PATRICKThe Letters survive in eight manuscripts: the earliest
giving an abridged text copied at the beginning of the
ninth century in Armagh; a second during the tenth
century, perhaps in the diocese of Soissons; a third
about the year 1000 at Worcester; a fourth during the
eleventh century, owned if not written at Jumièges;
three during the twelfth century in northern France and
in England; and one during the seventeenth century. As
among these eight manuscripts seven are independent
of each other, the text of the Letters is fairly secure.
Patrick wrote the name of his grandfather as Potitus,
which means “empowered man,” and the name of his
father as Calpornius, associated with the name of the
Roman plebeian gens Calpurniusand the name of
Julius Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, derived from καλπη +
urna+-ius, designating one who bears a “pitcher” or
“urn” in religious ceremonies. Patrick’s own name,
derived from pater+-icius, meaning “like a father,”
designates “a man noble in rank.” Because of the mean-
ing of his name and because of the status of his family
Patrick explicitly claimed nobilitatem“nobility” for
himself. He described his grandfather as a presbyter
“priest” and his father as both a diaconus“deacon”
and a decurio “decurion,”a member of a municipal
senate, an official responsible for the rendering of
taxes. His father owned slaves of both sexes and land,
avillula“little villa” near Bannavem Taburniae, per-
hapsBannaventa Berniae“market town at the rock
promontory of Bernia.” Although some would identify
Berniawith the territory of people described in Old
Welsh as Berneichand in Anglo-Latin as Bernicii,
inhabitants of the northern province of the kingdom of
Northumbria, and one later Life states that Patrick was
born in Strathclyde, the northern part of Britain was a
military zone. Patrick’s Roman Christian family of land-
owning and slave-holding clerics and imperial civil
servants are likelier to have lived somewhere in the
civilian zone of southwestern Britain, along the Severn
estuary, where Ordnance Survey maps show many vil-
las. As Patrick describes his fatherland in the plural as
Brittanniae“the Britains” and neighboring regions as
Galliae“the Gauls,” he must have been born while
these regions were still divided into multiple provinces
in which Roman ecclesiastical and civil administration
still functioned, perhaps about A.D. 390, certainly
before 410. As he refers incidentally to coinage, solidi
andscriptulae, and contrasts the behavior of the pre-
sumably post-Roman tyrannu Coroticus(a name
related to Old Welsh Ceredigion, modern Cardigan)
with that of Romano-Gaulish Christians dealing with
pagan Franks, his mission probably preceded the con-
version of the Franks, perhaps in 496, certainly before
- This is consistent with dates of The Annals of
Ulster, which record Patrick’s arrival as a missionary
in Ireland in 432, his foundation of Armagh in 444,
and his death in 461, when he would have fulfilled the
Biblical span of 70 years, alternately 491, when he
would have been about 100.
Captured as a 15-year-old adolescens“adolescent”
(15–21) on his father’s villula, Patrick worked as a
slave for six years near the Forest of Foclut in Ireland,
where began a series of seven dreams that informed
his career. After learning in the first that he would
escape to his fatherland he journeyed 200 Roman miles
(188 of ours), presumably from northwest to southeast
across Ireland, whence he sailed for three days. On
landing, his company wandered for 28 days through
wilderness, nearly starving until discovery of food
after Patrick’s prayer for help. There followed a great
temptation by Satan in a second dream, escape from
perils which lasted one month, an account of a later
dream which foretold accurately a captivity of two
months, then return to his family in Britain, and a
fourth dream in iuuentute“in youth” (22–42), in which
a man named Victoricius, sometimes identified with
Victricius bishop of Rouen (c.330–c.407), bore a
letter with the Vox Hiberionacum“the voice of the
Irish” summoning him to evangelize them. In the fifth
dream Christ spoke within him. In the sixth he saw
and heard the Holy Spirit praying inside his body,
super me,hoc est super interiorem hominem“above
me, that is above my inner man.” In the triumphant
seventh vision, following his degradation, he was
joined to the Trinity as closely as to the pupil of an eye.
After the raid by Coroticus Patrick sent a letter
seeking redress with a priest quem ego ex infantia
docui“whom I have taught from infancy” (implying,
since infancy ended at 7 and ordination to the priest-
hood occurred at 30, that he had been in Ireland more
than 23 years). Rejection of that letter elicited the letter
of excommunication we know as the Epistola. As
Patrick states in it Non usurpo“I am not claiming too
much,” one infers that his critics believed he was
exceeding the limits of his authority. His attempt to
excommunicate from Ireland a tyrant in Britain may
have provoked the attack that he relates at the thematic
crux of the Confessio, an attack on his status as bishop
when he was at least 51, in his senectus “old age”
(which began after 42) by ecclesiastical seniores
“elders” in Britain who tried him during his absence.
They charged him with a sin, committed when he was
14, confessed at least 7 years later, after escaping from
Ireland, before becoming a deacon. The sin was
revealed by the amicissimus“dearest friend” to whom
he had confessed it, the man whose statement Ecce
dandus es tu ad gradum episcopatus“Behold, you are
bound to be appointed to the grade of bishop” stands
at the symmetrical center of the Confessio.
Although modern scholars have supposed that
Patrick was poorly educated, a barely literate rustic