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Francine wrote - >> Moses is covered in unusual detail, including his birth and death. This >> by >> implication seems to rank him as one of Ireland's saints since only the >> saints get births and deaths recorded until long after Patrick's time. >> > Kings are recorded in other annals. Should have included them perhaps, but I didn't have those other annals to hand, and we do have to beware of later interpolations. The annals are a _mess_ from that point of view. In any case, Irish saints were (on the whole) also Irish royalty, eligible to be king of their sept, so my omission is not disastrous to my point. >> century. The original Apostles to Ireland were twelve saints, led by >> Finnian and including Columcille and not including Patrick. >> > What source are you thinking of in this respect? My impression is >that the saints named in this list of twelve varies and sometimes includes >Patrick. Thanks to Phyllis Jestice for answering this for me! > >> Since the >> ever-mutating hagiographies of the saints evidently held the claims of the >> kin groups to territory and jurisdiction (and prestige and status was >> vital), >> > I would say that the kin-group claims were not directly tied to the >saints in all cases. Frequently, the purpose of the hagiography was to >promote the fortunes and claims of the monastery or monasteries founded by >the saint in question. Those claims sometimes were in harmony with those of >related kin-groups; sometimes they were in opposition, which could lead to >monasteries' being attacked. Well ... ye--ee- ... um, since the monasteries held the territory to which local jurisdictional claims were linked, promoting themselves was (ideally) promoting the kin-groups which sponsored them - of course there were disputes and attacks, but the monasteries were not stand-alone entities. Their abbots were high-status people in their own right, even princes, like the founding saints whose "successor" they called themselves. I can see this discussion getting out of hand and leading me where I'm not entirely ready to go, heck. > >> this put Patrick's adoptive kin group at a disadvantage. So Moses >> was quite an inspired choice - if you already have twelve saints and their >> kin groups claiming Apostleship in Ireland, grabbing Moses for Patrick >> (and >> his adoptive kin group) is quite a good trump, don't you think? >> > It was one tactic used, but not the only one, and I don't think it >was the reason that groups like the monks of Iona wrote so many works >incorporating Mosaic customs and law. Iona had nothing to gain in the >seventh century from exalting a connection between Moses and Patrick. > Yep, definitely going where I'm not ready to go. I do have theories on why they were so interested in all of this in Iona and elsewhere - based on research of the annals and hagiographies and timing systems. You have to be careful about who was making what claim when, and in response to what, but with due caution I suggest the Iona monks might have been trumping the trump. The implications of their anniversaries suggest that they were claiming an even more prestigious parallel for Columcille. I gave a paper earlier this year in which I suggested that there was a system for calculating important "jubilees" - not in decades or centenaries, but cyclic repetitions nonetheless, and the implications of these jubilees suggest that the whole hagiographical and annal-keeping system is much richer in meaning than we have thought, although less reliable in pedantic content. St Columcille was ostensibly born, founded Iona, and died on jubilees of the birth and resurrection of Christ - which leaves Moses in the dust. But it's at least a four-fold calculation and the paper was received with both excitement and reservations. It needs more work! Then Maeve wrote - >>Patrick was not called the "Apostle to Ireland" before the 11th >>century. > >In Muirchú's seventh-century vita (and one of the earliest extant texts from >Ireland), the angel tells Patrick that his four requests have been granted: >"The first request: that your pre-eminence shall be in Armagh. The second >request: that whoever on the day of his separation from the body recites the >hymn that has been composed about you will be judged by you as regards the >penance for his sins. The third request: that the descendants of Dichiu, >who kindly received you, shall find mercy and shall not perish. The fourth >request: that all the Irish on the day of judgement shall be judged by you >(as it is said to the apostles: 'And you shall sit and judge the twelve >tribes of Israel'), so that you may judge those whose apostle you have been." > Well, I'd forgotten this one - and it certainly looks like a claim is being insinuated - it's not quite as direct as saying "There were twelve Apostles of Ireland ..." OK, I'll go on thinking. Best wishes, Pippin Pippin Michelli, Ph.D Assistant Professor of Art History, St Olaf College http://www.stolaf.edu/people/michelli/index4.html %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%