§ 14. The Conversion of Ireland. St. Patrick and St. Bridget.

LITERATURE.

I. The writings of ST. PATRICK are printed in the Vita Sanctorum of the Bollandists, sub March 17th; in PATRICII Opuscula, ed. Waræus (Sir James Ware, Lond., 1656); in Migne's Patrolog., Tom. LIII. 790-839, and with critical notes in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., Vol. II, Part II, (1878), pp. 296-323.

II. The Life of St. Patrick in the Acta Sanctorum, Mart., Tom. II.

517 sqq.

TILLEMONT: Mémoires, Tom. XVI. 452, 781.

USSHER: Brit. Eccl. Antiqu.

J. H. TODD: St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Dublin, 1864.

C. JOH. GREITH (R. C.): Geschichte der altirischen Kirche und ihrer Verbindung mit Rom., Gallien und Alemannien, als Einleitung in die Geschichte des Stifts St. Gallen. Freiburg i. B. 1867.

DANIEL DE VINNÉ: History of the Irish Primitive Church, together with the Life of St. Patrick. N. York, 1870.

J. FRANCIS SHERMAN (R. C.): Loca Patriciana: an Identification of Localities, chiefly in Leinster, visited by St. Patrick. Dublin, 1879. F. E. WARREN (Episc.): The Manuscript Irish Missal at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. London, 1879. Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxf. 1881. Comp. also the works of TODD, MCLAUCHLAN, EBRARD, KILLEN, and SKENE, quoted in ? 7, and FORBES, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 431.

The church-history of Ireland is peculiar. It began with an independent catholicity (or a sort of semi-Protestantism), and ended with Romanism, while other Western countries passed through the reverse order. Lying outside of the bounds of the Roman empire, and never invaded by Roman legions,1 that virgin island was Christianized without bloodshed and independently of Rome and of the canons of the cecumenical synods. The early Irish church differed from the Continental churches in minor points of polity and worship, and yet excelled them all during the sixth and seventh centuries in spiritual purity and missionary zeal. After the Norman conquest, it became closely allied to Rome. In the sixteenth century the light of the Reformation

1 Agricola thought of invading Ireland, and holding it by a single legion, in order to remove from Britain the dangerous sight of freedom. Tacitus, Agric.,

did not penetrate into the native population; but Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts set up by force a Protestant state-religion in antagonism to the prevailing faith of the people. Hence, by the law of re-action, the Keltic portion of Ireland became more intensely Roman Catholic, being filled with double hatred of England on the ground of difference of race and religion. This glaring anomaly of a Protestant state church in a Roman Catholic country has been removed at last after three centuries of oppres sion and misrule, by the Irish Church Disestablishment Act in 1869 under the ministry of Gladstone.

The early history of Ireland (Hibernia) is buried in obscurity. The ancient Hibernians were a mixed race, but prevailingly Keltic. They were ruled by petty tyrants, proud, rapacious and warlike, who kept the country in perpetual strife. They were devoted to their religion of Druidism. Their island, even before the introduction of Christianity, was called the Sacred Island. It was also called Scotia or Scotland down to the eleventh century. The Romans made no attempt at subjugation, as they did not succeed in establishing their authority in Caledonia.

The first traces of Irish Christianity are found at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century.

As Pelagius, the father of the famous heresy, which bears his name, was a Briton, so Cælestius, his chief ally and champion, was a Hibernian; but we do not know whether he was a Christian before he left Ireland. Mansuetus, first bishop of Toul, was an Irish Scot (A.D. 350). Pope Calestine, in 431, ordained and sent Palladius, a Roman deacon, and probably a native Briton, "to the Scots believing in Christ,” as their first bishop.' This notice by Prosper of France implies the previous existence of Christianity in Ireland. But Palladius was so discouraged

1 Isidore of Seville in 580 (Origines XIV. 6) was the first to call Hibernia by the name of Scotia: "Scotia eadem et Ibernia, proxima Britanniæ insula.”

2 Prosper Aquitan. (A. D. 455–463), Chron. ad an. 431: “Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatus a Papa Cœlestino Palladius primus Episcopus mittitur." Comp. Vita S. Palladii in the Book of Armagh, and the notes by Haddan and Stubbs, Vol. II., Part II., pp. 290, 291.

that he soon abandoned the field, with his assistants, for North Britain, where he died among the Picts. For nearly two centuries after this date, we have no authentic record of papal intercourse with Ireland; and yet during that period it took its place among the Christian countries. It was converted by two humble individuals, who probably never saw Rome, St. Patrick, once a slave, and St. Bridget, the daughter of a slave-mother. The Roman tradition that St. Patrick was sent by Pope Cælestine is too late to have any claim upon our acceptance, and is set aside by the entire silence of St. Patrick himself in his genuine works. It arose from confounding Patrick with Palladius. The Roman mission of Palladius failed; the independent mission of Patrick succeeded. He is the true Apostle of Ireland, and has impressed his memory in indelible characters upon the Irish race at home and abroad.

ST. PATRICK or Patricius (died March 17, 465 or 493) was the son of a deacon, and grandson of a priest, as he confesses himself without an intimation of the unlawfulness of clerical marriages. He was in his youth carried captive into Ireland, with many others, and served his master six years as a shepherd. While tending his flock in the lonesome fields, the teachings of his childhood awakened to new life in his heart without any particular external agency. He escaped to France or Britain, was again enslaved for a short period, and had a remarkable

1 He is said to have left in Ireland, when he withdrew, some relics of St. Peter and Paul, and a copy of the Old and New Testaments, which the Pope had given him, together with the tablets on which he himself used to write. Haddan & Stubbs, p. 291.

2 Hence Montalembert says (II. 393): "The Christian faith dawned upon Ireland by means of two slaves." The slave-trade between Ireland and England flourished for many centuries.

This fact is usually omitted by Roman Catholic writers. Butler says simply: "His father was of a good family." Even Montalembert conceals it by calling "the Gallo-Roman (?) Patrick, son of a relative of the great St. Martin of Tours" (II. 390). He also repeats, without a shadow of proof, the legend that St. Patrick was consecrated and commissioned by Pope St. Celestine (p. 391), though he admits that "legend and history have vied in taking possession of the life of St. Patrick."

dream, which decided his calling. He saw a man, Victoricius, who handed him innumerable letters from Ireland, begging him to come over and help them. He obeyed the divine monition, and devoted the remainder of his life to the conversion of Ireland (from A. D. 440 to 493).'

"I am," he says, "greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who never had the knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God." He speaks of having baptized many thousands of men. Armagh seems to have been for some time the centre of his missionary operations, and is to this day the seat of the primacy of Ireland, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. He died in peace, and was buried in Downpatrick (or Gabhul), where he began his mission, gained his first converts and spent his declining years."

His Roman Catholic biographers have surrounded his life with marvelous achievements, while some modern Protestant hypercritics have questioned even his existence, as there is no certain mention of his name before 634; unless it be "the Hymn of St. Sechnall (Secundinus) in praise of St. Patrick," which is assigned to 448. But if we accept his own writings, "there can be no reasonable doubt" (we say with a Presbyterian historian of Ireland) "that he preached the gospel in Hibernia in the fifth century; that he was a most zealous and efficient evangelist, and that he is eminently entitled to the honorable designation of the Apostle of Ireland." 3

1 The dates are merely conjectural. Haddan & Stubbs (p. 295) select A.D. 440 for St. Patrick's mission (as did Tillemont & Todd), and 493 as the year of his death. According to other accounts, his mission began much earlier, and lasted sixty years. The alleged date of the foundation of Armagh is A. D. 445. 2 Afterwards Armagh disputed the claims of Downpatrick. See Killen I. 71-73. 3 Killen, Vol. I. 12. Patrick describes himself as "Hiberione constitutus episcopus." Afterwards he was called "Episcopus Scotorum," then "Archiapostolus Scotorum," then "Abbat of all Ireland," and "Archbishop, First Primate, and Chief Apostle of Ireland." See Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.

The Christianity of Patrick was substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, i. e. Catholic, orthodox, monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the age of Gregory I. in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Confession he never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in matters of faith. He quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times; three times from the Apocrypha. It has been conjectured that the failure and withdrawal of Palladius was due to Patrick, who had already monopolized this mission-field; but, according to the more probable chronology, the mission of Patrick began about nine years after that of Palladius. From the end of the seventh century, the two persons were confounded, and a part of the history of Palladius, especially his connection with Pope Cælestine, was transferred to Patrick.'

With St. Patrick there is inseparably connected the most renowned female saint of Ireland, ST. BRIDGET (or Brigid, Brigida, Bride), who prepared his winding sheet and survived him many years. She died Feb. 1, 523 (or 525). She is "the Mary of Ireland," and gave her name to innumerable Irish daughters, churches, and convents. She is not to be confounded with her name-sake, the widow-saint of Sweden. Her life is surrounded even by a still thicker cloud of legendary fiction than that of St. Patrick, so that it is impossible to separate the facts from the accretions of a credulous posterity. She was an illegitimate child of a chieftain or bard, and a slave-mother, received holy orders, became deformed in answer to her own prayer, founded the famous nunnery of Kildare (i. e. the Church of the Oak), foretold the birth of Columba, and performed all sorts of signs and wonders.

1 Haddan & Stubbs, p. 294, note: "The language of the Hymns of S. Sechnall and of S. Fiace, and of S. Patrick's own Confessio, and the silence of Prosper, besides chronological difficulties, disprove, upon purely historical grounds, the supposed mission from Rome of S. Patrick himself; which first appears in the Scholia on S. Fiacc's Hymn."

2 The probable date of foundation is A. D. 480. Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.