The historical Patrick—Authentic records—Earliest known Gaelic litterateur—Dates elusive—Birthplace—Autobiographical details of his youth—Taken captive—Escape—Obscure wanderings—Return home—The rôle of missionary in Ireland—Epoch-making career—Remarkable Patrician Dialogues—His own literary work—The “Confession”—“Epistle to Coroticus”—“Deer’s Cry”—Ireland’s oldest book—Three other antique compositions from the Book of Hymns—A curious prophecy—Personal character—Death.

It is a characteristic of our age to doubt, if not to deny, the historical reality of many of the heroic figures that hover in the background of history. And such a doubt has extended even to St. Patrick, due largely to the fact that he is not mentioned by the early historians Prosper of Aquitaine (402–463) and Bede (673–735), both of whom attribute the conversion of Ireland to Palladius.

But this seeming omission has been explained on the highly probable assumption that Patrick^[10] was the Palladius of these writers; and against the merely negative inference there is the positive and almost overwhelming voice of history and tradition, which puts the essential features of Ireland’s apostle beyond all doubt.

The authentic records of his career are numerous and very old, dating back, we may say, to his own handwriting. For in the Book of Armagh we have what professes to be a copy of the autobiographical “Confession” which he wrote himself late in life. This Book of Armagh, one of the most ancient and exquisite of the Irish MSS., is itself nearly 1100 years old, having been written in 807 by a scribe Ferdomnach, and, in addition to the “Confession” and other interesting contents, it has preserved to us various Patrician documents. That the writer had before him the actual autograph MS. of the saint when copying the “Confession” is inferred from his own words, “Thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand. On the seventeenth day of March was Patrick translated to the heavens.” And also from his frequent marks of interrogation and casual hints, such as, “The Book is uncertain here,” showing that during the intervening centuries since Patrick wrote the writing must have become faded and even illegible in some places.

Besides his own personal account, there is no lack of early lives by other authors. Among those that may still be consulted are: (1) the biographical Hymn by Fiacc of Sletty, one of the saint’s own contemporaries; (2) two seventh-century Lives known as Tirechan’s and Muirchu Mac Cumachteni’s, found in the Book of Armagh; (3) the Tripartite Life, largest of all, from three very ancient Gaelic MSS., believed by Colgan, though not by later critics, to belong to the early part of the sixth century, and translated by him in his Trias Thaumaturga, 1645; (4) the Monk Jocelin’s memoir, twelfth century; and (5) other MSS. of the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Subsequent authors, of course, are mainly dependent on these.

A great historic character was this St. Patrick, who could not be buried in documents. His own words have far-reaching significance, beyond even what he himself meant to convey when he wrote, “He who is mighty came and in his mercy supported me, and raised me up and placed me on the top of a wall.” On this eminence St. Patrick is great, not merely as apostle of Ireland, but also as occupying a niche in the origins of Celtic literature. Essentially a man of religious initiative, and making no claim to distinction as a writer, he is nevertheless the earliest known pioneer of letters in Ireland—the first of whose work we have definite records to attest the authenticity.

What share he had in making the latter a literary country it is difficult to say; but from his missionary advent in Ireland a knowledge of letters seems to have spread rapidly over the land. His monasteries and churches were centres and nurseries of learning. “He used,” as Tirechan tells us, “to baptize men daily and to read letters and abgatoriae with them.”

There is a high probability that the Ogam writing peculiar to Ireland originated before his time, and even the beautiful modification of the Roman alphabet found in Irish books. These are still matters for research. But one thing, at least, is claimed for the saint and his Christian followers, that they made the use of the Roman script for the first time widely general. And this had far-reaching results for the future, since only by its adaptation, as apart from the rude and cumbrous though ingeniously simple Ogam, was any real literature possible.

In view of the mass of biographical material that has collected round the venerated name of St Patrick, it might be supposed that every event of his life would stand out clear and luminous. Yet such is the perversity of historic authorship, that names and dates and even oft-told incidents are hard to get at in their true setting. The career of the apostle is inextricably jumbled up and confused with that of two others—the traditional Palladius and another Patrick, both of which semi-mythical characters appear and disappear again and again, crossing his path like his double; insomuch that it has been conjectured that the incidents of one life are often transferred to another, and the saint is credited with experiences which really belonged to the history of the other two, such, for example, as his alleged mandate from the Pope and the superior continental training under Germanus.

Dates especially are wonderfully elusive. The usual chronology for St. Patrick’s career is given as follows: Birth, 387; missionary advent in Ireland, 432; death, 492 or 493. Yet each of these dates is still under discussion. Dr. Whitley Stokes puts the advent as early as 397; Dr. Todd as late as 439 or 440. And so, after all that has been said and searched, we are dependent for the essential features and outstanding facts of his life upon the apostle’s own writings.

Such historical details as are generally accepted may be briefly given. But in this case there is an advantage in quoting the ipsissima verba of the saint, and thus allow him to tell his own tale at critical points of his career, for his style and matter are themselves a revelation of character.

He first projects himself on the canvas of literary history by relating early circumstances and the pregnant event which changed the whole aspect of his life, and gave it the direction it afterwards took. Thus he begins:—

I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful and the most despicable among most men, had for my father Calpornius a deacon, son of the late Potitus a presbyter, who was of the town of Bonaven Taberniæ; for he had a farm in the neighbourhood where I was taken captive. I was then sixteen years old. I knew not the true God, and I was carried in captivity to Hiberio with many thousands of men according to our deserts, because we had gone back from God and had not kept His commandments, and were not obedient to our priests who used to warn us for our salvation.

Bonaven Taberniæ has been the subject of much eager inquiry to this day. Where is it? or Nemthur, the alternative name furnished by Fiacc of Sletty? Many places claim the honour of being the birthplace of the saint. Boulogne, Bristol, Glastonbury, Carlisle, Tours, Caerleon, and Ireland have all contended at one time or another for the prestige. But the best authorities in recent times seem to favour Old Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, as the most likely locality from which sprung the saint, and as fulfilling better than any of the others the actual suggestions of the records. In the river opposite the town there is a rock visible at low water, called St. Patrick’s stone, tradition alleging that the ship in which he sailed away to Ireland struck against it, but continued its voyage unharmed.

In captivity in Antrim he remained for six years, his daily employment being to feed cattle. Then the love of God entered his heart, he tells us, and a spirit of prayer grew upon him. Often he would say a hundred prayers in a day, and rise of nights to resort to the woods and mountains in snow, and frost, and rain, for the same purpose.

While thus exercised, one night, in a dream, a voice came to him saying, “Thy fasting is well; thou shalt soon return to thy country.” Later on, the dream was repeated, the same voice assuring him that the ship was now ready, 200 miles away.

Waiting no longer, the poor enthused slave fled from his master, and, after long wandering, reached the port, where he found indeed a ship, but the captain of it proved rough and hostile, and refused to have anything to do with him. On the way back to his hut he was recalled by a sailor, the upshot of the parley being that he accompanied the crew on the voyage. Afterwards he seems to have been detained by them on shore, perhaps in Gaul, as they wandered in a desert and suffered great hardships. “How is it, Christian?” said the captain one day when no food could be had. Patrick gave a characteristic reply, and he tells us that they were saved from starvation on that occasion by a herd of swine soon after appearing, some of which they killed and ate.

There is no mention in his account of any Continental sojourn,^[11] though almost all the Lives make reference to such. Fiacc of Sletty waxes poetical over it:—

If such wandering took place, it was probably after he escaped from the mariners. For, over twenty-two years of his life at this period seem to be a blank, unless accounted for by some such sojourn in this country or abroad. At length, after great privations and lonely struggle, he made his way back to his parents, who received him “as a son, and earnestly besought him not to expose himself to fresh dangers, but to remain with them henceforth.”

For a while he did stay, and then the apostolic spirit came upon him. “In the dead of night,” he says, “I saw a man coming to me as if from Hiberio, whose name was Victoricus, having innumerable epistles. And he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of it, which contained the words, ‘The voice of the Irish.’ And whilst I was repeating the beginning of the epistle, I imagined that I heard in my mind the voice of those who were near the wood of Foclut, which is near the Western Sea, and then they cried, ‘We pray thee, holy youth, to come and henceforth walk amongst us.’”

He is supposed to have been forty-five years of age then. His mission, we see, he attributed solely to an inward call or divine command. There is no mention of any authority from the Pope, of any visit to Rome or Gaul, or even of the superior education he is credited with having received on the Continent under Germanus. On the contrary, he speaks of himself in his early condition as “a rustic, a fugitive, unlearned, and not knowing how to provide for the coming day;” spiritually, “like a stone lying in the deep mud.” And in later life, in reference to the “Confession,” “Wherefore I thought of writing long ago, but hesitated till now, for I feared I should not fall into the language of men; because I have not read like others who have been taught sacred letters in the best manner, and have never changed their language from infancy, but were always adding to its perfection; for my language and speech is translated into a foreign tongue. Indeed, it can be easily perceived from the childishness of my writing after what manner I have been instructed and taught.”

He had used Latin, no doubt, as his mother tongue in boyhood, but, not having received much instruction in it, he had never cultivated it as a literary language, and consequently it had, during his captivity, fallen very much into abeyance, so that it was difficult for him in later days to write this language of the learned as fluently as he would wish.

His father was of Roman descent. His mother is said to have been British—a merely conjectural statement.

Like St. Columba in after years, St. Patrick addressed the tribesmen through their chiefs and kings, and was tolerant of contemporary superstitions, seeking rather to graft the new faith upon the old. He adopted the pagan festivals and associated them with Christian events. At Tara, however, he attacked paganism in its stronghold and burnt the druidical books, extorting from King Laoghaire a reluctant acquiescence in his work. From the chief, Daire, he obtained the site for his famous monastery at Armagh, which became his headquarters. He threw down, in what is the present county of Cavan, the great idol Crom Cruach—object of immemorial veneration and savage rites. From the huge stone, which bowed westward on that day of doom, the demon is reported to have fled to hell, leaving his fallen image leaning over, so that what was once called “The Chief of the Mound” was henceforth known as “The Crooked one [Crom Cruach] of the Mound.”

As his work advanced, a vast following of missionaries, bishops, and even chiefs and sub-kings, with their subjects, came under his influence. He had a share also in reforming the ancient druidical laws of Ireland, and bringing them more into harmony with Christian principles. According to the “Four Masters,” it was in 438 the part of the Brehon Law known as the Seanchus Mor, and still preserved in venerable documents, was redacted. Much of the work may be of later dates, but tradition credits St. Patrick with having undertaken the task along with others, and with having effected a drastic purification in his own lifetime.

Many legends have gathered round his name during the ages, and superstitious beliefs, as one might expect. Yet, so great is his prestige in the land of his adoption to this day, that not only are thousands called by his name, but the peasantry of Ireland actually believe that St. Patrick banished snakes from the island.

The historical records know nothing of any meeting between Ossian and the saint; yet in some of the older MSS. there are Dialogues^[12] in the heroic style reported as having been carried on between them, the bard representing the pagan ideal of his ancestors, the saint the Christian ideal of the Church. They are evidently the work of later times, some centuries, no doubt, after the saint’s time. But, both from a literary and religious point of view, they are profoundly interesting.

Besides these characteristic Dialogues reported in the Book of Lismore and other ancient MSS., and assumed to have taken place between St. Patrick and Ossian, there is a romantic and beautiful one recorded by Tirechan, and repeated with more or less variations in the Lives of St. Patrick, and consequently of great antiquity. It is taken from the Book of Armagh.

The saint had come to the well called Clebach, and before sunrise sat down beside it with his followers.

And lo! the two daughters of King Laoghaire, Ethne the fair and Fedelm the ruddy, came early to the well to wash after the manner of women, and they found near the well a synod of holy Bishops with Patrick. And they knew not whence they were or in what form or from what people, or from what country; but they supposed them to be divine sidhe, or gods of the earth, or a phantasm, and the virgins said unto them, “Who are ye! and whence come ye?” And Patrick said unto them, “It were better for you to confess to our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.”

With swift strides the narrative goes on to tell how the saint enlightened the two maidens, how they believed and were baptized, how they received the eucharist of God and slept in death. Thereafter they were laid on the same bed, covered with garments, while their friends raised great lamentation for them.

Such is a summary of the chief events in St. Patrick’s long and epoch-making career in Ireland, taken generally to have lasted sixty years, so that he must have lived to a ripe old age, if the records report with any exactness.

Leaving now the biographical and coming to the purely literary aspect of his life, we find that there are three pieces of literature assigned to him, namely, the “Confession” and the “Epistle to Coroticus,” both in Latin, and the “Deer’s Cry” in Gaelic. The two former are sometimes styled his epistles, numbered I. and II., the history of whose preservation to our own time is not without its peculiar interest.

Besides the copy of the “Confession” in the Book of Armagh, there are four other MSS. in existence: (1) the Cottonian, in the British Museum; (2) two MSS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, formerly preserved in the Salisbury Cathedral; (3) one MS. in the Public Library of Arras. The text of the Bollandist Fathers was taken from the Arras MS. and published at Antwerp in 1668 in their Acta Sanctorum. A copy of the “Epistle to Coroticus” accompanies each of the above except that in the Book of Armagh.

Of the “Confession,” the style and gist may be gathered from the extracts given as we recounted his life. It is perhaps the earliest piece of authentic Celtic literature we have, inasmuch as it is the first of which the authorship can be definitely and historically asserted. Its Latin is rude and archaic, answering to the description St. Patrick gives of his own writing. It quotes from the pre-Vulgate version of the Scriptures, and contains nothing inconsistent with the period in which it professes to have been written.

The saint appears to have penned this document as a kind of defence of his apostolic work against the attacks of men who regarded the whole undertaking as arrogant and presumptuous in view of his own rusticity. “The rustic condition was created by the Most High,” he gently reminds them, and adds some plain truths which show that, like Jesus, and St. Paul, and St Francis of Assisi, and other great master-spirits of the Christian Evangel, he did not disdain poverty, but voluntarily assumed it for the promotion of the Gospel. It would be tedious, he says, to relate even a portion of the many toils and dangers he had gone through. Twelve times his life was in imminent peril. Never one farthing did he receive for all his preaching and teaching. He challenges his detractors to say if he did and it will be returned. The people, indeed, were generous and offered innumerable gifts, which, out of principle, he refused, lest it might furnish an opportunity for cavil against the disinterestedness of his mission. On one occasion, on being told that his own nephew declared that his preaching would be perfect if he insisted a little more on the necessity of giving, he gave the noble reply, that “for the sake of charity he forebore to preach charity.”

The “Epistle to Coroticus” is evidently from the same pen. The Latin and the literary style are similar. It also quotes from the pre-Vulgate version, and there is no internal evidence against the assumption that it was written by the saint. Though not found in the Book of Armagh, it is preserved in the other MSS. cited, some of which may be as old as the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Certain authorities identify Coroticus with the Welsh prince Caredig. Other more recent scholars, such as Drs. Skene, Whitley Stokes, and Douglas Hyde, contend that he was a prince of Strathclyde, Ceretic by name, who had his capital at Alclwyd, the modern Dumbarton, and thus that he hailed from St. Patrick’s own district.

At any rate, the soldiers and allies of this nominally Christian king suddenly made a descent on the eastern shores of Ireland, which they harried, carrying away many of St. Patrick’s converts to be sold as slaves, and ruthlessly killing numbers of them on the very day after their baptism, while the symbol of their faith, as he says, was still wet upon their foreheads, and these neophytes were yet clad in their white vestments. The letter was sent as a remonstrance against such barbarous conduct, and to urge the lawless prince to restore the captives. But to little effect, for the invader treated messengers and letters alike with ridicule and contempt, delivering the converts abducted into the hands of the Picts and Scots.

In this letter, as in the “Confession,” St. Patrick gives interesting personal details. A few extracts are worth quoting. For example:—

I, Patrick, an unlearned sinner do truly acknowledge that I have been constituted a bishop in Ireland. I accept it of God that I am. I dwell among barbarians a proselyte and an exile for the love of God.

I have written these words to be given and delivered to the soldiers and by them to Coroticus.... I do not say to my fellow-citizens nor to fellow-citizens of pious Romans, but to fellow-citizens of demons, through their evil deeds.... I was of noble birth according to the flesh, my father being a Decurio. For I bartered my nobility—I do not blush nor regret it—for the benefit of others. No thanks to me. But God hath put in my heart the anxious desire that I should be one of the hunters or fishers who as God formerly announced should appear in the last days.... What shall I do, Lord? I am greatly despised. Lo thy sheep are torn to pieces around me and plundered by these aforesaid marauders under the command of Coroticus.

In this letter he mentions also that he is constrained by the Spirit not to see any of his kindred.

For St. Patrick’s beautiful hymn, the “Deer’s Cry,” we are indebted to the Book of Hymns of the eleventh century, which, like the Book of Armagh, contains several Patrician pieces. It is a Gaelic composition alleged to have been made by the saint while on his way to the great Court of Tara. It was celebrated for generations before the English conquest as a lorica or prayer for protection. Dr. Todd says, “That this hymn is a composition of great antiquity cannot be questioned. It is written in a very ancient dialect of the Irish Celtic. It was evidently composed during the existence of pagan usages in the country. It makes no allusion to Arianism or any of the heresies prevalent in the Continental Church. It notices no doctrine or practice of the Church that is not known to have existed before the fifth century. In its style and diction, although written in a different language, there is nothing very dissimilar to the Confession and the letter about Coroticus, and nothing absolutely inconsistent with the opinion that it may be by the same author.” Beyond this no positive proof can be given.

In the Liber Hymnorum it is prefaced by the following distinctive account in Gaelic:—

Patrick made this hymn. In the time of Laoghaire son of Nial it was made. The cause of making it however was to protect himself with his monks against the deadly enemies who were in ambush against the clerics. And this is a corselet of faith for the protection of body and soul against demons and human beings and vices. Every one who shall say it every day with pious meditation on God, demons shall not stay before him. It will be a safeguard to him against every poison and envy; it will be a comna to him against sudden death; it will be a corselet to his soul after dying. Patrick sung this when the ambuscades were sent against him by Laoghaire that he might not go to Tara to sow the faith, so that there seemed before the ambuscaders to be wild deer and a fawn after them, to wit, Benen;^[13] and faed fiada (guard’s cry) is its name.

Apparently the assassins mistook the chanting of the lorica for the cry of the deer. This saved the party, and furnished a name for the hymn.

A very remarkable and striking piece of literature it is, and one that does credit to the language in which it is clothed. “For its glow of imagination and fervour of devotion,” says Dr. Dowden, the author of the Early Celtic Church in Scotland, “it will always challenge a high place in the history of Christian hymnology.”

It it well worth transcribing also as exhibiting the saint’s creed, his belief in contemporary superstitions and attitude towards them, his piety and poetic gift. In all probability we have here a very fair representation of the gist of his teaching. Like the authors of the Vedic hymns, and the votaries of all primitive religions, he invokes the powers of nature, a phase of the religious spirit which seems to have fallen devotionally in abeyance in modern times. What strikes our age perhaps as more curious and superstitious, he prays for protection against the spells of women, smiths, and Druids, like any good heathen.

The oldest book in Ireland is now believed to be the Domhnach Airgid, a copy of the four Gospels in Latin presented, according to the “Tripartite Life,” by St. Patrick to St. Aedh Maccarthenn of Clogher. For protection it has a triple shrine of yew, silver-plated copper, and gold-plated silver. Shrine and MS. are to-day among the most prized treasures of the Royal Irish Academy. It is highly probable, says Professor G. T. Stokes and Dr. Wright, that it was the veritable copy used by St. Patrick himself.

The Book of Hymns has also three other very interesting compositions, which profess to date back to his time.

First there is Sechnall’s Hymn in praise of St. Patrick, supposed to have been written during his lifetime, and generally regarded as genuine. St. Sechnall, or Secundius as he is sometimes called, was the nephew and disciple of Patrick, and associated with him in the See of Armagh, either as contemporaneous bishop or as his successor. It was he who annoyed the saint by his sordid remark about preaching on the necessity of giving. To condone for the pain he gave his uncle, the penitent Sechnall composed this poem of twenty-two stanzas in his praise, thus constituting himself, if written before the “Deer’s Cry,” the first known poet of Christian Ireland. In view of its alleged acceptance by St. Patrick, the hymn has been held in great veneration, and sung as one of his honours on the days of his Festival.

A second Patrician piece in the Book of Hymns is Fiacc of Sletty’s metrical life—also called a Hymn. It is purely biographical, and written after St. Patrick’s death, according to the introduction in the above ancient MS. Here we are told in Gaelic, with Latin words curiously interpolated, that Patrick said to Dubthach, chief bard of Ireland, “‘Seek for me a man of rank, of good race, well-moralled, one wife and one child with him only.’ ‘Why dost thou seek that, to wit a man of that kind?’ said Dubthach. ‘For him to go into orders,’ said Patrick. ‘Fiacc is that,’ said Dubthach, ‘and he has gone on a circuit in Connaught.’ Now while they were talking, it is then came Fiacc from his circuit. ‘There,’ said Dubthach, ‘is he of whom we spake.’ ‘Though he be,’ said Patrick, ‘yet what we say may not be pleasing to him.’ ‘Let a trial be made to tonsure me,’ said Dubthach, ‘so that Fiacc may see.’ So when Fiacc saw he asked, ‘Wherefore is the trial made?’ ‘To tonsure Dubthach,’ say they. ‘That is idle,’ said he, ‘for there is not in Ireland a poet his equal.’ ‘Thou wouldst be taken in his place,’ said Patrick. ‘My loss to Ireland,’ says Fiacc, ‘is less than Dubthach’s (would be).’ So Patrick shore his beard from Fiacc then, and great glee came upon him thereafter, so that he read all the ecclesiastical ordo in one night—or fifteen days, as some say—and so that a bishop’s rank was conferred on him, and so that it is he who is Archbishop of Leinster thenceforward and his successor after him.”

Dr. Todd thinks it impossible to attribute so high an antiquity to the Hymn as Fiacc’s own time, since it contains an allusion to the desolation of Tara. Colgan 250 years previously met the difficulty by regarding the latter reference as prophetic.

We must not omit a very curious prophecy regarding St. Patrick which the Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn has preserved. It is in the copy of the Book of Hymns now in the convent of St. Isidore at Rome, a MS. of the eleventh or twelfth century. From internal evidence it may be recognised that the stanza cannot be older than the beginning of the seventh century, but it is written in a very ancient dialect of the Gaelic, and purported to be an old-time prediction by a pagan Druid.

A third Patrician fragment in the Book of Hymns, eleventh century, is entitled Ninine’s Prayer, with the explanatory head-line, “Ninine the poet made this prayer, or Fiacc of Sletty.” It runs:—

In all this varied literature, reaching from his own time till ours, the Apostle of Ireland stands forth a commanding personality, as different from St. Columba as St. Francis was from St. Bernard. Genial, earnest, humble, sensitively sympathetic, with commanding force of character and irresistible determination as the agent of a Divine Mission, his enthusiasm made way for him. Less impulsive, less warlike, and less learned than Columcille, he carried on his spiritual campaign in a spirit of self-denying devotion and love of men. “Patrick, without loftiness or arrogance,” as Fiacc describes him, “it was much of good he thought.” At the end of the day we find him in poverty and misery writing his Confession, not sure but the morrow of his life may bring a violent death, or slavery, or some other dread evil.

Yet true to the last in his unquenchable zeal, his own words seem to sum up the high aim of his life: “Therefore it is very fitting that we should spread our nets that a copious multitude and crowd may be taken for God, and that everywhere there may be clergy who shall baptize a needy and desiring people.”

He died at Saul, while on a visit there from Armagh, and his grave is believed to be at Downpatrick, to which place tradition says the remains of St. Columba were transported from Iona in the more troublous times, and re-interred beside those of his great forerunner.