Celtic Christian Spirituality [Paperback]

Oliver Davies (Editor), Fiona Bowie (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

"(A) useful and instructive collection..". -- Publishers Weekly

"A distinctive resource in the revival of interest in Celtic Christianity". -- Values & Visions

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In a brief introduction, Davies and Bowie (Univ. of Wales) trace the backgrounds of Celtic Christianity, which stemmed from a pre-Christian vital religion affecting every aspect of life and emphasized locality, landscape, and oral tradition while prizing poetry, mythology, and imagery. The authors see the Celtic religion as nature-affirming and optimistic and the Christianity that developed in Britain and Ireland as connected to the undivided Church yet isolated from current trends. The authors' selections from medieval religious poetry and prose, including poems recorded from oral tradition, support their view. The anthology concludes with poems written by nine modern poets (e.g., Euros Bowen, W.R. Rogers), who reveal aspects of this heritage. Recommended for academic, seminary, and large public libraries.
Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Oliver Davies is Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826408354
• ISBN-13: 978-0826408358
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,797,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fiona Bowie has been writing professionally since 1989, when she published her first book on Beguine Spirituality (translations by Oliver Davies) with SPCK/Crossroad. This was followed by studies on Hildegard of Bingen and Celtic Christian Spirituality in the same series. A move to the Welsh-speaking town of Bethesda in North Wales resulted in an edited collection of essays on 'Discovering Welshness' (Gwasg Gomer, also with Oliver Davies). After studying anthropology at Durham and Oxford universities, Fiona Bowie taught at the Universities of Wales and Bristol (UK) and Virginia (USA). She has written a best-selling textbook on the Anthropology of Religion (Blackwell), and edited volumes on The Coming Deliverer (University of Wales Press) and Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption (Berghahn). In 2010 she launched the Afterlife Research Centre, http://www.afterliferesearch.info, for the ethnographic study of the afterlife. Her most recent publication, Tales from the Afterlife (O Books), combines scholarship and imagination in presenting possible scenarios of our immediate post-mortem existence.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rich introduction to Celtic Christian prose and poetry., September 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Celtic Christian Spirituality (Paperback)

The editors have assembled, organized and introduced a rich collection of the prose and poetry of Christians from Brittany, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Although many of the works are translated from modern or ancient Breton, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic and from Latin, all flow with grace and feeling. The works from over a thousand years ago provide profound insights on the issues we face today and on how we can address our local problems through the love of all creation. The modern works are intensely personal but all have the ability to touch readers far from the Celtic homelands. A wonderful introductin to Celtic, Christian or Celtic Christian literature and an excellent springboard for wider studies. Readers unfamiliar with the geography and history of the Celtic lands might wish to read with a map in hand and balance the anothological approach with the works of J.Phillip Newell, David Adam, John O'Donohue, Edward Sellner, Thomas Cahill and Peter Berreesford Ellis.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Collects medieval verse/prose & contemporary poetry, December 22, 2008

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Celtic Christian Spirituality (Paperback)

Separating fact from fable when it comes to the Celtic Church's independence or submission to Catholicism has long been a British fascination. Welsh, English and Scots reformers popularized their revisions as reversions to earlier, supposedly autonomous, manifestations of an insular church that did not bow the knee to Rome. Davies & Bowie seek to correct antiquarian, New Age, or theological exaggerations which also have followed suit. They show in their introduction how the Celtic spiritual teachings differed-- and where they matched dominant Catholicism. They carefully, if briefly, remind readers too of the historical and social difficulties in defining a distinct Celtic identity. This concept "based on a mythologized reading of the past" would not have been understood by the ancients, although as the editors also note, "it has its own exigencies, and should not be dismissed too lightly" for those who chose this interpretation in centuries nearer our own. (4)

They also, as this combines medieval prose and poetry with contemporary verse, illustrate how poets express the physicality, nature-based connections, imaginative creativity, communal roots, and Trinitarian fluidity of Celtic-centered qualities that many Christians, or perhaps post-Christians, now seek to renew and revive. Many of the medieval entries can be found, in expanded form, in Davies' 1999 "Celtic Spirituality" anthology published in 1999 by Paulist Press. These two collections by Davies may be confused (not to mention a 1996 compendium by Davies from the medieval Welsh tradition!) The difference lies in the 1995 edition's subtitle of "modern sources"-- adding oral traditions gathered in from Scots Gaelic as "Carmina Gadelica" by Alexander Carmichael and from Irish as "Religious Songs of Connacht" by Douglas Hyde. Then, contemporary poetry from Celtic writers this past century brings the collection closer to the present.

It's an accessible anthology addressed more than the Paulist Press successor to the common reader, and I recommend it as an entry point. Bibliographies and sources used are both helpful, and I particularly value the translations of Welsh-language poet Euros Bowen.

His "Changing Government" stands out. "The government of the skies/ we have sent to hell,/ and so the throne of the sun is empty,/ there is a death mask on its face/ in a museum." (184) The whole poem's worthy of transcription. He ends "Tap Root": "There is no resurrection where there is no earth." (187) You might expect to have found instead the better-known vicar R.S. Thomas, but Davies & Bowen wisely try to welcome writers less-anthologized, and as deserving of attention.

As Irish-language representative (in translation), Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's certainly expected, and her feminism's necessary. As Davies & Bowie in their introduction caution, the tendency by moderns to amplify the matriarchal Celtic presence does clash with the patriarchal norm practiced even by the Celts, one that deepened under the penitential and apocalyptic emphases instituted by the Church that harbor less appeal for seekers from our own time. Today's poets do tend to favor the feminine and the natural, regardless of the author's male or female identification. Medieval entries, by contrast, feature the need for renunciation, repentance, and asceticism.

Speaking of nature, Seán Ó Riordáin might have been entered as a second Gaelic counterpart to Bowen, equally meriting exposure. His existential attitude might, however, unsettle many. Mary O'Malley or Caitlín Maude may also be sought out by readers looking into spirituality expressed by Irish poets. A mismatch between the flesh and the spirit, and a longing to reconnect what's been sundered, enters many inclusions. Brendan Kennelly's "Sculpted from Darkness" watches worshippers returning from midnight Mass over a bridge; "House" considers the fragile body and the aging dwelling elegantly juxtaposed.

Ruth Bidwell observes in "Standing Stone" a Welsh parallel to Kennelly's mass-goers: "A mindless ritual is not empty. When the dark mind fails, faith lives in the supplication of hands, on prayer-wheel, rosary, stone." (198) For another rural poet, the simple lines of Anjela Duval translated from Breton recall a 20c Emily Dickinson, if she'd had four years of grade school and worked her life alone on a remote farm. In their diction, capitalization, and imagery, there are eloquent comparisons to the Belle of Amherst. In a poem that could in theme if not in tone stand alongside R.S. Thomas, Duval laments "The Song of the Foreigner," one that ravishes the trees, despoils the land, and erases the language. It ends: "And soon...if we don't pay attention/ On the great organ/ Of their dark and sad forests/ --Fertilised with the ashes of our trees--/ The Atlantic Wind/ Will play while singing/ ...The Requiem of our Country." (228)