Page 16 - ModernParadiseFLIPBOOKcomplete

16

Cunliffe stresses how the sea was a highway as much as a barrier in prehistory. He

has personally led archaeological excavations at Hengistbury Head near Christchurch
st
Harbour, Dorset and believes it was in the 1 century BC a major hub for a coastal
and cross-Channel trading network. Seamen coming in from Brittany, keen to avoid
the treacherous seas off Portland Bill or the wayward tides of the east Solent, could
do so by navigating a course between St Alban’s Head to port and St Catherine’s
Head to starboard. This would take them between the chalk headlands of Durlston
Head and the Needles and into the sheltered haven of Christchurch Harbour. From
here, several river valleys led deep into the heartlands of southern England. Tracing

such hubs and networks is a major theme of his book.

On the edge: the voyage of St Brendan
What is clear therefore is that being an island did not isolate the inhabitants of early
Britain. But arguably something else did: being remote. A big theme of these sessions
will be the idea that we were on the edge of the world. To illustrate this, we need to
go forward in time a few centuries, to the sixth century AD, and to a bizarre

document in Irish history called Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis – “The Voyage of
St Brendan the Abbot”.

Saints’ Lives are one of the main sources of early Irish history, biographies which are
also hagiographies, i.e. aimed to praise the subject’s piety and holiness. These saints
typically endure hardship and danger and perform lots of miracles. One of them is St
Brendan, a monk and abbot of western Ireland (c.486-575), who also worked in
Britain, Wales and Scotland. However, he is best known from a surviving written

account of his voyaging in the northern seas off the coast of Britain and Ireland. It
was probably written in the 8th century, by an anonymous Irish monk living in Trier in
Germany around 200 years after Brendan lived.

Brendan is described as an “ascetic” “renowned for his power as a miracle worker”,
“spiritual father to almost three thousand monks”, often “engaged in spiritual

warfare” and we’re told that “since his ordination Brendan had never eaten meat”.
When he meets Peter the Hermit, Brendan feels ashamed and unworthy because
Peter is “living like an angel and wholly free from the sins of the flesh”. But Peter says
Brendan is “higher than any monk” and many miracles have been performed in his
name.

Brendan’s voyage takes him to many islands. Monks inhabit many of them; some
“lived the life of a hermit”, others live in communities; “the cells were scattered far
and wide over the island but the monks lived in close spiritual union with each other”;

“their diet was apples, nuts, roots, green vegetables and nothing else.” On one, a