Klu’Skap-O’Kom

In 1989, I read a review of an album in Thrasher magazine that would lead me to one of my favourite recordings—and rock bands—of all time: the Quebecois progressive thrash metal band, Voivod, whose masterpiece, Nothingface, was released that year. I could wax nostalgic about the band all day, but for the sake of this post they’re really just the context for something else. Although I stopped following them actively after several years, they recently released a music video that I came across on YouTube. The song bore the strange title, ‘Kluskap O‘ Kom,’ and the animated video created by drummer Michel Langevin featured a terrifying figure stalking through the woods. I looked up the title, and discovered that it refers to a figure out of Canadian First Nations legend. Eventually, I also came upon the following poem.

Klu’Skap-O’Kom*

By Rita Joe

I left a message to nikmaqq+
In the caves of stone
My home.
The message say I go away
But someday return,
And the sun will again shine
Across the trails
My people walk.

*Klu’skap-o’kom—Klu’skap’s home.

+Nikmaqq—My friends or Micmac.

In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, there are caves at a place, Kelly’s Mountain, where the legend says that Klu’skap left and will return someday. The place is beautiful in the rising and setting sun, hence the legend the Micmacs passed from generation to generation. The $46 million quarry nearby may destroy the caves, and the legend will only be a story of our past; as always this usually happens.

(Oct. 21, 1989) R.J.)

From Canadian Literature No. 124-125, Native Writers & Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer), p. 122.

'He Put No Difference Between Us'—Ss Peter & Paul in Radner & St Maximus

Last Thursday, 29 June on the Church’s calendar, we celebrated the memory of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. I had thought about doing an old-school Logismoi post for the Apostles, but unfortunately things were much too busy for the full treatment and I let it pass. A perusal of a borrowed book the other day, however, convinced me that I should at least do a post connecting back to their feastday, even if it wasn’t one of my traditional Saints’ posts. 

I have more than once, I am sure, mentioned my enthusiasm for John O’Keefe’s and R.R. Reno’s Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible. Well, my tremendous esteem for the merits of the authors’ arguments and conclusions led me to reread with careful attention the preface to the volume, wherein they acknowledge the various influences and intellectual debts that contributed to the book. One passage that caught my attention was this: ‘The work of Ephrem Radner defies epitome, but the fabric of his many publications is woven with figural patterns of biblical interpretation. He is a rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art.’ [1] 

I don’t quite remember how it happened, but somehow or another I shortly afterward discovered the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, edited by Reno, which ‘advances upon the assumption that the Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture’, and could be seen in some ways as a commentary attempting to carry out what O’Keefe and Reno present in Sanctified Vision. [2] I recalled having seen the series at our local evangelical megastore (which I was distressed to find no longer carries it, although the Christian romance section has certainly expanded), but I had never carefully examined it to discover its approach. Fortunately, my boss, the headmaster of our school, has what I take to be the entire series to date in his office, and I was surprised and excited to discover that the volume on Leviticus—surely a unique text for demonstrating the rich exegetical possibilities of the ‘Nicene tradition’—was written by that ‘rare contemporary practitioner of an ancient art’, Ephraim Radner. 

I realise I’m taking the long route to get back to Ss Peter and Paul. What does Ephraim Radner’s commentary on Leviticus have to do with the two chiefs of the Apostles? It so happens that interpreting Leviticus as Christian Scripture provides a direct connection: St Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9-16, which presupposes the distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11: 

For I am the Lord who brought you up [ἀναγαγὼν ὑμᾶς] out of the land of Egypt to be your God; and ye shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy. This is the law concerning beasts and birds and every living creature [πάσης ψυχῆς] moving in the water, and every living creature creeping on the earth; to distinguish between the unclean and the clean [διαστεῖλαι ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ἀκαθάρτων καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν καθαρῶν]; and between those that bring forth alive, such as should be eaten, and those that bring forth alive, such as should not be eaten. (Lev. 11:45-7, LXX) 

Compare then, the vision of the Apostle Peter in Acts: 

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: and he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: where in were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.’ And the voice spake unto him again the second time, ‘What God hath cleansed that call not thou common.’ This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. (Authorised Version) 

Clearly, St Peter is professing his fidelity to the distinction outlined in Leviticus 11. Just as clearly, the same God who gave to the Israelites the category of ‘unclean’ in Leviticus, is telling St Peter that He Himself has ‘cleansed’ all things. The exhortation to ‘be holy’ is not negated, however, and indeed, St Peter himself quotes it in I Peter 1:16, but it is no longer tied to the observance of dietary laws. 

In his commentary on this chapter of Leviticus, Radner draws on the mediaeval Benedictine writer, Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075-1129), whom Jean Leclercq notes as an exemplar of the use of ‘Old Testament texts...for expressing the loftiest realities of the New Testament,’ in whom ‘we sense the shadow of the whole archaic Eastern [patristic] background’. [3] I shall quote Radner at length: 

For Rupert of Deutz (Patrologia latina 167.796-801), the pentecostal focus in Lev. 10 [he connects the fire that devours the sons of the Prophet Aaron in Lev. 10:2 with the tongues of fire of Pentecost] explicates the framework of Lev. 11 in terms of the mission to the Gentiles entrusted the church by God. That is, the outline of distinction that Aaron (and Moses) provide the people—in terms of animal life, food, and even the touching of carcasses—properly embraces the distinctions of the peoples and their place within the providential calling of God. From the perspective of the New Testament, this coordination of elements is almost natural. It is, after all, Peter himself, in the course of his calling by God to turn to the Gentiles with the church’s first deliberate Christian evangelistic effort in their direction, who is presented with a threefold divine vision treating specifically the question of clean and unclean foods (Acts 10:9-16)....Rather than seeing Peter’s vision as a simple nullification of the Levitical laws of distinction, Rupert of Deutz understands these laws as the reflection of this single providential goal, by which the whole of the world will be brought into right relationship with God, gathered into the heavenly sheet. The vision sets in motion Peter’s visit to the Gentile centurion Cornelius in Caesarea, who is baptized despite his fundamental nonadherence to the breadth of the Levitical laws. Hence the Levitical laws pertain to—they advance toward and present—this goal of Gentile baptism, both in terms of reference and object; they do not contradict it. [4] 

Thus, the taking up of the animals without distinction into the four-cornered sheet is a symbolic revelation of the taking up of the peoples of the earth without distinction into the Church, where ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galations 3:28). In the words of St Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘For the God who had distinguished through the law the pure food from the impure, that same God had cleansed the nations through the blood of his Son, and that is the God whom Cornelius worshiped.’ [5] 

I have not been reading Radner’s commentary through, and so it was a look at the index for Greek Fathers, particularly for St Maximus the Confessor, that led me to the chapter on Leviticus 11. Unfortunately, the great 7th-c. Father is only cited once by Radner—when the latter writes: 

The allegorical reading—both Jewish and Christian—by which the sacrificial animals of Leviticus refer to those beastly, irrational, or wild (Maximus the Confessor [in Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware 1979-95: 2.273]) aspects of the self that require subjugation is in fact congruent with and perhaps even founded upon the presuppositions of this reality of distinction and offering. [6] 

A look at the text from the Philokalia which Radner cites is interesting. It is a Maximian anthology known as ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, & Virtue & Vice’. The part in question is numbered as the ‘Fifth Century’ of such texts in the English Philokalia, whereas it is the ‘Seventh Century’ in the Greek. The greater part of this century, including all of the chapters I will excerpt below, is taken from the treatise To Thalassios: On Various Questions relating to Holy Scripture. It is there that St Maximus dwells at length on what he calls ‘the spiritual contemplation [ἡ πνευματικὴ θεωρία] of...the written law’. [7] The simple statement—in chapter 50—of the allegorical reading of the animals as passions to which Radner is referring is believed to be the work of a 10th-c. scholiast. [8] St Maximus’s own comments in chapter 51, which the scholiast is presumably explaining, takes for granted the ‘passion’ reading: 

By spiritual sacrifices is meant not only the putting to death of the passions, slaughtered by ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Eph. 6:17), and the deliberate emptying out of all life in the flesh, as if it were blood; the term also signifies the offering up of the moral state we have gained through the practice of the virtues, together with all our natural powers, which we dedicate and offer [προσαγωγὴν ἀφιερουμένων] to God as whole burnt sacrifices, to be consumed by the fire of grace in the Spirit, so that they are filled with divine power. [9] 

The ‘fire of grace in the Spirit’, an obvious allusion to Pentecost, is only the second tie into Rupert’s connection of Leviticus with Pentecost. In chapter 49, the Confessor writes: 

The mystery of Pentecost is the direct union with providence of those things that are in its care. It is the union of nature with its principle, the Logos, under the guidance of providence; and in this union there is not the slightest trace of time or generation. Again, the Logos is our trumpet (cf. Lev. 23:24), summoning us with divine and hidden knowledge. He is our propitiation (cf. Lev. 25:9), since He expiates our offences in His own person by becoming like us, and divinizes our sinful nature by the gift of grace through the Spirit. He is our booth or tabernacle (cf. Lev. 23:42), since He is the realization of that immutability with which our inner being, conformed to God, is concentrated on the divine, and also the securing bond of our transformation into an immortal state. [10] 

Indeed, it is a shame that Radner does not make more use of St Maximus in his commentary. The Confessor comments specifically on St Peter’s vision itself in Questions & Doubts 116, where he responds to the question of what is signified by the sheet and the beasts that were on it: 

Since, according to the vision by the prophet Ezekiel, ‘their work was like a wheel within a wheel’, and through these a perceptible as well as an intelligible world are depicted as existing within one another—for the intelligible world is in the perceptible world by types, and the perceptible world is in the intelligible world by its logos—therefore, all of the perceptible world was shown to the Apostle. For the letting down by its four corners’ signifies the world composed of four elements, existing as clean in the intelligible world according to the logos that exists inherently in these things. And he heard, ‘rise up, kill, and eat,’ that is, ‘by (your) nous raise yourself up from that which is according sense, and “kill and eat”, which means by the distinction of reason divides sense perception, [11] and taking up these things spiritually make them your own.’ 

Or, it also signifies the church that is supported by the four foundations of the gospels or, again, by the four cardinal virtues. And the beasts and reptiles depict the different human customs which, from the Gentiles, are going to (change over to) the faith in Christ. And the ‘kill and eat’ shows ‘first, by the word of teaching, “kill” the evil in them and then “eat”, making their salvation your own just as the Lord also made it food for himself.’ [12] 

Of course, this post has been mostly taken up with St Peter, and for reasons of length I do not intend to devote equal space here to St Paul. But I will point out that St Peter’s experience of the vision, and his subsequent baptism of Cornelius, ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 2:16), connect him directly with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. ‘And’, in the words of Didymus the Blind, ‘through the figure shown by the linen cloth and through the granting of the grace of the Holy Spirit in like manner to the nations according to faith [cf. Acts 10:44-8], he [St Peter] made the case that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile.’ [13] 

St Paul of course makes himself a compliment to St Peter, ‘For He that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles’ (Gal. 2:8). But the baptism of Cornelius makes clear that the division in their duties is not a strict one, and St Peter at the Council of Jerusalem says to the apostles and elders: 

‘Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us; and put no difference between us and them [διέκρινε μεταξὺ ἡμῶν τε καὶ αὐτῶν], purifying their hearts by faith.’ (Acts 15:7-9) 

Once again, we see here that the erasure of difference between Jew and Gentile is signified by the erasure of difference between clean and unclean animals (the words of Acts 15:9 and Lev. 11:47 are not the same, but the phrases nevertheless echo one another). But if the separation of Jew and Gentile is abolished within the Church, how much more so that between these two holy Apostles? St Paul tells us ‘when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face’ (Gal. 2:11), but in the words of St John Chrysostom, ‘there was here a deep though hidden understanding between Paul and Peter’: 

Paul does not now say this to condemn Peter, but in the same spirit as when he said those who are ‘reputed to be something’ [in other words, St Paul does not in 2:9 deny that St Peter really is a ‘pillar’], he now says this too....And so Paul rebukes and Peter voluntarily gives way. It is like the master who when upbraided keeps silent, so that his disciples might more easily change their ways. [14] 

Thus, the witness of the Church to the spiritual unity of these two Apostles, testified to by their co-commemoration and the liturgical texts which praise them as ‘separated in body, united in the Spirit’, [15] is also expressed in the exegetical consensus of the Fathers. 

 [1] John J. O’Keefe & R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005), p. x. 

[2] R.R. Reno, ‘Series Preface’, Leviticus, by Ephraim Radner, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos-Baker, 2008), p. 11. 

[3] Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), pp. 102-16. 

[4] Radner, p. 107. 

[5] Francis Martin, ed., with Evan Smith, Acts, NT Vol. V in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 128. 

[6] Ibid., p. 110. 

[7] The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 267. 

[8] See ibid., p. 395. 

[9] Ibid., p. 273. 

[10] Ibid., pp. 272-3. 

[11] I’m not sure I understand the grammar of Prassas’s translation at this point. 

[12] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions & Doubts, tr. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois U, 2010), p. 103. 

[13] Martin, p. 125. 

[14] Mark J. Edwards, ed., Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, NT Vol. VIII in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), p. 26. 

[15] First sticheron at Lord I have cried, Tone 2, by St Andrew of Crete, from Great Vespers for the Feast; from the translation of Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), here.

'A Sage Across Seas'—St Columba of Iona

Today, 9 June on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Columba (Columcille) of Iona (c. 521-597), one of the greatest Saints of Ireland and an apostle to Scotland, who founded a sort of parallel to the Pachomian koinonia often known as the ‘Columban familia’. Thanks to God we have a lengthy account of St Columba (available online here) by another Saint of his central monastery at Iona who lived less than a century after the founder—St Adomnán. Called ‘one of the great works of the early medieval Irish church’ (Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery [Edinburgh: Edinburgh U, 1995], p. 28), Richard Sharpe points out that this Life ‘is made up almost entirely of miracle stories’, adding, ‘Many modern readers find such stories of miracles difficult to accept or believe (Introduction, Life of St Columba, by St Adomnán of Iona, trans. Richard Sharpe [London: Penguin, 1995], p. 3). But as Fr Seraphim (Rose) has written (‘A Prologue of the Orthodox Saints of the West’, Vita Patrum: The Life of the Fathers, by St Gregory of Tours, trans. Hieromonk Seraphim [Rose] and Paul Bartlett [Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1988], p. 21):

Orthodox Christians by no means see in such ‘anecdotes’ the essence of a saint’s life and character; but of course we take delight in the miracles of our saints and do not weary of them, knowing that in these true stories we can already see the breaking into this world of the entirely different laws of the spiritual, heavenly world.

Fortunately, however, even those who, like F.R. Hoare, whom Fr Seraphim cites, regret the neglect of ‘spiritual portraiture’ in the hagiographical tradition (qtd. in Fr Seraphim, p. 21), will find something to appreciate in St Adomnán’s Life of St Columba. Besides other comments found throughout the work, he prefaces the wonderful miracle stories with the following:

Since boyhood he had devoted himself to training in the Christian life, and to the study of wisdom; with God’s help, he had kept his body chaste and his mind pure and shown himself, though placed on earth, fit for the life of heaven. He was an angel in demeanour, blameless in what he said, godly in what he did, brilliant in intellect and great in counsel. He spent thirty-four years as an island soldier, and could not let even an hour pass without giving himself to praying or reading or writing or some other task. Fasts and vigils he performed day and night with tireless labour and no rest, to such a degree that the burden of even one seemed beyond human endurance. At the same time he was loving to all people, and his face showed a holy gladness because his heart was full of the joy of the Holy Spirit. (pp. 105-6)

Brendan Lehane, in keeping with his usual cynicism, confesses himself dissatisfied with this account, however, for making St Columba seem too ‘perfect’ (Early Celtic Christianity [London: Constable, 1996], p. 113). Apparently to tip the scales a bit, he tells a story a little later in his chapter on St Columba that, apart from painting the Saint in a less ‘rosy’ light, ‘illuminated—perhaps mythically—the great love of books and scholarship’. He continues:

Columba went once to stay with St Finnian of Moville. Finnian possessed the only copy in Ireland of St Jerome’s Vulgate, the best Latin version of the Bible; and Columba, knowing that contemporary ethics were against him, retired to the library every evening to copy the book in secret. One evening he was surprised by his host, who claimed the copy as his own, and being refused took the case to the High King of Ireland, Diormid. There is nothing surprising about the heat generated by this issue. Books were still rare and of a value that surpassed their content, though that itself was venerated. Monks often travelled far into Gaul, even to Rome itself, to collect them . . . Books also had, as objects, some magical qualities . . .

So the case was heard. Diormid found in favour of Finnian—not surprising in the light of Columba’s furtiveness—and gave a picturesque verdict: ‘To every cow her calf, to every book its copy.’ (p. 118)

It is thanks to this story that St Columba is considered by some to be the patron Saint of hackers. Read the end of this post to see why he could also be a patron Saint of copyeditors.

But taking, as Fr Seraphim says, ‘delight in the miracles of our saints’, I shall give just two of these stories of the ‘breaking into this world’ of the strange laws of the ‘spiritual, heavenly world’. First, and surely regular Logismoi readers knew that I would excerpt this one, there is the story of St Columba and the ‘Loch Ness Monster’, although to be fair the incident takes place in the River, and not the Loch itself. In his note on this passage, Sharpe mentions that this is the oldest report of ‘Nessie’, noting that believers point to it to show that a creature of this kind has lived in the loch for ‘over a thousand years’, but that unbelievers call it only ‘a typical early medieval water-beast story’, as though it is less credible because there are so many other stories of water-beasts (Sharpe, p. 330, n. 272). At any rate, here it is in full:

[II 27] How a water beast was driven off by the power of the blessed man’s prayer

Once, on another occasion, when the blessed man stayed for some days in the land of the Picts, he had to cross the River Ness. When he reached its bank, he saw some of the local people burying a poor fellow. They said they had seen a water beast snatch him and maul him savagely as he was swimming not long before. Although some of the men had put out in a little boat to rescue him, they were too late, but, reaching out with hooks, they had hauled in his wretched corpse. The blessed man, having been told all this, astonished them by sending one of his companions to swim across the river and sail back to him in a dinghy that was on the further bank. At the command of the holy and praiseworthy man, Luigne moccu Min obeyed without hesitation. He took off his clothes except for a tunic and dived into the water. But the beast was lying low on the riverbed, its appetite not so much sated as whetted for prey. It could sense that the water above was stirred by the swimmer, and suddenly swam up to the surface, rushing open-mouthed with a great roar towards the man as he was swimming midstream. All the bystanders, both the heathen and the brethren, froze in terror, but the blessed man looking on raised his holy hand and made the sign of the cross in the air, and invoking the name of God, he commanded the fierce beast, saying:

‘Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once.’

At the sound of the saint’s voice, the beast fled in terror so fast one might have thought it was pulled back with ropes. But it had got so close to Luigne swimming that there was no more than the length of a pole between man and beast. The brethren were amazed to see that the beast had gone and that their fellow-soldier Luigne returned to them untouched and safe in the dinghy, and they glorified God in the blessed man. Even the heathen natives who were present at the time were so moved by the greatness of the miracle they had witnessed that they too magnified the God of the Christians. (pp. 175-6)

The other story I wanted to post is of a more ‘mystical’ nature. There are several stories in St Adomnán’s account that specifically describe St Columba’s experiences of the uncreated light. This one is my favourite. It reminds me a great deal of a story I read somewhere about Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, but the source of which I can’t recall:

[III 18] How the Holy Spirit descended to visit St Columba in the same island, and remained over him for three days and nights

On another occasion when St Columba was living in Hinba, the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured upon him in incomparable abundance and miraculously remained over him for three days. During that time he remained day and night locked in his house, which was filled with heavenly light. No one was allowed to go near him, and he neither ate nor drank. But from the house rays of brilliant light could be seen at night, escaping through the chinks of the doors and through the keyholes. He was also heard singing spiritual chants of a kind never heard before. And, as he afterwards admitted to a few people, he was able to see openly revealed many secrets that had been hidden since the world began, while all that was most dark and difficult in the sacred Scriptures lay open, plain, and clearer than light in the sight of his most pure heart.

St Columba regretted that his foster-son Baithéne was not there. If he had been present for those three days, he could have recorded from the saint’s lips a great number of mysteries, both of ages past and future, unknown to other men, together with some interpretations of the sacred books. However, Baithéne was held up by adverse winds in Eigg, and could not be present until those three days and three nights of unique and glorious visitation had come to an end. (pp. 219-20)

But perhaps even more moving than the stories of St Adomnán’s great Life, we have the poetry of Iona. In fact, there is one poem which, according to Clancy and Márkus, most scholars accept as the work of St Columba himself—Altus prosator, ‘The High Creator’ (I quoted some brief lines from it here). It is a full-length alphabet prayer of twenty-three stanzas (each beginning with another letter) and a ‘Responsio’, the first being seven lines, the other twenty-two being six, and the Responsio three. I will not reproduce all or even much of it here, but I will give three stanzas that I find interesting:

G (Grassatis)

Our first two parents having been assailed and led astray,
the devil falls a second time, together with his retinue,
by the horror of whose faces and the sound of whose flying
frail men might be dismayed, stricken with fear,
unable to gaze with their bodily eyes on those
who are now bound in bundles in the bonds of their prisons. (p. 47)

Q (Quis ad condictum)

Who has climbed Sinai, the appointed mountain of the Lord?
Who has heard the immeasurable thunders sounding?
Who has heard the clamour of the mighty war-trumpet echoing?
Who has also seen the lightning flashing all around?
Who has seen the flashed and thunderbolts and crashing rocks,
except Moses, the judge of the people of Israel?

U (Vagatur ex climactere)

Orion wanders from his turning point at the hinge of heaven—
the Pleiades being left behind, most splendid of the stars—
across the boundaries of the sea, of its unknown eastern rim.
Vesper, wheeling in its fixed circuits, returns by its former paths,
rising after two years in the evening.
These things employed as types are understood figuratively. (p. 51)

Second, there is a poem attributed to a Dallán Forgaill and apparently written in the years immediately following St Columba’s repose called Amra Choluimb Chille, or ‘Elegy of Columba’. Here is a single stanza (V):

He ran the course which runs past hatred to right action.
The teacher who wove the word.
By his wisdom he made glosses clear.
He fixed the Psalms,
he made known the books of Law,
those books Cassian loved.
He won battles with gluttony.
The books of Solomon, he followed them.
Seasons and calculations he set in motion.
He separated the elements according to the figures among the books of the Law.
He read mysteries and distributed the Scriptures among the schools,
and he put together the harmony concerning the course of the moon,
the course which it ran with the rayed sun,
and the course of the sea.
He could number the stars of heaven, the one who could tell all the rest
which we have heard from Colum Cille. (pp. 107, 109)

Finally, there are also two beautiful Gaelic poems about St Columba by a Beccán mac Luigdech. Of the first, Fo réir Choluimb, 25 heptasyllabic quatrains rhyming a-b-a-b and employing alliteration, I shall again give only three stanzas:

Bound to Columb, while I speak,
may the bright one guard me in the seven heavens;
when I go to the road of fear,
I’m not lordless: I have strength.

It was not on cushioned beds
he bent to his complex prayers:
he crucified—not for crimes—
his body on the grey waves. (p. 137)

. . .

He fought wise battles with the flesh,
indeed, he read pure learning.
He stitched, he hoisted sail tops,
a sage across seas, his prize a kingdom. (p. 139)

The second poem, Tiugraind Beccáin, or ‘The Last Verses of Beccán’, will unfortunately have to wait for another post. But rest assured, I shall post the entire thing!

As for Orthodox services, there is an Akolouthia (unattributed) here, and an Akathist in French by Logismoi reader and online acquaintance Claude Lopez-Ginisty here.

An Announcement, a Giveaway, & an Historical Revelation

1. I am pleased to announce that after a months-long hiatus, Esteban Vazquez has returned to blogging, courtesy of a new computer replete with a functioning keyboard. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he has adopted the exotic and overwhelming WordPress for the hosting of Voice of Stefan. I suppose Esteban knows better than I what he is doing, however, and the level of entertainment in his posts certainly has not diminished with the change. In addition to the above link to the new location, I have duly changed the link in my blogroll to take readers directly to his latest offerings.

2. As an expression of his joy at returning to the blogosphere and adopting a new blogging platform, as well as his general joie de vivre, he has announced a book giveaway contest for The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, ed. Peter W. Flint (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). As a precondition for the contest, Esteban requires that one provide ‘your most creative theory regarding the identity of the Qumran community (if there was one, according to your theoretical construct). Obvious things like the Essenes and the Golbian Hasmonean fortress are out of the question.’ I hereby give my own ‘theoretical construct’:

The evidence appears to me to suggest overwhelmingly that the community at Qumran was a cult devoted to the worship of the Great Old One, Yog-Sothoth (whose name may be a transliteration of the Arabic يجيء الشذاذ), about whom the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, in his unspeakable Necronomicon, famously wrote:

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

Sorry this is the only post for today. There was no time . . . honest! The image above depicts the Key and Guardian of the Gate itself, at least insofar as such an ineffable horror from beyond this dimension can possibly be depicted. Your only refuge is madness.

'Beauteous Shining Birth'—St Kevin of Glendalough

Today, 3 June on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Kevin (Coemgen) of Glendalough (c. 498-618). Edward Sellner tells us that St Kevin ‘stands in the forefront of the great company of saints of Ireland’ (Wisdom of the Celtic Saints [Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria, 1993], p. 157). His future was prophesied by St Patrick himself as well as Find mac Cumaill. Furthermore—

At the time of Coemgen’s birth no pains of labour nor pangs of childbearing came to his mother, as to other women, for innocent, faithful, righteous was the offspring that she bore. And the high King of righteousness, the King of heaven, sent twelve angels with golden lamps to his baptism. And the angels gave him the name Coemgen (fair birth), that is beauteous shining birth. (Bethada Náem nÉrenn: Lives of Irish Saints, Vol. II—Translations, Notes, Indexes, ed. and trans. Charles Plummer [Oxford: Clarendon, 1922], pp. 121-2)

St Kevin was taken to St Cronan of Leinster to be baptised, who explained to his nursemaids ‘this was an appropriate name for him by the will and ordinance of God’, for (Plummer, p. 151)—

This is the name which God fashioned in heaven,
Which shall cleave to the child;
Consider, O women of fair attendance,
That this is his baptismal name, Coemgen.

As he was baptising the infant, St Cronan saw (Plummer, p. 152)—

Twelve angels, as was fitting,
God sent from on high in his honour;
And a taper with pure flame
Was in the hand of each angel.

After seven years, the young St Kevin was sent, at the command of an angel, to ‘a convent of monks to be taught, and instructed in manners’, where he stayed until he was old enough for ordination, ‘and after receiving ecclesiastical orders, he meditated in his mind to forsake the world and the society of men, and to lead a solitary eremitic life . . .’ (p. 152). Guided by an angel, he came to the slope of the lakes of Glendalough, where St Patrick had prophesied that he would flourish, and there lived in extreme asceticism on wild nuts and herbs, sleeping on rocks, and imitating the Saints of old, of whom St Paul wrote, ‘they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth’ (Heb. 11:37-8). ‘Great was his courage afterwards in separating from the glory and beauty of the present life, and remaining in solitude listeing to the converse of the angel who ministered to him’ (Plummer, p. 122). Sellner quotes one Life as saying ‘the branches and leaves of the trees sometimes sang sweet songs to him, and heavenly music alleviated the severity of his life’ (Sellner, p. 157), for ‘he would pray long and fervently to God’, and (Plummer, p. 152)—

Seven years in tangled deserts
Was he in gentle sort
Dwelling beside his people
Without food in Cáel Faithe.

Finally, St Kevin was discovered by a farmer, and the farmer’s sons dragged him out of his hollow and prevailed upon him to live openly, in a monastery and with disciples. According to Sellner:

At Disert-Coemgen, where Refert Church now stands, Kevin made a settlement for the disciples who joined him. He eventually moved his community to the glen ‘where two sparkling rivers meet’. Here at Glendalough he made his permanent foundation. The site, south of Dublin, is still popular with tourists and pilgrims. Located in the shadows of the Wicklow Mountains and surrounded by lakes and forests, it is very beautiful. (pp. 157-8)

St Kevin’s disciple, Solomon, tells us that it is an extraordinary pilgrimage site indeed (Plummer, p. 156):

Great is the pilgrimage of Coemgen,
If men should perform it aright;
To go seven times to their fair is the same
As to go once to Rome.

It was at this point that one of the more well-known incidents of St Kevin’s life occurred. It was his custom to spend Lent in ‘a wattled pen, and a grey flag-stone under him as a bed, and his only food was the music of the angels’—

And one Lent when he was acting in this way, a blackbird came from the wood to his pen, and hopped on his palm as he lay on the flag-stone with his hand stretched out; and he kept his hand in that position, so that the blackbird built its nest in it, and hatched its brood. The angel came after this to visit Coemgen, and bade him leave the penance in which he was, and return to the society of men once more. (Plummer, p. 155)

But St Kevin sternly replied:

Alas! a pain greater than the requital
My hand like a log under the blackbird;
The blood of His hands, of His side, of His feet
The King of heaven shed for my sake.

Of course there are many wondrous stories told of St Kevin. To prevent this post becoming too long, I shall give just one more of them:

It occurred to the King of Úi Faelain to send a son who had been born to him to Coemgen to be baptized; and he sent word to him to keep the boy with him to be fostered. And the reason why he sent him to him was because every son that had been previously born to him had been destroyed by the bright people or fairy courts. And when the infant came to Coemgen to be baptized, a fairy witch, named Caineog, with her attendant women followed the infant, bent on destroying it, as they had destroyed every other son which the king of Úi Faelain had had previously. When Coemgen noticed this, he cursed the women, and thereupon they were turned into stones, and they remain thenceforth in the form of stones on the brink of the lough which is in the glen. (Plummer, pp. 158-9)

St Kevin fell asleep in the Lord in 618, according to some at the age of 129. As the third sticheron (Tone 6) for ‘Lord I have cried’ in Reader Isaac Lambertson’s wonderful Akolouthia for the Saint says:

The years of man's life are threescore and ten, or mayhap fourscore if he be in strength, but any more is toil and travail; yet our Savior granted sixscore years unto His favored one, wherein to exalt His holy name.

According to Sellner, ‘He was a very popular saint in the Middle Ages. Gerald of Wales once described Kevin as “a great confessor of the faith, and abbot”. As the story of the blackbird reveals, Kevin was especially associated with the quality of patience’ (p. 158). Kevin Edgecomb, whose patron St Kevin is, has posted in its entirety one of the Lives in Plummer's translation here. Many years on your Old Calendar nameday, Kevin! I shall conclude with the Doxasticon from Vespers for the Saint:

Like as the two lakes of Glendalough water their vale, so was the glorious Kevin nourished with the twin springs of Orthodox doctrine and ascetic endeavor. Wherefore, all who honor him become like trees planted by the streams of the grace which dwelt in him, so that, nurtured thereby, their leaf doth not fall, and they prosper exceedingly in the Spirit, bringing forth in due season the goodly fruits of virtue and devotion.

'The First Being Who Lost His Wings'—The Vintage Book of the Devil

To continue my ongoing project of posting excerpts from the interesting books I’ve managed to acquire, today I will be giving Logismoi readers a little taste of The Vintage Book of the Devil, ed. Francis Spufford (NY: Vintage, 1997). The book is essentially, in the editor’s words, ‘a literary anthology’ (p. 15)—‘It only tries to put together some of the ways the devil has been written about, from the sensational to the dead-serious, with a very wide ground in between occupied by all those writers who simply rummaged the devil out of the box of imagining, and gave him lines to say’ (p. 15). Aside from the wonderful excerpts, there is a fascinating introduction by the subject himself. Obviously, it expresses some of the, typically cynical, views of the editor on the nature and history of the Devil, but these are easier to take coming from the Devil himself rather than some British journalist. As our diabolical protagonist acknowledges, ‘But who listens to me? My vested interests are obvious’ (p. 7). Of much more interest to me is the fact that there really are some valid insights here, although they are of course expressed with the Devil’s condescending misanthropy. Well, here’s a sample:

Oh, and I must mention my little Yezidis, toujours fidèles—a Mesopotamian sect much harassed by their neighbours. They worship me under the emblem of the Peacock, the first of all the beasts of the earth for pride, considering that the wise creator resigned the earth to me, and that I will remember my friends when I am reinstated in heaven. Thank you, Yezidis: I am touched. Your hopes are misplaced, and your numbers do not inspire much confidence, but I dare say a sulphurous tear might trickle down my hollow cheek if I were given to emotional display. (p. 6)

Furthermore, speaking of the idea that he is the ‘opposite’ of God, or ‘the essence of evil’, or that evil is ‘a thing in itself’, he writes:

But to think that I am the opposite of God! I am about as much the opposite of God as eggs are bacon’s opposite, or toast the opposite of marmelade . . .

. . . Your more impressive religious thinkers ruled it out altogether. It was your constant fear, but it never described the things you actually let me do. A modicum of success as a tempter was all I was allowed: you will note, please, that even then I could do nothing without your consent.

The fact that the dream has lingered on so long, you may attribute to the well-worn grooves your speculations run in, not to the creeds most of you have abandoned. More precisely, in the present century, you have to thank the way your philosophy and psychoanalysis abstract the pros and cons of good and evil when the deal with them. Religious good and evil, lifted out of the stories and theologies that set them in exact relation to one another, took on a mythic weightlessness, and were manipulated thus so dextrously that you might be forgiven for concluding they are indeed opposing faces of a single metaphor. (Forgiven, but not by me. I leave forgiving to those who do it well. It is not my métier.) (p. 4, 5)

And now, here are three of the texts selected by Spufford, with the headings he has given. The first is from Origen (Spufford, pp. 74-5):

Origen Shows Celsus how the Christians Piece it all Together

Some such doctrine is hinted at in the story that the serpent, which was the origin of Pherecydes’ Ophioneus, was the cause of man’s expulsion from the divine paradise, and deceived the female race with a promise of divine power and of attaining to greater things; and we are told that the man followed her also. And who else could be the destroyer in Exodus, which Moses wrote, except the one who is the cause of destruction to those who obey him and who do not resist and struggle against his wickedness? Further, the averter in Leviticus, which the Hebrew text called Azazel, is none other than he. The goat upon whom the lot fell had to be sent forth in the desert so that it should avert evil. For all who, on account of their sin, belong to the portion of the evil power and who are opposed to the people of God’s inheritance, are deserted by God. Moreover, take the sons of Belial in Judges. Who other than he can be the one whose sons they are said to be because of their wickedness? A clearer instance than any of these is that in the book of Job, who was even earlier than Moses himself. It is there written that the devil stands snear God, and asks for power against Job that he may encompass him with very severe calamities, first by the destruction of all his possessions and his children, and secondly by afflicting Job’s whole body with a violent attack of the disease called elephantiasis. I omit the passages from the gospels about the devil tempting the Saviour, that I may not appear to reply to Celsus with arguments on the question which are drawn from more recent scriptures. Moreover, in the last chapters of Job, where the Lord spoke to Job through a whirlwind and clouds the sayings recorded in the book bearing his name, several passages could be taken which deal with the serpent. I have not yet mentioned also the examples from Ezekiel where he speaks, as it were, of Pharaoh, or of Nebuchadnezzar, or of the prince of Tyre, or the passage from Isaiah where the dirge is sung for the king of Babylon. From these scriptures one would learnt not a little about evil, of the character of its origin and beginning, and how that evil came to exist because of some who lost their wings and followed the example of the first being who lost his wings.

Origen, Contra Celsum; trans. Henry Chadwick, 1953

The second is a description of a Sabbat (Spufford, p. 24)

Some Swedes Meet an Antecessor in a High-Crowned Hat

We of the Province of Elfdale, do confess, that we used to go to a Gravel-Pit, which lays hard by a Cross-way, and there we put on a Vest over our heads, and then danced round, and after this ran to the Cross-way, and called the Devil thrice, first with a still Voice: the second time somewhat louder: and the third time very loud, with these words, Antecessor come and carry us to Blockula. Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in different Habits: but for the most part, we saw him in a Gray-Coat, and red and blew Stockings. He had a red beard, a high crowned Hat, with Linnen of diverse colours, wrapt about it, and long Garters upon his Stockings. It is very remarkable, that the Devil never appears to the Witches, with a Sword at his side.

George Sinclair, Satans Invisible World Discovered, 1685

Finally, there are some lines of a modern poet (Spufford, pp. 202-3):

‘Faust Requires Mephistopheles to Describe Hell and Heaven for Him’

‘Tell me, I command you,
What is that place called hell?’

‘Hell is grey and has no bottom—
Which reminds me of a joke I heard . . .’

‘It was of hell I asked to hear,
Not your stale jokes.’

‘But hell is of no substance,
A confused and hence confusing thing—’

‘It is yourself that you describe,
I think.’

‘So be it—hell is,
Well, it’s empty.
Oh there are crowds of people all around.
But hell, you feel, is—empty.
The word is emptiness.’

‘Now let us speak of heaven.
What manner of place is that?’

‘I lack authority to speak of such.’
(Though not to miss it.)

‘Yet you were once in heaven,
Or so I’ve heard.’

‘Some time ago, it may have changed . . .
But—heaven is full.
That’s not to say it’s chock-a-block with people.
Simply, full—that’s what you feel.
The word is fullness.’

‘For one renowned for eloquence
I find you sadly tongue-tied!’

‘Whereof one cannot bear to speak,
Thereof one says but little.’

D.J. Enright, A Faust Book, 1979

I thought it interesting how those last two lines seem to modify Wittgenstein—‘heaven is full’, on the other hand, why, there’s Tom Waits, but with a different meaning!

'Rejoice, Sun Which Does Not Set on the Land of Ireland'—St Brendan the Navigator

Today, 16 May on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Brendan the Navigator (c. 484-c. 577), Abbot of Clonfert. According to the famous Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot, ‘St Brendan, son of Findlug, descendant of Alta of the line of Eogan, was born in the marshy region of Munster. He was a very ascetical man, famed for his miracles and spiritual father to almost three thousand monks’ (Celtic Spirituality, trans. Oliver Davies and Thomas O’Loughlin [NY: Paulist, 1999], p. 155). Dennis O’Donoghue’s 1893 translation of the second sentence is more faithful to the Latin—‘He was famed for his great abstinence and his many virtues, and was the patriarch of nearly three thousand monks’ (here).

St Brendan was baptised by St Erc, taught for five years by St Ita, ‘the Brighid of Munster’, and, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia—

he completed his studies under St. Erc, who ordained him priest in 512. Between the years 512 and 530 St. Brendan built monastic cells at Ardfert, and at Shanakeel or Baalynevinoorach, at the foot of Brandon Hill. It was from here that he set out on his famous voyage for the Land of Delight.

This voyage is of course the primary subject of what is perhaps the most famous hagiographic narrative in the Western world: the above-mentioned Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot. Davies describes the Voyage as follows:

In its combination of ancient Irish motifs, Christian apocalyptic vision, biblical reminiscences, early medieval zoological and geographical lore, all combined with exact descriptions of the monastic regimen and ascetical ideals, The Voyage of Brendan can be regarded as a compendium, or even classical narrative, of the early Irish Church. (p. 34)

But although it certainly has unique features, St Brendan’s story is also an example of the classic Irish tale of voyages, the immram, of which the Voyage of St Maeldune is another example (one used to great effect by Lord Tennyson—‘The Voyage of Maeldune’, Poems of Tennyson, ed. Jerome H. Buckley [Boston: Hough Mifflin, 1958], pp. 479-83).

According to the Voyage, while St Brendan ‘was engaged in spiritual warfare in a place which is called Brendan’s “Meadow of Miracles” [identified by Davies as, most likely, Clonfert—p. 508, n. 4]’ (Davies, p. 155), a relative, St Barinthus, told him about how he had been to visit his son, who was the elder at a skete on an isolated island, and how the latter had taken him to ‘the island which is called the Promised Land of the Saints, that land which God will give us and our successors on the last day’ (p. 156). It is, apparently, a foretaste of Paradise on earth. They stay there a year without noticing the passage of time or requiring food or drink, there is unwaning day, and when they return to the skete they say, ‘Can you not tell from the fragrance of our clothes that we have been in Paradise?’ (Davies, p. 157). (This makes me think of Coleridge—

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.)

At any rate, it is this testimony that inspires St Brendan to undertake his voyage. According to the narrative:

St Brendan selected seven monks from his community, shut himself in an oratory with them, and said to them: ‘My most beloved fellow-warriors, I look to you for advice and help, for my heart and all my thoughts are united in a single desire. I have resolved in my heart, if only it be God’s will, to seek that Promised Land of the Saints, of which St Barinthus has spoken. How does this seem to you, and what advice do you wish to give me?’

As soon as they knew their holy father’s intention, they said with one voice: ‘Father, your will is our will. Have we not left our families, have we not set aside our inheritance and put ourselves in your hands? And so we are ready to follow you to either death or life. We seek one thing only: the will of God.’ (pp. 157-8)

St Brendan and 17 of his monks set sail from St Brendan’s Mountain (on the Dingle Peninsular, Kerry—Davies, p. 508, n. 9), and spent seven years at sea in a wooden coracle covered in cowhide, searching for the Promised Land and encountering various marvels. The most well-known of those, though certainly not the most important, is the story of the ‘island’ that turns out to be the sea monster, often believed to be a whale, Jasconius (told in Davies’s translation on p. 163). In an interesting lecture on St Brendan, John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute, 3rd Marquess of Bute, makes the following comments:

This is the only incident in the whole romance which is actually grotesque. But from the solemnity with which it is narrated, it is evident that it did not appear to be grotesque to the author. It seems to have taken the fancy of the early and mediæval public, and even of the iconographic public in a special degree. The word whale has commonly been applied to the beast, and as the same episode occurs in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Jubinal has set himself to speculate how that story, or the Arabian Nights in which it is incorporated, came to be known in Ireland. I confess I do not agree with him. In the first place, the notion is not particularly recondite, and it has at least this possible foundation in fact, that, as I have been told by sailors, the back of a whale of advanced years, when asleep at the surface, may be and has been mistaken from some distance, greatly owing to the accretions upon it, for the top of a reef. [In a fascinating post, Brendan Macodrum points out that a description of this occurrence is found in the 2nd- to 4th-century Physiologus, likely to have been known by the author of the Voyage.] Again, a somewhat similar notion occurs in Lucian's Traveller's Tale, which was much more likely to be known to the Irish fabulist. Lastly, I must observe that all this is gloss. The word whale (cete) is never applied to the animal but always fish (piscis) or monster (bellua) or beast (bestie), and the whole thing, with the notion of its vast size, and the attempt to join the tail to the mouth, which brings it into connection with the emblem of eternity, which is due, I believe, to the Phoenicians, but which we ourselves so often use upon coffins and grave-stones, seems to bring it into connection rather with the idea of the Midgard-Worm, the great under-lying world-serpent which figures so largely in the mythic cosmogony of the Scandinavians. I suggest that this is the notion, of which the romancer may have heard from Scandinavian sources; and there is even a kind of indication that it was associated in his mind with the idea of paganism, as Brendan is made to speak elsewhere of God having made the most terrible (immanissimam) of beasts subject unto them [Davies, p. 173—‘My dear sons, watch and pray in case you should enter into temptation. Remember how God tamed that terrible beast beneath us without any difficulty’].

At last, St Brendan and his surviving companions were guided to the island they sought. According to the Voyage, they ate and drank of the blessed fruit and spring-water, discovered a river they could not cross (St Barinthus also mentioned this river), and finally encountered a ‘young man’, who kissed them and called them each by name, saying, ‘Blessed are they that dwell in your house, O Lord. They shall praise you forever and ever’ (Ps. 83:5).

Then he said to St Brendan: ‘This is the land which you have sought for so long. You were not able to find it immediately because God wished to show you his many wonders in the great ocean. Return now to the land of your birth, taking with you fruit from this land and as many gems as your boat can carry. The day of your final journey is approaching, when you shall sleep with your fathers. After the passage of many years, this land will be revealed to your successors when Christians will be suffering persecution. This river which you see divides the island into two halves, and you can see nothing but ripened fruit, which is how it remains all the year round, with no shadow of night, for Christ himself is our light. (pp. 189-90)

The end of the Voyage tells how St Brendan and his companions returned to his monastery in Ireland and told the story of their journeys and the wonders they experienced. The abbot also informed his spiritual children of the prophecy the young man made concerning his imminent repose. According to the narrative, ‘Events proved him right for when he had put all his affairs in order and had been strengthened by the sacraments of God, he soon gave up his spirit as he lay in his disciples’ arms, and passed over to the Lord, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen’ (Davies, p. 190).

Of course, there must have been some not entirely insignificant lapse of time between St Brendan’s return to Ireland and his repose, since, as Brendan Lehane (in his typically cynical tone) points out, ‘He was still to travel, to risk his life in restless searchings [he visited many places throughout the British Isles], and to play the autocrat among his erring monks’ (Early Celtic Christianity [London: Constable, 1996], p. 90). Among others, he founded a convent in Galway, ‘Annaghdown by the shore of Lough Corrib’, where he made his sister Brig the abbess (Lehane, p. 91). He met St Columba of Iona in Scotland, and St Gildas the Wise and St David in Wales. Finally, he returned to his sister’s monastery at Annaghdown, where he died in her arms in 577. According to Lehane, ‘On his instructions his body was taken for interment to Clonfert, where he was buried in the presence of many mourners’ (p. 99).

There have been many speculations that the Voyage of St Brendan contains a genuine account of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, i.e., that St Brendan and his companions may have visited the New World 300 years before Leif Ericson and over 900 years before Columbus. Apparently, it was doubted at one time that such a feat could have been accomplished in a coracle of the type described by the Voyage, but in 1976, someone did precisely that. I recall once hearing a recorded lecture by Hieromonk Ambrose (Young) at Holy Cross Hermitage about some markings in a cave in West Virginia that were believed to have been made by Irish monks, but unfortunately a little internet digging reveals that this interpretation of the markings is believed by most archaeologists to be ludicrously doubtful (alas, see this article). Do, however, read this article about the general idea of the Irish visiting the New World, maybe even Florida! (HT to Orthodox Okie, to whom I am grateful as well for the icon above.)

I highly recommend some of the posts on Brendan Macodrum’s blog, Wick Lit, though I should warn readers that this blog also features quite a number of images of nude women, most of them, however, somewhat tastefully done. Macodrum, a resident of Skellig Michael, the famous monastic island off the coast of Ireland, also has two other blogs, Cape Blue and Immrama (here he has posted the account of the end of St Brendan’s voyage from the Book of Lismore). He no longer posts on any of them, but if he happens to read this, many years on his Old Calendar Orthodox nameday!

There is also an Akathist to St Brendan here, but sadly it is in the barbarous French tongue, which I have not yet condescended to learn. I was, however, able to translate the title of this post from the first Ikos. Finally, for those who have been waiting all along for me to mention Frederick Buechner's novel, Brendan, I'm afraid it will have to wait for a separate post. This one has already ballooned to mammoth proportions.