Boulogne-Sur-Mer Part 4

From this narrative it is evident that the captives were carried by the fleet northwards around Erin until they arrived in the neighbourhood of Lough Larne, Antrim, where St. Patrick was sold as a slave. The captors afterwards sailed southwards and sold St. Patrick's sisters at Louth.

They must, therefore, as Father Bullen Morris surmises, have sailed around the western coast of Erin after sailing away from Armorica. It is clear, as the same writer does not fail to observe, that such a course cannot fit in with the Dumbarton theory: "A voyage northwards from the mouth of the Clyde would take the Irish fleet to the North Pole" ("Ireland and St. Patrick," p. 26).

The Scholiast and the author of the "Tripart.i.te Life" are of opinion that St. Patrick was made captive by the seven sons of Fachmad, King of Britain, who are represented as making a raid into Armorica. Jocelin declares that the capture was made by pirates. The Second, Third, and Fourth "Lives" are unanimous in stating that the Saint was captured by the Irish Scots. St. Patrick's own words in the Epistle to Coroticus, "Have I not tender mercy on that nation which formerly took me captive?" leave no doubt as to his capture by the Irish Scots. Colgan endeavours to harmonise both accounts by suggesting that the sons of Fachmad were British exiles in Ireland, who fought under the standard of King Niall when he invaded Armorica, and that they may have been the actual captors of the Saint.

ALL THAT THE SECOND AND THIRD "LIVES" TESTIFY.

As the Second and Third "Lives of St. Patrick" are practically and almost verbally identical up to the end of Section XL, the same translation up to that point will suffice for both.

"Patrick was born at Nemthur. He had a sister named Lupita, whose relics are preserved at Armagh. Patrick was born in the Field of Tents.

It was called Campus Tabernaculorum because the Roman army, at some time or other, pitched their tents there during the cold winter season.

"IV.--The boy, however, was reared at Nemthur. . . .

"XI.--This was the cause of his exile and arrival in Ireland: An army of Irish Scots embarked, as usual, in their ships, and forming a large fleet sailed over to Britain, and brought back from thence many captives and carried them to Ireland, the captives numbering altogether one hundred of both s.e.xes. Patrick was, as he himself testifies, in his sixteenth year at that time."

The following addition is given in the Third "Life": "Patrick, who was also called Suchet, was sprung from the British nation, and his country and the place where he was born was situated not far from the sea. His father's name was 'Calburnius,' the son of a venerable man named Pot.i.tus; but his mother, Conches by name, was the daughter of Dechusius. Both parents of this holy man were devoted to religion."

Controversially speaking, neither of these two "Lives" are of any value. Nemthur is not identified with Dumbarton, and it is not clearly stated whether the Irish fleet raided the island of Britain or Armorican Britain, or whether St. Patrick was descended from the Island or Armorican Britons. A recent writer lays much stress on the fact that the British word Tabern is used to denote a tent field in the Second, Third, and Fourth "Lives," but the argument does not carry with it much weight, for according to Camden the British and Gaulish Celts spoke the same language, so that it is just as favourable to Armorica as to the island of Britain (" Britannia," vol. i., p. 11).

THE FOURTH "LIFE."

"SOME say that St. Patrick was of Jewish origin. After Our Lord had died on the Cross for the sins of the human race, a Roman army, avenging His Pa.s.sion, laid Judea waste, and the captive Jews were dispersed amongst all the nations of the earth. Some of their number settled down among the Armorican Britons, and it is stated that it was from them that St. Patrick traced his origin." This may be gathered from the book of Epistles composed by himself, "on account of our sins, and because we had neither observed the precepts of the Lord nor obeyed His Commandments, we are dispersed to the uttermost ends of the earth."

"But, however, it is more credible and more certain that he speaks of that dispersion into which the Britons were driven by the Romans, in order that they might become possessed of the land near the Tuscan Sea which is called Armorica. After that dispersion, therefore, his parents went straight to Strath Clyde. There St. Patrick was conceived and born, his father being 'Kalburnius,' and his mother Conchessa, as he testifies in the book of his Epistles: 'I am Patrick, the son of Kalburnius, and Conchessa is my mother.' St. Patrick was, therefore, born in a town called Nemthur, which signifies a heavenly tower. This town was situated in Campo Tabernise, which is called the Field of Tents because, at one time, the Roman army pitched their tents there.

In the British tongue Campus Tabern is the same as Campus Tabernaculorum.

"XV.--But the first cause of his coming to Ireland, and the sequence of events which hurried him there, are not to be pa.s.sed over in silence.

By the divine providence of G.o.d, it so happened that in his tender years he should be led to that nation, so that in his youth he should learn the language of the people, whose apostle he was afterwards destined to become. At that period Irish fleets were accustomed to sail over to Britain for the sake of plunder, and to bring back to Ireland whomsoever they made prisoners. It chanced, therefore, that the venerated youth, with his sister, named Lupita, should be taken captives amongst others. Some have written that the Saint at the time was but seven years of age. It seems to me, however, more credible what he himself states: 'When I fell into captivity I was sixteen years of age.' He was taken to Ireland and sold in the northern regions to four brothers, whom he served with a simple and devout heart. On that account he was called Cothraigh. But he had four names, for he received the name of Suchet at baptism; he was called Magonius by Germa.n.u.s, Bishop; lastly, when he was elevated to the Episcopal dignity, he received his fourth name, Patrick."

It is suggestive how the Armorican tradition seems to manifest itself, either directly or indirectly, in nearly all the "Lives" of the Saint which are considered the best; in St. Fiacc's, in the annotations of the Scholiast, in the "Tripart.i.te Life," in the Fourth "Life," and in the Fifth by Probus. In the Fourth "Life" it is stated that both parents of the Saint were Armorican Britons, and that St. Patrick, except for the accident of his place of birth, was an Armorican Briton.

The author of the Fourth "Life," moreover, calls Calphurnius and Conchessa Armorican Britons, which serves to demonstrate that Armorica, even in the early years of St. Patrick, fell under the name of Britannia, and that its inhabitants were called Britons.

In this "Life" is to be found the mistake of the Scholiast, and of the other "Lives" who have adopted his suggestion, that Nemthur was the name of a town, and not of a tower or district, as may be gathered from the history of the tower itself.

The Second, Third, and Fourth "Lives" of the Saint, however, "are filled with fables," according to Canon O'Hanlon. "Their acts seem to have been either borrowed from one another, or are copies of versions taken from the same source" ("Lives of the Irish Saints," March 17th).

THE SIXTH "LIFE OF ST. PATRICK" BY JOCELIN.

"THERE was a man named Calphurnius, the son of Pot.i.tus, a presbyter, by nation a Briton, living in the village Taburnia (that is the Field of Tents), near the town of Empthor, and his habitation was nigh unto the Irish Sea. This man married a French damsel named Concuessa, niece of the blessed Martin, Archbishop of Tours, and the damsel was elegant in her form and in her manners, for, having been brought from France with her elder sister into the northern parts of Britain, they were sold at the command of her father. Calphurnius being pleased with her manners, charmed with her attentions, and attracted by her beauty, very much loved her, and from the state of serving maid in his household, raised her to be his companion in wedlock. And her sister, having been delivered unto another man, lived in the aforementioned town of Empthor.

"And Calphurnius and his wife were just before G.o.d, walking without offence in the justifications of the Lord, and they were eminent in their birth, and in their faith, and in their hope, and in their religion. And though in their outward habit and abiding they seemed to serve under the yoke of Babylon, yet did they in their acts and in their conversation show themselves citizens of Jerusalem. Therefore out of the earth of their flesh, being freed from the tares of sin and from the noxious weeds of vice by the ploughshare of evangelic and apostolic learning, and being fruitful in the growth of all virtues, did they, as the best and richest fruit, bring forth a son, whom, when he had at the font put off the old man, they caused to be named Patritius, as being the future father and patron of many nations; of whom, even at his baptism, the G.o.d that is Three in One was pleased by the sign of a threefold miracle to declare how pure a vessel of election should he prove, and how devoted a worshipper of the Holy Trinity. But after a little while, this happy birth being completed, they vowed themselves by mutual consent unto chast.i.ty, and with a holy end rested in the Lord. But Calphurnius-first served G.o.d a long time in the deaconship, and at length closed his days in the priesthood. . . ."

Chapter XII.--"As, according to the testimony of Holy Writ, the furnace tries the gold, so did the hour of trial draw near to Patrick that he might the more provedly receive the crown of life. For when the ill.u.s.trious boy had perl.u.s.trated three l.u.s.tres, already attaining his sixteenth year, he was, with many of his-fellow-countrymen, seized by the pirates who were ravaging the borders, and was made captive and carried into Ireland, and was there sold as a slave to a certain pagan prince named Milcho, who reigned in the Northern parts of the island, even at the same age when Joseph is recorded to have been sold in Egypt. . . ."

Chapter XVII.--"And St. Patrick, guided by his angelic guide, came to the sea, and he there found a ship that was to carry him to Britain, and a crew of heathens, who were in the ship, freely received him, and hoisting their sails with a favourable wind, after three days they made land. And, being come out of the ship, they found a region deserted and inhabited by none, and they began to travel over the whole country for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-eight days; and for want of food in that fearful and wild solitude were they perishing of hunger" (Jocelin's "Life of St. Patrick," translated by E. L. Swift).

Jocelin's "Life of St. Patrick" deserves the harsh sentence p.r.o.nounced upon it by Canon O'Hanlon: "It is incomparably the worst" of all the Latin "Lives" of the Saint. Jocelin represents Conchessa, St. Patrick's saintly mother, as a niece of St. Martin of Tours, and, almost in the same breath, suggests that either St. Martin's brother, or his brother- in-law, sold Conchessa and her elder sister to Calphurnius, a Briton of Clydesdale, as slaves. Although Conchessa was sold as a slave "at the command of her father," she is said to have succeeded in captivating and marrying her master Calphurnius.

Whilst Ware and Usher sneer at Jocelin's statement that Calphurnius and Conchessa took the vow of celibacy and devoted themselves to a religious life immediately after St. Patrick's birth, they eagerly adopt Jocelin's statement that the Apostle of Ireland was born at "Empthor," and that the home of The Sixth "Life," Calphurnius was "not far from the Irish Sea," although this untrustworthy author stands alone among the ancient writers in making this a.s.sertion.

Although Jocelin is responsible for the statement that St. Patrick fled to the island of Britain after his escape from captivity in Ireland, the subsequent three days' voyage by sea and twenty-eight days' journey by land before reaching his home are fatal to Jocelin's contention, as Professor Bury clearly demonstrates.

Ware's Empthor was near Dumbarton; Colgan's, Dumbarton itself; Usher and the "Aberdeen Breviary" identify it as Kilpatrick; Cardinal Moran rests sure that it is Hamilton, at the mouth of the Avon in Scotland; but St. Patrick's ship, chartered by Heaven to carry him to his "own native land," could, if any of the places named were St. Patrick's native town, have borne him directly almost to his destination, and saved part at least of the three days' journey by sea and the whole of the twenty-eight days' journey by wilderness before joining his relatives.

THE FIFTH "LIFE," BY PROBUS, PROVES THAT ST. PATRICK WAS BORN IN BONONIA.

THE Fifth "Life," written by Probus, an Irish monk, who died at Meyence in the year 859, is regarded as the best of the old Latin "Lives" of St. Patrick; it is considered to be an amended edition of the "Book of Armagh," written by Muirchu Macc-Mactheni, so truly that the blank left by the missing folio in that famous book can be filled in by copying the "History of Probus." (Canon O'Hanlon's "Lives of the Irish Saints,"

March 17th.)

The "Life of St. Patrick," by Probus, commences as follows:--

"Cap. I.--St. Patrick, who was also called Suchet, was a Briton by nationality. . . . He was born in Britain [in Britanniis], being the son of Calphurnius, a deacon, who was the son of Pot.i.tus, a priest, and his mother was named Conchessa, in a district within the region of Bannaue Tiburniae, not far from the Western Sea, which district, as we have discovered beyond doubt, was situated in the province of Nentria, where the giants are said to have formerly dwelt."

"XII.--When he was in his own country with his father Calphurnius and his mother Conchessa, in their own seaside city [city Arimuric] there was a great outbreak of hostilities in these parts. The sons of King Rithmit, coming from Britain, laid Arimuric and the surrounding country waste. They ma.s.sacred Calphurnius and his wife Conchessa; but their children, Patrick and his brother Ruchti, together with their sister Mila, they took captives to Ireland. They sold Patrick to Prince Milcho, but his brother Ruchti and his sister Mila to another Prince."

Colgan, in his annotations, subst.i.tutes Neutria for Nentria (4), and Armorica for Arimuric, Caesar testifies that all the towus on the sea coast of Armorica were called Armoricse (Britannia, vol i. p. 13). "In his own city Armuric" has therefore been rendered "in his own seaside city."

When Probus wrote his history there was no province in existence called either Nentria or Neutria; but there was a province called Neustria, which embraced Armorica or the northern sea coast of Gaul, where St.

Patrick was residing in his own native country (in patria) with his parents, when he was made captive. It follows, likewise, that St.

Patrick's native town, "Bannaue Tiburnise," according to Probus, was the seaside city in Armorica referred to. The Bannaue Tiburniae of Probus and the Bonaven Taberniae of St. Patrick are evidently one and the same as Bononia, where the Romans were encamped, which, as it has already been proved, was called Bonauen Armorik by the Gaulish Celts.

If any other proof were needed, the description of the province given by Probus as the country formerly inhabited by giants can leave no doubt on the subject.

Sammes, in his "Antiquities of Ancient Britain," published in 1676, narrates that the Scythians, or Cymri, were called the offspring of Magog by Josephus. Pouring out in mighty hordes from Scythia, they sacked Rome and plundered the Temple of Apollo in Greece. Some of them settled down in Sarmatia, Germany, and Northern Gaul, generally adopting the name of the lands in which they settled. Strabo is quoted as saying "that the very youths (of the Cymri) were half a foot taller than the tallest men," and Manlius for declaring "that the Cymri were a race so exceedingly tall that other nations seemed nothing in their eyes." The same authority narrates that "when one of the Cymri stood in the ranks he seemed of the same proportion as the others, but when he stepped out a few paces, and came near to the Romans, they all began to be amazed at the sight." On that account the Roman soldiers, as Caesar admits, were filled with consternation at the giants they were called upon to encounter when he marched against their leader, Ariovistus. The Cymri were also remarkable for their exceeding swiftness. Csesar witnessed that they "could lay their hands on the manes of horses and keep pace with them in the race." Tully testifies that it was "their joy and delight to die on the battlefield, and that nothing so tormented them as to die idly in their beds." "No wonder," says Sammes, "that they conquered many nations; distressed the Romans themselves, and were a constant thorn in the side of the Gauls" ("Antiquities of Ancient Britain," cap. 2).

Dr. Smith, in his "History of France," narrates that the Cymri "acquired permanent possession of an extensive territory north of the Loire, including the peninsula of Armorica" (p. 13). Bononia, or Boulogne, St. Patrick's native town, was, therefore, situated in Belgic Gaul during the days of Julius Caesar; but, later on, when the descendants of the Cymri, the Belgic Gauls, were almost annihilated in their fierce contests with the Romans, the same province came to be called Armorica. Sulpicius Severus, as we shall see presently, named the same country Britannia at the time of the Council of Ariminium in the year 359--just fourteen years before St. Patrick was born.

In the year 597 Armorica, or Britannia, became absorbed in the province of Neustria, when the kingdom of the Franks was sub-divided into three separate kingdoms, as Dr. Smith relates: "Sigebert became King of Austrasia (in the Prankish tongue, Oster-rike), or the kingdom of the Eastern Franks; Chilperic was recognised as King Neustria (Ne-oster- rike), the land of the Western Franks. The limits of the two kingdoms are somewhat uncertain; but the river Meuse and the Forest of Ardennes may be taken generally as the line of demarcation. Austrasia extended from the Meuse to the Rhine; Neustria extended from the Meuse to the ocean. Gouthran ruled over the division of Gaul which now acquired the name of Burgundy" ("History of France," p. 42).

Neustria, extending from the Meuse to the ocean, necessarily embraced the whole province of Britannia, or Armorica. That province still retained the name of Neustria when Probus, in the tenth century, wrote the "History of St. Patrick."

The change of the name Armorica to Britannia, and from Britannia to Neustria, together with the fact that the name Britannia, or Brittany, as applied to that particular province in Gaul was forgotten for centuries before any of the old Latin "Lives" of St. Patrick, except the first, were written, must have induced some old biographers of the Saint to interpret the name Britain, mentioned in the "Lives" and in the "Confession," as referring only to the Island of Britain,

With the exception of Probus, who had travelled abroad, the old biographers of St. Patrick, on account of their very limited sources of information, had very little knowledge of the histories of foreign countries, and it is not surprising to find them erroneously supposing that St. Patrick was born in Great Britain, because he mentioned in his "Confession" that he was born in Britain, and had relatives among the Britons.

St. Patrick, according to Probus, was one of the Gaulish Britons, being born at Bonaven, or Boulogne-sur-Mer. Although the Saint, according to Canon O'Hanlon, was a little man, he was descended from a race of giants--the bold Cymri, or Celts. That fact established a relationship of race between the Saint and the nation which he converted.

Camden and Keating narrate that King Milesius and his bold Scots, who successfully invaded Ireland, were descended from the Cymri; and it is remarkable that a fierce battle was fought between the Irish Scots and the Tautha de Danans at Mount Slemish, not far from Tralee, in Kerry, which is identical in name with Mount Slemish, in Antrim--the scene of the Saint's captivity ("Britannia," vol. ii., p. 123; "History of Ireland," vol. i., p. 123).

Eochaid O'Flin, a poet quoted by Keating, has left a record of this historical battle: