1 - Expanding the Narrative: The Composition of the Vita S. Patricii

Summary

Although the Vita Patricii seems to be the earliest of Jocelin's extant works, it is unlikely to have been the first text written by the author. The length and scope of the Vita, combined with the high-profile status of the Anglo-Norman ruler and Irish ecclesiastics who sponsored it, indicate that Jocelin must already have enjoyed the literary renown necessary to qualify him for this commission. The task of rewriting and updating the life of St Patrick was certainly not a job for an amateur. By the late twelfth century, a large amount of Patrician hagiographial material was already in circulation. Jocelin was therefore faced with the challenge of selecting material from this extensive corpus and creating a text that adequately represented all the narratives considered essential to the contemporary legend.

Jocelin's approach to the Vita Patricii was governed by a number of factors. Firstly, the political circumstances behind the work meant that it represented far more than a simple restyling of what was perceived to be archaic prose. It reflected the unity of religious intent shared by its three patrons, men who stood on either side of the secular/ecclesiastical and Anglo-Norman/Irish divides. The contemporary context of the work shaped not only specific narratives in the text (which will be discussed in detail in chapter five) but also the scale and weight of the project. The Vita provided the literary reinforcement for the cult of St Patrick at Down and for the wider reforms being implemented in the Irish church. As such, the work represents a textual foundation stone, a comprehensive account upon which the new ecclesiastical regime could be both built and consolidated. This chapter will analyse the way in which Jocelin approached this important text and how he constructed a new Patrician vita based largely on earlier source material.

The basic construction of the text

Jocelin's Vita Patricii belongs to a subgroup of texts derived from the largely vernacular Bethu Phátraic, a work more widely known by the name given to John Colgan's Latin translation of the text, the Vita tripartita (and this will be the name used to refer to the work thoughout this study). Scholarly opinion remains divided over the age of the Vita tripartita. Once thought to date to the early tenth century, recent studies now suggest the text could have been written as late as the twelfth.