The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall E-Book

Thomas Taylor

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 228

Beschreibung

In one of the most brilliant of modern books its author calls attention to the common fallacy which assumes that "if you can find a principle which gives an adequate explanation of three different facts it is more likely to correspond with the truth than three different principles which give adequate explanations of the same facts severally." This fallacy underlies much that is being urged in favour of a common origin for religious doctrines and methods of worship. A single source of religious belief or of religious phenomena is preferred to several sources as being more tidy and more in keeping with what we have learnt to expect in other departments of research. It may be illogical, but still it is recommended as a safe guide to the truth. Indeed, it is difficult for a modern student to conceive how any real advance can be made in scientific pursuits unless the principle, which prefers one explanation of phenomena to many, is favoured. Before the days of Kepler and of Newton it may have been possible, it may be possible still, to imagine more than one explanation of the fall of a heavy body to the ground and of the action of one inert mass upon another. The law of gravity, as elaborated by Newton, represents what, so far as we know, has invariably happened and what we believe will invariably happen in space between two or more bodies, namely, that they will, as heretofore, each attract all the other bodies directly as their mass and inversely as the square of their distance. This law is not merely preferred before all other laws; it is the very foundation of the whole of what is called Physical Astronomy. It is a law to which there are, within its own province, no known exceptions.

Leseprobe

Thomas Taylor

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Table of contents

PREFACE

I COINCIDENCE AND RESEMBLANCE

II THE CELTS

III CORNWALL AND BRITTANY

IV THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL

V THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL

VI EVOLUTION OF THE DIOCESAN-BISHOPRIC FROM THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL

VII CORNISH SAINTS

VIII ANCIENT RELIGIOUS HOUSES

IX CORNISH HERMITS

X ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT

APPENDIX A Extract from the “Life of St. Samson”(Ed. by Fawtier, pp. 143-5)

APPENDIX B Edward the Confessor’s Charter(Oliver’s Monasticon, p. 31)

APPENDIX C Charter of Count Robert of Mortain(Monasticon, p. 31)

APPENDIX D Erection of the Priory of St. Michael in Cornwall(Monasticon, p. 414)

PREFACE

In one of the most brilliant of modern books its author [1] calls attention to the common fallacy which assumes that “if you can find a principle which gives an adequate explanation of three different facts it is more likely to correspond with the truth than three different principles which give adequate explanations of the same facts severally.” This fallacy underlies much that is being urged in favour of a common origin for religious doctrines and methods of worship. A single source of religious belief or of religious phenomena is preferred to several sources as being more tidy and more in keeping with what we have learnt to expect in other departments of research. It may be illogical, but still it is recommended as a safe guide to the truth. Indeed, it is difficult for a modern student to conceive how any real advance can be made in scientific pursuits unless the principle, which prefers one explanation of phenomena to many, is favoured. Before the days of Kepler and of Newton it may have been possible, it may be possible still, to imagine more than one explanation of the fall of a heavy body to the ground and of the action of one inert mass upon another. The law of gravity, as elaborated by Newton, represents what, so far as we know, has invariably happened and what we believe will invariably happen in space between two or more bodies, namely, that they will, as heretofore, each attract all the other bodies directly as their mass and inversely as the square of their distance. This law is not merely preferred before all other laws; it is the very foundation of the whole of what is called Physical Astronomy. It is a law to which there are, within its own province, no known exceptions. We accept this law not because we prefer one explanation to many, but because it meets not only the requirements of cases which might conceivably be explained in other ways but also the requirements of cases for which no other explanation has been suggested or conceived. Among laws, which are not received as self-evident, the law of gravity is unique. This will be clear to anyone who contrasts the secure position which it occupies with the perilous position occupied by laws which have been formulated within recent years. Men do not prefer Newton’s explanation to other explanations: the evidence in its favour is so overwhelming that they feel compelled to accept it. It is far otherwise with other laws like evolution. These fascinate or repel from the very first. Preference undoubtedly enters into the complex intellectual process which leads us first to accept and then to defend this or that explanation of an array of facts. And this preference, admittedly illogical, may arise from our limited knowledge of the facts or from regard for some particular protagonist of one of many conflicting theories; but, other things being equal, it seizes hold of that explanation which claims to cover the most ground and to reconcile the largest number of facts. It only becomes mischievous when it claims infallibility. It is perhaps too readily assumed that in the domain of religious phenomena there is a law by which these phenomena are bounded and conditioned. Assuming such a law to exist, the attempts to formulate it will be directed in a greater or less degree by preference. For religious phenomena, by which is here meant the outward manifestations of religions, cannot be examined and classified, without a comprehensive knowledge of the religions themselves. And if, as a French writer has contended, “the man who would write the history of a religion must believe it no longer but must have believed it once,” it follows that few persons, even in this versatile age, can claim to be proficient in more than three or four religions. From which it also follows that lack of knowledge must be supplied by fertility of imagination or by the exercise of preference on the part of him who employs the comparative method in order to discover the law. And yet, it is only by eliminating this personal element and by confining our attention to material which is neither inaccurate nor defective that we can hope to arrive at the truth. It must be confessed that the rough and ready generalisations with which we are so familiar in this connection and the lack of care which is taken in gathering and sifting the materials upon which they are based, almost lead us to despair of useful results. The attempt to evolve a law from insufficient data is like an attempt to measure volume in terms of two dimensions or like an attempt to classify animals without an intimate knowledge of them. A salamander has four legs and a tail: so has a sheep. A zoology based on these criteria alone would not carry us very far. The biologist might kindly step in with his law of evolution and say some soothing words respecting their common origin, but we should leave off where we began and know no more of those animals than we did at the start, namely, that they each have four legs and a tail. [2]In studying religions those points of resemblance which are most obvious are sometimes the most misleading. And for this reason. The essence of a religion—what may be called its soul—is not always revealed in its methods of worship. This is said to be especially true of Buddhism, at least by those writers who, like Mr. Feilding, strive to commend it to the Western world. Certainly it is no disparagement of a true religion that it should have, in the department of worship, many points in common with a false one. Every religion requires some machinery if it is to do its work. And it is more true to say of religions that they agree in machinery but differ in what they teach than to say that they agree in what they teach but differ in machinery. It would be most untrue, nevertheless, to assert that these common elements have always been acquired in the same way or have meant the same thing or have been used with the same object. Before any deductions whatever can be legitimately drawn the religious phenomena must be submitted to the most rigorous scrutiny. Dates, places, distances count for more, whether the phenomena be prehistoric or historic, than almost anything save accurate definition. This will be clear if we take an imaginary case. Let us consider the eagle as an object of worship. In the year 4000 A.D. a popular archæologist of liberal views notes the immense number of brass eagles which are unearthed from beneath the sites of ancient churches, and inasmuch as no mention is made in history and no rubric is to be found in any of the old service books of the function assigned to the image of the king of birds, he comes to the conclusion that the Christians of the Victorian era were, in spite of much quarrelling concerning the point of the compass towards which the priest should stand at the altar and the use of lights and incense, united at least on one point—the worship of the eagle. He reflects that reverence for the eagle was as dear to the hearts of Roman soldiers as it was abhorrent to the Jews. He recalls the incident at Cæsarea. He does not forget that long after the Roman Empire had ceased to be an important factor in European politics the Jews were regarded with unreasoning hatred. Putting two and two together he comes to the conclusion that Christians, in order to emphasise their contempt for Jewish susceptibilities, admitted into their religious system the cult of the eagle and that this cult attained its high-water mark in the nineteenth century. If it be objected that such a notion is altogether preposterous and absurd, that it is, in fact, an insult to average intelligence to attempt to influence human judgment by a fiction so transparent, it ought to be sufficient to recall the erudite expositions of rock basins, stone circles and dolmens which, elaborated by men of the highest eminence, were welcomed as brilliant discoveries by a generation by no means remote. It is a common enough practice, but it serves no useful purpose to hold up the wisdom of one age to the scorn of another. There are two cautions which are needed in all ages; the first, that eminence in one department of human learning does not, of itself, constitute a qualification to pass authoritative judgments in other departments; the second, that as all knowledge, when unhindered, is progressive the present generation may indeed hope to have got somewhat nearer the truth than its predecessors, but in virtue of the same principle it is still far from its final stage. Archæology which at the beginning of the nineteenth century could hardly claim to be regarded as a science, had by the end of that century attained to the highest rank as a science. It has not outlived the record of past mistakes and some years may yet have to elapse before its achievements are fully recognised. It is impossible to discuss the Christianity of Cornwall in its earlier stages without devoting some space to its Celtic inhabitants. This is all the more necessary because in the county there are many monuments, both pagan and Christian, and in some quarters there has been a disposition to confound them. Only by referring the pagan monuments to their true place in pre-history is it possible to avoid this confusion. For such knowledge as he possesses of archæology the writer is largely indebted to M. Joseph Déchelette’s Manuel d’Archéologie. There is no work in English which, based on sound principles, attempts, as this does, to cover the whole ground. Like the Principles of Geology the Manuel stands alone.When the losses in human life, due to the Great War, come to be reckoned up and those losses come to be analysed, there will be few names to take precedence of that of M. Déchelette. The Revue Celtique, after expressing its profound regret for his death, says that after honouring France by solid and learned works, notably by his Manuel d’Archéologie—a unique monument of erudition—at the age of fifty-three, though not compelled to serve in the army, he chose to take part in the campaign and to die like a hero. An order of the day of the French army supplies particulars of his death. He was a captain in the 29th Regiment of infantry and was shot down while leading his company. With his men he had won 800 metres of ground. As he lay dying he asked his colonel whether they had kept the conquered ground, and being answered in the affirmative, he replied that he was happy that his death was of service to France. The writer finely adds, Belle vie, et fin plus belle encore.In a small book like the present, there will necessarily be many points which deserve some fuller explanation than was possible, while here and there some points will seem to be unduly magnified. The chapter on St. Michael’s Mount might, at first sight, seem to add little to the main subject, but in this case it was not so much the hope of gain as the fear of loss which had to be considered. Should the reader meet with phrases and expressions which appear to him inconsistent with a serious treatment of the subject the writer can only crave his indulgence and assure him that they were not altogether unprovoked. Chapter III was in substance contributed to the Truro Diocesan Magazine; Chapter IV was read at a conference of the Kirrier Rural Deanery; Chapters V and VI were printed concurrently in the Revue Celtique and the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall . For permission to reprint them their author tenders his thanks to those journals. Besides the Manuel d’Archéologie there are two other works to which he is much indebted, Dom Gougaud’s Chrétientés Celtiques and Miss Clay’s Hermits and Anchorites of England. No better introduction to Celtic Christianity could be desired than Dom Gougaud’s book. Miss Clay has treated her subject with a particularity which is as rare as it is valuable, and although her book furnished little material for the present work, it was of great value in supplying the cartography of an unfamiliar region. To Professor J. Loth and to Mr. H. Jenner, F.S.A., his obligations are of a more personal character and therefore more difficult to express. To both of them, in all matters which concern Celtic language and literature, he stands in the relation of pupil to master. As such he acknowledges gratefully their friendly and patient guidance and ever ready help. It should be needless to add that in so doing he has no wish to shelter himself behind great names. For all blundering and backsliding he and he alone is responsible, inasmuch as throughout the perilous adventure he has cheerfully bestridden his own beast.

I COINCIDENCE AND RESEMBLANCE

The tyranny of observed coincidence and resemblance over the human mind is very remarkable, especially when coincidence and resemblance are associated with traditional sayings and superstitions.

Thirteen persons sit round a dinner table. When dinner is over the discovery is made that they were thirteen in number and the diners reflect that, according to the ancient fiction, one of them at least will die within the year. During the year one of them dies, as an insurance agent would have told them was extremely probable. A succession of such coincidences does not lead them to study the insurance tables, or to calculate the expectation of life; it only helps to confirm the superstition.

The sight of one magpie by the road-side alarms: the sight of two encourages. At the end of the day the single magpie is recalled when reckoning up the day’s disappointments.

The devout Christian believer is not more prone to superstition than others. A man lay dying of consumption at St. Just. He was a crack rifle shot, an unbeliever and inclined to suicide. He insisted upon having his rifle by him as he lay in bed and, for the sake of peace, his wife allowed it. A single magpie came and perched daily on the hedge outside his bedroom window. One day seizing his weapon and steadying it on his knee as he lay there, he shot the magpie. The death of the solitary bird brought peace and all thought of suicide was banished and forgotten. The above are examples of superstition in the sense in which the word is here used.

But the shepherd’s proverb:

“ A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd’s warning:

A rainbow at night is the shepherd’s delight.”

and the fisherman’s

“ When the wind is in the south

It blows your bait into the fish’s mouth.”

are based upon sound observation and contain no taint of superstition; they could doubtless be referred to recognised scientific principles.

Again, the study of biology has led men to look, not in vain, for resemblances between the gills of a fish and the lungs of a mammal, between the hands of a man and the forefeet of a quadruped. Postulating the theory of evolution a common origin is discovered in either case.

The prehensile and tentacular movements of certain plants call to mind the like movements of certain fishes. Whether by means of the same theory, with the aid of the accredited results of research, they can be held to have had a common origin; whether, for example, they can be referred to some such quality or instinct as that which characterises the Proteus animalcule is perhaps an open question. It seems, however, quite clear that these blind, involuntary movements on the part of fishes are not derived from the similar movements of plants or vice versâ, but that, if a common origin is to be found, it must be sought in some very early stage before animal and vegetable became differentiated. The evolution hypothesis, whether it be regarded as proved or unproved, is in any case invaluable because it stimulates thought, observation, and research. By means of it knowledge becomes coherent, articulate, scientific.

The application of this principle to religion is becoming more and more the vogue, and, provided that its adherents are content to work on the same lines as the students of physical science, there is no reason why useful results should not be obtained. There is, however, a tendency to transmute this working hypothesis into a superstition which, in point of sanity, is only comparable to that of the number thirteen and that of the single magpie—the superstition, in short, which notes coincidences and resemblances and ignores their opposites.

It is by no means clear that resemblance of rite and ceremonial and coincidence in point of time of calendared festivals furnish the proper material from which to formulate the law and to determine the source of religious observance. For example, however we may judge of the Salvation Army, it is obvious that a very different principle underlies and animates Mr. Booth’s following from that which inspires the soldiers of King George. Military organisation merely suggested a useful and convenient form of discipline. In this case resemblance is utterly misleading, and the archæologist of the distant future, who should argue that the venerated coat of the General, supposing it to have been preserved, points to some mad but futile attempt to repeat the religious conquests of Mahomet, would be quite as wide of the truth as he who should seek the General’s prototype in the militant ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages.

A further danger attends the student of religions. This arises from prepossession rather than from hypothesis and leads him to mistake deduction for induction. He finds, we will suppose, what he takes to be a latchkey. It is an instrument considerably the worse for wear and of a somewhat unusual pattern. He is quite certain it is a key. There is no room for doubt. He determines to find a lock which it will fit. Starting with the key he examines locks prehistoric, mediæval and modern, but all in vain, for the simple reason that the implement in his hands is not a key at all but the head of a fish spear.

It is not the critical method of induction but the uncritical method of deduction which is to be reprobated. When, for example, we discover by observation, the practical universality of sacrifice as a distinguishing mark of religion, we may explain the fact in a dozen different ways, but in every case we are compelled to recognise the belief in a God of some sort, and when we find that generally, at some stage of religious development, sacrifice is offered by way of propitiation, we are led to the conclusion that safety and salvation were held to be only possible by atonement. We have before us a multitude of locks and one key fits them all, and we are therefore led to conclude that au fond offence and sacrifice are related as poison to antidote. When, however, we descend to particulars, resemblances and coincidences are found to be as misleading as the salvationist’s tunic. Their evidential value, to use a threadbare but useful phrase, is infinitesimally small and sometimes a negative quantity.

Relying upon resemblance, a person might be led to conclude that it was the spring turnip which suggested the shape of the watch and the duck’s egg the morphology of toilet soaps.

Utility and convenience have entered largely into the ritual systems of all religions. The same accessories are required for the worship of Baal as for the worship of Jehovah. To identify Baal with Jehovah is to beg the question and to fall a victim to the tyranny of coincidence and resemblance.

When attempts are made to discover a common origin for the Christian Eucharist, the Aztec communion described by Prescott, and the ceremonial eating and drinking practised by the worshippers of Mithras, it is often assumed that the closer the ritual resemblance between them the stronger the argument in favour of a common origin. It does not seem to have occurred to the maintainers of this hypothesis that public worship, of whatsoever kind it may be, finds expression in a symbolism of its own, just as thought expresses itself in speech and in written language. The fact that Christianity expressed itself in symbol and sacrament does prove that from the very first it claimed to be a religion and not a mere philosophy or school of thought, but it does not prove identity of origin or of intention with the pagan religions which employed the same or similar symbolism. It was inevitable that the Christian Passover should have been singled out in order to illustrate the prepossession that in origin it is essentially pagan. In this case, however, it is not resemblance but coincidence (in point of time) which is supposed to afford the ground of proof. One writer, at least, who rightly connects it with the Jewish Passover, in order to exhibit its sacrificial character,[3] does not hesitate to refer its origin to the worship of Attis or Tammuz, the earth-god, on the ground that the time of its occurrence roughly coincides with the solemnities of Attis. No better illustration of the tyranny of observed coincidence could be found than in his ingenious but futile attempt to apply the principle to Cornwall. His object is to identify the May-day festivities, which he conceives to be a survival of Beltane solemnities, with those of the Christian Passover. Unfortunately for him the latter festival occurs too early; it can never occur later than the twenty-fifth of April. But he has read of Little Easter, which occurs a week later, and attributing to the Cornish a preference for a réchauffé of the Easter banquet to the banquet itself—a preference for which no reasons are vouchsafed—he concludes that Little Easter is the Cornish equivalent of the Beltane Feast. It might have occurred to the maintainer of this opinion to test it by means of the same calculations which forbade the synchronising of Easter itself with the pagan solemnity. Had he done so he would have found that Little Easter (Paskbian) or Low Sunday occurs in May only once in sixty or seventy years, and on May-day less than once in a century.[4] A coincidence which occurs once in a century does not convince the writer and will hardly convince the reader of the identity of the Celtic feast of Beltane with the Christian Passover, or even with the Low Sunday celebration at Lostwithiel described by Richard Carew, the historian.[5]

It is impossible, without destroying the character of this enquiry, to consider the Christian Passover in all its bearings upon the subject before us, but a few remarks are needed in order to place it in a right relation to the more ancient solemnity from which incidentally it sprang.

The Jewish Passover was kept at the time of the first full moon which followed the vernal equinox. The primitive Christians of Asia Minor, claiming for precedent the practice of St. John the Divine, commemorated our Saviour’s Passion on the same day as the Passover and His Resurrection on the third day after. Thus it frequently happened that the very event which had led to the observance of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath had its yearly commemoration on some day which was not the Christian Sabbath. On the other hand, the Christians at Rome, following as they believed the practice of St. Paul, kept not only the weekly but also the yearly feast of the Resurrection on the first day of the week and the anniversary of the Passion on the third day before, in other words they kept their Paschal feast as we do now on the first day of the week which occurred next after the first full moon following the Spring equinox. The origin and signification of the feast were the same for both Eastern and Western Christians. It was the Christian Passover (Pascha) and was known by that name. The ancient Cornish word for it was Pask. In North Staffordshire forty years ago it was the custom, and it is probably still the custom, for bands of men and maidens to solicit Pace (Pasch) eggs. The use of the term Easter, of Saxon origin, is merely a proof of the stubborn independence of the English character which refused to receive not only the names of the days of the week but also of the Christian seasons from the Latin. The coincidence in point of time of the Paschal feast with a pagan feast, if such coincidence can be discovered, was purely accidental; and the same can be said of Ascension, Pentecost and all other movable feasts which are ancillary to or supplementary of it. In this connection it is noteworthy that throughout the bitter controversy, dating from an amicable discussion held in the year 162 when Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, paid a visit to Anicetus, bishop of Rome until the sixth century, it never occurred to either party to suggest a pagan origin for the feast or to connect the time of its celebration with nature or nature worship.[6] As the commemoration of a notable historical event—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ—it was observed by East and West, just as the Jewish Passover was observed as the anniversary of the “self-same day that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of Egypt by their armies,” and of that hurried meal of which a lamb of the first year and unleavened bread were the more important constituent elements. In the Bible and in the Primitive Church the two feasts are so closely linked together that, in order to demonstrate identity of origin for the Christian Passover and the feast of Tammuz the earth-god, it will be necessary to show that the Jewish Passover derived its raison d’être from the same source as the worship of Tammuz. That any such source has been found or that any connection has been found, or will be found, is not to be taken for granted. The connection between the Jewish and the Christian Pascha is not open to dispute. Had the Christian Church repudiated the Pascha and kept a festival of the Resurrection entirely distinct from it, something might have been urged in favour of a pagan origin. It is the indissolubility of their union which forbids any such interpretation.

The writer has no desire to be regarded as an obscurantist and, for this reason if for no other, he offers to the students of folklore in general and to all deductive philosophers obsessed with the unique evidential value of coincidence and resemblance in particular, the following facts, for the authenticity of which he is prepared to vouch whenever he is required so to do. He believes that when their import is fully grasped they will carry, to the minds of the said philosophers to whom the discovery, never previously announced, is humbly but confidently dedicated, the conviction that not in Asia, the accredited home of mystery, not in Africa the cradle of theologies old and new, not in America the foster mother of science Christian and otherwise, but in Australia will be found the true origin of the Easter festival and its ceremonial. He regrets that his command of scientific language is unequal to the task which a discovery of such absorbing interest and far-reaching possibility demands. He therefore craves the indulgence of the learned for expressing himself in terms which he hopes will be intelligible to learned and unlearned alike.