Upon her tomb in Kildare arose the inextinguishable flame called "the Light of St. Bridget," which her nuns (like the Vestal Virgins of Rome) kept "Through long ages of darkness and storm" (Moore). Six lives of her were published by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturgus, and five by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum. Critical Note on St. Patrick. We have only one or two genuine documents from Patrick, both written in semi-barbarous (early Irish) Latin, but breathing an humble, devout and fervent missionary spirit without anything specifically Roman, viz. his autobiographical Confession (in 25 chapters), written shortly before his death (493?), and his Letter of remonstrance to Coroticus (or Ceredig), a British chieftain (nominally Christian), probably of Ceredigion or Cardigan, who had made a raid into Ireland, and sold several of Patrick's converts into slavery (10 chapters). The Confession, as contained in the "Book of Armagh," is alleged to have been transcribed before A. D. 807 from Patrick's original autograph, which was then partly illegible. There are four other MSS. of the eleventh century, with sundry additions towards the close, which seem to be independent copies of the same original. See Haddan & Stubbs, note on p. 296. The Epistle to Coroticus is much shorter, and not so generally accepted. Both documents were first printed in 1656, then in 1668 in the Acta Sanctorum, also in Migne's Patrologia (Vol. 53), in Miss Cusack's Life of St. Patrick, in the work of Ebrard (1. c. 482 sqq.), and in Haddan & Stubbs, Councils (Vol. II., P. II., 296 sqq.). There is a difference of opinion about Patrick's nationality, whether he was of Scotch, or British, or French extraction. He begins his Confession: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and the least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible with the multitude (Ego Patricius, peccator, rusticissi mus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus apud plurimos, or, according to another reading, contemptibilis sum apud plurimos), had for my father Calpornus (or Calphurnius), a deacon (diaconum, or diaconem), the son of Potitus (al. Photius), a presbyter (filium quondam Potiti presbyteri), who lived in the village of Bannavem (or Banaven) of Tabernia; for he had a cottage in the neighborhood where I was captured. I was then about sixteen years old; but I was ignorant of the true God, and was led away into captivity to Hibernia." Bannavem of Tabernia is perhaps Banavie in Lochaber in Scotland (McLauchlan); others fix the place of his birth in Kilpatrick (i. e. the cell or church of Patrick), near Dunbarton on the Clyde (Ussher, Butler, Maclear); others, somewhere in Britain, and thus explain his epithet "Brito" or "Briton" (Joceline and Skene); still others seek it in Armoric Gaul, in Boulogne (from Bononia), and derive Brito from Brittany (Lanigan, Moore, Killen, De Vinné). He does not state the instrumentality of his conversion. Being the son of a clergyman, he must have received some Christian instruction; but he neglected it till he was made to feel the power of religion in communion with God while in slavery. "After I arrived in Ireland," he says (ch. 6), "every day I fed cattle, and frequently during the day I prayed; more and more the love and fear of God burned, and my faith and my spirit were strengthened, so that in one day I said as many as a hundred prayers, and nearly as many in the night." He represents his call and commission as coming directly from God through a vision, and alludes to no intervening ecclesiastical authority or episcopal consecration. In one of the oldest Irish MSS., the Book of Durrow, he is styled a presbyter. In the Epistle to Coroticus, he appears more churchly and invested with episcopal power and jurisdiction. It begins: "Patricius, peccator indoctus, Hiberione (or Hyberione) constitutus episcopus, certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum: inter barbaras utique gentes proselytus et profuga, ob amorem Dei." (So according to the text of Haddan & Stubbs, p. 314; somewhat different in Migne, Patrol. LIII. 814; and in Ebrard, p. 505.) But the letter does not state where or by whom he was consecrated. The "Book of Armagh" contains also an Irish hymn (the oldest monument of the Irish Keltic language), called S. Patricii Canticum Scotticum, which Patrick is said to have written when he was about to convert the chief monarch of the island (Laoghaire or Loegaire). The hymn is a prayer for the special aid of Almighty God for so important a work; it contains the principal doctrines of orthodox Christianity, with a dread of magical influences of aged women and blacksmiths, such as still prevails in some parts of Ireland, but without an invocation of Mary and the saints, such as we might expect from the Patrick of tradition and in a composition intended as a breast-plate or corselet against spiritual foes. The following is the principal portion: The Irish was first published by Dr. Petrie, and translated by Dr. Todd.. Haddan & Stubbs (320–323) give the Irish and English in parallel columns. Some parts of this hymn are said to be still remembered by the Irish peasantry and repeated at bed-time as a protection from evil, or "as a religious armor to protect body and soul against demons and men and vices." "5. I bind to myself to-day, The Power of God to guide me, The Might of God to uphold me, The Word of God to give me speech, Against the snares of demons, Against the lusts of nature, Against every man who meditates injury to me, With few or with many. 6. I have set around me all these powers, Against the false laws of heresy, Against the deceits of idolatry, Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids, 7. Christ protect me to-day Against poison, against burning, 8. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ in the chariot-seat [travelling by land], 9. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. 14. THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND, 10. I bind to myself to-day UNI CALIFORNI 51 The strong power of an invocation of the Trinity, The faith of the Trinity in Unity, The Creator of [the elements]. 11. Salvation is of the Lord, Salvation is of the Lord, Salvation is of Christ; May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us." The fourth and last document which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a Latin "Hymn in praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall (Secundinus) which begins thus: Audite, omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita Perfectamque propter uitam æquatur Apostolis." The poem is given in full by Haddan & Stubbs, 324-327, and assigned to "before A.D. 448 (?)," in which year Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his mission, according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440), and lasted till 493? The hymn is first mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh." The next oldest document is the Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned to the latter part of the sixth century, (l. c. 356–361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of St. Patrick; but it is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to St. Patrick are of later date (Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.). It is strange that St. Patrick is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he often refers to Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology. He is also ignored by Columba and by the Roman Catholic writers, until his mediæval biographers from the eighth to the twelfth century Romanized him, appealing not to his genuine Confession, but to spurious documents and vague traditions. He is said to have converted all the Irish chieftains and bards, even Ossian, the blind Homer of Scotland, who sang to him his long epic of Keltic heroes and battles. He founded 365 or, according to others, 700 churches, and consecrated as many bishops, and 3,000 priests (when the whole island had probably not more than two or three hundred thousand inhabitants; for even in the reign of Elizabeth it did not exceed 600,000).1 1 See Killen, I. 76, note. Montalembert says, III. 118, note: "Irish narratives know scarcely any numerals but those of three hundred and three thousand." He changed the laws of the kingdom, healed the blind, raised nine persons from death to life, and expelled all the snakes and frogs from Ireland. His memory is celebrated March 17, and is a day of great public processions with the Irish Catholics in all parts of the world. His death is variously put in the year 455 (Tillemont), 464 or 465 (Butler, Killen), 493 (Ussher, Skene, Forbes, Haddan & Stubbs). Forbes (Kalendars, p. 433) and Skene (Keltic Scotland, II. 427 sqq.) come to the conclusion that the legend of St. Patrick in its present shape is not older than the ninth century, and dissolves into three personages: SEN-PATRICK, whose day in the Kalendar is the 24th of August; PALLADIUS, "qui est Patricius," to whom the mission in 431 properly belongs, and PATRICIUS, whose day is the 17th of March, and who died in 493. "From the acts of these three saints, the subsequent legend of the great Apostle of Ireland was compiled, and an arbitrary chronology applied to it." § 15. The Irish Church after St. Patrick. THE MISSIONARY PERIOD. The labors of St. Patrick were carried on by his pupils and by many British priests and monks who were driven from England by the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries.* There was an intimate intercourse between Ireland and Wales, where British Christianity sought refuge, and between Ireland and Scotland, where the seed of Christianity had been planted by Ninian and Kentigern. In less than a century after St. Patrick's death Ireland was covered with churches and convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools of clergymen and missionaries, and workshops for transscribing sacred books. Prominent among these are the monas 1 A witty Irishman, who rowed me (in 1875) over Lake Killarney, told me that St. Patrick put the last snake into an iron box, and sunk it to the bottom of the lake, although he had solemnly promised to let the creature out. I asked him whether it was not a sin to cheat a snake? "Not at all," was his quick reply, "he only paid him in the same coin; for the first snake cheated the whole world." The same guide told me that Cromwell killed all the good people in Ireland, and let the bad ones live; and when I objected that he must have made an exception with his ancestors, he politely replied: "No, my parents came from America." 2 Petrie (Round Towers, p. 137, quoted by Killen I. 26) speaks of crowds of foreign ecclesiastics-Roman, Egyptian, French, British, Saxon-who flocked into Ireland as a place of refuge in the fifth and sixth centuries. |