Indo-European linguistics and classical philology
D. S. Penskaya. The Irish “Navigatio Sancti Brendani” and the Byzantine “Narration of Our Father Agapius”: possible relations (pp. 697–716)
Author
D. S. Penskaya (Russian State University for the Humanities)
Keywords\n monasticism, Byzantine literature, Irish literature, hagiography, apocryphon, immram, echtra, departure to Paradise, "Narration of Our Father Agapius", "Navigatio Sancti Brendani''
Pages\n 697–716
Summary\n
The paper is dedicated to the possibile interconnections between the Latin version of the Irish “Navigatio Sancti Brendani” dated from 9–10th cent. and the “Narration of Our Father Agapius”, Byzantine apocryphon, presumably, attested to the area of Syro-Palestinian monasticism 4–6th cent.In both cases the diverting form, recalling one of the fairy-tale, reveals a story of monastic life.Some episodes of the “Navigatio” (the events before monks’ depature to Paradise; the monastery of St. Ailbe and the Promised Land) are supposed to prove the influence of the “Narration”. The whole set of motives and their sequence in the scenes mentioned above traces back to the corresponding episodes in the “Narration”. If the author of the “Navigatio”indeed used the “Narration” as a source, certain tendency in its’ adaptationis discerned: in the “Narration” motives and images that formed a unique description of symbolic ascent to Christ and to Wisdom, lost their symbolic substance in the “Navigation”and plunged back into folklore.This relation of unique and symbolical in one case to standard and folk in the other is systematically followed in the paper. For example, the snow white bread as the main symbol of Christ, brought by Agapius fromParadise back to earth in the “Navigatio” is replaced by white andwonderful food of the otherworld. The symbolical sequence of helpers inthe “Narratio” representing the Holy Trinity (the eagle, the child, thehandsome man) in the “Navigatio” corresponds to a handsome man and ayouth, met by Barinthus and Brendan in the Promise Land; they are simplyhelpers similar to standard characters of the fairy-tales.If our hypothesis is true, it clarifies the origin of some motives of the“Navigation” and the text of the “Navigation” in its turn testifies that theplot of the “Narration” was known in the Celtic world. Thus, the discussionon the relations between Ireland and Eastern Orthodoxy (especially the onein Syria) in the early period that goes on nowaday acquires a new source.
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