e head of his Church. It is to me one of
the saddest sights on the face of the earth, a thoroughly estimable and
loveable old man, whom one cannot but venerate, made the mouthpiece of
ecclesiastics who are pulling the wires of policy, and declared to be the
medium of divinely infallible judgement.

It may well have been that Palladius came to Britain with Germanus, and
here heard--probably from the Britons of the West--of sparse congregations
of Christians scattered about in Ireland; and that he sought authority to
visit them, and confirm them in the faith, from some source which the
Irish people would not suspect or regard with jealousy. That he had the
assent of Germanus we may fairly suppose; that he had the consent and
authorisation of Pope Celestine I am quite ready to believe. Pope
Celestine, we may remember, was one of the Popes who got into trouble with
Africa for persisting in quoting a Sardican Canon as a Canon of Nicaea. He
was not likely to hesitate on ecclesiastical grounds when action such as
this was proposed to him.

Palladius went, then, about 432, to visit the scattered Irish Christians.
There is not a word of his mission being of the same character as that of
Germanus to Britain, namely, to attack Pelagianism. He landed in Ireland;
and then the several accounts proceed to contradict one another in a very
Celtic manner. The two earliest accounts, dating probably not later than
700, agree that the pagan people received him with much hostility. One of
the two accounts martyrs him in Ireland; the other says that he did not
wish to spend time in a country not his own, and so crossed over to
Britain to journey homewards by land, but died in the land of the Britons.
Another ancient Irish account says that he founded some churches in
Ireland, but was not well received and had to take to the sea; he was
driven to North Britain, where he founded the Church of Fordun, "and Pledi
is his name there." I found, when visiting Fordun to examine some curious
remains there, that its name among the people was "Paldy Parish."

The Scottish accounts make Palladius the founder of Christianity among the
Picts in the east of Scotland, Forfarshire and Kincardineshire and
thereabouts, Meigle being their capital for a long time. They are silent
as to any connection with Ireland. They are without exception late and
unauthentic, whatever may be the historical value of the matter which has
been imported into them. But all, Scottis