These may be summarised as (St. Leonard’ s 2014):

Here we have an approach to Christian spirituality, which is holistic and integrated; there is no separation between worship and service, activity and meditation; all are one activity – our devotion to God, the creator and provider of all things. Hence, ‘the Eucharist and worship [leitourgia as public service] encompass the whole world and the whole of creation’ (O’ Donell 2014:631).

This we might compare with Turner’ s (1977) key features of primal religion:

This indicates a degree of universalism in religious values, which picks up the idea of the immanence and transcendence of God in uniting all things within Godself. This is reflected in the collection of Celtic folklore, of unclear provenance during the 19th century by Alexander Carmichael in his Carmina gadelica (1900); some sources ‘may Have their roots in the middle Ages, but how deeply, and how far back in time, is by no means clear’ (Meek 2000:71). It may have ‘inherited or received a number of nineteenth century preconceptions of “the Celtic character”’ (Meek 2000:38).

In 409 CE, the Roman legions were recalled from Britain and the Saxons invaded the land. In the ensuing years, Christianity almost disappeared except in those western areas where the Celts retained their irreducible independence, particularly in monastic life as a radical alternative. Along with this in their resistance to the Roman tradition, they constituted ‘a spiritual resistance movement in the Western Isles of Scotland’ (Newell 1997:7). In the early days of Christianity and in a new age renaissance:

This was the process of inculturation. Celtic Christians gathered in monastic communities as bases for their missionary outreach and educational work. Community was a distinctive feature of their Christian life. It was coenobitical – ‘familial, personal and democratic’, although there it had an eremitical element (Woods 1985:244). This was, in part, the outcome of their fiery independence, austere living conditions (‘violent hail and icy snow which was drifting and blowing everywhere’ [Bede v.12:254]; ‘solitary habitation’ [Bede iii.16:135]; Newell [1997:7] refers to the ‘harshness of the elements’; a great drought rendered the land infertile in the years 737 and 741 [Bede Continuations:296, 297]) and love of remote places: ‘The surging waves, also, at times rolling mountains high in a great tempest’ (Adamnan 1857). The island monastic community of Iona was predominantly:

Work was honoured and Columba himself took his fair share whilst encouraging a positive spirit amongst his community:

Life was marked by a strong ‘Protestant’ work ethic and multitasking.

The Celtic church had two historical features that endured. Firstly, it prepared the way for the emergence of the High Middle Ages; second, it survived by inculturating itself into the Western European Roman church. This process began as the result of Pope Celestine's inauguration of a mission to Ireland (431 CE) and the introduction of monasticism into the Celtic churches.

From 795 CE, the Celts were terrorised by Viking raiders from Scandinavia who primarily targeted monasteries. These informal yet effective violent intrusions continued sporadically for three centuries (Falkus & Gillingham 1981:46). They were finally defeated by the rise of civilisation, inculturation and conversion.

St. Patrick's work in Ireland had a considerable impact for Ireland, which was a predominantly rural society at the time. Through the growth of the church, Patrick encouraged the establishment of monasteries, which were endowed by patron families. These endowments included land, which the monks and nuns then worked. In addition, villages and towns often then sprang up around the monasteries:

Thus, Patrick's approach led to the monasteries becoming community centres for local Celtic communities. This had an impact due to its encouragement of agricultural development to feed the growing population, but also in terms of changing the mobility patterns of the population which, in turn, had a double impact on the environment because it changed patterns of settlement and crop cultivation. As mentioned earlier, this aspect of Irish Christianity is important because many Anglo-Saxon missionaries like Boniface also drew on the Iro-Scottish tradition.

Patrick, like his successors, would never have worked alone:

This provided an example that the pagans would observe as well as colleagues like Columba.

In addition to their community use, three aspects of the work of the Celtic missionaries that would serve to attract the pagans besides the gospel were:

All three of these imply an improvement in the material quality of life that conversion and settling around the monasteries would offer. This is strongly reminiscent of the advice Bishop Daniel of Winchester gave to Boniface for his mission strategy:

In monastic Rules in the West and in the lives of monks such as Ursus of Auxerre, manual work is linked with prayer and reading, as an integral part of life. From the 5th century onwards, many of the vast forests, marshes and wastelands of Western Europe were settled and utilised by monks who brought them under cultivation who, since they were independent and self-sufficient, were also interested in labour-saving devices such as water-mills. In men like Ursus and his monks, Christianity contributed to what Lynn White has called ‘The agricultural revolution of the early middle ages’ (cited in Hillgarth 1986:21–22). This led to significant improvements in the quality of rural life.

Monks also imported superior construction skills and methods into the target society. This strategy is strongly reminiscent of the achievement of Benedict Biscop in his mission to the Northumbrian Angles. Bede records that Biscop imported stonemasons from France for the construction of his monastery (Bede 1998:191). This new method of construction must have impressed the Northumbrians, who had never seen such a thing before, as Hillgarth (1986:151) indicates. In the same way, the superior construction method of the monks would speak for itself and help to convince the pagans to convert to a somewhat ‘superior’ way of life, and therefore, to a superior faith. This is a factor that had indeed played a role in Irish and Anglo-Saxon mission successes; for instance, Bede (1998) adds that when Benedict Biscop was building his monastery, he not only imported new building technology in the form of masonry, but also glasswork:

This meant that in time, quarries were established to source the raw materials. This would probably have created an appeal to the Christian way of life for the pagans. In addition to glasswork, Biscop introduced to the Northumbrian Angles books, sacred vessels, vestments, pictures, and other things (Bede 1998:191–193). Fletcher (1999) comments:

Thus, monks imported new types of artifacts that appealed to the senses, as well as others that proved to be useful for daily life, and they taught their converts the skill of making and using them. The monks also often introduced new technology in terms of construction methods and artwork, which in turn had an impact on the way the environment, was manipulated. All of these factors would enable a visually and demonstrably more advanced way of life that was more productive at the same time. Concurrent with this, a disciple of Patrick arrived in Scotland.

St. Columba (521 CE – 597 CE) was a well-known Irish prophetic seer in his day who established a monastic and missionary centre on the Scottish island of Iona in 563 CE. Celtic Christianity was influenced by many miracles which are attributed to Columba regarding nature and the environment; these include the wine which was formed from water (Adamnan ll.i), the bitter fruit of a tree changed into sweet by the blessing of the water (Adamnan ll.ii), a pestilential cloud and the curing of many (Adamnan ll.iv), the cures of various diseases which took place in the Ridge of Ceate (Druimceatt) (Adamnan ll.vi), the danger to the blessed man at Sea and the sudden calm produced by his prayers (Adamnan ll.ix), and how an aquatic monster at Loch Ness was driven off by virtue of the blessed man's prayer (Adamnan ll.xxviii). Menzies (1949:13) expresses the following view: ‘We ought not to make too much of that because it was characteristic of the age he lived in’. According to Menzies (1949):

Columba was an ascetic who believed that austere living was a form of penance for the love of Christ. His love of Iona was derived from its remoteness where the sea offered his community protection until the Viking raids began. Trenholme (1909) describes the origin of the island environment of Iona some 2700 million years ago:

Iona is famous for its Marble Quarry, the first station on the present day weekly pilgrimage round the island (Iona Community n.d.:19). Stephenson (2011), writing over a century later, does not differ in essence:

The result is that of the 2000 acres of land on Iona, only one third can be cultivated. Yet, it has a rich and varied bird life. The sea offers up flounders, rock-cod, saith, lobster, salmon and mackerel. Seals are in evidence, as are whales and porpoises. Adamnan (l:xiii) possibly refers to a shark as a ‘huge monster’ ‘bristling with teeth’ and Baithene, Columba's successor at Iona, ‘raising up both his hands, blessed the sea and the whale’. There was no shortage of vegetation, which included shrubs, herbs and bushes.

Yet, it was a subsistence existence dependent on meat, pork, mutton and fish. The cultivatable land was not deep and could not support root crops. The normal diet consisted of porridge, bread, eggs, fish, pottage of nettles and milk, supplemented on occasion by seal and salmon. Beef and mutton were for Sundays and feast days.

The livers of fish and seals produced oil to light their ‘crusies’ [lamps]. Wool was combed, carded, spun, woven and dyed. Most structures were of wattle and daub. Vessels were made from wood. Tools were fashioned from stone, flint, bronze and iron (Menzies 1949:46–47). Peat provided fuel lit by flint, steel and tinder (Menzies 1949:53). Even the writing materials that produced beautiful illuminated manuscripts were home produced in order to emphasise the glory and praise of God. Life was difficult and the monks shared in it. Columba developed a strict rule, which included:

Work and prayer, as we have seen, were integrated into a holiness code governed by a simple lifestyle. Besides the introduction of technology, one might also name Benedict of Nursia's rule with its maxim of ‘ora et labora’ – the labour aspect of the work of monks often took the form of cultivating the land, indeed of making it arable in the first place. Thus draining swamps and marshes was a frequent endeavour, for example. Other examples include the felling of trees, the introduction of different plants.

The physical community consisted of a group of huts surrounded by earthen ramparts. There was a church, refectory, Columba and the monks’ huts, the hospitium (the ‘guest house’ at Iona was nearly always occupied by all sorts of people, from kings to fugitives from justice, who came to ask counsel of Columba [Menzies 1949:49]). Beyond the boundary rampart were the cowshed, two barns, the smithy, stable, the carpenter's shop, the kiln and the mill. Although Iona was a centre for medical care, there is no mention of an infirmary. Houseleeks, sorrel and marsh-mallows were used in the preparation of drugs. For the 7th century, this was a basic yet sophisticated community.

Columba came to a society dominated by the religion of the druids. This provided an enduring legacy, which Columba sought to integrate with his Christian faith founded on the incarnation: ‘Celtic heathenism was not uprooted; it was modified and many of its practices were “sained” (sanctified through inculturation) by the Cross and thus baptised into Christ’ (Menzies 1949:74). Iona became a missionary centre and the source of the Christianisation of what we now recognise as Scotland. It developed its own distinctive spiritual ethos.

For Scots and many others, ‘to tell the story of Iona is to go back to God and to end in God’ (MacLeod 1913:10). It is holy ground – ‘a very thin place […] where there's no[t] much between Iona and the Lord’ (Underhill 1946:196). It was and is a place of peace and serenity where living so close to the heart of nature people seemed able to penetrate the material world in their apprehension of the spiritual world. This was the traditional burial place of kings.

Celtic Christianity, in all these things and in all these ways, ‘its dynamism and creativity, its art and sense of creation, its seeing God in all things’ (Ferguson 1988), made a deep impression on the Christian west not least in its reverence of the created order.

Love of creation is manifested in the Celtic appreciation of beauty expressed in poems and runes about the natural world. It was also manifested in other art forms:

Here, ‘creation is viewed sacramentally’ (Newell 1997:8); ‘the world is the temple of God’ (Newell 1997:7) where monks and others experienced a ‘deep soul connection with the mystery that sustains creation’ (Silf 2011:76) and where peace and harmony are the main objectives in a ‘crucible of transformation’ (Silf 2011:77) through an enduring and close encounter with the living God (Ps 139). This abiding love of all creation was a hallmark of Celtic faith.

In matters of faith, Celts were influenced by traders coming from the east bringing stories of the lives and witness of the Eastern Fathers, the inspiration of Martin of Tours who provided the inspiration for his disciple, Ninian (360 CE – 432 CE), founder of the mission to Scotland. He advocated adhering to the simplicity of the gospel and an ascetic form of lifestyle promoted by the eastern fathers since the time of Antony (b. 253 CE). Particularly of the Holy Spirit, Celtic Christians integrated the history of salvation into their own distinctive history by:

This suggests the meeting place of the immanent and the transcendent. Celtic Christianity even used the environment to promote its ascetic lifestyle as spiritual training and discipline. As a severe penitential rite, one ascetic, Petroc, retreated to the banks of a river where:

On another occasion, one weary monk having spent the day harvesting shared what was the common experience of his colleagues:

They were governed by bishops, abbots and peregrini (itinerant saints). Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, bishops had a roving itinerant commission rather than a territorial one. This freed them for missionary outreach. Abbots were in charge of monasteries and peregrini sought out remote places to live. They learned from their eastern roots (Leech 1994:46) that there was no ‘detached’ theology but it was ‘an encounter with the living God […] of solitude […] constantly related to an authentic living situation’ (Leech 1994:32). This was integrated into family life:

Here there is the expectation of a sufficiency to meet life's needs:

In addition, there is ample reward for the hallowing of creation and its conclusion with a rest day:

This was a life sustained by agriculture, fishing, warfare (defence), fine arts, leisure and devotion. Due to their belief in the transfiguration and resurrection, they believed that humanity was sacred and that holiness was pervasive in creation and the environment, even in the lowliest task in the home within the community. God is given the glory:

God's presence is manifested in all things, in the majesty of creation:

God was the protector of his creation and humanity as can be seen in the life of the Irish Patrick (b. 389 CE) who is thought to have written:

God's protection was sought for day and night:

No distinction is made between care of the family and the domestic family animals. A rather romantic view of creation is to be found on the epitaph of the tomb of King Caedwalla (d. 689):

In all of this praise, we need to be reminded that the environment was harsh and the strong faith of isolated groups of Christians kept Christianity alive in this western part of the Roman Empire: ‘When crops failed, there was terrible hardship, and the lives of fishermen were often lost at sea’ (Newel 1997:7). On the land God's blessing was no less vital in sowing:

Moreover, in reaping:

Then he sees the process through to the harvest;

The whole family took up the strain of joy and thanksgiving and praised the God of the harvest, who gave them corn and bread, food and flocks, wool and clothing, health and strength, and peace and plenty. Despite this, the monks became adept fishermen as well as agriculturists. Their God was all-powerful. He lived in and amongst them. By drawing a circle, or caim, around themselves each day and seeking his protection, they had no need to live in fear:

Celtic runes (inscriptions including intricate intertwining lines signifying the continuity of life in the present and the hereafter) and poems symbolise this profound reverence for the environment. A 7th century CE poem emphasises this spiritual sensitivity:

There is no hierarchy of reverence here – all are venerated equally. This creation includes all humanity whom he has endowed with intelligence and freedom, whilst the animals have been given more power in many cases.

Cattle were highly regarded. The herding runes are examples of purely pastoral poems. They are sung by the people as they send their flocks to the pastures, or tend them on the hills, glens, or plains, but everywhere is the simple belief that the King of shepherds watches over men and flocks now as of old – ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever’:

Bride is St. Bridget of Ireland, venerated in the Eastern orthodox tradition, whose feast day, 01 February, marked the beginning of spring, lambing and lactation in cattle. However, prayers were said on behalf of all domestic animals:

In addition, for those not yet born:

The animals do not only produce food but also clothing:

The act of hunting was governed by spiritual and ethical principles. A young man was consecrated before he went out to hunt. He was anointed with oil, a bow was placed in his hand, and he was required to stand with bare feet on the bare grassless ground. Many conditions were imposed on the young man, which he was required to observe throughout life. He was not to take life wantonly. He was not to kill a bird sitting, or a beast lying down, and he was not to kill the mother of a brood, or the mother of a suckling. Nor was he to kill either an unfledged bird or a suckling beast, unless it might be the young of a bird, or of a beast, of prey.

The entire animal kingdom is venerated. Adamnan (I.xxxiii) refers to the protection extended ‘to the little island where our young seals are brought forth and nurtured’. A robber died as a result of this threat. Yet, Columba of Iona sent ‘a fat sheep and six pecks of corn as a last gift’ (Adamnan I.xxxiii) which were used at his funeral:

This has implications as Pelagius (390 CE – 418 CE) (in Robson 1998) makes clear:

Hence:

Celtic Christianity was marked by its political character seeking justice and charity. Celts were social activists through the media of pastoral care and spiritual development. This included preaching, celebration of the sacraments and spiritual direction with its distinctive emergence of the anamchara or ‘soul friend’ as the source of spiritual direction and cure of souls (Thurian 1958:69). The development of the Celtic penitentials (codes of penances and ecclesiastical penalties) also contributed to common spiritual welfare, which ‘represented a liberal effort to ensure some measure of equality in pastoral practice’, balanced by the ‘irreducible Celtic tendency toward independence of the spirit’ (Woods 1985:248). This was distributive justice and it was maintained in the political sphere:

Social justice was equally prominent, as is seen in the treatment of women, some of whom occupied superior positions to men as in the case of Bridget (452–524) and Hilda (618–680), abbess of Whitby (Robson 1998:190–191) who exercised ecclesiastical authority. Children who were fostered or were orphans were also honoured. Hospitality was a key precept of the Celts:

This was a distinct feature of life on Iona where:

Derived from the example of the eastern monastics, this warmth and openness showed an appreciation of the welcome of the stranger as the welcome offered to Christ himself. Adamnan (1.ii) records the arrival of Finten on Iona soon after Columba's death (597 CE): ‘he was only received at first with the hospitality given to every unknown stranger’. Strict as the rules on fasting were, they were set aside in order to render hospitality as with the arrival of Aidan (Adamnan 1.xx): ‘Thou art the door of the chief of hospitality’ (Carmichael 1900:9).

On the last night of the old year, a Hogmanay song was offered:

Such was the expectation of the visitor.