Muirchú Moccu Macthéni's 'Life of Saint Patrick'

David Howlett

David Howlett presents a radically new text, translation, and analysis of Muirchú Moccu Macthéni's Life of Saint Patrick, with newly discovered internal confirmations of the text, a definitive solution to the problem of the ordering of chapters, evidence of Muirchú's learning, deeper than previously supposed, and of his architectonic genius. Howlett suggests a date, a more ambitious theological purpose, and a more aggressive political purpose than earlier scholars have recognized. Muirchú exerted a profound, if previously unrecognized, influence upon later hagiographical writers, not only in Ireland, but also in Brittany and Wales, to be considered in two further books dealing with the Breton Latin Life of Saint Samson of Dol and Rhygyfarch ap Sulien's Welsh Latin Life of Saint David.

David Howlett, Bodleian Library Oxford, is editor of the British Academy's Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources and a member of the Comité de Rédaction of the Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis of the Institut de France.