2 - The Middle Ages - Medieval Britain

"York: The Mount Area"
Christian Celts - Charles Thomas
ISBN - 0-7524-2849-7

Celtic Christianity was a form of the Christian Religion in Europe, mainly Roman Britain and Ireland, during the Early Middle Ages. Celtic Christianity has been depicted in a number of different ways by different people. One idea of Celtic Christianity describes that it opposed the Catholic Church, being led by the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope. Other people claim that the movement simply rejected the authority of the Pope, and that Celtic Christianity was more one with nature, and more female friendly.

An Ogham Stone from
Inchagoill Island, part of
the lake district, Ireland

Medieval Britain and Celtic Christianity show signs of a very different civilization compared to the modern day. This difference can be seen in a number of ways, but very much so through Celtic Christian documents, like stone memorials, carvings and jewellery. The memorial to the right shows Celtic text engraved into stone. 

An example of an
 'Ogham' Inscription
on a stone pillar.

This Celtic language came from the Proto-Celtic language, a branch of an Indo-European language, which is a family of lots of relating languages. However 'it is conceivable that very occasionally people did write in British' (Christian Celts - Chales Thomas), however the problem in the modern day is decoding the words as they may have been 'scriptio continua, strings of letters not showing any word boundaries.' The same type of language is used on the stone image to the right, along with a basic Celtic Cross, which was a big image for the the Celtic movement that spread across  the UK including Ireland, and also moving across into France. 

However, even with signs of English writing, Celts still used other forms of langauge, like 'Ogham' inscriptions to the right and above. These inscriptions involved a row of lines like 'scratches'. The inscription on the stone reads upwards and each group of inscriptions represents a letter.