Monastery and High Cross: The Forgotten Eastern Roots of Irish Christianity

From the beginning of Celtic scholarship in English, there was mention of Egyptians in ancient Ireland. However, allusion to “seven Egyptian monks in Desert Uilaidh” in the Litany of the Céile Dé from the seventh century Book of Leinster was dismissed as merely symbolic.

But evidence continues to accumulate that connections with the Mediterranean in ancient Ireland were real.

Archaeology documents frequent commerce between Ireland and the whole Mediterranean world from prehistory forward. Over the years, more and more similarities, links, and borrowings between ancient Ireland and the East have been found in art, architecture, literature, and liturgy, hymnody, and monastic custom.

From the art in the Book of Kells to some passages in the Antiphonary of Bangor to images on Irish high crosses, there are parallels too close and too frequent and accidental to be.

Monastery and High Cross is a cross-disciplinary meta-analysis of English-language research into these questions over the last one hundred and sixty years. It reviews scholarship in history, art, architecture, monastic traditions, liturgical and literary allusions, and assembles a comprehensive and thought-provoking collection of evidence.