It’s the Ides of March, marking the middle of March, back
when the months meant ‘moon-ths’ and the middle was when it was full (in 2016
the full moon in March falls on the 23rd). It was the Ides of March that
marks the anniversary of Julius Caesar’s assassination, way back in 44 BCE. In what seems like a complete coincidence, we
will celebrate the life of St. Patrick on March 17. Patrick changed not only
the history of that small island but perhaps that of the whole western world (I’ll
get to that in a minute).
As a General taking on the Gauls (and others), Julius Caesar
extended the Roman Empire into what we now call Great Britain, eventually taking
to it Latin and all the arts, crafts and works associated with it. Caesar’s arrogance
and insistence on fighting in contradiction to orders from the civilian forces
in Rome (when he crossed the Rubicon) eventually propelled him into the role of
co-consul with Mark Antony and then all-powerful emperor in perpetuity (czar
and tsar both come from ‘Caesar’). Just one month later, 60 Senators turned on
him and stabbed him a total of 23 times right in the Senate’s Chambers. It was Shakespeare
who immortalized the warning to “beware the Ides of March,” which is directed
especially to those who pursue absolute power and ignore the predictions of
soothsayers (ancient word for ‘pundit’).
In dooming the dictator, the Roman Senate also inadvertently
doomed what was left of the Republic. Democracy with a small ‘d’ was gone
forever from Rome once the rules had been so flagrantly violated – first by
Caesar, but then by the conspirators. It is perhaps necessary to remind
Americans in this election season that it was Roman Republic, and not the Roman Empire,
after which our founding fathers modeled our own form of government. Sometimes
the distinction seems to be lost on the very people most insistent on
remembering how things were back in the days of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson.
Three-hundred years after the death of Julius Caesar, in 313
CE to be precise, Roman Emperor Constantine was the first to give legitimacy in
the eyes of the government to Christianity. Not only did Constantine legalize the
religion, he shaped it, declaring Sun Day the day of worship for all religions
and cults, and forcing orthodoxy in the Christian Church by convening the
Council of Nicaea. It was at this meeting among Christian leaders from various
sects and beliefs throughout the empire that the relationship between God and
Christ was voted on, the date of Easter was divorced from the date of Passover,
and in which the solar (Julian) calendar was designated once and for all the
proper way to measure time. The lunar calendar (which was the Jewish calendar)
was out, except, oddly enough, when it came to figuring out when Easter should
be celebrated. All this puts our
difficulty in universally adopting the metric system in a new light.
Incredibly, Constantine personally made his way to Britain
to battle the Picts in Scotland (the Romans never did conquer them). He even
died in York, England not far from where my own mother was born. York is also
not far from where Maewyn Succat was born (exactly where that is remains
a mystery) sometime around 385 CE. At 16, Maewyn was kidnapped and enslaved by an
Irish landowner. The son of a well-off Roman who served on the equivalent of
the city council, Maewyn labored half-starved and otherwise deprived for six
years on the Irish west coast, at which point he simply left, following a
vision he’d had in a dream.
A few years later, having attributed his survival to the
Christian God he had learned of before his captivity (but which he hadn’t much
believed in), Maewyn (now Patricius or Patrick) willingly and deliberately and
against the better judgement of everyone he met inside the church and out, became
the first-ever Catholic missionary to actual ‘barbarians’, far from the
comforts of Roman civilization. In short, he returned to the very place in
Ireland from which he had escaped slavery in order to spread the gospel. Patrick could have faded into obscurity, but he
did not. Instead, he was successful beyond his wildest hopes not only in
Ireland but throughout the western world. In fact, the whole concept of ‘the western
world’ exists in part because of Patrick.
“With
the Irish – even with the kings – he succeeded beyond measure. Within his
lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade [which he’d been caught
in] came to a halt, and other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal
warfare, decreased. In reforming Irish sexual mores, he was rather less
successful, though he established indigenous monasteries ad convents, whose
inmates by their way of life reminded the Irish that the virtues of lifelong
faithfulness, courage, and generosity were actually attainable by ordinary
human beings and that the sward was not the only instrument for structuring a
society.”1
Because Patrick was in the hinterlands, and because Rome’s
hold on the western front was rapidly declining, no one was around to correct his
unorthodoxies. In 409 CE, when Patrick was about 25 years old, the last Roman
garrison in Britain would be abandoned. The very next year, Rome itself would
be ‘sacked’ by the Goths. You know the surly teenagers in dramatic black
clothing who think they know everything but are really pretty clueless? not
those. The originals didn’t get the designation ‘barbarians’ for nothing.
But back to Patrick. He was the first to unconditionally
condemn slavery. The Romans would not have agreed. Even the church would have
been dubious. But there was no one from Rome paying any attention to him. So he
went on celebrating the traditional Irish holidays along with his pagan converts.
One of these holidays was Imbolc, the spring celebration that falls on February
1, and which is one of the four major parties in the Irish pagan calendar. From
time immemorial, the feast was held in honor the goddess Brigit, who oversaw
childbirth, fertility, good crops, and smith work (also associated with magic).
Under the Christian influence, the day also celebrates Saint Brigid, a contemporary of Patricks’ who becomes one of the
Church’s most famous feminist leaders (granted, there are not very many who are
actually remembered and celebrated).
Brigid (later St. Brigid) became high abbess at Kildare, one
of the most important centers of monastic learning anywhere in Ireland. What
made it particularly special (though not unique) is that it admitted both men
and women. Like many women in the early Irish church, Brigid was ordained,
likely as a Bishop, and in that role ordained other clergy (think on that for a
moment…).
The founding of monasteries throughout Ireland was incredibly
important for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly because as the sun
went down on the western Roman Empire, libraries and other centers of learning were
being deliberately destroyed, civil order broke down, no one was obeying the
laws about not killing, stealing, raping or paying taxes. The infrastructure
(roads and aquaducts) fell apart, traveling became really dangerous, and no one
had time for education or philosophy or speeches. It was the beginning of the
so-called Dark Ages.
Meanwhile, Patrick’s converts learned Latin and Greek (which Patrick taught them) and also figured out how to write down all their own Irish myths and stories. Irish was actually
the first vernacular literature ever written down in the west (as far as anyone knows). These unlikely scholars began to copy whatever books and manuscripts they could get their hands on. Like the Irish today, they were also welcoming of all comers. The Irish democratized history by writing down Irish history/mythology and preserving it for posterity. This was viewed as equally (maybe more?) interesting as the Latin philosophy, oratory, and drama that they spent their days and nights copying over and over. The Irish take on their own history was an inspiration to the foreigners who came in increasing numbers seeking sanctuary from the craziness on the mainland. In this way, much of European folk tales, poetry, and mythology was also recorded, often for the first time.
Not only did the Irish copy
down words, they illuminated
their books with incredible artistry
Eventually, the flow reversed and the pilgrims ventured back to found monasteries throughout what we now think of as Western Europe. While the Catholic missionaries unquestionably contributed to the ugliness that was the Middle Ages, these centers of learning did in fact spin a thread between the ancient and modern worlds, preserving much of what survived of Latin literature, along with the traditions associated with reading, writing, and learning.
While the deaths of Julius Caesar and Saint Patrick may not seem to have a lot in common, other than occurring in the middle of March, they are linked by the reach of Rome into what is now England, the adoption of Christianity by another Roman Emperor, and the unlikely savior of much of the learning of that distant Republic. If not for Patrick, the darkness of the dark ages likely would have persisted. If there had been an Enlightenment, it would have been a different sun that provided the light. There would be less to inspire Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, there would be no city on a hill, no democracy, no debate. We might well live under an oligarchy, or a dictatorship, without religious or other freedoms.
So as you lift your glass to toast St. Patrick on Thursday, thank him not only for the Irish, but for saving the western canon.
Excerpt from ‘The Deer’s Cry’, attributed to St. Patrick:
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
1 This quote, as well as the excerpt from St. Patrick’s prayer, and much of my understanding of St. Patrick and the missions he and his followers established, is based on Thomas Cahill’s ‘How the Irish Saved Civilization’, published in 1995.
