Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg

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Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of SalzburgAuthor(s): John CareySource: Speculum, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 1-10Published by: Medieval Academy of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2852184 .

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Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg

By John Carey

In the year 748 Pope Zachary, in a letter to St. Boniface, mentioned among other matters a complaint which he had received from the latter concerning an Irish cleric named Virgil, active at that time in Bavaria:'

As for his perverse and abominable teaching, which he has proclaimed in opposition to God, and to his own soul's detriment - if the report of his having spoken thus be true - that is, that there are another world and other men beneath the earth, or even the sun and moon ("quod alius mundus, et alii homines sub terra sint, seu sol et luna"): take counsel and then expel him from the church, stripped of his priestly dignity.2

Whatever action was taken did not interfere with Virgil's elevation to the bishopric of Salzburg in 767, or indeed with his canonization in 1233; we have no way of determining whether he retracted or vindicated his contro- versial position. This paper will take another look at the perversa et iniqua

A version of this paper was presented as part of the Celtic seminar series at the Harvard Center for Literary Studies, 16 October 1987. I am grateful for the comments and suggestions of those who attended and for the insightful criticisms of the readers who reviewed the text for this journal.

I On Virgil's life see, e.g., Bruno Krusch, MGH SSrerMerov 6:517-20; Paul Grosjean, "Virgile de Salzbourg en Irlande," Analecta Bollandiana 78 (1960), 92-123; James Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 523-26. In this paper I make no attempt to contribute to the debate sparked by H. Lowe's argument that Virgil wrote the Cosmographia of "Aethicus Ister" ("Ein literarischer Widersacher des Bonifatius," Abhandlun- gen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche KI. 11 [1951], 903-88); for bibliography see Michael Herren, "Hiberno-Latin Philology: The State of the Question," in Insular Latin Studies, ed. Michael Herren (Toronto, 1981), p. 14 and notes.

2 M. Tangl, ed., "Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullius," MGH EppSel 1:178-79: "De perversa autem et iniqua doctrina, quae contra Deum et animam suam locutus est, si clarificatum fuerit ita eum confiteri, quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sint seu sol et luna, hunc habito concilio ab aecclesia pelle sacerdotii honore privatum." The phrase "seu sol et luna" has generally been rendered "or (another) sun and moon," leading to some confusion: various scholars have claimed that this represents an unintelligent distortion of Virgil's position, while Krusch (p. 518) suggests reading "ceu" for "seu." But if we take the "sol et luna" to be our own luminaries, giving light to both hemispheres, the passage makes sense as it stands. (The variant "aliusque sol" is confined to Otloh's Vita S. Bonifacii; for this work's place in the text tradition see Tangl's stemma, p. xxx.)

SPECULUM 64 (1989) 1



2 Ireland and the Antipodes

doctrina itself, a topic which has attracted considerable attention for several centuries.3

It has been generally held that Virgil was condemned for maintaining the existence of the Antipodes, the hypothetical inhabitants of the hemisphere opposite our own;4 thus a classical writer like Lucretius described the Anti- podes in terms which vividly recall not only the ideas in Zachary's letter, but even their sequence:

Another part of the world lies under the waters, inaccessible to us; there there are unknown races of men, and unvisited realms, drawing a shared light from a single sun.5

This notion, although freely entertained by pagan thinkers, encountered stiff resistance from theologians throughout the first Christian millennium.6 Some historians of science have associated this opposition with the question of the sphericality of the earth; but in fact the Antipodes were assailed as energetically by those prepared to accept the earth's roundness (for example, Augustine), or indeed firmly committed thereto (for example, Bede), as by

3The major articles are Ph. Gilbert, "Le pape Zacharie et les Antipodes," Revue des questions scientifiques 12 (1882), 478-503; Hermann Krabo, "Bischof Virgil von Salzburg und seine kos- mologischen Ideen," Mittheilungen des Instituts fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung 24 (1903), 1- 28; and H. Vander Linden, "Virgile de Salzbourg et les theories cosmographiques au VIlle siecle," Bulletin de lAcademie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 5e serie, 4 (1914), 163-87. I have not read Jerzy Strzelczyk, "Iroszkocki biskup w Salzburgu, problem Antypod6w i 'Kos- mografia' Aethicusa z Istrii," Przeglad Historyczny 74 (1983), 221-36, but gather from the ap- pended French summary that he breaks no fresh ground with regard to this specific question.

4 On the Antipodes in antiquity and the Middle Ages see Konrad Kretschmer, "Die physische Erdkunde im christlichen Mittelalter," Geographische Abhandlungen 4 (1889), 54-59; Armand Rainaud, Le continent austral: Hypotheses et decouvertes (Paris, 1893), pp. 11-53, 118-67.

5De rerum natura 1.373-75: "Altera pars orbis sub aquis jacet invia nobis, / ignotaeque homi- num gentes, nec transita regna, / commune ex uno lumen ducentia sole." Cf. Solinus, Collectanea 53.1, where the island of Taprobane, thought to lie in the southern hemisphere, is described as "another world" ("orbem alterum"); the statement recurs in Dicuil's Liber de mensura orbis terrae, ed. J. J. Tierney (Dublin, 1967), p. 80, line 2.

6 Wesley Stevens has recently asserted that "there never was a doctrine of the Christian Church condemning the idea that there might be inhabitants of the southern temperate zone or a presumed fourth continent" ("The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's 'De natura rerum,"' Isis 71 [1980], 274); Zachary's letter, according to Stevens, denounces not the Antipodes but "speculation about human life on another planet or universe with another sun or moon" (review of Kurt Hillkowitz, Zur Kosmographie des Aethicus, part 2 [Frankfurt am Main, 1973], Speculum 51 [1976], 754). Even if the latter interpretation were correct (and I believe that the evidence presented in this essay indicates that it is not), it remains the case that Augustine's verdict "Antipodas esse . . . nulla ratione credendum est" (De civitate Dei 16.9) represented the orthodox position throughout the period which we are considering: Isidore used Augustine's very phrase (Etymologiae 9.2.133), and it was echoed by Bede ("Neque ... Antipodarum ullatenus est fabulis accomodantur assensus," De temporum ratione 34, PL 90:456-57; cf. the remarks of the ninth-century glossator, ibid., cols. 453-54). When opinion began to shift in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the first advocates of the Antipodes were promptly labeled heretics (examples and references in J. K. Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades [New York, 1965], pp. 161, 429-30; and Kretschmer, "Die physische Erdkunde," p. 59). A speculative interpretation of the church's position is presented by Valerie I. J. Flint, "Monsters and the Antipodes in the Early Middle Ages and Enlightenment," Viator 15 (1984), 65-80.



Ireland and the Antipodes 3

the proponents of a flat-earth cosmology (for example, Lactantius, Cosmas Indicopleustes). The difficulty lay rather in the belief, unquestioned since antiquity, that the other quadrants of the globe were entirely inaccessible to the inhabitants of the known world (the oixouvr?v): the ocean to the west was impassibly vast, while the equatorial zone was so hot that no human could traverse it. If the Antipodes were in this way utterly divided from us, how could they be descended from Adam, sole ancestor of humanity according to Scripture? And how could the Gospel come to them, which was to be preached "in the whole world, in witness to all peoples" ("in universo orbe, in testimonium omnibus gentibus," Matt. 24.19)? Only in the twelfth century did orthodoxy's strictures on this point begin to loosen.7

This puts Virgil in a remarkable position: in the eight centuries which separate the patristic apologists from the rise of Scholasticism, he is virtually unique in his advocacy of an inhabited southern hemisphere.8 What led him to put forward so obviously unpalatable a view? Many have seen him as a scientific pioneer, moved by astronomical considerations to proclaim the roundness of the earth;9 but this is surely to distort the issue. As Augustine noted with some asperity, it had not been evidence (astronomical or other) which had inclined the classical cosmographers to postulate the Antipodes, but rather an a priori sense of proportion: to prove that the world is a globe is not to prove that there are men on the other side of it. 1 Another motive must have been present: is there any chance of our discovering it?

It has not so far as I know been noted hitherto that certain vernacular works from early-medieval Ireland also attest to a belief in the Antipodes; I refer specifically to Saltair na Rann and Tenga Bithnua. Both are generally given a date in the early Middle Irish period (approximately 900-1050). Differing from one another in many respects, they share a profound and

7Rainaud, Le continent austral, pp. 133-34; Wright, Geographical Lore, pp. 159-65. Even at this date the question was felt to be highly problematical; see Philippe Delhaye, Le Microcosmus de Godefroy de Saint-Victor: Etude theologique (Lille, 1951), pp. 282-86.

8 This generalization does not of course extend to pagan writers like Macrobius and Martianus Capella or to Christian glossators who paraphrased these texts without explicitly concurring in their doctrines (e.g., Eriugena in Cora Lutz, ed., Iohannis Scotti Annotationes in Marcianum [Cam- bridge, Mass., 1939], pp. 143-44). The only other autonomous Christian reference known to me is a curious statement by Heiric of Auxerre, writing a century after Virgil's time: "Manifestum est quod Antipodes supra se coelum habent. Ferunt quidem esse Antipodes homines in alio orbe, quos dividit a nobis Oceanus, quos etiam dicunt vivere more et cultu Persarum [!] Quod autem vivere possint subtus terram, non repugnat fidei, quod hoc agit natura terrae quae speroides est" (cited by L. Traube, MGH Poet 3:422). The ideas strikingly recall Virgil's: with "homines in alio orbe" cf. "alius mundus et alii homines," with "supra se coelum habent" cf. "seu sol et luna." Traube postulated Virgil's influence, while E. K. Rand claimed that Heiric was following Eriugena ("Johannes Scottus," Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1 [1906], 19, n. 3, and 21). Use of the rare word speroides (= Greek aotiateoEt64!;) suggests the influence of Servius (discussed below).

9 Polemical interes't in Virgil goes back to 1605, when Michael Maestlin, writing to Kepler, compared Virgil with Copernicus; Kepler subsequently likened himself to Virgil (Vander Linden, "Virgile," p. 164).

10 De civitate Dei 16.9: "Neque hoc ulla historica cognitione didicisse se affirmant, sed quasi ratiocinando coniectant."




rather eccentric interest in questions of cosmology; both, it may be noted in passing, are emphatic in asserting that the earth is a globe."

One of the concluding cantos of Saltair na Rann consists primarily of a series of questions about the universe; some of these are humble protestations of man's inability to fathom the mysteries of creation, others-the considerably more pointed queries of an erudite master. The quatrains in which I am interested here incline toward the latter category:

What is the number of the hosts, with ranks of companies, which the noble wave of the clear sea conceals? What are the multitudes which dwell there, on the other side of the solid earth? They bend their knees habitually, at every hour without reluctance; it is praise, as they love purely, which each host sings to the bright King. Why did he spread out the world, a mighty circuit? Why did he make a famous, far-ranging road for sportive journeying in the night? And the bright sun, whither does it go?'2

The principal source here is a stanza in the hymn Altus prosator, ascribed by Irish tradition to Colum Cille (died c. 597):

Beneath the world, as we read, we know that there are inhabitants whose knee bends frequently in entreaty to the Lord; and to whom it is impossible to open the written book, signed with seven seals, concerning the warnings of Christ, which he himself had unsealed and thereafter stood forth as victor, fulfilling his own prophecies concerning his coming.'3

The poet here drew upon two scriptural citations (Phil. 2.10 and Rev. 5.3) to prove that there are people beneath the earth. Whether he meant living people or sufferers in the hereafter - and whether, if the former be the case, these are Antipodes or simply subterraneans - cannot be determined from the text. Joseph Sz6verffy has pointed out that the account of the Altus

11 With regard to Saltair na Rann see my article "Cosmology in Saltair na Rann," Celtica 17 (1985), 33-52; in Tenga Bithnua note in particular paragraphs 17-19 of Whitley Stokes's edition ("The Evernew Tongue," Eriu 2 [1905], 106-7), which present an elaborate exposition of the doctrine that "the world has been embodied in a round shape" ("is i ndeilb chruind ro damnaiged in doman").

12 Saltair na Rann, ed. Whitley Stokes (Oxford, 1883), lines 7905-16: "Cialin nasluag, srethaib drofig, / dosceil tonn muad mara mind, / ceti arbair trebait ann / dondleith tall dontalmain tinn? / Fillit anglini cognath / cechtrath cennachfdiiiri dreil, / molaid marcharait coh6g / canait cechslog dondrig reil. / Cid roleth bith, brigach cuaird, / cid dogni suairc sirach set, / isindaidchi fririad reb, / ocus grian gel cidimthet?"

13J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, eds., The Irish LiberHymnorum, 2 vols. (London, 1892), 1:77: "Orbem infra ut legimus incolas esse novimus / quorum genu precario frequenter flectit do- mino / quibusque impossibile librum scriptum reuoluere / quem idem resignauerat postquam uictor extiterat / explens sui presagmina aduentus prophetalia."




given in the sixteenth-century Betha Colaim Chille includes a passage which must reflect an antipodean interpretation:

He revealed therein much secret knowledge concerning the earthly creation; and among all else that he made known there he said that there are people beneath this earth with their feet above, and that they inhabit their land and country even as we inhabit our land, and that the same God is worshipped by them and by us.'4

Saltair na Rann, while not quite so explicit or verbose, likewise takes the Altus stanza to refer to the Antipodes.

We may note further that the Saltair innovates in declaring that the Anti- podes live beneath or beyond the sea as well as on the other side of the earth, a statement reminiscent of Lucretius's "Altera pars orbis sub aquis jacet." With both passages we may compare Tenga Bithnua's assertion that "there are many tribes under the seas, beneath the world" ("itat iltuatha fo muirib fon mbith"). 15

A remarkable section earlier in Tenga Bithnua describes the sun's course between its setting and its rising, when it passes "on the under-side of the earth" ("fo toibhuibh talman"). This fabulous itinerary deserves a separate and extensive treatment: various places of punishment are described as well as a monster which causes the tides and a flowery valley where many thousands have been sleeping since the creation. One sentence in particular may be quoted:

Thereafter [the sun] shines on the hosts of the youths in the playing fields, who cry out to heaven for fear of the beast who kills many thousands of multitudes under the waves to the south.'6

I believe that the Irish intelligentsia had a specific reason for accepting the Antipodes: their desire to accommodate as many as possible of their inherited beliefs to the prestigious and exciting world view afforded by Christian revelation and Graeco-Roman science. Much native saga is explicitly con- cerned with the reconciliation of foreign and native lore and values: the authors of Old Irish literature, churchmen steeped in the traditions of their ancestors, had a keen interest in achieving such a cultural synthesis. This concern extended even to the old gods, who were now portrayed as a branch

14 Manus O'Donnell, Betha Colaim Chille, ed. A. O'Kelleher and G. Schoepperle (Chicago, 1918), p. 208: "Do foillsigh se moran d'eolusaib diamhracha and leth risna duilib talmanda; 7 itir gach eolus da nderna se and, adubairt se go fuil daine fai an talumh-sa 7 a cossa anis, 7 gu fuil siad ag aitreb a tire 7 a talmhan fen mar atamaid-ne ag aitreb ar tire fen, 7 gorub inand Dia da creidend siad 7 sinde." Sz6verffy discusses this material in "The Altus prosator and the Discovery of America," Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 5th ser., 100 (1963), 115-118. His view that Zachary's condemnation of Virgil made the notion of the Antipodes "an area closed to the Irish" (p. 118) is not supported by the evidence advanced in the present paper; with his more general assessment of the "great strength and tenacity of medieval Irish traditions as well as the versatility of the Irish spirit," however, I am in enthusiastic agreement.

15 Stokes, "Evernew Tongue," p. 132. 16 Ibid., p. 124: "Toidid iarsin slogu inna maccradh isnaibh meallmuigib focerdat in ngair

dochum nimhe ar uamun in mil mharbus inna ilmili de shloguib fo thonnuib andes." Cf. the third of the quatrains cited from Saltair na Rann above.




of the human race which had somehow managed to escape the consequences of original sin.'7 The supernatural realm which the gods inhabited - the "Otherworld" of modern scholarship - was thought to be immanent every- where, but most often accessible by going underground or underwater: 18 the lower hemisphere, a habitable region which was described as lying either "sub terra" or "sub aquis," could serve as a rationalization of the subterranean land of the immortals.'9

Other factors would have contributed to this identification. The early tale Echtra Nerai describes its protagonist as bringing "fruits of summer" back from an Otherworld sojourn on Halloween;20 similarly Martianus Capella had discussed the reversal of the seasons in the southern hemisphere.2' More generally, the Otherworld was described by the Irish as the "other side" of the world they knew: with the Saltair's reference to the "far side" ("leth tall") of the earth we may compare the terse designation of the supernatural realm as the "other side" ("leth n-aill") in the tale Serglige Con Culainn.22 The heroic legend Mesca Ulad describes a primeval partition of Ireland, which might easily have suggested a comparable bisection of the globe:

He divided Ireland into two, so that he gave the half of Ireland that was below to the Tuath De Danann [the gods] and the other half to the sons of Mil Espaiine, to his blood relations [the Gaels].23

17 This bold piece of speculation was so far as I know first discussed by James Carney, "The Deeper Level of Early Irish Literature," Capuchin Annual (1969), 165. I have considered aspects of the subject at greater length in my paper "Tradition and Revelation in Early Christian Ireland," forthcoming in Tradition: A Continual Renewal, the proceedings of a seminar held in New Delhi, February-March 1987; I discuss another development of the notion of a sinless race in "The Irish Vision of the Chinese," triu 38 (1987), 73-79.

18 Documentation in Carey, "The Location of the Otherworld in Irish Tradition," Jigse 19 (1982), 36-43; see also "Time, Space and the Otherworld," forthcoming in the seventh volume of the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium.

19 A similar hypothesis was cited many years ago by M. R. James, "Learning and Literature till the Death of Bede," in The Cambridge Medieval History (Cambridge, Eng., 1922), 3:513: "Virgilius had in his mind not Antipodes, but dwellers below the surface of the earth.... Any one who has read much of Scandinavian or Celtic fairy-lore will realise that the beliefs he finds there about the underground people are just such as could be described by Pope Zacharias' phrase." This view has recently been revived by Marina Smyth, "Das Universum in der Kos- rnographie des Aethicus Ister," in Virgil von Salzburg: Missionar und Gelehrter, ed. Heinz Dopsch and RoswithaJuffinger (Salzburg, 1985), pp. 177-78; I differ fromJames and Smyth in believing that the alternatives are not mutually exclusive.

20 "The Adventures of Nera," ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer, Revue celtique 10 (1889), 220-21; I discuss the significance of this scene in greater detail in "Sequence and Causation in Echtra Nerai," forthcoming in Eriu 39.

21 Wright, Geographical Lore, p. 160; cf. Rand, "Johannes Scottus," pp. 21-22. 22 Serglige Con Culainn, ed. Myles Dillon (Dublin, 1953), line 141. 23 Mesca Ulad, ed. J. Carmichael Watson (Dublin, 1967), lines 4-7: "Cu ru raind H&rinn dar

d6 7 co tuc in leth ro boi sis d'Herind do Thuiaith De Danann et in leth aile do Maccaib Miled Esp.aine do chorpfhini fadein." This text was written long after Virgil's death, let alone the period to which I would assign the first postulation of an "antipodean Otherworld"; the theme is, however, evidently an ancient one. A stimulating recent discussion is that of John T. Koch, "New Thoughts on Albion, Ierne, and the 'Pretanic' Isles," forthcoming in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 6.




The passages from Saltair na Rann and Tenga Bithnua, for all their brevity, seem to me to bear out this hypothesis. Thus the Saltair renders "frequenter" in the Altus with the specific phrase ("cech trath") used of the birds of the Otherworld islands in Immram Brain;24 that the blessed immortals sing hymns perpetually is a prominent feature of such works as Navigatio sancti Brendani and the vernacular clerical voyage literature.25 Various details of the sun's subterranean itinerary in Tenga Bithnua recall accounts of the Otherworld: flocks of singing birds, fields of "wine flowers," and in particular the "hosts of youths in the playing fields," where the rare compound mell-mag is scarcely to be dissociated from the widespread Otherworld designation Mag Mell, "Plain of Sports."26

It is interesting to find a virtually identical idea current in Britain and Brittany a few centuries later; the evidence has been convincingly docu- mented by R. S. Loomis, who concludes "that in twelfth-century Britain the folk-belief in a subterranean fairyland was taken seriously by clerics and adapted to contemporary geographical conceptions as the lower hemisphere - the land of the Antipodes."27 He cites the claim of the poem Draco Nor- mannicus that King Arthur lives on, not in an enchanted cave or island, but in the southern hemisphere; recounts anecdotes from Giraldus Cambrensis and Gervase of Tilbury concerning subterranean excursions which lead to fairylands on the far side of the earth; and quotes Chretien de Troyes's description of Bilis, dwarf-king of the Antipodes. His concluding remarks might equally well be applied to the present inquiry: "What could be more plain than that, in the instances we have been studying, our clerical authors have been treating lay traditions, many of them of Celtic origin, and have given them a learned slant by harmonizing them with the best geographical science available?"28

The same transposition of the underworld is attested from late antiquity, when certain Alexandrian thinkers asserted that the places of the dead Erebus, Tartarus, Elysium - were located not within the earth, but on its "under" side. This doctrine is first attested in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus, in a discussion of the soul's departure "to the dwelling beneath the earth" ("xQT& Tl'v "onOElOV O'LXaLv"):

24 Immram Brain, ed. Seamus Mac Mathiuna (Tubingen, 1985), p. 34, line 36. James Carney calls attention to the ecclesiastical sense of trdth when he mentions the "birds singing canonical hours" (Studies in Irish Literature and History [Dublin, 1955], p. 283, n. 1); and indeed the phrase cech trdth seems generally to appear in clerical contexts. Cf. Proinsias Mac Cana, "Mongan mac Fiachna and Immram Brain," Eriu 23 (1972), 122-23.

25 Thus in Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, ed. Carl Selmer (Notre Dame, 1959), we read of the psalmody of the bird-shaped fallen angels of the paradisus avium (pp. 25-28), of the immortal monks of Ailbe's monastery (pp. 30-37), and of the three choirs on an island covered with preternatural flowers (pp. 50-53).

26 The only other instance noted in the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of the Irish Language occurs in an obscure "rhetorical" utterance in Cecile O'Rahilly, ed., Tdin B6 Cutailnge: Recension I (Dublin, 1976), line 1195.

27 R. S. Loomis, "King Arthur and the Antipodes," Modern Philology 38 (1941), 296. 28 Ibid., p. 303.




... for since the earth occupies the center of the universe, and the vault of heaven is spherical, the heavenly gods took one hemisphere, and those below the other.29

In fact there may be a historical link between these Hellenistic rationali- zations and the Irish beliefs which we are investigating; for the teaching of the Axiochus surfaces in Servius's commentary on the Aeneid, a work certainly available to the Irish scholars active on the Continent in Carolingian times,30 and very probably owing its survival as a complete text to an early Irish exemplar:31

Others understand [the location of the underworld] more profoundly, who wish the infernal regions to lie under the earth, as those geographers and geometricians maintain who say that the earth is spherical ("sphaeroiden"),32 held up by water and air. If this be true, it is possible by seafaring to reach the Antipodes - those who seem to us to be below, even as we to them.33

Servius's statement has a consequence of striking relevance to the study of Irish legend: he directly equated the subterranean realm with a remote land accessible by seafaring ("navigatione"). This comes across clearly in another passage:

Elysium . ., full of delights, is according to poets situated in the midst of the infernal regions.... According to philosophers, Elysium is [the same as] the Blessed Isles....34

I have argued elsewhere on behalf of the view, put forward by James Carney, that the concept of an overseas Otherworld, a remote region of fabulous islands, arose in early Christian Ireland as a literary modification of

29 Axiochus 37b: "Tfg Eiv y1' oxoluig 'a [ttaa rol) x6aiiou, ToiU 6 Jt6XOU 6OVoOg o(?)QOEL60o10, o, TO' [LEV ETEQOV 1[utLoaiLQLoV Owl'L EXaXov oL oUQa'vLoL, 'o 66 Ekqrov oi Ut'jVEQ0Ev." Cf. Franz Cumont, "Les enfers selon l'Axiochos," Comptes rendus a l'Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1920), 272-85; on p. 280 Cumont observes that "L'astronomie servait a interpreter les traditions mythiques sur la vie d'outre tombe et a leur donner un sens qui paraissait plus raisonnable."

30 On the text in Codex Bernensis 363 see Kenney, Sources, pp. 559-60, and John Contreni, "The Irish in the Western Carolingian Empire," in Die Iren und Europa im friiheren Mittelalter, ed. Heinz Lowe (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 758-98; Old Irish glosses printed by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, eds., Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1975), 2:235. Cf. John Contreni's description of Laon, Bibliotheque municipale 468, in The Cathedral School of Laon (Munich, 1978), pp. 118-20.

31 J. J. H. Savage, "The Manuscripts of Servius's Commentary on Virgil," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 45 (1932), 157. On the likelihood that Servius was already "closely studied" by the Irish in the pre-Carolingian period see now Michael Herren, "Classical and Secular Learning among the Irish before the Carolingian Renaissance," Florilegium 3 (1981), 135-36.

32 Manuscript readings: spaeroiden, sphaeroiden, speroide, sperodenec, speroiden, spheroeden. 33 Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen

(Hildesheim, 1961), commenting on Aeneid 6.532: "Alii altius intellegunt: qui sub terra esse inferos volunt secundum chorographos et geometras, qui dicunt terram OQaLQoub16 esse, quae aqua et aere sustentatur. Quod si est, ad Antipodes potest navigatione perveniri, qui quantum ad nos spectat, inferi sunt, sicut nos illis."

34 Ibid., 5.735: "Elysium . .. quod secundum poetas in medio infernorum est suis felicitatibus plenum.. . . Secundum philosophos Elysium est Insulae Fortunatae. Cf. 6.640: "Campi Elysii aut apud inferos sunt, aut in Insulis Fortunatis...."




the indigenous belief in an immanent Otherworld, hidden beneath lakes and hills.35 The "scientific" explanation of the Otherworld, whether adopted from Servius or arrived at independently, would have provided the perfect ratio- nale for such a transference and would moreover have been entirely conge- nial to the seventh-century intelligentsia to whom Ireland owes both the assimilation of classical lore and the first literary redaction of its native saga material.36 One of the earliest Irish texts describing an overseas Otherworld (perhaps indeed the oldest we possess) is Immram Brain maic Febail, in which a supernatural woman urges upon a mortal king a voyage to her marvelous country:

There are a hundred and fifty distant islands in the ocean ("oceon") to the west of us: twice the size of Ireland, or thrice, is each of them.37

It may well be significant that this quatrain contains the loan word ocian, here apparently used in the technical sense of Latin oceanus to designate the great body of water which separates the oiXo[tvq from land masses in other quadrants of the globe.38

The Irish not only localized versions of their pagan Otherworld on trans- oceanic islands, but also situated the Christian Otherworlds of Hell and Paradise in the far reaches of the Atlantic. Voyages to the Otherworld and visions of the afterlife overlap suggestively in later Old Irish: in one case part of one of the vision tales has been attached to the account of a fabulous voyage.39 The readiness of the Irish to situate spiritual realms across the sea was one of the points criticized by the English author of a poem denouncing Navigatio sancti Brendani:

35 Carey, "Location" (n. 18 above). Carney has remarked that he has "no confidence in any view which supposes that the primitive Irish believed in an Otherworld beyond the seas. It can be maintained, however, that there were primitive Irish tales which showed the hero visiting an Otherworld located under lakes or in mountains" (review of Selmer, Navigatio, in Medium Aevum 32 [1963] 40, n. 9). Cf. his statement in "The Earliest Bran Material," in Latin Script and Letters, A.D. 400-900, ed. J. J. O'Meara and B. Naumann (Leiden, 1976), p. 189: "I would venture the opinion .. . that 'dwelling in islands' is a rationalisation of the more primitive 'dwelling under water,' an idea found also in other cultures. This rationalisation, if it did not come with Chris- tianity, would have been strongly reinforced by it."

36 An excellent discussion of many aspects of this period's intellectual climate is provided by Kim McCone's recent article "Dan agus tallann," Leachtai Cholm Cille 16 (1986), 9-53.

37 Mac Mathiina, Immram Brain, p. 37, lines 105-8: "Fil tri coicta inse cian / isind oceon frinn anfar; / is m6 Erinn co fa di / cach af diib n6 fa thrf."

38 Such continents might be called "other worlds," as by Solinus and Heiric (nn. 5 and 8 above). Ocian 'ocean' is explicitly contrasted with muir 'sea' in a poem in the text Scela Mosauluim, ed. M. O Daly, Cath Maige Mucraime (Dublin, 1975), p. 76, line 551; cf. Sanas Cormaic, where the same difference is stressed and ocian is defined as "a sea which encircles round about" ("muir imma- timchellae ima chuairt") by contrast with the Mediterranean and the Irish Sea (Kuno Meyer, ed., "Sanas Cormaic," in Anecdota from Irish Manuscripts 4 [1912], 63, s.v. "immbath").

39 Discussion by David Dumville, "Towards an Interpretation of Fis Adamndn," Studia Celtica 12/13 (1977-78), 63.




To seek in the brine what is promised in heaven anyone with sense can plainly see the madness of it.40

In presenting these considerations I am not arguing for the monogenesis of the concept of an overseas Otherworld. Many factors doubtless contributed to the idea's rise and spread in the course of the Old Irish period: indigenous traditions of magical islands in or near Ireland,4' imported tales of journeys to the east,42 and the profound influence exercised on the Irish imagination by the practice of peregrinatio43 must all have played a part. What I do believe is that the doctrine of an antipodean Otherworld might well have provided the literati with a way of justifying this development, of articulating it to themselves and accommodating their inherited beliefs to the new cosmology.

This, I would suggest, is the background to Virgil's alius mundus. How it came to Boniface's attention we shall doubtless never know. Might it have figured in Virgil's preaching to his half-pagan Bavarian flock,44 an argument that the subterranean spirits of Germanic belief were really the faraway Antipodes?45 Perhaps the Irish missionary sought to introduce another people to his own culture's strategy of imaginative synthesis.46

40 Charles Plummer, ed., Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1910), 2:293: "Quod promittitur in celis, hoc in salo querere; / Quod patenter prudens quisque deputat insanie."

41 References in Carey, "Location," p. 40, nn. 20-21, and p. 41, nn. 27-29. 42 E.g., Vita sancti Macarii, PL 73:415-26; "The History of the Rechabites," ed. and trans. J.

H. Charlesworth in Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, 1985), 2:443-61. In the poem "Mochen, mochen, a Brenaind," Brendan's voyage is described as taking the saint to the eastern, rather than the western, ends of the earth (ed. and trans. H. P. A. Oskamp, Eigse 13 [1969-70], 92-98).

43 A particularly helpful study is that of Thomas Charles-Edwards, "The Social Background of Irish Peregrinatio," Celtica 11 (1976), 43-59.

44 The state of Christianity throughout Germany in Virgil's time is described in Boniface's correspondence (Tangl, "Briefe," passim); thus Gregory II observed of some of the converts that "quasi sub relegione christiana idolorum culturae eos servire cognovimus" (ibid., p. 30). For a sketch of missionary activity in Bavaria c. 700 see the Gesta S. Hrodberti confessoris, ed. W. Levison, MGH SSrerMerov 6:157-62.

45 A venerable but comprehensive collection of references to these beings is that of Jakob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, trans. J. S. Stallybrass, 5 vols. (London, 1883), 2:454-57, 4:1414-15.

46 Another Irishman condemned for accommodating the new religion to the old was the renegade bishop Clemens, accused of teaching "contra fidem sanctorum patrum . . . quod Christus filius Dei descendens ad inferos omnes, quos inferni carcer detinuit, inde liberasset, credulos et incredulos, laudatores Dei et cultores idulorum" (Tangl, "Briefe," p. 112).

John Carey is Lecturer in Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.



Documents

Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg