The Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii (The Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick) is a bilingual hagiography of Saint Patrick, written partly in Irish and partly in Latin. The text is difficult to date. Kathleen Mulchrone had assigned a late ninth century date based on the latest historical reference in the text. [1] However, on linguistic grounds, it has been dated to as late as the twelfth century. [2] The text as it stands probably reflects various stages of development. Máire Herbert summarises:
While there are some textual references indicative of ninth-century date, in my opinion the text was continued thereafter and completed around or after the mid-tenth century. Some decades later, in the eleventh century, the text was edited as a tripartite homily designed for preaching during celebration of the saint's feast. [3]
It was meant to be read in three parts over the three days of the Patrick's festival. James F. Kenney said that the Tripartite Life represents "the evolution of the Patrick legend nearly completed." [4] While the Tripartite Life bears many similarities with earlier texts, and developed from them, the text as a whole is more brazen, and has a polemical character.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Gall according to hagiographic tradition was a disciple and one of the traditional twelve companions of Columbanus on his mission from Ireland to the continent. However, he may have originally come from the border region between Lorraine and Alemannia and only met Columbanus at the monastery of Luxeuil in the Vosges. Gall is known as a representative of the Irish monastic tradition. The Abbey of Saint Gall in the city of Saint Gallen, Switzerland was built upon his original hermitage. Deicolus was the elder brother of Gall.
Óengus mac Óengobann, better known as Saint Óengus of Tallaght or Óengus the Culdee, was an Irish bishop, reformer and writer, who flourished in the first quarter of the 9th century and is held to be the author of the Félire Óengusso and possibly the Martyrology of Tallaght.
De duodecim abusivis saeculi, also titled simply De duodecim abusivis, is a Hiberno-Latin treatise on social and political morality written by an anonymous Irish author between 630 and 700, or between 630 and 650. During the Middle Ages, the work was very popular throughout Europe.
Lóegaire (died c. 462), also Lóeguire, is said to have been a son of Niall of the Nine Hostages. The Irish annals and king lists include him as a King of Tara or High King of Ireland. He appears as an adversary of Saint Patrick in several hagiographies. His dealings with the saint were believed to account for his descendants' lack of importance in later times. There are several accounts of his death, all of which contain supernatural elements, some of which concern his wars against Leinster.
Adomnán or Adamnán of Iona, also known as Eunan, was an abbot of Iona Abbey (r. 679–704), hagiographer, statesman, canon jurist, and saint. He was the author of the Life of Columba, probably written between 697 and 700. This biography is by far the most important surviving work written in early-medieval Scotland, and is a vital source for our knowledge of the Picts, and an insight into the life of Iona and the early-medieval Gaelic monk.
The Annals of Tigernach are chronicles probably originating in Clonmacnoise, Ireland. The language is a mixture of Latin and Old and Middle Irish.
Giric, if he is the Gregorius of Walter Bower, is the eleventh alleged Bishop of St Andrews. This Gregorius is mentioned in the bishop-list of Walter Bower as the successor of Bishop Fothad II. Bower's most recent editors commented that "there is no evidence to prove that any bishop of St Andrews was consecrated between 1093 and 1109". In the late 1990s, the University of Glasgow historian Dauvit Broun, by looking through the manuscripts afresh, recovered the previously unknown last 20% of Version-A of the St. Andrews Foundation Legend, a text composed at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries. In it, a few of the contemporary church's leading men are named, and one of these is "Archbishop Giric".
Secundinus, or Sechnall as he was known in Irish, was founder and patron saint of Domhnach Sechnaill, County Meath, who went down in medieval tradition as a disciple of St Patrick and one of the first bishops of Armagh. Historians have suggested, however, that the connection with St Patrick was a later tradition invented by Armagh historians in favour of their patron saint and that Secundinus is more likely to have been a separate missionary, possibly a companion of Palladius.
Muirchú moccu Machtheni, usually known simply as Muirchú, was a monk and historian from Leinster. He wrote the Vita sancti Patricii, known in English as The Life of Saint Patrick, one of the first accounts of the fifth-century saint, and which credits Patrick with the conversion of Ireland in advance of the spread of monasticism. This work was dedicated to Bishop Aedh of Slébte, who was also the one who suggested the biography be written, and was the patron for the work. Muirchú's work is of little historical value in relation to the distant fifth century, but is a useful source for the time in which he lived and how Patrick was viewed in the seventh century.
Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was never formally canonised by the Catholic Church, having lived before the current laws it established for such matters. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Church of Ireland, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland.
Saint Colmán mac Luacháin was an early Irish abbot, founder and patron saint of Lann.
Lommán mac Dalláin was a saint and patron of Trim, County Meath in Ireland.
In medieval Irish and Scottish legend, Goídel Glas is the creator of the Goidelic languages and eponymous ancestor of the Gaels. The tradition can be traced to the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn. A Scottish variant is recorded by John of Fordun.
Saint Cathróe was a monk and abbot. His life is recorded in a hagiography written soon after his death by a monk at the monastery of Saint Felix at Metz, where Cathróe was abbot. Miracles of healing were attributed to Cathróe during his life, and he was considered a saint after his death.
Odhran was the charioteer of Saint Patrick and the first Christian martyr in Irish history.
An Leabhar Breac, now less commonly Leabhar Mór Dúna Doighre or possibly erroneously, Leabhar Breac Mic Aodhagáin, is a medieval Irish vellum manuscript containing Middle Irish and Hiberno-Latin writings. The manuscript is held in the library of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, where it is catalogued as RIA MS 23 P 16 or 1230.
The Cambrai Homily is the earliest known Irish homily, dating to the 7th or early 8th century, and housed in the Médiathèque d'agglomération de Cambrai. It is evidence that a written vernacular encouraged by the Church had already been established alongside Latin by the 7th century in Ireland. The homily is also the oldest single example of an extended prose passage in Old Irish. The text is incomplete, and Latin and Irish are mixed. Quotations from the Bible and patristic sources are in Latin, with the explication in Irish. It is a significant document for the study of Celtic linguistics and for understanding sermons as they might have existed in the 7th-century Irish church. The homily also contains the earliest examples in written Irish of triads, a form of expression characteristic of early Irish literature, though the text taken as a whole is not composed in triads.
Samthann, modernised spelling Samhthann or Samthana, is an Irish folk saint, purportedly a Christian nun and abbess in Early Christian Ireland. She is one of only four female Irish saints for whom Latin Lives exist. She died on 19 December 739.
Kathleen "Kate" Mulchrone was an Irish Celtic scholar.
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