Thinking with St Patrick
Dr Carly Macnamara looks at St Patrick in more depth and in his own words.
Developing Critical Analysis Skills for Understanding Saint Patrick’s Own Writing
With the steady forward march of technological advancement and increasing access to primary sources assisted by the field of Digital Humanities, it is possible more and more for everyday folks to access sources and information previously available only to scholars. This fact is simultaneously a benefit and a danger as the general public is more familiar with accessing such sources through the assistance of professionals. Now nearly everyone is able to approach them on their own, but need to ensure they develop some of the skills necessary to successfully grapple with them. The main skill I’m addressing today is one that can be applied to anything you engage with, whether historic document, newspaper article, podcast episode, or news bulletin on your tv. I’m referring to the skills of critical analysis. I propose to provide an example of how to make use of critical analysis skills through an examination of St Patrick’s Confessio, or ‘Confession’. If you would like to take a look at the Confessio in its entirety, you can do so at confessio.ie.
There are a few main questions that you’ll want to pack into your toolbox for critically analysing historic sources. These are the following:
·       Who is the author of this piece and what do we know about them?
·       When are they writing?
·       Who is their audience?
·       What are they claiming to write about?
·       Are they writing about their own personal experience?
·       What is their goal in writing?
·       How has this source survived for us to access it?
For Patrick, we really have to look at the body of his Confessio to help us answer some of these questions. We are most interested here in who the historic Patrick was. We know he was born in the fifth century AD and raised on the island of Britain (near a place called Bannavem Taburniae, though we don’t know where that was). He was nominally a third generation Christian, as both his father and grandfather held positions in the church. While he tells us he wasn’t religious in his youth, he did ultimately become active in the church, even attaining the position of bishop. He was a Romanized Briton, which we can note based on his father’s position as Decurion (a Roman calvary officer). He further tells us he was captured in a raid at the age of 16 and taken to Ireland as a slave for six years, which may provide some insight into his interest in working with enslaved people in Ireland when he later returned on his mission.
Although he claims to be unlearned, he wrote in Latin, which would not have been his native language and thus indicates a degree of education. The Annals of Ulster note that Patrick arrived in Ireland in 432, though it is important to note that the Irish Annals are not believed to have been actively recorded at this time. Active recording of the annals is believed to have started in the mid-sixth century, meaning that everything that comes before that period was added in much later. We should also note that this date is suspiciously close on the heels of Palladius, whom Prosper of Aquitaine (who lived c.390-455 AD) noted was sent by Pope Celestine in 431 AD as the ‘first bishop to the Irish believing in Christ’. This all gives us valuable information about Patrick’s perspective and where he is coming from in his writing in addition to the setting within which he was acting.
Patrick indicates in his Confessio that he is writing in his old age, looking back at his life. This tells us that while he is talking about his own personal experiences, they are likely older memories rather than more recent ones. From here we can discuss a bit of what Patrick claims to be writing about, which is predominantly his experiences and actions while working to convert the Irish in Ireland.
Patrick’s audience seems to be other members of the church, especially authority figures. He specifically addresses ‘you well-educated people in authority’. He also appears to be responding to specific accusations leveled against him, so those accusers are likely also his intended audience. This bleeds a bit into discussing Patrick’s goal in writing.
His goal in writing seems to be a defense of his own actions and behaviours when working to convert people in Ireland. He goes to great lengths to describe how he refused to accept gifts from women he was in contact with, even to the point that they were hurt at his refusal. He also says that he received no payment for baptizing people or ordaining clerics, and that if he ‘asked them to pay even for the cost of [his] shoes – tell it against [him] and [he] will return it to you and more’.
Patrick’s Confessio survives in eight different manuscripts, which range in date from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries. The earliest comes from the Liber Ardmachanus or Book of Armagh. We should be cognizant of the deep difference in time from when Patrick himself lived, and when the earliest manuscript of his Confessio survives. There are possibilities of purposeful exclusions (which are evident in the Book of Armagh) in addition to copying errors, which can be as small as incorrect letters copied or as great as purposeful editing choices made by copyists. Armagh’s work in gathering information about Patrick was as a means of pushing their own claim to be the prime episcopal church of all of Ireland, and the omissions evident in the Book of Armagh’s version of Patrick’s Confessio looks deliberate as a means of making him look more successful in conversion than we get a sense of from reading the full document. What this means is that we cannot always rely on a source being the full and complete record of events or perspective that we would like it to be.
All this gives us the starting point from which we can read the text of Patrick’s Confessio and begin to understand it in a way that is useful for us as investigators of the past and people who are curious about who Patrick was and what he did. It enables us to understand Patrick’s zeal for his mission, which was not shared by either his family or the church, and helps us understand a bit better the society in Ireland that he was interacting with as well as his relationship to his religious superiors. We can also take this method of analysis and apply it to Patrick’s Epistola, or Letter to Coroticus, wherein we see a very different side of Patrick. Asking questions of the purpose and audience of this additional source helps us see how our author (Patrick, in this case) changes his writing style and the tone of his piece according to his own goals, views, and purposes in writing. As mentioned at the very beginning, this is a methodology that can be translated to anything and everything you interact with.
Dr Carolyn McNamara |
