Considering the global awareness of St Patrick's Day, there is a paucity of recent research on the Lives of Ireland's patron saint. For this reason, Elizabeth Dawson's new study of the Hiberno-Latin Lives AD 650–1100 is particularly welcome. The book is fairly compact, comprising 121 pages of main text, plus bibliography, appendices and index. While the volume covers a broad timeframe, over half is dedicated to the earliest hagiographic writings to AD 700. The narratives of Tírechán and Muirchú take centre stage. Ultimately, the book provides a useful starting point for further studies. It is hoped that further research on the later writings alluded to in the book will be undertaken in future.
Dawson's in-depth analysis of Tírechán's writing is particularly useful. As the less readable of the seventh-century Lives, the value of the Collectanea has often been under-estimated. Dawson argues that Tírechán wrote with various audiences in mind, countering assumptions that the work's primary purpose was to assert the primacy of Armagh. Dawson highlights Tírechán's interest in the religious transformation of Ireland and the religious history of Connacht. The structure and sources of Collectanea are explored as a prelude to evaluating Tírechán's deliberate development of the Patrician tradition.
According to Dawson, while Tírechán accumulated stories of St Patrick, Muirchú streamlined the narrative. Muirchú has clearer associations with the church of Armagh and his narrative was carefully crafted to comment on matters such as the relationship of ecclesiastical to secular power. He drew on earlier continental hagiographers for literary models, and there is a clever fusion of biblical and native symbolism. Dawson demonstrates how Muirchú's skills established key facets of later Patrician hagiography.
Dawson shows that later writers did not merely re-work the writings of Muirchú and Tírechán. The success of Patrick's cult was its adaptability, and the saint was reshaped at later centuries to serve changing priorities. We have incomplete survival of the later hagiography, which means that some links have been lost in the evolutionary chain. Dawson provides a clear account of the texts preserved in the Book of Armagh. This serves as a prelude to discussing the extended narratives of Vita Secunda, Vita Tertia and Vita Quarta, which takes up the final chapter of the book. Debates over the inter-relationship, date and authorship of these writings are laid out with a series of interesting observations. This analysis is considered as a ‘starting point’ (p. 103), and it is hoped that the call for further research on these later Lives will be followed by Dawson and others.
Overall, I consider this to be a really useful book. Its value is enhanced by the inclusion of appendices which draw out aspects of the Lives of Tírechán and Muirchú. There is an up-to-date bibliography and index. Dawson writes clearly and concisely, making this book an easy-to-follow guide to early Patrician literature. The arguments are clear and well-reasoned, and the work is properly footnoted to allow the reader to negotiate previous scholarship, as well as the Lives themselves. In confining the work to Hiberno-Latin writings and ending the study at 1100, the reader is left with a tantalising glimpse of much a larger body of material to which this research could be related. My only complaint, therefore, is the book's brevity and narrow focus, as the topics raise many questions which have yet to be answered. I look forward to reading and re-reading it again as a key work of reference for understanding the evolution of the medieval legends of St Patrick.
