Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd The Latin of Saint Patrick by Christine Mohrmann; Saint Patrick's Writings: A Modern Translation by Arnold Marsh Review by: T. Ã Raifeartaigh Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 13, No. 49 (Mar., 1962), pp. 51-53 Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005231 . Accessed: 13/06/2014 13:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. . Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Historical Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.76.48 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:06:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ihsp http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005231?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Reviews THE LATIN OF SAINT PATRICK. By Christine Mohrmann. Pp. 54. Dublin : Institute for Advanced Studies. 196i. 7s. 6d. SAINT PATRICK'S WRITINGS: A MODERN TRANSLATION. By Arnold Marsh. Pp. 28. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press. I96i. 2s. 6d. THE four lectures here assembled were delivered in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in I96I by the author, a professor in the universities of Nijmegen and Amsterdam whose special field is early Christian, late and medieval, Latin. The subject is considered by her under four headings, 'The general structure of the language of Saint Patrick', 'Syntax and vocabulary', 'The bible in the language of Saint Patrick', and 'General conclusions'. As a philologist whose function it is to inquire into, as she puts it, 'how the linguistic facts harmonize with the result of historical investigation and with facts handed down by tradition', her general conclusions are in close conformity with the outlines of the saint's career that have so far taken shape. Her task was no easy one. If the relating of the writings of the apostle of Ireland to their early christian context has fallen in the main to Professor L. Bieler (in his Libri epistolarum sancti Patricii, 2 vols, Dublin, 1952), and now, following in his wake, to the present distinguished Dutch authority, it will be some consolation to Irish Latinists to know that the author of this latest work pronounces St Patrick's writings to be the most difficult Latin to understand and interpret that she has ever studied. To the historian, perhaps her most important finding is the evidence of strong Gaulish influence, and that not only in the biblical elements, but also in the colloquialisms. These, she asserts, could not possibly derive from Patrick's British boyhood and in fact 'bear all the marks of living continental Latin'. Chapter and verse of the evidence of their distinctively Gaulish and non-British character should, however, have been supplied, as the matter is too important to be left to rest on mere assertion, however authoritative. It is nevertheless of interest that this view would confirm the inference to be drawn from paragraph 43 of the Confession that he spent some time in Gaul. Moreover, his apparently first-hand acquaintance with Gaulish christian custom in relation to the heathen Franks, as referred to in paragraph 14 of the Coroticus letter, would point to northern Gaul as the area of this sojourn. Professor Mohrmann's firm conclusion that 'there is nothing 51 This content downloaded from 62.122.76.48 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:06:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 52 REVIEWS in the language which supports prolonged personal contact with L'rins or with continental monasticism' would also corroborate this inference. On the vexed question of a Patrick other than the writer of the Confession and the Coroticus letter, a final nail in the coffin of 'old Patrick' is the author's view that the rudimentary character of the saint's vocabulary, reflecting, as it does, a church in its very beginnings, and the continental character of his system preclude decisively the possibility of his having come to an Ireland where a continental mission had been alive for thirty years. Actually, the problem of the 'two Patricks' was never a wholly serious one, for humanly and historically the only Patrick that matters is he who has attested himself, in writings addressed mainly to an audience thoroughly familiar with his labours, to have been the principal instrument of the Christianisation of the Irish. The really fundamental matter on which scholars are divided is whether the adverse verdict of the seniores upon him occurred before his appointment as bishop in charge of the mission to Ireland or in the course of his laborious episcopate there. While disclaiming any approach other than the purely philological, the author, in translating (p. I4) the word indulserat as 'had promised ', incidentally joins the camp of those scholars who regard the affair as having been concerned with his candidature for the episcopacy. 'Patrick', she comments in relation to the passage concerned, 'neglects every grammatical rule and simply adds the idea which comes to his mind that not only his friend had promised him the episcopate but that God had done the same'. Here she is not altogether surefooted. In the other five instances of indulgere in the writings the word means the granting, not the promise, of a favour. In paragraph 6 of the Coroticus letter it signifies explicitly the granting of the power of binding and loosing. Apart from all this, however, it would have been a psychological impossibility for Patrick to have associated the Lord with a false promise, as was here in question. Indulserat here must therefore connote, not a promise, but the actual conferring of the episcopacy. This would appear to lead inescapably to the conclusion that Patrick at the time of the seniores' attack upon him was already a bishop. How long he had then been such is another matter, but, at any rate, until there has been much further weighing of the text of this entire passage (including the propriety of Bury's emendation, oriebatur) the last word has still to be said on a problem on which must to a large extent depend the interpretation of Patrick's personality. An eventual solution of the problem need not be despaired of. On the possibly related question of whether Patrick's mission fell mainly within the first or the second half of the century, the author does not venture beyond the statement that the popular elements of his Latin point more to the first than to the second half-which is to be expected no matter within which half the mission mainly lay. In the circumstances it is unlikely that certainty on this point will ever be attained, for the Patrician datings in the annals, apart from showing considerable confusion, are obviously very much post-factum. This content downloaded from 62.122.76.48 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:06:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp REVIEWs 53 Among the many fascinating points which arise, Professor Mohrmann mentions that from the third century to the first half of the fifth the word dominicum was a term for a church. To her very interesting remarks on this word (which, as she believes, is used indirectly by Patrick in the very debated phrase, dominicati rethorici, and which, as she points out, with a Gaulish mutation passed into Irish as domhnach) may be added the statement in the 'Book of the angel', a not later than seventh-century source embodied in the book of Armagh, which reads, Omnis ubique locus qui dominicus appellatur in speciali societate Patricii pontificis atque heredis cathedrae eius Aird Machae esse debuerat. This shows that by then the word domhnach had become obsolete but that there lingered a sufficient tradition of its association with Patrick to lend plausibility to the claim there set out. In fact, the word seems to have gone out of use about 550, and in that regard it is of interest that of the some 20o identifiable place names containing a domhnach element which are to be found in Onomasticon Goedelicum, the province of Ulster contains over 50, the province of Leinster up to 40, the province of Munster some I5, and the province of Connacht a bare dozen. This might be a pointer to the relative strength and distribution of Gaulish influence in the growth of the early Irish church. Mr Arnold Marsh's 'modem translation' is on a different plane. In the field of historical speculation the author is a firm adherent of the theory that Patrick, rejected by the seniores, set out for Ireland of his own accord, a view that has never won much favour. The work's real interest, however, is that it is an attempt to put the saint's language 'into plain modern speech', including 'colloquialisms such as Patrick himself used' and 'sentences such as those in which he involved himself when expression did not come easy'. In a few cases the translation is open to correction. The verb prodesse (number 13 of the Confession), for instance, does not mean 'to be set up before', but ' to be of benefit to', hence 'to serve'. On occasion also the use of a colloquialism goes perhaps too far. Few would agree that Patrick, who was nothing if not dignified, should be made to render the Spirit's male vidimus as 'We take a poor view'. Nevertheless, this down-to-earth modern version succeeds in so conveying the tone and texture of the very homespun original Latin as to catch a certain naturalness in Patrick's character that tends to vanish under the gloss of any formal translation. T. 0 RAIFEARTAIGH PATENTEE OFFICERS IN IRELAND, II73-I826. Edited by James J. L. Hughes. Pp. vii, 142. Dublin: Stationery Office. 1960. 30s. (Irish Manuscripts Commission.) THE Liber munerum publicorum Hiberniae is an indispensable tool for those working in the field of Irish political and administrative history; but as it stands it is extremely difficult to use. There is no This content downloaded from 62.122.76.48 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:06:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Article Contents p. 51 p. 52 p. 53 Issue Table of Contents Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 13, No. 49 (Mar., 1962), pp. i-iv, 1-98 Volume Information Front Matter Charles O'Conor of Belanagare and Thomas Leland's 'Philosophical' History of Ireland [pp. 1-25] Historical Revisions The Scientific Investigation of the Potato Blight in 1845-6 [pp. 26-32] Select Documents Joseph Chamberlain, W. H. O'Shea, and Parnell, 1884, 1891-2 [pp. 33-38] Gladstone, Queen Victoria, and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 1868-9 [pp. 38-47] Bibiliographies Research on Irish History in Irish Universities, 1961-2 [pp. 48-50] Reviews Review: untitled [pp. 51-53] Review: untitled [pp. 53-54] Review: untitled [pp. 55-56] Review: untitled [pp. 56-58] Review: untitled [pp. 58-59] Review: untitled [pp. 59-61] Review: untitled [pp. 61-62] Review: untitled [pp. 63-64] Review: untitled [pp. 64-66] Review: untitled [pp. 66-68] Review: untitled [pp. 68-70] Review: untitled [pp. 70-74] Review: untitled [pp. 74-75] Review: untitled [pp. 76-80] Review: untitled [pp. 80-81] Review: untitled [pp. 82-85] Short notices Review: untitled [pp. 86-87] Review: untitled [pp. 87-88] Review: untitled [pp. 88-89] Review: untitled [pp. 89-90] Review: untitled [p. 90-90] Review: untitled [p. 91-91] Review: untitled [pp. 91-92] Review: untitled [p. 93-93] Review: untitled [pp. 93-94] Review: untitled [pp. 94-96] Back Matter