The Cross of Saint Andrew - the blue and white emblem of
Scotland's patron saint - is believed to be the oldest
continuously used flag in the world. Simple in its
design, it has withstood centuries of political and
religious turmoil, and remained the standard for
Christian Scots, as well as those who have forgotten the
reason their banner bears the Cross. (For the record,
Saint Andrew was martyred on an X-shaped cross). Like
the people for whom it flies, Saint Andrew's Cross has
proven its resilience and strength.
The endurance of Saint Andrew's Cross is seen in the
presence it still has in Scotland's largest emigree
nation - Canada. In a country whose first Prime Minister
was a MacDonald, whose first woman Prime Minister was a
Campbell, and which boasted no fewer than nine Prime
Ministers of Scottish ancestry (only five Prime
Ministers were French), it is not a stretch of the
imagination to suggest that Scotland still has at least
a pint or two of its own running through the bloodstream
of Canadian culture. Official ceremonies, academic
awards, university names and traditions, along with the
pipers who lead their processions - all these have been
inherited from the practices of the Celts of Scotland,
through their Canadian children.
The Cross of Saint Andrew can be found on 5 Canadian
provincial flags, either within the Union Jack, or in
the mirrored image of the flag of Canada's New
Scotland, Nova Scotia. Yet those who trace their
roots from that chilly isle to this great land do not
often read back far enough to discover the essence of
Scotland's Celtic roots, roots that reflected the
faith of Saint Andrew for nearly one thousand years in a
Celtic Church that was vibrant, independent, and fully
Orthodox.
For those who entertain new-agey illusions about the
Celtic Church, there is bad news: Celtic Christian
worship was in most ways very similar to the life of
Orthodox parishes today. What is very clear, Celtic
Christians had far less in common with the free-wheeling
nature worship one might find in certain Protestant or
Roman Catholic circles than it did with the spiritual
life of Greek monasteries in Byzantium. This shouldn't
surprise us: the Greeks and the Celts had the same faith
and liturgical life, while the Christian Celts and the
modern western confessions, distorted by the Great
Schism and the Protestant Reformation, do not.
In his classic book, Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic
Church, F.E. Warren thoroughly outlines this common
spiritual inheritance. Concrete examples are numerous.
Celtic Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, the
universal observance of the Church in the first
millennium. They rejected the claims to universal
authority that Popes of Rome often claimed over Church
decisions in custom, belief, and practice, and resisted
innovative changes to early Church practices, including
the Church calendar. The Celts observed a highly
ascetical life, strongly shaped by the widespread
presence of monasteries, where monks and non-monastics
alike would say the services of the Hours on a daily
basis.
The presence of married priests among the Celts did not
arise out of a special dispensation from Rome, but
rather, from the Celtic Church's independence from Rome.
Around 400 A.D., the Celtic Church was large enough to
attract the attention of Saint Jerome, who noted that
the Celts were in communion with Rome, Gaul, and Africa
- part of the universal witness to the One Faith. At the
Sixth Ecumenical Council, Saint Wilfred affirmed
the Orthodoxy of the Celts, despite the concerns of
their critics that some local Celtic customs were at
variance with Rome. Saint Columbanus, the great
champion of the independence of the Celtic Church,
repeatedly upbraids the Roman Church for its claims to
universal authority - the timeless Orthodox defense
against the extension of papal powers. "Let no bishop
leave their diocese," he thunders, "lest he interfere
with the affairs of the Church."
Saint Wilfred
Saint Columbanus
Synaxis of All Saints who
shone forth in Scotland
Saint Donald
Saint Columba
Saint Cummian
Saint Donan
Saint Ninian
The artistic life of the Celtic Church shows a warm
interplay between the images of the universal Orthodox
witness, and local Celtic traditions. Architectural
decoration, ribbons in stone carvings, and giant initial
letters in manuscripts reflect a North African
influence, a fact not lost on most modern authorities on
the Celts. The use of icons, and iconostases, were seen
in various Celtic churches, including the burial place
of Saint Brigid, the
great Celtic saint. Celtic depictions of Christ as a
child, wrapped in mummy-like swaddling bands, reflect
Egyptian and Byzantine iconography. Like Orthodox
bishops today, Celtic bishops used staves bearing the
heads of snakes, like Moses in the desert. We can only
imagine how much more we would know if the persecutions
of Diocletian (305-313AD) had not destroyed many
churches in the Celtic diaspora on the European
continent (the earliest Celtic Church dated from around
200 A.D).
Liturgically, the Celtic Liturgy will seem familiar
to Orthodox Christians, which is not a surprise in light
of the fact that it represents one of the oldest
Orthodox liturgies. The celebrant faced the altar,
behind an icon screen, offering up the sacrifice of the
Holy Mysteries of Communion with both elements together
in the chalice. Communion was almost certainly delivered
on a spoon; many such spoons have
been found. A little water was added to the
chalice before Communion, just as it is in the Liturgy
of Saint John Chrysostom. There was even use of a small
Eucharistic knife or spear, used for dividing Communion
before it was placed in the chalice.
The souls of the departed were uniformly commemorated at
the Liturgy, with long lists of saints, both local and
universal, named at the services (there is some
suggestion that the Celts did not ask for specific
prayers from the saints; their general intercessions
were assumed). The episcopal blessing, at Liturgy and
perhaps other times, was bestowed in the manner of the
Greek Church, with the fingers of the celebrant in the
form of the Christogram (IC XC):
A variety
of other liturgical parallels exist. Women were always
veiled in the Celtic Church for the reception of Holy
Communion. It is known that the Celts served at baptism an
unction with blessed oil (as well as chrismation), and
performed a ritual washing afterwards, much like the Slavic
churches do to this day (the Greek custom of covering a
newly baptized child with olive oil is an expansion on this
practice, which works very well in Mediterranean climates,
but which finds its limits in chilly northern climes). There
is some suggestion that the Celts celebrated the Liturgy
without wearing shoes, in the manner of the Copts of Egypt
(just like the North American saint of our time, Saint John
Maximovich). Noting the
Celtic monastic connection with the Copts, this would
come as no surprise.
It should not surprise us to find these similarities, since
in comparing the Celtic Church to the Church in Byzantium,
or to Orthodox Christianity today, we are in fact comparing
the Church to itself. The Orthodox Christianity of the
Apostles, of the Ecumenical Councils, of the Byzantines, the
Slavs, the Arabs, and the Celts - it is one faith, not many.
The Celtic Church was astonishingly similar to Orthodox life
today - because it was Orthodox.
The inheritance of Saint Andrew, whose proud banner waves in
front of many a Presbyterian church in Canada, is not to be
found inside these churches. Nor is the bold heart of the
Celtic Christians of Scotland to be found at Burns dinners
or chip shops or the Lodge of the Scottish Rite.
The banner of the Celts is an
Orthodox Christian one; it always has been. And
it is a banner that flies proudly in the hearts of hundreds
of thousands of Canadians, who still await the
rediscovery of their own Orthodox Celtic roots, which cannot
be found in the western confessions. These confessions
of the last thousand years would have been virtually
unrecognizable to the Celts of a millennium ago - the same
Celtic Christians who would feel right at home in any
Orthodox church in North America today.
Canada's first Scottish leader, Prime Minister John A.
MacDonald, lies buried in the cemetery of a parish church in
Kingston, Ontario, the same building that is home to the
Orthodox Community of Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Perhaps it is
in such a representation that we can rediscover the heritage
of the founders of our own nation, its own enduring and
brave Orthodox roots, put down in Celtic lands by the same
Orthodox monastic saints who once made pilgrimage across the
ocean to our own land. For it is only these roots that will
keep Saint Andrew's banner long and gloriously waving - not
just in our hearts, but in our lives.
____________________________________
Background
note: The St. Andrew's cross is a distinctive shape because
the Apostle Andrew, who would later become the patron saint
of Scotland, asked that he not be crucified on a cross of
the same shape as that on which Jesus Christ was executed.
(See the Great Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church, November
30th)
The legend of the birth of the Scottish flag takes place
circa AD 832 near
Athelstaneford in East Lothian. Angus mac Fergus, King of
the Picts, and Eochaidh of Dalriada faced off against the
army of Athelstane, King of Northumbria, comprising Angles
and Saxons. On the eve of the battle, it is said that the
Scots saw the clouds in the evening sky arranged in a
formation exactly like that of St. Andrew's cross. The Scots
saw this as a harbinger of their victory. When they were
victorious the following day, they adopted a white St.
Andrew's cross on a field of azure blue as their national
standard.
Father Geoffrey Korz,
(Dormition, 2007)
=========================================================================
