THE ROMAN MISSION OF ST. PATRICK

New Zealand Tablet, 19 March 1914, Page 45

THE ROMAN MISSION OF ST. PATRICK

(By the Rev. J. Kelly, Ph.D., for the N.Z. Tablet.) We Protestants claim onr descent from the early Church of St. Patrick, and we say the domination of Rome was introduced by the perfidy of Henry the Second, and thrown off when the face of the Church was washed at the Reformation.' , . No fact is so well established in history as this.’—J. M. Robinson, M.A., Rector of Avoca, in the Ulster Guardian.

Few luminaries hang in the grey firmament of the venerable Church of Ireland; so few that periodic displays of fireworks are as a matter of course to be expected, and as a matter of course do come off. A few years ago Dr. O’Hara, Protestant Bishop of Waterford, in his hatred of Papists, opened his mouth at Coleraine and put his foot in it decisively and marvellously. Later, Walter McMurrough Kavanagh, a Protestant layman, stood up at a synod and, in equivalent words, begged the dignitaries of his Church to have some regard for truth and common sense. ‘ George Birmingham*,’ himself a Church of Ireland cleric, also protested that Irish Catholics really were not the murderous savages which the combined intelligence of an Ulster Synod proclaimed them. A Church of Ireland Synod is fair as a coruscation ; but, to borrow one of the latest flowers of nervous English, J. M. Robinson is simply ‘ It.’ We used to think that it was the domination of England, Henry’s perfidy introduced. Moreover, until J. M. Robinson told us we were wrong, we believed that St. Patrick was sent to Ireland by Rome. But now we see that ‘ no fact is so well established in history ’ as that St. Patrick is the spiritual father of the Church of Ireland. Mr. Robinson did not go to any pains in his letter to establish anything—possibly he took it for granted that his readers were as conversant with facts ‘ well established in history ’ as Macaulay’s pet schoolboy must have been. But it is worth while inquiring into the rationale of the matter.

In his Life of St. Patrick (Macmillan, 1905), Professor Bury tells us that his conclusions ‘ tend to show that the Roman Catholic conception of St. Patrick’s work is, generally, nearer to historical fact than the views of some anti-papal divines.’ And, in discussing the circumstances of St. Patrick’s consecration, he writes that the question does not involve any kind of theoretical importance, for the reason that, ‘by virtue of what had ,already happened, Ireland was, in principle, as closely linked to Rome as any Western Church.’ So that whether Patrick ‘ was consecrated at Rome or at Auxerre was a matter of little moment ’ (Cap. 111., p. 61).

The ancient biographies of the saint bear witness to the fact that Patrick spent some time in the peaceful close of the great Monastery of Marmoutiers at Tours, under the direction of his relative, St. Martin, and in the village of St. Patrici, in the department of Loire, the memory of the Irish Apostle is still kept green. Evin and Probus record that Patrick received minor Orders during his stay at Tours. According to St. Eleran he was thirty years of age at the time of the visit to his relations mentioned in the Confession ; about the same time (A.D. 403) he was ordained priest. From that time to the date of his mission to Ireland about thirty years elapsed, concerning which little information is forthcoming. According to the Lives, he went south from Tours and abode for a considerable time at Lerins. This little island, half cloister, half university, was one of the gardens of sanctity and learning which girdled the shores of Italy and Provence before the end of the fourth century. It is still called St. Honorat in memory of St. Honoratus, who first gathered about him here that little community of monks whose influence became so great in southern France. The names of Honoratus, Archbishop of Arles, Hilary, his successor in office, Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, the great Vincentius, and of Patrick

himself, shed unfading lustre on the little island off the Cape of Cannes, where in the holy solitude and sequestered cells ‘withdrawn into tlie great sea’ the Apostle of Ireland prepared tor his great work. From Lerins to Auxerre Patrick was attracted by the fame of Geimanus, at whose feet, according to Probus, he spent many years in patience, in obedience, in charity, in chastity, in purity of heart and soul.’ In 1882 Father Hogan, S.J., discovered the first five chapters of Muirchu’s ‘Life of St. Patrick,’ which were missing from the Book of Armagh, in which, however, reference to them was found in the twentieth folio. The text discovered by the Irish Jesuit in the Burgundian Library at Brussels corroborates the testimony of Probus with the following words: ‘He (Patrick) found in the city of Alsiodorus a certain holy prince-bishop, Germanus, with whom he remained no little time like Paul at the feet of Gamaliel.’

Meantime in Gieat Britain the Pelagian heresy was fast gaining ground. Pope Celestine sent his deacon, Palladius, to the aid of the English bishops, but the mission proved unfruitful. The bishops asked their French brethren to help them. Celestine made Germanus his legate, who, taking with him Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, and Patrick, went to England on a mission which seems to have had good results. This took place about the year 429, and about the same time the Pope sent Palladjus to Ireland. ‘ Archdeacon of Pop® Celestine, Bishop of Rome, and forty-fifth successor to the Chair of St. Peter,’ says the Book of Armagh, ‘was Palladius consecrated and sent to convert this island which was stark with the colds of winter, but with no result. For nobody can receive from earth without it is given him from above. Also these raw barbarians were not inclined to receive his teachings, and just as little was he inclined to stay in a country which was not his home, wherefore he went back to him who had sent him. Hardly had he passed the first sea on the return journey when he died in the country of the Britons’ (Hogan, Documenta 25). What was denied to Palladius was reserved by Providence for Patrick, who now in his sixtieth year undertook the conversion of Ireland. Thirty years previously in a vision he heard the voices of the Irish calling to him over the seas. His boyhood had been spent in captivity among the hills and valleys of Connacht. Green Erin was calling him as she invariably, calls even her adopted children. I like to think that he, too, felt the Tleinureh, the nostalgia we all feel for the dear old island of our dreams. And he was going back to conquer where he had been captive, to kindle on the crest of Croagh Patrick a light that was to be in after ages a beacon to all the world. He was going with the authority of the Pope. No fact in his life is: so significant as this, none—with apologies to J. M. Robinson—more clearly established.

1. Among the sayings of St. Patrick, found in the Book of Armagh, we find the following advice to his flock: Ut Christiani, ita et Romani sit is —As ve are Christians be ye also Romans. The genuineness of these words has of course been disputed, but it is significant that so far back as the year 800, the first part which, contains the words quoted, was ascribed to St. Patrick himself. A century later Columbanus calls the Irish ‘ the disciples of Rome,’ and Boniface IV. says that Ireland kept the faith as it was received from the successors of the holy apostles.

2. Tirechan’s notes on the life of St. Patrick, written in the Book of Armagh, were, according to the Protestant historian Graves, already nearly illegible in 806, and so, undoubtedly of ;the time of Tirechan, who had his information from Ultan, Bishop of Ardbraccan, a contemporary of Patrick. Tirechan testifies that Patrick’s mission by Celestine took place in the thirteenth year of the Emperor Theodosius. 3. Aileran, Abbot of Clonard (664), author of the fourth Life of St. Patrick, mentions the saint’s journey to Rome. 4. In the introduction to his History of the Britons, published in 822, Bishop Markus speaks of the sending of St. Patrick by St. Celestine.

5. St. Eric, all-powerful at the court of Charles the Bald, gives expression to the tradition of the diocese of Auxerre when he relates that Germanus sent Patrick to Rome in company with the priest Segetius, who was to bear testimony of Patrick's merit to the Holy See.

6. According to the Annals of Inn is fallen, ' St. Patrick came from Rome to Ireland and preached here diligently the faith of Christ.' The Four Masters write : ' St. Patrick was called to the episcopal dignity by the holy Pope Celestine, who first gave him the mission to preach in Ireland.' 7. Maelbrigte or Marianus Scotus writes: 'After him (Palladius) was Patrick, a Briton by birth, who was consecrated by Pope Celestine and raised to the archiepiscopal dignity for Ireland. Sixty years long he strengthened his preaching with signs and wonders and converted the whole island to the faith of Christ.'

In a clear stream follow the testimonies of the oldest and best authorities from the sixth to the eleventh century, a mass of positive argument against which such negative proofs as Todd and others adduce are of no moment. Todd’s main argument against St. Patrick’s Roman mission was based on the fact that it is not mentioned by Muirchu in the Hook of Armagh. Cardinal Moran, in 1864, already called attention to the fact that the index on folio 20 gives the heads of the missing chapters, the sixth mentioning St. Patrick’s journey to Rome. Cardinal Moran’s conclusion that the text of Probus contains the lost chapters has since been borne out by Father Hogan's discovery. Later German Protestant critics have now admitted that St. Patrick’s connection with Rome is clearly established. From the fifth and seventh'Lives (Colgan) it appears that Patrick received two missions from Celestine, one while he was a simple priest, before the news of the death of Palladius reached Rome, so that, already on his way to Ireland, he turned back when he heard of Palladius’s death in order to ask the Pope to give him such full charge of the Irish mission as Palladius had received. From confusion on this point arise apparent contradictions as to the person of the bishop who consecrated Patrick. According to Cardinal Moran’s view, the course of events was as fellows: John of Tynmouth narrates that Patrick turned from his way and went to a holy bishop named Amator, by whom he was consecrated. Amator, according to Probus, was a man of ‘ wonderful sanctity,’ and in the Book of Armagh he is mentioned as ‘ a wonderful man and a famous bishop.’ The annals of the Church in Gaul know no such bishop. The consecration took place near Eboria. There is no city of that name in Gaul. But on the way to Ravenna, where Germanus was at this time, there was a place in the north of Italy called Eboria. Its modern name is lorea; and it is significant that in the diocese of lorea seven churches are dedicated to St. Germanus (Bellesheim, Geschichte der K. Kirche in Ireland, 1., 39). Germanus was in Ravenna, whither Celestine often came, so it becomes intelligible how the news of the death of Palladius came to Patrick at Eboria on his way to Ireland, and how he turned aside and was consecrated by Amator in presence of Theodosius, Germanus, and Celestine. The difficulty about the name Amator is removed by the consideration that the consecrating prelate would probably be Maximus of Turin, Maximus being in old Irish Amahor. Whence Moran concludes that the facts point out that at the time of the death of Palladius St. Patrick was closely associated with Celestine, Theodosius, and Germanus; that Eboria is the modern lorea; and that the consecrating bishop was St. Maximus of Turin.

To conclude, Father Morris, one of those best qualified to speak on the matter, savs: * In spite of all the darkness in which Patrick’s life is veiled his Roman mission is above all doubt. . . The old Irish writers who treat of the subject are, we boldly assert, in full harmony with the unassailed tradition of ten centuries, that Patrick received his mission from Pope Celestine.’ Let us leave .1. M. Robinson in peace in his sweet

vale of Avoca, and try to remember this week of March how inexpressibly much we owe to the glorious saint whose spiritual children metaphorically clasp hands all. round the globe on Patrick's Day.