Peregrinatio in the Ocean: Allegory and Reality in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani

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Peregrinatio in the Ocean:
Allegory and Reality in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani
Fedor D. Prokofiev
Ernest Renan, who called the Navigatio Sancti Brendani “the most singular
product of this combination of Celtic naturalism with Christian spiritualism”
(“le produit le plus singulier de cette combinaison du naturalisme celtique avec
le spiritualism chrétien”)1 was by far not the only researcher who noticed the
careful matching of realism of the description of sea travel and the rather overdrawn
descriptions in the religious fragments of the text.
For a rather long time, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani was considered an
allegorical brain-twister, a literary distortion of one or several historical travels.
Researchers were busy in establishing the events that stood behind the phenomena
faced by Brendan and his travel companion, the sources of information
used by the anonymous author of this story and the exact location of the mentioned
islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Various episodes of the travel were placed
from Scotland to the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. In such readings, the
Island of Sheep and the Paradise of Birds appear to represent the Faroe Islands.
The Island of Blacksmiths is equated with Iceland, a crystal column with an iceberg,
thickened sea with polar ice packs, while sea monsters seen by Brendan
and his fellow travellers are regarded as whales, dolphins, seals, etc.2 The research
tradition stating that the description of Brendan’s travel was based on an
actual travel goes back, in fact, to medieval charts placing Brendan’s island in
various parts of the Atlantic.3 In 1976, this approach was corroborated by a research
journey. Together with three companions, Tim Severin managed to reach
1 Ernest Renan, “La poésie des races celtiques,” Revue des deux mondes 24 (1854) : 473-506.
2 For the most concise bibliography of similar works, see: Eugene F. Fingerhut, Who First
Discovered America? A Critique of Writings on Pre-Columbian Voyage (Claremont, CA:
Regina Books, 1984), 11-29; idem, Explorers of Pre-Columbian America? (Claremont:
California Press, 1994).
3 Kent Methewson, “St. Brendan’s Mythical Isle and Toponymic Drift: from Iceland to Ecuador,”
in Atlantic Visions, ed. John De Courcy and David C. Sheehy (Dún and Laoghaire:
Boole Press, 1989), 51-60; Donald S. Johnson, Phantom Isles of the Atlantic (Fredericton,
New Brunswick: Goose Lane Editions, 1994), 175-206; Valerio M. Manfredi, Le Isole
Fortunate: topografia di un mito (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1999), 229.
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the Island of Newfoundland and visit Scotland, the Orkney, Shetland and Faroe
Islands, as well as Iceland and Greenland on board of a currach, that is, a small
leather boat, reconstructed after its description in the Navigatio.4
The perception of the Navigatio as a source based on actual historical
events is surely not accidental. The text contains a number of elements closely
related to the realities of the so-called Golden Age of saints. To begin with, it
rests upon the tradition of peregrinatio pro Dei amore, which was characteristic
solely to Ireland and its movement for rethinking the tradition of penitential exile.
5 A pilgrimage for the love of God was distinguished by a number of
characteristic traits such as the necessary permission of a Father Superior, the
detailed description of the currach’s construction6 and a thorough preparation for
the journey. At the same time, the descriptions of certain islands (for instance, of
the Island of Sheep and the Paradise of Birds, as well as monastic insular settlements)
are in fact highly realistic and resemble extracts from De Mensura Orbis
Terrae (VII, 11-14) written by the Irish geographer Dicuil,7 which certifies that
Irish monks had permanent and temporary settlements on the Faroe Islands and
in Iceland in the seventh and eighth centuries.8 Finally, the geographic space of
the text, it seems, fairly corresponds with the Irish medieval perspective on the
world, based on a T-shaped chart which can be traced back to the Bible and an
understanding of the ocean as an endless abyss,9 with numerous islands, the socalled
“antipodes” of Virgil of Salzburg, located to the west of Ireland.10
Only recently, the excessive attention to the historicity of the journey has
yielded to the acknowledgement of an existing necessity to study the religious
and literary functions of the text itself. The allegorical reading of the Peregrina-
4 The expedition was described in Tim Severin, The Brendan Voyage (London: Arena, 1978).
For a review arguing against the scientific character of the journey, see John J. O’Meara, “In
the Wake of the Saint,” Times Literary Supplement, July 14, 1978.
5 Thomas Mobray Charles-Edwards, “The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio,” Celtica
11 (1976): 43-59.
6 Jonathan M. Wooding, “St. Brendan’s Boat: Ded Hides and the Living Sea in Columban and
Related Hagiography,” in Studies in Irish Hagiography, ed. J. Carey, Máire Herbert and
Padraig Ó Riain (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 77-92.
7 See, for instance, the comparison with the description of islands in the Liber de mensura orbis
terrae: Jonathan M. Wooding, “Monastic Voyaging and the Navigatio,” in The Otherworld
Island, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 226-45.
8 In recent years, this field is being researched by Barbara Crawford in the framework of the
St. Andrews Papar Project [http://www.paparproject.org.uk/introduction.html]: The Papar
in the North Atlantic: Environment and History. The Proceedings of a Day Conference held
on the 24th of February 2001. The “Papar” Project, vol. 1, ed. Barbara E. Crawford (St.
Andrews: University of St. Andrews, Committee for Dark Age Studies, 2002).
9 See, for instance, Tom O’Loughlin, “Living in the Ocean: the Significance of the Patristic
Understanding of oceanus for Writings from Iona,” in Studies in the Cult of Saint Columba,
ed. Cormac Bourke (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 11-23.
10 John Carey, “Ireland and the Antipodes: the Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg” Speculum
64 (1989): 1-10.
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tio as a metaphor of monastic life is much more accepted nowadays.11 However,
there has been no comprehensive study of the text revealing the meaning of all
its elements. The present paper aims at eliciting the means and functions used by
the author, which define the role of reality and allegory and create a multi-level
effect in the text, as well as at understanding the role of historical details in an
allegoric context.
Eschatological Structure
The Navigatio, written approximately between the end of the eighth century
and the first third of the ninth century,12 gives us much more detailed information
about the author than about the heroes of the text. It seems that the
author either belonged to the ascetic movement of the “clients of God” (céli
Dé),13 which appeared in the end of the eight/beginning of the ninth century, or
11 This reading, although in a very schematic form, was for the first time used in the following
works: James F. Kenney, “The Legend of St. Brendan,” Transactions of the Royal Society
of Canada, third series 14 (1920): 51-67; Cynthia Bourgeault, “The Monastic Archetype in
the Navigatio of St. Brendan,” Monastic Studies 14 (1983): 109-21; Dorothy A. Bray, “A
Note on the Life of St. Brendan,” Cistercian Studies 20 (1985): 14-20. For an analysis of
the journey as a metaphor of monastic life, see the following articles: Dorothy A. Bray,
“Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” Viator 26 (1995): 1-10; Tom O’Loughlin,
“Distant islands: The Topography of Holiness in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” in The
Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales, ed. Marion Glasscoe, Exeter
Symposium VI (Cambridge: DS Brewer, 1999), 1-20. In Russian historiography a similar
reading is proposed by Aron Gurevich in his introduction to the translation of the work by
John K. Wright, Geographicheskie predstavleniya v epohu krestovyh pohodov. Issledovanie
srednevekovoi nauki i traditsii v Zapadnoy Evrope [Geographical lore in the time of the
crusades: a study in the history of medieval science and tradition in Western Europe] (Moscow:
Nauka, 1988), 5-6. In this introduction, Gurevich noted that the Navigatio Sancti
Brendani pertains to the genre of travels to the Other World, popular in the Middle Ages.
12 Jonathan Wooding proposed the earliest dating (first half of the eighth century): Wooding,
“The Latin Version,” in The Voyage of St. Brendan – Vernacular Versions in Translation,
ed. Ray W. Barron and Glyn S. Burgess (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002), 18. David
Dumville believes that the text can be dated back to 786 [David Dumville, “Two Approaches
to the Dating of Nauigatio Sancti Brendani,” Studi Medievali 29/1 (1988): 87-
102], while David Stifter suggests 825 as the approximate date for the creation of the work
[David Stifter, “Philologica Latino Hibernica: Navigatio Sancti Brendani” (Master thesis,
University of Vienna, 1997)].
13 Céli Dé was an aristocratic movement, which was underlined by the term itself. In the
Christian tradition of Western Europe this term was widely used to define the members of
the “retinue” (dám) of the Lord as his “clients”. The existence of a similar term mog Dé
also points to the special status of this group as spiritual aristocracy [see, for instance: Thesaurus
Paleohibernicus, ed. and tr. Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, 2 vols. (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1903-1905), vol. 1, 694 and vol. 2, 5, 265]. The term can be
regarded as a direct reflection of the social and economic classification within the laic
community for noble clients (sóer-chéle) and not noble clients (dóer-chéle), as well as servants
(mog). Thus, the céli Dé have a higher status in the society of those following God
(mog Dé) thanks to the sanctity of their ascetic life and spiritual wealth.
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was in contact with monasteries that became bulwarks of this movement (such
as the monastery of Clonfert14 with St. Brendan being its patron saint).
The movement of the “clients of God” was against the practice of peregrinatio.
At that time, the ascetic ideal was associated with a stable monastic life
that was characterized by a complete renunciation of mundane matters, regular
services and fasting, unlike the ascetic ideal of sea travels common from the
sixth until the beginning of the eighth century.15 The Navigatio is a peculiar
combination of these two concepts of asceticism and a manifestation of the stabilitas
in peregrinatione principle: the narrative does not accentuate events,
while its cyclic nature is meant to reflect the cyclic nature of a monastic year
and stable religious life in general. This conception is found in brevity in the socalled
Hermit’s Song written in the tenth century: “I am alone in my small cell,/
There is no one next to me,/ Such a pilgrimage would be dear/ To my heart before
I meet with death.”16 We should base the analysis of the structure of the
text, which, according to a widely accepted opinion, bears a distinctive chiliastic
character, on this conception.
Although the journey of St. Brendan lasted for seven years, the text describes
only three yearly cycles: the first two years and the last one, when the
preparations of Brendan and his return took place.
The first cycle is placing the itinerary of the journey into a spatial as well
as a thematic structure. Already the description of the first year reveals the eschatological
theme of the narrative, when one of the brothers died after having
stolen a silver snaffle, being misguided by a daemon.17 In this cycle, the monks
are confronted by a somniferous spring. Having received a warning, they all act
differently: they drink once, twice or thrice and fall asleep accordingly for one,
14 See Colmán Etchingham, Church Organization in Ireland, A.D. 650 to 1000 (Maynooth:
Laigin Publications, 1999, repr. 2002), 248-61. The thirty-seventh paragraph of Tecosc
Maíle Ruain (The Rule of Tallaght), ed. and tr. Edward J. Gwynn, Hermathena 44/2 (1927):
22-3 explains the necessity of physical chastity through the interaction of Máel Ruain with
his pupils, including the heads of the main monasteries, particularly the head (erenagh) of
Clonfert, Muirchetach mac Olcobhair.
15 Jonathan Wooding has developed this idea and underlines a number of similarities between
the text of the Navigatio and Tecosc Maíle Ruain, the teaching of Máel Ruain, who died in
791, as well as the set of rules of the céli Dé [Jonathan Wooding, “Fasting, Flesh and the
Body in the St. Brendan Dossier,” in Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults, ed. Jane Cartwright
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 161-76].
16 M’óenurán im aireclán / cen duinén im gnáis: / robad inmuin ailethrán / ré indul i ndáil
mbáis; Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 18.
17 Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, ed. Carl Selmer (Notre Dame: Indiana, 1959), § 6, 12-
5. For convenience, I am using the numeration of Selmer’s edition in my work. In the earlier
manuscripts there was no division in chapters. There exists also a Russian translation of
the Navigatio Sancti Brendani [Plavanie Svyatogo Brendana. Srednevekovye predaniya o
puteshestviyah, vechnyh strannikah i poyavlenii obitateley inyh mirov (The Journey of Saint
Brendan. Medieval legends about travels, eternal travelers and the appearance of inhabitants
of other worlds), ed. and tr. Nikolay Gorelov (Saint Petersburg: Azbuka-Klassika,
2002)].
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two or three days. This was a turning point for the travellers in the realization of
the implacability of death and responsibility for their deeds, which could not be
avoided despite the constant protection of the Lord. Brendan told them that God
had given them food, but they harmed themselves with it.18 In another extremely
important scene from the first cycle, Brendan tells his fellow travellers to put the
oars aside and rely on God’s will, when they found themselves in the frozen sea,
and this helped them to escape the dangerous area.19 In allegorical interpretation,
the monks feel the Judgment Day and their death (allegorically symbolized by
the dream), as well as the evil forces approaching and learn to trust their vessel,
representing their lives, to the Lord, and in full obedience follow advises of their
mentor.
The second cycle sets the continuity and systematicity of the narrative and
thus intensifies the theme of monastic life and stability. The last cycle ultimately
discloses the eschatological theme of the Navigatio. The travellers have visions
of the anticipation of Judgment Day. After a standard opening at the Island of
Sheep, Jasconius and the Paradise of Birds (§ 20), they cross a transparent sea (§
21), see a crystal column (§ 22), the Island of Blacksmiths (§ 23), and a mountain
spouting fire (§ 24), meet Judas Iscariot (§ 25) and Hermit Paul (§ 26) waiting
for Judgment Day on an island. Finally they celebrate Easter and visit Canaan.
The monks are searching for Canaan not through advanced movement but
by following the liturgical year with its regular cycle and celebrating every important
event in the life of Christ with prayer and religious service – therefore by
systematic breaks in the travel. The temporal cycle is reflected in movements in
space: all the feasts are celebrated in the same locations every year and always
on the same island, or – in the case of Jasconius – in the same location in the
ocean. The monks follow the same route one year after another, and although
the narrative leads them to unknown islands almost in every cycle, they always
go back to places they visited in the first cycle and which became inherent to
their feast rites. Thus, Christmas is always celebrated in the monastery of Saint
Alba, the Great Lent is spent on the island of a procurator, who always replenishes
their goods; Easter is celebrated on the back of Jasconius (iasc in Irish
means fish), a mysterious Irish sea monster, which was probably initially called
Casconius (casc in Irish means Easter20); and during the period from Easter until
Pentecost the monks stay on the Island of Birds. The liturgical cycle is also
symbolized by fish, biting their tales (§ 10, 21).21
For that matter, the monks are not “travelling” but following vows of obedience
in the world of monastic stabilitas and stasis until they are allowed to
reach the Divine world. The structure of the text in fact denies any development
18 Navigatio, 30: Dominus dedit nobis pastum, et uos fecistis inde detrimentum.
19 Ibid., § 14, 39.
20 See more information on differences between a number of manuscript groups: Ludwig
Bieler, “Casconius, the Monster of the Navigatio Brendani,” Eigse 5 (1945-1947): 139-40.
21 Navigatio, 21, 58.
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of the narrative, and its cyclical repetition is ultimately interrupted. The only explanation
to the fact that the travellers had spent exactly seven years in order to
reach Canaan is heard from a young man, who tells Brendan that he could not
have found Canaan immediately, because God wanted to reveal numerous mysteries
of the ocean to him.22
Theoria and Praxis
The Navigatio was conceived as a two-layered work.23 It is easy to draw a
distinctive line between the two types of situations described in the text. On the
one hand, there are standard episodes of an ordinary sea travel, with a time and
space framework clear to the readers. On the other hand, there are accounts of
phenomena which lay outside common human experience and are profoundly
alien and unknown to the listeners of the story. Based on this division, one
should understand “regular” parts of the text as historical narrative, pointing to
the realities familiar to the audience of the text and revealing ideals of praxis,
while allegorically described episodes related to “miraculous” events are meant
to illustrate the Divine world, which can only be understood through contemplation
(theoria).24
A whole range of characteristics helps the reader to distinguish between
the different layers. One of the most important characteristics is the presence of
liturgy which serves as means of highlighting ordinary time and events. The liturgy,
always heavenly and at the same time terrestrial, becomes a link connecting
these two domains. These worlds seem to incorporate each other on miraculous
islands during the most important events of the liturgical year. In the
text, the fasting of the monks is very tightly connected to the liturgy. It represents
not only a part of the monastic life, but a very significant, if not the key
element of the narrative, as the text contains forty references to food.25
Sharply defined contrasts between descriptions of regular and “miraculous”
parts of the story also help to distinguish between the two layers. Some
episodes offer detailed information regarding directions and length of the journey
and everyday events, while others talk about misty clouds, travelling in circles,
loss of direction and fading time.
22 Ibid., § 28, 80: Ideo non potuisti statim [illam] inuenire quia Deus uoluit tibi ostendere
diuersa sua secreta in oceano magno.
23 The most detailed analysis of this concept is presented in O’Loughlin, “Distant islands: The
Topography of Holiness in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani.”
24 A binary opposition of theoria and praxis, very common to the tradition of early medieval
spirituality, was sometimes seen as a characteristic Irish tradition [see, for instance, Clare
Stancliffe, “Early ‘Irish’ Biblical Exegesis,” Studia Patristica 12 (1975): 361-70]. Although
it is impossible to prove this, it is very probable that the author of the Navigatio was acknowledged
with this tradition and could expect his audience to be familiar with it.
25 See, for example, a table composed by Jonathan Wooding in “Fasting, Flesh and the Body
in the St. Brendan Dossier,” 171.
13
A third characteristic which helps to define the layers are Biblical allusions.
Although they are spread all over the text, their distribution is not even.
“Miraculous” parts of the text, which require an allegorical reading, often contain
visionary references to the language and images of the Old and New Testament.
26 Finally, when heroes of the Navigatio are confronted with evil, there is
no place for allegories, as the author introduces moral teaching in confinement
with the laws of ethics.
I would allow myself to briefly illustrate the two-layered structure of the
text with the introductory narrative of Barintus, which defines the paradigm for
the rest of the text. The narrative starts with the genealogy of the saint, which
has a significant meaning. By reading that Saint Brendan was the son of
Finnlug, descendant of Alta, of the race of Eoghan and was born in Munster, the
reader is immediately placed among familiar characters and realities, and the
story unfolds in “real” time and space. It was important for the author to underline
that the starting point of the story was located within grasp, while the finishing
point of the narrative, just like the life of any Christian, lay far beyond the
borders of this world. But Brendan, a man of great abstinence and famous for his
miraculous deeds, who was related to many readers through kinship, had lived in
their world, in Clonfert.27
The readers of the Navigatio also learn the biography of Barintus28, of the
race of King Niall, the relative of Brendan who died in c. 548-549. Barintus and
Brendan are presented to the readers as simple monks, who pray every day, follow
the vows and commit deeds of valour (in suo certamine), which each Christian
should commit (1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7). Certamen plays one of the most
important roles in the lives of Barintus and Brendan and indicates that they lived
as they ought to, unlike a number of monks who did not follow all the regulations
of monastic life.
It is in this ordinary world that the monks discover the “miraculous”
realm, so different from their everyday environment. The transition from one
world to another is imbedded already in the request of Saint Brendan, because
he does not want to hear only about the ocean, an unexplored part of the world,
but also about the numerous miracles, which can be observed there and do not
pertain to the terrestrial world. The author names the reasons for mentioning the
miracles: first of all, they are meant to reveal the Word of God to the monks (indica
nobis uerbum Dei) and thus become a medium of Divine revelation; secondly,
miracles were supposed to inspire the monks.29 Thus, the delight of
acquiring knowledge about sea monsters is mated in the text not with a mere
entertainment for the readers, but with spiritual instruction. It may seem that the
26 See, for instance, notes 7, 10, 47, 48, 59, 85 in Selmer’s edition of the Navigatio (Nauigatio,
83, 88, 90).
27 Nauigatio, 3, §1: uir magne abstinencie et in uirtutibus clarus.
28 There is yet another explanation associating Barintus with a sea deity, Manannán mac Lir
[Arthur C. L. Brown, “Barintus,” Revue Celtique 22 (1901): 339-44].
29 Nauigatio, 4, § 1: refice animas nostras de diuersis miraculis que vidisti in oceano.
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main character had been allotted a function of illustrating the structure of the
text which is built on the juxtaposition of spiritual and physical repletion.30
Later, Barintus starts the account of his journey. At first, he goes to one of
the monasteries on the Delightful Island (Insula deliciosa) which despite its
name was located somewhere in the physical reach of the text’s audience. It is
said that the island is situated next to the Slieve League (iuxta montem lapidis)
in Donegal County,31 exactly three days of boat ride away from the Irish shores.
It is another ideal monastery, similar to the convent of Brendan. It is important
that the potential audience of the text knew it very well or even had been there.
The time within the monastery walls is the same earthly time as in every monastery.
We learn that Barintus stayed there overnight. Because the narrator,
Barintus himself, did not introduce any adjustments to the interrelation between
the insular and regular times, the audience very well understood the length of his
stay. At the same time, the author shows that the space of the island was familiar
to the readers, because Barintus managed to encompass the whole island while
he stayed there.32
After visiting the Delightful Island, Barintus went westwards and found
himself in the space which one should not nor can perceive literally. Right after
visiting a familiar island, the travellers were caught in misty clouds (ista caligo
circuit illam insulam), which were meant to symbolize the border between the
two dimensions of reality. After this event, time and space are placed outside of
the direct dimension; Barintus and Mernóc are whirling in the fog, practically
not being able to see anything, and the time terminated its regular development,
as it seems that the travel lasted only for one hour. Having crossed through the
fog, the travellers find themselves on an island which is not familiar to the audience.
After the narrative leaves the readers’ world and places them in a different
reality, where the divine is closer and less concealed, everything they were to
face there will be understood as an allegory.
The land the travellers find themselves at is amazingly similar to New Jerusalem
as described in the last visionary of the Apocalypses (Rev. 21:10-22:5).
Thus, we learn that the Promised Land of the Saints is incredibly abundant with
herbs and fruits (terra herbosa pomiferosaque ualde); the travellers, as Barintus
says, do not see any plants without flowers nor trees without fruit (nihil herbe
uidimus sine floribus et arborum sine fructu). This description seems to be an
allusion to “the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her
fruit every month” (Rev. 22:2)33, not subjected to the change of seasons. All the
stones in this land are precious (lapides enim ipsius preciosi generis sunt), just
like New Jerusalem which shines like a precious stone (Rev. 22:11) with its
30 Ibid., 25.
31 According to a common opinion in scholarship, Mons Lapidis is associated with Slieve
League [The Voyage of St. Brendan: Journey to the Promised Land, tr. John J. O’Meara
(Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1976), XIX].
32 Nauigatio, 4, § 1: isulamque totam perembulanti.
33 All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James-version of the text.
15
walls adorned with different precious stones (Rev. 21:19-21). On the fifteenth
day the travellers find a river in the centre of the island, crossing it from the east
to the west, which is similar to the river running across the Heavenly City (Rev.
22:1). On the island, the monks do not lack clothes, food or drink – all the needs
representing imperfection and moral decay after the Fall.34 There is no place for
signs of imperfection and sin in the Heavenly City, as “there shall in no wise
enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or
maketh a lie” (Rev. 21:27). On the island, Barintus and his travel companions
are approached by a certain angelic figure, a man in grand splendour (vir cum
magno splendore), who addresses them all by their names and tells them about
the peculiarities of this place. In a similar fashion, the Revelation (Rev. 21:9)
tells about an angel appearing to John who knows his name and explains him his
visions. Another point of contiguity between the island and the Heavenly City is
the absence of a division of the day in day-time and night-time. The island
which is not exposed to the light of a certain material celestial body, does not
have nights, which again is again emphasized in the Relevation: “And there
shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the
Lord God giveth them light” (Rev. 22:5). There is light on this island which is
similar to the light shining upon John in the city of Apocalypses; it lacks neither
sun nor moon, because God himself illuminates the existence of its inhabitants
(Dominus noster Jhesus Christus lux ipsius est). The appearance of Christ in this
instance can be easily explained, as it directly springs from a line in the Revelation,
according to which the Holy Lamb is the light of the city (Rev. 21:23).
The most common characteristic of the Promised Land of the Saints is the
absence of any limitations. It is mostly reflected in the limitations of material
space and time which appeared with the creation of all the creation, as it is told
in the Genesis. Time and space of the island are not identical with time and
space of our world. Unlike all the other islands, the Promised Land of the Saints
requires more than fifteenth days in order to walk it all. Time-wise, the situation
is similar: Barintus and his companions imagine that they spend only fifteen
days according to the earthly time line, when they are told that fifteen days on
the island are equal to a year on earth. The passing of time is not perceived appropriately
because it is always day-time on the island and there is no difference
between light and darkness; the travellers do not suffer any needs, such as feelings
of hunger and thirst, which also create the time line. Thus, it is an island
which is perceived not through ordinary physical experiences, but with the help
of higher mystic knowledge, which is subject to understanding only through allegory.
After leaving the Promised Land, the travellers once again have to overcome
the misty clouds dividing the two dimensions. They again find themselves
in a perfect monastery, but this time they possess knowledge that the Gates to
34 As it is well known, all these needs were perceived as one of the punishments for Adam’s
sin. Clothes are mentioned in Gen. 3: 7, 21. On the necessity of working in order to make
bread: Gen. 3: 18, 19.
16
Paradise (porta paradisi) are located somewhere very near to the monastery, and
thus very near to any (ideal) monastery in Ireland.
Metaphorical and Physical Journey
The stay of the monks in the Promised Land of the Saints is described in
the first and the last but one chapter (or in the last chapter, according to Giovanni
Orlandi, who regarded the last, twenty-ninth chapter, as a later insertion).
35 The account of the journey of Brendan is situated between these two
allegorical fragments of the text. Being a metaphoric description of monastic
life, this journey unfolds in the real world, which cannot be perceived otherwise
than historialiter. This juxtaposition of the two worlds can be clearly detected at
the analysis of apocalyptic visions. Fragments describing immediate confrontation
with the forces symbolizing evil and moral corruption leave no place to
any allegoric reading. All the six chapters talks about events take place in our
time and space. The incident with the monk stealing a silver snuffle36 and the
meeting with Judas Iscariot37 take place in the space dimension of the ocean and
the islands next to the shores of Ireland. Monsters are seen as representatives of
our world or a world which is close to us in its materiality. In a similar fashion,
chapters talking about confrontation with demonic forces38 present the Gates to
Hell as a miraculous but inherent part of our world. The text of the Navigatio
gives an impression that there is no symmetry between the Gates to Heaven and
an infernal volcano, where one of Brendan’s fellow travellers is found. The abstract
appearance and superficial perfection of places marked by divine presence
symbolize their spiritual essence and distinguish them from the episodes dedicated
to the confrontation with forces of evil.
Thus, the metaphoric journey becomes associated with physical movements
in the world, which is similar to the world of the audience of the text, and
not accidentally it is presented as an entirely reliable historical travel, according
to medieval standards. The paradox is characteristic not only of the Navigatio
Sancti Brendani but of the entire early Irish literature, which associates the
metaphor of travelling with a physical journey.
This characteristic is reflected in the attitude to the phenomenon of peregrinatio
that existed in early medieval Ireland. Motives of the fragility of human
life, the constantly changing and unpredictable nature of the earthly existence
and of peregrinamur a Domino (2 Cor. 5:1-2, 4, 6) are often found in medieval
35 Giovanni Orlandi, Navigatio Sancti Brendani (Milan and Varese: Cisalpino Goliardica,
1968), vol. 1, 72-3.
36 Nauigatio, 15-6, § 7.
37 Ibid., 66-8, § 25.
38 Ibid., 61-5, § 23-4.
17
writings,39 but only the Irish monastic culture associated it with the ascetic deed
of “wandering”. One of the most famous Irish pilgrims, Saint Columbanus, developed
this concept and compared the human life (vita) with a road (via), which
the Christians had to plod along in an endless journey of “guests of this world”:
…for the end of the road is ever the object of travellers’ hopes and desires,
and thus, since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us
ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our
roadway is our home … Therefore let this principle abide with us, that on
the road we so live as travellers, as pilgrims, as guests of the world, entangled
by no lusts, longing with no earthly desires, but let us fill our
minds with heavenly and spiritual impressions, singing with grace and
power, ‘When shall I come and appear before the face of my God?’40
Thus, according to Columbanus, everyone should hasten to one’s true fatherland,
which is where the Father is, but not to loose home from love to the roadway
itself.41
It is important to underline that despite his love to elevated style, Columbanus
did not perceive peregrinatio only as an abstract notion. He directly connected
this concept with wandering, physical alienation from the fatherland
when he wrote that he was a pilgrim in the honour of God42 or urged to prepare
for physical sufferings and losses: “Therefore, since these things are so, ‘let us
make ready our mind, [not for joy, not for security, as the Sage says, but] for
temptations’ [Eccles. 2.1] and trials, for grieves and toils.”43 However, in some
works Columbanus seems to have consciously mingled these dimensions of
perigrinatio. Thus, the Ninth Sermon mentions “the foreign lands”,44 where
Columbanus and “his dearest friends” live, which clearly points to the earthly
peregrinatio, juxtaposed to the heavenly fatherland. However, along with it, the
sermons of Columbanus give realistic descriptions of lands that the saint used to
live in.
The same idea is met in the Life of Saint Columba, another very famous
pilgrim. The author of his life, Adamnan, wrote about the last hours of the saint:
“Thus far have the last words of our venerable patron, as he was about to leave
this weary pilgrimage for his heavenly country, been preserved for recital in our
brief narrative.”45 This example again shows the incorporation of the two con-
39 Reginald Grégoire, “Saeculi actibus se facere alienum. Le ‘mepris du mondes‘ dans la
littérature monastique latine médiévale,” Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 41 (1965) : 251-
87.
40 Italics by F. D. Prokofiev, “Columbanus, ‘Instructio,’” in Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. and
tr. George S. M. Walker (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957) vol. 2, 96,
VIII, 2.
41 Columbanus, “Instructio,” 94-6, VIII, 1.
42 Columbanus, “Epistula,” 16, II, 6.
43 Columbanus, “Instructio,” 80-2, IV, 2.
44 Ibid., 102, X, 3.
45 Adamnan, Life of Saint Columba, Founder of Hy, ed. William Reeves (Edinburgh: Edmonston
and Douglas, 1874), III: 24.
18
cepts of peregrinatio – as a spiritual and physical journey. Thus, for the Irish, as
Thomas Mobray Charles-Edwards notes, physical the peregrinatio appeared to
be a clear and tangible image of the transient nature of human life on earth.46
We find an almost analogical reading in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani. It
should be stressed that the term peregrinatio did not acquire the meaning of a
religious practice in Ireland until the end of the seventh century and was used
there in a broader sense, which is close to its initial meanings such as “wandering”,
“travelling”, “staying in foreign lands” (peregrinus stemming from “per”–
across and “ager”–land, country, field, etc.), which were consolidated by first
translations of the Holy Scripture into Latin. It seems that the author of the
Navigatio used the word peregrinatio in regard to the journey of Saint Brendan
not as a pilgrimage pro Dei amore but as a term, which incorporates physical
movements and the allegorical stay of the soul away from the heavenly fatherland.
The author of the Navigatio appears to have played on purpose with the
consonance of the words via and vita in the last chapter of his work, when he
wrote about Brendan, predicting his near death: narrauit omnia que accidisse
recordatus est in uia et quanta ei Dominus dignatus est miraculorum ostendere
portenta (§ 29).47 The same tight connection between the life and travel of Brendan,
on the one hand, and his stay away from the heavenly fatherland and his
journey described in the Navigatio, on the other hand, can clearly be observed at
the example of the twentyh-eighth chapter, where a young man is foretelling
Brendan that the days of his “earthly pilgrimage” are about to end and Brendan
may soon be resting in peace among his saintly brethren.48 Thus, the author extrapolated
the popular concept of peregrinatio pro Dei amore on a broader concept
of peregrinatio as wanderings of the soul on the way to the New Jerusalem:
Thus, just like symbolic historiography …, which regarded events of the
earthly life as revelation of the transcendental plan of being, the divine
plot, the geography of this period was also first of all symbolical: it was
meant to reveal a roadway to men. Not as much a roadway to other countries
and cities, but a spiritual road to the salvation of his soul. Thus, an
earthly journey was easily transformed into a journey in the outer world
… The geography of a medieval man is first of all the topography of his
inner world.49
Monastic Community
A monastery is placed in the physical and metaphysical centre of the journey.
The monastery is never defined; it can be any monastic community, which
46 Mobray Charles-Edwards, “The Social Background to Irish peregrinatio,” 102, note 38.
47 Nauigatio, 81.
48 Ibid., 80, § 28.
49 Aron Y. Gurevich, “Predislovie” [Introduction], in Wright, Geographicheskie predstavleniya,
9.
19
helps travellers to reach their spiritual fatherland through chaste life, deeds of
valour or certamen. All these monastic communities are situated on the border
between our world and the Divine world, not far from the Gates to Paradise. At
the same time, despite the physicality of monastic islands, dictated norms of existence
are of Divine character.
Thus, for instance, the author of the Navigatio notes that the community
of Mernóc monastery50 followed traditional religious virtues (erat enim habitacio
eorum sparsa, sed tamen unanimaliter illorum conseruacio in fide, spe et
caritate)51, liturgical hours, norms of communal meals (una refectio, et ad opus
Dei semper fuit coadunate) and ascetic vegetarian diet.52 It is worth stressing
that a significant attention is given not to physical and scholarly activities, but to
hours of praying, liturgy and fasting. “Theologians judged contemplative life,
allowing men to become closer to God, higher than deedful life, and thus placed
monks closer to the Divine in hierarchy than all the rest of humankind.”53
According to the author of the Navigatio, followers of Alba spoke only in gestures
and used their voices only for praising God, had been on the island for
eighty years, had become neither old nor weak (attamen senectus aut languor in
membris nostris minime amplificatur), and had not suffered from any weakness
of body or soul, which were so common among humankind (nullus ex nobis
sustinuit infirmitatem carnis aut spirituum qui uagantur circa humanum genus).
54
The perfection of monastic life with its astonishing daily routine and absolute
prevalence of the spirit is allegorically mirrored in the ideal structure of a
local church, which can be compared to the New Jerusalem in its perfection. In
the Navigatio, the church is described as a square building with seven lamps –
three before the altar in the middle and two pairs of lamps in front of two other
altars. The altars were made of crystal, just like all the vessels used in services.
At the same time, there were twenty four seats placed in a circle.55 This description
contains striking allusions to the Heavenly City as found in the Revelation.
The Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as a quadrate structure,56 with
twenty-four seats placed in a circle (4:4) and seven lamps (1:12).57 The divine
50 Charles Plummer, “Some New Light on the Brendan Legend,” Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie
3 (1905): 129, note 1.
51 Allusion on Phil. 3: 20: “For our conversation is in heaven,” and 1 Corin. 13: 13: “And now
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
52 Nauigatio, 4-5.
53 Aron Y. Gurevich, Srednevekovyi mir: kul’tura bezmolstvuiuschego bol’shinstva [The medieval
world: culture of the silent majority] (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 39.
54 Nauigatio, 32, § 12.
55 Ibid.
56 Ezek. 48:16: “And these shall be the measures thereof; the north side four thousand and
five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five hundred, and on the east side four
thousand and five hundred, and the west side four thousand and five hundred.”
57 Exod. 25:37: “And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps
thereof, that they may give light over against it“; Numbers 8:2: „And thou shalt make the
20
character of nature on the island is revealed in a very significant episode of the
Navigatio which talks about self-illuminating lamps shining with spiritual light
(spirituale lumen), similar to the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai which was a sign
to the reaching of the Promised Land.58 This divine light is sharply contrasted
with the infernal volcano, marked by earthly characteristics.
Every time Brendan and his fellow travellers find themselves on a monastic
island, they express their amazement with the life of its community and their
desire to stay there.59 But already the beginning of the text tells us that the
travellers ought to return to their home monastery, as the heir of Alba tells
Brendan that he must come back home with his fourteen companions, as God
had already prepared their burial places.60 Thus, the text clearly expresses the
thought according to which every monastery, following traditional rules and
leading a spiritual life, is a paradise on earth, or according to the Life of St.
Samthanne, a place from where one can reach the Heavenly Paradise.61
***
It remains to note that the Navigatio Sancti Brendani is basically a monastic
creation, a story about monks told by monks, or at least its original manuscript
addressed to monks, based on the clerical mindset of the author and his
dominating interest in the doctrines and ascetic life. The Navigatio should not be
taken only as a narrative about the miracles of God or a description of geographical
travels of Irish monks, but should be analyzed in the history of the
Irish Church in the eighth and ninth centuries, as well as in the context of the ascetic
movement of the “clients of God”. As Dorothy Bray has noted, history existed
on the level of immram (the Irish term immram is synonymous to the Latin
navigatio), as well as on the level of a Christian allegory in the historical context
of Irish monasticism and represented monastic life as means of achieving the
perfection of life in the afterlife.62 The Navigatio Sancti Brendani propagates
monastic ideals of stability and faith. The regularity of prayers, fasts and services
followed by Brendan’s companions coincides with a strictly harmonized
cycle of monastic lifestyle. The constant encouragement which Brendan’s pupils
experience from their master, his unfailing faith in God’s protection against the
forces of evil and support of the monks’ spiritual and material existence makes
Brendan an ideal abbot, as well as the father and head of a community.
seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over
against it.”
58 Nauigatio, 28-37.
59 Ibid., 36, 52, § 12, 17.
60 Ibid., 36, § 12.
61 “Vita Samthanne,” in Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 vols., ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford,
1910, repr. Dublin> Four Courts Press, 1997), vol. 2, 260.
62 Dorothy A. Bray, “Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani,” 185-6.
21
One can argue that the presence of historical details in the text is not accidental.
The author intended to unite the two dimensions and place the journey
both in geographical and liturgical realities, in historical and eschatological perspective.
These two dimensions can be joined in this world by two means – with
the help of liturgy and chaste life. Wherever the monks happen to be, whatever
initiative they undertake, they inalterably sing psalms and observe regularity of
annual sacraments. Monastic life itself appears to become a preparation for an
afterlife. The moral of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani is centred on a monastery,
which does not have a certain location, a monastery defined by a community of
people. An ideal monastery is located on the junction of the two worlds, connected
with the Heavenly world and close to the Gates to Paradise. Thus, numerous
historical details allow the author to picture a two-level reality as well as
to make his instruction at most substantive and univocal, on the one hand, and
counter a miraculous abstract world with a physical and sinful world, on the
other hand. Using the characteristic given by John Tolkien to Beowulf, also in
the Navigatio Sancti Brendani “the elusion of historical truth and perspective…
is largely the product of art.”63
63 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics (London: Oxford University
Press, 1937), 5.
MEDIEVAL TRAVEL IN RUSSIAN RESEARCH
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XXVII
MEDIEVAL TRAVEL
IN RUSSIAN RESEARCH
Edited by
Svetlana I. Luchitskaya and Gerhard Jaritz
Translated from Russian by
Irina Savinetskaya
Krems 2011
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG
DER ABTEILUNG KULTUR UND WISSENSCHAFT DES AMTES DER
NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
– ISBN 978-3-901094-29-6
– ISSN 1029-0737
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen
Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, A–3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich
zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck,
auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist.
Druck: KOPITU Ges. m. b. H., Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A–1050 Wien.
Table of Contents
Preface …….……..…………………………………….…………………….… 6
Fedor D. Prokofiev, Peregrinatio in the Ocean:
Allegory and Reality in the Navigatio Sancti Brendan ….…………….… 7
Svetlana I. Luchitskaya, Travelling to the Holy Land
in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries:
a Study into the History of Everyday Life ….……..……………………. 22
Olga I. Togoeva, Travel as Mission in the Epic of Joan of Arc …..………..… 48
List of Contributors ……………………………………………………………69
6
Preface
The present special volume of Medium Aevum Quotidianum is another result of
the cooperation with the editors of the Russian journal Одиссей: человек в
истории. It is the third time that we got the chance to offer translations of
contributions published in Одиссей which deal with aspects of daily life and
material culture of the Middle Ages.1 We are happy to make again some results
of Russian research available to a broader, international audience this way.
This time, we publish three studies selected from the 2009 volume of the
Russian journal that concentrated on the main topic ‘Travel as a Cultural and
Historical Phenomenon’ (‘Путешествие как историко-культурный фено-
мен’).2 The contributions deal with travelling in different parts of the Middle
Ages. Fedor D. Prokofiev analyses reality and allegory in the eighth-/ninthcentury
Navigatio Sancti Brendani. Svetlana I. Luchitskaya studies the daily life
of crusaders and pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land, mainly in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Olga I. Togoeva deals with the role that travel plays in the
sources about the life of Joan of Arc. The articles offer new results in a field of
medieval studies that has found particular interest in Medieval Studies during
recent years.
Gerhard Jaritz
1 See Gerhard Jaritz, Svetlana I. Luchitskaya and Judith Rasson, eds., Images in Medieval and
Early Modern Culture (Approaches in Russian Historical Research), Medium Aevum
Quotidianum, Sonderband XIII (Krems, 2003); Grigorii V. Bondarenko, Some Specific
Features of the Perception of Early Medieval Irish Feasts , Medium Aevum Quotidianum 54
(2006), 7-19; Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin, The “Feast” in Medieval Russia, ibidem, 20-28.
2 Moscow: Nauka, 2010.