History Of The Scottish Nation
Vol 2, Chapter 8 - Palladius sent to the Scots in Ireland. Dies and is buried at Fordun

There was then great fermentation of ideas going on at the centre of the religious world. It was now as when the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea, and creatures of new and monstrous shape lifted up their head above the waves. The appearance of Christianity had awakened into temporary life the worn-out energies of the Pagan world. The action and interaction of the Greek, the Roman, and the Asiatic mind, and the struggles of old and expiring systems to graft themselves on the living stock of Christianity, and so prolong their existence under a new name, gave birth to numerous and diverse theories in which the Gospel was modified, or metamorphosed, or altogether subverted. Among other heresies which arose at this time was Pelagianism.

The exposition of Pelagianism belongs to the province of the theologian rather than to that of the historian. Nevertheless the purposes of history require that we offer a sketch of the general features and character of this system. It will show how the current is setting, and what are the thoughts that occupy the men of the age, if we attend a little to this matter. Pelagianism has as its central proposition that man's free-will is unimpaired, that no influence fetters or dominates his choice between good and evil, and that he has all the power he ever had, or needs to have, if he chooses to put it forth, to will and to do what is spiritually good. In short, that man now is as perfect as Adam was when he came from the hand of his Maker. One sees at a glance that this is a doctrine which cannot stand alone, and that it must needs be buttressed on all sides by cognate ideas and propositions. Pelagianism sweeps the whole field of theological science, and urgently demands that all within that field shall be brought into harmony with itself. In other words, it demands a remodeling of the Gospel as a remedial scheme. It is clear that a perfect man can have known no fall, and it is just as clear that he can need no saviour. The authors of Pelagianism, therefore, felt themselves bound, in consistency, to deny the fall in the Scriptural sense. They admitted indeed that Adam had sinned, but they maintained that the consequences of his sin were restricted to himself, that he did not transmit either guilt or corruption to his posterity, and that though he died, death was not a penalty but a natural evil. They farther taught, as a necessary consequence of their main and central doctrine, that every human being comes into the world with as pure a nature and as free a will as Adam possessed in innocence. So much for the back-look in the case of Pelagianism.

Turning to its forward aspect, it was seen to have attendant upon it, on this side also, certain very serious consequences. If man is not in bondage to guilt and corruption, where is the need of a Redeemer? If he retains his original perfection, where is the need of the Spirit to renew him. Is he not able to save himself? His understanding, as clear as Adam's was, shows him what is good; his will, as unfettered as was that of the first man, enables him to choose good; he has but to walk straight on and he will without fail inherit life eternal. Such are the conclusions at the two extremes of this system, and no other conclusions could such a middle position have, logically and consistently, save these—a denial of the fall on the one side, and a denial of the atonement on the other. Pelagianism was Greek thought in a Christian dress. The essence of the theology of Pelagius was the ethical development of man, as the Greeks taught it, resulting at last in perfection, and attained simply by his own natural powers.

Pelagianism was the boldest defiance which had as yet been flung down to Christianity. Its rise marks a noted advance in the war, already organized, in which the Gospel was fated to struggle century after century for the redemption of the race. Pelagianism was a change of front in that war—in truth, a march back to old Paganism. All previous heresies had assailed Christianity from the Divine side, by impugning the rank or the nature or the person of its Author, the second person of the adorable Trinity. This assailed Christianity from the human side, by underrating the injury to man by the Fall, and representing his nature as so perfect as to need no renewal. The policy pursued till now had been to lower Deity; the plan now followed was to elevate humanity—to lift up man into a position in which he should not need the aids of Divine grace. All subsequent heresies have grown out of the Pelagian root; they have been but modifications or developments of Pelagianism. But we touch the verge of polemical theology, and must again return within the lines of history.

The Romans quitted our country about the year 410. Their departure was followed by a century of darkness, and during, that dreary period we are left without historic guides, or guides that we can follows, their facts are so few, and their fables are so many. It was during this century that the Pelagian heresy broke out. It arose at Rome, but it had for its author a native of Britain. That author was surnamed Morgan, a Welshman, it is supposed, who, after the manner of the times, had Latinised his name into Pelagius.[1] Pelagius had as his fellow-labourer in the work of propagating the heresy which bore his name an Irishman called Celleagh, or Kelly, who too, following the fashion of the day, dropped the Hibernian appellation, and assumed the more classic term of Coelestius.[2] Morgan and Kelly, or, as they chose now to be called, Pelagius and Coelestius, were the first two promoters of this heresy. Its real author, however, if we may believe Marius Mercator,[3] was Rufinus, who having instilled his pernicious principles into the minds of his two disciples from the British Isles, sought through them to give currency to his opinions while he himself remained in the background.

Morgan and Kelly, or as we shall henceforth call them, Pelagius and Coelestius had arrived in Rome before the year 400. Sound in the faith, and blameless in life, they were honoured with the friendship of the eminent men then living in the Metropolis of Christendom. Their reputation for talent and learning was great. Though Pelagius gave his name to the heresy he was not its chief propagator. This unenviable distinction fell to the lot of his coadjutor Coelestius. The latter was of noble birth; and being a man of acknowledged ability, and possessing, moreover, the quick wit of his countrymen, he stood forth at the head of the sect as its facile princeps, and the most successful expounder of its peculiar tenets. Jerome, who was at Rome when the Pelagian heresy broke out, opposed it with characteristic vigour. He could find no name to vent his contempt of it but the scathing epithet, "puls Scotorum," that is, Scotch porridge, or Irish flummery. Morgan, he compared to Pluto, and Kelly to his dog Cerberus, hinting at the same time that of these two infernal divinities the "dog" was better than the "king," and the "master rather than the disciple of the heresiarch." [4]

Pelagius and Coelestius went forth to spread their doctrines at an hour dark with portents of coming evil. On the northern frontier of the empire was seen the avenging Goth; the twilight of the Middle Ages was already darkening the sky of the world; and more ominous still, the "shepherds" of the church slumbered at their post. Drowned in worldly pleasures, they gave no warning to the flocks over which it was their duty to watch. The two apostles of Pelagianism, finding the field free to them, divided Christendom between them. Pelagius selected the East as his field of labour, Coelestius turned his steps toward the West. The latter crossing the sea announced to the famous churches of Africa that he had come to emancipate them from the slavery of the Fall, and the enfeebling doctrine of man's inability to work out his own salvation. Augustine, who was then in the zenith of his influence, was not slow to enter the lists against the preacher of these novelties. In presence of such an antagonist, the defeat of Pelagius was assured from the first. He failed to plant Pelagianism in Africa, and retired crest-fallen from the field, where he expected he would be hailed as a deliverer, and over which he hoped to walk in triumph. The churches of Africa, even under the "Doctor of grace" might have no very clear or definite view of the great doctrine of justification by faith as the church had till Luther appeared; yet they were not prepared at the bidding of Coelestius, to accept a theology which made the history of the Fall little better than a fable, and the doctrine of original sin an ensnaring and enfeebling delusion.

Pelagius had better success in the East. There Pelagianism was already in the air. This unhappy state of things was mainly owing to the teaching of Origen whose views were somewhat akin to those of Pelagius. The bishop of Jerusalem welcomed the heresiarch, and in that very city where the great Sacrifice had been offered did a doctrine find favour which made its offering to be in reality without purpose. In a synod held soon after at Diospolis, the ancient Lydda, the tenets of Pelagius were pronounced orthodox. This judgment, however, was reversed by Pope Innocent. Condemned by Innocent, Pelagius was next acquitted by his successor Zosimus. But again Zosimus, at the expostulation of Augustine, retracted his own judgment, and finally condemned Pelagius as a heresiarch.[5] So little theological discernment had the synods and bishops of those days. The Pelagian champion was bandied from council to Pope, and from one Pope to another; he was branded with heresy this hour; he was absolved and pronounced orthodox the next, and finally the brand was reimposed by the same hands which had taken it off. Ecclesiastics who show so little confidence in their own judgment have verily small claim to demand the absolute submission of ours.

Meanwhile the heresy which was being approved and condemned by turns at Rome, was spreading in the countries north of the Alps. It had infected the churches of France, and in that country synods were convoked to examine and pass sentence upon it. Traveling still farther northward Pelagianism reached at last the land which had given birth to its alleged authors. It was tainting the theology and rending the unity of the British and Scottish churches (A.D. 420), and this it is that now brings Palladius upon the scene. The mitre of the See of Rome—for as yet the tiara had not been achieved—now sat on the brow of Celestine. This Pope and his advisers could not but see that the opinions of Pelagius, whether true or false, menaced the unity and stability of the Roman See, and they resolved to discountenance the new tenets. Accordingly Pope Celestine dispatched Palladius to check the ravages which Pelagianism was making in the churches of the British Isles, and having recovered them to orthodoxy, he empowered him to place himself at their head, at least at the head of one of them, as its "first bishop."Thus we read in the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitane, under the year A.D. 431: "Palladius is ordained by Pope Celestine, and sent as the first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ."[6] The man and his mission bulk so little in after years that we might take Prosper's words as the record of a myth, were it not that his statement is repeated and confirmed by both Bede and Baronius.

This matter throws a clear light upon the ecclesiastical state of our nation in the centuries that preceded the coming of Palladius, and therefore we shall study a little fullness in our historic treatment of it. All the historians of the time agree that Palladius was sent as their first bishop to the Scots. Bede, as we have said, testifies to the fact, and Cardinal Baronius does so not less explicitly. The words of the latter are, "All men agree that this nation (the Scots) had Palladius their first bishop from Pope Celestine" [7] The same authority again says, "From this you will know how to refute those who allege that Sedulius, the Christian poet, whom Pope Gelasius so much extols, had for his master Hildebert the Archbishop of the Scots, for seeing even Sedulius himself lived in the time of Theodosius the emperor, how could he have had for his teacher Hildebert archbishop of the Scots, seeing there was no archbishop yet ordained in Scotland, and Palladius is without debate affirmed to have been the first bishop of that nation."[8] The same thing is asserted in a fragment of the "Life of St. Kentigern." The venerable Palladius, says the writer, " the first bishop of the Scoti, who was sent, in the year of the incarnation, 431, by Pope Celestine, as the first bishop to the Scots, who believed." [9] To the same purpose the Magdeburg Centuriators, who, speaking of the fifth century, say, "Nor were the Scots without a church at this time, seeing Palladius was sent as their first bishop from Celestine." [10] With this agree all the ancient writers of our own country. "Before the coming of Palladius," says Fordun, " the Scots, following the custom of the primitive church, had teachers of the faith and dispensers of the sacraments who were only Presbyters or monks." [11] And John Major says, " The Scots were instructed in the faith by priests and monks without bishops." [12] The current of testimony to this fact runs on unbroken to our own day, but to trace it farther were to heap up a superfluous abundance of proof. It does not in the least alter the meaning, or weaken the force of these statements on whichever side of the Irish Sea we shall place the Scots. Till Palladius appeared amongst them a diocesan bishop was unknown to them; and as he was the first, so he was the last bishop to the Scots for a long while; for as we shall see in the sequel, many centuries passed before a second appeared.

We come now to the vexed question, To what country was Palladius missioned? We have no hesitation in replying that the Scotland to which Palladius was sent was the Scotland of the fifth century, the century in which Prosper of Aquitane wrote. The Scotland of the fifth century was Ireland. The Scotland of our day was known in that age as Albania. For, as Bishop Usher remarks, "there cannot be produced from the whole of the first eleven centuries a single writer who has called Albania by the name of Scotia." [13] And "whoever," says Dr. Todd, "reads the works of Bede and Adamnan will not need to be informed that even in their times, Scotia meant no country but Ireland, and Scoti no people but the inhabitants of Ireland." [14] We have already shown that the Scots had a common origin with the other races which descended from the regions of the north, with life new and fresh, and ideas unfettered by the past, to begin the modern times on broader foundations than the Greeks and Romans which preceded them.

We take it as a matter about which there call hardly be any doubt that Palladius was sent to Ireland. There were at that time no Scots in Scotland. Pioneer bands of Scots had before this crossed the channel and planted themselves in the mountains of Argyleshire. They were welcomed by the Picts for the sake of the aid they brought them in the forays and raids in which they indulged. Pict and Scot fought beneath the same banner against their enemies the Romans, or joined their arms not infrequently in a common onslaught on their neighbours the British, on the other sidle of the Roman wall. But, as we have already said, the Romans, a little before this time, had succeeded in sowing dissension betwixt the Scots and the Picts, and the result was that the Scots had found it convenient to quit Scotland, or had been driven out of it by force. The mission of Palladius took place in the interval between their expulsion and return, and this makes it undoubted that the Scots, to which Celestine, in A.D. 431 sent Palladius as their "first bishop," were those in Ireland, the Scotia of that day. Prosper says, in almost so many words, that Ireland was the scene of Palladius' mission, when he writes in another place,"Having ordained a bishop to the Scots, while he (Celestine) studied to preserve Roman Britain Catholic, he made the barbarians island Christian.'' [15] The words of Prosper may indeed be held to apply to the northern and barbarian part of Scotland in contradistinction to its southern and Roman portion, but it is much more probable that he has Ireland in his eye.

On the showing of Prosper then, the Scots in Ireland were already believers in Christ. We do not see what should hinder Ireland receiving the gospel as early as England and Scotland. It is nearer to Spain, where Christianity was planted in the apostles' days, than Scotland is. The navigation across from Cape Finisterre, the ancient Promontorium Celticum, to the south of Ireland is direct and short. The coasts and harbours of Ireland, Tacitus informs us, were better known in his day to the foreign merchant than those of Britain. Traders from Cartage and North Africa and even from the more distant Levant frequently visited them. If the merchant could find his way to that shore why not also the herald of the Gospel? That Ireland should remain unchristianised till the fifth century is incredible, we might say impossible. From Ireland came Coelestius, bringing with him from thence a pure faith to have it corrupted at Rome. From that same country came yet a greater theologians and scholar, Sedulius, that is Shiel. Sedulius, who was a contemporary of Coelestius, was amongst the most accomplished divines of his day: he was an elegant Latin poet, and a zealous opponent of Pelagianism. "Sedulius the presbyter," says Trithemius, "was a Scot." He speaks of himself as "Sedulius Scotigena," that is, a born Scot. Having left the Scotia of that day, Ireland to wit, he traveled over France and other countries, and ultimately settled in Italy, where his rich erudition and his beautiful genius gained him many admirers. His hymns, Dr. Lanigan informs us, were often used in the church services, and among his prose writings is a commentary on all the epistles of Paul, entitled " Collectaneum of Sedulius, a Scot of Ireland, "a work not unworthy of taking its place in any Protestant theological library of our day. A church that could send forth a man so richly endowed with the gifts of genius and learning must have held no mean place among her sisters of the fifth century.

But the Scots of Ireland had opened their ears to the syren song of Pelagianism, and were being lured into a path which promises much at its beginning, but is bitterness in the end, that of one's saving one's self. Celestine seeing the danger to which they were exposed, sent Palladius from Rome to lead them back into the old ways. So has it been assumed, though no ancient writer says that Palladius came to combat Pelagianism. The pontiff had another end in view, though less openly avowed, that of breaking the Scots to the curb of a Roman bridle and preventing them escaping from under his crozier in days to come. The Scots probably divined the real purpose underlying Celestine's affected concern, and hence the cold reception they appear to have given his missionary. From the time that Palladius sets out on his journey, we obtain only dim and shadowy glimpses of him. No bishop or church salutes him by the way. We pursue the dubious steps of this "first bishop" of the Scots through the fragmentary notices of successive chroniclers, only to to find that he is enveloped in the haze of legend, and we are conscious of a touch of pity for one who had come so far, and encountered such a diversity of fortune, in quest of a miter, at least a diocese, which after all he failed to find. The earliest Irish traditions indicate Wicklow as the place where Palladius landed. [16] From this point he turned his steps inland. But again we lose all track of him. He makes no converts that we can discover. He finds no flock over which to exercise his episcopal authority, or flock willing to receive him as their shepherd.

The authorities that follow tell us in plain words that the mission of Palladius was a failure, and that the same year that saw him arrive in Ireland saw him take his departure from it. Those of the inhabitants of that country who were already Christians declined his authority, being jealous probably of his having come to impose a foreign yoke upon them, and a yoke which above all others they detested, and with good reason. From Rome the Scots had received nothing but war and persecutions. They dreaded her missionaries not less than her soldiers. It had cost then much suffering to resist the imposition of her political yoke, and they were in no humour to bow their necks to her ecclesiastical tyranny. Rome they had come to regard as the symbol of intrigue, of force, and of boundless ambition. Her bishops, they knew, were following in the footsteps of her emperors, and were seeking to grasp the universal government of the church and to become the one bishop of the ecclesiastical world as Caesar had been the one king of the political. Such were the feelings with which the Scots of that day were inspired towards Rome. It is probable that Palladius had not been an hour in their company till he discovered how the matter stood, and saw, that in no character could he approach the Scots which would be less welcome or more ungracious than that of missionary or bishop of the Pope. Like the raven from the ark; he goes forth from the foot of the pontifical chair, but he returns not, and the explanation of the matter lies in the point we have stated—Scotch mistrust of Romish envoys.

As regards those of the inhabitants of Ireland who were still Pagan—that is, the descendants of the race that were found occupying the county when the Scots arrived in it, "God hindered him "—that is Palladius—says the first Life of St. Patrick, "for neither did those fierce and savage men receive his doctrine readily, neither did he himself wish to spend time in a land not his own, but returning hence to him that sent him, having begun his passage the first tide, little of his journey being accomplished, he died in the territory of the Britons." [17]

The Scots declined to receive him, and Pagan Ireland he did not evangelize. Palladius was not the man to do this. He lacked the faith and courage requisite for such a work. Pope Celestine could elevate him to the dignity of the miter, he could not crown him with the higher glory of converting Ireland. The old Druidic priesthood of that island was still powerful—more powerful than in either England or Scotland. The Romans were great iconoclasts when Druidic oaks or altars were concerned; and hence a vast demolition of stone circles and sacred groves in Britain and Caledonia; but the Romans had never been in Ireland; and as a consequence, no ax or hammer had been lifted up upon the consecrated trees, and the sacrificial dolmens of that land, unless it might be that of some iconoclastic Scot, and so the priesthood of Ireland retained much of its ancient influence and power. This made the task of Christianising pagan Ireland a formidable one indeed. When Palladius shook off the dust from his feet against the Scots who had rejected him as their bishop, as manifestly they did, he might have turned to the pagan Irish, but his heart failed him, when he thought how hazardous the enterprise would prove. The Anakim of Irish paganism were "fierce and savage," says an old chronicler Muirchu, "and ready to wash out in blood any affront that might be offered to their Druidic divinities," and so Palladius leaving "those few sheep in the wilderness," he had been appointed to feed, turned and fled front a land which, doubtless, it repented him he ever had entered. "He crossed the sea," says the authority quoted above, "and ended his days in the territories of the Britons."

In the second and fifth Life of St. Patrick, a similar account is given of the mission of Palladius, with this exception, that "the territories of the Britons" is changed into "the territories of the Picts." [18] The precise spot in the territories of the Picts where the ill-fated deputy of Pope Celestine died is fixed by another ancient biographer. The Scholia on Fiacc's Hymn, given by Colgan in has collection of the Lives of St. Patrick, speaking of Palladius, says, "He was not well received by the people, but was forced to go round the coast of Ireland towards the north, until, driven by a great tempest, he reached the extreme part of Moidhaidh towards the south, where he founded the Church of Fordun, and Pledi is his name there."[19] In harmony with these statements is a still later biography, of date probably about A.D. 900. This writer makes the death of Palladius take place at Fordun in Scotland, and adds a few particulars not found in the other accounts. He says, that Celestine, when he missioned him to Ireland, committed to him the relics of "the blessed Peter and Paul," that he disembarked at Leinster, that he was withstood by a chief named Garrchon, that, nevertheless, he founded three churches, depositing in them the bones of the apostles, and certain books which the Pope had given him, and that, "after a short time, Palladius died on the plain of Girgin, in a place which is called Fordun." Girgin or Maghgherginn was the Irish name for the Mearns. [20] One of his biographers, not unwilling, perhaps, to put honour on one who had borne so many humiliations, states that Palladius "received the crown of martyrdom" at Fordun. Even this compensation was denied him in all probability, for the southern Picts of that age were Christian.

The mission of Palladius is a tangled though interesting story. It is to the Scots in Ireland that he is sent, and yet it is among the Picts of the Mearns only that we find any monuments of him. If Palladius set sail from Ireland to go to Rome, his first port of disembarkation would be Wales, or the north of France. Instead, we find him arriving on the eastern coast of Scotland. This was to go a long way out of his road if he wished to return to the eternal city. There must have been some reason for this. Palladius would naturally be in no hurry to appear before his master. He had nothing to tell Pope Celestine, save that his mission had failed: that the Scots whom he hoped to bring to his apostolic feet had repulsed him as their bishop, and that the pagan Irish still clung to their idols. Palladius might think it well to let another carry these unwelcome tidings to Rome. Meanwhile, as some of his biographers hint, expelled by Garrchon, he set out northward in the hope of finding in some other part of Ireland a tribe who might bid him welcome, and whose conversion to the Christian faith might extend the glory of the Papal See, and redeem his own mission from total failure. Nor is there any improbability in the statement that while so engaged he was caught in one of the Atlantic storms, and carried through the Pentland Firth, and along the coast of Scotland southward, and finally landed on the shore of Kincardineshire. Whatever the causes that operated, and these it is now impossible to discover, there can be no doubt that Palladius after years of wanderings, pursued now by fierce Irish chieftains, and now by the tempests of the sky, took up his abode at Fordun in the Mearns; and there, near the spot where, according to one theory, Galgacus made that noble stand which checked the northward advance of the Romans, did the first bishop sent from Rome to the Scots, also terminate his career, and spend his last years, most probably, in peace.

The village of Fordun is situated on a spur of the Grampians, looking sweetly down on the well cultivated plains of the Mearns, doubtless less fertile then than now. This is the spot which gave rest to the "traveled feet" of Palladius. All the ancient chroniclers say so with one voice. And if the singular unanimity of their testimony needed farther corroboration we have it in the chain of evidence, partly monumental, and partly traditionary, that comes down from Palladius' day to our own. In the churchyard of Fordun is a little house of most ancient aspect. Its thick wall, low roof, and small window, through which the sun struggles with no great success to dispel the darkness of the interior, make it more like a cave than sanctuary. This edifice, which one can well believe was reared in the days of Palladius, enjoys the traditional reputation of being his chapel. Here, it is said, the image of the "saint" was kept, which crowds of pilgrims from the most distant party of Scotland, year after years, came to worship. So does Camerarius affirm on the authority of Polydore Virgil. And so, too, does Baronius. He tells us that "they highly honoured the relics of Palladius which are buried in the Mearns, a province of Scotland.'' [21] In the corner of the manse garden is a well that goes by the name of Paddy's well. [22] And the market held yearly at Fordun is styled Paddy's fair, or, in the vulgar speech of the district, "Paddy Fair." This last is the strongest proof of all that a church and festival in honour of Palladius once existed here. The festivals of the Roman church were always followed by a fair, and sometimes they were festival and fair in one. At the Reformation they were abolished in their religious character of a festival, but retained in their secular form of a fair, and so here the festival is dropped, but the fair is continued. [23]

One other circumstance in the story of Palladius must we notice. It is surely touching to reflect that in the spot to which the "first bishop to the Scots" came to breathe his last, one of the earliest and noblest of our reformers first saw the light. Lying sweetly in the valley beneath Fordun, about a mile off, is Pittarrow. Fordun and Pittarrow! The first gave a grave to Palladius; the second a cradle to George Wishart.

Footnotes

1. Mor is the Welsh word for sea, which is Pelagus in Latin.

2. Coelestius is the Latin for Celleagh.

3. See Dupin under Mercator.

4. O'Conner, Rerum Hibernicarum, vol. i., Prol. i., p. 74; Baronius Annal, cent. v.

5. All three judgments are infallible on the principles of the Syllabus of 1864, and the decree of the Vatican Council of 1870.

6. Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinates a Papa Celestino Palladius, et primus episcopus mittitur.—Prosper Chron., A.D. 455.

7. Primum vero eam gentem a Cælestino papa episcopum habiusse Palladium omnes consentiunt.—Baron. Ann. 42D, Tom. vi., p. 587. Colon. 1609.

8. Ex his autem habes quibus redarguas asserentes Sedulium Christianum poetam quem tantopore Gelasius laudat habuisse præceptorem Hildebertum Scotorum archiepiscopum: etinam cum ipsæ Sedulius ad Theodosii imperatoris tempora referatur quo modo usus esse potuit Hildeberto, Scotorum Archiepiscopo preceptore, si nullus adhuc ordinatus erat in Scotia archiepiscopus et Palladius absque controversia primus dicatur ejus gentis artistes. Ibid.

9. Bishop Forbes, Life of St. Kentigern, Historians of Scotland, vol. v. p. 1.26.

10. Centur, Magd., vol. ii., cent. v. cap. 2, p. 10. Basileæ, 1624.

11. Ante cujus (Palladii) adventum habebant Scoti fidei doctores, ac sacramentorum ministratores, prerbyteros sulummodo vel monachos, ritum sequentes ecclesiæ primitivæ.—Fordun, lib. iii. c. 8.

12. Per sacerdotes et monachos, sine episcopis Scoti in fide erudiebantur. Major, Die Gestis Scotorum, lib. ii., cap. 2 , p. 53. Edin. 1740.

13. Usher, De Primord, c. 16.

14. Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p. 282.

15. Et ortlinato Scotis episcopo, dum Romanam insulam studet servare Catholicam, fecit etiam barbaram Christianam. Prosper, Cont. Collat., A.D. 432. See Skene's Celtic Scotland, " vol. ii., p. 5.

16. The Scholia on Fiacc's Hymn. Original Irish in the MS. at St. lsidore's Convent, Rome.

17. Written by Muirchu about A.D. 700, and preserved in the Book of Armagh, A.D. 800.

18. Dr. Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p 288.

19. Ibid., p. 290.

20. Todd, Life of St. Patrick, pp. 294, 295, Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., pp. 27-29.

21. Magno honore prosequentes ejus reliquias in Mernia Scotiæ provincia collocatus. Baron., Annal. Ann., in. 31, cent. v., c 2.

22. Statis. Acct. of Scotland, vol. iv., p. 499. We quote the "Statistical Account" at the same time we may state that we, ourselves, have seen and examined on the spot the objects we describe above.

23. Dr. Skene, who is unwilling to admit that Palladius was ever in Scotland, in his learned work, Celtic Scotland, assumes that the church at Fordun was built by Teranus, a disciple of Palladius, and dedicated to his master, and that he brought his master's relics from Ireland or Galloway to Fordun: a not very probable assumption.

Editor's Note

Pelagianism began in Rome. It is the very foundation of the Papacy. At that time a Man began to exalt himself as God and sit in the temple of God calling himself God. Morgan and Kelly were but dupes in this Great Apostasy (II Thess. 2:4).

After the expulsion of Palladius we can't help but feel that he headed to Alban and the church that sent St. Patrick to Ireland, to find some way to stop the evangelisation of Ireland. St. Patrick tells of certain elders who came from Britain with an accusation of a sin that he had committed at 15. It almost destroyed the ministry of Patrick as he tells us in his Confession.