Boulogne-Sur-Mer Part 6

Caligula's tower, on the north-eastern cliffs, in the town and within the suburbs, was called "Turris Ordinis" by the Romans, but "Nemtor" by the Gaulish Celts, as Hersart de la Villemarque states in his "Celtic Legend."

It is certain that Niall of the Nine Hostages made use of the Port of Boulogne when he invaded Armorica in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and that he died at that port after his a.s.sa.s.sination.

It is probable that Niall sailed to Boulogne when invading Armorica on the first occasion, for he was carrying his arms into the same country, of which Boulogne was the princ.i.p.al port, and the only one used by the Romans when invading England.

The return of Niall from his first expedition into-Armorica with captives, including St. Patrick, on board in the year 388, corresponds precisely with the fifteenth year of St. Patrick, who was born in the year 373. This fact is not only testified by Keating, but by Hersart de la Villemarque in his "Celtic Legend," who narrates that Calphurnius, St. Patrick's father, was a Roman officer in charge of Nemtor, near which his family resided in a Roman villa, and that Calphurnius was slain, and St. Patrick made captive by a hostile fleet that came from Ireland.

As Nemtor was not only the name of the tower, but the district of the tower, and situated within the suburbs of Bonaven, St. Fiacc's account of his patron's birthplace, which simply gives the name of the district, and St. Patrick's statement that his home was in the suburban district of Bonaven, harmonise together.

The Scholiast and the author of the Trepart.i.te "Life," by admitting that the Saint was captured in Armorica, annul their a.s.sertion that he was born in Scotland, because St. Patrick distinctly states that his family hailed from Bonaven Tabernise, or Boulogne, and that he was captured while residing at his father's villula. The Scholiast and Tripart.i.te "Life" consequently admit that Bonaven Taberniae was situated in Armorica.

The impression that Bononia, or Boulogne, was St. Patrick's native town is confirmed by Probus; he narrates all the misfortune that overtook Calphurnius and his family whilst they were quietly living in their own native country (in patria), and in their own seaside city in Armorica.

Armorica was then included in the Province of Neustria, one of the sub- divided kingdoms of the Franks, and it was on that account that Probus states that St. Patrick was born in Neustria.

Ware, Usher, and Cardinal Moran, who cling to the Scotch theory of St.

Patrick's birth, all contradict the Scholiast, who a.s.serts that St.

Patrick was born in Dumbarton; whilst those who hold fast to the Dumbarton theory make frantic efforts to convert the Crag into a heavenly tower.

St. Patrick, after the vision, in which he was told that he should return to his own native country, sailed to Gaul and not to the Island of Britain.

It had been proved on the authority of Sulpicius Severus, who was born in the year 360, that Armorica was called Britannia, and the Armoricans were called Britons when the Council of Ariminium was held in the year 359--fourteen years before the birth of St. Patrick. The Saint, when writing his "Confession" in 493, when the province had even a stronger claim to the name, could emphatically say, if he was born in Armorica, that he was a Briton and had relatives amongst the Britons.

THE SITE OF THE VILLULA WHERE ST. PATRICK WAS BORN.

FRENCH archeologists point out the "Hotel du Pavillion et des Bains de Mer," facing the sea-bathing place at Boulogne, as occupying the site from which Caligula's tower, Nemthur, once lifted its head into the heavens and shed its light over land and sea. On the frowning cliff which casts its shadow over the hotel there is a ma.s.s of hard brick ruins--the last remnants of the fortifications built round Nemtor when Boulogne was captured by the British troops in 1544.

Calphurnius's villula was evidently situated somewhere on the plateau, called Tour d'Ordre, between the tower and the town, for St. Patrick, in his "Confession," a.s.sured us that his father's home was near to ("prope") Bonaven, a statement which he would not make if the villula stood on the sea-coast beyond the tower. It is, therefore, certain that the site of the villula still exists somewhere not far inland from the ruins alluded to.

[Picture: THE PRESENT FORTIFICATIONS AND SITE OF THE ROMAN ENCAMPMENT AT BOULOGNE.]

Although Nemtor was undermined by the sea and fell into the waves in 1649, a picture of the tower as it once stood in all its glory is still to be seen in the museum of Boulogne, and the curator very kindly permitted the writer of this little history to get the drawing copied, so that the sons of St. Patrick might be permitted to view Nemtor, which Calphurnius lost his life in defending, and which gave a name to the district in which St. Patrick was born.

If this brief history of St. Patrick's native town has succeeded in identifying ancient Bononia, now Boulogne-sur-Mer, as St. Patrick's birthplace, then the whole plateau of Tour d'Ordre, on the north- eastern cliffs of Boulogne, where the villula of Calphurnius once stood, will become sacred in the eyes of the spiritual sons of St.

Patrick throughout the wide world.