Rome and the Isles: Ireland, England and the rhetoric of orthodoxy

The earliest expressions of Irish identity are found in the letters of Patrick and Columbanus. They both saw a deep significance in the conversion of the Irish to Christianity: it was the realisation of the Christian oikoumenē and, for Columbanus, affirmation of the universal extent of Rome's authority. This contrasts sharply with the representation of the Irish in Cummian's Easter letter and in Bede's reporting of the synod of Whitby in the Historia Ecclesiastica. Both writers drew on the conventional descriptions of the heterodox, on constructions of Judaism and on rhetorical geography to show that the far-flung islands of Ireland and Britain were also far removed from the apostolic norms defined and maintained at Rome. Universality and unity were the defining characteristics of orthodoxy; the particularism of the Irish and British in the celebration of Easter therefore threatened their place as members of the universal church.