15 Patrick at Rome
The evidence for a visit of Patrick to Rome A.D. 441 depends upon two records, one in the Annals, the other in Tírechán.
(1) Ann. Ult. sub a. 441: Leo ordinatus est xlii<i> Romane ecclesie episcopus et probatus est in fide catolica Patricius episcopus.
(2) Tírechán, (p. 301₆: see above, p. 250):
Et exiuit [sc. Sachellus] cum Patricio ad legendum xxx annis et ordinauit ilium in urbe Roma et dedit illi nomen nouum Sachellum et scripsit illi librum psalmorum quern uidi [sc. Tírechán], et portauit [sc. Sachellus] ab illo partem de reliquis Petri et Pauli Laurentii et Stefani quae sunt in Machi.
[Cp. Tírechán, 329₂₄, where Patrick is said to have given to Olcan (ordained bishop at Dunseverick) partem de reliquiis Petri et Pauli et aliorum et uclum quod custodiuit reliquias].
The ordination of Leo is wrongly placed in the Annals in 441; it belongs to 440. But its close association with the notice of St. Patrick’s probatio shows the meaning of the words probatus est;413 and in fact there is no other conceivable meaning than formal approval by the Church, and the only form which that approval was likely to take in such a case was the approval of the Church’s chief representative, the Bishop of Rome. Such approval might have come in the shape of a formal epistle from the Roman bishop to the bishop in Ireland. But when we find in our seventh-century authority, Tírechán, a statement that Patrick was in Rome accompanied by Sachellus, and when we find that in his time there were relics of Peter and Paul and other martyrs at Armagh procured by St. Patrick; and seeing that there is nothing improbable in these records, and that, on the contrary, a visit of Patrick to Rome is antecedently probable; we may venture, I think, to combine these testimonies and conclude that Patrick did visit Rome at the beginning of Leo’s pontificate. The tradition of Sachall has all the appearance of being genuine; and Tírechán in this passage was using an older written document, as is proved by his uncertainty about a numeral (cum uiris uiii aut uiiii, 300₂₇; cp. above, App. A, ii. 1).
The notice in the Annals probatus est in fide Catholica is, by its brief formal character, stamped, in my judgment, as a contemporary entry, made probably in a fifth-century calendar. If it had been concocted in the sixth century, or at any later period, it could never have taken this shape; it would have been expressed more clearly. It implies and assumes contemporary knowledge—the knowledge, as I contend, of the visit to Rome.
There is another remarkable notice in the Annals, two years later, which it seems to me may bear on the subject—Ann. Ult. sub a. 443: Patricius episcopus ardore fidei et doctrina Christi florens in nostra provincia.414
Ann. Inisf.: Patricius in Christi doctrina floruit.
It is clear that the Ulster Annals give the entry in its original form, which is abbreviated (and translated into the past tense) by the Annalist of Inisfallen. It has never been explained why a notice of this kind should be entered under this particular year. Such a notice, attached to a certain year, must have had a motive in some particular occurrence which happened at that date. It belongs unquestionably to that small group of contemporary entries which, preserved in calendars, found their way into the later annalistic compilations (see above, p. 282). Now Patrick’s visit to Rome supplies an explanation which would fully account for it. His return from Rome, with the new prestige and authority with which the Roman bishop’s approbation would have invested him, furnishes a motive which would explain a formal entry recording his activity and success at this juncture.415
The passage in Tírechán quoted above calls for a remark. There is obviously an error in ad legendum xxx annis. The error probably arose from some combination of the genuine tradition that Sachellus accompanied Patrick to Rome with the false idea (which had arisen before Tírechán’s time through chronological confusions about Patrick’s life) that Patrick studied for thirty years abroad.