The Confession is preserved in the Codex Armachanus (ff. 22-24) along with other Patrician documents which will claim our attention. But the text is not complete. Considerable portions are missing, which are found in later MSS. There is nothing in these portions to excite suspicion of their genuineness; in fact we have positive evidence that one of these missing parts was read in the text of the Confession in the seventh century, for Tírechán (310₅) refers to a passage (372₃₃) which is not found in the Armagh MS., and on the other hand there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the text of these later MSS. does not represent the full extent of the original work.[227] The question arises, How are the omissions in the oldest MS. to be accounted for? The theory that the scribe omitted passages which were illegible in his exemplar cannot be seriously entertained, as there are no proofs to support it. The statements made by Todd,[228] Haddan and Stubbs,[229] and Zimmer[230] as to the obscurity or defectiveness of the copy used by the Armagh scribe are not borne out by the alleged evidence.[231] The nature and subject of the omitted passages give us no clue, for, though it might be just conceivable that one passage was deliberately left out because it refers to a fault committed by Patrick in his boyhood, the omission of the other portions cannot be similarly explained; and an explanation which does not apply to them all will carry no conviction. It seems that the imperfect state of this text of the Confession may be due to no more recondite cause than the haste and impatience of the scribe to finish his task. There may have been some external motive for such haste and carelessness; and as a matter of fact there is positive evidence that he stopped before his proposed task was finished. The heading of the Confession is: Incipiunt Libri Sancti Patricii Episcopi. This shows, as has often been observed, that the scribe intended to copy both the Confession and the Letter against Coroticus. But he did not fulfil his purpose; he never copied the Letter. The Confession ends on f. 24 vᵒ b; the second column is a blank; and therefore it is certain that the Letter was never included in this MS. Further, the paragraph[232] which the scribe has attached to the end of the Confession ought, possibly, to have followed the Letter, though of course the autograph volumen may have contained only the Confession. It seems then most simple to suppose that the scribe was hurried, and that in writing out the Confession he “scamped” his work for the same reason which impelled him to omit copying the Letter.
It is perhaps superfluous now to defend the genuineness of the Confession, especially as Professor Zimmer, the most important critic who impugned it, now admits it. Two considerations are decisive. (1) There is nothing in the shape of an anachronism in the document, nothing inconsistent with its composition about the middle of the fifth century. (2) As a forgery it would be unintelligible. Spurious documents in the Middle Ages were manufactured either to promote some interest, political, ecclesiastical, local, or simply as rhetorical exercises. But the Confession does not betray a vestige of any ulterior motive; there is no reference to Armagh, no reference to Rome, no implication of any interest which could prompt falsification. And what Irish writer in the sixth century[233] would have composed as a rhetorical exercise, and attributed to Patrick, a work written in such a rude style? But besides these considerations, which are decisive, the emotion of the writer is unmistakable; and I cannot imagine how any reader could fail to recognise its genuineness.[234]
A critical edition (the first accurate text) has been published by Rev. N. J. D. White in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1904, to which I may refer for an account of the MSS. and previous editions.
2. The Letter against Coroticus
The other extant work of St. Patrick is the Letter, which may be most conveniently called the “Letter against Coroticus.” It is addressed to Christian subjects of Coroticus, a ruler in north Britain; its motive and contents will be dealt with App. B, p. 316. It is not contained in the Armagh MS., but it was known to Muirchu in the seventh century; and that the scribe of the Armagh MS. knew it and intended to copy it may (as pointed out above, p. 226) be justly inferred from the heading before the Confession: incipiunt libri sancti Patricii episcopi. The document is preserved in a St. Vaast MS., from which it was printed in the Acta Sanctorum (March 17); in two Fell MSS., which were collated for the edition of Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, ii. 314 sqq.); and in a Cottonian MS. (Nero EI), the text of which is given in Stokes’s edition (Trip. vol. ii. 375 sqq.).
The genuineness of the document[235] seems to be written on its face, as in the case of the Confession; that a falsification should have taken this form would be inexplicable. An analysis of the language and style points clearly to the same authorship as the Confession; and the occurrence of such phrases in both documents as certissime reor or the favourite utique is characteristic of a writer who was indoctus and had no great command of language. It is noteworthy, and need not excite suspicion, that in both documents he uses the same formula in describing himself:—
Confession, 374₃₆, Patricias peccator indoctus scilicet Hiberione conscripsit.
Letter, 375₁₁, Patricias peccator indoctus scilicet Hiberione constitutus episcopum me esse fateor.
[Critical edition by Rev. N. J. D. White, in Proc. of R.I.A. 1904.]