British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

British Academy/Royal Irish Academy Joint Symposium

Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings

Trouble at the White House: Anglo-Irish relations and the cult of St Martin

Juliet Hewish (UCD)

In a famous passage describing the conversion of the Picts, Bede tells how Colum Cille came from Ireland to preach to the northern Picts, but that the southern Picts had been converted ‘multo ante tempore' by a certain Nynia. According to the Bollandist Paul Grosjean, Bede's interest in St Ninian derived from the fact that he was educated in Rome, and his role in this account is to grant prestige and an ancient lineage to the Roman practices at Candida Casa, which had recently been annexed by Bernicia and its first English bishop installed. Ninian is thus intended as 'une sorte de contre-Columba' and his associations with St Martin are to be rejected as 'additions tendancieuses''. Nora Chadwick has argued, instead, that the cult of Martin was brought to England from Ireland, and not by Ninian. If the cult of Martin was brought from Ireland, by whom and at what time would this have occurred, and if this was the case, why might Bede have wished to mask the missionary activities of the Irish in this area? The aim of this paper is to consider these two questions, to examine Anglo-Irish relations between the supposed foundation date of Candida Casa and the writing of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, particularly in relation to the cult of St Martin, and finally to consider the implications that a strong cult of St Martin within the sphere of Colum Cille's influence would hold for our reading of Bede.