Celtic Church In Britain And Ireland

The present work is a translation of an article written by Professor Zimmer for the tenth volume of the Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. It was a good idea to make Zimmer's work accessible to a wider circle of English students, and it is pleasant to notice that the idea originated with Dr. Whitley Stokes, who on other occasions has shown himself a vigorous opponent of many of Zimmer's theories. The present work contains a sketch of the fortunes of the Celtic Churches in the British isles to about 1200, i.e. until they became completely merged in the Roman organization. This sketch is marked by all the qualities which we are accustomed to associate with Zimmer's work—great learning, a firm grasp of complicated relations, and an extraordinary gift of ingenious combination. A considerable portion of the book is occupied with a masterly analysis of the Patrick legend. Zimmer does not actually abolish St. Patrick, but he leaves very little indeed of the traditional saint. He shows that the ordinary view of him as a great and successful missionary who, in the middle of the fifth century, converted an entirely heathen land to Christianity, and founded a strong Church based on diocesan episcopacy, is utterly inconsistent with all the known facts, with the statements of Patrick himself in the Confessio and Epistle to Coroticus (which Zimmer now accepts as genuine, though he did not always do so), with Prosper's statement that Palladius (with whom Zimmer identifies Patrick) was sent 'ad Scotos credentes in Christum,' with the silence of Bede, with the existence of a strong Irish Church in the sixth century which, though episcopal in character, was monastic and not diocesan in its organization. He shows, moreover, how the Patrick legend, with its gift of primacy to Armagh, was the price which the South of Ireland, where the legend originated, offered to the North of Ireland to induce it to follow the example of the South and submit to Rome in the matters of the Easter cycle and the tonsure. But for these and many other points of interest we must refer our readers to the work itself. The translation is on the whole well done, and the authorities are cited in the notes to a greater extent than was possible in the original article. There are some awkward expressions and one or two slips in matters of detail which might with advantage be corrected in a new edition. —The Church Quarterly Review, Volume 56 [1903]