ON ST. PALLADIUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR,
APOSTLE OF THE SCOTS,
AT FORDUN IN SCOTLAND.
IN THE YEAR 431.
HISTORICAL COLLECTION
Of the cult, country, legation, deeds, and writings.
Palladius, Bishop and Confessor, in Scotland (S.)
BHL Number: 6417
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
§ I. On the cult of St. Palladius and his ecclesiastical Office.
This holy Palladius, called subsequently the Apostle of the Scots, owes his first notice in ecclesiastical history to Prosper of Aquitaine; celebrity was conferred on him by Bede, Sigebert, Marianus Scotus, and others, Most well-known from the disputes of the Scots and Irish, who mostly followed Prosper, and the authors of the life of St. Patrick, in some places a little more free; but in these last centuries he has attained a widely-extending fame, from the most widespread disputes of the Scots and Irish, each nation, as though for altar and hearth, as we have said more than once in our Acts concerning St. Rumold and very many others, fighting most fiercely to claim the Saints for itself. The cause of the litigations our Elders have often set forth, derived mostly from the sole appellation of Scotia or of the Scots, the modern Scots seizing for themselves all things which even from afar sound anything Scottish, the Irish on the contrary recognizing for some centuries (some extend to more, others contract) no other Scotia except that very island which today is called Hibernia Ireland. It has always been fixed with me, to abstract, as far as might be, from that odious question, only cursorily to touch the arguments of each party, for the rest to pursue those things which pertain more closely to the Saints, leaving to both parties a free arena for fighting it out. By nearly this norm it is certain that the things to be said of St. Palladius are to be measured, where there is no contention about his Scottish origin, but about goat's wool, as they say i.e., a trifling dispute, namely to whom he was sent by Pope Celestine. We follow the order set in the title, taking our beginning from the cult.
[2] You will not find ancient indications of the Christian veneration shown to St. Palladius in the sacred Fasti: for the Palladius or Pallattius who is reported in the Hieronymian Martyrologies on this day, in race, in the ancient Martyrologies he is not marked: age, and laurel is most far distant from him of whom here we treat. Nor has the day of his passing hitherto become certainly known to anyone, nor accordingly do I sufficiently perceive what led Greven to record him on this day, unless he doubtless found it so written in some ancient codex. If the things which exist concerning the Saint's death in the various lives of St. Patrick be rightly weighed, he did not die in the month of July of the year 431, much less in January, on the 27th day of which the Catalogues of the Saints of Ireland, both manuscript and printed, report his natal or festivity; for it is far more probable that toward the end of the said year, on 15 December, he reached the goal of his life, as Ware noted on the writers of Ireland, page 101: He (St. Palladius) died among the Picts, on the way to return to Rome, on 15 December, in the year from the coming of the Savior 431, namely the same year in which he came into Ireland (as Bishop). So it is commonly handed down. So hands down Bale in Ussher, so Ussher himself page 814, so after them Sirin in the manuscript life of St. Palladius, kindly communicated to me by the Rev. Fathers, the Irish Franciscans of Louvain.
[3] Meanwhile by Bollandus among the Passed-over of 27 January, we read it thus observed: by the more recent Irish on 27 January St. Palladius, Apostle of the Scots, is reported on this day by Ferrarius and the Anglican Martyrology; by several and more ancient on 6 July. He is marked at any rate in Wilson's English Martyrology; there on that day adorned with an elogium, which I would not dare to approve any more than the Aberdeen lessons, to be produced below. More briefly Ferrarius treats of St. Palladius: At Fordun in Scotland, of St. Palladius, Bishop and Apostle of the Scots, in the note mixing some false things with true; this rightly stated, that his relics are held in the greatest veneration at Fordun: and this was doubtless taken from the Annals of Baronius, where on the year 429, n. 4, he says of St. Palladius: Whom the Scots rightly venerated as their Apostle, prosecuting with great honor his relics, placed in Mearns, a province of Scotland. Here Baronius begins to declare his mind, in this whole controversy favoring the parts of the modern
Scots quite openly, as will no less clearly appear from the following. But let us pursue the cult.
[4] Who are those several and more ancient Martyrologists, whom Bollandus intimates report St. Palladius on this 6 July, on this day by the Scots, neither did he himself sufficiently express, nor have I discovered in so many of our codices. Among all the Usuardine additions of this day there is only one supplement copied from Greven, in which it is most simply announced: Of Palladius, Bishop and Confessor. Perhaps Bollandus looked to the old manuscript Catalogues of the Saints of Ireland and Scotland, of which we have several: but not even these agree among themselves, the Irish standing for 27 January, but the Scottish for this day, whom Castellanus followed in his Universal Martyrology. Their coryphaeus, Dempster, in the Scottish menology quite grandly: In Mearns, of Palladius, Deacon Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Apostle of the Scots, sent by St. Celestine the Pope, that he might protect the Scots, long before believing in Christ, from the Pelagian pest, raging in England. To Dempster is added as substitute Camerarius: St. Palladius, Bishop and, as it were, Apostle of the Scots, sent by Celestine the Roman Pontiff into Scotland, both to restore the ecclesiastical discipline (which among the chief men of the Scots, the tyrant Maximus being conquered and driven out of Scotland, had much languished) to its pristine splendor, and also to guard against the Pelagian heresy. Of the rest of the series of the elogium, which teems with gross errors according to Sirin, discourse will recur below.
[5] This makes for it, that which he subjoins at the end: Then the life, to the possessors of the sacred body; nay the very footsteps of that holy Man in Scotland can be shown, and precious relics were once venerated at Fordun, Polydore in the English history book 1, etc. Nay, 150 years ago the caskets themselves, most rich in gold and silver and gems, were repaired by William Scheves, Archbishop of St. Andrews. The hyperbolic writer did not know the golden mean, having invented not one casket and those most rich, for which he refers us to Boethius, whom, if he read at the source, he either did not understand or basely corrupted. These are the words of Boethius concerning St. Palladius, book 7, folio 128 verso: After many at length pious sweats and religious works, spent in publishing the doctrine of Christ for the salvation of mortals, having obtained at Fordun (the name is that of a village in Mearns) a most blessed exit from this life, he yielded to fate: where his sacred relics, held in much honor, are shown even in this our age to be venerated by many flowing thither for the sake of religion. These William Scheves, once Archbishop of St. Andrews, a man everywhere learned, dug from the ground with many pious prayers and solemn apparatus, and honorably placed in a silver casket, in the fourth year after the coming of Christ in the flesh, above the ninety-thousand four-hundredth i.e., 1494. Who from this could hammer out even a word about caskets repaired somehow in the plural, and those all most rich in gold and silver and gems?
[6] But certainly these things plainly demonstrate the cult of St. Palladius established in Scotland, by whatever authority at length it was done, among whom too he is honored with an ecclesiastical Office, concerning which Dempster raises an over-religious scruple in the Ecclesiastical History of the Scots book 15, n. 998, where he undeservedly accuses the Martyrologists, as though they were injurious and unjust to the glory of his nation, which he ought rather to have imputed to the less celebrated fame of his Saints in other parts of the world. Yet Sirin does not rightly thence deduce that St. Palladius was never venerated in Scotland with any ecclesiastical office, since in the Breviary of the Cathedral church of Aberdeen, printed in 1509, at the expense of Walter Chepman, of which a manuscript copy is with us, and which we have cited elsewhere, there is reported a life distributed into six lessons, although most full of errors, under this title: The Life of St. Palladius, Archbishop Cardinal, Apostle of the Scots (commonly St. Padie), sent by Celestine the First, under Eugenius II, in the year 432, July 6. It begins from the prayer: O God, who didst provide for the people of the Scots blessed Palladius as Pontiff and apostle of the Catholic faith and likewise doctor, grant us, we beseech, by his intervention to obtain thy ineffable mercy, and to enjoy, thou mediating, life everlasting. Through the Lord, etc. The whole office is taken from the Common of a Confessor and Pontiff. Let us hear the lessons, from one or another of which you will easily determine concerning the rest.
[7] Palladius the egregious Pontiff, of the Egyptian nation, sprung of illustrious birth, whose lessons do not stand. under the Lord Evagrius the monk, a most religious man, who is said to have been a disciple of the two Macarii; while his youthful years assailed him, holily and devoutly served under the habit and rule of the religious. Under whose sway and Christian rule he learned and knew to announce the faith. Who a little after, on account of his approved life, an oracle being taken up by an angel, said to his fellow-soldiers: For it is fitting, if we wish to follow him whom we preach, that we openly teach others the things which we have learned, in his honor, who administers these several things to us, and faithfully investigate, by learning from others, the things concerning this faith which we have less understood. But by the admonition of the aforesaid angel, he came from Egypt to Rome, where he was held and reckoned in the greatest esteem by Pope Celestine, who, on account of the sanctity of his life then, was appointed by the said Celestine as Bishop, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Blessed Celestine meanwhile, led by God's favor, desiring to enlarge the orthodox faith … among the Scots … in the year 424 persuaded blessed Palladius, whom he had lately ordained Prelate and soldier of the faith, to preach to the nation of the Scots the Roman and Catholic faith, etc. Let these suffice, however ill scraped together and curdled; with which the remaining lessons, composed to the same norm, no more stand; this one thing nevertheless, which last we were seeking, proving, namely that our Saint did not lack an ecclesiastical office in Scotland, which no one has hitherto shown could be said of Ireland, so that in this part at least the condition of the Scots is the stronger.
§ II. On the country, legation, deeds, and writings of St. Palladius.
[8] As certain as it seems from the premised lessons and others Not an eastern monk, that the cult of St. Palladius is rightly established, so is it evident that the country of St. Palladius is to be explored neither from a history so ill sewn together, nor from the Scoti-chronicon of Fordun, nor from the more recent writers, concerning which the praised Sirin disputes at length quite excellently, refuting all those who judged him to have been a Greek, an Egyptian, a Galatian, an Irishman, or a Briton; inasmuch as, from mere conjectures, resting on no foundation, they gathered into one Palladius things which it is undoubted pertain to various [men]. And indeed, since no contemporary anywhere mentioned St. Palladius, except Prosper alone; and he in no way touched his country, asserting him to be only a Deacon of the Roman Church (not archdeacon, Archbishop, or Cardinal), this one thing he left most probably to be supposed, that our holy Palladius was not some eastern monk, much less a Briton, but an Italian cleric.
[9] Sirin proves this by various arguments, which it will be enough here cursorily to have gleaned. but seems to have been by country an Italian. That the Saint made small fruit in Ireland all admit, the cause he himself prudently alleges, ignorance of the vulgar tongue, whence he was scorned and repulsed by the inhabitants. Besides, it is not probable that the writers of the life of St. Patrick would have kept silent about the country of St. Palladius, his predecessor, if they had known [him] a Briton or an Irishman; where on the contrary St. Evin expressly affirms: And when he had resolved to return to his own people, seized by disease, he died in the land of the Picts. He had resolved to return to Italy; this is therefore, and not elsewhere is to be sought, the Saint's country. Add those words of Probus, speaking of the deeds of Palladius: Nor did he wish to spend a long time in a land not his own, but disposed to return to him who sent him, which indicate plainly enough that St. Palladius was nothing less than an Irishman or a Briton: which to prove at length I do not see worth the while, nor do the already-named litigants contend more spiritedly about that matter.
[10] Far more difficult is it to unweave another web, more intricate, concerning the legation or mission of St. Palladius; It is probable that two legations whether it was undertaken for the sake of the modern Scots, or rather of the Irish, for which they most contentiously fight among themselves, with an over-ambitious piety on both sides. Baronius seems to have taken the name of the Scots thus, as to intimate that Prosper treated of the modern Scots. This certainly is established from that writer's Chronicle, that under the consulate of Florentius and Dionysius, that is, in the year 429, Pope Celestine kept watch that the remnants of the Pelagian heresy in Britain might be extinguished, and that Palladius the deacon was the author to the Pontiff, that St. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, should be sent thither. Hear his words: Agricola the Pelagian, son of Severianus the Pelagian Bishop, corrupted the churches of Britain by the insinuation of his dogma; but at the instance of Palladius the deacon, Pope Celestine sends Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, in his stead, and, the heretics being dislodged, directs the Britons to the Catholic faith.
[11] From these words, to say in passing, whatever Sirin argue against [it], Baronius not improbably deduced that he undertook [it to the Scots.] that from that year 429 St. Palladius undertook his first legation into the Britains, either with St. Germanus, or perhaps sooner; who, either from that time crossing into Ireland, and perceiving that greater authority was necessary for him, returning to Rome, was there consecrated Bishop by Pope Celestine, and thence again destined to the same Scots; which other legation, the name of St. Palladius nevertheless being suppressed, the same Prosper records in his book Against the Collator chapter 21, in the edition of the year 1711, col. 363: Nor indeed with slower care did he free the Britains from this same disease, when he excluded certain enemies of grace, occupying only the land of their origin, even from that secret recess of the ocean, and, a Bishop being ordained for the Scots, while he is zealous to keep the Roman island Catholic, he made also the barbarian island Christian. Begun, says Sirin, for the completed conversion of Ireland is to be attributed to St. Patrick, all the monuments of all Ireland cry out. Most rightly, if Prosper spoke of Ireland.
[12] Who those Scots were Moreover, that the last words of Prosper are to be so understood, he himself teaches more distinctly (say the Irish writers) in the aforesaid Chronicle, at the consulate of Bassus and Antiochus, by which the year 431 is marked, writing thus, as the most recent edition of the entire Chronicle, already cited, has: To the Scots believing in Christ, Palladius is ordained by Pope Celestine, and sent as the first Bishop. These, with others, seem so to be combined, that St. Palladius was sent into the Britains, that he might keep the island Catholic, probably a little before SS. Germanus and Lupus, whom he left in Britain, but himself passed over to the Scots, to make them Christians. But the particles seem to stand in the way, to the Scots believing in Christ. This very thing is the unhappy handle of huge altercations between the adverse parties, which both, by their own arbitrament and national spirit, so bend and involve, that I indeed would by no means wish to sit as arbiter to appease or compose their spirits.
[13] That the Scots of that time, at least those whom Prosper points at, were Irish, from the words of Prosper his cited words not obscurely demonstrate, when they distinguish the island of the Scots from the Roman or British island, of which a part was and is today Albania, or Lesser Scotland, which was never an island by itself, and which in Prosper's time did not come under the name of Scotia. Therefore the barbarous island, separated and contradistinguished from the Roman British island, cannot but be Ireland, whatever, as we said above, Baronius may otherwise feel, inclining to the parts of the modern Scots; but since Prosper in both places speaks of the same Scots, treating of the conversion of the same nation to the Christian faith, who would sufficiently doubt that in both places also Ireland is indicated? Thus argue the Irish and their favorers; and I ingenuously confess that this argument is of the greatest weight with me, plainly to disarm the Scots, if Prosper had a little more openly expressed two different islands. But again on the contrary, Prosper calls them Scots believing in Christ in the last place; not therefore Ireland, which the same Prosper asserted against the Collator that St. Palladius first made Christian.
[14] it does not seem sufficiently clear; Here is the knot of the whole matter, this is nearly the Achilles of the Scots; but if it be rightly weighed, it is to be resolved for them equally as for the Irish, since it is not yet sufficiently established that at that time one nation was more believing than the other, although the Scots build up their little verses, to carry back their conversion to the third century, which Baronius seemed to grant them, others not so easily thinking it to be admitted. And indeed if it be admitted, the authority of Prosper will all but finish them, since for them, no less than for the Irish, this pill remains to be swallowed, that their barbarous region was made Christian by St. Palladius, and so was not such before the year 429. For the rest, to say it once, that by the Scots in Prosper no others can be conceived than the Irish, seems to some so manifest, that all things must be marvelously twisted, to draw thence another sense. A cloud of witnesses is produced in Ussher in the Britannica page 798, affirming with one consent that St. Palladius was sent to the same Scotia, to which St. Patrick was given him as successor; but it is undoubted that the latter was directed into Ireland, and was the true apostle of the whole island, if not the first; what can more clearly follow, than that St. Palladius was destined to the same island? The same feel other writers, more in number, recited on the next following page 799 by the same Ussher.
[15] Thus therefore the words of Prosper would be to be reconciled, that since he wrote his Chronicle, probably with repeated cares, after the year 433, when now Patrick was fruitfully laboring in the Irish vineyard, yet they favor the Irish, he used a prolepsis familiar enough to historians, naming as believers, for that year in which he wrote, those who could truly be called believers, and to whom therefore he fitted the famous verses concerning the ungrateful:
— now the savage nations and barbarous realms, The new grace of Christ, before unknown or scorned, Draws to itself, and builds itself a temple in every land.
Others explain Prosper's sense otherwise, and although they would have Kiaran, Ailbe, Declan, and Ibar to have sweated in the Irish harvest before SS. Palladius and Patrick, they contend that this in no way is contrary to Prosper. But however his words in the cited places be taken, that they are to be understood of the Irish Scots, not only the Irish, but Tillemont and other learned [men] free from party zeal, commonly admit today, so that I forbear to report the several arguments of Sirin, by which he refutes a little more sharply John Major, Buchanan, Lesley, and other Scots, and even our own Michael Alford, calling them fictions and figments—whatever things were devised by them, as diligent adorners of their own affairs, to persuade that by the Scots of Prosper are indicated the Albanians or modern Scots—in which he has several agreeing with him.
[16] Of the least weight with me are the things which Camerarius heaped up, whom Camerarius ill assails. whose opinion, promised above, we adduce hither: Moreover, that St. Palladius was sent to our Scots, not to the Irlanders or Irish of Ireland, all writers of all nations and ages agree, because those to whom he was sent already believed in Christ, as Ado, Prosper of Aquitaine, and others already cited testify; but the Irish Irlanders scarcely a hundred years after believed in Christ. See Sigebert, Ado, Bede, Hermann the Contract, Count Avering, Matthew of Westminster in the year 433, Florence of Worcester in the year 421, Polydore Virgil book 3, Freculph of Lisieux book 5 chapter 33. For the first of the Irish, Sinellius, baptized by St. Patrick, was at least 80 years after this arrival of Palladius in Scotland. In few words, says Sirin, Camerarius belches forth so many crude fictions, stupendous and stolid errors, nay monsters of errors. But by what reasons of no great moment he here defends himself, see in his famous work On the Piety of the Scots from page 225. But by what reasoning St. Palladius is especially to be venerated and worshipped by the modern Scots, has been abundantly shown above. And of these things more than enough.
[17] Another difficulty remains in the word "first Bishop," as though before St. Palladius there had been no Bishop in Ireland; Whether the first Bishop of Ireland; which pleases not that nation, which records other Bishops older than Palladius, named above, who began to cultivate that vineyard, whence another controversy sufficiently obscure arises. Sirin reports the text of the Chronicle cited above, in which that word "first" is not expressed, just as it truly stands in the Chronicle published by Du Chesne, volume 1 On the Writers of France page 205: To the Scots believing in Christ, Palladius, ordained by Pope Celestine, is sent as Bishop: which, if it be the genuine reading of Prosper, the question vanishes, which the praised Sirin thinks is also so to be explained, that the word "first" falls on the first Bishop sent by Celestine, after whom the second was Patrick, destined into Ireland by the same; or on the first Bishop directed to the whole of Ireland, that is, the primary Bishop of the island; all which tend to this, that the scruple of those men may be saved, not enduring that St. Palladius be absolutely called the first Bishop sent to the Scoto-Irish, in which I confess I see almost no offense, since those Irish writers, who contend about the primacy, so to speak, of Christianity against their rivals the Scots, are not of so great authority as is Prosper of Aquitaine alone, from whom, as from a most pure fountain, are had all the things which concerning our St. Palladius can be received with any certainty. See Ussher from page 800, interpreting these things a little otherwise, and Tillemont not too much trusting the Irish monuments, volume 14 page 155.
[18] what he did there; Of the things which in his brief apostolate St. Palladius either did or endured, Prosper handed down nothing; a few things the writers of the life of St. Patrick said, whose various texts Ussher and Sirin, now not once cited, collected, not to be here severally enumerated, since in the matter they agree well enough, but all the circumstances, in which especially they differ, I do not judge to be admitted, especially, that by some he is called a Martyr, others bring other things no more proven, while meanwhile some doubt whether St. Patrick was truly ordained by Celestine, and by the same given as successor to St. Palladius. Have in few words the things which, written of him in the life by Jocelin, Papebroch published on 17 March, volume 2, page 545: The aforesaid Pope (Celestine) had sent before him into Ireland, for the sake of preaching, another doctor, by name Palladius, namely his archdeacon, to whom, companions being joined, he gave a supply of books; namely both Testaments, with relics of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and of very many Martyrs. But the Irish not believing his preaching, but most obstinately opposing [it], he departed from their region, and, tending toward Rome, in Britain within the borders of the Picts, departed to his fate. Yet converting some in Scotland to Christ, he baptized them, and founded three churches, built of oak, in which he left his disciples as prelates, namely Augustine and Benedict, Silvester and Solomus, his codices and relics of the Saints being conferred on them. To this Palladius, in a more fruitful legation and labor, St. Patrick succeeded, because, as is said in the Irish proverb: Not to Palladius, but to Patrick the Lord granted Ireland to be converted. So much for the deeds.
[19] whether he wrote anything. As for what pertains to writings, nothing greatly doubtful today remains, after Ussher page 802, Ware from page 100, Sirin and others long ago demonstrated, that the works attributed to our St. Palladius are either fictitious in Bale and Dempster; or wrongly ascribed to him, inasmuch as they were composed by Palladii of the same name. Let Ussher be seen in the cited place, where, their own country and writings being assigned to the other Palladii, he rightly illustrates very many things which by Trithemius, Possevino, and others had hitherto been wrongly confused; often deservedly harassing Bale both there and elsewhere, as one who had the custom, not only of attributing to authors those things which he had somewhere read to have been written by them, but even those which he himself conjectured could probably have been written by them. To finish the whole matter in a word, there is nothing that makes [it] credible that anything of writing by our St. Palladius was handed down to memory and posterity. And lest the authority of Ussher, as of a non-Catholic, be thought to be weakened in these things, Tillemont can be seen on the same matter, volume 14, page 737.