Episode 117f Monasteries, Bishops, Abbotts and The Loch Ness Monster

Description: Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow joins us again to lead us through another great topic in the conversion of the Irish to Christianity. Today we will talk about monasteries, abbots and bishops and the roles they played in Irish Christianity. We will also talk about new evidence and new interpretations on the organization of early Irish Christianity.

About Today’s Guest:
Dr. Carolyn McNamara
On Twitter: @MedievalCarly
Education Evolved: @EducationEvolvd www.educationevolvedltd.com/
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Begin Transcript:
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•Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow joins us again to lead us through another great topic in the conversion of the Irish to Christianity. Today we will talk about monasteries, abbots and bishops and the roles they played in Irish Christianity. We will also talk about new evidence and new interpretations on the organization of early Irish Christianity.
•With that, here is the next piece of the mosaic of the history of the Popes of Rome and Christian Church.

Steve: [00:00:00] Now th there has been a fairly recent change in scholarship on how the, what the role of the Bishop was an Ireland. What was the traditional scholarship on the role of the Bishop and how has that sort of modified throughout the sense maybe the, the eighties.
Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah, that's a great point. So the previous understanding was that, you know, there's the. It was a huge blossoming of monastic. Life in Ireland, I think to a degree that you don't frequently see elsewhere, just the sheer number of monasteries in Ireland is impressive. So there was this belief that it was the Abbots themselves that were the most important ecclesiastical figures.
In Ireland and north Britain in this early medieval period, and that they held a higher status even than [00:01:00] bishops. And some of this belief was based on, I think. The point that we were in understanding the materials that we had at the time. So as I've said, we've, we've constantly been evolving in how we understand materials and how we work with them.
And maybe even what's been translated, you know, I have this huge pile of, of materials, but if we haven't had time to properly have a look at it and compare them with each other and really make sure we're understanding what's going on, then we're not going to have as good an understanding as we do, you know, once that work has been done.
And I think that's part of what went into this previous perspective versus how we, we view it now. So. There's not as many discussions of bishops because you are unlikely to have as many bishops as Abbott's, you know, every monastery needs an Abbott, but not every monastery needs a Bishop. [00:02:00] And even at my favorite monastery at banger, like they only had a few bishops ever, so we can cut.
Take that into mind, as we're thinking about, you know, what this understanding was, but yeah, starting around the 1980s, they really started to readdress some of these earlier perspectives and realize that, you know, When we talk about these monks and these monasteries, the monks themselves were not likely to be in clerical orders themselves.
Like it, wasn't a requirement of being a monk. And even if you're not in monastic orders and you haven't taken an oath of being a monk, you know, there's an even larger pool of lay brothers that existed around monastery who were associated. Perhaps just because they lived on land owned by the monastery.
So [00:03:00] there's this large lay population that's associated with the monastery and none of those people needed to be in clerical orders. And we've come to understand more and more that, you know, all of this pastoral care that's required. In the church was under the purview of the Bishop. You know, the Abbott didn't have the right to ordain clerics.
He may not have been ordained himself. So the Bishop needed to do that. And the Bishop was the one who had the right to, you know, bring a church into use as a sacred place. And so they're the ones who have that power. And they were the ones who were charged with the good working of a church and making sure that, you know, the people receive the sacraments that they needed, whether it's, you know, birth or, um, baptism or, you know, final rights and burial.
So that was all under the purview [00:04:00] of the Bishop. So this thought that had existed about, you know, the Abbott speak, the ones in charge because they were maybe so many of them. And I think there was also some confusion in that there wasn't a big city for a Bishop to kind of have as his seat of his power.
There was no York, there was no Canterbury for these bishops to be located at. As part of what led to that, uh, previous understanding, but that we're, we're starting, we're getting better and better at it. Seeing how it more likely was today with this, you know, monasteries and Abbott's being more concerned about their monastic lives than about the pastoral care of the, the wider communities.
And we see that even in the life of St. Colombia. And if people are interested in early medieval religious lives, I highly recommend reading the life of Saint [00:05:00] Colombia. It's really easy to read. You know, there's a really good translation by Richard Sharp. It's got the earliest mention of the Lochness monster in it.
So it's lots of fun. Uh, But we also see in it that Colomba himself as described by Adivan a hundred years later, his focus wasn't on conversion. You know, this is very different from what we see with Patrick, he's interested in his own community. And the times that you'll see him involved with conversions are when people have specifically come to him and said, you know, Colombia, please, you know, do this for me.
You know, I'm about to die. I want to die a Christian or what have you that they've specifically come to him to ask him personally for intervention.
Steve: Yeah, it's kind of interesting because, because Ireland wasn't in the Roman empire, that or organization would be a little bit different, but maybe not quite [00:06:00] as different as what earlier scholars thought.