Anonymous, Life of Brendan of Clonfert (17^th century, from an earlier ms.)

One day Brendan and Bishop Erc were going along the road, when a man happened to join them. There happened, moreover, to meet them seven warriors who were enemies of his. He was greatly terrified at seeing them and said: “Those men will kill me now,” said he. “Go under the shadow of yonder standing stone,” said Brendan, “and stretch thyself in its shadow.” He did so; and Brendan lifted u his hand to God, in prayer for the man’s deliverance.

Then his enemies came to the stone, and smote it on the side, and after cutting off its head, they left it, and carried of the head, thinking that it was the head of their enemy; and the (decapitated) stone still remains in the same place. Thus Brendan mad a man of the stone, and a stone of the man. “Do penance,” said Bishop Erc to them, “for it is the head of stone that you hold, and your enemy has escaped from your hands safe and sound.” They did rigorous penance thenceforth under the rule of Bishop Erc.

Translation, Charles Plummer, Lives of Irish Saints, Vol. II

This is one of my favorite stories in all the hagiographical writing from the period of the Celtic Revival. We recall that hagiography is a kind of history, but not. Its purpose was to celebrate a particular saint, not merely to extol the saint but to establish the importance of his paruchia, his “spiritual family.” The greater the saint, the greater his monastery and the “family” of monks and others attached to it.

So, as we might expect, hagiography is a kind of history-writing with hyperbole. This was understood at the time, and no one objected. Rather, the art of hagiography came to involve trying to tell the best and most believable story without descending into the realm of magic or falling into incredulity.

So hagiography contains a good bit of recognizable history. Brendan and Erc were real people. Brigands and bad guys abounded along the highways of medieval Ireland, and they could be violent in pursuit of their goals. It’s even possible that the phrase, “and the (decapitated) stone still remains in the same place” indicated an artifact with which hearers would have been familiar – a pagan standing stone with a bit of its top broken off.

In order to be useful to its purposes, hagiography must be believable, and factoring in historical data and referents helped hagiographers to achieve that objective.

But the main point of this and all hagiography is not to communicate an accurate record of historical events. Two overarching points are being made here.

The first relates to Brendan and his wisdom in saving the man who “happened to join them.” This phrase probably wants us to think that, during the course of their walking together, the man began to “walk the same path” as Brendan and Erc – he became a believer. The writer wants us to see Brendan, a disciple of Erc (and thus well-grounded in the first phase of the Celtic Revival, the generation that succeeded Patrick), as a faithful servant of those in need and an able communicator of the Gospel.

But, second, Brendan is to be seen as one of the great saints by which paganism was vanquished in Ireland and the Gospel became established as the religion of all truly pious people. The stone was a “standing stone” – that is, a pagan monument set up on its end as a place for worship or otherwise honoring some pagan deity. Brendan instructed the man to “stretch thyself” in the shadow of the standing stone. It sounds like he was instructing him, first, to conform his body to the outlines of the stone, but to “stretch” himself, perhaps in the shape of a cross. If this is the case, Brendan would have been instructing the man to take up the discipline of crosfigell – praying with one’s arms outstretched in the form of the cross. For the purposes of the story-teller, Brendan was bringing Christ and the light of the Gospel into the shadowy darkness of paganism by sending a man like himself to bear the Good News in his own body.

The pagan warriors, blinded by rage, mistook the standing stone for the man (who may have been praying on the back side of the stone) and violently whacked off the top of the stone, thinking it to be the man’s head. This probably did not happen. We cannot imagine a sword sharp enough to cut the top off a large stone. And even if we could, the shock of the blow would surely have alerted the warrior to his mistake. Yet these warriors did not see the error of their way until Erc advised them of it.

But the point is not history. The point is Good News. Paganism self-destructs in the presence of the Gospel, preached by men like Brendan and Erc. The light of Christ overcomes the darkness of paganism. The preaching of repentance takes away the darkness of unbelief and puts everything in a new light. Erc’s call for the men to repent found all seven of them (a perfect, and therefore, representative number) submitting to the rule of discipline of Erc’s community.

This also would figure as a historical fact. Many who were led to see the error of their pagan or unbelieving ways attached themselves to the one who led them to salvation, very often becoming a member of a particular community of the faithful.

The important point of this vignette is reduced to a pithy, almost proverbial statement: “Thus Brendan made a man of the stone, and a stone of the man.” The stone became a man in the eyes of the warriors, thus illustrating the deception of their violent, unbelieving way of life. And the man in the stone became a stone, standing on the Rock of Christ for his salvation. It’s not important whether that statement makes perfect sense, only that it be memorable to capture the important details of the story, thus to facilitate re-telling (and, doubtless, further elaboration of details).

Reading Celtic hagiography is a great challenge. We must not dismiss this literature simply because it beggars belief at times. Rather, we must learn to appreciate it as a form of art intended for meanings other than the simple recounting of historical fact. It does some of that, to be sure, but readers of hagiography must always keep its larger and more important purposes in mind if they want to gain the benefit Celtic hagiographers intended.

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