Flavio Biondo, an Italian humanist, in the early 15th Century, first coined the term “Middle Age” (”medium ævum”) to designate the period between the Classical and the enlightened Renaissance revival of classical ideas, philosophies, aesthetics. In English, Dutch, Russian and Icelandic, the plural form of the term, Middle Ages, is used, however, other European languages use the singular form (Italian medioevo, French le moyen âge, German das Mittelalter.) The popular word we use commonly today, “medieval”, is a contraction of the Latin medium ævum or “middle epoch”. Enlightenment thinkers used it as a pejorative descriptor of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages would come to be viewed as a Dark Age during which many of the advances and achievements of the Greeks and Romans would be eclipsed by warfare and the gradual disintegration of institutions and culture that the Europeans had inherited from the Classical era.
The beginning of the Medieval period is introduced with the fall of the Roman Empire, when in 476 C.E., the emperor was driven from his throne by barbarian invaders. The dissolution of the once expansive and powerful Roman Empire allowed for the formation of tiny kingdoms throughout Europe vying for territory. There was great instability as a result of such fragmentation and ongoing invasions and infighting bewteen tribes such as the Vikings, Visigoths, and Gauls, as well as the Moors began to change the nature of European life. 
A lack of centralized political power in the greater region gave the Catholic Church tremendous power and civilian life - in terms of cultural growth, education, literacy, political involvement, and commerce - was in many ways truncated by an era of conflict and unenlightened dogma. With lawlessness and warfare widespread, community became focused around small powers, nobles or kings, who established control of land and created feudal systems by which to garner work from the peasant-class in exchange for access to land and protection from marauding tribes.
One of America’s biggest holidays, St. Patrick’s Day is not the most important day on the Irish calendar. Boiled pork and cabbage becomes corned beef and cabbage when it crosses the ocean and the concept of ‘little people’ becomes a breakfast cereal celebrity once it hit American shores.
So how did the remembrances of Irish Americans become the March madness of a diverse immigrant nation? How did the story of Ireland’s patron saint develop into a drinking fest to rival any German get together? The history of the Irish people is fraught with conflict, persecution, determination and strength and these qualities are best known in the story of a rich boy turned slave turned Catholic priest and eventually, Ireland’s patron saint.
Patrick was born Patricius in Wales during Roman rule, approximately 1, 500 years ago. This young Welshman had little religious faith, came from a good family and lived an easy life. Until of course he was kidnapped at the age of 17 by slave traders and taken by boat to ancient Ireland. Patrick’s life became that of a shepherd as he tended sheep for his master in the hills of county Antrim. County Antrim is in Ireland’s north and is the same county where the city of Belfast is located today.
After several years in Antrim, Patrick claimed to hear voices telling him to escape which he did returning to Wales for a brief time. But the voices in his head would not stop and Patrick consulted a priest. The priest told him the voice he heard was that of God and Patrick had been called to the Catholic faith.
Patrick then traveled to France to be properly trained in the Catholic faith. Returning to Ireland a few years later as a freeman, Patrick preached the gospel and allegedly converted many of the ancient Celts to the Roman Catholic religion. He also advocated for an end to slavery but it would be centuries before the Christian world agreed with him.
Over time, Patrick would become the bishop of a converted Ireland, punctuating the emerald landscape with monasteries. During the middle ages, it was these monasteries and ones like them across Europe that would preserve language and literature during the upheaval of the dark ages. It is believed that the Celtic cross also stems from Patrick’s efforts as he took a traditional Celtic religious symbol of the sun and added it to the Christian cross to show the connection to potential converts.
Other symbols celebrated on March 17 (the date of Patrick’s death) such as the shamrock were often thought to be from Patrick’s influence. The myth that he used the shamrock to teach the Catholic trinity, the belief that he scared all the snakes out of Ireland and the idea of leprechauns as symbols of the day are not true. Leprechauns came from a 1959 American movie, snakes are an ancient Celtic symbol and the shamrock was worn as a symbol of Irish nationalism not of Catholic belief. What Patrick did was provide a legend and a symbol of Ireland that carried across the oceans to the new world.
Celtic Replicas
Isle of Lewis Celtic Chess Set (board and pieces)
Celtic Sun Cross
Celtic Bronze Sword
Celtic Crucifix of Athlone
Celebrated in the Americas for centuries, St. Patrick ’s Day reminds the country of its immigrant roots and diversity of belief. It also reminds us that whether Irish or not, everyone can come together once a year to remember an historic figure who escaped from slavery, spread a religion and gave an excuse for green colored alcohol.
Tags: America, Anicent Rome, Antrim, Catholic, Catholic trinity, Celtic, Celtic Bronze Sword, celtic cross, Celtic Crucifix of Athlone, Celtic religious symbol of the sun, Celtic Replicas, Celtic Sun Cross, Celts, conversion of ancient celts by St. Patrick, Druids, history of St. Patrick’s Day, Ireland, Ireland’s patron saint, Irish American history, Isle of Lewis Celtic Chess Set (board and pieces), Leprechauns, March 17th, middle ages, Patricius, Romans, shamrocks, snakes, St. patrick, St. Patrick’s Day history, St. Patrick’s Day origins
The handbag in our culture is so ubiquitous and the ranges of handbag styles is so expansive that we may take for granted the history of the handbag or the simpler pouch. Examples of pouches used to carry objects or goods or money are seen in art from antiquity, such as in the sculpture of Hermes of Thrace found at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Hermes, apart from being the messenger god, was also the god protectorate of commerce and trade and so, aptly, could be depicted carrying a pouch of money.
Even in its early history, the pouch was adorned in ways that attested to its transformational potential. And often it has been the case that a bag’s outer adornment reflects a desire or intention or a meaning beyond its material purpose. In the middle ages, for example, purses were often exchanged between couples as tokens of love and courtship and the purses themselves would often display embroidered images of lovers in courtship. This was part of the medieval fashion to celebrate courtly love and romance and a bag with an embroidered image of this would serve to echo a cultural notion of the times.
As the European continent fell under the influence of various political/cultural influences during the middle ages, costume would be manipulated to reflect a person’s cultural associations. In the history of costume and culture this is not unusual, as distinctions of status have always been manifest in costume to some extent. However, during the middle ages, as consolidated centers of power and influence developed and larger groups of diverse populations had to coexist, costume came to be a mechanism of enforcing societal norms in a way different from before.
Beginning in the 9th century in southern Europe, (and prior to this in the Middle East and northern Africa), as Islam established itself in political power, Jewish and Christian populations within their jurisdiction were distinguished from their Muslim neighbors by restrictions in clothing. Christian and Jewish populations were ordered to wear signs or markings on their headwear or variably told to wear head-coverings that marked them apart. Later, in the Arab kingdoms of the 14th century, Jews were designated to wear yellow clothing, Christians blue, and Samaritans red.
Changes in clothing styles in the middle ages were not very dramatic until the mid-13th century when the tunic styles that had dominated both men’s and women’s wardrobes began to diversify and manifest unique designs. A dramatic shift in artwork during this same medieval period, when fashion essentially began its history, reflects the changes of those times. What Giorgio Vasari, the Renaissance art historian, classified as Gothic Art offers us images caught in time of a movement and energy that encapsulated the end of the middle ages.
Gothic art evokes the great cathedrals of France and Germany to the modern viewer, but Gothic sculpture, and particularly the forms explicit in the Gothic aesthetic, tell a lot about the time period’s aspirations and visions of itself. If Gothic architecture was reflective of people’s Christian ideals, with spires reaching for the heavens and stained glass windows channeling God’s light through the chambers of the church, then Gothic sculpture was charged with the restlessness and flamboyance of the period. Whereas the Romanesque aesthetic in sculpture that preceded it was marked by rigidity and stoic beauty, Gothic sculpture broke free literally and figuratively.
