Patricius," to whom the mission in 431 properly belongs, and Patricius, whose day is the 17th of
March, and who died in 493. "From the acts of these three saints, the subsequent legend of the great
Apostle of Ireland was compiled, and an arbitrary chronology applied to it."
§ 15. The Irish Church after St. Patrick.
The Missionary Period.
The labors of St. Patrick were carried on by his pupils and by many British priests and monkswho were driven from England by the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries.^59 There
was an intimate intercourse between Ireland and Wales, where British Christianity sought refuge,
and between Ireland and Scotland, where the seed of Christianity, had been planted by Ninian and
Kentigern. In less than a century, after St. Patrick’s death Ireland was covered with churches and
convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools of clergymen and
missionaries, and workshops for transscribing sacred books. Prominent among these are the
monasteries of Armagh, Banchor or Bangor (558), Clonard (500), Clonmacnois (528), Derry (555),
Glendolough (618).
During the sixth and seventh centuries Ireland excelled all other countries in Christian piety,
and acquired the name of "the Island of Saints." We must understand this in a comparative sense,
and remember that at that time England was just beginning to emerge from Anglo-Saxon heathenism,
Germany was nearly all heathen, and the French kings—the eldest sons of the Church—were
"monsters of iniquity." Ireland itself was distracted by civil wars between the petty kings and
chieftains; and the monks and clergy, even the women, marched to the conflict. Adamnan with
difficulty secured a law exempting women from warfare, and it was not till the ninth century that
the clergy in Ireland were exempted from "expeditions and hostings" (battles). The slave-trade was
in full vigor between Ireland and England in the tenth century, with the port of Bristol for its centre.
The Irish piety was largely based on childish superstition. But the missionary zeal of that country
is nevertheless most praiseworthy. Ireland dreamed the dream of converting heathen Europe. Its
apostles went forth to Scotland, North Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy.
"They covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied navigators, they landed on the most desert
islands; they overflowed the Continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant
visions a world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ. The poem of the Pilgrimage of
St. Brandan, that monkish Odyssey so celebrated in the middle ages, that popular prelude of the
Divina Commedia, shows us the Irish monks in close contact with all the dreams and wonders of
the Keltic ideal."^60
The missionaries left Ireland usually in companies of twelve, with a thirteenth as their leader.
This duodecimal economy was to represent Christ and the twelve apostles. The following are the
most prominent of these missionary bands:^61
St. Columba, with twelve brethren, to Hy in Scotland, a.d. 563.
(^59) Petrie (Round Towers, p. 137, quoted by Killen I. 26) speaks of crowds of foreign ecclesiastics—Roman, Egyptian,
French, British, Saxon—who flocked Ireland as a place of refuge in the fifth and sixth centuries.
(^60) Montalembert, II. 397.
(^61) See Reeves, S. Columba, Introd, p. lxxi.