Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 74

Ireland has been called “the island of saints and scholars.” But the other Celtic lands have produced their share of holy people as well. The coming of Christianity to the Celtic world was revolutionary on more than one level: not only did it forever change the way that the Celts viewed spirituality and the cosmos, but perhaps even more importantly, the Celtic tradition influenced how Christianity was practiced, giving birth to a unique expression of that faith, marked by optimism, mysticism, and deep love for nature.

Saint Patrick is probably the only Celtic “super-saint,” which is to say a saint whose fame and popularity extends well beyond the Celtic world. But other saints, like Brigid, Columcille (Columba), Brendan (called “the Navigator” because of the legend that he and his companion monks sailed from Ireland to North America—in the sixth century!) and Columbanus all have enjoyed their own measure of fame. And what’s truly lovely about the Celtic world is the abundance of lesser known (and in some cases only regionally venerated) “saints.” Many of these folks have never been officially canonized, but that never stopped their small-scale cults from flourishing. In a way, the Celtic veneration of saints echoes the older veneration of pagan deities—the emphasis was not on the big names that everyone knew, but on the local figure, who may never have been famous but who gave a particular place its own unique sanctity.