Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars

by John Healy

This Confession contains many interesting references to the personal history and apostolic labours of St. Patrick, which are not always remembered; and which ought to be separated from the more uncertain and controverted facts of his history.

His father was Calpornus, or Calpornius, a deacon, who was the son of Potitus, and Potitus was the son of Odissus, a priest. The text, however, leaves it doubtful whether the word priest belongs to Potitus or to Odissus.[89] His father dwelt in the township (vico) of Bannavem Taberniae. He had also a small villa not far off, “where I was made captive at the age of about sixteen years.” He was in ignorance of the knowledge of the true God,[90] which is to be understood of his defective training as a Christian during the years of his boyhood; for he adds that he did not keep God’s Commandments, and was not obedient to the priests—our priests—as he calls them, when they admonished him to attend to his salvation. Therefore it was God punished him by this captivity in a strange land, at the end of the world. But that God pitied his youth and ignorance, and showed him mercy, consoling the captive as a father consoles his son. For which he earnestly thanks God, and takes occasion to profess his faith in the Holy Trinity, as Arianism was then rampant in the Church. After much hesitation he resolved to write this Confession in order to show the true motives of his own heart to his friends and relations.

The reason of his delay and hesitation was the rudeness of his style and language in consequence of his captivity when he had to make use of a strange tongue. But he should be forgiven, for the conversion of the Irish was the epistle of salvation, which he had written by deeds, not by words, not in ink, but in the Spirit of God. Though he was a stone sunk in the mire, a man of no account in the eyes of the world, yet God in His mercy exalted him; for which he will always give earnest thanks to God. Hence he wishes to make known God’s goodness in his regard, and to leave it as a legacy of God’s mercy to his brethren, and to the thousands of spiritual children whom he baptized.

When he came to Ireland (Hiberione), his daily employment was to feed cattle (pecora); but then it was the love of God began to grow within him, and he used to pray even up to a hundred times a day and as many in the night; he used to rise before the dawn to pray in the woods and mountains in the midst of rain, and hail, and snow.

One night he heard a voice saying to him in sleep—“your ship is ready”—and he travelled 200 miles to the port, where he had never been before, and where he knew no one. Thus after six years’ captivity he succeeded in reaching this port. The master of the vessel at first would not take him on board, but afterwards he relented, when Patrick was returning to the cottage where he had got lodging. He was called back, and invited to go on board as one of themselves; but he declined familiar intimacy[91] through fear of God, because they were Gentiles.

In three days they disembarked in a desert land, through which they travelled for twenty-eight days, and were well nigh starving, until relieved at the prayer of Patrick. Reference is then made to the great stone that seemed to fall upon him in a dream, from the weight of which he was relieved by invoking Elias. It seems, too, that he fell into a second captivity, which continued for two months; but the text here is uncertain, and can scarcely be relied on.

He succeeded, however, in reaching the home of his parents in Britain—in Britannis—and they most earnestly besought him to remain with them, now that he had escaped from so many dangers.

But the Angel Victor, in the guise of a man from Ireland, gave him a letter in which the “voice of the Irish” called him away; the voices of those who dwelt near the wood of Focluth, from which he seems to have escaped, also called upon him to come once more and walk amongst them. The Spirit of God, too, spoke within his soul and urged him to return to Ireland. The same Holy Spirit encouraged him to persevere when objection was made by certain elders to his elevation to the episcopacy. Therefore, he was encouraged to undertake the great task, and his conscience never blamed him for what he had done.

It would be tedious, he adds, to recount all his missionary labours, or even a part of them. Twelve times his life (anima) was in danger, from which God rescued him, and from many other plots and ambuscades also, and therein God rewarded him for giving up his parents and his country, and all their gifts, and heeding not their prayers and tears, that he might preach the Gospel in Ireland, where he had to endure insult and persecution even unto bonds. But he strove to do the work faithfully, and God blessed his efforts, and those wonderful things were accomplished by the apostle, to which we have already referred.

Hence, though anxious to visit his parents and his native country in Britain, and even to revisit the brethren in Gaul—here referred to for the first time—and to see the face of God’s Saints there, he was bowed in spirit, and would not leave his beloved converts, but resolved to spend the rest of his life amongst them.