Joyce's Well of the Saints

I do not see what good it does to fulminate against English tyranny while the tyranny of Rome still holds the dwelling place of the soul.

-James Joyce, "Ireland: Island of Saints and "

In 1906, no less a personage than Cardinal Michael Logue, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, visited Bobbio in Italy to pay homage at the shrine of Saint Columbanus. He declared the shrine "a pious and patriotic object" of interest "for Irish Catholics at home and abroad" since it recalled "the hallowed and glorious memories of our past."¹ One wonders if Joyce had any idea, just a year later, that he was following in such eminent footsteps in his own public celebration of Columbanus and a host of other Irish saints in his lecture to an audience of some one hundred Triestines in the principal sala of city's borsa. For a man who so outspokenly rejected the two defining pillars of Irish identity, the Roman Catholic Church and the greater Irish nationalist movement, Joyce's 1907 lecture "L'Irlanda: isola dei Santi e Dei Savi" ("Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages") is a surprising document. It contains Joyce's strongest public identification with the Irish Revival, which he defines as "the Irish nation's insistence on developing its own culture" and with the Sinn Féin movement (while at the same time casting doubt on the real possibilities of Sinn Féin's policy actually being successful). In its employment of "the familiar nationalist topoi of Ireland's superior antiquity, literacy, and sanctity,"² it contains many ideas that he would later mock, interrogate, and even dismantle in Ulysses when he has the Citizen unburden "his soul about the Saxo-Angles in the best Fenian style" (SL 239). It also provides evidence of his ongoing engagement with matters Irish, which contrasts with the old view that "the plight of Ireland left him cold and somewhat bored" and that by 1907 his "interest in Irish politics waned."³ More recent criticism has revised these views. Vincent Cheng, for example, casts Joyce as an anticolonial author hoping for an end to British administration of Ireland, an argument weakened by Cheng's reluctance to take adequate account of Joyce's equally polemical stance toward Irish Catholic nationalism and Irish self-betrayal, chiefly identified by Joyce in Dermot McMurrough's invitation to Strongbow and in the Irish Parliament's voting in favor of the Union: "In my opinion, these two facts must be perfectly explained before the country in which they took place has even the most elementary right to expect one of its sons to change his position from that of detached observer to convinced nationalist."⁴ Joyce would later work these betrayals into his fiction. In A Portrait he has Stephen say "My ancestors . . . allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?" (P 203). This is restated in more polemical terms by the Citizen in Ulysses with regard to McMurrough: "The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here" (U 12.1156-58). Both the material in the Saints and Sages lecture and Joyce's fiction suggest that it is Joyce's belief that the chief cause of the disasters of Irish history lies with the Irish themselves.

His lecture, as Emer Nolan has shown, draws attention to his "ambiguities and hesitations" and as such is evidence of "the uncertain, divided consciousness of the colonial subject."⁵ While it could be argued that an uncertain and divided consciousness is not a priori the exclusive heredity of the colonial subject, time here allows us only to note that he was not only a "colonial subject" but also a "Catholic subject" in exile and that his pronouncements should be read in the knowledge that they were written to fulfill the expectations of a very particular audience of keen Tries-tine irredentists who saw in Ireland under British administration a parallel with their own situation as the third city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Joyce was paying more generous lip service to the very public side of their anticolonial struggle than he had ever done to Ireland's. The Triestine context of the lecture cannot be overlooked: it is hard to imagine Joyce delivering such a lecture had he known it might be read by his contemporaries in Dublin, because it at least partly challenges the cut-and- dried Luciferian non serviam he attributes to Stephen Dedalus (and which most critics subsequently and too easily have reattributed to Joyce himself ), even if he claims to be "an unprejudiced observer" rather than an active participant or "a convinced nationalist."

Around the time of Joyce's lecture, which Stanislaus felt was "rather scrappy," the two brothers engaged in ample discussions about Ireland, which reveal Joyce's love-hate relationship with his country, which was in contrast with what might be called his brother's "hate-hate" relationship. Stanislaus noted: "Jim's character and his whole nature is much more Irish than mine. He is steeped in the country."⁶ Stanislaus disagreed with his brother's belief that Ireland "had absorbed the different peoples who had settled in it." In his lecture Joyce declared: "Finally, the victory of the usurper, Brian Boru, over the Nordic hordes on the sand dunes outside the walls of Dublin put an end to the Scandinavian races, which did not, however, abandon the country, but were gradually assimilated into the community, a fact we should keep in mind if we wish to explain the curious character of the modern Irishman" (IISS 116). In his later "The City of the Tribes" article, published in Il Piccolo della Sera, Joyce, as if consciously attempting to mirror the Triestine model of hybridity, pursued his earlier line of argument in favor of Irish hybridity when describing Galway's Spanish heritage. Stanislaus disagreed and maintained instead that the weakness of the Irish character was that it "could not assimilate." In this it was unlike the "English character," which was "like a sponge, absorbing everything; but Ireland was still suffering from indigestion of the English who landed in it over nine hundred years ago." The Sinn Féin policy, according to Stanislaus, aimed at prolonging the refusal of the English. Joyce disagreed and asked, "What did they want their own mercantile fleet and their own consuls if not to have intercourse with all the nations of the world?" Stanislaus believed that the Irish wanted only "commercial intercourse" and pointed out that the word "foreign" in Ireland meant "corrupt, vicious, and godless," claiming that his fellow countrymen were "afraid the continent would corrupt their island purity." He felt that foreigners were spoken of in Ireland "with the same contempt as the ancient Greeks spoke of barbarians" (TD April 28, 1907). In the "Cyclops" episode, Joyce would have the Citizen speak of all things foreign in stereotypical terms that embody the criticisms put forward by Stanislaus. However, in later conversations, Joyce became even more pro-Irish, asserting that his fellow countrymen were the "most intelligent, most spiritual, and most civilised people in Europe"; if Ireland "could assert itself," it would be capable of contributing "a new force to civilisation not less than that contributed in our times by the Slavs." Later, Joyce challenged his brother by asking him what his politics were and if he did not believe that Ireland had a right "to govern itself " and was "capable of doing so." In Joyce's view, the English knew that Ireland would not be content with Home Rule, that it would want a complete break and to "set up in rivalry and if it were successful it would do so." For this reason, in his opinion, the English wanted to keep Ireland "poor and dependent upon it, just as Gogarty had wanted to keep him [Jim] dependent upon him for fear he'd do anything" (TD April 29, 1907).

In his diary, Stanislaus left a long summary that captures the main points of his brother's lecture, his linking of faith and fatherland, his celebration of early Gaelic civilization, and his condemnation of subsequent suppression:

he said that Ireland alone had received Christianity without bloodshed and that in the early ages of the Church it had been the home of learning and its missionaries had founded universities and abbeys, and even towns all over Europe. He gave a long list of these, many of them in Italy. He mentioned the constant feuds which later made the island like a shambles, the invasion of the English, their methods and suppression and oppression, and gave a brief sketch of the penal laws, and their results.

(TD April 27, 1907)

In extolling the wealth of Irish saints and celebrating the country's Golden Age, Joyce was following in the well-established tradition initiated by the great seventeenth-century Catholic historian Geoffrey Keating or Seathrún Céitinn, author of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, which has been described as the "origin legend of the emergent Irish Catholic nation,"⁷ and by the Four Masters, who penned the Annála ríoghachta Éireann (the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, or the Annals of the Four Masters-which are also, of course, central to Finnegans Wake). This tradition was continued down through the nineteenth century by Catholic historians and antiquarians and also by the Catholic clergy and prominent members of the hierarchy. In 1866, Cardinal Cullen, for example, wrote:

The sixth century was a golden age of our early church. From north to south monasteries and convents adorned our island; and the lamp of faith . . . burned brightly through the length and breadth of the land. Pilgrims from foreign countries came to study . . . and her missionaries went forth as new apostles to stem the tide of barbarism, which had well nigh submerged all civilization on the continent.⁸

Views like this drew heavily on the tradition established by the returned exile Keating, who wrote:

If, indeed it be that the soil is commended by every historian who writes on Ireland, the race is dispraised by every new foreign historian who writes about it, and it is by that I was incited to write this history concerning the Irish, owing to the extent of the pity I felt at the manifest injustice which is done to them by those writers. If only indeed they had given their proper estimate to the Irish, I know not why they should not put them in comparison with any nation in Europe in three things, namely, in valour, in learning, and in being steadfast in the Catholic faith: and forasmuch as regards the saints of Ireland, it needs not to boast what a multitude they were, because the foreign authors of Europe admit this, and they state that Ireland was more prolific in saints than any country in Europe; and, moreover, they admit that the dominion of learning in Ireland was so productive, that she sent forth from her learned companies to France, to Italy, to Germany, to Flanders, to England, and to Scotland, as is clear from the introduction to the book in which were written in English lives of Patrick, Columcille, and Brigid.⁹

Keating's writings were very much part of a battle for the legacy of Ireland's Christian heritage, which continued right up to Joyce's time. On the Church of Ireland side, James Ussher led the appropriation effort in his Discourse on the religion anciently professed by the Irish and British, which McCafferty defines as "the origin legend of the Church of Ireland."¹⁰ On the other side, Father John Lanigan (1758-1828) contributed greatly to the consolidation of the image of Ireland as a Catholic land of saints and scholars in his four-volume Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, which was published in 1822.¹¹ This work provided much of the base for the subsequent publications by nineteenth-century revivalist figures such as Petrie, O'Curry, and O'Donovan. The celebration of what Fr. M. J. Fahey in the February 1911 Catholic Bulletin called the "civilization and Christian piety that once shed its light throughout Europe"¹² was a favorite pastime of Catholic revivalists. In short, as Collins has written, "the importance of the Roman Catholic Church in focussing the public's mind on the Celtic Christian Golden Age cannot be overstressed."¹³ Nor can the fact that this refocusing was a direct response to what Catholics felt was an Anglo-Irish offensive to put the emphasis on Celticism rather than Catholicism as the marker of Irish identity.

If in the aftermath of the lecture Joyce and Stanislaus locked horns over Ireland's future, in anticipation of it Joyce took the trouble to read a number of background texts in order to give substance to his presentation. Among them, in all probability, was Justin McCarthy's Irish Literature, which contained an introduction to "Early Irish Literature" written by Douglas Hyde, who signed himself "An Craoibhín."¹⁴ Hyde may even have furnished the pious "Island of Saints and Sages" title of Joyce's lecture, although this ancient tag was common currency.¹⁵ Another text, identified by Kevin Barry in his excellent edition of Joyce's nonliterary writings, was P. W. Joyce's A Short History of Gaelic Ireland (1893). According to Barry's note, "almost all the saints and scholars mentioned below by Joyce are described in the Short History, 162-189."¹⁶ In reality, several of the saints that Joyce talks about in his lecture are not actually mentioned in this history, and the information about those who are often differs from that provided by Joyce in Trieste in 1907.

Yet Joyce's hagiographies in the lecture do have a decidedly secondhand feel to them. What this essay will argue is that their previously unidentified source is James Wills's massive four-volume Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, from The Earliest times to the Present Period, Arranged in Chronological Order, and embodying a History of Ireland in the lives of Irishmen. On May 18, 1907, Stanislaus recorded in his diary that "Today Nora was reading aloud for Jim: 'The Lives of Illustrious Irishmen'-a very long-winded and worthless book." Joyce did not share his brother's disdain. In the book's "advertisement," a preface published in the opening pages of the 1839-47 edition, Joyce would have read of the book's aim to

collect the lessons of our moral and political history, and present them in the inductive form of examples. . . . To the Irishman who sees in this work, for the first time, an attempt on an extensive scale, to concentrate, in a well-digested and comprehensive form, the virtues and honours of his country; and faithfully to portray the individual lives of Irishmen who have obtained eminence in the various departments of human pursuit; little need be said to recommend it to his favour.¹⁷

Joyce borrows wholesale from Wills for his lecture, which thus becomes his first major act of "stolentelling" (FW 424.35). In doing so, he is of course following in a tradition of borrowing, often from dodgy sources, by Irish "historians" who were more concerned with popularizing the myth of the Irish Golden Age than they were to check the veracity of their "facts."

I would like now to examine some of the correspondences between Joyce's lives of the saints and the original versions in Wills. The first "Irish" religious figure mentioned by Joyce is Blessed John Duns Scotus, "known as the subtle doctor (to distinguish him from St Thomas, the angelic doctor, and Nonaventura, the seraphic doctor), militant champion of the dogma of the immaculate conception and, judging by what the chroniclers of the time say, an unbeatable dialectician" (OPCW 109). In a note, Kevin Barry writes: "John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308), philosopher and theologian, nicknamed Doctor Subtilis, was not Irish. Joyce confuses John Scotus Erigena (fl. 850), Irish philosopher at the court of Charles the Bard, celebrated commentator on the writings of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, with this John Duns Scotus, who was 'regent' of Paris University."¹⁸

In reality, Joyce does not confuse the two men at all. Rather, he is convinced that John Duns Scotus is Irish. His source for this information is Wills, who, citing Sir JamesWare's De scriptoribus Hiberniae, states that John Duns Scotus was indeed born in Ulster, studied in Oxford and then in Paris, following Aquinas, "the famous angelic doctor (LIDI 3:269)." This "itinerant sophist . . . early in life made a vow to support the honour of the Virgin: it was for this purpose that he presented himself to the University of Paris, and offered to maintain against all opponents, her freedom from original sin." He took part in a long debate in which he defended her freedom from original sin. After listening to "three days of ceaseless verbosity . . . Duns calmly arose and recited all their several arguments, which one after another, he unanswerably refuted." He "annihilated his already prostrate antagonists" to the point that the "university was convinced and gave Duns his doctor's degree, with the well-merited title of the 'subtle doctor' "(LIDI 3:270).

In claiming John Duns Scotus as Irish, Wills (and subsequently Joyce) had at least one leg to stand on, as the following polemical commentary from the Most Reverend John Healy reveals:

Like many other good things which Ireland has produced, both England and Scotland have striven to make Scotus their own. Thomas Dempster, the saint-stealer, in his Menologium Scotorum, published in A.D. 1621, and dedicated to Cardinal Barberini, has endeavoured to prove that Scotus Erigena was a native of North Britain; as, however, his arguments are founded on the similarity in sound between Ayr and Erigena and between Scotus and Scot, we need not now refute them at length.¹⁹

The Catholic Encyclopedia (with which Joyce was extremely familiar) is far from dismissive of the possibility that Scotus was Irish:

The birthplace of Scotus has been the subject of much discussion and so far no conclusive argument in favour of any locality has been advanced. The surname Scotus by no means decides the question, for it was given to Scotchmen, Irishmen, and even to natives of northern England. The other name, Duns, to which the Irish attach so much importance, settles nothing; there was a Duns also in Scotland (Ber-wick). Moreover, it is impossible to determine whether Duns was a family name or the name of a place. Appeal to supposedly ancient local traditions in behalf of Ireland's claim is of no avail, since we cannot ascertain just how old they are; and their age is the pivotal point.

This discussion has been strongly tinged with national sentiment . . . the English have some right to claim Scotus; as a professor for several years at Oxford, he belonged at any rate to the English province; and neither during his lifetime nor for some time after his death was any other view as to his nationality proposed. It should not, however, be forgotten that in those days the Franciscan cloisters in Scotland were affiliated to the English province, i.e. to the custodia of Newcastle. It would not therefore be amiss to regard Scotus as a native of Scotland or as a member of a Scottish cloister. . . . The case is somewhat better with the entry in the catalogue of the library of St. Francis at Assisi, under date of 1381, which designates Duns Scotus's commentary on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard as "magistri fratris Johannis Scoti de Ordine Minorum, qui et Doctor Subtilis nuncupatur, de provincia Hiberniae" (the work of master John Sco-tus of the Franciscan Order known as the subtle doctor, from the province of Ireland). This, though it furnishes the strongest evidence in Ireland's favour, cannot be regarded as decisive. Since Scotus laboured during several years in England, he cannot, simply on the strength of this evidence, be assigned to the Irish province. The library entry, moreover, cannot possibly be accepted as contemporary with Scotus. Add to this the geographical distance and it becomes plain that the discussion cannot be settled by an entry made in far-off Italy seventy-three years after Scotus's death, at a time too when geographical knowledge was by no means perfect. Finally, no decisive evidence is offered by the epitaphs of Scotus; they are too late and too poetical. The question, then, of Scotus's native land must still be considered an open one.²⁰

Joyce returns to Duns Scotus later in his talk, correctly describing him as "founder of the Scotist school" and then recounts the legend-à la Wills-of how "he once listened to the arguments of all the professors of the University of Paris for three whole days and then, speaking from memory, confuted them one by one" (OPCW 109).

Before embarking on his descriptions of the Irish saints, Joyce discusses the origins of the Irish language and the importance of German scholarship for "the languages and history of the five Celtic nations" (OPCW 109). For someone who rejected the Irish language movement, here he devotes a surprising amount of space to it, writing of its importance in day-to-day life, in newspapers, schools, and universities, and outlining the activities of the Gaelic League. This is in contrast to the critical attitude toward the language movement expressed in "The Dead" and with what he was saying privately to Stanislaus about it and about Sinn Féin: "Jim said that he did not sympathise, either, with the language movement. Personally he would consider every hour he spent in the study of Irish an hour wasted, but he did not believe that either of these things would put him out of the [Sinn Féin] movement" (TD May 10, 1907). A sense of Joyce's disregard for the language movement and of his belief that it was of interest to but a small minority does emerge in his lecture, when he comments to his Italian audience: "The members of the League correspond in Irish and on many occasions the postman, unable to read the address, has had to turn to the head of his section for help in unravelling the problem" (OPCW 109-10).

Joyce's lecture then proceeds onto the shakier ground of the origins of the language. He claims that Irish is eastern in origin and "has been identified by many philologists with the ancient language of the Phoenicians. . . . The language that the comic dramatist Plautus puts in the mouth of the Phoenicians in his comedy Poenula is virtually the same language, according to the critic Vallancey, as that which Irish peasants now speak" (OPCW 110). In citing the eighteenth-century philologist and antiquarian General Charles Vallancey (1721-1812), author of An Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language. Being a collation of the Irish with the Punic Language (1772), Joyce was dropping a big but rather outdated and even discredited name. Chances are, however, that he was not reading Vallancey at first hand but relying on Wills's version of the theory, which is contained in his "Historical Introduction to First Period" but which is also more openly dubious about the reliability of this theory than Joyce. Wills's synthesis reads as follows:

But the next point, of which this is valuable as a confirmation, is the real or supposed discovery of Vallancey, on the coincidence of the Irish language with some passages of an ancient unknown tongue, supposed to be the ancient Phoenician, and given as such in an ancient drama, the Poenulus of Plautus. . . . it is fair to preface it here by stating, that it is questioned by authoritative linguists and antiquaries: but we may add, that the objections which we have heard or read, are not conclusive enough to warrant our rejection of so important an illustration of our antiquity. . . . The Poenulus of Plautus contains about twenty-five lines of a foreign language, put by the dramatist into the mouth of Phoenicians; but which has ever since continued to defy the research of etymologists. By a fortunate thought, the sagacity of Vallancey, or of his authority (oft his claim to originality is doubted), hit upon a key to the difficulty. By attending to the vocal formations of these lines, they were found, without any transposition of sound, to be resolvable into words, exhibiting but slight differences from the Irish language.

(LIDI 1:11)

Joyce continues by describing Irish druidism as Egyptian and claims that the "Irish priests were highly learned. . . . Festus Avienus in the fourth century was the first to name it the Insula Sacra" (OPCW 110). Joyce seems to have simply adopted and adapted what he read about this in Wills, who also quotes Festus Avienus and makes a similar reference to the Insula Sacra:

At some time between the ninety-second and hundred and twenty-ninth Olympiad, the Carthaginians sent out two maritime expeditions to explore, more minutely, the eastern and western coasts of the world, as then known to them. Of these, that led by Himilco was directed to the Western Islands. Both of these voyagers left accounts of their voyages and discoveries, of which those written by Himilco were inserted in the Punic Annals. From these Festus Avienus, who wrote his poem, De Oris Maritimis, some time in the fourth century, affirms himself to have derived his accounts of the western coasts; and, indeed, asserts an acquaintance with the original Journal. In this account, Himilco is described as coasting the Spanish shores-the known Phoenican course to these islands; and stretching from the nearest point across to the Æestrumnides, or Scilly Islands. These are described, in the sketch of the geographical poet, as two days' voyage from the larger Sacred Island of the Hiberni, near which the island of the Albiones lies.

Ast hinc duobus in sacram sic InsulamDixere prisci, solibus cursus rati est.Hæc inter undas multum cespitem jacitEamque late gens Hibenorum colitPropinqua rursus insula Albionum patet.

(LIDI 3:19)

The first saint on this "holy island" to be discussed by Joyce is "Man-sueto" (he Italianizes the names of all the saints where possible, although they are given in Latin in the English translations). Wills writes about Mansuetus in connection with St. Peter the Apostle, who "sent him to preach the gospel in Lorraine. He built a church there, and died after a ministry which lasted forty years, on the 3rd of September, 405. He was canonised by Leo IX., in the 11th century, and is proved by Ussher to have been a native of Ireland" (LIDI 3:76). In Joyce, we read that "under the apostolate of St Peter we find the Irishman Mansuetus, later canonized, as a missionary to Lorraine, where he founded a church and preached for half a century" (OPCW 111). This is a loose translation of Wills, though Joyce did not forget Mansuetus (in Latin, "mild") and later alludes to him in Finnegans Wake in the phrase "owning my mansuetude before him" (FW 484.3), which is printed on a page containing references to other missionary bishops, Ailbey, Ciaran, Declan, and Ibar, all of whom are said to have come to Ireland before St. Patrick: "Ailbey and Ciardeclan, I learn, episocoping me altogether" (FW 484.23-24).

Next up in Wills and Joyce is Saint Cataldus: According to Wills: "He was born in Munster, educated at Lismore, and was made bishop of Rachuen. After some years spent here, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on his return through Italy, was made bishop of Tarento. He is also mentioned as having held a professor's chair at Geneva, with much reputation" (LIDI 3:77). Joyce reports more succinctly that "Cataldus held the chair as a teacher of theology in Geneva and was later made bishop of Tarentum" (both Wills and Joyce use the Italian "Tarento" rather than the Latin "Tarentum" or the more common "Taranto").

They also both group the saints Pelagius and Celestius together. Wills provides a long entry, stating that the "birth-place of Pelagius cannot strictly be ascertained" before describing his travels and his "capture by the Goths," then linking him with "his disciple and fellow-countryman Celestius," with whom he "seems to have withdrawn into Africa." He also describes the many theological controversies in which Pelagius was involved before concluding:

Pelagius, after this, was little engaged in any public ecclesiastical controversy, as he ceases to be personally noticed in the writings of the age. He probably had begun to feel, for some time, the tranquillising symptoms of old age, and given place to the increasing ascendancy of the vigour and abilities of his pupil Celestius; who, from this, is found in the foremost place, and maintaining the opinions of his master, with more boldness and equal dexterity.

(LIDI 80-83)

Joyce has far less to say. Following Wills, however, he reports that Pelagius was "an indefatigable traveller and propagandist, if not Irish (as many maintain), was certainly either Irish or Scottish, as was his right-hand man, Celestius" (OPCW 111).

The next entry in Wills runs to twenty pages and is entirely devoted to Saint Patrick, whom Joyce barely mentions. Joyce's is a surprising omission, especially given the fundamental role that Patrick will later play in Finnegans Wake. Also conspicuous by his absence is Saint Columcille, who, as "Calomnequiller" (FW 50.9-10), is an important model for Shem the Penman (both are, among other things, poets in exile). In omitting Patrick, Joyce's agenda is marked. He is focusing on those adventurous and often heroic Irish saints who chose the path of peregrinatio and took their learning abroad to Europe (while St. Patrick renounced his patria et parentes in order to set up his mission in Ireland, though of course, he too was an exile there). Establishing this tradition of European exile was an important gesture for Joyce in the development of his own personal politics, which ran decidedly contrary to established wisdom as to the dangers of emigration. While the mass of Irish would go to live in Irish communities in England or the United States, the monks celebrated and imitated by Joyce would go into foreign lands where they would not have any Irish community to fall back on but would have to make their way by winning over the local population. Joyce the peregrinus was all too well aware of nationalist anti-emigration propaganda and of the contemporary Catholic Church's role in discouraging emigration; indeed, he wrote against it in "Eveline" as he does here, in this reversal of the standard view. While he saw emigration as a perquisite for the survival of the soul, most clerics viewed the flight from Ireland negatively and regretted their loss of power over the emigrant's physical and spiritual well-being.²¹ Kerby Miller has noted how emigration was politicized and criticized by Catholic and nationalist opinion makers to the benefit of those who remained at home in a "semimythical Holy Ireland,"²² a land of virtue, faith, spirituality, and traditionalism, a bulwark against the modernity and materialism to be found elsewhere. Joyce instead celebrates exile and emigration in his lecture as empowering, an assuming of individual responsibility that does not necessarily involve loss of key elements of one's Irish identity. Later, he would look back on his self-alignment with Columbanus and his ilk with irony through Stephen's self-mocking reflections in Ulysses: "You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Colum-banus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven" (U 3.192-96).

After Patrick, Wills provides the following entry on Saint Sedulius:

He was a man well versed in the knowledge of the Scriptures, of great accomplishments in human learning, and had an excellent taste both for prose and verse. For the love of learning he left Scotia, travelled into France, and from thence into Italy and Asia. At length, departing from the borders of Achaia, he came to be in high esteem in the city of Rome, on account of his wonderful learning. He writ many works, both in prose and verse, of which I have only met with the titles.

(LIDI 105)

Wills goes on to describe Sedulius's many publications and then reports (from Bale) "that he wrote hymns, which the church uses, as, Hostis Her-odes impie; A Solis ortus Cardine" (LIDI 105-6). Joyce compresses this material down to the bare essentials: "Sedulius travelled through a large part of the world, finally settling down in Rome, where he composed the fair total of almost fifty theological tracts and many sacred hymns which are still used today in the Catholic ritual" (OPCW 111).

Of Fridolinus Viator, Wills writes:

Amongst the many Irish ecclesiastics who carried learning and piety into France at this period, Fridolinus Viator was distinguished as being the son of a king, and as having early resisted the attractions of a court that he might devote himself to religion and philosophical studies. He travelled through France and Germany preaching Christianity and founding monasteries. . . . He obtained the name Viator from his unceasing toil in travelling from one country to another for the propagation of religion; and at length ended his labours at the monastery of Seekinge [sic], in Germany.

(LIDI 3:112)

Summarizing, Joyce tells his audience that "Fridolino Viator" was "of royal Irish stock . . . a missionary to the Germans and died at Seckinge [sic] in Germany." Both Wills and Joyce misspell the name of the monastery at Säckingen (or Seckingen) in Germany.

Wills devotes several pages to Saint Columbanus, but a couple of short excerpts show how his entry is Joyce's source. Wills outlines his early youth and then his going to France with twelve followers:

This illustrious saint and writer was the descendant of a noble family in the province of Leinster. . . . He tore himself, doubtless with pain and after many serious conflicts of the heart, from his father's house, and the temptations by which he was beset; his youthful pride and passion, 'Nihil tam sactum religione (says an ancient author of his life) tamque custodiaâ clausum, quod penetrare libido nequeat.'

(LIDI 3:125)

When Columbanus went, aged fifty, to France with twelve companions, "the state of Christianity in France had fallen into the most melancholy depravation"; the Upper Burgundy was a "savage region," though Col-umbanus managed to find "a spot adapted to the retirement of his taste and the sanctity of his purpose"(LIDI 3:126). Wills also describes Colum-banus's time in Italy, his work with the Lombards, and his founding of "the monastery of Bobio [sic], in which he passed the remaining interval of his old age, and died on the 21st November, 615, in the 56th year of his age" (LIDI 3:129).

Joyce too describes how Colombanus "had the task of reforming the French Church" and how he stirred up "a civil war in Burgundy with his sermons" before leaving "for Italy where he became the apostle of the Lombards." He repeats Wills's misspelling of Bobbio, noting how the saint "founded the monastery of Bobio [sic]," an unforgivable mistake, given that Joyce was living in the Italian-speaking city of Trieste (OPCW 111).

In his next entry on Saint Frigidian, Wills describes how "Frigidian, or Phridian, son of a king of Ulster, went at an early period of his life to Rome, and from thence to Lucca, where he was consecrated a bishop" (LIDI 3:129). Joyce's brief comment is almost word for word from Wills, with "Ulster" becoming "Irlanda del nord" for the benefit of his foreign audience, who would not recognize the provincial name: "Frigidianus, son of the king of the north of Ireland, held the bishop's chair in Lucca." Joyce then omits a collection of saints portrayed in Wills probably because none of them left Ireland for Europe but remained at home to practice their religious missions. He takes up from Wills again with Saint Gall. Wills writes:

St Gall, eminent for his writings and sanctity, is still more so for the strange adventures and vicissitudes of a life divided between the wanderings of a missionary and the stern seclusion of a hermit's cell. . . . He was first the pupil and afterwards the companion of the illustrious Colombanus. . . . These eminent missionaries had been, by the intrigues of queen Brunehilde, banished from their monastery at Luxeuil. They had arrived in the country of the Grisons, where, after much opposition from the people . . . they succeeded in converting many to Christianity; and, collecting their converts into a small settlement they led a useful, quiet, and happy life, in the peaceful occupations of agriculture, and the forest sports of hunting and fishing. . . . The bishopric of Constance falling vacant, St Gall was invited to assist at the election. He consented; and, coming to the council of bishops, abbots, and holy men, assembled for that purpose, he had some difficulty in resisting their unanimous disposition to elect himself 'on account of the good testimony he bore with all men.' . . . He declined the office. . . . He died on the 16th of October, 646, in the 95th year of his age. The hermitage, once sanctified by the latter years of his pious life, became soon an object of veneration, and, by the magnificent piety of kings and nobles, was erected into an abbacy of wide domain and princely jurisdiction. The abbot became the prince of a canton of 1100 square miles. . . . The remains of the ancient Benedictine abbey are, we believe, still visited as the principal curiosity of the ancient town of St Gall.

(LIDI 133-37)

Joyce's version rings with echoes from Wills. We are told that Saint Gall was "first the pupil and then the companion of Columbanus," that he "lived as a hermit among the Grisons," "refused the bishopric of the city of Constance and died at the age of ninety-five. On the site of his hermitage an abbey was built, and the abbot, by the grace of God, became the prince of the Canton and greatly enriched the Benedictine library, the ruins of which are still displayed to visitors in the ancient town of St Gall." The echoes that can be heard would be rendered even more clearly were we to play around with the translation back into English of Joyce's lecture.

Wills next describes St. Finnian [sic]:

Beyond the moat, and farther to the right on a swelling bank over the Boyne, is the spot where once stood the abbey and cathedral of Clonard-cluain-craind, the Field of the Western Height; but not a vestige now remains but a stone baptismal font, of what was once a bishop's see, and the most famous seat of sacred literature and pious study in Ireland. Here St. Finnian [sic], the most learned of all the successors of St Patrick, established, in the 6th century, his college, to which three thousand students, resorted not only from all Ireland, but also from Britain, Armorica, and Germany. The venerable Bede describes the English, both of the better and middle ranks, as coming here not merely for the sake of study, but in the hope of leading a quieter and more contemplative life . . . and, under the direction of holy Finnian [sic], receiving from Irish hospitality, instruction, food, lodging, and books, without charge-cead mile failte.

(LIDI 138)

Joyce provides an accurate summary of the above while at the same time correcting the saint's name, rendering it more accurately, with just one n: "Finian, known as the learned, founded a school of theology on the banks of the river Boyne in Ireland where he taught Catholic doctrine to thousands of students from Great Britain, France, Armorica and Germany, giving each of them (blessed were the days!) not just lessons and books, but even free bread and board" (OPCW 111).

Wills then continues with a legend he credits to a source no less authoritative than the Dublin Penny Journal.

There yet remains a legend which says, that St Columba, the son of Crimthan, one night when his lamp failed, being exceedingly anxious to master some important passage he had taken in hand, was seen with the fingers of his right hand tipped with light, running along the leaves of this book, and so, from the effulgence which they cast on the pages, he was enabled to study, while all around him was dark.

(LIDI 3:139)

Once again, Joyce provides a swifter version of this rather particular story, omitting the name of Columba, who is described simply as a student: "However, it seems that occasionally he neglected to refill their study lamps. A student, finding himself suddenly without light, was obliged to invoke divine grace which made his fingers shine miraculously so that, by tracing his finger along the pages, he could quench his thirst for knowledge" (OPCW 112).

Both Wills and Joyce continue in this vein through a whole range of Irish saints, including Fiacre, Fursey, Virus, Disibod, Rumold, Albinus, Killian, and Sedulius the Younger. In all cases, Joyce is again clearly lifting his material from Wills, as both the rhythm of his sentences and his choice of detail make abundantly clear. I will focus on just three examples. Of St. Fiacre, Wills describes his hermit life in France and points out that:

There is also a tablet hanging up in the church of St Maturin, in Paris, on which is inscribed a hymn to the honour of St Fiacre. . . .He died the 18th of August, but the year is not known. Monsieur Bireal, one of the French king's preachers, pronounced the eulogium of St Fiacre, which is printed amongst the composition of that orator.

(LIDI 3:139)

Joyce also mentions the "commemorative tablet in the church of S. Maturin in Paris" and "a sumptuous funeral paid for by the court" before discussing St. Fursey, noting that he "founded monasteries in five countries" and died in "Péronne in Picardy" (OPCW 112). This information can again be traced to Wills, who writes of Fursey's travels through "Aus-trasia, Flanders, Brabant, Liege, and Namure" and his death in "Péronne, in Picardy" (LIDI 3:139-40).

Joyce's slip with the name of the next saint, Argobast (he calls him Arbogast) cannot be attributed to Wills, but apart from that, their versions of his life are practically identical, as are their sketches of the saints that follow, including Sedulius the Younger. Wills writes:

From the great reputation Sedulius had acquired by his Commentaries on St Matthew, he was selected by Pope Gregory II to go into Spain to reconcile some differences that had taken place amongst the clergy of Oreto; and, to give him additional authority over them, he was nominated bishop of that see. The Spaniards, at first, showed some hesitation in receiving him, on the plea of his not belonging to their country; upon which he wrote a treatise to prove, that as he was of Irish birth, he was consequently of Spanish descent, and therefore entitled to their regard.

(LIDI 3:152)

Joyce slightly embroiders this version, writing:

Sedulius the Younger was chosen by Pope Gregory II for the mission of pacifying the clerical strife in Spain, but when he got there the Spanish priests refused to listen to him, saying that he was a foreigner. To this Sedulius replied that, as he was Irish and of the old Milesian race, he was, in fact, of Spanish origin, an argument his opponents found so persuasive that they let him install himself in the bishop's palace in Oreto.

(LIDI 3:154)

Joyce would have enjoyed this reference to the ancestors of Milesius who, legend would have it, having lived in Spain later traveled from there to Ireland. Later he would reopen these connections when creating the character of Molly Bloom, who, through her Spanish-Jewish mother and her being reared in Gibraltar, also embodies Moorish, oriental qualities.

Wills brings this section of his biographies to a conclusion, writing:

We shall close the biography of this period with the ancient Itinerary of King Alfred in Ireland:

I found in the fair InisfailIn Ireland while in exileMany women, no silly crowd,Many laics, many clerics.

(LIDI 3:154)

Just in case we were in any doubt as to Joyce's source, he too concludes this section of his lecture with reference to King Alfred and with a skilful translation into Italian of the same verse from the Itinerary:

King Alfred, who visited the country, has left us his impressions in verses called 'The Royal Journey' [Joyce's original Italian called it L'Itinerario Reale]. In the first verse he tells us:

I found when I was in exileIn Ireland the beautifulMany women, a serious crowd,Laymen and priests in abundance

(Trovai, quando fui esule/In Irlanda la bella/Donne molte, una folla seria/Laici e preti in abbondanza).

(OPCW 113, 248)

Following this glorious period in Irish history, Wills and Joyce are in agreement that darkness and strife follows. It would have been impossible to find a Catholic reading of Irish history that differed. Cardinal Cullen's words in his St. Patrick's Day homily of 1867 are typical:

But after that golden era of our history, Ireland had to undergo many sad vicissitudes of fortune, such as the Danish and Norman invasions, the devastation of the sixteenth century, penal laws and persecution, which swept away our convents and institutions and covered the land with ruin and devastation.²³

Wills therefore follows standard descriptions, writing of "a period of surpassing and universal darkness" and what he calls "a deeply-seated disorder throughout the constitution of the social state. Learning, religion, and morals were depraved to a state nearly touching upon the dark limit of ignorance, superstition, and barbarism" (LIDI 3:154, 223, 229). Joyce is even more explicit: "Whoever reads the history of the three centuries that preceded the arrival of the English will need to have a strong stomach, as the internecine strife, the fights against the Danish and Norwegians . . . succeeded one another with such regularity and ferocity that they turn this era into a real butcher's mess'' (OPCW 113).

Despite the darkness of this period, Wills manages to find and celebrate three great heresiarchs, Erigena, Macarius, and Virgilius Solivagus. He devotes a lot of space to the first-John Scotus Erigena-initially giving a sketch of the disorder in France.

Such is a summary sketch of the intellectual state of the continent, when Charles the Bald ascended the throne of France, and by his love of knowledge, and encouragement of its professors, made his court and table a centre of attraction for the better intellects of his age. Among the most eminent for extensive knowledge and pleasing conversation, whom the sagacity and taste of Charles distinguished by peculiar favour, the Irish scholar John Erigena, was the first; the same keen and subtle invention and adroitness, which placed him at the head of the disputants of his controversial period, gave ready tact, quick discernment, and facile point in conversation, and he so won on the monarch, that he became his constant companion, was a frequent guest at the royal table and admitted to the privilege of friendship, and placed at the head of the university of Paris.

(LIDI 3:154, 230)

Scotus became involved in various theological controversies, among them those concerning the Eucharist and the subject of "predestination and divine grace." Ultimately, however, he "owes his place in literature" to his contribution to "the philosophy called Aristotelian," which was the fruit of his possessing "the boldness to give free scope to original speculation, and to erect a system of his own":

This temper received its direction from circumstances. From the earliest records of philosophy in the East, the idea of a mystical union of the spirit of man with the universal spirit by contemplation and ideal absorption, appears to have been in some form a tenet of doctrine. . . . In this state of things, the Greek emperor sent over, as a present to Lewis the Meek, some works of mystical theology, which had long been highly popular in the Eastern church. Of their tendency the reader may judge from their titles. On the Celestial Monarchy; On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; On Divine Names; On Mystical Theology. These treatises received additional value from the reputation of their pretended author, Dionysius the Areopagite, who, under the familiar name St Denis, was believed to be the first Christian teacher as he was the patron saint of France. Charles was ignorant of the Greek language, and therefore sought a translation. . . . Scotus was applied to by the king and undertook the task. . . . In executing his task he became enamoured with a system, in the transcendental altitudes and depths of which the reach of his subtlety, and the boldness of his fancy could range unquestioned above the dull track of common notions. . . . The translation of Scotus was eagerly received, and laid the foundation of the theological controversies of the following three centuries. On the fortune of Scotus the result was less favourable. The translation was in many respects at variance with the dogmas of Western theology, and the book was published without the licence of the Roman see. Nicholas the First applied, by a menacing letter, to Charles, who dared not openly defy the pontifical requisition, to send the book with its author to Rome. Scotus decided the perplexity by withdrawing himself from Paris.

(LIDI 154, 231-32)

Joyce's version is again very similar. He describes Scotus Erigena as "rector of the University of Paris" and translator of "Greek books of mystic theology by the pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, patron saint of the nation of France." In claiming this, he follows Wills into the common error of confusing Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite with St. Denis, patron saint of France. He also errs in calling Scotus Erigena rector of the University of Paris. Despite this slip, Joyce is not mistaking Scotus Erigena for Duns Scotus here. Given that he groups him chronologically with Macarius and Virgilius Solivagus, Joyce clearly has his man. He goes on to compare these translations with those of Plato in the days of Pico della Mirandola and continues, again lifting but at the same time adding a polemical turn, humor, and pace to Wills's version:

It goes without saying that this kind of innovation, which was like a life-giving breath working a bodily resurrection of the dead bones of orthodox theology heaped up on an inviolable holy ground, a field of Ardath, did not have the sanction of the Pope, who invited Charles the Bald to send both the author and his book under escort to Rome, probably wishing to give him a taste of some of the delights of papal hospitality. It seems, however, that Scotus had kept some good sense in his exalted brain, for he turned a deaf ear to the polite invitation and returned, as fast as he could, to his own country.

(OPCW 114)

Of the two or three remaining names that, according to Joyce, "shine out like the last few stars of a radiant night," first comes "Giovanni a Sacrobosco," in his literal translation of Wills's "John a Sacrabosco" (LIDI 4:259). According to Wills's long version, John of Holywood was an "ancient mathematician and astronomer" who wrote the "standard work" on the sphere and upheld the ideas of Ptolemy. Joyce's version is very close, describing him as "the last great advocate of Ptolemy's geographical and astronomic theories." Joyce then talks of Petrus Hibernicus, "the theologian who had the supreme task of educating the mind of the author of the scholastic apology, Summa contra Gentiles, St Thomas Aquinas" (OPCW 114). The version in Wills is a bit longer but substantially the same:

Peter, an Irishman of great ability, and remarkable both as a philosopher and a theologian, went to Italy on the special invitation of Frederick II, who had at that time restored the university of Naples, and wished to have a man of his learning and acquirements, both as an example and instructor to the rising generation. He was tutor to Thomas Aquinas in philosophical studies, in the year 1240, and wrote Quodlibeta Theologica.

(LIDI 4:265)

Having studied the close analogies between the two texts, there seems little doubt that Joyce was drawing heavily on Wills-a most convenient source and evidence of Joyce's magpie-like capacity to borrow what he needed for his writing without paying too much attention to the accuracy of his sources. It should not be forgotten that one of Joyce's principal motives for giving this lecture was to make some badly needed money following his disastrous period in Rome. It should not, therefore, be given undue importance within the overall Joycean scheme of things.

At the same time, we might note that in writing about these Irish saints Joyce is following a conscious strategy. He is reclaiming a Catholic Irish intellectual heritage that was often ignored or forgotten by the narrow-minded contemporary Irish Church. There is not a mention of any of these saints in A Portrait or in Dubliners precisely because the young Joyce rarely would have heard them mentioned at home or at school. Joyce is also drawing attention to a group of courageous, strong-minded, intellectual religious figures who stand in marked contrast to the often repressive and parochial religious figures that populate both his fiction and the contemporary Irish church. Similarly, in reconstructing this golden period of Irish Christianity (predominantly seen in exile), he was offering an alternative to the romanticized "Celtic twilight" reconstructions penned by Yeats and the early revivalists, who downplayed the Catholic heritage and emphasized popular Celticism as they sought to impose their own hegemony over Ireland. Joyce's own words are important in this regard: "Even a superficial review shows us that the Irish nation's desire to create its own civilisation is not so much the desire of a young nation wishing to link itself to Europe's concert, but the desire by an ancient nation to renew in a modern form the glories of a past civilization." These words situate the Joyce of 1907 very much within a Catholic view of Irish history, that of a long-lost golden age. Collins comments effectively on the pervasiveness of this view:

In this singling out of the Irish as 'a holy nation, a people set apart', MacHale gave voice to a crucial leit-motif of Irish nationalism as it evolved during the course of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. It was but a brief step from this to Cullen's characterization of the Irish as a 'martyr nation'. Taken together, MacHale's and Cullen's images combine to depict Ireland as the holy-martyr nation. The historical reality of there having been a Celtic-Christian-Golden Age in Ireland was taken as proof-if any was needed-that Celticism and Catholicism belonged together. Protestant patriots might have tried to shift the historical focus further back, to 'pagan Ireland', as in the case of Ferguson and even Yeats, or forward to some future nirvana, as in the case of Wolfe Tone and his friends. But, the image which caught best the imagination of the Catholic masses was that of the real Golden Age.²⁴

In everything Joyce did there was the desire to link his country to "Europe's concert," but he also had to come to terms with "the glories of a past civilization," which, he felt, offered Ireland her passport into modern Europe. He chose to dwell on Ireland's intellectual glories, which he defined in his own terms in this lecture and in openly polemical contrast with the convenient revivalist constructions of the past and present. Here he was doing the spadework necessary for the more important tasks ahead in Ulysses, the book in which he would undertake a massive deconstruction of the mythologies of at least two versions of romantic Ireland, the Celtic and the Catholic, that continued to be put forward, in various shades, by his contemporaries back in Dublin.