II

ROMAN AND CELTIC CHRISTIANITY

 

St. PATRICK

IT was in the days of Constantine and Athanasius that ancient Britain was most Roman, cultivated, and prosperous. But even in the fourth century the Picts and the Irish were ravaging Britain, and early in the next century the Roman Empire left Britain to her fate. After 410 connections with Rome were at an end and many of the Britons migrated to Gaul, where they gave the name of Britannia to Armorica and planted the language which has survived until today. Soon other and more terrible enemies came to Britain.

The Saxons and the Angles came not to plunder only, but to settle. Canterbury and London were destroyed, and the invaders steadily pressed westward. In the last quarter of the sixth century Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester were taken. Silchester was evacuated, Wroxeter was stormed. The Romano-British tradition was lost. Many Latin words continued to be used by the conquered Britons, words which remain in Welsh disguised so much as to escape the eyes of everyone who is not a trained philologist; but of actual history we know very little. Gildas, a well-educated priest who wrote about 540, has recorded some details of the persecution of Diocletian and knows of the coming of the English about 450. But he is walking in a land of shadows. And although he seems to have been contemporary with the Celtic hero Arthur, who was to become a king of legendary romance, he tells us nothing about the hero or his prowess. The history of England and of the Church in England does not become clear and intelligible until a real link was again forged to join the country with Rome. That link was forged by Gregory the Great.

The best-known figure of the fifth century in our islands is St. Patrick, a Briton who became the foremost apostle of Ireland. There were Christians in Ireland before his time, and Prosper tells us that in 431 Palladius, consecrated by Pope Celestine, is sent to the Scots believing in Christ as their first bishop. The work of Palladius was abruptly ended by death. Patrick, whose Celtic name was Su-cat (strong in war) was born at ‘Bannauenta’, possibly Daventry, and was the son of Calpurnius, a deacon, the son of Potitus, a presbyter. When sixteen years of age he was carried off by a band of Irish raiders. After a bondage of six years he escaped to the coast and boarded a ship which was engaged in the export of Irish wolf-dogs. Landing in Gaul, he made his way to the famous monastery of Lerins, and then to Auxerre, where he was ordained deacon by Bishop Amator. He was later consecrated bishop by Germanus, probably not until the death of Palladius. He returned to Ireland, reaching the coast of Wicklow, and defied heathen sentiment by lighting his Paschal fire within sight of Tara, before the king’s own pagan fire was lighted at that sacred spot.

After a great success at Tara, won in spite of the Druids, he overthrew a famous idol called Cenn Cruaich, in what is now county Cavan. He is said to have visited Connaught, but his work is more closely identified with the north of Ireland. He went to Rome and obtained the approval of St. Leo, than which nothing was more likely to further his own influence. This approval was ratified by the gift of precious relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. Not long after his visit to Rome he founded the church of Armagh, establishing it as the primatial church of Ireland. He died in 461 and was probably buried quietly at Saul, though in the twelfth century St. Malachy of Armagh informed his friend St. Bernard that the relics of the saint were at Armagh. An iron hand-bell of great antiquity, now preserved in the National Museum at Dublin, is called Patrick's by a tradition which is not improbable.

It is a remarkable fact that although Patrick was a man of work and not of letters, he is the earliest Irish writer of whom we can say that writings ascribed to him are really his. We possess in Irish the 'Breastplate' or 'Cry of the Deer', and in Latin his 'Confession' and a letter against Coroticus. The first is a rough hymn: legend says that the saint made it on his way to visit King Laoghaire at Tara, and that the assassins who had been posted by the king to kill Patrick thought that the chant was the sound of a herd of deer passing by, and thus the saint escaped.

The 'Confession' is a kind of Apologia pro vita sua, written in barbarous Latin to describe his career and defend himself against detraction. The letter against Coroticus was caused by the sanguinary raid in which the soldiers of Coroticus, a British king of Strathclyde, killed a number of Christian neophytes on the day of their baptism and carried off others into slavery. The saint, who admits his rusticity, could write with force and indignation. He was a man of one book, and that book was the Bible; and in his consciousness that God had dealt wonderfully with him he is at one with St. Paul and St. Augustine.

The beginnings of Christianity in Scotland date back to Romano-British times. Its oldest monuments are certain carved stones at Kirkmadrine, in Wigtonshire, which have survived all the storms which have swept over Britain from the fifth century to the present day. They are far older than the work of St. Columba, and are in a region where St. Ninian or Nynias labored about the time of the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain. He was himself a Briton and trained in Rome. He planted the centre of his missions at what is now the little town of Whithorn, and his church there gave its name of “Candida Casa” to the bishopric. It is probable that Ninian went to the north of Scotland and labored in the valley of the Ness. If he did not himself preach to the northern Picts, the Gospel was brought to them by his immediate disciples.

St. Kentigern (otherwise Mungo, 'my dear one') was the apostle of the Britons of Strathclyde. He became the hero of many fantastic tales, but with the help of Welsh documents the outlines of his life are made plain. He labored near Glasgow, but being opposed by a pagan king, Morken, fled to St. David at Menevia, and founded a monastery at Llanelwy (St. Asaph). In 573 the battle of Arderydd gave victory to the Christian Britons and he went back to Glasgow. Soon after 584 he met St. Columba, and the two venerable servants of God exchanged their pastoral staves in token of their mutual regard. He died in 603.