apparently taken from the older chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who died in the year 1084, and who gives it thus :'In the eighth year of Theodosius, Bassus and Antiochus being consuls, Palladius, being ordained by Pope Celestine, was sent as first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ. After him St. Patricius, a Briton by birth, was consecrated by St. Celestine the Pope, and sent to the archiepiscopate of Ireland. There during sixty years, preaching with signs and miracles, he converted the whole island of Ireland to the faith.'28 As Pope Celestine died in July 432, this supposed mission of Patrick must have taken place within a year at least of that of Palladius; and while Probus records the latter alone, without any hint of its sudden termination, we are asked to believe that it had proved at once unsuccessful, and that Palladius having either suffered martyrdom or died within the year, a second mission, headed by Patrick, was sent either directly by or during the life of Pope Celestine. If this be so, if it be true that the mission of Palladius effected nothing and came to an end either by his martyrdom or flight within a year, and that Patrick's mission, which succeeded it, was followed by the conversion of the whole island, it seems strange that nothing should have been known on the Continent at the time of this great event, and that it should be noticed by no contemporary author. Not a single writer prior to the eighth century mentions it; and even Bede, who quotes the passage in Probus recording the mission of Palladius, and mentions those of Ninian and Columba, is silent as to that of Patrick. Columbanus, and the other missionaries from Ireland who followed him, seem to have told their foreign disciples nothing about him, and in the writings of the former which have been preserved,— in his letters to the Popes and the Gaulish clergy, and in his sermons to his monks, the name of Patrick, the great founder of his church, never appears. We should be 28 Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. Script., vol. v. p. 533.

tempted to conclude, as many have done, that the account of Patrick and of his mission was entirely mythical, and that neither the one nor the other had any real existence, were it not that, when we turn to the writings of two of the contemporaries of Columbanus at home, we do find an occasional mention of Patrick at a sufficiently early date to leave no reasonable doubt of his existence, and that two documents are attributed to him which may fairly be accepted as genuine. The oldest authentic notice of Patrick occurs in a letter which is still extant, written by Cummian to Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, regarding the proper time for keeping Easter. In it he refers to the cycle introduced into use by our pope, Saint Patricius;' 29 and Adamnan, writing in the end of the seventh century, in the second preface to his Life of Columba mentions Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of Saint Patricius the bishop.'s '30 These early notices, though few in number, seem sufficient to prove his existence; but if we are to receive as genuine documents his Confession and the Epistle to Coroticus, as undoubtedly we ought, they not only afford conclusive evidence of his own existence and the reality of his mission, but give us his own account of the leading particulars of his life.31 The information he gives us may be shortly stated thus:-Patricius was born of Christian parents and belonged to a Christian people; for he was the son of Calpornius a deacon, son of the late Potitus a presbyter, who lived in the village of Bannavem of Tabernia, where he had a small farm.' 32 He was of gentle birth, his father being also a 'decurio,' that is, one of the council or magistracy

29 Usher, Sylloge, Ep. xi.

30 Adamnan, Vit. S. Col., ed. 1874, p. 107.

31 A careful edition of the Confession and Epistle, with a translation, is annexed to Miss Cusack's Life of

VOL. II.

Saint Patrick, to which the references are made.

32 Qui fuit vico Bannavem Taberniæ.-Conf. The natural inference certainly is that Tabernia was the name of the district in which Bannavem was situated.

B

of a Roman provincial town.33 He lived at this little farm when, in his sixteenth year, he was taken captive and brought to Hibernia or Ireland with many thousands; and he adds, 'as we deserved, for we had forsaken God, and had not kept his commandments, and were disobedient to our priests, who admonished us for our salvation.' He remained six years in slavery in Ireland, where he was employed tending sheep; and then he escaped in a ship, the sailors of which were pagans, and after three days reached land, and for twentyeight days journeyed through a desert. He was again taken captive, and remained two months with these people, when on the sixtieth night he was delivered from their hands. A few years after he was with his parents, or relations, in the Roman province of Britain, when he resolved, in consequence of a vision, to leave his native country and his kindred, and go to Ireland as a missionary to preach the gospel, which, he says, he was able to accomplish after several years.

34

Saint Patrick's narrative of his early life conveys the impression that he was a simple youth, of an earnest and enthusiastic temperament, who, in the solitude of his captivity in Ireland, had communed with his own spirit and been brought under a deep sense of religion; and, when again restored to his native country and his home, had brooded over the desire which strong religious conviction creates in many a youth to devote himself to missionary labour, till he became persuaded that he had received a divine call. If he was taken captive in his sixteenth year and remained six years in captivity, he was twenty-two when he escaped, and was probably now between twentyfive and thirty years old. He had early been made

33 Ingenuus fui secundum carnem ; Decurione patre nascor.-Ep. Cor.

34 Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram cum parentibus meis.-Conf. The expression Brit

anniis or Britannicis in the plural, clearly designates the Roman province in Britain. He calls it here

his 'patria.' 'Parentes' may be either parents or relations.

a deacon,35 and must at this time have gone to Ireland probably in priest's orders; for he tells us that he had lived and preached among the Irish from his youth up, and given the faith to the people among whom he dwelt.36 At the age of forty-five he was consecrated a bishop, and in his epistle to Coroticus he designates himself 'Patricius, a sinner and unlearned, but appointed a bishop in Ireland.' 37

It is clear from Patrick's own account of himself that he was a citizen of the Roman province in Britain; 38 that his family had been Christian for at least two generations, and belonged to the aristocracy of a Roman provincial town, and that the district of Tabernia, in which it was situated, was exposed to the incursions of the Scots; that he had laboured among the Irish as a missionary for at least fifteen, if not twenty, years before he was consecrated a bishop, and it was only latterly that his labours were crowned with much success. His Confession appears to have been written towards the end of his life, as he concludes it by saying that it was written in Ireland, and that this was his confession

35 He alludes to words spoken when he was fifteen years old. 'Quod confessus fueram ante quod essem diaconus.'--Conf.

36 Vos scitis et Deus qualiter apud vos conversatussum a juventute mea et fide veritatis et sinceritate cordis ; etiam ad gentes illas inter quas habito, ego fidem illis præstiti et præstabo.'-Conf. The same thing is implied in his epistle to Coroticus, where he says that he had sent a letter by a holy priest, quem ego ex infantia docui.' If he had taught this priest from his infancy, he must himself have been long in Ireland.

37 In his Confession he says that, when about to be given the rank of a bishop ('gradus episcopatus') a fault was brought up against him

which he had committed thirty years before, when he was fifteen ; and his epistle to Coroticus commences 'Patricius peccator indoctus, scilicet Hiberione constitutis episcopum me esse futeor certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum.'

38 In his Confession he says he had been desirous to go 'in Britanniis quasi ad patriam et parentes; non id solum, sed etiam usque Gallias.' This excludes the idea that he could have been a native of any part of Gaul. Britanniæ is the well-known expression for Roman Britain. In his epistle to Coroticus he says, 'Non dico civibus meis, neque civibus sanctorum Romanorum.'

before he died; 39 and his epistle was written to Coroticus while the Franks were still pagan—that is, before their conversion in the year 496. In his Confession he tells us that through his ministry clerics had been ordained for this people newly come to the faith, and that in Hiberio or Ireland 'those who never had the knowledge of God, and had hitherto only worshipped unclean idols, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called the sons of God. The sons of the Scoti and the daughters of princes are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ.' 40 In the epistle to Coroticus he addresses his beloved brethren and children whom he had begotten in such numbers to Christ.' 41 It is, however, remarkable that he does not in either document make the slightest allusion to Palladius or his mission, and this leads certainly to the inference that it had failed and had never become an efficient and operative episcopal mission in the country. Patrick's episcopate must certainly have followed that of Palladius, and that possibly at no great distance of time; and if he was then forty-five years age, this would throw his sixteenth year, when he was taken captive, to the first decade of the century, when the Roman province was exposed to the incursions of the Scots, and thus he must have himself already laboured as a missionary among the Irish people, to whom Palladius was sent as their first bishop.

of

Such is the account which Patrick gives of himselfin these documents, which we accept as undoubtedly genuine ; and we shall see how, at a later period, this simple narrative

39 Et hæc est confessio mea antequam moriar.-Conf.

40 Et ut clerici ubique illis ordinarentur ad plebem nuper venientem ad credulitatem. . . . Unde autem Hiberione, qui numquam notitiam habuerunt, nisi idula et himunda usque nunc semper coluerunt, quomodo nuper effecta est plebs Do

mini et filii Dei nuncupabantur. Filii Scotorum et filiæ Regulorum monachi et virgines Christi esse videntur.-Conf.

41 O speciossissime, atque amantissimi fratres et filii, quos in Christo genui, enumerare nequeo. — Ep. Cor.