St. Patrick and His World
By Mike Aquilina.
Scepter, 2024.
Paperback, 144 pages, $15.95.
Monastery and High Cross: The Forgotten Eastern Roots of Irish Christianity
By Connie Marshner.
Sophia Institute Press, 2024.
Paperback, 240 pages, $18.95.
Reviewed by Ryan Patrick Budd.
My connection to ancient Ireland began in 2015, when I was discerning my vocation at Silverstream Priory in County Meath. One day, the inmates of the priory—four habited monks and a few street-clothes postulants—took a field trip to Monasterboice, the ruins of an ancient Irish monastery. As part of our journey, we chanted the midday hour of prayer in the ruins of what we supposed to have been the chapel. Other visitors, tourists from all over, assumed we were part of the show. Not much is known for sure about Monasterboice, but the place’s name—as is common with placenames in Ireland—refers to a person. The name translates, “Boecius’s Monastery.”
The psalmist, retelling the wonders of the Exodus from Egypt, sings to God:
Your way was through the sea,
your path through the great waters;
yet your footprints were unseen. (Psa 77:19)
It turns out that much the same could be said of the Exodus-like journey of Christianity to Ireland—considered in the fourth century to be the “end of the earth” (cf. Acts 1:8). Connie Marshner and Mike Aquilina have both published books this year that give us a window into this long-lost world of ancient Irish Christianity. Each is a discernment project, straining to see through a glass, darkly, how this middle eastern religion came to Ireland, whence it spread even farther abroad.
According to Marshner in Monastery and High Cross: The Forgotten Eastern Roots of Irish Christianity, the coming of Christianity to Ireland was, indeed, an exodus from Egypt. In this book, which distills the findings of her doctoral research, Marshner details solid evidence that early Irish devotional, monastic, and liturgical life did not come entirely by way of Gaul on the Continent, as has long been supposed. Rather, much may have come directly from Egypt, Syria, and the Christian East.
Central to Marshner’s argument is challenging the assumption made by generations of scholars that Ireland was something of a cultural backwater prior to the arrival of the Norman English. Contrary to this assumption—with its own origins in propaganda—is evidence that the Irish were trading directly with the Mediterranean world before the Roman conquest of Britain. If Ireland ever became a backwater, this occurred after the English came, and not before. Marshner shows that scholarship is increasingly acknowledging ancient Ireland’s connectedness with the rest of the world. For instance, evidence shows that the tin trade was bringing foreign traders from as far away as Phoenicia to the Emerald Isle for at least a thousand years prior to Henry II’s invasion of Ireland in 1169. These traders brought stories and traditions with them.
Some of these stories concerned far-off Armenia, the first officially Christian nation and the only other place in late antiquity where people built high crosses in stone to mark their allegiance to Christ. While these crosses have become an iconic part of Irish heritage, Marshner argues that their origin seems to be Armenian.
Similar findings include church design and liturgical customs that are Eastern in origin and appear to have been in use in Ireland before becoming popular on the Continent. Irish liturgists, what is more, appear to have been very much aware of the Carolingian reforms—and to have been as divided about them as current Catholic traditionalists are about the suppression of the Latin Mass. This suggests, as Marshner concludes, that ancient Ireland was not on the raggedy edge of Christian culture, but very much part of the conversation.
Marshner acknowledges the consensus that Christianity existed in Ireland prior to the mission of Saint Patrick, but also indicates that, in places, it may have been well-established. The tradition of Irish monasticism, long recognized to be a direct heir of the Desert Fathers, may even have predated Patrick, even if he himself shared this tradition and furthered its expansion in Erin.
Yet, this book, for all its impressive assembling of evidence, represents at its core a call for further study. Marshner is occasionally guilty of making inferences on scanty evidence, but largely recognizes that the domain of early Irish Christian history continues to be shrouded in Dublin fog. Much of this is due to its very ancientry—the study of any ancient culture requires much conjecture and admission of ignorance. More is perhaps due to the widespread destruction visited by the English imperialists, which may account for the loss of much valuable evidence.
The study of an ancient people who has borne long subjection to a foreign yoke—like ancient Israel—requires listening to the people’s own stories of themselves, as much other evidence might be lost to time. The Irish Christians’ own stories do indeed point to early connections with the Egyptian Church. Marshner suggests that missionary zeal or persecution may have driven Coptics and other Eastern Christians to the relative safety of Ireland’s shores, to which they brought the traditions of Saint Anthony and Saint Pachomius. Perhaps their traditions found their way to Ireland by way of the Gaulish Church, deeply influenced by Saint John Cassian. Marshner cites evidence that suggests the former, but, as she acknowledges, only further study can bring many of these connections out of the realm of educated guesswork.
Alongside the bigger picture painted in Monastery and High Cross stands Mike Aquilina’s thinner and more modest St. Patrick and His World. Aquilina is more circumspect than Marshner as to the probative value of the evidence of Patrick’s life, yet he is able to sketch a compelling portrait of Ireland’s apostle.
As Aquilina notes, the only direct evidence we have of Patrick’s existence are two writings attributed to him: his Confession and his Epistle to Croticus. These are surely Patrick’s own works: their Latin is so poor and uncultured that nobody would have ascribed them to Ireland’s patron saint had they not come from his own hand. They show that Patrick was, before all else, a man of the Word of God. Aquilina shows well how Patrick thought, spoke, and viewed the world through the language of the old Latin Bible. There is hardly a sentence in his Confession, in particular, that does not quote from or allude to Sacred Scripture. While Patrick’s Latin may have been poor, his Scripture knowledge was profound.
In particular, Patrick sees his own mission through the lens of Paul’s mission to the Greeks. Disobedient at first, Patrick must suffer for the sake of the Name: He interpreted his enslavement as a young man as God’s punishment for his sins. He also received a vision to preach in Ireland that resembled Paul’s own vision of the man of Macedonia. Like Paul, Patrick also reveals a father’s heart in his writings. Patrick’s anger at Croticus’s enslavement and murder of newly baptized Christians is transparent in his public letter to that pirate. Yet, as Aquilina notes, his anger was thoroughly Christian. While he denounced Croticus’s sin in no uncertain terms, he prayed for his repentance and conversion to Christ.
As other works like Gary Michuta’s Gospel Truth suggest, that these works of Patrick were indeed his own testify strongly to their historical reliability. As Michuta notes, the specific details given in the Gospels dare the reader to examine the evidence for himself. The contemporary reader could, if he wished, travel to Capharnaum and ask whether Jesus really did give the Word of Life discourse at the synagogue in that city. In particular, the Confession was a defense of Patrick’s ministry among the Irish. If the facts he relates about his ministry could be denied, they would have been, and his memory would have lived in infamy. That the opposite, in fact, happened suggests that he was telling the truth.
But Aquilina is clear: we don’t know much more than what Patrick tells us, and Patrick is not forthcoming about dates or the names of persons or places. Aquilina surmises that Patrick did not give those names or dates because everyone reading the Confession would have known those details.
While this paucity of specifics does not impugn the historicity of Patrick’s story, it enables us to know very little more about him. Aquilina notes, for instance, that there were several Croticuses during Patrick’s time. While Patrick may indeed have visited the places associated with his name, like his famous Purgatory, oral tradition alone supports their claims.
Aquilina’s book also surveys the various legends about Patrick, suggesting that they do not always conform to the portrait of the saint we receive from his authentic works. The Patrick of legend was quick to curse and condemn his enemies. The Patrick of the writings seems thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Christian hope and mercy.
Taken together, these works introduce us to what can be known of ancient Christian Ireland, which has long been understood as the cradle of Christendom. “The isle of saints and scholars” was either the native turf or spiritual ancestor of the missionaries who spread Christianity to most of northern Europe. Its influence on history is incalculable. What we can know, then, should be known. While much of the “footprints” of its history are as invisible as God’s footprints in the Exodus, those we can discern are precious.
Ryan Patrick Budd is a scholar in residence and research assistant to Dr. Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and author of the forthcoming book Salvation Stories: Family, Failure, and God’s Saving Work in Scripture from Emmaus Road Publications.
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