Early Christian Ireland, and: Ireland and the Classical World (review)

JECS readers should note the title of Charles-Edwards's book. It does not deal with early Irish Christianity but with Ireland in its early Christian period. Consequently, it contains an enormous amount of political history, which nonspecialists will find extremely difficult to follow, as well as some social history, which is more accessible. The author here takes the familiar approach that the history of Irish Christianity must be fitted into political and social history; this tack also helps to illuminate some of the Christian texts. Charles-Edwards joins the increasing number of scholars who posit a late fifth-century date for the mission of Patrick, a view which forces a reconsideration of the mission of the first bishop in Ireland, Palladius, who was sent there by Pope Celestine I in 431. Charles-Edwards gives Palladius' mission a thorough Roman background by emphasizing its source, Prosper of Aquitaine, who put this first mission in an Augustinian framework, i.e., a Roman missionary out to save the barbarians from eternal damnation.

Patrick next steps into that framework. He saw himself as a new Paul. Patrick's famous reference to having carried the true faith to the ends of the earth is now less an explanation to the British church of the geographical extent of his missionary work than it is an early Romanizing interpretation of Irish Christian history. This important insight puts in a different light the later (seventh and eighth centuries) attempts by the bishops of Armagh to turn Patrick into an apologist for the Roman rather than the Celtic form of Christianity. Armagh's ambitions were no less, but at least they did not force Patrick into a role that he himself chose not to play.

Problems facing students of early Irish Christianity have usually focused of the reliability of the sources. Patrick's own writings have become the reliable standard, and for many scholars they are the only reliable works. However, Charles-Edwards has skillfully woven into this tapestry some vernacular sources hitherto not given much credence. He succeeds because he makes a good case for a later date for the saint. A later Patrick is closer in time to the extant vernacular works.

The book's only real deficiency is limiting the discussion of intellectual movement to the Paschal Controversy despite the fact that so many monastic and exegetical texts survive. All in all, this impressive analysis and rethinking of traditional historiography is likely to win over most scholars. The volume will not be replaced for some time although its technical nature makes it impossible for me to recommend it to the nonspecialist.

Freeman's book follows a path set out by the Canadian scholar James Kenney in 1929, tracing references to Ireland in Classical writers, here extended to the fifth century C.E. Freeman deals with two categories: first, what the ancients actually knew about Ireland, and secondly, the image of Ireland in their writings. The first is an account gradually filled in by trade, especially from Roman Britain, and the second a mix of hard and soft primitivism. Most Christian references are occasional and fall into both categories. Prudentius claims that even the barbaric Irish, barely more thoughtful than animals, can recognize the natural order of the divine creation whereas Claudian lists the Irish among the many barbarians routed by the Christian emperor Honorius, a blatant untruth. Jerome reports that Irish men "have wives enjoyed by all and children in common" (100), another untruth, but he refers most extensively to the Irish when he accuses Pelagius ("that most stupid man weighed down by Irish porridge" [101]) of belonging to that barbarian race. Ireland becomes a stick by which to beat the frightful heresiarch. Freeman does not include the works of Patrick, his...