RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Celtic Church.
comes again into view in the sixth century (see below, II-, 1).
2. In Ireland: There is native tradition of the
introduction of Christianity into Ireland, the two
oldest records of which can scarcely
1. Native ^e dated earlier than the last quar-
Tradition ^ of the seventh century. They
Origin are ^ *^e '^e °^ Patrick, written by Muirchu Maccu-Machtheni at the wish of Bishop Aed of Sletty (d. 698), and (2) the collections of a certain Tirechan, a pupil of Ultan of Ardbrechan (d. 656), based upon information about Patrick which his teacher had communicated to him personally or had left in his papers. Both records, but with additions and amplifications, are in the Book of Armagh (Liber Ardmachanus), the several parts of which were written between 807 and 846. In brief this native tradition is as follows: In 431 Ireland was entirely heathen. In that year Pope Celestine I. sent a certain Palladius to preach to the people, but he turned back and died in Britain. His place was at once (c. 432) taken by a Briton, Patrick, wiio in his youth had been a prisoner in Ireland. He evangelized the entire land, founded churches everywhere, ordained bishops and presbyters, and died (459) universally revered as the head of the Church, in which he held a sort of metropolitan rank, with his see at Armagh in Ulster.
Everything discredits the authenticity of this tradition. (1) It represents Patrick as a personality comparable to Martin of Tours or Columba, the apostle to the Picts; such men do not fail to find a biographer among their admirers and associates; their fame grows and is spread i j^.. m the next generation. But the name of Patrick does not appear till the second third of the seventh century, and then it is in the letter of Cummian (q.v.) to the abbot Seghine of Iona, in connection with the introduction of the Dionysian (!) paschal computation, which is ascribed to him. He is not mentioned in the full report of the Synod of Whitby (664), although the arguments were historical and the Irish referred to the traditions of their forefathers and to Columba (Bede, iii. 25). Bede must have been well informed concerning the Church in North Ireland and his interest in the beginnings of Christianity in the British Isles was keen; yet he says nothing about Patrick in his Eistoria ecclesiastica. It seems impossible that there can have existed in the North of Ireland in the seventh century a tradition of a founder of the Irish Church called Patrick. And yet it is in the North (at Armagh) that the tradition (the first reports of which come from the South) represents Patrick as having his see and ending his days. (2) The tradition describes the Irish Church as episcopal, dependent on Patrick's see of Armagh. But as a matter of fact the Church of Columba and of Finnian of Clonard, i.e., from the end of the fifth century, is a monastic church without central organization and with no traces of such a past as the tradition presupposes. How intensely the Irish cling to the customs of
Tradition Unreliable.
their fathers was shown at Whitby; it took four hundred years to transform this monastic church of the sixth and seventh centuries even after the theoretical acceptance of an episcopal constitution. If, then, the organization was so fundamentally changed within one generation, as it must have been if the tradition be correct, an explanation is needed. And none is forthcoming. (3) There is good reason to believe that Ireland was not entirely heathen in 431. The island is easily accessible from Britain; and active intercourse, particularly between the Southwest of Britain and the Southeast of Ireland, existed as early as the third and fourth centuries (cf. Zimmer, Nennius vindicatus, pp. 85- 93, Berlin, 1893; Kuno Meyer, Early Relations Between Gael and Brython, in the Transactions of the Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895-96, pp. 55-86). As has been seen, there was a well-organized British Church in the fourth century. It is natural to assume, then, that Christianity was carried to Ireland from Britain before the time assigned to Patrick. And the assumption is corroborated by certain saints' lives, particularly those of Declan, Ailbe, Ibhar, Ciaran, and Abban (ASB, July, v. 590-608; Sept., iv. 26-31; Apr., iii. 173; Mar., i. 389-399; Oct., xii. 270-293; cf. also Ussher, Antiquitates, ed. of 1687, pp. 408 sqq.). In all these lives Patrick figures as " Archbishop of Ireland," but this is due to the time of redaction. These same men are not only Patrick's contemporaries,, but older contemporaries, independent of him, and recognized as the apostles of their districts. Their locality is the Southeast, the coast counties of" Wicklow, Wexford, and Waterford, and the adjoining inland counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, where local testimonies to their cult still survive. Further evidence may be found in the fact that the two lives of Patrick, mentioned above, limit his activity to the North. The Patrick legend originated in the South and was forced upon the North from the time of Cummian's letter, the object being to win over the North Irish to conformity with the Roman Church. But this alone does not explain the silence of the lives concerning the South. It must be that, while the Southerners were willing to acknowledge Patrick theoretically as apostle of the North with his see at Armagh, hoping thereby to win over the mainstay of the opposing party, the abbot-bishop of Armagh, the traditions in the South concerning the founders of the monasteries there were too well known to admit of a description of Patrick as the apostle of the South. A third testimony is the fact that Ireland cherished the memory of the heresiarch Pelagius and was well acquainted with his writings (cf. Bede, ii. 19). In the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, the Irish Church possessed the original unmutilated commentary of Pelagius (when it had disappeared everywhere else in the West) and knew that Pelagius was the author. Pelagius may himself have been an Irishman (cf. Jerome, in MPL, xxiv. 682a, 758b). He was a sincere and earnest thinker and did not adopt heretical views until he went to Rome (c. 400). His learning was great and would naturally gratify the pride of his countrymen. If he
Celtic Church