Gripla - 20.12.2011, Side 105

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this mechanical copy is a poor one, with a number of evident mistakes in
word division etc.; but the text is very well-known and long investigated by
scholars because of both its archaic language and its explicit definition of
the trechenelæ martre or „threefold martyrdom“ categorized by colours.110
The fundamental study of this last topic remains the article by Clare
Stancliffe on the “Red, white and blue martyrdom”, published in 1982:111
here the scholar examines the relevant passage of the homily in the light of
some up to that point unpublished Latin texts, of Continental provenance
but with strong Irish connections.
To begin with, I print here the Cambrai excursus on the subject of
martyrdom in the English translation by Stokes and Strachan, but with
the acceptance of Clare Stancliffe’s suggestion for translating glasmarte
as ‘blue martyrdom’ (instead of ‘green martyrdom’), and of Próinséas Ní
Chatháin’s reading of manuscript f. 38r, l. 17, as cení césa ‘although he does
not endure’ (instead of ‘although he suffer’):
Now there are three kinds of martyrdom which are counted as a
cross to man,112 that is to say, white martyrdom, and blue martyr-
dom, and red martyrdom. This is the white martyrdom to man,
when he separates for sake of God from everything he loves,
although he does not endure fasting or labour thereby. This is the
blue martyrdom to him, when by means of them [i.e. fasting and
110 The text of the Cambrai Homily is edited by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, Thesaurus
paleohibernicus: A Collection of Old-Irish Glosses Scholias Prose and Verse II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1903; repr. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1987), 244–247. See also Rudolf Thurneysen, Old Irish Reader (Dublin: Dublin Institute
for Advanced Studies, 1949; repr. 1981), 35–36.
111 Cf. above, note 107. A careful study of the Cambrai Homily’s structure and sources, which
shows that it was skillfully constructed, and that its author drew especially on a couple
of Gregory the Great’s Homiliae in Evangelia (namely Homily 32 and 37) achieving very
effective results, is Pádraig P. Ó Néill, “The Background to the Cambrai Homily,” Ériu
32 (1981): 137–147. See also Próinséas Ní Chatháin, “A Reading in the Cambrai Homily,”
Celtica 21 (1990): 417, for a reassessment of a textual emendation in the passage discussed
here (cf. below). For a summary account giving all the chief points, see Westley Follett,
Céli Dé in Ireland. Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 2006), 54–56.
112 The preacher is elaborating on Matthew 16, 24: Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum
et tollat crucem suam et sequatur me “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me”; cf. also Luke 9, 23 (...et tollat crucem suam cotidie et
sequatur me “...and take up his cross daily and follow me”).
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