical sacrifice of a lamb for Passover (Hebrew, Pesach; Greek, Pascha), he calls out over a roaring cataract, Sacrificemus immaculatum hostiam(IV.12).

So, Walter has created scandal and unnecessarily implicated Brendan by parsing Lamb of God—the normal liturgical language for christ—in literal terms. Stanza 312, above, reveals his motivation as the anti-Semitic zeal evident in his other writing. Since the Latin text was unavailable to his audience and the charge was inflammatory, Walter’s indictment seems to have set in place an enduring prejudice.

NAZAREANS

To make sense of all this, we first inquire into the term Nazareus. Nazareans were a sect within Christianity from the beginning. Saint Augustine of Hippo described them succinctly (Contra Faustum XIX.4):

If one of the Nazareans, or Symmachians, as they are sometimes called, were arguing with me from these words of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law, I should find some difficulty in answering him. For it is undeniable that, at his coming, Jesus was both in body and mind subject to the influence of the law and the prophets. Those people,

moreover, whom I allude to, practice circumcision, and keep the Sabbath, and abstain from swine’s flesh and such like things, according to the law, although they profess to be Christians. They are evidently misled as well as you, by this verse in which Christ says that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. It would not be easy to reply to such opponents without first getting rid of this troublesome verse.

In the third century, Saint Jerome recovered the earliest version of Matthew’s gospel among Nazareans (De Viris Illustribus, chapter 3):

Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and aforetimes publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek, though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea which Pamphilius so diligently gathered. I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Berrea, a city of Syria, who use it. In this it is to be noted that wherever the Evangelist, whether on his own account or in the person of our Lord the Saviour quotes the testimony of the Old Testament he does not follow the authority of the translators of the Septuagint but the Hebrew. Wherefore these two forms exist

Out of Egypt I called my son, and for he shall be called a Nazarene.

A century later, St. Gregory Nazianzus spoke more eloquently of them. As he left Constantinople, the Patriarch pronounced this Farewell to the Church of Constantinople (Hawthorne):

Farewell, choir of Nazarenes, harmonies of the psalms, nocturnal stations, sanctity of virgins, modesty of women, companies of widows and orphans, eyes of the poor turned toward God and toward me.

St. Augustine’s words, St. Jerome’s, and St. Gregory’s tell us that Nazareans were deeply concerned with preserving sacred texts and that they meticulously observed scriptural precepts. Walter’s contemptuous label Nazareus signals catastrophic erosion of respect from the time of those great Church Fathers.

The very name Nazarean underscores the Jewish roots of the sect. Christians of this general background may be distinguished as two broad groups. The most literalistic attempted to keep narrowly to the whole Mosaic Law. These are the strand St. Paul labeled Judaizers. His label, and the prejudice associated with it, came to be applied later to Judaic Christians known in their time as Quartodecimans. The word quartodecimo, itself, means fourteen. It was used to denote those who kept Passover on the fourteenth day of the lunar

month Nisan (Leviticus 23:5). These fourteeners lost the central argument at the First Ecumenical Council (325 CE). The Nicene assembly ruled that the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection should be celebrated by the Christian world simultaneously, on the first Friday through sunday of the solar calendar following the first new moon after the spring equinox.

A second society of quite literate Judaic Christians, meanwhile, taught that the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. had rendered observation of the Seder at Passover, as prescribed in Exodus 12, impossible: the lamb could no longer be slaughtered in the Temple as the Law required. In the view of the revered Church Father St. Ephrem the Syrian, however, Christians might still observe a form of the feast. They had a Lamb: Christ, the eternal sacrifice, who had fulfilled Moses’ Law once and for all. In Ephrem’s area, east of Antioch, Christians of Judaic heritage began fasting while their Jewish compatriots feasted at the Seder; they then feasted during the Jewish fast of unleavened Bread (corresponding to Orthodox Christian Bright Week, when no fasting is allowed). Thus, beginning in Syria, some Christians accommodated both the canons of Nicea and Judaic tradition (Rouwhorst 27 etpassim). ⁶

The Nicene canons, however, had permanently delinked Resurrection from the mysticism of the

fourteenth of Nisan, a night the full moon rises at the moment of sunset and sets at sunrise. For some, this night of no darkness was the fourth day of Creation, the creation of the sun and moon, for undoubtedly God had created them without intruding darkness (Scaena IV, endnote 2).

Today, this mysticism is lost, perhaps to us all; however, in a letter to the churches of Spain, St. Cyril of Alexandria asserted that his uncle Theophilus wished simply to preserve this ancient awareness among Christians that they might see the sunrise and moonset of endless light. We must wonder, Who was this Theophilus? In answer, we find him a pivotal figure, indeed. After the Council of Nicea, he was the patriarch appointed to determine the date for each future Pascha through Alexandrian observational astronomy.

Possibly, Walter knew little of this. Still, he should have been well aware that the Celtic Church’s spokesman at the Synod of Whitby (663 CE) had claimed the authority of John the Apostle for Celtic tradition—John, the mystic of light, whose Jewish traditions had quite early created a crisis in Rome. The early problem was simple. Churches of John’s tradition celebrated Pesach (Passover) as Jews. John’s own disciple Polycarp had traveled to Rome, where he asked Bishop Anicetus (157-168 CE) to lift an excommunication imposed on the churches with roots in Smyrna, Ephesus, and much of Asia Minor

for observing Pesach on Nisan 14. Anicetus agreed. The next bishop, Victor I, nevertheless, reinstated the excommunication in 190 CE. ⁷

In line with this tradition, the Navigatio contains fairly strong indicators that when Brendan sailed, the Celtic church was still consolidating reforms such as implemented around Antioch in response to Nicea (scenes iv, viii, and xvi). Foremost, Abbot Brendan’s Resurrection celebration is curiously informal. In scene iv, he may simply observe the moon to determine the Cena Domini. Certainly, only he recognizes the season. This computation was otherwise so difficult that papal passports carried the date to Western churches throughout the world.

Additionally, the outdoor, meditative missas Brendan has said separately on Jasconius are fully in line with the cosmic mysticism of Light eloquently expressed by Saint John. Thus, the text may reflect preliterate transmission of John’s customs, not easily dislodged by later argument from canon law.

Naturally, any Roman Catholic should be scandalized by casualness about the canons of the First Ecumenical Council. The narrative is less perplexing from a Christian Orthodox perspective, though. In Ethiopia, for example, a bull, a lamb, or a chicken may be slaughtered for Pascha (Easter) at the same time Jewish Ethiopians slaughter for Passover. In Greece and Cyprus, most pious Orthodox serve lamb

on Pascha (Easter Sunday); however, in defiance of teaching that requires a strict fast until after the midnight liturgy, many families serve lamb on Saturday afternoon. In Shreveport, Louisiana, at a church founded by immigrants from Saint John’s apostolic center at Ephesus, lambs were slaughtered in Orthodox Christian homes for Pascha until the current generation dropped the custom. All this may be seen to flow from very ancient custom.

To confirm the durability of this ancient practice in Ireland, we turn to Abbot Cummian’s letter to Bishop Ségéne. Since Mosaic Law prescribes that children be taught through Passover observances forever, Cummian suggests, lamb sacrifice is eternally mandated, so the Crucifixion may be understood in the authentic, God-mandated terms of its typology (that is, God’s explanations, arranged through events and recorded in scripture). The typological implication expressed in John’s first epistle, verses 1:7-8, undergirds Cummian’s opinion:

I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is