CULDEI. – Religious communities proper to Celtic monasticism. Their origins are little known. As a distinct institution, the C. belonged to the reform movement of the eighth century. “The most satisfactory hypothesis is that the C. were religious communities gathered around the reforming leaders ... and that the method they followed was to combine the austerity of the life of recluses or anchorites with a well-organized communal life and the close and rigorous supervision of a spiritual superior” (Kenney).
Their name, considered by some to be a corruption of the Latin cultores Dei, derives from Celtic (Irish Cili Dé, Scottish Kili Dei) and means “servants of God.” Attested in the forms Colideus, Culledens, Kelledens (English Culdee), the word is ancient, but it is found as the specific term for a category of monks only from the eighth century onward.
The best-known apostle of this reform is Maelruan (Máel-Ruain, died in 792), founder of the monastery of Tamlachta (now Tallaght, near Dublin), the principal center of the movement. Among his distinguished disciples, Máel-Dithruib and, above all, Oengus (or Aengus), called “the c.,” should be remembered. The three famous documents—the Martirologio di Oengus, the Martirologio di Tallaght, and the Messale di Stowe—come from Tamlachta.
A monastic rule is attributed to s. Maelruan and was edited and translated into English by W. Reeves. It should be noted that all the known Irish rules, although they bear the names of famous early saints, belong, in the form in which they have come down to us, to this period of the eighth and ninth centuries.
At Tallaght the C. made up the entire monastic community, whereas elsewhere, as at Ros-eré, they formed a distinct community situated near the old monastic church; elsewhere still, as at Armagh, they constituted a particular group, almost a community of “strict observance” within the older, larger, and decadent organization.
Their practices are known to us in part from the three Rules or ascetical directories that have come down to us in Irish: 1) the aforementioned Regola di s. Maelruan; 2) the Note sui costumi di Tallaght, collected partly around the year 840 and partly later; 3) the seventh section of the Insegnamenti di s. Mochuta (died in 636), in verse (a ninth-century recension).
Their program was: “to keep vigil, pray, read, work.” Out of a spirit of mortification they excluded music. They had a double Lent: the principal one before Easter, and the summer one after Pentecost. They practiced weekly confession; the confessor was called “the friend of the soul.”
From Ireland the institution of the C. spread to Great Britain and Scotland (with its principal center at S. Andrews), changing according to the countries. The Danish invasions brought about the decline of the institution, which nevertheless survived until the Protestant Reformation.
It was then claimed that the C. represented the whole of Celtic monasticism, deriving from the primitive faith “uncorrupted by Rome.” Nor were there lacking those who, for nationalistic reasons, maintained that their origin was Scottish rather than Irish.