John Toland and the Discovery of an Irish Manuscript in HollandAuthor(s): Alan HarrisonSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 22, No. 1, Serving the Word: Essays and Poems inHonour of Maurice Harmon (Spring - Summer, 1992), pp. 33-39Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25484462 .

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Alan Harrison

John Toland and the Discovery of an Irish Manuscript in Holland

John Toland is a perfect example of a prophet unrecognised in his own

country.1 At the beginning of the eighteenth century his was a name to

stir strong feelings of either sympathy or animosity ?

mostly ani

mosity. It was a common device to denigrate an enemy by suggesting an association with Toland. However, this notoriety lasted hardly two

generations after his death (1722) so that in 1790 Edmund Burke was

able to write, "Who, born within the last forty years has read one word

of Collins, and Toland ... and that whole race who called themselves

freethinkers?"2 Nowadays many of the contentious and controversial issues of the enlightenment era are no longer important. Yet those

interested in the intellectual development of the past three hundred

years cannot ignore the contribution of John Toland to the history of

freethinking and the development of republican ideology. It is not too

much to claim that the only other Irishmen from the eighteenth cen

tury to inspire more scholarship on the history of ideas than Toland are Jonathan Swift and Edmund Burke. As is the case of each of them, it is also often forgotten that John Toland was an Irishman.

Not only was he an Irishman but he was an Irish speaker born in

the remote peninsula of Inishowen in 1670. The Tolands or Ui Thuath

all?in may also have been hereditary Gaelic scholars and, although the

native tradition of learning was on the wane by 1670 Toland's interest

and competence in the Irish language may go back to this connec

tion.3 Nothing is known about his parents except that they were

Roman Catholics. He rejected Catholicism while he was still in his

1. There is a vast amount of "Toland" literature: see G. Carabelli, Tolandiana:

materiali bibliografici -per lo studio delV opera e delta fortuna di John Toland (Fierenze; La nuova Italia, 1975) and G, Carabelli, Tolandiana ... Errata, addenda e indici

(Ferrara, 1978). For Toland's life I am using

the following sources: DM?; P. des

Maizeaux, A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Toland (two vols., London, 1726); R.E, CXSullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy (Cambridge Mass, and

London: Harvard University Press, 1982); S.H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners and Mind (Longston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press,

1984); L. Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1876); A.B. Worden (ed.), Edmund Ludlow,AVoycefrom the Watch Tower: Part Five 1660-1662

(London: Cambden series 4, vol. 21,1978); J.G. Simms, "John Toland (1670-1722), a Donegal Heretic", IHS XVI, 63 (1969), pp. 304-320.

2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 186. 3. I am grateful to Professor Brian ? Cu?v for drawing my attention to this possi

bility.

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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

teens and seems subsequently to have received sponsorship for his

further schooling, perhaps from a local Anglican clergyman or gran dee. At the age of sixteen he went to attend Glasgow University and

he continued his studies there and at Edinburgh and Leiden Univer

sities. While still in Scotland he became embroiled in religious and

philosophical controversies of a type that recurred throughout his life.

It is significant that he studied in Holland as it was then a cradle of

religious tolerance and republican ideas.4 By any standards he was a

brilliant scholar and this brilliance as well as his lack of reticence

brought him into contact with many of the great intellectuals of the

time, and rarely was he considered their inferior. Among his acquain tances and correspondents we find Friedreich Spanheim, Gottfried

Leibnitz, Jean Le Clerc, John Locke, Anthony Ashley Cooper (Second Earl of Shaftesbury), Robert Molesworth, Edward Lhwyd and many others.

Toland, of course, hoped that his talents would earn him a public

post of some kind. Like Jonathan Swift he was not content merely to

be a philosopher and a writer but he craved to have a hand in the con

duct of public affairs. His early and perhaps most famous work Chris

tianity not Mysterious (1696) earned him a notoriety that ensured that

this would never come about. The reasons and facts of that contro

versy are not my concern here, but after the book had been attacked and publicly burned in Dublin, where he had been hoping for a

governmental appointment in 1697, powerful figures such as Robert

Harley, while they were prepared to employ his talents as a writer and

polemicist, would not openly acknowledge their connection with him.

Much of the rest of his life and writings is an apologia for and defence of his opinions and an effort to reinstate himself on the political stage.

Although he was not an official member of the delegation that went to Hanover in 1702 to explain the Act of Settlement to the Electress

Sophia, Toland travelled with them. He spent much of the next eight years on the continent, at the court of Hanover, travelling probably to Rome and certainly to Prague and spending some time writing, study ing and debating in Holand. There were two encounters during this

period that cast light on his Irish origins and on his interest in the Irish

language. In 1708 he visited Prague and prevailed on some Irish Fran ciscans there to give him a certificate saying that he belonged to an

Irish family from Inishowen.5 When we study the names of those who

signed this document, two O'Neills and a Devlin, we realise that these

4. See M.C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981); F. Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the

Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); J. Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976).

5. des Maizeaux (1927), p. v.

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TOLAND AND AN IRISH MANUSCRIPT

are not only fellow Irishmen but Ulstermen and probably Irish

speakers from his own district in Co. Deny and Co. Donegal. From

1714 we find one of them, Francis Devlin, mingling with the coterie of

Irish scholars in Dublin sometimes known as "the O Neachtain circle",

composing poetry and transcribing manuscripts.6 Toland must have

requested this certificate from his compatriots to use as a type of pass

port to make him acceptable to other Irishmen on the continent at that

time. What is interesting is that the fraternal feeling of Irish speakers seems to have transcended the natural antipathy the friars would have had for Toland, the deist who had not only turned his back on Cath

olicism but who also attacked it at every opportunity. The other

incident is the discovery of the manuscript now known as "Harl.

1802" or "the Gospels of Mael Brigte".7 Toland announced this discovery in his book Nazarenus which was

published in 1718 but which was based on letters he wrote while in

the Netherlands in 1709.8 The book consists of two letters addressed to

a powerful but unnamed patron whom Toland calls "Megaletor". This name and other internal evidence give us a clue about the pat ron's identity. It means "great-hearted one" and had been used as the name of the ideal leader of the perfect republic by James Harrington in

his Oceana which had been edited and published by Toland in 1702.9

Internal and circumstantial evidence lead me to believe that the

"Megaletor" addressed in the letters which comprise Nazarenus was

Prince Eugene of Savoy. Prince Eugene, perhaps better known for his

martial exploits, was at that time in Holland and was one of the lead

ing lights in the masonic-type societies of freethinkers that were popu lar there.10 Toland had an interest in such societies, perhaps from the

time he was in Scotland and certainly when he was in London. Prince

Eugene was also a patron of the arts and a great book collector. In the

first letter Toland describes a manuscript in Italian which he claims is

6. See A. Harrison, Ag Cruinni? Meala (Baile ?tha Cliath: An Cl?chomhar, 1988),

pp. 21-55. 7. For an account of this manuscript see J.F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History

of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (Dublin: P?draic ? T?illi?ir, reprint, 1979), p. 648; R. Flower, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum Vol II (London,

1926), pp. 428-432. 8. J. Toland, Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentue and Mahometan Christianity. Containing the

history of the ancient gospel of Barnabas, and the modern gospel of the Mahometans, attributed to the same Apostle

... also likewise the original plan of Christianity ... With

the relation of an Irish Manuscript of the four Gospels as likewise an summary of the

antient Irish Christianity and the reality of the Keldee (an order of lay-religious) (London,

17181 9. My working copy of this work was printed in Dublin for more than 300

subscribers in 1737.1 am grateful to Malcolm Latham for help in identifying the

Homeric epithet "Megaletor". 10. See Jacob, (1981).

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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

a translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas.11 He also claims that this Gospel is a version acceptable to Mohammedans. The use

fulness of these claims to propound his deistic and pantheistic theories is obvious. In the preface and appendix both written in 1718 he tells us

that Prince Eugene is now the owner of his manuscript. What I am

implying here is that in 1709 Toland wrote to the Prince telling him about the esoteric importance of the manuscript and he duly bought it.

In the letter and the appendix Toland mentions that he approached

"Megaletor" through the good offices of Baron de Hohendorf (himself a notable bibliophile), a close associate of Prince Eugene.

The second letter in Nazarenus deals with the Irish manuscript. It is a copy of the four Gospels in Latin written in Armagh in 1138 by a

monk named Mael Brigte. As well as the text which is based on the

Latin Vulgate there are variant readings, commentaries and glosses in

Latin, and glosses, colophons and other marginalia in Irish. It is

written in Irish miniscule script and much of it is difficult to decipher. Toland uses some of the variant readings and the Irish material to

introduce a discussion on the nature of Irish Christianity, for him a

Christianity unfettered by priestcraft and the Papacy. He goes on to

propose that the Culdee movement from the eighth to the tenth

centuries reflects a type of non-sacerdotal Christianity. The manuscript, it seems, had been stolen from the Biblioth?que

Royale in Paris along with others by a certain Jean Aymon, who is

described elsewhere as "a French renegade priest and adventurer."12

Indeed Aymon was just the type of person with whom Toland would

have consorted. Let us look at his account of discovering the manu

script. In the Preface to Nazarenus (written in 1718 when the book was

published) he says:

... be pleas'd to understand, that in the beginning of the same year, 1709,1 discover'd at the Hague a manuscript of the four Gospels (then lately brought from France) all written in Irish characters, which were mistaken for

Anglosaxon, but yet the whole text in the Latin tongue. Some little thing in Irish itself is here and there mixt among the NOTES, which are very numer ous, and other passages in the Irish language

occur also else-where ... I have

set it in its true light, beyond what most others had an opportunity of doing,

11. See David Sox, 'The Gospel of Barnabas", Clergy Review 68 (1983), 207-213; J. Jomier, "Une ?nigme persistante; TEvangile dit de Barnabe", M?langes de

ITnstitut dominicain dr?tudes orientales du Caire, 14 (1980), 271-300; L. LeGrand, "An Islamic Christology; the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas", Indian Theological Studies 18 (1981), 354-364.1 am grateful to my colleague, Kevin Cathcart, Professor of

Near Eastern Languages, University College, Dhublin, for drawing my attention to

these articles. 12. CE. and R.C. Wright, The Diary of Humfrey Wantey (2 vols., London: The

Bibliographical Society, 1966), p. 439.

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TOLAND AND AN IRISH MANUSCRIPT

the Christianity originally profest in that nation ... which appears to be

extremely different from the religion of the present Irish.13

As we often find with Toland, here his impressive scholarship is allied

closely to a polemical purpose. He gives us the same account in the letter in more detail. This letter

(written in 1709 to "Megaletor") consists of fifty-seven pages. Refer

ring to the manuscript he writes, "I have [it] now before me on the

Table",14 and declares that it shows in its notes and glosses "much

fuller and better than the incomparable Archbishop Usher (the glory of Ireland) has ... what was the genuine Christianity of the ancient

Irish."15 This refers to Usher's argument that the ancient Irish church was independent of Rome.16 Later on Toland triumphantly tells us

how he has recognised this as an Irish manuscript whereas Father

Robert Simon, who catalogued it for the Biblioth?que Royale was

totally "ignorant of the Irish language".17 Toland also corrects Father Simon's identification of the scribe saying that he had misunderstood the Irish "do Maelbrigte" as "Dom Aelbrigte". Continuing he says, "Now the real truth of the matter is, that do is an Irish prepositive par ticle signifying to, for etc; and Maolbrigte the transcriber's name,

signifying the servant of Brigid ...".He adds to this that his own spell ing of the name "Maol" rather than "Mael" is just a modern one.18 He

goes on to tell the story of Irish Christianity claiming it had been free

of all the accretions of priestcraft. His account of the Culdee movement lays great emphasis on their tolerance and their lack of a

hierarchical structure, two qualities very dear to Toland himself.

Although one can find little fault with his linguistic notes and

although he shows himself familiar with the material, most modern commentators on the history of the early Irish Church would not be

happy with his special pleading and selective use of the evidence.19

His thesis is an elaboration of Usher's which was (and still is!) attractive to Protestant apologists because they could then point to the

Reformation as a return to ancient practices and values and not a

schism. Toland uses the same methods to make a plea for a type of

republican egalitarianism and freedom of conscience. His discovery

13. Nazarenus, Preface, p. x.

14. Nazarenus, Letter II, p. 1. 15. Nazarenus, Letter II, p .2. 16. J. Usher, A Discourse of the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and British

(Dublin, 1631). 17. Nazarenus, Letter II, p. 9; See also R. Simon, Biblioth?que Critique (Paris, 1708),

pp.271-275. 18. Nazarenws, Letter II, p. 10. 19. See for example P. O'Dwyer, "Celtic Monks and the Culdee Reform", An

Introduction to Celtic Christianity, ed. J.P. Mackey (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark,

1989), pp. 140-171.

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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

of the manuscript Gospels of Mael Brigte gave him an opportunity to

utilise his antiquarian scholarship in his polemical arguments, a device, as I said above, he resorts to often. There is no doubt that he

was an exceptional scholar and that he had a real feeling for scholar

ship but he was also prepared to subordinate it to promote his own

ideas. I do not intend to deal here with the validity or otherwise of his

arguments but rather to tell the story of the manuscript. When Toland

returned to London in 1710 not having succeeded in buying the

manuscript himself (or in persuading Prince Eugene to buy it) it seems

he informed others of the treasures in the possession of Jean Aymon.

Among those he told was Humfrey Wanley who was employed by Robert Harley (later Earl of Oxford) to maintain and build up his

collection of books and manuscripts.20 Wanley worked diligently for

Robert Harley and later for his son Edward from 1708 until his death

in 1726 and it was chiefly due to his efforts that such a wonder

ful collection was made. He kept a journal and wrote many letters

throughout this period and through these we can follow the pro tracted negotiations between his agents and Aymon as he tried to

purchase the stolen manuscripts for the Harleian collection. One letter

written to an agent of his in 1712 uses a catalogue of the manuscripts that had been drawn up by Toland.21 Apart from this there is no

record of any communication between Wanley and Toland either in

the form of letters or notes in the journal. It is more than likely that

they were in contact in connection with the purchase of the manu

scripts which was not completed until 1715.22 Association with Toland was considered dangerous and a careful scholar like Wanley would

likely have suppressed such evidence especially as Toland had

criticised Harley after he had felt he had been ignored by him. Wanley would have avoided putting Toland's name to paper either because he was a dangerous deist or because he was his employer's professed enemy.

In a footnote in Nazarenus Toland alludes to the above purchase, "Since the writing of this Dissertation, in the Year 1709, the book is come into England, being purchased by the Earl of OXFORD, in

whose large Collection of Manuscripts it is not the least valuable

piece."23 Wanley undertook to catalogue the manuscripts in the Har leian collection. He died before it was finished and it was not pub

2D. See Wright and Wright (1966); D. Douglas, The English Scholars (London: Second Edition, Eyre & Spotfiswoode, 1951), pp. 98-118.

21. Wright and Wright (1966); P.L. Heyworth (ed.), Letters of Humfrey Wanley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

22 The business of purchasing manuscripts from Aymon was not fully finished until 1721: see Hayworth (1989), pp. 265-268 and pp. 428-431.

23. Nazarenus, Letter II, pp. 15-16.

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TOLAND AND AN IRISH MANUSCRIPT

lished until 1759.24 The catalogue includes Wanley's account of the

manuscript Harl. 1802. In this he acknowledged the help he had

received from three Irish scholars in interpreting the passages in Irish.

They were Thomas O'Sullevane (who wrote the anonymous disser

tation to the Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde (1722)), a John Corny (of whom William Nicolson said in his Irish Historical Library (1724) that he had the best collection of Irish manuscripts in private hands) and John Toland. Whenever Wanley is in doubt about interpreting the

material he quotes the opinions of all three scholars. Toland was far

from being the least competent of them, often making suggestions that

coincide with modern interpretations. Leaving aside his philosophical and political polemics he is a key figure in the story of the eighteenth

century discovery and description of the Gospels of Mael Brigte.

24 H. Wanley, D. Casley and others, A Catalogue of the Harleian Collection of

Manuscripts, vol. 1 (London, 1759), p. 229.

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