The life of St. Patrick and his place in history

by J. B. Bury

For his combination of the rise of the Patrick legend with the Paschal question, Zimmer lays much stress on Muirchu. I have pointed out above ([Appendix A, ii. 3]) that a certain indirect connexion between Muirchu’s work and events connected with the Roman controversy may be fairly inferred. But this inference does not furnish any support for Zimmer’s daring theory. And it is important to notice in this connexion that Muirchu did not believe that Patrick went to Rome; he admits that he wished to do so, but denies that he passed beyond Gaul. This in itself would make us hesitate to believe that the story of Patrick, as expounded by Muirchu, was a recent fabrication in the interests of the Roman cause.

But we may waive all particular criticisms of Zimmer’s reconstruction, and state the general and decisive objection to his or any similar theory. It is this. The nature of the traditions which are preserved in the two seventh-century compilations written by Tírechán and Muirchu forbids the hypothesis of recent fabrication. In the first place a critical examination of the texts of these works enables us to conclude that they were largely based on older written material. In the second place, it is perfectly inconceivable that all the detailed traditions which Tírechán collected both from written and from oral resources concerning Patrick’s work in Connaught should have been deliberately invented, between 625 and 660, in a region where Patrick’s name was never known. In the third place, the really characteristic Patrician stories, the death of Miliucc, the events of the first Easter, the story of Daire, are not of the kind which are fabricated, generations after the life of the hero, for a deliberate purpose. They belong to the legends that spring up soon after the death of their hero, or even during his lifetime. I may refer to what I have said in the text ([p. 111]). If we had no other evidence, the tale of the first Easter at Slane and Tara would be in itself a guarantee that the “Patrick legend” could not have been deliberately invented in the seventh century.

One more observation. It would be difficult to explain how it came that, if the author of the Confession spent his life in Leinster, and his name was sufficiently well remembered to make his fortune in the seventh century, no particular church in that region claimed him. Zimmer may get out of the difficulty through his identification of Palladius with Patrick; he may say that Patrick’s church was the Palladian Cell Fine, where memorials of Palladius were preserved. But this explanation would only serve to emphasise the improbability of the theory of identity. It is impossible to understand how Cell Fine remembered its founder as Palladius and not as Patricius, seeing that (ex hypoth.) the name Patricius (as used by the author of the Confession) had so completely superseded the name Palladius, that the bishop was not only glorified as Patricius in the seventh century, but even distinguished definitely from Palladius. Again: either it was remembered in south Ireland or it was not remembered at the beginning of that century, when the Patrician legend is alleged to have taken shape, that Palladius and Patricius were the same person. If it was remembered, then how came it that Palladius-Patricius was differentiated into two, when it was assuredly more in the interests of the Roman cause to glorify an apostle sent by Celestine than to discriminate a successful missionary who was not sent by a Pope, from an unsuccessful missionary who was? If it was not remembered, then the only passage which Zimmer can quote for the identification (Lib. Arm. p. 332, see above, [p. 389, note]) can be at once eliminated from the discussion, as resting on mere conjecture.

[The argument, which Zimmer adduces for his theory, from the statement that Patrick’s burial-place was unknown, falls to the ground when the evidence in regard to his burial-place is criticised as a whole. See above, [Appendix C, 19].]

FOOTNOTES

[1] I may be permitted to remark that in vindicating the claims of history to be regarded as a science or Wissenchaft, I never meant to suggest a proposition so indefensible as that the presentation of the results of historical research is not an art, requiring the tact and skill in selection and arrangement which belong to the literary faculty. The friendly criticisms of Mr. John Morley in the Nineteenth Century and After, October 1904, and of Mr. S. H. Butcher in Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (1904), Lecture VI., show me that I did not sufficiently guard against this misapprehension.

[2] For the expansion of Christianity in the first three centuries see Harnack’s invaluable work Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902).

[3] Rufinus, Hist. ecc. ii. 7. For the Georgian legend of Nino see Life of St. Nino, translated by Marjory and J. O. Wardrop, in Oxford Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, vol. v. (1900).

[4] De Vocatione Gentium, ii. 32.