Patrick has not told us where, or in what circumstances, he parted from his companions, nor has he related his subsequent adventures. When he found himself free his first thought would have been, we should suppose, to make his way back to his home in Britain. We saw that he probably succeeded in escaping from his fellow-travellers in Italy, and his easiest way home might in that case have been by the coast road through Liguria and Provence to Marseilles. From whatever quarter he started, he seems to have reached the coast of Provence. For here at length, amid perplexing, broken clues, we have a definite trace of his path; here at length we can fix an episode in his life to a small plot of ground.
In the later part of the fourth century the influence of the Eastern on the Western mind had displayed itself not only in theological thought, but also in the spread of asceticism and the foundation of monastic societies, especially through the influence of men like Ambrose, Martin of Tours, and Jerome. In choosing their lonely dwelling-places, the eyes of anchorets did not overlook the little deserted islands which lay here and there off the coast in the western Mediterranean. Island cloisters studded the coast of Italy “like a necklace” before the end of the fourth century, and soon they began to appear off the coast of Provence. It was perhaps while Patrick was a slave in Ireland that a traveller, weary of the world, came back from the east to his native Gaul, and, seeking a spot where he might found a little society of monks who desired to live far from the turmoil of cities, he was directed to the uncouth islet of Lerinus, which no man tilled or approached because it was infested by snakes. Honoratus took possession of it and reclaimed it for cultivation. Wells were dug, and sweet water flowed “in the midst of the bitterness of the sea.” Vines were planted and cells were built, and a little monastic community gathered round Honoratus, destined within a few years to be more illustrious than any of the older island cloisters. Lerinus is the outermost of the two islands which lie opposite to the cape of Cannes, smaller and lower than its fellow Lero, which screens it from view, bearing at the present day the name of the man who made it significant in history.[37] It is difficult to realise as one walks round it to-day and sees a few stones, relics of its ancient monks, that at one time it exercised a great if unobtrusive influence in southern Gaul. Its peaceful, sequestered cells, “withdrawn into the great sea,” in mare magnum recedentia, had a wonderful attraction for men who had been shipwrecked in the tumbling world, or who desired unbroken hours for contemplation—vacare et videre.
Patrick found a refuge in the island cloister of Honoratus, and in that island we are for the first time treading ground where we have reason to think that he lived for a considerable time. We should like to know the circumstances of his admission to this community, but his own picture of the state of his mind enables us to understand how easily he could have been moved by the ascetic attractions of the monastery to interrupt his homeward journey and lead a religious life in the sacrae solitudines of Lerinus for a few years.
Among the men of some note who sojourned in the monastery in its early days was Hilary, who afterwards became Bishop of Arelate; Maximus, who was the second abbot, and then Bishop of Reii; Lupus, who subsequently held the see of Trecasses; Vincentius, who taught and wrote in the cloister; and Eucherius, who composed, among other works, a treatise in praise of the hermit’s life. Eucherius had built a hut for himself and his wife Galla, aloof from the rest of the brotherhood, in the larger island of Lero. It was remembered how one day Honoratus sent a messenger across in a boat with a letter on a wax tablet, and Eucherius, seeing the abbot’s writing, said, “To the wax you have restored its honey.”
As the monastic spirit grew and spread, many a stranger set his face to Lerinus, hoping, as men hoped greatly in those days, that “he might break through the wall of the passions and ascend by violence to the kingdom of heaven.” Among those who joined the new society was Faustus, a compatriot of Patrick. But it is unknown whether he was at Lérins at this time; perhaps he was still only a child, for we first hear of him in the abbotship of Maximus, who succeeded Honoratus,[38] and whom he himself was destined to succeed.[39] Faustus had enjoyed an education such as Patrick never acquired. He was a student of ancient philosophy, and a master of style, as style was then understood. He was afterwards the valued friend and correspondent of the greatest man of letters of that century, Sidonius Apollinaris. Crude and rustic must Patrick have seemed to his fellow-countryman, if they met at Lérins. Yet to-day the name of Faustus has passed out of men’s memory, and Patrick’s is familiar in the households of western Christendom, and in far-western Christendom beyond the ocean.
There can be no doubt that the years which he spent at Lérins exercised an abiding influence on Patrick. He was brought under the spell of the monastic ideal; and though his life was not to be sequestered, but out in the active world of men, monastic societies became a principal and indispensable element in his idea of a Christian Church. It is improbable that during these years of seclusion he was stirred, even faintly, by the idea of devoting himself to the work of spreading Christianity in the barbarous land associated with his slavery and shame. But he was profoundly convinced that during the years of his bondage he had been held as in the hollow of God’s hand; whatever hopes or ambitions he may have cherished in his boyhood must have been driven from his heart by the stress of his experience, and in such a frame of mind the instinct of a man of that age was to turn to a religious life. At Lérins, perhaps, his desire, so far as he understood it, was to remain a monk; uenire ad eremum summa perfectio est. But there were energies and feelings in him which such a life would not have contented. At the end of a few years he left the monastery to visit his kinsfolk in Britain, and there he became conscious of the true destiny of his life.
When Patrick returned to his old home, his kinsfolk welcomed him “as a son,”[40] and implored him to stay and not part from them again. But if he had any thought of yielding to their persuasions, it was dismissed when he became aware, all at once, that the aim of his life was determined. The idea of labouring among the heathen, which may have been gradually, though quite unconsciously, gathering force and secretly winning possession of his brain, suddenly stood full-grown, as it were, face to face with him in a sensible shape. In a vision of the night it seemed to him that he saw a man standing by his side. It was a certain Victoricus. We may suppose that Patrick had made this man’s acquaintance in Gaul, and that he was interested in Ireland, but his only appearance in history is in Patrick’s dream. To the dreamer he seemed to have come from Ireland, and in his hand he held a bundle of letters. “And he gave me one of these, and I read the beginning of the letter, which contained ‘the voice of the Irish.’ And as I read the beginning of it, I fancied that I heard the voice of the folk who were near the wood of Fochlad, nigh to the western sea. And this was the cry: ‘We pray thee, holy youth, to come and again walk amongst us as before.’ I was pierced to the heart and could read no more; and thereupon I awoke.” This is the dreamer’s description of his dream. But, as the story was told in later days, the cry that pierced his heart was uttered by the young children of Fochlad, even by the children still unborn. There is nothing of this in Patrick’s words, yet the tradition betrays a true instinct of the significance of the dream. It brings out more intensely and pathetically how the forlorn condition of the helpless unbaptized, condemned to everlasting punishment by the doctrine of the Church, could appeal irresistibly to the pity of a Christian who held that rigorous doctrine.
This doctrine was closely connected with the question which, at this time, above all other questions, was agitating western Christendom; and, strange to say, the controversy had been opened by a man of Irish descent. It is possible that, as some claim, Pelagius was born in Ireland, but the evidence rather points to the conclusion that he belonged to an Irish family settled in western Britain. His name represents, doubtless, some Irish sea-name such as Muirchu, “hound of the sea.” While Patrick was serving in Ireland, Pelagius was in Rome, thinking out one of the great problems which has constantly perplexed the meditations of men, and promulgating a view which arrested the interest or compelled the attention of leaders of theological opinion from York to Carthage, from Carthage to Jerusalem. For some years the Roman Empire echoed with his fame.
Pelagianism is not one of those dull, lifeless heresies which have no more interest than the fact that they once possessed for a short space the minds of men a long while dead. At this period the onward movement of human thought was confined within the lines of theology, couched in theological language, and we must distinguish those questions which, like the Arian and Pelagian, involve speculations of perpetual human interest from controversies which touch merely the formulae of a special theology. We need not enter upon the actual course of the debate in which Pelagius and Augustine represented two opposed tendencies of religious and philosophic thought, destined to reappear in the time of the Reformation, but we are concerned with the general significance of the questions involved. The chief and central principle of Pelagius was the recognition of freewill as an inalienable property of human nature. In every action a man is free to choose between good and evil, and his choice is not determined, and has not been predetermined, by the Deity who originally gave to man that power of choosing. Pelagius regarded freewill as the palladium and surrogate of the dignity of human nature. This view logically excluded the doctrine of original sin, inherited from Adam, as well as the doctrine of predestination; it implied that infants are born sinless, and that baptism is not necessary to save them from hell; it implied that it was perfectly possible, however difficult, for a man who had not embraced the Christian faith, or been bathed in the mystical waters of baptism, to lead a sinless life. It is clear that this thesis, as the opponents of Pelagius saw and said, struck at the very root of the theory of the “Atonement”—at least as the “Atonement” was crudely conceived by the Church in dependence on the old Jewish story of the fall of Adam. Pelagius does not seem to have succeeded in really working his theory of human nature into the Christian system, which he fully accepted, and this was the logical weakness of his position in the theological debate.
Pelagius was not a mere speculator. Himself a monk and rigorous liver, he had in view the practical aim of raising the morality of Christians, and his particular view of human nature and “sin” bore directly on this practical aim. For if the purpose of religion is to realise the ideal of holiness and draw men up, above the level of commonplace sensual life, to high and heavenly things, and if the doctrine of sin was framed by the Church with this view, it might well have seemed to an observer that there lay a practical danger in such a doctrine. There was a danger that, if men were taught that they were born evil and impotent to resist evil by efforts of their own nature, the moral consciousness would be stifled and paralysed by a belief so dishonouring to humanity. The assertion of the freedom of the will by Pelagius, and his denial of innate sin, represent a reaction of the moral consciousness against the dominance of the religious consciousness, and although he speaks within the Church, he is really asserting the man against the Christian, defending the honour of the “reasonable creature.”[41]
To the surveyor of the history of humanity this is the interest which Pelagius possesses, an interest which is generally obscured in the dust of controversy. He was the champion of human nature as such, which the Christian Church, in pursuance of its high objects, dishonoured and branded as essentially depraved. He was the champion of all the good men who lived “on the ridge of the world,” as men of his own race would have said, before ever Jesus was born, of all those whose minds were fixed on invisible things, of all the noble and sinless pagans, were they many or few. This was the merit of Pelagius, to have attempted to rescue the dignity of human nature oppressed by the doctrine of sin; and we who realise how much our race owes to the peoples of antiquity may feel particular sympathy with him who dared to say that, before Jesus, sinless men had lived upon earth.[42] Of few men have the Celts of Ireland or Britain better reason to be proud than of the bold thinker who went forth to speak holy words for humanity against the inhuman side of the Christian faith. He was ranged against the authorities of Augustine and Jerome, but he was not fond of fighting; he wished to keep the whole question out of the region of dogma, and let it remain a matter of opinion; he never sought to get his own views sanctioned by a council of the Church. But the strife and the defeat are of subordinate interest. What interests us is that Pelagius, himself originally stimulated by Rufinus, stimulated thinking men throughout the West, and induced many to modify their views about freewill and congenital sin.
The repose of Lérins was not uninvaded by the sounds of this debate, and some of its more notable monks showed hereafter that they had been profoundly influenced by the arguments of Pelagius. The subject therefore must have been familiar to Patrick; and the terrible doctrine, impugned by the Scottish heretic, that infants, being sinful at their birth, incur the everlasting punishment of the wicked until they are redeemed through the mysterious rite of baptism, might well affect his imagination. Nothing could have done more to quicken his concern for the unbaptized people by the western sea than a vivid realisation of this doctrine.
The self-revealing dream convinced Patrick that he was destined to go as missioner and helper to Ireland—ad ultimum terrae, to the limit of the world. Yet he felt hesitation and uncertainty, distrusting his own fitness for such an enterprise, conscious of the defective education of his youth; and he felt a natural repugnance to return to the land of captivity. His self-questionings and diffidence were in the end overcome by the mastering instinct of his soul; and to his religious imagination the instinct seemed to speak within him, like an inner voice, confirming his purpose. Such experiences befall men of a certain cast and mould when an impulse, which they can hardly justify when they weigh it in the scales of the understanding, affects them so strongly that it seems the objective compulsion or admonition of some external intelligence.
It is probable that when he was finally convinced of the destination of his life, and knew that he must seek the woods of Fochlad, Patrick did not tarry long in Britain, but returned to Gaul in order to prepare himself for carrying out his task. It was necessary not only to train himself, but to win support and countenance for his enterprise from influential authorities in the Church. Even if Patrick had been already in clerical orders, it would have been the mere adventure of a wild fanatic, and would have excited general disapprobation, to set sail in the first ship that left the mouth of the Severn for the Irish coast, and, trusting simply in his own zeal and the divine protection, set out to convert the heathen of Connaught. Such were not the conditions of the task which he aspired to perform. He knew that, if he was to succeed, he must come with support and resources and fellow-workers, accredited and in touch with the Christian communities which already existed in Ireland. He needed not only theological study and the counsels of men of leading and light, but material support and official recognition.
At this time the church of Autissiodorum seems to have already won a high position in northern Gaul through the virtues of its bishop, Amator. It was soon to win a higher fame still through the greater talents of Amator’s successor. The town of Autissiodorum, situated on the river Yonne, is no exception to the general rule that the towns of Gaul have preserved the old Gallic names, whether place-names or tribe-names, throughout Roman and German domination alike; and Auxerre, like most towns in Gaul, unlike most towns in Britain, has had a continuous life through all changes since the days when it was Patrick’s home in the reign of Honorius and Valentinian. For it was Auxerre that Patrick chose as the place of his study; perhaps he was introduced to Amator by British ecclesiastics. It may be that there was some special link or intimacy between the church of Auxerre and one of the British sees. But it is not unlikely that there was a further motive in determining Patrick’s choice. Perhaps some particular interest had been exhibited at Auxerre in the Christian communities of Ireland. There is, in fact, evidence which points to the conclusion that Auxerre was a resort of Irish Christians for theological study. Patrick was ordained deacon by Bishop Amator before long, and it would seem that two other young men, who were afterwards to help the spread of Christianity in Ireland, were ordained at the same time. One of them was a native of south Ireland; his Irish name was Fith, but he took the name of Iserninus. The nationality of his companion, Auxilius, which the Irish made into Ausaille, is unknown.
Fourteen years passed, at the smallest computation, from the ordination of Patrick till the day came for setting forth to his chosen task. This long delay can hardly be accounted for by the necessities of an ecclesiastical training. There must have been other impediments and difficulties. He intimates himself that he was not encouraged. Those to whom he looked up for counsel considered his project rash and himself unqualified for such a work. His rusticitas, or want of liberal education, was urged against him; and perhaps a failure to win support is a sufficient explanation of the delay.
At all events Patrick, one would suppose, had a discreet, if not a sympathetic, guide in the head of the church of Auxerre. Amator had been succeeded by one who was to bear a more illustrious name in the ecclesiastical annals of Gaul. Germanus is a case, common in Gaul and elsewhere at this period, of a distinguished layman who held office in the State exchanging secular for ecclesiastical office. In the year 429 it devolved upon him to visit Britain, and this enterprise must have had a particular interest for Patrick. The poison of the serpent Pelagius, as his opponents named him, had been spreading, in a diluted form, in the island; some of the writings of its British advocates are still extant. The orthodox pillars of the British Church were alarmed, and they sent pressing messages across the sea to invite their Gallic brethren to send able champions over to overcome the heresy. It was probably to Auxerre and Troyes, in the first instance, that they made their appeal, and it is recorded that at a synod held at Troyes it was decided that Germanus should proceed to Britain along with Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who had been formerly a monk of Lérins. Whatever may be the truth about this alleged Gallic synod, Germanus went with higher authority and prestige; for he went under the direct sanction of Celestine, the Bishop of Rome. We learn that this sanction was gained by the influence of the deacon Palladius, who may possibly have been a deacon of Germanus. The authoritative mission from Gaul seems to have crushed the heretics, and their doctrine was compelled to hide its head in Britain for a few years to come.
Celestine was approached soon afterwards on a subject which touched Patrick more closely than the suppression of heresy in Britain. His attention was drawn to the position of the Christian communities in Ireland. The man who interested himself in this matter was the same deacon, Palladius, who had interested himself in the extirpation of British Pelagianism. It is remarkable that this first appearance of Irish Christianity in ecclesiastical history should be associated, both chronologically and in the person of Palladius, with the Pelagian question. Now we may be sure that some overture or message had come from the Christian bodies in Ireland, whether to Britain, or Gaul, or to Rome itself; for the Bishop of Rome would hardly have sent them a bishop unless they had intimated that they wanted one.[43] It is, then, not impossible, though it is not proven, that the motive of the Irish Christians in taking such a step at this moment may have been the same Pelagian difficulty which had caused the appeal from Britain.[44] The question, which must have occurred sooner or later, of organising the small Christian societies of Ireland may possibly have been brought to a head by the Pelagian debate. And if the Pelagian heresy had gained any ground in Ireland, nothing would have been more natural than that the fact should have come before the notice of Germanus while he was dealing with the same question in Britain.
This conjecture, which is suggested unconstrainedly by the general situation, may supply us with the key for reading between the lines of a passage in Patrick’s autobiographical sketch. He complains of the treachery of a most intimate friend, whom he does not name, but who seems, from the circumstances, to have been an ecclesiastic, whether of Britain or Gaul. To this friend he had communicated his inmost thoughts,—credidi etiam animam,—and had evidently received sympathy from him in regard to his cherished plan of working in Ireland. His friend had told him emphatically that he must be made a bishop. And afterwards, when the question of choosing a bishop for Ireland practically arose, his friend was active in urging his claims. Now it was in Britain that the matter was discussed when Patrick’s friend, though Patrick himself was not there, showed such loyal zeal in his behalf. Here, then, we have an incident which exactly fits into the situation when Germanus was fighting against heresy in Britain in A.D. 429. If this heresy existed in Ireland, it was an element in the problem with which Germanus had to deal, even with regard to British interests solely; for, if the false doctrine were permitted to spread unchecked in the Irish communities, it might constitute a serious danger to the neighbouring church in Britain. If, as was most likely to occur, orthodox members of the Irish communities sent representatives to Germanus while he was in Britain and asked for some intervention, the question of sending a bishop to guide the Irish Christians in the right path and organise their society became at once practical and urgent. This then, it seems reasonable to suggest, may have been the occasion on which Patrick’s friend designated him as the suitable man for the post.
The opportunity for which Patrick had been waiting long seemed to have come at last. Probably a certain interest in Irish Christianity had been already felt in Gaul, and especially at Auxerre; but it was now brought under the notice of the head of Christendom. There seemed a prospect now for Patrick to undertake the work on which he had set his heart under high sanction and with sufficient support. But Celestine’s choice fell on another. The deacon Palladius, who had been active in these affairs, was prepared to go to Ireland, and Celestine consecrated him bishop for the purpose (A.D. 431). The choice, if it was Celestine’s own, was perfectly natural. We must remember that the first and chief consideration of Celestine was the welfare and orthodoxy of Irish believers, not the conversion of Irish unbelievers. He was called upon to meet the need of the Christian communities; the further spreading of the faith among the heathen was an ulterior consideration. The qualification, therefore, which he sought in the new bishop may not have been burning zeal for preaching to pagans, but rather experience and capacity for dealing with the Pelagian heresy. Palladius had taken a prominent part in coping with this heresy in Britain, and it is a probable conjecture that he had accompanied Germanus thither. Possibly representatives of the Irish Christians may have intimated that they wished for his appointment.
The brief chronicle of the visit of Palladius to Ireland is that he came and went within a year. It is generally assumed that he had not the strength or tact to deal with the situation; that he departed in despair; that his mission was a failure. But our evidence hardly warrants this conclusion. We are told that he proceeded from Ireland to the land of the Picts in north Britain, and died there. But we cannot be sure that he did not intend to return. It is with north Leinster[45] and the hills of Wicklow that tradition associates the brief episode of Palladius. But we may be tempted to suspect that the expedition of Palladius to the country of the Picts was not an abandonment of Ireland, but was, on the contrary, part of his work in Ireland, and that it was not the Picts of north Britain, but some Christian communities existing among the Picts of Dalaradia in north Ireland, who were the object of his concern. The most probable conclusion seems that the episcopate of Palladius in Ireland was cut short, not by a voluntary desertion of his post, but by death.
We should like to know where were the dwelling-places of the Christians to whom Palladius was sent. Between the port where Wicklow of the Vikings now is, the port where Palladius landed, and the lonely glen of the two lakes by whose shores a cluster of churches was afterwards to spring up, stretched the lands of the children of Garrchu, and tradition said that the chief of this tribe regarded Palladius with disfavour. But his short sojourn is also associated with the foundation of three churches. It is possible that we may seek the site of a little house for praying, built by him or his disciples, on a high wooded hill that rises sheer enough on the left bank of the river Avoca, close to a long slanting hollow, down which, over grass or bushes, the eye catches the glimmer of the stream winding in the vale below, and rises beyond to the higher hills which bound the horizon. Here may have been the “House of the Romans,” Tech na Rómán, and Tigroney, the shape in which this name is concealed, may be a memorial of the first missioner of Rome. But farther west, beyond the hills, we can determine with less uncertainty another place which tradition associated with the activity of Palladius, in the neighbourhood of one of the royal seats of the lords of Leinster. From the high rath of Dunlavin those kings had a wide survey of their realm. Standing there, one can see westward to Mount Bladma, and northward, across the Plain of Liffey, into the kingdom of Meath. More than a league eastward from this fortress Palladius is said to have founded a church which was known as the “domnach” or “Lord’s house” of the High-field, Domnach Airte, in a hilly region which is strewn with the remnants of ancient generations. The original church of this place has long since vanished, and its precise site cannot be guessed with certainty, but it gave a permanent name to the place. At Donard we feel with some assurance that we are at one of the earliest homes of the Christian faith in Ireland, not the earliest that existed, but the earliest to which we can give a name.
There was a third church, seemingly the most important of those which Palladius is said to have founded, Cell Fine, “the Church of the Tribes,” in which his tablets and certain books and relics which he had brought from Rome were preserved. Here, and perhaps here only, in the place, unknown to us, where his relics lay, was preserved the memory of Palladius, a mere name. Whatever his qualities may have been, he was too short a time in Ireland to have produced a permanent impression. The historical significance of his appearance there does not lie in any slight ecclesiastical or theological successes he may have accomplished. It is significant because it was the first manifestation in Ireland of the authority of Rome. The secular arm of Rome, in days when Rome was mightier—the arm of Agricola, the arm of Theodosius—had never reached the Scottic coast; it was not till after the mother of the Empire had been besieged and despoiled by barbarian invaders that her new spiritual dominion began to reach out to those remote shores which her worldly power had never sought to gain. The coming of Palladius was the first link in the chain which bound Ireland—for some centuries loosely—to the spiritual centre of western Europe.
But when, seeking vainly for traces of this first comer in the vales of the children of Garrchu or on the holy hill of Donard, we see the memorials in earth and stone of days before Palladius, we are reminded that, if his coming is significant, it is a fact more important still that no secular messengers of Rome had come before him. The superstitious and primitive customs of the island were protected and secured, pure and uncontaminated, by the barrier of sundering seas. If one of the early Roman Emperors had annexed Ireland to their British provinces, ideas of city life and civil government and administration would have been introduced which might have proved a more powerful solvent than Christianity of Celtic and Iberian barbarism. A Roman colonia, a number of Roman towns with municipal organisation, might, in a couple of hundred years, have produced a greater change in civilisation than all the little clerical communities which sprang up in the three or four centuries after the coming of Palladius. It would have been the task of the Roman government to put an end to the incessant petty wars between the kingdoms and tribes, pacisque imponere morem. But the absence of such civilising influence protected and preserved the native traditions, and the curiosity of those who study the development of the human mind may be glad that Ireland lay safe and undisturbed at the end of the world, and that Palladius, nearly a hundred years after the death of Constantine, was the first emissary from Rome.
The appointment of Palladius as bishop for the Scots had naturally affected the plans of Patrick. There was no longer any motive for delay in setting about the accomplishment of his project. There was no reason why, with the support of Auxerre and Bishop Germanus, he should not set forth, along with whatever coadjutors he could muster, and, under the auspices of the new bishop, begin the conversion of the heathen. All was arranged for his enterprise in the following year (A.D. 432), and the tradition is that he had already set out from Auxerre, accompanied by Segitius, an elderly presbyter, when the news reached Gaul that Palladius was dead. The announcement was brought by some of the companions of Palladius, and Patrick’s plans were once more interrupted. But only for a moment. The circumstances seem to imply that there was a distinct understanding that he was to be the successor of Palladius, and Germanus consecrated him bishop immediately. And so it came about that, in the end, he started for the field of his work invested with the authority and office which would render his labours most effective.[46]
Considerable preparations had, doubtless, been necessary. To carry out the ambitious scheme of converting heathen lands, there was needed not only a company of fellow-workers, but a cargo of “spiritual treasures” and ecclesiastical gear for the equipment of the new communities which were to be founded.[47] Money and treasure were indispensable, and however simple Patrick’s faith may have been in the intrinsic potency of the gospel which he was inspired to preach, he was a man of thoroughly practical mind, and he knew that silver and gold and worldly wealth would be needed in dealing with pagan princes, and in the effective establishment of clerical communities.
The foregoing account of Patrick’s setting forth for the field of his labours is based on a critical examination of the oldest sources. In later times men wished to believe that he, too, like Palladius, was consecrated by Celestine.[48] Such a consecration seemed both to add a halo of dignity to the national saint and to link his church more closely to the apostolic seat. We have no means of knowing whether Patrick set out before or after the death of Celestine,[49] but in any case the pious story is inconsistent with the oldest testimonies. Nor, even if there were room for doubt, would the question involve any point of theoretical or practical importance. By virtue of what had already happened, Ireland was, in principle, as closely linked to Rome as any western church. The circumstances of the consecration and mission of Palladius were significant; but whether his successor was ordained at Rome or at Auxerre, whether he was personally known to the Roman pontiff or not, was a matter of little moment. It will not be amiss, however, to dwell more fully on the situation.
The position of the Roman see at this period in the Western Church is often wrongly represented, or vaguely understood. At the end of the fourth century the bishops of Rome, beyond their acknowledged primacy in Christendom, possessed at least two important rights which secured them a large influence in the ecclesiastical affairs of the western provinces of the Empire.[50] The Roman see was recognised by imperial decrees of Valentinian I. and Gratian as a court to which clergy might appeal from the decisions of provincial councils in any part of the western portion of the Empire. Of not less practical importance was another distinctive prerogative, which, though not recognised by any formal enactment, was admitted and acted upon by the churches of the west. The Roman Church was regarded as the model church, and when doubtful points of discipline arose, the bishops of the Gallic or other provinces used to consult the Bishop of Rome for guidance, not as to a particular case, but as to a general principle. The answers of the Roman bishops to such questions are what are called decretals. No decretals are preserved older than those of Damasus,[51] and perhaps it was in his pontificate that the practice of such applications for advice became general. The motive of the custom is evident. It was to preserve uniformity of discipline throughout the Church and prevent the upgrowth of divergent practices. But those who consulted the Roman pontiff were not in any way bound to accept his ruling. The decretal was an answer to a question; it was not a command. Those who accepted it were merely imitating the Roman see; they were not obeying it.
The appellate jurisdiction, and the decretals which were gradually to be converted from letters of advice into letters of command, were the chief foundations on which the spiritual empire of Rome grew up. But in the latter part of the fourth century its nascent authority was confronted by a serious danger in the shape of a rival. When Milan instead of Rome became the imperial residence in Italy, the see of Milan assumed immediately a new importance and prestige. Its bishop soon came to be regarded as an authority to which appeals might be addressed, as well as to the Bishop of Rome. This new dignity was justified by the personality of Ambrose, who then occupied the see, but it was due to the presence of the Augustus. If his presence had been lasting, it is possible that Mediolanum would have become in regard to Rome what Constantinople became, because it was the Imperial city, in regard to Alexandria and Antioch. But the danger passed away when the Emperor Honorius migrated to Ravenna, though the consequences of the transient rivalry of Milan with Rome can be traced for a few years longer.
For the further development of the spiritual authority of Rome two things were necessary—tact and imperial support. Bishop Zosimus possessed neither, and his brief pontificate did as much as could be done within two short years to injure the prestige of the apostolic seat. He was smitten on one cheek by the synods of Africa, he was smitten on the other by the Gallic bishops at the Council of Turin.[52] He intervened in the Pelagian controversy, and was obliged to eat his own words. But his inglorious pontificate remains a landmark,[53] because he was the first to make a strenuous attempt to exercise sovran rights which the western churches had never admitted or been asked to admit—rights which a more competent pontiff afterwards secured. The indiscretions of Zosimus were atoned for by more moderate successors, but the most consummate tact and adroitness would never have won the powers of intervention which he had claimed and the Gallic bishops had repudiated, if Pope Leo had not gained the ear of the Emperor. In A.D. 445, one of the greatest dates in the history of the growth of the papal power, the Emperor Valentinian III. conferred on the Bishop of Rome sovran authority in the western provinces which were still under imperial sway.[54]
But in the meantime, though southern Gaul might resist Zosimus and disregard Celestine when they attempted to assert a right of control, though Celestine might discern in the power of the see of Arles and in the tendencies of the monks of Lérins forces adverse to Roman influence, no Gallic bishop would have thought of questioning the appellate jurisdiction or the moral authority of the Roman see, as exercised before the days of Zosimus. Germanus of Auxerre might sympathise with Hilary of Arles in his struggle with Pope Leo, but in dealing with heresy in Britain he had acted cordially with Pope Celestine. No one could ascribe more importance than Vincentius of Lérins to the decisions of the “apostolic seat.”[55] It would be a grave mistake to infer from the disputes which cluster round Arles that the bishops of Gaul had ceased in any way to acknowledge the older claims of Rome or to reverence it as the head of Christendom.
When a new ecclesiastical province was to be added to western Christendom, it was to Rome, naturally, that an appeal would be made. It was to the Bishop of Rome, as representing the unity of the Church, that the Christians of Ireland, desiring to be an organised portion of that unity, would naturally look to speed them on their way. His recognition of Ireland as a province of the spiritual federation of which he was the acknowledged head, would be the most direct and effective means of securing for it an established place among the western churches. If, then, they asked Celestine either to choose a bishop for them, or to confirm their own choice and consecrate a bishop of their choosing, they adopted exactly the course which we might expect. But once this step was taken, once the Roman bishop had given his countenance and sanction, it was a matter of indifference who consecrated his successor. There was significance in the consecration at Rome of the first bishop of the new province; there would have been no particular significance in such a consecration in the case of the second any more than in the case of the third. It was an accident that Patrick was consecrated in Gaul. If Palladius had not been cut off, and if Patrick had proceeded, as he intended, to Ireland in the capacity of a simple deacon, he might afterwards have been called to succeed Palladius by the choice of the Irish Christians and received episcopal ordination wherever it was most convenient. The essential point is that by the sending of Palladius, Ireland had become one of the western churches, and therefore, like its fellows, looked to the see of Rome as the highest authority in Christendom. Unless, at the very moment of incorporation, they were to repudiate the unity of the Church, the Christians of Ireland could not look with other eyes than the Christians of Gaul at the appellate jurisdiction of the Roman bishop, and the moral weight of his decretals.