Being an Irish-speaker, and one who
has lived in Ireland (working in an Irish-language bookstore, even, for a year
or so, and descendant of all sorts of Irish) and so on, wandering long along
the streams and fields in the twilight (Ireland herself, never, ever, leaves
you), a life-long student of all things involving the second largest British
Isle, I have to say:
We know nothing about Catricius (the
Irish couldn't pronounce the P-sound in those days) except what he, himself, wrote. All the rest is legend written down at least
a century and a half later, and by Irish clerics in Armagh who wanted
to lay claim to be the principal church/monastery in all Ireland. By that time,
Ireland was (kinda sorta, more or less) Christian entirely. The Pope had sent
Palladius, though we've not clue how successful he was -- he was only supposed
to be a bishop to already believing Christians. And St. Brigid had been
responsible for converting Leinster and lands about. But Patrick – up to then,
in a freshly all-Christian Éire – was unknown, unmentioned. He had been as
forgotten as one could be. Then suddenly, the Armagh crew was crowing. It's as
though someone discovered his two surviving documents in an attic somewhere,
because there seems to be no memory of him until suddenly, poof! His documents
are there and published, and the fabulous history hastily written up by the
Armagh crowd.
And because of the way he narrated
his tale, in part, and because of the absolutely unique way he wrote
in Latin, as some scholars have said, he might as well not have
written anything at all. However, his documents are SO unique, there can absolutely
no doubt Patrick wrote them. They're simply unbelievably rare and utterly
precious.
For Patrick wrote Latin the way a
fifth-century someone of his (much curtailed) education would write. As such,
in the entire corpus of Latin literature, from it's beginning, Patrick's is the
only example of a (relatively) unlettered lettered man
writing in Latin. That makes it HARD TO READ for scholars, believe me.
We have his Confession, and His Letter to the Soldiers of
Corotius. But though he gives the town where he was from, Patrick
doesn't say what region it was in, or even what country; i.e. Gaul or Britain.
The idea of writing that out, or saying what kingdom in Ireland he was enslaved
in, simply doesn't occur to him. He was from The Empire, don't you know. Where in the Empire was of small concern to him. We generally
assume he came from Britain, in the western area; i.e. modern Wales, or
Cornwall, or Cumbria in the north, but we really have no clue. "My father
was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at
Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken
prisoner."
Alright, Boyo, ceart go leor, m'
bhuachaill, and just where was Bannavem Taburniae? And what sort of home?
Probably a country villa, such as dotted Britannia (the Welsh: Prydain) in late
Roman times. But we can't be sure of anything. He wrote in the Confession that he was enslaved to a man for six years,
escaped through God's inspiration, and came back home (wherever that was),
where he received a message in a dream from people living in the "Wood of
Volcut" near the "Western Sea." (Modern translations mention
"home in Britain" but I'd have to see the original Latin for that.)
However, was he meaning the Atlantic, the Western Sea from an Irish
perspective, or the Irish Sea, from a Britain perspective. We don't know. No
clue. I believe it is generally assumed he was in and around the County Down,
mainly, in northeast Ireland. His burial site is there, of course.
And so it goes. When Patricius
escaped from Ireland, after a three-day voyage, he landed in a desolate land
with the mariners, and traveled for 28 days through a "wilderness".
Scholars say there's nowhere in Western Europe at that time that one could
travel for a month in a "wilderness". This, of all the mysteries in
the Confession, is the most obscure.
It is the only writing in the entire Confession, however, that we can doubt. Everything else he
wrote in it, no matter how obscure, we can take for absolute fact. And note,
too, that his tale is not one of astounding miracles such as defeating the
Druids, or converting the High King (good luck with that!), or anything else.
Crom and the Old Ones were secure, so they thought. He does report dreams,
however, visions in dreams, intense bouts of prayer, but no miracles.
Everything he writes is filled with his passion, too. It is amazing material to
read, just astounding. But as noted, murky enough to leave us with more
questions than answers. An exploring anthropologist he was not. Oh, though, had
he been a British Herodotus! But no, no such luck.
Finally, Patricius seems most in a
passion about defending himself, to be writing in defense of his mission.
Brethren back home (Britain?) accuse him of misleading the Irish, cleaning out
their wallets. Patrick, like Donald Trump (half-Scottish) doesn't take that. He
fights back. That's the reason he wrote Confession and the Letter (written against a British warlord of carried off
some of Patrick's flocks as slaves). But most amazing, perhaps, of all, we get
a strong glimpse of the fact that Patrick might not even have been ordained – not as a priest, and certainly not as a bishop! THAT might have been the
underlying issue all along. If so, it just adds more incredibleness, more
astonishment, to Patrick's Tale.
And all that is, after all, far more
interesting than out-druiding the Druids or sending ol' Crom Cruach and Lugh
Lámhfada Samildánach packing! (Fionn stayed around, of course; ye just can't
get rid of Fionn.)
An Préachan
No comments:
Post a Comment