[P. 16.]—Calpurnius a decurion: Corot. 377₂₀ decorione patre nascor. That Patrick’s family were British provincials and lived in Britain there can be no question: Confession, 370₁₀,₁₂, and 364₁,₂ (cp. Corot. 375₂₃), passages which prove that Patrick regarded Britain as his native land, and that his family lived there continuously from the time of his captivity till his old age. There is no evidence whatever that they had come and settled in Britain during his boyhood, and his biographer in the seventh century writes unhesitatingly that he was Brito natione, in Britannis natus (Muirchu, 494, 6). Patrick does not say himself that he was of British descent, but the presumption that his family was British is confirmed by his Celtic name Sucat (see below, [291]).
[P. 17.]—Decurions in smaller towns. The evidence is collected in Kübler’s article Decurio in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. The canabae which grew up at military stations sometimes received self-governing privileges and had decurions (the evidence is for Apulum in Dacia, Moguntiacum, and Brigetio). There is also evidence for decurions in pagi, but only for Africa. Vici and castella were attributed to the larger towns near which they were situated, and had no ordo decurionum (see Cod. Just. 5. 27. 3. 1; 10. 19. 8). We can therefore infer that Calpurnius was a member of the municipal senate of some town in the neighbourhood of the vicus Bannaventa.
[Ib.]—The condition of decurions or curiales in the fourth and fifth centuries. Chief source: Codex Theodosianus, esp. xii. 1. The subject is well treated and elucidated in Professor Dill’s Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, Bk. iii. chap. 2 (On the Decay of the Middle Class).
[P. 18.]—“Sixteen acres or upwards”: ultra uiginti quinque iugera priuato dominio possidens, Cod. Th. xii. 1, 33.
[Ib.]—“Sinews of the republic”: nerui reipublicae, Novell. Maioriani, vii. 1.
[P. 19.]—Curials who took orders. Julian’s rescript: Cod. Th. xii. i, 50. Enactments of Theodosius I., ib. 121 (A.D. 390); 123 (A.D. 391; cp. esp. § 5).
[P. 20.]—Married clergy. Calpurnius and his father are instances of married clergy, belonging to the period of transition, before the principle of celibacy had been generally recognised. Enjoined by the Spanish Council of Elvira in A.D. 305, this principle had not been universally accepted even in Spain, for it was in answer to an appeal from a Spanish bishop that Pope Siricius wrote his Decretal of A.D. 385, laying down the necessity of celibacy. This ruling expressed the rapidly growing tendency in the western churches, yet at a much later time Gallic councils found it necessary to legislate against married clergy. There is therefore nothing surprising in finding married deacons and presbyters in Britain in the fourth century. It is open to any one who chooses to believe that Calpurnius and Potitus gave up family ties before they took orders; but such a belief would be a pure act of faith, superfluous and ungrounded.
[P. 23.]—The names Patricius and Sucat. The statement of medieval biographers that the name Patricius was first assumed on the occasion of ordination must be regarded as a conjecture to explain the tradition that he had four names. The earliest mention of the four names (Sucat, Magonus, Cothrige, and Patricius) is in Tírechán (p. 302), who found them in a written source. There is no difficulty about Cothrige; it has been recognised (by Todd, Rhŷs, Thurneysen, Zimmer) that it is simply an Irish equivalent for Patricius, with the regular mutation of p to c, which we find in early loan words from the British language (e.g. casc = pascha, cruimthir = premter for presbyter, cp. Zimmer, Early Celtic Church, p. 25). I have pointed out traces of an older (labio-velar) form: Qatrige (“Tradition of Muirchu’s Text,” p. 200). I have also shown (ib. p. 201) that, in early tradition, this name was specially connected with Patrick’s captivity, and this supports the view that he was named Patricius as a child (his Irish captors rendered it Qatrige or Qotrige). The genuineness of the name Sucatus (also recorded by Muirchu, Sochet, p. 494), which corresponds to the modern Welsh hygad, “warlike” (cp. Stokes, Trip. p. 616, and the explanation in the scholia on the hymn Genair Patraicc, l. 3), is generally admitted and derives some support from a similar consideration (Bury, ib. p. 201). It is probable that when Patricius went to Ireland as a bishop his name was generally rendered Patraicc (with p), because it now came in its Latin form, and not as a Brythonic word (Patric?). But we have traces of the use of the other form in petra Coithrigi at Uisnech (Tír. 310₂₅) and petra Coithirgi at Cashel (ib. 331). Before the seventh century, the Sprachgefühl for the mutation of foreign p to c had so completely disappeared that the equation Cothrige = Patricius was not recognised, and an absurd derivation for Cothrige was invented (Tír. 302); but it is significant that this etymology was connected with the captivity.
The fourth name Magonus (Tír.: Magonius in later documents) appears in the Historia Brittonum as Maun. It seems to me to be simply the Roman cognomen Magonus (see C.I.L. v. 4609; viii. 9515).[347]
[P. 23.]—Concessa. There is no reason to doubt the tradition (Muirchu, p. 494) that this was the name of Patrick’s mother. No credit can be attached to the names or existence of numerous sisters (Lupita, etc.) mentioned in later documents. The tradition that Secundinus (Sechnall) was his sister’s son might be regarded as a ground for assuming that he had at least one sister. But it is to be observed that the tradition appears in an extremely suspicious form. In the preface to the Hymn which is called by his name (Lib. Hymnorum, i. p. 3), Secundinus is described as “son of Restitutus of the Lombards of Letha and of Darerca, Patrick’s sister.” But a woman named Dar-erca must have been an Irishwoman, not a Briton; and the expression “Lombards of Letha” for Italy suggests that the statement was not derived from a very ancient source. Secundinus does not appear in Muirchu; in Tírechán he is only mentioned in a list of bishops ordained by Patrick; and in the Additional Notices (p. 346), where he occurs once, nothing is said of kinship. But he is mentioned twice in the Annals.[348] In A.D. 439 (Ann. Ult.) he arrives in Ireland, already a bishop, to help Patrick; and this record must be preferred to Tírechán’s statement that Patrick ordained him. Under A.D. 447 his death is recorded (Ann. Ult. A.D. 448, Ann. Inisf.), in the seventy-fifth year of his age. At that time Patrick cannot have been much more than fifty-eight (see [Appendix C, 3]), so that he would have been about seventeen years younger than his nephew. This is impossible, except on the supposition that the mother of Secundinus was half-sister of Patrick, daughter of a former wife of Calpurnius.