Anyone who has woken up a little foggy on 18 March knows that Saint Patrick and “memory” make uneasy bedfellows. Glimpsing Ireland’s patron saint is like looking at a diptych through a kaleidoscope: one eye spies the fuzzy image preserved in his two authentic writings, the Confessio and the Epistola ad milites Corotici; the other eye catches the holy hero boldly outlined in later hagiography. [1] Thankfully, we now have Elizabeth Dawson’s new book to train our focus.

This skinny volume--slim in size, not in import--synthesizes much of the Anglophone scholarship to date on the textual dimension of Patrician veneration. Dawson traces Patrick from his fifth-century compositions into the pages of hagiography; with chapters each on Patrick himself and seventh-century prolegomena, Tírechán’s Collectanea (ca. 664-88; Dawson thinks post 688), Muichú moccu Machtheni’s Vita Patricii(690s), the assembly of the Liber Ardmachanus (807/08), and the ordinal vitae (Colgan’s Vita secunda, Vita tertia, and Vita quarta), Dawson explores the intertextual borrowings and iterative process ofréécriture (never using that word; more on that below) that Patrick, the literary figure, underwent. Dawson’s book is valuable for its intelligent and compelling arrangement of the complicated materials into a coherent, aggregated image. I will be tepidly recommending this book to junior scholars interested in dipping a toe in Patriciana and whole-heartedly to seasoned scholars desiring a svelte reference volume on most of the Latin vitae of Patrick antedating 1100. This book has the added value of clarifying comments and interpretations Dawson has made elsewhere, serving as an intertextual aid to her other published work. [2]

Dawson’s first chapter (13-31), concerning the Patrick of his own pen, offers little beyond collection and synthesis. Dawson’s interpretation of Patrick’s two testimonia to his fifth-century ministry is comfortably establishment. Patrick’s authentic works were known to subsequent seventh-century authors, like Tírechán and Muirchú; the two texts, theConfessio especially, seemed to be important relics in their own right, even if later authors understood these non-linear accounts rather poorly. Patrick enters the Irish hagiographic tradition in the seventh century; precisely when is uncertain. Later authors, it seems, patched the holes in Patrick’s narrative with invented details drawn from Scripture and other hagiographic texts.

The most original contribution here is Dawson’s surehanded effort to tease out the Vorherleben of the earliest vitae of Patrick. Pre-hagiographic references to Patrick indicate the esteem Irish authors had for him. The earliest mention of Patrick as a saint, by Cummian in his Epistola de controversia Paschali (ca. 633), holds too that Patrick brought the first Easter tables to Ireland. The hymn Audite omnes amantes, attributed (wrongly) to Secundius, an abecedarian poetic encomium to Patrick, survives in the Antiphonary of Bangor, dating to 680-91. The First synod of Patrick--spuriously Patrician--dates to the seventh century (both Tírechán and the Collectio canonum Hibernensis [ca. viii-in] make use of it) and indicates Patrick’s name carried weight before his emergence as a hagiographic hero. The Liber Angeli, likely seventh-century, places Armagh at the center of Patrician veneration, probably the earliest text to do so.

Hagiographic compositions predating 688, undertaken almost certainly by Ultán of Ardbreccan (d. 657, to whom both Tírechán and Muirchú refer) and Ailerán sapiens (d. 664, whom the later Vita tripartita mentions), have perished. Dawson correctly notes other episodes of hagiographic reliance (e.g., Adomnán’s reliance on a lost vita of Columba by Cummene and the reliance of the author of the Vita prima Brigidae on earlier lost works by Ultán and Ailerán); Patrick’s early hagiographers must likewise have consulted and repurposed earlier works. Developing devotional materials for community purposes, Dawson argues, better explains the shape of the surviving texts than assuming commemorators produced materials in a circumstance of institutional rivalry (e.g., Kildare contra Armagh and vice versa).

Dawson’s second chapter (33-62) extends Catherine Swift’s interpretation that Tírechán’s Collectanea was written for political purposes (to advance claims made by the Uí Néill) rather than strictly ecclesiological purposes (to advance the parochial claims of Armagh). [3] Dawson enriches Swift’s reading by understanding that the two propositions are not mutually exclusive. Tírechán’s two-book structuration is important: book one is more straightforwardly biographical and Ulster-focused; book two is Connacht-focused and more institutional in nature. Dawson posits that Tírechán’s source-materials explain this shift: book one depends on the work of Ultán and other unnamed seniores; book two depends on an accounting of material relics and firsthand reportage of churches within Armagh’sparuchia.

Dawson considers Tírechán’s compositional methodology and adjudges his literary merits. Tírechán’s principal informer, Dawson argues, was Ultán, who fostered him. Evincing a native’s interest in Connacht, he was probably also gathering information firsthand. Tírechán’s focus shifts between the two books, but the text is unified by a shared cast of characters. Dawson is much kinder to Tírechán than have been previous critics. Often derided as a haphazard heap (the present reviewer is one such offender here, though Dawson has changed my mind), [4] Tírechán’s text is intentional in its topical and thematic unity, written with an interest in the episcopacy and in cleansing the next generation to accommodate the Church (e.g., throughout the text, Patrick consecrates children for ecclesiastical vocation and distributes alphabet tablets).

Chapter three (63-86) concerns Muirchú’s Vita Patricii. To Dawson’s mind, Muirchú wrote to deepen the institutional ties between Armagh and Sletty, an episcopacy that had entered clientage with the PatricianMutterhaus. Thus, Muirchú’s text engages in an imagined prosopography of institutional affiliation. In a deft bit of argumentation, Dawson notes that the difficulty in establishing the sequence of Muirchú’s text inflects crucial questions of theme. Two reconstructions of his text have been advanced: one by Ludwig Bieler and one by David Howlett. Dawson observes that the emplacement of chapters permits a choose-your-own-adventure of Muirchú’s intended theme: follow Bieler’s chapter ordering, and Muirchú is emphasizing by narrative priority thaumaturgy and the centrality of Armagh; follow Howlett’s chapter ordering, and Muirchú is emphasizing institutional hierarchy: the sacred before the profane. Whatever the case, Muirchú was operating in a tilled field, as Dawson correctly argues; he was a self-conscious emulator of both the generic and narrative conventions of continental hagiography. Muirchú takes dual inspiration from both Ultán and Cogitosus of Kildare to produce a Patrick fit for extramural consumption.

Muirchú, writing within a conventional generic framework, produced a far more polished and mature narrative than Tírechán. In Muirchú’sVita, “Patrick the man was finally lost to Patrick the saint” (65). The text includes “typical saintly elements,” and Muirchú “recognise(s) elements of saintly veneration that were meaningful to multiple audiences” (82 and 86). Still, institutional concerns may well have been secondary to the demand to produce devotional materials for his immediate communities. And everywhere Muirchú betrays his understanding that a world well-ordered is a world in which the sacred subsumes the secular; using Patrick’s cultus as a vehicle to elevate Armagh as an ecclesial center achieves that imperative.

Later authors would subsequently develop upon these seventh-century foundations. Dawson’s fourth chapter (87-100), a transitional chapter of sorts, considers two later phenomena that worked in lockstep: the development of the Patrician cultus in non-Armagh communities and the ways in which they appropriated the memory of Patrick to their own ends; and the ossifying of Patrician veneration at Armagh represented by the compilation of Liber Ardmachanus. The commemoration of Patrick, now multipolar, did not necessarily remain Irish. Patrick’scultus also must have enjoyed vernacular treatment and this effusion must be considered as parallel to, though informed by, the Latinate tradition. According to Dawson, time, not just place, inflects these developments after Tírechán and Muirchú. Communities commemorated Patrick voicing different concerns and, therefore, advanced different rationales. By the eighth century, the ascendency of Armagh was firmly established, and Patrick’s cultus there served as a rationale for that ascendency. However, venerating Patrick was not necessarily the same thing as venerating Armagh.

The production of Liber Ardmachanus bulks largely in this story. The dossier, comprised of a mish-mash of older and more recent Patrician texts (and containing the oldest copy of Patrick’s Confessio), a Vulgate New Testament with Insular symptoms, and Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini, was assembled at Armagh in 807/08 by the scribe Ferdomnach in a rather rude hand at Abbot Torbach’s behest. Dawson subtly argues against the prevailing interpretation of Richard Sharpe that the codex was intended for personal rather than community use. [5] Dawson notes (correctly, to the eyes of the present reviewer) that the assemblage of Patrician texts indicates that the codex functioned in a “constitutional” sense, precisely because of its low script. The lesser inclusions in the dossier, like the Liber Angeli, the Additamenta, and the Notulae, indicate not only the existence of free-floating materials but also a more expansive corpus of lost Patriciana. Liber Ardmachanus then represents not the dynamic vitality of Patrician devotion at Armagh but rather the arrest of Armagh-directed commemoration while other traditions of commemoration were still developing. In this sense, this dossier is something like a statement of finality.

Surely, Dawson’s fifth chapter is her most original contribution (101-33); here she teases out the thorny web of the ordinal vitae, finding some degree of success. Dawson correctly notes that scholars have neglected these late, low vitae. Her work, really, substantiates the suspicions of J. B. Bury and Ludwig Bieler and occasionally she relies on these suspicions as substantiated fact. In the main, she is correct--the ordinal lives are part of a bifurcated tradition: the Vita tertia forms one branch, and the hyparchetype of the closely related Vita secunda and Vita quarta, called by Bury ‘W,’ represent the other. Dates are difficult to establish, and Dawson seems to throw up her hands by assigning these compositions anywhere between the eighth and eleventh centuries. I concur with Dawson that the Vita tertia is the older of the two recensions. Each of these vitae incorporate elements from Tírechán and Muirchú but repurpose these materials away from their focus on Armagh, thereby indicating the concerns of their anticipated audience(s).

As Dawson maintains, the Vita tertia is closer to its original than the others, an amalgamation of and a concordance between seventh-century traditions. Its author never acknowledges borrowing, but, as Dawson notes, is very interested in the materiality of Patrician devotion, referencing many relics and objects important to Patrick’s cultus, almost like an index of pilgrimage. Undoubtedly an Irish composition, the Vita tertia, in contrast to Tírechán and Muirchú, is pan-Hibernic, but remains focused on the north of Ireland. Dawson takes this localization as an index of the text’s northern composition, but it may simply reflect that the author of the Vita had northern materials more ready-to-hand. The Vita tertia--of all Patrician lives--survives in the greatest number of manuscripts and enjoys the greatest geographical spread, having wormed its way into continental Legendaria.

The Vita secunda and Vita quarta descend from a singular hyparchetype. The Vita secunda preserves a shortening of the original materials but is, as Dawson notes, the older of the two recensions. TheVita quarta is more faithful to the original though it betrays infection occasionally by Vita tertia materials. Thus, a picture of the lost original can be substantially made from its descendants (and one wishes Dawson had attempted that work). The lost hyparchetype, “W,” was interested in Ireland’s southeast rather than its north--interest in Patrick had become pan-Hibernic. Its author’s interest in British sites indicates an incipient transnational focus.

So far, all to the good. But the monograph has some shortcomings. First, Dawson does not sustain her engagement with the Vita tripartita, a bilingual Irish and Latin vita dating to the tenth century with later interpolations.As well, Dawson leaves unconsidered the Vita Patricii of Probus, Colgan’s Vita quinta, which probably dates to the end of the tenth century and was probably composed for a community around Glastonbury, long a locale of Patrician veneration. Further, she leaves unconsidered the fragmentary Vita Patricii by William of Malmesbury, likely dating 1129-35, which is substantially based on the English recension-family of the Vita tertia. Her cursory attention to the Vita Patricii of Jocelin of Furness, Colgan’s Vita sexta,written around 1185, is understandable since no modern edition of this Vita has yet appeared. She mentions the Vita tripartita only when probing its contents for information on other vitae; she mentions Probus only three times, William once, and Jocelin twice; these shortcomings frustrate as missed opportunities from a scholar clearly familiar with the literature. True, the bilingual Vita tripartita is notan exclusively Hiberno-Latin text (but then all these vitae betray an underpinning of vernacularity, if only on the onomastic level), and, true, William’s and Jocelin’s texts fall outside of Dawson’s self-imposed chronological mandate, but no explanation is given for ignoring Probus’ Vita. One is left with the sense that Dawson’s story lacks an ending.

Oddly, Dawson makes no attempt to engage with the growing literature, most of it Francophone, on the phenomenon of réécriture hagiographique. [6] Dawson says “The Hiberno-Latin hagiographical works written about the saint, [sic]together form a group of connected texts that show Patrick was a saint who was studied and reinterpreted across successive generations” (135). This sentence is as good a definition of réécriture as any. Instead, Dawson “reinvents the wheel” when many of the processes she outlines have analogs and reflexes in other examples of réécriture. [7] The iterative vitae Patricii have yet to receive contemplation from this perspective; the development of acorpus of Patrician vitae fits the pattern explained by models informed by réécriture. Dawson’s decision in this regard feels like another missed opportunity to transform a very useful book into something groundbreaking.

Further, I wonder precisely what audience Dawson and the press had in mind when making decisions of presentation. The book is useful as synthesis and as a Patrician primer. However, lengthy sections of undigested Latin sit densely on almost every page. While I quite enjoyed the opportunity to work through the Latin in the book, would a neophyte, just wetting their feet in Patriciana and Hiberno-Latin, for whom this book is most useful, feel the same? An experienced scholar of Patriciana--for whom blocks of untranslated Latin would present no problem--is unlikely to come away from the book with anything radically new.

It should be clear, I hope, that I really liked this book. Dawson has performed a service, her book fills a gap, and any scholar interested in the literary aspects of the formulation of Patrick’s cultus would benefit from consulting it. However, or perhaps because I like it, I would be remiss in failing to note that this book really would have benefitted from additional editorial attention. Typographical errors are so frequent and distracting that Dawson’s excellent scholarship cannot put its best foot forward. One wishes the press, the series, the editor, the author--someone--had been more vigilant not only as a kindness to the reader but also out of respect for Dawson’s scholarship. My copy will comfortably join its peers, sitting between Carney and Dumville, and I plan on making regular recourse to it in future.

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Notes:

1. A slippage noted sixty years ago by D. A. Binchy, “Patrick and his Biographers: Ancient and Modern,” Studia Hibernica 2 (1962): 7-173.

2. Elizabeth Dawson, “Pillars of Conversion in Muirchú and Tírechán: Two Case Studies,” in St Patrick’s Confessio Hypertext Stack (Royal Irish Academy, 2011), accessed 5 January 2025 <https://www.confessio.ie/more/article_dawson#>; eadem, “The Vita Patricii by Tírechán and the Creation of St Patrick’s Nationwide Status,” in Stanislava Kuzmová et al., eds., Ciuis Patrocinio Tota Gaudet Regio: Saints’ Cults and the Dynamics of Regional Cohesion (Zagreb: Hagiothea, 2014), 1-20; and eadem, “Brigit and Patrick in Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae: Veneration and Jurisdiction,” Peritia 28 (2017): 35-50.

3. Catherine Swift, “Tírechán’s Motives in Compiling the Collectanea: An Alternative Interpretation,” Ériu 45 (1994): 53-82.

4. J.-Michel Reaux Colvin, “Scoticitas: Reframing ‘Scotus’ in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” Viator 53.2 (2022): 141-75, at 150n41.

5. Richard Sharpe, “Palaeographical Consideration in the Study of the Patrician Documents in the Book of Armagh,” Scriptorium 36 (1982): 3-28.

6. Monique Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann, “Avant-propos,” in Monica Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann, eds., La réécriture hagiographique dans l’Occident médiéval: Transformations formelles et idéologiques (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), 7-14; see also Monique Goullet, Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques: Essai sur les réécritures de Vies de saints dans l’Occident latin médiéval (VIIIe–XIIIe s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), esp. 7-29.

7. See, e.g., J.-Michel Reaux Colvin and Alexander O’Hara, “Réécriture and the cultus of Saint Gallus, ca. 680-850,” Traditio 79 (2024): 1-38.