Christian Period (400-800 AD)
Summary. Describes the social and economic
conditions in ancient Ireland, the economy, free farmers, unfree classes,
warfare, functions of chiefs, grades of chiefs, craftsmen, poets
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Europe
Britain
Social and Economic Conditions in England
Social and Economic conditions
in Ireland
The Social Stratification
of Irish Society
The Structure of
the Economy
The Farm
Livestock
Craftsmen
Travel and Trade
The Structure within the
Tuath
The Grades of
Tuatha
The Family and Kinship
The Five Provinces
Warfare
The Life of the
People
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Situation
in Europe and Britain
(400-800AD)
Europe
This period covers the centuries during which
Christianity and writing were brought to Ireland. On the Continent, it was a period of slow
economic decline, a period of adjustment as the barbarian chiefs from the other
side of the Rhine took over the government, fought each other from
time to time, and assimilated Roman culture more or less successfully. Only at
the very end of the period was there one chief who managed to control quite a
large part of the Western
Empire, and a large
piece of western Germany as well. In places like the Visigothic
kingdoms in Italy and Spain, life was little different from what it had been
under the Roman emperors. In the nineteenth century, dominated by Darwinian
ideas of race struggles, it was regarded as a period of reversion to barbarism.
Irish Romantic historians depicted Ireland as a solitary beacon of light and learning
virtually cut off from the rest of Christendom, with Irish missionaries going
out to reconvert Europe.
It could be described as lasting from the
withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain in 410 AD until the first Viking raid in 795 AD.
The beginning was marked by a significant and as it proved irreversible
weakening of central Roman government in the western provinces, and the
beginning of the settlements of the semi-Romanised peoples from outside the
frontiers of the Empire inside those frontiers. The end of the period is marked
by the onset of the Viking invasions. The wars and migrations of the Christian
and semi-Romanised ‘barbarians’ between 400 AD and 800 AD were comparatively
mild, unlike the time after 800. The period was also marked in western Europe
by the successful absorption of the various barbarian peoples, their adoption
of Christianity, the spread of Christianity into the countryside and among the
common people, the general use of Latin among the educated classes, the revival
of writing, followed by a revival of trade, a revival of architecture in stone,
and so on.
The Roman Empire
by 400 AD had reached its greatest extent, and there is no obvious reason why
the Latin part of it should collapse so suddenly. By the year 800 the Empire
was about a quarter the size of what it was in 400 AD, was centred on
Byzantium, was Christian, and was Greek-speaking. It became
known as the Byzantine
Empire though it was
merely the continuation of the state that started in Rome. The root problem seems to have been that the
productive capacity of the Empire was insufficient to defend all its frontiers
at the same time, and to enforce internal discipline. On the eastern frontier Persia had been restored under the Sassanid
dynasty. Along the northern frontier the Teutonic-speaking tribes seemed no
more dangerous than in the days of Julius Caesar. Yet between the year 378 when
the Visigoths won the battle of Adrianople and 698 when the Arabs captured Carthage the Roman Empire
lost two thirds of its territory. Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople for the defence of the more valuable eastern
provinces. Two emperors were provided, one for the east and one for the west.
The western emperor made Milan,
not Rome his seat, again with a view of facing the
greatest threat.
The decline of the Roman Empire and of long distance trade and travel led to a
shrinking of the towns. Trade, roads, and transport were virtually unchanged
from the preceding period, but the collapse of a central government, central
defence, and central taxation meant that trade became largely local. Ships
however were constantly improving, and it would appear that reasonable
conditions prevailed over the whole of the North Atlantic. There seems to have been increasing confidence
in sailing out of sight of land, so that even before the Viking period voyages
were being made to the Faeroes, and even Iceland and Norway. By the time the Holy Roman Empire was established under Charlemagne, it could be
felt that the losses had been largely regained. Those barbarian tribes like the
Franks, the Angles, and the Saxons had accepted Christianity, and the guidance
of the Church, and were themselves promoting the
spread of Christianity.
In these 400 years here was not anarchy or
reversion to a primitive social and economic life. Cities may have shrunk, but
they still existed. The Roman roads may have been ill-repaired and unsuitable
for wheeled traffic, but they still existed. It may have been advisable to
travel in groups along with some men who carried arms. A person travelling from
Northern France to Rome could follow the straight Romans roads from city
to city the whole way. As late as the early nineteenth century an English
bishop travelling to Rome would hire post chaises until he reached
Rome. The time taken would have been little different
from travelling on horseback. Bishop Poynter left
London on 28 November 1814 and arrived in Rome on 14 January 1815. The journey cost him £40 sterling (about £1600
today). Cost in the early Middle Ages would have been
proportionate, something that a bishop or chief with access to some means of
earning or borrowing cash could afford. With regard to trade, we can remember
the words of Pope Gregory when he saw fair-haired English slaves being sold in
the slave market, ‘Non Angli sed Angeli’ (not Angles but angels). Slaves were still a commodity that could
be transported at a profit. The source of most of the slaves
were the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, and slavus replaced servus as the common Latin word for slave. Pilgrimages like
that of the Spanish nun Etheria to the Holy Land made at the end of the fourth century were not as
easy as they had been. But they were certainly not impossible. It would be
possible for Charlemagne’s army to march from Aachen on the Rhine to
Rome, given good conditions, in six weeks in summer.
An Irish messenger to Rome
in these centuries would probably have taken somewhat longer than Bishop Poynter in 1815. He would probably have been held up at
various points by the need to negotiate a passage through the next state, and
the need to await a body of trustworthy armed men going in his direction. He
would probably have needed twice as much money to
allow for gifts and bribes and for a longer stay in Rome. There would always be delays when the alpine
passes were blocked during the winter. So it would not be unreasonable to allow
a full year for a return journey to Rome, with three months to go, three months to return
and six months in Rome awaiting a decision and for the passes to reopen.
A journey to a Church council in the north of France could be undertaken in a single summer. So the
lack of contact between Ireland and Rome in these four centuries is quite remarkable.
Semi-nomadic or nomadic peoples
outside the borders of the Empire caused the problems. The region that
stretched from the Atlantic coast to the borders of China was controlled by the descendants of pastoral
nomads who were split into three linguistic groups. These were the
Indo-European group, the Finno-Ugric group and the Altaic group. Among the Indo-European
tribes the Teutonic-speaking group occupied all of Central Europe, replacing the Celtic-speakers, all of northern Europe except Finland and Estonia, and spread far to the east into southern Russia. The most important of these were the Goths, originally
from a small area in Sweden who had carved out a huge kingdom for themselves
in southern Russia. There they came under pressure from Huns. The
division into Huns, Turks, Tartars, and Mongols was largely one of language,
though the later Mongols coming from the easternmost part of the steppes were
Mongoloid rather than Caucasoid in appearance. Their economy in the dryer parts
of the steppes had to be based on the horse and the sheep, rather than on
cattle and pigs. Their skills in horsemanship
gave them a military advantage for several hundred years over the settled
agriculturists. From the fourth to the seventeenth century various steppe
peoples formed transient empires and attacked every place from France to North China.
Up the year 800 the disturbances were to a large extent caused by migrations of
semi-Romanised peoples into the shelter of the Empire. After 800, the
steppe-dwellers directly attacked the new Christendom.
Fighting on horseback instead of from chariots
was now the rule among the steppe-dwellers. As they had no stirrups and their
seat was not very secure on the horse’s back they used arrows and a light spear
for thrusting downwards. The general tactic was to wear down defending forces
with repeated swoops using arrows, until it was time to overwhelm the weakened
defenders with a rush. For defence and attack against them Romans, Byzantines,
and Persians used combined forces of cavalry and infantry, with increasing
emphasis on cavalry. The heavy cavalry with armour, the cataphracts
of the Byzantines and Persians, and the heavy cavalry of the Franks and Crusaders, had the advantage in a pitched
battle.
The first
of the steppe-peoples to come into contact with the Roman Empire were the Huns. The incursion of the Huns set up a
movement of peoples that the Germans call Voelkerwanderung
or wandering of the peoples. This was an extraordinary complex movement of
peoples. The movement of the Goths from Sweden to southern Russia and then back into Italy and Spain is typical. Many of them too were already
Christian, the Goths and the Vandals being Arians. To the south the Arabs,
rapidly, and with very little destruction took over large parts of the Roman
and Persian empires and life in the cities continued virtually unchanged. The
Goths and Vandals similarly established themselves in the urban environments of
Italy, Spain, and North Africa.
It was customary in the past to exaggerate the disturbances these movements of
the peoples caused.
Further north, other
Teutonic-speaking tribes, still pagan, like the Franks crossed the Rhine, and they did not favour life in cities. The cities did not
completely disappear, but urban life became much less important, and the great men of the region preferred to live
on their estates. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who settled in Britain spoke variants of Teutonic, itself a branch of
Indo-European. In manners, social organisation, and manner of warfare they
differed little from the Celtic-speaking warriors in Ireland. In England they rapidly absorbed all that the local
Romano-British peoples could teach them, and were rapidly absorbed into the
local population. Like the Franks, they did not take to life in towns.
There are two very important dates
marking the beginning of the period. The first was the battle of Adrianople near Constantinople
in 378 AD when the Gothic cavalry defeated the Roman legions. The other date
was 406 AD when the river Rhine froze over and the Teutonic tribes passed into
the Empire in overwhelming numbers and were never driven out. Then in 410 AD
the Christian Visigoths under Alaric burned Rome, but that city was no longer of military
importance. In 451 the Huns themselves under Attila arrived in Gaul, but were defeated by a combination of Romans under Aetius and the Visigoths under Theoderic
their king. In 476 the last Roman emperor
in the west, Romulus Augustus was deposed by the Ostrogoths
who then founded their own kingdom of Italy. In 486 Clovis, king of the Franks conquered north-eastern Gaul. In 496 he was converted to Christianity. In 529 Justinian, the
emperor in Constantinople, published his Law Code which was to influence
canon and civil law ever afterwards. In that same year St Benedict of Nursia founded the monastery on Monte Cassino
which gave the definitive character to western monasticism. In 533 Justinian
attempted to re-conquer the west but failed. In 552 the Turks in central Asia achieved over-lordship over the other tribes. In 622 Mohammed
started his new religion. His followers captured Syria in 636 and Baghdad in 638. In 679 they failed to capture Constantinople. In 694 they captured North Africa, and in 711 invaded Spain. In 732 the invading armies of the Muslims were
defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martial, leader of the Franks. In 793
occurred the first Viking raid on England. In 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, king of
the Franks Holy Roman Emperor.
The Empire itself had become officially Christian
in the reign of Constantine (306-337) and the Christian religion was
increasingly and openly practised throughout the Empire.
The
defence of Rome against the Huns and Vandals was largely left to
Pope St Leo I. He was able also to assert the authority of Rome even in the East at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
The Church prospered in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths
in Italy, and from this period dates the famous mosaics at
Ravenna. The chants in the church services became more
elaborate and those in Rome were collected and approved by Pope St Gregory the
Great (590-604), and have been known ever since as the Gregorian chant. In the
period 400 to 800 AD the diocesan system and the monastic system spread all
over the Western Empire and beyond.
The diocesan system, and connections
with Rome, remained always possible. Travelling to
Rome was not too difficult especially for those who
could afford horses. Even those who went on foot, and that
was the vast majority of people, could walk to Rome.
Monasticism was in deep trouble almost from the
start. It was all very well when it was confined to a few communities under the
direct supervision of the Desert Fathers themselves. But anybody could become a
monk. A novice could go to one abbot and ask for instruction, then wander off
and ask for instruction from another, or not, as the case might be. Various
attempts were made to draw up a rule of life for monks before St Benedict of Nursia wrote his famous Rule or Regula Monachorum in
540 AD.
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Britain
In Britain the period commenced with the withdrawal of the
imperial legions in 410 AD to meet the threat of the threat of the Visigoths.
They were never to return. The Romano-British were advised to provide for their
own defence against the raids of the Irish, Scots, and Picts.
The Romano-British rulers, following Roman custom, invited in some of the
barbarians, namely Angles and Saxons to defend them. During the Roman
occupation the carrying of arms by the British ruling families except if they
joined the Roman army was forbidden. The
lower ranks were all mercenaries in the original sense of paid soldiers, (mercenarius a
hired servant). Civilian officials or landowners became officers as the need
arose. The only difference in the organisation was with regard to who paid the soldiers. The Roman officials, mostly Romanised
Britons, were told to organise the payment of the soldiers from Britain's own tax receipts. This was no doubt seen as a
temporary measure. The tax receipts,
however, mainly from taxes on merchants, continued to fall.
The century and a half between the first reported
arrival of the Saxons and the mission of St. Augustine was a real ‘Dark Age’ in Britain, an age in which there were no
written records, and about which we know virtually nothing. The arrival
of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain is almost as much a mystery as the arrival of the
Celtic-speakers in Ireland. We know almost as little about fifth and sixth
century Britain as we do about Ireland. The only difference is that we knew a great deal
about Roman Britain because written records had been kept. When written records
ceased to be kept there was little difference between the various parts of the British Isles. We know the beginning of the process, the
semi-Romanised province of Britannia, with Latin spoken by the ruling classes and British spoken by the
others. We know the end of the process with English-speaking petty kingdoms in England, and British-speaking petty kingdoms along the
western coasts. But of the process itself we know almost nothing. Bede skips from his narrative about St Germanus
of Auxerre to the mission of Saint Augustine a hundred a fifty years
later. From the mission of Augustine in
597 until Bede’s History a hundred years later we are
largely dependent on what Bede could collect. (On Bede’s sources see Bede.)
In the nineteenth century it, in the heyday of
Darwinian Rassenkampf
or struggles between races, it was believed that hordes of Angles and Saxons
bringing all their women with them, exterminated the
local people and occupied their land. This theory was abandoned not least
because there was not the slightest evidence for it. Against it was argued that
the change of language could be explained if St Augustine and his fellow missionaries had adopted English
rather than British or Latin for their ecclesiastical courts. Why should they
do this? Because English happened to be the language of the
court in Kent where they first landed. There is no evidence for this either, but it
remains a distinct possibility.
There is also the possibility that the process of
change from the Roman provincial administration to local chiefdoms was identical
in both parts of Britannia, the only difference being the language spoken by
the most prominent local warrior. In each case the chiefdom would have been
about the size of a county,
Essex, Kent, and Sussex on one side, and similar states like Dyfed,
Powys, and Gwynedd on the other. By the end of the period, i.e. 780,
Anglo-Saxon speakers had reached the borders of present-day Wales, and there the king of Mercia, Offa, built his dike.
According to a contemporary cleric called Gildas,
towards the end of the fifth century various British chiefs united and defeated
the Anglo-Saxons so severely at a place called Mons Badonicus (unidentified) about 493 AD
that the advance of the Anglo-Saxons towards the west was stopped for forty
years. Warfare was endemic not only between Britons and Saxons but also between
the various tribes on each side. After the battle of Deorham
near Bath in 577 they reached the Severn. By 780 they reached the limit of their expansion. In 350 years they
had advanced about 200 miles across England.
Much the same can be said about the Anglo-Saxon
conquest of England as has been said of the Celtic conquest of Ireland. Written records virtually disappeared towards
the end of Roman rule and then ended altogether. They brought chiefly their language,
and were quickly swallowed up by the native inhabitants. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon
customs closely resembled each other
in any case. The newcomers had much to learn from the natives who already had
experienced four centuries of Roman rule. They had to learn the latest
techniques of agriculture. A strange feature of the post-Roman period was the
disappearance of Roman art-forms. They
certainly kept their own religion. It is very doubtful if there were any Christians
in the countryside apart from in some Roman villas. As the towns decayed the
number of Christians would have fallen drastically. There is no need to assume
that Christianity entirely disappeared before the arrival of St Augustine in 597. Whether there were Christian priests and
bishops in Saxon-occupied territories we do not know for we have no records.
The fact that St Gregory sent a bishop, rather than a group of priests, would
seem to indicate that he expected that there would be some Christian priests in
the region even if no bishop was known to reside in that area. Nor do we know
how long or to what extent the Roman administrative system survived. The same
is largely true of British-speaking areas. To what extent some of the newcomers
also spoke Latin and British we have no idea. In Kent, which was
close to the Continent they partially adopted the Roman way of life, but in
other parts, where Roman influence had virtually disappeared or had never
existed, they may have just brought the customs of their own lands. There was
probably little difference between the two parts of Britain. Indeed the advance of the Anglo-Saxon warrior
families closely resembled the advance of the Eoganacht and Ui Neill families in Ireland.
The precise social organisation of the
Anglo-Saxons in England after they arrived is not clear, for we have no
records. Obviously their military adventures had to be co-ordinated. Yet units
like those of Mercia or Northumbria of Bede’s
day are too large. These would correspond to those of the provincial chiefs in Ireland. Settlements like those in Middlesex and Surrey were always dependent on greater chiefdoms like Kent and Essex. So
it is reasonable to assume that there were many smaller local units with
elected chiefs who was bound to provide so many
warriors to a hosting of the greater chiefs. The other possibility is that they
used the old Roman administrative divisions, where similarly a local person
would be elected to organise the
hosting.
Artistic objects from Britain and Ireland towards the end of this period closely resembled
each other. In England, as in Ireland, the old La Tene motifs
were revived and developed into forms of the utmost complexity. The practices
of the chiefs and of the ecclesiastics in both islands were almost identical.
So too were the monasteries. Very soon
after the conversion of England Anglo-Saxon missionaries went to preach on the
Continent as the Irish monks were doing. In England as in Ireland lesser chiefs were eliminated leaving only a
handful of great chiefdoms that really counted. England was somewhat ahead of Ireland at achieving political concentration. But a
unified English kingdom was not achieved before the ninth century. It can be
said that there was a common culture, despite differences of language, across
the whole British Isles.
From the very north of Scotland including most of the west of Scotland, England west of the Pennines and then down the Cotswolds and across to Devon and Cornwall there were a string of Celtic-speaking chiefdoms.
With regard to historical writings, the Celtic parts are only slightly better
off than the Anglo-Saxon part. In the sixth century were the monk Gildas who wrote a religious sermon or tract on the evils
of his time, and two poets, Anieran and Taleisan, who wrote obscurely about certain events of their
time. Later in the ninth century a writer called Nennius
wrote a ‘history’ which is not altogether dismissed as rubbish, because it may
contain more ancient material. There are also Lives of various saints that may contain some historic matter.
It may be that in the immediate post-Roman period
a common Celtic language was spoken in all this part of England and Scotland and the whole of Ireland. But as it was not written it is impossible to
say for certain. The Celtic language was in a period of rapid change at this
time, and by Bede's day (700 AD),
Welsh, Gaelic, and Pictish were distinct languages.
The British language in Wales and Ireland changed rapidly in very different directions. The
western parts of Scotland followed Ireland. The Pictish chiefdom
was in the north east of Scotland. Here again, because of lack of records, we know
little about these chiefdoms apart from their names.
In the north, three British/Welsh chiefdoms were
emerging, of which we at least know their names. By the end of the period,
records were more abundant though still not numerous. The first was Strathclyde
around Glasgow that was its ecclesiastical centre. By this date Hadrian’s Wall was a complete irrelevance. The fact that the
boundary between England and Scotland was finally fixed not far from the Wall was a
pure coincidence. Scottish kings claimed Northumbria as part of Scotland, while English came to be spoken as far north as Stirling before the border was finally fixed. The church
in Glasgow was founded by St Kentigern (6th cent) but
Christianity north of Hadrian’s Wall dated at least from the time of St Ninian early in the fifth century. This was probably the
chiefdom of Coroticus (Carodoc,
or Ceredeg) to whose soldiers St Patrick wrote. The
second was Gododdin, based on Edinburgh. The Gododdin seem to
have been the Votadini of Roman times, a
semi-Romanised tribe who controlled the land between Hadrian’s wall and the Firth of Forth. The earliest surviving
written work in the British/Welsh language Y
Gododdin was written in the sixth century by the
poet Aneirin. Welsh literature dates from the sixth
century. The third, Rheged, was based on Carlisle. These latter two were to succumb to the
Northumbrians in the 7th century. It is not clear when they became Christian.
Further north, in the Highlands and in the north-east, the rival chiefdoms and
over-chiefdoms of the Picts and Scots had emerged
from among the Caledonian British chiefdoms of Roman times. It would seem that
in Scotland as in Ireland and Wales the fracture between British/Welsh and
British/Gaelic had not been neatly along the seashore. The Pictish
language was always distinguished from British/Welsh. It may be that the
non-Indo-European speech that preceded British or Celtic was still spoken in
parts of Scotland in Roman times. The Picti and Scotti
of later Roman times were not races
but the names of clans, usually but not invariably named after the ruling
family. The Picti were also found in Ireland though there they always in historical times
spoke Gaelic. The Scotti
too may have spread to Ireland or even originated in Ireland, but their ruling over-chiefs in historical times
came from the Dal
Riata (Dal Riada) of north Antrim. The ruling family of the Scotti was supposed to be descended from a
chief of the Dal
Riata of Antrim called Fergus Mor mac Erc. (This Erc/Earca seems to have been the grandmother of the Erc who married Muiredach and
whose son was Muirchertach Mac Earca
if the genealogists can be trusted. Again, the genealogies may contain historic matter. This connection was with the Cenel Eogain. But Erc apparently was married first to Fergus Cenn Fada son of Conall Gulban that would establish a link between the Cenel Conaill and
the Scottish Dal
Riata). The most important Scottish chief of the Dal Riata at this
period was Aedan Mac Gabrain,
and he was 'ordained' king by St Columcille on Iona in 574. Though Aedan Mac Gabrain drove the Ulaid of east Ulster out of Man he was more preoccupied with the war
against the Northumbrians, and in
this he received assistance from the Cenel Eogain. He was defeated and killed by the Northumbrians
in 603. Bede noted that the defeat was so heavy that
no further attacks were made on the Northumbrians up to his own day a hundred
years later. In Scotland as in Ireland there was not centralised government within the
provincial chiefdoms. The over-chief held sway and exacted tribute and
assistance in war from the lesser chiefs when he was able. The Scottish Dal Riata were over-chiefs like
the Ui Neill in Ireland, and secured their independence from the Irish Dal Riada. The
unification of Scotland did not commence until after 800.
Of the early part of the period in Wales like elsewhere, the fifth and sixth centuries, we
know virtually nothing. Later, records become more abundant, but as we might
expect chiefly concerned with monastic interests. As in the North we know the
names of the chiefdoms but little else.
Wales gradually formed itself out of the late Roman
province of Britannia Prima into the chiefdoms of Gwynedd, Dyfed, Morganwg, Gwent, and
Powys, and various ruling families took over and administered parts of the
province. These corresponded to the over-chiefships
in Ireland. The basic administrative unit within the petty
state was the ceneld that seems to have been the
exact same as the cenel in Ireland, a group of families descended from a single
ancestor. Later it came to include other local residents or even conquered
peoples (Evans 58) Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Hampshire were originally part of this
province, but when the Anglo-Saxons of Wessex reached the Bristol Channel the two parts were cut off. Later still the Mercians reached the sea at Chester, and the Celtic-speaking region was split into
three. This was an insuperable obstacle to the emergence of a strong, unified,
Celtic-speaking kingdom in the west of England. Evans notes that no local chiefdoms emerged in
the parts that were to become England. The reason for this is doubtless that the people
clung to Roman administrative forms as long as was possible, and that the local
tribal chiefs had become Romanised. With the decline
of trade, and the lessening of taxation, the raising of troops, whether locally
or by hiring mercenaries from Wales, would have been ever more difficult. This in
itself would explain the slow defeat
of the British until, at Offa’s Dyke,
the Saxons encountered those who had reverted to the old clan system of
fighting. Cornwall, the last Celtic-speaking chiefdom in the South
West was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons about 800 AD, while Strathclyde a little
later succumbed to the Scots. The British rulers survived only west of Offa’s dyke.
Christianity
had come to Britain during the Roman occupation, and it survived the
departure of the Romans. It is no surprise that it survived
most strongly in a Roman city, nor that from there the conversion of rural Wales commenced. From the Roman city of
Caerleon priests set out and converted most of Wales. Some of Wales was being converted in the second half of the
fifth century at the same time as Ireland. But most of the conversion was in the sixth
century as in Ireland. There may have been individual Christian rulers
in Wales from 490 onwards, and all of them would have been
Christian from 570. St Illtyd in Wales flourished around 520 AD. St Cynog
founded churches in Brecknockshire around 500 AD. St David flourished in the
second half of the 6th century.
In Scotland too, just beyond Hadrian’s Wall, St Ninian established
the church at Whithorn in Scotland that was flourishing early in the sixth century.
It is likely that St Patrick belonged to this church and became its bishop. St Kentigern (518 to 603?) was the great apostle of the
kingdom of Strathclyde. Strathclyde, whose centre was Dumbarton on the Clyde about eighty miles beyond the Wall, became a Christian kingdom in
573. If the accounts of his life can be relied on, there were Christians in the
region before that. He is said to have rebuilt a church in Glasgow, built originally by Ninian. Further north among the Scots of Dal Riada Aidan
Mac Gabhrain, the patron of St Columcille,
was probably the first Christian king after 575 AD. The centre of the kingdom
was at Dunadd, about forty miles west of Dumbarton.
Both the Ui Neill and the Eoganacht rulers in Ireland embraced Christianity in the decade 560-570.
The first Saxon ruler to embrace Christianity was
Ethelbert of Kent in 597. There was little difference in time between the last
Welsh, Irish, and Scottish chiefs accepting Christianity, and the first of the
English. Northumbria followed in 626, Wessex in 635, and Mercia, the last in 655. (Clovis, king of the Franks, had accepted Christianity
about 500.) The is little doubt that Christianity spread through the rest of
Britain in what was to be called England at the same time and in the same way. Bede's remark that the British clergy were unwilling to
preach to the Anglo-Saxons should be treated with some caution. Or if it were
true might have applied only in parts of Northumbria. Bede attributes their
conversion to a mission of Pope St Gregory the Great to Kent (597 AD) and a mission of the Irish of Iona to Northumbria (635 AD). But writing nearly two hundred years
later Bede’s knowledge of the matter was slight. Even
if St Augustine had never been sent, we would expect the
Anglo-Saxon chiefs to have accepted Christianity early in the seventh century,
namely about a century after Wales, Ireland, and southern Scotland.
Once organised, the Church in England had one great advantage over the Church in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and that was its closeness to the Continent
enabled Rome to take a closer interest in what was being done,
and enabled the English Church to keep in closer contact with the Church in Gaul. Not only was Augustine sent from Rome by Gregory I, but also Bishop Birinus
was sent by Honorius I to the West Saxons in 635. Of
inestimable value was the appointment of Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of
Canterbury in 664. He was able to re-organise the Church in
accordance with the latest developments abroad, and also to ensure that proper
standards of learning were acquired by the clergy (Bede,
Ecclesiastical History, 205 ff). He personally taught Greek and Latin, astronomy and
the calculation of the calendar, the scriptures and the sacred chants. This
latter he caused to be adopted in all the churches in England. If a similar archbishop had been sent to Ireland at the same time reform would probably have not
been delayed until the twelfth century. With him came Benedict Biscop who had studied on the Continent, and had purchased
many religious books there. He went to Northumbria, built the monasteries Jarrow and Wearmouth, and ensured that the latest developments in
Rome were adopted.
Once they had been converted to Christianity, the
Anglo-Saxon clerics, beginning with St Boniface early in the eighth century,
began to preach to those tribes like the Friesians who were still pagans.
A great deal of nonsense has been
written about the supposed Celtic Church in the British
Isles and a supposed
Celtic monasticism. None such ever existed. Neither bishops nor monks in the British Isles ever attempted to develop forms different from
those in Gaul. Where differences arose in Ireland it was because the Irish were tenaciously holding
on to traditions that they had received from Gaul. In the fifth century there was no difference between a monastery in
Gaul and one in Ireland, except that in Gaul abandoned Roman buildings were easier to find.
Virtually nothing is known about the
origins of monasticism in Britain. It would seem that a British priest St Ninian visited St Martin, and
about 397 AD founded a monastery like St. Martin's
beyond Hadrian's Wall. This monastery was built of stone and was white
from which was derived its name Candida
Casa or Whithorn. The modern town of
Whithorn in Galloway takes
its name from the church. However, this early date is not certain. The first
converts would have been among the semi-Romanised tribes just north of the
Wall. It would seem too that St Patrick's father was a minor Roman official on
the coast near Carlisle, south of the wall, and facing Whithorn across the Solway Firth. This would fit in with the tradition that he was
a slave in the north of Ireland.
[Top]
Social and Economic Conditions in England
There was very little cultural difference
between those in the British
Isles who spoke a Celtic
language, and those who spoke an Anglo-Saxon one. Regional differences of
course there were. Eastern
England was more exposed
to developments on the Continent than western Ireland. Tillage was more important on the dryer lighter
soils of eastern England than the wet boggy lands of western Ireland. But mixed farming prevailed everywhere. Though
long-distance trade, taxable and recordable, had virtually ceased, it does not
follow that local trade, local tillage, local
improvements in agriculture, local drainage, and so on ceased. It does not
follow that local skills in woodwork and metalwork
ceased. When the superstructure of Roman life was removed the old life of the
country continued, and such evidence as we have indicates that craftsmanship
was of a high order, and much the same over the whole British Isles. The skills necessary to build boats, put roofs
on houses, make swords and shields were not necessarily affected. Agricultural
too was not necessarily lost. The coulter was now added to the plough, a sharp
vertical knife fastened in front to the ploughshare that made it easier draw
the plough and cut the sod. This proved particularly useful on heavy clay
soils. Over the centuries the ploughs and ox teams grew larger, but the both
were probably very small at first. The great changes in agriculture were
several hundred years into the future but tiny incremental improvements
continued. The climate was improving, and no doubt, population was increasing.
As we would expect, the social
structure among Anglo-Saxons was virtually identical with that among the
Celtic-speakers. The chief was the elected leader of a warband.
The choice of chief was restricted to members of certain families and the
electors were similarly restricted. The earliest chiefdoms we know about were
about the size of a county, and corresponded to the ruiri in Ireland. Towards the end of the period, the stronger
chiefs had carved out larger chiefdoms similar to the ri ruirech of
chief of a province in Ireland where a similar development was occurring.
Towards the end of the period there arose a vision of one chief of all the
Anglo-Saxons, the Bretwalda like the similar vision
in Ireland of one king or ard ri for the
whole of Ireland. There must have been a grade corresponding to
the ri tuaithe in Ireland, responsible for the hosting of men in a section
of a county. Their ability to rule depended on their ability to control the
warrior families within their territory. Warfare and the grabbing of land was
their chief occupation. Over a period of centuries they were on the whole more
successful than the Celtic chiefs whose lands they coveted. But we have no idea
which lands were conquered and which just adopted the English language. Intermarriage
would have been very common especially among the ruling class. The territorial gains of the Anglo-Saxon
chiefs coincided with the territorial gains of the Ui Neill and Eoganacht
in Ireland at the same time. In the Danish period the
pressures grew for a stronger and more centralised monarchy. The division of
the chiefdoms into shires under aldermen directly responsible to the chief
dates from the time of Egbert of Wessex (d. 839) in
the following period.
Basically there were three grades,
the chieftain’s kin (athelings), the freemen (carls or
churls), and the slaves. Both chiefs and churls dwelt in farmsteads (hams or tuns named after the family that lived there). There were
no officials, no administration, and no public control of law and order. Every
atheling and every churl was responsible for the maintenance of public order,
and disputes could be brought before the chief who arbitrated. Then the
aggrieved party carried out the sentence, aided if necessary by forces provided
by the chief. In the early days the freemen, or churls, attended the chief’s
moot and could be called to arms by the chief for defence purposes.
The churls were the free cultivators
who might have from thirty to a hundred acres, corresponding to the boaire. With regard to the chiefs and their
athelings they were in a very weak position, and open to exploitation, as were
the boaires
.If he could not meet the demands of his local lord he had to borrow stock,
perhaps his own stock, back from him, and became a gebur
or boor, i.e. tied to the lord until the debt was discharged. This resulted
usually in a permanent dependency with hereditary tributes of services, fines,
and produce. The constant raids and wars and heavy costs of defence during the
Viking virtually eliminated the free classes (Bryant Makers 121 ff). They were not slaves however, for they owned the
produce of their lands after paying the annual tributes. But neither were they
free. They could not leave their land nor the service
of the local lord. As will be seen later, the social structure in Ireland and its evolution was virtually identical. In the
various courts or assemblies called by the chief or local lord evidence was
taken on oath and a weight was given to the oath in accordance with the man’s
status. The possibilities of abuse for example with regard to debts or
ownership of land are obvious.
[Top]
Social and Economic conditions in Ireland 400 to
800 AD
General
Observations
Just at this time we are able, for the first time
to get information from various written sources about Irish society. Putting
Irish society in its geographical and historical context the picture is one of
a fully mature society which had been developing and changing for
millennia. It was also probably broadly
typical of similar societies in Northern Europe
that had never been part of the Roman Empire.
There is little present that could not have been present in the Late Neolithic
or Early Bronze periods. Most of the information in this chapter comes from
written sources in the eighth and ninth centuries, but should be reasonably
valid for the whole period, for the pace of social change was slow. The
information we have concerns the higher classes both on the lay and clerical
sides. We have almost no information regarding the poorer classes.
Some of the information comes from written sources, for example the legal
documents. These written sources have to be studied in context. The same is
true of other documents like the Lives
of the saints, and the sagas. Sociology and economics did not exist at that
time so writers had other concerns. But it is possible with care to extract
much useful information from them. But they need to be carefully interpreted.
One concern of the lawyers seems to have been to preserve every custom or
judgement no matter what its source. Lawyers collected laws whether or not the
laws were contradictory. Occasionally a great ruler like Justinian might ask
his legal experts to reduce the collections to some kind of order. Often they
were no more than collections of traditional laws and judgements from various
sources, and of varying value. Secondly, because every man had a blood price or
honour price in accordance with his status it was necessary to assign some
place to him in the hierarchical order. Thirdly, as all these laws had to be
memorised, they had to be cast into a form suitable for learning by heart. The
modern student therefore becomes uneasy when he hears of seven degrees of
nobility, and seven degrees of freemen. Seven is a useful number and occurs often in the Bible. But as in the
collections of laws in the Bible itself much information about a society by
studying the collections of laws even if an artificial framework is ignored
(see Exodus 22). For information on
historical events up to the year 800 we are largely reliant on annals kept in
monasteries in the northern half of Ireland, especially Iona and Clonard. Therefore we have more information on the various
branches of the Ui Neill than we have on all the rest of
the chiefly families put together. Information about Munster is especially hard to come by.
Climatically, the Sub-Atlantic period had come to an end, and
the weather became slightly dryer. The temperature continued to rise.
Conditions for farming were better than at any time since the Middle Bronze
period. Mitchell notes that at this time the population was growing and by 800
AD all the potential agricultural land was tilled (153 ff). Potential that is
in the social and economic conditions of the time. But this at the time probably
did not amount to a tenth of the surface of the country. The great clearances
of forests and reclamation of land in Europe did not
commence until after 1000 AD. In
terms of geography, economic production was local. There was little long
distance trade or production for distant markets, or exports to purchase
luxurious imports such as was to be found in the southern lands. Nor was there
a purchaser like the Roman army buying up surpluses. Nor does there seem to
have been large local markets where products like wheat or cattle could have
been bought or sold. Nor was there a real effective coinage.
One can see the problem when the basic unit of exchange was a female slave. In
terms of history, social and economic conditions in Ireland from the fifth to the eighth century did not
differ greatly from those in the preceding Iron Age nor
from the better-documented Viking Age that succeeded it. It should be noted
that a non-money economy persisted in parts of Ireland until the nineteenth century.
The Ordnance Survey Map of Monastic Ireland illustrates the distribution of monasteries
founded between 600 and 1100 AD. (This distribution differs very little from
that of monasteries founded between 1100 and 1500 AD) What are remarkable are
the vast areas in which there were no
monasteries. The populated areas also coincide with the areas that are known to
have been bishoprics. It also clearly shows why no boundaries were assigned to
dioceses at the synod of Rathbreasail. This does not
mean that the intervening spaces were entirely unoccupied. For one thing, each
occupied area would have had vast areas of woodland for their cattle and pigs
to be herded in. Also it is likely that obscure corners of tillable soil were
occupied by lesser or broken tribes who had been driven off the lands and who
survived partly, if not wholly by plunder. These would not have sufficient
land, or a secure enough grip on it, to endow monasteries. But the distribution
is still puzzling. While in Ulster much of the unoccupied land was of poor quality
even after it was drained and reclaimed, this can hardly be said of large parts
of Munster. One can only suppose that many of the soils were
water-logged, and that drainage did not commence until the Middle
Ages. It should be noted too that many of the lands granted to the
Normans and changed to their system of cultivation proved
unsuccessful. But when considering the various battles and conquests, and
attempts at conquest this map should
be kept in mind. For example, the first expansion of the Ui Neill from Inishowen was along the north
coast, and then up the Bann valley towards the west side of Lough Neagh. Then
another branch advanced along the valley of the Strule
towards Omagh and Clogher.
The population
would have been less than half a million, but increasing between 600 AD and 800
AD (O’Corrain). Population density over the whole
island would have been about 10 to the square mile. But within a tuath in an inhabited area it might be several times that
figure There were probably considerable fluctuations caused by plagues and
famines, but the overall reproduction rate was probably in any case only
slightly above the 2.4 children required nowadays to maintain the population.
This figure should be calculated as meaning the survival of that proportion of
children to an age when they had children themselves, for almost certainly
infant mortality was high. The number of pregnancies of a fertile woman would
naturally have been far higher than that, allowance being made for infertile
women, miscarriages, still-borns, and those who died
in childbirth, and infant mortality. We would expect that every fertile woman
and girl was made pregnant as soon and as often as possible. The aristocracy,
if nobody else, would have ensured that. We would expect the reproductive rate
of noble women, calculated thus to be higher than those of freewomen, which in
turn would have been higher than those of the poorer classes and slaves. A
typical household might consist of up to thirty people, half of them children,
and as many others including relatives, servants, and slaves directly dependent
on the family for shelter, food and clothing. The density of these farms would
be about 6 to the square mile that equals 640 acres (Mitchell 153 ff). But the
vast part of Ireland seems to have been uninhabited or inhabited very
thinly by scattered peoples, broken clans, and outlaws.
A
Celtic language was everywhere
spoken and always by the upper class but the older language may have survived
in pockets among the poor people or broken tribes (de Paor,
Saint Patrick's World 23 ff). The language was however changing very
rapidly. Recognisably Gaulish names in the fourth
century li
