Cornell University Press
Chapter Title: Skellig Michael Monastery, Ireland, eighth–tenth centuries
Book Title: Fifty Early Medieval Things
Book Subtitle: Materials of Culture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Book Author(s): Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey and Paolo Squatriti
Published by: Cornell University Press. (2019)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt22p7hpc.35
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Cornell University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Fifty Early Medieval Things
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Thing 30A. Skellig
Michael: view of the lower
monastery with the south
peak in the background.
© National Monuments
Service, Department of
Arts, Heritage, Regional,
Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
Thing 30B. Skellig Michael: overhead view of the structures on the South Peak.
© National Monuments Service, Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional,
Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3050-2666f-Printer Pdf-PV-028-034-r02.indd 154
11/20/2018 12:39:18 PM
30. Skellig Michael Monastery
Ireland, eighth–tenth centuries
The Island of Skellig Michael is a sheer, sandstone promontory that juts out
of the Atlantic Ocean 11.6 kilometers (7 miles) off the southwest coast of Ireland.
The seas are so rough and the weather so inclement that it is readily accessible
by boat from the mainland only between late May and late September. Today, its
only inhabitants are small rodents and several species of seabirds, though Luke
Skywalker does dwell there in solitary retirement in J. J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The
Force Awakens (2015), evidently because the place is so obviously remote. Between
the eighth and thirteenth centuries, however, the tiny island hosted a resident
community of humans. These hardy souls were Christian monks who came from
the Irish mainland in search of the most radically isolated place they could find, a
remote haven where they might subsist in prayer and contemplation, undisturbed
by the cares of the world, like the early Christian ascetics in the Egyptian desert
from whom they drew their inspiration. Ever since Christianity came to Ireland,
mainly via England and Scotland, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the island had
become a hotbed of monasticism, its countryside liberally sprinkled with communities of men, and of women, devoted to living separately—in both spatial and
social terms—from society at large.
The principal monastic settlement on Skellig Michael sat in the protected lee
of the lower of the island’s two rocky summits, the so-called North Peak. Within
enclosure walls that delimited the sacred precincts of the monastery proper rose six
beehive-shaped dwellings, called clochans, and two small, rectangular churches,
the largest of which had interior dimensions of only 3.45 by 2.35 meters (11.5 by
7.5 feet). All were built entirely of dry-stone masonry, consisting of flat stones fitted together with no mortar, tapering inward to form a corbelled roof. A total of
perhaps twelve monks inhabited the complex, sleeping two to each clochan.
Yet some members of the community sought a place of still greater physical and spiritual isolation. They turned to the higher, steeper south peak, where
they constructed several stone terraces clinging to the sheer sides of the summit,
accessible only via a dizzying climb along narrow ledges and sheer cliff faces overlooking the sea 200 meters (220 yards) below, into which they carved just enough
foot- and hand-holds to permit a determined climber to ascend. Three separate
terraces were constructed with retaining walls of dry-stone masonry, infilled with
rubble and earth to create level platforms only a few meters wide.
The lowest, the so-called garden terrace, preserved no traces of habitation,
which led its first modern investigators to surmise that it was used as a garden
to provide sustenance for the solitary hermit whom they pictured living atop the
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3050-2666f-Printer Pdf-PV-028-034-r02.indd 155
11/20/2018 12:39:18 PM
P a r t V. T h i n g s o f t h e E i g h t h C e n t u r y
156
peak. The next, higher terrace contains the most substantial structural remains,
notably the foundations of a nearly square, dry-stone oratory measuring approximately 2.3 by 2 meters (7.5 by 6.5 feet) on the inside, located at the east end of
the terrace. Across from the oratory to the west was a leacht, a rectangular, drystone platform that may have served as an outdoor altar or a container for relics.
An upright stone slab inscribed with a cross, carved probably in the ninth century,
stood nearby. Two connected, rock-cut basins collected rainwater from the face of
the cliff for the use of the terrace’s occupants. The third terrace was built higher
still, just below the exposed, north side of the summit. Cold and wind-lashed even
in sunny summer weather, the inhospitable perch offers sweeping panoramic views
across the island to the lower monastery and the Irish mainland beyond. Much
of the terrace has collapsed, its unmortared masonry undermined by centuries of
wind and rain, but traces of paving, a leacht, and possibly a small shelter remain.
While the structures on the south peak have been intensively studied since the
1980s, much uncertainty remains about their chronology and even their function.
Parts of all three terraces have crumbled away, structural remains apart from the
oratory are sparse and difficult to identify, and none of the few surviving objects
can be closely dated. All that can be said with confidence is that the terraces were
built and occupied between about 700 and 1200, the period when the lower monastery was in use. The presence of the water basins on the oratory terrace has led
some to imagine it inhabited by hermits whose effort to achieve maximal separation from human society prompted them to rely as little as possible on others for
their basic needs. In part because surviving traces of living spaces are so meager,
however, others have imagined the terraces as a place where members of the lower
community went on a more occasional basis, performing a devotional circuit of
the various leachta (the plural of leacht), altars, and crosses scattered across the
three terraces and the paths that connected them.
It is possible that the South Peak also served as a place of refuge for the monks
in times of danger. The earliest written reference to the monastery of Skellig
Michael is a description of a Viking raid on the island in 824, when one of the
monks was carried off to die in captivity, allegedly of starvation. From the later
eighth century through the tenth, raiders from Scandinavia were a frequent presence in the waters around Britain and Ireland, and they initially found monasteries easy prey, full of valuable objects and able-bodied monks to enslave. The
South Peak provided a 360-degree view over the waters all around the island, such
that warning could have been signaled to the monks below in plenty of time to
allow them to take refuge in case of attack; and no enemy could have scaled the
South Peak under an avalanche of rocks hurled down from the upper terraces.
First and foremost, however, the terraces of the South Peak were solitary
places of sublime beauty, evidently designed to bring those who made the dangerous, exhausting climb—a kind of vertical pilgrimage—quite literally closer to
their God. For the monks of Skellig Michael, the effort and risk of hauling tons
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3050-2666f-Printer Pdf-PV-028-034-r02.indd 156
11/20/2018 12:39:18 PM
30. Sk ellig M ich a el Mona st ery
157
of building-stone up a vertical cliff-face under the most trying weather conditions was but a prelude to the still more difficult task of inhabiting spaces as farremoved as possible from anyone and anything extraneous to the project of
unstinting prayer and contemplation.
Further Reading
The dramatic account of the initial investigation of the structures on the South
Peak during the 1980s is in W. Horn, J. W. Marshall, and G. D. Rourke, The
Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael (Berkeley, 1990). For presentation of the
subsequent archaeological investigations that have provided the most detailed
information available for the date, occupational history, and configuration of
both the lower monastery and the South Peak, see E. Bourke, A. R. Hayden, and
A. Lynch, Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry: The Monastery and South Peak. Archaeological
Stratigraphic Report: Excavations 1986–2010 (Dublin, 2011).
Thing 30C. Skellig Michael: reconstruction of the ‘Oratory
Terrace’ on the South Peak. © National Monuments Service, Department
of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3050-2666f-Printer Pdf-PV-028-034-r02.indd 157
11/20/2018 12:39:19 PM
Thing 31A. Offa’s Dyke. Map by Ian Mladjov, adapted from
Cyril Fox, Offa’s Dyke (London, 1955).
This content downloaded from 169.232.187.115 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:13:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3050-2666f-Printer Pdf-PV-028-034-r02.indd 158
11/20/2018 12:39:19 PM