In Proteus Stephen thinks, "Isle of Saints," and in
Cyclops the Citizen exclaims, "Island of saints and
sages!" They are voicing a common Irish expression that
recalls the early medieval times when Irish monks like Columbanus brought Christian
spirituality and learning to Europe after the collapse of the
Roman empire. The phrase also evokes the title of a lecture,
"Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," that Joyce delivered in
1907 at the Università Popolare in Trieste, introducing to
Italians the notion that his island once housed a great
civilization.
In the talk, Joyce observed that Irish people cling to the
phrase because "Nations have their ego, just like
individuals." The spiritual character of Ireland was
established long before the arrival of Christianity: "The Druid priests had their temples
in the open, and worshipped the sun and moon in groves of oak
trees. In the crude state of knowledge of those times, the
Irish priests were considered very learned, and when Plutarch
mentions Ireland, he says that it was the dwelling place of
holy men. Festus Avienus in the fourth century was the first
to give Ireland the title of Insula Sacra; and
later, after having undergone the invasions of the Spanish and
Gaelic tribes, it was converted to Christianity by St. Patrick
and his followers, and again earned the title of 'Holy Isle'."
In the Christian era, the druids' highly learned priesthood
gave way to monastic scholarship that kept the intellectual
traditions of the West alive through the Dark Ages: "It seems
undeniable that Ireland at that time was an immense seminary,
where scholars gathered from the different countries of
Europe, so great was its renown for mastery of spiritual
matters." Joyce stresses that he is not speaking of
Christianity for its own sake, but because in those days it
sheltered and fostered learning, art, and spirituality: "in
the centuries in which they occurred and in all the succeeding
Middle Ages, not only history itself, but the sciences and the
various arts were all completely religious in character, under
the guardianship of a more than maternal church."
The relentless Viking
invasions of the 9th and 10th centuries weakened this
civilization, and the Anglo-Norman invasions of the 12th
century sealed its fate: "Ireland ceased to be an intellectual
force in Europe. The decorative arts, at which the ancient
Irish excelled, were abandoned, and the sacred and profane
culture fell into disuse." Eight centuries of colonial
capitulation and degradation followed, with the result that
"the present race in Ireland is backward and inferior."
"Ancient Ireland is dead just as ancient Egypt is dead."
But the Irish genius has remained alive throughout that time,
Irish industry and ingenuity have flourished in foreign
countries, and Irish valor has won Britain's wars. "Is this
country destined to resume its ancient position as the Hellas of the north some
day? Is the Celtic mind, like the Slavic mind which it
resembles in many ways, destined to enrich the civil
conscience with new discoveries and new insights in the
future? Or must the Celtic world, the five Celtic nations,
driven by stronger nations to the edge of the continent, to
the outermost islands of Europe, finally be cast into the
ocean after a struggle of centuries?"
Joyce acknowledges that he cannot answer these questions.
But "even a superficial consideration will show us that the
Irish nation's insistence on developing its own culture by
itself is not so much the demand of a young nation that wants
to make good in the European concert as the demand of a very
old nation to renew under new forms the glories of a past
civilization."
