Haddan & Stubbs, note on p. 296. The Epistle to Coroticus is much shorter, and not so generally
accepted. Both documents were first printed in 1656, then in 1668 in the Acta Sanctorum, also in
Migne’s Patrologia (Vol. 53), in Miss Cusack’s Life of St. Patrick, in the work of Ebrard (l.c. 482
sqq.), and in Haddan & Stubbs, Councils (Vol. II., P. II., 296 sqq.).
There is a difference of opinion about Patrick’s nationality, whether he was of Scotch, or
British, or French extraction. He begins his Confession: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and the
least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible with the multitude (Ego Patricius, peccator,
rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus apud plurimos, or, according to
another reading, contemptibilis sum apud plurimos), had for my father Calpornus (or Calphurnius),
a deacon (diaconum, or diaconem), the son of Potitus (al. Photius), a presbyter (filium quondam
Potiti presbyteri), who lived in the village of Bannavem (or Banaven) of Tabernia; for he had a
cottage in the neighborhood where I was captured. I was then about sixteen years old; but I was
ignorant of the true God, and was led away into captivity to Hibernia." Bannavem of Tabernia is,
perhaps Banavie in Lochaber in Scotland (McLauchlan); others fix the place of his birth in Kilpatrick
(i.e. the cell or church of Patrick), near Dunbarton on the Clyde (Ussher, Butler, Maclear); others,
somewhere in Britain, and thus explain his epithet "Brito" or "Briton" (Joceline and Skene); still
others seek it in Armoric Gaul, in Boulogne (from Bononia), and derive Brito from Brittany (Lanigan,
Moore, Killen, De Vinné).
He does not state the instrumentality of his conversion. Being the son of a clergyman, he
must have received some Christian instruction; but he neglected it till he was made to feel the power
of religion in communion with God while in slavery. "After I arrived in Ireland," he says (ch. 6),
"every day I fed cattle, and frequently during the day I prayed; more and more the love and fear of
God burned, and my faith and my spirit were strengthened, so that in one day I said as many as a
hundred prayers, and nearly as many in the night." He represents his call and commission as coming
directly from God through a vision, and alludes to no intervening ecclesiastical authority or episcopal
consecration. In one of the oldest Irish MSS., the Book of Durrow, he is styled a presbyter. In the
Epistle to Coroticus, he appears more churchly and invested with episcopal power and jurisdiction.
It begins: "Patricius, peccator indoctus, Hiberione (or Hyberione) constitutus episcopus, certissime
reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum: inter barbaras utique gentes proselytus et profuga, ob amorem
Dei." (So according to the text of Haddan & Stubbs, p. 314; somewhat different in Migne, Patrol.
LIII. 814; and in Ebrard, p. 505.) But the letter does not state where or by whom he was consecrated.
The "Book of Armagh "contains also an Irish hymn (the oldest monument of the Irish Keltic
language), called S. Patricii Canticum Scotticum, which Patrick is said to have written when he
was about to convert the chief monarch of the island (Laoghaire or Loegaire).^56 The hymn is a
prayer for the special aid of Almighty God for so important a work; it contains the principal doctrines
of orthodox Christianity, with a dread of magical influences of aged women and blacksmiths, such
as still prevails in some parts of Ireland, but without an invocation of Mary and the saints, such as
we might expect from the Patrick of tradition and in a composition intended as a breast-plate or
corselet against spiritual foes. The following is the principal portion:
"5. I bind to myself to-day,—
(^56) The Irish was first published by Dr. Petrie, and translated by Dr. Todd. Haddan & Stubbs (320-323) give the Irish
and English in parallel columns. Some parts of this hymn are said to be still remembered by the Irish peasantry, and repeated
at bed-time as a protection from evil, or "as a religious armor to protect body and soul against demons and men and vices."