Chapter XXIII (4)

The human mind, according to the positivists, is radically incapable of knowing causes, and if it attempts to know them it exhausts itself with fruitless efforts. This is wherefore they treat as illusions all the causes which philosophers assign to phenomena. They deny the metaphysical being, God as cause; yet they substitute the metaphysical being humanity, and not content with affirming it, they even define it, both as principle and cause, to be a great collective beings-- living a life of its own, and advancing continually through the ages from progress to progress, and from whom all individual existences proceed as their beginning, and to whom they all return as their end. Nor is this all. After having defined this metaphysical being, they explain it, and pretend to know what it has been, what it is, and what it will be--they, who declare that Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Des Cartes, and Leibnitz have done nothing, because in attempting to penetrate the mystery of human life these master minds broke against an insolvable problem--they, we say, do not hesitate to raise the veil, and to give us the complete solution of the far more formidable mystery of human destiny. They know its origin. Humanity has begun in fetichism; M. Littré, however, has discovered, since the death of his master, that prior to fetichism there was a state in which man like the brute sought only to satisfy his physical wants; but he maintains that at any rate, if fetichism was not the first it was at least the second state of humanity. If we ask him what proofs he has of this, he confesses that if direct facts are demanded he has none; but he has arguments, and here is the way in which he argues:

In America and the unexplored regions of Africa savage tribes are found who were and still are fetich worshippers, _therefore_ so was it with all men in the beginning! Such is the positivist induction. [Footnote 117]

[Footnote 117: How know the positivists that these savage tribes do
not represent the degenerate man, rather than the primitive man--man
cut off from communion with the central life of humanity, not man in
his first developments?--TRANSLATOR.]

Positivism continues: From fetichism humanity passed to polytheism, and then from polytheism to monotheism. But it forgets that it is not permitted to take the part for the whole, and if Europe became Christian after having been pagan, it has not been the same with all the world, for on one side we find the people Jewish, who have always believed in the unity of God, and, on the other side, we find many nations still remaining immersed in the darkness of idolatry. But we must not be too exacting with the positivists. They have here really some partial facts which they can use, though not legitimately as the basis of an argument. [Footnote 118]

[Footnote 118: Truth is older than error, and man began not in
error, but in the truth, the sole principle of life and growth.
Monotheism preceded, historically, both fetichism and polytheism,
and the earliest and most authentic historical documents that we
have prove that all the world began by believing in and worshipping
one God. Polytheism bears evident traces of a prior religion which
asserted the unity of God, of being not a development of fetichism,
but a corruption of monotheism, as positivism bears unmistakable
traces of its being a corruption of Christianity; a conclusive
evidence that it never could have originated in a society that had
never known and believed the Christian religion.--TRANSLATOR.]

As to the future, who can doubt that humanity will be positivist? Can any one prove the contrary? Is not the future a domain open to all, and where each may imagine for himself the part that pleases him? And yet, even in regard to the future, it is necessary to be circumspect. Young as positivism is, it has had the pain of seeing more than one of its predictions falsified by the event. In 1850 M. Littré assured us that the race had arrived at that degree of civilization that rendered war henceforth impossible, and that the republic was definitively established in France. What does he think of either prediction now? He would have obliged us if he had given us his explanations of these predictions in his last publication. The first would, perhaps, have embarrassed him; the second would give him less trouble, because the destruction of the republic of 1848 by the empire accords only too well with the positivist hostility to a really representative government.

It is useless to press the matter further. There is in the positivist induction no trace of a rational process, and positivism in the last analysis is simply the product of pure imagination. Moreover, M. Littré is so well aware of it that he has taken in advance his precautions against all unfavorable criticism. It may say what it pleases, he will not hear or heed it; he professes to be a positivist, and positivist he will live and die. His decision is made. Beside, no one who has not taken his degree of doctor in the mathematical, astronomical, physical, and chemical sciences, understands or can understand anything of positivism, and is incompetent to its discussion. But if instead of opposing one is disposed to accept it, he is very accommodating, and by no means exacts so laborious and painful an initiation. He requires only one thing--namely, the denial of the supernatural order. To be received into the positivist school it is not necessary to affirm or to believe anything--simple denial suffices.

We must in concluding make a single reference to M. Taine. As the positivists, M. Taine denies metaphysics, all metaphysical (spiritual) beings, God, and the human soul, and like them he substitutes for these others of his own fashioning. From Messrs. Comte and Littré he separates only on a single point. To the cause _humanity_ he prefers the cause _nature_. There is no disputing about tastes. We add merely a word on one of the fundamental maxims of M. Taine's method. The philosopher, he says, must be in the study of science perfectly disinterested, and even to the degree of forgetting that he is a father, a son, a husband, a citizen. He must take account only of the facts furnished by observation, and in no respect trouble himself about their practical consequences. Were the facts observed to prove that paternal love, filial respect, conjugal tenderness, and devotion to one's country are empty words or dangerous illusions, he must not hesitate to immolate these sentiments on the altar of reality--or science. We do not discuss such a doctrine. The irreflection of the author (we can suppose nothing else) is so great that we need only indicate it. Does not M. Taine comprehend that the disinterestedness or indifference of the philosopher must consist not in abjuring the eternal principles of the just, the true, the good, the beautiful, and the noblest sentiments of the human heart, but simply in silencing within {739} him the voice of prejudice and passion, so as to leave his understanding free and unbiased? Knows he not that to know a fact he must study it first in himself and in its essence, and then in its manifold applications? The chemist asserts a substance only after, having resolved it into its elements, he has experimented on it in all its effects; in like manner, it is not enough for the philosopher to have studied a doctrine in its principle, he must go further, and establish that in its applications it conforms to the laws of the just, the true, and the beautiful. It is, in fact, this accordance that is, all things considered, the surest test of its truth. The moral is the counter-proof of the intellectual. M. Taine and his school recognize, it is true, no principles anterior to facts, and therefore want, as M. Comte avows, a type-law, a term of comparison, which may serve as the criterion of the judgment of facts themselves; but is there a more manifest mark of the falsity of a theory than that it leaves the human mind without any means of determining the significance of phenomena, without a touchstone to determine whether the metal be gold or copper?

But it is time to close. It is assuredly a grave fact, and one that merits more attention than it receives, that a doctrine so thoroughly materialistic and atheistic can be produced in our age, that it can obtain adherents, and be recognized by important and widely influential public journals, which, without openly displaying its flag, insinuate its principles, and strive to infuse it into the minds of their readers. Yet this fact is nothing new. There are always atheists in the world; even in the time of the Prophet King the impious said: There is no God. _Non est Deus_. But we discover in the positivist system a sign or symptom, if not graver at least more alarming, in the manifest enfeeblement in our time of reason, and the rational faculties of the soul, which it supposes. We know that society is not responsible for all that is said or done in its bosom, but we know also that people are in general treated as they deserve to be treated, and that writers, journalists, and system-mongers, when they believe they are addressing a community accustomed to think, to reason, to reflect, and to render an account to themselves of what is addressed to them, are on their guard and weigh carefully what they say. They may assign bad reasons, but they will at least assign reasons of some sort, and take great pains to do it, as the thing most essential to their success. There have always been sophists, but the sophist of former times reasoned; the sophist of to-day reasons not, he simply imagines. Do not attempt to refute him; he will not listen to you, for he understands not the language you speak; he denies or affirms with assurance, with audacity, even at the command of his passions or his caprices; he seeks not to convince, but to startle, to astonish, and neither proves nor cares to prove anything. Things have come to such a pass that Voltaire himself, if he could return, would blush with shame for his children. He might still smile approvingly on their blasphemies; his good sense would be shocked with the incoherence and extravagance of their theories; and he would say to them. Continue, my children, to deny, to crush _l'infame_, all that is well, but do have the grace not to attempt to put anything in place of what you deny. You are not equal to that, and can only render yourselves ridiculous.

The evil is very real and very great, but it has already been denounced by an authority so high, and with so much eloquence, that I need not any further insist on it. I would simply add that it calls for a prompt remedy, since the peril is great and imminent. When faith grows weak in souls, and reason remains, there is hope; for reason well directed leads back to faith, since human reason is the child of the divine reason, and {740} cannot persist in denying her mother; but when reason in her turn goes, and leaves only imagination in her place, there is no ground of hope; and everything is to be feared, for no means of salvation remain. Imagination is, indeed, one of the powers and one of the grandeurs of the human mind, which it elevates and adorns; but if it comes to predominate alone, without supporting itself on reason, it loses its virtue and its beauty, and is proper only to dazzle, to pervert, to bewilder and mislead. It sheds darkness, not light, or if it emits still some gleams, it is only to gild with a last and false splendor a dying civilization. When the barbarians thundered at her gates, Rome still imagined, but she had long since ceased to reason.

COUNT VICTOR DE CHALAMBERT

------

From Chambers's Journal.

PLAIN-WORK.

"Thank goodness, Lizzie! you were taught to work."

My husband is constantly repeating this sentiment to me, and I decidedly agree with him that it is a great cause for thankfulness. I may say, in passing, that I don't believe I should ever have married my husband at all if I had not been able to work, for one of his very first questions to me upon our becoming acquainted, was as to what occupation I took most pleasure in, and upon my answering "Plain-work," a pleased smile came over his face. From that moment, he has since confessed to me, he made up his mind that I should be his wife. I am now the mother of a large family, with constant demands upon my needle, and what I should do, if I had not early acquired the use of it, I cannot think. I made a point of teaching my own girls as soon as ever they became old enough to handle their needles, and if they don't all turn out good plain-workers, it certainly won't be my fault.

I look upon occupation as the true secret of happiness, and surely there is no occupation so well suited to a woman, whether she is the wife of a gentleman or a laborer, as needle-work. I would encourage the taste for it as early as possible in a girl, as I think it has such an influence for good on her character in making her womanly and sensible. It has also the effect of producing tidy habits, for no girl who can thoroughly use her needle will be content to go about the house with her frock torn or a rip in her petticoat; but, upon the first appearance of a hole, she will sit down and carefully mend it. When still quite young, she works for her doll; a little older, for some poor child in the village, or her own younger brothers and sisters. In either case, she is learning to be loving and kind, and the habit of working for others and being useful is good for her.

You wish probably to fit your daughter for her future career in life, and you naturally look forward to her marriage as the aim and object of your most ardent desires. I know _I_ do with regard to my own girls, for, being a happy and married woman myself, I cannot bear the idea of their becoming old maids. Well, if you want her to marry, and you desire to train her to be a good wife, teach her to work; you are laying the foundation of much future happiness, and her husband will bless you for it. Say she marries a man not too well off, who is constantly engaged in his profession, and she is in consequence forced to spend {741} many hours of her day alone. This is very trying to her at first, fresh from a happy home and the bosom of a large family. She turns to her needle as her companion and solace during her husband's absence, and finds her greatest interest and pleasure in working for him. She keeps his clothes in good repair, and he never finds his socks in holes or his shirts minus their buttons. Very likely--and happy I consider it for her if it is so--his wedding outfit may have been small. In that case, she can employ herself in making him a new set of shirts; whilst her odd moments may be profitably spent in knitting him a set of warm socks against the coming winter. Depend upon it, he will never find any shirts that fit him so well, or any socks so comfortable, as those made for him by his wife during the early days of their married life. This gives her so much occupation during her day that she has no time to be dull or discontented. She gladly puts away her work when she expects her husband's return, and she meets him with a cheerful smile, being happy in her own mind and feeling that she has been praiseworthily engaged. She is also ready to enter into his interests and pursuits, in which she finds an agreeable relaxation.

Then there's the coming baby to work for. What mother does not remember the delights of working for her first baby! The care and thought bestowed first upon purchasing the materials, then upon cutting them out to the best advantage, followed by many months of happy employment in making them up. The little articles, when finished, are carefully put away in a drawer set aside for the purpose, and bunches of lavender are placed amongst them.

The first baby is born, and others follow, and the cares of a family come rapidly upon your child. She now feels the real use of her needle, and she learns to thank you accordingly for the pains you took with her. Not only can she sew well, but she knows how to cut out; and she has such a first-rate eye, from long practice, that she can take her patterns from the shop-windows. She makes the best use of her powers of observation. That which makes men good soldiers, doctors, engineers, literary men, artists, and naturalists, makes her a good plain-worker. In her own line, she is not to be beaten. Perhaps she is a little proud of her talent; but she uses it to good advantage, and her husband has the comfort of seeing his children well clothed, and of finding his bills comparatively small. Constant practice has also given her a capital knowledge of the value of materials, and she understands thoroughly the textures of different cotton, linen, and woollen fabrics, so that it would be very difficult to impose upon her.

I have taken it for granted that your daughter marries a poor man, as poor men unfortunately predominate in this world, and it is always as well to be prepared for the worst. But her husband may be rich or, at all events, well enough off to render it unnecessary that his wife should be a slave to her needle. You will still find that you have done your girl no injury by imposing upon her the early habit of using that instrument. You have, at all events, given her the power of superintending her servants, and seeing that their work is properly done; and she will not so easily be taken in by her dressmaker, or trampled upon by her nurse, who will soon find out that "missis" knows how to work for her own children, and will respect her accordingly.

But supposing that your daughter does not marry at all, still her knowledge of plain-work will not be thrown away upon her. If left poorly off, she has her own clothes to make and mend, and if not, surely there are plenty of claims upon her. There is her more fortunate sister, who married young, and is now a widow, with six children on her hands--think of the comfort and use her needle may be to them! Then her brothers are {742} most of them married with families, and Aunt Susan's work is invaluable, If she has no brothers or sisters, but is left entirely alone in the world, and so well off that she does not require to work for herself, let her turn to the poor, and give them the use of her needle; she will certainly find a never-ending field amongst them. By the time she has worked for all the babies in the parish, and helped the mothers about the clothes for the elder children, she will find she has occupation enough for her fingers to keep her mind happy and interested, and to prevent her from dwelling upon her own loneliness. She can also spend some time profitably in instructing the girls in the village-school how to cut out and sew. The ignorance upon these points in some schools is perfectly lamentable. I took a nursery-maid for my eighth baby straight from a national school. She was a fine healthy girl of sixteen. It will hardly be credited that she could not hold her needle properly! She doubled it up in her hand, and pushed it into her work in the most extraordinary manner. I tried in vain to teach her by every means in my power, but if the knack of holding the needle is not learned in early life, it is rarely acquired afterward. Although so very awkward about her work, that girl had been taught to crochet ridiculous watch-pockets, and to knit impossible babies' shoes, with such wonderful pointed toes that no infant I ever saw could get his feet into them. At length I was obliged to part with her on this account, though a tidy, active girl, and satisfactory in many ways. She is not the only case I have had in my house of ignorance on the subject of plain-work. Some of my servants have been able to sew well enough, but have not had the remotest idea of cutting-out and placing their work. I have often thought, if I had only time to spare, how much I should like to teach the rising generation the little I myself know of the art of plain-work.

In these days of sewing-machines people think much less of needle-work than they did formerly. I don't approve of sewing-machines myself. My husband accuses me of being jealous of them, but in this he is unjust to me. I don't approve of them simply because I think that the work produced from them--though I grant that the stitches may be regular enough--cannot be compared to good hand-work, particularly when employed upon fine materials. I have seen machine-work in every stage, and from the very best sewing-machines, and I never could consider it equal to good hand-work. I feel convinced in my own mind that sewing-machines will have their day, and that when that day is over, plain-work done by hand will be at as high a premium again as ever. Even pillow-lace is now gradually recovering the place it once occupied in public estimation, and from which it was temporarily ousted by lace produced from that unutterable abomination, the _machine_, and which used to be called "Nottingham lace."

I acknowledge machine-work may be all very well for cloth clothes, and useful in families where there are many boys; but my ten children are mostly girls, and I don't at all covet a machine. My husband offers me one periodically, and I as often refuse it. I could not bear to have one in the house, it would be going so entirely against my own principles.

It is most important, when a girl is learning to work, that great care should be taken with her to prevent her from acquiring bad habits; such habits, I mean, as clicking her needle with her thimble, pinning her work to her knee, biting the end of her thread, and sticking her needle into the front of her dress. These habits once gained will probably stick to her all her life, and she will find the greatest difficulty in overcoming them. It is therefore advisable that she should be taught to work by her mother, rather than be left to the instruction of servants. A {743} ladylike manner of working is essential, and should be carefully cultivated, for work may be executed both neatly and rapidly without the acquirement of any of these vulgar peculiarities. A great point to be learned connected with plain-work, and one that I consider quite indispensable, is the art of cutting out accurately and without waste of material. Far too little importance is attached to that branch of work, and many women go to their graves without acquiring it, having been dependent all their lives upon their servants or some kind friend for having their work cut out and placed for them. When this is the case ladies are apt to be too much under the thumb of their ladies' maids or nurses, who are not slow to profit by their own superior knowledge, and domineer over their mistresses accordingly.

Where there are a number of the same articles of clothing to be made, it is advisable to cut out one garment first, being careful to take the pattern in paper, and to complete it before cutting out the rest of the material. By this means an opinion can be formed as to whether it fits properly and any necessary alterations may be made. The other articles may then be cut out all together, care being taken to pin the separate parts together, to avoid their being mislaid or any mistakes made. It is no doubt essential that sewing should be neatly done, but I think this need not be achieved at the entire expense of all rapidity of execution. It really is perfectly ludicrous to see some women at their work. They look at each stitch when completed, and give it a little approving pat with the top of the thimble; and at this rate, though the neatness of the work may be undeniable, still so little is accomplished, that it is hardly worth the trouble of doing it at all. Method in plain-work is also highly necessary, and much time and labor may be spared by keeping all the materials in the proper places. If every article when done with is put away carefully, it is sure to be forthcoming when again required. Thus, there is no time wasted in searching for a missing reel of cotton, or hunting up a pair of scissors. The cleanliness of the work is also thereby kept unimpaired.

The greatest care should be taken with the pieces of broken needles, which are too apt to be left carelessly about the floor, and which are most dangerous, especially when there are any young children in the house. I must confess, and I do it with shame, that there was a time when I was not as careful as I am now. I never shall forget my husband's indignation upon coming into my room one day, where our second baby was crawling about on the ground, at finding a piece of a broken needle in her hand, quite ready to put it in her mouth. I think he was more angry with me then than he had ever been before during our married life. It was certainly a good lesson to me, for I have been most careful ever since, and I'll trouble him or anybody else to find a broken needle about my carpet _now_. Waste should be carefully avoided, both with regard to ends of cotton and pieces of material. The scraps of the latter which are too small to be of any use, instead of being left littered about the room, should be thrown into a waste-basket, to be cleared by the housemaid, and the larger pieces should be tidily put away. The time will probably come when they will be required for some purpose or other; and if pinned up in a tight bundle they will not occupy much space in a drawer or basket kept for the purpose.

I trust I have not ridden my hobby to death, nor worn out the patience of my readers, but it is a subject the importance of which I strongly feel. It must not, however, be supposed that I advocate the cultivation of work to the exclusion of more intellectual pursuits, or that I wish to take the bread from the mouth of my poorer sister. I consider a thorough {744} knowledge of the science of plain-work to be essential to every woman, be she rich or poor, and that in it she will always find a sphere of usefulness. It will, if cultivated, turn out for her own benefit, and the comfort and happiness of those around her, and surely it shall be said of her that "her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."

------

THE BIRTHPLACE OF SAINT PATRICK.

BY J. CASHEL HOEY.

The question of the birthplace of St. Patrick--a question which has been debated with considerable learning and acrimony for several centuries--has always seemed to me to have an interest far beyond the rival claims of clans and the jealous litigation of the antiquary. It is interesting not merely because it is in reality a curious archaeological problem, but also because it may in some measure afford a clue to the character of one of the greatest saints and greatest men of his own age or of any other--a saint who was the apostle of a nation which he found all heathen and left all Christian; who succeeded in planting the Catholic faith without a single act of martyrdom, but planted it so firmly that it has never failed for now 1,400 years, though tried in what various processes of martyrdom God and man too well know; a saint whose apostolate was the mainspring of an endless succession of missionary enterprises, prosecuted with the same untiring zeal in the nineteenth century as in the fifth, wherever the vanguard of Christendom may happen to be found, whether in Austria, in Gaul, in Switzerland, or in Iceland, as now at the furthest confines of America and of Australasia. Add to these ordinary evidences of the supernatural efficacy of St. Patrick's mission the testimony which is derived from the peculiar spiritual character of the people that he converted. The Irish nation retains the impress which it received from the hands of St. Patrick in a way that I believe no other Christian nation has preserved the mould of its apostle. If that nation has never even dreamed of heresy or schism, it is because, in terms as positive as an ultramontane of our own days could devise, [Footnote 119] St. Patrick established the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff as a chief canon of the Irish Church. Patience in poverty, an innate love of purity, prodigal alms-giving, and mutual charities, the practice of heavy penances and of long fasts, a peculiarly vivid sense of purgatory, and a strong devotion to the doctrine of the Trinity, which the saint taught in the figure of the shamrock--these have always been the distinguishing characteristics of Irish piety. They were the peculiar characteristics of the Christian of the fourth century, who had not yet learned to live at peace with the world--who felt that as yet Christians were in the strictest sense one family community--who practised mortification, as if the untamed pagan {745} blood were still burning in his veins, and the great temptation to whose faith was the heresy of Arius, and the question of the relations of the three divine persons. But St. Patrick was not only a great saint--was not merely and simply the apostle of the Irish; he was their teacher and their lawgiver, their Cadmus and Lycurgus as well. The school of letters which he founded in Ireland so well preserved the learning which had become all but extinguished throughout western Europe, that your own Alfred, following a host of your nobles and clerics, went thither to be taught, and the universities of Paris and Pavia owe their earliest lights to Irish scholars. The Brehon laws, which are at last to be published, by order of Parliament, a complete code of the most minute and comprehensive character, were, according to the evidence of our annalists, carefully revised and remodelled by St. Patrick, with the consent of the different estates of the kingdom of Ireland; and there is good reason to believe that this revision, of which there is abundant intrinsic evidence, had reference not merely to the Christian doctrine and the canons of the Church, but to the body of the Roman civil law.

[Footnote 119: "Quaecunqne causa valde difficilis exorta fuerit
atque ignota cun?tis Scotorum gentis jadicils, ad cathedram
archiepiscopi Hibernensium, atque hujus antistitis examinationem
recte referenda. Si vero in illa, cum suis sapientibus, facile
sanari non poterit talis causa praedictae negotiationis, ad Sedem
Apostolicam decrevimus esse mittendam; id est, ad Petri Apostoli
cathedram, auctoritatem Romae urbis habentem." This canon of St.
Patrick is contained in the "Book of Armagh," the antiquity of which
is instanced in the text of the present paper. The canon is of a
date early in the fifth century; and it would be difficult to show
so early, so emphatic and so complete a recognition of the Papal
authority in the ecclesiastical legislation of any other national
church.]

It would throw a certain light upon the character of a saint whose works were so various and so full of vitality, if we could arrive at any solid conclusion as to the place of his nativity, the quality of his parentage, and the sources of his education. The theory most generally accepted, and which certainly has the greatest weight of authority in its favor, is that which assumes that St. Patrick was born in Scotland, at Dumbarton, on the Clyde--the son, as we may suppose, of a French or British official employed in the Roman service at that extreme outpost of their settlements in this island, where he would have spent his youth surrounded by a perpetual clangor of barbarous battle, amid clans of Picts and Celts swarming across the barriers of the Lowland. The opinion that St. Patrick was a Scotchman has the unanimous assent of all the antiquaries of Scotland; but I am not aware that any of them has succeeded in identifying any single locality named in the original documents with any place of sufficient antiquity in or near Dumbarton; nor could I, in the course of a careful examination of the district and the recognized authorities concerning its topography, arrive at any acceptable evidence on the subject. I have to add to the Scotch authorities and pleadings, however, all the best of the Irish. That St. Patrick was born in Scotland is the opinion of Colgan, [Footnote 120] a writer whose services to the history of the Irish Church cannot be excelled and have not been equalled. The opinion of Colgan has overborne almost every other authority which intervened between his time and the present. The Bollandists [Footnote 121] accepted it without hesitation; and I hasten to add to their great sanction that of the two most learned antiquaries of the latter days of Ireland, Dr. John O'Donovan and Professor Eugene O'Curry. They, I am aware, were also of Colgan's opinion; and so, I believe, are Dr. Reeves and Dr. Todd, whose views on most points of ecclesiastical antiquities connected with Ireland are entitled to be named with every respect.

[Footnote 120: Colganus, R. P. F. Joannes, "_Triadis Thaumaturgae,
sen Divorum Patricii, Columbae, et Brigidiaetrium Hiberniae
Patronorum, Acta_." Lovanii, 1647.]

[Footnote 121: "_Acta Sanctorum Martii_" a Joanne Bollando, tom. il.
Antverpiae, 1668.]

Still it is to be said, on the other hand, that the opinion that St. Patrick was born in France has always had a traditional establishment in Ireland. It is asserted in one of the oldest of his lives, that of St. Eleran, and indicated in another, that of Probus. Don Philip O'Sullivan Bearre [Footnote 122] is not the first nor the last of the more modern biographers of the saint who has held that he was of French birth, though of British blood. But before the time of Dr. Lanigan, the most acute, the {746} most conscientious, and perhaps the most generally learned of Irish historians, there appears to have been no really candid and scientific examination of the original documents and evidences. Irish scholars were too angrily engaged in the controversy of Scotia Major and Scotia Minor to be seriously regarded when they proposed to remove St. Patrick's birthplace from the neighborhood of Glasgow to the neighborhood of Nantes. Until Dr. Lanigan published his Ecclesiastical History, [Footnote 123] no one seems to have even attempted to identify he localities named in the various original documents which concern the saint. Dr. Lanigan came to the conclusion that he was born not at Dumbarton but in France, at or in the neighborhood of Boulogne-sur-Mer. I am able, I hope, to perfect the proof which Dr. Lanigan commenced, and which, if he had been enabled to follow it up by local research and by the light lately cast on the geography of Roman Gaul, would, I am sure, have come far more complete from his hands.

[Footnote 122: D. Philippi O'Sullevani Bearri Iberni, "_Patritiana
Decas_." Madrid, 1629.]

[Footnote 123: Lanigan, John, D.D. "An Ecclesiastical History of
Ireland." Dublin, 1820.]

I hold, then, with Doctor Lanigan, and with a tradition which has long existed in Ireland, and also in France, that St. Patrick was born on the coast of Armoric Gaul; and that Roman in one sense by descent--by his education in a province where Roman civilization had long prevailed, where the Latin language was spoken, and the privileges of the empire fully possessed--Roman too by the possession of nobility, which he himself declares, and of which his name was a curious commemoration [Footnote 124]--Roman, in fine, in the connection of his family which he testifies with the Roman government and with the Church, St. Patrick was a Celt of Gaul by blood. The fact that the district between Boulogne and Amiens was at that time inhabited by a clan called Britanni has misled both those who supposed he must have been born in the island of Britain and those who held that, if born in France, he must have been born in that part of it which was subsequently called Brittany.

[Footnote 124: Gibbon says ("Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
v. vi.) "At this period the meanest subjects of the Roman empire
assumed the illustrious name of Patricius, which by the conversion
of Ireland has been communicated to a whole nation." It is supposed
that the name was conferred on St. Patrick in consideration of his
parting with his nobility for a motive of charity, as he mentions in
his Epistle to Coroticus. But he was certainly not the first of the
name. Patricius was also the name of St. Augustine's father, born
fully a century before.]

The original documents which bear on the point are only two in number --the "Confession" of St. Patrick himself, and the hymn in his honor composed by his disciple St. Fiech. Of the antiquity of these documents we have evidence the most complete that can be conceived. Not merely does written history certify the record of their age--they have borne much more delicate tests. The hymn of St. Fiech is written in a dialect of Irish that is to the Irish of the Four Masters as the English of Chaucer is to the English of Lord Macaulay. The quotations of Scripture which are given in the "Confession" of St. Patrick are taken from the version according to the interpretation of the Septuagint, and not according to the recent version of St. Jerome, which had indeed been just executed in St. Patrick's time, but had not yet been publicly received. At the same time, the "Liber Armachanus," which contains the original copy of the "Confession," contains also St. Jerome's translation of the New Testament--thus curiously marking the fact that the date of the one document by a little preceded the date of the other. The manuscript itself has been subjected to a most curious and rigorous examination. The authentic signature of Brian, Imperator Hibernorum, commonly called Brian Boroimhe, on the occasion of his visit to Armagh, carries us back at a bound eight hundred years in its history; but the scholar who is expert in the hue of vellum and the style of the scribe, will tell us that the "Book of Armagh" was {747} evidently a book of venerable age even then. The Rev. Charles Graves, [Footnote 125] a fellow of the University of Dublin, and a scholar specially skilled in the study of the Irish manuscripts and hieroglyphs, published a paper some years ago in the "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy" on the question of the age of the "Book of Amagh." That the version at present preserved in the library of Trinity College is a copy from a far older version he says there can be no doubt. The marginal notes of the scribe show that he found it difficult in many places to read the manuscript from which he was transcribing. But the same notes, the character of his writing, and a reference to the Irish primate of the time under whose authority the work was undertaken, leave no doubt that the transcript was executed by a scribe named Ferdomnach, during the primacy of Archbishop Torbach, at a date not later than the year of Our Lord 807.

[Footnote 125: Graves, Rev. C, "On the Age of the Book of Armagh:
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," vol. iii., p. 816.]

Of the "Confession," beside the original copy in the "Book of Armagh," there are several manuscript versions of great age in England: two at Salisbury; two in the Cotton library; one, I believe, at Cambridge; another very interesting and valuable copy, that which was used by the Bollandists in printing their edition of the "Confession," existed until the time of the revolution in the famous French monastery of St. Vedastus. Fragments of the precious manuscripts of that learned congregation are scattered among the libraries of Arras, of Saint Omer, of Boulogne, and of Douai; but among them I could not find any trace of the missing manuscript of St. Patrick's "Confession;" nor could the present learned representatives of Bollandus, who were good enough to interest themselves in my inquiry, give me any room to hope that it still exists. It would have been of much importance to have been able to compare the style and the text of the only existing French copy with the original in Ireland--especially as that French copy belonged to the very district from which St. Patrick originally came.

There are four localities designated in these documents; three of them in the "Confession of St. Patrick," and one in the hymn of St. Fiech. In the "Confession," St. Patrick says of himself, "Patrem habui Calphurnium Diaconum (or Diacurionem) qui fuit e vico Bonaven-Taberniae; villam Enon prope habuit, ubi ego in capturam decidi." The hymn of St. Fiech adds that the saint was born at a place called Nem-tur.

The ancient "Lives of St. Patrick" cite these localities with little variation.

The first Life, given in Colgan's collection, and ascribed to St. Patrick junior, says, "Natus est igitur in illo oppido, Nempthur nomine. Patricius natus est in campo Taburnae."

The second Life, which is ascribed to St. Benignus, is word for word the same with the first on this point.

The third, supposed to be by St. Eleran, suggests that he was of Irish descent through a colony allowed by the Romans to settle in Armorica; but that his parents were of Strato Cludi (Strath Clyde); that he was born, however, "in oppido Nempthur, quod oppidum in campo Taburniae est." This life is of very ancient date, and shows clearly enough how old is the Irish tradition concerning the saint's birth in France.

The fourth Life, by Probus, says: "Brito fuit natione . . . de vico Bannave Tiburniae regionis, haud procul a mare occidentali--quem vicum indubitanter comperimus esse Neustriae provinciae, in qua olim gigantes." Here, again, we observe the same confused tradition of the saint's French origin; for Neustria was the name in the Merovingian period of the whole district comprised between the Meuse and the Loire.

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The fifth and best known life, by Jocelyn, has it: "Brito fuit natione in pago Taburniae--co quod Romanus exercitus tabernacula fixerant ibidem, secus oppidum Nempthor degens, mare Hibernico collimitans habitatione."

The sixth Life, by St. Evin, declares that he was "de Brittanis Alcluidensibus, natus in Nempthur."

The Breviaries repeat the same names with as little attempt to fix the actual localities.

The Breviary of Paris says: "In Britiania natus, oppido Empthoria." The Breviary of Armagh: "In illo Brittaniae oppido nomine Emptor." The old Roman Breviary says simply: "Grenere Brito." The Breviary of Rheims: "In maritimo Brittaniae territorio." The Breviary of Rouen: "In Brittania Gallicana." The Breviary of the canons of St. John of Lateran: "Ex Brittania magna insula."

It will be observed that in the principal of these authorities there is a concurrence in accepting the locality called so variously Nemthur and Empthoria, as well as the second of the localities, the Taberniae, named by St. Patrick himself; and also that there is no appearance of certainty in the minds of the writers as to the exact sites of the places of which they speak. None of them ventures to name the exact district or diocese where Empthoria or the Taberniae are to be found.

But certain scholia upon the "Hymn of St. Fiech," which were for the first time published by Colgan in the "Triadis Thaumaturgae," boldly lay down the proposition that "Nemthur est civitas in Brittania Septentrionali, nempe Alcluida;" and the name is also translated as meaning "Holy Tower." The same writer, however, adds in another note that St. Patrick was not carried into his Irish captivity from Dumbarton, but from Boulogne, where he and his family were visiting some of their friends at the time when the Irish pirates swept down upon the coast of Gaul. The Irish annals say that about the period of St. Patrick's captivity, Nial of the Nine Hostages lost his life on the Sea of Iccius between France and England. These long piratical forays were not uncommon at the time. [Footnote 126] A little later, the last of our pagan kings, Dathy, was killed by lightning near the Rhaetian Alps.

[Footnote 126: Totum cum Scotus Iernem Movit, et infesto spumsvit
remige Tethys CLAUDIAN.]

Colgan with a curious credulity accepted this improbable solution of the scholiast, of which it may in the first place be said that it is incompatible with the statement of St. Patrick himself, who declares distinctly that he was captured at a country house belonging to his father, near the town to which his family belonged.

Usher, however, who had equal opportunities of studying the original documents, also adopted this explanation. Several Irish writers, and especially Don Philip O'Sullivan, vaguely conscious of the tradition of St. Patrick's French origin, attempted to reconcile the fact of his being a Briton with the fact of his birth in France by the supposition that he was a Breton of Brittany. This theory, however, falls summarily to the ground when it is opposed to the fact that the province now known by the name of Brittany was not inhabited by any tribe which bore the name in the time of St. Patrick, "The year 458," says the Benedictine Lobineau [Footnote 127] in his learned history of Brittany, "is about the epoch of the establishment of the Bretons in that part of ancient Armorica which at present bears the name of Bretagne." There was, however, a clan called Brittani, further toward the north of France, a clan whose territory Pliny and the Greek Dionysius Periegetes had long before designated with accuracy: Pliny in these words, "Deinde Menapii, Morini, Oromansaci juncti pago, qui Gessoriacus vocatur; {749} Brittani, Ambiani, Bellovaci." [Footnote 128] The Brittani of the time of St. Patrick are to be found in the country that lies between Boulogne and Amiens. It is there that Lanigan came upon the first authentic traces of the origin of our apostle.

[Footnote 127: Lobineau. D. Gui Alexis, "_Histoire de Bretagne_."
Paris, 1707.]

[Footnote 128: Plinii Secundi, "_Historia Naturalis_; de Gallia," 1.
iv. The editors of the Dauphin's edition have a note on the word
Brittaui, which is worth quotation. "Ita libri omnes. Hi inter
Gessoriacenses Ambianosqne medii, in ora similiter positi, ea loca
teuuere certè, ubi nunc oppida Stapulae, Monetrolium, Hesdinium, et
adjacentem agrum, Ponticum ad Somonam amnem. Cluverius hic Briannos
legi mavult." See also the learned essay on the Britons of Armorica
in the "_Acta Sanctorum, Vitâ S. Ursulae_;" Octobris, vol. ix., p.
108. A glance at the map will show the close relation of the
district marked by the present towns of Etaples, Montreuil, Hesdin,
and Ponthieu to the localities named a little farther on. That the
Britons of Great Britain originally came from this district is
declared in the Welsh Triads, thus: "The three beneficent tribes of
the Isle of Britain. The first was the nation of the Cymmry, who
came with Hu the mighty to the Isle of Britain, who would not
possess nor country nor lands through writing and persecution, but
of equity and in peace; the second was the stock of the Lioegrians,
who came from the land of Gwasgwyn (Gascolgne), and were descended
from the primitive stock of the Cymmry: the third were the Brython,
and from the land of Llydaw they came, having their descent from the
primary stock of the Cymmry." And again, Cynan is spoken of as lord
of Meirlon (probably a Celtic form of the word _Morini_) in Llydaw.
Taliessin also mentions the _Morini Btython_ in his _Prif Gyfarch_,
Lydaw, Latinized Letavia, is one of the early Celtic names of the
country of the Morini, as Neustria, in the Life by Probus, was that
given in the Merovingian period to the whole province between the
Meuse and Loire, including Boulogne of course. Pliny mentions
Boulogne itself as the _Portus Morinorum Brittanicus_. ]

He was guided to his conclusion, mainly, I think, by the "History of the Morini," published in the year 1639, by the Jesuit Malbrancq, [Footnote 129] and which seems strangely to have escaped the notice of every earlier Irish writer. In this work, there are two chapters devoted to the tradition of the connection of St. Patrick with the see of Boulogne. Malbrancq relates this tradition, which states that previous to his departure for the Irish mission, St. Patrick remained for some time at Boulogne, occupied in preaching against the Pelagian heresy, to contend with which Saint Germanus and Lupus had crossed over to Britain. Malbrancq refers, in proof of this fact, to the "Chronicon Morinense," to the Catalogue of the Bishops of Boulogne, and to the "Life of St. Arnulphus of Soissons." This tradition is to a certain extent a clue in tracing the early and intimate connection of St. Patrick with this country--but as yet it is nothing more.

[Footnote 129: Malbrancq, Jacobus, "_De Morinis et Morinrum rebus_."
Tornaci Nerviorum,1639--1654.]

The critical question is, whether the four names given by St. Patrick himself, and by St. Fiech, can be identified with any localities now known either in the district of Boulogne or any other district in which toward the close of the fourth century it is possible to find the conditions of Roman government and British blood combined? Before Lanigan there was, it seems to me, no serious attempt made to solve this question. The scholiast whose authority was so unhesitatingly adopted by Colgan and Usher simply says, "Nempthur est civitas in Brittania Septentrionali, nempe Alcluid." There is not a word more. He does not attempt to show how Nempthur and Alcluid are to be considered as convertible terms. Nor does he attempt to interpret the names of the three localities stated by St. Patrick himself. The same may be said, in the most sweeping way, of the biographies and the breviaries.

I will now read the reasons which Lanigan gives for identifying Bonaven with Boulogne, and Taberniae with a city very famous in the wars of the middle ages, long before Arras had been fortified by Vauban or defended by General Owen Roe O'Neill. It will be observed that Lanigan does not attempt to identify the two other localities Enon and Nempthur. The former he regarded as too insignificant, the latter he did not believe had any existence. I will not say that his proof with regard to the identity of Boulogne with Bonaven is conclusive; but if the whole of his proof rested on as strong presumptive grounds, little would remain to be said on the subject. The second part of it is, however, in my humble opinion, wholly erroneous. He says:

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"Colgan acknowledges that there is an ancient tradition among the inhabitants of Armoric Britain that St. Patrick was born in their country, and that some Irishmen were of the same opinion. He quotes some passages from Probus and others whence they argued in proof of their position, but omits, through want of attention to that most valuable document, the following passage of 'St. Patrick's Confession:' My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, son of Potitus, a priest of the town Bonavem Taberniae. He had near the town a small villa, Enon, where I became a captive.' Here we have neither a town Nemthor nor Alcluit. Nor will any British antiquary be able to find out a place in Great Britain to which the names Bonavem Taberniae can be applied. Usher, although he had quoted these words, has not attempted to give any explanation of them, or to reconcile them with Nemthur.