fact is, though Dr. Ledwich does not appear to know it, that, during several ages after the death of St. Patrick, the secular clergy in general were called Canonici, because the canons were their rule of life, in contradistinction to the Monachi or Regulars, who professed to follow the rule of St. Benedict *, or some other monastic rule.

The critic now carps at the title of Archbishop, conferred on St. Patrick by his biographers:

Here," he says, "all biographers, ancient and "modern, discover their ignorance of ecclesias"tical history.-Before Theodore, Archbishop "of Canterbury, enjoyed this title in 673, "it was unknown in Britain †.". -Now let us see (without going further for this purpose than our national historian) whether "all bid.

graphers, ancient and modern, discover their "ignorance," or whether Dr. Ledwich discovers his presumption in this particular! I read then in Venerable Bede, that the man of God, Augustine, going to Arles, was consecrated Archbishop of the English nation, "according to the "orders of the holy father Gregory, by Etherius, "Archbishop of the said city ." I read concerning St. Laurence, the immediate successor of Augustine, that, having "obtained the rank of

* Concil. Vernum. A. D. 755. Can. ii. Concil. Aquisgran. cap. 115. See Van Espen, Tom. i. de Canonicis.

+ P. 65.

Bede Eccl. Hist. 1. i. c. 27. See also c. 24.

Archbishop, "* he endeavoured to promote the work of God which was begun; and that he "not only took care of the new church of England, but also extended his pastoral solicitude to the ancient inhabitants of Britain, and to "the Scots who inhabited Ireland †." I read of their successors, Justus and Honorius, that they also were honoured with the title of Archbishop‡ I might extend my arguments, were there occasion for it, by demonstrating that York §, St. David's, Seville, Mentz, Sirmium, and several other sees in the western, as well as in the eastern church, no less than Canterbury and Arles, were honoured with the title and jurisdiction of Archbishoprics long before the time of St. Theodore. But the occasion does not require such a dissertation, and, I think, enough has been al ready said to prove that critic grossly ignorant, as well as intolerably vain, who has ventured to reproach "all the biographers of St. Patrick, "ancient and modern, with ignorance of eccle"siastical history."

The following objection is nearly allied to the foregoing. The writer cavils at the legatine authority and the use of the pall, said to have been conferred upon St. Patrick by Pope Hilary in 462.

* "Laurentius Archiepiscopatus gradu potitus," 1. ii. c. 4. † Ibid.

Ibid. 1. ii. c. 15, 18.

St. Paulinus, who was consecrated for the see of York in 622, is expressly termed Archbishop by Bede, 1. iii. c. 25, and received the metropolitical pall from Pope Honorius, 1. ii. c. 17.

Q

Now supposing that Joceline, arguing from the practice in his own time, may have erred in imagining that the use of this ornament necessarily accompanied the metropolitical dignity, yet nothing is more certain than that Dr. Ledwich himself is most egregiously deceived in fancying that the Popes had no legates before the second Nicene Council in 787. To mention two or three instances out of as many hundreds of such delegations. The great St. Augustine says, that he was sent by Pope Zozimus to Cesaræa, in Mauritania, to perform certain ecclesiastical commissions in his name *. St. Leo the Great, in the year 444, testifies, that he had appointed Anastasius, a bishop, to be his Vicar in the vince of Illyrica†, and St. Gregory the Great acknowledges the Archbishop of Arles to have been the legate of the apostolic see for a long time past, with the use of the pall, in the letter by which he makes St. Augustine of Canterbury his legate throughout the British islands, though he did not bestow the pall upon him till a later occasion. Dr. Ledwich concludes the above

Aug. Epis. 157.

pro

"Vicem nostram coepiscopo nostro Anastasio, secuti eorum exemplum quorum nobis recordatio est veneranda, commisimus." St. Leo, Metrop. Illyricum, ep. 25.

" Interrogatio Augustini-Qualiter debemus cum Galliarum an Britanniarum episcopis agere?-Respondit Gregorius-In Galliarum Episcopos nullam tibi auctoritatem tribuimus; quia ab antiquis prædecessorum meorum temporibus pallium Arelatensis epis copus accepit, quem nos privare auctoritate accepta non debemus, Britanniarum autem omnes episcopos tuæ fraternitati committimus ut indocti doceantur, infirmi robborentur, perversi auctoritate corrigantur." Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1. i. c. 27.

66

mentioned criticisms, or rather cavils, in the following manner: "It must be tiresome to the "reader, as it is to the writer, to pursue further "this critical examination of the life of our saint. "I do not hesitate in affirming that every chap"ter in Joceline, Colgan, and Probus, is liable "to similar objections; internal and invincible proofs these, that our apostle and his history are equally fabulous *." I also, Sir, must confess, that it is tiresome to argue with a writer so strong in assertion and so weak in proof; and I, in my turn, do not hesitate to affirm, that there is not a paragraph in all Dr. Ledwich's criticisms concerning St. Patrick and the ancient religion of Ireland, which does not consist of ground less assertions and chimerical suppositions, in opposition to positive evidence.

66

What I have just now said concerning chimerical suppositions more particularly applies to the account which our writer gives of the supposed origin of the history of St. Patrick. He says: that "The ninth century, being famous for reviving and incorporating pagan practices "with the Christian ritual, and observing that "Rome had her Mars, Athens her Minerva, Carthage her Juno, and every country and city a proper and peculiar deity, whose guardian. care was its protection and security, conceived it a very becoming employment for Christian "saints to assume the patronage of a Chris

* Antiq. p. 66.

"tian people, &c. *."-I should be glad to know what Dr. Ledwich means by the ninth century. Did these brilliant ideas seize all at once the whole collection of men, women, and children in the ninth century? Or was there a combination of artful impostors throughout Christendom, who undertook to make their respective countrymen believe that there had been a St. Patrick in Ireland, a St. David in Wales, a St. George in England, a St. Palladius in Scotland, &c. whilst they were perfectly convinced that all such saints were mere chimeras? If the latter supposition is adopted, as undoubtedly it must be, I ask, by what means could these impostors prevail on the learned men throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Flanders, and Italy, to adopt their scheme, and concur together, as they have done, in publishing the same particulars concerning St. Patrick; for example, without the reclamation or objection of a single individual amongst them? By what artifice could they induce the princes and people of Christendom to build churches to the honour of this phantom termed St. Patrick, and to call their towns, havens, and other places after his name? I could be amused, Sir, with the revery of Dr. Ledwich, had it the merit of originality, but being acquainted with the learned dreams of the celebrated Hardouin, who gravely maintains that all the classical books, except Cicero's

* Antiq. p. 66.