The Purgatory of St. Patrick Part 21

In this there is an account of a certain Irish monk, "cui Petro nomen fuit," who appears to have entered the Purgatory in vision. This is probably the pa.s.sage which Messingham and Montalvan quote, though a different reference is given.

'Maurolicus Siculus', who follows next in Messingham and Montalvan, is omitted by Calderon.

"David Roto, y el prudente Primado de toda Hibernia," are one and the same person. This was the famous David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory, so intimately connected in 1642 with the Confederation of Kilkenny, of which an excellent history has been written by the Rev. Charles Meehan, M.R.I.A. The epithet "prudente" seems to have been a happy condensation of the many terms of encomium lavished upon this celebrated man by Messingham. Alluding again to his cla.s.sification of his authorities under the first four letters of the alphabet, Messingham says:--

"Whatever then you shall find written under the letter A, until you come to the next letter, is taken from the Right Reverend Father David Roth, Lord Bishop of Ossory, and Vice Primate of all Ireland, a Man excellently well read in all parts of literature, an eloquent Rhetorician, a subtle Philosopher, a profound Divine, a celebrated Historian, a zealous chastizer of Vice, a steady Defender of Ecclesiastical Liberty, a constant a.s.sertor of the Privileges of his Country, most devoutly compa.s.sionate upon the calamities of his Nation, a diligent Promoter of Peace and Unity among the Clergy, and, for that end, inst.i.tuted the Congregation commonly called Pacifick, in the year 1620, which has, with no little fruit and advantage to the Clergy, spread itself over all the Kingdom, -- a Man, in fine, who has left to Posterity many rare Monuments of his excellent talents, the Catalogue of which I shall not here, for good reasons, insert, but hope for more soon from him."

"Belarmino," "Beda." Cardinal Bellarmin and Venerable Bede are too well known to require any observations.

"Serpi, Fray Dimas," cut into two lines, with the names transposed, mean 'Fr. Dimas Serpi', one of whose works ('Aprodixis Sanct.i.tatis, etc', Romae, M.DC. IX.), though not the one referred to by Messingham, is in the British Museum. In Montalvan the marginal note gives, "Lib. de Purgatorio, cap. 26," as the reference. The German translator of this drama (Brunn, 1824), misled by the punctuation of the original, treats Dimas Serpi as two persons.

"Jacob Solino," the next authority for the legend, is perhaps the most perplexing in the list. Like twin stars that seem one to the naked eye, but resolve themselves into two beneath the telescope, so the single author of the printed text of Calderon appears distinct persons in the pages of Montalvan. He gives them thus: -- "Jacobo,"

"Solino," with a separate reference to each. Thus to "Jacobo," the marginal reference is, "In sua historia Orientale;" and to "Solino,"

"cap. 35," without the name of the work.

From Messingham we at once learn who the former writer was. He calls him in one place "Jacobus de Vitriaco," and in another more briefly, "Vitriacus." The pa.s.sage referred to in the marginal note of Montalvan is given thus:--

"Further, Jacobus de Vitriaco, in his History of the East, chap. 92, writes thus concerning this cave:-- 'There is a certain Place in Ireland, call'd St. Patrick's Purgatory, into which whosoever enters, except he be truly penitent and contrite in Heart, is s.n.a.t.c.hed away by Devils, and never returns. But he that with true contrition confesseth his sins, and goes in there, tho' the Devils vex and torture him, by Fire and Water, and many other Torments, yet is he purged of all his sins: Now they that are thus purged, and return, are never more seen to laugh or play; or to take pleasure in any thing in this World, but constantly weeping and sighing, forget the things that are behind, and stretch forward to the things that are before them.' -- A Brief History of St. Patrick's Purgatory, Paris, 1718, pp. 9, 10.

"Solino," who is so strangely united by Calderon's printer to "Jacob," presents some difficulty. In Messingham's list of authorities this name does not appear. The first French translator of Montalvan (Bruxelles, 1637) merely gives the Latin form of the name, "Solinus." The second French translator, Bouillon, in his 'Histoire de la vie et du Purgatoire de S. Patrice' (Troyes, 1642), turns both names into French, thus, "Jacques Solin, en son Histoire Orientale, chap. 26." This is doubly a mistake. The 'Histoire Orientale' is the work of Vitriacus, as already pointed out; and "chap. 26" refers not to that work, but to some unnamed writing of "Solino."

Of course the first name that suggests itself, as the author alluded to, is that of Caius Julius Solinus. The latest date a.s.signed as the period when this celebrated writer flourished is A.D. 238 -- that is, about 135 years before the birth of St. Patrick. To quote him as an authority on the subject of St. Patrick's Purgatory would therefore be a more absurd anachronism than any that has been pointed out in this curious list. This difficulty appeared to me so strong, that for a while I was led to believe that "Solino" was but a corrupted Spanish form of "Joceline," or "Joscelino," as it is sometimes given, whose 'Life of St. Patrick', written in the twelfth century, supplies all the incidents of St. Patrick's early life recorded by Montalvan and Calderon. He is also frequently referred to by Messingham. But further reflection convinces me that the writer alluded to was in reality the celebrated Latin author of the third century already mentioned, Caius Julius Solinus.

Solinus has of course no allusion to St. Patrick's Purgatory; but in his celebrated work, 'Polyhistor', compiled, it is thought, chiefly from Pliny's Natural History, he has a remarkable chapter on Ireland.

Some of his statements are doubtful, and all are very curious; one of them at least depriving St. Patrick, by antic.i.p.ation, of one of his most famous miracles. This is the banishment of the serpents, which it appears was first mentioned by Jocelin in the twelfth century. It is expressly stated by Solinus, who wrote in the third century, that in Ireland "There are no snakes and few byrdes," to use the language of the old English translator, Arthur Golding. This statement of the previous exemption of Ireland from venomous reptiles was warmly disputed by Dr. David Rothe, the Bishop of Ossory, early in the seventeenth century. It will be remembered that "David Roto" has already been quoted as an authority on the subject of St. Patrick's Purgatory, and it is his collateral controversy with Solinus that probably led Montalvan, and subsequently Calderon, to suppose that Solinus had in some way alluded to that legend. A valuable 'Life of St. Patrick', by P. Lynch (Dublin, 1828), contains many allusions to this subject, of which the following may be given as an example.

"The objections which Doctor Roth raised to the testimony of Solinus have as slender a foundation in reason. For Solinus (saith he) not only mentions this.e.xemption of Ireland from venomous creatures, but says further, that in Ireland there are few birds, and no bees; and therefore concludes, that as he is mistaken in these latter particulars, so he is not to be believed in the former,"-- p. 42.

The author of this Life of St. Patrick goes on to say that Solinus may have been perfectly accurate in these statements. That other writers have alluded to the time when bees were first introduced into Ireland, and that the migration of some birds thither, among others the magpie, took place at a comparatively modern period. He does not add, however, that Solinus states that the very dust of Ireland was so distasteful to the bees, where they are now as much at home as in Hymettus, that if it is scattered about their hives even in another country they abandon their combs. Thus writes quaint Arthur Golding:--

"There is not any Bee among them, and if a man bring of the dust of the stones from thence, and strew them among Bee-hyves, the swarme forsake ye combes."

Another misstatement of Solinus may be pointed out. He says:--

"The sea that is betweene Ireland and Britayne, being full of shallows and rough all the yeere long, cannot be sayled but a few dayes in the summer time."

With the following picturesque pa.s.sage referring to the warlike training of their children by the Irish, as recorded by a Roman writer in the third century of the Christian era, we take leave of Solinus, who we have no doubt was the author referred to by Montalvan and Calderon under the name of "Solino:"--

"If a woman be delivered of a man childe, she layes his first meate upon her husband's sworde, and putting it softly to his prettie mouth gives him the first hansel of his sworde upon the very point of the weapon, praying (according to the manner of their country) that he may not otherwise come to his death, than in Battel and among weapons."-- 'The Excellent and Pleasant Worke of Julius Solinus Polyhistor. Translated out of Latin into English by Arthur Golding, Gent.' At London, 1587. p. 105.

The last name in the list of authorities on the subject of St.

Patrick's Purgatory is "Mensignano," with the reference in the margin of Montalvan's 'Vida y Purgatorio' to his 'Florilegium'. This of course is Messingham, out of whose book, aided by his own wild imagination, Perez de Montalvan created the character of Luis Enius, who is presented to us with such dramatic power by Calderon.

Notwithstanding the length of these notes, the following summary, taken with some corrections from the Introduction to the former translation of this drama (1853), may still be useful:--

The curious history of Luis Enius, on which the princ.i.p.al interest of the play depends, has been alluded to, and given more or less fully by many ancient authors. The name, though slightly altered by the different persons who have mentioned him, can easily be recognised as the same in all, whether as Owen, Oien, Owain, Egan, Euenius, or Enius. Perhaps the earliest allusion to him in any printed English work is that contained in Ranulph Higden's "Polychronicon," published at Westminster, by Wynkin de Worde, in 1495: "In this Steven's tyme, a knyght that hyght Owen wente in to the Purgatory of the second Patrick, abbot, and not byshoppe. He came agayne and dwelled in the abbaye of Ludene of Whyte Monks in Irlonde, and tolde of joye and of paynes that he had seen." The history of Enius had, however, existed in MS. for nearly three centuries and a half before the Polychronicon was printed; it had been written by Henry, the monk of Saltrey in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, from the account which he had received from Gilbert, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Luden, or Louth, in Lincolns.h.i.+re (Colgan, 'Trias Thaumaturgae', p. 281.

Ware's 'Annals of Ireland', A.D. 1497). Colgan, after collating this MS. with two others on the same subject which he had seen, printed it nearly in full in his 'Trias', which was published at Louvain, A.D.

1647, where with the notes it fills from the 273rd to the 281st page.

Messingham, as we have seen, had printed it earlier from other sources, in 1624. Matthew Paris, however, had before this, in his History of England, under the date 1153, given a full account of the adventures of Oenus in the Purgatory, and in the few places that I have compared his account with that given in Colgan, I find both generally agreeing in substance, though not in words. In the folio edition of Mathew Paris, London, 1604, the history of Oenus begins at the 72nd and ends at the 77th page. In Montalvan's life of St.

Patrick, the adventures of Enius are given much more fully than either in Matthew Paris or Colgan. In their versions of the story the early life of Enius, previous to his undertaking to enter the Purgatory, is pa.s.sed over with a few general remarks as to its extreme wickedness -- while they give in great detail all that he saw and heard therein. Matthew Paris, for instance, opens the story of Enius in these words: "Miles quidam Oenus nomine, qui multis annis sub Rege Stephano militaverat -- licentia a Rege impetrata, profectus est in Hyberniam ad natale solum, ut parentes visitaret. Qui c.u.m aliquandiu in regione illa demoratus fuisset coepit ad mentem reducere vitam suam adeo flagitiosam: Quod ab ipsis cunabulis, incendiis semper vacaverat et rapinis, et quod magis dolebat, se ecclesiarum fuisse violatorem et rerum ecclesiasticarum invasorem praeter multa enormia quae intrinsecus latebant peccata," etc. -- 'Mat. Par'., p. 72. In Henry of Saltrey's account, as given by Messingham in 1624 and Colgan in 1647, this portion of the life of Enius is despatched even with more succinctness, but in Montalvan's 'Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio', all his early crimes are detailed nearly in the order and almost in the very words that Calderon has used. Sir Walter Scott mentions, in his Border Minstrelsy, that there is a curious MS. Metrical Romance, in the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, called, "The Legend of Sir Owain,"

relating his adventures in St. Patrick's Purgatory; he gives some stanzas from it, descriptive of the knight's pa.s.sage of "The Brig O'Dread;" which in the legend, is placed between Purgatory and Paradise. This poem is supposed to have been written late in the thirteenth century. It was printed for private distribution in Edinburgh, in 1837, but from the very limited impression, there having been but thirty-two copies struck off, it must always remain extremely scarce. A cognate work, however, "The Visions of Tundale"

(Edinburgh, 1843), published by the same lamented scholar (Mr.

Turnbull) who edited the former work, though rare, is more accessible.

THE END.