Reviews 361 literature in both Latin and the vernacular. For those interested in secular vernacular literature, of every genre, this work demonstrates how intertwined were ecclesiastical and secular intellectual life. However, they were not indistinguishable, as this work amply demonstrates. The medieval Irish were as capable of differentiating between religious and secular purpose as are their modern counterparts. The author has been well served by the press and its editors. The research is lucidly presented and well argued. Future researchers into the world of medieval Ireland’s learned classes have a firm foundation on which to build. They will be dipping into this welcome volume for years to come. Colin Ireland, Arcadia University, Dublin.
[email protected] © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.PERIT.5.102754 Dominique V. C. Santos, Patrício: a construção da imagem de um santo / How the historical Patrick was transformed into the St Patrick of religious faith. Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013. x + 295 pp. GBP99.95, US$149.95. ISBN: 0-7734-4552-8. Dominique dos Santos’s book is based on the thesis he submitted for a doctoral degree to the History Department of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil, in 2012. The foreword is by his former supervisor, Dr Ana Teresa Marques Gonçalves. His work has two main objectives: to analyse how St Patrick was represented, and, consequently, his cult and image invented and re-invented, during the middle ages, and to examine how modern scholars have studied Patrick, the historical figure. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, and final considerations. In the introduction Santos explains his theoretical concepts. Historians should be aware of the discourses behind the texts they analyse, and they should be keenly aware of their own discourses and interpretations. Santos is strongly influenced by the works of Roland Barthes and Hayden White. He seeks a balance between a more conservative approach and a post-modernist one by taking into account the works of Henri Lefebvre, Carlo Ginsburg and Luís Costa Lima. He argues that the past cannot be visited as a distant country, nor can it be reconstructed from the available documentation. Only impressions are possible. Consequently, the ‘real Patrick’ and fifth-century Ireland, cannot be reconstructed on the basis of two short documents by a single individual, Patrick himself. Though Patrick wrote these documents, they are not necessarily factual (1–9). In the first chapter Santos attempts to analyse how Patrick, his writings and his cult, have been treated by scholarship. The first part of this chapter is about the ‘beginnings of Patriciology’. Here he studies the key works, and notes how some scholars are imbued with religious fervour and driven by identity disputes—James Ussher, Philip O’Sullivan Beare, John Colgan, James Henthorn Todd, among others (15–23). The second part is given over to an analysis of the approach to Patrick and his works in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. The contributions of J. B. Bury and D. A. Binchy, among others, are evaluated. The approaches of these scholars are the key inspi-
362 Reviews ration for Santos’s investigation and critical focus. Bury’s attempt to distinguish between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’ Patrick (an undertaking not yet completely abandoned by scholars) leads Santos to his key arguments (24–39). In the third and last part of the chapter, he takes into account the most recent contributions, particularly those of David Howlett and Thomas O’Loughlin (39–69). The second chapter aims to put in context the primary sources for an analysis of the construction of the saint. This is ‘a work of long duration’. Three key historical periods are selected. In the first he treats of Patrick’s writings, his Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus, from the fifth century. In the second, he conceptualises the Vita sancti Patricii of Muirchú, written in the seventh century. For some reason he does not justify his decision to exclude Tirechán’s equally seventh-century work—apart from a brief comment about the time constraints of a doctoral programme (267). For the third period, he chooses Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii apostoli hibernensis by the Cistercian monk known as H. of Saltrey in the twelfth century. Parts of this chapter could have been shortened, for example, the section on the organisation of the church in Ireland (101–16). In his third chapter Santos analyses the four documents chosen by him. First, he observes how Patrick represented himself, and the Ireland he encountered; then, how Muirchú and H. of Saltrey, represented Patrick. This chapter, and the final considerations, show how the idea of Patrick, the saint, was invented, re-invented and inflated throughout the middle ages, and how the ‘humble sinner’ of the fifth century was transformed into the great apostle and judge of the Irish, and the recipient of revelation from Jesus himself in Tractatus de Purgatorio. Santos shows how, in each of these historical moments, a Patrick was constructed in accord with the adversities of both author and contemporary church. The amount of quotation from these sources may seem excessive to a reader familiar with them. Nonetheless, these quotations are valuable, not least because this is the first time these excerpts have been translated into Portuguese (The writings of St Patrick, have already been translated into Portuguese by Santos, and are available through the Royal Irish Academy’s website, confessio.ie.) Edwin Mellen Press gives young scholars an opportunity to publish their dissertations soon after their defence. This is laudable. There are great benefits from having this work published in its original language, since it gives access to sources and scholarship previously unavailable to a Portuguese-speaking readership, and to the Brazilian market generally, one of the newest areas of Celtic and Irish studies. However, there are editorial problems. Some typographical errors have gone unnoticed. For example, an alternation between the terms Briton/Breton (britão/bretão) and Britain/Brittany (Bretanha/ Britânia) has occurred. There was an earlier debate (recently re-ignited) about Patrick’s place of birth, but there is now a consensus that he was from Britain, and this consensus is accepted by Santos (72–73). Although a good deal of the scholarship on Patrick and Patrician studies in this book is familiar to experts, it has never before been assembled
Reviews 363 and analysed in such a comprehensive way. Santos’s approach is innovative and inspirational, and his is an important contribution to the literature on Patrick. It is a very enjoyable read, and, with the necessary revision, it would be good to have it published in English. If so, it will have to be much cheaper Elaine C. S. Pereira Farrell, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
[email protected] © BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.PERIT.5.102755 Bernard Meehan, The Book of Kells. Thames & Hudson: London, 2012. 256pp; reproductions, 230 in colour. GBP55.00. ISBN 978-0-500-23894-3. Thames & Hudson’s latest stout and colourful volume celebrating the Book of Kells (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 58) should surely see the end of this form of marketing of that particular manuscript. The Book of Kells must be unique in the number of facsimiles which have been published over the years, and besides, it can now be studied, in its entirety, on a DVD-ROM with built-in facility for enlargement of any selected portion, and it can even be read on an iPad app, as well as free on-line. For repeat performances, the Book of Kells is quite the Ninth Symphony of book-illumination. Bernard Meehan’s comment about it in the volume under review, that its allure lies partly in what is hidden by its closed codex format, is surely disingenuous, given the ever-increasing accessibility of its pages. Few corners have not now been pried into, and reproduced. Things have certainly moved on since the days when we depended on J. O. Westwood and E. H. Zimmermann. What one does not often see is a picture of the closed codex, or its separate volumes, held in human hands, or laid on desk or lectern, to draw it back to its proper proportions. The cult of magnification has become a deeply distorting factor in the increasingly common efforts of museums and publishers to popularise medieval art; for example the British Library’s recent Masterpieces/Medieval art by James Robertson. Enlargement of leaves and details was, of course, carried radically forward in Thames & Hudson’s earlier volume, The Book of Kells, introduced by Françoise Henry (1974). The photographic technology at the service of Meehan’s version of the Book of Kells is no doubt more finely tuned, but the impact of Henry’s selection of details, cogently juxtaposed, still outclasses his, though his huge double-spread of the central portion of f 13 (plate 37) enlarges the display lettering of the Breves causae of Mk to 12 cms, easily beating Henry’s mere 5 cms (her plate 12). These magnifications betray a deep distrust of the artists’ own choice of scale. Typically, the jacket of the present volume, reproducing f 104, is bigger than life-size, the decorated text shorn of empty margins, to attract the eyes, of just what audience? Evidently, not one that can readily read the Latin script, since the text displayed (Mt 24: 19–24) is particularly glum and intimidating. But does it matter to the lay public in the twenty-first century what is written in the Book of Kells? After all, as Meehan reports in the first paragraph of his Introduction, over 500,000 visitors annually go to Trinity College Library to see it on display. The status of the Book of Kells as an Irish national
