Empire: World History - 385. Saint Patrick: Slave, Rebel, & Ireland’s Patron Saint (Ep 3)

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated all over the world every year by the Irish diaspora, but what is the real history behind the patron saint of Ireland? How is the traditional story of his life almost entirely incorrect? And why were Irish people in Rome considered to be the most scholarly Christians?  In Episode 3 of this series, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by Irish historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín to bust myths about Saint Patrick. Summer sale is here: get an annual Empire Club membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, early-access, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over.   For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Lorcan Moullier Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpod.uk.com. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back. Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EVAP rebate on select 2027 volt and 2026. TV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. On the 17th of March, each and every year, the Irish diaspora celebrates St. Patrick's Day. You know this, the Chicago River is dyed green, tourist flock to Dublin from all over the world.

But what is the history of the real Patrick? Now, the traditional story of Ireland's patron saint is that sometimes around the year 4, 3, 2, a man walked into Ireland. He'd been there before as a slave. and it had taken him years to escape. Now he was back to convert the people of this island. But how much truth is there in that origin story? Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arndon. And me, William Durimple.

In today's episode of Empire, we're joined by the great Irish historian, Darvi O'Kronin, to find out more. I hope I've got it right, Darvey. This is a unique pronunciation of a unique name, the last man in Ireland to have the true biblical name of David. He's also the professor of history at the University of Galway, a member of the Distinguished Royal Irish Academy, and author of a new edition, the early medieval Ireland 400 to 1200, the most comprehensive and scholarly treatment of this period. Darvey, welcome to Empire. Thank you very much. Hello to both of you.

And also, you know, you missed out one of his major accolades as he's a very good friend of Jane Ormeyer, who is a superstar on this podcast. And regular listeners will know how much we'll know how much we. rate her. Can you first of all just paint us a picture, Davy, please, about, you know, the kind of Ireland that Patrick walked into, because I suppose many of our listeners won't have encountered early Irish culture or society. So you just describe it for us. Well, I do have to tell you that I always made the remark to my students, my undergrads in the university here in Galway, that almost everything they'd ever heard or read about St. Patrick was wrong. Starting, I'm afraid, with your date, William, but we won't go into that just yet. But in terms of the background, the Ireland that Patrick arrived in, at whatever time he arrived in Ireland, and we can talk about that later, was certainly different from what you might expect elsewhere in the Roman Empire, which would have included Britain.

Britain was a province of the Roman Empire, and the Britain that Patrick came from was a Romanized Britain. So he would have experienced the same kind of upbringing and lifestyle and education and so on as anybody else in Western Europe at the time. So Ireland was different from that point of view. the Roman Empire never established itself here. The Roman legions never arrived. There was no conquest of Ireland as such. We know from Tacitus that his father-in-law, Agricula, had the idea at one stage of coming over and doing the job, but somebody obviously told him about the weather and he decided against coming. So they never came. They had a good sense to stay where they were. So we never had straight roads for a long time. We never had the trappings of Roman civilization, in particular the Roman

administration, the imperial administration, and so on, but also the language, obviously, and the script that went with it. So the Ireland that Patrick came to would have been an Irish-speaking island, for the most part. Almost everybody would have spoken Irish. Sadly, not all of us do now, still at the present day, but the language has continued from his time down to the present day. He acquired the language, obviously, since he spent six years in the country, and that certainly would have been an advantage to him when he came back. But the Irish, he, rather the Irish culture or society that he came to, wouldn't have been altogether different, I suppose, insofar as it's probably a mistake to imagine early Ireland in the fourth, fifth or sixth century as being

like North Korea. We weren't hermetically sealed off from the Roman Empire. There was constant coming and going trade, everything, people. In fact, there were Irish colonies in Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries. We know from inscriptions and other evidence, archaeological evidence, that there were substantial numbers of Irish settlers in Devon and Cornwall and Wales and so on. and certainly those people must have been coming and going to the homeland and they must have been bringing back tales and so on. So it wouldn't have been a completely closed book from Patrick's point of view. But definitely from an organizational point of view, we think we know the set up in Ireland. It seems to have comprised small what you might call petty kingdoms.

It's not a derogatory term. It's just small kingdoms made up of small numbers of people. We have no idea what the population was like in Ireland where you can guess a figure, but it is only a guess. but it would have been a lot smaller, obviously, than the offshore island than Roman Britain. And there is this sort of theoretical concept we have still that Ireland was made up of a lot of kingdoms, one estimate made by the great Owen McNeil way back in the last century, but that there might have been at any given time 150, up to 150 such kingdoms, which actually caused great consternation outside of Ireland,

because where you're used to having one king for one people or one king for one kingdom, when you told people on the continent, oh, well, we have 100. You can imagine the consternation that would have caused. And it actually carries over into the church organization as well. There's a similar problem arising for the similar reasons. The thing that always surprises me when I go to Dublin, and I'm very used to the collection in Edinburgh from this period of all the stuff from the picks and so on. But when you go to the Treasury in the National Museum in Dublin,

it is astonishingly rich. There's nothing else in any museum of the period anywhere in Europe that has that amount of gold. That's true. Tarks, these brooches, these fabulous ornaments and that golden boat. I mean, it's not peripheral in that sense. Oh, definitely, yeah. Oh, there's certainly the case that you didn't require Christianity in order to produce high-grade art in Ireland. As you say, the torques and various other pieces of gold that have survived and are displayed,

both in our National Museum and in the British Museum and elsewhere overseas, these are certainly fabulous pieces of artwork. So the idea that you had to be Christian to produce fine art, either in gold or in any other medium is a fallacy. And the Irish definitely didn't need any lesson from that point of view in terms of what you might call civilization. If you equate civilization with high artistic achievement, then the Irish were already there, so to speak.

And tell us a little about the spiritual world, the hierarchy that St. Patrick is going to confront if he's bringing a new faith. Who are the opposition? Yeah, because I mean, I've always had this idea of, you know, sort of, you know, these high priests or priestesses, is even better, you know, with lyrical poetry holding forth in front of, you know, great numbers of people. Is that what it was like? I'm afraid not. No, no. There is a cure for that, yes. Obviously, there are images of pre-Christian

or non-Christian, Irish society, but they're all transmitted through Christian sources. So that, for example, when you read the biographies of Patrick, which is where you would go first, I suppose, in the fond belief that you might learn something about pre-Christian religion in Ireland. You don't actually. The only evidence we have really, the only substantial evidence is Patrick's own words from his own texts that have survived. And he is appalled by the fact that, for example, according to him, at any rate, the Irish believe in a solar deity. They adore the sun and so on. And he does mention at one point that he refused to engage in certain non-Christian practices.

But unfortunately, he doesn't tell us what they were. And apart from Patrick, there's really nothing from the 5th century, though we actually know nothing. can, and most people do, in terms of reconstructing or recreating the pre-Christian Irish society in religious terms, they tend to go back to Caesar, but I mean, Caesar is, you know, 44 BC or something like that. You're talking half a millennium. So really, we have no evidence whatsoever, certainly in documentary form, we've no evidence whatsoever. What exactly comprise the Irish pre-Christian religion? Right. Okay, because, you know, I'm a Yates girl. And, you know, his sort of idea of this great Irish tradition that, you know, hand to hand to hand, the bards reach over time.

And, you know, he suggests, and I have always thought that there was a great bardic tradition. Also, I mean, the sun god, do we have a name for the sun god of the Irish? Because I'm fascinated with sun gods. No, actually, not. Well, there is loch, you know, the loch, but that's the same loch as in lugudunum and Lyon and all that kind of thing. It's a great Celtic god of God, so to speak. and there are a few other names that crop up in the literature as well.

But there's no evidence of any cults associated with these gods or any kind of practice or ritual activity and so on. Right. Okay. I mean, I'm just fascinated because the sun unites, you know, Hindu mythology, Egyptian mythology. But back to the Bardic tradition. So, I mean, you're saying that's okay. That's true.

Yes, there is a Bardic tradition. You can work backwards. It depends on how far you want to go. There is a very vibrant, a very active bardic tradition. tradition all the way down to the 17th century, the beginning of the 17th century, the flight of the earls from the Irish civilization collapses under the pressure of Elizabethan conquest and so on. But again, that's quite a stretch, you know, to go from 1,500 back to 500. And although the bardic tradition conveys very sophisticated literature, when we talk about bards, we're not

talking about Caesar's bards, we're not talking about druids or priests or anything like that. A bard in the Irish tradition is a poet. Now, admittedly, Irish, Bard's have mastery of a very, very, very sophisticated degree of language and so on. Bardic poetry is very sophisticated. And if you want to argue that this is a carryover from the earlier period all the way down from the time of Patrick, well, yes, you can do it, but I don't know the evidence for it. But it is the case that there are professional poets, something that I'm not familiar with either in Roman Britain or elsewhere on the continent.

There are professional poets, and Patrick almost certainly would have encountered professional poets, say the royal poets or whatever the case may be. when he arrived. And there does seem to have been a sort of a fellowship or a brotherhood or some kind idea. You can call it a druidic cast if you want, but that's really just taking over the kind of language that you get in Christian writings. There's archaeology too, of course, and again, in the same National Museum that contains those extraordinary gold talks and all this amazing bling. You've also got evidence of the same sort of thing we have in England and Scotland, which is bodies in bog and people being sacrificed.

That gives us some indication, surely, of what's going on. It does. It suggests something is going on, yes, and whether these are ritual burials, or my archaeological friends tend to talk about everything in ritual terms, I suppose. But we have no way of telling, William, I'm afraid, you know, we have these beautifully preserved bodies

with their hair nets and their manicured nails and that kind of thing. Extraordinary. It is really, right? It is very extraordinary, yeah. It's eerie at the same time, and you would like to know what is going, on. Is it ritual? Is it to head off the effects of plague or something like that? We just have no way of

knowing. What is extraordinary? I mean, we should say, because I think we do say it, and we will say it again, there is something very peculiar about the lack of oxygen in a bog, which means that these bodies are preserved, you know, to an anthropologist's wildest expectations. It's an anaerobic environment, so we can see every line, every sinew, and the way in which somebody was unfortunately killed. You can take their fingerprints. I mean, it's bonkers. I mean, I've seen pictures, but I haven't actually seen one of these bog bodies

close up. I mean, can you explain what it looks like? I said they were eerie. I took one of my children in and she left immediately. It's disconcerting to see the degree of preservation. It's like looking at an open coffin almost in some cases. As you said, Anita, it's the anaerobic

quality of the bog that has preserved the flesh and the bone and the accoutrements, let's say, to an extraordinary degree. And it implies, I suppose, that, well, unfortunately, when I say it implies, that's all we can say. It depends on your point of view. It's not clear to me at any rate. It may be clear to my archaeological friends, what exactly is going on here, or to our ethnological or anthropological friends, whether this has a parallel in other societies. I don't know what is going on in these cases. Why you would bury a body in that condition, whether it is an elder who

has simply passed away and is buried reverentially, I don't know. Being. buried in a bog doesn't sound reverence. You know, there's a difference between being buried in a bog and being buried in New Grange. Yeah. So. Yeah, because, I mean, in our heads, I suppose, you know, sort of being thrown into a bog. It's not the most elubrious resting place in our heads. But, I mean, maybe it meant something entirely.

It may well have done. Yes, clearly. It may well have done. Yeah. Davy, let's go back to St. Patrick then. We've got him to Ireland. Give us your account, as opposed to the judicial account, of who he was. and when he landed because he didn't like the date that I produced.

Yes, okay. Well, I can start with when he landed. Almost certainly he didn't land in 432. 432 is an interesting date because it almost certainly derives from the history of another early 5th century missionary to Ireland, a man that we know as Palladius, who seems to have been a deacon of the Church of Ozzie and the south of France. And Palladius cropped up. The reason why we take Palladius seriously, if you want to put it that way, is that he cropped. up in continental sources. And the trouble with Irish sources for Patrick or anything to do with

Eric Christianity is that Irish sources, almost without exception, have been tampered with. They've been fiddled and they've been doctored. So we cannot trust them. Whereas a continental writer writing about Ireland has no particular axe to grind, has no reason to tamper. Fiddled with by whom and when? Do we know, do we have fingerprints on the fiddling? The church. The church. We almost do. The church of Armagh. The church of Armagh, for example, which lays claim to Patrick, more or less from the beginning, certainly from the seventh century, is obliged to do certain things to the documentation which strengthens its argument because its argument is not watertight. And there are subtle things that happen, for example, in that famous manuscript that we call

the Book of Armagh, which is what it says on the tin. It is a collection of documents put together in the Church of Armagh, around about eight hundred, say, in the first half of the ninth century. And the book of Armagh is where we get all our biographical material about Patrick, all the later biographies by Murakou and Tirichon and various other texts, all of which comprise what we call the patrician dossier, the collection of documents that Armand put together in order to advance its case, and it was a case. It was a legal case.

They put together this documentation to lay claim or to boast or the claim that they had been founded by Patrick, and therefore they were entitled to call themselves the center of the Irish Church. But if you dig, I mean, there's no mention of Armand Patrick's writings, for example, which is either interesting or not interesting. we have only two documents of Patrick, you might well argue, well, there's lots of documents that haven't survived. They may be full of our mass. That's not a very solid argument, but at the same time, it is a fact. But in terms of the arrival date, it doesn't really matter, I suppose, when Patrick

arrived. But the tendency nowadays, I think, is to say that, well, we do know that somebody called Palladius, this deacon of Ozair that I mentioned a moment ago, was sent by no less a person than the Pope, which is pretty big news in the fourth, fifth century. What's the source for the this. This is a chronicle from the continent, Prosper, Prosper of Aquitaine, who's regarded as a very, very reliable, a highly informed, highly reliable source. And as it happened, Prosper happened to be in Rome at the time that he was writing about the events in around 429, 434, 31. He reports, for example, that there was an expedition center. And one of the members of his group, one of the members of his expedition was this man, Palladius. And two years subsequently, in 431, Prosper says,

Palladius was sent as the first bishop, Primos Episcopas, that's what the Latin says. He was the first bishop to the Irish believing in Christ. Now, if you say, who are the Irish believing in Christ? Where do these guys come from? How are there Irish believing in Christ before ever Palladius are a Christian mission arrived? Well, the answer obviously is there must have been Christians there before Palladius, and there must have been Christians in sufficient numbers to warrant the sending of a bishop, no less. And one theory, it's not altogether 100% watertight, but one theory is that the Christians to whom Palladius was sent as first bishop might actually have been those people whom Patrick converted.

So that would put Patrick back into the late 4th century, early 5th century, pre 4th 32 in other words. And David, just to put the overall picture that the Roman legions are heading in the opposite direction to this missionary. in 410 is the pullout of the Romans from... That's right, yeah. Well, yes, if it was. Traditionally, we have picks pouring over the wall. We have Germans arriving in Kent or manner of horror turning up. Which makes it all the more surprising why 20 years later.

You know, if you think of 410, 411 as the Roman legions leaving Britain, and yet 430, let's say, there are Pelagians, lots of Pelagians in Britain and Ireland. You say, how could that possibly be after 20 years? you know, it's a conundrum. It's one of the many mysteries. I mean, I should say, because we have listeners all around the world, and if you don't know about St. Patrick, the thing that we're taught as kids is that, you know, Patrick goes to Ireland and charms the snakes out of Ireland and, you know, brings Christian salvation to the island.

That is the story of St. Patrick. But actually, Patrick does tell his own story because, you know, we've got the confession. It's an account of his life and his mission written. by himself? That's right. Or are you going to tell me it isn't? And doctor, doctor. Are you going to tell you?

You've got that look about you, that you don't believe it. We'll come back to the doctoring in a moment. But yes, we are incredibly lucky that we have the two letters, as they're called, the longer one being known also as the confessor, the confession. And then the other letter to the soldiers of Caroticus, which he wrote probably early in his career in Ireland after an attack had been made on his newly baptized converts. The confession is something he said. He wrote Antiquam Moriard before I died.

So it seems to have been composed at the end of his life in order to provide a summary of what he thinks he has achieved. Now, I don't think anybody, I don't think there is anybody left who would doubt that these are original documents, that these are authentic, that these are documents written by the person we know as Patrick. Now, when that person came to Ireland, it's immaterial from that point of view. Well, we don't care about that anymore. No, we don't.

It doesn't matter. We've moved past that. All we care about is that we have the two letters and everybody believes these are authentic documents. Can we talk about it? Because, you know, in these letters, you know, he's pretty personal, you know, and he's quite honest about his own inadequacies. He talks about, you know, how he is a failing man. But he does also tell a story, you know, a story of a man who is traumatized by captivity. Just in a nutshell, tell us about the captivity of Patrick as told by himself. possibly on his deathbed? Well, probably the best known modern historian of Patrick, J.B. Bury, the great John Bagnall Bury, who was Regis Professor of History in Cambridge before he passed away in 1927. He wrote a famous book on St. Patrick, which was the standard account of Patrick for many years,

called The Life of St. Patrick and His Place in History. And he wrote that as a historian of the later Roman Empire, of late antiquity. He didn't write it as a history of Ireland. He wrote it as the last chapter in the history of the Roman Empire. And he said Patrick has a place in history because Patrick is the only citizen of the Roman Empire who was taken captive, was taken out of the empire, spent some time amongst the barbarians, escaped from captivity, came back and wrote about his experiences. And that's what we have in the confession. So, I mean, what does he say about it? How bad was it for him? I mean, just, you know, describe what he says. Oh, he says he was on the point of death several times. He's very remarkable. And in fact, it gives us an interesting insight into what you were. asking about previously the organization of Irish society because he says at one stage he was engaged

in missionary activity presumably he and his colleagues were traveling around the country and they were taken prisoner and he thought they were on the point of death that they were all going to be put to the sword but he said he had taken precautions because he had bought insurance so to speak we would say he had bought himself physical protection for the possibility that something like this might happen and that saved him it literally saved his life he and his co-missionaries were saved from being butchered. And we know that others, the letter to the soldiers of Caroticus, they were less squeamish. They did actually kill some of Patrick's converts and made off with others and took them into captivity. And who are the soldiers of Caroticus? And who is Caroticus? Oh, Carotagos. There's a

$64,000 question now. We think he might have been a king of Strathclyde. He mentioned in the book of Arma. A Briton. Yes, he would have been a Britain. And Patrick is irate for that reason, because Britons should be good Romans and good Romans should be good Christians. And what are Christians doing, massacring newly converted members of the church? So he has an axe to grind and he expels or he excommunicates Cretacus for that reason. But when I say the text is manipulated or the text has been doctored, two things are relevant from that point of view, Anita. In the case of the confession, we are very lucky that there are other copies of the confession

elsewhere in other countries. The book of our mass should be the golden version. of it. It's their official version, but we have discovered, because there are other copies on the continent, which we know must have left the country in the 7th century, they have a slightly different text. These are in Irish monasteries like St. Gall or Bobbiot? Lots of them, lots of them, if you think of Fursa and Killian and all these people on the continental mission. Rather than where they are, I'm desperate to know what the differences are. So, okay, where are the discrepancies? The differences are all those points in the confession where Patrick reveals himself to be weak,

You know, Patrick in the biographies is an all-conquering Clint Eastwood type, Druid smashing, gun-toting, all-destroying, kick-ass convert. Snake-chalming. Yeah, everything, every. Druids had no chance against Patrick in the biographies. But in fact, if you think of those soldiers of Caroticus, they did what they did. Patrick cursed them and they just laughed at him. He said he wrote a letter to Caroticus, and they all fell around laughing at the letter.

And then he wrote the subsequent letter, which is a little bit of. one that has come down to us. So they said, oh, yours. You know, who the hell do you think you are? We'll do what we like. Thank you very much. And all of this is revealed in the confessio. And Patrick reveals that there's nothing he can do about this. And the guys in our mouth say, oh, we can't have this. No, no, no, no, no. This isn't going to work. It makes him look weak. He looks weak. He looks weak. Ah, interesting. They cut out all those passages. And they're all there in the continental copies, luckily for us. They basically inject him with steroids to make him look tougher. Oh, how interesting. Yeah. Yeah. They have faked him. They've done an AI job.

Raban Patrick and turned them into a superhero. Yeah, they have. Marvel superhero. Yeah, that's what he is. Oh, yeah. But the stories that there are in the other versions, the confrontation with the druids, the blinding, all made up, all focus, focus. You don't go for any of it.

Not at all. You're very skeptical. I am very skeptical. Yes. Well, I mean, you know, just throw away the blinding, because if Armar wanted us to know these stories, we should know these stories, what about the blinding? What does that particular version tell us about Clint Eastwood? St. Patrick. He strides around Ireland and it's like a Clint Eastwood movie. The druids sort of

appear out of the saloon and they stand there in the street and they do their various miracles. And in the end, the druids are, I just swept up into the air and dropped down on their heads on the ground and smash that way or they disappear. Caroticus actually in the seventh century biography that's in the book of Armagh is actually turned into a fox. Oh. To a fox. You were asked to believe that he is turned into a fox and he ran a way, never to be heard again. Now, if you believe that, you believe anything. Now, when I say the manipulation, the other interesting point about manipulating the sources is that the folks in Armagh did have these documents. It's quite clear. They did have their copy, call it the original copy

or not. They had a copy of the confessio, the long letter, and they had a copy of the letter to the soldiers of Caroticus. But there's no copy of the letter in the book of Armand, the letter to the soldiers of Caroticus. Why? Because it shows Patrick up in a very bad light. They cannot have this. Not even in a bad light, just in a human light. You know, the man's been sort of set upon by Briggins, you know? They're not interested in Patrick the human. They're interested in Patrick the gunslinger. Yeah. This is what you're used to in Irish saga, Irish myth, Irish storytelling. It's heroes. It's heroes. Patrick can do things, but he can't do all that that's cracked up. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back after the break

and talk about the change that came, undoubtedly, with Patrick. And as you say, maybe you know, the groundwork was laid by others before. But let's talk about how, after the break, Patrick changed Ireland. Welcome back. So, Davy, we left everybody sort of imagining what Ireland wanted its Patrick to look like, you know, or what is now Northern Ireland wanted it's Patrick to look like, you know, sort of a musly gunslinger. Let's park that for a second and just talk about actually what early Irish Christianity looked like.

Because there was a template, you know, the Roman-Jolns. church. So did they do things the Roman way in Ireland? Yes, there's been a tendency, I suppose, in the romantic period, or wherever you want to describe it, to argue that the Irish Church is very different, that the Irish are different in everything, but particularly in the church and the organisation in a church. It has to be emphasized. It can't be emphasized enough that they did not differ in any way in doctrinal or theological terms. There's nothing about early Irish Christianity that anybody could find offensive. There is a whiff, but in terms of Christianity, the other idea that you have frequently in the literature is that the Irish church was monastic,

this by contrast with the rest of Western Christendom, which was Episcopal. The church was organized, you know, with a hierarchy and at the top you have your bishops. And then everything is organized territorially in terms of diocese. It is the case that in the Irish church, from the 6th century on, monasteries and the monastic organization, that's to say a monastery that has affiliate monasteries attached to it, branch offices, if you want to call it that. that these are spread all over the country. And in fact, the best example of all that we have is Iona,

the famous monastery of Iona, founded in 563 by Colomber, Colum Killis, we call them, which is not in Ireland at all. And yet it runs an entire network of subsidiary churches in Britain, in Scotland, in Ireland, from Iona. And that's because Iona was organized in a particular way and Colombo was the headman. And in fact, the Venerable Beed remarks specifically

on the fact that Iona was organized differently, that this is different from what everybody else said. Now, you go back to Patrick, given that Patrick, whenever he came to Ireland, must have come from Roman Britain. The organization of the church in Roman Britain cannot have been different from the organization anywhere else in the Western continent. So the early church in Ireland must have been run by bishops. The difficulty is that if you have 150, too, as they're called, small kingdoms, petty kingdoms, each one with a king of their own, and each one claiming a bishop of their own, according to early Irish law, You don't qualify in law as a kingdom unless you have a king and a bishop. And therefore, to follow that logic, you would have 150 bishops.

And all of a sudden, people in Western Europe would say, hang on a minute. Now we have one bishop, you know, in Visigothic Spain. And we have one in Frankish Merivin-Gingal and so on. How could you have 150? Yeah. So it's a good question. So you have little sort of mini-bishop, so to speak. And there is no doubt.

It's a mistake to say that the church becomes entirely monastic. You cannot have that. There must have been bishops, and we know there are bishops still functioning in the Irish church, because you have to have a bishop for sacramental purposes. But there's no question that if you look at Columba, who is far in the way the most important man in the Irish church in the sixth century until he dies in 597, there are others like a whole rake of them. They all happen to be in charge of monastic perukia, as they are called.

Okay, so these heads of the monastic orders. I mean, I'm sort of, you know, Colomba is the one who eclipses everybody. else. But I'm imagining men of enormous charisma and power. I mean, were they powerful, these head monks? Yes, they were. I think they were, yes, for two reasons. In almost every case, they derive from powerful political families, as indeed bishops do on the continent and in Britain. They're all related to each other. All these hierarchies, secular and ecclesiastical, they're all very closely intertwined. And Ireland is no different. So you can be sure that someone like Colomba is well got. And we know that Columbus is well got. And we know that

Columbia was, in fact, a nephew of a high king of Ireland. His family was very well got in political terms. And the same applies to all the big names that we have in relation to all the other monastic peruque. So they are all big noises. And you can tell, for example, the best known of all, he's not in Ireland at all, but the one that your listeners or readers or whatever would be most familiar, would be Columbanus, the man who heads to the continent and who heads up in Bobio in the north of Italy and so on. And who does battle with the Pope, no less. You know, we have a letter from Columbianus wrote, written to Gregory the Great and 600 saying, what are you doing?

You're all wrong about Easter. You're all wrong about this. You're all wrong about that. We Irish have sorted this out years ago. What's this nonsense you're going on with? So these guys are used to mixing it with important people. You know, there's a certain degree, obviously, of deference, but not apology. So these guys are well connected.

But as I say, there are bishops still. Bishops still have a sacramental function. You cannot ordain a priest unless you have a bishop. It's as simple as that. So if you want to have priests, you have to have bishops. The diocese still exist. The diodes tend to be territorial. That's to say, associated with tribes or however you want to describe them, population groups. And they are still there. It's a parallel system, if you like, but it is the case. And you mentioned Anita charisma. There's no question if you read Columannis, say, or if you read about Colum Kill or any of these people, these guys have charisma coming out their ears. You know, these guys really are important people and people listen to them. So what they say is important. There is some evidence that, there is a difference of origin in particularly the monastic movement. We'll come back to this again later, but just to raise the flag here,

when you go again around the National Museum, you see all these papari out of Irish bogs, specifically out of Egypt. And you have those images of St. Paul and Anthony, the Desert Fathers, far more emphasized in the Irish Church than you do, say, in Gaul or Northern Italy. That's interesting. And there is a theory that there is a root of transmission, from Egypt via Visigothic Spain and that you can see you don't you're shaking your head.

Just let me finish this before you destroy it. I'm trying to hold it. The way that the Psalms are sung, the specific use of the Psalms, which is in the Visigothics Church, which ends up in Ireland. You don't buy any of that. No, no, no. He does not. Look at his face.

All this nonsense about the Coptic Church and the influence of the Coptic Church. It's all hocus, pocus, I'm afraid. There's no evidence at all. There's the church out of Ireland. There's a whole variety of texts that say this church, Puri Egyptiani and this sort of thing, the children of Egypt. Yes, the Puehary-A-Gy are Alquins carnage. They have to do with a particular Easter practice that he doesn't approve of, which had come out of Alexandria and Egypt. It's nothing to do with the Coptic church.

It's a totally different thing altogether. So how do you account for the images of St. Paul and Anthony? Well, they've been to St. Paul's, and they have an image. They've read their biographies. Those are the sample. Those are the templates. that every Irish writer who's doing a biography of a saint has at his left elbow. These are the standard ways you write a biography of, in this case, the Desert Fathers.

They all know about Paul and Anthony. That's why they're on the High Crosses. You're perfectly correct. But that's not because they have either been to the desert or people who've come from the desert to teach them about Christianity. It's not true. There are occasional similarities, if you like, the decoration, say, in the book of Duro. There's a famous carpet page in the Book of Doro that looks very like something Coptic. But you know, you have to allow for ethno genesis or whatever

is the term that the archaeologists use, that you can have two things popping up in different parts of the world at the same time. But no, a Coptic Irish church, no, sorry. No, listen, I'm with you. I'm not going to argue with any of this. Oh, really? Why bother? Why bother?

I tell you what, when I went to St. Paul's Monastery, which is where St. Paul is from, on the Red Sea, there is an icon that. It's actually a late icon, it's 18th century, but it has the iconography of St. Paul and Anthony in the cave, and they've both got their hands out, and they've got a disc of the host between them that they're sharing. And it is identical to some of the Pictish,

particularly one crosses, a place called Phalus Wester. But it's part of this chain that you get a nig and on the high crosses. There is an iconographical link, definitely, with Coptic art. I mean, you're not necessarily getting it, Coptic monks turning up in Ireland, but you're definitely getting material from the Church of Egypt, Egypt making its way. And it's, you know, you can go to the National Museum of Ireland and see these papari. They're not, you know, it's not Irish papyruses. No, no, there's no Irish papyrus.

Although that story was ruined. I used to tell my students when we were studying manuscripts, the one thing you could be certain of, and everybody was agreed on, that the Irish never used papyrus. They always used vellum and so on. And that was true until the famous Fadden Moore Salter was dug up out of the bog there back in 2006 or something like that. And DNA analysis showed up traces of papyrus in the satchel that was also found alongside the salter. Now, that upset the cat. Take that, Anita. I sat up in my chair, William.

There's no evidence at all of the Irish having used papyri on the basis of that evidence. Yeah, but they had it in the satchel. Hang on a minute. They had it in their satchel. There are traces of it that you and I can't see. We don't know what was in the satchel. And there's no proof that that satchel would. No, there's a whole binding in the National Museum.

No. Okay, all right. Let's not fall out. I'm going to ask a very simple and straightforward question, because we've got plenty we can fall out over in a minute. But can I ask you this? When exactly was Patrick made a saint? And do we know a little bit about the circumstances around that?

Well, that's a hard one now. I should have studied to answer that question. I'm not sure that Patrick ever was actually officially made a saint. I mean, we have thousands of saints in Ireland. There's a dictionary of saints here that I'm looking at. There's about a thousand pages of it and almost a thousand saints. So they're saints to us, but not to Rome, if you know what I mean. They haven't been canonized in that sense.

And I don't think Patrick ever was canonized officially, strictly speaking. You know, that's just blown my mind. Okay. So, right, I'm going to hit you with some more saints then because I have a favorite. Okay. St. Bridget. I am really quite partial to St. Bridget. Now, for those who don't know, I mean, she's, you know, first of all,

meant to be born around and you're going to tell me off about dates again, I can feel it. But, you know, sort of 451, we're thinking, 80. Fondly enough, now, the most recent study has come up with the idea that the dates that you get on our annals, as they're called, our proto-chronicles, that they're probably correct. Yeah, I think she's supposed to have died in 5-2-6.

Did you get that, Willie? I got a date, right? You know, you got it right. Girl's tower. Head girl. There is an argument. I mean, did she meet Patrick? Did she know Patrick?

you know, did they know each other, all this kind of stuff. Don't spoil it. I mean, just I want to know. Why is she special? For those who don't grow up. Yeah, tell the story. It's a great story. Well, she's a woman, you know. It's a very male-oriented society, obviously. That's why I love her. Yeah, okay. And there are interesting things said about her, and she seems to be in charge of a church in Kildare in the sort of south midlands of the country. She appears to have authority over a bishop, which is one of the reason. In fact, she appears to have been made a bishop by Bishop Conley.

Now, the story is that he had too much to drink and he had a fit of the staggers and he made a bishop when he shouldn't have done. But the fact is that, you know, that they're trying to get around the problem that here is somebody who is a head of a monastic house, in this case a religious house of nuns, apparently having authority over a bishop, which shouldn't happen. Okay, but you're living out the foxy bits. I mean, if he did do it after, you know, he had a lot to drink, I mean, it's possible because they said St. Bridget was able to reproduce, you know, sort of food and beer and ale. could change water into beer. She was the kind of girl you want to have had for. Yeah. Well, I mean, at a party, you know, she's useful.

But also, you know, she has a sunbeam for a cloak. You know, there's all sorts of wonderful things. Yeah. It's impresses you, huh? I mean, if your girlfriend hung her coat on a sunbeam, you'd be impressed. I'd love it. And I would ask where she'd ordered it. It's highly unlikely.

The sun almost never shines in Ireland, as you know. Well, no, there is that. Maybe they lost it with the cloak when they missed. place and cloak. But with Bridget, I suppose what I'm interested most in is that these kind of powers, you know, sort of being able to do these miracles, to me, sounds really druidic. You know, it's more druidic than it is. Oh, dear. Well, I mean, okay, I put it in this way. Oh, no, you lost your girl star now, Anita. I know. But to the bottom of the class. There is an argument. Again, it's an ongoing argument.

I'm not sure that there can be a resolution to it. But there is this argument that Bridget, as we know her, the Christian saint, the head of the monastic, or, nunnery house in Kildare, that she is a Christianization of a pre-Christian deity. And we do know that there is somebody called Briege, a sort of three-fold god, or goddess, rather, who's mentioned in early sources as being perhaps one of the few remnants of pre-Christian religion. And there may be a sort of, you know, cleaning up, however you want to describe it. One of the things said about the Irish, generally speaking, in terms of their Christianity, is that they didn't do a clean sweep of everything that was there before them, that they

tended to absorb and assimilate those aspects of the earlier society and make them part and part of Christianity. So that, for example, still in modern Ireland, we have the concept of holy wells. And you have a bush growing by the holy well and people come along and do their pilgrimages and they hang rosary beads and various things like that. And people say, oh, this is pure pagan. This is pure pre-Christian and so on. This is a thousand years old. Now, it may or may not be. But there seems to be something all right in Kildare. Kildare is unusual, all right, because Bridget does seem to be a genuine history. Bridget, we talk about. Although, in fact, the lives of Bridget, what I call the biographies of British are worthless. Absolutely, from a biographical

point of view, they're complete garbage. They're worse even than the Patrick lives, and that's saying something. So we're reliant on very little information, but we have enough to be able to say with a certain degree of confidence that she does seem to have existed. She does seem to have been important. Kildare is a very important religious house for a long time down into the 12th century and beyond. And the question does arise, how can this be if the person in charge is a woman? Now, there is the belief that the Irish invented the idea of the dual foundation, in other words, a foundation of men and of women, of monks and of nuns. And there's a certain element of that in England, in the seventh century, arguably. Yes, exactly, and a few others as well,

arguably taken over from Irish examples. We can't prove it. The same applies on the continent in one or two cases. So it's possible. But you can bet your, well, I was going to say, you can bet your bottom dollar that somebody like Bridget would have been well connected. But in fact, the tribe that she comes from, the population group, is rather obscure by comparison with the others that we know about. Now, this may well be the case or be due to the fact that her tribe was actually a big, important population group, but that they simply went into decline. By the time we come across in the sixth century. They're not as important as they used to be. But the fact that she is there, and that there's so much interest in her, as I say, there's nothing worthwhile. We only know

her and her father, Duffoch. That's it from biographical evidence. And we have three lives, more than three lives. So they're utterly worth this. They're fantastic in terms of all the great stories. You describe hanging her coat on the sunbeam and all this kind of stuff, feeding people with nothing. But these are all just, you know, miracle stories because it's expected of a great Irish saint that he or she can perform miracles. It's as simple as that. Davy, one example where you do have the old world of the pre-Christian tribal Celtic world

producing extraordinary fusion and mixture with the new Christian world and these ideas coming in from the continent is, of course, in art. And one of the great glories of this period is this astonishing, a new world where all these different influences, a little bit of Roman,

a little bit of Latane, a little bit of gospel books turning up from Rome, produce, and give us a little sketch of the high crosses, and particularly the first of the books, Doro. Doro is pretty intimately connected with Kells. Doro is supposed to have been a model for Kels. In fact, a book of Kells is probably the book best known that everybody knows and has heard about, but one of the most famous books of the Middle Ages,

and it's still an extraordinary thing. But anybody who has seen it, it comes away wondering, how on earth did they do it? you know, Giralis Cambrances, the infamous 12th century, Norman historian of the conquest of Ireland, talked about it being the work of angels. And I don't know whether you believe in angels, but you can believe in angels when you look at some of the decorated pages in Kells. Now, Kells is probably the high point of achievement. Duro is interesting in many ways. It's the earliest gospel book that we know of that is illustrated apparently for the purpose of

illustration, that's to say, just for decoration. I mean, there is illustration in religious books and so on. And some of the figures are like jewelry, aren't they? They're like a sort of clasp or... They are. And in fact, you mentioned the Pictish influence. Some of the representations of the evangelist symbols are straight out of Pictish art, you know, stone art of the calf or whatever the case may be. It's straight off a Pictish stone.

Which is nothing surprising because if you believe, as many people do, that the Book of Durro may be originated in the Columban perukia, let's say, is associated with Columb or Columcilla. And given that the headquarters is there on Iona, not a million miles away from Pickland, there's absolutely no reason why the community of Iona, the community of Doro, or the community of wherever it is, would have had picks in them.

And they say, look, this is how we do it, where we come from. And they show the Irish how to do it. It's as simple as that, yeah. Well, I mean, we're in audio format, but, you know, you can see our faces if you're watching on YouTube. Hello. But, I mean, if you're not, I mean, I'd really urge you to go and have a look at both the book of Kells

and the book of Doro because they are beautiful. I mean, the colours, the. the detail, they are astonishing. As you say, people sort of look at them now and go, how on earth did they do that? Can I invite you to punch my co-host in the head? Because he's been trying to suggest to me that the book of cows... No, don't even go there.

Scottish. No, no, not Scottish, Pictish. There's a new book in right now. I forget the name of the author. William must know the author. I've got it here. I'm bristling actually my computer on it. Victoria Whitworth.

That's it. I had the book. It's actually a very good book. Yes, it's very well done, actually. I don't believe the argument that it was done in Port Mahomac, that wonderful site in Port Mahomac. Yeah. No, I don't believe it. Well, they found venom being made. Well, yes. So what? You know, and they found lots of things in Whitby, but it doesn't bring the book a Kells to Whitby, you know. Okay, well, all right. It's fine. I mean, I feel like you've dealt with it really well. Can I ask you, before you move on, Anita. And I think it's easy to forget, particularly for our audience who might not be so familiar with Irish things,

is that the Irish do appear to be the first people to introduce decoration into gospel books particularly, not exclusively, but gospel books particularly for the sake of decoration. They produce carpet pages that I mentioned before, which means a page of decoration that looks like a carpet. That's why I'd call it a carpet page. And there's no text at all, no written text whatsoever. So you're...

And you're invited to draw conclusions from the imagery, the decoration and so on, whether it's Christian or whatever the case may be. And then by the time you come to Kells, it's just otherworldly. I've known. I've seen, I've seen Kells, I don't know how many times, and I'm all the more mystified every time I see it. How was it done? It is one of those things, though, isn't it? Because, you know, every time you look at it, it's better than the way you remembered it or imagined it. I've got a question specifically about Patrick. At what point does he becomes synonymous with Ireland and Irish identity, you know, to the point where, you know, you have St. Paddy's Day celebrations all over the world. You know, it's arguably bigger in New York

than even in Ireland. I think it's already there in 7th century. As I say, the people who brought the Patrick texts to the continent also brought the Patrick legend. And we know what we can demonstrate there's a cult of Patrick. Obviously, there's one in Ireland, because Patrick is mentioned in several sources that don't have anything to do with Armagh, in fact, in the 7th century. So clearly the name was in circulation. And he was held. in high esteem, but also that culture, whatever version of it was brought to the continent. And you have, for example, in Peron, Perona Scotorum, in Piccaday, reference to a seventh-century inscription on a church, which is a sort of metrical biography of Patrick.

And it's assumed that everybody will know what this is all of. In Picardy, yeah, yeah, Peron, Peronascator. In fact, it's so Irish, it's so associated with the Irish that it requires the name, the Latin name, Perona Scotorum. Scottish is the medieval word for Irish, Scottish and Scotts. and Scotty and so on. So Perona, Scatorum is Perona of the Irish. Davy, we've hinted now at this continental mission,

which is where we'd like to take this now, because just give us a very brief sketch of this astonishing renaissance of learning, or not even Renaissance, this birth of learning, this birth of literate, scholarly, academic, wonderfully artistic life that blossoms inside these monasteries and which is then exported to the continent. You mentioned Bobio, which is near on the way to Venice.

There's other Irish monasteries in places like St. Gall in Switzerland. Yeah, there's a whole string of them all across the continent. For people that don't know this story, give us a little sketch. It's interesting because the Irish are associated with missionary activity on the continent, and it begins very early on. Columbanne, as I mentioned, and whom you mentioned in relation to Bobbiot and so on, left Ireland sometime in the 580s or 590s, eventually ended up in Barbio dying in in 615.

But he's one of the first of many. There's a steady stream. So many, in fact, that some continentals complain about the numbers, the tribes, the hordes of Irish who are showing up on the continent, maybe because they're all asking for B&B and things like that. Some of them were begging and some of them were, you know, they had nothing, like Oscar Wilde, they had nothing to declare but they're genius, you know. But it is true that already before they left, there's an absolutely astonishing degree of learning and literature in Ireland.

both, interestingly enough, both in the Latin language, which you would expect from a Christian church in the western part of the world at any rate, but also in the Irish language. The Irish start writing their own language very early and we have really sophisticated compositions, both in prose and in poetry already by 600, which implies, given the degree of sophistication

also in the Latin productions, which implies a continuity from the time of Patrick. It used to be thought that there was a break, that there was a gap, that there was a chasm somewhere, probably in the mid-sixth century because of the Justinian plague, which caused great havoc all across Western Europe, but also in Britain and Ireland, huge loss of life, and abandonment of monastic and religious houses and dereliction and all that kind of thing. But there does seem to be a degree of continuity which kept these traditions going, so that by the time the Irish

arrive on the continent, for example, it's been pointed out by a Danish scholar, a modern Danish scholar, that Conabannis in the letter that he wrote to Pope Gregory I think of, you know, Papa Tutti Tutti Tupi, the man at the head of the church. Here is this bumscious little Irish man writing a letter to him in Latin, which according to Dagna Norberg, Columbian is Latin better than the popes. He writes a better class of Latin. Now, you might say that happens often or always

where people acquire language as a second language. You have a better grasp of grammar because you have to. You're learning how the language works and functions, and it's different from the language you're brought up with. But the fact is Columbianniss, and all the Irish write really first-class Latin. Now, we would love to know how they did that, how they taught it, how they taught it so effectively. It seems to be like Oxford and Cambridge in the 19th century, where Greek and Latin seems to have been taught to an exceptionally high degree.

But whatever means they have, the Irish are synonymous with learning by the time they get to the continent. And any time an Irishman knocks on the door, he's invited into the parlor to give a lecture on some sophisticated theological subject or grammatical subject or artistic subject or whatever the case may be. because it's assumed. If it's Irish, it's learned. Yeah. And also probably a bucket-loaded charm comes in with an Irish. I'd just say, probably that doesn't hurt at all. It's been absolutely wonderful to have you.

Thank you so much for being with us. Where do we go to next, Woody? We're off to Pickland. We're off with Gordon Noble next to Port Moorgh, actually. All right those places. And East Lomond and Berghead. Well, so that debate continues. And if you can't wait to hear about the picks, you've got to join the club.

You know where to do, where to go, you know how to do it? You want me to tell you? Alita, you tell, you tell. You tell. You tell you. Have you forgotten it? Empirepod UK.com. Empire pod UK.

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Yeah, discounts on Darby's book. Anyway, till the next, that one there. Until the next time we meet, though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me. And goodbye for me, I presume. Goodbye to you. Goodbye for me, William Durable. A quick word for our Empire listeners. For a limited time only, we are running a discount on the Empire Club.

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