International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Daria Penskaya
St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
“Navigatio Sancti Brendani” and “Narratio Agapii”: Possible Interconnections
The paper is dedicated to the possibile interconnections between the Latin version of the Irish 
“Navigatio Sancti Brendani” dated from the 9-10
th
cent. and the “Narration of Our Father Agapius”, 
Byzantine apocryphon, presumably, attested to the area of Palestinian monasticism 5
th
-6
th
cent. 
In both cases the diverting form, recalling the one of the fairy-tale, reveals a story of the 
monastic life. 
Some episodes of the “Navigatio” (the events before monks’ departure to Paradise; the 
monastery of St. Ailbe and the Promised Land) are supposed to prove an influence of the “Narration”. 
The whole set of motives and their sequence in the scenes mentioned above seems to be traced back 
to the corresponding episodes in the “Narration”. If the author of the “Navigatio” indeed used the 
“Narration” as a source, certain tendency in its’ adaptation is discerned: motives and images that 
formed in the “Narration” a unique description of a symbolic ascent to Christ and to Wisdom, in the
“Navigation” lost their symbolic substance and were plunged back into folklore.
This relation of unique and symbolical in one case and standard and folk in the other is 
systematically followed in the paper. For example the snow white bread as the main symbol of 
Christ, brought by Agapius from Paradise back to earth in the “Navigatio” is replaced by white 
and wonderful food of the otherworld. To the symbolical sequence of helpers in the “Narratio” 
representing the Holy Trinity (the eagle, the child, the handsome man) in the “Navigatio” correspond 
just a handsome man and a youth, met by Barinthus and Brendan in the Promise Land; they are 
simply helpers similar to standard characters of the fairy-tales. 

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In case that our hypothesis turns to be true, it clarifies the origin of some motives of the 
“Navigation” and the text of the “Navigation” in its turn testifies that the plot of the “Narration” 
was known in the Celtic world. Thus the discussion on the relations between Ireland and Eastern 
Orthodoxy in the early period that goes on nowadays, acquires a new source.