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Pagans and Paganism in the Writings of (St) Patrick [Part 2]

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…Continued from Part 1.

Welcome to Part 2 of an attempt to gauge how much, if anything, we can actually derive about authentic Irish paganism from within the fifth century writings of the Historical Patrick.  

The last time we left off, we had taken a look at some of the more (in)famous references to alleged pagan ritual within his texts; and how, when examined for biblical allusion and metaphor, it becomes readily apparent that the actions and events he depicts were firmly intended to be read and interpreted against a biblical background. As such, they cannot, and should not, be held up as being representative of any genuine elements of authentic Irish pagan ritual. However, there are further, lesser known, references to pagans in his writings, some of which have been utilized in the past to suggest a possible kernel of truth. And so, for the day that’s in it, lets take a deeper look.

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Pagans and Paganism in the Writings of (St) Patrick [Part 1]

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Image: Billy Mag Fhloinn (Used with permission)

Introduction

The writings of the Historical Patrick are quite honestly remarkable.  As the earliest surviving documents known to have been written in Ireland, they represent the very start of recorded Irish History itself. As the only primary sources from either Ireland or Britain for the entirety of the fifth century AD, they contain the earliest historical articulation of a collective Irish Identity alongside a complex and fluid sense of Insular Romano-‘Britishiness’ and Imperial ‘Romanitas’.

Its not perhaps always appreciated, despite the obvious, that Patrick’s writings also represent the earliest – the only – contemporary historical source from a Christian actively engaging with Insular Irish Pagans in late prehistory. As someone who had spent several years as a slave in Ireland as a youth, and who then returned to evangelize as a missionary in later life, Patrick’s writings also represent a unique textual witness to the start of the end of Irish prehistory, and what I like to call: ‘honest to gods’ authentic Irish paganism.

Perhaps even more remarkable is that, unlike some other Christian sources, Patrick provides us with a profoundly respectful, and altogether realistic treatment of insular Irish pagans and their society. Patrick speaks of regularly going out of his way so as not to bring the new religion, or any of its practitioners, into disrepute among those pagans he was continually living and working alongside. He mentions paying over the odds to local judges to allow him access new territories in peace. He references entering into alliances with local pagan kings and the deliberate hiring of their sons as traveling bodyguards, for both physical (and perhaps more importantly, social) protection. As someone whose mission was perilously existing on the fringes of insular Irish society Patrick seems to have gone to great lengths in all his dealings with actual pagans, ever conscious of not offending them in any way, appearing to intrude on their territories, or causing them to react with hostility to his missionary activities. 

Over the years, some scholars have occasionally tuned their attention to this aspect of Patrick’s writings in order to seek out tidbits of information as to genuine pagan Irish beliefs and practices – all of them with varying levels of success. Some of this has even permeated into popular culture and consciousness and is occasionally regurgitated uncritically by modern authors, bloggers and journalists. Much of it, if not all, is complete and utter bullshit.

And so, for the day that’s in it, and in keeping with blog tradition, I thought I’d take a deep dive on the very same subject and ask the eternal question: How much, if anything, can we actually derive about authentic Irish paganism from the writings of the Historical Patrick?

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17 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About The Historical (St) Patrick

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St. Patrick’s Day is almost upon us again. To celebrate, here’s an flagrantly shameless click-baity 17 point listicle (I like to think of it as a ‘histicle’) on aspects of the historical (St) Patrick which are not widely known or usually discussed in modern media. His two surviving documents (and their respective manuscript versions) can be read in a variety of languages here.

1 – Recorded Irish History Starts With Patrick

Before being grossly inflated to within an inch of his hagiographical life by early medieval authors, the man we call ‘Patrick’ was an actual historical person. He lived sometime in the late 4th/early 5thC AD. Copies of two documents written by him survive. They are the earliest surviving texts known to have been written within Ireland. As such, recorded insular Irish ‘history’ (the study of the written word) starts with Patrick. There’s absolutely nothing earlier. Nor indeed, anything after him, for more than a century. The very fact that his writings managed to survive at all is pretty feckin’ amazing.

2 – Growing Up, Patrick Was A Spoiled Little Shit

St. Patrick didn’t call himself ‘Patrick’. Or ‘Saint’. He identified himself as ‘Patricius‘. His father was both a deacon and a type of Roman Town Councillor. His grandfather was a priest. His family’s villa estate had servants. In modern day parlance, Patrick was a spoiled little shit. With a maid. Despite the families ecclesiastical connections, he didn’t have a very religious upbringing at all. He says himself that he didn’t pay much attention to priests in general. Too busy gallivanting and drinking Frappuccinos probably. There’s a good chance his father only took on the role of ecclesiastical deacon in order to help mitigate the families imperial tax liabilities. ‘Tax avoidance, your honour. Not evasion. That money was just resting in my account’.

3 –  Rude Britannia

Many people, past and present, have laid several modern nationalist claims on Patrick’s ethnicity; despite the fact that Patrick clearly identified himself and his family as being Britons from the island of Britain. This means he would have considered himself British (in the late antiquity sense of the word). His native language would have been Brythonic. Despite this language being the precursor of Welsh, he would not have considered himself as such. He couldn’t have. A coherent welsh identity didn’t yet exist.  They still had all their own vowels for fecks sake. His (unidentified) home town was, in all likelihood, somewhere in North West Britain, not far from the Hadrians Wall frontier zone. Despite living near the (modern day) Scottish border, he did not identify with the inhabitants there either. In fact, he expresses a particular hatred for the insular peoples of Scotland, i.e. ‘The Picts’, essentially calling them worthless, unworthy, blood thirsty, evil thieving bastards. Seriously. He couldn’t stand them blue arsed pagan feckers.

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Brexit Stage Left: The Historical Patrick, ‘Britishness’ and Imperial Romanitas

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Image: William Warby / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

I recently had the pleasure of reading an interesting article by Andrew Gardner which has just been published in the  Journal of Social Archaeology, entitled: ‘Brexit, boundaries and imperial identities: A comparative view’ (January 17, 2017). The paper set out to explore the dynamics of imperial identity formation, both past and recent present, via the background of Brexit, Border Studies and frontier frameworks. In doing so, it draws upon several chronological examples, the most interesting to me of course being that of Insular Britain in the 4th and 5th centuries AD.

I have always been particularly interested in the creation, interplay and maintenance of multiple identities in the North Western Frontier Zone of Britain, South West Scotland and the Irish Sea during the same period – especially given the areas importance when it comes to Early Insular Christianity. Sites such as at Kirkmadrine, Whithorn, Maryport, Kirkliston et al, provide fleeting evidence for an early western regional Christian activity, commemoration and identity expression, not to mention the placing and effect of Hadrians Wall on peoples on both sides.

Indeed it is from this same area that the Historical Patrick  most likely hailed from, and within whose writings we can find a complex articulation and cognition of multiple religious and cultural identities – Irish, British, Pictish and Roman. Gardner’s interest in exploring the role and impact of ‘peripheral’ locations in the articulation, maintenance and transformation of larger imperial ‘core’ identities  is well placed and the  wider region’s geographic, political, economic and social interfaces in the 4th and 5th centuries provide an ideal vehicle for doing so.

Of course, we do not need to look very hard in the modern world to see that distinct cultural, religious and ethnic polities which border one another often result in a more visible and articulate ‘peripheral’ self expression/cognition of ‘core’ identity. Having a clearly defined and regular ‘other’ in plain sight provides ample social and political opportunities to develop cognitive and cultural distinctions of ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. And it was, naturally, no different in the past. The writings of the Historical Patrick provide a rare, but valuable, window on the same.

Imagine my surprise then, to find two rather strange, almost throwaway statements by Gardner (albeit referencing others) on the very subject of the Historical Patrick’s own sense of identity – namely, that “he appears to have abandoned the idea of being Roman’ and that “he did not associate his religious identity with ‘Romaness'”.

I quote both below, in context (with my bold for emphasis).  Although I suspect the second example may not have been intended by the author as a direct reference to Patrick, I include it for clarity anyway – mainly due to it echoing the original statement and also the fact that Gardiner references the same author’s book in both cases.

More clearly, there is actually evidence for the continuation of both ‘British’ and ‘tribal’ identities after the end of Roman administration in the early 5th century, particularly from some of the small number of insular written sources, such as inscribed stones (White, 2007: 154–176, 202–207), and the 5th/6th century writings of Patrick and Gildas. It is especially notable that both of these authors appear to have abandoned the idea of being Roman (even though they write in Latin), but do identify as Britons (Higham, 2002: 39–73; Jones, 1996: 121–130).

Gardner (2017), ‘Brexit, boundaries and imperial identities

Whether such patterns fully provided the resources for a ‘British’, as opposed to regional, identity is difficult to judge, partly because few artefact types survive the economic changes following on from Roman administrative withdrawal, and partly because our later ‘British’ written sources do not clearly articulate this identity in material terms, but rather in terms of Christianity vis-à-vis the pagan Saxons, and indeed the role of the church in social relations at this time is probably very significant (Higham, 2002: 59–72). However, it is ironic – but quite telling – that these Christian writers do not associate their religious identity with ‘Romanness’.

Gardner (2017), ‘Brexit, boundaries and imperial identities

While this is no doubt true of the likes of Gildas, such a statement concerning the Historical Patrick would not, in this decade, find much support among anyone with a passing familiarity with his two surviving 5th Century documents. In fact, not only  can such a view be shown to clash considerably with Patrick’s own words, in-text allusions and inferences; it fundamentally misunderstands the very motivation behind Patrick’s lesser known document, the Epistola, or ‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’ – a document  which, while promoting a somewhat idealized Christian version of Insular British Romanitas, nevertheless rests on Patrick’s own sense of his privileged background, status and entitlement as an Imperial Roman citizen.

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The Price of Patrick: Fifteen Men (On a Deadmans Chest) [3]

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Nephin dwarfs Croagh Patrick in County Mayo – Image: Mayo.Me / Flickr / (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

<–Continued from Part Two

Show Me The Money

If Patrick indeed managed to establish himself in such a manner – as a publicly recognized high status figure (and related Christian ‘kindred’) within insular Irish society –  then he could have opened up an entirely different revenue stream quite apart from the previously mentioned gifts, offerings and even perhaps, any potential seed funding or external support from British Christian supporters.

As we have seen, in the later law tracts, a noble was entitled to receive his rightful portion of his clients shares and profits. As a Christian leader/Bishop Patrick would have likely expected occasional offerings from his more wealthy converts. As a ‘lord’ over ‘base clients’ however, he would have possibly been in a position to act as an initial seed funder himself – lending funds/goods/agricultural stock (on a favorable basis) to fledgling Christian clients in return for future shares/dividends/surplus. This in turn could have provided a regular ‘revenue stream’ to fund the expense of  his larger missionary efforts.

Quid pro quo – the more converts/clients brought in, the more revenue increases; the higher the increase in revenue, the higher the amounts he had to spend; the more he spent, the more  converts/clients he could bring in. Its essentially business marketing/localization 101 – early medieval Irish style. A self sustaining system, reliant on the flow of ‘funds’ from one level to the next.

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