The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland 9789048535118

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The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland

Knowledge Communities This series focuses on innovative scholarship in the areas of intellectual history and the history of ideas, particularly as they relate to the communication of knowledge within and among diverse scholarly, literary, religious, and social communities across Western Europe. Interdisciplinary in nature, the series especially encourages new methodological outlooks that draw on the disciplines of philosophy, theology, musicology, anthropology, paleography, and codicology. Knowledge Communities addresses the myriad ways in which knowledge was expressed and inculcated, not only focusing upon scholarly texts from the period but also emphasizing the importance of emotions, ritual, performance, images, and gestures as modalities that communicate and acculturate ideas. The series publishes cutting-edge work that explores the nexus between ideas, communities, and individuals in medieval and early modern Europe. Series Editors Clare Monagle, Macquarie University Mette Bruun, University of Copenhagen Babette Hellemans, University of Groningen Severin Kitanov, Salem State University Alex Novikoff, Fordham University Willemien Otten, University of Chicago Divinity School

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland

Brian James Stone

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Reproduced by kind permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 445 5 e-isbn 978 90 4853 511 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984455 nur 684 © Brian James Stone / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7 Introduction: Early Irish Rhetoric Ireland and the Roman Frontiers Historiography and Medieval Rhetoric A Note on Periodization

9 11 21 26

1 Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland and the Latin West Social and Ecclesiastical Organization in Early Ireland

31 37

2 Learning in Ireland in the Sixth through the Eighth Centuries 45 Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England 52 Ireland and Spain 58 Letter Writing and the Paschal Controversy 63 Columbanus 67 Learning at Iona 73 The Grammatical Handbook Tradition in Ireland 78 3 St Patrick and the Rhetoric of Epistolography The Historical Context of Patrick’s Mission to Ireland The Dating of Patrick’s Obit Rhetoric of Epistolography Patrick’s Learning The Purpose of Patrick’s Mission

93 93 98 110 116 120

4 A Rhetorical Analysis of Patrick’s Epistola ad Milites Coroticus 123 Patrick and Paul 137 5 The Hisperica famina 155 Rhetorical Analysis of Hisperica famina 162 6 Secular Learning and Native Traditions 191 Filidecht and Secular and Church Relations 192 Verbal Art and Early Irish Poetry – ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ 208 The Cauldron 210 ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ and The Trivium of the Liberal Arts 216

Conclusion and Considerations for Further Study

235

Bibliography 239 Index 271

Acknowledgements With every book comes a great debt of gratitude and a limited space in which to express it. I would first like to thank those whose generosity and guidance made this project possible. I am grateful to An Foras Feasa Research Institute at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth for a Visiting Fellowship in the early stages of drafting the manuscript. I would specifically like to thank Elizabeth Boyle, who was incredibly generous with her time and feedback, and this project would have floundered without her knowledge and guidance. In kind, I would like to thank the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway for a Visiting Researcher fellowship. Conversations over lunch and tea with Pádraic Moran inspired the form this book has taken, as the idea to focus on a series of case studies was his. His interdisciplinary expertise is rare, and I owe a debt of gratitude for his insights and generosity. I would also like to thank Daniel Melia, whose work on rhetoric in Celtic Studies inspired me at an early point in my career to pursue this research trajectory. His vast knowledge and keen eye saved me from many errors. I also extend my appreciation to the Celtic Studies Association of North America. The members who have contributed to my seeing this project through are too numerous to mention, but I am grateful to this organization for providing a space for junior scholars to share their work and grow as researchers. I also want to express my gratitude to the American Society for the History of Rhetoric. This organization provides numerous opportunities for junior scholars and conversations during and after conferences have proven invaluable. I am especially grateful to Scott Stroud, who as president of ASHR supported my work. I owe a special thanks to Dan Michael Wiley. His patience and generosity are always apparent, perhaps never more than during our Old Irish seminars. Dan’s dedication to his students is unmatched, and I am grateful to have had such a wonderful and brilliant teacher. Even during calamitous times, he remained dedicated to his students, including myself. And, as it goes, I must acknowledge that all shortcomings and errors are my responsibility alone. I would also like to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of my parents. Stephen Stone supported me in these pursuits from the get go, and his enduring interest in my research is appreciated. My mother, Barbara Stone, encouraged independent thinking from a young age, and I hope that some of this shines through in this work.



Introduction: Early Irish Rhetoric

This book presents a study of the rhetorical arts in early medieval Ireland, c. 431-800 CE. It consists of three case studies of Latinate and vernacular texts that are unique but also representative of the various strands of early Irish learning. The early Irish tradition is vast, consisting of texts composed in Latin, as well as the largest corpus of vernacular literature in the medieval west. The social and historical contexts from which this learned tradition emerged is also remarkably complex. Therefore, this study can only provide a snapshot of what is certainly a fruitful area for rhetorical study. To begin, it is appropriate to dispel myths often associated with early Ireland. First, the early Irish did not identify as ‘Celtic’. In fact, Celtic does not designate an ethnicity, but a linguistic family. Though the early Irish spoke a Celtic language, they were culturally distinct from their Celtic speaking neighbours in modern-day England, Wales, and Scotland, and the origin of the Celtic language in Ireland is still debated, though it likely arrived in Ireland in the last few centuries BCE.1 Therefore, speaking of a ‘Celtic rhetoric’ is troubled from the start. An idea often associated with Celtic identity is Ireland’s isolation from the western Latin world in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Scholars who maintain this position argue that since the Romans never colonized Ireland, their ‘Celtic’ culture was preserved, under the protection of a ‘Celtic mist’, as it were.2 Therefore, the extant medieval manuscripts preserve something of the pre-Christian mythology and religion that would have been 1 See the summary of the debate and a definitive response in Sims-Williams, 2020 2 In an article that represents the first foray of historians of rhetoric into the Irish tradition, Johnson-Sheehan and Lynch, 2007, p. 1 write ‘Ireland, however, offers us an interesting exception to Romanized Europe. The Island’s remoteness allowed it to preserve much of its Celtic culture while keeping at arm’s length the cultural influences of Rome and much of medieval Europe. The Irish traded with the Roman world, and eventually they were converted to Christianity after the arrival of St. Patrick in 431 AD. Nevertheless, Irish culture stood apart from European culture, especially during the crucial period of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ from the fifth to ninth centuries. It was not until the date 1172 AD, when England’s Henry II conquered Ireland, that we might mark Ireland’s capitulation to European civic and educational practices – and then only as a conquered people’. As will be discussed at length below, the Irish were in continued communication and exchange with learned communities in Britain and western Europe from the fifth century on

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_intro

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The Rhetorical Arts in L ate Antique and Early Medieval Ireland

lost under Roman colonization. However, early Irish literature is preserved primarily in manuscripts that post-date the texts themselves, sometimes significantly. These manuscripts were composed and illuminated in Christian scriptoria, and the same is true of earlier exemplars from which texts were copied, so the extant evidence cannot be trusted to tell us much about any pre-Christian, ‘Celtic’ traditions. In addition to the Christian context of manuscript production, the Irish were certainly not isolated. Though Irish manuscripts and material culture are indeed distinctively Irish, from the beginning of the written record in Ireland in the fifth century CE the Irish maintained consistent contact with European neighbours, especially Britain and Spain, but also Gaul and Rome. Instead of the preservation of ancient Celtic beliefs and practices, what survives in manuscripts represents a composite, learned culture born of a multicultural, multilingual landscape. This holds true for even the most seemingly archaic literary, learned, and legal texts that survive. Contemporary scholars have distinguished between ‘archaic’ and ‘archaizing’, and early Irish scribes were particularly fond of the latter. Many tales once considered to be of ancient origin due to linguistic dating have been demonstrated to be later compositions informed by secular and ecclesiastical Latin learning. Early Irish law offers a prime example. The civic code of Gaelic law survived as the primary means of social regulation until the invasion of the Anglo-Normans in the late twelfth century when it was partially eclipsed. However, from its earliest articulations in law-texts it was informed by Canon Law and explicated according to the Latin learned tradition. An essential component of all law-texts is an archaizing language, often put in the mouth of a legendary figure, known as rosc, a difficult, non-rhyming, alliterative, intentionally obscure style that was performed in judicial ritual. The language of such passages misled generations of scholars who dated these texts to an archaic period of the language’s development. However, scholars now agree that the performance of such verse in judicial contexts is evidence of the importance of verbal art and ritual in the early Irish system of law. A central argument of this book is that the early Irish were not isolated at the Empire’s fringe or outside of European scholarly circles, but were immersed in the ecclesiastical and scholarly trends and debates of their time. From the ordination of Ireland’s first bishop in 431 CE, Ireland was of interest to the Church in Rome and their attempts to manage the frontier. However, there is certainly something culturally distinct about early Irish literature and verbal art. As will be discussed below, their contributions to and preserved in surviving manuscripts are texts that exemplify the outward looking orientation of early Irish scholars and the pervasive influence of Latin learning on the vernacular tradition

Introduc tion: Early Irish Rhetoric

11

grammatical, exegetical, and literary traditions is vast and well-documented, the Gaelic system of law is unique and fascinating, and their role in the transformation of the rhetorical arts in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages is under-appreciated. This study seeks to demonstrate the rhetorical arts in early Ireland as both unique from and indebted to the classical tradition.

Ireland and the Roman Frontiers Behold how the Ocean, previously raging, has now paved the way for the feet of holy men; its barbarian heavings, which earthly rulers were unable to tame by the sword, the mouths of priests bind with simple words by virtue of the fear inspired by God; and the one who, when an unbeliever, neer had the least fear of bands of warriors, now, as a believer, already fears the tongues of humble men.’ Pope Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job3

A study of rhetoric in Ireland in the fifth through the eighth centuries must begin with the introduction of Christianity and Latin learning to the Latin West in Late Antiquity. The above epigraph from Gregory the Great’s (540-604 CE) Moralia in Job reflects a deep satisfaction with the outcomes of the Church’s attempts to spread Christianity throughout the ‘barbarian’ west in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, especially those islands that lay at the fringes of the Roman frontiers. Gregory’s comments also speak to the importance of the rhetorical arts in the late antique and early medieval west as Christianity spread throughout Western Europe into regions transformed by the retreat of Roman legions and the ‘age of migrations’. To fifth-century Romans, Ireland represented ‘the end of the world’, the very edge of human civilization, a land occupied by ‘barbarian’ races. In ‘Sermon 82’, preached a century earlier at Rome on the twenty-ninth of June, 441 CE, the feast-day of Peter and Paul, Pope Leo the Great (c. 400-461 CE) exalted this achievement: These men [Peter and Paul, as opposed to the fratricide Romulus and his victim Remus] are the ones who promoted you [Rome] to such glory that, as a holy race, a chosen people, a priestly and a royal city, and having been made the head of the whole world through the holy see of the blessed Peter, you came to rule over a wider territory through the worship of God than by earthly domination. For although you were exalted by many victories and thereby extended the authority of your empire by land and by sea, 3

Quoted in T.M. Charles-Edwards, 1993a, p. 12

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nevertheless what the toils of war subjected to you is less than that which a Christian peace has made obedient. 4

Pope Leo here refers to successful missions in Britannia and Ireland and the effective management of the Western frontier. By 431 CE, Ireland had its f irst bishop ordained by Rome, Palladius, evidence that substantial Christian communities had developed by the early fifth century, though Christians may have been present in Ireland much earlier. Ireland’s patron saint, the Briton Patrick, established Christian communities throughout Ireland in the fifth century, baptising many, and inspiring a generation of nuns, priests, and bishops. A century later, the learned Irish monk, Columbanus (543-615 CE), was not only witness to the fruits of these efforts, but was a product thereof. An Irish peregrinus (‘selfexiled monk’), Columbanus, ever loyal to the Rome of Peter and Paul, would carry the gospel throughout late antique Gaul, establish flourishing centres of learning and worship built on the strict asceticism and learned traditions of his native Ireland, and realize Leo I’s dream of bringing Christianity to ‘barbarian’ kingdoms.5 The social and cultural landscape of Western Europe changed dramatically and continuously from the fifth century onwards. In 406 CE, Roman legions pulled out of Britannia, and in 410 CE Aleric and the Visigoths sacked Rome. Rome’s power was waning in the west, and Emperor Honorius had no choice but to call his legions back to Rome, leaving the empire’s frontiers in disarray. The exit of these forces exacerbated the already tumultuous situation, and as Roman forces departed Britannia, the Britons suffered a series of incursions by the Scotti and Picts, and conquest and settlement by the Angles and Saxons.6 Though Rome would no longer have a military presence in Britannia and Western Europe, the Church would remain; the cultural impact would persist, with the chair of Peter and Paul secure in Rome. What Rome could not achieve through violence, the Church would achieve through winning hearts and minds. Some of the Germanic rulers would be baptized, and the power once secured by the sword would now be secured through Christian ideology. As this study seeks to demonstrate, late antique and early medieval Irish learned communities maintained consistent communication with their British and Continental neighbours, and Christianity and the Latinate 4 Quoted in ibid., 1993, p. 2 5 See Riché, 1981 6 See the overview in Charles-Edwards, 2013, pp. 36-56

Introduc tion: Early Irish Rhetoric

13

textual culture it proliferated in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages arrived in Ireland from Britain as early as the fifth century, if not before. Though it is true that Ireland was never colonized by the Romans, what we know of Irish history and literature was written down, in books, by churchmen, who were associated with the church in Britain and in Rome, and who were trained in late antique grammar and rhetoric. From the earliest written records, Irish scholars were multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and in continuous contact with scholarly communities in Europe.7 Given the continued intercourse with scholars on the Continent, the rhetorical arts must have had a place in the great monasteries that rose to prominence in the sixth and seventh centuries and that were revered for their learning. However, in many ways the case of Ireland is unique. Though the Irish were part of a continental community, there is something distinctively Irish about the extant manuscripts, the texts they preserve, and material evidence. In the sixth through the eighth centuries, we witness a flowering of manuscript illumination and Latin learning, especially in grammar and computistics (astronomical observation and calculation, especially of the date of the passion and Easter). Christian communities in Ireland, and those established on the Continent or in Britain by Irish churchmen, produced a vast Latin and vernacular literature that includes some of the greatest artistic monuments of the Middle Ages. Monastic communities capable of producing Book of Kells and Book of Durrow–as well as learned scholars such as Columbanus–were established between the sixth and ninth centuries. These communities developed a Gaelic orthography by the late seventh century, innovated manuscript design and layout, and produced a rich body of literature, as well as learned handbooks. Though many important manuscripts produced in Ireland have survived, many of those that contain earlier material8 were compiled at a much later date, and the majority of the Irish manuscripts that survive were preserved in Continental centres of learning associated with the Irish.9 This fact alone speaks to the extent of Irish intercourse with learned centres on the Continent throughout the Early Middle Ages. The evidence demonstrates that the early Irish were fierce scribes and scholars, known by their continental colleagues for serc léigind (‘a love of 7 Though this point will be elucidated at length throughout this study, see the essays collected in Flechner and Meeder, 2016; However, see also the review of this volume in O Hara, 2017; See also Contreni, 1992; idem, 1982; idem 1977 8 On linguistic dating of early Irish texts, see Stifter, 2013 9 On the survival and loss of medieval Irish manuscripts, see Ó Corráin, 2011-12

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The Rhetorical Arts in L ate Antique and Early Medieval Ireland

learning’). Yet questions remain as to what rhetorical education in these centres looked like. What role might rhetorical education have played in the production of such significant texts? Had the trivium of the liberal arts found a home in Irish schools? What might contemporary histories of rhetoric tell us about the verbal, visual, and material rhetoric of early Ireland? These are the questions that inspire this study, a study which can only begin to scratch the surface, as the textual traditions of Ireland are vast and full of potential for the student of rhetoric. The Latin learning of the early Irish church is where any study of the rhetorical arts in Ireland must begin. Though many historians of rhetoric have deemed the dawning of Christianity the death knell for the rhetorical arts, late antique Christians adopted and adapted secular arts from an early date, the most noted examples including Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Cassiodorus. As Elva Johnston writes, ‘… Christianity was supported by the vigour and rigour of classical education; reading and writing were all-important in the worship of the divine Logos’.10 Even as social contexts transformed the rhetorical arts in important ways, they did not simply fade away. Ernst Curtius has reminded us that reception and transformation characterize classical learning in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.11 As we will see, the early Irish are no exception. There was a native learned class present in Ireland before the arrival of the British Church; however, what survives is, if not outright Christian, syncretic work in which Latin secular and Christian learning merge with native traditions in the creation of a composite learned culture. Christian learning arrived in Ireland by way of Roman Britain. Our earliest examples of rhetorical learning among British churchmen include Pelagius (c. 354-418 CE) and Gildas (c. 500-570 CE). Pelagius is best known as a heretic and enemy to Augustine (354-430 CE) and Jerome (c. 347-420 CE), witnessed in a series of letters debating the nature of grace.12 Heresy aside, the letters reveal that Pelagius was likely educated in Roman Britain in a tradition of Roman rhetoric and perhaps in law. Gildas, the author of De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (‘On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain’), wrote in a Hiberno-Latin that betrays a rhetorical education, one also likely received in Britain.13 Gildas’s Latin shares many ‘hisperic’ symptoms with a Lorica, often attributed to him, as well as the 10 11 12 13

Johnston, 2013, p. 4 Curtius, 1953, p. 19 See Rees, 1991 and 1998 For an edition and translation, see Winterbottom, 1978

Introduc tion: Early Irish Rhetoric

15

Hisperica famina (‘Western Orations’), a text of Irish provenance that will be discussed at length in Ch. 5.14 Though the evidence is slim, there is enough to suggest that a form of Roman education persisted in sixth-century Britain. Fifth-century Roman Britons would have written and spoken Latin, though the Latin they wrote was not the Latin they spoke. Rome encouraged the noble classes of its western provinces to participate in Latin culture, reading the Latin authors, such as Vergil, and writing in grammatically correct Latin.15 In fifth-century Britain, education and training in rhetoric were still essential to achieving social ascendency and political power, and something of this cultural institution survived into the sixth century. In the fifth and sixth centuries the rhetorical arts were certainly undergoing transformation. Christianity was a religion of the book, and at its heart was the speech of God, ‘an eloquence, teaching salvation, perfectly adjusted to stir the hearts of all learners’, as Augustine had proclaimed, and the tools of rhetoric were put to Christian ends.16 The Latin of the western provinces of the Empire was of a different kind than that of Antiquity, the Latin of Britain, and later Ireland, was the Latin of the Bible and of the Eucharist, a Latin that was appropriate for early Christians for whom Latin was most often a second language. Vernacular languages shaped and changed Latin in interesting and colourful ways, something we shall see especially in the case of hisperic style and the peculiarities of Hiberno-Latin.17 Thomas Charles-Edwards explains that this Latin was ‘not the highly polished Latin of the grammarian and the rhetor, educators of aristocratic youth, but the language of artisans, merchants, and shop-keepers … Nobody could translate the particular rhetoric of, say, the opening of St John’s first epistle into Ciceronian Latin’.18 Instead, Biblical Latin had its own eloquence, though not one recognized in classical schools, and not fully embraced by students of rhetoric to this day. As was noted above, those few studies of Irish eloquence have suggested that distance from the Roman Empire is what makes Irish rhetoric unique and worthy of study and historians of rhetoric must turn to pre-Christian myths preserved in manuscripts. This view neglects the simple fact of literacy as a Christian phenomenon in early Ireland. Ecclesiastical learning 14 See Herren, 1974a, pp. 414-15 15 Charles-Edwards, 2003a, p. 108 16 Brown, 1967, p. 256 17 On the unique, and perhaps not-so-unique, features of Hiberno-Latin, see Orchard, 1987-88; Löfstedt, 1979 18 Charles-Edwards, 2003a, p. 109

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came from Britain to Ireland in the first three decades of the fifth century.19 However, there is evidence of contact between the Romans in Britain, or at least the Romanized British, and the Irish as early as the fourth century CE. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, a late Roman historian, the Romans had a treaty with the ‘Scotti’ (the name given to the Irish), a treaty which, once broken in 360, led immediately to massive raids, and also to a major invasion concerted with other peoples.20 One catastrophe that followed these events came in 367 when Scotti (‘Irish’), Picts, and Saxons joined forces to attack the coasts of Roman Britain. This historical account makes it clear that Ireland was not a backwater of Europe, isolated from the rest of the western world, but that there was an effective political authority among the Irish that possessed large numbers of ships. At least one function of those ships had been trade between Ireland and Britain, including a slave trade, allowed under the terms of the treaty broken in 360.21 A result of this trade was very likely the arrival of Christianity from Britain to Ireland at an early date, but Rome would soon send a bishop to oversee Irish Christians. The Life of St Germanus of Auxerre written by Constantius of Lyon (fl. c. 480CE), bishop and former provincial governor, tells us that Germanus visited Britain with a colleague, Lupus, bishop of Troyes, in 429. This visit was motivated by concerns of Pelagianism spreading inside the British Church, a concern related to Rome’s management of the deep frontiers of the Imperial government. Germanus was a fierce orator and, though we must take hagiographical accounts with a grain of salt, Constantius claims he emerged victorious in his debates with British bishops. The papal authority backing Germanus’s visit was arranged by another Gallic bishop who would have a profound importance in the history of early Ireland, Palladius. It was the successful conclusion of this visit to Britain that led Pope Celestine to send Palladius to Ireland.22 In 431 CE, Prosper of Aquitaine’s Chronicle tells us that Palladius (fl. 408-431CE), a highly educated, Gallic bishop, was ordained at Rome by Pope Celestine as the first bishop to the Christians already present in Ireland.23 His mission was to ensure continuity with Rome in the midst of the so-called Pelagian heresy in Britain. Though the dates are not without debate,24 sometime in the early fifth century the Briton, St Patrick, began his mission 19 20 21 22 23 24

See contributions in Pryce, 1998 See Charles-Edwards, 2003a, pp. 20-26 See Wooding, 2002 Charles-Edwards, 2003a, p. 26 See Mommsen, 1892, pp. 341-499 See pp. 107-22 below

Introduc tion: Early Irish Rhetoric

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in Ireland, and it is with Patrick’s two extant texts, the Epistola ad Milites Corotici (‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’) and Confessio (‘Confession’) that the Irish rhetorical tradition begins. With the arrival of Palladius and Patrick, Ireland entered into a relationship with Rome and Britain that would endure throughout our era, 431 CE-800 CE.25 The evidence for the early period in Ireland is sparse, and for the fifth century we are limited to the writings of St Patrick. Nothing of Palladius’s mission found its way into the historical record and, according to the annals and Patrician hagiography, it was short-lived and unsuccessful. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Palladius would have brought books and the means of producing more along with him from Rome. Despite the dearth of evidence for Palladius’s time in Ireland, we will see that Patrick’s writings provide us with great insight into the nature of rhetorical education and practice in fifth-century Britain and Gaul. From the outset, a rhetorical history of fifth-century Ireland is a multicultural one. We can be certain that Patrick also brought with him to Ireland books and writing materials, and we can also be certain that among the Christian communities he established, schools were of the utmost importance. As was noted at the outset, Christianity is a religion of the book, and literacy was essential to reading Scripture. What this may have looked like, however, is a matter of pure conjecture. That being said, one can say with a fair degree of confidence that Patrick would have brought biblical codices, the Psalter (which was central to elementary education), and perhaps synodical decrees and writings of the Latin Fathers.26 Despite this relative dearth of evidence for the fifth and sixth centuries, Charles-Edwards argues that by the seventh century Christian religion and Latin culture had spread throughout the northern Atlantic region: ‘As 25 On evidence of relations between the Irish and the southern English in the seventh century, see Herren, 1998 26 ‘Codices’ is a more accurate term for representing the state of Scripture at this time, as canonization was incomplete and there existed no ‘Bible’ as a modern reader may think. Such a bound item did not exist until the thirteenth century. Patrick used the Vetus Latina, or Old Latin Bible regularly, though he also uses Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Greek Septuagint. O Loughlin, 2001, p. 48, writes ‘It would be anachronistic to speak of ‘Bibles’, or even of ‘the Scriptures’ collectively. The notion of ‘the Bible’ lay centuries ahead, and even the notion of a pandect – a single very large manuscript containing all the books in ‘the Canon’ – was unknown. Equally, the notion of a fixed list of books – the Canon – was relatively new, and no single list had yet gained dominance, and the presence in Ireland (and elsewhere) of so many works now termed ‘apocrypha’ shows how long it took for one canon to establish itself’. Patrick likely brought with him the Book of Psalms, portions of the Old Testament, the Pauline Letters, and other miscellaneous items, and these were also likely recopied in Ireland

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the first monks had settled in the sandy deserts of Egypt, so the monks of the world’s edge settled the deserts of the sea’.27 The Christianity of the Roman Empire was transformed into a Christianity that could easily cross boundaries. Christian learning had come to Ireland from Britain, and the Irish would play an important role in the spread of Christian learning to communities in northern Britain, including Lindisfarne in Northumbria and Iona in Scotland, in the following centuries. From Ireland, Christian learning would also find its way to Burgundy and northern Italy through the efforts of the Irish peregrini, monks who chose self-exile from Ireland. The background of this practice is complex. Some peregrini sought to take up the revered call to exile in pursuit of solitude across the ocean. Some ventured to islands in the north Atlantic, such as the Faroe Islands, and there enjoyed solitude. Some travelled to Gaul, where one might more easily find a safe space for monastic pursuit, as well as wealthy patrons to fund the monastery. Though peregrinatio pro Christo was not a custom limited to the Irish, the Irish took it up with particular enthusiasm, and there is evidence that this practice was revered in pre-Christian Ireland.28 The most famous peregrinus, Columbanus, and his followers established monastic communities throughout Gaul and in northern Italy in the late sixth and early seventh century, monasteries that would be essential in the coming Carolingian Renaissance. Columbanus’s extant letters and sermons, composed in the late sixth or early seventh century, reveal a man trained in an advanced Latin and capable of rhetorical dexterity.29 Though written on the Continent in the last years of his life, the letters especially reveal something of the rhetorical and grammatical training Columbanus received in Ireland.30 From the seventh century forward, there is a wealth of medieval Irish literature in Latin and the vernacular, including a vast body of saga, hagiography, law-tracts, poetry, genealogy, grammars and other learned handbooks, exegetical works, as well as ecclesiastical and learned texts.31 Though no rhetorical handbooks of Irish provenance survive (or have been 27 Charles-Edwards, 2003a, p. 115 28 On the Irish social background of Irish peregrinatio, see Meeder, 2019; Johnston, 2016; Charles-Edwards, 1976 29 For a sobering critique of earlier scholarship on writings attributed to Columbanus and a study of his style, see Smit, 1971 30 See Winterbottom, 1976, for a discussion of late antique rhetoric and Columbanus’s style 31 For comprehensive surveys, see Ó Corráin, 2017; Charles-Edwards, 2005; Kenney, 1966; For surveys of vernacular literature, see Ní Mhaonaigh, 2006; Ó Cathasaigh, 2006; Carney, 2005; For a survey of Latin literature, see Ó Cróinín, 2005; Sharpe, 1997; Lapidge and Sharpe, 1985

Introduc tion: Early Irish Rhetoric

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discovered), the literary evidence makes clear the importance of rhetoric in early Irish schools.32 It is within these types of sources, in unexpected genres, that evidence for rhetorical learning lies. Early Irish vernacular literature is broken into several periods: ProtoGoidelic, before fourth century CE; Primitive Irish period, fourth to sixth century CE; Archaic/Early Old Irish, c. seventh century; Old Irish, eighth to ninth centuries, CE; and the Middle Irish period, c. tenth-twelfth centuries CE.33 The earliest Old Irish passages are primarily preserved in continental manuscripts including the Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles (mid-eighth century),34 the Milan Glosses on a commentary on the Psalms (early ninth century),35 and the St Gall Glosses on Priscian’s encyclopaedic grammar.36 Though Priscian was likely known in Ireland by the seventh century, the St Gall manuscript was written in the middle of the ninth century by Irish scribes, probably in Ireland. The Middle Irish period boasts a vast body of literature preserved in manuscripts of Irish provenance, including Lebor na hUidre (Book of Dun Cow) and Book of Leinster. Some of the texts preserved in these manuscripts may have been recorded from much older exemplars. In any case, Ireland boasts the largest body of vernacular literature in the medieval west. The present work consists of three case studies representative of the potential of early Irish traditions for the student of rhetoric. In this, it is in no way comprehensive. However, it is my intention to introduce the student of rhetoric to the primary and secondary sources that are indispensable to a rhetorical history of early Ireland. I also provide a brief historical sketch of the western European and Irish contexts in order to better situate the rhetorical analyses that constitute the bulk of this study. In addition, I will also provide an overview of scholarship on secular and Christian learning in early Ireland. The texts chosen as the subject of each case study represent only some of the genres that offer promise for a history of rhetoric, but they also represent different facets of early Irish learning. 32 According to Czerny, 1874, p. 235, in the catalogue of the holdings of the St Florian library in the twelfth century, a Rhetorica Ailerani is given. This seventh-century writer was the author of the Interpretatio mystica et moralis progenitorum Domini Iesu Christi (See Breen, 1995b), as well as a shorter poem. Though a rhetorical analysis of the Interpretatio mystica may shed light on the rhetorical learning of Aileran, the Rhetorica Ailerani no longer survives 33 For those interested in learning Early Irish, see Stifter, 2006; see also the resources gathered here: https://www3.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/iul/ (accessed 17-03-2021) 34 For a digital edition of the glosses, see https://wuerzburg.ie/ (accessed 17-03-2021) 35 For a digital edition of the glosses, see Griffith and Stifter, 2014: https://www.univie.ac.at/ indogermanistik/milan_glosses/ (accessed 17-03-2021) 36 For a digital edition of the glosses, see http://www.stgallpriscian.ie/ (accessed 17-03-2021)

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In Chs. 3 and 4, I provide a rhetorical analysis of St Patrick’s writings, with special attention to the adaptation of Roman rhetoric to epistolography. Patrick’s writings are the earliest extant in late antique Ireland, and in this they provide insight into a period in which evidence is slim, in both Ireland and Britain. In Ch. 5, I will look at the Hisperica famina, an example of an Irish rhetoric likely composed in Ireland in the late seventh century. In this analysis, I uncover evidence that, in addition to Donatus, Isidore, and Priscian’s Praeexercitamina (an adaptation of Hermogenes’ Progymnasmata), the colloquia and hermeneumata of Late Antiquity were likely known by the authors of the Hisperica. I also discuss the style referred to as ‘hisperic’ by scholars of Hiberno-Latin literature, an archaizing, deliberately arcane and affectedly learned style that is reminiscent of that of writers of the ‘third sophistic’,37 such as Apuleius, Aulus Gellius, and Fronto.38 Furthermore, I examine the metaphors used to describe eloquence and oratorical performance in light of early Irish literature. Finally, I will turn to an example of the tradition of the secular learned classes of early Ireland, the filid. Here, I will briefly describe what is called rosc, a type of highly rhetorical, obscure, non-rhyming, syllabic, alliterative verse associated with the filid, a learned caste consisting of a union of ecclesiastical and secular scholars.39 Rosc is found in many early Irish law-texts and sagas and possesses an archaizing, stylistic function. Though it is primarily a poetic form, it is also a non-metrical rhetorical style in direct speech, and the two are often combined. 40 It was likely developed in native verbal art, but its stylistic features include parallelism, homoioteleuton, amplif ication, abnormal word order, and word-play, which Johan Corthals notes are ‘perfectly matched by Late and medieval Latin rhetorical and poetical style’ and are strongly influenced by Latin and Christian culture. 41 It was the province of those verbal artists who 37 This term, ‘third sophistic’, is controversial and unsettled, but scholars agree that, though marking continuity with and change from the second sophistic, it begins around 250 CE and is predominantly the reserve of Christian writers indebted to the pre-Christian tradition in both the Greek and Latin speaking worlds. For an overview of definitions and debates, see Fowler and Puertas, 2014 38 See Pernot, 2005, p. 142 39 Breatnach, 1984, pp. 452-53 writes of the sub-categories of rosc: ‘the first consists of syllabically regular lines with a fixed cadence and alliteration, but without rhyme; the second of lines with regular number of stressed words per line and alliteration; while the third type shows no apparent regular syllabic or stress patterns, but is heavily alliterative’ 40 Corthals, 1996, p. 17 41 Ibid., p. 26

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possessed judicial authority, though it is often ascribed to legendary figures in law-texts and sagas. In order to understand filidecht, the craft of the filid, I will also look to an eighth-century, prosimetric learned text that appears in a fifteenth-century legal codex and that is associated with a poetico-legal school known as the Nemed School. The poem, titled here ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’, likely dates to the eighth century and describes the nature of verbal art and learning, the ranks and privileges of the filid, and the divine source of inspiration for verbal art. This poem is the product of secular and ecclesiastical collaboration and is a prime example of the syncretism that marks not only early Irish literature, but early Irish intellectual culture.

Historiography and Medieval Rhetoric It is clear that the rhetorical arts were still a significant part of education throughout Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. However, these periods have received little attention from historians of rhetoric.42 For some time, a historiographical problem has plagued the history of late antique and medieval rhetoric. Buying into the narrative of decline and rebirth–a narrative that served the ends of modernity–and taking ancient Greece and Rome as the pinnacle of culture, these historians believed that since the production of rhetoric handbooks and treatises ceased, the significance of rhetoric must have waned with the dawning of Christianity and the authoritarian, ascetic life of the monastery. With the waning glory of Roman civic life, rhetoric was no longer relevant. Therefore, the dominant narrative goes, if rhetoric is knowledge of speaking well on civil affairs, there must have been little use for it in a landscape dominated by ‘barbarian’ warlords or subject to papal authority. If rhetoric were studied, handbooks or other evidence would have survived, and the survival of numerous grammar handbooks must mean rhetoric had been swallowed up by grammar, leaving rhetoric a pale shadow of its former glory, having been reduced to discussions of tropes and figures. It is my contention that evidence for the continued relevance of rhetoric does indeed exist, though we must look in the right places. The historian of medieval rhetoric must turn to a variety of genres, media, and modalities

42 For a challenge to this dearth in rhetorical history see especially Duncan, 2015, and the sources cited there

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and approach rhetorical artefacts as dynamic adaptations and syncretic compositions. Susan Jarratt states the historiographic problem succinctly: Traditional histories of rhetoric could be defined as those histories having taken as their subject matter chiefly documents explicitly calling themselves ‘rhetorics’: i.e., pedagogical treatises concerned with the composition and delivery of persuasive orations … This selection is based on a narrow definition of rhetoric as the teaching and performance of an opinion-based discourse for use in the social sphere as distinct from the poetic and the philosophical or scientific … The revisionary historian today will work with an expanded range of materials: not only the pedagogical treatises summarized in traditional histories, but any literary artefact as it operates to shape knowledge and effect social action. 43

By the early Middle Ages, the uses to which rhetoric was put had changed, and the historian of rhetoric must look beyond the handbook tradition. This makes perfect sense, as rhetoric had always been versatile and adaptable. As for those historians of rhetoric who have studied the Middle Ages, even the most prominent have found little of interest in the medieval rhetorical tradition prior to the twelfth century, and none of the major surveys treats texts of Irish provenance. 44 In the words of Martin Camargo, the Middle Ages have been treated as ‘flyover country’. 45 The very notion of a ‘middle age’ limits our framework as within it ‘middleness’ is figured. It is a period necessary to the ends of those who would forward a narrative of decline from which the modern world has emerged. In kind, medieval rhetoric ‘has been defined by what it is not – the “true”, “authentic,” or “primary” rhetoric that was lost in the collapse of classical culture and recovered in the Renaissance’. 46 The absence of ‘new’, or ‘original’, rhetorical treatises has led to this narrative of the discontinuity of rhetorical practice. Yet studies of rhetorical innovation and application tell another story. Rhetoric has always been a fluid art, difficult to pin down and define. Many scholars maintain the Platonic view of rhetoric that distinguishes verba, 43 Jarratt, 1998, pp. 13-14 44 See, for example, the trailblazing scholarship of James J. Murphy, who revolutionized the study of medieval rhetoric, but who does not consider Irish texts. In large part this is due to the fact that many of the relevant texts have only been edited and translated in the last few decades, but also because rhetoric handbooks of Irish provenance have not survived; See Murphy, 2005; idem, 1978; idem, 1974 45 Camargo, 2003, p. 21 46 Ibid., p. 23

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verbal expression, and res, the matter of speech. That is, content and form are distinguished, and rhetoric is simply a matter of style, ornament, and formal presentation. This is bound up in an understanding of truth as a verbal rapprochement of reality that is separate from language rather than understanding truth as produced within discourse. While an examination of the influence of handbook theory on rhetorical artifacts is not without merit, the dissimulatio artis inspired an attempt to conceal theoretical models. Therefore, a rhetorical analysis of late antique and medieval texts must push beyond contemporary theories or models for composition and tend to the rhetorical nature of the text itself, the reality it constructs and its persuasive potential. Even when considering handbooks, no one set of prescriptive rhetorical practices or rules could speak to the exigencies of a given moment of utterance or composition. In this regard, rhetorical practice is always situated and situational. In Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, rhetoric was Christianized and, as Rita Copeland explains, ‘became attached to different methods and branches of knowledge–whether logic or poetics or theology–or to different practical aims, such as preaching, law, business or diplomacy’. 47 The historian of medieval rhetoric must therefore look beyond the rhetorical handbook to the wealth of medieval discourses that are rhetorical. For some scholars of late antique Christian rhetoric, neglect of actual speeches and letters in the study of ancient rhetoric does a disservice to the rhetorical tradition. Instead, rhetorical artefacts have as much, if not more, to reveal about rhetorical practice than descriptive handbooks. In a rhetorical analysis of the First Letter of Clement, Odd Magne Bakke writes that even though rhetorical handbooks are descriptive, they necessarily systematize, and in this tendency the abstractions they represent fail to capture the wide range of practices from which they draw. If a rhetorical analysis of an ancient text consults only handbooks, ‘there is a risk that one may over-systematize and overschematize, and force structures onto the letter which did not exist in actual contemporary rhetorical discourses or letters’. 48 Bakke’s method takes the rhetorical artefact, in this instance a letter, as primary, and turns to the handbooks likely available to the author in order to see what the two might reveal. One must be careful not to force a rhetorical reading on a primary text in order to satisfy a preconceived notion of what proper rhetoric looked like in a given time and place. Not only does this lead to an unsatisfactory, if not misleading analysis, but also 47 Copeland, 1991, p. 176 48 Bakke, 2001, p. 23

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works against one’s ability to determine the significance of a rhetorical artefact (or group of artefacts) to the history of rhetoric. Such an approach is also misleading in that a properly rhetorical letter, for example, may be rhetorical in its own right–in its purpose–but not fit with the ‘norms’ as perceived by contemporary scholars. Another important consideration in this study will be the definition of rhetoric, which I will use in two distinct senses. The first is considered in the classical sense, though throughout Antiquity and Late Antiquity various definitions have competed since Aristotle’s formal articulation of the art. While indebted to Greek rhetoric, Roman rhetoric is distinct, and undoubtedly figures such as Cicero, Quintilian, and pseudo-Cicero had a profound and lasting influence on the rhetorical arts of the Middle Ages. 49 For these rhetoricians, rhetoric is, in essence, vis persuadendi (‘persuasion’). However, it is also the art of speaking and writing well on civila negotia (‘civic affairs’), whereas grammar is the art of speaking or writing correctly.50 There is also a moral component to the orator’s craft. Quintilian famously wrote that the orator is ‘vir bonus dicendi peritus’ (‘a good man speaking well’).51 The orator who composes epideictic rhetoric must be able to recognize what is honestas (‘morally worthy’) and turpia (‘morally reprehensible’).52 By the fifth century, encyclopaedic works grew in popularity, and in these texts classical learning was condensed into textbook form, a form embraced by many Christian scholars. These include Cassiodorus’s Expositio psalmorum (Commentary on the Psalms) (c. 540-50 CE) and Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Litterarum (Principles of Sacred and Secular Literature) (543-55 CE), Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (Etymologies) (c. 630 CE), and Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) (c. 410-20 CE).53 Though following Roman rhetoricians, Cassiodorus saw no reason for students to pore over the entirety of Quintilian or Cicero. Some scholars have read the Expositio psalmorum (hereafter CP) of Cassiodorus as an ars rhetorica, and this had possibly 49 See Ward, 2018, for a detailed examination of the persistence of Roman rhetoric in the Middle Ages 50 Giomini and Celentano 1980, pp. 24-25 51 All references to Quintilian’s Instituio Oratoria rely on the edition of Butler, 1922; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 2.21.4-6 52 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 2.20.8 53 There are a number of commentaries on Capella’s De Nuptiis dating to the ninth century, three of which are the work of Irish scholars working in Carolingian circles. For an overview of these manuscripts, see Esposito, 1910, reprinted in Lapidge, 1990, pp. 499-507

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arrived in the Irish monastery at Iona by the seventh century.54 Cassiodorus wrote in CP ‘You masters of secular literature, realise that from the psalms have flowed forth your figures of speech, your proofs of different kinds, your definitions, your teachings about all disciplines, for in these writings you find enshrined what you realise was said long before the existence of your schools’.55 For Cassiodorus, the principles of ancient rhetoric were abundant in scripture, and a student need not read the speeches of great orators to gain mastery over the art. Yet the influence of Cicero remained strong and, as Laurent Pernot writes, from Antiquity to modern times the notion of rhetoric based upon his works was not limited to public discourse, ‘but concentrated in itself the potentialities of literature, science, and humanism’, constituting a ‘very broad and overwhelming conception of rhetoric, which opened to rhetoric a vast domain and to whose spread cultural institutions have contributed’.56 Rhetoric came to have an influence on history, literature, liturgical texts, epistolography, and even architecture, and it is in such texts that the student of rhetoric in early medieval Ireland must turn.57 John O. Ward writes that classical rhetoric served the Middle Ages in a variety of ways, and it ‘provided guides and tips for the appropriate use of humour, on increasing memory capacity, on analysing legal issues, on acting and gesture, for oral and written style, conversation, letter-writing, or speech-making’ and, in short, ‘it was made to fit every kind of situation requiring or benefiting from persuasive or effective communication’.58 In kind, Matthew Kempshall warns ‘Concentrating on material drawn from Cicero and Quintilian risks giving the impression that the study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages was simply a case of the recovery and transmission of a single ‘classical’ mode of analysis and, as such, that rhetoric constituted a more or less static art and discipline throughout most of this period’.59 The second definition of rhetoric that will be used in analysis of secular verbal arts is that inspired by the American philosopher and rhetorician 54 O Loughlin, 2001, p. 51; For Cassiodorus’s Expositio psalmorum as an ars rhetorica, see Astell, 1999 55 ‘Cognoscite, magistri saecularium litterarum, hic schemata, hinc diuersi generis argumenta, hinc def initions, hinc disciplinarum omnium profluxisse doctrinas, quando in his litteris posita cognoscitis quae ante scholas uestras longe prius dicta fuisse sentitis’ (Expositionum libri psalmorum 23.10.192-196) 56 Pernot, 2005, p. 121 57 On rhetoric and history, see Kempshall, 2011; on rhetoric and the architecture of Augustan Rome, see Lamp, 2013; on rhetoric and the arts in the Middle Ages, see Carruthers, 2010 58 Ward, 1995, p. 10 59 Kempshall, 2011, pp. 11-12

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Kenneth Burke. This conception of rhetoric challenges the Platonic distinction between verba and res. Burke’s dramatistic approach to rhetoric posits all language as persuasive, and he defines humans as symbol-using animals who, through symbolic action, construct social reality. In A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke defines rhetoric as ‘The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents’ and ‘the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols’.60 Burke’s dramatistic definition of language as symbolic action that induces action and constructs social reality, that exerts through speech a persuasive action on an audience, is a useful heuristic for examining verbal art in early Irish texts. It serves to take us beyond a limited understanding of rhetorical practices, or rhetoric as an art of expression, and it gives us the tools necessary to develop an understanding of early Irish rhetorical practices, both secular and Christian. Burke’s understanding of rhetoric has been of value to studies of ‘cultural rhetorics’. That is, though Hellenic and Hellenistic cultures are often viewed as the harbingers of the rhetorical arts as a formal system of persuasion, cultures the world over place oratory at the centre of social life. Numerous recent studies on the oratory of Indigenous cultures, Native American cultures, ancient Chinese and Egyptian cultures, and African cultures, have helped to decenter scholarly discourses that have in large part treated rhetoric and oratory as a western phenomenon.61 Indeed, oratorical performance is central to the social lives of numerous cultures, and the verbal art forms that emerge from and shape such cultural contexts are worthy of study in their own right, without recourse to the western tradition. The current study will treat both late antique rhetoric as it was transmitted to Ireland, as well as distinctively Irish oratory as it is seen in a syncretic form in the Hisperica famina and the ‘Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’.

A Note on Periodization There have been several important contributions to our understanding of the interaction of Irish and late antique literature, studies that demonstrate 60 Burke, 1950, pp. 41-43 61 Cultural rhetorics is the preferred term as ‘comparative rhetorics’ tends to perpetuate the western v. non-western binary in which western rhetoric rests in a position of superiority. For a discussion of these matters and an advanced theoretical positioning and methodology, see Powell et al, 2014; For model studies, see especially Stromberg, 2006; Lu 1998; Hutto 2002

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convincingly the influence of Roman literary models and rhetoric on Irish saga of the Middle Irish Period.62 Though such studies have influenced the methodology of the present study, the focus here is the earlier body of literature produced during the so-called ‘Golden Age of Irish Learning’, the fifth century through the early ninth century CE. This era is nearest the arrival of Christian learning from Ireland’s late antique neighbours and prior to the disruptions and turmoil of the ‘Viking Ages’, begun in earnest around 795 CE, but intensifying around 830.63 It is important to note, however, that Irish learning by no means ceased after the Viking Wars, and that Roman influence on Irish literature continued throughout the Middle Ages.64 This study focuses on representative texts produced between c. 431800 CE. When speaking of the pre-Carolingian Era, or late antique and early medieval Ireland, one must note that periodization is a necessary and troubled act. Any attempt at defining an era or period necessitates exclusion of that which does not f it the picture the historian wishes to paint. Arnaldo Marcone writes that: ‘The precariousness of any kind of historical periodization is based upon two different elements: the historical research that precedes it and the different sensibility that different cultures and ages have for their past’.65 Indeed, historiography and narrative of national origins are deeply ideological, something witnessed most clearly in the ‘nativist’ debate among Irish historians in the twentieth

62 See Clarke and Ní Mhaonaigh, 2020; Ní Mhaonaigh, 2017; idem, 2015; idem, 2014; Miles, 2011; idem, 2009; idem, 2007; Clarke, 2014; idem, 2009; O’Connor 2014; idem, 2013; Corthals, 1996 63 Ó Corráin, 1972, pp. 80-110 explains that the Viking invasions were a gradual yet destructive affair. The first recorded attack took place in 795, and a succession of attacks on monastic settlements on islands along the northern parts of both the west and east coast continued throughout the ninth century, increasing in intensity from 830. The coastal monasteries took the brunt of these southward, Norse incursions, and inland monasteries were largely unaffected. The Viking Age is often used as a cut off point for the ‘Golden Age of Irish Learning’, but Ó Corráin, 2015, has argued that though the consistent sacking of churches did indeed impact manuscript production and the wealth of the monasteries, the impact on learning and manuscript production was not as great as some have argued 64 Miles, 2011, p. 16, has warned against distinguishing between pre-Carolingian and Carolingian learning in Ireland as the latter term suggests that the period following the ‘Golden Age of Irish Learning’ stands in its shadows. It is not my intention to promote a narrative of the decline of Irish learning following the ninth-century Viking Wars, but to stress to the non-expert the extent and influence of the Irish learned tradition in this early period, a period almost entirely glossed over by historians of rhetoric 65 Marcone, 2008, p. 10

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century.66 Nonetheless, periodization is a necessary aspect of historical study. As we will see below, Ireland maintained communication with Christian Rome and British and Continental colleagues throughout our period. This troubles the waters when distinguishing the late antique and early medieval periods. In short, there is no clear cut-off date between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and the geopolitical circumstances of a given region must be taken into consideration.67 Late Antiquity, c. 200-600, is a period that emerged in response to the narrative of decline that dominated traditional historiographies, narratives that sought to create a clear distinction between the classical and the Christian.68 But Christianity did not emerge in a vacuum, and the rituals, beliefs, and values of early Christianity are a development of the Mediterranean world. As we see in late antique and early medieval Ireland, Christian practices were adapted to Irish society in new and unique ways. Though there is no clear and absolute moment of transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Medieval in Ireland, we must see the Irish as both unique from and concomitant with the cultural movements of sub-Roman Britain and Gaul and, later, Western Europe. The early Irish were inheritors of the Christian learned traditions of Late Antiquity, but the Irish tendency was reception and transformation. This is perhaps witnessed most clearly in the early development of vernacular literacy shortly after the introduction of Latin to Ireland’s shores. Therefore, these periods generally used by historians serve as an easy and recognizable reference point, but they do not apply to Ireland in the same ways they might to Roman Britain and Gaul. However, as the early Irish church developed an independent, if not composite, literary identity, and as Irish scholars established practices and beliefs that distinguish them from their British neighbours, we may identify a fluid and dynamic point of transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages in Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries. The complexities and difficulties of periodization aside, the fifth through the eighth centuries represent the earliest stratum of literary activity in Ireland. Scholars have identified a number of subsequent, medieval ‘renaissances’, such as the Carolingian Renaissance, the Benedictine Reform, the 66 For a comprehensive summary of these debates, see Johnston, 2013, pp. 20-25; Wooding, 2009 67 Ando, 2008, p. 32, provides an overview of periods from influential historians, ranging from a genesis in 150, 200, 250, 395, or 425 to a terminus in 600, 700, 750, or 800 68 Brown, 1971, proposed the ‘long Late Antiquity period’ and included not only western Europe, but the Roman and Sasanian territories in the east

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Ottonian Renaissance, and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. However, the early period demonstrates the continuation of intense intellectual activity well before these movements and problematises the very idea of ‘renaissance’, suggesting instead a continued intellectual movement marked by varying degrees of intensity in part due to socio-historical contexts. Of course, the survival of manuscript evidence is a limitation on the historian’s understanding of the extent and nature of learning.

1

Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland and the Latin West

Though Ireland was never properly a part of the Roman Empire, it was a part of the Roman frontier. The extent of exchange and interaction with Britain and the Continent justifies our consideration of Ireland in the context of Late Antiquity as early as the third century CE. Elva Johnston has noted that the fifth century has served as ‘a chronological boundary’ and, as a result, ‘early Irish historical scholarship is greatly invested in analyzing conversion, Christianization and changing religious affiliations’, rarely treating the earlier period.1 Johnston has challenged the tendency of Irish historians to view Ireland as isolated from the Roman world and has argued that it should be viewed in a comparative context and as a frontier of the Empire. She writes of Roman frontiers that ‘They are no longer viewed as lines on a map, as hard borders defended by large-scale fortifications … instead they are seen as zones of complex cultural, economic, and military interaction’.2 The influence and reception of Roman, Gallo-Roman, and Romano-British culture along Irish transmarine frontier zones is witnessed in the archaeological record and includes decoration, ornament, and, of greatest significance to the current study, literacy, ogham being the primary example.3 It is clear now that Christianity and its literate culture arrived in Ireland at an early date, likely by way of Roman Britain. The Romans had arrived in what they would call the Roman province of Britannia as early as 55 or 54 BCE, as Julius Caesar reports in his Gallic Wars. However, the Roman presence would not endure until 43 CE when Roman emperor Claudius, in front of 200,000 soldiers, invaded the island from the south. The Romans would gradually take control of much of Britain over the coming decades. The Roman presence in Britain was naturally to spread to the near neighbours in Ireland. The archaeological evidence shows that the Irish were involved in maritime trade with Romano-British and Spanish traders, and perhaps even traders from the Mediterranean world, as early as the later fourth or early fifth 1 Johnston, 2017a, p. 108 2 Ibid., p. 111 3 Ibid., pp. 117-20

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch01

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century CE.4 Burials in the Roman fashion, found scattered along the eastern coastal region, provide evidence that Romans may have resided in Ireland as early as the first or second century CE.5 Pot sherds of Late Roman Amphorae, Phoenician Red Slipware, African Red Slipware, coins, and Roman style burials also point to interaction with the western French and Romans, whether from Gaul or Britain.6 A ship discovered in Lough Lene in Co. Westmeath, built with Irish materials but using a classical Mediterranean fashion, suggests a Roman presence in Ireland, or perhaps an Irishman who had lived and worked as a ship builder in the Mediterranean region and returned home.7 The discovery of the ship certainly points to trade with the Mediterranean world. Trade, especially of slaves, was also one avenue for the spread of Christianity. In addition to material evidence of exchange, there is evidence that mercenary Irish soldiers served in the Roman army, another possible avenue for Christianity in Ireland. With the arrival of Christianity, there would have been a demand for wine for communion, as well as olive oil and other luxury items. These items would have been available through long-established trade routes, routes witnessed in the remarkably accurate map of Ireland created in 140 CE by the Greek astronomer and cartographer, Ptolemy.8 Though the Romans never colonized Ireland, it was part of the Roman Empire’s limes, or ‘frontier zone’. The archaeological, dynastic, and linguistic records leave no doubt that the early Irish traded with the late antique, Mediterranean world.9 With Christianity came literacy. The earliest example of vernacular literacy in Ireland is ogham, an early form of vernacular writing, based 4 E. Breatnach, 2014, pp. 153-155 provides an overview of the archaeological evidence, including collections of Roman objects, gold medallions of Constantine and Constantius, dating to the 320s and 330s, and two hordes of Roman silver dated to the late fourth or early fifth century found in Ireland 5 See Raftery, 1994, pp. 206-210 6 See Loveluck and O Sullivan, 2016, especially pp. 19-28; See also the seminal paper by Wooding, 2002 7 Raftery, 1994, pp. 208-209, points out that radiocarbon dating places the ship somewhere between 400-100 BCE; however, taking into consideration ‘old-wood effect’ attributed to the yew wood from which the dating sample was drawn, it could date to the early Roman period 8 E. Breatnach, 2014, p. 41; Darcy and Flynn, 2008; Raftery, 1994, pp. 204-206 9 E. Breatnach, 2014, p. 155; Potsherds, Roman coins, ogham stones and evidence of luxury items provide evidence for a Christian community on the south-western Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry as early as the fifth century, either before or concomitant with the arrival of Ireland’s first attested bishops. Luxury items, such as fine pottery and tableware, in Iveragh suggest an established Christian community where ritualistic activities, including liturgy, reading, and writing, would have been possible. The material evidence suggests a Christian community in the south of Ireland deeply influenced by Mediterranean Christianity, and perhaps an educated elite who were travelling between the southern regions of Ireland and western Britain

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on Latin, inscribed on standing stones. These stones are found especially throughout the south and southwest of Ireland, as well as in Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. The script itself may have been created in Roman Britain by individuals literate in a regional variety of Latin. Their dispersal in these regions further suggests cultural interaction at an early date. The ogham inscriptions are based on the Latin alphabet and consist of a series of notches along a line, similar to Norse runic inscriptions.10 Based on linguistic evidence, some scholars have dated ogham stones to as early as the fourth century, though the majority were inscribed in the fifth and sixth centuries.11 The inscriptions include patronymic kinship formulae and provide valuable evidence of the early political landscape in Ireland, evidence that is in some cases confirmed by entries in the annals or saga literature. The inscriptions were likely used to mark grave-sites and the territorial boundaries of ruling dynasties, though there also exists a ‘scholastic’ variety.12 In Lebor Ogaim, an Old Irish tract on the ogham alphabet preserved in a number of manuscripts, gives a variety of 100 variant modes of writing, some intentionally cryptic and intended as riddles.13 Though ogham stones do provide evidence of an early form of literacy and writing, their function may have been symbolic.14 Literacy was the province of an elite, learned class at this time, whether of the surviving Royal aristocracy in sub-Roman Britain, the curiales, or clerics. However, the line and notch writing system would have been recognizable symbolically to the pre-literate and literate alike. In any case, the ogham stones, along with Irish and Pictish high crosses and carved stones, positioned prominently in the landscape, should be of great interest to the student of late antique and material rhetoric.15 The Ireland that Patrick arrived to in the early fifth century was in large part pre-Christian, though we know from Prosper’s Chronicle that Palladius, who traditionally has been believed to have preceded Patrick and who was 10 The ogham stones, as well as a wealth of secondary resources, can be found at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Ogham in 3D website: https://ogham.celt.dias.ie/menu. php?lang=en&menuitem=00 (accessed 17-03-2021) 11 McManus, 1991, pp. 118-120 12 See Swift, 2003, and the sources cited there 13 The tract is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308-314, T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1-35.28, and National Library of Ireland MS G53 1-22; See Swift, 2008; See Macalister, 1937 14 Johnston, 2017a, p. 25, writes ‘It is worth speculating, though, that the majority of those who viewed monumental ogham saw the notches and dots as symbolic forms rather than as written words. This symbolic quality of ogham may be one reason that notches and dots were chosen over the actual Latin alphabet’ 15 The ‘Irish Inscribed Stones Project’ at NUI Galway is an excellent resource for such research: http://www.nuigalway.ie/irish-inscribed-stones-project/ (accessed 17-03-2021)

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sent by Rome, was sent as bishop to Christians already present there. Combined with the material evidence cited above, it is clear that Christians were present in early Ireland. The social and political landscape of late antique Ireland is difficult to summarise succinctly as there was a great deal of regional variation, and there was no centralized system of monarchy like that in Merovingian Gaul. There is little in the way of conclusive evidence as, aside from ogham stones, the written record begins with Patrick, writing sometime in the mid to late fifth century, and picks up again in the middle of the seventh. Later literary texts that portray the pre-Christian Irish world are in large part untrustworthy as historical evidence, akin to hagiography in the shaping of fantastical and legendary mythos, often with propagandistic ends for the patron funding the scriptorium from which the manuscripts emerged. Ireland in the fifth century would have been quite different from the Mediterranean world, Gaul, or Roman Britain. It was a rural society with no cities, no urban lower and middle classes, and the basic social unit was the kin-group, not the individual. There was no coinage, mass production of goods, and trade was in large part limited to the coastal regions.16 However, we know that by the fifth century Christianity had a budding presence in Ireland, and that by the sixth century it had been preached widely, though pre-Christian religion was still quite predominant. As for the structure of Irish society in our period, we know little of the fifth century. One must be cautious when using evidence from a later period to make claims about the reality of those that precede it. For the sixth century we have no surviving manuscripts of absolute authenticity, though seventh-century writings may be said to reflect some truth. The law-texts of the seventh and eighth centuries provide the best evidence, and these are of two kinds: secular and canon laws. The bulk of early Irish legal texts were written between 650-750 CE, at the same time as the composition of the earliest origin-legends, the earliest immram ‘voyage’ text, and the earliest of the sagas of the Ulster cycle, as well as the earliest grammar of the Irish language. This suggests that legal writing may have been part of a movement ‘to give textual definition to Irish tradition’ in the eighth century.17 As noted, the legal texts are of two kinds. Canon law, written in Latin, is ecclesiastical, whereas secular law, written in the vernacular, is secular.18 Some of the legal texts are explicitly stated to be the result of synodical decree, whereas others are the work of a legal school or single 16 Stancliffe, 2005, p. 397 17 Charles-Edwards, 1999, p. 6 18 Ibid., p. 5

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scholar and intended more as handbooks than codified law.19 The secular laws are believed to be native to Ireland as it was never colonized by the Romans but was introduced to Christianity and literacy by Roman Britain. Roman law had lost authority in Britain by the fifth century (though it was still the law of the land in the Frankish kingdoms of Gaul), replaced by a re-emergence of native British law.20 The evidence of the early law-texts reveals something of the organization of sixth- and seventh-century Irish society, one in which Christian and secular systems of governance were intertwined,21 but evidence for the social organization of the pre-Christian period must be deduced from material evidence, place-names, literature, and in large part from later law-texts; we can never be entirely certain of the accuracy of texts produced in Christian scriptoria. Pre-Christian Irish society was organized according to a system of kinship established under regional kings, a system that adapted to ecclesiastical organization after the arrival of the church, and that was based on the status of the individuals who were part of a basic territorial unit, a túath (‘petty kingdom’) (plural, ‘túatha’), that was overseen by a rí (‘king’). In kind, the importance of the hereditary rights of the kinship system later influenced ecclesiastical organization. The well-known law-text Bretha Nemed Toísech includes a section on status that gives a series of seven grades for nobles, including three types of king, rí benn, rí ruirech, and ollam.22 A king who was over a single túath was also called rí túaith. In addition to kings, lords, and freemen, the legal texts relate the nemed (‘privileged’) groups in Irish society, including skilled labourers, or, ‘men of skill’, and the learned class of poets, ‘noble men of skill’.23 Enech (‘face’) refers to status and honour, and to commit an offence against someone of high status, to dishonour him or her, incurred a greater penalty than an offence against someone of lower status. This status was measured in terms of lóg n-enech (‘honour-price’), which was paid in restitution for offences. Between the fifth and the twelfth centuries, there were probably 150 kings at any given time, and the average túath likely contained around 3,000 people.24 However, the túath differed from a principality in that it was a rural, ritual community at the centre of which was the king, who possessed 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid., pp. 7-9 Ibid., pp. 4-5; See also Binchy, 1983 Etchnigham, 1999, pp. 6-11 Breatnach, 1987, p. 83 Stancliffe, 2005, p. 398 Kelly, 1988, p. 3

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through fír flathemon (‘ruler’s truth’) a divinely ordained sovereignty.25 Towns were rare, and only the learned classes were entitled to travel freely from túath to túath and receive protection according to the law. The clerical class was highly mobile, and early Irish law also suggests that the lawyers kept in contact with their colleagues in other túatha, which would have allowed the exchange of texts.26 It was also a hierarchical society, and this is reflected in the weight accorded to a nemed’s speech. As Fergus Kelly writes, ‘the oath of a person of high rank automatically outweighs that of a person of lower rank. Native Irish law never subscribed to the Roman principle of all citizens being equal before the law. The early Irish lawyers knew of the Roman principle from canon law’, but it never took hold in early Ireland.27 As for social organization and position, the most important legal distinctions were between: ‘1) those who are nemed, and those who are not nemed, and 2) between those who are sóer (‘free’) and those who are doer (‘unfree”)’.28 Nemed means ‘sacred, holy’, ‘so it seems that the privileges of rank were originally sustained by religious feeling as well as respect for wealth and power. The chief categories of nemed in society are king, lord ( flaith), cleric, and poet’, and the rí túaith, the most important nemed, is the king of a túath.29 Though there have been some claims to a high-kingship in Irish history, the most famous being Brian Bóruma (941-1014 CE), this was likely a title of posthumous honour rather than political reality. The closest attested in the law-texts was the ruiri, a great king who has power over three or more túatha. In its infancy, the early Irish church was under British control, perhaps even before the arrival of Patrick in the early fifth century. Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the British and Irish churches maintained consistent contact, and Irish monasteries proliferated. At an early date, British control over the Irish church subsided, probably by way of a synod. Patrick’s mission, which may have been predominantly in the west of Ireland, was under British supervision, and his Confessio makes clear that his conduct and worthiness as a bishop were in question, likely by a British synod. During Patrick’s mission, the synod represented the tier of authority above the bishop. On the Continent, the synod was overseen by a metropolitan bishop who exercised authority within a province, whereas the British evidence gives only the synod. Both represent the province, rather than the diocese, 25 26 27 28 29

Binchy, 1970, p. 8 Kelly, 1988, p. 6 Ibid, p. 7 Ibid., p. 9 Ibid., p. 9

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and correspond to late-Roman government. By the end of the fifth century, the Irish Church was still under the control of the British, and the end of this relationship likely came between 490 and 550 since the Irish Church recalled by Columbanus (ca. 590) appears to have progressed beyond dependence.30 The end of British influence would have come about slowly. Patrick mentions Irish clergy and nuns in his writings, and they would have slowly taken over as they grew in numbers. This was a slow process, and the British and Irish Churches maintained regular contact from the fifth century forward. In the sixth century, Irish monasticism flowered in its own right, while the church in Britain declined. Not much is known of the early period in Ireland, and the best evidence–hagiography and law-texts that attribute authority to now lost texts–must be taken with a grain of salt. By the late sixth century, learning in the north of Ireland, especially at Bangor, was advanced enough to produce learned and eloquent writers such as Adomnán of Iona and Columbanus. By the seventh century, Anglo-Saxon and Gallic monks came to Irish monastic communities in large numbers, including Maigh Eon a Saxain (‘Mayo of the Saxons’) in County Mayo, and most especially Rath Melsigi in County Carlow. In the latter community, several monks came from Northumbria, including Willibrord, Swithbert, Adalbert of Egmond, and Chad of Mercia.31 From the earliest records, Irish monastic communities were multicultural and multilingual spaces.

Social and Ecclesiastical Organization in Early Ireland The organization of early medieval Irish society by the seventh century was, in large part, ecclesiastical. Though kingship remained an important element of the social, cultural, and political landscape, by the seventh century the church had penetrated nearly every aspect of Irish social life, including the secular. I will briefly discuss this organization, as well as the implications this has for understanding the rhetorical arts in early Ireland. Kinship and dynastic inheritance persisted in the Christian era and were prevalent in the organization of Christian society. Early on, the church was likely in competition with dynastic families. For example, in the ‘First Synod of Saint Patrick’, probably written in the late sixth century, we are given a picture of a semi-Christianized Ireland where clerics are regularly in contact with non-Christians. Therefore, it is ‘necessary for it to be stated 30 Charles-Edwards, 1999, pp. 16-17 31 For an overview of Anglo-Irish relations in the seventh century, see Ó Cróinín, 2004

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that a Christian must not make an oath before a druid in the pagan manner. Similarly, a cleric must not act as an enforcing surety for a pagan or accept alms from a pagan for his church’.32 This synod indicates that disputes among Christians were to be settled within the church, which had not yet been recognized by secular law. Charles-Edwards writes that by the time of the composition of the secular law-texts in the seventh or eighth centuries, the Church had successfully subdued pre-Christian institutions. The druid (of which we know so little) had been replaced by the cleric, and the law-texts make it clear that clerics were treated as equal or superior to kings. The early eighth-century Críth Gablach, a law tract on social classification, poses the question ‘who is nobler, the king or the bishop?’ and the cleric is granted the highest nobility as ‘the king rises up before him on account of the Faith’.33 This is quite a pronouncement, given the position accorded the king in early Irish society. In Ireland, unlike neighbouring Gaul and Britain, the bishop was deemed to be of equal, if not higher, status than even the king, quite different from the political structure of the Merovingian kingdoms. The development of the church in early Irish society is evidenced in the proliferation of these codified law-texts from the mid-seventh through the eighth century, by which time the churches were fully integrated and imbued with the values of Irish society.34 The secular practice of hereditary succession was transferred to ecclesiastic communities, and secular and canon law were merged. The abbot of a monastery often belonged to the ruling kin-group of a territory, and links with secular power provided the Church privilege and influence.35 As Donnchadh Ó Corráin says of this dynastic class of abbots, ‘the great hereditary clerical families were usually discard segments of royal lineages, pushed out of the political struggle and forced to reprise themselves in the church’.36 Therefore, dynastic succession became a dominant model of church and social organization. From the law-texts, it is evident that the churches were deeply concerned with the law and played a prominent role in shaping it. The seventh- or eighth-century law-texts of the Nemed School distinguish the saí litre ‘ecclesiastical scholar’, ‘who practices ecne, here largely understood as canon law and the law of scripture, no doubt the mish-mash of scriptural, canon 32 Charles-Edwards, 1999, p. 40 33 Ibid., p. 41 34 Ó Corráin, 1981, p. 333, writes ‘The churches then, at their lowest as well as at their highest levels, in canon law as well as in personnel, were fully integrated with Irish society as a whole and deeply imbued with the values of that society’ 35 Kelly, 1988, p. 40 36 Ó Corráin, 2005, p. 585

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and secular best represented in the Collectio canonum hibernensis’.37 From the mid-seventh century on, the Collectio canonum Hibernensis (hereafter Hibernensis), canon law, and the vernacular law-texts–especially the Bretha Nemed texts (in part translations of the Hibernensis)–serve as fairly reliable evidence from which historians have attempted to paint a more complete picture of early Irish church and social organization. However, there was considerable regional variation, and scholars have often distinguished between monastic communities in the north and in the south. Hereditary succession was, however, widespread. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Irish society was organized by territorial units called paruchia (‘bishopric’) and túath (‘petty kingdom, community’). The Irish word túatha is akin to Latin plebs, and the organization of the early Irish Church was integrated in large part with secular society. Colmán Etchingham writes that ‘Like plebs, túath can signify the populace in general and especially the laity in contrast to eclais “the church”. However, túath also has a more strictly defined connotation, that of the basic political and jurisdictional unit of early Ireland, presided over in secular affairs by a rí túaith’.38 There were several types of monastic communities, and there was a great deal of diversity in their organization. This diversity is matched by the terminological flexibility of primary sources, specifically law-texts and canons. In addition to plebs and túath, paruchia is an important pastoral, jurisdictional sphere, and they were akin to bishoprics outside of Ireland, being territorially cohesive.39 Familia is used somewhat interchangeably with paruchiae, but it also has familial overtones, perhaps indicating kinship, and referred to the community of an individual church, or to an associated group of churches. 40 The designation monachi and manaig loosely refer to a range of individuals who were subject to ecclesiastical authority, similar to the client or tenant of a secular lord, and who, in kind, received pastoral care. 41 Many of the vernacular law-texts and canons grant equal status to rí túaithe and a bishop, demonstrating the extent of the political authority of the latter. 42 In the sixth through the eighth centuries, the abbot of a monastery was princeps, the ruler of the monastery, as well as comarba, the heir to the land and property of the monastery. 37 Ibid., p. 331 38 Etchingham, 1999, p. 141 39 Ibid., p. 108 40 Ibid., p. 129 41 Ibid., p. 363 42 Ibid., p. 141

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The church in early Ireland differed in many respects from that of Rome and Gaul. Both the British and the Irish church had reputations for ecclesiastical practices that strayed from orthodoxy, especially the dating and celebration of the Passion and of Easter, a practice called computistics that was related to the quadrivium of the liberal arts, specifically astronomy. 43 The Council of Nicea of 325 called for a uniform practice, and the Victorian and Dionysian Easter tables led to a degree of uniformity on the Continent in the sixth and seventh centuries. However, some Irish calculated Easter according to their own traditions, especially those in the north of Ireland and Iona, an Irish monastic settlement in Scotland. This computistical controversy occupied early Irish churchmen for decades. For example, the southern Irish cleric, Cummian, wrote a letter to the northern bishops calling on them to abandon the Irish calculation, but this was a practice that would die hard. This ‘Paschal letter’ written by Cummian to Ségéne, fifth abbot of Iona sometime around 632 or 633 CE, is an account and defence of a synod held to settle the doctrinal problem of the Easter question.44 The synod, held at Mag Léne near Durrow, was attended primarily by clergy from the southern churches. After debate, they agreed to the calculation of Easter practised on the Continent. However, even after the adoption of the ‘orthodox’ method, discontent remained, and Cummian dispatched a delegation to Rome, a practice conforming to the synodical decree that disputed cases were to be referred to Rome. 45 The controversy would continue throughout the sixth and seventh centuries, and coupled with the ‘Three Chapters Schism’ in the east would threaten the unity of the universal church, until it was resolved in 716 CE.46 Columbanus would weigh in on the question in famous letters written to Pope Gregory the Great and to Pope Boniface IV in the first decade of the seventh century.47 The synod as a public space of debate, and the rhetoric of the synodical letter as a means of representing the deliberative and judicial arguments of those clerics unable, or unwilling, to attend, deserves further attention from historians of rhetoric.48 Irish historians often articulate this debate between the north and south monastic communities as one between the Romani ‘internationalists’ in 43 For an overview of the study of computistics and astronomy in early Ireland, see Bisagni, 2020 44 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988 45 Ibid., p. 17 46 For an account of the controversy, see also Charles-Edwards, 2000, pp. 391-415 47 See Walker, 1957 48 For a history of Irish synods and councils in their international context of the sixth through the eighth centuries, see Dumville, 1997

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the south of Ireland, and the Hibernenses ‘nativists’ in the north. Kathleen Hughes was the forerunner of this position, but today scholars argue the church was more unified than many historians have portrayed, and that the church was integrated with the secular classes by the early seventh century. The Romani, as the name suggests, sought alignment with the orthodoxy of the church at Rome, whereas the Hibernenses valued the traditions of the Irish church. 49 For Hughes, the theory is that in fifth and sixth century Ireland, there was a pattern of scattered, ascetic, monastic paruchiae, also called familia, or ‘monastic foundations’, such as Iona, Durrow, and Derry, that differed by the end of the seventh century from territorial dioceses, or ‘jurisdictional paruchia’, organized according to túatha, such as Armagh and Kildare.50 In short, an early episcopal organization had lost out to a secular monasticism that would perpetuate itself until the reform movement of the late eighth and early ninth century.51 Richard Sharpe, however, would argue that ‘episcopal, monastic, and secular elements were accommodated in a single, hybrid ecclesiastical system, the salient characteristics of which were not change and confrontation but continuity and diversity’.52 Rather than two different systems, a ‘church run by bishops with a well-defined territorial jurisdiction’ and ‘a church made up largely of monasteries ruled by abbots’ was all part of one system.53 Throughout the sixth century, church organization, and therefore social organization, was quite complex, and by the seventh century the bishop maintained pastoral jurisdiction and resided within a monastic community in an ecclesiastical settlement. The lands and revenues of these settlements were controlled by the comarbate (‘heir/successor’) of the community’s founder in his capacity as princepts/airchinnech (‘governor, head’).54 Etchingham summarises that ‘the early Irish church embraced 49 Richter, 2000, pp. 72-75 provides nuance to this perspective, demonstrating a good deal of overlap and collaboration, rather than contentious and dichotomous relations on matters of doctrine 50 Etchingham, 1999, p. 27 provides an overview 51 The heart of this debate lies in this two-fold division, the familia, such as that of Columban foundations, consisting in a territorial model, associated with a túath, and overseen by episcopal lordship (the bishop taking on a role akin to rí túaithe), and that of the monastic paruchia, with its arch-episcopal model that absorbed smaller territorial communities and was dominated by abbots by the end of the seventh century. The Romani were associated with the latter, and Hibernensis with the former 52 Ibid., p. 25 53 Sharpe, 1984, pp. 261-63 54 Etchingham, 1999, pp. 25-26

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episcopacy, abbacy and “coarbial” authority within a single, flexible system of ecclesiastical headship’.55 This unity would seem to be confirmed by Aidan Breen and Donnchadh Ó Corráin in their work on Synodus II Patricii ‘The Second Synod of Patrick’, as both scholars demonstrate the relationship between canon law–established synodically–and the vernacular law-texts. Ó Corráin writes that the compilers of the Syondus II Patricii and the vernacular laws ‘both belong to a shared (one could say identical) cultural environment, and that includes legal culture’.56 Breen demonstrated that the Synodus II Patricii was in fact related to Canones Adomnani, the Hibernensis, as well as the Penitential of Cummian (possibly the same Cummian who composed the ‘Paschal Letter’), which further demonstrates a shared learned culture in seventh-century Ireland, rather than competing factions.57 It is clear from these accounts and the proliferation of canons in this period that synods and councils were essential to church governance. In the late antique and early medieval west, the synod and council were responsible for the preservation of the ecclesia and creation of ordinances and canon law.58 Synods were a primary means of church, and thus social, governance in Ireland from the fifth-century to 697, at which point in Ireland they fall from the record.59 In Ireland, the secular counterpart to the ecclesiastical synod was a ‘council’, likely related to the king’s óenach,60 and where the canon-laws were the product of synodical decrees, the cánai ‘secular laws’ were the result of councils of secular lawyers.61 The function of a synod was ‘to hand on to its own generation the wisdom expressed in, among other sources, the conciliar tradition of legislation’, and would have consisted in rhetorical debate and argumentation bolstered with the credibility of scripture, Church Fathers, conciliar legislation of canon-collections, and hagiography, often in that order.62 These sources of authority and this form of arrangement common to canon-texts were also the form used in synodical letters. From the synods we have a rich body of literature, including canons 55 Ibid., p. 105 56 Ó Corráin, 2002, p. 335 57 Breen, 1995, pp. 103-07 58 On seventh-century Visigothic and Carolingian synods and councils, see Kraemer, 2016 59 Dumville, 1997, p. 32 60 The óenach was a political assembly and fair held on sacred grounds associated with a specific dynasty, perhaps a burial ground. While there was feasting, drinking, and games, laws were also promulgated in a form of public spectacle. On the óenach, see Jaski, 2000, especially pp. 37-57; Kelly, 1986; Binchy, 1958 61 Charles-Edwards, 1998, pp. 8-9 62 Dumville, 1997, p. 28

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and letters, such as Cummian’s ‘Paschal Letter’, not only of value to the social and cultural historian, but to the student of rhetoric as well. From synodical letters and canons we get insight into the form argumentation and debate took in this period. The organization of early Ireland is essential to understanding the nature of the rhetorical arts, but also to the dismissal of portrayals of the Early Middle Ages as an authoritarian age with little practical need for rhetoric and debate. It is clear that in early Ireland, as it was to certain degrees in late antique Gaul and Britain, a bishop’s authority, akin to that of a secular ruler, was not at all absolute, and synods and councils were spaces of well-organized, ritualized debate.63 Deliberative and judicial rhetoric, arrangement, delivery, and proof were essential to synodical rhetoric, witnessed most clearly in synodical letters, but also in canons. While numerous disputes among ecclesiastics may be cited in this regard, among the Irish the best examples are letters and canons born of the Easter controversy in the seventh century.

63 Until quite recently, historians deemed the early Christian period as a time of stifled open-ended debate and the rise of authoritarianism. Mayke de Jong and van Renswoude, 2017, p. 7, summarise the change in scholarly consensus: ‘This tenacious image is based on the preconception that the expression of divergent points of view was unthinkable in a period in which “the Church” was dominant and religious diversity was oppressed. Free expression of opinion is supposed to have disappeared, along with the possibilities of an open exchange of ideas, the very moment Emperor Justinian closed the doors of the Academy of Athens. While it should be noted that “free expression of opinion” is an idealistic construction in the first place, it cannot be denied that religious unity at the level of kingdoms and empires was indeed the professed ideal during much of the early Middle Ages […] Scholars, bishops and rulers were intent on establishing orthodoxy and defending it against heresy, that much is true, but orthodoxy, as is well known, does not exist in and by itself. It develops in a dialectical relationship with “heresy” – a position that is not only held by modern sociologists of religion, but was acknowledged in the early Middle Ages as well. Debate with heterodox thinkers was considered necessary to arrive at the “truth”’

2

Learning in Ireland in the Sixth through the Eighth Centuries

In Celtic studies, scholars have debated the prevalence of secular learning in early Ireland, and stances on this matter vary widely. In 1910, Heinrich Zimmer offered up a theory for the pre-eminence of the Irish in classical learning based on the ‘direkte Handelsverbindungen’ (‘direct trading-connections’) between Ireland and Gallo-Roman Aquitaine.1 The wine trade with Gaul, Zimmer argued, provided the means for the exodus of throngs of scholars from western Gaul to Ireland in the period of migration. These traders brought with them late antique Christian learning, including the works of Ausonius of Bordeaux, Sulpicius Severus, and Martin of Tours. Three years later, in a lecture given to the School of Irish Learning in September of 1912, Kuno Meyer argued that in a twelfth-century Leiden manuscript he found further evidence for late antique Gallic scholars fleeing to Ireland. Both Meyer and Zimmer believed this note to be of the sixth century and no later: The Huns, who were infamously begotten, i.e., by demons, after they had found their way by the guidance of a hind through the Maeotic marshes, invaded the Goths, whom they terrified exceedingly by their unexpectedly awful appearance. And thanks to them, the depopulation of the entire Empire commenced, which was completed by the Huns and Vandals and Goths and Alans, owing to whose devastation all the learned men on this side of the sea fled away, and in transmarine parts, i.e., in Hiberia and wherever they betook themselves, brought a very great advance of learning to the inhabitants of those regions.2

Zimmer and Meyer take ‘Hiberia’ to mean ‘Irish’ and ‘British’, and Meyer argues that in this twelfth-century account there is clear evidence of the 1 2

Zimmer, 1909 Meyer, 1913, p. 6

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch02

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arrival of Gallic scholars in Ireland by the fifth century. This thesis is proved, Meyer argues, in the earliest extant writings of Irish provenance, as St Patrick refers to ‘dominicati rhetorici’ (Confessio 238.23-24), those rhetoricians in comparison to whom he felt rustic and uneducated. And with Zimmer and Meyer a long debate ensued that would continue into the twenty-first century. Meyer’s claims have been tempered to the extreme, but the case on classical learning in the fifth through the eighth centuries has not been closed.3 Much scholarly ink has been spilt on this problem. Michael Herren suggests that the foundation for the belief in widespread classical Latin learning in medieval Ireland also lies in the overall reputation of the Irish in the seventh and eighth centuries, Irish activity on the Continent in the ninth century and after, seventh- and eighth-century quotations of classical literature, and ‘Irish command of classical prosody’. 4 This evidence sits at the heart of the debate. However, in attempting to understand Irish learning in light of late antique learning, twentieth-century scholars have tended to focus too narrowly on direct, positivistic evidence of manuscript transmission.5 Such a focus on direct transmission of manuscripts containing the works of classical authors fails to take into account adaptation and innovation, both clear marks of early Irish learning. Though an understanding of transmission may be important to an understanding of Ireland’s place in the western world, one must be wary of making transmission primary to the value of the texts at hand. As Dáibhí Ó Cróinín has written, ‘the modern debate about Ireland’s contribution to European culture has centred on the role played by medieval Irish scholars in the transmission of the Classics to the continent’.6 This being said, in this section we will review evidence for the transmission of relevant texts in order to better place Ireland within a European context. In the late antique west, Roman education had already been adapted to new socio-cultural contexts and was profoundly influenced by literacy. Christian learning, with an emphasis on literacy and exegesis, transformed the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.7 Many historians of rhetoric argue that oratory was not as important in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages as it had been in the Roman Republic and that, in fact, it had been in decline since the late Empire. However, preaching, synodical debate (synodical letters and canon law provide our best evidence), epistolography, historiography, poetry, hymns, 3 4 5 6 7

For a critique of Meyer’s thesis, see Wooding, 1996, esp. pp. 33-4; see also James, 1982 Herren, 1996, p. 4 See especially Sharpe, 2010 Ó Cróinín, 1993, p. 41 See Penella, 2013, and the chapters in this volume

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and exegesis all turned to rhetorical tradition for models for these genres. In addition to new rhetorical genres, the purpose of education changed. Edward Watts writes that in Late Antiquity, education was no longer modelled on paideia, but more rudimentary literacy, which itself was only available to the elites.8 In early Ireland, too, literacy and learning is associated with an elite class, though the extant evidence reveals a Latin literacy far beyond ‘basic’. Such literacy was, of course, essential to a Christian culture of the book. In Late Antiquity, education emphasized grammatical rules, eloquent composition, and mastery of a canon of authors, whether secular, Christian, or both. The most conventional path for a student began at the school of the grammarian, the ludus litterarius, during the pre-teen and teenage years. The curriculum was not rigid, but was flexible and responded to individual needs. Grammarians trained students in everything from basic reading and writings skills to rhetorical composition. They stressed the importance of correct pronunciation, declensions, syntax, and so on. When a student reached the appropriate stage in their education, they began schola grammatici, and enarratio poetarum, the interpretation of poetry, was central to their training. From examples of refined Latinity, such as Vergil, the student learned to discover the poet’s verba or scriptum, and also his voluntas, or meaning. The grammarian also introduced the progymnasmata (‘preliminary exercises’) that taught students to use their budding grammatical skills to elaborate upon a variety of themes in imitation of models.9 By the age of thirteen or fourteen, a student would advance to study with the rhetorician, the schola rhetoris, or study rhetoric with a grammarian, and the progymnasmata continued to be central to the curriculum well into the most advanced stages. Students would begin by memorizing short passages, but move toward more complex orations. They read and commented on speeches and history, and composed their own rhetorical exercises, declamations, on hypothetical mythological and literary situations. In Late Antiquity, the progymnasmata were used not only for the composition of speeches in classroom contexts, but were frequently used in literary compositions, especially biographies, and were also used in the composition of the New Testament gospels.10 The progymnasmata continued to be taught throughout the Middle Ages.11 By the fifth century, scripture was increasingly used for grammatical and rhetorical education, the commentaries on the Psalms having displaced Vergil 8 9 10 11

Watts, 2012, p. 469 Ibid., p. 469 Humphries, 1999, pp. 23-45; See also Heath, 2002/03 See Loveridge, 2019; idem, 2016

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as the foundational text in the first stage of the curriculum, and this practice most certainly continued in Ireland throughout our period.12 Representative of the late fourth and early fifth centuries, Augustine’s homilies on the Psalms (titled Enarrationes in Psalmos by Erasmus), and Jerome’s homilies on the Psalms, develop a grammatical-exegetical approach, ‘weighing conflicting interpretations, deciding between various textual readings, and revealing the mysteries hidden in the text’.13 Prosper of Aquitaine had composed his own Expositio psalmorum, largely based on Augustine, sometime between 440-450, and Eucherius of Lyon’s Liber formularum spiritalis intelligentiae (Book of forms of spiritual intelligence) provides a defence of an allegorical reading of scripture, including interpreting metaphors in the Psalms.14 In Late Antiquity, the Psalter was central to grammatical and exegetical education, and the pervasiveness of the late antique psalmscape fostered polemical exchange.15 Cassiodorus’s mid sixth-century Expositio Psalmorum represents a culmination of this tradition and was the first systematic textbook on the Psalms intended for use in monastic education, one much more manageable than Augustine’s unwieldy work intended for oral delivery. By the sixth century in Ireland, learning was flourishing in monastic communities, and while there appears to be a discernible curricular pattern, regional variation, access to texts, and the motivations of specific communities bred great diversity. In several texts, we are told that grammar, divine scripture, history, and computus are the four primary canons of Gaelic learning.16 Charles-Edwards argues that rather than the three stage Roman education, grammar and rhetoric were combined into one stage–as they had been throughout the late antique west–leaving room for exegesis as the culmination of one’s education.17 However, we must allow for diversity in curricula in early Ireland just as such diversity marked curricula in the late antique schools of Rome. Scripture was also likely introduced early in one’s education, specifically the Psalms (likely in their entirety), and the grammarian turned to scriptural examples, rather than the secular poets, such as Vergil.18 The discovery in 2006 of the late eighth- or early 12 Amsler, 1989, p. 122 13 Ibid., p. 122 14 On the importance of the exegetical method of Eucherius and his continued influence in the Middle Ages, see O Loughlin, 1995 15 See Berkovitz, 2018 16 See Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, p. 117; Macalister, 1939, II, 118-19 17 Charles-Edwards, 2000, pp. 179-180 18 On the study of the Psalter in early Ireland, see McNamara 2000; McNamara and Sheehy, 1973

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ninth-century Faddan More Psalter in a bog in Ireland not only suggests the centrality of the Psalms (centrality further demonstrated by the Springmount Bog Tablets) in the curriculum, but the presence of papyri in the binding of the manuscript also shows that in c. 800 Irish scholars were capable of obtaining books from the Mediterranean world.19 The Psalms were clearly central to study by the sixth century in Ireland, and the vast number of surviving glosses on liturgical texts provide evidence of Christian teaching and exegesis. The curriculum began with elementary training, taking the Psalms as the primary text of study. A student likely began elementary education around the age of seven and then moved on to practice on wax tablets before advancing to interpretation and exegesis, studia maiora, all in preparation to take part in the liturgical services. The saint’s lives tell us that wax tablets were also used by teachers for taking notes and in preparing works to be recorded on parchment or vellum, and the seventh-century Springmount Bog Tablets provide rare insight into the work of an Irish scribe.20 Commentaries on the Psalms usually contain three sections, including a brief Argumentum, Explanatio, and the Commentarius proper, and the Irish commentaries tend to follow this organization, though the Irish were also interested in the place, time, and author, often reading Scripture as historical. The oldest extant Old Irish glosses are found in the seventh-century Ussher Gospels, a gospel book containing a pre-Vulgate (Old Latin) reading of the four gospels, and demonstrating the practice of annotating Latin texts in Latin or Irish was widespread by 700.21 By the late seventh century, the Pauline Epistles were used as a standard copybook in insular scriptoria. In Anglo-Irish schools, the Pauline Epistles were especially used for study in exegesis, as is witnessed in Cambridge Trinity College manuscript, MS B. 10. 5 (CLA 2.133), written in either Ireland or England but in an Irish hand, and containing insular glosses.22 Indeed, the Würzburg, MS M.p.th.f. 12 (CLA 9.1403), copied at length in the late eighth century, and the early ninthcentury Milan Glosses in the Milan Codex Ambrosianus C 301 inf., ascribed to a Diarmait, are heavily annotated in both Latin and Irish, demonstrating the use of the Psalms for grammatical training, and the Pauline Epistles for more advanced study.23 19 See E. Kelly, 2006 20 McNamara and Sheehy, 1973, p. 206 21 See especially Ó Cróinín, 2001 22 Sharpe, 2010, pp. 6-7; On the problem of distinguishing Anglo-Saxon and Irish miniscule see O Sullivan, 2005, pp. 512-14 23 Sharpe, 2010, p. 9; See also the discussion of f igures in Clarke and Ní Mhaonaigh, 2020, pp. 485-487; In the Milan Glosses on the Psalms, Stokes and Strachan, 1901, the glossator draws

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The evidence makes it clear that the monastic curriculum in early Ireland began with reading the Psalms and advanced to grammar and exegesis.24 The Irish used most of the great Latin commentators on the Psalter, but they were particularly influenced by Theodore of Mopsuestia and adopted an Antiochene, rather than Christological approach, to the Psalms, and in this were more interested in their historical meaning.25 Of course, interpretation had always been central to rhetoric, as the orator interpreted what would persuade a given audience in a given moment. However, in Late Antiquity, the act of interpretation had shifted its focus from the crowd to Scripture and a Christian audience concerned with ecclesiastical matters, matters that were far from apolitical. Charles-Edwards concludes that scriptural scholarship had a more central role in the early Irish Church than in others, and that knowledge of the Bible was not solely a pious goal, ‘but the expertise of a sapiens entitled him to sit in authority alongside bishops and the abbots of the greater monasteries’.26 Just as in the ages of Cicero and Quintilian, the study of grammar and rhetoric had as its end securing a powerful place in society for the aspiring student. As early Ireland was governed in large part by councils and synods, the ability to speak well, to cite auctoritas–in this case Scriptural rather than secular–and the ability to write well, especially letters, was central to joining the governing class.27 Christian culture was a culture of the book, and in this way it was unique to those that preceded it and from which it was born.28 In Ireland, it was necessary for non-native Latin speakers to learn to read and write Latin in order to gain access to the continental learned community introduced by the Church. Whether secular or Christian, with the Church came a demand for literacy and with literacy came power, and the primary curriculum was adapted to meet these needs. attention to figuration around 30 times, whereas in the Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, there is no such focus on the concerns of the grammaticus. Instead, the glossator draws attention to imitation, preaching style, similitude, etc. See Stokes and Strachan, 1901, pp. 12, 19, 22, 39, 56, 59, 69, 72, 88, 100, 116, 130, 133, 175, 198, 217, 220-21, 243, 251, 253, 261, 264, 300, 315, 320, 365, 379, 516, 525, 527, 530, 541, 549, 572, 577, 582, 586, 588, 594; See also Griffith and Stifter, 2014, a dictionary of Old Irish glosses, an incredible resource born of much labour: https://www.univie. ac.at/indogermanistik/milan_glosses/ (accessed 17-03-2021) 24 Boyle, 2016, p. 13 25 McNamara and Sheehy, 1973, p. 201 26 Charles-Edwards, 2000, p. 181 27 The numerous extant letters, those of Patrick, of Cummian to Ségéne and Béccán, and those of Columbanus, speak to the importance of rhetorical letters in early church governance 28 Cameron, 1991, pp. 108-112 discusses the uniqueness of Christianity in the spread of literacy. Roman, educated elites had little incentive for encouraging literacy. For Christians of the Middle Ages, literacy was essential to the spread of their religion

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Early Ireland was a diverse, multi-lingual place, and to paint a general picture of centres of learning would be inaccurate at best. However, it is clear that within monastic communities, some quite large, some small and rural, there was a distinction between three types of learning. The ninth-century Battle of Mag Rath describes an historical battle that took place in Ireland in 637 CE. It tells the story of the legendary scholar and master of all three branches of learning, Cenn Fáelad mac Ailella (c. 679 CE), the scholar to whom is attributed parts of the Auraicept na nÉces (‘The Scholar’s Primer’), and who was possibly a cousin of Aldfrith of Northumbria and uncle to Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.29 Cenn Fáelad was injured at the battle and lost his ‘brain of forgetfulness’.30 He was taken to the centre of learning at Tuaim Drecain run by Bricín to heal, a centre that had three schools: ‘scol léiginn ocus scol fénechais ocus scol filed’ (‘a school of Latin learning, and a school of native law, and a school of poetry’).31 Cenn Fáelad mastered all three branches of learning and, in this tale, represents their compatibility. This tripartite structure is represented also in the Bretha Nemed Taoísech, a text divided into thirds, each written by an authoritative, if not fictional, figure in each branch of learning, a cleric, a poet, and a judge.32 Though there appears to have been individual, specialized schools, there was a great deal of overlap between clerical and secular scholars. Writing on the nature of the learning communities of early Ireland, and the thorny historical problem of the relationship between secular and Christian learning, Elizabeth Boyle says that the learned personnel of early Ireland, even if they were not clerics, ‘would have a shared educational experience, and shared intellectual horizons, with those who were’ and this elite, intellectual caste ‘drew from the same pool of fundamental knowledge, even if they specialized in a particular discipline, such as the law, or exegesis, or poetry, or history’.33 Indeed, texts such as the Auraicept na nÉces demonstrate the compatibility of secular and Christian learning, as well as a great deal of overlap in areas of expertise. Latin learning thrived in this ‘Irish Golden Age of Classical Learning’, though only a handful of texts dating to this era survive. In these texts, we see a dynamic synthesis of the various types of learning discussed above, both secular and Christian. One generalization that can be made is that liturgical texts were written in Latin, whereas ‘secular’ texts were written 29 On Aldfrith of Northumbria, see Ireland, 2015 30 This story is repeated in a number of places, including the seventh-century vernacular grammar, Auraicept na nÉces, and also in the Bretha Nemed Toísech. See Stacey, 2007, pp. 197-204 31 O Donovan, 1842, p. 282 32 See Breatnach, 1984 33 Boyle, 2016, p. 13

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in the vernacular, though there are exceptions. By the Middle Irish period, vernacular production outpaced Latin compositions. Of twenty-two items listed as ‘Scholastic texts’ in Michael Lapidge and Richard Sharpe’s Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature 400-1200, only two postdate 800. However, after 800, there is a paucity of materials for the study of Latin, whereas there is a wealth of evidence for vernacular composition in the monasteries. This could be evidence that Latin was supplanted by a greater interest in native sénchas, prose and poetry on Irish history.34

Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England In order to provide an overview of learning in Ireland in the early Middle Ages, I will provide a survey of Irish medieval texts with a clear classical influence, including some that are dated later than the era under investigation in this study.35 The evidence for the later period is plentiful, while the evidence for the Old Irish period is much more scant and scattered. There is also evidence that texts extant in Ireland before the Viking Age survived the turmoil of this period and were used in the composition of later saga material and learned texts; therefore, these later texts sometimes provide evidence for the earlier period.36 As has been discussed, literacy and Latin learning arrived with early British churchmen, but there had existed in Ireland a learned class prior to the arrival of missionaries from the east, the áes dána (‘people of arts’). By as early as the seventh century, the secular tradition of learning had begun to merge with the clerical schools, forming elite, learned castes known as the filid. A legend recounted in the additamenta to the ninth-century Book of Armagh, and recounted in the Vita Tripartita and the preface to ‘Fiacc’s hymn’, tells us that St Patrick came from Tara into Leinster, where he encountered the Irish rígfiled (‘poet-king’) Dubthach moccu Lugair at Domnach Már Criathar in Uí Chennselaig. This legend provides an account of the Christianization of Irish secular poets: Patrick asked Dubthach for one of his student-poets as “material for a bishop”. Dubthach replied that only one met Patrick’s conditions, Fiacc 34 Miles, 2011, p. 39 35 For a comprehensive list of the Latin sources of early Ireland, see Kenney, 1966; see also Lapidge and Sharpe, 1985; Lapidge 1990 36 Miles, 2011, pp. 70-71

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of the Leinstermen, who had gone into Connacht on a poet’s circuit. As they spoke, Fiacc approached and Dubthach said to Patrick: “Make as if to tonsure me, for this man will take my place and rescue me by being tonsured in my stead, for he is very dutiful”. Fiacc fell for this pie fraus and Patrick tonsured him, baptized him and consecrated him as the first bishop of the Leinstermen.37

Though this is clearly a legendary tale, it reflects some of the reality of the relationship between secular and clerical scholars and the ways the legal traditions had merged by the ninth century, though it is hardly credible evidence for the reality of fifth-century Ireland. Our only written evidence for the fifth century comes from Patrick, and the sixth century is also scant, though the writings of Columbanus provide clues. The ninth century poet Óengus of Tallaght, an Irish bishop, wrote Félire Óengusso (‘Martyrology of Óengus’), a metrical martyrology that consists of 365 quatrains and is a register of saints and their feast days. Though the dating is contested, Liam Breatnach has placed its composition before 808.38 The text contains 365 quatrains, one for each day of the year, and it provides the feast days and bits of information about a number of sixth century Irish saints. For September tenth, the following description is given for Findbarr maige Bili: ‘A gilded champion/with purity, over the swelling (?)/sea [he came] with law, a sage for whom Ireland is sad, Findbarr of Mag Bili’.39 ‘Law’ here likely means ‘canon law’, and, therefore, liturgical texts. Given our knowledge of transmarine trade routes and the available means of book production, and the evidence for a number of seventh-century texts imported to Ireland via trade, it should not be a surprise that books were being imported into Ireland already in the sixth century. 40 However, as none survives, what books a sixth century Irish scribe had to hand will remain a mystery, though it is likely that they included the Biblical codices, grammatical manuals, glossaries, and miscellanies, liturgical texts, canons, the writings of the Church Fathers, and, perhaps, late antique authors. Though the fifth and sixth centuries offer us little in the way of extant texts, there is much evidence for learning in the seventh century, and the perspectives of the British are illuminating, especially Bede’s Historia 37 Ó Corráin, Breatnach, and Breen, 1984, p. 390 38 Breatnach, 1996, pp. 74-75 39 Stokes, 1905, p. 193: ‘A. iv. idus Septembris. Cli dergóir co nglaini,/cor-recht tar sál sidi,/súi diand Ériu inmall, Findbarr Maige Bili’ 40 On the exchange of books in Ireland between the fifth and ninth centuries, see Sharpe, 2010; see also Wooding, 2002

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Ecclesiastica (‘Ecclesiastical History’).41 He writes of the tradition of British clerics travelling to Ireland for study: … there were many of the English race, both nobles and commoners, who, in the days of Bishops Finan and Colman [of Lindisfarne], had left their own country and retired to Ireland either for the sake of religious studies or to live a more ascetic life. In course of time some of these devoted themselves faithfully to the monastic life, while others preferred to travel round to the cells of various teachers and apply themselves to study. The Irish welcomed them all gladly, gave them their daily food, and also provided them with books to read and with instruction, without asking for any payment. 42

Bede lists at least twelve Englishmen who had travelled to Ireland for study, including two of superior ability, Aethelhun and Ecgberct (doctor suauissimus), the latter a member of the important monastic communities at Rath Melsigi and, later, Iona. 43 Some of these wandering scholars were to return and become bishops in England, while others stayed in Ireland. Adomnán, ninth abbot of Iona and Columba’s biographer, tells us there had also been two Englishmen among Columba’s original monastic familia at Iona, Pilu and Generus. 44 In the 630s Irish monks had established at Northumbria, and the king of Northumbria in 685, Aldfrith, was an Irish speaker schooled by the Irish. Aldfrith may have had an Irish name, Flann Fína, and was at Iona when the crown and the body of his brother, king Ecgfrith, slain in battle against the Picts, was brought to him. 45 In 634-635, the Irish monk Aídán established the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, Fínán and Colmán being his successors, and the church was led from Iona and Ireland. 46 The Irish held an international reputation as the uncontested, premiere place for study until 669, when Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian founded a school at Canterbury that offered a curriculum to rival the Irish.47 Given the strong relationship of ecclesiastical and secular powers, such cultural interactions were not confined to the 41 See Charles-Edwards, 1983, for a full account of Bede’s perspectives on the Irish and the Britons; On Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in Ireland, see Ní Chatháin, 1984 42 Cited in Ó Cróinín, 2004, p. 6 43 Ibid., p. 9 44 Ibid., p. 12 45 Sharpe, 2010, p. 5 46 Ibid., p. 15 47 Ibid., p. 15

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religious sphere, but were also political. For example, Adomnàn, abbot of Iona and author of the Life of Columba, first visited Northumbria for political purposes, pleading with King Aldfrith to release Irish hostages captured in a Saxon raid in 685. 48 By the mid-seventh century, the Irish reputation for learning was wellestablished in Gaul, likely a result of Columbanus’s activities there. Bede tells us the Frank, Agilbert, who would become Bishop of Wessex, studied in Ireland. 49 In 656, Bishop Dido of Poitiers brought Dagobert II to Ireland for study.50 And in the mid-seventh century, the daughter of Pepin of Landen, Gertrude, imported Irish scholars to set up a school at her community in Nivelles.51 But it is from Saxon scholars, such as Bede and Aldhelm (639-709 CE), that we have our earliest attestations of the continental reputation of an Irish education. In the middle of the seventh century, the Irish schools were revered, and scholars from Britain and the Continent travelled to Ireland for a liberal arts and scriptural education.52 Bede sings the praises of scriptural studies in Ireland, as well as the generosity of the Irish who took in large numbers of British students free of charge between 651 and 664. Aldhelm, who had received his elementary education in an Irish monastic settlement, clearly saw the learned Irish as direct competition. This is witnessed in his pointed and humorous accounts of Irish scholars in a letter to his disciple, Heahfrith, as he was returning from a period of study in Ireland. Aldhelm warns of the Irish proclivity for ‘not only the grammatical and geometrical arts – to say nothing of the thrice-three scaffolds of the art of physics – but also, the fourfold honeyed oracles of allegorical or rather tropological disputation of opaque problems in aetherial mysteries’.53 The liberal arts taught in Ireland described here are similar to the seven given in the pseudo-Isidorian Liber numerorum, which Michael Lapidge considers an Irish production.54 Here, the arts following the foundation of 48 Annals of Ulster 685.2 49 Historia Ecclesiastica 3.7 50 Riché, 1976, p. 104 51 Ibid., p. 458 52 Herren, 1981, p. 121, surveys the evidence of Bede, including the Frank Agilbert, Bishop Dido of Poitiers, and Dagobert II. Gertrude, daughter of Pepin of Landen, brought Irish scholars to her monastic community in Nivelles to establish a school. 53 Edition and translation in Howlett, 1994b, p. 43: ‘non solum artes grammaticas atque geometricas bisternasque omissas fisicae artis machinas, quin immo allegoricae potiora ac tropologicae disputationis bipertita bis oracular aethralibus opacorum mellita in aenigmatibus problematum’ (490.17-491.2) 54 Lapidge and Herren, 1979, p. 181, n. 6

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grammatical study, known as Ars physica, include arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, astrology, mechanics, and medicine.55 Additionally, the Irish had a reputation for exegetical studies, an art that drew heavily on rhetoric, as one had to understand figures, tropes, and stylistic ornament in order to read scripture. In hisperic Latin unique to the Insular world, especially the Irish, Aldhelm warns of the Irish propensity for secular mythology, admonishing Heahfrith for spurning ‘the inextricable rule of the New and the Ancient Document [the New and Old Testament]’ and undertaking ‘a journey through the slippery paths of a country full of brambles […] the troublesome meanderings of the worldly philosophers’.56 Aldhelm’s main concern appears to be the influence of secular learning upon his pupil, but there is also a clear sense of competition. Until now, Ireland had the reputation as the pre-eminent place of study. Aldhelm defends the prestige of British scholars, arguing for Britain’s newfound superiority in learning, specifically under Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Adrian of Canterbury: [the] verdant country of Ireland is adorned, so to speak, with a browsing crowd of scholars, just as the hinges of heaven, and decorated with stellar flashings of twinkling stars, yet nonetheless, Britain, although situated in almost the outer limit of the western world, possesses, for example, the luculent likeness, as it were, of the flaming sun and the moon.57

William of Malmesbury, in Book V of his Gesta pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the Bishops of the English), tells us that Aldhelm himself was educated by the Irish monk Máeldub, who had established the monastic community at Malmesbury, and he was clearly familiar with Vergil’s poems, Statius’s Thebaid, Lucan’s Belllum Civile, and possibly Ovid’s Metamorphoses.58 But, as Aldhelm also studied under Hadrian, abbot of St Augustine’s at Canterbury, 55 See discussion in Dempsey, 1999, p. 9 56 Howlett, 1994b, p. 23: ‘Et iccirco uita comite opatum Hibérniae portum ténes/sacrosancta potíssimum praeságmina/refutatis philosophorum commentíciis légito/Absúrdum enim árbitor/ apreta rudis ac ueteris instrumenti inextricábili nórma/per lubrica dumosi ruris díuertícula/ immo per discolos philosophorum anfractus íter cárpere’ 57 Ibid., p 45: ‘Quamuis enim praedictum Hiberniae rus discentium ópulans uérnansque/ut íta dixerim/pascuosa numerositáte lectórum/quemadmodum pole cardines/astriferi micantium uibraminibus síderum ornétur:Ast tamen clímatis Británnia/occidui in extremo ferme orbis márgine pósita/uérbi grátia ceu sólis flammígeri/et luculento lunae specimine pótiátur’ 58 Miles, 2011, p. 18; By the Middle Irish period, there was fervent translation (more accurately paraphrase) of Roman literature into the vernacular. See Miles, 2011 and the primary and secondary sources cited there; See also O Connor, 2014; Clarke and Ní Mhaonaigh, 2020

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there has been debate whether Aldhelm encountered these works in Malmesbury or Canterbury. There has even been debate over whether Máeldub exists, and over evidence of Irish influence in Aldhelm’s writings.59 However, G.T. Dempsey has convincingly dismissed Lapidge’s scepticism and argued that Aldhelm’s rhythmical verse was learnt in ­Malmesbury, and that his writings are credible sources for our understanding of learning in seventh-century Ireland.60 The letters of Aldhelm also reveal something of the circulation of texts.61 By this time, there was an open exchange of students between Ireland and England and biblical and patristic scholarship flourished.62 There is evidence of some knowledge of Greek, likely from glossaries rather than Greek texts.63 For this reason, a certain style of orthography, often referred to as ‘the Irish hand’, is witnessed in manuscripts of both Irish and English provenance, as well as Gaul.64 Such unrivalled illuminated texts as Durham Gospels, Lindisfarne Gospels, and Book of Kells are products of these Irish monastic communities.65 The Irish themselves were notorious wanderers, and the influence of their style of learning reached far and wide in the sixth through the eighth centuries. Rather than ‘saviours of civilization’, the Irish produced original learned and creative texts that married native and Latin learning. We can also safely say that the Irish played an important part in the exchange of Christian Latin letters in the western intellectual world and, in this exchange, the art of rhetoric held a significant place.

59 See Lapidge and Herren, 1979; on the continental influence on Aldhelm, see Winterbottom, 1977; for an argument not only for Máeldub’s existence, but his placement in the seventhcentury circle of elite scholars in Leinster, and his authorship of the hisperic poem Rubisca, see Herren, 1987; on Aldhelm’s knowledge of Irish learning of the seventh century, especially computistics, see Ó Cróinín, 1983a; on Aldhelm’s imitation of Hiberno-Latin models, see Orchard, 1994 60 Dempsey, 1999, pp. 3-4 61 For extant letters exchanged between English and Irish writers in the seventh century, see Howlett, 1996; idem 1994c; on Aldhelm and Irish learning, see Howlett, 1994b 62 For an authoritative overview of the evidence, see Sharpe, 2010 63 For an overview of the extent of Greek learning, as well as the controversy surrounding the issue, see Moran, 2012; see also Howlett, 1998 64 On Irish orthography and paleography, see O Sullivan, 2005; Ó Cróinín, 2004; Bischoff, 1994; Timothy O Neill, 1984 65 Discussions of illuminated manuscripts relevant to visual and material rhetoric include the following: O Neill, 2013; Clancy, 2011; Doyle, 2008; Richardson, 2005; Cronin, 1995; Ó Corráin, 1994

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Ireland and Spain In addition to continued intercourse with British scholars, early Ireland shared close contacts with Spain. In seventhcentury Ireland, ‘the worlds of genealogy and tribal legend on the one hand and Christian Latin scholarship on the other were closely associated’, and the renowned scholar of Visigothic Spain, Isidore of Seville, had a profound influence on both traditions as early as 650.66 From Spain came writings of the African church fathers, copies of Donatus’s grammars, Ars maior and Ars minor, Pompeius Africanus’s commentary on Donatus, the creed of the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675), which is used in the seventh-century Irish De ordine creaturarum (A Treatise on the Ordering of Creation), and perhaps of greatest influence in early Ireland, Isidore of Seville.67 In the continental pre-Carolingian context, the writings of Isidore are unique in that they remained an active cultural force outside of the context of their composition.68 In Ireland, the most influential of Isidore’s works was the Etymologiae (Etymologies). This work, vast in content and in breadth of knowledge, was a handbook containing ‘the whole of Hellenistic culture, of the arts, law, medicine, and a whole range of techniques’.69 Books I-III are dedicated to the seven liberal arts. As in Ireland, societal conditions were conducive to learning in seventhcentury Spain. Hillgarth argues that the civil wars in seventh-century Spain did not disrupt the continuity of significant cultural centres such as Toledo. Many aristocratic episcopal families survived the violence and maintained the means of learning and book production. This secure political climate allowed for the transmission of texts to Spain from the Christian West, especially Italy and Africa, where they were used, copied, and shared.70 These texts were to make it to Ireland, likely to a community in the southeast, in advance of Britain or the Continent. Aldhelm, who began writing in the 670s, and Bede, around 702, were the first Anglo-Saxons to cite Isidore; however, 66 Ó Corráin, 1998, p. 199 67 Herren, 1996, p. 250 argues convincingly for the influence of Isidore’s writings on the Auraicept and the Hisperica famina, and discusses the Old Irish title for Isidore’s Etymologies, Culmen, interestingly cited in the opening of The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Most compellingly, there is an extant St. Gall Isidore copied in an Irish hand: ‘The evidence of the St. Gall fragment of the Etymologies shows that the Irish were copying as well as reading Isidore at home by the middle of the seventh century’ 68 Hillgarth,1984, p. 4 69 Ibid., p. 4 70 Ibid., p. 3

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there are several earlier Irish Latin exegetic, grammatical, and computistic writers in the seventh century who cite Isidore, especially the Etymologies.71 Hillgarth cites at least ten seventh-century Irish authors who use Isidore, and the range of use is exceptional. He writes: Six works – the Etymologies, De natura rerum, Differentiae, De ortu et obitu partum, Allegoriae, and Quaestiones in vetus testamentum – are used in Irish exegetical writings. Six works – the Etymologies, De natura rerum, Differentiae, Chronica, Synonyma and De officiis – are employed in the Hisperica famina (which uses four works of Isidore), by Vergilius Maro, and in grammatical works such as the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (which also uses four works), Malsachanus and (probably) the Ars Ambrosiana.72

The Etymologies and the De natura are also used in Irish computistical texts. The extent of Isidore’s use in seventh-century Ireland is unparalleled anywhere in the West, and there is no documented use of Isidore outside of Spain, the Chronica being the exception, before the late seventh century.73 Several examples serve to illustrate this point. The De ortu and the Etymologies were known to the Irish author Laidcend, author of a lorica titled ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, by 661, and the De nature rerum and Etymologies were used by an Irish computist before 658.74 The oldest manuscript of Isidore’s Etymologies was written in Ireland in the mid-seventh century, as well as the earliest copy of the Origines, preserved in St Gall 1399.75 The canonical text of the vernacular Auraicept na nÉces, composed in the mid-seventh century, begins with the story of Babel’s tower and the invention of the Irish language, likely drawn from Isidore or Orosius.76 This text’s division of Irish into registers reflects Isidore’s account of the registers of Latin. Indeed, in a colophon to An Táin Bó Cúailnge (‘The Cattle-Raid of Cooley’) in the Book of Leinster, the Etymologies are referred to as the ‘culmen’, i.e., ‘summa’, the ‘summit’ of all learning.77 The Irish retrieve the lost tale in exchange for the 71 Ibid., p. 7 72 Ibid., pp. 15-16 73 Ibid., pp. 9-10 74 See Herren, 1973; for discussion of Laidcend and early Irish learning, see Howlett, 1996 75 Hillgarth, 1984, p. 10; See Smyth, 2016, for an overview and critique of dating 76 Ahlqvist, 1982, p. 40 77 Ó Máille, 1921, pp. 71-76; in this anecdote, an assembly of the poets of Ireland was called by Senchan Torpesit to see if any of them remember the Táin in its entirety. Since they knew only fragments, Senchan sent his students to the Continent to retrieve the Táin in exchange for the Culmen. In the glosses to the Féilire Óengusso, Isidore is referred to as ‘Esodir in chulmin’, ‘Isidore of the Culmen’ (p. 74). Ó Máille identifies Senchan with a poet of Guaire who died in 663, giving

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culmen. Given the reverence with which this tale was treated, this speaks to the profound respect the Irish had for Isidore across the centuries. Textual transmission from Spain in the seventh century may have also brought a complete copy of Boethius’s De institutione arithmetica (hereafter DIA), which is witnessed in a seventh-century computistical tract, De ratione conputandi.78 The author of this text cites Boethius three times, and explains early in this work that ‘the four subjects essential to the church are scripture, history, computistics and grammar’.79 Though the computa are more closely related to the quadrivium of the liberal arts, the Irish curriculum favoured the triad of grammar, computistics, and scriptural studies.80 The Sirmond manuscript containing Bede’s computus, the exemplar of which likely originated in southeast Ireland in the seventh century, contains Boethius and a number of computistical works, several composed in Spain, before Bede.81 In fact, the Irish computistical tracts were essential to Bede’s The Reckoning of Time. An important piece of the puzzle is Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS BPL 239Ia, dated to the second quarter of the ninth century. Known as ‘Z’, it is written in a characteristic semi-uncial, insular script with decorations and colours similar to many early Irish psalters. It has 36 Old Irish glosses dating to c. 800.82 A later twelfth-century manuscript of DIA at Trinity is nearly identical, suggesting the methods for teaching DIA had not changed from the ninth to the twelfth century. Also, in the eleventh or twelfth century Irish manuscript Florence, Bibliotheca Medici Laurenziana, MS Plut. 78.19 a complete copy of De Consolatione Philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy) (hereafter DCP), including Middle Irish glosses, has survived.83 In the early period our only sure evidence for Boethian influence points to the study of Boethius’s work on the quadrivium. Given the Irish interest in the trivium, especially grammar, we can speculate that now lost texts may have provided evidence for the study of Boethian rhetoric. This is, of course, pure speculation. However, David Howlett writes that of the four primary authors writing on the liberal arts in Late Antiquity, Martianus Capella, a mid-seventh century date for the Etymologies in Ireland. However, T.F. O Rahilly, 1926-28, p. 109, notes the Annals of Tigernach have an entry for 618 that states ‘scribend in Cuimin’, ‘the writing of the Culmen’, suggesting an early seventh-century date 78 See Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, pp. 122-23 79 O Néill, 2013, p. 43 80 Ibid., p. 43 81 Ibid., p. 48 82 Ibid., pp. 48-49 83 See Ó Néill, 2005

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Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville, the Irish ‘were acquainted early with all of these thinkers, and the earliest copy of Cicero’s De oratore was written by Lupus of Ferriers and was copied from an Insular manuscript that was lent to him between 829 and 835 by Einhard, a biographer of the Emperor Charlemagne’.84 That an Insular exemplar was the source of this Carolingian copy of De oratore is compelling but, again, barring discovery, one can only speculate as to its origins. As will be discussed again below, scholars must use caution when ascribing any textual tradition among Irish scribes on the Continent to the Irish at home. That works of Martianus Capella were studied in Ireland long before they became known anywhere else in Europe is attested in seventh-century Ireland by the use of the De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii (The Marriage of Philology and Mercury) (hereafter De nuptiis) in the anonymous grammar named the Anonymous ad Cuimnanum (hereafter Anonymous) by Bernard Bischoff, the Auraicept na nÉces, and a vernacular law-text. The Anonymous incorporates material from Capella’s Book 3 on grammar, especially sections 290 to 324. However, no other sections are evidenced in the Anonymous or in any other early Latin grammars of Irish provenance, so it could have been that it was taken from a grammatical miscellany, rather than a complete copy.85 The same is true of a section on grammar in the vernacular Auraicept na nÉces (hereafter Auraicept), the oldest part of which has been dated to the ‘Old Irish’ period, c. 700-900 CE. The Auraicept draws on Priscian and Donatus, as well as Martianus Capella and Isidore, among others, but it is most significant for its insight into the linguistic training of the poet in early Ireland.86 In addition to grammatical instruction, the Auraicept was clearly part of a wider educational program. As Deborah Hayden has noted, the Auraicept ‘was composed in an intellectual milieu similar to that which produced numerous other Hiberno-Latin grammars, biblical exegeses, and vernacular legal texts’.87 Though the use of Martianus Capella by the authors is certain, positivistic evidence suggests a grammatical miscellany, rather than a complete copy of De nuptiis, though such evidence also does not rule out the possibility. Further evidence for study of Martianus Capella and Boethius is a vernacular text of the Nemed School dated to the late seventh or early eighth century 84 Howlett, 2013, p. 111 85 See Teeuwen, 2007, for an overview of direct evidence for Martianus Capella in Irish Latin texts 86 For a critical edition, see Ahlqvist, 1983; see also Hayden, 2014; idem 2011 87 Hayden, 2011, pp. 4-9

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called Dliged sésa a hUraicept na mac sésa (‘System of higher learning from the handbook of students of higher learning’) (hereafter Dliged sésa). Dliged sèsa is a primer for the study of law and poetry, two arts closely related in early Ireland, though there are also allusions to natural science. Johan Corthals believes the text is indebted to late antique learning due to the allusion to the ‘woman of poetry’ witnessed in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis and Boethius’s DCP along with what appears to be an adaptation of the rhetorical doctrine of the five canons of rhetoric as it appears in the pseudo-Cicero Rhetorica ad Herennium. Dliged sésa synthesizes the verbal art of the filid with the late antique grammatical and rhetorical tradition, and it is incorporated in the law-text Bretha Nemed Dédenach. The Nemed School was a poetico-legal school located in Munster, and the compiler’s concern with verbal artistry confirms its significance in the oratorical performance of law in early Irish society. In esoteric prose, this text traces the development of speech from its physical source within the body and the invisible elements, the dé án anma i gcurpaibh diosoillsi(b) (‘fiery smoke of the soul in the covered particles’), into artistic skill personified in the Fo-suidhighter bé d(h)úisioch dúthrachtach (‘woman full of treasures and desires’), the female patron of the arts exemplified in the works of Martianus Capella and Boethius.88 Mastery of these arts allows the student to ascend to the highest circles of Irish society, to join the nemed. The influence of Christian thought is also revealed in the invocation of God’s aid to help the student ‘in the fields of concord’, a rhetorical theme common in the writings of both Columbanus and Gregory the Great.89 Voice and its regulation in poetic composition is a primary concern for the author of Dlíged Sésa who cites the Rhetorica ad Herennium (hereafter ad Herennium) on voice in Latin: At é téora ranna gotha .i. méd, sonairte ocus maoithe, ut dixit Cicero: Figura vocis in tres partes divi(di)tur, in magnitudinem, in firmitatem et in mollitudinem. (‘These are the three parts of the voice: size, strength and softness. As Cicero said, the voice is divided into three categories, according to its size, strength, and softness’).90 Though this is the only direct citation of the ad Herennium, it is applied here not to traditional oratory, but to the verbal art of the filid, demonstrating the ways in which the Irish adapted Latin learning to their own learned arts. The allusion to Martianus Capella, Boethius, and the ad Herennium by scholars of the Nemed School suggests that this poetico-legal school 88 Corthals, 2013, p. 87 89 Corthals, 2013-2014, p. 87; see also Corthals, 2007; on the language of concord in Columbanus’s writings, see Bracken, 2018 90 Corthals, 2007, p. 137

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in eighth-century Ireland possessed rhetorical handbooks, or perhaps rhetorical miscellanies, that circulated widely in Late Antiquity. However, Irish scholarship is syncretic, and scholars used such authorities to create their own texts, both learned and literary. The Nemed School, though clearly concerned with native Irish legal and learned traditions, understood their own verbal art in light of late antique grammatical and rhetorical arts. Rather than copying handbooks passed down from antiquity, these scholars were innovators who created their own handbooks based on their own traditions and for use by their own scholars and practitioners.

Letter Writing and the Paschal Controversy The letter was a significant genre in early Ireland, and in the many extant examples we find that late antique letters were likely known and studied. As noted above, Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine as first bishop to the Christians in Ireland in 431 CE. In the beginning, the Irish conversion was a British matter, and the British maintained control of the Irish churches in the fifth and sixth centuries.91 Contacts between Ireland, Britain, Gaul, and Rome continued in the fifth through the seventh centuries and, aside from material evidence, the primary literary evidence for these contacts are a few extant letters. The letters also demonstrate the primacy of synods and councils in ecclesiastical governance and, in kind, reveal much about the nature of synodical debate in this early period. Of course, letters also allowed for long distance communication, which was not necessarily something new, though Christian writers certainly innovated those communication strategies that grew in importance in the age of Justinian and Augustan.92 Just as Aldhelm’s letter provides our earliest account of the prestige of Irish learning, the extant Irish letters demonstrate the importance in the seventh century of communication among and between ecclesiastical communities in Ireland, Britain, Gaul, and in the case of Cummianus Hibernus and the clerics at Armagh, Rome.93 Manuscripts and learning were shared among these communities, and letters were the means for requesting copies of desired texts, as well as more accurate ones. Colmán’s letter to Feradach demonstrates that Irish clerics were capable of requesting texts from other centres of learning, whether in Rome, Gaul, or other 91 See Dumville, 1997, p. 1 92 See Corcoran, 2014 93 On communication between Armagh and Rome, see Sharpe, 1984

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centres in Ireland, but also that letters were used to impart strategies for textual criticism.94 The surviving letters were most often composed in the midst of ecclesiastical controversy and debate. For Patrick, we will see that the question of his fitness for the bishopric inspired his Confessio, while his Epistle was inspired by barbaric acts of a local slave-raider against recent convertees. Cummian’s De controuersia paschali (‘On the Easter Controversy’) was, as the title suggests, also born of controversy, one over the correct date of the passion and of Easter, a controversy in which the Irish were embroiled for many years, as was the pseudo-Columbanus Epistle De sollemnitatibus of uncertain authorship.95 Cummian’s letter on the paschal controversy exists in a sole surviving copy in a manuscript of the eleventh or twelfth century, though orthography suggests the exemplar is quite old.96 Cummian himself is a shadowy figure, though he may have authored other texts that still survive, and the letter itself indicates that Cummian was of a southern Irish milieu.97 The letter was written ca. 632 or 633 to ‘venerable Ségéne, abbot of Iona, successor of the holy Columba’, who held that office from 623-652 CE.98 As for Cummian, there is evidence to suggest that he was of a southern Irish milieu, perhaps of the Columban paruchia, but the evidence is far from conclusive.99 In early Christianity, the two most significant events were the passion (trial and crucifixion) and resurrection of Christ, and the anniversary of the Pasch was the central celebration of the Christian year, and all other feasts and seasons were calculated from that date. The beginning of the letter implies that some southern Irish churches celebrated Easter on a different date than that celebrated at Iona, which celebrated the ‘Irish’ orthodox Easter.100 This celebration was out of line with that celebrated 94 According to Sharpe, 1992a, it is unclear if by ‘a Romanis’, Colmán means he requested a superior version of Isidore and Sedulius from the ‘Romani’, meaning the southern Irish learned circles, or from ‘those in Rome’. If it were the former, the letter could be dated to the early seventh century. This would show that learning was shared among ecclesiastical communities in Ireland. If it were the latter, Colmán may have been an Irish scholar in a continental centre of learning, and the letter would likely be of the late eighth or early ninth century. In any case, the letter provides evidence of scholarly exchange among learned circles 95 See Ó Cróinín, 1997, pp. 264-70 96 London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A.xii, fol. 79r-83r (old foliation, 76r-80r); for a description of the manuscript, dating, and orthography, see Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, pp. 51-54 97 For a discussion of the difficulty identifying the Cummian of the letter, see ibid., pp. 8-15 98 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, p. 7 99 Ibid., pp. 7-15 100 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, pp. 18-29 summarize the Paschal question in Late Antiquity and early medieval Ireland

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in Rome and throughout Gaul, and apparently also in the southern Irish churches. As with the problem of the Pelagian heresy that so concerned Prosper of Aquitaine and the Gallic and Roman churches, a series of synods and councils were called to bring the church into alignment regarding the date of the passion and the resurrection.101 Cummian’s letter ‘is at once a report of a synod held by the southern Irish churches to discuss the Paschal problem and a defence of that synod against the criticisms apparently made of it by Ségéne and his followers’.102 Cummian’s letter demonstrates the degree to which the early seventhcentury Irish were in contact with their continental and Roman colleagues.103 As Cummian claims in the letter, after poring over evidence from a variety of Easter tables, historical texts, and writings of the Church Fathers, he called a synod of primary southern Irish ecclesiastics at Mag Léne, where it was agreed to adopt a new, ‘orthodox’ method of calculating the date of Easter. Shortly after, a debate arose among Irish clerics, and the new orthodox date was called into question. The Circle of Cummianus then dispatched ‘a delegation to Rome in order to ascertain which was the method practised by the Holy See, and in the third year … some of the delegation returned with the news that the new cycle was indeed that of the universal church’.104 Yet the monks of Iona were not convinced. Cummian’s letter appears to be a reply to a charge of heresy directed at the southern Irish churches by Iona. Ó Cróinín writes that the letter ‘was not an unsolicited attempt by Cummian to win over the Iona monks to the so-called “orthodox” reckoning of Easter’, but rather a response to charges of heresy levelled by Iona.105 The letter is a carefully organized, deliberative response, and even a cursory analysis demonstrates the adaptation of the Ciceronian canons. Indeed, Ó Cróinín says that we might identify Cummian’s letter as ‘a carefully 101 In addition to his close association with Germanus, who famously defeated Pelagians in Britain in oratorical battle, Prosper himself penned several anti-Pelagian works, including a collection of three hundred and ninety-two sentences from twenty-four of Augustine’s writings, a paraphrase of one hundred and five of these sentences in epigrams, an abbreviated version of Enarrationes in Psalmos, and possibly Capitula Sancti Augustini in urbem Roman transmissa and the lost Excerptio Prosperi ex libris de Trinitate sancti Augustini; for references to primary editions, see Stansbury, 1999, p. 58; On Prosper, see Hwang, 2009 102 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, p. 4 103 In addition to Cummian’s letter, from Bede we know of a letter from Pope Honorius I to the Irish clergy in 634, a letter from Ségéne and other Irish clerics to Pope Severinus about 638, and a letter from Severinus’s successor, Pope John IV and the Roman curia, written in late 640, accusing the Irish of Pelagianism; see Ó Cróinín, 1985; J. Kelly, 1978 104 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, p. 17 105 Ibid., p. 16

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constructed legal document’ that follows a careful procedural approach likely in imitation of a canonical decree.106 Like Columbanus before him, Cummian appeals to the Roman rhetoric of concord, demonstrating at least awareness of such rhetoric as employed in Cyprian’s De unitate ecclesiae. Rhetorical proofs follow a pattern witnessed in other Irish letter writers. The general formula is Old Testament proof, New Testament proof, authority of a Latin Father, and synodical or canonical proof, a formula explicitly laid out in Book XIX of the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis titled ‘De ordine inquisitionis causarum’ (‘Concerning the order of invoking authoritative sources’). Though there is variation, this combination is common in both letters and canons. This letter is an important source for our understanding of compositional rhetoric and the ends to which the five canons, stasis theory, and deliberative and forensic rhetoric were put in ecclesiastical disputes, and a rhetorical analysis will shed light on the changing nature of rhetorical practice in the early Middle Ages. The contents of Cummian’s library evident in the Letter are of great significance as it was composed in seventh-century Ireland. Therefore, we can say with a great deal of confidence that those texts to which Cummian alludes were available in Ireland in the first half of the seventh century. Cummian cites no fewer than ten different Easter cycles,107 and quotes extensively from the Latin Vulgate and Vetus Latina.108 In addition, Cummian had in his library a vast collection of patristic and technical works, including: Origines-Rufinus’s Homilia in Leviticum; Augustine’s Epistle 36, Enarratio in Psalmos, De haeresibus 29, In Iohannem 17.3; the pseudo-Augustine cyclus paschalis; Victorius Aquitanus’s Tabula paschalis; Cyprian’s De unitate ecclesiae 6; the pseudo-Columbanus Epistle De sollemnitatibus; Pelagius’s Epistle ad Demetriadem; as well as several synods and councils, including Canon 1 of the Council of Nicaea and Canon 1 of the Council of Arelatensis.109 That even more texts were available in seventh-century Ireland would seem likely given consistent contact with Britain, the Continent, and Rome. Indeed, one would assume that the delegation to Rome would have returned with books. As noted above, histories of medieval rhetoric tend to only treat the twelfth century forward, and the influence of rhetoric on epistolography is no exception. One reason is that the church is commonly believed to have been an authoritarian regime, and when a pope or bishop proclaimed heresy, 106 Ibid., p. 17 107 Ibid., p. 29 108 Ibid., p. 222 109 Ibid., pp. 225-226

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the case was closed. Cummianus’s letter, and many more like it, reveal the extent of debate over issues of orthodoxy, as well as the centrality of letters to such debate. A rhetorical history of synodical debate in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages will help scholars better understand the changing socio-political contexts that shaped innovation in rhetorical practice.

Columbanus Also embroiled in the Paschal controversy and international politics of the late antique west was the most famous Irish writer from our period, Columbanus. The century of major monastic founders runs from 540-640 CE, and aside from brief notices in annals, the Penitential of Finnian,110 and The Alphabet of Piety,111 Columbanus provides some of the earliest substantiated evidence for the nature of Irish monasticism and monastic learning. The authentic, extant writings attributed to the saint remain a matter of debate, but likely include six letters, thirteen sermons, a Regula Monachorum and Regula Coenobialis, a penitential and two poems.112 Columbanus was born in Leinster and educated in Ulster, studying first with Sinlanus before entering a monastery in Bangor where he studied under Comgall.113 He travelled to Gaul around 591 as a peregrinus. Columbanus is a writer known for his refined prose style, one that betrays a secular education, as well as his zealous dedication to the ascetic life. Columbanus will be treated briefly here because his writings warrant a study in their own right; he is a central figure in early Irish learning. Writing nearly a century after his death, Columbanus’s biographer, Jonas, writes of the nature of his education: When the years of his infancy had passed and he had grown to boyhood, he dedicated his sharp wits litterarum doctrinis et grammaticorum studiis, which he pursued throughout the entirety of his boyhood and adolescence, until they reached fruition in his adult years.114 110 See Bieler and Binchy, 1963, pp. 74-95 111 See Hull, 1968 112 For edition and translation, see Walker, 1957; for discussion of manuscripts, dating, attribution, and significance of Columbanus’s writings, see the essays collected in Lapidge, 1997; for more recent studies, see O’Hara, 2018 113 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 176; for an argument on the political reasons Columbanus studied in Ulster, see idem, 2018 114 Krusch, 1905, p. 155

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Jonas also wrote that as a young man, Columbanus had studied grammar, rhetoric, and geometry, as well as the cursus of Sacred Scripture.115 There is no reason to doubt the veracity of this claim, and this is firm evidence that rhetoric was taught in Ireland in the sixth century.116 Though one must take hagiographical accounts with a grain of salt, Columbanus’s writings themselves provide ample evidence of the extent of his learning and demonstrate a ‘thorough command’ of Latin employed in different styles to suit the occasion.117 Though educated in Ireland, Columbanus placed himself into voluntary exile from Ireland, a practice referred to as peregrinatio, a form of exile for God, one that was met with zeal by the Irish. Peregrinatio was considered a sort of martyrdom, a ‘white martyrdom,’ as opposed to a ‘red martyrdom,’ the latter entailing death in service of God.118 To leave one’s homeland was to forfeit one’s right to inheritance, the value of one’s family name and all the power and prestige that accompanied it, all in exchange for the cleric’s robes; this was a major sacrifice.119 Columbanus’s peregrinatio led to the establishment of important centres of learning, including Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines in Merovingian Gaul, as well as Bobbio in northern Italy, all of which he established himself, but also those established by his disciples, including St Gall in Switzerland, monastic communities whose scholarly influence would be significant to the Carolingians.120 Columbanus’s contribution goes far beyond establishing centres of learning of signif icance to the Carolingians. It was quite vast, and his efforts working with the secular elites of the Frankish kingdoms led to the proliferation of monastic communities, with 100 being founded in the wake of his death; this left an indelible mark on the ‘ritual economy’ of not only his contemporaries in Merovingian Gaul, but of the Middle Ages, as well. Alexander O’Hara writes that ‘The world of Late Antiquity that Columbanus entered when he left Ireland toward the end of the sixth century was a world of gentes. The pluralistic political landscape of the gente had replaced a world of empire. The post-Roman kingdoms of Europe through which Columbanus travelled and established his monastic foundations

115 Ibid, p. 3 116 See the arguments in Breen, 2011, especially pp. 8-9 117 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 177 118 Siewers, 2005, discusses the colours of martyrdom in the Cambrai Homily, especially at pp. 33-37 119 See Charles-Edwards, 1976 120 See O Hara, 2018, and the contributions therein

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were comprised of many different communities of peoples’.121 Columbanus transformed the monastic model of Late Antiquity as he founded the rural monastery, ‘“pure spaces” of intercessory prayer independent of bishops and secular authorities’ that ‘became a new form of cultural contact that transformed the interrelationship between monastic groups and secular authorities’.122 The Frankish elite were persuaded to adopt this practice and saw these new monastic communities as a new means of winning social and political prestige and power for their families.123 From the time of Columbanus, and especially the rule of the Merovingian King Clothar II (584-629 CE), the monastery came to have a more important role in medieval politics. Though Columbanus’s surviving writings were likely composed on the continent, he left Ireland at a fairly advanced age. Therefore, they reveal something of his early education. Columbanus first studied with Sinlanus (Mo-Sinu maccu Min) before entering the monastery at Bangor founded by Comgall. Ó Cróinín cites a note from a manuscript in Würzburg that sheds light on the reputation of the former: Mo-Sinu maccu Min, scholar and abbot of Bangor, was the first of the Irish who learned the computus by heart from a certain learned Greek. Afterwards, Mo-Chuaróc maccu Neth Sémon, whom the Romans styled doctor of the whole world, and a pupil of the aforesaid scholar, in the island called Rannach of Downpatrick, committed this knowledge to writing, lest it should fade from memory.124

The name Mo-Sinu appears also in the commemorative poem ‘In memoriam abbatum nostrorum’ (‘In memory of our abbot’), which survives in the late seventh-century Antiphonary of Bangor, a manuscript that also preserves a poem attributed to Columbanus, Precamur patrem. Ó Cróinín remarks that Columbanus ‘was clearly the product of an intensive schooling, a system which had effectively mastered the techniques of language teaching from the elementary to an advanced level […] sixth-century Ireland had every reason for the pride and self-confidence that are mirrored in his correspondence’.125 Comgall (d 603), the abbot of Bangor in Ireland, was also Columbanus’s 121 O Hara, 2018, p. 6 122 Ibid., p. 7 123 Ibid., p. 7 124 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 177 125 Ibid., p. 178

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teacher, and it is likely that peregrinatio and his monastic ideals were taught by Comgall and the monks at Bangor. Columbanus’s letters were written in the later part of his life, between 600 CE and his death in 615 CE, and while the letters of Columbanus are a gem in the crown of early Hiberno-Latin literature, Columbanus was a peregrini, and his most famous compositions were written on the Continent; this is the reason they have survived. This led Neil Wright to argue that one must be cautious when drawing from the Episulae ‘any firm conclusions about the saint’s early training at Bangor or about Latin learning more generally in Ireland at the turn of the sixth century’.126 In response to such claims, Clare Stancliffe has argued that given the advanced age at which Columbanus left for Gaul, it is unlikely that Columbanus gained such grammatical and rhetorical expertise after he left Ireland.127 Columbanus is easily confused with another early Irish saint, Columba of Iona (521-597 CE).128 There is even less known about Columba outside of legendary accounts, but Alex Woolf has argued that Columba’s biographer, Adomnán, might help to shed light on the Irish monastic community in which the later Columbanus was trained. Both Columba and Columbanus received their training at Bangor, and though Adomnán never identifies the monastery at which Columba took his orders, he names three teachers: Cruithnechán, Gemmán, and Uinnianus.129 It is this last teacher who may help shed light on early Irish learning. In ‘Letter I’, Columbanus cites both Uinnianus and Gildas as authority figures on the question of overzealous monks.130 The famous British writer, Gildas (500-570 CE), is known as an accomplished and difficult writer of sub-Roman Britain whose Latin demonstrates hisperic symptoms. He is best known for his De excidio Britanniae, was trained in Roman rhetoric, and is believed to have visited Ireland in 565.131 There is also a strand of genealogy in the Middle Ages that attributes a son named Uinnianus to Gildas, which 126 Wright, 1997, p. 32 127 See the arguments in Stancliffe, 2011 128 Columba was a monk at Iona and may have authored three extant poems, including the ‘Altus Prossator’. For an overview, as well as translation, see Clancy and Márkus, 1995 129 Woolf, 2018, p. 94 130 Walker, 1957, p. 10 131 Lapidge, 1984, provides an account of the changing nature of rhetorical education in Late Antiquity in the Christian west. Lapidge analyzes Gildas’s De Excidio and concludes that it is developed according to the traditional organization prescribed by Cicero and reiterated in Martianus Capella and Isidore of Seville with special attention to the changing role of rhetorical education as letter writing grew in importance. The style of De Excidio also betrays Gildas’s rhetorical training

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Woolf argues is possibly the Irish teacher Uinnianus identified by Columba’s biographer, Adomnán. Columba and Columbanus were part of the f irst generation of Irish churchmen to take up the call to peregrinatio following monastic foundation in Ireland by British fathers. Ninth-century writers portray Uinnianus as a renowned scholar who had brought the gospels to Ireland. He is likely the author of the Penitentialis Uinniani, which is possibly the unacknowledged source for Columbanus’s own penitential. In any case, Gildas was a leading figure in the development of the British and Irish churches, and especially the growth of monasticism, and he stressed that the Irish Church was an offshoot of the British Church.132 This leads Woolf to suggest a strong connection among the British churches and the northern Irish churches, suggesting ‘a unified ecclesiastical province whose clerics interacted with one another on an almost daily basis’.133 This would include, of course, a shared library. Evidence for a shared monastic tradition is also revealed in the potential confusion of these two figures. Woolf notes that Columba and Columbanus share a name in religion, the Latin word for ‘dove’, which may reflect Uinnianus’s spiritual instruction. The name first appears in the later sixth century, and Woolf suggests the possibility that ‘Uinnianus may have called all his students, secular and clerical, by the same name’.134 In De excidio Gildas writes, ‘“Where you had been a raven, you had become a dove (ex corve Columbam): as though you were stoutly cleaving the hollow air with your whirring glide and avoiding with sinuous twists the savage talons of the swift hawk, you came swiftly and in safety to the caves of consolations of the saints that you can trust so well’”.135 That a sub-Roman Briton trained in Roman rhetoric may have had such close connections with the northern Irish churches is significant and has implications for how we read Columbanus’s letters.136 The ‘little dove’ may also be more than a pet-name for a student. Based upon text-internal evidence, Michael Lapidge attributes to Columbanus two hymns found in the late seventh-century Antiphonary of Bangor, Mundus iste transibit (‘On the world’s impermanence’) and Precamur patrem (‘We pray 132 Woolf, 2018, p. 95 133 Ibid., p. 97 134 Ibid., pp. 97-98 135 Ibid., p. 98 136 For further discussion of Gildas and Columbanus, as well as Columbanus’s rhetorical style, see Winterbottom, 1976

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to the father’).137 The latter, a rhythmical poem, is a meditation on Christ’s role in the scheme of salvation,138 one that Howlett argues demonstrates a great deal of poetic and figural sophistication.139 In line 81 of Precamur patrem, Columbanus refers to himself as micrologi, a grecism witnessed only in Columbanus’s ‘Letter I’ and in Jonas’s hagiographical account of the saint’s life, which confirms Columbanus’s authorship. The grecism is drawn from the Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nazianzus, widely accepted as the most accomplished rhetorical stylist of the patristic age.140 Lapidge’s interpretation is worth quoting in full: What drew Columbanus’s attention to the word was the context of Gregory’s discussion: the parallelism of the small dove (parua Columba) and the small or ineloquent rhetorician. Columbanus frequently plays on the association of his own name: Columba in Latin, peristera in Greek, (bar)iona in Hebrew. It suited Columbanus’s literary purposes splendidly that, to a micrologus, a small Columba was the vessel of the Holy Spirit – just as he, literally a Columba and although a humble micrologus, was not to be despised by mighty popes since he was, in effect, a vessel of the Holy Ghost.141

For Columbanus, this was a sort of ‘signature tune,’ a personal creed; he was the ‘little rhetorician’, wherein his name itself is representative of the humility topos. It could be that such a title was given to both Columba and Columbanus due to their scholarly skill and achievement. Preserved in the Antiphonary of Bangor at Bobbio, the poem was likely composed while Columbanus was still at Bangor, ca. 591 CE. Clare Stancliffe argues that this makes the hymn ‘doubly valuable: for it gives us a glimpse of the skills in Latin learning and composition that were already developed in sixth-century Ireland – skills which we would know nothing of but for the preservation of Columbanus’s writings on the Continent’.142 Stancliffe highlights the importance of Precamur patrem as evidence for the contents of the library of Bangor in the sixth century, but also the route of transmission of texts from the Continent to Ireland. She argues that, rather than Aquitaine, 137 Lapidge, 1997, pp. 253-254 138 Ibid., pp. 256-257 139 See Howlett, 1994c, pp. 1-10 140 See Kennedy, 1983, p. 215; idem, 1994, pp. 261-2 141 Ibid., pp. 259-260 142 Stancliffe, 1996, p. 91

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Atlantic trade routes seem to have played a larger role than previously thought in the transmission of texts.143 There is evidence, therefore, that the library at Bangor included Cassian’s Institutes, Caesarius of Arle’s sermon 194, Gregory of Nazianzus’s oratio 3 in the Latin translation of Rufinus, Jerome’s Epistle 14 and Epistle 22, and Vergil’s Aeneid.144 In Late Antiquity, commentators such as Macrobius and Servius celebrated Vergil’s abilities as an orator, and his writings were used in rhetorical instruction. Vergil was likely known in Ireland from an early date via the commentaries, though perhaps also a complete copy of the Aeneid.145 Gregory of Nazianzus, as noted above, was revered for his rhetorical dexterity. The writings of Cassian, Basil, Jerome, Faustus, and Caesarius were all known in Ireland c. 600, and in the case of Caesarius, his writings had reached Ireland within a century of his death.146 Both Cassian and Gregory of Nazianzus worked to adapt antique paideia to new Christian contexts, and Columbanus’s interest in Gregory’s writings, coupled with his own rhetorical skill, are significant for our understanding of rhetorical education and practice in early Ireland. In late sixth-century Ireland we find a place of intellectual intercourse and learning equal to and, in some cases, more fervent than the rest of the Christian Latin West. In summary, Bangor was a centre of learning in continuous scholarly exchange with Britain and the Continent via transatlantic trade routes from the sixth century forward. Its location in the northeast of Ireland makes it likely that there was a shared intellectual horizon with Iona, a Columban foundation in western Scotland.

Learning at Iona Iona was founded in 563 by Colum Cille (‘Columba’ in Latin, the same discussed above). Colum Cille is one of the most significant figures in early Irish literature, but there are no extant contemporary accounts of his life nor any confirmed extant writings, though his biographer tells us he was 143 Ibid., p. 97 144 Ibid., pp. 91-92 145 See Hofman, 1988; In addition to Vergil, Bobbio manuscript, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS G.82 contains a fifth-century manuscript of Seneca the Younger palimpsested at Bobbio in the seventh century, demonstrating at least that Columban monastic communities on the Continent had access to secular texts. Though we cannot know with certainty, it is likely that such texts found their way to Ireland 146 Stancliffe, 2011, p. 27

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a talented scribe who wrote many manuscripts, manuscripts with magical properties, including Book of Durrow, which according to legend could not be destroyed by water.147 The nearest contemporary account is given by Adomnán (679-704), ninth abbott of Iona, in his Vita Columbae.148 Adomnán also provides some of our earliest evidence of learning in seventh-century Iona. Adomnán tells us Columba was the son of Fedlimid and Eithne of the Cenel Conaill in Tír Chonaill in modern day County Donegal and was a descendent of the fifth century high king Niall of the Nine Hostages, ancestor of the powerful Uí Néill dynasty.149 He was fostered by Saint Cruithnechán, who was also his first teacher, before studying divine wisdom in Leinster with Gemmán.150 Columba then entered the monastic school at Clonard Abbey under Uinniau (also spelled Finnbarr, Finnio, and Finnian), a British cleric of some repute. In hagiographical and annalistic sources, Finnian is given as one of the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’, and legend has it that as many as 3,000 scholars were instructed at Clonard. As noted above, this is possibly the same Uinnia that Columbanus studied under.151 Columba was born in the age in western Britain and Ireland known as the ‘Age of Saints’.152 The monastic ideal inspired recent Christian converts who flocked to religious houses in large numbers. Adomnán was one of these Christians, but aside from his position and his authorship of a number of works, little is known about him. Adomnán was renowned as a scholar during his lifetime, having been received positively by Northumbrian clerics and, as Bede tells us, was friends with Northumbrian king Aldfrith (d. 704 or 705).153 His renown lasted long after his death in 704. For my present purposes, I will highlight the works associated with Iona that are of relevance to a history of rhetoric. Recent research has shed much light on learning and literary pursuit at Iona. 154 As Mark Stansbury has demonstrated, Iona was unique in that writing was central to monastic life for even the most esteemed clerics. The scribae (‘scribe’) 147 For an overview of the role of the scribe in Iona, including Columba, in the context of Late Antiquity, see Stansbury, 2014 148 For a translation with critical introduction and detailed notes, see Sharpe, 1995 149 Sharpe, 1995, 16 150 Ibid., 11.25 151 Discussion in Sharpe, 1995, pp. 10-12 152 Chadwick, 1961, p. 36, breathes life into this description of early Ireland, arguing also that the ‘Age of Saints’ was also an age of writing 153 Clancy and Márkus, 1995, pp. 14-16 154 See Stansbury, 2014; Aist et al, 2010; O Loughlin, 2007; idem, 2001; idem, 2000; idem, 1994a; idem, 1994b; idem, 1992; Clancy and Márkus, 1995; Sharpe, 1995

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(given most often as scriptor, librarius, antiquarii), was often perceived as a manual labourer, and it was rare for an abbot to pursue this task.155 One who occupied such a prestigious position composed but did not do the manual labour of writing: the dictator composed by dictation; the notarius transcribed the composition in shorthand; and the librarius prepared the manuscript. In seventh-century Ireland, however, this distinction is not as clear, and in composing a manuscript a figure such as Colum Cille passed his virtus to the manuscript itself, rendering it indestructible, if not venerable as a relic. This also might transform the way one reads a manuscript, as well. In this light, Stansbury argues for reading ‘the selective use of graphic devices as a rhetoric of legibility’ that ‘encourage certain interpretations’.156 Manuscript layout, illuminations, embellished capital letters and flourishes, and even punctuation were intended to guide the reader to a certain interpretation or to meditate on certain sections.157 Stansbury’s study is an essential starting place for a student of the visual rhetoric of manuscript illumination. The earliest manuscript that can be said with a good deal of certainty to have been written at Iona is the ‘Schaffhausen Adomnán’, containing his Life of Columba.158 Claims have been made for Book of Durrow (said to have been written by Colum Cille and to have been indestructible), Book of Kells, and Cathach (‘The Battler’), a psalter said to have been carried into battle as a good luck charm. However, though it is likely that these manuscripts were produced in a Columban foundation, the evidence for places of production is not certain.159 That being said, later and contemporary literary evidence make it clear that writing and learning were essential activities at Iona and other Columban foundations. It is from such literature that scholars have been able to get an idea of what books were available in Iona. From Iona we have a collection of prose works, including two attributed to Adomnán, the Vitae Columbae (‘Life of Columba’)160 and De Locis Sanctis (‘On Sacred Places’).161 The latter text is a seventh-century description of Palestine and other regions in the Near East drawn from a number of oral and written sources, including the 155 See Stansbury, 2014, pp. 5-20 156 Ibid., p. 27 157 On manuscript culture in Ireland and Irish centres, see Moss, O Mahony, and Maxwell, 2017 158 On the Schaffhausen manuscript, see Stansbury, 2003-04; On the Vita Columbae, see Clancy and Márkus, 1995, pp. 25-26; Sharpe, 1995; Picard, 1987-88; idem 1982a; idem 1982b 159 Stansbury, 2014, pp. 24-26 160 For a valuable introduction and translation, see Sharpe, 1995 161 For an edition and translation, see Bieler and Meehan, 1958

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Gallic bishop Arculf’s account of his pilgrimage.162 This work will be of particular significance to those with an interest in the rhetoric of place and sacred spaces. There is also Cáin Adomnáin (‘Adomnán’s Law’, or ‘Law of the Innocents’), Canones Adomnani (‘Canons of Adomnán’),163 the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis (‘Irish Collection of Canon Law’)164, possibly Hisperica famina (‘Western Orations’), and the Iona Chronicle. The Collectio Canonum Hibernensis will be of special interest to those pursuing a study of rhetoric and canon law in early Ireland. There is also a substantive body of poetry and hymns, in Latin and in Irish, attributed to or associated with Colum Cille, including Altus Prosator (‘High Creator’) and Dallán mac Forgaill’s Amrae Choluimb Chille (‘Wonderful Colum Cille’) along with several others, including the poems of Beccán mac Luigdech.165 All of these texts reveal a deep dedication to the monastic practice of lectio divina, meditative study of the Bible. However, these sources are also ripe with rhetoric, as recent rhetorical studies of literary responses to doctrinal matters, hymnody, and prayer have demonstrated, and as discussions of the promise of synodical texts, such as canons and letters, suggested above.166 In addition to the Latin Vulgate and Vetus Latina, a number of secular and scholarly texts provide insight into the library of this great monastic community. Of greatest interest here are Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei (City of God’), De consensus evangelistarum (On the Harmony of the Evangelists), and De doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), the former two certainly available to Adomnán, and the latter likely available.167 Isidore’s works were also known in Iona in the seventh century, specifically the Etymologiae (Etymologies) and De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things). Cassiodorus’s Expositio psalmorum (Exposition of the Psalms) (referred to above as a Christian ars rhetorica) and Institutiones are reflected in Adomnán’s writings, as well as a spattering of Church Fathers, including Gregory’s Dialogi (Dialogues), Leo the Great’s sermons 21 and 50, and a number of works by Jerome. 162 See O Loughlin, 2007 163 For an edition and translation of both texts, see Ó Néill and Dumville, 2003 164 For a critical edition and translation, see the 3 volume collection by Flechner, 2019; however, see also the review of these volumes in Russell, 2021 165 For a critical edition and translation of the Iona poems, see Clancy and Markús, 1995; for a translation of Altus Prosator, see Carey, 2000, pp. 29-50; for a critical edition and translation of Amrae Choluimb Chille, as well as a re-evaluation of its date of composition, traditionally believed to have been the sixth century, see Bisagni, 2019 166 See Fitzgerald, 2012; Pernot, 2006 167 O Loughlin, 1994a, p. 47 and p. 51

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Pervasive throughout the corpus of poetry and prose associated with Iona are John Cassian’s (c. 360-c. 435) Conferences and Book IV of the Institutes (in Apgitir Chrábaid ‘The Alphabet of Devotion’),168 works also deemed to be inventive responses to secular learning. Rebecca Krawiec argues that Cassian invented a new monastic reading culture, which required a particular form of literacy. She writes that ‘Cassian’s texts function as monastic equivalents to rhetorical handbooks (the Institutes) and works of literary theory (the Conferences) and are themselves sublime replacements for “pagan” literature’ that appropriate ‘rhetorical values and prestige into a new performance of the elite male self’.169 Such a perspective challenges traditional narratives of rhetorical history cited above, and demonstrates the significance of Iona’s literature for a history of rhetoric. Irish authors created original and creative monastic literature that possesses rhetorical depth. As Adomnán’s biography of Columba makes clear, there were secular and political implications in these works that sought to place the monastery and Christian ideology in the centre of early Irish social life. Thomas O Loughlin also makes the case for the presence in Iona of Paulinus’s Epistolae; Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Natural History); Sulpicius Severus’s Chronicon (Sacred History), Vita Martini (Life of St Martin), Dialogi (Dialogues), and Letter II; and Vergil’s Aeneid and Georgics.170 O Loughlin notes that if these texts were available, many more were likely available as well, and the Irish had access to any number of authors. He writes, ‘Its library shows us that Iona was not acting as a “saviour of civilization”, nor was it “the last outpost of a civilization”, but actively playing its part in the give-and-take of Latin Christian letters that constituted the intellectual world of the west at the time’.171 Though Iona may be said to be an exception rather than the rule, many of the texts alluded to above are also named in the seventh-century O Mulconry’s Glossary, including Jerome, Cassian, Augustine, Isidore, Vergil, Priscian, and Cicero.172 Indeed, Herren’s remarks on the second-hand nature of Latin learning in Ireland were intended to temper claims of Ireland as the ‘harbinger of classical learning’.173 At the time, tempering of such claims was necessary. But it is clear that we must move beyond an understanding of encyclopaedic texts, Christian or secular, as less valuable to a history of 168 For an edition and translation, see Hull, 1968; Clancy and Márkus, 1995; Carey, 2000 169 Krawiec, 2012, p. 1 170 O Loughlin, 1994a, esp. p. 52 171 O Loughlin, 2001, p. 53 172 For an excellent critical edition and translation, as well as extensive notes, see Moran, 2019 173 See Herren, 1981

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the rhetorical arts and recognize them as a creative, Christian response to secular learning of value in their own right. In kind, the Irish texts that draw upon and adapt these works should be read as literary and rhetorical productions and valued as such.

The Grammatical Handbook Tradition in Ireland In addition to the rich tapestry of ecclesiastical and secular learning represented in the literature of Iona and other early Irish monastic communities, there is an extensive Latin grammatical handbook tradition associated with the Irish both at home and abroad, with five surviving manuals written before 700. In comparison, not a single grammatical manual was written in Merovingian Gaul between the sixth and eighth centuries. These manuals, both Latinate and vernacular, as well as other literature inspired by grammatical study, provide insight into linguistic education in early Ireland, including the rhetorical arts. In early Ireland, grammatical studies dominated the curriculum, and such study was quite different from what a modern reader might imagine. In his Ars grammatica, known in Ireland by the seventh century, Diomedes defines grammar as ‘the understanding of the poets and the ready elucidation of writers and historians, and the logic of speaking and writing correctly’.174 The study of grammar was the study of the poets and historians, especially Vergil (who was seen as both, as well as a master orator by late antique commentators), and it is through such study that one achieved mastery of language. In Epistle 95,65, Seneca sarcastically referred to the grammaticus as the custos Latini sermonis (‘the guardian of the Latin language’). In Late Antiquity, St Augustine used the same metaphor, though in a different application, referring to the grammaticus in De musica as custodia historiae, the guardian of traditional culture and all of the aspects of learning denoted by the word historia.175 Robert Kaster explains that Augustine’s emphasis on historia, ‘the great weight of tradition’ is on ‘the binding and limiting force of the past’s authority that animates the grammarian’s custodia historiae’.176 In Antiquity, the grammarian’s task consisted of recte loquendi scientia (‘the science of proper speaking’) and poetarum enarratio (‘interpretation of the poets’), as per Quintilian. In Late Antiquity, writers such as Macrobius 174 Chin, 2008, p. 99 175 Kaster, 1980, p. 219 176 Ibid, p. 220

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conceived of enarratio as a method that required care and maintenance for keeping in touch with one’s culture and that produced a habit of mind, attention to detail, diligence, and reverence for the past.177 Grammatica did not consist only in elementary linguistic training, but included the interpretation of texts at all levels, from the lexical, to etymological analysis, metrics, textual analysis such as emendatio, and the interpretation of allegory and other rhetorical devices. It was not restricted to literary texts, but took as its subject history, poetry, and philosophy, and was interested in descriptions and definitions of these genres.178 As the anonymous author of the seventh-century Anonymous ad Cuimnanum (hereafter Anonymous) writes, ‘… he who desires wisdom should shudder at the art of grammatica, without which one can not be learned and wise’.179 This was only one aspect of grammatical study, which also had as a goal the development of the moral citizen. The grammaticus oversaw the passage from basic literacy gained in the ludus litterarius to the initiation into literary culture and the attendant status and perquisites. As Catherine Chin writes, grammatical education in Late Antiquity ‘was understood to produce a particular kind of social and cultural actor, or more broadly, to contribute to the maintenance of a subject’s educated ethos’.180 Antique and late antique education, especially rhetorical, but also grammatical, stressed the literate person should be urbane, selfless, knowledgeable, and virtuous.181 This is witnessed in the tradition of the author of an ars dedicating the work to one’s son, as Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and Charisius did. Such dedications also reflected the temporal concerns of grammarians, the antiqui and nos, the ancients and the contemporaries. The Latin grammatical curriculum had been transformed in Late Antiquity from the traditional ars grammatica (such as Donatus) in the third and fourth century to the grammatical commentary inaugurated by Servius on the verge of the fifth century.182 By the seventh century, the Irish had begun writing their own commentaries on Donatus, deeply influenced by the late antique commentary tradition and Isidore’s etymologizing strategy, and in this century the Irish won an international reputation for learning.183 177 Kaster, 1980, p. 235 178 Burnyeat, 2007, p. 183 179 Qtd. in ibid, pp. 182-83 180 Chin, 2008, p. 49 181 Ibid., pg. 49 182 See Visser, 2011 183 Sometime around the seventh century, there was an influx of grammars to Ireland. Some features of Irish texts provide clues for the sources used by the Irish in gaining grammatical

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As has been noted, knowledge of Latin was essential for learning liturgy, reading and interpreting Scripture, and the daily business of ecclesiastical administration. Knowledge of Latin not only connected one to the international community of scholars, but to the time of the apostles. In order to aid in the process of learning Latin, the Irish developed a system of construe marks–critical signs, commas, semicolons, dashes, and the like–placed over and under words, in order to guide students through a Latin text.184 The Irish commentaries also follow a unique lemma-scholion format that has been useful in identifying the Irish provenance of manuscripts. The extant commentaries, such as those on the Auraicept na n-Éces, should be read as a repository of teaching and learning representing generations of commentary and elaboration. In addition to the basics of reading Latin, all of the grammars include discussion of the vices and virtues of language, as well as sections on figures. On the one hand, this was a guide for the use of figure and ornamentation in one’s own writing, on the other an understanding of figuration was essential to biblical exegesis. But the grammars also elucidate the functions of grammatica, including lectio (‘reading’), enarratio (‘interpretation’), emendatio (‘correction’), and iudicium (‘judgement’), which are given in the Anonymous.185 Additionally, that the primary exercises of rhetorica were taught in early medieval grammatica is evidenced in the Anonymous’s explication of chiria (chreia), one of the progymnasmata of ancient rhetoric. A chreia is an instructive saying or act that is expressed concisely and attributed to a person, and the Anonymous draws on both biblical and secular examples in explication. Like the grammatical excerpts of the Vatican Grammarian, the Anonymous’s treatment of chreia can be compared to Theon, Aphthonius, and Priscian’s Latin translation of Hermogenes (Praeexercitamina) and provides the canonical distinction between chreia of speech, action, and mixed, and also distinguishes four types: propositium (proposition), percunctatium (‘inquiry’), refutatium (‘refutation’), and demonstratium (‘demonstration’).186 knowledge. In the Anonymous ad Cuimnanum, we see the use of antiquae (suspensions, notae iuirs, legal shorthand), and notae Tironianae (Tironian notes) that were derived from the late antique shorthand practices. These, in addition to the use of cursive half-uncial script points to a manuscript presently in Naples but whose origins lie in the monastery of Bobbio, near Piacenza. These features do not appear in texts dated before 600, but they appear in the St Gall Isidore (Etymologiae) dated to the mid-seventh century or later; For studies of insular, Latin grammatica, see the works of Law included in the bibliography 184 See Draak, 1967; idem, 1957 185 Bischoff and Löfstedt, 1992, p. 15 (I.465-492) 186 See ibid, pp. 121-22 (XVIII.71-122)

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In this, the Anonymous can be placed in a well-defined rhetorical tradition, though further exploration of the chreia in this text must remain a matter for another time. The proliferation of grammatical manuals also tells us something of the character of Irish learning. As Louis Holtz writes, Wherever grammatical manuals increase in number, it is a sign that there is a direct interest in the study of language, an attempt to put language into scholarly form. Whenever there is such an interest in Latin, this is something of international concern arising from a need to master the language that was par excellence the medium for communicating what was written.187

The seventh-century Irish were certainly outward looking, and they engaged Latin learning with fervour, though by the eighth century the vernacular tradition would flower, and this called for the production of vernacular grammars, as well. In early Ireland the study of grammar was transformed to meet the needs of an emergent Latin culture, and a tradition of both rudimentary grammatical handbooks and exegetical grammars developed. Louis Holtz argues the Irish grammars provide evidence that the influential Roman grammarian Donatus (fl. 4th cent.) was likely being studied in Ireland as early as the second half of the sixth century and, in addition to Isidore’s Etymologies, Donatus’s Ars maior and Ars minor, and Priscian’s (fl. 500 CE) Institutiones grammaticae were the primary sources for the Irish grammars.188 A copy of Priscian’s complete grammar, dated linguistically to the early seventh century, and containing around 3,000 Old Irish glosses, has resided at the Irish monastic foundation, St Gall Stiftsbibliothek, since the late ninth century.189 Donatus’s grammars were by far the most popular throughout Late Antiquity. However, they were still rather advanced for students with no knowledge of Latin at all. This led the Irish to innovate and create a new handbook genre of elementary Latin manuals.

187 Holtz, 1981a, p. 135 188 Ibid., p. 144, argues that Asper’s grammar likely dates to circa 600, and an ancient, common source, a synthesis of Donatus’s Ars minor and Partes maiores, was used in Asper, Malsachan, and the Ars bernensis, leading Holtz to claim that Donatus was probably being studied in Ireland by the second half of the sixth century. He writes that such a synthesis of Donatus’s two books represents ‘a conscious pedagogic project’; see also Hofman, 1981 189 See Bauer, Hofman, and Mauer’s digital edition of the St Gall Priscian Glosses at http://www. stgallpriscian.ie/ (accessed 17-03-2021); See also Hofman, 2000; idem, 1996

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The Irish also developed their own method for composing pedagogical texts. Charles-Edwards coined the phrase the ‘Standard Old Irish Textbook Style’ to describe the Irish textbooks derived from Latin grammars, including the Auraicept na nÉces (‘Scholar’s Primer’) (hereafter, Auraicept) and Mittelirische Verslehren, a Middle Irish Irish tract on poetic metres that the seven grades of sóerbaird (‘noble bards’) were required to master.190 These textbooks were intended for the Irish student who learnt Latin in schools in order to gain access to Christian Latin culture. Such manuals proliferated in Irish schools both at home and on the Continent. In fact, of the texts available in Bobbio during the Carolingian period, the most notable are the ‘astonishing number of grammars’.191 There are no known grammars produced in Merovingian Gaul between the sixth and eighth centuries, whereas an unparalleled five Hiberno-Latin manuals have survived, all written before or around 700 CE, in Ireland, at Bobbio, or within Irish circles on the Continent. These include the Ars Asporii,192 Anonymous ad Cuimnanum,193 which may have been addressed to Cummene (d. 669), an abbot of Iona, Ars Ambrosiana, 194 the grammar of Vergilius Maro Grammaticus, 195 Ars Sergilli,196 and the Ars Malsachani.197 All but the Anonymous may have been written in Ireland and are dated between 650-700 CE.198 Though dated to the eighth century, the grammar of Malsachanus is significant for its use of a seventh-century Irish tract on verbs, as well as the use of not only Donatus, but Consentius, Diomedes, Vergilius Maro, and Eutyches (a 190 Charles-Edwards, 1998, p. 74; for a diplomatic edition, see Thurneysen, 1891; see also the critical edition of McLaughlin, 2007, which addresses manuscript witnesses unavailable to Thurneysen; See also McLaughlin, 2008, idem, 2005; see discussion in Ó hAodha, 1991, pp. 207-44 191 Richter, 2008, p. 147 192 See Holtz, 1981b 193 Bischoff and Löfstedt, 1992; in the introduction to this edition, Bischoff, p. xxii assigns the text to the continent in the early eighth century and suggests it originated in Bobbio and writes ‘Angesichts dieser Bindung an das Columban-Kloster sind aus den Literatur-Kenntnissen des “Anon.” keine Rückschlüsse aud der Bücherbesitz in Irland möglich’. Therefore, the Anonymous may not tell us anything about the sources available in Ireland in the early eighth century. That being said, there is strong evidence of interaction and exchange among these communities 194 See Löfstedt, 1982 195 See Löfstedt, 2003 196 Marshall, 2010 197 Löfstedt, 1965 198 Vivien Law was a leading expert on insular Latin grammars; however, some of her claims have been widely rejected by prominent scholars, especially her insistence on an Anglo-Saxon origin for some of the grammars. For example, see Law, 1982, and reviews in Ahlqvist, 1983; Ó Cróinín, 1982-83; Holtz, 1983

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student of Priscian in Constantinople).199 There is also ‘Versus Cuiusdam Scotti de Alphabeto’ (‘Verses of a certain Scot about the alphabet’), a mid seventh-century abecedarian poem, likely composed in Ireland, consisting of a riddle for each letter of the alphabet, demonstrating the creative ends to which grammatical study was put.200 One of the earliest Latin grammars, Ars Asporii (‘Asper’s Grammar’), which Holtz dates to the early seventh century, adapts Donatus to early Irish monastic contexts, leading Holtz to comment ‘Donatus has undergone a conversion to asceticism’.201 In the section on declension paradigms, Donatus’s magister (‘teacher’) and musa (‘muse’) are replaced by iustus (‘just man’) and ecclesia (‘church’). Donatus had been fully Christianized. This is likely representative of a debate among early Irish scholars over the validity of the study of secular texts. By the seventh century, the Irish gained access to a new range of late antique grammarians, and some schools embraced secular learning, as is witnessed in the apologia for the study of Latin grammar and the liberal arts as an end in itself in the preface to the Anonymous. Holtz identifies this as an Irish reply to Gregory the Great’s famous pronouncement that ‘it is wholly scandalous to submit the words of the heavenly Revelation to the rules of Donatus’, and, citing Augustine, the author of the Anonymous writes that knowledge is ‘an outer covering, a vessel ready to receive any sort of liquid’.202 Though the place of composition is unclear, Ó Cróinín has argued that ‘Asper’s Grammar’ may have been commissioned at Iona by Fergnae Brit, abbot of Iona (CE 605-623), and the Anonymous ad Cuimnanum was perhaps addressed to Cummeneus (Cumméne Find), who succeeded Fergnae as abbot of Iona from CE 657-59.203 Of the seventh-century grammars, the most unique are those of Vergilius Maro Grammaticus (fl. c. 650 CE), a prolific coiner of words. Vergilius was often cited in early Irish texts and is used as a source in other grammars, including the Ars Malsachani and the vernacular grammar Auraicept. Vergilius’s writings have attracted attention for their outlandish and satirical account of the grammatical arts and challenge to the dogma of Christian education. There has been much speculation regarding his place of origin, 199 Law, 1981, p. 88, argues that both Clementis Ars Grammatica and Ars Malsachani used a common source, a detailed tract on the verb. She writes that such a detailed tract on the verb, in possession of Irish scholars around 700 CE, suggests a connection with Irish scholars on the Continent, and the existence of a now lost early Hiberno-Latin grammar, the earliest of its kind 200 See Howlett, 2010 201 Holtz, 1981a, p. 144 202 Ibid, p. 141 203 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 176

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but Ó Cróinín has demonstrated that the earliest references to Vergilius’s work appear in Irish sources, and due to his familiarity with features of Old Irish syntax and morphology, most scholars agree that he was Irish.204 Furthermore, Herren has shown similarities in style and vocabulary with the Hisperica famina, arguing that Vergilius was in fact a member of the same southern Irish scholarly community that produced the Hisperica famina, and Marshall has demonstrated the same with the Ars Grammatici Sergilii, Cosmographia of Aethicus Isther (Pseudo-Jerome), and Auraicept.205 Vergilius also mentions at least one Irish grammarian of the seventh century, Asperius (author of the Ars Asporii). Therefore, the evidence points to a place of composition among an Irish literary milieu, likely in the south of Ireland, and a date of 650-700 CE. Vergilius’s extant writings, the Epitomae and Epistolae, combine serious treatment of grammar–primarily that of Donatus’s Ars maior and Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis–with parody, wit, and much that has perplexed and confounded scholars.206 Vergilius’s rhetorical style is unique but is also representative of Hiberno-Latin literature. For as Holtz writes, ‘We have indeed to hypothesize that Vergilius’s case was not exceptional. The rediscovery of an autonomous and objective culture, finding its rationale in itself and not in any service to the faith, was not only his but that of a whole generation’.207 Vergilius is known for inventing both authors and quotations, and some have even read his work as satire or parody. Some of these satirical elements were borrowed from Aulus Gellius’s (c. 120-180 CE) Noctes Atticae (‘Attic Nights’) in which two prestigious Roman grammarians argue over the vocative of ego. In Vergil the vocative of egregious is the source of debate, and the portrayal takes the form of burlesque and critique, much as in Gellius.208 Vivien Law saw the work as a critique of the rigidity of monastic education and the handbook form as a vehicle to achieving this end. Instead of lists of conjugations, there is reminiscence, conversation, and debate, showing also an interest in rhetoric. In fact, in Epitomae 4.3, Vergilius discusses the differences between poetry and rhetoric. Throughout his work, for example, there are two dozen citations of Cicero, none of which can be traced to any genuine works.209 Though it seems 204 Ó Cróinín, 1982 205 See Herren, 1992, pp. 13-14; Marshall, 2010, pp. 173-74 206 For a critical edition, see Löfstedt, 2003; for translated sections and a brief overview, see Copeland and Sluiter, 2012, pp. 248-55; for a scholarly analysis, see Law, 1995 207 Holtz, 1981a, p. 141 208 Kaster, 1986, p. 329 209 See Herren, 2013, pp. 42-5

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unlikely that Vergilius had access to Cicero’s writings in the mid-seventh century, he and his milieu show an interest in the relationship between the denial of worldly wealth and wisdom expressed in the tetrad of wisdom, counsel, prudence, and learning, all of which derive from nature.210 Cicero’s four cardinal virtues, found in De inventione and De republica, but available through Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, include prudence, justice (which derives from nature), fortitude, and temperance.211 In Late Christian Antiquity, the four theological virtues were articulated through comparison to the four evangelists, but the virtues themselves were prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.212 In this, Damian Bracken suggests that not just Vergilius, but the circle of Vergilius, were attempting to offer an alternative to the dogmatic educational programme of the early medieval church.213 Vergilius’s ars grammatica–a restrictive and relatively dry genre–can be read as a learned and expansive argument against church dogma regarding the source of wisdom and an exhortation of multiplicity and plurality.214 There is much promise for a study of the grammatical and rhetorical arts in Vergilius’s extant writings, as well as those who incorporate Virgilian material, including the commentary on the Catholic Epistles by Scotus Anonymous,215 pseudo-Bede,216 pseudo-Augustine’s (or Augustinus Hibernicus) De mirabilibus sanctae scripturae (On the miraculous things in Sacred Scripture)217, and Laithcenn mac Baíth, the author of Egloga de Moralibus in Job,218 an abridgement of Gregory’s Commentary on Job.219 Vergilius discusses grammar as entwined with other arts, seemingly inseparable, and this mirrors conceptions of the liberal arts– even in their unique forms–in early Ireland.220 As Rory Naismith writes, Vergilius’s grammars ‘reflect the importance of grammar and language in general as the conveyors of 210 See Bracken, 2002 211 De inventione 2.53.159-2.54.165 212 Bracken, 2002, pp. 259-260 213 Ibid., p. 260 214 Law, 1995, especially p. 49 215 Dated likely before 650, possibly before Vergilius, and of southern Irish provenance; See Bracken, 2002, pp. 252-53 216 Dated likely to the eighth century, but containing seventh-century material; on pseudo-Bede, see contributions in Bayless and Lapidge, 1998 217 For an edition and translation of selections, see Carey, 2000; see also Bracken, 1998 218 For an edition, see Adriaen, 1969; see also Howlett, 1995b 219 On the interrelations of several seventh-century Hiberno-Latin texts, including those cited above, see Breen, 1984 220 See the remarks of Ó Cróinín, 2005, pp. 376-78

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knowledge and wisdom, not least in the context of Latin’s rich history, grammatical, gentile, and Christian’.221 The grammar of Asper precedes those of Vergilius, whom Holtz dates to about 650CE, evidence that the study of grammar was well underway in Ireland by the seventh century. He places Asper as a contemporary of Columbanus, about 600CE.222 Therefore, Asper appears to be the model used by Vergilius, Malsachanus, the author of the Anonymous, as well as the Hisperica famina. Vergilius cites Asper by name, providing firm evidence of his influence. Asper is unique as there is no sign of the influence of Isidore. It is also significant that Asper’s grammar reveals ascetic values and the ideals of monastic life. We should not conclude from this that there was one school of thought that dominated all of Ireland at any time, for Asper’s apparent contemporary Columbanus attests to the pursuit of style and ornamented prose, and his influence on later grammarians who espouse the legitimacy of a marriage of secular and sacred is clear. It appears, rather, that there were competing schools of thought and that the debate over the study of secular letters, either alongside or instead of Scripture, was prevalent in this period. In addition to the Latin grammars, there is also a tradition, starting in the late seventh century, of vernacular grammar manuals and texts that demonstrate language study.223 In a work on the tradition of Celtic grammatica, Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell write, What we can learn from this elementary form of textual pedagogy about the history of education and literacy, the study of logic and philosophy, or the wide-ranging manuscript tradition of the Celtic languages prompt us to consider how European scholars transferred and adapted ideas and concepts from the authoritative tradition of classical Greece and Rome to suit the pedagogical and ideological needs of their own languages and cultures.224

In addition to giving a student access to Latin literature and culture, other fruits of grammatical study included the development of grammatical metalanguage and poetic composition and performance. The Auraicept, as well as other texts in Irish and Welsh, ‘offers insight into a wide range of other historical questions, including the nature of elementary pedagogy 221 Naismith, 2008, p. 53 222 Ó Cróinín, 2005, p. 143 223 See especially the essays collected in Hayden and Russell, 2016 224 Hayden and Russell, 2016, p. 2

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and rhetorical practice in the medieval period, the extent of scholarly networks’.225 Much work remains to be done on these texts, and a proper history of rhetoric in Celtic languages is long overdue.226 Perhaps the most important of the vernacular grammars is the Auraicept, which is an Irish grammar that consists of a ‘core’, or lemmata, dated likely to the seventh century, and layers of commentary and glossing added over time. The Latin sources informing the text include Donatus, Consentius, and Priscian, mentioned by name, and Isidore and Vergilius Maro Grammaticus are quoted or paraphrased anonymously, along with some Classical and Hiberno-Latin grammars that are difficult to accurately identify. Erich Poppe has also suggested that Boethius’s translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, a textbook on logic, may have been a source for the compilers of the Auraicept.227 This grammar represents the range of learning of the filid and the foundational grammatical analytic approaches of the curriculum of an early Irish poetico-legal school. As Erich Poppe and Patrick Sims-Williams have commented, ‘The studies expected of the filid included grammar, knowledge of the vernacular ogham alphabets, and the reading of texts such as Bretha Nemed and Auraicept na nÉces, and thus overlapped with regular ecclesiastical education’.228 The text begins with a pseudo-historical narrative account of the origin of the Irish language at the tower of Babel. In this account, a commonplace in the pseudo-historical tradition, Fénius Farsaid was asked to abstract a language from those languages already in existence. This language was assigned to the Greek Goídel mac Aingin meic Glúinfind meic Láimfind meic Agnumain and was thus called Goídelc, ‘Irish’. The origin tale explains ‘then what was best of every language and what was widest and finest was cut out into Irish’.229 Irish was sometimes referred to as bérla tóbaide, ‘the selected language’, and was considered to be equal to, or superior to, the three sacred languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.230 In the Auraicept, therefore, Irish is formed from a combination of the best features of other languages. The canonical part of the Auraicept is no more than five manuscript pages long, but is accompanied by three recensions of commentary.231 It is 225 Ibid., p. 3 226 On f igures of speech in medieval Welsh, see Russell, 1996; for an overview of the Welsh bardic grammars, see Jacques, 2020 227 See Poppe, 1999, for an analysis of all Latin quotations 228 Poppe and Sims-Williams 2005, pp. 293-94 229 Ahlqvist, 1983, p. 48 230 Russell, 2005, p. 405; on origin stories of the Irish language, see Moran, 2015 231 Ahlqvist, 1983, pp. 47-51

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ascribed to Cenn Fáelad, whose death the Annals place around 679.232 The canonical text consists of the origin story recounted above, the Latin and Ogham alphabets, and Latin classification of consonants applied to the Ogham alphabet. Gender in Latin and Irish is also considered, a description shared by ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’, as well as distinctions of comparison, person, and voice.233 There is then a discussion of the seven things that must be taken into account when analysing the Irish language, including letter and syllable, declension and accent, juncture, and gender and distinction, and the influence of Isidorean etymologizing is clear throughout. The canonical section of the Auraicept ends with a description of the Ogham alphabet, and a table of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets.234 The relationship between the legal tradition and the grammatical is most clear in the Auraicept manuscript witnesses, several of which contain legal texts on the legal status of poets, and the authorities invoked throughout the text are those of the pseudo-historical tradition.235 As Abigail Burnyeat has demonstrated, the grammatical commentary makes use of ‘a broad range of the techniques of enarratio and lectio ranging from etymological and lexical analysis through allegorical and analogical interpretation to the provision of narrative and (pseudo-)historical explanations drawn from Biblical tradition and the wider Irish literary canon’.236 These techniques are also witnessed in commentary on texts from a variety of genres, including legal and literary texts, demonstrating the centrality of this type of learning to the literary and legal traditions. Grammatica was not seen as distinct from the other educational and literary concerns of the learned classes, but was foundational, and the integration of these other genres in the context of a grammatical tract mirrors the concerns of those ‘guardians of language’ discussed above. Late antique grammatical commentaries, such as those of Servius and Macrobius, were concerned first and foremost with enarratio and the distinction of genres, such as historia and fabula, and the Auraicept is part of this tradition. The Auraicept also illuminates the Irish exegetical method employed in enarratio. The various strata of commentary are divided into sections, each containing their own prologue ascribed to a figure from the pseudohistorical tradition, again linking the various branches of learning. As Abigail 232 See Hofman, 2013, p. 188, and the references provided there 233 Ibid, p. 186 234 Hofman, 2013, p. 186 235 Ahlqvist, 1983, pp. 12-13 236 Burnyeat, 2007, p. 209

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Burnyeat explains, the etymological commentary ‘presents a qualitative as well as descriptive etymological examination of a variety of aspects of each word of the sentence being commented on’.237 The etymological strategy includes breaking a word down in an attempt to identify its elements, its roots, and its species and genus. Examples are provided from both Biblical and vernacular traditions. Approaches to textual interpretation are related to strategies for scriptural exegesis, including identifying the place, time, author, and reason for composition, as well as the elements of language and etymology of a word. To illustrate the relationship of etymologizing and Irish learning, we will briefly look at one example. In the etymology for ‘litera’ (‘letter’), we see the relationship of the various branches of learning and the linking of the exegetical method and the vast corpora of Irish legal and pseudohistorical texts that would be the subject of linguistic analysis. In late antique grammatical tracts, ‘letter’ has three standard etymologies. As Brian Cook summarizes, ‘letters provide a path for readers to follow; letters are repeated when read; letters are named from their erasure from wax tablets’.238 The Auraicept, however, appears to only record two of these, that letters are named for their providing a road for readers to follow and being erased from wax tablets. Instead, the Auraicept gives, in advance of the aforementioned, an explanation that has been interpreted as ignorance on the part of the author: ‘From legitera, i.e., the name for the dwelling/ lair of a certain animal that dwells on the seashore named Molossus, and whoever sees the lair of that animal, to him is revealed knowledge of every art’.239 George Calder, the editor of the sole and incomplete edition of the Auraicept, suggested that this etymology must have surely been confusion on the part of the author, as Molossus traditionally referred to a place or warriors, not to a dog. Instead of ignorance, Cook argues that Molossus has several possible meanings that were exploited by the commentary author. Isidore identifies Molossus as a metrical form named after the Molossian warriors, and Diomedes Grammaticus provides a similar etymology. But in other grammars, hounds are related explicitly to exegesis. For example, Varro suggests that a dog (‘canes’) has the ability to reveal things through its barking. 240 After reviewing several examples of the connection of animals to language in the Irish literary tradition, Cook argues that ‘this 237 Ibid, p. 203 238 Cook, 2020, p. 216; I am grateful to Cook for sending me an early version of this article 239 Ibid., p. 216-17 240 Ibid., p. 230

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seemingly odd etymological explanation of “letter” is rich with connection to language through animals’ and that ‘unpacking such an etymology would have required knowledge of Latin and skill with the synchronic etymological method, both of which suggest a robust and creative intellectual community’.241 Rather than ignorance, we have evidence of complex, culturally situated etymologizing, and this etymology would have been more useful to Irish students than those found in the Latin handbooks. The Auraicept is of special interest to students of medieval vernacular grammar, rhetoric, and exegesis. It not only gives insight into the medieval Irish curriculum and the centrality of linguistic analysis, but also into the ways in which Latin grammatica helped to shape and develop vernacular learning, grammatical, historical, literary, and legal. The Auraicept shares affinities with the so-called exegetical grammars, demonstrating the close relationship of secular and ecclesiastical learning. The best example is coined the eighth-century ‘Old Irish Treatise on the Psalter’ (hereafter ‘Old Irish Treatise’).242 Study of the Psalms was primary to not only grammatical and exegetical learning, but to the monastic curriculum, and the ‘Old Irish Treatise’ provides evidence that the Irish had developed a system of biblical commentary in the vernacular by the middle of the eighth century. The scripture was central to grammatical study, offering plentiful examples of Biblical eloquence, and in the exegetical tradition a passage of scripture was used to illustrate figure, ornament, and style. The Psalms were used to teach elementary reading and writing, as well as exegesis. In seventh-century Ireland, the Gallican text of the Psalter was widely used, rather than the earlier Old-Latin text, demonstrating again the ability of early Irish scholars to access texts in vogue on the Continent.243 The Old Irish glosses on the Würzburg Codex demonstrate that by c. 750 CE the Irish had mastered the use of vernacular for exposition of the scripture, a practice informed in large part by Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, and Cassiodorus, as well as Isidore’s Etymologiae.244 In the ‘Old Irish Treatise’, 21 questions and answers on individual topics mirror the catechetical structure that was widely used in Ireland. As in the Auraicept, these include questions of time, place, and authorship, and occasionally reason for writing. One question is that of the argumentum (‘argument’) of 241 Ibid., p. 233 242 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B 512, fols 45r-47v and British Library, MS. Harley 5280, fols 21r-24v; see Kenney, 1966, pp. see also Ó Néill, 1979 243 McNamara and Sheehy, 1973, pp. 207 and 214 244 Ó Néill, 1979, pp. 148-49

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the psalm, demonstrating the ways the trivium had been folded together into grammar and exegesis.245 A scheme is introduced in the ‘Old Irish Treatise’ for interpreting the Psalms on four levels, adapted from Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on the Psalms. These include the first historical meaning, the second historical meaning, the allegorical meaning, and the moral meaning.246 This is a fusion of the Antiochian and Alexandrian schools of exegesis and is distinctively Irish. Grammar figures largely in the ‘Old Irish Treatise’, including etymologies in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew from Vergilius, again pointing to a shared intellectual tradition, evidenced in the Auraicept, in which grammatica was foundational. Ó Néill, alluding to the language of the ancient trivium, says that in this text grammar ‘is made the handmaid of exegesis’.247 The extant grammars are evidence of an extensive tradition of grammar and exegesis among the Irish, a scholarly interest also evidenced in testimony from contemporaries outside of Ireland, such as Bede and Aldhelm. Though this introduction to the tradition is necessarily brief and incomplete, it should be clear that there is much of value to the student of medieval rhetoric. The Irish manuals, in both Latin and the vernacular, are the earliest extant in the Middle Ages, and they deserve a place in mainstream histories of medieval grammar, rhetoric, and exegesis. From this brief overview of learning and some of the Irish learned centres, it should be clear that from the earliest records the Irish were outward looking and engaged in Latin learning in vogue on the Continent and Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean. In this, the Irish were immersed in multiculturalism and bilingualism and responded by reflecting on the nature of language, so that, as Michael Clarke puts it, ‘verbal creativity was enmeshed with metalinguistic reflection and interpretation’.248 It is in these texts that evidence for the nature of rhetorical practice is to be found.

245 Ibid., p. 156 246 Ibid., pp. 159-160; see also McNamara and Sheehy, 1973, for a survey and discussion of all extant Irish exegetical works on the Psalter, as well as the Psalter’s place in Irish monastic education, and esp. pp. 257-58 for the primacy of historical readings 247 Ibid., p. 152 248 Clarke, 2013, p. 64

3

St Patrick and the Rhetoric of Epistolography

The following section seeks to contribute to an understanding of Patrick’s rhetorical education, as well as demonstrate his position as an inheritor of, and contributor to, a decidedly Christian art of rhetoric in the late antique west. In order to realize such an end, the methodology employed will combine rhetorical analysis with an investigation of socio-historical context in a comparative framework. In other words, this study employs a close textual reading in order to detect rhetorical strategies indicative of contemporary trends in rhetorical practice. My interests here are the rhetorical dimension of Patrick’s writings, so this chapter should not be read as an attempt to offer a complete reappraisal of the myriad thorny issues that have plagued Patrician studies for more than a century. In this case study, I will analyse Patrick’s Epistola, which provides evidence of the significant role of epistolography–a performative genre in which ritualized delivery was central–in early Gallo-Roman and Romano-British contexts. The Epistola is primarily demonstrative and in it Patrick admonishes the British Church, or a British faction in the Irish Church, to ransom slaves taken into captivity by slave raiders. However, it also possesses a forensic dimension in condemnation of Coroticus and his men who had raided, murdered, and abducted a number of Patrick’s recent converts. In addition, there is evidence for the continued use of progymnasmata, Biblical texts for grammatical and rhetorical education, and imitatio, a practice that took the Pauline Epistles as the primary text of study.

The Historical Context of Patrick’s Mission to Ireland The arrival of Christianity in Ireland was motivated from the outset by political concerns. The same controversies that had drawn the attention of Rome to Britain and North Africa seem to have inspired an interest in Ireland. The entry for 429 in Prosper’s Chronicle reads:

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch03

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Agricola the Pelagian, the son of Bishop Severianus the Pelagian, corrupted the churches of Britain by introducing his own doctrine. On the recommendation of the deacon Palladius, Pepe Celestine sent Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, as his representative, and when the heretics had been cast down, he guided the Britons to the Catholic faith.1

In 431, Prosper writes of a synod of more than two hundred bishops convened at Ephesus in which Nestorius was condemned as a heretic, as were ‘many Pelagians’. In the same year, Prosper tells us, ‘Palladius, having been ordained by Pope Celestine, was the first bishop sent to the Scots believing in Christ’.2 Prosper does not mention the reason for Palladius’s mission, but given the earlier entry in which Palladius is said to have organized Germanus’s trip to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy, one might assume it was a related mission. Though there is no evidence of Pelagianism taking hold in Ireland, Celestine’s interest in sending Germanus to Britain was clearly a matter of frontier management, as the Church now had jurisdiction over Christian communities on the outskirts of the frontiers.3 Any challenge to the unity of the Church was a challenge to the power of Christian Rome, and orthodoxy and heresy were powerful tools. Whether there were rumblings of Pelagianism taking hold in Ireland, or whether for Celestine Palladius’s ordination as bishop to Irish Christians was a pre-emptive move, is unclear. It could also be that concerns over Pelagianism provided the justification for intervening. However, it was around this same time that Patrick the Briton began his mission in Ireland, and one would assume that he represented the interests of the church in Britain. This will be explored below. In any case, 431 is the beginning of written history for Ireland. As a result of these politically motivated appointments, we have St Patrick’s opuscula, ‘Epistola ad Milites Corotoci’ (‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’) (hereafter, Epistola) and Confessio (‘Confession’), the earliest extant compositions written in Ireland, though they survive in much later manuscripts.4 1 Translation in Murray, 2008, p. 68 2 Ibid., p. 68 3 On Pelagianism in Ireland, see Kelly, 1978; on Pelagianism in Britain and Ireland, see R.A. Márkus, 1986 4 The Confessio survives in several manuscripts, the earliest being the ninth-century Book of Armagh (Trinity College, MS 52), though this version is redacted for propagandistic purposes. This manuscript is quite small, no bigger than a pocket gospel book, leading Sharpe, 1982, p. 5 to believe it was intended for library use. In addition to The Confessio, the manuscript contains several texts relating to St Patrick (fols. 2-24), including two seventh-century biographies of St

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While Palladius’s appointment to Ireland could certainly be seen as politically motivated, in Patrick’s writings there is a sense of pastoral duty, though one should not think of pastoral duty as apolitical or as distinct from frontier management. In fact, it was central to it. In the Epistola Patrick enforces the ecclesiastical laws of the universal Church, excommunicating an enigmatic king, Coroticus, in a demonstration of forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric in epistolary form. In the Confessio we witness a form of forensic and deliberative rhetoric in response to a synod called to challenge the legitimacy of his bishopric and mission, also in epistolary form. Within both texts, Patrick betrays his education in rhetoric despite his claims to ignorance and rusticity. Many scholars have waded into the troubled waters of Patrician chronology, and still many thorny problems trouble Patrician studies. Decades of debate have yet to provide us with sure footing as to Patrick’s dates, and the possibility that the Patrick who has come down to us in hagiography and legend is a conflation of two or more historical Patricks further complicates things. I will present these issues and debates so that the reader will have the resources necessary to arrive at their own conclusions, but I will ultimately argue for an early Patrick who arrived in Ireland by the second or third decade of the fifth century. Patrick’s mission was likely not ordained at Rome, but by the British Church. His educational background is allusive, but it is likely that he was educated in either Gaul or Britain in the late fourth century, though the evidence for an education in Gaul is strong. Muirchú moccu Mactheni, Patrick’s seventhcentury biographer, claims that Patrick studied at Auxerre with Germanus, the bishop sent to the British by Palladius, though hagiographical accounts

Patrick written by Muirchú maccu Machtheni and Tírechán, the Liber Angeli, in which an angel gives Patrick the primatial rites of Armagh, followed by the redacted version of the Confessio in which Patrick’s confession of youthful sin is glaringly absent. It also contains the only complete New Testament written in Irish to survive from the period (fols. 25-191), as well as the Life of St Martin of Tours (fols. 192-22), who was revered as the founder of monasticism in early Ireland, followed by works of Sulpicius Severus. Both the Confessio and Epistola are found in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 17626, dated to the tenth century. In this manuscript, we have the earliest complete version of the Confessio. Other manuscripts include London, British Library, Cotton Nero E.1 of the tenth or eleventh century; the eleventh century Rouen, Bibliothèque municipal, 1391; Salisbury, Cathedral Library 221 and 223, dated to the eleventh or twelfth century; and the eleventh century Arras, Bibliothèque municipal, 1391. Digitized manuscripts and facsimiles can be found at https:// www.confessio.ie/manuscripts# (accessed 17-03-2021)

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are far from trustworthy.5 Also, as will be taken up below, it is likely that the acta of Patrick were conflated with those of Palladius, whether intentionally or through general confusion. The language of study and worship for both Palladius and Patrick was Latin, and this tradition came to Ireland with them, though there was likely a literate, Christian community prior to their arrival. Charles-Edwards argues that there was a Christian community in Ireland before 400CE, and that at this time worship and instruction took place in Latin, using pre-Vulgate Biblical texts.6 Ó Cróinín argues that Palladius and his contemporaries, in addition to literacy, introduced the entirety of Christian learning. Taking the Palladian Easter table as evidence, Ó Cróinín suggests that the first continental mission to Ireland brought doctrines current in the late fourth-century Gallican and north Italian churches of Milan and Auxerre, including the doctrines of Ambrose and Augustine.7 Palladius was born to a noble, Gallic family from Poitiers and had an intensive education. It is unclear whether Palladius was active in Rome or in Gaul at the time of Germanus’s trip to Britain and his own ordination as bishop of the Irish.8 However, Ó Cróinín has suggested that a poem, the De reditu of Rutilius, who held office as magister officiorum at Ravenna in 412, provides evidence of a noble-born Gallican aristocrat who studied law at Rome and who was on a course for imperial office before deciding on monastic life.9 A question lingers regarding the association of Palladius and Germanus in the writings of Prosper, the former perhaps a deacon at Rome who had orchestrated the approval of Pope Celestine. Prosper tells us that deacon Palladius instigated the trip of the bishop of Auxerre to Britain, but scholars have wondered whether a Gallic deacon would have that kind of pull in Rome. Therefore, many have concluded he must have been Celestine’s deacon. However, why, if Palladius were an influential deacon at Rome, would Celestine send such a valuable member of his curia to Ireland? It seems unlikely, and scholars tend to agree that Palladius was instead a respected and influential deacon in Auxerre who hailed from 5 In the late seventh-century Vita sancti Patricii 1.6, Muirchú moccu Mactheni tells us that Patrick studied in Auxerre in Gaul with Germanus for a period of 30 or 40 years. However, such a hagiography, though perhaps based on oral tradition, may not be reliable, especially considering the propagandistic uses to which such texts composed at Armagh were put. The Latin and English translation of Muirchú and Tírechán are available on the Confessio.ie website: https:// www.confessio.ie/more/muirchu_english# (accessed 17-03-2021) 6 Charles-Edwards, 2004, p. 17 7 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 23 8 For a summary of the debate, see Ó Cróinín, 2000, pp. 211-12 9 Ó Cróinín, 2000, pp. 212-217

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Poitiers.10 Given the status of his family, and their position in imperial service, Palladius’s education would have been secular, concluding with training in law and rhetoric in Rome, and he would have moved in the most elevated circles of the Western Church. His influence on the development of the early Irish church must have been considerable.11 Palladius’s mission was also deemed a success in Rome. As Prosper writes in his anti-Pelagian tract Contra Collatorem (‘Against the Collater’) of 434, ‘having ordained a bishop for the Irish, while he (Celestine) labours to keep the Roman island Catholic, he has also made the barbarian island Christian’.12 Written three years after he was dispatched to Ireland, Prosper celebrates Palladius’s mission as a success, giving Pope Celestine credit for the conversion of the ‘barbarian’ island. Considered in light of the sermon preached by Leo I, it is clear that extending its influence to the furthest reaches of the frontier was of significance to Rome. In a letter written two centuries later, Columbanus writes: For all we Irish, inhabitants of the world’s edge, are disciples of Saints Peter and Paul and of all the disciples who wrote the divine scriptures inspired by the Holy Ghost, and we accept nothing outside the evangelical and apostolic teaching … but the Catholic Faith, as it was delivered by you first, who are the successors of the holy apostles, is maintained unbroken.13

Charles-Edwards argues that Columbanus here refers to Palladius,14 who bishop Cummian, in his ‘Paschal Letter’ written to Ségéne of Iona, refers to as ‘sanctus Patricius papa noster’ (‘holy Patrick our father’).15 However, aside from these brief mentions, Palladius’s contribution is downplayed by Patrician hagiographers, and nothing remains from the Palladian mission.16 For example, the seventh-century hagiographer, Tírechán, 10 Ibid., pp. 231-37 11 Ó Cróinín, 1995, p. 149, writes that ‘for the formative period of the Irish church we can legitimately point to a dual legacy from the church in Gaul, one which need not necessarily have been incompatible with the role that monasticism came to play in the development of the Irish church. It would be mistaken to assume that Palladius – however well-connected socially – was incapable of adapting his experiences as a deacon in the church of Auxerre to the circumstances he encountered in his new mission field’ 12 Qtd. in Etchingham, 2016, pp. 184-85 13 Translated in Charles-Edwards, 2000, p. 375; For edition see Walker, 1957, pp. 38-39 14 Charles-Edwards, 2000, p. 375 15 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, pp. 84-5 16 The earliest example of the erasure of Palladius from the Irish tradition is the seventh century Vita S. Patricii by Muirchú; see Bieler, 1979, pp. 73-76

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writes in the supplementary notes of his Vita in the Book of Armagh, ‘Bishop Palladius, who was called Patrick by another name is sent first, who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Irish, as is the tradition of the holy man of old’.17 After this, Tírechán writes, Patrick the Briton began his mission which was far more successful than the other ‘Patricius’, Palladius. This was the dominant tradition in seventh-century Ireland, where the propagandistic hagiography of Armagh shaped the narrative of Patrick’s legend.

The Dating of Patrick’s Obit This brings us to a serious problem in any study of Patrick, one that has plagued Patrician studies for over a century: the dating of Patrick’s mission in Ireland. The Annals of Ulster give 432 for Patrick’s arrival, and this date is traditionally associated with the arrival of Patrick in Ireland.18 In the traditional Patrician chronology, his death was placed around 492/493, asserting that Patrick was 60 years old when he arrived in Ireland, thus dying at 120, the same age as Moses.19 Aside from the readily apparent problem here, there are no Irish chronicles for the first part of the fifth century, and it is likely that the early dates were constructed from European sources. The annals give two different obits, one of 457 and another of 493.20 The Annals of Ulster also record the death of Patrick as 457, 461, and 493, whereas the Tripartite Life of St Patrick gives the death of Patricius Scottorum episcopus toward the end of the fifth century.21 As one can see, annalistic evidence is not always reliable, and a gap this large poses problems. This lack of proof-positive evidence has led to a series of hypotheses, and the problem of Patrick’s dates is far from resolved. Aside from Patrick’s own writings, much of the extant evidence is provided by later hagiographical material with clear propagandistic ends for the primacy of the see of Armagh. This legendary Patrick is clearly distinct from an historical Patricius. In the early twentieth-century an historian of Rome, J.B. Bury, offered up a chronology that would prove influential. Bury asserted that Patrick was born in 389, was captured in 405, and escaped in 411. He was ordained at

17 18 19 20 21

Bieler, 1979, p. 72 Charles-Edwards, 2006, p. 63 See Thomas, 1981, p. 315 Annals of the Four Masters 457.3; 493.4 See the contributions in Dumville, 1993

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Auxerre by a bishop Amator, who died in 418, and returned as bishop to Ireland in 432, dying in 461.22 Though Bury’s scheme continues to hold sway to this day, in the mid twentieth century, the problem of two death dates and the name Patricius came to the fore. It is in the name that at least one source of controversy arises, for patricius was a name for a person of an honourable social position in the Roman territories of Late Antiquity. Palladius himself would have possibly been referred to as patricius, and it is possible that our St Patrick was known as patricius due to his noble birth and position in the Roman British elite.23 In 1942, Thomas F. O Rahilly gave a lecture titled ‘The Two Patricks, a lecture on the history of Christianity in fifth-century Ireland’ that forwarded the argument that the two Patricks, Palladius and Patricius episcopus, had been conflated in legend, Patricius episcopus absorbing any associations with Palladius for the sake of Armagh’s supremacy.24 The Patricius, a Briton who came to Ireland in 461 and who wrote the Confessio and Epistola, received credit in hagiography for traditions associated with Patrick-Palladius, probably a native of Auxerre. Mario Esposito took the theory further, suggesting there may have been as many as three historical Patricks, but both Prosper and Bede wrote of the mission of Palladius; is it conceivable they would have been ignorant of the successful mission of Patrick?25 James Carney would agree with O Rahilly on many particulars, but argue that the first missionary sent to Ireland was Secundinus (434-447), a northern Italian cleric, who may have been a separate individual, or who may have been Palladius, the bishop sent to Ireland in 431 as ‘primus episcopus Scottorum’; in any case, annalistic evidence suggests that Patrick was anterior to Secundinus.26 The original list of the bishops of Armagh given in Book of Armagh, before the later imposition of the ‘phantom-Patrick’ of 432-457/61, includes Secundinus (434-47), Benignus (447-67), Iarlaithe (467-81), and Cormac (481-96/7).27 Patrick the Briton, the author of the opuscula, Carney argues, came to Ireland in 457 and died around 492. He had nothing to do with the Armagh episcopacy, his mission likely focused in the west of Ireland, but the propagandists used his fame and legend to assure the primacy of the see of Armagh. Both O Rahilly and Carney also dismissed 22 23 24 25 26 27

Thomas, 1981, pp. 315-16 On the name Patricius and the discussion of chronology, see Sims-Williams, 2007 O Rahilly, 1942 Esposito, 1956, p. 140 See Carney, 1955, pp. 394-402 Ibid., p. 396

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association of our Patrick and the year 432, Carney going so far as to suggest the phantom-Patrick of 432-57/61 be expunged from the evidence.28 R.P. Hanson, however, sticks to the argument that there is one single Patrick, who was born in 388 or 406, returned to Ireland in 425 or 435, and who died in 461.29 Hanson argues that Patrick would have been educated and trained between 420-425 and cites as evidence the eschatological nature of Patrick’s writings, as well as Patrick’s reference to himself as Romanus. While this was common in the fifth century, perhaps the nearness of the Sack of Rome in 410, coupled with his insistence on his romanitas, indicates a worldview in which the end of the Roman world was indicative of the immanence of the apocalypse. But, as Esposito wrote of the Patrician problem in the mid-twentieth century, ‘it is impossible to hope that a definitive result, acceptable to all parties, can ever be achieved’.30 This does not, however, prevent Esposito from forwarding his own thesis. Esposito argues that it is unlikely that Christian communities as might form from slave trade and interaction with traders were large enough to inspire a pope to send an experienced ecclesiastic to organize and administer the church’s affairs. Therefore, Patrick the Briton must have preceded Palladius. After all, Patrick makes no mention of Palladius at all in the opuscula. Since historians have agreed that Patrick’s writings are indeed authentic and, in large part, uncorrupted, this would seem unlikely. Esposito inverts orthodox wisdom and argues Patrick surely preceded Palladius and was probably a contemporary of Augustine, giving his floruit as c. 350 to c. 430 CE.31 Travelling from Rome to Ireland in 431, Palladius would not have arrived until 432, which is the date given in the Annals of Ulster. As for the earlier Patrick, though he was unknown in Rome, and though his mission was of his own volition, cultural memory preserved his legacy and provided Armagh propagandists with the materials necessary to create the legendary Patrick. As forceful as Esposito’s arguments are, they have not gone unchallenged. However, his claim to an early date is an interesting one, and we will return to this possibility below. David Dumville argues that Patrick must have written after 404 given that this is the year Jerome completed his translation of the Septuagint into Latin, the Latin Vulgate Bible. Patrick’s writings are varied in their source use, with the intermingling of quotations from the Latin Vulgate and Vetus Latina, 28 Ibid, pp. 357-58; It is worth noting that Binchy, 1962, p. 138, who is highly critical of Carney’s studies of Patrick, writes that his arguments ‘deserve to survive only among the ludibria of the subject’ 29 Hanson, 1968, pp. 178-88 30 Esposito, 1956, p. 144 31 Ibid., p. 145

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or Old Latin Bible. However, the manuscripts in which Patrick’s writings are preserved are much later and, as Dumville points out, the possibility of interpolation by medieval redactors weakens this argument.32 Unfortunately, Patrick does not cite any historical events or figures, aside from the enigmatic Coroticus, so text-internal evidence for his dates is also allusive. However, scholars have identif ied two f ifth-century British princes named Coroticus (Old-Welsh Ceretic), and the evidence is compelling. In the Welsh genealogies there is a Ceretic Guletic who ruled over what would later be called the kingdom of Strathclyde between 410-440 CE.33 The second, whose name was given to the Welsh county Cardigan, was the fifth son of the famous Cunedda, but his invasion and conquest of North Wales is difficult to date with accuracy, and both 460 and 500 have been given.34 In any case, this second Coroticus flourished in the last decades of the fifth century. Clearly, an identification with either prince would be essential to attempts to secure Patrick’s obit. Muirchú’s biography of Patrick contains a chapter heading that reads ‘De conflictu sancti Patricii aduersum Coirthech regem Aloo’ (‘On the conflict of St Patrick and Coroticus, King of Alclud’)35 which identifies Coroticus as king of Ail Cluaithe, or Alclud, the kingdom of Strathclyde in modern day Scotland. Hagiographical evidence of later centuries must be used cautiously, but given the close proximity of Dumbarton and Coroticus’s allies in Patrick’s Epistola, the Picts and Scotti (possibly referring to Irish settlers in Scotland), this earlier Coroticus seems the most likely, whereas an alliance between the ruler of Cardigan and distant peoples is less likely. This also accords with Esposito’s early chronology and is a strong argument against the later date based on what Binchy calls ‘the balance of probability’.36 In addition to what can be guessed about Coroticus, the annalistic evidence, again not wholly reliable, gives the deaths for a large number of Patrick’s alleged contemporaries between 480 and 549. This is strong evidence against an early date for Patrick’s own death in 461. Whether these individuals were even associated with Patrick is unclear, and Tirechán and Muirchú may ‘have deliberately foreshortened history in order to glorify certain magnates and clerics by bringing them into contact with the saint’.37 Though the evidence is far from solid, the problem that emerges is that the 32 33 34 35 36 37

Dumville, 1993, pp. 15-17 Binchy, 1962, p. 106 Ibid., p. 106 Discussion in ibid., p. 107-8 Ibid., p. 109 Ibid., p. 112

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‘official’ obit of c. 432 is either far too early or the chronology of the sixthcentury annals is fraudulent, part and parcel of Armagh’s propaganda efforts. Binchy believes the latter is less likely, and he argues that the other Patrick, perhaps Palladius, may have arrived c. 432, died in 461, and the Patrick who wrote the Epistola must be the Patrick who died in the last decade of the fifth century. The Patrick of the Book of Armagh is a composite figure, an amalgamation of two or more figures. The other possibility, and one that Ludwig Bieler entertained, is that the Patrick who wrote the Epistola came in 432, died in 461, and was succeeded by another Patrick who died c. 492. If Coroticus is identified with Ceretic of Dumbarton, this is a strong argument in favour of the latter position. Patrick does, however, provide some biographical information. Patrick writes in the Confessio that his father, Calpornius, was a decurion, a curiales who ‘uillulam enim prope habuit’ (‘had a villa near’) a town he identifies as Bannavem Taburniae. Unfortunately, it is unclear where this Romano-British villa would have been, though scholars have offered up many possibilities, but the most likely is along the Atlantic seaboard in the southwest given Patrick’s story of abduction and enslavement at the hands of Irish raiders. As the son of a decurion–an administrator for the Roman government in Britain–Patrick would have been expected to take over upon his father’s retirement, as the curiae were in large part hereditary. Though slavery was quite common in fourth- and fifth-century Britain, Patrick describes his father’s household as one of considerable affluence, possessing several slaves.38 Patrick proclaims that he sold off his title and his inheritance in order to begin his mission in Ireland: (‘Vendidi enim nobilitatem meam’ (‘I have sold my nobility’).39 This may provide evidence for Patrick’s obit, though it is far from certain. By the mid-fourth century, material evidence suggests many of the Romantype villas had been abandoned as Roman power waned in the west. It was around this time that Irish and Pictish raiding of the British seaboard had reached a fever pitch. The raids of the 340s saw the reinforcement of Hadrian’s Wall in response. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus writes that in 367 the Roman Britons faced the ‘barbarica conspiratio’ (‘barbarian conspiracy’)40 in which the Picts, Irish, Attacotti, and Saxons all attacked Britain. These raids continued for several decades, and in 410 38 All references to Patrick’s Epistola ad Milites Corotici and Confessio are to Bieler, 1952, and all translations are my own; Bieler, 256.11, ‘servos et ancillas domus patris mei’ (‘slaves and slave-women of my father’s villa’) 39 Bieler, 1952, 256.12-13 40 Seyfarth, 1978, 27.8

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Honorius called for Britons to defend themselves from their attackers. Since Patrick’s claim that he renounced his inheritance and wealth was intended to stir the reader, we should assume that he left Britain while his father’s wealth–in the form of land and slaves–was still secure and following the raiding events of which he may have been a victim. This would lead us to the late fourth or early fifth century as the likely time of the sale of his father’s land, though it must have preceded the Saxon victories of c. 441.41 However, in 2020 archaeologists used radiocarbon dating to determine that the mosaic floor of a room in the Chedworth Roman Villa in southwest England was built in the fifth century. The mosaic was of lesser quality than the villa’s fourth-century rooms, but the finding suggests the economic decline of the fourth and fifth centuries may have been more gradual than previously believed. Also, though Patrick insists on his Roman identity, he uses the word uillulam (‘villa’) to describe his father’s estate, and he tells us his father was a decurion, we learn nothing else about the estate. It could be that these social systems persisted after the exit of Roman legions in 410. In short, this does not provide solid evidence for the date of his arrival in Ireland, though it does suggest the first quarter of the fifth century. The case for such an early chronology, an argument based in large part on that of Esposito, is given by John T. Koch. His chronology suggests that Patrick was born c. 351-53 and died c. 430 CE. Koch searched evidence from Roman Inscriptions of Britain and the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire and found only one Patricius with any Romano-British connections, a Patricius who in 385 served as the Fisci Patronus (‘advocate of the Imperial Purse’) for Emperor Magnus Maximus at Trier.42 This Patrick also has a direct connection with northern Ireland, as the Ballinrees hoard of Roman silver, deposited no earlier than c. 420, near Coleraine, co. Derry, is stamped with ‘EX. OFF. PATRICI’ (‘from the officina of Patricius’). 43 A second discovery in Kent of an ingot stamped ‘CVRMISSI’ ‘supports an immediate south British source for the Ballinrees material as a whole’.44 It is believed that the ingot was not produced in an Imperial workshop, but at a private one owned by a Patricius. Throughout the opuscula, Patrick tells us that he gave gifts to Irish kings and paid wages to their sons and companions, as well as the ransom of Christian captives. After refusing his hereditary title in Britain, Patrick

41 42 43 44

See Charles-Edwards, 2013, pp. 48-56 Koch, 2003, pp. 109-110 Ibid., p. 110 Ibid., p. 111

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must have exchanged his wealth into a portable form, and the Ballinrees horde may provide the material evidence. 45 In addition to this material evidence, Koch draws attention to the references to Franci, Romani Gallorum Christianorum and tot milia solidorum in Epistola § 14 discussed above. Throughout the opuscula, Patrick writes from first-hand knowledge, and it would be odd for him to make an exception in this case. In the Epistola, Patrick writes ‘Consuetudo Romanorum Gallorum christianorum: mittunt uiros sanctos idoneos ad Francos et ceteras gentes cum tot milia solidorum ad redimendos captiuos baptizatos’ (‘This is the custom of the Roman Christians of Gaul: they send holy and capable men to the Franks and other pagans with thousands of gold coins to ransom baptised captives’).46 It is as though Patrick has first-hand knowledge of the raiding that took place at Trier in the late fourth century. Koch writes that if we accept the early chronology, then Patrick ‘would have had abundant first-hand experience of hostile pagan Franks, huge quantities of Roman coins, and whatever official financial steps were taken for safeguarding the Christian population of Roman Gaul’.47 It is this evidence that, in fact, many scholars have used to argue for a later date.48 However, Koch points out that Magnus Maximus had continuous confrontations with pagan Franks and, after seizing power in Gaul in 383, killed Emperor Gratian’s comes domesticorum Mallobaudes, who held the title rex Francorum. Around 383, Bauto, a pagan Frank who had become magister militum of Maximus’s rival western Emperor, Valentinian II, inspired Trans-Rhenine attacks against Maximus’s northern frontier.49 This may explain the seemingly out-of-place reference we get from Patrick to the custom of the Roman Christians of Gaul: ‘they send holy and capable men to the Franks and other pagans with thousands of gold coins to ransom baptised captives’. Writing from personal experience at Trier, Koch suggests, Patrick admonishes Coroticus, likely a Christian King, that his raiding is beneath even the barbarous Franks. That Patrick was in charge of the imperial purse under Magnus Maximus seems unlikely, but the context described by Koch does help to illuminate Patrick’s mention of the practices of the Christians of Roman Gaul and provide further evidence for an early date. Patrick’s Latin is also comparable to fifth-century Romano-Gaulish Latin, and his adherence to the Nicene Creed may be relevant when one considers 45 46 47 48 49

However, see Sims-Williams, 2007, pp. 61-3, for a critique of this thesis Bieler, 1952, 257.10-12 Koch. 2003, p. 114 See Etchingham, 2016, pp. 195-96 Koch, 2003, p. 114

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that Patricius of Trier is noted in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus to have played a role in the persecution of Priscillianists during the reign of Maximus. The zealous, Catholic orthodoxy we read in Patrick was also the state policy of Maximus’s regime.50 At Confessio § 4 Patrick gives a creedal statement from the Nicene Creed that clearly rejects the views of Arianism, in which Jesus was a creation of God and therefore second to God.51 One observation commonly made about Patrick is that he is no theologian, especially since he does not even allude to the Pelagian heresy that would have been difficult to miss in fifth-century Britain. However, in addition to the Nicene Creed, Patrick’s ‘Rule of Faith’ shares a close antecedent in the Commentary on the Apocalypse of the late third-century martyr, Victorinus of Petavium, and his mensural fidei shows similarities with the ‘creed’ of Auxentius, Bishop of Milan (355-74 CE). This leads Koch to conclude that these statements, or similar ones, were current at the court at Trier in the 380s.52 The problem of ‘two Patricks’ is also taken up by Koch, who argues that the earlier obit is secondary in the annals, implying prior knowledge on the part of the annalist of the later obit.53 The label Senex Patricius in the obits of the Annals of Ulster (457 and 461) clearly reveals knowledge of an earlier Patrick, and the 461 obit is consistent with the seventh-century hagiographical account of Muirchú. The assimilation of Palladius to Patrick correlates with the literary domain of Armagh propaganda, c. 670-805. Taken along with annalistic obits of 457-62 and 487-96, it is clear that there was an organized Christian community in Ireland prior to Palladius’s arrival in 431, but whether this was a community organized by Patrick is as yet unproven. Walsh and Ó Cróinín have argued that the evidence in Cummian’s letter of the Alexandrian computistic table attributed to ‘sanctus Patricius papa noster’ (‘our holy father, Patrick’), a table witnessed also in a seventh-century Irish text ascribed to Patricius, must have come from Palladius, as a Briton such as Patrick would have only known of the 84-year (Pseudo-)Anatolian cycle.54 Koch argues, on the other hand, that this table may have been known from Patrick if we allow that he had connections with Trier and southern Gaul in general. Patrick also tells us that some of his converts had taken up the calling to monasticism, which began to gain in importance in the west by the second half of the fourth century. As he writes in Confessio § 41 ‘Yet recently, what 50 51 52 53 54

Ibid., p. 118 See Toom, 2014 Koch, 2003., p. 119 Ibid., pp. 113-22 Walsh and Ó Cróinín, 1988, pp. 276-83

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a change: they have become “a prepared people” of the Lord, and they are now called “the sons of God”. And the sons and daughters of Irish leaders are seen to have become the monks and virgins of Christ’.55 Patrick also uses ‘monachi et uirgines’ to refer to those captured or killed by Coroticus in § 12 of the Epistola. Some scholars have argued that reference to monasticism must mean a later date as it had not developed fully in the west until the fifth century.56 However, by the end of the fourth century, monasticism was on the rise in the west. For example, both Jerome and Augustine had begun experimenting with monastic communities, Augustine having written the Praeceptum for his monks by 397.57 The first use of monasterium in Latin can be dated to approximately 370, witnessed in an anonymous translation of Vita Antonii.58 Before 395, when Paulinus of Nola first uses the word, it is witnessed in Evagrius of Antioch’s translation of Athanasius’s Vita Antonii, in the writings of Pope Siricius, in Jerome, and in Ambrose.59 It also appears in Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Martini, probably published in 397.60 The original meaning of the Greek likely transferred into Latin, and it was taken to mean both a hermitage and a dwelling for a community of monks.61 Like monasterium, monachus is found in Latin translations of the Vita Antonii and Jerome’s four uitae of monks. Jerome’s Epistle 3 to Rufinus (374) speaks of ‘monachorum’ in Egypt; it occurs in the acts of the synod of Saragossa of 380; Ambrose uses it in Epistle 12 (381) and in a letter to Pope Siricius written in 385, whereas Paulinus’s earliest use is 395.62 This gives us a terminus post quem of approximately 380, as before this date the word is quite simply not attested in Latin, regardless of the existence of communities one might consider monastic. Perhaps most significant for the present inquiry is the monastic community founded by St Martin at Ligugé near Poitiers. By 372 Martin had established a much larger monastic complex at Marmoutier near Tours, where he also became bishop. We have already established the association of Palladius and Poitiers in this period. Most compelling, however, is the extent to which the early Irish revered St Martin of Tours. As has been noted, 55 Bieler, 1952, 248.7-9, ‘usque nunc semper coluerunt quo modo nuper perfecta est plebs Domini et filii Dei nuncupantur, filii Scottorum et filiae regulorum monachi et uirgines Christi esse uidentur’ 56 Dumville, 1993, p. 17 57 See Brown, 2013, pp. 173-77 58 Lienhard and Bonn, 1977, p. 60 59 Ibid., p. 60 60 Ibid., p. 60 61 Ibid., p. 63 62 Ibid., pp. 66-68

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the ninth-century Book of Armagh contains a complete New Testament, as well as Patrick’s Confessio, Lives of Patrick, and the Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus. That all of these texts exist in the same manuscript demonstrates that the early ninth-century church of Armagh held Martin in high esteem. We also see evidence in Jonas’s Life of Columba (c. 640) of reverence for Martin as early as the mid-seventh century at Bangor and Iona. It could very well be, then, that this was the continuation of a tradition of influence from Gaul at a quite early date.63 Patrick’s renunciation of his title and his inheritance may also be illuminating. After Maximus fell in 388, Gaul was ruled by Theodosius I, an emperor based in Constantinople. Civil War ravaged the area, and those who had pledged allegiance to Maximus found themselves in a dangerous place, as happened to Paulinus’s brother, whose estates had been confiscated. Similarly, Symmachus, having joined sides with Maximus of Trier before his defeat, was forced to sell off his estate.64 Paulinus’s own denunciation of his wealth was in large part a protective measure, rather than purely an act of Christian renunciation. As Peter Brown has shown, the Roman villas of Gaul were not hidden in the countryside, but were often within a ten-mile radius of town. More importantly, they were ‘connected, through the fiscal system of the empire, to the principal centres of consumption in the West. They were connected to the imperial court at Trier, to the armies of the Rhineland frontier, and the rich regions such as Aquitaine’.65 The villas of Gaul and Britain were not simply economic centres, nor were they proto-feudal castles. Rather, they were monuments to the wealth and prestige of the owners, lavishly decorated in mosaic and the ‘common coin of late Roman art’.66 They were characterized by ‘an explosion of colour on their walls and floors, which went hand in hand with the sudden explosion of colour in their dress’.67 The splendour of the villas was matched by the splendour of dress and presentation of the wealthy elites, all of which indicated group membership. These displays advertised an individual’s paideia and Romanitas, their dedication to otium, something which distinguished them from lower-class citizens. To renounce one’s inheritance and social position within this context was to make a bold statement.

63 64 65 66 67

See Richter, 1999, pp. 225-31 Ibid., pp. 210-11 Brown, 2013, p. 196 Ibid., p. 196 Ibid. pp. 192-93

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Patrick’s pride in the renunciation of his wealth, his desire to imitate Christ and Paul, also squares with theological debates regarding wealth in the late fourth century, as does his affirmation of the Nicene Creed. Priscillian, the Arian who stirred the most controversy in the late fourth century and who became bishop of Avila in 381, was executed at Trier in 384 or 386, and his association with wealthy estate owners was at the centre of the controversy.68 The ‘shadow of Priscillian had fallen across the landscape of Spain and southern Gaul’, as Brown puts it, and Paulinus’s decision to make public his renunciation was intended to make clear to the Christian communities of his region that he would ‘follow to the letter Christ’s command to the Rich Young Man’.69 Sulpicius Severus, in his Life of Saint Martin, wrote of this event ‘“There”, Martin kept exclaiming, “there is someone to imitate”. He held that our generation was blessed in possessing such an example. For Paulinus, a rich man with great possessions, by selling all and giving to the poor … has illustrated Our Lord’s saying’.70 Paulinus proved that a wealthy man, through renunciation, could be the very large camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Of course, Paulinus was also interested in protecting himself on the heels of the beheading of Priscillian and the suspicions his contingent of wealthy landowners had raised. One could assume that this context of ultra-Nicene doctrine and weariness over worldly wealth inspired Patrick.71 Patrick’s insistence on his own imitation of Christ mirrors the ascetic and theological values of late fourth-century Gaul. While one might argue that this tradition of renunciation may have continued to have resonance in the following decades, which it surely did, the political and economic contexts in sub-Roman Britain do suggest that for his estate to still possess value, and for his renunciation of his title and release of his assets to carry the weight he intended, he likely left for Ireland in the first quarter of the fifth century. However, it is unclear just how quickly the system of Roman governance to which the villas and their overseers were central disintegrated during the fifth century. Traditionally, it was believed that by 410 CE the system had failed. However, material evidence suggests that the disintegration was gradual and varied by region. Some villas also may have changed their role during the late fourth and early fifth century and 68 Ibid., pp. 211-16 69 Ibid., p. 216 70 Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin, 24.4-5 71 This argument was raised by Daniel F. Melia in his talk titled ‘Evidence for St. Patrick versus Evidence for “St. Patrick”’ given at the 34th Annual University of California Celtic Studies Conference/Annual Meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of America in 2012

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served as shelters for a lord’s retinue and servants.72 Patrick does, however, refer to his father as a decurion. It could be that this terminology survived the evacuation of Roman interests and systems of taxation and governance, but it would seem unlikely. Since we do not know with certainty from which region Patrick hailed, we are left to speculate. This being said, by the middle of the fifth century the system had changed utterly, and it is probable that Patrick abandoned his wealth and family in the first quarter of the fifth century. One final problem is that of Palladius. Little is known of Palladius who, after Prosper’s account, disappears from Continental sources. In the biographies, Palladius is deemed a failure, either dying a martyr’s death or landing in Scotland instead of Ireland. As has been discussed, some scholars argue that Palladius arrived prior to Patrick and the biographers incorporated his record into Patrick’s. The compiler of another Patrician biography, the Tripartite Life, suggests ‘Palladius with eleven helpers landed near Arklow, made a few converts and founded three churches, but was then expelled by Nath Í mac Garrchon, and having been taken ill on the homeward journey, died in Pictland’.73 But Nath Í ruled in the second half of the fifth century; therefore there is evidence of a transference, not from the first Patrick to the second, but from Patrick to his predecessor, in order ‘to furnish a pseudo-historical basis for the failure of the first mission’.74 This leads Binchy to propose another possibility. The Palladian and Patrician missions functioned simultaneously, but independently, of each other and eventually Palladius was absorbed under Patrick’s leadership.75 However it is still possible that the Patrick who wrote the Epistola arrived in Ireland prior to, or around the same time as, Palladius, and that a third missionary, also called Patrick, flourished at the end of the fifth century. What is nearly certain is that, whether predecessor or successor, the acta of Palladius, especially his sojourn in Auxerre with Germanus, were transferred to the British missionary Patrick, whether intentionally or due to confusion in the eighth century. Though there is no certainty in this matter, based on the strength of the identification of Coroticus with Certic of Dumbarton, the likelihood that his estate would have possessed little value by the middle of the fifth century, and based on Patrick’s apparent adherence to an ultra-Nicene Creed, I will suggest an early date for the Patrick who wrote the Epistola, placing him in Ireland before 450, perhaps as early as 410. It is likely that in the oral tradition Patrick 72 73 74 75

See Gerrad, 2013, esp. pp. 250-62 Summarised by Binchy, 1962, p. 113 Ibid., p. 136 Ibid., p. 146

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and Palladius were conflated and became the Patrick of legend, although it is just as likely that these two individuals were not alone in introducing Christianity to Ireland. As Etchingham has argued, the relationship of Patrick and Palladius may not be as important as scholarship has suggested. It is clear that both figures made a contribution to conversion during the earliest phases: ‘That of Palladius was as agent of the papacy, in 431 and for ten years or more thereafter, and perhaps in the eastern half of the country. Patrick’s contribution involved a relationship to the British Church that is unclear, and within uncertain geographical and chronological parameters’.76

Rhetoric of Epistolography Patrick’s opuscula provides the earliest evidence of a rhetorical tradition in Ireland, but perhaps tells us more about rhetorical education in Roman Gaul and Britain. Most historians of rhetoric trace the true beginnings of the ars dictaminis to the middle of the eleventh century, beginning with Alberic of Monte Cassino in southern Italy. Prior to this, the argument goes, epistolary was an important means of communication and its conventions were passed on mainly by modelling and general formulae. The first mention of the ars dictaminis began with a short mention by Julius Victor in the fourth century CE.77 It is perhaps not insignificant that this handbook circulated in Irish circles on the continent in the seventh century.78 Handbooks of rhetoric, with the exception of Demosthenes’s On Style (§§ 223 – 225) do not discuss writing, as speech was privileged over writing by the likes of Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian.79 However, an art of letter-writing has existed from ‘the earliest records of Western civilization’.80 Though Victor’s ars rhetorica is in large part adapted from Cicero and Quintilian, the two chapters appended to the end dealing with dictamen are original. This demonstrates not only the increasing significance of epistolography, but also that teachers of rhetoric had begun to recognize the extent to which letter-writing had been influenced by rhetorical theory. Despite the absence of theoretical treatises prior to Victor, Stanley Stowers writes that ‘something about the movement of early Christianity made it a 76 77 78 79 80

Etchingham, 2016, p. 197 Perelman, 1991, p. 97 Ó Cróinín, 1993, p. 47 Kennedy, 1999, p. 131 Murphy, 1974, p. 194

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movement of letter writers’.81 The Progymnasmata of Theon of Alexandria (likely fifth century CE) tried to bridge rhetoric and epistolography, and Theon recommended students compose fictive letters and lists this practice under the rhetorical rubric of prosopopoeia.82 Indeed, Michael Trapp says that fourth- and fifth-century works on epistolary theory ‘pretty well guarantee that the properties of letter-writing featured to some extent in the curricula of grammatistes and grammatikos in the centuries A.D’.83 Perhaps the most profound example of the marriage of rhetoric and epistolography at an early date is the Pauline letters,84 though the vast late antique letter collections that have survived demonstrate late antique letters as rhetorical artifacts. In the late antique West, rhetorical theory and practice shifted not only due to changing socio-political contexts in the midst of the gradual disintegration of the Empire, but also due to the expanding geo-political boundaries of the church. Letter writing was clearly of importance in the Greco-Roman world, witnessed in the vast corpus of Cicero’s letters, and the cursus publicus, established by Augustus, was an early version of a postal service reserved for official matters, including transportation of goods and taxes, but also letters. Though scholars have claimed that epistolary theory and writing were not innovative objects of serious study in early medieval monastic curricula, the evidence from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, what Jennifer Ebbeler calls the ‘golden age of Greek and Latin letter-writing’, tells a different story. By the fourth century, a distinctively Christian epistolary form emerged, witnessed most clearly in writers such as Paulinus and Augustine, characterized by ‘a complex interplay of innovation and tradition’, and as part of a larger project of the development of a ‘distinctively Christian literary and artistic culture’.85 There are over 9,000 extant letters from Antiquity and Late Antiquity, including twenty-one out of twenty-seven writings in the New Testament that are written in letter form.86 The extant letters of Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, Fronto, and Ausonius have proven invaluable for the history of the Roman Empire, though they have drawn little attention from historians of rhetoric.87 81 Stowers, 1986, p. 15 82 See Lampe, 2010, p. 15; On the rejection of the traditional dating of Theon to the f irst or second century, in favor of a fifth-century date, see Heath, 2002 83 Trapp, 2003, p. 38 84 For a recent collection that details the developments controversies in this area of inquiry, see Sampley and Lampe, 2010 85 Ebbeler, 2009, p. 271; See also idem, 2012 86 Stowers, 1986, p. 15 87 McNally, 1973, examines Cicero’s comments on rhetoric and oratory in his letters

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The letters of early Christian writers have also been of value to historians, especially those of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (c. 200-258 CE), who left 81 letters, and Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus in the east. In the west, Symmachus left over 900 letters and, along with the letters of Paulinus and Ausonius, provides historians with a glimpse into the process of Christianization.88 Symmachus was a notorious orator, and his letters reveal much of his style, though a rhetorical study of his letters is also wanting.89 Of course, the letters of Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Pope Gregory the Great, Cassiodorus, and Faustus of Riez, and a number of popes are equally valuable. Letters from everyday people are not nearly as common, as they were not as likely to survive the centuries. In 1973, however, more than 250 wooden writing tablets were discovered at Vindolanda, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. These tablets have been of value for information about life in Roman Britain in the first and second centuries CE, but they also provide insight into linguistic changes and everyday spoken Latin in Britain.90 The definition of a letter – what it is and what purpose it is to serve – is an important aspect of epistolography, the rhetorical art of letter-writing. A letter may be defined traditionally as any written correspondence between two or more individuals with the aim of communicating information or persuading the addressee. Michael Trapp def ines a letter as ‘a written message from one person (or set of people) to another, requiring to be set down in a tangible medium, which itself is to be physically conveyed from sender(s) to recipient(s)’.91 In Late Antiquity, however, there was clearly a perceived relationship between a letter and the spoken word. In Epistle 66, Ambrose writes that: ‘“The epistolary genre (genus) was devised in order that someone may speak to us when we are absent”’.92 The letter was seen as sermo absentium (‘absent conversation’), a conversation in absentia. It made present that which was absent, and it always involved more than the sender and addressee.93 88 van Renswoude, 2019, pp. 87-108, discusses the rhetoric of free speech in Ambrose of Milan’s letters; For an edition and translation of Book 1 of Symmachus’s letters, see Salzman and Roberts, 2011 89 For a discussion and translation of excerpts of the above mentioned letters, see Schwartz and Hooper, 1991 90 See Bowman, 1994 91 Trapp, 2003, p. 1 92 Forste-Grupp, 1995, p. 1 93 Letters are to make present that which is absent, the addressee, or, make the addressee present in its absence. Of course, the addressee is never entirely absent in discourse. In this type of communication event, the interlocutor, or addressee, is physically absent, but present in another sense. Derrida, 1971, pp. 180-81, however, sees the spoken word as guilty of the same

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In her study of Paulinus’s letters, Catherine Conybeare writes that the audience of a letter in Late Antiquity was open-ended, and would ‘extend beyond the immediate community, and its composition will be largely beyond the control of either the writer or the recipient of the letter’.94 This was a distinctively Christian innovation, as letters and their carriers were seen to create and sustain ‘a continuous sense of Christian community’.95 Letters (prose) were also distinct from verse, the latter associated with pre-Christian learning. The letter was something distinctively Christian, far more than communication of information across distances, as the letters of the New Testament make clear. For writers such as Paulinus, the letter became a sort of sacrament, a ‘spiritual offering and a basis for general meditation and reflection’,96 as well as a means of maintaining friendship, censuring friends and foes alike, and ensuring adherence to orthodoxy. Epistolography was also a performative genre in that letters were delivered by messengers, often as part of an official envoy, and were intended to be read aloud and performed. As Jennifer Ebbeler has illustrated, ‘the messenger served as a stand-in for the letter’s absent author and might even be expected to provide supplementary information or answer questions raised by the letter’.97 In some instances, the letter served to begin negotiations or debate, and the messenger and envoy were trusted to represent the interests of the sender. The envoy also often delivered other items in addition to the letter, including books or consecrated wine and bread. Among elites, letter exchange followed a code of conduct to which participants were expected to adhere, including ‘the expectations that a correspondent would write back, use reliable messengers, and employ conventional rhetoric’.98 A messenger was also expected to properly represent the sender, including an appropriate garment, as Paulinus’s Epistle 17 and 22 to Severus makes

thing: ‘I would like to demonstrate that the traits that can be recognized in the classical, narrowly defined concept of writing, are generalizable. They are valid not only for all orders of ‘signs’ and for all languages in general but moreover, beyond semio-linguistic communication, for the entire field of what philosophy would call experience, even the experience of being: the above-mentioned “presence”’. The letter is of interest in this light as it mirrors the textual and material supplementarity of presence, a presence mediated by the linguistic, material, and ritualistic performance of mediated absence 94 Conybeare, 2001, p. 41 95 Ibid., p. 54 96 Ibid., p. 55 97 Ebbeler, 2012, p. 272 98 Ibid., p. 272

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clear.99 The performance of official letters was a public affair, included an exchange of gifts, and was an historical event, of which the surviving letter is a trace remain. The exchange of letters involved not only the sender and receiver but the messengers and even entire communities. In this, there are also elaborate and multi-faceted rhetorical and literary purposes a letter might serve. In this, the letter is a complex and nuanced genre that drew on features of other genres, written and spoken. A genre, however, is not a static form that is adapted to different contexts or audiences, a sort of ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ form, but represents typified social and ideological action that emerges from and responds to socio-historically situated exigencies, what Greek rhetoricians call kairos. Researchers in rhetorical genre studies understand genre as a cultural artefact comprised of the dialogic relationship between genre, individuals, activities, and context. Genres also absorb and transform other genres, recontextualizing the complex play of forces of genre in a given communicative act.100 Here, one might think of the polemic use of the Psalms in early Christian letters of censure. In the letters of Columbanus, for example, the Psalms are recontextualized and put to the end of admonishing the recipient, such as Pope Boniface IV. In addition, the three rhetorical genres described by Aristotle are absorbed and transformed in the letter, a genre in which we see epideictic, deliberative, and forensic rhetoric functioning to varying degrees, sometimes simultaneously. A letter is much more than a transhistorical macro-structure; it is a dynamic rhetorical structure, a site of social and ideological action that is both stable and dynamic. A distinct feature of the letter, of course, is addressivity. Mikhail Bakhtin tells us that within genre exist ‘“conceptions of the addressee” and typical forms of addressivity’.101 Audience, conceptually, is a function of genre and does not exist as such outside of discourse. What the recipient(s) of the letter know, believe, accept, and reject are all considerations for the letter writer, much as they are concerns for the rhetor. Therefore, the interlocutor of this written dialogue is inscribed in the text and is very much present in the exchange, even if only in the writer’s imagination. Though an addressee might be an actual person or group of people, the author and audience are 99 In Epistles 17 and 22, Paulinus admonishes Severus’s courier, Marracinus, for wearing military, rather than clerical garb when delivering a letter to him at Rome. The relevant excerpts can be found in Lienhard and Bonn, 1977, p. 73 100 Bawarshi and Reiff, 2010, p. 82 101 Bawarshi and Reiff, 2010, p. 83

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figurative constructions of discourse.102 For our purposes, we must attend to the author and audience of the letter itself, to their creation and presentation in the text itself. In a rhetorical analysis of an early Irish poem, Daniel F. Melia eloquently summarises such a conception of audience when he describes ‘the audience discoverable in the text itself, the audience whom the implied author expects to recognize and respond to certain strategies he uses in the text’.103 The addressee of Patrick’s Epistola may correspond to an historical figure named Coroticus, but the Coroticus presented in the letter is of interest in his own right. As will be discussed below, Coroticus comes to represent much more than a single person, but his actions come to represent social practices admonished and deemed ‘barbaric’ and out of line with Roman Christian values. The operation of metaphor and metonymy is supplementation, and Coroticus and his men stand in for all those who would continue the pre-Christian practices of raiding and murdering. All social transactions are governed by a prescribed set of rules, and in the case of letter exchange, the code of conduct includes expectation of a response and the employment of conventional rhetoric.104 Therefore, Ebbeler suggests, the task of twenty-first century scholars of letter-writing is ‘the identification and analysis of the letter’s highly conventional idiom – “the rhetoric of epistolography”, as we might call it – followed by a discussion of the creative manipulation of this idiom in specific instances’.105 In Patrick’s opuscula, we see a Christian idiom conventional in his context, and this ‘rhetoric of epistolography’ is manipulated in the Epistola with the intention of not just censuring, but admonishing and condemning the actions of Coroticus. Criticism would require response. It would be unlikely that Coroticus, or those clerics with whom he associated, would not respond to 102 Foucault, 1977, pp. 123-25, writes of the author’s names ‘Its presence is functional in that it serves as a means of classification. A name can group together a number of texts and thus differentiate them from others. A name also establishes different forms of relationships among texts. Neither Hermes nor Hippocrates existed in the sense that we can say Balzac existed, but the fact that a number of texts were attached to a single name implies that relationships of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentification, or of common utilization established among them. Finally, the author’s name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse. Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates […] In this sense, the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society’ 103 Melia, 1990a, p. 189 104 Ebbeler, 2012, p. 272 105 Ibid., p. 273

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the serious accusations levelled by Patrick. In fact, it could well have been a fallout due to Patrick over-stepping his pastoral boundaries–excommunicating a British king, and likely patron of the British Church, not within his jurisdiction–that inspired the synod in which the legitimacy of Patrick’s bishopric was called into question. In any case, Patrick’s letter provides insight into the rhetorical nature of epistolography.

Patrick’s Learning There has never been any doubt whether Patrick received at least some education, as he was literate. Rather, the question is the extent of his education. The certainty that he was educated is due to the class into which Patrick was born, as Patrick’s Latin name, Patricius, in fact means ‘noble, of the Patrician class’, the curia or decurio, the group who had ruled Rome, according to legend, ever since Romulus and Remus founded the city. We know from Patrick’s writings that his father, Calpurnius, was a decurion, and his grandfather, Potitus, was a priest. Both were from Banaventa Berniae, a small town somewhere in Britain, likely along the west coast, though its exact location eludes historians. Patrick lived in relative luxury on a small villa, an estate that held many slaves. Given this upbringing, any reasonable scholar would allow for at least minimal education. However, from the Confessio we learn that Patrick was captured during his formative years by Irish raiders (16 years old) from his family’s villa in Britain.106 Patrick was carried away as a slave across the Irish Sea and sold into slavery along with his family’s servants. He was held in servitude for six years, watching over sheep for his Irish master. During these years, Patrick experienced visions and a profound calling from God. After escaping from slavery on a trading vessel, he returned home to Britain where he was warmly welcomed by his family who must have believed him dead. Despite their wishes that he remain, at some point he must have returned to his studies, perhaps in Britain but, more likely, in Gaul. In time, he was consecrated as a bishop, likely in the British Church and, according to his own wishes, returned to Ireland to spread the word of God. Many scholars now argue that during the years following his captivity, Patrick must have received further education as part of his preparation for the bishopric. There is no way of knowing with certainty where Patrick received his education, though there are two main theories. Patrick’s biographer, 106 See Freeman, 2004, for an excellent account of the biographical details

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Muirchú holds that Patrick travelled and studied in Gaul with St. Germanus at Auxerre (1.6). Tirechán, another biographer, claims that Patrick sojourned in the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea, taken by some scholars to refer to Lérins, the island monastery off the south-eastern coast of France.107 If Patrick studied with Germanus at Auxerre, there is no doubt that Patrick would have been exposed to a rhetorical education second to none. Germanus was known to have defeated the Pelagians in Britain using his superior rhetoric. Significantly, Palladius had chosen Germanus as his delegate to Britain.108 This is a tempting possibility. However, the only evidence is hagiographical and is in large part untrustworthy. Therefore, without discovery of further evidence, historians will never know with certainty. Text-internal evidence does point to time spent in Gaul, or at a British monastery that had close contacts with monastic communities in Gaul. Despite the general consensus of scholars writing in the early and midtwentieth century who would claim that Patrick was not educated beyond the elementary level, it is now clear that Patrick was educated in rhetoric, at least to the Roman education curriculum’s secondary level, the schola grammatici, and trained in letter writing and progymnasmata.109 Daniel F. Melia states the matter plainly: ‘In any event, the notion of a truly ‘unlearned’ and super-rustic Patrick cannot be sustained against the internal evidence of his Roman rhetorical education’.110 In addition to Patrick, Gildas, writing a century later in Britain, was clearly educated in Roman rhetoric, which lends weight to the argument that traditional Roman schools survived at least in the first half of the sixth century, and that Patrick may have been educated in Britain.111 However, I argue that the evidence leans more in the direction of a Gallo-Roman school, though one could equally surmise that there were active Roman schools in both Britain and Gaul in the late fourth through the fifth century, schools that maintained close contacts, perhaps under papal authority from Rome.112 107 See Carney, 1961, p. 72; Ryan, 1931, pp. 60-66 108 Bieler 1948, p. 4 109 Among the first scholars to note the influence of Roman rhetoric in Patrick’s writings, albeit in passing, is Lapidge, 1984, p. 29 110 Melia, 2008, p. 99 111 See Breeze, 2010; For a rhetorical analysis of Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae, see Lapidge, 1984 112 Lapidge, 1984, explains that there were grammar and rhetorical schools in provinces of the Roman Empire, and there is ‘abundant testimony’ in the fourth-century poet Ausonius (28). He writes that though there is no evidence for Roman Britain, ‘there is no difficulty in the assumption that here as elsewhere in the Empire grammatici and rhetores would have been involved in the instruction of the local population and would have occupied teaching posts paid for by the state’ (28). From Plutarch in the second century there is evidence of a Greek rhetor, Demetrius, active in

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The question of Patrick’s education and reading was taken up by Peter Dronke in an essay titled ‘St. Patrick’s Reading.’ Dronke’s essay is essential for any student of the writings of Patrick as he provides a thorough review of twentieth-century scholarship on Patrick while providing an interesting, retrospective analysis of some heated debates. Dronke suggests that Patrick’s writings reveal a much more complex understanding of rhetoric and a much more sophisticated education than had been accepted. Dronke’s analysis highlights the influence, if not direct imitation, of Augustine (especially in the Confessio) and Cyprian. He reveals Patrick as versed in late antique learning and situates him among the learned elite of the fifth century. Dronke demonstrates in the Confessio Augustinian stylistic patterns, showing that the influence goes beyond content: ‘In particular, Augustine has Britain (De Defectu Oraculorum pr. 2). Juvenal, in Saturae XV.111-12 wrote that ‘“eloquent Gaul has taught the Britons to plead” – apparently implying that Gaulish rhetores were at that time being imported for the purpose of establishing rhetorical schools on the Roman model’ (29). And then, ‘In the fifth century the writings of St Patrick, a Romano-Britain who had been abducted at the age of sixteen by Irish raiders (at precisely the age, we might suppose, when he would in different circumstances have passed from the school of the grammaticus to that of the rhetor), contain ample evidence that trained rhetoricians were still to be found in Britain. Patrick, in his Confessio, addresses his seniores in Britain somewhat defensively in that they (unlike himself) were “clever rhetoricians” […] accomplished in matters pertaining to the law (legis periti) and expert in that rhetorical concision known technically as breuitas’ (29). But all this testimony aside, the Empire would have needed civil servants and administrators, trained in declamation, to carry on the bureaucracy. The monastic schools, on the other hand, were designed as retreats from the secular world, and secular learning was often not tolerated, as in the case of Jerome and Paulinus of Nola. Sulpicius Severus, in his Vita S. Martini reiterates that salvation is not found in orators, but by fisherman (Fontaine, I.248): ‘St Martin was a praiseworthy subject because he was above all a rude, unlettered (inlitteratus) soldier’ (30). Lapidge sums up the evidence: ‘There is no evidence whatsoever that rhetoric, the mainstay of traditional Roman education, was ever taught in a monastery in late Antiquity’ (30). Yet Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, Cassian, and Gregory the Great were all trained in that which they disdained: ‘[…] the heresiarch Pelagius, who, given his formidable accomplishments in forensic oratory, must surely have been trained in Britain in a rhetorical school before departing for Mediterranean regions (probably during the 380s)’ (31). Faustus of Riez, who became a bishop at Lérins in c. 433, was clearly trained in rhetoric, though Lapidge believes it unlikely that he taught rhetoric there, but rather was trained in rhetoric in Roman Britain (32). He writes, ‘The most reasonable explanation is that Faustus acquired his training at the hands of a rhetor in Roman Britain before departing for the monastic life at Lérins. This inference, taken in combination with the evidence of Patrick’s writings mentioned earlier, suggests that rhetorical schools were flourishing in Britain as elsewhere in the Empire during the first half of the fifth century’ (32). Gildas was clearly educated in the liberal arts and was the product of a traditional Roman education. In the uita of Gildas by an eleventh century monk of Ruis (Brittany), Gildas went into a monastery under a certain Hildutus, where he studied scripture and the liberal arts, though he was inclined more to the latter. Eventually he ‘set off for Ireland so that he might seek the learning of other wise men “both in philosophy and in divine learning”’ (33)

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a parallelism that consists in combining a passionate personal utterance and a biblical echo in the same sentence or group of sentences, so that the personal and biblical moments are juxtaposed, made symmetrical syntactically and harmonized emotionally’.113 Dronke further explains how Patrick’s stylistics pair with conscious use of rhetorical device: ‘But the use of rhetorical devices – anaphora, parallelism, antithesis, rhythmic cola – is made special, both in Patrick and Augustine, by their unusual habit of pairing sentences one of which is biblical and the other the writer’s own’.114 Dronke’s main argument is that direct quotation and allusion is not the only means for determining influence. This is an important observation, and it speaks to the halting effect of such positivism. Given the genres in which Patrick wrote, should we expect to see quotation and allusion from every source he encountered? Do we see in each of Jerome’s letters evidence of his having read Cicero? D.R. Howlett’s study, The Celtic Latin Tradition of Biblical Style, further demonstrates Patrick’s stylistic sophistication. In this text, Howlett analyzes the rhetorical and stylistic structure of Celtic Latin works from the fifth through the tenth centuries. With reference to the rhetorical structure of both Hebrew and Greek scriptural passages, Howlett illustrates the use of both chiasmus and parallelism in the letters of Patrick. Patrick’s writings, as well as those of Columbanus, demonstrate not only the use of these rhetorical tropes common to Scripture, but they are also organized according to a mathematical structure called the ‘Fibonacci sequence’. Howlett explains: ‘The patterns exhibit balance not only in the statement and restatement of ideas, but in the numbers of words and syllables and letters. These are arranged in one of two forms, either perfect symmetry or division by extreme and mean ratio, the golden section’.115 Howlett explains that this was a common feature of medieval letters: ‘The form of the cursus widely taught in the Middle Ages as part of the ars dictaminis required stressed rhythms which can be perceived as reflexes of these quantitative rhythms’.116 The structure of the text, Howlett explains, utilizes antiphony in the pairing of statements, a common feature of the Latin bible, as well as internal chiasmus in the four main body paragraphs.117 This Christian method of composition was drawn from a neo-Platonic understanding of the mathematical ordering of the universe. As the creator 113 114 115 116 117

Dronke, 1981, p. 126 Ibid., p. 133 Howlett, 1996, p. 18 Ibid., p. 23 Ibid., p. 40

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had created the universe mathematically, so the creator of a composition should mathematically structure a composition. Thomas Charles-Edwards cites Howlett and explains Patrick’s conscious rhetorical effort, one not born of ignorance, but of aesthetic training in a monastic school: What Patrick was attempting to do – and achieved with great success – was to write a biblical Latin. His principal stylistic weapon was the device known as chiasmus, namely placing one’s text in ABBA order […] This pattern is the main structural device of Hebrew poetry but is also carried over into prose. The direct result of ordering a text in such a way is that it cannot be read linearly, because A1 and B1 must be read with A2 and B2 in mind, as well as vice versa. Having advanced so far in a certain direction, the text then doubles back on itself and produces a series of variations on its earlier themes, only now in reverse order.118

The work of Charles-Edwards and Howlett demonstrates clearly that Patrick was far more than a layman, but that his training determined his rhetorical sensibilities. Dronke demonstrates a sophisticated patterning of content, specifically a combination of scriptural and personal proofs in paired clauses. As Howlett writes near the end of his study, the portrayal of Patrick as ‘a naïve and barely literate rustic struggling to express himself in a language he could not master … is a grotesque misrepresentation of the thought and prose of a writer who was more than competent’ and that this view ‘may now be consigned to the dustbin of our intellectual history’.119

The Purpose of Patrick’s Mission The purpose of Patrick’s opuscula must be considered in light of the purpose of his mission. Once again, conjecture based on context and text-internal evidence is necessary. Was his goal, as a pious man of God, to spread the gospel, unhindered by political ambitions? It is important to recall that Christian conversion was essential to imperial management of the Goths and other peoples of the western frontier, including the Frankish kingdoms, and bishops played a prominent role in these efforts. As Elva Johnston has pointed out, ‘Churchmen were ideal legates, especially as ecclesiastical communities

118 Charles-Edwards, 2000, p. 231 119 Howlett, 1994a, p. 115

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gradually colonized their civil counterparts’.120 We must recall the epigraph with which this book began; what Rome could not win by the sword, the Church would win by the tongues of holy men. Indeed, the central feature of a Roman delegation was eloquence, and letters were often flourishes in their oratorical performances.121 The reason for Palladius’s mission to Ireland to preach to those Christians already present was at least in part to ensure that Pelagian heresy was not thriving in Ireland, but it was also an ambitious political move. It was not merely a theological concern born of the Christian, evangelical spirit, but the dispatch of such an envoy was a common strategy in frontier management.122 The dispatch of Palladius to Ireland may have been part of an attempt to reconstruct the Empire.123 Germanus, the Gallic bishop and famed orator, had been sent along with an envoy to Britain in order to check such a controversy. Charles-Edwards writes For twenty years at least Palladius’s mission remained a matter of deep concern for both Leo and Prosper. Moreover the consecration of a bishop by the pope for the Irish was directly relevant to canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon and thus to papal relations both with the Eastern empire and with the bishop of Constantinople […] The activities of Germanus and of Palladius, in Britain and in Ireland, demonstrated that a Christian and papal Rome, the Rome of Peter and Paul, could intervene to safeguard and to spread the Faith in an island which had thrown off Imperial authority and also in another island which had never been subject to the sway of the Emperor.124 120 Johnston, 2017a, p. 121 121 Gillett, 2003, p. 4, writes ‘The most basic instrument in all forms of contact, however, was the envoy, the individual who acted as an authority’s representative, and so as the vehicle for communication. Even formal, diplomatic letters were of secondary importance to the envoys who bore them as their credentials and as overtures to their speeches. The political shifts of the fifth century rode upon the pronouncements and persuasions of countless, largely unrecorded representatives dispatched by emperors, kings, generals, bishops, cities, and provincial councils’. We have no record of how Patrick’s letters were received, but given his background we can assume that an envoy was sent to present the letter to Coroticus and to the British bishops, respectively. However, the survival of the letters demonstrates their significance to Irish Christian communities and their likely use in liturgical contexts, as well 122 Wood, 1987, p. 251, writes that in addition to Prosper’s Chronicle, his Contra Collatorem provides evidence that ‘Celestine’s policies thus encompassed both Britain and Ireland, and the entry in Prosper’s Chronicle for 429 needs to be seen in conjunction with that for 431’, meaning ‘enemies of grace’, i.e., those who subscribe to Pelagius’s teachings, also inspired the mission to Ireland 123 See Wood, 1987, for consideration of the evidence 124 Charles-Edwards, 1993a, p. 9

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Palladius’s mission, like that of Germanus, was not simply one of missionary significance, but one of frontier management. Patrick’s mission was not ordained by Rome, but likely by British bishops. However, it is possible, given the evidence from Constantius’s Life of Germanus, that the British Church was under the control of Rome and that for these reasons the British Church had a vested interest in Ireland.125 Therefore, Patrick’s mission may have been of a spiritual nature, though one cannot rule out the possibility of the British Church’s political concerns. Johnston notes that Palladius would have represented relevant secular powers, and that Irish secular elites were likely amenable to diplomatic overtures.126 This means that Palladius would have been responsible for brokering agreements and maintaining peaceful conditions on the frontiers. As has been noted, we must bear in mind the purpose of Patrick’s writings, which were not theological in the strict sense. Patrick was not engaging in debate over theological issues, but in the case of the Epistola he was persuading British and Irish kings and recent converts to abandon violent practices like raiding and pillaging. Indeed, the threat rendered in the Epistola was excommunication of a king and his people by a bishop, something Patrick may not have had authority to do if Coroticus were not in Patrick’s paruchia. This could have been a factor in the synod called to question his position. The Confessio was a response to this synod and the criticisms from his superiors in the British Church. Patrick was summoned, but he declined to attend. Instead, an envoy was likely sent in his stead, letter in hand. It could be that, like Paul before him, Patrick preferred the letter over appearing in person to plead his case. Considering contemporary evidence, it is likely that Patrick’s mission was not one born of a profound spiritual calling to preach to the Irish, but was a political appointment on behalf of the Roman British Church. Indeed, the rhetoric of such a spiritual calling was a primary means of establishing ethos in such a politically motivated venture. In this, Patrick’s writings can be read as part and parcel of fifth-century frontier management from the Roman Church in Britain, perhaps approved directly from Rome. 125 Wood, 1984, describes in detail Constantius’s version of Germanus’s trip to Britain and writes that Prosper’s ‘clear juxtaposition of Celestine’s work in Britain and Ireland in Contra Collatorem lead plausibly to the conclusion that the two policies were related and that it was as a result of observations made by Germanus on the relations between Britain and Ireland that Palladius set out in 431’ (14). These events suggest that ‘Britain was still subject to the Roman Church if not to the Emperor and that papal policy was being pursued with confidence on the fringes of the world’ (14) 126 Johnston, 2017a, p. 122

4

A Rhetorical Analysis of Patrick’s Epistola ad Milites Coroticus

The Libri Epistolarum Sancti Patricii Episcopi, the Book of Letters of St. Patrick the Bishop, is the name Ludwig Bieler gave to St Patrick’s opuscula, including the Confessio and the Epistola ad milites Coroticus. Bieler constructed his edition from eight surviving manuscripts of various date but dates the exemplar to the fifth or sixth century, though the earliest surviving version was copied c. 800 in what is now known as Book of Armagh.1 This codex, including the Psalter, Gospels, the entire New Testament, the Liber Angeli, and the Lives of St Patrick and St Martin, as well as Patrick’s writings, was written to be the personal devotional book of Toarbach, coarb of Patrick.2 In the manuscript, the Patrician texts begin: Incipiunt libri sancti Patricii episcopi (‘Here begins the book of St Patrick the bishop’). This section of the Book of Armagh is the work of two scribes, including the Armagh scriptorium’s master scribe, Ferdomnach, and they represent incomplete versions of the Epistola and Confessio.3 While the earliest manuscripts do not appear to have survived, the eight surviving manuscripts are believed to accurately represent the original exemplar, as the copies were not influenced by the romantic style of the early Bardic tradition in Ireland. 4 Concerning this matter, Ludwig Bieler argues, The redactor, it would appear, abstained from interference not only with the contents of Patrick’s letters, but also with their style. The endlessly 1 See Bieler, 1952, pp. 7-30 for a discussion of the manuscript tradition 2 Sharpe, 1982, p. 5 3 Of the Confessio and Liber Angeli, Sharpe, 1982, pp. 23-24, argues that there is a logical connection between the two as the Liber Angeli claims a primatial status for Armagh due to Patrick’s status as the apostle of Ireland, and Patrick’s Confessio provides proof of this apostolic mission. Therefore, Sharpe suggests these two texts together should be treated as the Volumen Patricii, a propagandistic document claiming Armagh’s primacy that predates the texts found in Book of Armagh and that appears to have had a reliquary status. The Volumen has the character of an epistolary address in the use of the dative case and the first-person of the Confessio. In time, Book of Armagh ceased to be used as a personal devotional book and came to possess reliquary status 4 Bieler, 1952, p. 39

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch04

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protracted λέις ϵιίρομέυη (somewhat obscured by the punctuation of modern editors), the capricious, yet always incomprehensible progress of ideas, the directness and warmth of expression, all this has unmistakably the personal touch of the extraordinary man. Even grammar and spelling, I think, were hardly touched.5

Bieler’s thesis is widely accepted and has helped to set aside concerns that the manuscripts, copied over several centuries, are tainted by the rhetorical, stylistic, grammatical, and thematic tendencies of redactor context. The version of the Confessio in Book of Armagh, however, does leave out an important section on Patrick’s childhood sin. However, considering the propagandistic ends to which the early manuscripts were put by the hagiographers Muirchú and Tírechán in order to claim superiority for the ecclesiastic community at Armagh, that the Libri Epistolarum remained mostly unchanged is remarkable.6 The unaltered form of the text also provides students of rhetoric with a valuable resource for understanding the rhetorical arts in the Latin West. Epistolography was associated with rhetoric in the early Christian period, if not in theoretical handbooks, at least in practice.7 Epistolography is also associated with the progymnasmata, and in his Epistola Patrick implements imitatio, progymnasmata, especially maxim, ethopoeia, comparison, and narration, and conventional epistolary strategies, such as epideictic, paraphrasis, protreptic, and paraenetic.8 Since little is known of rhetorical theory and practice in Britain and Gaul during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Patrick’s writings provide insight into the nature of rhetorical education, theory, and practice, especially epistolography. As was noted above, Patrick’s writings were both practical and literary, though scholars have tended to dismiss the literary value of the opuscula, in part due to the perceived quality of Patrick’s Latin.9 Given Patrick’s social class, 5 Ibid., p. 39 6 For translations of the Lives of Patrick, as well as Patrick’s opuscula, see Davies, 2000; see also O Loughlin, 1999; for a complete bibliography of Patrician primary and secondary resources, along with Latin editions and English translations of primary sources, see confessio.ie/more/ bibliography_full# (accessed 17-03-2021) 7 See Sampley, 2010, and the sources cited throughout 8 On epistolography and progymnasmata, see Lanham, 2012, pp. 104-106 9 To date, Mohrmann, 1961, is the only thorough examination of Patrick’s Latin. Mohrmann suggests that Patrick’s Latin exhibits features of Latin spoken in Gaul in the fourth and fifth century. However, the discovery of writing tablets and inscriptions in various regions of Britain have advanced the understanding of Latin spoken (or at least written) in Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries. Russell, 2011, examines the evidence for the influence of British (the Celtic

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it is certain that Patrick would have spoken a form of Latin common among Romano-British elites. In the fourth century, the term Romania was coined to designate non-Roman Latin speakers and, though this refers more specifically to Gaul, the evidence suggests that Latin was spoken in Britain during the Roman occupation and for several centuries after.10 Certainly, comparing Patrick’s Latin to those writers present in Rome or the Mediterranean world does little to advance our understanding of Patrick’s learning, and the term Romania suggests that fourth-century Romans made a distinction. Moreover, Patrick’s opuscula served a rhetorical purpose: in the Confessio, to establish (or salvage) his character (ethopoeia), to defend his mission, and to reach a wide audience, and in the Epistola to excommunicate the British king Coroticus and admonish the British Church to ransom Christian slaves from the Picti and Scotti.11 Patrick does this through appeal to pathos, demonstrations of epideictic, demonstrative, and forensic rhetoric, and innovative imitation of Christian models, especially St Paul. Indeed, within the opuscula, Patrick weaves together scripture and personal experience, with reference to the Nicene Creed and an insistence on the centrality of God’s grace, in order to present a carefully developed and forceful argument in a style suited to a clerical audience. Despite his claims to rusticity, Patrick was clearly trained in a form Roman rhetoric.12 language spoken in Britain during and after the Roman occupation of Britain) on Latin, as well as the relationship between Latin and British during and after the Roman occupation. Though Russell, p. 154, notes that the findings of his study, in which he intentionally sets the methodological bar quite high, suggest some aspects of British morphology was influenced by Latin, likely between the fourth and sixth centuries. Therefore, Latin may have been spoken more widely in Roman and post-Roman Britain than many Patrician scholars have allowed. Patrick’s Latin deemed to be evidence of a lack of proper education may in fact be features of Latin spoken in fourth- of fifth-century Britain 10 Amsler, 1989, p. 57 11 Lanham, 2012, p. 104, notes that epistolography falls under the heading of ethopoeia, writing ‘This exercise, the speech in character, was considered to be among the more difficult, and many examples of it survive, especially of the type using figures from poetry or history that students would have read … Establishing an authorial voice, an ethos, is a central task for any speaker or writer, but character portrayal addresses the very essence of the letter, which is, after all, a substitute for one’s physical presence’. Lanham cites Theon and Nicolaus as proponents of practicing ethopoeia in letter form 12 Lynch, 2008, attempts a rhetorical analysis of Patrick’s writings and, despite its shortcomings, Lynch has brought the attention of rhetorical studies to Patrick’s texts. In a later article, Lynch, 2010, returns to the Epistola and provides an insightful rhetorical analysis. In this work, he recognizes that Patrick was an ecclesiastic trained in late antique Roman rhetoric, though he says little of the relationship of rhetoric and epistolography among late antique Christian writers, and especially the prominence of rusticity and simplicity as rhetorical topoi. The social and political context of Patrick’s mission to Ireland is also not considered in full, leaving the

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We will now turn to the letter itself. The Epistola begins: I, Patrick, a sinner, naturally unlearned, placed in Ireland, I confess myself to be a bishop. I certainly think I receive without effort from God that which I am. I dwell among barbarians and heathens and accordingly I am a proselyte, and a fugitive on account of God’s love. He is the witness if that is so. Not because I was wishing so much a hard and so much a cruel essence to pour forth from my mouth, but I am compelled by the zeal of God; the truth of Christ incites me. For the love of nearest sons and daughters in Christ,13 for whom I have given up my fatherland and parents and my soul up to the point of death. If I am worthy, I live for my God to teach gentiles, even if some despise me. (254.1-9)14

In this salutation, many rhetorical features emerge. To begin, there is amplification in description, such as ‘a sinner, naturally unlearned, placed in Ireland’ and ‘I am a proselyte, and a fugitive on account of God’s love’. The salutation brings to mind the words of John Cassian in Pref. 2 of his De institutis: ‘You have summoned me, an unworthy man and the poorest in every respect, to share of so great a work’. Of course, Cassian was not truly proclaiming a lack of worth for penning this work, but rather the humility topos represents his programme of renunciation, ‘aimed to strip the monk of self-centred attachments and identities, to destroy all conceptions of secular analysis focused on the letter as more of a simple communication between Patrick and Coroticus, not allowing for greater complexity in audience and addressee. However, his suggestion that the letter is organized as a formal rhetorical document is useful. Lynch suggests that, roughly, the letter is organized thus: exoridum, section 1-2; narratio, section 3; confirmatio, sections 4-9; refutatio, sections 10-14; peroratio, sections 15-21 (p. 69). Such an analysis can prove difficult, and the organization does not always hold. This is more likely due to a more nuanced and well-theorized approach to epistolography developed in the fourth century. As was discussed above, one must be cautious not to force extant speeches and letters into frameworks delineated in handbooks 13 Harvey and Malthouse, 2013-2015, p. 85, filiatio in the non-classical lexicon of Celtic Latin often refers to ‘sonship’, ‘the relationship of Christ to God the father’. For this reason I have translated filiarum as ‘sons and daughters in Christ’, as the context suggests that Patrick has exchanged his secular ties for those he has converted at the edge of the world, including also ‘brothers and sisters’ in Christ, i.e., Patrick’s Christian family 14 ‘Patricius peccator indoctus scilicet Hiberione constitutus episcopum me esse fateor. Certissime reor a Deo accepi id quod sum. Inter barbaras itaque gentes habito proselitus et profuga ob amorem Dei; testis est ille si ita est. Non quod optabam tam dure et tam aspere aliquid ex ore meo effundere; sed cogor zelo Dei, et ueritas Christi excitatuit. Pro dilectione proximorum átque filiórum pro quibus “tradidi” patriam et parentes et “animam meam usque ad mortem. Si dingus sum uiuo Deo méo Docére géntes esti contémpnor alíquibus’

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rank and hierarchies. Anything that could be pointed to with pride, anything that divided, was to be torn away’.15 A monk under Cassian’s programme must renounce all remnants of his former life, including family, wealth, and social position. Moreover, the epistolary opening exposes the nature of the relationship between the sender and the recipient and served to generate a relationship of trust between them and establish ethos. This practice finds its origins in secular rhetoric, namely captatio benevolentiae. Some modern commentators have argued that we should take Patrick at his word, that he is uneducated and barely qualified to be writing at all. Instead, however, we can see Patrick as a product of a training in the Roman Church of the West. Cassian developed a literary style that reflected this intense emphasis on the importance of humility, which he saw not as a means to spiritual progress, but the effect thereof. Goodrich argues that the humility and self-deprecation in Cassian’s prefaces should be understood in light of the conventions of classical literary texts. He writes, ‘Rather than monastic humility, these disavowals of literary ability are simply examples of insinuatio, the downplaying of one’s own talents for the purpose of winning the good opinion of an audience’.16 Patrick’s salutations in the Epistola and Confessio mirror this, so it is clear that he was drawing on a commonplace.17 Verba and res are not distinct, and the humble style not only suits the message, but the very nature of the message demands it. In this, it is not eloquence and tricks of the sophist that persuade the audience, but the Word of God. Stylistically, the humility topos deployed by Patrick provides us with evidence to determine the type of monastic milieu he lived among before his mission to Ireland. Cassian’s strict monasticism seems unlikely, as Patrick did not wall himself within the confines of the monastery and forsake all bonds with outsiders, but instead travelled the countryside of Ireland preaching, baptising converts, and establishing churches. Cassian and certain other fourth- and fifth-century Christians, including Caesarius of Arles and Eucherius at the monastery in Lérins, who Mark Amsler refers to as ‘separatists’, rejected secular latinitas, writing, rhetoric, and philosophy, and ‘established a kind of counterliteracy programme, appealing to the intuitive knowledge of the rusticus and promoting the image of the illiteratur literatus’.18 Classical 15 Goodrich, 2007, p. 208 16 Ibid., p. 35-6 17 235.1-2 ‘Ego Patricius peccator rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus’ (‘I, Patrick, am a sinner most rustic and the least of all believers and the most contemptible in the presence of churchmen’) 18 Amsler, 1989, p. 86

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Latin was considered to be an impediment to dissemination of Christian truth, and evangelism ‘motivated a theory of audience-oriented translation and language pragmatics’.19 The language of the Bible, the sacra eloquia, had its own grammar and rhetoric, which was initially based on secular grammar and rhetoric, but which exceeded it through the power of the Christian message. Patrick was clearly educated among such a milieu as he expresses such beliefs throughout his letter, but especially here in the salutation. It is also clear that Patrick was aware of the ecclesiastical debates of the day, perhaps of the plight of Paulinus, the problem of vice and wealth in the churches of southern Gaul, and perhaps even the radical views of Cassian. Patrick’s renunciation of his former acquaintances, both familial and secular friendships, is reminiscent of Paulinus of Nola’s privileging of Christian friendship over the worldly. It is important to note that for Romans amicitas was considered extremely important, as a number of letters between friends, such as Fronto and Marcus Aurelius, and Paulinus and Symmachus, attest. In letters to Eucherius and Galla, Paulinus contrasts humana amicitia (‘human friendship’) and that bound in divina gratia (‘divine grace’) and caritas Christi (‘the love of Christ’). Dennis Trout writes that ‘from the loftiest perspective that Paulinus could imagine, all individual relations among Christians might simply dissolve into their common membership in that three-dimensional, mystical Pauline body of which Christ was the head’.20 Patrick appears to have been a part of a community that practiced a monasticism somewhere in between these extremes, though he clearly valued his Christian family over his secular connections in Britain. Patrick is also clearly impatient with those Christians who cling to worldly wealth, pre-Christian practices such as slave-raiding (díberg in Irish society), and especially the ornament and pretension of secular learning. For example, Patrick addresses his rhetorical learning at many points throughout the Confessio, often expressing anxiety or critiquing the rhetorical values of his British colleagues. In § 5 he writes ‘I have not been one of those students who in the very best manner had drunk of both law and sacred letters’, writing of his contemporaries that ‘They have never had to change their speech ever since infancy; rather they were always improving and perfecting their command of language. My words and speech, however, are turned into an alien language … As the wise man says; “For wisdom becomes known through speech, and education through the words of the tongue” (Ben Sira 4:24). In § 10 he writes ‘Now today it is with great fear and shame that 19 Ibid., p. 87 20 Trout, 1999, p. 211

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I expose my lack of expertise and polish … to the learned I am unable to make my meaning clear’. Despite these self-deprecating statements, Patrick also defends the ‘rustic’ and suggests that highly ornamented rhetorical style betrays deception. In the Confessio, Patrick writes: But if I had been given such an existence as the others, then nevertheless, near the reward, I would not remain silent. And, if by chance I am seen as presumptuous, with my ignorance and my slow tongue, still it is written: The tongue of the stammerer will quickly learn to speak peace. How much more should we strive, we who are, it says, the letter of Christ in salvation all the way to the ends of the earth. And if this does not fail, but is ratified and most powerful, written in your heart, not in ink, but with the spirit of the living God. And once again, the Spirit bears witness, for the Most High created the rustic. (238.6-14)21

Instead of a straightforward proclamation of humility and simplicity, Patrick here frames simplicity as the Christian value par excellence and organizes this section using the rhetorical exercise of comparison. In this, Patrick not only defends himself against the judgments of ‘more learned men’, but he also appeals to a much wider audience of early Irish Christians. This evidence is suggestive, though it is not concrete enough for us to place Patrick in a specific community or even region. This may also be beside the point, as Patrick need not have hailed from a prestigious, well-known community to have been exposed to these ideas. In the late fourth and early fifth century, each monastic community was unique, though certainly some themes persisted across boundaries. Though there has been a tendency for historians to write of the ‘Common Celtic Church’, and ‘Celtic Christianity’, there was likely great diversity throughout Britain and Ireland. O Loughlin writes that ‘Each monastery should be seen, as with most monasteries in the period, as an individual response to the monastic impulse by someone who had experienced monasticism and then went off to establish either a hermitage to which others later came or a coenobitic community’.22 This 21 ‘Sed si itaque datum mihi fuisset sicut et ceteris, uerumtamen non silerem propter retributioinem, et si forte uidetur apud aliquantos me in hoc praeponere cum mea inscientia et tardiori lingua, sed etiam scriptum est enim: Linguae balbutientes uelociter discent loqui pacem. Quanto magis nos adpetere debemus, qui sumus, inquit, epistola Christi in salute usque ad ultimum terrae, et si non deserta, sed ratum et fortissimum scripta in cordibus uestris non atramento sed spiritu Dei uiui. Et iterum Spiritu testatur et rusticationem ab Altissimo creatam’ 22 O Loughlin, 2013, p. 268

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certainly would be the case for the monastery at which Patrick was trained and received orders–likely in Gaul, though perhaps in Britain–as well as for the monastic communities that he established in Ireland. Coroticus was not adhering to the Christian practices that monastic communities of the ‘holy Romans’ in fourth-century Gaul and Britain valued, as he was allied with apostates (Irish and Picts) and accompanied them on raids. Understanding this context, the humility topos has more force, as the clerics and Christians who were to hear the letter read alongside Coroticus (and for years after) would certainly sense this rhetorical force. Turning again to the Epistola, perhaps most telling in this section is the humility that Patrick elaborates through amplification, in cursus rhythm, especially when he writes ‘Not because I was wishing so much a hard and so much a cruel essence to pour forth from my mouth’ (‘Non quod optabam tam dure et tam aspere aliquid ex ore meo effundere’). Here, Patrick writes disparagingly of his own rhetorical abilities, but he does so within an elaborate biblical style prose rhythm. Moreover, such proclamations of humility had developed into a topos – the humility topos – by this point in time. The humility topos, though witnessed in Roman writers, was fully developed in the first through the fourth centuries CE, especially in the discourse of St Paul and Cassian. Something akin to humility topos can be witnessed in Cicero in what is called captatio benevolentiae, ‘capturing the good will’ of the audience with the appearance of ignorance. In confessing ( fatere)23 to be a bishop, Patrick also makes of himself a model, an example of an ideal Christian, who in the tradition of St Paul, has given himself over to the Christian form of life, entirely to God, and in humility. This is an appeal to ethos as Patrick establishes his character (ethopoeia) as a humble, subservient follower of Christ, and in doing so imitates St Paul, who called on others to imitate his example. Schwietering explains: St. Paul puts the duty of becoming the ‘servus Jesu Christi’ before every Christian, for whom freedom means not individual freedom but humble submission to Christ’s will. Paul, who boasts of his weakness (infirmitas), was to the Middle Ages a model of deepest humility. Bernard of Clairvaux, who places the Apostle beside David in his humble awareness of his sins (Cantica, Sermo 34), sees embodied in him the highest degree of humility, because he not only bears with patience the humiliation of his weakness, but boasts of it.24 23 Harvey and Malthouse, 2013-2105, fatere, in Classical Latin fateri, to declare, admit 24 Schwietering, 1954, p. 1281

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To boast of one’s humility seems contradictory, but this is an important aspect of early Christian literature. In the Confessio, Patrick compares his style with the learned, ornamental style of his presumed audience, distinguishing his own ideology from the likes of the highly educated, rich, noble elites of the British Church. He writes, ‘Not because I was wishing so much a hard and so much a cruel essence to pour forth from my mouth, but I am compelled by the zeal of God; the truth of Christ incites me’. This ‘hard’ and ‘cruel essence’ pouring forth from his mouth further establishes his humble character and is in sharp contrast with descriptions of great orators in the classical era. The pouring and flowing of words like honey was a common metaphor for oratory throughout its history and was used to describe figures like Nestor in the Iliad.25 Latin terms such as suaviloquens (‘sweetly speaking’) and melliloquent (‘honey-speaking’) were often used to refer to Roman orators. In Irish literature, the filid’s masterful oratorical performance is often described as a rushing torrent, rather than a gentle flowing. In the Hisperica famina, to be discussed below, the metaphor is given as ‘ac inmensus urbani tenoris manasset faucibus tollus’26 (‘A great torrent of urbanity would flow from my mouth’). We must also consider that the letter was intended to be performed, and Patrick here is anticipating the performance of his letter in his absence. Scholars have assumed that Patrick was uneducated or incapable, but also that his intended audience was likely better educated, especially in the case of the Confessio. However, it could also be that Patrick knew his audience and adapted his rhetoric to an environment in which the ornament and bombast of secular learning were scorned and the Word of God was seen as distinct from rhetorical tricks.27 25 West, 2007, pp. 90-91, writes, ‘Of Nestor the poet goes on to say that his speech used to run from his tongue sweeter than honey […] Compounds such as “honey-voiced”, “honey-toned”, “honey-sweet”, “honey-tongued”, and other are routinely used of poetry and song in archaic and classical Greek verse’ 26 ‘Tollus’ is a common Hiberno-Latin barbarism, ‘scotica et alia barbara’, in which tolus is derived from the Irish tolae, ‘flood’ 27 Wright, 1997, pp. 32-33, discusses a near contemporary of Patrick’s, Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594 CE), whose writings further demonstrates the extent of the humility topos in learned Christian communities, though a century later. In his research on Columbanus’s style, Wright turns to evidence of learning in sixth-century Gaul by way of Gregory of Tours, who writes that the state of learning had fallen into disarray: ‘“But no grammarian, skilled in the art of dialectic, could be found to describe this situation in prose or metrical poetry. Many used very often to groan and say: ‘These are times of woe! The study of letters dies among us, nor can any rhetorician be found in our people to publish these present deeds in his pages.’” However, Wright warns that ‘pessimism such as Gregory’s was a literary convention among the cultural elite; his opening remarks represent a rhetorical topos which can frequently be paralleled in prefaces to other Latin texts composed in the sixth and seventh centuries’. Like Patrick, Gregory displays

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Not only is Patrick’s apparent ‘rusticity’ evidence of a Christian rhetorical topos and practice, but it must also tell us something of Patrick’s audience. Many scholars accept that Coroticus was an historical, British king (Corithech, a norther Briton or Pict, or Ceretic, a Welsh ruler),28 and the British Church is taken to be the intended recipient of the Confessio.29 But it is also clear that Patrick intended both the Confessio and the Epistola for a wider audience beyond his immediate context. As we have seen, preservation and collection of letters was common in Late Antiquity. Bieler even suggests that several copies were likely made simultaneously and were intended to be distributed to several recipients.30 But it is my contention that audience is an invention of discourse, and from the opuscula we gain insight into Patrick’s construction of his own character and that of his audience. The title given to Patrick’s Epistola might suggest Coroticus and his soldiers were the intended audience of the letter. Or, more precisely, that Coroticus was the addressee. However, if we accept that Patrick’s letter is a conscious rhetorical and literary text, the intended audience must have been much wider than Coroticus and his soldiers, and the actual audience most certainly was. As was noted above, even in the Hellenistic and Hellenic ages, letters were frequently rendered as literary objects intended to be appreciated as such by a wide audience, but this practice was most widespread in Late Antiquity. Patrick’s opuscula became literature when they were collected and circulated years after his death, as they were in the Book of Armagh, whether or not this was his intention. Though Coroticus and his men likely received the letter by messenger, the letter that survives is likely not the letter sent in the immediate aftermath of the attack. In the extant literary version, the f igure of Coroticus in large part functions metonymically. Considering the evident widespread popularity of Patrick’s opuscula in the centuries after his death, Coroticus at least eventually came to stand in for those recent Christian converts–or those who resisted conversion–and those who continued such violent raiding practices. However, slavery was an accepted practice in both Britain and in Ireland in the fourth and fifth centuries, and continued to be for centuries after.31 The Irish slave class was recruited by birth, judicial penalty, and a great deal of learning, despite his protests: ‘Thus, while Gregory may well lament the lack of grammatici and rhetores skilled in prose-writing, in so doing he displays a considerable mastery of their supposedly lost art’ 28 See Hanson, 1968, p. 11 for a summary of this debate 29 See Charles-Edwards, 2000, pp. 226-31 30 Bieler, 1952, p. 28 31 Kelly, 1988, pp. 95-97

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force, and foreign slaves were highly valued due to the difficulty of escape.32 Irish raiding of the coast of Britain had plagued the Romans for some time, and it came to a head in the fourth century. In the fourth century, the Romans had a treaty with the Irish, but this was broken by the Irish in 360, leading to the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ of 367 in which the Irish, Picts, and Saxons allied together to attack the Roman Britons.33 Patrick would have likely been aware of these events, and was likely kidnapped in the midst of such raids that continued into the early fifth century. Therefore, it could be that Patrick’s own experiences led to such convictions, but it could also be that the raiding practices of the ‘barbarians’ were condemned by the Church, whereas slavery itself, in the proper Roman fashion, was acceptable. Patrick calls Coroticus and those who support him apostates, those who have abandoned God, and we get a sense of a Christian morality at odds with social practices.34 In this, we see that the letter’s purpose could be of a managerial nature. While it is likely that Coroticus was an historical figure, within the text a much wider audience is invoked.35 The composition of such letters was 32 Charles-Edwards, 2000, p. 68 33 Charles-Edwards, 2004, pp. 25-28 34 O Loughlin, 1999, pp. 90-92 35 E. A. Thompson, 1999, pp. 21-27 has written on this issue of audience through elucidation of the historico-political context of Patrick’s Ireland and a sketch of the historical Coroticus. Scholars have generally agreed that Coroticus was a fifth century, Christian king from Britain, living among the Picts in southern Scotland. Thompson argues, however, that considering Patrick’s familiarity with Coroticus, as well as his attempt to reach him by letter, that it is more likely that Coroticus was a Briton living in Ireland. In the fifth century, Ireland’s political landscape consisted of a multitude of túatha (petty kingdoms) with no central authority. Raiding and slavery were a fact-of-life and it is likely, argues Thompson, that Coroticus, leading a band of raiders, was resident in northeast Ireland. Charles-Edwards, 2013, p. 26, points out that a list of contents in the Book of Armagh identify Coroticus as king of Ail Cluaithe, or Alclud, the kingdom of Strathclyde in modern day Scotland, and that an alliance with Picts in a raid on Irish territory makes thie plausible. Thompson also suggests that Patrick’s letter would lead one to believe that Coroticus was, at least to a degree, admired by those in his territory and, as noted above, was a Christian. In this respect, Patrick can be seen as not only admonishing the actions of Coroticus, but a way of life common to this socio-historical context. Thompson points out that even though the letter is written in Latin, this does not discount a wide audience. In the fifth century, there was still no orthographic system in place for Old Irish. Also, Latin was the language of the church. Thompson, p. 25, argues, ‘Latin must have been familiar to some at least of the Christians, especially the British Christians, who lived in Ireland even before Patrick arrived there. Does it follow that Coroticus himself could understand or even read Latin? Patrick instructs his messenger, not to hand over his letter to the tyrant or to his men, but to read it aloud ‘before all the peoples and in the presence of Coroticus’. Presumably, Patrick was the leading ecclesiastic in Ireland, holding the position of

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a common practice in Late Antiquity. For example, Trapp explains that there are several categories of letters distinguished by their audience. There are those composed by actual historical individuals, intended to be sent to actual historical individuals, and that were not copied and distributed widely.36 Other letters were assigned fictitious authorship and were sent to fictitious characters. There are varying combinations of these characteristics witnessed in other letters, as well. Ben Witherington III suggests that New Testament letters were ‘not mainly letters, although they have epistolary openings and closings sometimes. They are discourses, homilies, and rhetorical speeches of various sorts that the creators could not deliver personally to a particular audience, so instead they sent a surrogate to proclaim them’.37 Certainly, Paul, in First Letter to the Corinthians, admonishes the people of Corinth, but to say this letter has reached a much wider audience would be quite an understatement. Patrick invokes several audiences in this letter, including Coroticus and his soldiers, Christians, and even the captives and God. This leads O Loughlin to comment that rather than being an historically vague letter, it is ‘one of the most elegant moral instructions to new converts to Christianity that we possess’.38 Instead of a letter in the strict sense, it is a rhetorical discourse that sits at the confluence of a variety genres. As alluded to above, Patrick portrays Coroticus and his soldiers as daemoniorum (‘apostates’) and as distinct from the Sanctorum Romanorum, (‘holy Romans’), whom Patrick also addresses: I write by my hand. I composed words that are to be delivered, to be handed down, and to be sent to the soldiers of Coroticus. I am not talking to the citizens of holy Romans, but to the evil citizens for their evil works, for their living an hostile enemy’s way of life in death. Allies of the Irish, and of the Picts, and of the apostates. Blood stained men, bloodied from the blood of innocent Christians, whom I converted to Christ in number and whom I confirmed in Christ. (254.10-15)39 bishop, and as Coroticus was presumably Christian, as Thompson claims, then Patrick’s letter was a part of a ‘propaganda tour’ through Coroticus’s territories 36 Trapp, 2003, p. 37 37 Witherington III, 2009, p. 9 38 O Loughlin, 1999, p. 92 39 ‘Manu mea scripsi atque condidi uerba ista danda et tradenda, militibus mittenda Corotici, non dico ciuibus meis neque ciuibus sanctorum Romanorum sed ciuibus daemoniorum, ob mala opera ipsorum. Ritu hostile in morete uiuunt, socii Scottorum atque Pictorum apostatarumque. Sanguilentos sanguinare de sanguine innocentium Christianorum, quos ego in numero Deo genui atque in Christo confirmaui!’

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To begin, it is significant that Patrick here refers to himself and other Christians, presumably in Coroticus’s company, as ‘holy Romans’. This is likely because Patrick identified as Roman, as a Roman Christian, which speaks to cultural identity in fifth-century Britain. Though by the late fourth century the Roman legions had abandoned Britain, Romanitas clearly survived for some time after, as did the Latin language. This verbal portrayal does much rhetorically. The seat of Christian orthodoxy is Rome. Again using rhetorical comparison, Patrick portrays the Christian converts captured by Coroticus as holy Romans, in opposition to the likes of this marauding king. Scotti was commonly used to refer to the Irish, whereas the Picti were a Celtic-speaking people who lived in the northern and eastern parts of modern day Scotland. From this, it seems that some of the Irish had allied with the Picts and carried out these raids, likely with some regularity. Patrick portrays himself, his converts, and many of the Christians who were to hear the letter delivered, as Roman Christians, of the ‘family in God’ and the body of the Church, in opposition to the apostates. The rhetoric of the body of the Church was not just a term of endearment, but also the rhetoric of government and a means of establishing and maintaining social cohesion. Coroticus is also an ally of the apostates, and the apostates pose the greatest threat to the body. Those who are within the body of the holy church have an obligation to the other members, and they are expected to behave in a way prescribed by orthodoxy. An apostate is one who has severed from the body, who threatens the body, and Coroticus allies himself with them, as well. The ‘body’ was threatened from without, in the form of persecution and temptation, but also from within the body of believers. Indeed, just as sedition and vice threatened the Corinthians, Patrick suggests here Coroticus and the apostates in his company pose a similar threat. Patrick’s rhetorical sophistication is also witnessed in his deployment of rhetorical figures and tropes and in his imitation of the Pauline model. It was common practice for a letter to be composed and then dictated to a scribe, but Patrick tells us that he himself wrote the Epistola. ‘Manu mea scripsi’ (‘I write by my hand’) is a trope in letter-writing suggesting dedication and intimacy. Writing with one’s own hand carried with it a notion of special authority, as not all who composed committed to scribal labour, and we see this also in the Pauline Epistles. 40 Oliver Davies points out four examples of similar declarations in Paul: ‘videte qualibus litteris scripsi vobis mea manu’ (‘behold a letter I have written to you by my own hand’) (Gal 6:110); 40 Davies, 2000, p. 491

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‘salutatio mea manu Pauli’ (‘The salutation of Paul by my own hand’) (Col 4:18); ‘salutatio mea manu Pauli quod est signum in omni epistula ita scribo’ (‘The salutation of Paul, by my own hand, which is the sign of an Epistle. So I write’) (2 Thes 3:17); ‘ego Paulus scripsi mea manu’ (‘I, Paul, have written this by my own hand’) (Phlm 19). This gives the audience a sense of intimate connection to the author and therefore possesses a pathetic dimension. It can also be assumed from this that Patrick composed regularly, but that his compositions were written down by a scribe or secretary, which was common practice in Late Antiquity. The events that inspired the Epistola, however, inspired Patrick to take up the stylus and write the letter himself. The diction of this section also reveals something of the audience. Patrick uses diacope, as in ‘the citizens of holy Romans … the evil citizens for their evil works’. Patrick uses synonymia, giving four different words to describe the intended fate of the letter: scrībō, ‘to write’; condō, ‘to put together, to compose’; dō, ‘to give, to deliver’; trādō, ‘to hand down, send’. Patrick writes, he composes a letter that is to be delivered, to be sent, or, to be handed down. This last translation of trādō is significant. One sends a letter, but one hands down wisdom, knowledge, or tradition. The synonymia achieves the rhetorical effect of amplification, emotional force, and intellectual clarity, but the words also mean significantly different things. 41 If we take trādō here to mean ‘hand down’, rather than send, then this may provide evidence internal to the text itself suggesting that the audience of the letter was more than the stated addressee. The effectiveness of the humility topos becomes more acute in this light. For a pious and self-righteous man of God, condemning the actions of a king would be less effective rhetorically. Instead, Patrick presents himself as a humble servant of God condemning the atrocities brought upon the innocent by an evil, earthly ruler, and handing down the wisdom of God. Despite his self-presentation as rustic, Patrick demonstrates his rhetorical education throughout the Epistola. In the passage at hand, we see the use of figura etymologica, also known as polyptoton, the use of several different forms of a single root: sanguilentos, sanguinare, and sanguine.42 Through this figure, Patrick paints a powerful image in his audience’s mind, one of apostate warriors covered in the blood of baptized Christians. This ‘bringing before the eyes’, enargeia, ‘was esteemed not for its imaginative energy and vividness alone, but because it was crucial to rational demonstration, 41 See Silva Rhetoricae, ‘Synonymia’, http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/S/synonymia.htm (accessed 13-03-2021) 42 Melia, 2008, p. 98

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for it provides the evidentia needed to persuade judges (one’s audience) of the moral veracity of one’s argument’, writes Mary Carruthers, citing Quintilian’s Book 6 of Institutio Oratoria. 43 It is emotion that changes the mind of an audience. As Quintilian wrote: ‘Proofs may lead the judges to think our cause the better one, but it is our emotional appeals that make them also want it to be so; and what they want they also believe’. 44 He also writes that suffering should be made palpable through visual examples, including bloody garments and open wounds. 45 Through descriptio and figura etymologica, Patrick appeals to the audience’s emotions, attempting to admonish Coroticus and persuade his audience to condemn the apostate king’s actions.

Patrick and Paul In the Epistola, Patrick uses scriptural proofs and allusions and deploys the three types of oratory, epideictic, deliberative, and forensic. Though the letter blends several genres, the most prominent is deliberative rhetoric. Patrick recounts Coroticus’s actions, couching his condemnation and admonishment in scriptural allusion, in order to argue the course British and Irish Christians should take in response to the practices of the likes of Coroticus. Throughout the opuscula, Patrick’s primary model is Paul, whose letters he draws on with skill and rhetorical sophistication. Patrick focuses on the future and uses appeals and topoi common to deliberative and protreptic genres. He excommunicates Coroticus and his men–presumably baptized Christians–and argues for the severing of the apostates from the Christian ‘body’, and also for adopting the practice of paying ransom to retrieve kidnapped slaves sold into non-Christian communities. First, he argues that the actions of Coroticus and his men are at odds with the ways of the Christian community, the Christian body, a common topos of deliberative rhetoric witnessed in both ancient and early Christian rhetoric. 46 Second, Patrick argues for proper treatment of the members of the Christian body, describing the apostates as wolves who ravage the Christian community. The body metaphor was commonly applied to the political unit of the Church, a metaphor that appealed to the need for 43 Carruthers, 2010, p. 4 44 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoriae, 6.1.6 45 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoriae, 6.1.30 46 Bakke, 2001, p. 201

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cooperation among different members to preserve the community. 47 This metaphor is seen in ancient rhetorical handbooks and was used frequently in Christian letters. Patrick amplifies this with the commonplace of strife and violence destroying the body, referring to Coroticus’s men as wolves. The letter is hortatory and dissuasive, directly addresses the audience in the present tense, but with an eye to the future and to the common good of the Christian body. Specifically, Patrick offers proof by example, weaving together scriptural allusions in a forceful manner. Here, we see both warnings of destructive behaviour and examples to be imitated, a common feature of deliberative rhetoric. 48 Those who behave like Coroticus and his soldiers, and those who sit idly by or continue to fraternize with them, will be excluded from eschatological salvation, a strong warning of future disadvantage. In this we see not just a genuine concern for the well-being of the young, Christian community in Ireland, but also a means of frontier management. Turning again to the opening of Patrick’s letter, I will demonstrate Patrick’s imitation of the Pauline letters and highlight examples of epideictic and paranesis and their scriptural parallels. In ancient grammatica and rhetorica, imitation was a central classroom exercise, related to comparison, and also informed advanced practice. Patrick not only uses Paul as an exemplum for his own persuasive strategies, but also calls for imitation of Paul and himself as a model of Christian behaviour. After the initial opening line cited above, ‘I, Patrick, a sinner, naturally unlearned, placed in Ireland, confess myself to be a bishop’, Patrick continues: ‘Certissime reor a Deo accepi id quod sum’ (‘With certainty, I receive from God that which I am’).49 This phrase is witnessed in 1 Corinthians 15:10: ‘gratia autem Dei sum id quod sum’ (‘By the grace of God, I am who I am’). Patrick imitates Paul and once again employs ethopoeia to begin the letter and establishes his own character as he alludes to Cain in Genesis 4:12: ‘Inter barbaras ita que gentes habito proselitus et profuga ob amorem Dei est ille si ita est’ (‘I dwell among barbarians and accordingly, I am a proselyte and a fugitive on account of God’s love. He is the witness that this is so’).50 The parallel in Genesis is ‘cum operatus fueris eam non dabit tibi fructus suos vagus et profugus eris super terram’ (‘When you shall till it, it will not yield to you its fruit: you will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth’) (Genesis 4:12). This 47 Ibid., p. 201, discusses the body metaphor in relation to the First Letter of Clement 48 Ibid., p. 321 49 254.2 50 254.3-4

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phrasing, ‘fugitive’ and ‘vagabond,’ is again repeated in Genesis 4:14. Patrick paraphrases (paraphrasis) Genesis and shapes the discourse to work in his rhetorical context in identifying himself as a ‘proselyte and a fugitive’, as Patrick is not necessarily being punished for sins, as was Cain, but has been commanded by God to spread the Good News. It is important to note that in late fourth-century monastic life, suffering for God was an ideal to be attained. While the humility topos is undoubtedly present in the letter’s opening, it is used as a means to create ethos. These rhetorical strategies, in turn, are employed as paraenetic, as a means of dissuading the actions of the soldiers of Coroticus, the Christians who associate with him, and all of the Christians who would hear this letter performed over the centuries. Later in the letter’s opening, Patrick continues to establish his character and to hold it up as a model of behaviour for his audience: It is not because I was wishing such a hard and such a cruel essence to pour forth from my mouth, but I am compelled by the zeal of God; the truth of Christ has incited me for love of neighbours and sons, for which I have given up my native land, parents, my life, even until my death. If I am worthy, I live for my God, even though I may be held in low esteem by some. (254.4-9-)51

Strung artfully together are allusions to and borrowings from the Pauline Epistles, as well as a proclamation of the monastic ideal of the Gallic Christians, especially Cassian, Martin of Tours, and Paulinus of Nola. Again Patrick uses the humility topos in speaking of the ‘hard and cruel essence’ that pours forth from his mouth.52 As noted above, this clearly demonstrates awareness of elocutio and dictio in that Patrick openly compares his style and diction to that of the rhetores. 51 ‘Non quod optabam tam dure et tam aspere aliquid ex ore meo effundere; sed cogor zelo Dei, et ueritas Christi excitauit, pro dilectione proximorum atque filiorum, pro quibus tradidi patriam et parentes et animam meam usque ad mortem. Si dignus sum, uiuo Deo meo docere gentes etsi contempnor aliquibus’ 52 The scriptural allusions in self-presentation work to win over the audience, establish ethos, provide examples of proper behavior, and persuade the audience to such behavior in the future. When Patrick writes, ‘I am compelled by the zeal of God’ he alludes to 2 Corinthians 11:10 and Romans 10:9: ‘es veritas Christi in me’ (‘the truth of Christ is in me’) (2 Cor 11:10) and ‘quia si confitearis in ore tuo Dominum Iesum et in corde tuo credideris quod Deus illum excitavit ex mortuis salvus eris’ (‘For if you confess with your mouth to the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved’) (Romans 10:9). Though Patrick is paraphrasing, even alluding to a brief passage of scripture was sufficient as it was expected that the recipient of the letter would understand the allusion and complete it

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Patrick appeals to his own example for, like Paul and the Gallic saints, he has given up all of his worldly possessions and ties to the earthly realm to carry God’s word to them. This also sets up the later condemnation of the practice of slave raiding, which is ultimately a financial transaction in which one puts one’s wealth above the good of the Christian body. The final section of the opening alludes to 2 Corinthians 5:14. Patrick says, ‘the truth of Christ incites me for love of neighbours and sons, for which I have given up my native land, parents, my life, even until my death if I am worthy’. Patrick paraphrases 2 Cor 5:14: ‘caritas enim Christi urget nos’ (‘For the charity of Christ incites us’). Invoking this passage, Patrick speaks of himself as ‘nos,’ as ‘one of us,’ that is, the apostles and saints who have given up their earthly lives to spread the Good News. Patrick has given up everything, and he also risks the rapprochement of those for whom he has given up everything. This is important in establishing his character and credibility for an audience who may suffer similar persecutions for turning away from their native social customs, of which we may see Coroticus as representative. Though Paul is Patrick’s model in the Epistola, the allusion would reverberate in the Christian West in the fifth century, where a century before figures such as Cassian, Paulinus of Nola, and Martin of Tours had espoused the Christian ideal of renunciation of wealth. The opening of Patrick’s letter establishes character and credibility (ethopoeia), while the second section establishes the intended audience and the character of the subject of admonishment: Coroticus. It is in this section that the influence of narratio, ecphrasis, and synkrisis are witnessed. In an admonishing tone, Patrick addresses the letter to Coroticus and his soldiers, condemning them for the slaughter of innocent Christians, who were presumably under Patrick’s protection. The second section is forensic in nature and in tone, dealing with what has happened and the nature of the actions of the soldiers. In this we also see Patrick’s rhetorical training in a version of the progymnasmata. In this, Patrick’s texts provide important insight.Nicholas Orme, in his landmark study Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England, explains that ‘virtually nothing is recorded about schooling in the island, which means that we can only conjecture its nature from what is known about the process in the rest of the Empire’.53 Yet another problem that plagues such a study is the diversity within educational curricula throughout the Empire, a problem often glossed over by commentators.54 As Orme 53 Orme, 2006, p. 16 54 See Kaster, 1983

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points out, in Roman Britain the Roman model for education would have been the standard. Modelled in large part on the Greek education system, this included three steps. The first was ludus litterarius, which included time spent in elementary learning, gaining skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. The second, schola grammatici, included time spent with the grammaticus, where a boy would learn composition and interpret literary works. In this second stage, students would have been exposed to progymnasmata, ‘preliminary exercises’, or ‘beginner’s textbooks of composition’, that were intended to prepare them for time with the rhetorician, which constituted the third step of a complete education.55 While there are many extant versions of these exercises from Antiquity, the only Latin versions available prior to 500 CE were those recounted by Quintilian in Institutio Oratoria 1.9, 2.4, and 10.5, though we must allow that there were Latin handbooks that no longer exist. Also, the pseudo-Cicero Rhetorica ad Herennium discusses the progymnasmata, and this popular, technical handbook was widely influential in the fourth and fifth century and beyond.56 Quintilian discusses only four of the traditional progymnasmata, fable, maxim, chreia, and narrative, avoiding the use of the term progymnasmata and employing instead ‘quaedam dicendi primorida’.57 Quintilian likely believed that his selection represented the only exercises that should be treated by the grammaticus, whose job he describes in 1.9 as teaching recte loquendi scientia (‘correct speaking’) and enarratio poetarum (‘reading the poets’). These preliminary exercises prepared the students for the next and final step in education, schola rhetoris: rhetoric. In this stage of rhetorical education, students were introduced to declamatio. These exercises were similar to progymnasmata, but dealt with ‘real world’ matters, as opposed to fable, etc. However, elements of progymnasmata were drawn on and incorporated in declamatio. Declamations were also further subdivided into those on legal or forensic topics (controversiae) and those on political or deliberative topics (suasoriae).58 Cicero, Quintilian, and Seneca the Elder all wrote on and practised declamatio, so it is clear that progymnasmata and declamatio were integral elements of Roman education, and it is likely they persisted beyond the fifth century in Roman Britain and Gaul. 55 Hock and O Neill, 1986, p. 3 56 See Hock and O Neill, 2002, pp. 87-8; For a discussion of ad Herennium in Late Antiquity, see Taylor, 1993a; idem, 1993b; for an overview of ad Herennium and its influence in the Middle Ages, see Ward, 2018, esp. pp. 92-216 57 For a discussion, see O Neil, 1986, p. 118 58 Forbes, 2003, p. 137

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As has been noted, there is no extant Latin version of the progymnasmata aside from the rather brief treatment in Quintilian, the ad Herennium, and the sixth-century Latin translation of Priscian. However, it is clear that they continued to play a significant role in late antique education.59 The progymnasmatic elements of this section are narratio, ecphrasis, and synkrisis, and here, in appeal to pathos, we also see what Macrobius calls imago, a form of the argumentum a simili.60 In general, this is referred to as comparison. Cicero, Quintilian, and the ad Herennium all discuss comparison (synkrisis) as it was a common rhetorical exercise. Paul utilized it regularly throughout his letters.61 Patrick’s own refutation from the opposite takes the holy Romans and the apostates as the point of comparison: ‘I am not talking to the citizens of holy Romans, but to the evil citizens for their evil works, their living an enemy’s way of life in death, allies of the Irish and the Picts and of the apostates’. In rhetorical apostrophe, the phrase ‘holy Romans’ is chosen specifically, as opposed to ‘followers of Christ’, or various other metaphors used to describe the Christian community. Holding up the way of life of Coroticus as a locus communis, an admonishment that applies to all men of his kind, including many Irish and British Christians, brings forth the way of life that Patrick champions. Patrick addresses Coroticus and his men and portrays them as a threat to the community, and this admonishment paves the way for the deliberative argument that follows. Along with synkrisis, narratio and ecphrasis are demonstrated in this section of Patrick’s letter, and these rhetorical exercises were closely related in Roman rhetoric. In Macrobius, comparison is called argumentum a simili (‘arguments from resemblance’) and is of three kinds: exemplum (‘example’), parabola (‘comparison’), and imago (‘description’). Imago is ‘a vivid description of a bodily form that is absent or of a purely imaginary object’ and such descriptions were used to stir pathos.62 In the ad Herennium, a long discussion of similitude precedes the treatment of exemplum, and in Cicero and Quintlian comparison and exemplum are often mentioned together, which demonstrates the interrelationship among comparison, example, and description in Roman rhetoric.63 Example expresses the best 59 See Marrou, 1956, pp. 282-83 60 P. Davies, 1969, p. 273 61 See Forbes, 2003, for a helpful overview of comparison in ancient rhetoric and an analyzsis of Paul’s use of it 62 Saturnalia 4.5.9-12; All references to Macrobius’s Saturnalia rely on the translation of P. Davies, 1969, p. 273 63 See Fiore, 2003, esp. pp. 231-33

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or worst ways to be followed, and description and comparison allow the orator to elaborate in epideictic, deliberative, and (a)protreptic discourse. Patrick describes the soldiers of Coroticus: ‘Bloodstained men, bloodied from the blood of innocent Christians, whom I begot to God in great numbers and whom I also confirmed in Christ’ (Sanguilentos sanguinare de sanguine innocentium Christianorum, quos ego in numero Deo genui atque in Christo confirmaui). The description is amplified using figura etymologica, a stylistic figure in which words of the same etymological stem are repeated to achieve emphaticness. The image of the bloodstained soldiers brings a barbarous image to the mind of the recipient, a strong appeal to pathos through amplification. Macrobius cites examples of imago from Vergil’s Aeneid intended to incite horror: ‘And in rent robe Discord stalks, rejoicing, Bellona at her heels with bloodstained [sanguinem] scourge in hand’ and ‘Within, the unholy Spirit of Strife, high-seated on a pile of cruel arms, his hands bound behind his back with a hundred knots of bronze, roars horribly with bloodstained mouth’.64 Clearly the image of bloodstained hands would have had currency with an educated audience.65 The comparison continues here as Patrick makes clear that the blood these soldiers are stained with is that of ‘innocent Christians’ who were slaughtered. The image is one of ‘brothers and sisters in Christ’, members of the body of Christ, ravaged by those apostates who continue to threaten the Christian community. This passage admonishes the actions of the raiders and embedded in this admonishment is praise of the Christian way of life. This is not the behaviour of true Christians, and Coroticus and his men threaten the harmony of the whole community. We see again the prominence of the deliberative genre in Patrick’s identification of two opposed, irreconcilable communities. The fate of the devil’s community, ‘living an enemies’ life in death’ is exclusion from the eschatological salvation at hand. This is also called protreptic in Stowers’s taxonomy as Patrick argues for a specific form of behaviour for members of the Christian body.66 Patrick especially speaks to those Christians who live alongside 64 Saturnalia 4.5.11-12; P. Davies, 1969, pp. 273-74, ‘Sanguineum quatiens dextra Bellona flagellum (aut) scissa gaudens vadit Discordia palla’ and ‘Furor inpius intus/Saeva sedens super arma, et centum vinctus aenis/Post tergum nodis fremit horridus ore cruento’ 65 Patrick and Vergil both use sanguis to indicate something ‘blood-stained’, including hands, and it is such a frequent description throughout the Aeneid, one must wonder whether Patrick had indeed read his Vergil or Vergilian commentaries 66 Stowers, 1986, p. 113, writers that ‘Protreptic works urge the reader to convert to a way of life, join a school, or accept a set of teachings as normative for the reader’s life […] If the author believes that the uninitiated must overcome a serious moral character problem […] admonition, censure, or rebuke might play a central role’

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Coroticus and allow the destruction of members of their community. It is this very notion of membership and community, a Pauline theme, that gives this section rhetorical force. When Patrick writes, ‘I am not talking to the citizens of holy Romans, but to the evil citizens for their evil works, their living an enemy’s way of life in death, allies of the Irish and the Picts and of the apostates’, he uses a form of the word ciues, that I translate as ‘citizens’. This word, however, has a special connotation in Latin. Davies explains, ‘The basic idea he [Patrick] wished this word to convey is a notion of alliance with others. This notion of being a fellow citizen with the servants of God or the Devil is an important motif in the development of Latin theology, as in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei, and has Eph 2:19 as its basic text’.67 In referring to the ‘citizens of Holy Romans’ Patrick is paraphrasing, once again, the Pauline Epistles: ‘ergo iam non estis hospites et advenae sed estis cives sanctorum et domestici Dei’ (‘Now you are no longer strangers and foreigners. Now you are fellow citizens with the saints and those of the household of God’) (Eph 2:19). To be a member of the Christian community requires a certain form of behaviour, a form of life. Since the end of Patrick’s persuasion was ultimately to strengthen and grow the Christian community in Ireland, establishing those who behave like and associate with the likes of Coroticus as a part of the community of the devil is a powerful rhetorical move. The deliberative rhetorical strategy is witnessed most clearly and powerfully in a later passage in which Patrick admonishes those whose way of life includes slave-raiding and murderousness. As Patrick relates in the Confessio, as a boy he was captured and enslaved by marauders such as Coroticus. It is understandable that Patrick, pastoral concerns aside, would have looked upon this practice with such disdain. However, Patrick’s family held slaves at their villa.68 It is not slaveholding that Patrick disdains, but he specifically cites the defilement of his father’s slaves at the hands of the Irish raiders. Patrick paints a picture of Coroticus and his men that is admonitory and furthers the letter’s protreptic nature: Who among the saints would not be horrified of enjoyment and celebration with such a kind? With the spoils of dead Christians, they fill their homes; they live from plundering. Ignorant, miserable, venomous, mortal, 67 Davies, 2000, p. 491 68 ‘Numquid a me piam misericordiam quod ago erga gentem illam qui me aliquando ceperunt et deuastauerunt seruos et ancillas domus patris mei?’ (‘Can it be from my own self that I perform a pious act of pity toward the people who captured me and ravaged the slaves and servants of my father’s house?’) (256.9-11)

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they spread poisonous food to their loved ones and sons, as Eve did not understand what poison she delivered to her husband. All those who are evil do this. They work toward the penalty of eternal death. (257.4-9)69

Comparison is again central to the argument, this time the soldiers of Coroticus being compared to Eve. This suggests that they know not what they do, but their actions damn them all the same. Though the Latin is present tense, the purpose is to draw attention to the future and emphasize the choice at hand; change your ways, or be damned in the end times. The purpose is, on the one hand, to prove the guilt of the raiders and to render the judgment that awaits (the forensic dimension). On the other hand, Patrick’s primary purpose is to persuade certain Christians to change their ways. This deliberative rhetoric is amplified with distinct synchrisis, and the scathing rapprochement weaves together allusions to scripture. In a string of adjectives describing the evil nature of the marauders and their behaviour, Patrick uses miser (wretched, miserable, unhappy, pitiable, unfortunate), venenum (poison, venom), and letalis (lethal, fatal, mortal) to amplify his description. This is an example of synathroesmus, specifically synonymia, a figure of amplification consisting of a conglomeration of many words with similar meaning to achieve emotional force. The soldiers are characterized as ignorant fools spreading ‘poisonous food’ to their loved ones. This metaphor finds its origins in Genesis as Eve, persuaded by the serpent, eats of the apple of knowledge and entices Adam to do the same. Yet, in the invocation of this metaphor, Patrick persuades new and old converts alike of the seriousness of these misdeeds. Paraphrased in the very end of this passage is 2 Cor 7:10: ‘quae enim secundum Deum tristitia est paenitentiam in salutem stabilem operatur saeculi autem tristitia mortem operator’ (‘For the sorrow that is according to God works penance, steadfastly leading to salvation: but the sorrow of the world works death’). This paraphrase is a conscious use of a rhetorical exercise, paraphrasis, rather than evidence of Patrick’s bad memory or poor access to legitimate texts as many scholars have claimed.70 The next passage compares the situation with Coroticus and the British Christians in his entourage to the practices of the Roman Christians of 69 ‘Quis sanctorum non horreat iocundare uel conuiuium fruere cum talibus? De spoliis defunctorum Christianorum repleuerunt domos suas, de rapinis uiuunt. Nesciunt miseri uenenum letale cibum porrigunt ad amicos et filios suos, sicut Eua non intellexit quod utique mortem tradidit uiro suo. Sic sunt omnes qui male agunt: mortem perennem poenam operantur’ 70 See Roberts, 1985

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Gaul. As has been noted, this passage has been important for attempts to date Patrick’s floruit, but it is also important for understanding the overall complexity of Patrick’s argument. It is through this comparison that Patrick argues for the guilt of those who fraternize with, and continue to accept the patronage of, Coroticus (the forensic dimension). It is also an argument for a path to remedy the situation, for Patrick also implies that the British Church should pay ransom to rescue the captured Christians from their bondage (the deliberative dimension). Here, synchrisis, pathos, and paraphrasis lend to the deliberative argument. These rhetorical strategies are incorporated with allusion to scripture and adapted to the specific rhetorical context at hand. Patrick writes: The tradition of the Roman Christians of Gaul: To send off capable, consecrated men to the Franks and the other (pagan) peoples with such a sum so as to buy back the baptized captives. You rather destroy and sell these Christians to a foreign people who are ignorant of God, as though you were handing over the members of Christ to a brothel. What sort of hope do you have in God? Or who could consent to you? Or who could lavish kind words upon you? God will judge you. As it is written: ‘Not only those who do evil, but even those who go along with it need to be condemned’. (257.10-17)71

The comparison as set forth in this passage again demonstrates its close relationship with exemplum, but Patrick’s amplification and elaboration deserve further discussion. In Roman rhetoric, Quintilian discussed comparison as similitudo, which is of two types, similitudines of embellishment, ‘“devised to make our pictures yet more vivid”’ and similitudines of proof, ‘“designed for insertion among our arguments”’.72 In Quintilian’s taxonomy, Patrick’s argument is an argument by comparison with an historical example, which is nearer veritas (‘truth’) than other types, including illustrative and hypothetical comparisons.73 Quintilian likely shared a common source with Macrobius, who in the 71 ‘Consuetudo Romanorum Gallorum Christianorum: mittunt uiros sanctos idoneos ad Francos et ceteras gentes cum tot milia solidorum ad redimendos captiuos baptizatos. Tu potius interficis et uendis illos genti exterae ignoranti Deum; quasi in lupanar tradis membra Christi. Qualem spem habes in Deum, uel qui te consentit aut qui te communicat uerbis adulationis? Deus iudicabit. Scriptum est enim: Non solum facientes mala sed etiam consentientes damnandi sunt’ 72 Qtd. in McCormick, 2014, p. 160 73 Ibid. p. 64

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Saturnalia defines these as ‘argumentum a simili’, which is of three kinds: exemplum (‘example’), parabola (‘comparison’), and imago (‘likeness’).74 For Macrobius, argumentum a simili is discussed specifically in relation to stirring one’s audience to pathos, clearly a serious concern for Patrick here. Patrick begins by explaining the practice condoned by the Roman Gauls (i.e., the ecclesiastics by whom he was likely educated and trained), and uses this as the point of comparison to admonish the actions of Coroticus and his soldiers and pre-Christian practices at large using what Macrobius calls argumentum a modo, referring to the manner of the Christian’s treatment at the hands of the apostates.75 The British Christians who allow these practices to continue, who accept Coroticus and his men in their Christian family, are also targeted. Patrick praises the practices of the Christians in Gaul while condemning the actions of Coroticus’s soldiers, as well as those soldiers who do nothing to defend or protect newly converted members of the body of the Church. Roman Christians pay ransoms to retrieve the kidnapped slaves, while Christians like Coroticus sell off Christians to apostate brothels. This is what Macrobius identifies as argumentum a loco, an argument describing the place to which the Christians have been sent. Both argumentum a modo and argumentum a loco are described by Macrobius as a means of stirring pathos. The image of innocent Christians, newly baptized, being murdered and sold into slavery provides a stunning appeal to pathos, and in comparison with the practices of the Roman Christians of Gaul the Christians who associate with Coroticus are no Christians at all. The subsequent rhetorical questions, interrogatio, put directly to the audience make for a powerful rhetorical moment. The passage also reveals something of Patrick’s background, as he is aware of the practices of Christians in Gaul, and he also expresses deep concern for the virginal women who have been sold to the apostates. This has been taken as evidence that he was educated there rather than in Britain, Patrick’s biographer Muirchú associating him with Auxerre. Though the evidence cannot lead us to a certain conclusion, we should take this as clear evidence that Patrick had contact with Gallic Christian communities, whether through close ties in a British monastic community (perhaps a Gallic teacher in Britain) or through time spent in such a community in Gaul. It is also clear here that it is not necessarily slavery that Patrick takes issue with, but that some of his flock have been murdered or sold off to 74 Saturnalia 4.5.1-12; P. Davies, 1969, p. 271 75 Saturnalia 4.6.2-3; Ibid., p. 275

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non-Christians. As was noted above, slavery was deeply ingrained in Roman British society, as well as in Irish society, and Patrick even grew up around slaves. But Patrick specifically describes the violent nature of the raids and the sale of his flock into slavery among non-Christians. Patrick emphasizes ‘lupanar’ (‘brothel’), which suggests his concern was especially for those virgins who will be defiled in their bondage among non-Christians. The question at hand is whether one could remain a member of the body of Christ if bondage included sexual use. Paul himself never condemns slavery, nor does he address the use of slaves for sexual purposes when he admonishes porneia in 1 Corinthians, taken by many scholars to mean taking a prostitute. It was widely accepted that a slave owner had the right to use their slaves for sexual purposes, and some scholars have even argued that in Thessalonians 4:3-8 Paul approves of this as a morally neutral, proper outlet for unclean desires.76 In response to the incursions of the Goths into Rome and the rape of Christian Romans, Augustine, in De civitate Dei 1.18.2 argues that ‘the body does not lose its holiness if the holiness of the soul remains, even when the body is forced’.77 Similarly, Jerome, in Liber hebraicarum quaestionum in Genesim 23, writes that ‘bodies of holy women are not stained by violence, but pleasure’.78 Patrick, however, clearly sees sexual purity as essential to one’s salvation and to membership in the body of Christ. Patrick’s admonition, of course, was intended for more than just Coroticus, as those who ‘go along with’ evil are just as guilty. Even if one did not practice slave-raiding, and if one did not defile one’s slaves, allowing it to happen implied guilt. Given the significance of patronage in early monastic communities, Patrick could be admonishing the British Church itself, or a branch thereof, for continuing to accept the likes of Coroticus. The paraphrase of Romans 1:30-32 at the end of the section strikes fear (pathos) into the minds of those implicated and establishes ethos in the admonishment. While Paul never condemns slavery itself, Patrick frames his argument in the rhetoric of the ‘body of Christ’ and represents the body as severed by the actions of Coroticus. The Latin Vulgate version of 1 Cor 6:15 paraphrased above reads: ‘nescitis quoniam corpora vestra membra Christi sunt tollens ergo membra Christi faciam membra meretricis absit’ (‘Do you not know that your bodies are the members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them a whore? Never!’). Learned Christians 76 Glancy, 2002, pp. 58-62 77 ‘Non amittit corpus sanctitatem manente animi sanctitate, etiam corpora oppresso’ 78 ‘Corpus sanctarum mulierum non uis maculat, sed uoluptas’

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would immediately recognize this allusion, and its invocation would carry weight. In this context, Paul is specifically admonishing those who lie with prostitutes, not slave-holders who defile slaves, nor slaves who are defiled. Again, the crux of Patrick’s argument is that those who were taken were baptised and that the slaveholders themselves are not Christian; it is a violation of Gallo-Roman social practice not to seek a means for retrieving the converts. The use of this paraphrase is more complex and meaningful in this context than an initial interpretation of its pathetic appeal may allow. The image of Christians being handed over to a brothel is based upon Paul, and lupanar carries with it strong images as lupus literally translates to ‘she-wolf’. In an earlier description, Patrick wrote ‘Lupi rapaces deglutier unt gregem domini qui utique Hiberione cum summa diligentia optime crescebat’ (‘Rapacious wolves have consumed the flock of the Lord, which was beautifully increasing in Ireland with the greatest loving care’) (255,1.5). Lupanar parallels lupus, and the image of the wolf consuming the body of Christ provides emotional force to the description. Unlike Paul, Patrick clearly believes that one cannot be of the body of Christ in sexual servitude, and this is the sin that Coroticus has visited upon baptized virgins of his flock. It is clear that Patrick chose scriptural proofs with rhetorical force and authority in order to weave together a compelling argument for Coroticus’s guilt (the forensic dimension) and for a means of retrieving Christian captives from apostates (the deliberative dimension). Given the literary nature of the letter and the expansiveness of its audience, we needn’t limit an interpretation to the specific situation at hand. Rather, we might read this as an argument for the practices to be permanently adopted by Irish and British Christians and, therefore, a means of frontier management. In the following section, Patrick again brings together several passages from the Pauline letters in order to create a juxtaposition between the biblical and current context. Through rhetorical appeals, synchrisis, and paraphrasis, Patrick leads the letter’s audience to see Ireland’s context as parallel to that of Paul and the New Testament Christians. By appealing to pathos, Patrick compares the situation of the Christians enslaved by Coroticus to those Christians enslaved throughout the history of Christianity: I am ignorant of what to say or how to more fully tell of these dead sons of God, whom the sword has struck so harshly above measure. For it is written: Weep with those who weep. And again: If one member suffers, every member suffers. For this the church weeps and laments for its sons and daughters whom the sword has not yet killed, but who have been

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carried off to distant lands, where sin severely, shamelessly, abundantly overflows. There in that place the native people drive Christians into slavery, especially the most base and wicked apostate Picts. (257.18-26)79

This is most clearly argumentum a loco, for it is the place to which the Christians have been taken that strikes the greatest fear, as well as the fate they will meet there. The use of three pleonastic adverbs, ‘grauiter’ (‘severely’), ‘impudenter’ (‘shamelessly’), and ‘abundat’ (‘abundantly’) creates a powerful admonishing effect in amplification of pathos through climax and synonymia. Even worse than death is being carried off in slavery by apostates, severed from the body of the Church, separated from the Christian family. This is something that Patrick could personally attest to. In admonishing this practice of slavery, Patrick asks that his audience empathize with the plight of the enslaved Christians. When speaking of the captives, Patrick uses the words redacti sunt (‘they are reduced’), which echoes the Pauline theme in Romans 8. The Christians, once delivered from slavery, must not fall back into it, and by being taken as slaves by the Picts, they may also fall back into spiritual slavery.80 In being absent from the newly founded Christian family, unable to take part in mass and receive pastoral care, they are in danger of returning to a life of sin and of losing their faith. Paraphrasing Paul in Rom 12:15, Patrick writes, ‘gaudere cum gaudentibus flere cum flentibus’ (‘Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep’). Patrick immediately follows this paraphrase with another of 1 Cor 12:26: ‘et si quid patitur unum membrum conpatiuntur omnia membra sive gloriatur unum membrum congaudent omnia membra’ (‘And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with them. And if one member wins glory, all the members rejoice with them’). This example of the ‘Family Letter’ topos establishes the extent of the Christian family, which is to include all Christians; therefore, to allow the enslavement of your neighbour is to allow the enslavement of your Christian brother. Achieving pathos in asking for empathy from his audience for those enslaved, Patrick establishes credibility through paraphrase of Paul’s letters. This rhetorical practice is continued throughout this section. 79 ‘Nescio quid dicam uel quid loquar amplius de defunctis filiorum Dei, quos gladius supra modum dure tetigit. Scriptum est enim: Flete cum flentibus, et iterum: Si dolet unum membrum condoleant Omnia membra. Quapropter ecclesia plorat et plangit filio et filias suas quas adhue gladius nondum interfecit, sed prolongati et exportati in longa terrarium, ubi peccatum manifeste grauiter impudenter abundant, ibi uenundati ingenui homines, Christiani in seruitute redacti sunt, praesertim indignissimorum pessimorum apostatarumque Pictorum’ 80 Davies, 2000, p. 494

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In the closing section of the letter, Patrick summarizes his admonishment of Coroticus and his men in protreptic, employing the ‘Family Letter’ topos, the ‘Substitute for Personal Presence’ topos (and in this case the deity’s absence), as well as the ‘Prayer and Obeisance to the Gods’ topos: I am witness before the eyes of God and his angels that it will [come about in this way, that is, the judgment], as it has been said, by someone as ignorant as me. These words are not mine but God’s and his apostles and his prophets that I tell in Latin, and that never lie. He who believes will be rescued, he who does not believe will be condemned. God has spoken. (259.1-5)81

It can be seen here that toward the close of this letter, Patrick’s reliance upon the Pauline model wanes. He summarizes his argument, and its deliberative nature becomes clear; take one course of action and be saved, or take another and be excluded from the rapture. Patrick turns now to paraphrase of the Old Testament, particularly this line repeated in Psalms 59:8 and 107:8: ‘Deus locutus est in sanctuario suo’ (‘God has spoken in [through] his holiness’). Recalling the living nature of logos, Patrick tells his audience that the word of God has been spoken through him, in sacred Latin, just as Patrick’s living word will be spoken through the messenger or lector. As in the proclamation of rusticity with which the letter begins, and in the carefully chosen scriptural proofs, the saying and the said are inseparable, and it is the Word of God that should persuade the audience, not the tricks of the rhetorician. The ethos that is established is persuasive, not only for Patrick’s new Christian converts, but also those who do business with the likes of Coroticus. These are not Patrick’s words, but the words of the apostles and prophets. The guilty have been proven to be so, the necessary course of action has been explained, and those who hear must make a choice. Patrick concludes with a forensic tone and in admonishing prose adorned with epistolary commonplace in protreptic form: I beg that anyone who so much serves God, who is able to be the carrier of this word, should by no means hide it from any man, but be capable 81 ‘Testificor coram Deo et angelis suis quod ita erit sicut intimauit imperitiae meae. Non mea uerba sed Dei et apostolorum atque prophetarum quod ego Latinum exposui, qui numquam enim mentiti sunt. Qui crediderit saluus erit, qui non crediderit condempnabitur, Deus locutus est’

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of dispatching it before all people and before Coroticus himself. If God inspires them they [the captives] might return to God and the penitents will give penance for a long time for their having been impious – murderers of the Lord’s brothers – and they will liberate the captives, baptized before they were captured, so that the capturers may be worthy to live in God and to be whole here on earth and in eternity! Peace to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Amen. (259.6-13)82

To begin, Patrick makes it clear that the letter was intended to be performed and to as wide an audience as possible. For one who carries the word of God, Patrick uses the word ‘gerulus,’ which means ‘bearer,’ ‘carrier,’ ‘doer,’ or ‘worker.’ To carry this message is to be a worker for the good, a bearer of the word, of the sacrament, a doer of the deeds of God. And it is not that the word is to be simply read in the sense of the English ‘to read,’ but Patrick uses the third singular, passive, present, subjunctive of lego, ‘commission,’ ‘dispatch,’ ‘entrust,’ ‘will,’ ‘delegate,’ ‘bequeath,’ and also ‘it be read,’ and ‘recite.’ The meaning of Patrick’s Latin is much richer than the English translation allows. In reading this text to Coroticus and his men, or to whomever may have been in attendance, the messenger dispatches, entrusts, and bequeaths the word of God to his audience, bringing it to life in the minds of the listeners. Patrick pleads with the Christians nearest to Coroticus to heed his words and work to free the captive Christians. At a deeper level, this is also a call for all Christians, all Scotti and Picti, who hear his words to abandon such practices as those of Coroticus and his soldiers, and to adopt the practice of the Roman Christians of Gaul. In this, we certainly see concerns that align with the goals of frontier management and the perpetuation of Christian ideology. The managerial intentions of the letter are clear; Irish and British Christians should adopt the practices of the Roman Christians in Gaul. Patrick paraphrases and adapts New Testament epistolary form and convention, along with Greco-Roman epistolary form and commonplace, in a complex, rhetorical composition. This analysis demonstrates clearly that Patrick was educated in Roman rhetorical practices by way of progymnasmata–most clearly narration, comparison, and description–and 82 ‘Quaeso plurimum ut quicumque famulus Dei promptus fuerit ut sit gerulus litterarum harum, ut nequaquam subtrahatur uel asbcondatur a nemine, sed magis potius legatur coram cunctis plebibus et praesente ipso Corotico. Quod si Deus inspirit illos ut quandoque Deo resipiscant, ita utu el sero paeniteant quod tam impie gesserunt – homicida erga fratres Domini – et liberent captiuas baptizatas quas ante ceperunt, ita ut mereantur Deo uiuere et sani efficiantur hic et in aeternum! Pax Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, Amen’

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Greco-Roman epistolary commonplace and convention, as well as forms of argumentation and ornament described by Roman rhetoricians such as Quintilian and Macrobius. Clearly, though sources of study had changed, the circles Patrick studied in, be they Gallo-Roman or Romano-British, maintained a form of rhetorical education, whether in Gallic monastic schools or the kind established in Roman Britain. In any case, Patrick’s Epistola is an important example of the rhetorical art of letter-writing in fifth-century Ireland.

5

The Hisperica famina

The Hisperica famina (‘Western Orations’) (hereafter Hisperica) are a seventh-century collection of fascinating, Latin orations that constitute a school textbook on rhetoric and composition.1 Similar to several other extant ‘hisperic’ texts written in a unique form of Hiberno-Latin, they invoke neologism and archaic vocabulary, draw on Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic, and employ terms in unique ways.2 Their influence was widespread, and a number of insular compositions are believed indebted to the hisperic style they demonstrate. For example, Máeldub likely imparted knowledge of the Hisperica to Aldhelm while he was a student at Malmesbury, and their influence is evidenced in his De virginitate, Aenigmata, and epistle to Eahfrid.3 Due to their gratuitous artificiality, deliberate obscurity, extreme invective, and outlandish style an argument can be made that the Hisperica are evidence of the continuation of the so-called ‘third sophistic’ that developed in the late antique and early medieval west. Or, perhaps they could be placed alongside other hisperic texts in a ‘Celtic’ or ‘Insular’ sophistic in the seventh and eighth centuries. Second Sophistic rhetoric in the Latin ‘Silver Age’ tended towards heightened, superficial style, bombast, and strange vocabulary, including graecism and archaism, and later writers are sometimes identified as part of a third sophistic. Rather than evidence of a decline in literary and rhetorical style, the rhetoric of the second and third sophistic reveal the social and cultural values of the learned classes from which it emerged, and hisperic style reveals much about the stylistic values of the early medieval Irish. Aside from the exemplary studies discussed below, hisperic Latin has in large part escaped the notice of rhetorical studies. 1 There are five extant versions of the Hisperica famina. The text used here is known as the A-text, which is preserved in Rome, BAV, Reg. lat. 81, f 1-12 and is edited in Herren, 1974a. See Herren, 1974a, for a discussion of the manuscripts and other versions. B is in Luxembourg, Bibliothèque nationale, 89, and Paris BNF, lat. 11411, f99-100; C is the glossary, found in the Echternach Glosses, in Luxembourg, Bibliothèque nationale, 89; D is in Paris, BNF, lat. 11411, f 101-02 2 These include the Lorica of Laidcenn, the Rubisca of Brían Con Catha, the St Omer Hymn, the grammar of Vergilius Maro Grammaticus, and the writings of Aldhelm. For an edition and translation of these texts, see Herren, 1987; see also Howlett, 1996 3 Herren, 1974b, p. 413

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch05

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The A-Text of the Hisperica likely dates to the mid-seventh century and is certainly the work of an Irish milieu. 4 As a terminus post quem, Andy Orchard suggests the writings of Isidore, indicating composition in the first half of the seventh century at the earliest, and a terminus ante quem based on the writings of Aldhelm, who appears to imitate them in his fixed patterns of syntax, indicating the late seventh century.5 Michael Herren also argues that the Hisperica influenced the Lorica of Laidcen (d. 661 CE), providing further evidence for a late seventh-century date.6 As for the text’s Irish provenance, P. Grosjean was the first to note the influence of Irish on some of the faminator’s7 coinages, and most commentators now agree the text is an Irish production.8 Both Herren and Orchard also turn to evidence from the text itself. The Lex diei section describes scholars traveling around Ireland from master to master, a way of life also described by Bede in the years 651 to 664, during the time of bishops Fínán and Colmán at Lindisfarne.9 Therefore, the activity described in the text itself further supports the contemporary literary evidence. In any case, they are not older than the youngest manuscript witness, which dates to the ninth century. The Hisperica are perhaps the finest extant example of hisperic Latin, a form of Hiberno-Latin that developed in Ireland or Irish learned settings in the early Middle Ages. The title itself is a play on words, combining Hibernia (‘Ireland’) and Hesperides (‘Western Isles’). Famen (pl. famina) is a pseudo-archaic coinage from fari (‘to speak’), and neologisms and archaic words such as these are a feature of hisperic Latin. The syntax follows the adjective, verb, noun, and two adjectives, verb, two nouns structure and clearly indicates familiarity with the ‘golden line’. Throughout the text, one finds archaic words, words used in unusual senses, neologisms, Greek words, Greco-Latin hybrids, and Hebrew and Celtic derived words.10 This linguistic playfulness is common to early Irish literature, as the Irish transferred Old Irish spelling features to Latin and placed Latin endings on Irish words, such as apigitorium from Irish aipgtir (‘alphabet’) and tigernus from tigern (‘lord’). This makes hisperic Latin notoriously difficult to read, but it also marks an important moment in the history of rhetoric.

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

For a comparison of the A-, B-, and D-Texts, see Carey, 2003-2004 Orchard, 1994, p. 96; Winterbottom, 1977 Herren, 1973, pp. 49-51 I will follow the convention of referring to the author(s) of the Hisperica as ‘faminator(s)’ Grosjean, 1956 Orchard, 2000, pp. 4-6; Herren, 1983, pp. 33-37 See Herren, 1974b, p. 413

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The Hisperica begin with an address by an expert practitioner of rhetoric, who takes pride in his proficiency in Latin rhetoric, to a group of newcomers.11 This section is followed by verbal contests rich in figurative language before a section on the twelve faults of diction paraphrased from Donatus and Isidore. This adaptation of Donatus’s De barbarismo in the Ars maior considers not only the faults and virtues of speech, but also of writing. The rest of the text consists of descriptions of objects, including writing tablets, as well as a section called ‘Lex diei’, a description of a day in the life of a monastic student, all of which mirror scholastic colloquia composed using description exercises, such as those found in Priscian’s Praeexercitaminia. Therefore, it is clear from the outset that this text is a school handbook, part of an enigmatic wisdom tradition, demonstrating grammatical and rhetorical learning. The Hisperica can therefore be seen as evidence of a rhetorical tradition in early Ireland, though their purpose has not been without debate. As William Sayers acknowledges, the various manuscript recensions are ‘on recognizably scholastic themes’ and ‘represent the efforts of teachers of Latin rhetoric, in Ireland or Irish-inspired environments, to provide both a mnemonic framework for the acquisition of an erudite and recherché vocabulary’.12 In a study of two recensions of the Hisperica famina, John Carey suggests that the texts derive from a glossary of hisperic terms that served as a word-list for students who used the list for composition on scholarly subjects, but who also drew from Irish oral tradition.13 In a study of the A-, B-, and C-Texts, Carey follows the position of the nineteenth-century scholar Heinrich Zimmer who argued that the similarities among the various recensions suggest the Hisperica are stylistic exercises, containing treatments of the same theme, with a given glossary of words, and a given pattern for the student to follow.14 Gabrielle Knappe also takes the Hisperica as scholastic texts and argues for the influence of Priscian’s Latin adaptation of Hermogenes’ progymnasmata, the Praeexercitamina, on the descriptive speeches that follow the opening section.15 Following Sayers, Carey, and Knappe, I hope to show that this text is a rhetorical composition, in which students used the Hisperic glossary in order to compose a version of progymnasmatic description exercises, drawing on secular and ecclesiastical tradition alike, and likely for the purposes of memorization and preparation for future rhetorical compositions, written 11 This portrayal is given by Wright, 1982, p. 62 12 Sayers, 1990, p. 222 13 See Carey, 2003-04, for a discussion of the manuscript tradition and the available editions and translations 14 Ibid., pp. 45-6 15 Knappe, 1994, especially p. 133

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and oral. Here, I hope to demonstrate that the first sections are an emulation of late antique rhetorical practices, the scholastic colloquia, taking the form of grammatical composition, such as that of the Gallo-Roman grammarian and poet Ausonius, influenced stylistically by Vergil and Sedulius Scottus’s Carmen Paschale.16 As such, however, they are also an Irish reflex of these works, further demonstrating the syncretic tradition in which scholars worked to adapt classical works to their own cultural context. Descriptive set-pieces were popular in early Irish scholarly literature, and it is clear that descriptive exercises were central to Irish learning. Already in the seventh century, Irish writers used description in original literary compositions both ecclesiastical and secular. Lisa Bitel demonstrates the significance of description in a study of Cogitosus’s seventh-century Vita of St Brigit.17 Brent Miles has demonstrated the centrality of descriptive set-pieces and imitatio and aemulatio of Roman epic in Middle Irish saga, and some sections of these tales may have been composed as early as the eighth or ninth century.18 Johan Corthals has argued that roscada (the highly stylized, archaizing verbal art discussed at length below) were influenced by late antique Latin poetry and rhetorical exercises, including description, and were used in the sagas and law-texts from the eighth century through the early modern period.19 Most importantly for our present purposes, Corthals also sees a parallel between the Áiliu poems preserved in the eighth-century law tract Bretha Nemed Dédenach and the Hisperica famina. The Áiliu poems describe the ritual celebration following a student’s graduation from the school of the filid. The students drink ale, and the life cycle of the grain from which it is brewed is described. Corthals writes that ‘Such descriptive digressions (gr. Ekphráseis) are a common feature of Greek and Latin epic style, and the A-text of the Hisperica famina contains a fine example of this, which could show that it was known and applied in a seventh century Hiberno-Latin classroom’.20 Both texts preserve a student’s demonstration of learning in celebration of completion of a course of study. 16 Winterbottom, 1968, p. 127, draws attention to the Hisperica’s place in this tradition, citing the 1929 study by W.H. Stevenson, Early Scholastic Colloquies. However, Winterbottom’s interest is primarily in the influence of the Hisperica on the tenth- and eleventh-century English colloquies 17 Bitel, 2004 18 See Miles, 2011; see also Poppe, 2016b; idem, 2008 19 Corthals, 1996, pp. 20-21, lists among the topics roscada share with medieval Latin poetry exhortations, elegies, salutations, panegyrics, riddles, dialogues, altercations, battle-songs, and occasionaly satire, parody, address to the sword, and material about love; idem, 2010 20 Corthals, 2010, p. 74

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As for the sources informing the Hisperica, Herren has identified a number of influences including Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, De Natura Rerum, and De Differentiis Verborum; pseudo-Isidorian De Ordine Creaturarum; De Excidio Britanniae of Gildas; Vergil; the Bible; Graeco-Latin and Hebrew-Latin Glossaries of unknown origin; and Vergillius Maro Grammaticus.21 Sarah Corrigan has argued for the influence of Pliny’s Naturalis historia, especially in descriptions of sea creatures in the De mari (‘On the sea’) section.22 Though many scholars attributed knowledge of the golden line to familiarity with secular Latin authors, Neil Wright demonstrates that Caelius Sedulius’s Carmen Paschale, which was widely known throughout the seventh-century west, was a primary source of imitation.23 Caelius Sedulius (fl. early fifth century CE), the author of the Carmen Paschale, is noted for his skilful imitation of scripture and was among fifth-century Christians who sought to create a Christian literary art that rivalled secular Roman poetry. Most notable is Sedulius’s use of the ‘golden line’, and Neil Wright identifies thirty-six lines that use this syntax, ‘a proportion far higher than in any other Late Latin Christian poet’.24 Scholars have assumed that this form in the Hisperica was evidence of knowledge of Vergil among the faminators, and it most certainly is, but Wright demonstrates the influence of Sedulius arguing that Vergil ‘was not the only poet to influence the faminators’.25 Among Insular writers the golden line was not unknown, and Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate contains twenty-four golden lines, and another twenty-two closely modelled on this form.26 The Hisperica famina comes closest to matching Aldhelm’s fixed syntactic patterns and use of the golden line, and Sedulius is most likely the faminator’s source. Wright says that the faminator’s ‘method of imitation is instructive’ in that his ‘process [of source selection in his imitation] indicates that in these lines the faminator’s overriding concern was to use Sedulius’ poem as a basis for stylistic variation’.27 Wright gives the two primary stylistic patterns of the text as epithet, verb, substantive, as in ‘sublime posco rectorm’ and two epithets, verb, two substantives, as in ‘insignem leonine eruit vatem follo’. This last example represents the golden line of hexameter poetry, as one

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Summarized in Sayers, 1990, p. 63 Corrigan, 2013-14 Wright, 1982 Wright, 1982, p. 76 Ibid., p. 62 Orchard, 1994, p. 97 Ibid., p. 67

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sees in Vergil.28 The symmetrical structure of the opening line of the A-text, ‘ampla pectoralem suscitat vernia cavernam’ demonstrates the golden line, in which two adjectives are separated from their nouns by the medial verb. Though the Carmen Paschale was a source of imitation for the Hisperica, and while Isidore, Vergil, and other well-known Latin writers inform the text, it stands out as a product of an Insular, Hiberno-Latin culture, and was possibly produced within a single milieu in southern Ireland, a milieu that included Vergilius Maro Grammaticus and the grammarian Asperius.29 As to the purpose of the Hisperica, there is debate. Many years ago, Phillip W. Damon argued that there is evidence in the text suggesting an adaptation of the declamatory exercises known as suasoriae.30 Michael Winterbottom casts doubt on this suggestion31 arguing that the passages under consideration are probably not rhetorical exercises, but rather part of a manual for training in hisperic style and vocabulary.32 Regarding Britain and Ireland, Lapidge argues that there is ‘no evidence whatsoever that rhetoric, the mainstay of traditional Roman education, was ever taught in a monastery in late antiquity’. However, this view neglects the changing roles of the grammaticus and rhetor in Late Antiquity.33 Gabrielle Knappe’s study of the Hisperica is attentive to the blurring of these roles and reveals their indebtedness to late antique rhetorical traditions. Knappe is particularly interested in the enigmata. She suggests that the Hisperica drew on Donatus’s chapters on the vices of diction in the Ars maior, and that the twelve school exercises that conclude the text are modelled on the school exercise, ‘description’, in Priscian’s Praeexercitamina.34 Ultimately, Knappe argues that the Hisperica are indeed rhetorical texts that indicate the successive stages of the rhetor’s education in early Ireland, but that ‘the framework was 28 Ibid., p. 74 29 See especially Herren, 1992 and Ó Cróinín, 1982. Herren argues here that Vergil was an Irishman, or at least was educated in Ireland, and that certain ‘Hisperic’ words that appear in his grammar are witnessed in the Hisperica, pointing to the likelihood that Vergil was of an Irish milieu in southern Ireland, a milieu that included the authors of the Hisperica famina. Also, see Bracken, 2002 for further evidence of an ecclesiastical scholarly milieu working in southern Ireland in the seventh century by way of Scottus Anonymous and the Vergilian theme of the incompatibility of the pursuit of knowledge and wealth noted in a tradition of sapiential literature 30 Damon, 1953, p. 403 31 Winterbottom, 1967, p. 134 32 Ibid., p. 132 33 Lapidge, 1984, p. 30 34 Knappe, 1994, p. 133; For an authoritative account of the transmission of Donatus in Late Antiquity within the context of Stoic grammar, and especially the influence on early Irish grammar manuals, see Holtz, 1981b

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the modified education of a late antique grammaticus/rhetor’ in which we see the blurring of the roles of the grammaticus/rhetor that mark late antique education.35 As Knappe points out, a grammaticus is not mentioned in the whole of the Hisperica, and the faminators clearly thought of themselves as rhetores. Andy Orchard argues that the Hisperica should be read as quality literary texts. Unique to Orchard’s study is his attention to the form and function of the Hisperica, moving away from a focus on the sources informing the text’s composition. He demonstrates a great deal of complexity and consistency throughout the A-Text, with special attention to the Lex diei with which it begins. Like Knappe, Orchard sees the descriptions as particularly significant, and in the enigmata he sees a parallel to objects of description in Anglo-Latin texts, specifically those of Aldhelm.36 He also demonstrates stylistic and syntactic patterns, as well as parallelisms of diction, in the beginning of each line of the enigmata. Concluding his thorough and convincing literary analysis of the Hisperica, Orchard writes, ‘far from being a disparate collection of deliberately obfuscatory and trivial observations, the Hisperica famina display considerable literary (as well as linguistic) sophistication on the part of their authors, and as such are best measured alongside literary texts’.37 Orchard’s study is one of the first to treat the literary and rhetorical complexity of the Hisperica famina. While seeking the textual influences on the Hisperica is not without fruit, it does expose us to numerous difficulties. Donatus and Priscian are not the only texts where barbarisms, solecisms, and vices are related, and Isidore may be the means by which the faminator came across this knowledge, but Knappe makes a strong case for the use of Donatus in the section on twelve faults of speech. The absorption of rhetorical education into grammatical instruction in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages should not be thought to suggest a decline in rhetorical theory or the rhetorical arts, but rather the growing importance of reading and writing. A student of late antique and medieval rhetoric is by necessity a student of grammatica and exegesis. For present purposes, I will treat the Hisperica famina as an example of a unique learned handbook in early Ireland. While it is not necessarily representative of the grammatical tradition, as several of the grammatical handbooks follow the commentary format, it is of interest to the student of rhetoric for several reasons. First, it begins with an oratorical debate among monastic students which, along with other features of the text, 35 Knappe, 1994, p. 161 36 Orchard, 2000, p. 12 37 Ibid., pp. 44-45

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makes it clear that this text is representative of a grammatical and rhetorical tradition. Second, I will argue that the sections of the text known as the enigmata do indeed represent progymnasmatic exercises, or insular adaptations thereof. Moreover, the entire text is an imitation–or, perhaps better, emulation–of the late antique scholastic colloquia tradition known as the Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana. As a prime example of a creative adaptation of these scholastic texts in Late Antiquity, we will look to Dacimius Magnus Ausonius (310-395 CE), a Gallo-Roman poet of the fourth century CE. I will also examine the metaphors used to describe rhetoric and oratorical debate and the influence of the Irish learned tradition. I will argue that the Hisperica are learned orations with vernacular parallels that demonstrate a student’s grammatical and rhetorical learning. And, finally, the metaphors for oratory will occupy a good portion of my analysis as they reveal much about the cultural values associated with verbal art, and may also reveal something of the sources available to the faminators. I will not work through the text from start to finish, but rather focus on sections in which metaphors for oratory are pronounced and the influence of late antique scholastic colloquia is evident. It is my intention to present the Hisperica famina as a case study to demonstrate the value of Hiberno-Latin learned texts for the student of rhetoric.

Rhetorical Analysis of Hisperica famina The Hisperica begin with an oratorical display between a school master and a group of newly arrived studentsfollowed by a brief section on ‘The Twelve Faults of Ausonian Diction’ (drawn from Book 3, chapters 1-3 of Donatus’s Ars maior and Isidore’s De grammatica), and ends with a series of speeches, known as the ‘enigmata’.38 The language of the encounter of the rhetoricians is martial, and their engagement is framed in bellicose metaphors. What follows consists of twelve distinct sections, demonstrating learning in both speech and composition, but with a greater focus on writing. However, the composition was intended for oral performance.The subjects of the descriptions that follow are ‘Incipit lex diei’ (‘The Rule of the Day begins’) (A133-357), ‘De caelo’ (‘On the sky’) (A358-80), ‘Incipit de mari’ (‘It begins on the sea’) (A381-425), ‘De igne’ (‘On fire’) (A426-51), ‘De campo’ (‘On a field’) (A452-76), ‘De uento’ (‘On the wind’) (A477-96), ‘De plurimis’ (‘On many 38 Knappe, 1994, pp. 133-45, demonstrates Donatus as the primary source for the faminator’s adaptation of the twelve faults of speech

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things’) (A497-512), ‘De taberna’ (‘On the book container’) (A513-30), ‘De tabula’ (‘On a writing tablet’) (A531-46), ‘De oratorio’ (‘On a chapel’) (A547-60), ‘De oratione’ (‘On prayer’) (A561-70), and ‘De gesta re’ (‘On a deed’) (A571-612). In the opening of the text a speaker, presumably an Irish school master, sees an approaching group of students and interrogates them about from where they come and the nature and extent of their learning. The speaker boasts and welcomes a verbal duel: Thus I invite the accomplished competitor to a duel of words [obello certatorem], who whill engage in rhetorical gymnastics [sophicam] with eagerness. For before I fought three athletes, I slaughtered incompetent duellers, and also punished powerful peers, and struck down stouter giants in the frontline; hence I avoid none of my contemporaries. When their vicious darts start to pierce me, I immediately unsheathe my versatile sword, which slices nourishing statues; I take my wooden shield in hand, which covers my fleshly limbs with protection; I brandish my iron dagger, whose deadly tip exhausts the turning archers, therefore I call up all contemporaries to conflict (A22-36).39

The dialogue of the opening section is rivalrous, and the interlocutors contend about who is better educated, which school is better, and so on. The speaker establishes his own credibility in his depiction of his experience in rhetorical battles. As Orchard has pointed out, the enemies are enumerated in ascending order, an example of the rhetorical figure tricolon abundans: inexperienced fighters (inertes … duelles [A25]), ‘stout combatants’ of equal experience (robustos … coaeuos [A26]), and more powerful warriors (fortiores … in acie ciclopes [A27]). 40 It is clear from the very beginning that this is a text about rhetoric, and the metaphors employed, the darts (spicula), the sword (spatham), the shield (peltam), and the dagger (pugionem), clearly refer to the scholar’s tools, the stylus and wax tablet. 41 Therefore, it must 39 In what follows I rely on the edition and translation of Herren, 1974a, unless otherwise noted; Hinc lectorum sollertem inuito obello certatorem,/qui sophicam plas mauerit auide palestram./Nam trinos antea dimicaui athletas,/inertes mactaui duelles,/ac robustos multaui coaeus,/fortioresque prostraui in acie ciclopes;.hinc nullum subterfugio aequeuum./Dum truculenta me uellicant spicula,/protinus uersatilem euagino spatham, quae almas trucidat statuas;.arboream capto iduma peltam,/quae carneas cluit tutamine pernas;/ferralem uibro pugionem,/cuius pitheum assiles macerat rostrum cideones;/ob hoc cunctos lastro in agonem coaeuos 40 Orchard, 2000, pp. 21-22 41 Ibid., pp. 20-24, provides examples of these same metaphors in the B- and C-Texts, as well as Aldhelm, demonstrating their pervasiveness among the Irish rhetores

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be assumed that what follows is also related to the pedagogical craft of the grammaticus and rhetor. Near the end of this section, the faminator writes ‘This splenid collection of speeches dazzles, which piles up no words in a faulty mass, but maintains its fine vigour with choice distinction’ (A41-42).42 In the first book of Isidore’s Etymologiae, titled ‘De grammatica’ (‘On grammar’), which is an adaptation of Donatus, Isidore discusses ten faults of speech (‘De vitiis’), and the ‘piling up of words’ is referred to as perissologia, which he describes as ‘the superfluous addition of several words’ (1.34). 43 The faminator explicitly states this is not what he is doing, but rather he is of the mind that his ‘elegant effusion of phrases dazzles’, and is indeed composed on a solid foundation of grammatical knowledge. A far cry from the humility topoi of much Christian writing, the faminator ‘checks its [the ‘elegant effusion of phrases’] forceful vigour with careful balance’. In this section we also see deployment of several of the ‘eloquium figurae’ (‘figures of speech’) that Isidore treats in the next section of Book 1. For example, the string of parallel verbs in past and then present tense: slaughtered, punished, brought down, and unsheathe/hacks, take/compasses, brandish/torments. These triads mirror the three opponents the faminator identifies–an inexperienced rhetor, ‘powerful peers’, and even more powerful opponents, the ‘stouter giants’–and are a playful use of homoeoptoton, in which ‘many words in the same grammatical case are used’, 44 hyperbole, sarcasmos, ‘hostile ridicule with bitterness’,45 and similitudo, ‘that by which the description of some less known thing is made clear by something better known to which it is similar’. 46 In this case, the comparison is between oratorical debate and combat. Of similitude, there are three kinds, and the martial metaphors can be identified with parabola, ‘a comparison from dissimilar things’, 47 and perhaps also paradigma (‘paradigm’), a model for ‘something appropriate to the thing that we describe either from its similar or from its dissimilar nature’. 48 Martial combat and verbal spar42 See n. 699 below 43 Isidore lists the following faults: ‘barbarism, solecism, acyrologia, cacemphaton, pleonasm, perissologia, tautologia, tapinosis, cacosyntheton, and amphibolia. For amphibolia, there are four varieties of this fault given 44 All references to Isidore’s Etymologies rely on the edition of Lindsay, 1911. All translations are my own; Isidore, Etymologies, 1.36.15 45 Ibid., 1.36.29 46 Ibid., 1.36.31 47 Ibid., 1.36.33 48 Ibid., 1.36.34

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ring are both similar and dissimilar but, considering the nature of early Irish pseudo-history and Latin epic, tales such as An Táin Bó Cúailnge, the faminator’s audience would likely better relate to martial metaphors than tales of great debates. The following section, the Lex diei, consists of a description of a day in the life of the student, morning, mid-day, and evening, providing us with insight into education in early Ireland. It may not be a coincidence that this is the structure of the Hermeneumata which inspired Ausonius’s Ephemeris. In his study of this influence in Ausonius, Pucci reproduces a table from Dionisotti that demonstrates a great deal of consistency across redactions. This includes the following: Waking Up; School; Busines/social; Lunch; Preparing dinner; Baths; Dinner; Bedtime. 49 This consistency leads Pucci to remark ‘this stability is important for the Ephemeris, because it makes it much easier to say that extant colloquia reflect in their ordering and contents something comparable to the colloquia Ausonius would have known in the fourth century’.50 Furthermore, Ausonius’s readers would have likely been familiar with the colloquia as a genre. The subjects of the descriptive set-pieces in the Hisperica are also reminiscent of the colloquia. Several are clearly not ecclesiastical, but instead take the four elements, sea, fire, earth, and wind, preceded by the sky as subject-matter, something unique to the Hisperica. The other descriptions are of everyday things in the monastic community, including the book container, a writing-tablet, a chapel, and prayer. The final enigmatum, De gesta re, describes an adventure and battle reminiscent of the dream recounted in Ephemeris 8.1-21.51 We will further investigate the possible influence of the Hermeneumata and Ausonius below. As noted above, the purpose of the Hisperica has alluded scholars for generations, the earliest engagements with the text being quite disparaging.52 However, most recently Gabrielle Knappe has argued convincingly that the enigmata are based upon the progymnasmatic description exercise as adapted in Priscian. Andrew Orchard has compared the hisperic enigmata to the Anglo-Latin enigmata, specifically those of Aldhelm, who composed on Terra (‘earth’), Ventus (‘wind’), Ignis (‘fire’), Vertigo poli (‘the height of heaven’), and Arca (‘book-cupboard’).53 If one accepts Knappe’s thesis, then 49 50 51 52 53

Pucci, 2009, p. 52 Ibid., p. 52 Ibid., pp. 63-64 See the discussion in Herren, 1974b Orchard, 2000, pp. 12-13

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this would seem to suggest a common source for Aldhelm. I will not treat this now, but I accept the analysis of Orchard and Knappe but also argue for the influence of late antique scholastic colloquia. Specifically, I argue that Ausonius’s Ephemeris, inspired by the Hermeneumata tradition, provides evidence for the widespread circulation of these texts, as well as their remarkable consistency in thematic content across redactions and contexts. Commentators on the Hisperica have offered the possibility of the faminator’s use, along with Laidcen and Aldhelm, of the Hermeneumata, but they have treated the Hermeneumata as glossaries from which the faminator drew vocabulary. However, this was only one aspect of those texts. Pucci explains that the simple word lists were supported by the colloquia, ‘offering students practice sentences using basic vocabulary in stories whose contents were innocuous and familiar’.54 Included in the manuscript tradition of the Hisperica is an hisperic glossary in the C-Text, and the recension of these manuscripts closely mirrors this scholastic tradition. The Hermeneumata I will attend to are bilingual schoolbooks which include descriptions of a day in the life of a student quite similar to both Ausonius’s Ephemeris and the Hisperica.55 To begin, the adjectives, metaphors, and similes used to describe speech and successful oratory, especially ‘Ausonian’ and ‘torrent’, place the Hisperica in the tradition of Roman rhetoric. The school master and students are both in pursuit of ausonici faminis, or eloquent Latin diction. Ausonicus is a term used several times throughout the A-text to characterize the rhetorical skill of the orator. Ausones is the Greek form from which the Latin Aurunci was derived, and it was used by the Greeks for Italic tribes, specifically the tribe that the Roman historian Livy called Aurunci. It is used poetically in a variety of Roman poets to mean simply ‘Italian’, and in the Aeneid 12.823-36 Vergil writes ‘The people of Ausonia will keep their ancestral speech and culture, their name be as it was’. The first instance of its use in the Hisperica is in Ausonicus catena (‘Ausonian chain’) in the opening section where the presumed schoolmaster greets newly arrived, foreign students. This section of the A-text is as follows: ‘But if for an ample measure of the temporal life/ The Ausonian chain had bound me,/a draught of sonorous speech would arise in my throat,/and a great torrent of urbanity (urbani tenoris) would flow from my mouth’ (A: 57-60).56 However, it seems to be used in two contradictory senses. Later in the text the faminator writes: ‘Who will 54 Pucci, 2009, p. 65 55 The Hermeneumata are edited in Goetz, 1892 56 Quodsi amplo temporalis aeui stadio/ausonica me alligasset catena,/sonorous faminis per guttural popularet haustus,/ac inmensus urbani tenoris manasset faucibus tollus.

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ask these possessors/to grant us their sweet abundance?/For an Ausonian chain binds me;/hence I do not utter good Irish speech’ (A271-74).57 Herren and Winterbottom both agree the ‘Ausonian chain’ signifies the visiting students’ linguistic limitations; that is, they are required by the school’s master to speak only in Latin58 However, Sayers argues that this does not explain the earlier use, which is clearly positive.59 As Sayers brings to light, this instance does not refer to an ‘Ausonian chain’ representative of inability, but rather quite the opposite. Sayers argues that ‘the Ausonian chain must at a minimum refer in a positive sense to the training in Latin rhetoric to which the student, Irish or foreign, has committed himself, training on the completion of which he would be capable of the “mellifluous flow of Ausonian speech” (40f.), his own “Ausonian flood”’.60 In the C-text, ausonicus is glossed with italicus (‘Italian), so the sense might be the ‘chain of Roman rhetoric’ obligating one to oratorical battle. With considerable caution, one might consider the image of Ogmios, the Celtic deity of eloquence, who is portrayed by Lucian as ‘connected to a crowd of men by delicate chains of gold and amber, which are fastened to their ears and to the tip of his own tongue. His face is turned to the men, and he is smiling: he is leading them by the chains, and they are following him gladly’.61 In any case, hisperic, famina, and ausonicus illustrate the practice of using semantically narrow terms in an extended sense throughout the text. Many commonplaces were used to describe eloquent speech throughout Antiquity, among them the similes ‘flowing like honey’ and the ‘torrential flood’, and these are witnessed also in the Hisperica For similes used in Greek literature, the song of the cicada is used in the Iliad as a metaphor for the speech of the elder Trojans: ‘because of age the men had ceased from battle, but as speakers they were excellent, like cicadas’ (3.150-1). In Plato’s Phaedrus (259b-c) Socrates relates the myth of men who became the tribe of cicada. The bee has been used as representative of eloquent individuals since Plutarch (45-120 CE), though literary antecedents can be found in Plato and Aristotle.62 Plutarch writes that properly educated young men select what is best in poetry the way that bees select what is best from flowers,63 57 Quis tales poscet possores/ut melchilentum concesserint opiminium?/Nam ausonica me subligat catena;/ob hoc scottigenum haud cripitundo eulogium 58 Sayers, 1990, p. 223; Winterbottom, 1968, p. 129 59 Sayers, 1990, p. 223 60 Ibid., p. 224 61 Carey, 2014, p. 1; Sayers, 1990, pp. 223-25, overviews other possible Irish associations 62 Sic, Plato’s Phadeo 82b and Aristotle’s Politics 1253a7-9 63 Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales 622C, 673C

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and this simile is adopted by Christian writers such as Basil64 and Gregory of Nazianzus.65 We also see this image in Macrobius’s Saturnalia in his description of his process of selection for his encyclopaedic work.66 Martial metaphors, which we will examine below, are witnessed in one of Fronto’s letters to Marcus Aurelius, De Eloquentia, where he describes an orator as one who is armed with words,67 a metaphor employed by Aulus Gellius in his essay on Cato’s speech, For the Rhodians, where he notes that Cato had called upon ‘“all the armaments and auxiliaries of rhetorical studies”’.68 Such metaphors tell us much about how scholars perceived of the rhetorical arts. As for Anglo-Latin examples, Aldhelm, in his ‘Letter to Heathfrith’, refers to ‘the fourfold honeyed oracles of allegorical or rather tropological disputation of opaque problems in aetherial mysteries’.69 In the Irish vernacular tradition, this metaphor is also witnessed. In the Book of Leinster Táin, we have ‘Loegair(e) Milbél’, ‘(Loegar the honey-mouthed’),70 and in Tecosca Cormaic (‘The Instructions of Cormac’) 13.37 ‘milbéla druinecha’ (‘skilful women are honey-mouthed’).71 This metaphor for eloquence also appears in the Hisperica: This splenid collection of speeches dazzles, which piles up no words in a faulty mass, but maintains its fine vigour with choice distinction. Do 64 Basil, To young men on the right use of literature, 4.7-8 65 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, 43.13.1 66 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.5 ‘Multas variasque res in hac vita nobis, Eustachi f ili, natura conciliavit: sed nulla nos magis quam eorum qui e nobis essent procreati caritate devinxit, eamque nostram in his educandis atque erudiendis curam esse voluit, ut parentes neque, si id quod cuperent ex sententia cederet, tantum ulla alia ex re voluptatis, neque, si contra eveniret, tantum maeroris capere possent’ (‘We ought in some sort to imitate the bees; and just as they, in their wanderings to and fro, sip the flowers, then arrange their spoil and distribute it among the combs, and transform the various juices to a single flavour by in some way mixing with them a property of their own being, so I too shall put into writing all that I have acquired in the varied course of my reading, to reduce it thereby to order and to give it coherence’ 67 Haines, 1920, p. 69, ‘Do you see that he handles almost all the weapons of the orator? Therefore if Chrysippus himself has shewn that these should be used, what more do I ask, unless it be that you should not employ the verbiage of the dialecticians but rather the eloquence of Plato? […] A sword must be used in fight against (opponents), but it matters much whether the blade be rusty or burnished’ 68 Ronnick, 2003, p. 200 69 Translation in Howlett, 1994b, p. 43, ‘Quin immo allegoricae potiora/ac tropologicae disputationis bipertita bis oracular aethralibus opacorum mellita’ 70 O Rahilly, 1967, p. 133 (ll. 4832) 71 See eDIL, dil.ie/32220, entry for ‘mil’, in which there are a number of references to ‘honeymouth’ and ‘sweet-worded’. For example, Briathrach is given as ‘sweet-worded’, and milisbriathrach is ‘sweet tongue’

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you amass with equal skill a honeyed smattering of Ausonian speech from your throat? As when unnumbered swarms of bees speed through their hollow beehives, swallowing honeyed floods in hives, creating solid honeycombs with their extremities. This splendid gathering of scholars is brilliant: not since ages of elapsed time have we found a phalanx to equal it, nor through future regions of the temporal globe shall we see an equivalent group of shimmering reputation. But close at hand there stands a dreadful serpent, who will wound this band with venomous attack, unless they pray the ruler of the vast heaven to free the flowery company from poisonous judgement (A41-52)72

Orchard’s translation beautifully captures the force of the simile and metaphors. This section follows the martial metaphors cited above, and its position at the beginning of the work draws attention to the author’s intentions, which is a demonstration of learning. It would appear that the creation of ‘solid honeycombs with their extremities’ refers to writing, as do the weapons invoked just before it, and in this a common metaphor for speech is applied equally to prose composition, which is the concern of the rhetor, whereas poetry is the concern of the grammaticus. The metaphor of the honeycomb had currency in late antique Gaul, as is witnessed in the Epistula ad Sapaudum of Claudianus Mamertus (fl. mid-fifth century). In this letter, Claudianus writes of the Greek learning of Sapaudus, a teacher of rhetoric in fifth-century Gaul. Claudianus writes that Sapaudus, like a worker-bee, picks from the greatest authors ‘doctiora quaeque’ (‘whatever is most learned’): … quos ingenii melle repleas eloquentiae conficis fauos, e quibus item discipulorum tibimet uelut eiliorum numerositas dilecta formatur […] eloquentiae fauos et ipsa conficiet’ (‘you finish the honeycombs of eloquence that you fill with the honey of learning, and from these, in kind, the multitude of your adored students, like sons, are formed […] and they themselves finish the honeycombs of eloquence’)73

72 Translation in Orchard, 2000, p. 26; Uelut innumera apium concauis discurrunt examina apiastris/melchillentaque sorbillant fluenta alueariis,/ac solidos scemicant rostris fauos./Hic comptus arcatorum exomicat coetus cui dudum per lapsa temporum stadia parem non creuimus phalangem,/nec future temporalis globi per pagula/equiperatam fulgidi rumoris speculabimur cateruam./Sed presto horrendous asstat chelidrus,/qui talem uipereo ictu sauciabit turbam,/ nisi uasti exigerint rectorem poli/qui florigerum agmen reguloso soluerit discrimine 73 Engelbrecht, 1885, p. 205; see discussion in John, 2020

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The creation of ‘honeycombs of eloquence’ (eloquentiae fauos) resonates with the faminator’s. Another example is found in Sedulius, in the ‘Preface’ to the Carmen Paschale. Addressed to the guest who has been invited to his ‘feast’, Sedulius writes: Nobilium nitidis doctorum uescere cenis … Cerea gemmates flauescunt mella canistris,/Collucentque suis aurea uasa fauis’ (‘Feed yourself on the splendid meals offered by noble men of learning … Waxen honey gleams in jewelled containers,/And golden vessels glow with the same color as the honeycomb within’.74 In all of these examples, the metaphor of the bee gathering honey refers to learning and rhetorical imitation and invention. One function of metaphor is to take an inchoate aspect of our existence and express it in concrete terms. In the Hisperica, the bees fly through hollow hives, gathering honey, and in turn create solid beehives. This is not only a metaphor for the composition of eloquent speeches, but also of learning in general, as the student gathers what is of value from listening to speeches and reading texts in order to create new compositions. There appears to be no way to discover the specific source from which the faminator might have drawn, but it is enough to say that this metaphor, common to late antique rhetoric, tells us something of the persistence of the rhetorical tradition in early Ireland. The torrentis (‘torrent’) metaphor or simile is not as common in discourse on rhetoric as that of words flowing like honey from the orator’s lips, though it had currencyin Late Antiquity. It is also used in Irish vernacular legal texts, such as the Bretha Nemed, as we will see below. Vergil uses water similes to describe speech in the Aeneid. For example: ‘uix ea legati, uariusque per ora cucurrit/Ausonidum turbata fremor, ceu saxa morantur/ cum rapidos amins, fit clause gurgite murmur/uicinaeque fremunt ripae crepitantibus undis’ (The envoys had barely spoken, when a confused murmuring ran through the troubled mouths of the Ausonians, as when rocks slow swift rivers, there is a roar in the enclosed pool and nearby banks resound with the rumbling waves’).75 Quintilian uses it in Institutio Oratoria 10.1.61 when describing Pindar’s lyric poetry and velut quodam eloquentiae flumine (‘his rolling flood of eloquence’). Macrobius writes of Cicero that ‘his words flow forth like a copious torrent’.76 We also see it in Venantius Fortunatus’s Carmina, who also uses the honey simile.77 Juvenal, in Satires, warns that ‘torrens dicendi copia multis et sua mortifera 74 Ed. and trans. in Springer, 2013, p. 3 75 Vergil, Aeneid, 2.296-301 76 Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.1.4 77 See Knappe, 1994, n. 66

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est facundia’ (‘to many people their own torrential flood of speech and their own eloquence is fatal’).78 It is also deployed frequently by Ausonius in his epideictic descriptions in praise of his teachers in ‘Poems Commemorating the Professors of Bordeaux’. Of his teacher Attius Tiro Delphidius, a rhetorician, Ausonius writes, Almost in the cradle itself, you began/ to be the poet of a famous god; a boy, wearing/ on your brow the garland of the Olympian crown,/ you sang Jove’s praises: next, pressing onward/ like a raging flood [‘cursim more torrentis’], you strung together an epic/ all in verse more rapidly than any man free from/ the handicap of prosody could shape as much in prose.79

Similarly, of Tiberius Victor Minervius he writes ‘dicendi torrens tibi copia, quae tamen aurum, non etiam luteam volveret inluviem (‘your speech was like a torrent in full spate, yet one which whirled down pure gold without muddy sediment’).80 The examples in Ausonius could be multiplied. The faminator deploys the flood metaphor in a more descriptive and violent context: As when a mountain stream passes over rocky precipices,/and the devouring flood uproots the leafy ash trees,/and unleashes thundering crashes with a roar,/destroying the mud dam in the river channel/and bearing away the hardened gravel in its whirlpool,/with equal turbulence do I surpass your Ausonian flood (A87-92).81

Torreó and flumen describe a ‘rush of eloquence’ in the Hisperica and late antique writers, including Ausonius. The imagery of the metaphor here is one of violence, rather than one of gently flowing honey. Of Delphidios, Ausonius writes that ‘the days of tyranny’ inspired such a flood of epic to flow past his lips, implying that Delphidios would have been happier had he been able to pursue ‘the Muses’ tasks amid the peaceful toil of letters’, rather 78 Juvenal, Satires, 10.7-8 79 References to Ausonius’s poems rely on the edition and translation of White, 1919, 5.5 https://archive.org/stream/deciausonius01ausouoft/deciausonius01ausouoft_djvu.txt (accessed 17-03-2021), ‘tu paene ab ipsis orsus incunabulis/dei poeta nobilis,/sertum coronae praeferens Olympiae,/ puer celebrasti lovem/mox inde cursim more torrentis/freti epos ligasti metricum’ 80 White, 1919, 5.1 81 Ceu montosus scropias tranat tollus per macides,/frondeos fluctiuaga eradicate hornos deuoratio,/inormia euoluit murmure crepita,/limosam fluminio mactat crepidinem alueo,/ concretas euellit uortice glarias,/pari ausonicum ex ubero pululamine fluuium

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than face oratorical combat with tyrants. The parallel with the Hisperica is compelling. Like the grammatical verse of Ausonius, the famina are grammatical orations, written to demonstrate and teach grammatical and rhetorical learning. The faminator does this in a self-conscious fashion, in a metadiscourse, drawing attention to grammatical and rhetorical learning as it is on display in the orations. One could imagine a student composition taking such a form, much as the declamations and progymnasmata of the antique and late antique schools. As was noted above, there is an Irish parallel in the vernacular Áilliu poems in Bretha Nemed Dédenach, and the composition of verse to demonstrate one’s learning upon completion of a course of study was a tradition in early Ireland. Where some historians of rhetoric might expect to find a rhetorical treatise proper, in Irish scholarly circles we should rather expect to find a syncretic text, one that represents Irish tradition and demonstrates the application of grammatical and rhetorical learning. While the Gallo-Roman rhetor and poet Ausonius was not well-known in the later medieval period, he was widely known and studied throughout Late Antiquity. His descriptive poems are referred to as Ephemeris, and Joseph Pucci has argued that they should be read as scholastic colloquia in the Hermeneumata tradition. The Hermeneumata are anonymous, third-century CE instructional manuals written to teach Greek to Latin-speakers and, in the West, to teach Latin to Greek-speakers. We can presume that they were adapted to cater to the needs of students learning Latin in the early medieval west. The texts often included an alphabetic glossary, much like the glossary in the C-Text of the Hisperica, a thematic glossary, and colloquia that used the glossary to describe a day in the life of a pupil and master.82 Pucci draws attention to a gloss in manuscript V of the Ephemeris which reads ‘Here begins the Ephemeris, that is the business of an entire day’, which replicates the phrasing of the prefaces in Hermeneumata.83 A common phrase used to preface these scholastic colloquia was ‘that is, the business of an entire day’.84 The parallels between the ‘Lex diei’ (‘On the Rule of the Day’) of the A-text of the famina and Ausonius’s ‘Interlude’ and ‘The Daily Round’ are striking. In Hermeneumata C and Ausonius’s Emphemeris there is a close parallel with the description in the Hisperica, including the morning chores, the astronomical themes, clothing, the book satchel, the wax tablet, the description of the materiality of scribal practice, and also feasting. 82 Gayraud, 2010, p. 37 83 Pucci, 2009, p. 53 84 Ibid, p. 54

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In Ephemeris 1, Ausonius admonishes a scholar to awaken: […] while you slumber on because you drink deep […] And so no sound enters the winding channels of your ears, a deep stupor presses on your consciousness, and all the dazzling beams of light do not vex your eyes. Old tales pretend that once upon a time a youth slept on year in, year out, untroubled by the interchange of night and day, because Luna made his slumbers unending. Up with you, you waster. What a thrashing you deserve! Up, or a long, long sleep will come on you from where you dread it least. Out with you, Parmeno, from your downy bed. Perchance this little poem, tuned to the Sapphic meter, encourages your sleep? Come then, brisk Iambus, and banish now the restful Lesbian strain.85

In ‘Lex diei’ in the Hisperica, following a description of the morning hours marked by secular language, the faminator writes, This noisy clutter incites us to stir from our bedrooms and gather a heap of clothing about our fleshy bodies./So wrap the soft robes around your limbs,/gird your white shifts of rough linen with leather belts,/fasten silver brooches to your brown soles./Remove your comfortable nightgowns/and put on soft woollen garments./Assemble the colony of rhetors/and scan your letters;/for a scholar celebrates no triumphs,/if he tears healthy slumber from the depths of his breast,/unless while Phoebus is glowing in the East,/ he remove the pleasure of sleep from his eyelids/and put the well-worn garment around his loins/to forge his reading assignment (A190-204).86

The parallels with Ausonius are significant. In Ausonius, Luna inspires the student’s slumber, while in ‘Lex diei’ it is Phoebus glowing in the East that is 85 ‘tibi causa somni […] inde nec flexas sonus intrat aures/et locum mentis spoor altus urget/nec coruscantis oculos lacessunt/fulgura lucis./annuam quondam uiveni quietem,/noticis et lucis vicibus manentem,/fabulae fingunt, cui Luna somnos/continuarit./surge, nugatory, lacerande virgis,/surge, ne longus tibi somnus, unde/non times, detur; rape membra molli/Parmeno, lecto./ fors et haec somnum tibi cantilena/Sapphico suadet modulate versu;/Lesbiae depelle modum quietis,/acer iambe’ 86 Pucci, 2009, pp. 54-55, ‘Hic sonorous soporeis nos excitat tumultus expergesci thalamis,/ uestiles corporeis colligere strues mediadis./Hinc molliformes artate tolibus trabias,/alboreas rudi bisso pelliceis stipate camisas baltheis,/argeneas fuluis figite lunulas stolis,/blanda euoluite mutatoria,/mollesque lanigero amplexu aptate tapetes./Sophicam scemicate coloniam,/ ac litterales speculamini apices./Nam nulla cerimonicat arcatori trophea,/si salubrem pectoreo carp erit soporem claustro,/ni rutilante phoebe orientis ardore,/somniosum euellerit palpebris oblectamentum,/tritamque aptauerit lumbis stragulam,/lectoralem cudere industriam’

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the call to the day.87 Ausonius focuses on the difficulty of getting out of bed, whereas the faminator more on dressing for the day and the call to study. There is also inspired word-play, as Knappe has pointed out that trophea (‘trophies’, ‘triumphs’,), here and elsewhere in the text, likely carries with it the double meaning ‘rhetorical tropes’.88 Though the thematic parallels are clear, the Hermeneumata, which Pucci argues were a model for Ausonius, also contain striking thematic similarities with ‘Lex diei’. In a text known as Hermeneumata C there is a description of the morning duties, but the dressing routine closely resembles ‘Lex diei’: Nutrix, Nutritor, dress and shoe me; it’s time, the hour is here, before daylight, for us to set out in the morning for school. For in the morning, when I have begun to be awake (and in the morning I have awoken), I have gotten up, I have gotten up from sleep and from the bed, from the cot. This I do first (I did first): I left the bedroom and put on my undergarments and overclothes, cloak, tunic and other clothes. By then I have aroused my boy and have said to him: Get up, boy, see if it is light; open the door and window.89

The thematic similarity does not seem to be coincidental, and there is a strong argument for reading ‘Lex diei’ as a scholastic colloquy, as the student not only describes the morning routine of the student, but puts to use those classroom exercises. Thematically ‘Lex diei’ would appear to be an imitation of this genre, though the Latin is quite different. Of course, for many scholars this would rule out any direct influence. However, as Carey has demonstrated the Hisperica were composed using a glossary of hisperic terms like that preserved in the C-Text, and the faminators were not interested in producing a perfect imitation of the classical exemplar. In fact, rather than imitation, 87 Compare also to Aldhelm’s ‘Letter to Heathfrith’. Howlett, 1994b, p. 43, ‘Nam quernadmodum alternatim reciproca facessante noctis nebula/mellifluum examen/Emergente axe tenus aequore Titane/glescentium culmina tiliarum per florulenta/ad crates graciles sarcinatum’ (‘For just as the honey-flowing swarm (of bees) – when the mist of night departs in its course and Titan (i.e. the sun) emerges from the sea up to the peak of heaven – clothed in yellow vestments carries its burden through the flowering tops of blooming lindens to the graceful honey-combs’) 88 Knappe, 1994, pp. 13-15 89 Pucci, 2009, p. 55 ‘Nutrix, nutritor, vesti me et calcia; tempus est, hora est, ante lucem ut manicemus ad scholam. Mane cum coepi vigilare (et mane viglavi), surrexi, surrexi de somno et a grabato, de lecto. Hoc primum facio (primum feci): deposui dormitoria, et sumpsi linteum, amictulum, pallium, fasciam, tunicam, et reliqua indumenta. Tunc ergo excitavi meum puerum, dixi illi: surge, puer, vide si iam lucet: aperi ostium et fenestram’

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aemulatio (‘emulation’) would be a more accurate description. For example, scholars have noted the influence of Roman epic on early Irish saga, but those influences may be secondary to native strategies and tales. This type of syncretism is precisely what one would expect from a learned, Irish milieu. It could also be, however, that there are other, now lost, exemplars to which the faminators turned. While this is an instance of progymnasmatic description, it also appears to be an imitation of scholastic colloquia. The evident syncretism demonstrates the faminator’s interest in placing these rhetorical teachings within the discursive, cultural context of early Ireland. Heroic language of the sagas and epics informs the metaphors used to describe oratorical debate, as well as metaphors associated with the natural world and astronomy. Some have argued that this is evidence of a native, pre-Christian, learned tradition preserved by the faminators. While there may be some truth to these claims, and while the source of those metaphors is likely to extend from an oral tradition, they are put to the ends of creating an Irish cultural reflex of late Latin learning, taking Vergil, Ausonius, scholastic colloquia, Isidore, Vergillius Maro, among others, as exempla. William Sayers has elucidated the significance of the ‘chain’ metaphor as witnessed in the phrase ‘Ausonian chain’, turning to the native Irish context of its use. He says the metaphors describing rhetorical skills are of two types, ‘cultural (turning, forging, incantation, warfare), and natural (aquatic flow and flood, fire)’.90 Sayers’ classification and attention to metaphor is indeed important and sets our inquiry on the right path. However, in my own understanding of metaphor, I would not differentiate between natural and cultural in such a sense, as certainly significance associated with the natural world is culturally situated. That being said, Sayers provides an essential framework from which to begin our own investigation of metaphor. Sayers pays special attention to the ‘Ausonian chain’, explicating the signif icance of the chain as something more than that which binds or enslaves: “Ausonian chain” like the “Ausonian flood” is only an occasional tag in the Hisperica famina, suggesting, variously, submission to the discipline of Latin grammar and the master, the dynamic interlocking of words through metre, syntax, alliteration, etc., and the link, in two directions, to both inspiration and the public, source and target, it is symptomatic of the larger Irish conception of artistic activity in its relation to divine forces.91 90 Sayers, 1990, p. 233 91 Ibid., p. 233

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An allusion here is made to texts such as the ‘Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ and the persistence of the imbas forosnai, a divine inspiration born of the mast of nine hazel trees that flow forth from the Well of Ségais and are carried down the River Bóinn. This inspiration is associated with the craft of the filid and is a trope invoked in the law-tracts and literary texts. Within the Hisperica, Sayers claims, we see evidence of attitudes toward nature, the resolution of Celtic, late antique, and Christian ideologies, the social organization of the school and, most importantly for this study, ‘the relative “positioning” of these schools of Latin rhetoric vis-à-vis traditional Irish (originally orally based) poetic schools and other Christian monastic centres of letters and learning’.92 The faminator refers to his eloquence as ‘urbana facundia’ (‘urbane eloquence’) and ‘loquelosus tenor’ (‘colloquial flow’).93 It appears that Ausonian, or Italian, eloquence is urbane, whereas hisperic eloquence is colloquial, and the faminator is skilled in both. In the beginning of the A-Text, some of the metaphors used to describe rhetorical speech include ‘egregiam urbani tenoris propinant’ (‘sparkling water of urbanity’) (A5), ‘fabulosas per ora depromunt gazas’ (‘treasures of stories’) (A10), ‘Num trucida altercaminum inter soboles pubescent litigia’ (‘savage disputes and contestations’) (A11), ‘sonoreus faminis per guttura popularet haustus’ (‘mouthful/draught of sonorous speech’) (A59), ‘ac exiguous serpit per ora riuus’ (‘scanty stream’) (A56), ‘urbani tenoris’ (‘torrent of urbanity’) (A60). Rhetorical speech is here considered as clean, clear water, as treasure, as a slow flowing or torrential stream. All of these metaphors, aside from treasure, indicate cultural values associated with the natural world, determined by the significance of these natural forces to social life. These metaphors can be seen as highlighting the perspicuity of speech given by Priscian, Donatus, Isidore, and many others. However, more significantly, these earthly metaphors are associated with that which is life giving and joyous. ‘Haustus’ can be translated as a ‘draught’, or ‘mouthful’ of something to be drunk, connoting a mouthful of ale or water, or the flowing of ale or water; a mouthful of sonorous speech is like a mouthful of ale or sparkling water. These metaphors also call forth common tropes and motifs from vernacular literature, where streams, lakes, and treasures are associated with the síd, poetic inspiration, and knowledge.94 ‘Sruth’ (‘stream, river, 92 Ibid., p. 234 93 Lapidge, 2004, p. 327, lists several instances of this phrase in Anglo-Latin literature, including the Historia Regum and Aldhelm. In the case of the latter, in the De Virginitate we get ‘“quis urbana uerborum facundia fretus enarrare sufficat”’ 94 In several of the Immrama (‘sea-voyages’) and Eachtraí (‘journeys’), early medieval Irish tales of voyages to the Otherworld, descriptions of the Otherworld include plains strewn in

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current, torrent’) is a metaphor used of speech and the arrival of wisdom or knowledge in a number of vernacular texts, as we will see below in ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’. Srúaim sois (‘a stream of great knowledge’) and srúaim ecna úaigh (‘stream of pure wisdom’) are examples, and a short poem in Book of Leinster reveals the fourteen streams of poetic ability.95 In Immacallam in dá Thuarad (‘Colloquy of the two Sages’), also in Book of Leinster, the poet Néde says that he practices sruth fail (‘a stream of science’)96 and gains ‘erraind nais a sruth buais’ (‘a share of new wisdom from the stream of science’).97 This metaphor for speech as ‘poetic streams’ is central to the Bretha Nemed law-tracts. As examples, the law-text describes ‘Dlomhthar derbh duimh do creath caonsrothaibh’ (‘poetic craft in fair streams’) and ‘Tamhan diandi dloing bánsrotha bhard mbinn’ (‘A taman, when he emits the fair streams of sweet-voiced bards’).98 In such metaphorical accounts of eloquence, there is no distinction between verba and res, between the saying and the said. Rhetoric is not conceived of as form and ornamentation, but shares the essence of, is born from the same source as, the knowledge it imparts. As for ‘treasures of stories’, there are also parallels in late antique rhetoric, where in the work of Boethius and Martianus Capella an artistic skill is rendered allegorically as a woman full of treasures. Dliged sésa a hUraicept na mac sésa (‘System of higher learning from the handbook of students of higher learning’), is a late eighth- or early ninth-century Irish text and an early example of the thought of Boethius and Martianus Capella in Ireland. Of this text, Johan Corthals writes: Dliged sésa evokes the development of speech from its natural, physical roots in the bodily organism and in the world of invisible elements (dé án anmae i curpaib dis. oillsib (§ 5) ‘fiery smoke of the soul in the covered particles’) into a developed artistic skill equated with a ‘woman full of treasures and desires’ (bé dúisech dúthrachtach, § 7), which will eventually enable the successful student to move into the highest circles of society.99

silver and gold, beautiful chariots, and the liminal space where the water meets the land is commonly associated with the síd. There is also an association of the otherworld and knowledge and learning; See Nagy, 1981-82 95 See Thurneysen, 1891, § 110 96 Stokes, 1905, p. 23 97 Ibid, p. 25 98 Breatnach, 1987, pp. 52-56 99 Corthals, 2007, p. 83

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The treasures of speech are both literal and metaphorical, as command over rhetorical speech provides one with social prestige and payments for services rendered to a patron.100 Dlíged sésa is an example of this metaphor in the syncretic, vernacular tradition, and the parallel with the Hisperica is interesting; however, the evidence is not enough to suggest with confidence that the faminators were familiar with Boethius or Martianus Capella. Instead, this may derive from other late antique writers, a native metaphor for verbal art, or both. Returning to the metaphor of speech as flood, the speaker admonishes his opponent, pleading with him to return to his homeland and give up the rhetorical battle. He praises his own eloquence, and in a more extended metaphorical account of rhetorical speech as an ‘Ausonian flood’, the faminator writes: As when a mountain stream passes over rocky precipices,/and the devouring flood uproots the leafy ash trees,/and unleashes thundering crashes with a roar,/destroying the mud dam in the river channel/and bearing away the hardened gravel in its whirlpool,/with equal turbulence do I surpass your Ausonian flood (A87-92).101

In competition with the stranger, the faminator provides a metaphor for the power of his rhetorical talents. His talent is a force of nature, a mighty flood, capable of great destruction. It is unclear whether the river metaphor is employed in the Hisperica with the native language of status and law in mind, or if this is allusion to Vergil’s Aeneid.102 As noted above, streams feature prominently in early Irish learned texts, as the lore associated with the Bóinne attests. The salmon of knowledge swam the River Bóinne, and it was from the source of this river, the well of Ségais, that divine inspiration, imbas forosnai, originated from the mast of nine hazel trees to be carried downstream by the salmon. Here, the Ash tree is swept away, and Ash trees, which grow near the water, were venerated in early Ireland, along with the 100 For the amounts rendered for various poetic compositions, see Breatnach, 1987 101 ‘Ceu montosus scropias tranat tollus per maciedes,/frondeos fluctiuaga eradicate hornos deuoratio,/inormia euoluit murmure crepita,/limosam fluminio mactat crepidinem alueo,/ concretas euellit uortice glarias,/pari ausonicum ex ubero pululamine fluuium.’ 102 Vergil describes the onslaught of warriors in Book 2.304-305: ‘[…] as when f ire attacks a wheat-field when the south-wind rages,/or the rushing torrent from a mountian stream covers the fields’ and Book 10.602-604: ‘Such were the deaths the Trojan leader caused across that plain, raging like a torrent of water or a dark tempest’; see also the examples provided in Orchard, 2000, pp. 35-36

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Oak and the Yew. While there is no direct mention of this within this text, this was certainly a part of the cultural imaginary of an early Irish milieu. The flood of eloquence is powerful enough to carry away even the most powerful and venerated objects of the natural world. A stark comparison follows the flood metaphor, one where rhetorical speech is equated with the heat of the sun and the intensity of fire, also one of the four elements: As when the red fire of the summer heat bakes the scarlet oaks/with its scorching/and reduces dry oaks to heaps of ashes,-/as when a fiery furnace vents its torrid exhalation/and directs the crackling flames through the ceiling,/with equal heat do I scorch the learned throngs./Or the truculent snake terrifies the herds of cattle,/that it may kill the fattened bullock in its tight embrace. It fills its horrible crop with the entrails’ fat,/It sucks with ferocious draught the bloody liquid,/with equal fear do I perturb the wretched diction of the historians (A93-104)103

In this description, the orator’s skill is rendered in a hyperbolic description that contrasts with the power of water. The heat of the summer sun is, of course, out of one’s control, but is clearly a powerful force of nature, whereas the heat of a furnace, essential for cooking and warmth, is a human invention, and its heat and strength are controlled. The similes represent the power of fire in two distinct realms, the natural and the social. The same interpretation applies to the snake consuming domestic cattle, a means of payment and sign of wealth and prestige in early Ireland, and this example is made more interesting by the absence of snakes in Ireland.104 Here, the orator also presents himself as a predator, his interlocutor the prey. The ‘prey’ identified here is historum logosa, or diction of the historians, likely an allusion to enarratio historiarum. There was great diversity in late antique curriculum, but for Quintilian poetic narratives were appropriate for the grammaticus, whereas historical narratives were left to the rhetor.105 103 ‘Ueluti rosea aestiui laris ueternas cremat pira(m) rubigine/amurcas,/ac aruca fauellosis minorat robora tumulis,/ciboneus torridum spirat clibanus ructum/fra(n)gosas flectit per laquearia flammas,/aequali doctoreas torero feruore cateruas./Ceu truculentus pecorea terret bouencus aremnta/saginatum stricta mactet iuuencum ligituria/horribilem uisceria complet ingluuiem aruina/sanguineum trucido hiatus sorbellat fluentum/pari erumnosos perturb pauore historum/logosa’ 104 See Orchard, 2000, pp. 36-37 for a discussion of the possible Latin sources of the serpent 105 Quintilian, Institutio 2.4.2, ‘grammaticis autem poeticas dedimus; apud rhetorem initum sit historica’

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Therefore, in Quintilianic rhetoric, the former teaches poetic material, and the latter prose.106 While there is no evidence that Quintilian was known in early Ireland, the association of prose with rhetoric persisted. It could be that at this point in rhetorical history the distinction between the grammaticus and rhetor, their relative pedagogical territory, does not serve us well. What is significant is that it is clear that rhetoric remained a part of the curriculum, regardless of the title of whomever taught the class. One could also read into these metaphors the distinction between natural and developed oratorical talent, a distinction of interest to rhetoricians throughout Antiquity. The fire metaphor also has later vernacular parallels. In Immacallam in dá Churad (‘The Colloquy of the Two Sages’), in response to a question about his name, Néde responds ‘Rosre tened,/Tene feth … Droncherdach co teinm a tein’ (‘Angriness of fire,/Fire of speech … Downright-skillful with bitterness (?) out of fire’).107 There is also a parallel metaphor in an example of praise uttered by the fili Urard mac Coise: ‘“A spurting flame causing a troop to tremble, a very lively blaze lastingly, the grandson of the kin of Liamain who hacks off heads, the mighty one of the Barrow, a torrential blow”’.108 Fire in the Colloquy is associated with the angry heat of firey speech, but in the Hisperica fire is a means for describing eloquence that inspires fear in an opponent in oratorical combat. Again in this section trees are central to the function of the metaphor. Of special significance in these passages are the Oak (‘dair’) and Ash (‘uinnius’) trees, two of the seven ‘airig fedo’ (‘lords of the woods’), which are granted special status in the law-texts and in the sagas.109 According to the ninth-century law-text Bretha Comaithchesa destruction or alteration of a neighbour’s tree carried hefty fines, especially for these highly valuable trees.110 Certain types of trees were also venerated in early Ireland in both ecclesiastical and secular contexts. In a Middle Irish collection of place-lore, the Dindshenchas, one poem celebrates five outstanding trees: Éo Rossa (a yew), Bile Dathi (an ash), Éo Mugna (an oak), Cráeb Uisnig (an ash) and Bile Tortan (an ash).111 In a discussion of the origins of the Ogham alphabet, the Auraicept suggests that ogham vowels are named in Gaelic from trees, of which there are four classes: chieftain trees, peasant trees, herb trees, and 106 Ibid., 2.4.2 ‘grammaticis autem poeticas dedimus; apud rhetorem initium sit historica’ 107 Stokes, 1905, p. 21 108 Breatnach, 2016, p. 69 109 See Kelly, 1999, p. 41 110 See Kelly, 1988, pp. 380-88 111 Kelly, 1999, p. 49

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shrub trees. Chieftain trees include oak, hazel, holly, apple, ash, yew and fir.112 The ash tree is venerated as ‘a check on peace’ as ‘of it are made the spear-shafts by which the peace is broken’.113 That trees appear in legal and vernacular grammatical contexts may be of significance for understanding this metaphor in the Hisperica. The burning and washing away of trees, which in a text such as the Auraicept are associated with the origins of the ogham alphabet, could be read as an allusion to the grammatical tradition, which was foundational and integral to all other branches of learning. The ‘Ausonian flood’ is capable of clearing such mighty and venerated trees, tearing them out by their roots, and the ‘fiery furnace’ of oratory burns them to their roots. Ausonian eloquence is capable of destroying the foundation of one’s grammatical and rhetorical learning. This also informs our understanding of the torrent metaphor in the Hisperica. For example, in the Lex diei, the faminator writes ‘What work of your own do you do?/Do you hew the sacred oaks with axes,/in order to fashion square chapels with thick beams?’ (A62-63). The faminator goes on to insult the strange student, suggesting he is a mere farmer who tends to sheep, compelling him to return home and give up his scholarly pursuits. This brings to mind the stories of churchmen cutting down the sacred Oak groves of the native inhabitants of Britain, using the wood to build chapels in their place, a practice with parallels in early Ireland.114 If the trees figuratively represent the origins of the alphabet, this could be a means of distinguishing between secular and ecclesiastical learning. What we can say with confidence is that these metaphors posit the power of rhetorical speech to destroy the sacred, by means of raging waters or fire, by flooding or intense burning, or as a snake consuming its prey. Not only 112 Calder, 1917, p. 89 113 Ibid., p. 91 114 According to Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldi, Saint Bonfiace, the Anglo-Saxon missionary, ordered his retinue to cut down ‘Jove’s Oak’, and use the wood to build a church at the site dedicated to St. Peter. This event took place in the eighth century, and therefore takes place after the composition of the text at hand. However, this was a common practice, and for this reason many early Gallic churches were located in Oak groves. See Riché, 1993, pp. 40-1; In Ireland, the emphasis appears to be more on individual venerated trees rather than sacred groves. Kelly, 1999, p. 49 writes ‘Such trees are referred to as bile or fidnemed. In some cases they were on monastic grounds. For example, the Annals of Ulster record the destruction by lightning in AD 996 of the monastery of Armagh, including its timber building, stone church, porch and “fidnemed”. Venerated trees may also grow on secular sites, and be a focus of local pride’. A tree’s status also made it a potential target for an enemy attack. One such example is in the Annals of Ulster that record in 1099 the Cenél nÉogain cut down a sacred tree of the Ulstermen, the Cráeb Telcha, ‘the tree of the hill’, and that in 1111 the Ulstermen retaliated by chopping down the sacred trees of the Cenél nÉogain.

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are these symbols of the natural world culturally significant, but they place the power of rhetoric on par with the most powerful forces of the natural world, fire and water, predator and prey. Well-crafted oratory is as powerful as those natural forces that consume and destroy even the most potent and symbolic elements of the natural world. Though these metaphors may have been borrowed from late antique rhetoric, their deployment here is distinctively Irish. We will now turn to the very opening of the A-Text, wherein reference to warfare does not function metaphorically, but rather lists a series of rhetorical topoí in the types of tales a poet would recite. At A7-21 the speaker encounters the newly arrived students and inquires where they come from, what they have studied, and what rhetor they adhere to: To what earthly region of the tripartite world/does this flourishing throng of rhetors bend its reins?/and what distant zones of the vast fundament have they abandoned?/Do they proffer the treasures of stories through their mouths?/Do savage disputes and contestations arise among offspring,/or do heirs acknowledge mutually agreeable reigns?/Has some savage band of warriors/rushed headlong in the deadly clash of battle,/to blacken their white flanks in dark rivers of purple gore?/or has the foamy flood of the booming deep/brought helpless oarsmen to shipwreck?/or has dreadful death swept away the populace to a common doom?/What texts do you recite/and what rhetor do you adhere to? (A7-21)115

Here, the faminator asks what part of the ‘tripartite world’ the visitors, the ‘throng of rhetors’, come from and compares the inventive capacity of the newly arrived strangers with that of his own colleagues.116 Using the language of Genesis, the faminator brings to mind the world of travelling monks, both the wandering Irish monks, the peregrinati, and those who travelled to Ireland from Britain and the Continent. The rhetor invites competition, certain of his colleagues’ superiority in the rhetorical arts. The 115 ‘Cui mundane triquadrae telluris artico/rhetorum florigera flectit habenas caterua?/et quae remota uasti fundaminis deseruere compete?/Utrum fabulosas per ora depromunt gazas?/Num trucida altercaminum inter soboles pubescent litigia,/an placorea abucant proles sceptra?/ Utrum saeuus a matorum coetus/toxica corruit certandi in acie,/ut fur is ostrei cruoris riuis./candida oliuarent madiada?/Seu spumaticum bombosi tithis flustrum/intertes oppressit naufragio remiges?/an horridum communi stragi rapuit acculas l(o)etum?/Quos edocetis fastos?/ Cuique adheretis rhetori?’ 116 The tripartite division of the world is explained in Genesis, but also in Isidore, Etymologies, 7.6.4-20

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clear competition between the Saxon and Irish schools in the humorous letter of Aldhelm to Heathfrith provides an appropriate parallel.117 What follows is a list of topoí for rhetorical invention, akin to the themes for declamation, including adventures at sea, such as the vernacular immrama (‘sea-voyages’) and echtraí (‘journeys’), stories of contested dynastic succession, great battles, shipwreck, and great pestilence.118 In this passage, it does appear that the faminator is more concerned with Latin literature and learning than with native tradition. For example, one could take this as a summary of key events in Roman epic. In the Aeneid there is the wreckage of Aeneas’s fleet by Aeolus’s winds, the pestilence that strikes Aeneas and his men in Crete and, of course, many great battles. Statius’s Thebaid, which was known in Ireland at least by the Middle Irish period, tells the story of Oedipus’s plot to destroy his sons by compelling them to fight for the throne of Thebes. However, biblical examples are also plentiful. In the Old Testament, Samuel 9-20 tells of the struggles of King David as his sons fight to be his successor to the throne. Such tales comprise the repertoire of the poet, and both Latin and native tales could have provided the raw materials for extempore composition. But composition first requires that a student learn the arts of description, narration, and so on. This thread is picked up by Gabrielle Knappe who describes the enigmata of the A-Text as based on Priscian’s Praeexercitamina, a Latin adaptation of Hermogenes’s progymnasmata. The topoí identified by the faminator above belong to narratio, though description and other means of amplification would be necessary to bring a composition to completion. Before turning to Knappe’s analysis, we will first entertain the possibility that in the Hisperica we see consideration of tale-types in a manner consistent with the late antique grammatical and rhetorical tradition. Of narratio, Priscian writes, ‘Narration is the presentation of an event as it happened or as if it happened […] But there are four kinds of narration: the fabulous, the fictional, the historical, the legal’.119 The faminator does not explicitly distinguish between fabula and historia, though there is allusion to the diction of the historian, and nowhere in the text is there obvious allusion to these concerns of late antique grammar and rhetoric, witnessed especially 117 See Lapdige and Herren, 1979, pp. 161-63; see also Howlett, 1994b, pp. 37-58 118 The immrama are generally considered to be of a more ecclesiastical nature, the echtraí (‘journeys’) their secular counter-part. Though such binary thinking has been challenged, the overall themes of the immrama do bring to mind the Irish monastic practice of peregrinatio. For a reading of relevant tales and a review of the literature, see Hillers, 1993, especially pp. 67-72; see also Dumville, 1976 119 Miller, 1973, p. 53

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in the Vergillian commentaries of Servius and Macrobius, but also treated by Quintilian and in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. However, the types of stories the faminator draws our attention to are indeed narrations. Stories of great warriors rushing into battle, sea journeys, and other tropes of saga literature can be classified as fabula, and later Irish writers made such distinctions, as witnessed in the Latin colophon to the Book of Leinster Táin. Stories of dynastic succession and plague, on the other hand, most often would be identified with historia, which is more closely aligned with truth–but not necessarily infallible truth– than fabula. Quintilian describes the practice of distinguishing between the two types of narration as enarratio historiarium and enarratio auctorum,120 and in Late Antiquity this was an essential function of the grammarian and rhetorician. The faminator is not concerned with distinguishing among the types of tales, perhaps because this is not the purpose of the text. If the purpose of the Hisperica is to demonstrate learning, even these allusions to types of narration would satisfy the listener. It could also be that these are common themes treated in composition exercises, similar to the thematic repertoire of declamation. However, the faminator only mentions these tales, but does so within the context of rhetorical competition. With description, we are on surer ground in the enigmata. Knappe argues that the enigmata are based on Priscian’s description exercises. Descriptions of the sky, the sea, fire, a field, the wind, and so on, align with Priscian’s instructions: ‘A description of events would be of a battle on foot or of a naval battle; one of time would be of spring or summer; one of a situation would be of the state of peace or of war; one of places would be of a seashore, a meadow, mountains, cities’.121 Priscian also relates six themes for description, themes Knappe demonstrates in the twelve enigmata.122 Knappe charts the thematic overlap: mixed description of tempus and res: description of locus extended: description of personae: description of multa alia: mixed description of tempus, status, and res:

Incipit lex diei De caelo, De mari, De campo De plurimis De taberna, de tabula, de oratorio, De oration De gesta res

In addition to the thematic overlap, the order of the enigmata follows that given by Priscian. Moreover, Priscian provides a quote from the Aeneid in 120 See Dietz, 1995, p. 66 121 Miller, 1973, p. 65 122 Knappe, 1994, p. 149

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the description of personae, and the faminator’s description (‘De plurimis’, A497-512) shares similar features to Vergil’s description.123 The final enigmatum, ‘De gesta res’, is an example of mixed description in which the themes tempus, res, and status are combined in the description of a public event. After a description of the morning akin to the scholastic colloquia, there is a narration and description of an attack by marauders on a group of native inhabitants as the marauders feast on a poached hog. Knappe notes that in this section the faminator relies on more than Priscian for the narratio exercise would require more details, such as who the marauders are, where they land, and so on.124 It could be that the faminator is invoking a tale or theme well-known to an Irish audience. Joseph Nagy has identified this brief tale as a fían-tableau inspired by native story-telling, stories of the mythological hero Finn and his band of warrior-hunters, the fíana.125 Carey also sees a parallel with accounts of Gallic warfare, as well as the Irish saga tradition, arguing the description was composed with native or contemporary story-telling in mind, creating a local reflex of late antique Latin learning.126 Ausonius and the Hermeneumata both include descriptions of similar scenes, albeit in dreams. For example, in Ephemeris 8 Ausonius writes, … of four footed beasts and winged creatures; when monstrous shapes of earth and sea are mingled in one […] Here I endure the sight of troops of cavalry cutting down brigands: or in the bloody arena some wild beast tears my face, or I am butchered with the sword. I go afoot across the wrecking sea, bound at a stride across the straits, and flit above the air on newfound wings’.127

123 Ibid., p. 151 124 Ibid., p. 151 125 Nagy, 1987, pp. 165-66 126 Carey, 2003-2004, pp. 48-49 writes ‘In Togail Bruidne Da Derga the doomed king Conaire, who has asked a witch what she sees for him in the future, receives the reply “I see for you … that neither lump(?) nor flesh of you will escape from the house into which you have come, except what birds will carry off in their claws”. And in the early version of Mesca Ulad, the gloomy Doeltenga prophesies to his warrior companions, “I swear what my tribe swears, that you will not reach your land ever, except for as much of you as birds will carry off in their claws”’ 127 The complete text in Pucci, 2009, p. 63, reads ‘[…] uadrupedum et colucrum, vel cum terrena marinis/monstra admiscentur; donec purgantibus euris/difflatae liquidum tenuentur in aera nubes./nunc for a, nunc lites, lati modo pompa theatric/visitor, et turmas equitum caedesque latronum/perpetior: laerat nostros fera beluva vultus/aut in sanguinea gladio grassamur harena/ per mare navifragum gradior pedes et freta cursu transilio et subitis volito super aera pinnis’

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Though there are late antique parallels in Ausonius and the scholastic colloquia, this tale is thematically Irish. Given the allusions to Irish tradition discussed above, perhaps only a brief mention would be required for the faminator’s purpose: a demonstration of one’s learning across a wide spectrum of grammatical and rhetorical knowledge. We can also see the syncretic impulse in the description in ‘De plurimis’ (‘On Many Things’). While several of the enigmata blend description and exhortation, this one is significant for its description of the scholars themselves, a description preceding that of a book container and a writing tablet that is said to contain ‘the mysteries of rhetoric in waxen spheres’ (A544).128 As noted above, this description is reminiscent of the scholastic colloquia and the poetry of Ausonius. The faminator writes, This renowned throng is radiant with flowery array;/it plumps itself out with red outer garments/and adds masses of vestments of multifold splendour./Some wear purple cloaks,/some confine their bodies with white garments,/others compress their meaty limbs with scarlet robes./Many heap up motley raiment around their fleshly frames,/gather together purple bestments,/support yellow caps on the crowns of their heads,/smooth their curly locks,/tie their yellow braids,/and carry bright booksacks on their necks./Many grasp square shields in their shield hands,/brandish iron daggers in their hands,/and possess other objects,/which I cannot describe in the allotted time (A500-512).129

Though the scholastic colloquies and Ausonius also describe the clothing that adorns the occupants of the school, the faminator goes into more detail. Most importantly, the colour of clothing held special significance throughout the Middle Ages generally, especially for royalty, and the same is true of early Ireland. For example, the vernacular law-tracts go into detail on clothing associated with status. Robin Chapman Stacey discusses the tenth- or eleventhcentury commentary on Cáin Íarraith, a tract on fosterage, that goes into 128 ‘ac sophica caereis glomerat misteria planetis’ 129 ‘Haec egregia floreis fulget caterua pompis,/quae fuluas congelat extrinsecus stragulas,/ ac uestiles multigene ligone nectunt strues./Caeteri purpureas a(c)r(i)ctant blemmos,/alii cicinias castant mediadis stolas,/alteri iacinthinas corporeis stipant trabias pernis./Plurifici storn os carnali compage globant amictus,/ostreas pastricant aremllosas,/giluas uerticibus alunt mitras,/crisposoque sedant cincinnos,/ac libosas copulant tricarias,/nitentes ceruicibus gestant curuanas./Innumeri quadrigonas captant scutilibus peltas,/ferriales uibrant idumis pugiones,/ac altera glomerant plasmamina,/quae temporali propiamine non exprimo’

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great detail on clothing. She explains: ‘Children of the freeman classes wore clothes that were dark or muted in colour, whereas children of the noble classes had garments that were all or partially coloured […]’.130 Reds, greens, purples, and blues were appropriate for the nemed (‘privileged’) class, whereas the muted colour was appropriate for the lower classes. Though the Cáin Íarraith is much later than the Hisperica, this practice is also related in the c. eighth-century, Old Irish law-tract Senchas Már: According to the rank of each man, from the humblest man to the king, is the clothing of his son. Blay-coloured, and yellow, and black, and white clothes are to be worn by sons of inferior grades; red, and green, and brown clothes by the sons of chieftains; purple and blue clothes by the sons of kings.131

Orchard draws attention to the parallel with Nauigatio S. Brendani, likely composed in the eighth century. Here, there are three groups dressed according to their age and rank: boys in white, young men in hyacinth, and elders in purple.132 It is not clear in ‘De pluribus’ that the colour of one’s clothing distinguished one’s rank within the school, but the description may distinguish the legal status of the schoolboys and clerics. As for clothing and the status of the learned orders, the ollamh, the chief poet of the seven grades of the filid, was allowed to wear up to six different colours, the same as the king, and the ‘flowery array’ may describe persons of the various ranks of the learned orders.133 Finally, in the Loch Gorman dindschenchas, the colourful raiments of the dress of a woman who appears to King Cathaír functions as an allegory for the áes dana (‘people of the arts’, or ‘poets’): ‘These are the colours thou speakest of/in the young woman’s raiment –/the men of every new art under heaven,/without sameness in their metres’.134 Though the description in the Hisperica is certainly no allegory, this legal and literary tradition might inform it. The last section we will look at is from ‘De tabula’, the description of the wax writing tablet. Martial metaphor is again deployed, but this time in the description of writing utensils. The faminator writes in ‘De pluribus’, ‘Many grasp square shields in their shield hands,/brandish iron daggers 130 Stacey, 2007, p. 17 131 Hancock et al, 1865, pp. 147-49 132 Orchard, 2000, pp. 43-44 133 Breatnach, 1987, pp. 87-88, writes that the distinction of the seven grades of the poets mirrors those of the ecclesiastics, and the former is determined by the extent of one’s learning 134 Translation in Boyle, 2016, p. 18

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in their hands’. The ‘square shields’ referred to here are wax tablets used for practising composition, and the ‘iron daggers’ are the styluses used for inscription. The wax tablet, carved from Oak, contains ‘ac sophica caereis glomerat misteria planetis’ (‘the mysteries of rhetoric in waxen spheres’) (A544). To return briefly to Ausonius, his description of the wax tablet bears resemblance to the faminator’s. In Ephemeris 7, Ausonius writes ‘cui multa fandi copia, punctis peracta singulis, ut una vox absolvitur’ (‘Open your folding tablets wherein a world of words is compassed in a few signs and finished off as a single phrase’).135 Again, the thematic parallels are striking, but clearly the faminator’s take is stylistically and figuratively unique. The writing tablet was also associated with the etymology of the letter, ‘a path for readers’, in several grammatical manuals from Priscian and Isidore to several ninth-century Irish grammarians, including the vernacular Auraicept. For example, Priscian writes, ‘It is called litera (letter) either as a leg-iter-a (reading road), because it provides a path for reading, or is derived from literua (erasure), as some prefer, because the ancients used to write mostly on wax tablets’.136 In this, we can perhaps understand this metaphor as a comparison of grammatical and rhetorical learning and combat, in which students are as dedicated to scholarship as the warrior is to battle. As the warrior possesses shield and sword, so the rhetor possesses grammatical knowledge and rhetorical knowledge. This martial metaphor is also representative of the general theme of this book, that following the decline in Roman military power, the tongues of holy men had become more powerful than the sword. For those Roman Christians seeking to subjugate the ‘barbarians’ on the far-flung frontiers, this power lay in the Word of God. However, the learned caste in early Ireland, the filid, wielded the power of satire and praise, a native oratorical form, which will be discussed at length below. In a society that valued warrior culture, the metaphor of writing implements as martial weapons certainly reveals something of the prominence of rhetoric. The spoken word is as powerful as the sword, we are told here, and this squares with Stacey’s plea for us to think of the power of the word in medieval Ireland as a power akin to that of the sword.137 The Hisperica famina offer an example of the syncretic learned tradition in early medieval Ireland. They are clearly modelled on a version of late 135 Pucci, 2009, pp. 58-59 136 Cook, 2020, p. 5; see idem, pp. 5-8 for an account of the ninth-century grammatical manuals that include this etymology, and for a discussion of this etymology relevant to the Auraicept 137 Stacey, 2007, p. 8

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antique scholastic colloquia, progymnasmata, and part of a tradition of Hiberno-Latin sapiential literature. Given the thematic and stylistic similarities in the extant manuscript recensions, along with their clear dependence on the Hermeneumata, it could also be argued that the progymnasmatic exercise paraphrasis was as prominent as description. The use of metaphors is especially rich and reveals much about the way a learned milieu in early Ireland conceived of the verbal arts, including both grammar and rhetoric, as well as the intermingling of Latin and native learning. That composition of such texts by students, perhaps upon completion of a course of study, was a common practice in early Irish schools is witnessed also in the vernacular Áilliu poems, though the Hisperica provide an early, Hiberno-Latin example. Further study of style and figuration in the Hisperica and other hisperic texts will shed light on what might rightly be referred to as an Insular Sophistic.

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Secular Learning and Native Traditions

This study has thus far demonstrated the ways in which the practices and pedagogies of late antique Latin grammar and rhetoric were adapted in the production of Latin learning in early medieval Ireland. As these are among the earliest extant texts produced within Ireland, they serve us well as a starting point in an investigation of this nature and scope. In the eighth century, the vernacular tradition flowered in its own right, and secular and Biblical Latin learning were integral to the production of this literature. However, there was also a learned class present in Ireland prior to the arrival of the Church, and their traditions were integrated with Latin learning in the formation of a syncretic, vernacular tradition, the fruits of which are ripe for rhetorical studies. As was alluded to above, there has been continued debate regarding the antiquity of native pseudo-history and poetry preserved in monastic scriptoria. That debate is too extensive to treat fully here. However, it should be noted that regardless of whether we might think of the extant texts as representative of an oral tradition is not necessarily of significance. Texts that will be referred to as ‘native’, or ‘secular’, are extant solely due to the introduction of writing by the Church. Furthermore, collaboration between clerics and the native learned community of Ireland led to their composition. Therefore, what we refer to as ‘native’ must be viewed in this light; such texts are still ‘Christian’ texts. Though we can never fully understand the nature of a native, oral tradition prior to the development of a vernacular literature, it is clear that such a tradition was used in the development of a learned tradition that fused Latin learning with the practices, themes, tropes, and motifs of Irish culture. This chapter will begin with a discussion of the school of the filid, a learned caste born of the fusion of ecclesiastics and secular scholars and organized according to a strict hierarchy. We will then turn our attention to an example of a learned text, written in prosimetric form, associated with a poetic-legal school, the ‘Nemed School’, titled ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ (hereafter, ‘The Cauldron’). I will situate this text within its historical and socio-cultural context in order to better understand the persuasive nature of poetico-legal discourses in early Ireland, as well as its portrayal of the liberal arts. Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_ch06

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‘The Cauldron’ both comments on and demonstrates the learning of a poetico-legal school with recourse to pseudo-history and grammatica. It is a syncretic text composed in verse and prose representative of the learning of the Nemed School and, as such, supplements the legal tracts described above. ‘The Cauldron’ is didactic in nature and representative of the wide range of learning of the filid. As in the law-texts, ecclesiastical and native learning are brought together in dialogic interaction. Above all, this text sheds light on the rhetorical dimension of law and poetry, praise and satire, and the social position of the filid, a person of stature in early Irish society who most closely parallels the rhetor of the Hellenic world.

Filidecht and Secular and Church Relations The story of Columba’s conversation with the boy from the Otherworld, Immacallam Choluim Chille ocus ind Óclaig (‘The Conversation between Colum Cille and the Youth’), dated to the eighth century, provides a framework for understanding the relationship of Christian clerics with the secular learned class in Ireland. In this brief, enigmatic tale, Colum Cille, on a circuit with his clerical retinue, sees a boy, an óclach, at Carn Eolarig on a hill overlooking Lough Foyle. This meeting in such a liminal space, where land meets water, and where sky meets land, indicates to the reader this is an otherworldly boy. Colum Cille asks the boy from where he has come, and the boy responds: ‘Respondit iuuenis: “I come”, said the youth, “from strange lands, from familiar lands, so that I may learn from you the spot upon which died, and the spot upon which were born, knowledge and ignorance”’.1 The boy describes the land beneath the lake, Mag Febuil, before it was inundated, an otherworldly description that shares features with a number of tales likely composed by a single milieu.2 The boy shares this knowledge of the distant past and the Otherworld with Colum Cille and asks that the saint share with him knowledge of Christianity. What is most striking about this tale is that Colum Cille wishes to learn from the boy the secrets of Ireland’s pre-Christian past. The majority of their conversation, however, is not shared with the reader, just as Colum Cille, 1 Carey, 2002, pp. 60-62, ‘Do-dechad-sa,’ ol ind óclach, ‘a tirib ingnad, a tirib gnath, co fesur uait-siu fót forsa mbeba ocus fót fora ngénir fis 7 anfis.’ Respondit Colum Cille: ‘Cesc,’ ol Colum Cille; ‘cóich robo riam, a lloch-sa at-chiam?’ 2 For a discussion of this text and the tradition of which it is a part, see Johnston, 2015; for an edition and translation, see Carey, 2002, pp. 57-61

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at the tale’s conclusion, refuses to share the content of the conversation with his monkish retinue. The exchange of knowledge in the tale works as a metonym for the shared learning of cleric and native scholar, of senchas and scriptural learning.3 Colum Cille is an ideal figure for the tale as he was strongly associated with the filid, especially as a defender of their learning at the historical convention of Druim Cett of c. 590. This legendary account portrays clerics poised to expel the learned order from Ireland before Colum Cille comes to their defence. 4 Many tales mirror this framework, wherein saints converse with heroes of Irish pseudo-history, including St Patrick. Johnston writes that the discourse between saints and characters from Irish pre-history ‘are emblematic of Christianity and native senchas, respectively’ and that the narratives ‘revolved around authority and knowledge, including native traditions interpreted within the superstructure provided by Christianity, one validated by the saintly protagonists’.5 It should be unsurprising then that Patrick later emerged as a mythologized figure whose literary and rhetorical function within various tales was to validate secular practices as they took shape within Christian communities. A prime example is the ‘Pseudo-historical Introduction to the Senchas Már’ (hereafter ‘The Introduction’), the introduction to the canonical collection of Old Irish law-tracts dating from the seventh or eighth century. ‘The Introduction’, likely composed many years after the original lawtracts were gathered together in the manuscript, gives the time of the composition of the laws as ‘after Patrick’s arrival in Ireland and his victory over the druids’.6 According to this legendary account, Patrick’s adherence to the law was tested by Loígaire (fl. fifth century), a pre-Christian king, who ordered Patrick’s charioteer, Odrán, killed. At Odrán’s death, Patrick raised his hands to the heavens in anger and summoned an earthquake that shook the whole of Ireland. God granted Patrick whichever ‘brehon’ he desired, and he chose Dubhthach moccu Lugair, the ‘chief poet of Ireland’, as arbitrator.7 Binchy provides a summary of the tale: After this case had been decided, the men of Ireland resolved to amend the whole body of their law in accordance with Christianity, and Patrick 3 4 5 6 7

See Johnston, 2015 See Nagy, 1997, pp. 135-98 Johnston, 2015, p. 419 Binchy, 1975-76, p. 17 Ibid., p. 18

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agreed. At a fresh meeting in Tara all the men of arts (aés dána) were brought to demonstrate their professional functions before the saint. And to Dubthach moccu Lugair was entrusted the task of expounding “the judgements and filidecht” (doubtless a reference to the original oral transmission of the laws in verse). At this point all three recensions stress the fact that the pre-Christian sages of Ireland who had proclaimed “the law of nature” (recht aicnid, used in the Pauline rather than the classical Roman sense) had been inspired by the Holy Ghost just like the Hebrew prophets.8

This moment is described as a ‘comuaimm’ (‘stitching together’) of Church and tribe, and the legend serves to validate the learned caste of Ireland as ordained by Patrick himself. Binchy argues that the filid and their schools had been Christianized for several years before the composition of the canonical part of the Senchas Már, and that the original preface, dating to the seventh century, makes no mention of Patrick. The text’s purpose, the ‘comuaimm’, was to defend or to emphasize the compatibility of native law with ‘recht litre’ (‘law of Scripture’), while framing native law as Natural Law.9 Patrick’s insertion into the law-tracts was a common practice, and the vernacular Córus Bésgnai also portrays the law as framed with Patrick’s blessing.10 The clerics and native learned community worked together in textual production, including not only law-tracts, but history, poetry, and saga, as well, all of which were portrayed as ordained by the Holy Spirit.11 The seventh century was the critical period in the development of Irish law. A complex legal system and legal profession responsible for the oral transmission of legal maxims and verse flourished prior to the introduction of Christianity. By the time legal knowledge was put down in writing, there was already a blending of native and Latin traditions, and this included learned personnel. Based on the evidence of early law-texts, Donnchadh 8 Ibid., p. 19 9 This argument is convincingly developed in Watson, 2018, especially pp. 92-97 10 For a critical edition and translation, see Breatnach, 2017 11 Filidecht is justified as ‘natural knowledge’ ordained by the Holy Spirit. Watson, 2018, writes ‘There [Senchas Már] we are told that the Holy Spirit “spoke and prophesied” (ro labrastar ⁊ doairechain) through the mouths of “righteous poets and judges” (brethemon ⁊ filed firéon fir), from the first settling of Ireland “until (the) coming of the faith” (co cretem anall), in the same way as he did through “the chief prophets and patriarchs” (inna primfáide ⁊ inna n-uaslaithre) of the Old Testament. The results of this “speaking” and “prophesying” are broadly characterized as the “law of nature” (recht aicnid), in two places, but in one instance, are divided into two distinct elements: i.e. the “law of nature” and the “law of the prophets” (recht fáide)’

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Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach, and Aidan Breen write that ‘a large party in the Irish church in the seventh and eight centuries consciously conceived of the mandarin caste of churchmen, scholars, jurists, canon lawyers, and historians and poets, to which they belonged, as priests and levites in the strict Old Testament sense of these terms’.12 In kind, the sevenfold hierarchy of the filid given in the law-tract Uraicecht na Ríar–and subsequently adapted in numerous law-texts–depends on that of the Church, an order which is drawn from the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit and elaborated in the spirit of Isidorean etymologizing.13 Both saints and legendary figures from oral tradition provided the filid with a means for establishing their own ethos and articulating their divine origins in early Irish society. The filid clearly had an important social function. As for the type of learning that was the dominion of the filid, it included three primary branches: fénechas (law); filidecht, which encompassed senchas (genealogy, history), scéla, (‘tales’, historical or mythological), dindschenchas (placename lore), and praise poetry and satire; and at times légend, Latin learning. Prosimetric form is pervasive in early Irish literature, and intentionally archaizing verse is imbued with authority and credibility and is used to provide testimony, authority, and corroboration in a variety of genres. 14 In this, poetry is pervasive. To be qualified as a fili, one had to master this vast body of oral literature, or coimcne. A list of the types of tales to be memorized by a fili is as follows: Aided (‘death-tale, violent tale’); Aithed (‘elopement’); Baile/buile (‘vision, frenzy’); Cath (‘battle’); Compert (‘conception’); Echtra(e) (‘expedition, journey’ (to the otherworld)); Fess/feis (‘feast’); Fís (‘vision’); Forfess/forbais (‘beleaguering, siege, night-watch’); Im(m)ram (‘sea-voyage’); Orcian/orcun (‘murdering, ravaging’); Serc (‘love’); Slúagad/slógad (‘a hosting, a military expedition’); Táin (‘Driving off, cattle-raid’); Tochmarc (‘wooing, courting’); Tochomlud (‘setting forth, proceeding, advancing – origin legend’); Togail (‘attack, destruction’); Úath (‘terror horror’).15 Tales were composed for wealthy patrons, and many reflect the political concerns of the benefactors. Indeed, the production of manuscripts was expensive, and a well-stocked scriptorium was a sign of prestige. Mastery of these tales, along with hereditary requirements, determined the grade of a fili. The Uraicecht na Ríar (‘Primer of Stipulations’), part of the Bretha Nemed Toísech, provides the qualifications for the various 12 13 14 15

Ó Corráin, Breatnach, and Breen, 1984, p. 394 See Breatnach, 1987, pp. 82-100; see also discussion and references in Watson, 2018, pp. 45-48 See Toner, 2005 Mac Cana, 1979, pp. 73-81

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grades of poets and clerics according to nemed (‘noble’) status. The highest secular grade, the ollam, ‘has three hundred and fifty compositions, that is fifty for each grade; he is knowledgeable in all historical science, and he is knowledgeable in the jurisprudence of Irish law’.16 The ollam also has a high ‘honour-price’, which is determined by grade, and has a golden branch above his head.17 The second highest grade is the ánroth, who has ‘pursued a course of study’ and has ‘ability in poetry, and he is not from a family which practices poetry […] Splendid is his poetry, splendid his attendance at study. He has one hundred and seventy five compositions’.18 The ánroth has a silver branch above his head.19 The lower grades have also mastered learning, but not to the degree of the top two, and the bard ranks the lowest. The three lowest grades, the taman, drisiuc, and oblaire possess fewer compositions, twenty, ten, and five respectively, and they do not have knowledge of letters.20 They have a bronze branch above their head,21 and are not qualified to render judgements as ‘Roscad’s (alone) do not make the apportioning of truth; gleaning tamans oppress the chiefs of a court … It is neither roscad nor chanting which apportion the truth to all. Better is prolific nature out of which judgements are triumphantly delivered’.22 In order to render true judgements, a fili must do much more than master an obscure style. In terms of ancient rhetoric, verba and res are not distinguished, but the content of the judgement, the status of the judge, and the form and style of the utterance are essential to legitimacy. The monastic schoolmaster, the ‘fer léigind’, enjoyed prestige within the learned, literate, ecclesiastical communities in Ireland and abroad; however, the way to secular power was through the literacy of the filid. Johnston writes: Moreover, the work of monastic pseudo-historians showed that a creative combination of traditional knowledge and Christian learning could bring about a new literature which had, at the same time, claims to antiquity […] The fili’s professional competence and the fer léigind’s ecclesiastical prestige combine with the overking’s reception of a story to create a community of learning and power […] Christian injunctions against 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Breatnach, 1987, p. 103 Ibid., p. 94 Ibid., pp. 107-9 Ibid., p. 94 Ibid., p. 13 Ibid., p. 94 Ibid., p. 13

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secular tales failed before this complex realization of a culture that was at once native and Christian.23

Johnston succinctly and helpfully identifies a ‘threefold hierarchy of literature’, which included scéla, for a secular audience, scripture and exegesis, for a Christian and Christianizing audience, and pseudo-history, which mediated the two and served as the adhesive for the Irish elites.24 Johnston is interested in the social use of this categorization of texts, stating that not only did the filid have to memorize them, but that such texts would have been utilized on certain occasions, with some composed to be read by individuals, while others were intended to be performed orally as part of a public performance.25 In addition to the memorization of numerous texts, to achieve the highest status of ollam, and enjoy the full rights of his profession, one’s father and grandfather must have been of the filid: ‘If he be not the son of a poet, however, or a grandson, only half honour-price goes to him’.26 The filid relied on patronage by either kings, nobles, or the Church, and the fili was an essential figure in the hierarchy of early Irish society. In order for a túath to be recognized as a túath, it must have a fili. A text in the Corpus Iurius Hibernici claims ‘Ni tuath cin tri saornemthib samuidter, eclais flaith file’, (‘No túath is established without three noble nemeds, a churchman, a lord, a poet’), a requirement echoed in the Bretha Nemed: ‘Ni ba tuath tuath gan egna, gan egluis gan filidh, gan righ, ara corathat cuir ocus cairde do thuathaibh’, (‘A túath is not a túath without an ecclesiastical scholar, a churchman, a poet, a king by whom contracts and treaties are extended to (other) túath’s’).27 In some law-texts, however, the abbot is placed on equal footing with the fili, and in general the rí thúath, the king of a túath, is subservient to the bishop.28 For example, the author of Críth Gablach (‘Branched Purchase’) asks the question ‘“who is nobler, the king or the bishop?” and concludes 23 Johnston, 2013, p. 155 24 Ibid., p. 156 25 Ibid., p. 25 26 Breatnach, 1987, p. 67 27 Ibid., p. 90 28 Breatnach, in a talk give at Tionól in 2014, provides further examples: ‘Biaid íar tain suidigud gill fri cimbail guth, co n-ailli co fiat, fillfit flaithi foltaib fir fri eclais, ar is ruidles la cach riucht; tárfaidir gáu, ar-foilgither fuigel Féine’ (‘There will be after a time the giving of a pledge to ward off a bell’s sound, with halleluiah with fiat, lords will bend, because of (its) assets of truth, to the church, for it is totally immune from claim by any person; falsehood will be spurned, the arbitration of the laymen will be eclipsed’); ‘Níbi do flaith laimithir labrathar, ar ní i n-airecht láech clandtair findsruth fír, ar is for ailchib firinne fothaigthir áe ecalsa’ (‘It is not to a lord that

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that the bishop is nobler because “the king rises up before him on account of the Faith”’.29 As we saw above, clerics and the filid interacted, but the nature of their relationship fluctuated depending upon time and place. And, certainly, to speak of a singular relationship would be to neglect the complexity of historical circumstance. It is likely that these relationships differed from person to person and community to community, and thus ‘mandarin castes’, plural, may be a more accurate description. Stacey argues that secular and ecclesiastical scholars had a shared intellectual horizon, and their training, whether clerical or secular, judicial or poetic, would have overlapped. Jurists and poets both drew on biblical and canonistic texts, translating ecclesiastical texts into professional vernaculars, revealing a command of Christian learning. In kind, the stylistic influence of Latin grammar on vernacular law-tracts is clear.30 Stacey, following Charles-Edwards, provides an account of the context in which this type of education may have been obtained. Education in early Ireland was divided into two stages, the first focused on grammar and rhetoric, with some biblical training, and the second, which was more advanced, on exegesis. Not everyone progressed through both stages: ‘some who “might enter the ranks of the learned”, but who were not destined for a career in the church, might complete only the first part of the training […] The literati of early Ireland were in other words, more of a “complex aristocracy” than a single mandarin class’.31 So while we might speak of the Nemed School as a single, learned milieu, we must allow for some degree of diversity among the filid in early Ireland. As mentioned above, pedagogy and patronage were two fundamental aspects of the training of a fili in a curriculum that included knowledge of oral tradition, reading and writing, and mnemonic training.32 While all education took place within monastic communities, the laity could receive an education in a monastery without taking clerical orders. In addition to training in Scripture, the poet is portrayed as a grammatical expert in something akin to the traditional Latin curriculum. The BND, for example, quotes the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium in a discussion of it ventures to speak, for it is not in the assembly of laymen that the fair stream of truth is settled, for the lawsuit of the church is founded on rocks of righteousness’) 29 Breatnach, 1987, p. 41 30 Stacey, 2007, p. 58 31 Ibid, p. 59 32 Johnston, 2013, p. 144

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voice.33 The fili’s function in society shared close parallels with the Hellenic rhetor. Johnston explains: Like the classical rhetor, the fili was concerned with the connections between oral utterance, gesture and persuasion. This was crucial to his successful function as a highly regarded literary specialist within the royal court. Similarly, he learned the laws governing metrics and the different levels of rhetorical expression. The latter fed into the very complex linguistic register of rosc, which is a notable feature of many legal and literary texts.34

As Corthals, Johnston sees the influence of Roman rhetoric in the obscure style known as rosc. For the learned classes of poets in Ireland, the ritualistic performance of obscure language distinguished them from everyday citizens. The obscure ‘language of the poets’, bérla na filed, distinguished the fili in vernacular verbal art. Bérla na filed finds a parallel in Latin, called bán bérla (‘white language’), as well as bérla féne, the language used by jurists. All three contrast with gnáthbérla, everyday language, and the language of the professionals distinguished them from other citizens.35 In several law-tracts we are told that there are specific and strict requirements of the filid. As was noted above, command of the obscure, alliterative roscada alone does not give a fili the power to render fír (‘truth’ or ‘justice’). However, a judgement not given in rosc is not credible. As the basis of sound judgements, the fili must know the ‘three rocks’ roscada, fásaige (‘maxims’), and tesdemuin (‘testimony’) on which they are based.36 The latter two constitute the ‘law of nature’. But the soundness of judgements is also distinguished based on the type of judge. For a secular judge, all sound judgements are based on maxims, whereas for a clerical judge they are based on Scripture, and for rulers they are based on both.37 It is clear that a fili must be well-versed in a vast body of literature, especially maxims, have mastery over arrangement and style (roscada), and must be skilled in performative delivery. The fili must recognize what maxims and precedents are relevant to the case at hand and render them in 33 Ibid, p. 146 34 Ibid, p. 146 35 Ibid, p. 146; see also the discussion in the Auraicept of berla Fene (‘Language of the Irish’), fasaige na filed (‘Commentaries of the Poets’), berla etarsgarta (‘Parted Language’), berla forttide na filed (‘Obscure Language of the Poets’), and íarmbela in Calder, 1917, pp. 101-105 36 Stacey, 2007, p. 74 37 Ibid., p. 168

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judgements. Even the lowest grade of poets, those belonging to the bardic class, were required to demonstrate mastery of grammatical and rhetorical learning and observe custom. As the Uraicecht na Ríar proclaims, ‘Correct … playing of music to every company in the merry house of a mead-hall, eloquence applied to historical lore (soindsce for coimgne), proper arrangement and harmony are what confer dignity on a cano who sings in harmony bardic compositions’.38 Regardless of origins, this verbal art performed an important function in early medieval society. The jurisprudence of the early Irish court was a complex, well-organized system. However, not much is known of court procedures. No actual speeches from important legal cases survive, though the literary representations are plentiful, and narratives and verse are central to early Irish law-tracts, while legal scholarship informs saga.39 Given the interrelatedness of various branches of learning, it is from these literary and historical texts that we can get a glimpse, albeit a filtered one, of what Irish court procedure looked like. 40 The Irish term airecht can be translated as ‘court’, though one must be cautious in assuming close parallels with the Roman court. 41 For minor disputes, such as those regarding land law, neighbourhood regulations, and kinsmen, court could be held in the house of the brithem (‘judge’). 42 Legal disputes involving more prominent individuals or significant disputes took place in the airecht. It is likely that this court was a large, outdoor public assembly and included ‘formation of political alliances, the proclamation of legislative initiatives, and the festive aspects of kingship and rule – feasting and the racing of horses’. 43 Those involved in the legal process likely sat 38 Breatnach, 1987, p. 35 39 See especially Qui, 2014; idem, 2013; see also Ó Cathasaigh, 2005a; idem, 2005b 40 One such text is Immathchor nAilella ⁊ Airt. In this conversational altercation, spoken entirely in rosc, Ailill Aulomm, father of the ancestor of the Eoganachta, and Art mac Cuinn, brother of Ailill’s wife Sadb. The matter in dispute is comaltar, ‘parents sharing in the fosterage of their children’, of Sadb’s children after Ailill rejected her and she fostered her children in seclusion. Corthals, 1995, p. 93 says of the text ‘it is the only one that gives a full account of the different stages of a legal proceeding deriving from a historical case, and thus, it can be regarded as a reflex of a literary genre which in the rhetorical schools of antiquity was called controversia’. Corthals also suggests the speeches of the participants in Immathchor are written in an elevated style akin to genus grande in Latin rhetoric, including formal f igures, amplif ication, artistic patterns of word-position, and metre; see also Stacey, 2007, pp. 60-7 41 See Sharpe, 1986, p. 169 42 Breatnach, 1990, pp. 9-10 43 Stacey, 2007, p. 62

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within an enclosure in a carefully structured space. Stacey writes of this space: Function and rank were communicated by the placement and movement of persons within the enclosure. Judges sat at its very heart: all movement made during the pleading and evidence-gathering part of the session seems to have been toward or away from these men, who were clearly conceptualized as both the literal and symbolic centre of the proceedings. In one direction only did the judges themselves – or at least their words – appear to move. Judicial verdicts reached by judges had actually to be proclaimed by the king, bishop, and chief poet who sat behind them at the back of the court.44

Though there was likely to have been regional variation as to the organization of such an assembly, it is clear that it was a performative space in which staging and ritual was as persuasive as the verbal art of those experts called on to render judgements. 45 By the ninth century, though perhaps earlier, a professional class of advocates known as aigne presented pleas. There were three types of advocates, the glasaigne (‘fettering advocate’), aigne airechta (‘court advocate’), and aigne fris-n-innle breith (‘advocate whom judgment encounters’).46 Different law-texts provide different hierarchies, and it is highly likely that there was variation over time and across regions. However, it is clear that there was a systematic process whereby judgments were rendered, and there was a professional class of individuals who participated. Testimony, pleas, counterpleas, recitation of history, precedents, verbal art, and so on were integral to the pageantry and symbolic action of the airecht. The eighth century Cóic conara fugill (‘Five Paths of Judgement’) (hereafter Cóic conara) is the main source of what court procedure would have looked like. A plaintiff must first initiate a law-case (aí), publicly declare an offence has occurred (aidbriud, (‘assertion’)), and hire an advocate (aigne) to plead the case. 47 One recension of Cóic conara lists eight stages of a law-case: (1) fixing a date for the hearing, (2) the aigne choosing the appropriate ‘path of judgement’, (3) giving of security (árach), (4) pleading (tacrae), (5) rejoinder ( fecrae), (6) judgement (breth), (7) promulgation ( forus),

44 45 46 47

Ibid., p. 63 On seating arrangement of the court, see also Kelly, 1988, pp. 193-6 Breatnach, 1990, pp. 11-12 Kelly, 1988, p. 190

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(8) conclusion. 48 Two other recensions of Cóic conara give the five ‘paths’ for pursuing a case. These include fír (‘truth’), dliged (‘entitlement’), cert (‘justice’), téchtae (‘propriety’), and coir n-athchomairc (‘proper enquiry’). Of the five paths, Corthals argues that the underlying idea is similar to the questions of stasis theory and may be an explanation of native Irish court procedure in light of Latin rhetoric. 49 Corthals also takes the early eighth century Immathchor nAilella ⁊ Airt (‘Mutual Restitution between Ailill and Art’), a text he sees as realted to Cóic canara, as the only historical text transmitted in rosc ‘that gives a full account of the different stages of a legal proceeding’ and that is ‘a reflex of a literary genre which in the rhetorical schools of antiquity was called controversia’.50 The evidence Corthals presents for the influence of Latin rhetoric on Cóic canara is convincing, but further research is necessary to determine how widespread this influence on early Irish law was generally. The role of the filid was complex, and their responsibilities included recitation of poetry, history, and rendering judgments in judicial contexts. As the king must possess fir flethemon, the filid possesses fir filed, (‘truth of poets’), which is manifested in the purity of their compositions.51 To what degree the filid were involved with legal proceedings is unclear, and the Nemed School seems to have been unique in its association of the filid with judicial contexts, and should perhaps be seen as a school in which the separation of these crafts had not taken place. In other law-texts the brithemain (‘jurists’) are often given as a distinct order, and they are divided into three grades in the Nemed School.52 Again, we must be cautious with generalizations as there appears to be a fair degree of diversity. Therefore, the analysis of ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ below should not be taken as necessarily representative of the general state of learning in early Ireland. It is clear, however, that the filid were a wealthy and powerful group. Another important function of this class of poets was the composition of áer (‘satire’) and molad (‘praise’). This verbal art is clearly of an epideictic nature, though it does appear to be a native practice. However, it would have likely been understood in light of Latin learning, and epideictic was central to late antique rhetorical curricula. At this point, I am unaware of any studies demonstrating the influence of Latin rhetoric in the practice of 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid., p. 191 Corthals, 1995, n. 28 Ibid., p. 93 Stacey, 2007, pp. 35-41 See Kelly, 1988, pp. 47-52; See also Breatnach, 1990

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praise and satire, and a comparative study is wanting. This Irish epideictic tradition was highly structured and elaborated according to legal procedure. Only a nemed (‘dignitary’) could lawfully satirise, and the target of a satire, or the subject of a praise poem, could be both a secular figure or a cleric, and this power imbued the filid with great prestige.53 The signif icance of satire and praise is indicative of the importance of honour, enach (literally ‘face’, also ‘honour’), in early Irish society. Panegyric was the province of both the bardic and filid classes, though the praise and satire of the filid was marked by displays of knowledge superior to that of the bard.54 Of the filid’s satire, Johnston writes, ‘Satire ranged from laconic but cutting statements, to formal verse-types and was feared as a semi-magical weapon, a fear that was undoubtedly real in a society so preoccupied with public honour’.55 There are extant satires associated with the tradition of the filid, and numerous accounts in the law-texts and sagas speak to their significance.56 But satire had its counterpart in praise, and as satire had the power to deface, praise had the power to undo the effects of a satire. The existence of pre-Norman praise poetry, however, is scant, though it is clear that it was also a central duty of a fili.57 We should not necessarily think of praise and satire as opposites, as in the law-texts they are not discussed in binary terms, but are interrelated in complex ways. In early Irish society, the power of the word was parallel to the power of the sword, and the satire of the filid invoked fear, granting them great power.58 A potent satire was said to raise blisters on one’s face, and in some instances kill.59 The power of the verbal effacement of honour was also prevalent in ecclesiastical contexts, and early Irish clerics had fused this secular tradition with the singing of the Psalter in the ritual practice of ‘salim escaine’ (‘psalms of malediction’). This was an efficacious practice of admonition designed to help Irish clergy deal with powerful enemies and that involved the ritual singing of psalms and the ringing of bells.60 Though the practice of satire is ordained for both secular scholars and clerics, the 53 Breatnach, 2006, p. 63 54 See the discussion in Ó Cathasaigh, 2013 55 Johnston, 2013, p. 166 56 For a collection of early Irish satire, see McLaughlin, 2008 57 See Breatnach, 2006 58 Stacey, 2007, p. 8 59 See, for example, the satire of Nede son of Adnae related in Cormac’s Glossary in Stokes, 1862, pp. xxxvi-xli; See also the study of Meroney, 1953-58 60 See Wiley, 2001

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Bretha Nemed Déidenach distinguishes between the two. Breatnach points to a section of the text that elucidates the distinction between the lawful use of praise among the secular filid and the Christian cleric: Is payment for praise or satire ordained? As for the law of the godly folk, only the praise of God is ordained, and heaven is its reward. As for the law of the worldly folk, however, it is ordained, as Solomon said: As silver is tested in the crucible, and gold in the furnace, thus a man in the mouth of one who praises.61

Clerics were not allowed to receive payment for satire or praise, whereas the payments due to a fili are elaborated in law-texts. The Bretha Nemed Déidenach (hereafter BND), one of two principal surviving remnants of the Nemed School, designates the authority of the filid in early Irish society, provides a list of duties, and distinguishes between the various grades of poet, especially in relation to praise and satire.62 This form of epideictic rhetoric was highly regulated according to a mutually agreed upon understanding of its judicial function. Satire was only lawful under certain conditions and was used by the filid as an ‘absolute sanction’, something beyond the jurisdiction of the low-ranked poets, such as the bard, a right that imbued the fili with a great deal of power in early Irish society; satire was not to be taken lightly. The pervasive power of satire is due to the importance of honour in early Irish society. The BND provides that one’s honour is more fragile than one’s body: The body is not as vulnerable as the face/honour. A single treaty is enforced throughout Ireland. It is the poets who enforce the regulation of honour, because of (the existence of) the hostile territories without exchange of hostages and joint citizenship … so that everyone submits to the poets for fear of their satire, having their cheeks/honour as hostage.63

Due to the importance of honour and the power of satire, its practice was highly regulated. As Breatnach explains, satire was a last resort: ‘a number of formalities must be observed, all with the purpose of giving ample warning to the 61 Breatnach, 1987, p. 64 62 See editions and translations of select passages, see the following: Breatnach, 1987; Ó Corráin, Breatnach, and Breen, 1984; Watkins, 1963; Gwynn, 1942 63 Breatnach, 2004, p. 27

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offender and providing him with the opportunity of avoiding being satirized by settling the matter at issue’.64 The target of the satire must have the opportunity to resolve the dispute, and the composition of a trefocal was the means to persuade compliance; it served as a formal warning. The trefocal consisted of a mixture of praise and satire, was required to be metrically perfect, and was carried out over a period of ten days.65 The performance of the satire could itself last up to 30 days. This mixture is often described in an image of the three colours of poetry, white, black, and speckled. Breatnach cites an example from the Auraicept: ‘White by which one praises, black by which one satirizes, speckled by which one gives notice’.66 The three ‘utterances’ of the trefocal include naming the offence, naming the offender, and praise. The trefocal lasted ten days, and by law certain provisions had to be provided to the fili and his entourage, including food, for its duration.67 The requirements, however, differ depending on the rank of the target of the admonishment, whether ecclesiastics, lords, poets, and commoners. For ecclesiastics, psalms of malediction or fasting would be used in place of the trefocal, along with the ringing of bells and the presentation of the saint’s relics, especially a saint’s crozier.68 In these public events, symbolic action consisted of visual, sonic, material, and verbal rhetoric. The filid were also granted the privilege to lawfully satirize the king if he was seen to be in violation of his obligations to his people, if the produce of the land succumbed to drought or blight, if he was not whole in body, or if he uttered a false judgement and violated fír flathemon, or ‘prince’s truth’. Though some scholars have identified this role as a continuation of the role of the druid in pre-Christian society, it is more likely that it is a development of this new social configuration. For example, Daniel Watson has demonstrated that the doctrine of fír flathemon, as articulated in the late seventh-century specula principium, Audacht Morainn (‘Testament of Morann’) and the early seventh-century Pseudo-Cyprian De XII abusius saeculi (‘On the Twelve Abuses of the World’), may have originated in the 64 Breatnach, 2004, p. 25 65 In Cormac’s Glossary, Trefhocal is defined thus: ‘i. trifoccail bíte and .i. dafoccul domolad dobreith forcula animdergtha dofairce (intres focul .i. focul imdergtha ocus aeir(e)’ ‘three words that are in it, i.e. two words of praise to counteract the reproach which the third word causes, i.e. the word of reproach and satire’; See Breatnach, 1987, p. 139; idem, 1988, p. 16; idem, 2004, pp. 25-6 66 Breatnach, 2004, p. 25 67 Ibid., pp. 25-26 68 See Bitel, 2006-7; Wiley, 2001

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biblical account of iustitia regis (‘justice of kings’).69 This doctrine was subsequently expanded in a form of Isidorean etymologizing to explain the king’s role and responsibility, especially the soundness of his kingdom, body, and his fír flathemon. Though there may well have been a pre-Christian doctrine on kingship, it is represented in light of Latin learning and we can say nothing of its ancient form. The role of the filid in the regulation of the king, therefore, should be read in kind. The process of satire was highly ceremonial and entailed public performance, and we should imagine a charged and colourful atmosphere attendant to this ritual. For example, in the ritual psalms of malediction clerics rang bells and continuously recited specific psalms. At times, the ritual would have involved a traveling entourage of poets. Satire was often practised in order to settle disputes within the túath, but the fili could also satirize beyond the boundaries of his own túath on behalf of others if a cairde (‘treaty’) was violated. An example of such a violation would be the failure to return hostages. The rhetorical display would have been mighty, as the fili would have been accompanied by a retinue of poets. The Uraicecht na Ríar provides an account of the extent of the retinue based upon the fili’s grade: ‘Twenty-four people for an ollam when engaged on public business, twelve when pursuing a claim, ten at feasts of hospitality, eight on a circuit with a king’.70 The filid would have been arrayed in colourful clothing that distinguished them from lower-rank citizens, and an air of fear and awe would have pervaded as they made their way to the public space where the trefocal or satire was to be performed. Such a powerful, rhetorical performance required an audience, and we can be sure this event would have gathered one. Though very likely a native practice, Latin learning clearly influenced the practice of satire and praise. For example, BND provides an account of appropriateness in praise of a laudandus based upon their position: ‘“Tothocht danó .i. amal beit a mbésa corop amlaid moltair cách, .i. molad laích for láech, molad cléirig for cléirich, molad mná for mnaí” (“‘appropriateness then, i.e. as their ways of life are that everyone be so praised, i.e. a layman is to be praised as a layman, a cleric is to be praised as a cleric, a woman is to be praised as a woman”’).71 The appropriateness of the praise must be rendered in consideration of who it is that is being praised, as well as the occasion of the praise. If one is praising a warrior, i.e., a ‘layman’, then 69 Watson, 2018, pp. 176-91 70 Breatnach, 1987, pp. 104-05 71 Ibid., p. 69

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one might follow this example of a proper praise from Urard mac Coise: ‘“A spurting flame causing a troop to tremble, a very lively blaze lastingly, the grandson of the kin of Liamain who hacks off heads, the mighty one of the Barrow, a torrential blow”’.72 The discussion of propriety–a matter of style but also a controlling rhetorical principal–leads one to wonder about the influence of Roman epideictic rhetoric on this Irish tradition. Epideictic rhetoric had gained significance in the Imperial period, and it had become a part of the Roman preliminary exercises during the Second Sophistic.73 It is certain that the Nemed School had access to the ad Herennium, but this rhetorical handbook only mentions epideictic in passing. Menander Rhetor II highlights the various uses of this type of speech and its appropriateness when addressing a pupil, a fellow student, or a governor, though it is highly unlikely Menander was known in early Ireland.74 His work on epideictic, however, had a lasting influence on late antique Christian writers, and it is possible that this epideictic tradition was known in eighthcentury Ireland. Though it is possible that some version of epideictic theory in Latin learning had been handed down to the Irish schools, it is also just as likely that the Irish had their own form of epideictic that flourished before the arrival of the Church.75 Satire and praise do appear to have pre-Christian origins. However, such a tradition was certainly reinterpreted in light of Latin learning. Johnston has described the parallels between satire and praise and Hellenic and Hellenistic oratorical practices. She writes: ‘The performance of a tale or the recitation of a praise poem in the patron’s hall was a highly charged and political action in the sense that it reaffirmed the patron and his social position within an elitist public environment. In early Ireland some of the most important performance events occurred when tales were recited or performed in this environment’.76 It is clear that rhetoric would have been central to such performance, and guidance for the performance of verbal art is given in the law-texts. Early Irish scholars would have seen this potential in late antique rhetorical theories of delivery. The BND stressed what an effective rhetorical performance would look like using the terminology of the ad Herennium. In the ad Herennium, delivery is given as the graceful regulation of voice, countenance, and gesture, combining the visual with 72 73 74 75 76

Ibid., p. 69 See Quintilian 2.1.11; 2.4.20 Pernot, 2012, p. 18 See, for example, the brief discussion of ‘comparative epideictic’ in Pernot, 2012, pp. 119-20 Johnston, 2013, p. 170

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the aural. The performer of a tale or judicial judgment combined the aural and the visual, the ‘disjunction between literate and non-literate, between the eye and the ear’.77 Specifically, writes Johnston, the BND ‘treats of séis (‘musical art’), cluas (‘ear’) and guth (‘voice’) as integral components of the fili’s art. They combine with the inspirational qualities of anal, (‘breath’), to create aí, (‘poetic art’)’78 The filid’s chanting must be melodious and pleasing to the ear, but must also be performed with precision and in accordance with regulations on breath, wherein the most advanced of the poets, the ollam, is allowed the most breaths.79 The historical evidence on the nature of the learning and the social status of the filid is illuminating. The law-tracts provide a very pragmatic kind of evidence that leaves us on sure ground as to the societal function of the elite, learned class, and the centrality of oratorical practice. The law-tracts that provide such detailed insight also consistently feature narrative and verse ascribed to mythical authors of the pre-Christian past, a practice with great antiquity, pervasive in literature and law-texts alike. We will now turn to an example of such a text, ‘The Cauldron’, ascribed to the legendary poet Amairgen, which in essence summarises much of the legal material in the BN.

Verbal Art and Early Irish Poetry – ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ ‘Moí coire coir Goiriath’, or ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’, survives in the sixteenth-century MS. TCD MS H.3.18 pp. 53a 1-57b5. It appears after a copy of Amra Con Roí, a poem in Bérla na Filed (‘language of the poets’) 77 Ibid., p. 170 78 Ibid., p. 170 79 For example, Stacey, 2007, p. 76-77, cites the BNT on breath: ‘My Neire accustomed to proclaiming, if you would be a judge, may you not judge a lawsuit that you do not “clean out,” that proceeds in accordance with the regulation governing lawsuits: the suit of a lord, the suit of a poet, the suit of the Féni (free Irishmen). A suit of a lord: (it entails) the length of three breaths because of the mutual surrounding of lords, or poets and of the Féni. A suit of a poet who does not advance to equal honour-price to a lord, let it be sung in two breaths, for the status of poet is stronger than the status of the Féni. The suit of the Féni (it entails) the length of one breath, except for a royal hospitaller or royal steward, for a steward is entitled to a superior (level of) lawsuit’; Breatnach, 2014, gives an example that provides a different formula from CIH 662.12: ‘.uii. n-anála don eclais, ⁊ .uii. in cach anáil; trí anála don flaith ⁊ .uii. focail in cach anáil; dá anáil don filid, ⁊ .u. focail in cach anáil; ananála dona fénib, ⁊ .u. focail inntib’ (‘Seven breathings for the ecclesiastic, and seven [phrases] in each breathing; three breathings for the lord, and seven phrases in each breathing’ two breathings for the poet, and five phrases in each breathing; a single breathing for the commoners, and five phrases in it’)

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in which the gifts bestowed upon a poet by his patron are recounted.80 Immediately following the text there is a legal text on court procedure beginning Cis lir cenela airechta dochusin lá.81 The manuscript contains numerous legal texts. Though the text survives in a sixteenth-century manuscript, it was copied from an Old Irish original and is dated to the eighth century.82 The text provides a tripartite, hierarchical structure to denote the grades of learning by way of the cauldron, a metaphor for a container of knowledge and a cultural symbol richly imbued with meaning. It is written in a rhetorical style characterized by grammatical parallelism, alliteration, and archaizing syntactic constructions. As for the primary content of the text, there are three cauldrons formed in a person: Coire Goiriath, Coire Érmai, and Coire Sofis. Each cauldron may occupy one of three positions: upside down, on its side, or upright. In this metaphor, we can take this to mean each cauldron may be full, half-full, or empty. The Coire Goiriath is distributed in youth, and it is in the upright position from birth in some, but it may be on its side or upside down in others. This probably refers to the hereditary rights of the highest rank of filid, as well as natural ability. In this, it corresponds to the first stage of one’s education, perhaps parallel to the first stage of a Roman education as out of it comes knowledge of grammar, metrics, and writing.83 The second cauldron, Coire Érmai, occupies most of thetext. This cauldron is upside down in the ignorant, on its side in a bard, and upright in the highest ranked, specifically the ánroth. As Breatnach points out, there is no mention of knowledge being distributed from it. Instead, the Coire Érmai ‘magnifies’. It occupies a middle stage between the basics of grammar and the third and final cauldron, the Coire Sofis. The Coire Érmai does not distribute, like the other two cauldrons, but rather it is added to by joy and sorrow. However, this cauldron takes whatever position the Coire Goiriath was in from the first except in the highest grades of the filid. It is this cauldron which allows one to acquire skill in speech: fó atrab n-insce (‘good is the acquisition of speech’), and a gloss adds is maith in coiri a fuil in tein fesa (‘Good is the cauldron in which is the fire of knowledge’).84 This knowledge f ills the cauldron through the course of study and the experience of joy and sorrow. These make the cauldron upright in 80 81 82 83 84

For an edition and translation, see Henry, 1995 See Breatnach, 1981, p. 45; for an edition of Cis lir cenela airechta dochusin lá, see Kelly, 1986 Breatnach, 1981, p. 52; Corthals, 2013-2014 Breatnach, 1981, p. 48 Ibid., p. 49

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the individual, from without and from within, a point to be taken up below. Breatnach summarises: ‘Thus the Coire Goiriath begins upright, the Coire Érmai begins at the stage where the process of emptying out has started, this process is completed, and when the Coire Érmai is filled again it is converted to the Coire Sofis’. 85 The Coire Sofis represents the highest level of learning to be obtained and ‘out of it is distributed the knowledge of every art besides poetic art’. 86 It starts out upside down and, as a conversion of the Coire Érmai, its beginning point is the same as the latter’s last position. The purpose of the text is to provide a model of learning that accounts for the conflicting perspectives of the secular and ecclesiastical scholars that formed the filid class. The hierarchical order of the poets, witnessed in several law-texts, is related, along with the source of inspired utterances, both secular and divine. Knowledge, the credibility of the verbal artist, and oratorical performance are closely related and are articulated in verse attributed to legendary figures.

The Cauldron Before I examine the content of ‘The Cauldron’, I will f irst provide an overview of its central metaphor, the cauldron. In Dialogues on Eloquence, François Fénelon claims, ‘Since the time of the original sin, man has been entirely enmeshed in palpable things’, and he concludes ‘lively portraiture of things is as it were the soul of eloquence’.87 The early Irish were fond of ‘the soul of eloquence’, and understanding the cultural significance of early Irish metaphors is essential to understanding Irish eloquence. Metaphor does much more than simply offer a concrete image as a means of understanding the inchoate and abstract. It reflects social and cultural values and makes sense, through discourse, of the disparate elements of social and cultural life. It is clear that the cauldron was a potent symbol in early Ireland.88 85 Ibid., p. 51 86 Ibid., p. 49 87 Fenelon, 1951, pp. 92-3 88 There is a later Welsh parallel, suggesting a Celtic theme. The Preideu Annwn, dated to the ninth or tenth century, depicts the cauldron of the chief of Annwfyn as a source of poetry. Taking the subject of poetic inspiration and learning as the contents of the cauldron, the metaphor serves to make a manageable object out of the otherwise inchoate and abstract arts of learning, while at the same time placing the learned men in early Irish society on a hierarchical continua, thus serving a function in social organization

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Elva Johnston describes ‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ as a ‘sophisticated melding of Christian literacy with native tradition, mediated through scholarly grammatical studies and expressed in terms that tie in with the pseudo-historical framework of the Irish past elaborated by clerics and filid’.89 Central to the invocation of this Irish past is the image of the metaphor. As Johnston writes, the text ‘[…] brilliantly combines this imagery with other mythological tropes, such as the nine hazels of poetic wisdom from the well of Ségais, and aligns them with religious and secular composition. The text affirms the importance of both and explains that the source of filidecht lies in a combination of inspiration, whether human or divine, with knowledge’.90 The text focuses on grammar and a course of training for the learned and the elite, promulgated by the legendary figures Amairgen Glúngel, the fili who in Lebor Gabála divided Ireland between the Tuatha Dé and the Sons of Míl, and Néde. The cauldron is an important trope central to myriad early Irish tales, and that it plays a central role in this text on the arts of learning and poetry demonstrates its significance. Socially, it was also central to daily life and would have been the centerpiece to any dwelling, and from this it gained cultural significance. Material evidence suggests the significance of the cauldron to everyday social life, but also that the cauldron was a high-status item, something attested also in the law-texts. There also appears to be great antiquity to this significance. An example is the famous Castlederg bronze cauldron, found in a bog in Castlederg, County Tyrone, which dates to 700 to 600 BCE. The construction of this cauldron, the skills of casting, beating, and riveting that were required to make it, suggest it was an object of special status, perhaps central to elite ceremonies associated with the king’s ability to share food and drink, the significance of which the trope of hospitality in numerous early Irish tales makes clear. The magical cauldron is a common trope in early Irish and Welsh literature clearly popular among the Irish literati. The Dagda (‘Good God’) is a deity that, like Jupiter, is central to the structure of the loose pantheon of deities that can be detected in early Irish literature.91 That the Dagda, known so well for his cauldron, is also depicted as the god of magic, druidism and, most importantly, wisdom, must be of significance. His son, Óengus, 89 Johnston, 2013, p. 148 90 Ibid., p. 147 91 Williams, 2016, p. 10; Catherine Swift, 2003, p. 55, has suggested that the Dagda and his son Óengus were the gods of the great Boyne River Valley complex at New Grange, and their cult likely took shape in the late Iron Age under Roman influence

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is the god of poetry. The Dagda is said to be descended from the Túatha Dé Danann, that magical race that was cast beneath the earth after a series of battles with the Milesians and who now occupy the síd mounds of Ireland. According to Recension 1 of Lebor Gabála (‘Book of Invasions’), the Túatha Dé had learned their magical arts from four sages who came from four mysterious cities of the north of the world. It was from these sages that four gifts were granted to the Túatha Dé: Stone of Fál, Spear of Lug, The Dagda’s Cauldron, and Sword of Núadu. As for the Dagda’s Cauldron, ‘coire ansic’, it was brought from Muirias. Its magical quality was that it continuously replenished itself: ‘no group of people would go from it unsatisfied’.92 Though there may have been a tradition of the Dagda’s cauldron that dates back to the eighth century or earlier, this recension of Lebor Gabála is of the eleventh century, and it is just as likely an invention of a learned milieu seeking to create a divine origin for the magical arts of these deities.93 The magical cauldron is a common trope of much Middle Irish literature, though the tradition surely has greater antiquity, at least to the time of the production of BN in the eighth century.94 The briugu (‘hosteller’) was a wealthy, important person in early Ireland, and the self-regenerating cauldron was a symbol of this role.95 In the twelfth-century Scél na Fír Flatha ‘The Tale of the Ordeals’, the Irish king Cormac Mac Airt celebrates the feast of Tara and invites all the kings of Ireland to his massive banqueting hall on the hill of Tara, Tech Midchuarta.96 At this meeting, the laws of the Irish are revised. Prior to this meeting, the poets adjudicated all cases, but due to the obscurity of their judgements (rosc, no doubt), not even the kings could understand them. Cormac therefore deprives the poets of their judicial powers aside from those that apply to their profession. Everyone has certain rights that are, in kind, laid down: ‘And though these had been previously settled, the nobles of the men of Ireland at that time prescribed the measure of advocacy and speech to every one in accordance with his dignity, as they are in the Bretha Nemed’ (‘Co robadar sin hi tus isin aimsir sin conaimthitar maithi fear nErenn tommus n-ai ⁊ indsci do cach iarna miadhamlacht (amail)

92 Trans. Williams, 2016, p. 149 93 For an edition and translation, see Macalister, 1932-42 94 For example, Da Choca’s Hostel is alluded to as part of the Book of Druim Snechta, a lost manuscript believed to belong to the first half of the eighth century 95 See Mac Eoin, 1997; McCone, 1984 96 For a summary of the tale, editions and translations, and recensions, see Wiley, 2008 https:// web.archive.org/web/20060902103320/http://www.hastings.edu/academic/english/Kings/ Scel_na_Fir_Flatha.htm (accessed 17-03-2021); see also Stokes, 1891, pp. 182-229

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rogabsad isna Brethaib Neimeadh’).97 In order to ensure each person receives their proper due, Cormac places a coire ainsic (‘cauldron of restitution’) on the fire, and the cauldron provides each company what is appropriate to their status. After this, ‘twelve ordeals’ were designed to distinguish truth from falsehood, and the eighth included the ‘coire fír’ (‘cauldron of truth’). Water was boiled in this cauldron made of gold and silver. Someone accused of an infraction put his hand in the water, and if he were guilty, he would be burned, but he would not be harmed if he were innocent.98 The cauldrons in these tales are not only associated with the law and the importance of fír in legal discourse, but with legal status as it is laid out in BN. Though ‘The Cauldron’ pre-dates these texts, they demonstrate the continued importance of these legal texts in the twelfth century. In another tale, Scél Mucci Mic Dathó (‘The Story of Mac Datho’s Pig’), dated to c. 800, there are six great bruidne ro-boi (‘great hostels’) of Ireland, including the hostel of Mac Dathó, bruden Daderga (‘Da Derga’s hostel’), bruden Fhorgaill Manaich (‘hostel of Forgall Manach’), bruden Mic Dareo i m-Brefini (‘hostel of Mac Dares in Brefne’), bruden Dachoca (‘hostel of Da Choca’) bruden Blai briuga (‘hostel of Blai the landowner’).99 Each hostel had its own ‘Cauldron of Plenty’ and they serve as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Though the cauldron is clearly associated with legal status, the imagery of the cauldron is inspired by the Otherworld feasting hall. In addition to its use as a literary trope associated with status and the law, the cauldron is also an everyday household item, which partly explains the significance of this trope. In an exploration of cauldron imagery in legaltexts, Fergus Kelly writes that according to Críth Gablach, ‘all commoners of mruigfer rank were expected to possess “a bronze cauldron in which a boar can fit” (caire umai i talla torc). An aire tuíseo “lord of precedence” has an even bigger cauldron, and is said to own “bronze vessels including a cauldron which fits a cow along with a flitch of bacon” (humalestrai im chaire I talla boin co tinnniu)’.100 In the law-texts, the cauldron is associated with the briugu (‘hospitaler’), whose status and honour-price depends on his ability to provide hospitality. As Kelly points out, Bretha Nemed Toísech claims the briugu’s status comes from three attributes: ‘having a neverdry cauldron, a dwelling on a public road, a welcome for every face (A tri 97 Stokes, 1891, p. 187 98 Ibid., pp. 191-92 99 Chadwick, 1927, § 1 100 Kelly, 2010, p. 33

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nemiter bruigaid: caire ainsic, arus for thuathset, fo cen fria cach ngnuis)’.101 In the tenth-century tale Esnada Tige Buchet (‘The Melodies of the House of Buchet’), Buchet is introduced as ‘as coire féile la Laigniu’ (‘a cauldron of hospitality among the Leinstermen’).102 The cauldron’s significance to legal status and rank also speaks to the importance of feasting in early Irish society. Stacey writes that recent scholarship has revealed how ‘potent a symbol the consumption of food was in the ancient and medieval worlds’ and that ‘without some understanding of beliefs about food it would be impossible to make any sense at all of some of the most significant events in Christian history’.103 But feasting was also an element of cultural organization, based on grade and honour-price. Stacey discusses the ‘champion’s portion’ topos, common in early Irish literature, as well as the magical cauldron that provides automatically the portion most appropriate to the status of each person it serves. But there is more at work here than a literary trope. She writes: Uraicecht Bec and Críth Gablach, two important tracts on status, define the grades they describe in large part by food, as does the clientship section of Bretha Nemed Toísech – both the food that persons of those grades would pay to their lords in rent, and that which they and their retinues would consume or display themselves … Food preparation and consumption were even used as metaphors for essential concepts within the culture such as, for example, poetic inspiration, or the taking on of lordship.104

Mythology and cosmology often operate according to a tropological cultural logic, and the operation of tropes, their play within culture, should not be taken lightly. Rather they are at the heart of continuous and dynamic cultural production. This can be seen, for example, in the legendary figures to whom ‘The Cauldron’ is ascribed, Amairgen and Néde. Early Irish law-texts demonstrate a tendency to attribute their promulgation or pronouncement to authoritative figures well-known in senchas, including Ailill, Aithirne, Amairgen, Cenn Fáelad, Cermna, Conall Cernach, Conchobar, Senchán Toirpéist, Néde, Morann, and many others.105 Along with prose, rosc, and rhyming 101 Ibid, p. 33 102 Ibid., p. 33 103 Stacey, 2007, p. 18 104 Ibid., p. 18 105 See Breatnach, 2005, pp. 361-71; see also Qui, 2014

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syllabic verse, Breatnach identifies this attribution of texts to mythical authors as a stylistic feature of early Irish texts.106 These figures represent pre-Christian learning and often serve to defend its value. As an example, Néde also appears in Immacallam in Dá Thuarad (‘Colloquy of the Two Sages’) (hereafter Immacallam), a text that deals with the same themes as ‘The Cauldron’. The Immacallam, as the name indicates, is a dialogue between two learned poets, or filid. Néde represents the second grade of poet, ánroth, whereas Ferchertne represents the highest, that of the ollam, and Ferchertne, though represented as a pre-Christian f igure, has insight into divine, Christian knowledge through his prophetic abilities. In this, he is deemed akin to the Old Testament prophets, securing his ethos in the intermingling of secular and Christian learning.107 His ability to perceive of Christian doctrine before the birth of Christ and, thus, before its articulation, grants him special credibility. His possession of pre-Christian knowledge is bolstered by these abilities, and the credibility of the class of poets who claim to be inheritors of this knowledge is also secured. Though both Néde and Ferchertne have received imbas (‘inspiration’), in Immacallam Ferchertne receives inspiration beyond the secular sphere, something of which Néde is incapable. In ‘The Cauldron’, however, Néde describes the Coire Érmae, the cauldron capable of receiving grace (‘rath’) and associated with divine inspiration. Néde is portrayed in this poem as possessing divine knowledge only available to Ferchertne in Immacallam. As Daniel Watson says of these conflicting perspectives, ‘it seems that the very possibility of salvation for anybody lies in the fact that there are some who practise these disciplines, in that the necessary epistemological content of “grace” (rath) as such, appears to be accessible through them alone’.108 Though there is not space here to go into the nuances of the differences in these perspectives, it is clear that ‘The Cauldron’ is part of a native tradition of law, adhering to accepted stylistic practices, and entering the fray regarding disputes over the superiority of secular and ecclesiastical learning. In this, the text is evidence of syncretic learning, the interweaving of native and Latin learning, in the form of a creative product that takes on the aura of pre-Christian mythological authority.

106 Ibid., p. 371 107 See Watson, 2018, pp. 118-21 108 Ibid., p. 133

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‘The Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ and The Trivium of the Liberal Arts The first section of the text is ascribed to the legendary poet of the Milesians, Amairgen, while the second is ascribed to Néde mac Aidne.109 Recall that these figures of prehistory, with their foresight of Christian doctrine, were deemed as authoritative as the Jewish prophets. This frame establishes the attempt to justify secular practices within a Christian environment. The first and last sections of the text are rhymeless, alliterative encomia in praise of the three cauldrons. It begins with strophes that are composed in an archaizing style using variable, internal alliteration.: Mine is the proper Cauldron of Goiriath, Warmly God has given it to me out of the mysterious elements; A noble privilege which ennobles the breast Is the fine speech which pours forth from it. I am grey-bearded Amairgen, blue-haired and white-kneed, let the work of my goiriath in similes and comparisons110 be related since God does not equally provide for all, inclined, upside down, upright no knowledge, partial knowledge, full knowledge in order to compose poetry for Éber 111 and Donn112 with many great chantings, of masculine, feminine, and neuter, of the signs for double letters, long vowels and short vowels, I relate, in this way, the nature of my cauldron113 109 In the following analysis, I rely on Breatnach’s edition and, unless otherwise noted, his translation. I have chosen to look at each section of the text concurrently in order to preserve the poet’s presentation as best as possible 110 Condelgib, eDIL gives s.v. coindelg refers to the comparative degree in grammar in the Auraicept § 668 111 Son of Míl, ancestor of the southern Gaels – Eber – name of several characters in the legendary accounts of the origin of the Gaelic race. In the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the sons of Míl (Milesians) were the race that maintained control of Ireland after a series of invasions (also the subject of Cath Maige Tuired) and after the Tuatha Dé Dannan were forced to live below the earth’s surface where the Otherworld realm, or síd, is located. Amairgen was a poet of the Milesians who rendered the judgement that sent the Tuatha Dé beneath the earth 112 Son of Míl 113 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 62-3; ‘Mo Coire, coir Goiriath/Gor rond×n-ír Día dam a dúile ndemrib,/ Dliucht sóer sóerus broinn/Bélrae mbil brúchtas úad./ Os mé Amargen glúngel,/Garrglas, grélíath,/

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The cauldron of goiriath is associated with elementary linguistic education, parallel to the first stage of Roman education. This section consists of meta-discourse on grammar and alludes to the basics of grammatical instruction, including the comparative degree and figure of speech. As in the Roman trivium, grammar is foundational and it allows the poet to perform the verbal arts and to do so for two figures from native sénchas, Éber and Donn. On the one hand, this alludes to Amairgen’s poetry that plays a central role in the Lebor Gabhála. On the other, this alludes to the craft of the fili who composes such poetry in literary creations. The hierarchy of poets is also given in that ‘God does not provide equally to all’ the gift of speech. The question of natural ability in students, natura vs. ars, is a persistent one through the tradition of ancient rhetoric. For Quintilian, whose interest is in the production of the future orator, ratio is the defining feature of a human being. Reason, which is realized in speech, is natural in humankind: homini naturale.114 However, not everyone possesses this equally, and training and exercise brings out one’s oratorical ability to the degree to which they are capable. In ‘The Cauldron’, it is a noble privilege to utter fair speeches, but not everyone possesses this ability equally. This is related here in the position of the cauldron: upside down, on its side, and right side up; ‘no knowledge, partial knowledge, or full knowledge’. As we will see, the cauldron’s position can change at various stages of the fili’s education. The source of the speech granted by this cauldron is the ‘mysterious elements’. While this has a supernatural air to it, the source for this understanding is the grammatical tradition and early medieval theories of language. Corthals argues that the cauldron represents ‘remote, hidden elements’, and in the late seventh- or early eighth-century tract Dliged sésa a hUraicept na mac sésa ‘System of higher learning from the handbook of students of higher learning’ (hereafter Dliged sésa), found in Bretha Nemed Toísech, Corthals sees a parallel with the source of the goiriath given in ‘The Cauldron’. Dliged sésa ‘evokes the development of speech from its natural, physical roots in the bodily organism and in the world of invisible elements’ the ‘“fiery smoke of the soul in the covered particles” into a developed Gním mo goriath/Crothaib condelgib,/Indethar dath;/ Nád inonn airlither Día Do cach dóen,/ De thoíb, ís toíb, úas toíb,/Nemsós, lethsós,/Lánsós do Hébiur Dunn,/Sliucht as-indethar/ Altmod mo choiri’ 114 In 2.8.12 Quintilian encourages students to follow their natural inclinations and abilities which are not equal in all children; see also Fantham, 1995, for an exploration of the use of natura in Quintilian

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artistic skill equated with a ‘“woman full of treasures and desires”’.115 Here, the development of speech is traced from its most basic, physiological origin to its refinement. Corthals sees in this woman a reflex of the liberal arts represented as a woman full of treasures in Boethius and Martianus Capella. The invisible elements, Corthals argues, ‘recall the “remote, hidden elements” which in the first section of our texts are stated to lie at the origin of the Coire Goiriath, and which in antique learning represent the world of invisible things that were thought to underlie all visible matter’.116 The section from Dliged Sésa is as follows: ‘Daughter of the Túairgnithe, whose seat is the mother of the voice, the dull one, which is clear, the pure one; the smoke of the fire is from the world of invisible elements. Noble river, which mysteriously flows the way back to the source of the spring to the place where it begins its journey. Solid and fluid at the same time, she should not break out tearfully, nor should she arrive asleep (perspicuitas). Shrine of life, from which I examine every limb, every joint, through the sinew of the tendons. Ever-living revelation of life, fiery smoke of the soul in the lightless elements. I describe, etc.117

Such figurative accounts of the nature of speech were common in early Irish vernacular learned tracts,118 and there is also a parallel with the seventhcentury Irish grammarian, Vergilius Maro Grammaticus, and his etymology of ‘letter’: To go into the matter more closely, it seems to me that the littera is similar to the human condition: just as man consists of a physical portion, a soul, and a sort of celestial fire, so too the letter is permeated with its body–that is, its shape, its function and its pronunciation, which are its joints and limbs, as it were–and has its soul in its meaning (sensus) and its spirit in its higher form of contemplation.119 115 Corthals, 2013-2104, p. 83 116 Ibid., p. 83 117 Corthals, 2005, p. 138, my translation: ‘Tūairgnithe ingion, asa suidhe as māthair ghotha, as glas as glē, as glad as dé do thein a curpa(ib) diosoillsi(b). Sruth rán, reithes rūnaibh athchor do thuinn tobair dú dia ccomhla. Fosa(i)dh, udmhall, ni mā(i)n dērach, ni sā in sūanach. Comhra(i) r bethadh, as-glionn gach n-all gach n-alt tre féthi(bh) edarbha. Foirnés bhūan beatha(d), dé án anma i gcurpaibh diosoillsi(b). Do-glinn et cetera’ 118 For a discussion of linguistic theory in Dliged sésa, see Poppe, 2016a 119 Law, 1995, p. 68

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Dliged sésa also consists of a figurative account of the faculty of speech and, despite the seemingly archaic and pre-Christian language, discusses perspicuitas, in that speech should be neither overly emotional nor ‘asleep’. Elsewhere in the text the Rhetorica ad Herennium is quoted on voice, making it clear rhetorical delivery was of interest. In both ‘The Cauldron’ and Dliged Sésa the source of the voice would appear to be within the body, in the ‘world of invisible elements’, and through the processes of articulation and writing achieves full expression and meaning. Mastery over these processes grant social rewards and prestige. As we will see below, the movement of the cauldrons is associated with the basics of the trivium and movement to reflection on the nature of language and the verbal arts. In the next section of the poem, the encomium on the cauldron continues, and attention shifts to the third cauldron: I praise120 the Cauldron of Knowledge Where the law of every art is ordered121 Where prosperity increases Which amplifies every artistic craft Which exalts one through poetic craft 122

The Cauldron of Knowledge (sofis) represents the culmination of all learning, though its relationship to the other cauldrons is complex. It is through this culmination of learning that the laws (dliged) of all the arts (dáno) are ordered, and through which all artistic crafts are exalted.123 As in the Dlíged sésa, the promise of increased prosperity and, presumably, social prestige accompanies the mastery of the arts of discourse, perhaps the most pervasive and common promise of the art of rhetoric throughout its history. This section of the text is imitated in another poetic text on learning, the so-called Áiliu poems, which are found in Bretha Nemed dédanach.124 120 Breatnach, 1981, translates this as ‘acclaims’, but here I opt for ‘praise’ in order to stress the exhortative function. eDIL s.v. Ar-cain is cognate of the Latin canō given as ‘sings, chants, recites’ and is applied to poetry, charms, magical formulas, and also to legal pronouncements and maxims 121 Breatnach, 1981, translates sernar as ‘set out’, but I opt for ‘ordered’, though eDIL sernaid also gives ‘arrays, disposes, ranges, orders’, or ‘prescribes, appoints, propounds’ 122 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 62-3; ‘Ara-caun Coire Sofis/Sernar dliged cach dáno/Dia moiget moín/ Móras cach ceird coitchiunn,/Con-utaing duine dán’ 123 On the relationship of dliged and Latin ratio, as well as the various possible definitions of the former, see Charles-Edwards, 2003b 124 Corthals, 2010, p. 61

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The two learned traditions central to the concerns of the law-texts include secular and Canon law, and the commentator distinguishes between the internal and external sources of inspiration of verbal art relevant to judicial contexts. The following prose sections in catechetical form mirror those of other pedagogical texts in the use of the verbal formula ceist (‘question’), from the Latin quaestio, and ní anse (‘not difficult’), a form of the figure of speech hypophora:125 Question. Where is the source of poetic art in a person: in the body or in the soul? Some say in the soul since the body does nothing without the soul. Others say in the body since it is inherent in one in accordance with one’s heritage i.e. from one’s father or grandfather, but it is more true to say that the source of poetic art and knowledge is present in every corporeal person, save that in every second person it does not appear, while in another it does.126

This section refers directly to the claims of the law-tracts, wherein one receives status and position among the filid based upon hereditary claims, following the father and the grandfather in order to achieve the status of ollam. However, the poet argues that the cauldrons are in each person from birth, though as to mastery of poetic arts, some, we will see, possess it in spades, while others possess it barely. This distinction also takes into account the poetic abilities of the lower orders of the poets, including the bards. A similar metaphor for bardic practice, specifically for those lacking in ability, appears in Uraicecht na Ríar: ‘I take no account of longbard’s with shallow vessels containing different kinds of milk’.127 The following strophes, also in prose, relate the nature of each cauldron relevant to its position in a person, akin to natura as a source of facility in speaking and writing in Roman rhetoric. Each cauldron corresponds to learning, akin to the three stages of Roman learning, whereas the position of the cauldron, as well as its ability to transition, corresponds to one’s professional status. The cauldrons are not only the source of poetic art, but of all knowledge: 125 On this form, see Baumgarten, 1992 126 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 64-5; ‘Ceist, i tá bunadus inaircetail induinie; inacurp famenmain asberat ar nidena incorp (n)ige n-anmain asberat araili bid i curp, in tan dofoglen occunda corui .i. oathair nó senathair, olsodhain as fíru, ara-thá bunad ind airchetail 7 int sois i cach duiniu corpthu, acht cach la duine ní adtuíthi and, alailiu atuídi’ 127 Breatnach, 1987, p. 35

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What does the source of poetic art and every other knowledge consist of? Not difficult; three cauldrons are generated in every person, i.e. the Cauldron of Goiriath and the Cauldron of Érmae and the Cauldron of Knowledge.

The Cauldron of Goiriath, it is that which is upright in a person from the first; and it distributes knowledge to people in adolescence. After it has been turned, the Cauldron of Érmae magnifies; It is that which is generated on its side in a person. The Cauldron of Knowledge, it is that which is generated upside down and out of it is distributed the knowledge of every other art besides poetic art.128

The first two cauldrons seem to represent elementary speech and an advanced knowledge of the liberal arts, whereas the third cauldron represents progress in education and learning. The first cauldron, that which is upright from birth in one who achieves the highest levels of poetic learning, is clearly elementary. The Cauldron of Érmae seems to align with the position of the Cauldron of Goiriath in an individual, upside down, on its side, or upright from birth, but after it is ‘converted’ it ‘magnifies’ (moigid). This could mean that it magnifies the talent that one is born with (natura), presumably through study and practice. In Roman rhetoric, there are three sources of facility in rhetoric. Natura refers to natural endowment, and this is accompanied by ars or doctrina (technical instruction) and exercitatio (exercise).129 The Cauldron of Érmae is also easier to ‘convert’ to upright status if it is on its side, rather than upside down, and in this it is a continuation of the position of the first cauldron, suggesting that one possessing natural facility excels more easily through instruction and exercise. The position of the Cauldron of Sofis, on the other hand, is upside down, which suggests this is the source of knowledge and mastery of the arts–besides the verbal arts–that one is not born with, but that one must work to obtain, hence the 128 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 64-5; ‘Caite didiu bunad ind archetail 7 gach sois olchenae? Ní ansae; gaintir tri coiri in cach duine .i. coire goriath 7 coire erma 7 coire sois. Coire Goiriath, is é-side gainethar fóen induiniu fo chétóir; is as fo-dáilter soas do doínib i n-ógoítiu. Coire Érmai, immurgu, iarmo-bí impúd moigid; is é-side gainethar do thoíb i nduiniu. Coiri Sois, is é-side gainethar fora béolu 7 is as fo-dáilter soes gachadana (olcena cinmotha aircedal)’ 129 Rhetorica ad Herennium, 1.1, 3, 12-13; 2.7, 12; 3.14, 20, 27, 34, 39-40; 4.7, 27, 58, 69; see Kraus, 2009, esp. pp. 63-4

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distance it must travel from upside down to upright. Here, it becomes clear that in this metaphor there is a single cauldron that changes position and nature at different stages of learning Johan Corthals believes that in this the text provides a local reflex of classical learning as transmitted through Late Antiquity and evidence of a continuity of learning from the Latin rhetorical tradition to the medieval.130 Through the presence of ‘inheritance, grace, and striving for perfection’, the philosophical question of poetic art ‘linked to ancient and Christian concepts of body, soul and grace’ lead us to see the cauldron not as reflective of an ancient pre-Christian ritual or belief, but ‘simply metaphorical representations of the abstract matter under discussion’.131 Here, Corthals relates the cauldron poem to a classical exemplar, ‘The three bowls of Apuleius’, which he argues ‘correspond exactly to the three cauldrons of our text in that the first pertains to elementary knowledge, the third to the higher level of the rhetorician, and the middle one to the school in between. In some sense, this image could be compared to other ancient, conventionalised images, originally meant for use in the school’.132 The parallel in Apuleius’s three creterras (‘wine bowls’) corresponds to the three stages of learning in the late antique rhetorical curriculum, the trivium and quadrivium of the liberal arts: The first bowl–that of the litterator–frees one from the basics; the second– that of the Grammaticus–builds one up with learning; and the third–that of the rhetor–arms one with eloquence. This is as far as most people go in drinking, but I have drunk other bowls at Athens: the specially made wine of poetry, the clear white of geometry, the sweet muscat of music, the dry red of dialectics, and the never-sating nectar of universal philosophy.133

Apuleius uses the verbal metaphors eximit (‘frees’), instruit (‘builds up’), armat (‘arms’), and potatur (‘drinking’), and it is the wine bowls, or learning, which provide for this social movement within society. Each branch of learning is compared with a variety of wine. If we take ‘The Cauldron’ as an Irish reflex of Apuleius, the first bowl correlates to the primary stage of education wherein a student learns the basics of reading by way of reading 130 Corthals, 2013-2014, pp. 76-77 131 Ibid., p. 81 132 Ibid., p. 81 133 Harrison, 2000, p. 68, ‘ego et alias creterras Athenis bibi: poeticae commentam, geometriae limpidam, musicae dulcem, dialecticae austerulam, iam uero uniuersae philosophiae inexplebilem scilicet et nectaream’

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the poets, but ‘basics’ is given as ‘early youth’. The second bowl represents the second stage of education, grammatica, that once converted ‘magnifies’, or in Apuleius ‘brings one up’. The third is the final stage of Greco-Roman education, rhetorica, which eloquentia armat (‘arms one with eloquence’). In ‘The Cauldron’, out of the third and final cauldron ‘is distributed the knowledge of every other art besides poetic art’. This could be taken to relate to the rest of the passage in Apuleius, who boasts of going beyond the three stages of education, studying the liberal arts at advanced stages, which he did in Carthage and Athens and throughout his travels around the Mediterranean world.134 Corthals’s case for the imitation of Apuleius is persuasive as the similarities between the figurative portrayals of learning are evident, but the cauldron in our poem is clearly distinct in several regards. It cannot be argued with certainty that Apuleius is a direct influence, but it is an insightful parallel. The text provides further details on each cauldron, moving next to the Cauldron of Érmae. The position of the cauldron within each person is related to their grade, per the law-tracts. In those who are ignorant, it is upside down, whereas in the bard and in the ánroth, the second highest grade of poet, it is upright. The ollam is not mentioned, but this is likely because the poet has already claimed the cauldrons are to be found in every person, and the only means of achieving ollam status is hereditary, though it would also involve intense study. The position of the cauldron is ‘converted’ by way of emotions, and in this we may see further late antique influences: The Cauldron of Érmae, then, in every other person it is upside down, i.e., in ignorant people. It is on its side in those who practice bairdne135 and raind.136 It is upright in the ánroth’s of knowledge and poetic art. And the reason, then, why everyone else does not practise at that same stage is because the Cauldron of Érmae is upside down in them until sorrow or joy converts it. Question. How many divisions are there of the sorrow which converts it?; Not difficult; four; longing, grief, and the sadness of jealousy, and exile for the sake of God, and it is from within the student that these four sorrows make it upright although they are produced from outside. 134 Ibid., p. 3 135 DIL = bardic craft, bardic composition, less highly regarded than filidecht 136 some type of verse, perhaps associated with legal disputes – dividing things up

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There are, then, two divisions of joy through which the cauldron is converted into the Cauldron of Knowledge, i.e. divine joy [ fáilte deodha] and human joy [ fáilte dóendae].137

The emotions of sorrow that convert the cauldron are éolchaire (‘longing’), cumae (‘grief’), brón éoit (‘sorrow of jealousy’), and ailithre ar Dia (‘exile for God’). The Stoics also arranged the emotions, or ‘passions’, into a group of four: distress, pleasure, fear, and lust. This is clearly not the source for our poem, though the division into four may not be without significance. In the Early Middle Ages, longing, love, joy, and anxiety are prevalent, particularly among Gallic writers, including those writing at Columban monastic establishments, including Desedirius and Columbanus’s biographer, Jonas.138 Love (amor, caritas, diligo), joy (laetitia), and fear (timor) are the primary emotions expressed in Columbanus’s own writings.139 Emotions were central to the thought of Cassian, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. However, regardless of the source, these four emotions are clearly ‘Irish’, as peregrination was a practice the Irish took up with fervour. Love, be it conceived as amor or caritas, and anger, emotions so central to late antique Christian thinkers, do not appear. The cauldron’s four emotions could be those born of experience, the opposite of innocence, for longing, grief, jealousy, and the sorrow born of permanently leaving one’s homeland are certainly those of one who is not young and naïve. In this, there also appears to be a hierarchical ordering of the emotions, as sorrow born of exile is certainly nobler than that born of longing, grief, or jealousy.140 But along with sorrow, joy converts the cauldron. Human joy and divine joy here seem reminiscent of the two types of wine Apuleius describes as ‘the pleasures of the table’, i.e., worldly pleasures, whereas the ‘wine of the Muses’ is divinely inspired. However, the distinction between secular law and Canon law pervasive in the Irish legal tradition suggests that this is likely representative of these two systems. They are given equal status in the 137 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 65-7; ‘Coire Érmai dano, gach la duine is fora béolu atá and (.i.) i n-áes dois. Lethchlóen i n-áes bairdne ⁊ rand; is fóen atá a n-ánsrothaib sofis ⁊ airchetail. Conid airi didiu ní dénai cách óeneret, di hág is fora béolu atá Coire Érmai and conid× n-impoí brón nó fáilte. Ceist, cis lir fodlai fil forsin mbrón imid-suí? Ni ansae .i. iiii. A cethair: éolchaire, cumae, ⁊ brón éoit ⁊ ailithre ar Dia, ⁊ is medón ata-tairberat inna cethair-se cíasu anechtair fo-fertar Atáat dano dí fodail for fáilti ó n-impoíther i Coire Sofis, .i. fáilte déodae 7 fáilte dóendae’ 138 See Rosenwein, 2006, pp. 142-9 139 Ibid., pp. 156-8 140 See comments in Watson, 2018, pp. 127-28

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text, which speaks to the ‘stitching together’ of secular law and Canon law witnessed most clearly in the ‘Pseudo-historical Introduction the Senchas Már’.141 There are four divisions of ‘human joy’ in our poem, and there are also four ‘pleasures of the table’ in Apuleius: Sapientis uiri super mensam celebre dictum est: “prima”, inquit, “creterra ad sitim pertinent, secunda ad hilaritatem, tertia ad uoluptatem, quarta ad insaniam”’ (‘There is a much-quoted saying of a wise man concerning the pleasures of the table: “The first bowl”, he says, “is for thirst, the second for fun, the third for pleasure, the fourth for madness”’).142 The four joys given in ‘The Cauldron’ are quite distinct: As for human joy, it has four divisions: (i) the force of sexual longing, and (ii) the joy of safety and freedom from care, plenty of food and clothing until one begins bairdne, and (iii) joy at the prerogatives of poetry after studying it well and (iv) joy at the arrival of imbas which the nine hazels of fine mast at Segais in the síd amass and which is sent upstream along the surface of the Boyne, as extensive as a wether’s fleece, swifter than a racehorse, in the middle of June every seventh year regularly.143

‘The force of sexual longing’ (‘luud éoit fuichechtae), ‘the joy of safety and freedom from care, plenty of food and clothing until one begins bairdne’ (‘fáilte sláne, nemimnedche, imbid bruit ⁊ biid co feca in duine for bairdni’), ‘joy at the prerogatives of poetry after studying it well’ (‘fáilte fri dliged n-éces iarna dagfrithgnum’), and ‘joy at the arrival of imbas’ (‘fáilte fri tascor n-imbais’) do not, on the surface, resonate with the monastic life. In another context, ‘Luth eoit futhachta’ is given as ‘one of the four kinds of carnal pleasure’, glossed as ‘one of four carnal sins’.144 Here, it is not refraining from such carnal pleasures that brings joy, but it is given as the first joy that may convert the cauldron. However, aside from sexual longing, it is clear that such joys do accord with the fili’s training, monastic or otherwise. One experiences the force of sexual longing for the first time in adolescence. The monastic community would provide one with food, security and shelter, 141 See pp. 250-52 142 Harrison, 2000, p. 172 143 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 66-7; ‘Ind fáilte dóendae, atáat cethéoir fodlai for suidi .i. luud éoit fuichechtae 7 fáilte sláne 7 nemimnedche, imbid bruit 7 biid co feca in duine for bairdni; 7 fáilte fri dliged n-écse iarna dagfrithgnum, 7 fáilte fri tascor n-imbais do-fuaircet noí cuill cainmeso for Segais i sídaib, conda thochrathar méit moltcnaí iar ndruimniu Bóinde frithroisc, luaithiu euch aige mmedón (leg. i n-inmedon) mís mithime dia secht m-bliadnae beos’ 144 Bergin and Best, 1907-13, v. 25.3

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though we may take this to be true of secular schools, as well. The bardic arts clearly precede the study of poetry, and the arrival of imbas, one of the three requirements of the poet, is associated with the highest achievement of filidecht. The final three joys are those of the student who has successfully risen through the ranks and achieved a master’s status. Above, the emotions of sorrow–‘longing, grief, the sorrow of jealousy, and exile for the sake of God’–are said to arise from outside the person, but ‘it is internally that these four make it upright, although they are produced from outside’. The understanding of emotion as arising from outside the person may also reveal a late antique influence as this conception aligns with Stoic theories of emotion that were taken up by late antique Christian writers.145 Emotions were central to the doctrine of the Desert Fathers, in which all emotions are portrayed as a negative influence, a distraction from the pursuit of the religious life, the end of which is eternal salvation. They manifest in the seven deadly sins. Evagrius (d. 399 CE), in his Practical Treatise, provides a characteristic example of emotion among the Desert Fathers. He wrote of ‘eight thoughts’: ‘gluttony (gastrimargia), lust (porneia), avarice (philarguria), distress (lupē), anger (orgē), acedia, vanity (kenodoxia), and pride (huperphania). Barbara Rosenwein explains that these were not emotions, but ‘rather their first prickings and tinglings – the Stoic first movements, but in Evagrius’s view sent by the demons’.146 If you assented to them, they would stir emotions. John Cassian adapted this list and placed them as the chief vices. In Gregory the Great this list would take the form most recognized today as the seven deadly sings: ‘vanity (inanis gloria), envy (invidia), anger (ira), sadness (tristitia), avarice (avaritia), gluttony (ventris ingluvies), and lust (luxuria)’.147 Virtue is contrary to emotions, which not only exist as mental abstractions and cognitive appraisals, as they do in Stoic thought, but are rather part of man’s corrupted nature. Augustine took a lighter approach and allowed a place for the emotions in Christian life. As humankind was 145 For Cicero, pleasure and desire are assessed as good, whereas pain and fear are assessed as evil. He translates the Stoic pathé into pertubationes in Tusculan Disputations. The Stoics, whom Cicero admired, believed that the wise man or woman was unswayed by passion. Pre-emotions presented themselves, signaling an emotion was arising. Rosenwein, 2006, p. 39, writes, ‘These were the “f irst movements”, manifesting themselves as pallor, weeping, shuddering, or an expansion or contraction of the chest … In this way, you circumvented both judgments involved in emotion: the assent to anything external being good or bad as well as the assent to the bodily reactions that were appropriate to the emotions’ 146 Rosenwein, 2006, pp. 46-7 147 Ibid., p. 48

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corrupted by the Fall, the human will tended to assent to the wrong things. However, God’s grace allowed one to be justifiably ‘angry (irasci) at a sinner to correct him, feel sorrow (constristari) for the afflicted to free him, fear (timere) that a person in danger might parish’.148 Fear of God also became a chief virtue in eschatological theology. The joys described above seem to be secular in nature. There is ‘joy at the prerogatives of poetry after studying it well’, as well as joy at the arrival of imbas forosnai. Scholars have tended to read this as evidence of preChristian learning or religious practice. However, if read figuratively, one could make an argument that imbas is either a reflex of Latin learning, or represents a native tradition understood in light of Latin learning. Elizabeth Boyle’s reading of ‘Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise’ provides a framework with which to approach imbas in ‘The Cauldron’. In this tale, Cormac experiences a dream-vision that is interpreted for him in rather explicit terms by the Irish god Mannán mac Lír: Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which are in the fountain sever them and send their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than any music that men sing. Manannan replies: ‘The fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is obtained. And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams. The folk of many arts are those who drink of them both’.149

There are a number of versions of the Well of Segais in early Irish literature, and this was a common trope representing the source of learning and poetic inspiration. In several texts, the hazel nuts appear in contexts of poetic inspiration, and Boyle argues that such instances should be read as allegorical symbolism, rather than interpreted literally. In the early Irish poem ‘Finn and the Man in the Tree’, there is an account of Finn finding his servant hiding in a tree, at which he puts his thumb in his mouth, and imbas illuminates his

148 Augustine, City of God, 14.6, qtd. in idem, p. 50 149 Boyle, 2016, p. 23

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understanding, ‘fortnosna a imbus’, after which he chants roscada.150 As Boyle notes, the poem is found in a gloss to the eighth century Senchas Már and is associated, as is ‘Cormac’s Adventure’, with legal literature. Boyle translates this section of ‘Finn and the Man in the Tree’: ‘[…] And this was the practice of the man, cracking nuts; and he would give half the kernel of the nut to the blackbird that was on his right shoulder while he would himself eat the other half […]’.151 Boyle says of this allegory ‘[…] we may yet suggest that “cracking nuts” symbolises the search for the hidden meaning, and that giving half of the kernel (or inner meaning) to the blackbird symbolizes, as in Mentis in excessu, “preaching to others”’.152 The cracking of the nut to get at the sustenance inside is associated with access to knowledge, and it occurs, again, alongside imbas. What appears on the surface to be a text preserving a remnant of pre-Christian learning is, in fact, an exercise in Christian allegory. In ‘The Cauldron’, there is ‘joy at the arrival of imbas’, the hazels carried down the river Bóinne, which follows the joy of studying the prerogatives of poetry. Though imbas is often read as ‘inspiration’, this joy could be taken as that born from gaining mastery in not only composition, but exegesis. Returning to‘The Cauldron’, we see in the next section the power of emotion in the conversion of the cauldron, and the marriage of secular and ecclesiastical learning becomes clear. While the image of the cauldron maintains its pre-Christian, secular associations, we move from the sorrows and joys introduced earlier to the coming of divine joy which converts the Cauldron of Érmae to an upright position: Divine joy, moreover, is the coming of divine grace to the Cauldron of Érmae, so that it converts it into the upright position, and as a result there are prophets, divine and secular, and commentators both on matters of grace and of secular learning, and they then utter godly utterances and perform miracles, and their words are maxims and judgements, and they are an example for all speech. But it is from outside that these make the cauldron upright, although they are produced internally.153

150 For a discussion of verbal artistry in the text, see Hollo, 2012 151 Boyle, 2016, p. 32 152 Ibid., p. 32 153 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 68-9; ‘Fáilte déodaa, immurgu, tórumae ind raith déodai dochum in Choiri Érmai conid× n-impoí foen, conid (d)e biit fáidi déodai 7 dóendai 7 tráchtairi raith 7 frithgnamo imale, conid (leg. conid) íarum labrait inna labartha raith 7 do-gniat inna firtu,

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The concerns of the law-texts discussed above inform the subject matter at hand, and the poet justifies secular practice as divinely inspired. The poet is concerned with secular learning, but divine grace provides inspiration for divine utterances both Christian and secular. With the coming of divine grace (raith déodai) to the cauldron, the filid become ‘both divine (déodai) and secular (dóendai) prophets ( fáidi) and commentators both on matters of grace and of secular learning’. Their utterances (bríathar) are ‘maxims’ ( fásaige) and ‘judgments’ (bretha). The same source provides inspiration for secular and divine prophets. At this point, one might recall the Anonymous ad Cuimnanum in which the study of the liberal arts is defended: ‘Scientia exterior est more vassis omni parati liquori ab eo bibere volenti’ (‘Knowledge is an outer covering, a vessel ready to receive any sort of liquid’).154 Above, it was noted that sound judgements must be based on the ‘three rocks’ roscada, fásaige, and tesdemuin (‘testimony’).155 The latter two constitute the ‘law of nature’, a means of confirming the validity of secular learning in a Christian context. But the soundness of judgements is also distinguished by the type of judge. For a secular judge, all sound judgements are based on maxims, whereas for a clerical judge they are based on Scripture, and for rulers they are based on both. The law-texts make clear that a fili must be well-versed in maxims and judgements and have mastery over style (roscada), and the grades of the nemed class are distinguished according to memorization of a vast body of literature, including maxims and testimony. This knowledge is transmitted here in rosc, and the text is perhaps a mnemonic rendering of the complexities of the requirements of the poets in the language that grants secular judgements credibility. Divine grace, however, is given as a blessing that makes the pinnacle of learning possible, and it comes to the cauldron of Érmae alone. The lists of sorrows and joys that convert the Coire Érmae, as Breatnach has suggested, correspond to the stages of poetic development over the course of one’s career.156 However, as Watson notes, they also represent a hierarchical arrangement of the joys and sorrows that inform the practice of verbal art, ‘leading from the most foundational and involuntary to the most sublime and intentional’.157 While the Coire Goiriath represents the fundamental education of the grammatical and basic rhetorical arts, divine condat fásaige 7 bretha a m-bríathar, conda(t) desimrecht do gach cobrai. Acht is anechtair ata-tairberat ina-hí-siu in coire cíasu medón foraferthar’ 154 Holtz, 1981a, p. 141 155 See p. 227 above 156 Breatnach, 1981, p. 50 157 Watson, 2018, p. 127

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joy and grace are essential to the ‘turning’ of the Coire Sofis, the source of all the arts which is upside down in all at birth. In order to reach the pinnacle of learning, divine grace is necessary, and it comes to the Coire Érmae alone. As in ancient rhetorical theory, natura plays a role, but one must achieve mastery through doctrine and exercise in order to reach the heights of verbal artistry. But there seems to be more. The experience of these emotions leads the poet to the higher levels of learning. However, in the poem only those who receive ‘divine joy’, those whose cauldron is visited by divine grace (rath), are capable of ‘maxims and judgments’ ( fásaige ⁊ bretha), and reach the ultimate heights. That their words are an example, that they are also ‘godly’ and ‘miraculous’ ‘maxims’ and ‘judgments’ suggests that they are also worthy of imitation. The ability to compose such speech comes from one’s nature, extensive study and experience, akin to ars and exercitatio in Roman rhetoric, but it is ultimately born of the coming of imbas and divine grace. These heights will not be achieved by all students, but as filidecht is authorized by the prophetic, pre-Christian figures from whom it descends, it is not necessarily through Christian learning alone that one reaches such heights. Can divine grace be visited upon one who pursues secular studies alongside scriptural? The poem seems to confirm this. The final section of the poem is one long, final strophe, broken up by a section of commentary, and concluded with a short encomium in passive/ active construction, containing internal alliteration, and parallel to the opening stanza. In it, the unity of divine and secular learning are central: Concerning that, what Néde mac Adnai said: I acclaim the Cauldron of Érmae With understandings of grace With accumulations of knowledge With strewings of imbas,158 (which is) the estuary of wisdom the uniting of scholarship the stream of splendour the exalting of the ignoble the mastering of language159 158 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 68-9; ‘De sin a n-as-ber Néde mac Adnai: Ar-caun Coire nÉrmai / Intlechtaib raith, /rethaib sofis,/srethaib imbais,/’ 159 ‘indber n-ecnai,/ellach suíthi,/srúaim n-ordan,/indocbáil dóer,/domnad insce,/’

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quick understanding the darkening of speech [roiscni] the craftsman of synchronism [comgni] the cherishing of students, where that is due is attended to160 where senses are distinguished where one approaches meaning [séis]161 where knowledge [sofis] is propagated where the noble are enriched where he who is not noble is ennobled 162 where names are exalted where praises are related by lawful means with distinctions of ranks with pure estimations of nobility 163 with the fair speech of wise men with streams of scholarship, a noble brew in which is brewed the basis of all knowledge which is set out according to law 164 which is advanced to after study which imbas quickens which joy converts which is revealed through sorrow, it is an enduring power 165 Whose protection does not diminish I acclaim the Cauldron of Érmae.166

160 ‘Intlecht ruirthech,/rómnae roiscni,/sáer-comgni,/cóemad felmac;/fégthar ndliged/’ 161 Breatnach, 1984, p. 189, amends his previous translation of séis as ‘musical art’ to ‘meanings’ and advises the reader to see Watkins, 1963 162 Breatnach, 1981, pp. 68-9; ‘Deligter cíalla,/cengar sési,/sílaigther sof is,/sonmigter soír,/ sóerthar nád sóer,/’ 163 Ibid., pp. 70-1; ‘Ara-utgatar anmann,/ad-fíadatar moltaa/modaib dligid,/deligthib grád,/ glanmesaib soíre,/’ 164 Ibid., pp. 70-1; ‘Soinscib suad,/srúamannaib suíthi,/sóerbrud i mberbthar/bunad each sofis/ searnar iar ndligiud,’ 165 Ibid., pp. 70-1; ‘Drengar iar frithgnum,/fo-nglúasi imbas,/ime-soí fáilte,/faillsigthir tri brón,/ búan bríg’ 166 Ibid., pp. 70-1; ‘Nád díbdai dín./Ar-caun Coire nÉrmai’

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What is the érmae? Not difficult; an artistic ‘noble training’ or an artistic ‘after-turning’ or an artistic course, i.e. it confers knowledge and status and honour after being converted.167 The Cauldron of Érmae It grants, it is granted It extends, it is extended It nourishes, it is nourished It magnifies, it is magnified It requests, it is requested of It acclaims, it is acclaimed It preserves, it is preserved It arranges, it is arranged It supports, it is supported.168 Good is the well of measure, Good is the acquisition of speech, Good is the confluence of power, Which builds up strength.169 It is greater than any domain, It is better than any patrimony, It brings one to wisdom, It separates one from fools.170

This final thirty line strophe consists of an encomium on the Cauldron of Érmae and the filidecht it represents. It is composed using grammatical parallelism, ‘It grants, it is granted’, etc., and the text ends with two quatrains composed in syllabic verse. In the language of the legal tradition, including the Bretha Nemed, one whose cauldron is upright produces ‘streams of splendour’ (srúamannaib n-ordan) and ‘streams of scholarship’ (srúamannaib suíthi). The legal rights and authority of the filid are summarized, and these are related to oratorical practice and verbal art. 167 Ibid., pp. 72-3; ‘Cid a n-érmae? Ni ansae: ér-impúd soí nó iar-impúd soí nó éraim soí .i. ernaid sofis ⁊ soíri ⁊ airmitin iarna impúd’ 168 Ibid., pp. 72-3; ‘Coire Érmai/ernid, ernair,/mrogaith, mrogthair,/bíathaid, bíadtair,/ Máraid, márthair,/áilith, áiltir,/ar-cain, ar-canar,/fo-rig, fo-regar,/con-sernn, fo-sernnar,’ 169 Ibid., pp. 72-3; ‘Fo-sernn, fo-sernnar,/fó topar tomseo/fó atrab n-insce,/fó comar coimseo,/ fon-utaing firse’ 170 Ibid., pp. 72-3; ‘Is mó cach ferunn,/is ferr gach orbu,/berid co hecnae,/echtraid fri borbu’

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One who has achieved the heights of learning has been granted the authority of praise and satire, an authority confirmed by law, as well as the authority to render judgments. In addition to accumulations of knowledge, understanding of grace, and the authority to perform this epideictic verbal art, the student gains mastery over exegesis. It is in the Cauldron of Érmae ‘where senses are distinguished’ and ‘where one approaches meaning’, as in late antique enarratio. After the grammatical foundation of the Cauldron of Goiriath, the student masters not simply poetry, but a verbal art imbued with social power and cultural prestige, and this includes interpretation: in short, the rhetorical arts. This is not simply a reflex of the trivium, but rather an articulation of an Irish learned tradition influenced by Latin learning. The ‘uniting of scholarship’ (ellach suíthi) presumably means the marriage of secular and ecclesiastical learning, something also witnessed in the very development of the filid as a learned class whose seven grades were recognized by the church. As one masters language (domnad insce) and ‘the darkening of speech’ (rómnae roiscni), the intentional obscurity so valued by the early Irish literati, one also masters roscada, the style in which a just judgment must be uttered. This archaizing style is also representative of ancient learning and the ethos of the pre-Christian prophets of Ireland who promulgate the doctrine at the heart of the poem. But the coming of divine joy and grace to this cauldron grants one the gift of divine prophecy, a gift not bestowed upon all students. Therefore, even absolute mastery over the secular arts are made dependent upon grace. The Cauldron of Érmae both arranges (con-sernn) and is arranged, it supports ( fo-sernn) and is supported by the verbal art of which it is the source. It is the middle cauldron that ‘magnifies’ or ‘amplifies’ filidecht which is, in kind, magnified (máraid) by the same. The ‘fair speech of wisemen’ (soinscib suad), uttered by those ‘craftsman of synchronism’ (sáer-comgni) (coimgne, ‘synchronism’, often translated as ‘all embracing knowledge’, but also ‘historical knowledge’), is central to this social function, which necessitates learning so that it may endure, and in this students are cherished.171 In the Cauldron of Érmae it is ‘a noble brew in which is brewed’ (sóerbrud i mberbthar), ‘the basis of all knowledge’ (bunad cach sofis): a unique form of the verbal arts of the trivium. The ‘Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ provides a rich, metaphorical source for understanding filidecht. It reflects the learning and organization of the filid and represents in prosimetric form the knowledge related in the law-tracts and the marriage of verbal art and law. It appears that it would 171 eDIL s.v. coimgne

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have served as a mnemonic device and as a source of contemplation for students. This is an interesting feature of the text; it compels us to participate in the process it delineates, demanding exegesis and performance of learning. In this light, it is an instructive text, likely composed for didactic purposes, using a culturally rich symbol as the core of its metaphor. It is a text that reveals much about the organization of the filid and conceptions of learning and knowledge they shared.



Conclusion and Considerations for Further Study

The history of rhetorical traditions in Ireland is one that is slowly forming but that offers much promise. The scope of the vernacular and Latin learned tradition from the seventh century forward is wide-ranging, including grammars, learned handbooks, letters, liturgical texts, hagiography, lawtexts, genealogy, lore of place-name, verse, and pseudo-history. As primary scholarship advances new editions and translations, the door is opened for scholars in adjacent fields, and Ireland should no longer escape the attention of rhetorical studies. Below, I briefly review some of the texts mentioned in the preceding chapters only as a representative sample of areas ripe for rhetorical inquiry. The writings of Columbanus offer important insight into rhetorical education in the sixth and seventh centuries not only in Ireland, but in continental centres of learning. In addition to his letters, sermons, and hymns, there remain unedited and untranslated manuscripts associated with Columbanian circles on the continent, works associated with rhetorical learning, and more that is yet to be discovered. Several hagiographic works, including the Life of Columbanus (and the writings of Adomnán generally) and the Latin and vernacular lives of Patrick, will also prove to be of value in our pursuits, as epideictic and other rhetorical genres inform their composition. The examples from early Ireland are plentiful, and such studies are wanting. There are a number of Irish learned Christian poems that demonstrate a special interest in language, especially, ‘Versus Cuiusdam Scotti de Alphabeto’,1 ‘Aipgitir Chrábaid’,2 ‘Interpretatio mystica progenitorum Domini Iesu Christi’3 of Ailerán the Wise, De Mirabiilibus sacrae scripturae,4 and the Carmen 1 2 3 4

See Howlett, 2010 See Clancy and Márkus, 1995, pp. 195-207 See Breen, 1995b See Carey, 2000

Stone, Brian James, The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789462984455_concl

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Paschale.5 Though these poems have in part been the subject of stylistic studies, much remains to be done regarding linguistic theories preserved therein, including the rhetorical. The grammatical texts discussed also deserve further study. All of these, with the exception of the learned vernacular text, Auraicept na nÉces (‘The Scholar’s Primer’) (the edition of which is incomplete) remain to be translated, though they are all now edited. The Auraicept is perhaps the most important as it is a vernacular learned handbook informed by the tradition of Latin grammatica, but rhetorical theories can also be detected. The Insular Latin grammars are all of interest, but Vergilius Maro Grammaticus’s grammar proves of special interest to rhetoric, as he specifically discusses rhetorical theory. Studies in Celtic grammatica have proliferated over the last few decades, and many more important studies are emerging that will shine a brighter light on the changing form of rhetorical theory and practice as it was combined with ars grammatica in the Early Middle Ages. In the centuries up to circa 900CE, learning continued to thrive in Ireland, and the vast vernacular literature produced as a result represents further rhetorical innovation and practice. The ‘Cauldron of Poetry and Learning’ provides a glimpse into the innovative compositions that the learned poets, the filid, of the poetico-legal schools created. Social stratification of secular learned communities working in cooperation with recently arrived episcopa led to a socio-cultural context unique in this era, and the learning that resulted provides a fascinating fusion of secular and ecclesiastical learning. As Elva Johnston articulates it, filidecht is ‘at once pragmatic and mythopoetic, especially at the intersection between learning and composition’.6 Those more mysterious elements of learning were made concrete using vivid symbols and figures from ancient tradition. The scholarly was framed in terms of the supernatural, and an original and insightful learned tradition is evidence of these activities. This learned tradition challenges contemporary views of the decline of the signif icance of memory and delivery in the traditional five canons of classical rhetoric, and there is a vast body of literature that attests their continued relevance and creative adaptation. As our knowledge of early Irish grammatica and rhetorica continues to advance, we will need to revise our historical narratives of the rhetorical arts in the Middle Ages. The law-tracts themselves also deserve further rhetorical study. Bretha Nemed Déidenach and Bretha Nemed Táoiseach, those law-tracts that cite 5 See Springer, 1988 6 Johnston, 2013, p. 100

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pseudo-Cicero and demonstrate the influence of Latin learning, have much to teach us about performance and adaptation of ancient rhetorical theory to new cultural and intellectual contexts. While scholars agree the legal schools of Ireland pre-date the arrival of Christianity, the learned texts introduced by the church were integrated into this native system. Within these learned circles of lawyers and poets, several handbooks were composed and rhetorical arts are central to their purpose. Dliged sésa a hUraicept na mac sésa is a learned text that incorporates late antique rhetorical texts in innovative ways, and understanding the nature of this incorporation and the verbal art it exalts will be of great value to historians of rhetoric. The Corpus Iuris Hibernici, compiled by D.A. Binchy, contains a wealth of legal material, much of which is yet to be translated and studied.7 In addition to these are the roscada, those moments of rhetorical speech witnessed in the law-tracts and the sagas, notorious for their rhetorical nature, and that Johan Corthals argues are adapted from late antique rhetoric. Moments of direct speech in the pseudo-histories (sagas) often composed in rosc are also of interest, and scholars in rhetorical studies have only recently begun to seriously study such speeches in Homer and Vergil.8 Numerous historical texts survive, and a study of direct speech and the relationship of history and rhetoric would advance our understanding of linguistic education in early Ireland, as well as rhetoric’s relationship to other areas of learning, especially historiography. Satire and praise were powerful verbal arts of the filid used to enforce laws. Satire, psalms of malediction, and praise poetry, both Christian and secular, Latinate and vernacular, provide insight into rhetorical practice within secular contexts in a complex social organization more dynastic than monarchic. The rituals associated with this practice were highly performative and involved visual, material, sonic, and verbal rhetoric. Comparative epideictic is a relatively new field, and Ireland has much to offer to our understanding. This verbal art sheds light on the fusion of native, secular, and Christian Latin learning in Ireland and the importance of expanded conceptions of the rhetorical arts in the Middle Ages. Finally, the visual and material rhetoric of the early Irish tradition remains virtually unexplored. Ogham stones, high crosses, and the architecture and topography of monastic settlements are ripe for rhetorical study. The same is true of richly illuminated manuscripts, including Book of Kells and 7 See Binchy, 1978 8 See p. 56 n. 58 above for references to recent studies on pseudo-history; on rhetoric in Vergil, see Farrell, 1997

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Book of Durrow.9 These are only the most famous examples. Such gospel books were preserved as relics and inspired both meditation and veneration, and in recent work on illumination and meditation the Irish tradition has been neglected. Often associated with clerics of the ‘age of saints’, these manuscripts, as well as bells, croziers, and other saintly relics possessed persuasive force and, in addition to their ritualistic function, served to establish the primacy and authority of those monastic communities that possessed and displayed them. Within the confines of this book, I could only focus my analysis on a small, but representative sample of this textual tradition, and there is a vast amount of work remaining to be done before we will fully understand the extent and nature of rhetorical learning and practice in medieval Ireland. As more rhetoricians gain interest, and as more texts are discovered among vast manuscript holdings the world over, we will more fully develop our understanding of just how rich and interesting the Irish contribution to medieval rhetoric is.

9 For a discussion of meditatio and memoria in insular manuscript illuminations, especially in Book of Durrow, see McCloskey, 2018; see also Moss, O Mahony, and Maxwell, 2017; Doyle, 2008

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—. ‘Columbanus and Gildas’. Vergiliae Christianae 30 (1976): 310-17. —. ‘On the Hisperica Famina’. Celtica 8 (1968): 126-39. Witherington III, Ben. What’s in the Word: Rethinking the Socio-Rhetorical Character of the New Testament. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009. Wood, Ian. ‘The Fall of the Western Empire and the End of Roman Britain’. Britannia 18 (1987): 251-62. —. ‘The End of Roman Britain: Continental Evidence and Parallels’. Eds. Michael Lapidge and David Dumville. Gildas: New Approaches. Studies in Celtic History. Woodbridge: Boydell Press (1984): 8-17. Wooding, Jonathan M. ‘Reapproaching the Pagan Celtic Past – Anti-Nativism, Asterisk Reality and the Late-Antiquity Paradigm’. Studia Celtica Fennica VI (2009): 51-74. —. ‘Trade as a factor in the transmission of texts between Ireland and the continent in the sixth and seventh centuries’. Eds. Próinséas Chatháin and Michael Richter. Ireland and Europe in the early Middle Ages: texts and transmissions/Irland und Europa im früheren Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung. Dublin: Four Courts Press (2002): 14-26. —. Communication and commerce along the Western sealanes AD400-800. Oxford: BAR International Series 654, 1996. Woolf, Alex. ‘Columbanus’s Ulster education’. Ed. Alexander O Hara. Columbanus and the peoples of post-Roman Europe. New York: Oxford University Press (2018): 91-102. Wright, Neil. “Columbanus’s Epistulae.” Studies in Celtic History. Columbanus: Studies on the Latin Writings. Ed. Michael Lapidge. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997. —. “The Hisperica famina and Caelius Sedulius.” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 2 (1982): 61-74. Yaceczko, Lionel G.S.A. ‘Ausonius of Bordeaux: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Establishment of a Christian Culture in the Late Roman West’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. The Catholic University of America, 2016. Young, Simon. ‘St. Patrick and Clovis’. Peritia 16 (2002): 478-9. Zimmer, Heinrich. ‘Über direkte Handelsverbindungen Westgalliens mit Irland im Altertum und frühen Mittelalter’. Sitzungsberichte der königlich-preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften I (1909), pp. 363-400.

Index addressivity 114-115 addressee 112-115, 125n12 Adomnán of Iona 42, 54-55, 70-77, 235 Life of Columba 75-76, 107 Adrian, Abbot of St. Augustine’s see Canterbury aemulatio 158, 174-175 Aeneid 73, 77, 143, 166, 170, 183-185 áes dána 52, 187, 194 Áiliu poems 158, 219 airecht 200-201; see also court, Irish Aldfrith of Northumbria 51, 54-55, 74 Aldhelm 55-58, 91, 155-161, 165-166, 168, 174n87, 176n93, 183 Amairgen Glúngel 208, 211, 214, 216-217 Ambrose of Milan 14, 96, 106, 112 Annals of Ulster 55n48, 98, 100, 105 Antiphonary of Bangor 69, 71-72 aprotreptic see protreptic Apuleius 20, 222-225 argumentum 90-91, 142-147, 150 Aristotle 24, 114, 167 Armagh 41, 63, 94n4, 96n5, 97-102, 105, 107, 123-124, 181n114; see also Book of Armagh arts, verbal 25-26, 217, 219, 221, 237 Asper see Grammar handbooks, insular audience, conceptions of 26, 50 in Hisperica famina 165, 185 in late antique epistolography 113-115 in Patrick 125, 127-140, 147-152 in secular verbal arts 197, 206 see also addressee and addressivity Augustine of Hippo 14-15, 48, 66, 77-78, 83, 90, 96, 100, 106, 111-112, 224, 226-227 Confessio 118-119 De Ciuitate Dei 67, 144, 148 Aulus Gellius 20, 84, 168 Auraicept na nÉces 51, 59, 61, 80-83, 84-91, 180-181, 188, 199n35, 205, 216n110, 236 Ausonius 45, 111-112, 117n112, 158, 162, 165-166, 171-175, 185-188 Ephemeris 165-166, 172-173, 185, 188 Auxerre 95-97, 99, 109, 117, 147 Barbarian Conspiracy 16, 102, 133 Basil 73, 112, 168 Bede 53-55, 58, 60, 65n103, 74, 91, 99, 156 Bobbio Abbey 68, 80n83, 82 Boethius 60-62, 87, 177-178, 218 Book of Armagh 52, 94n4, 98-99, 102, 107, 123-124, 132, 133n35 Book of Durrow 13, 74-75, 238 Book of Kells 13, 57, 75, 237 Book of Leinster 19, 59, 168, 177, 184 Burke, Kenneth 25-26

Caesarius of Arle(s) 73, 127 Canones Adomnani 42, 76; see also Adomnán of Iona Canterbury 54, 56-57 Cassiodorus 14, 24-25, 48, 61, 76, 90, 112 Expositio psalmorum 76, 24-25, 48 Cauldron Castlederg 211 as cultural symbol 209-213 hospitality in law-texts 213-215 Celestine, Pope 16, 63, 94, 96-97, 121n122, 122n125 Cenn Fáelad mac Ailella 51, 88, 214 Ceretic Guletic see Coroticus Ceretic of Dumbarton see Coroticus Cicero 24-25, 50, 61, 65, 70n131, 77, 84-85, 110-111, 130, 141-142, 170, 226n145 pseudo-Cicero 24, 62, 141-142, 198, 237 Colmán 39, 54, 63-64, 156 Colum Cille 70-77, 192-193 Columba see Collum Cille Columbanus 12, 18, 37, 40, 50n27, 53, 62, 57-74, 86, 97, 114, 119, 235 Precamur patrem 69, 71-72 pseudo-Columbanus 64-66 Epistle De sollemnitatibus 64-66 Comgall 67, 69-70 commonplaces, rhetorical see topoi computistics 13, 40, 57n59, 60 comuaimm 194 Consentius 82, 87 Constantius of Lyon 16, 32n4, 122 Corithech see Coroticus Cormac Mac Airt 168, 212-213 ‘Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise’ 227-228 Coroticus, identity of 101-104, 109, 115, 121n121, 132-134 Ceretic Guletic 101-102, 132 Ceretic of Dumbarton 101-102, 109 Corithech 132 Corpus Iurius Hibernici 197, 237 councils, ecclesiastical 40n48, 42-43, 50, 63, 65-66, 121n121; see also synod court, Irish 196, 199-202, 209 cultural rhetorics see rhetorics; cultural Cummian 40-42, 64-66, 97 Paschal Letter 40-43, 97 curiales 33, 102 Cyprian, bishop of Carthage 66, 112, 118 De unitate ecclesiae 66 Dagda 211-212 declamation 47, 117n112, 141, 172, 183-184

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dindschenchas 180, 187, 195 Diomedes Grammaticus 78, 82, 89 Dliged sésa a hUraicept na mac sésa 62, 177-178, 217-219, 237 Donatus 20, 58, 61, 79, 81-84, 87, 157, 160-164 Dubthach moccu Lugair 52-53, 194 Easter see computistics education 22-26, 45-52, 78-81, 90-91 Christian 22-26 enarratio 47-48, 78-80, 88, 141, 179, 184 imitatio 47, 50n23, 174-175 paideia 47, 73, 107 Roman, three stages 140-142 ludus litterarius 47, 57, 79, 141 schola grammatici 47, 117, 141 schola rhetoris 47, 141 Secular see filid see also Liberal Arts emotion 136-137, 223-227, 230 emulation 158, 162, 175 enach see honour enigmata 160-162, 165, 183-186 epistolography 63-67, 110-115, 124-126, 134, 151-153 ethos see rhetoric Eucherius of Lyon 48, 127-128 exegesis 46-51, 80, 89-91, 197-198 Faustus of Riez 73, 112, 118n112 Ferchertne 215 figures, rhetorical anaphora 119 argumentum a loco 147, 150 argumentum a modo 147 argumentum a simili 142-147, 164 chiasmus 119-120 figura etymologica 136-137, 143 homoeoptoton 164 homoioteleuton 20 hyperbole 164 imago 142-143, 147 interrogatio 147 parabola 142, 147, 164 parallelism 20, 119, 161, 209, 232 sarcasmos 164 synonymia 136, 145, 150 filid 20, 51-53, 188, 191-208 ánroth 196, 209, 215, 223 bards 82, 177, 220 filidecht 192-196 ollam 35, 187, 196-197, 206-208, 215, 220, 223 scéla 195-197 senchas 52, 193-195, 214, 217 frontier, Roman 31-32, 94-97, 120-122 management 10-17, 122, 138, 149, 152 Fronto 111, 128, 168

genre, rhetorical 18-21, 46-47, 63, 79, 81, 88, 195, 202 letter as 112-114, 134, 137 Germanus 16, 65n101, 93-96, 109, 117, 121-122 Gildas 14, 70-71, 117, 117n112 grace 121n122, 125, 128, 138; see also rath grammar handbooks, Latin 13-15, 21, 24, 34, 46-50, 58-61, 78-91, 117n112, 128, 131n27, 158-164, 183-184, 188-189, 198, 209-211, 217-218, 236 Anonymous ad Cuimnanum 59, 61, 79-83, 229 Ars Asperii 81n188, 83-86, 160 Ars Ambrosiana 59, 82 Ars Malsachani 59, 82-83, 86 Ars Sergilli 82 vernacular 86-91; see also Auraicept see also Vergilius Maro Grammaticus grammatica 10-11, 47-49, 55-63, 78-93, 158, 161-164, 172, 181, 188, 198-200, 211, 217, 223, 229, 232-233, 236, 236 Gregory I the Great, Pope 11, 40, 62, 76, 83, 85, 117n112, 224-227 Gregory of Nazianzus 72-73, 112, 168 Hadrian, Abbot of St. Augustine’s see Canterbury heresy, Pelagian see Pelagianism hermeneumata 162, 165-166, 172-174, 185-186 Hermogenes 20, 80, 157 high crosses 33, 237 historiography 21-26 honour 35-36, 196-197, 203-205, 213-214 hymns 46, 71, 76 Iliad 131, 167 imbas forosnai 176, 178, 215, 225-231 imitation 47, 49n23, 108, 118, 125, 135, 138, 159-162, 170, 174-176, 230 imperial management see frontier management Iona 18, 37, 40-41, 54-55, 64-65, 70-78, 82-83, 97, 107 Cumméne Find 82-83 Fergnae Brit 83 see also Adomnàn; Ségéne Isidore of Seville 20, 24, 58-61, 70, 76-77, 79-81, 86-90, 156-161, 164, 175-176, 182, 188, 195, 206 De Natura Rerum 59, 76, 159 Etymologies 24, 58-59, 76, 81, 89, 91, 164, 182n116 Jerome 14, 17n26, 48, 73, 76-77, 84, 90, 100, 106, 112, 117n112, 119, 148 John Cassian 73, 77, 117n112, 126-128, 130, 139-140, 224, 226 Institutes 73, 77 Jonas of Bobbio 67-68, 72, 107, 224

Index

Laidcen 59, 155n2, 156, 166 Latin biblical 15, 120, 95-97 Hiberno-Latin 14-15, 20, 51, 70, 82-84, 87, 131n26, 155-162, 189 Hisperic 14-15, 20, 56, 70, 155-160, 167, 174, 176, 189 Romano-British 124-125 law 14, 23, 58, 76, 96-97, 117n112, 128, 158, 176-180 canon 34-39, 42, 53, 76 fásaige 199, 229-230 fénechas 51, 195 roscada 10, 20, 158, 196, 199-200, 202, 214, 228-229, 233, 237 secular 10-11, 18, 20-21, 34-39, 51, 53, 62, 158, 176, 177-180, 186-187, 192-208, 210-215, 219-220, 224-225, 229, 231, 233, 235-237 tesdemuin 199, 229 law-tracts Bretha Comaithchesa 180 Bretha Nemed Déidenach 38, 62, 87, 158, 172, 177, 204, 212-213, 219, 236 Bretha Nemed Toísech 35, 38, 51, 87, 177, 195-197, 213-214, 217, 236 Cóic Conara Fugill 201-202 Collectio Canonum Hibernensis 39, 41n51, 42, 66, 76 Córus Bésgnai 194 Críth Gablach 38, 197-198, 213-214 Pseudo-historical Introduction to the Senchas Már 187, 193-194, 225, 228 Uraicecht Bec 214 Uraicecht na Ríar 195, 200, 206, 220 learned personnel see filid Lebor Gabála 19, 211-212, 216n111, 217 Leo I the Great, Pope 11-12, 76, 97, 121 Lérins 117, 127 letters see epistolography; see also performance Liberal Arts 40, 55, 58, 60, 83, 85, 117n112, 218, 221-223, 229 quadrivium 40, 60, 222 trivium 14, 46, 60-61, 90-91, 217, 219, 222, 233 see also grammar; rhetoric Lindisfarne 18, 51, 54, 57, 156 literacy 15, 17, 28, 31-35, 46-47, 50, 52, 77, 79, 86, 96, 127, 196-197, 211 literature Latin 9, 13-14, 18-19, 18n31, 51-52, 86, 183, 235-236 vernacular 9, 13-14, 19, 34-35, 81, 90, 168, 172, 176, 183, 191, 236 logos see rhetoric Macrobius 73, 78-79, 85, 88, 142-143, 146-147, 153, 168, 170, 184 Saturnalia 142, 143, 147, 168, 170

273 Máeldub 56-57, 155 Martianus Capella 24, 79 De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii in early Ireland 60-62, 84, 177-178, 218 material rhetoric see rhetoric; see also ogham stones; high crosses maxim see law, fásaige Maximus of Trier 103-107 metaphor 48, 78, 115, 131, 163-164, 166-181, 209-211, 214, 220, 222 of the Church as body 137-138, 142 of grammaticus as custodia historiae 78 of poisonous food 145 see also oratory Muirchú moccu Mactheni 95-97, 101, 105, 117, 124, 147 natura 209, 217, 220-221, 230 Néde mac Adnai 177, 180, 203n59, 211, 214-216 nemed 35-36, 62, 187, 196-197, 203, 229 Nemed School 21, 38, 61-63, 191-192, 198, 202, 204, 207 Nicene Creed 104-105, 108-109, 125 Northumbria 18, 37, 51, 54-55, 71 Ogham alphabets 87-88, 180-181 ogham stones 31-34, 237 Old Irish Treatise on the Psalter 90-91 oratory, metaphors for Ausonian speech/chain 166-167, 170-171, 175-176, 178, 181 containers/bowls 83, 170, 213, 220, 222 honey/mellifluous 55, 131, 167-171, 174 martial 162, 164-165, 168-170, 187-188 treasure 62, 176-177-178, 182, 217-218 water/torrent/flow/stream 131, 150, 166-167, 170-171, 176-178, 181, 197n28, 218, 227, 230-232 pagan see pre-Christian Palladius 12, 16-17, 33, 63, 94-100, 102, 105-106, 109-110, 117, 121-122; see also Patrick paraphrasis 124, 139, 145-146, 149, 189 paruchiae 39, 41 Paschal controversy see computistics pathos see rhetoric Patricius episcopus see Patrick Patrick background and education 116-120, 144 Confessio 36, 46, 64, 94-96, 102, 105, 107, 116, 118, 122-123, 125, 127-129, 131-132 dating, problem of 98-110 hagiography 17, 94n9, 95, 96n5, 98-99, 109 phantom-Patrick 99-100 Two-Patricks Theory 99, 105 see also progymnasmata; see also Palladius Pauline Epistles 19, 49, 93, 135, 139, 144

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Paulinus 77, 106-108, 111-113, 118, 128, 139-140 Pelagianism 16, 65n103, 94 Pelagius 14, 66, 117n112, 121n122 peregrination 18, 68, 70-71, 183n118, 224 performance of law 10, 62, 199-208, 208n79 of letters 112-116, 120-121, 131 of verbal art 26, 162, 197-199, 204-208, 236-237 see also satire and praise Plato 22-23, 26, 110, 167 Pliny 77, 111, 159 poetry 47, 51-52, 76-77, 79, 84, 158-159, 192, 196, 205, 216-217, 225-228, 233, 237 golden line 159-160, 169-170 poetic languages, vernacular bán bérla 199 bérla féne 199 bérla na filed 199, 208 bérla tóbaide 87 gnáthbérla 199 praise poetry see satire pre-Christian Irish learning 113, 175, 192-194, 205-208, 215, 219, 227-228, 230, 233 religion 9-10, 15, 33-35, 38, 222, 227 social practices 18, 115, 128, 147, 205 Priscian 19, 61, 77, 87, 161, 165, 176 Praeexercitaminia 142, 183-185, 188 Priscillian 105, 108, progymnasmata 47, 111, 140-142 chreia 80-81, 141 ecphrasis 140, 142-145, 149, 152, 157, 160-162, 164-166, 171-172, 184-189 ethopoeia 124-125, 130, 138, 140 in the Hisperica famina 157-162, 164-166, 172, 183, 188-189, 172-176, 179, 183-189 maxim 124, 141, 194, 199, 219n120, 228, 229-230 narratio 124, 140, 142, 152, 183-185 in Patrick 46, 117, 124-126, 130, 138, 140, 142-143, 145-147, 149, 152-153, 156 synkrisis/synchrisis 46, 124, 140, 142, 145-147, 149, 152, 156, 164, 179 Prosper of Aquitaine 16, 33, 48, 65, 93-94, 96-97, 99, 109, 121, 122n125 Chronicle 16, 33, 93-94, 121n122 Expositio psalmorum 48 protreptic 124, 137, 143-144, 151 psalms commentaries on 17, 19, 24-25, 47-49, 76 of malediction 114, 203-206 use in grammar and exegesis 47-50, 90-91 pseudo-history 165, 191-193, 197, 235, 237n8 Quintilian 24-25, 50, 78, 110, 137, 146, 170, 179-180, 217 on enarratio historiarum 184 on progymnasmata 141-142

rath, ‘grace’ 215, 222, 227-230, 233 Rath Melsigi 37, 54 renaissances 18, 28-29 Rhetorica ad Herennium 62, 141-142, 184, 198, 207, 219 rhetorical performance see performances rhetorics appeals ethos 79, 122, 125n11, 127, 130, 139, 148, 151, 195, 215, 233 logos 14, 151 pathos 125, 142-143, 146-150 conception of 23-26 cultural 26 deliberative 43, 65-66, 95, 114, 137-138, 141-146, 149, 151 demonstrative/epideictic 24, 93, 95, 114, 124-125, 137-138, 143, 171, 202-204, 207, 233, 235, 237 encomium 216, 219, 230, 232 forensic 40, 43, 66, 93, 95, 114, 117n112, 125, 137, 140-141, 145-146, 149, 151-152 historiography 17, 19, 21-27, 77, 180 material 10, 13-14, 32-33, 57, 108-109, 205, 211, 237 of place and space 40, 43, 69, 75-76, 200-201, 206 sonic 204-205, 237 synodical 40-43, 46, 63, 66-67, 76 visual 14, 57, 57n65, 75, 205-208, 237 Rí 35-36, 39, 197 rosc, roscada see law satire and praise 188, 192, 195, 202-203, 237 legality of 203-207, 233 scholastic colloquia 20, 157-158, 162, 165-166, 172, 175, 185-186, 189 schools 54-55, 74, 82-83, 87, 116-117, 158, 163-166, 176, 189, 194, 236-237 organization of 48-52, 172-176, 186-187, 191-192, 198-202, 222, 233-234 see also Nemed School scribes 10, 13-14, 19, 49, 53, 73-75, 123, 135-136 Scripture Latin Vulgate 17n26, 49, 66, 76, 96, 100, 148 Vetus Latina 17n26, 59, 66, 76, 100 Sedulius, Caelius 158-160, 170 Ségéne of Iona 40, 50n27, 64-65, 97 Servius 73, 79, 88, 184 slavery 147-148 in Ireland 132-133, 147-148, 150 in Roman Britain 102, 116, 132-133, 147-148 social organization, early Ireland 35-43, 210n88, 213-214, 237 Spain, connections to Ireland 10, 58-61 St Gall Stiftsbibliothek 19, 58n67, 59, 68, 81 St Martin of Tours 45, 77, 94n4, 106-108, 117n112, 123, 139-140

275

Index

styles Biblical 50n23, 90, 119, 123, 125, 127-131, 139 Columbanus’s writings 67-68, 71n136 hisperic 15, 18n29 and n30, 20, 84-86, 155, 158, 160 vernacular texts 10, 20, 23, 57, 82, 196, 199-200, 207, 209, 216, 229, 233 Sulpicius Severus 77, 95n4, 105-108, 117n112 Symmachus 107, 112, 128 synods and councils 37-38, 40, 42-43, 50, 60, 63, 66-67, 94-95 and Patrick 17, 36-37, 116, 122 and Ségéne 40, 64-65 synodical texts/canons/letters 34, 40, 42-43, 46, 66, 76 testimony see tesdemuin (under law) textual interpretation see exegesis Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury 54, 56 Theodore of Mopsuestia 50, 91 Theon of Alexandria 80, 111, 125n11 Tírechán 95n4, 96n5, 97-98, 101, 117, 124 topoi 182-184 ‘Champion’s Portion’ 214 of Christian body 137 ‘Family Letter’ 150-151

humility topos 72, 126-127, 130, 132, 136, 139, 164 ‘Prayer and Obeisance to the Gods’ 151 ‘Substitute for Personal Presence’ 151 trade with Britain and Gaul 16, 34, 45, 53, 72-73 with the Mediterranean 9n2, 31-32, 34 slave 16, 100 Trier 103-105, 107-108 túatha 35-36, 39, 41, 133n35 Túatha Dé Danann 211-212, 216n111 Uinnianus 70-71 verba and res 22-23, 25-26, 127, 177, 196 verbal art see art Vergil 15, 47-48, 73, 77-78, 84, 143n65, 158-160, 166, 170, 175, 178, 237 Vergilius Maro Grammaticus 59, 82-87, 91, 155n2, 160, 218, 236 Versus Cuiusdam Scotti de Alphabeto 83, 235 visual rhetoric of manuscripts see rhetoric Vita Columbae see Adomnán Well of Ségais 176, 178-179, 211, 225, 227