It is suggested that this must belong to a period when the British and Irish churches were estranged by the latter’s adoption of Roman customs, that is, not earlier than A.D. 716. I cannot see the cogency of this argument. The canon does not seem to me to imply hostility to the British Church, but to be a natural precaution and safeguard against unauthorised and possibly heretical clerics coming over from Britain. It is an application to Irish circumstances of the 7th canon of the Council of Antioch (Mansi, ii. 644), μηδένα ἄνευ εἰρηνικῶν δέχεσθαι τῶν ξένων.[269] In Patrick’s time, when there was Pelagianism in Britain, some such precaution may have been specially necessary; and it is conceivable that a case of a heretic coming over to Ireland and attempting to propagate his views may have occurred and called forth this ordinance. The words sine epistola (ἄνευ εἰρηνικῶν) show that no hostility to the British Church is implied.
The outcome of this investigation is that the case for rejecting the circular letter of the three bishops on internal evidence breaks down; and otherwise an early date is suggested, as Todd admits when he says that some of the canons “were certainly written during the predominance of paganism in the country.” Hence, the external evidence being in its favour, we need not hesitate to accept the document as authentic.
[Note on the Liber de Abusionibus Saeculi]
This treatise[270] is ascribed to Patrick in some MSS., but the authorship has been generally rejected, on account of the Latin style, which is very different from that of the Confession and the Letter, and on account of the Scriptural quotations, which are taken from St. Jerome’s version. In itself, the difference in the quality of the Latin might not be decisive, for we have a conspicuous example of similar difference in style between the Historia Francorum and the Gloria Martyrum of Gregory of Tours.
In MSS. this treatise is variously ascribed to Cyprian and Augustine. The external evidence for Cyprian is best, because Jonas of Orleans, who lived in the first half of the ninth century, quotes it as Cyprian’s: De institutione regia, c. 3, Migne, P.L. 106, 288-9. This testimony and the testimonies of the MSS. are directly contradicted by the internal evidence, namely, by the Scriptural citations from the Vulgate, which render the authorship of Cyprian or Augustine untenable.
There is earlier evidence which points in a different direction. In the eighth century the tract was regarded as the work of Patrick both in Ireland and in Gaul. (1) The ninth Abuse is quoted almost entirely in the Hibernensis (above, p. 239) and ascribed to Patricius. (2) Extracts from the same section are quoted in a letter of Cathuulfus (apparently otherwise unknown), addressed c. A.D. 775 to King Charles the Great, and preserved in a ninth-century MS. (Epp. Karolini Aevi, ii. p. 503. The editor, E. Dümmler, leaves the quotation unidentified).
This evidence proves that the treatise is older than A.D. 700, and strongly suggests that its origin is Irish, that it was ascribed in Ireland to Patrick, and travelled to Gaul under his name. The twelfth Abuse, populus sine lege, is consonant with the origin of the work outside the Roman Empire.