[P. 206.]—Scriptural quotations in the Confession and Letter. A full conspectus of these has been furnished by Rev. N. J. D. White in his edition. His results as to the text used by Patrick may be summed up as follows. For the Old Testament there is no evidence that he used the Vulgate (cp. above, [p. 293] ad fin.), while there are distinctively Old Latin citations. The New Testament citations are not so clear: some passages seem certainly to imply the Vulgate; others have Old Latin support. As there can be little doubt that Patrick quoted largely from memory, I am inclined to conjecture that he had been trained on an Old Latin version in Gaul, but that he possessed in Ireland a copy of the New Testament Vulgate, in which he looked up some of his references. This would explain the twofold character of the New Testament quotations, but I put forward the conjecture with great diffidence.
[Ib.]—Succession of Armagh bishops. See the four lists in Todd, St. Patrick, p. 174 sqq. All these lists interpolate Sechnall, and three of them the fictitious Sen Patraic, between Patrick and Benignus. But the breviarium in the Book of Leinster (f. 12, vᵒ A; see my paper in E.H.R., October 1902) recognises that Iarlathus (the successor of Benignus) was the third bishop. I cannot, however, consider it certain that Benignus succeeded Patrick before his death in 461, because the ten years which the lists assign to Benignus may have been based on the Sen Patraic interpolation, “Sen Patraic” being supposed to have died in 457, and ten years (467-457) being thus obtained for Benignus.
[P. 207.]—Day of St. Patrick’s death. It is recorded in the Calendar of Luxeuil (Martene et Durand, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, iii. c. 1592 (1717); Stokes, Tripartite Life, ii. 493).
[Ib.]—Two distinct sets of petitiones granted to Patrick are recorded, one in Muirchu, the other in the Lib. Arm. at the end of Tírechán’s Memoir. (1) Of the four petitions mentioned by Muirchu as granted by the angel before Patrick’s death, two have obvious motives: one (a) is of Ulidian origin, and the other (b) is in the interest of Armagh (see above, [p. 207]). The other two are: (c) that whoever sings the hymn concerning St. Patrick (Sechnall’s hymn) on the day of his death shall be saved; and (d) that Patrick shall himself judge all the Irish on the day of judgment. One wonders what Patrick would have thought of such petitions, especially of the latter. It seems clear that (c) and (d) were first invented, and had become current before (a) and (b) were added.[355] (2) The other set consists of three (tres petitiones ut nobis traditae sunt Hibernensibus, p. 331, Rolls ed.), and the Vita Tertia (c. 85) connects them with the sojourn for prayer on Mount Crochan. They are (a) that none of the Irish who repents, even on his death-bed, shall be shut up in hell; (b) that barbarous peoples shall not rule the Irish for ever; (c) that seven years before the last day Ireland shall be overwhelmed by the sea, and none of the Irish survive. These petitions are given in the Historia Brittonum, and must have been current in the eighth century.[356] The point of the second petition is not clear. Possibly it refers to invasions from Britain.
We may conjecture that the stories of the petitions grew out of an early legend that, through their saint’s intercession, the men of Ireland were to have a privileged position at the Last Judgment.
[P. 211.]—St. Patrick’s crozier. The history of the crozier known as baculus Iesu, which existed in Armagh in the eleventh century (see the obscure notices in Tighernach, s.a. 1027 and 1030), was transferred in the latter half of the twelfth century to the Cathedral Church of Dublin, and was publicly burnt as an object of superstition in 1538, will be found set out in Todd’s Introduction (pp. viii. sqq.) to the Book of Obits and Martyrology of the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Dublin, ed. by J. C. Crosthwaite, 1844. The veneration with which it was regarded in the eleventh century shows that it was an ancient relic, and it can hardly be doubted that it was the existence of this relic at Armagh which occasioned the story that Jesus gave a staff to Patrick. This story occurs in the Vita Tertia, c. 23, which probably goes back to the ninth century; and even if the story was not invented till that period, the object which suggested it must have been older. It seems very probable that the staff was one of the insignia consecrata mentioned in the Liber Angueli (355₂₉, 356₄), and this would take us back to the eighth century. There is therefore reason for thinking that the crozier which perished in 1538 may have been extremely ancient, but there is no positive proof that the tradition which assigned it to Patrick is correct, or that it was as old as the fifth century.
[Ib.]—St. Patrick’s bell. In Ann. Ult. s.a. 553, there is a notice, derived from the Book of Cuana, to the effect that in that year St. Columba placed the relics of Patrick in a shrine. Three relics had been found in Patrick’s tomb, “the cup, the gospel of the angel, and the bell of the will,” and an angel instructed Columba how to distribute them: the cup was to go to Down, the bell to Armagh, and he was to keep the gospel himself.[357] If this notice stood in the Book of Cuana, it would show that early in the seventh century the “bell of the will” existed at Armagh, and was believed to belong to Patrick. The bell has been described, and its history traced, by Bishop Reeves in Transactions of the R.I.A. xxvii. pp. 1 sqq. (1877). It is a four-sided bell, weighing 3 lbs. 8 oz., made “of two plates of sheet-iron, which are bent over so as to meet, and are fastened by large-headed iron rivets.” The handle is of iron. A shrine, which is also preserved in the Dublin Museum, was made for it, c. A.D. 1100. Bishop Reeves believed that the tradition which ascribed the bell to Patrick is sound. He seems to have thought that there is no room for reasonable doubt. But it is to be observed that the statement cited from the Liber Cuana opens the door to possibilities of fraud. We may infer from it with certainty that for nearly a century after Patrick’s death this bell was not at Armagh. Its genuineness therefore depends on the truth of the story of the opening of Patrick’s tomb (at Saul), and the discovery of the bell in the tomb. But if the relic was a forgery, just such a story might have been invented.
Chapter X
[P. 218.]—Latin the ecclesiastical language in the west. Since these remarks were written, I came across two short but valuable papers on the subject: P. Frédéricq, “Les conséquences de l’évangélisation par Rome et par Byzance sur le développement de la langue maternelle des peuples convertis” in the Bull. de l’Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres, 1903, n. 11, 738-751; F. Cumont, “Pourquoi le latin fut la seule langue liturgique de l’occident?” in Mélanges Paul Frédéricq, 1904, 63-66.