The clue lies in our hands. Caplait is a loan word from the Latin capillatus “de-capillated, shorn”; and a proverb declaring that the mael is like to the caplait proves that the two were not the same. The mael being the man with the native tonsure, the caplait was the man with a foreign tonsure, as his foreign name implies. This proverb, which was current in the seventh century, preserves the memory of a Christian tonsure (distinct from the native) formerly used in Ireland.
But the proverb gives us still more information than this. It directly confirms the view, which I suggested above as possible, that the foreign tonsure was at first (in Patrick’s time) enforced, and afterwards yielded to the native one. The proverb is evidently a surviving witness of the struggle (probably in the latter part of the fifth century) between the two forms of tonsure. The clerics who clung to native customs cried: There is no distinction between a mael and a caplait—that is, the old national tonsure is as good a mark of his calling for the Christian cleric as the foreign tonsure which removes all the hair from the crown.
The story of the conversion of the two magicians, as told by Tírechán, was evidently designed to illustrate this proverb, but without any comprehension of the proverb’s real significance. In other words, it was invented, or reshaped, at a time when the native tonsure had so completely ousted its rival that men almost forgot that there had been a rival. The story indeed bears upon it an obvious mark of manufacture, in that it represents one of the Druids as named Caplait. He could not have borne this name till after his conversion. That the story was entirely invented for the purpose of explaining the proverb is extremely unlikely. I suggest as probable that in the original story there was only one Druid, who on his conversion received the Christian tonsure, and thus from being Mael became Caplait. The proverb suggested the duplication of Mael-Caplait into two brethren.
It is another question—and for the present purpose does not matter—whether the Christian tonsure of the fifth century was the tonsure of the seventh century, the corona, or not. It may have been a total shaving of the head, no fringe being left. The earliest mention of the corona seems to occur in Gregory of Tours, Liber Vitae Patrum, xvii. 1 (p. 728, ed. M.G.H.), and it may not have become general before the sixth century. We have no particulars as to the exact nature of the tonsure referred to in Socrates, H.E., 3. 1. 9, or in Salvian, De gub. Dei, 8. 21. Once the coronal tonsure was introduced in the west,[265] the total tonsure was distinguished as the Greek or St. Paul’s tonsure (see Bede, H.E., iv. 1); but it seems not improbable that the total tonsure was universal in the early part, at all events, of the fifth century. There is a passage in Tírechán which seems to me to preserve the memory of the practice of total tonsure in the days of St. Patrick. It is the name of Patrick’s charioteer, fol. 13 vᵒ b (322)₂₆:
Et sepiliuit illum aurigam totum id totmael caluum.
The hybrid name Tot-mael contrasts the Christian tonsure with the native semi-tonsure, but it suggests total rather than coronal tonsure. It is, in any case, another undesigned testimony to the difference between the ecclesiastical and the native tonsures in Patrick’s time; while it possibly indicates that the mos Romanus introduced into Ireland in the fifth century may have been partially different from the mos Romanus which was reintroduced in the seventh.
But the passage in Tírechán on which I have commented appears to me to demonstrate that the foreign tonsure had at one time been customary for clerics in Ireland; and therefore the objection to the genuineness of the circular letter, which has been founded on the inclusion of a canon on this subject, falls to the ground.
(2) The second objection urged by Todd is that some of the canons imply a nearer approach to diocesan jurisdiction, and a more settled state of Christianity, than was possible in the days of St. Patrick. (So far as a relatively settled state of Christianity is concerned, it must be remembered that Todd did not realise how far Christianity had spread in Ireland before St. Patrick; and if we take into account that the letter of the three bishops is designed both for those parts of the island where Christian communities had existed many years before, as well as for those (like Connaught) where churches had only recently been planted, there is nothing in the canons that need surprise us on this head).