The Bell, the Land and the Saint’s Due

A bell and its keeper

The surviving Bell of St Patrick is a small handbell made from sheets of iron, riveted together and coated with bronze. It has long been associated with Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint. The National Museum of Ireland dates the bell to the eighth or ninth century and the elaborate shrine made to contain it to around 1100. The bell is older than its decorated shrine, although the museum’s date for the surviving bell places it centuries after Patrick’s lifetime.

The shrine’s inscription names Domnall Ua Lochlainn, the ruler who commissioned it, as well as the craftsmen involved in its making. It also names Cathalán Ua Maelchallain as keeper of the bell. His inclusion alongside a king, a senior church figure and the makers tells us that his connection with the object mattered enough to be recorded on the shrine itself.

The Irish word máer or maor is often translated as steward or keeper. The English words are useful starting points, but they do not by themselves establish a fixed job description. Responsibilities could depend on the person, the institution and the period.

The museum describes the bell’s later keepership as a long family tradition. That does not, on its own, establish every link in a pedigree between Cathalán and an earlier or later individual, or tell us the precise rights attached to the office in his lifetime.

What was a relic?

A relic was an object associated with a holy person. It might be a part of the saint’s body or an object connected with the saint’s life and cult. A bell, a staff or another treasured object could become a focus for devotion because people believed the saint’s power remained active through it.

A shrine, or scrín in Irish, was a container or reliquary made to hold and honour a sacred object. A reference to “Patrick’s shrine” does not automatically tell us what was inside it, whether it held a bell, or whether it was the surviving shrine now in the National Museum.

Relics were vulnerable. They could be seized, plundered or profaned. Such acts might be understood as insults to the saint and the church, as well as acts in a political conflict. Chronicon Scotorum records under 976 and 978 the plundering of shrines associated with Colum Cille and Adomnán. The notices do not identify their keepers or describe the shrines’ contents.

Patrick’s shrine and the settlement in Mide

Two annal collections preserve an account of Máel Sechnaill taking a shrine of Patrick: Chronicon Scotorum, under 986, and the Annals of the Four Masters, entry 985.4. They use different year headings. It is safer to retain each source’s label than to present one exact calendar year as settled. The Four Masters is a seventeenth-century compilation drawing on earlier material; Chronicon Scotorum also survives through a later textual tradition. They are witnesses to a reported earlier event, and their transmission and relationship require care.

Both accounts say that Máel Sechnaill took Patrick’s shrine from Áth Firdiad to Áth Sige in connection with a conflict involving the son of Cairellán. Peace followed. The settlement included a visitation of Mide—roughly the medieval kingdom of Meath—covering both church and lay people, hospitality associated with forts, seven cumals, and other dues or demands.

The account joins a sacred object, a ruler, a territorial church visit, hospitality and an assessment. It suggests that the dispute was resolved through an agreement concerning the claims of Patrick’s church as well as the immediate seizure of the shrine.

Forts, hospitality and a correction

The published English translations refer to a feast or banquet for every fort or fortress. The Irish text of the Four Masters reads Ergnamh gacha dúine in the corresponding passage.

An earlier reading could have mistaken the relevant word for “person” and produced a claim about a payment or meal due for each individual. The parallel wording and published translations support a reading concerned with forts. They do not establish a per-person hospitality tariff in this settlement. Further dictionary and printed-edition checking remains open.

This is more than a detail of spelling. A fort points toward places of residence, local power and hospitality. A per-person assessment would describe a different way of measuring an obligation.

A cumal was a unit of value used in early Irish assessments. The term has a historical association with an enslaved woman, but a debt expressed in cumals does not, without further evidence, mean that seven women were handed over. The annal gives the amount in the source’s own unit; it does not supply a reliable modern cash equivalent or identify what was actually delivered.

A circuit through a living territory

The visitation of Mide is described using the language of a circuit or territorial visit. In Irish sources the word cuairt can refer to a journey or visitation through a region. A circuit was a way for authority to be exercised in person: a church leader and those accompanying him travelled among the people and places with which the church claimed a relationship.

The Mide settlement expressly included church and laity. That brings the religious community and the wider population into the same account, although it does not tell us exactly how the visit was organised at each stop or who performed every task.

Other entries show that demands could be measured in different ways. In its account of Cellach’s Munster circuit in 1106, the Annals of Ulster, U1106.6, records an assessment by cantred, a territorial division, in cattle, sheep and a half-ounce, together with valuables. A separate northern assessment that year, U1106.4, uses groups of persons as its unit. These notices should not be combined into a single national tariff or assigned to a bell keeper without evidence.

The successor and the steward

A central figure in the authority of Patrick’s church was his comarba, commonly rendered coarb or successor: a person understood to hold a succession associated with the saint and his church. The title should not be assumed to describe a modern office with an unchanged set of powers across every century.

The Annals of Ulster, U973.5, records Patrick’s successor Dub dá Leithe making a circuit of Munster and obtaining his demand. It does not name a bell or its keeper.

A later steward offers another comparison. Under 1108, the Four Masters, M1108.6, names Oengus Ua Cleircein as maor Mumhan ó Phatraic, translated as Patrick’s steward in Munster. The Annals of Ulster, U1108.4, appears to record the same man as steward of Dál Cais, a regional people or dynasty. The descriptions may refer to the same office from different perspectives, but should not be silently merged into a single precise title.

Oengus shows that maor could appear in a regional setting connected, in one witness, with Patrick. The notices do not say that he kept Patrick’s Bell or collected the 1106 assessment. Nor do they show that his duties were Cathalán’s.

Another bell: the Life of Mac Creiche

The Life of Mac Creiche is a saint’s life, or hagiography: a narrative concerned with a holy person’s acts, powers and standing. It tells how people seeking Mac Creiche’s help against a monster promised obligations to him and his religious community. Their proposed surety was reciprocal: the people stood as surety for the church, and the church for the people.

The narrative lists tribute every third year, payments connected with hearths, and a yearly due for the bell. The Irish text uses the phrase cíos do cluicc gacha bliadhna—a due or rent for the bell each year. A later verse gives the yearly bell tax as a penny. These passages describe an asserted arrangement within the story; they are not an account book showing payments received. Life, chapter 15 §56 and chapter 18 §70, stanza 29.

The story also gives the saint’s steward a place in the community’s protection. Mac Creiche promises that water in which his bell has been washed, together with his steward’s prayer, will repel pestilence. The narrative joins that promise to other benefits and obligations, and warns of consequences for disrespect or false dealing. A verse also describes the bell sounding before a difficult battle. Life, chapter 18, stanzas 34–35.

This is a striking picture: a bell associated with an annual due; a steward’s prayer associated with protection; and a saint’s community and surrounding people bound together in a story of service, payment and mutual obligation. It does not establish that every relic worked this way, that every steward performed the same ritual, or that a steward personally received the whole bell due.

The date of the story is not the date of an account

The Life’s colophon says Mícheál Ó Cléirigh copied the text in 1635 from a copy he made in 1634, which in turn came from a book written in 1524 for Mac Creiche’s coarb. That tells us about the documented chain of copying. It does not by itself date the original composition, prove every element was invented in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, or turn the narrative into a contemporary record of early medieval fiscal administration.

The Life is evidence for a tradition connecting a saint’s bell with dues, protection and stewardship. Its claims require further testing before they can be treated as a record of what was paid, by whom, and in which century.

Two bells with similar names

Mac Creiche’s Life calls his bell Finnfaidech. A similarly named bell appears in Patrician tradition. The Annals of Ulster, U1013.1, refers to the profanation of Patrick’s Finnfíadech and the breaking of Patrick’s staff.

A shared or similar name is not enough to make the two bells the same object. Nor does it establish that either is necessarily identical with the surviving Bell of St Patrick and its later shrine. Each identification needs its own chain of evidence.

The Mac Creiche references to an annual bell due and a steward’s protective prayer belong to Mac Creiche’s narrative. They provide a comparison for investigating Patrick’s Bell; they do not become evidence of Cathalán’s duties because another bell had a similar name.

What the comparison can—and cannot—tell us

The annals place a shrine of Patrick within a dispute followed by peace, a circuit through Mide, hospitality and assessed dues. Other notices show Patrician circuits and a named steward in a regional context. The Life of Mac Creiche presents a separate tradition in which a bell carries annual dues and a steward’s prayer forms part of a promised protection.

These examples make it reasonable to ask whether the keeper of Patrick’s Bell might have had responsibilities extending beyond physical care of the object. A keeper could have been involved in presenting a relic, maintaining relationships or performing duties on behalf of a community. For Cathalán, however, those possibilities remain questions. The evidence presented here does not establish that he led circuits, collected dues, performed protective prayers, held an independent territorial jurisdiction or negotiated with church authorities on the terms described in another saint’s Life.

Nor does it prove an earlier genealogy for him. An association between a family name, a sacred object and a later tradition of keepership cannot supply missing generations on its own.

The question that remains

The inscription gives us Cathalán’s name and his connection to the bell. The surrounding sources give us a wider field in which to investigate that connection.

The strongest next evidence would be a record that speaks directly about Patrick’s Bell and its keeper: a grant, an appointment, a dispute over custody, a statement of dues, or a description of duties and succession. A source assigning an obligation to another officer, or showing that a different relic was involved, would matter just as much as one supporting the proposed comparison.

Medieval Irish sources show several ways in which relics, territories, obligations and officers could be connected. They do not yet establish the particular income, powers or hereditary rights of Cathalán Ua Maelchallain.

Reading the sources

• Chronicon Scotorum, English and Irish, annal 986.
• Annals of the Four Masters, English and Irish, M985.4 and M1108.6.
• Annals of Ulster, English and Irish, U973.5, U1013.1, U1106.4–6 and U1108.4.
• Life of Mac Creiche, English translation by Charles Plummer and Irish, chapters 15, 17 and 18, and colophon. Section numbers differ between texts.
• National Museum of Ireland: Bell of St Patrick and its Shrine.