Speaker 1: But there is something to be said for the idea
that our kingdom is not of this world, that we
belong to a heavenly city. And the thing that I
want to argue is that if you don't have this sense,
the sense of belonging to heavenly city, then you won't
have universal history. And that actually the sense of alienation
to this world is the thing which is necessary, paradoxically
necessary foreign culturation, our longing for paradise and desire to
forsake this world paradoxically results in saints who establish the world.
When you say something like the Saints uphold the world,
this is what that means.
Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Begel.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone.
Speaker 4: We are back with an episode of Universal History with
Richard Rowland. As you see, sometimes it takes a little
longer for us to get to these episodes, but it's
actually because we're doing all the good stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Symbolic World Press.
Speaker 4: Richard has been working in the background, you know, he's
really been managing the company, putting things together, trying to
get people's books to them, you.
Speaker 3: Know, getting the courses together.
Speaker 2: Like there.
Speaker 4: We have so many great things going on We're really
excited about the spot.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason it's been a while since
we've done one of these videos is because we just
finished the purgatorial course that's also which was an amazing
experience and is if you like this sort of thing.
It's just us talking for eighteen hours about Purgatorio, and
I think it's so far of the classes that we've done,
it was my favorite. I mean, we got to talk
about so many amazing things in that course, and there's
so many great insights that I think that really surprised everybody,
and I got new things going through it with you
as well.
Speaker 2: So and we do plan.
Speaker 1: I know a couple of people have been like, Okay,
don't forget about Perry d So we want to make
sure that's on the schedule. So this is on the
schedule for early next year, so just to stay tuned
for that. We have some other exciting courses in the
new year that I'm really eager to announce, but I'm
going to restrain myself for now. But we have just
a lot of good things coming. So one of the
cool courses that we have coming up that's starting in
mid November is Martin Shaw's course on Christian wonder Tales,
And let me just say that this course is going
to be absolutely amazing. It's going to be four sessions
with Martin, and he's going to be He teaches in
a very different way than I teach, which is to say,
he's gonna basically like get you inside of the story.
So one of the things we're gonna be kind of
talking around the story of Saint Brendan the Navigator today
as part of our Universal History series and especially as
part of the mini series where we're kind of focused
on Ireland. But what I want to say is that
I'm not going to steal any of Doctor Shaw's thunder.
In fact, it would be impossible for me to do so,
because no matter how I tell the story, he's going
to tell it better. I'm going to talk about the story,
but He's going to tell you the story. So hopefully
this is just maybe what's everybody's appetite. I am personally
really looking forward to that course. We're also the course
has an insanely amazing logo that Heather designed, and we
went to Heather and Martin were like, could we make
this into a T shirt? Because I would wear that
so we're gonna have We're gonna have merch for that course,
which I'm really excited about. So okay, so we're gonna
be talking about the boy Saint Brendan the Navigator today.
Probably not the entire thing, because the actual voyage is incredibly.
Speaker 2: Long, I think, much longer than anybody remembers.
Speaker 1: But one of the questions that I've gotten several times
recently is what book of Irish saints do I keep
referring to? And I thought I'd shared it before, but
if not, here it is. It's just called The Lives
of Irish Irish Saints. It's in three volumes, edited by
Charles Plumber. They have these green covers and no pictures
at all. I mean, this is the horrible thing about academia.
It's published by Oxford Clarendon Press. The horrible thing about
academia is that people collect the most wondrous things they
can and then make them look as deliberately boring as possible.
And someday we're going to fix this, Jonathan. Oh yeah,
someday we're going to do our own collection of the
Lives of the Saints of the British Isles, and it's
going to be done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have the best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: So okay, So the thing that I wanted to talk
about today to kind of introduce this is actually to,
let's say, introduce a corrective to the universal history discussion.
Speaker 2: And so I started this, this entire series.
Speaker 1: Which has been going for like almost three years now,
and people somebody asked me the other day, is like,
how many more videos are you going to do? And
I said, I can do unlimited videos on this. I'm
never going to stop, Like I'll stop when Jonathan like
you know, smothers me.
Speaker 2: With a pillow, like we're going to just keep making
these forever. But no, the the.
Speaker 1: The very first video in this series we introduced with
this idea that sort of as I said, you know,
I said something like Constantine saved everything or something like that,
and and you were like, oh, Richard Jesus saved everything.
Like we've got to be a little you know, But
I that was a corrective itself, right, I'm I'm you know,
like Constantine is sort of the big bad guy. And
one of the purposes of this project is basically like
an appologia for Constantine and for other people who build civilizations,
found cultures, established dynasties, all these different things.
Speaker 2: And you've talked a ton, even really recently.
Speaker 1: The video you did on Saint Peter is another great
example of the ways that you know, whenever we establish
these hierarchies in the world, they have these upsides in
these downsides, and they have these two different kind of
aspects they can take. We actually talked about this a
lot in our Inferno and Purgatorial courses as well, since
this is one of the main things that Dante is
constantly thinking about and trying to like work through what's
gone wrong with it in his own time. But then
also why is it still necessary? But all of that
to say when somebody says something like, oh, well, you know,
Christ's kingdom is not of this world, which is certainly
something you find a lot of the martyrs saying, especially
during the Great Persecution. Christ's kingdom is of this world,
and we should be focused on heavenly things and not
on any earthly city.
Speaker 2: I mean, as I'm recording.
Speaker 1: This, we're in the middle of a yet again, the
most important election of my lifetime. I'm told every election
is the most important election in my lifetime. And I'll
just admit that I really struggle actually being a Christian
and being involved in politics, and part of it is
just a certain amount of cynicism that I sort of carry.
And so you can go too far and just say
Christian shouldn't be involved in politics at all, which seems
to not be right. But there is something to be
said for the idea that our kingdom is not of
this world, that we belong to a heavenly city. And
the thing that I want to argue is that if
you don't have this, if you don't have this sense,
the sense of belonging to heavenly city, then you won't
have universal history.
Speaker 2: And that actually the sense.
Speaker 1: Of alienation to this world is the thing which is necessary,
paradoxically necessary foreign culturation.
Speaker 4: And I think this is the paradox that you know,
we've presented many times on this channel in different guises,
which is that if you don't hold if you try
to hold on to something as if you own it,
then you lose it. Whereas if you are willing to
let it go and to or offer it up to
God is a good way of thinking about it, then
you actually get the best of it, you know. And
so you know, obviously Christ of that about your life.
But it's a way of thinking about the everything, all
the identities and all the things you participated.
Speaker 1: Let me just pick on my own tribe for a moment, right, So,
among converts to Orthodoxy in the United States, there's a
lot of talk about inculturation and you could even say
a certain degree of anxiety about it.
Speaker 2: A lot of anxiety about.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, when are we going to get like really
like American music, as if there's like one, you know,
American music, and so anyway there and there are attempts
that are constantly made at this about sort of trying
to figure out and you can see anxiety in people
where they're constantly worried about, well, what's it mean to
be like a Western person and an American and then
also part of the Eastern Orthodox Church and all of
the things that you know come with it. And one
of the things, one of the ways this can manifest
is that people get a little hasty about trying to
solve the problem, and they get a little hasty about
you say, like baptizing various elements or things from other
religious traditions, stuff like that. And I just I hear
have to say I'm going to say this. I have
to insist upon the fact that Christians don't baptize cultures,
they don't baptize practices. They baptize persons. And we have
very often this language is kind of slipped in where
we talk about, oh, we just took this custom and
baptized it, you know, by analogy. But I think it's
important to insist on this idea that we baptize persons
because it's through holy people, it's through us living lives
of asceticism and holiness. It's through the Saints that our culture,
whatever it's supposed to be, whatever is good in it,
whatever can be carried with it into the life of Christ,
that that's going to grow and be made manifest.
Speaker 2: But this is a.
Speaker 1: Slow process, and as I said, paradoxically, it is one
that only begins to work when we embrace our alienation
to this world and our desire for paradise. So our
last video was on this sort of the surprising Irish
origins of purgatory, and then we went into that and
did you know, a six week course on Dante's Purgatorio
where we revealed, among other things, the secret resting place of.
Speaker 2: Arthur for people who if you, if you, if.
Speaker 1: You watch the chorus, you know, well, one of the
things that is true about all traditional accounts of purgatory
that or or or things that are like purgatory right
now you not even you know purgatory specifically as as
the doctrine now taught by the Roman, Conthlic Catholic Church.
But but but these these kind of uh, these data
which have come to us in the usually in the
form of you know, apocalyptic visions and dreams and you know, uh,
the visitation of dead loved ones and so forth, right,
which which which? Which accounts for a very large body
of human experience over the course of the last several
hundred years. And one of the things that all of
these traditional accounts that we talked about in the purgatorial class,
that they all have in common is that at the
end of purgatory, or at the bottom of purgatory, or
at the top of purgatory, depending on what your scheme is,
there's the earthly paradise.
Speaker 2: And the earthly paradise is sort of the last stop.
Speaker 1: It's a refreshment before you move on to the true paradise.
And what it seems to be is that all of
this fixation on the afterlife, and you could say that
at its heart it really has a longing for paradise,
and that these accounts cast that longing forward into the
journey of the soul after death. But this desire for paradise,
this is what sent men out into again, very paradoxically,
it's what set men out into the wilderness of the
Egyptian desert to confront the demons head on and to
confront the darkness with their own hearts. That same desire
for paradise is what made Constantine build the first Christian city.
And what I want to talk about today is the
way in which this desire for paradise manifests. This manifests
itself in the life of Saint Brendan of Clonfer, who
is considered one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland. So
there's these twelve great bishop saints of Ireland and they're
called the twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Speaker 2: And they're the sort of the ones upon whom you
could say the.
Speaker 1: Manifestation that the phenomena of an Irish church is founded.
And I think I said this a couple of videos ago,
but it's several historians have said that it's not an
exaggeration to say that the Church of Britain and Gaul
during the sixth century is fundamentally an Irish church. It's
founded by Irish missionaries. It's founded by these Irish monastic bishops.
So in the West, not every bishop has been a monastic,
they're usually not, but in the Irish practice and there
probably is here. One of the things that I have
not yet really talked about is whether or not there
is a continuity.
Speaker 2: Between you could say, like the.
Speaker 1: Egyptian Desert and Egyptian Christianity and Celtic Christianity. The evidence
seems to be that there is, but it's really easy
to overstate the case. And I think we're just now
sort of maybe kind of sorting out, you know, what
things are similar just because they're both Christian aesthetic traditions,
and what things are similar because maybe there's some direct influence.
But certainly one of the things that seems to be
an element of direct influence in the Irish Church is
the fact that all the Irish bishops are monastics, and
so you have people building Christian communities not in the
center of a city like they would do in Constantinople,
but rather in around a monastery. So what happens is
you have a holy man and then community forms around him,
and then the city forms around the monastic community. And
that's the model for how churches are planted and how
they grow in the in the Irish Church of.
Speaker 2: The fifth and sixth century.
Speaker 1: So Saint Brendan is born somewhere in the second half
of the fifth century, I believe, and he is a
remarkable young man in many ways.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 1: You know, the sort of the sort of well, let
me just let me just introduce him, because I think
that we have some ideas of Saint Brendan, and he's
in his little boat and sanely across, you know, alone
on the on the sea, and it's all very picturesque
and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But I want us to under.
Speaker 1: In order to kind of make the point that I
want to make, we need to understand how Saint Brendan
was conceived of by the Irish. So this is from
this is from an eighth century life of Saint Brendan.
Then then of this company of Happy and Blessed ones
that is one of the twelve as well.
Speaker 2: Let me back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: He says, now, there are many of the patriarchs and
the prophets and the apostles of the Lord of the Elements,
the Lord of Elements, that's an Irish name for good
of whom this oracle is spoken in the Old and
the New Testaments. That they were happy, just and perfect
in their desire and longing to fulfill the divine command
and teaching, and who had the secret fear of the
Lord perfectly in their hearts and minds, without thought for
anything else but that alone. So there's a connection here
between the twelve Patriarchs of the Old Testament, the twelve
Apostles in the New Testament, and then the twelve Apostles
of Ireland. Right one, then, of this company and blessed
ones in the New Testament, is he whose festival and
commemoration falls at this season on the sixteenth day of June,
to wit Brendan, the Sun of Finnlug. This Brendan was
the head of the belief and the devotion of a
great part of the world, like faithful Abraham, a pre
eminently prophetic psalmist, like David the son of Jesse, a
distinguished sage, like Solomon the son of David, a lawgiver
to hundreds like Moses the son of Amram, A prolific
translator like Jerome, A wondrous thinker like Augustine. And this
is going to trigger some people. A great and eminently
universal student like Origin. A virgin like John the Lord's
bosom foster Ling, which is this is an eighth entry
there wrote this. Yeah, A virgin like John the Lord's
bosom foster Ling. An evangelist like Matthew, a teacher like Paul,
a chief apostle, gentle and forgiving like Peter. An Aramite,
that is, a hermit like John the Baptist. A commentator
like Gregory of Rome. That's Saint Gregory the Dialogius, a
prudent and wondrous emissary by sea and land, like Noah
in the Ark. For as Noah raised the ark. Of course,
you might just be thinking, oh, he sailed, Noah sailed,
that's the comparison. But no, it says, far as Noah
raised the arc high above the noisy waves of the flood,
so will Brendan, the son of Finnlog raise his monks
and his family, hopefully that is us, high above the
fire of doom, so that no fog or spark or
smoke shall reach them through the power and fair devotion
of Brendan, the son of Finnlog. So that's how he's
introduced in every single one of the patriarchs and the
prophets and the great fathers of the Church come again
in fifth century Ireland.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the stories of his childhood themselves are quite remarkable,
and there's all the sort of the wondrous stuff that
you would expect in one of these kinds of wonder tales.
When at his baptism three Actually, today, everybody, we're going
to play my favorite game, which, as you all know,
is throwing information at Jonathan that he's never heard before
and then asking him to interpret it on the fly.
So one of the things I should really just send
you notes beforehand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the things.
Speaker 1: And maybe you have a take on this, maybe you don't.
Maybe it's just one of these kind of like wondrous
things that happened in the story.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that happens is.
Speaker 1: When he's baptized that out of the font three and
they are three gelding rams. They're called what's the word
for that, man, I can't remember the word right now.
There's a special there's a special word for for gelding rams. Yeah,
for a gelding ram, like an old there's like an
old English word for this. It's like waiters or something
like that. Anyway, three of them come leaping out of
the font and they basically become his baptismal feet. So
the idea is like you bring an offering to church
when a child was being baptized, and these three rams
come leaping up out of the baptismal font, which is
like pays his baptistm.
Speaker 3: Pays and do they eat the rams?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the implication. I mean, you can't do anything
else with the guilding ram, right.
Speaker 3: It's castira.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, I don't know if you have thoughts
about that.
Speaker 5: I didn't even but I think I think I think
that it's it's definitely it's related to the idea of
the Miracle of the five thousand, in the sense of
this notion that you kind of are able to gather
out of the sea.
Speaker 3: It's something like fishing, right some ways.
Speaker 4: It's it's the idea that when you go when when
you go down in the water, when the Christian goes
down into the water, they bring up the fish or
like the miraculous fish of.
Speaker 3: Saint Peter. I think that's what it refers to.
Speaker 4: It's like Christians are able to gather new things from
the from the waters, and so I think it's also
probably related to the fact that he then finds a
new land, because that new land is something that he
gathered out of the chaos of the of the west,
you know, that was able to kind of discover this
new place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's all related to this idea of of
going into the deep and then bringing out a treasure.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's definitely a very strong association for
people who aren't familiar with like ancient baptismal rites.
Speaker 2: In the ancient.
Speaker 1: Baptismal prayers, there is a very very strong association between
the baptismal waters and then on the one hand, the
primordial waters of chaos over which the Holy Spirit hovers
right to draw you know, creation ab out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also like the flood, right, the flood and the
idea of like the serpent and the water or the
demon in the water, like there's there's a dragon down there, right,
And so that's one of the things that in these
ancient baptismal prayers, we would ask God to actually crush
the head of the serpent in the water, right, So
basically take this thing that has this potential for chaos
and then make it a place of new life and
where identity can be conferred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think I think that's what it is.
Speaker 4: And it's like it's also like this idea of like
gather bringing food, like bringing food up from the.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned this before, but a lot of
Irish miracles are specifically food related. They have to do
with a miraculous meal being provided in some way. There's
a lot of other fun stories about, you know, Saint Brendan,
all these kinds of things that maybe you would expect
in a story like this. He when Brendan is young,
he decides he wants to spend his life traveling around
the island and basically learning the rule of the Saints
of Ireland in other words, traveling to all these monastic
communities and collecting what is their rule of life. And
so he does this and there's a lot of you know,
as he travels from place to place, he rights wrongs,
He you know, restores the dead to life. He one
of his miracles involves a man who's traveling with him,
who's being hunted by his enemies, and he says, go
and hide under this stone, like it's under the standing stone,
like an old pagan standing stone.
Speaker 2: Go hide under the stone.
Speaker 1: And then the enemies come along and they look at
the stone and to them, to their eyes, it looks
like this man they've been hunting, and so they strike
the top of the stone off like and the top
of the stone falls off as though it's this man's head.
And then the man comes out and sat Brendan says,
you know, you have to do penants to become monks now,
and so you know, just like stories like this, and
a lot of them are as usually in this kind
of literature. The interesting thing about this kind of hagiography
is that the emphasis is, you could say, the rhetorical
flourish is put on extolling the virtue of the saint
and then but the miracles themselves are just told in
this very matter of fact kind of a way, which
is maybe counterintuitive to the way that most of us would.
Speaker 2: Write the story.
Speaker 1: Now, right, yeah, so long story short, As he's traveling around,
he finally comes to so after having written the whole
rule of the saints of Ireland and put their together,
the customs and their devotions. And this is sort of
the you say, the mythic source for the rule of
life that was followed by Celtic monastics, you know, is
Saint Brendan's rule, the same way that you have like
the rule of Saint Benedict in the West, or you know,
Saint Basil in the East, or something like that. But
after he's been writing all this, he comes back to
the bishop and it says he received orders from him,
which is to say, he's ordained, he's made a priest
or a bishop. And there at that service, the gospel
reading that day is the same gospel reading that seems
to launch a lot of these ancient monastics on the career,
which is whoever does not give up father.
Speaker 2: And mother, houses and lands, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And it says that it was after this therefore, so
this is after he's kind of been traveling around Ireland
and working on establishing and building up the Irish Church.
Ireland is his home right. His parents are very di
a very devout chieftain and his wife. He has a brother,
his foster mother was this monastic woman. And anyway, so
he has a family. Ireland's his home. And it says
but after he heard this gospel passage, it was after this, therefore,
that they grew up in his heart a great love
to the Lord. And he desired to leave his land
and his country, his parents, and his patrimony. And he
requested earnestly of the Lord that he would grant him
some secret country, far removed from all men. And so
at this point Brendan starts looking for this place, for
this secret country, and he starts moving, you know, more
and more, you could say, towards the edge of the island.
And this is when he first meets a small group
of monks who had once traveled to the land of
the Saints. And with a blessing from an angel, he
is granted to undertake this task. So Brendan takes sixty
men and three boats and they.
Speaker 2: Embark.
Speaker 1: Actually the story of how they get together originally it's
fifty seven fifty six men, fifty six men, three boats.
So they make the boats, and we get all the
language about the making of the boats. And if you're
attented to this sort of thing, there's similarity in the
language for the making of the boats, and then the
account of there the building of the arc in Genesis,
but also some of the same phrases for the building
of the Tower of Babel huh, which I just thought
was very interesting. And people who've been paying attention to
your work for a long time should, I think be
able to understand the similarity between these two things. But
just talking about like bitchumen and mortar and all these
different things, like there's some similarity in the language. So
he gets his boat ready, and then after this it
says he saw three months of his family coming to
towards him, and they fell on their knees before him
and said, Oh, Holy Father, for the love of God,
let us go with you where thou goest, or else
we will starve ourselves, for we have vowed to make
our pilgrimage with thee as long as we live. And
Brendan says, go ahead and come under the boat, because
one of you is doing this out of the right
motivation and you're going to find salvation, and the other
two of you are going to hell.
Speaker 4: So does he implied that they're going to die on
the trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not just die, but lose their souls, lose
their souls. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then now he's got he's up to fifty nine people.
And then just as they're about to launch. You're going
to love this, a jester shows up, and like a fool,
like a jester, he shows up and he says, take
me with THEE for God's sake. Pity my wretchedness that
I may go with thee. None of these like threats
or pleadings or look at how I am. Just take
me with you for God's sake. And Brendan says, took
him with him for God's sake, and embarked in his
boats with sixty men, as the writings say, and then
we get some poetry.
Speaker 2: Now to this is when we actually make.
Speaker 4: One, especially that it's the last one and it's like
just before leaving. You can almost imagine that he would
have like the scene of him the boat's actually leaving
and like in the movies, like he jumps on the boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I mean again, if somebody were to, I don't know,
animate this or something, you know, it's not impossible to
think about future projects, maybe artistic projects. You can sort
of like see him with his his you know, it
probably didn't wear like a jester, like a Renaissance gester's cap,
but you can almost see him like there, he's tattered
and his motley is.
Speaker 3: All it's like oiled everything, you know, kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so and you know, last guy in the
boat comes with the eleventh hour, right, the last worker
in the vineyard, right.
Speaker 2: And so they set out on the sea.
Speaker 1: And then we come to the next thing that you'll
get to tell me the symbolism of on the fly.
Speaker 2: Are you ready? Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Always.
Speaker 1: Brendan bade farewell to the saints of Arun and left
a blessing with them, and they sailed on due west
across the ocean, and saw after a while, at a
distance from them, a notable fair island, and they steered
their boats toward it till they reached the brink of it,
and they saw the shore.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 3: I said, I know the scene, but yeah, keep okay, okay, good.
Speaker 1: They saw on the shore was full of hideous furry
mice as large as cats. And they brethren asked Brendan,
what do yonder mice want? Said they Their desire.
Speaker 2: Is to eat and devour us, said Brendan, So you
have these big mice as big as cats. Now do
you know what happens next?
Speaker 3: No? That?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah I did not.
Speaker 1: I've I've read the So this is, like I said,
this is an eighth century vita. There's the navagazzio like
the Navigate the Voyage of Saint Brendan as a text,
and I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's in there. I read it last year.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the island of mice, and I certainly
don't remember the detail about the jester. So this is
isle of mice, giant mice as big as cats, and
the the and you can sort of like imagine they're
all kind of gathered there on the shoreline. And the
men who are with Saint Brendan they ask him, like,
what's going on here at? And Brenda says, they desire
to devour us. And then the craziest thing happens, and
that is Brendan turns to the gester and says to him, arise,
take the body and blood of Christ and depart to
the eternal life. For I hear the song of a
calling thee to them. And then the mind of the
jester rejoiced at the saying, and he said, ah Lord,
what good have I done? That I should be taken
to heaven so speedily? And so he takes communion and
he lays down on the boat and he dies. And
it says that the Jester is carried up into heaven
by all nine orders of angels, carry him from the
boat up into paradise. And then Brendan takes the body
and throws it on the shore. Yeah, and the mice
devour it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now I understand what it's about.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just the last little detail and then you
can explain this one to us. It says the company
Brendan buried his bones afterwards, and his name was inscribed
in the martyrology.
Speaker 2: For he was a glorious martyr.
Speaker 4: Wait a glorious okay, now martyr Okay, Okay, that one
threw me off there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the jester who sort of lays down text commune,
lays down the boat, gives up his life voluntarily, and
then his body is eaten by the shall we say,
rodents of unusual size for all of my ro o
U s is and it's eaten by the rodents of
unusual size. And then he's a martyr.
Speaker 3: So I mean I okay, So let's start with the
first part.
Speaker 4: The first part is not obviously pretty simple, like in
the sense that I think that one of the things
that you know, obviously going out into the water represents
is something like death. And so we'll see different images
of that, different iterations of it. And the idea of
the you know, the devouring parasites, the idea of all
of you know, it's kind of like their rats, but
they could be worms, like, they could be the things
that eat you when you go down to the earth,
like all the multiplicity kind of uh, coming to you
and devouring your body. And and so the the image
that's being proposed here is you know that that in
death we still ascend into heaven like that that even
though your body decomposes you, it doesn't mean that that's hell.
Like it doesn't just because your body decomposed, it doesn't
mean that that's that that's the end of you. That
in fact, you know, it actually opens up the space
for you to ascend.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Now I have to admit that the martyr thing threw
throws me off, really throws me off. Why is he
a martyr?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: And you know, are so what could we consider that.
Speaker 4: The rats represent also like something like the pagan nations.
Speaker 2: You know that, I think that's part of the answer.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's probably so it's like something like but also.
Speaker 1: Like the passions, I mean, you know, like the oversized
you know, like these oversized road.
Speaker 4: For sure, that's what they for sure, all of these
things are connected. But then if it was the passions,
he wouldn't be a martyr. But if if it's the nations,
then it's something like, you know, in some ways an
image of being eaten by the lions, but being eaten
by these these savage like nations that are that are
going to kill you because you're shit.
Speaker 1: You do sometimes find in Celtic Christianity. And I have
no idea because I don't know what the provenance of
this schema is. I have no idea if it's what's
going on here, but I'll hazard this as like a suggestion,
and that is that that you do have in Celtic Christianity,
this idea of the have you heard this like the
red martyrdom and then the Green martyrdom and then the
White martyrdom. So the idea is something like the red
martyrdom is when you're martyred in your blood, right and
then but the green martyrdom is the martyrdom of the
of the ascetic, right, the asseetic who ultimately gives their
life up to God.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a.
Speaker 1: Beautiful story about this that now Saint Dimitri Stanaloi tells
in one of his in one of his books about
about this half nite monk who was so full of
longing for God that he just went into a cave
and just said, Lord, just take just take my soul,
just take my spirit, you know, I just want to
be with you, Like, because he was in the state
of perfect prayer, he said, I can't hold onto this
much longer, and I need you to take me now
before I sin, you know.
Speaker 2: And then and then he just.
Speaker 1: Falls over there in the cave and God receives the soul.
Speaker 2: And so there's this.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a crazy thing, by the way, Like
you know, probably most of us should not pray that prayer.
Speaker 3: But yeah, God's like, yeah, you just send two seconds ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, exactly, right, right, Yeah, you don't want me
to take you right now? Yeah, I mean, this is
this is uh, there's this idea of like the green
martyrdom and the white martyrdom is the martyrdom of basically
the Chase marriage bet like a a couple who lives
holy life in the world together and and you know,
it becomes a witness to holiness in that way. Right,
So I think this is actually a pretty useful schema
for thinking about our own lives and and things.
Speaker 2: But it's certainly.
Speaker 4: The context you would think that it would be the
second one, like a green martyrdom.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe, But I'm not really satisfied with this explanation because
that doesn't really seem to be I'm just I'm really
just like you, trying to figure out.
Speaker 3: How there could be other types of martyrdom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, but I don't think that's the case.
I don't think that's the case here.
Speaker 1: I think that something something about his his body being
devalot voured by the mice.
Speaker 4: So one of the things you could understand, like if
you think of it like I mean just narratively, if
you thought of it as this is a test that
they have to get through, and so basically it's like
a barrier. There's it's like a you know, they come
to the barrier, they have to defeat the boss in
like a video game before they go to the next stage,
and that in some ways almost like someone has to
be offered up to these mice for them to continue on,
Like someone has to be eaten by the mice before
they continue on.
Speaker 3: Who is it going to be the last one?
Speaker 4: The last one is martyred in that sense, because it's
he's willing to let go in order for the boat
to continue and to be martyred for I mean, this
is now we're fantastical, like we're obviously because I mean
these stories are always really quite fantastical, but that might
be a way of understanding the idea that he's a martyr.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it mentions here also is
to say, hrein is the kindness of the Lord that
the sinner who came last to the ship should be
chosen of him to go first to heaven.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Right.
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting like even Saint Brendan, who's this
great saint who has this desire to see paradise, he's
got to go on this seven year voyage, right, but
the but the the fool who showed up at the
last minute, he's just taken.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then for sure, that's definitely got to be
some connection to the idea of the of the workers,
like the parable of the of the of the workers.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. I think that's yeah, that's that's that's for sure.
Speaker 3: So it's still really muddy, like very odd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I I this is one of those things.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of wonder I need to go back
and look at the the version of the Novgatio that
I've read before, because I actually wonder if this is
a case of one of those things that Martin was
talking about in your last video together where he said, uh,
he said, think about or maybe you said this. One
of you said, this is like, think about the part
of the story that you can't remember, and that's the
part of the story. I don't remember which one of
you said.
Speaker 3: I think it was. I think it was.
Speaker 2: It was really.
Speaker 1: Helpful for me, though, because there are even parts of
the Gospels. I mean, I've read the Bible probably over
one hundred times cover to cover, and you know the Gospels,
Like how many times have I read the Gospels And
there's still part of the Gospels that I can't remember
with exactness because they're so so strange, and I'm wondering
if this was in there before and it was so
strange my mind just said, I'm going to delete that.
Speaker 2: I have no idea what the big rous is are about.
Speaker 3: There's no hook for this in my memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, right right now.
Speaker 3: I didn't meditate on it.
Speaker 6: Hello, there, this is Martin Shaw inviting you to come
and join me for Christian wonder Tales, my first online
course with Symbolic World. It is a secret history of
things that were going to be exploring, from the early
Celtic saints and heroes of antiquity all the way up
to the chivalric tradition of Arthur round Table Merlin.
Speaker 7: The whole thing. What do stories like that have to
tell us about the moshpit of our own modern lives. Well,
over four gatherings, we're going to find out. I promise
you this, it will not be boring.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is the thing, guys. We're not going
to get through the whole Voyage of Saint Brendan because
that was literally just the first weird episode. So the
next episode has to do with the story of the
Island of the Bridles And I won't read the whole
thing here, but essentially what happens is they show up
and there's a there's a hermit on this island, and
he's really really happy to see them, and Saint Brendan says,
we can't trust this hermit, you know. But he basically
brings them, brings them into this house. And they come
into the house and the house is full of it says,
indescribably long and wide, with many chased vessels. And this
is probably a culturally specific reference here, and well maybe not,
maybe it's symbolic or both. And old mounted bridles. So
there are these these bridles, like you know, like for
a horse that are but they're really rich and they're
like you know, chased with gold and things like this.
So they come into this hall. The idea is like
it's like this big chieftain's house and there the food
is really good. There's uh a board spread with a
covering of all various colors, bread of strange whiteness, and
a quantity of excellent fish, and so Saint Brendan blesses
the food. They say a prayer you actually get kind
of this old Celtic breast blessing prayer in the in
the in the text actually, which is lovely. And then
they sit down and he says okay, we need to
pray our hours, and so they do prayers, and but
whenever they fall as when they fall asleep, Brendan stays awake.
He stays vigilant in the hall, and he sees the
hermit their host as this evil spirit who's walking around
and takes one of the golden bridles and says, and
into the bosom of one of the brethren. And this
is one of the three brothers who showed up as
the late to the ship. Right, So now we know
what's going to happen to this guy, right. And so
they start to leave. And one of the things that
Saint Brendan told them when they arrived and the island
is is you can't steal anything, even the water. And
so when they get ready to leave, they get on
the they're getting on the ship and Brendan says, we
can't get on board because one of you has stolen something.
And they all say, you know, Forvid your father, any
theft should stay in our journey, and Brenda says, there's
a golden bridle under the armpit of the brother of
whom I spoke to you last night, and a theft
which the devil gave him then the brother heard this,
he cast the bridle from him and prostrated himself before
Brendan and said, oh, beloved father, I have sinned beyond doubt,
But pity me and pray for my.
Speaker 2: Soul, that my soul and body be not damned.
Speaker 1: And then Brendan basically expels the demon from the island
and tells him not to torment another human being until
the day of judgment.
Speaker 2: So they're at least down by one now.
Speaker 1: And then Brendan says to the brother who carried the
who stole the bridle, so I remember a moment ago,
I said, now we know what happens to this guy.
Speaker 2: Surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1: This turns out to be the brother who is saved,
because Brendan says to him, receive the body and blood
of Christ, and then your soul is going to depart
from your body, and you're going to be buried here
on this island, and the brothers who came with you
from the monastery, their resurrection is going to be in hell.
Speaker 3: He repeats that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he's rough. Here is a rough team.
Speaker 1: So he takes communion and he dies and he's buried,
and that's the one of the three who.
Speaker 2: That's the one of the three who who we're seeing.
Speaker 3: We're seeing, so we're seeing a few things going on.
Speaker 4: One of the things is that this is definitely decidedly
a contrast to the other island. On the other island,
you had a bunch of rats that are going to
eat you, and here you have a bunch of bridles
without animals. You have things that are meant to control animals.
Uh So, principality basically the idea of a spirit or
something something that you think about that that's great though, Yeah,
something that is, and that it has a royal there's
a royal element to it, like you know, it's like
all these these very fancy things. And so you kind
of get these two opposites, uh you know, let's say,
looking at each other. And so interestingly enough, the you know,
the spirit is trying to so that the the the
animals want to eat the person and then they ultimately
are given the person to eat, but not before they're saved.
And now this this guy, what he wants to do
is he basically wants to let's say, infiltrate or or
it's like he's like his hidden power. He wants to
impose his hidden power on the group and then he fails.
But nonetheless the person who participated that it's to his
salvation and he stays there and is buried there. Does
it say that the that the that the fool is
buried on the island with the rats. Yes, okay, So
so then I think what you're also seeing is a
kind of salvation of.
Speaker 3: These islands, Like you're basically seeing these.
Speaker 4: Islands being colonized for Christ for all intentsive purposes by
burying a saint there and making them like transforming them.
And so you see that, so they satiate the rats
and then they can go there and bury him there.
Then they chase the demon a way and then now
are able to And so I think we're also seeing
a type of spiritual colonization of the wild world.
Speaker 2: That's that's such a good point.
Speaker 1: And the there is definitely I mean, this isn't all
Christian like ancient Christian traditions, Okay, this idea that that
you have to build a church on top of a saint,
like on top of a martyr, on top of somebody
who you know, who has has been shown to be
a holy person. There are some extreme examples of this
in Celtic storytelling, some of which are like almost like
too dark to tell. I have I have this one
story I was telling Martin about it back in February.
I have this one story that I've been I've been
trying to write about one of these instances, which which
like I've never been able to finish it because the
actual story is terrifying and dark. And but but it's
based on this idea that you have to build a
church over a Christian body basically, and this does seem
to be in some ways an inversion or transformation of
the old So in some pagan societies, including the Irish,
there's this idea that if you're going to build a building,
you have to bury somebody alive under the foundation of
the building. It's basically like to appease the old gods
of the land, you have to bury somebody under the foundation,
usually a slave, right, And so what happens with the
Irish Church is that the slaves of Christ give their life,
they give their bands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to the land to become the foundation for civilization.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The idea that civilization is based on sacrifice is something
that most people have understood and like you said, embodied
it in the weirdest surprising ways and sometimes very dark ways.
But you know, the canaan Abel story is not a
right that ridiculous. The foundation of Rome is all of
these these stories have to do with the idea of
a kind of human sacrifice before the foundation of a city,
and so I think you're probably right that in some
ways it's showing how Christ transformed that to self sacrifice,
and that that is actually how you found the right
type of city.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll maybe, I'll I'll tell you the other story later.
I mean, people who are in the no can probably
guess what it is, but I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna tell it today because it's a little dark and
I don't want to get distracted.
Speaker 1: But so the next island, the next island is Oh.
The other thing I should mention is that as they're
leaving the island of the the Bridles, a young man
comes up to their ship, and it's very obvious that
the young man is Christ. It's like this beautiful youth
comes up with like a basket of bread and a
vessel full of water, and he gives it to them,
and he says, this is going to last, and you won't.
Speaker 2: Need anything else until Easter.
Speaker 1: And then they sail away, right, and so it's kind
of like it was like, don't steal anything from the island,
even the water. And now that they've kind of passed
the tests of the island, they're given the water and
the bread that they need for their journey. Now, one
of the main preoccupations with of the of the Voyage
of Saint Brendan.
Speaker 2: Is how the.
Speaker 1: How the uh, let's say, how do you keep the
liturgical calendar when you're in three boats out in the
middle of the North Atlantic, right, And so we get
a lot of detail about, you know, they they arrive
at this island just in time for Easter, and then
they're given the things that they need to celebrate Easter
there by hermit and then and then they travel on
to an island called the Paradise of Birds, which is
which is of course, is where they celebrate Pentecost. I mean,
where else would you would you do that?
Speaker 2: And there's there's.
Speaker 1: A ton of stuff in here about like certain sheep
on certain islands and what makes the sheep grow big
and all this different stuff, and it's like we probably
like every single one of these things. There seems to
be something about the animals that you meet, you know,
from island to island. And so this island, which is
where they celebrate Pasca, right, is full of sheep, right,
but the sheeper as big as cows right there, and
they're docile. They follow the monks around, and there's definitely
like this is kind of a paradiscle place already, and
this is where they celebrate. This is where they celebrate Easter,
and that's where they receive the and even mentions them
doing like the foot watching service and things like that.
That's where but that's where they celebrate Easter, and that's
where they receive provisions to.
Speaker 2: Go on their way. They get to the Island of Birds.
Speaker 1: And there's so many, so many things that I could
talk about here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The last thing that is maybe, oh my gosh, so
I hate to make a two parter, especially when when
Martin's going to talk about this in his course. But
so the let me just put this out here is
like maybe the the okay, let's do let's do two more.
Let's do two more every single one of these islands.
And there's there's several different islands because Brendan makes multiple voyages,
and each voyage is like a certain number of years,
and you know, you get these different islands, and these
could be like you know, various legends that people put together.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not just one voyage he comes back.
Speaker 2: Not just one voyage. That's right. There's the Isle, there's
the Isle of Dwarves. There's the Boy, the Island of
Paul the Hermit, you know from Egypt.
Speaker 3: There's this story of an island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Paul the Hermit's on an island like alive. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's there's so many I never I don't remember any
of There's.
Speaker 2: So many crazy things.
Speaker 1: There's uh, there's the island that is like the the Okay,
I'm gonna give you dealer's choice here. I'm gonna or
not dealer's choice to the opposite of that, all right,
So you guse get your pick. Do you want to do, uh,
do you want to do the story of the Isle
of the Demon Smithy or do you want to do
the the story of the Island of the Intoxicating Waters.
Speaker 4: Like he's making you two between those two. I know,
I like the I mean, obviously the demon Smithy wins.
Speaker 2: Oh, we gotta do that. Yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 1: So, as Brandon was traversing the ocean, he saw an
island near him, hideous, dark, mountainous and rocky, with a
rugged summit without trees or herbs, full.
Speaker 2: Of houses like forges. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they get close to the island, and Brendan says
to the brothers, I'm afraid of this island for your sake.
It's not my will that we would go there if
we could avoid it. But the wind is driving us
straight towards it. So when they're no more than stones
flow from the island. They hear the thunderous working of
the bellows being blown, the clang of the hammers as
they smite the anvils, and great fear seizes them. And
of course they did Monsole make the suny of the cross,
Lord Jesus Christ delivers from the focalist island. And it
says after this they saw a couple hideously black like
the color of the smith's coal, coming out of the forges,
as if they were going to do some work or other.
And when they saw God's people, and I should say,
by the way, this is a little like each of
the islands gets more extreme, like there's definitely a progression
like the first two are, you know, like there's some
clear symbolism at work.
Speaker 2: And as we get further and further out.
Speaker 1: So this is this is like island number thirty nine
or something in the right. So they see these two
demons coming out of the forge, and when they see
God's people, they turn back again into the forges and
brought out two charges of molten iron red hot, which
they held with tongs in their hands, and rushing eagerly
to the shore, they cast them at the boat. This
did no harm to them, for such was not God's will,
for they passed over the head some distance beyond the boat.
After this, God said a following wind to Brendan's company
from the side of the island, and out of the
same forges they're issued an innumerable hideous and diabolic band
carrying fiery charges like these molten bits of metal to
cast at them. And basically they they continue to sort
of charge these until it makes the sea boil. And
it says the cries and shrieks they uttered were heard
from were heard after they were out of sight. And
then basically the sea boiling creates this tide that kind
of pushes bread and his ships away from the island,
and that's the that's the story, like it's it's this,
it's again, it's just very very strange, and it's kind
of like this like Volcanic Island with these demons working forges.
You know, there's like shades of vulcan or hef Aestus
there and even all the relations that that.
Speaker 2: That has would have had in.
Speaker 1: The Irish mind to like purgatorial imagery, which he talked
about previously.
Speaker 4: I mean, it all makes it all makes sense, okay,
So question so he said, there that island with Paul,
with the hermit alder hermit. So for people who don't know,
some people might not know, but that there in the
legend of San Antony, in the story of sant Anthony,
there's a sense in which we tend to think of
sant Antony as like the first hermit, saying, but in
his story there is this mysterious character called Paul the Hermit,
who is already like a hermit. He's basically a monk
before monks. He and the and the and his origin.
No one knows what it is like, we don't really
know what he is, you know, how he became a monk.
He's just a monk and he's there and Anthony learned
from him, and so it's just it's just fascinating that
they would integrate that into the story of.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, that's definitely an Egyptian link. So so there's
something that I should I did a bad job telling
the story of the Devils with the Molten Metal. And
the reason I did a bad job is because that
story is related to the torment of Judas. And I
know you're going to want to hear about this. Okay,
let me see.
Speaker 3: This is one of the islands.
Speaker 1: This is one of the islands, right, So they're voyaging
on the sea. They leave one island where they lose
one of the guys, and they get onto this next
island and they see what appears to be a man
like on a rock, like just on this rock out
in the middle of the ocean, and one of the
guy says, that's a bird, and Brendan says, no, no, no,
let's get closer and see what it is. And so
they get closer and they see a man sitting on
the stone and the likeness of a cloak or other
garment suspended on two iron forks before him. So there's
like these two iron forks and they're holding some kind
of a garment before him, and he's being tormented among
the waves. The cloak basically like whipping in his face,
smiting him under the eyes. He's being dragged off the rock,
is being tossed on to it again by the waves,
all these different things. And Brendan says, what's going on?
And who are you and why are you being tormented
this way? And he says, I'm that evil chapman Judas
who delivered the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Into the hands of the Jews.
Speaker 1: But it is not this place which is my acquittal,
but by the mercy of the Lord and in honor
of the resurrection.
Speaker 2: I have this ease. So this is on parrot Is
on Easter.
Speaker 1: So on Easter Judas gets let out of Hell and
he's on this rock and he's still being tormented, but it's.
Speaker 2: Not quite so bad. By the way.
Speaker 1: This idea of like a refrigerium, like a little break
for the souls and torment on easter Is is a
pretty old belief, certainly a minority tradition, but it's something
you find in like a lot of apocalyptic literature, like
the Visiopoli and things like that, and it's usually like
the Virgin Mary or Saint Paul or somebody intercedes for
the damned and they're given like kind of like a
day off. Again, this is not a dogmatic teaching of
anybody's church. I just need to be really clear about this.
So I don't get you know, canceled, but that is
that is. This is like a traditional thing in certain
especially in like monastic literature, and so a.
Speaker 4: Beautiful image in the sense that it is. It is
a glimmer, right, you know, a glimmer that the resurrection
and that ultimately the final moment or the final resurrection
holds some mysteries that are not as obvious as we
might think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what Judas says is that this state is
like being in Paradise compared to my state in hell.
In Hell, yeah yeah, and Andy says, and compared with
what will be inflicted on me this night on the
Fiery Mountain where is Leviathan and his companions and where
the brother was snatched from you.
Speaker 1: So this is referencing the previous island. It says there
they assail me, that is, and it says I am
smelted like lead in an earthen pot. So there's a
connection between this and the island of the demon. Smithy's right,
I'm smelted like lead in an earthen pot. And I
was with them when the brother came to them. That's
the second. That's the brother that got snatched. That's the
third of the three that showed up late.
Speaker 2: So there's one.
Speaker 3: Did they tell us how the two monks got all right?
Speaker 1: So one of Bowie, I'm gonna have to remember, Well,
one of them get snatched away by demons and basically
thrown into lava, and I don't remember how the other
one dies right now, But anyway, they both come to
bad as.
Speaker 4: That they're like, yeah, you know, Brandon says that we
should still go on this trip.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is like, let's be honest about ourselves
and say, like, if you show up, if you show
up with like two of your buddies and the holy
Man that you want to travel with, and you're like,
we're gonna starve ourselves to death if you don't let
us on your boat. And the holy Man says, sure,
one of you is going to heaven and the other
two of you are going to hell. I think a
lot of us would be like, I'm obviously the good one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but once the guy goes to heaven the other
they should have seen the.
Speaker 2: Well at that point you're on the boat man, It's
like where else are you gonna go?
Speaker 3: Where are you gonna go? All right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he says, uh, there they assail me. I'm
smelted like lead and earthen pot.
Speaker 6: And uh.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so and then he says, oh, and of course
we need to figure out why does Judas get this?
Why did he get this little, uh little reprieve. So
Brendan says, what's the garment which smites the under the eyes?
And Judas says, it is a garment which I gave
to a poor man out of the portion of my
Lord when I was his chamberlain. So remember that Judas
had the purse. He's in charge of distributing the alms. Right,
But as it was not mine to give, it turns
to my loss now and.
Speaker 2: Not to my ease.
Speaker 1: And the stone on which you see me sitting is
a stone which I laid down on the public road
when I was in the second life, before I became
a disciple of the Lord. So this idea of here
are these things that Judas did in his life. And
it's like the story of the Onion in Dostoyevsky, you know,
except that it's not because because Judas Judas was a thief,
he had the purse, you know, all these things, but
even the things that he did distribute were not actually
his to distribute, right.
Speaker 4: And it's related to the It's related to the servant,
like that story that is so hard to understand, the
servant that gives away his master's debt, that gives away
the debt even though it's not his to give and
then and then he like shrewd because he does that.
Speaker 1: Except in this case, this this is like his reprieve
but also it's his torment.
Speaker 3: At the same time, both at the same time. Yeah, right,
I mean, very very mysterious. This stuff is.
Speaker 1: This stuff is very very h strange. And how many
of these islands are there, man, I don't even know
because there's so many of them. I haven't like sat
down and counted them.
Speaker 2: I should have.
Speaker 1: I should have counted, Jonathan, but I was I was
really just trying to like immerse myself on the story.
But there's so many different things. There's the island with
a giant griffin on it. There's you know, and then
eventually you know, he finds the Land of Promise. And
but but the whole story of just the Land of
Promise itself is so long, we'd have to.
Speaker 2: Do a video on it, like just a video on it, and.
Speaker 1: Maybe we will, uh the maybe the last thing, well,
I'll mention two things. One is just to further scandalized
people in case they're still watching this video. At this point,
when the demons show up to torment Judas, Saint Brendan
tells them to leave him alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give him his day of reprieve.
Speaker 2: And Brendan says it.
Speaker 1: And the demons say, why do you invoke the name
of the Lord on behalf of yonder Man when it
was he who delivered up the Lord to cross and passion,
And Brendan just says leave him alone. Wow and uh.
And then when they leave the demon's curse Brendan, they say, oh,
servant of God, a curse would be thy journey to
us because our Lord treated us with contumely because we
have not yet exhibited him his special servitor. And Brenda says,
your curse shall be turned into a blessing for me.
For whoever you curse shall be blessed, and whoever you
blessed will be a cursed. And then the demons are like, well,
as soon as he gets back in here, we're going
to torture him extra just to show you. And Brennan's like,
I mean, there's there's this long exchange of smack talk
between Brennan and the demons. But what Brenda basically tells
them tells the demons is you don't have power even
in hell. So you're gonna torment them exactly as much
as God allows you and know more mm hm, and
and it says nevertheless, the demons.
Speaker 2: Were bound to fulfill the commands of Brendan. So that
is that is a story man.
Speaker 4: That is some wild stuff and so and so then
the final land is the Land of prompts.
Speaker 3: Will do a video on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so your I have a question, like I actually
it's such a weird thing that I'm asking this because
it's always the last person to try to mix uh,
these types of stories with more historical considerations.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm gonna ask, I know what you're
gonna ask.
Speaker 3: So there there are.
Speaker 4: People that have surmised the possibility that in fact, Brandan.
You know, you know that obviously the story of Brandon,
although some of it is somewhat fantastical and accumulation of legends,
that it is based on something that's real in the
sense real in the sense of history oracle like that, actually,
this is something that happened, and that that the possibility
that Brendan came.
Speaker 3: To yeah, to the big land on this side.
Speaker 1: Obviously, the the land making, making Canada paradise is what
you're trying to say, right, So, I think there could
be something to that, and certainly, like people have proven
that it's feasible.
Speaker 2: Now when you think about like.
Speaker 1: The multiple voyages and what's the what's the meaning of
these different islands and things like that, it's obvious that
Brendan is moving through myth. And I'm certainly not the
kind of person, you know, I'm absolutely the wrong person
to tell you all of these things are just only allegorical,
because because I think they're much stronger than that, and
there there's definitely the sense of wildness. I think that
I think that if it's true, and I again, I
think there's no reason to doubt that it was, it
was doable, and that it was possible that if it's
true that and and you know that the land of
Promise that that Brendan you know, made his way to
is in some way, you know, like North America. There
are some some interesting implications for thinking about the symbolism
of what it means to be, you know, a North American,
because certainly Brendan probably didn't wash up in you know, Florida,
but so I'll say North American, not American. But there's
there's there's something interesting there. I want to talk about
that more next time, because there's two things that I
want to say to kind of close this video out.
Speaker 2: I know it's been a little long. One is that.
Speaker 1: The story of Saint Brendan's life doesn't end with his
finding Paradise, because when he finds Paradise, after a seven
year voyage and then a second voyage after that, he
comes back to Ireland and he spends the rest of
his life working miracles and building monasteries, and uh, we'll
cover all of that.
Speaker 2: I think we'll just have to do another Saint Brendan video.
I think that's the best way to do this.
Speaker 1: Because we haven't even talked about, you know, celebrating Pasca
on the back of Leviathan, and like all the other
great things from the Nevagazio that that we haven't had
time to cover yet, So we'll do that for our
next video. But the thing that I want to point
out is that Brendan has this desire for paradise, which
causes him, which motivates him to forsake the world and.
Speaker 2: To move in to begin to move towards Paradise.
Speaker 1: And along the way, what you have happening is this winnowing, right,
And so we lose this brother to this thing. We
lose this brother just thing. And some of these guys
go to Paradise and some of them go to Hell,
but Brendan doesn't get to die, right, And so there's
this winnowing that happens, which is in it's the winnowing
of Brendan's soul, the winning wing of our soul right
as we undertake this journey. But the thing that it
eventually results in is for Brendan, as one of the
twelve Apostles of Ireland, to found the Irish Church and
to establish the Irish people. And those are parts of
his story which most people have forgotten. This stuff in
the voyage is the weird stuff, that's what people remember.
But in the earliest lives of Saint Brendan, the voyage
stuff is kind of I wouldn't say handwaved, but it's
not even emphasized to the same degree that Brendan's work
as as somebody who created Irish civilization, Irish culture is.
And obviously we think usually think of Saint Patrick in
that role, but Saint Brendan is one of the other
people who has that who has that role for the
Irish people.
Speaker 2: And so it's a.
Speaker 1: Way of seeing the way that our longing for paradise
and desire to forsake this world paradoxically results in saints
who stablished the world. When you say something like the
Saints uphold the world, this is what that means. And
if we're going to be that kind of person, if
we're going to do that kind of work, and I'll say,
you know, whatever, you know, church you find yourself in. Certainly,
if you're an Orthodox Christian in American's day and you're
really struggling with the whole convert thing, and you're really
struggling with the whole culturation thing, what I want to
encourage you to do is actually pump the breaks a
little bit on the end culturation. I joke, and I
think some people took it too seriously and freaked out
a little bit. But I joke about someday when there's
you know, the Autocephalist Church of Texas and Guacamal has
replaced a hummus as a Lenten dip of choice, right,
you know, I joke about, you know, what will that?
Speaker 2: You know, what will that be like?
Speaker 1: But the truth is that we need to pump the
brakes a little bit on worrying about all of this
stuff and like is our is our music really American yet?
And like all this stuff, and you know, and I'm
not against those those attempts, some of them are quite beautiful.
But for the most part, you know, we can afford
to be a little less agitated, a little more trusting
in God, but also first and foremost, I mean fundamentally
focused on the life of prayer and asceticism that we're
called to His Christians, father Sarah from Rose. One of
my favorite things about him, and this is something that
I heard around the celebration of his repose last year,
is that, you know, after he died, that go in
and then cleaning out all those things. And he has
he's a prayer book, you know, just you know, like
like I don't know if it's exactly the same, but
like one of the little read Jordanville prayer books basically
you know nothing, you know every you know, that's part
of your orthobrostarter pack. Right, But he's got this prayer book.
But the prayer book is the pages are stayed yellow
with use, They're wrinkled from the continual falling of his
tears on the pages. They're stained with wax from you know,
just years and years of just using the same prayer
book and praying those prayers and weeping over his sins. Right,
And I think he's really become a symbol for a
lot of us who have converted to the Orthodox Faith.
And I think rightly so. But the thing that we
need to remember about him isn't just like his huge
literary output. It's his life of prayer, in his life
of repentance. That's where in culturation begins. Right, don't worry
about baptizing the culture. Just baptize your kids and trust
the church.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's great, that's a great call. That's a
great call.
Speaker 4: And I can't wait to learn more about the voyage
of Brand. And it's funny because I think I know
the story, but.
Speaker 2: You're right, there's so many parts of it that's sick
in mind.
Speaker 4: The virgins that I've encountered have been, you know, just
shortened for consumption.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people just focus on the just
focus on the voyage as well, and they don't know
about the other stuff. And I think some of the
weirder stuff in the voyage in the older sources, some
of that got weeded out over time because people were like,
it's too weird.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do with it. But I don't.
But I promised to always find the weirdest stuff for you. Jonathan.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: We we that's what we need and don't And as
Richard said, I would say, always remember how identity.
Speaker 3: Functions for Christians, you know, and that self sacrifice.
Speaker 4: Is the core and it's it, but it is affording
of life, right, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's that's that's the surprise of Christ.
Speaker 4: We have to stay attacked to So thanks everyone, and uh,
talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Talk to you soon.