Adomnán, in his On the Holy Places, reports the recent visit of the Franco-Gallic bishop Arculf to the place in Jerusalem where *Abraham (Old Testament patriarch, S00275) had prepared to sacrifice his son. Written in Latin at Iona (north-west Britain), possibly 683/689.
Evidence ID
E06075
Type of Evidence
Literary - Pilgrim accounts and itineraries
Major author/Major anonymous work
Adomnán
Adomnán, On the Holy Places - Book One
VI. <DE BASILICA QUAM CONSTANTINUS UICINAM SUPRADICTAE ECLESIAE IN EODEM FABRICAUIT LOCO UBI CRUX DOMINI RUINIS SUPERATA POST MULTA TEMPORA REFOSA INUENTA EST IN TERRA>
[...] 2. Inter has itaque duas eclesias ille famosus occurrit locus in quo Abraham patriarcha altare conposuit, super illud inponens lignorum struem, et ut Isaac suum immolaret filium euaginatum arripuit gladium; ubi nunc mensa habetur lignea non parua, super quam pauperam elimosinae a populo offeruntur [...]
'(6) <CONCERNING THE BASILICA WHICH CONSTANTINE ERECTED NEAR THE CHURCH MENTIONED ABOVE, IN THE PLACE WHERE THE CROSS OF THE LORD WAS FOUND BURIED UNDER DEBRIS, WHEN AFTER A LONG LAPSE OF TIME THE GROUND WAS DUG UP>
... Then, between these two churches, comes the celebrated place where Abraham set up an altar, placing upon it a heap of brushwood, and seized the unsheathed sword that he might sacrifice his son Isaac. There is a fairly large wooden table there now on which alms are offered by the people for the poor...'
Text and translation: Meehan 1958, 48-51, lightly modified.
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Cult building - independent (church)
Place associated with saint's life
Non Liturgical ActivityPilgrimage
Bequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Distribution of alms
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Source
On the Holy Places records across three books the travels of Arculf, an otherwise unknown Gallic bishop (sanctus episcopus gente Gallus), through diverse sacred sites in Jerusalem (Book one); Palestine, Syria, and Egypt (Book two); and Constantinople and Sicily (Book three). In the preface, Abbot Adomnán of Iona (ob. 704) explains that ‘in response to my careful enquiries he dictated to me … this faithful and accurate record of all his experiences … first I wrote it down on tablets (tabulis): it will now be written succinctly on parchment (in membranis breui)’. Bede, writing in 731, would report that Adomnán gave a copy of the volume to King Aldfrith of Northumbria (northern Britain) on a visit to his kingdom (Ecclesiastical History, 5.15). We know from Adomnán himself and other Irish sources that at least two such visits took place, in 687 and 689, thus establishing the latter date as the probable terminus ante quem for the work. Its terminus post quem is more difficult to determine. Meehan supposed that the Third Council of Constantinople (680-81) might have occasioned Arculf’s visit to the imperial capital. This is attractive, although ultimately conjectural. Yet if it were the case, we might – helped by Adomnán’s claim that the bishop spent nine months at Jerusalem – date Arculf’s adventures to around 679-82, and thereby the composition of On the Holy Places to no earlier than about 683. The work appears to have been popular. It survives in 22 manuscripts, the earliest of which are 9th century continental productions. Bede spoke of its ‘many readers’ (legentibus multis), and produced his own abridged version of the text in around 703.On the Holy Places is more, however, than a straightforward itinerary. Adomnán embellishes and adapts Arculf’s account throughout with his own authorities on the Holy Land: chiefly the works of Jerome, but also texts such as Sulpicius Severus’ Chronicle, Hegesippus’ Histories, Iuvencus’ History of the Gospels, Eucherius of Lyon’s On the Layout of Jerusalem, as well as the Bible. Recent scholarship has also identified the degree to which the narrative of On the Holy Places is highly controlled and exegetical; this has asserted the text’s sophisticated theological qualities and, significantly, the authorial primacy of Adomnán, raising him above his status in older studies as merely Arculf’s amanuensis or ‘stenographer’ (O’Loughlin 2007). This has led in turn to the radical proposition that Arculf may perhaps have never existed, and been only a literary device of Adomnán. It appears strange, O’Loughlin has suggested, that Arculf’s journey appears to have accorded so well with Adomnán’s literary and theological interests; besides, the bishop is unheard of elsewhere, and the probability of him coming to Ireland or north-west Britain via a shipwreck (as Bede claimed), after a journey around the eastern Mediterranean, seems doubtful.
This may go too far. Further work has now reasserted the degree to which – in addition to, and in dialogue with, its literary models – Adomnán’s text does contain important evidence for the later 7th century Near East, which must have almost certainly come from a recent, eyewitness account (Hoyland and Waidler, 2014). The arguments against Arculf’s existence are in any case not compelling. Franco-Gallic episcopal lists survive patchily enough from the 7th century to account for his disappearance from his homeland’s records, while the suggestion he came directly to Britain through a shipwreck, after being swept away by storms, is made only by Bede, writing some years later: Adomnán and Arculf’s encounter could well have involved less drama than the Northumbrian monk imagined. Other sources show that connections between Gaul and the 7th century Irish church were relatively strong. It should not seem too surprising that the abbot of Iona might have found the opportunity to interview a figure such as Arculf at some point, shipwreck or not.
Adomnán’s account focuses almost entirely on biblical sites – many of his titular Holy Places are those directly associated with the life of Christ, and therefore not included in our database. Beyond these, the cult activity he reports almost exclusively revolves around Old and New Testament figures, most prominently Mary: of the post-biblical saints, only Jerome (E06084) and George (E06094) receive mention. Although Adomnán reports that Arculf visited a cult site of the latter in Palestine, he saves this story for his third book, set predominantly in Constantinople. This is noticeably distinct in tone from those that precede it, and the only part of the work to feature miracles, two of which explicitly involve the veneration of images and the gross ill-doing of those who offend them (E06094, E06117). If Brubaker and Haldon (2011) are correct in arguing that neither the Byzantine cult of images, nor the controversy over them, predated the period c. 680, then these closing passages of On the Holy Places would seem to confirm that Bishop Arculf’s journey was indeed a real one, and cannot have long preceded Adomnán’s adaptation and propagation of his account.
Discussion
Adomnán/Arculf describes the two churches on either side of this site as the Constantinian basilica known as the Martyrium and the 'immense church' of Golgotha (pergrandis eclesia – in fact probably an oratory connected to a large atrium: Meehan, 1958, 21-22).Bibliography
Editions:Meehan, D.M., Adamnan’s De locis sanctis (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3; Dublin, 1958), with English translation.
Bieler, L., Adamnanus, De locis sanctis libri tres, in: Itineraria et alia geographica (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 175; Turnhout, 1965), 175-243 (see also 249-80 for Bede’s version).
Further reading:
Brubaker, L., and Haldon, J., Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850: A History (Cambridge, 2011), 50-68, 781-2.
Hoyland, R.G., and Waidler, S., "Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis and the Seventh-Century Near East," English Historical Review, 129 (2014), 787-807.
Ní Dhonnchadha, Máirín, "Adomnán [St Adomnán], (627/8?-704)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/110
O’Loughlin, T., Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama (New York, 2007).
Record Created By
Benjamin Savill
Date of Entry
16/08/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00275 | Abraham, Old Testament patriarch | Abraham | Certain |
|---|
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