Smith, Greg dot com

For hundreds of years, this was the Church on the Edge of the World:

The island above is called Skellig Michael. Skellig is an old Irish Gaelic words meaning "rock," and so it's name was Michael's rock, or the rock of St. Michael.

It lies about 12 miles off the southwest tip of Ireland. Sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean, it's longitude is 10 degrees, 32 minutes, 19 seconds West of the Prime Meridian, which made it, for all practical purposes, the Western-most point of Europe during the Middle Ages (two of the Blasket Islands, about 20 miles north of Skellig Michael are a few miles further to the west, but they were semi-inhabited by seasonal shepherds).

If you travel to Killarney, Ireland, and then drive out to the coastal village of Portmagee, and if the weather and the sea state cooperates (which is not everyday), you can take a boat out to the Skellig. When you step onto the landing at the island you’ll be confronted with a steep climb up more than 500 stone steps and a rough-hewn trail laid into the barren hillside, covered with gulls and puffins. After climbing to the summit of the 700 foot tall rock you round a bend and encounter sort of ledge or terrace hanging over a near-vertical drop to the crashing waves below.

On this terrace, no larger than the size of a modern ranch house, sit six beehive stone huts and two stone “oratories” (rooms where scripture was read and mass taken). From some time in the 6th or 7th century until sometime around the year 1200 AD this monastery was the Church on the Edge of the World.

There were never probably more than 12 monks, along with an abbot (imitating the pattern of Christ with his 12 disciples). Century after century, through all seasons, under bright sun and steady downpours and dense fog and fierce Atlantic storms these monks lived and worshiped in this high and isolated spot.

They had a small garden on adjacent terrace and grew a few vegetables. Birds eggs would have been numerous, though fish would have been difficult to catch as there is no beach, just steep, slippery cliffs. Most likely the monastery was periodically supplied from the mainland, including the important communion host and wine.

The monastery survived a number of viking raids over the centuries, particularly in the 9th century.

This place belongs to another world.

Sometime in the 13th century the Little Ice Age hit Europe. The weather became harsher and colder as ice caps and glaciers grew. It became almost impossible to survive year-round on the Skellig, and the monastic community relocated to the mainland. For some time afterward it was used by monks as a temporary retreat before being abandoned permanently.

Why did so many generations of monks live and die in such an inhospitable place? There were no amusements, no recreation, no interaction with other people other than the eleven other men perched on the ledge over the Atlantic. While we find it a stunningly beautiful place to visit, I believe that to understand their motivation we must go back to the Syrian desert.

Many Irish monks, imitating the withdrawal of St. Anthony into the desert, sought a desert in the sea and founded monasteries on hundreds of islands—the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Faeroes—eventually reaching from the coast of Great Britain as far as Iceland. The monastic ideal of going into exile for the love of God, peregrinatio pro Dei amore , flourished in the Irish church, which was dominated by the monasteries.

A couple of days ago I wrote about Simeon Stylites, who lived on a pillar to remove himself from the temptations and distractions of the world. The monks of Skellig Michael found a higher pillar to crucify themselves on, at the edge of the world.