Saint Patrick, AD 493 - 1993: v.13. (Studies in Celtic History) - Tapa dura

St Patrick's contribution to Irish history has been much celebrated but is also the subject of intense controversy. This collection of essays is to commemorate the 1500th anniversary of his death - 17 March, 1993 - an event which has already been celebrated once, in 1961. The contributors to this volume, leading scholars in the field, question that death-date of 461, and here explore a number of issues, including some which suggest that 1993 should be commemorated as the saint's true death-date. With respect to the saint's career, Patrick's own impassioned "apologia pro uita sua" is a text to whose detailed message access is not easy. The later Irish sources about St Patrick are also difficult, but they cannot be cast aside; it is doubtful whether they tell us much more about St Patrick, yet they may bring us material about Palladius, sent from Rome in AD 431 as first bishop for Irish Christians, but left ultimately without subsequent history or cult in his adopted country. The invention of two Patricks seems to belong, at the latest, to the 8th century and may be a reflex of the largely successful 7th-century conflation of the careers of Palladius and Patrick. The continuing mediaeval development of the legend and cult of St Patrick has its own interest as well as illuminating a wide variety of other historical and literary-historical issues, several of which are explored in this volume.

David N. Dumville is a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and Reader in the Early Mediaeval History and Culture of the British Isles in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge.