Gripla - 20.12.2011, Síða 106

GRIPLA106
labour] he separates from his desires, or suffers toil in penance and
repentance. This is red martyrdom to him, endurance of a cross or
destruction for Christ’s sake, as happened to the apostles in the per-
secution of the wicked and in teaching the law of God. These three
kinds of martyrdom are comprised in the carnal ones who resort to
good repentance, who separate from their desires, who pour forth
their blood in fasting and in labour for Christ’s sake.113
Old Irish báanmartre ocus glasmartre ocus dercmartre identify possible
forms of martyrdom as white (bán, especially in the non-literal sense of
‘bloodless’, Lat. ex[s]anguis), blue (glas, corresponding to Lat. hyacinthinus,
as Stancliffe has convincingly demonstrated, in particular with the sym-
bolic sense of ‘pale, livid, discoloured [for instance, in abstinence]’), and
red (derg, fundamentally ‘red with blood’, hence ‘bloody’).114 True, neither
the idea of bloodless and lifelong types of martyrdom nor the link with
colour-imagery were new, occurring for example in the works of Jerome
and Sulpicius Severus (ca. 400 A.D.), both particularly influential on early
Irish monasticism; in fact, Sulpicius’ distinction between a ‘sine cruore
martyrium’ and its opposite, the ‘palma sanguinis’, may be reflected in the
meanings of bán and derg as suggested by Stancliffe.115 But it is in dealing
with penitence that the elaboration of the Irish preacher adds something
more original to the frame, and shows some point of contact with our Old
Icelandic allegorical interpretation of the rainbow.
Among the Latin excerpts selected in Stancliffe’s paper as useful par-
allels to the Cambrai text, one is particularly relevant to our topic of
113 Cf. Thesaurus Paleohibernicus II, 246–247; Stancliffe, “Red, white and blue martyrdom”:
23; Ní Chatháin, “A Reading of the Cambrai Homily”: 417. I print here also the Old Irish
text from Thesaurus Paleohibernicus (ibid.), with Ní Chatháin’s corrected reading of the
bánmartre definition: Filus trechenélae martre daneu adrímiter ar chruich du duiniu. mad esgre
báanmartre ocus glasmartre ocus dercmartre. Issí in bánmartre do duiniu intain scaras ar Dea
fri cach reet caras cení césa aíni na laubir n-oco. Issí ind glasmartre dó intain scaras fria thola leó
nó céssas sáithor i ppennit ocus aithrigi. Issí in dercmartre dó foditu chruche ocus diorcne ar Chríst
amail tondeccomnuccuir dundaib abstolaib oc ingrimmim inna clóen ocuis oc forcetul recto Dée.
Congaibetar inna trechenél martre so issnib colnidib tuthégot dagathrigi, scarde fria tola, céste
sáithu, tuesmot a fuil i n-áini ocuis i laubair ar Chríst.
114 Cf. Stancliffe, “Red, white and blue martyrdom”: 27–29.
115 Ibid., 31–32.