Battle of Cúl Dreimhne

The Battle of Cúl Dreimhne likely took place in 560CE (estimates vary). Although there are different accounts of the reason for the battle, the most popular is that it was fought over a copy of the Cathach ("The Battler").

The Cathach is a psalter, a collection of the Psalms from the Bible. The original was at Movilla Abbey, in the possession of Saint Finnian of Movilla. A visiting Columba made a copy of it miraculously in a single night, in order to have his own, but Finnian objected to this.

The question arose: was the copy owned by Finnian because he possessed the original, or by Columba because he made it? The High King of Ireland, King Diarmait Mac Cerbaill, famously proclaimed "To every cow belongs her calf, therefore to every book belongs its copy." Then (according to this version of the story), Columba raised an army to fight for his right to keep the copy. It is far likelier that the battle was a dynastic conflict because of the way Diarmait had assumed the kingship after his predecessor's death.

Another theory for the start of the battle is the violation of the rules of sanctuary when a man under Columba's protection was forcibly taken and executed, whereupon Columba raised an army against Diarmait. Columba was exiled for his actions and required to create as many souls for Christ as had been killed in the battle (3000). There is no evidence that his missionary work after that time was the result of exile rather than a desire to spread Christianity.

But as to the battle itself: it was in northwest Ireland in what is now County Sligo. You can visit the site of the "Cooldrumman Battlefield" at the foot of Ben Bulben. Modern scholars point out that the earliest references to the battle do not mention a book at all.

Was the Cathach so important that a battle could arise over it losing its uniqueness and its place on Movilla Abbey. To answer that, we need to take a closer look at the Cathach itself, and that's what we'll do next.

Cassiodorus and Colleges

Yesterday's post mentioned Cassiodorus (c.485-c.585), a contemporary of Boethius, and his description of the relationship between Arithmetic and Music. His full name was Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. He was not a senator; that was part of his name, although he was a statesman under Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.

He served in several different roles in government, and his literary skills were so well recognized that he was often asked to draft important documents while he was in Ravenna. (Why Ravenna and not Rome? That is for the next post.) Whether because he was a devoted statesman, or just because of personal inclinations, his writings try to unite the cultural differences between the Eastern and Western Roman empires, between Greek and Roman cultures, between the Roman culture and the invading Goths, and even between established Christian doctrine and heresies. After his retirement from public life, he founded a monastery and turned to writing about religion.

The immediate reason for bringing him up in a medieval blog, however, is his link to medieval universities, which didn't exist for several centuries after his death. We are familiar by now with the medieval curriculum of the trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy). You might be surprised to know that Cassiodorus not only listed these fields of study, in that order, but also that he derives them from the study of the Bible.

In his Expositio Psalmorum ["Explanation of the Psalms"], he interprets Psalm 18.5

"Their voice resounds through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth"

as the teachings of the Bible being spread throughout the world, and that these teachings are the origin of secular studies. Therefore, mastering the secular arts helps bring one back to better comprehension of the Bible. This was, in fact, considered the original purpose of medieval universities: to train better clerics.