Judging Latin Book by "Coptic" Cover

JUDGING LATIN BOOK BY ‘COPTIC’ COVER
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Ex Aegypto vocavi filium meum (Matt 2, 15, cf Num 23, 22)

Treasure from the Bog: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Fadden More Psalter. RTÉ/National Museum of Ireland. 52 Minutes

ONE OF THE most remarkable discoveries of the past decade was the Psalter uncovered in the bogin Fadden More, North Tipperary in July 2006. The Psalter is dated from approximately 800 and is one of the very few books of its age preserved with its original binding intact. The conservation of the manuscript is largely down to the painstaking labour over a few years of John Gillis of Trinity College, Dublin. The television film under review was very interesting and showed the identification and the preservation of the psalter in an entertaining manner. From this point of view, it is well worth a viewing. The contributions of the various scholars are enlightening, though I wonder why Thomas Cahill, author of the feel-good book How the Irish Saved Civilisation was chosen as an interviewee.

It was necessary for the programme to contextualise the discovery in the Irish Church of the day. Though I would have differences in emphases with some of the scholars who spoke, there was nothing misleading presented in the course of the show by any of the academics or Museum archaeologists interviewed. I would have more problems with the type of conclusion drawn by the producer voiced by the narrator.
The first papyrus
To come to the point, the attention focussed on one very important feature. When the bulk of the work was done, it was discovered that the inside of the binding was the first discovery in Ireland of papyrus. This was not to be expected given the climate in Ireland. Egypt’s dry climate is ideal for papyrus; this is found less commonly and in poor condition on the continent; and in Ireland, it was never found at all until this one case. In the course of his conservation work, Mr Gillis visited San Gallen to view similar manuscripts. Following the confirmation that the cover of the psalter did indeed contain papyrus, he went to the Coptic museum in Egypt to examine their book-binding practices, which were remarkably similar. Which prompted the deduction that definite proof connected the early Irish Church with the Coptic Church of Egypt.
 

First we need to be careful about the noun Copt.  It is derived from the Arabic qubt, which is based on the Greek word for Egyptian, Αἰγύτιοι. The Copts are ethnic Egyptians where as most Egyptian Moslems are Arabs in origin. In time this came to have a particular denominational meaning. The Coptic Church is monophysite: it holds that Christ has one nature. There is some diversion as to whether this means that Christ was solely divine or whether by nature was a fusion between the divine and the human, but essentially it believes Christ has no separate human nature. It is noteworthy that the Director of the National Museum, Dr Patrick Wallace was much more nuanced in his approach and spoke of the “monastic church of Egypt”. Though the monophysite position was defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 450 and debated long before that, it took centuries to take shape and it was some time before it was a unanimous position among Egyptian Christians. Likewise, RTÉ uses the term “Roman Catholicism” to refer to a denomination which has never described itself as Roman Catholic. Initially the Church used the designation “Great Church” and after the Great Schism, the western Church referred to itself as Latin Christendom. The term Roman Catholic seems to have been invented by Anglican theologians to designate the Catholic Church as it became after the reformation.  So the application of either term in the context of either Ireland or Egypt in the early ninth century can be misleading.
Desert Fathers
Even without the trace of the papyrus in the manuscript, we can say that there was an Egyptian influence on the early Irish church. The early Church in Egypt left a mark on all Christianity, or at least on any Christian denomination with a role for monasticism. This would exclude most of the Protestant world, but from the High Church wings of the Anglican and Lutheran communions through to the Assyrian Church of the East, there is a plethora of churches in which monasticism has a central importance.  This has been the case since St Anthony of Egypt became the first monk in the third century, following the example of St Paul of Thebes, who was the first acknowledged hermit. Both men were venerated in Ireland, appearing in literature, on high crosses and in many other contexts which marks their special significance. There is no doubt that the spirituality of the Desert Fathers made a deep impression on the Irish Church, which developed as a strongly monastic church to an extent that it took until the 12th century to set up an universally accepted diocesan structure, paving the way for the episcopal church we are acustomed to now. In this way, one appreciates the claims of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (i.e. Churches which reject the Council of Chalcedon on various grounds, and who are not in communion with Constantinople nor Moscow; nor necessarily with each other) that the early Irish church was one of them more than similar assertions from Anglicans or Presbyterians.

Of course the development of the Irish Church, and the Egyptian influence on it, was a lot more complex. Firstly, geographical and political factors played a part. In the absence of towns, Ireland was more suited to the development monasteries associated with the tribal federations who ruled Ireland. The Desert Fathers provided a tremendous inspiration in the absence of a cult of martyrs. But the most important source of this influence was not directly from Egypt, but through the Church in Gaul. Gaul was a centre of Greek and Alexandrian influence up to and after the evangelisation of Ireland and figures such as St Martin of Tours bowed to the example of Ss Paul and Anthony. The life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus was as widely read as the life of St Anthony by St Athanasius. St Patrick was considered the nephew of St Martin, as he was also believed to be St Mel’s uncle. To understand this, we have to understand the importance of the nephew in Irish ideology, specifically the “sister’s son”. Cú Chulainn was the son of Conchobair MacNessa’s sister, as many of the heroes had this relationship with the kings they served, so the poetry of Bláthmac, an eighth century monk, explains the incarnation in terms of Christ being the “sister’s son” of all mankind, the nephew of Man.  The early Irish monks did not literally believe St Martin was St Patrick’s uncle, but rather used the relationship to stress the spiritual descent of the first patron. In other words, that Irish Christianity was derived from Gaul.
Egyptian influence in perspective
This is not to deny the Egyptian influence, but rather to put it in perspective. As Gaul suffered the barbarian assaults (already evident in St Patrick’s lifetime), Gaul became less important and the Irish Church developed a life of its own which would gradually spread through the whole of Europe. It continued to take inspiration from Egypt and elsewhere, Syria and Armenia included. But this appeal was not unique to Ireland. St Anthony was venerated across Europe at the time. St Augustine, mentions both Ss Paul and Anthony in his Confessions and very much imitates them in his monastic legacy. Many centuries after the decline of the Coptic Church, the Russian monastic pioneers imitated the desert spirituality in Russia’s vast wilderness. Though Ireland had no desert, the old Irish dísert came to mean a retreat away from population. But we would get a wrong impression to think this was unique to Ireland, even n the Latin West.

The Egyptian church found other ways of expanding its influence. First of all, Egyptians who accepted the hypostatic union had to go elsewhere. Secondly, Egypt’s monasteries became the prey of multiple attacks from pre-Islamic Arab raiders from the fourth century on. Finally, the Islamicised Arabs supplanted Egyptian autonomy and very soon, the Copts were a minority in their own country. All this meant that there was a steady stream of refugees from Egypt and some of these found there way to Ireland.
Oriental influences
The appearance of a Coptic cover on an Irish psalter is nothing which should cause surprise. The blue pigmentation in other manuscripts is lapis lazuli, which is imported from the Middle East. No one suggests a strong Persian influence in Irish Christianity though. The more important point is that the Fadden More Psalter, like the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, is written in Latin, as are all texts of the canonical scripture or liturgical importance, together with a great deal of sacred and secular literature in contemporary Ireland. One could argue about the knowledge of Greek in Ireland of the time. There is no doubt that it was known and that it was probably more widely known here than elsewhere in the West, but it never assumed anything near like the importance that Latin had. In this context, it is harder to make a strong case for a particularly close link between Ireland and the Churches of the East, exclusive of any relationship with our sister Churches in the West.

Nevertheless, the programme made one important point. Christianity was established in the Middle East and in its early centuries was divided over three continents. As such it was far from a uniform body, which meant that a church in the far West such as Ireland could absorb oriental influences in addition to the Latin and Gallican stamp that was left on the church. But the programme makers were unable to bring the consequences of this home. In the first place, building so much around the fall of Rome in 476, when the eastern Christian world would say that the Roman Empire continued to exist until 1453, was very much in keeping with the western view of history.  It is interesting nonetheless that everyone accepts the decline of Rome in secular terms from the late fifth century and few correlate this to the increasing importance of the Roman Church through the same period. Secondly, though the programme stated the Coptic Church is thriving, it did not acknowledge the difficulties faced by Copts in their home country right up to the recent martyrdoms in Libya nor the even worse situation of Christians of ancient churches in other Islamic countries. A Christianity which flourished while our own ancestors worshipped idols was to disintegrate due to internal dissension and external persecution over many centuries. It is certain that these churches, particularly that of Egypt, left a mark on the Irish Church among other churches. But it would be a mistake to assume that this was a pre-eminent influence above all others. That is what the programme tries to do.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 136, January-February 2015