[Footnote 138: Among the names of villages in this district of whose history I could find no trace, is one called Erin, the place where Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre was born.]
Let me now add to the etymological evidence a few historical illustrations.
St. Patrick is stated in almost all his biographies to have been a nephew of St. Martin of Tours. St. Martin, though said to be a Celt of Pannonia, was during his military and early ecclesiastical career stationed in this identical district. The well known legend of his division of his cloak with the beggar, who proved to be our Lord himself, is alleged to have taken place at Amiens. It is recorded that he was baptized at Therouanne. The first church raised to his honor was built there. The principal missionaries of the district are said to have been his disciples, and evidently entertained a deep devotion to him, of [{756}] which there are still abundant evidences. [Footnote 139]
[Footnote 139: Of the 420 churches comprised in the ancient diocese of Boulogne, 82 had St. Martin for patron. I also find several dedicated to the Irish St. Maclou and St. Kilian: but, strange to say, not one to St. Victricius.—V. "Histoire des Evêques de Boulogne," par M. l'Abbé E. Van Drival. Boulogne, 1852. ]
St. Patrick, while in captivity at Slemish in Ireland, lived within sight of Scotland. A few miles only separate the coasts at Antrim. But when he escaped, he did not attempt to pass into Scotland. He made his way south, and passed through England to France. He says he was received among the Britons as if (quasi) among his own clan and kin. Doubtless there was close relationship of race and language between the Britons of the island and of the continent. There were Britons and there were Atrebates on both sides of the sea. [Footnote 140] But Britain was not the saint's native place nor his resting-place. He went on, and abode with those whom he calls his brethren of Gaul, "seeing again the familiar faces of the saints of the Lord," until he was summoned to undertake his mission to Ireland.
[Footnote 140: M. Piers, in the paper already cited, quotes H. Amédée Thierry as saying; "Les Brittani furent les premiers qui a'y fixèrent; il habitalent une partie de la Morinie; peut-être par un pieux souvenir ont-ils appelé leur nouvelle patrie la Grande Bretagne. Les Atrebates anglais, originaires de Belgium, résidaient à Caleva ou Galena Atrebatum, à 22 milles de Venta Belgarum dans le canton où est aujourd'hui Windsor." H. Piers adds that there is a tradition that a colony of the Morini had given their name to a distant country of islands which they discovered; but that he has found it impossible to discover the name in any ancient atlas. Perhaps the district of Mourne, on the north-east coast of Ireland, is that indicated. The Irish derivation of the name is at all events identical with the French ]
In his own account of the vision which induced him to undertake the apostolate of Ireland, he says he was called to do so by a man, whose name is variously written Victor, Victoricius, and Victricius. The real name is in all probability Victricius; but if it were Victor or Victoricius, it would be equally easy (were it not for the fear of failing by essaying to prove too much) to identify the source of the saint's inspiration with the same district. Saint Victricius was the great missionary of the Morini at the end of the fourth century; but he had been preceded in that capacity by St. Victoricius, who suffered martyrdom with Sts. Fuscien and Firmin, at Amiens, in A.D. 286. Again, the name Victor is that of a favorite disciple of St. Martin, whom Sulpicius Severns sent to St. Paulinus of Nola, [Footnote 141] and of whom they both write in terms of extraordinary encomium. But the person referred to in the "Confession" is far more probably St. Victricius, [Footnote 142] who was an exact contemporary of St. Patrick, who was engaged on the mission of Boulogne at the time of his escape, and who is said to have been a French Briton himself. Malbrancq's "Annals of the See of Boulogne" aver that in the year 390 the "Morini a Domino Victricio exculti sunt," and that in the year 400 he dedicated their principal church to St Martin. [Footnote 143]
[Footnote 141: S. Paulini Nolani "Opera. " Epistola xxiii. in the "Patrologiae Cursus Compietus" of J. P. Migne, vol. lxi. Paris, 1847. See also the two epistles to St. Victricius, who with St. Martin persuaded Paulinus to withdraw from the world. I hare a suspicion that the disciple of St. Victricius, named in these epistles now as Paschasius, now as Tytichus or Tytius (the name being evidently misprinted, but there being no doubt, as the Bollandists say, that the two names refer to one and the same person), may have been in reality St. Patrick. In his 17th Epistle, St. Paulinus refers to the accounts he had heard from this young priest of the anxiety of St. Victricius for the evangelization of the most remote parts of the globe, and speaks of him as a disciple in every way worthy of his master; "In cujus gratia el humauitate, quasi quasdam virtutam gratiarumque tuarum lineas velut speculo reddente collegimus.">[
[Footnote 142: Franciscus Pommeraeus, O. S. B.. In his "History of the Bishops of Rouen." says St. Victricius was also sometimes called Victoricus and Victoricius.]
[Footnote 143: See also "Acta Sanctorum Augustii;" tom. ii., p. 193. Antverpiae, 1735.]