§ 2 Foundation of Armagh (A.D. 444)
No act of Patrick had more decisive consequences for the ecclesiastical history of the island than the foundation, soon after his return from Rome, of the church and monastery of Ardd Mache, in the kingdom of Oriel. King Daire, through whose goodwill this community was established, dwelled in the neighbourhood of the ancient fortress of Emain, which his own ancestors had destroyed a hundred years agone, when they had come from the south to wrest the land from the Ulidians and sack the palace of its lords. The conquerors did not set up their own abode in the stronghold of the old kings of Ulster; they burned the timber buildings and left the place desolate, as it were under a curse. The ample earth structures of this royal stronghold are still there, attesting that Emain, famous in legend, was a place of historical importance in the days when Ulster belonged to one of the elder peoples of the island.143 Once and again, long after the days of St. Patrick, the Picts from their home in Dalaradia made vain attempts to recover their storied palace, but it was not destined to become a place of human habitation again until, more than a thousand years after its desolation, a house seems to have been built there by an Ulster king “for the entertainment of the learned men of Ireland.”
KING DAIRE
The abode of king Daire was somewhere in the neighbourhood. It seems possible that he was the king of Oriel, though it may be held that he was only king of one of the tribes which belonged to the Oriel kingdom.144 Daire was not ill disposed towards the foreign religion, and he was persuaded to grant Patrick a site for a monastic foundation not far from his own dwelling. Eastward from Emain, concealed from the eye by two high ridges, rises the hill known as Ardd Mache, “the height of Macha,” bearing the name, it is said, of some heroine of legend. At the eastern foot of this hill, Daire apportioned a small tract of ground to Patrick, and this was the beginning of what was to become the chief ecclesiastical city of Ireland. The simple houses which were needed for a small society of monks were built, and there is a record, which appears to be ancient and credible, concerning these primitive buildings. A circular space was marked out, one hundred and forty feet in diameter, and enclosed by a rampart of earth. Within this less, as it was called, were erected, doubtless of wood, a Great House to be the dwelling of the monks, a kitchen, and a small oratory.145 This record has an interest beyond this particular monastery, as we may believe that it represents the typical scheme of the monastic establishments of Patrick and his companions.
STORY OF DAIRE’S HORSE
We know not how long Patrick and his household abode under the hill of Macha, but this settlement was not to be final.146 It seems that the bishop ultimately won great influence over the king, who evidently embraced the Christian faith; and then Daire resolved that the monastery should be raised from its lowly place to a loftier and safer site. A curious story, with the marks of antiquity about it, has come down, showing how all this befell, and it would be difficult to say how much is fable and what was the underlying fact. Patrick, so the tale relates, had from the very first cast his eyes upon the hill of Macha. But Daire refused to grant it, and gave him instead the land below. One day a squire of the king drove a horse to feed in a field of grass which belonged to the monastery. Patrick remonstrated, but the squire made no answer, and when he returned to the field on the morrow, he found the horse dead. He told his master that the Christian had killed the horse, and Daire said to his men, Go and kill him. But as the men were on their way to do his bidding, an illness unto death suddenly fell on Daire, and his wife said, “It is the sake of the Christian. Let some one go quickly, and let his blessing be brought to us, and thou shalt be well; and let those who went to slay him be stopped.” Then two men went to Patrick and told him that Daire was ill, and asked him for a remedy. Patrick gave him some water which he had consecrated. With this water they first sprinkled the dead horse, and it was restored to life; and then, returning to Daire’s house, they found it no less potent in restoring their lord to health.
FOUNDATION OF ARMAGH
Then Daire visited the monastery to pay respect to Patrick, and offered him a large bronze vessel, imported from over seas. The bishop acknowledged the gift by a simple “I thank thee,” in Latin. The king looked for some more elaborate and impressive acknowledgment; he was annoyed that the cauldron should be received with no greater sign of satisfaction than a gratzacham, as the Latin phrase gratias agamus sounded in rapid colloquial pronunciation. And on returning home he sent his servants to bring back the bronze, as a thing which the Christian was unable to appreciate. When they came back with the vessel, Daire asked them what Patrick said, and they replied, “He said gratzacham.” “What,” said Daire, “gratzacham when it was given, gratzacham when it was taken away! It is a good word, and for his gratzacham he shall have his cauldron.” Then Daire went himself with the cauldron to Patrick, and said, “Keep thy cauldron, for thou art a steadfast and unchangeful man.” And he gave him, besides, the land which he had before desired.
Whatever may be thought of the anecdotes of the horse and the cauldron, we may believe that Patrick won the respect of Daire as a man of firm character, and that for this reason Daire was induced to promote him to the higher site, granting him the land on the hill, with the usual reservation of the rights of the tribe.147 So it came about that Patrick and his household went up from their home at the foot of the hill and made another home on its summit. The new settlement was probably constructed on the same plan, though the close may have been larger, to suit the area of the hill-top.148 The old settlement below was perhaps devoted to the uses of a graveyard,149 and in later days a cloister was to arise there, known as the Temple of the Graveyard.
THE CHOICE OF ARMAGH
Such, according to ancient tradition, was the founding of Armagh, which rose to be the supreme ecclesiastical city in Ireland. Though we have no record of Patrick’s own views, it is hardly possible to escape the conclusion that he consciously and deliberately laid the foundations of this pre-eminence. It is true that some of his successors in the see supported and enhanced its claim to supremacy and domination by misrepresentations and forgeries, just as in a larger sphere the later bishops of Rome made use of fabricated documents and accepted falsifications of history in order to establish their extravagant pretensions. But as in the case of Rome, so in the case of Armagh, misrepresentation of history could only avail to increase or confirm an authority which was already acknowledged and to extend the limits of a power which had been otherwise established. If the church of Armagh had been originally on the same footing as any of the other churches which were founded by Patrick, it is inconceivable that it could have acquired the pre-eminence which it enjoyed in the seventh century merely by means of the false assertion that the founder had made it supreme over all his other churches. Now we know of no political circumstances or historical events between the age of Patrick and the seventh century which would have served to elevate the church of Armagh above the churches of northern Ireland and invest it with an authority and prestige which did not originally belong to it. The only tenable explanation of the commanding position which Armagh occupied is that the tradition is substantially true, and that Patrick made this foundation, near the derelict palace of the ancient Ulster kings, his own special seat and residence, from which he exercised, and intended that his successors should exercise, in Ireland an authority similar to that which a metropolitan bishop exercised in his province on the continent.150 The choice of Armagh may seem strange. It may be said that if his “province” was conterminous with the whole island, the hill of Macha was hardly a well-chosen spot as an ecclesiastical centre. We might expect him to have sought a site somewhere in the kingdom of Meath, somewhere less distant from the hill of Uisnech, which the islanders regarded as the navel of their country. Trim, for instance, would seem to be a far more suitable seat for a bishop whose duties of supervision extended to Desmond as much as to Dalriada. There are two points here which may be taken into consideration. If we confine our view to the sphere of Patrick’s own missionary activity, namely, northern Ireland, Armagh was a sufficiently convenient centre. Meath and Connaught and the kingdoms of Ulster, the lands in which Patrick had himself chiefly worked, might seem to require closer supervision, and it may have been a matter of policy not to attempt to press his authority too strictly over the churches of the south. We shall see presently that though he visited southern Ireland, his work there was relatively slight. The evidence suggests that while the whole island formed a single ecclesiastical province, in which Patrick occupied the position of “metropolitan,” there was actually, though not officially, a province within a province. He exerted a more direct and minute control over the northern part of the island. But, in any case, the position of an ecclesiastical metropolis cannot be entirely determined by compasses; geographical convenience cannot be always decisive. Here we come to a second consideration. The circumstance that king Loigaire was not a Christian may have weighed with Patrick against choosing a place in Meath. He may have thought it expedient to fix the chief seat of ecclesiastical authority in the territory and near the palace of a Christian king. If Daire was king of Oriel, his conversion to Christianity, in contrast with the obduracy of Loigaire, will go far to explain the choice of Armagh. It counted for much to have a secure position near the gates of a powerful king, and his conversion would have been the greatest single triumph that Patrick had yet achieved.
Our oldest records do not describe Patrick’s work in the kingdoms of Ulster with the same details or at the same length as his work in Connaught. But they indicate that he preached and founded churches in the kingdoms of Ailech and Oriel, as well as in Ulidia; and there is reason to believe that fuller records existed at an early period and were used by one of the later biographers. It may be noted that he is said to have consecrated the site of a church at Coleraine, and that a stone on which he sat was shown at Dunseveric, on the shore of the northern sea. In the land of the Condiri, who gave their name to the diocese of Connor, many churches attributed their origin to him, for instance, Glenavy,151 near the banks of Lake Neagh, and Glore, the church of Glenarm.