[215] The Second Letter to the Corinthians seems to have been especially before him. This was natural. In it Paul was vindicating his character.
[216] The legend will be found in Vit. Trip. pp. 112 sqq.
[217] The old lists of the Armagh succession agree in assigning to Benignus ten years as bishop, so that, as Benignus died in 467 (Ann. Ult., sub anno), he would have succeeded in 457.
[218] March 17.
[219] Oirthir, not to be confounded with the kingdom of Oriel (Oirgéill), of which it formed the eastern portion.
[220] Inundations are a recurring motive in the legends of the Island-plain. See the salt-marsh stories, above, p. 91.
[221] This second incident can be shown to be a subsequent invention. See [Appendix C, 19].
[222] This story is also told by Muirchu, but not in immediate connexion with the story of the waggon and oxen seized by the men of Orior. It seems probable that the latter was suggested by the former. We meet the duplicate waggon and oxen in the Life of St. Abban (Colgan, Acta Sanctorum, i. March 16, cc. 41 sqq.), where the account of that saint’s death and burial and the struggle between the north and the south Leinster men is obviously borrowed from the stories about St. Patrick. Another story of wild bulls drawing a saint’s body to its tomb will be found in the Life of St. Melorus of Cornwall, Acta Sanctorum (Boll.), Jan. 1, vol. i. p. 136.
[223] It is to be seen in the National Museum at Dublin. For the evidence as to the bell and the staff, see notes, [Appendix B]. For the copy of the gospels, which used falsely to be supposed to be his, see note, [Appendix B, on chap. viii. p. 162].
[224] This theory of Professor Zimmer is examined at length in [Appendix C, 21].