circa 500 AD
The peacock's feather
Most of the early Christian missionaries to Ireland came from Britain, as St Patrick did. However, a stone carving found at Rathduff near the village of Anascaul tells another story. The carving shows a fan made from peacocks' feathers, which were used in the churches of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean to keep the priest cool in the heat. There are other carvings of this kind of fan, called a flabellum, on the Dingle and Iveragh peninsulas. These early Christian artworks date to the 6th century. There is firm evidence that some, at least, of the early Christian missionaries to Ireland came from the Mediterranean area, while Christian monasticism originated in Egypt with the 'Desert Fathers'.
