The Most Revd Diarmuid Martin and The Most Revd Michael Jackson were at the Royal Irish Academy this week for the launch of an internet resource to enable research into the writings of St Patrick.
A presss release from the RIA states:
Not everyone realizes that there are two Latin works, still surviving, that can definitely be attributed to Patrick’s own authorship. Composed in the fifth century and preserved in manuscripts dating from the 800s onwards, these are the very oldest texts, in any language, written in Ireland that are still extant.
These texts prove that St Patrick really existed, because they allow us to define the historical Patrick as the person who wrote them. This real St Patrick is thus the very first recordable individual that we can identify for certain in Ireland.
At a well-attended launch on 14th September the Royal Irish Academy published his writings in a freely accessible form on line at www.confessio.ie, both in the original Latin and in a variety of modern languages (including Irish). The English translation is a straightforward and accurate rendering titled My Name is Patrick, by Pádraig McCarthy.
The centrepiece of the celebration was a dramatized reading of part of this, in dialogue form, by the their Graces the Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland Archbishops of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Diarmuid Martin and the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson. The occasion symbolized that fact that the digital publication project, funded under the Irish government’s Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (Cycle Four), provides access free of charge, for anyone anywhere, to a piece of heritage that can be claimed by the most diverse components of Irish society. Designed to be of interest to the general public as well as to academic researchers, the St Patrick’s Confessio Hypertext Stack includes such features as digital images of the medieval manuscripts involved, a specially commissioned historical reconstruction that evocatively describes life in pre-Viking Ireland, audio presentations, and some ten thousand internal and external digital links that make it truly a resource to be explored.
Further information from the Project Leader, Dr Anthony Harvey (e-mail DMLCS@ria.ie; phone 01-6762570).