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Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams. By Ian Bradley. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. x + 246 pp. $45.00 cloth.
A quick glance over the shelves of any music shop or bookstore-religious or general-gives ample evidence of the popular love affair with things Celtic, a fascination that shows few signs of subsiding. This enthusiasm for Celtic lore is not a unique phenomenon, says Ian Bradley, the Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of St. Andrews. Rather, it is only the most recent incarnation of a fascination that has resurfaced repeatedly over the last millennium and a half.
In his delineation of six distinct periods in which there was a conspicuous interest in Celtic traditions, Bradley attempts to trace how enthusiasts from each era constructed idealized views of the past that helped to explain or ameliorate the religious and socio-political conditions in which they found themselves. The first wave, from 664-800 C.E., was marked by a yearning for that perceived golden age of the saints, a nostalgia felt by Celts living in the British Isles, by conquerors who eulogized the vanquished, and by exiles on the Continent where, Bradley insists, the appeal of Celtic Christian spirituality was first felt. This was the period of legend-makers and hagiographers who constructed the Vitae of long-dead saints, often to bolster the claims of monasteries and churches. The second revival of interest in Celtic spirituality ran from 1070 to 1220, when reforming monasteries on...