St. Patrick Apostle Of Ireland

A Memoir of his Life and Mission

with an introductory dissertation on some early usages of the church in ireland, and its historical position from the establishment of the english colony to the present day

by

James Henthorn Todd, D.D.

senior fellow of trinity college, regius professor of hebrew in the university, and treasurer of st. patrick’s cathedral, dublin

Ego Dominus primus et novissimus Ego sum. Viderunt insulæ et timuerunt, extrema terræ obstupuerunt, et appropinquaverunt, et accesserunt.

Esai. 41:4, 5

DUBLIN

HODGES, SMITH, & CO.

publishers to the university

1864

Preface

The Author feels that some apology is required for having occupied in this volume so large a space with merely introductory matter. But Irish history is so little known, that it became necessary to explain at considerable length certain customs or usages of the antient Church of Ireland, which by some writers have been greatly misunderstood, and by others concealed or kept out of view. It was important to make it clear that those usages were not of the nature of heretical or schismatical irregularities, nor all of them, strictly speaking, peculiar to Ireland. Some of them were the result of the insulated position of the country, combined with the social condition of the people under the government of their aboriginal chieftains; some of them were antient customs, which continued to exist in Ireland long after they had been abolished elsewhere; and some had been abolished elsewhere for reasons which did not apply to Ireland.

It was necessary, also, in order to correct certain popular mistakes, to draw attention to the fact that from the eleventh century to the Reformation there were two Churches in Ireland, each ignoring, as far as it could, the existence of the other; and that since the Reformation a third Church has sprung up, deriving its succession from a foreign source; whilst the original Irish Church, properly so called, having merged into the Church of the English pale, has adopted the Reformation, and lost in a great measure its hold upon the descendants of the native tribes. This loss is to be attributed to that old and deep-seated disaffection to England which is the parent of almost all the political and social evils of the country; nor can there be a doubt that this disaffection was mainly caused, not by religious differences, but by the impolitic measures enforced in the twelfth and some following centuries, for compelling the Irish people to adopt manners and laws for which they were wholly unprepared; not to speak of the arbitrary confiscation of landed property, for the benefit of the English colonists, and the sudden overthrow of the authority of the native chieftains.

The remainder of the volume is occupied with the history of the plantation of Christianity in Ireland, as it is recorded in the acts of its first missionaries, Palladius and Patrick. But, notwithstanding the number of pages employed in the narrative, several important ...