"The proposal seemed shameful to us, Aquitanians, Gauls, and Britons, who, rejecting the offer of help from the treasury, preferred to live at our own expense. Three, however, of the Bishops from Britannia, possessing no means of their own, refused to accept the maintenance offered by their brethren, deeming it a holier thing to burden the treasury than to accept aid from individuals" (Lib. ii., p. 401).
If any doubt exists as to the Britannia referred to, it is solved in the same book, p. 431. Sulpicius Severusi an Aquitanian by birth, speaks of the trial, condemnation and punishment of the Priscillian heretics by the secular Court at Treves in the year 389. Prisciallanus and his followers, Felicissimus, Armenianus, and a woman named Euchrosia were condemned to death and beheaded, but Instantias and Liberianus were banished to the Island of Sylena, "quas ultra Britanniarn sita est" (which is situated beyond Britain). Although it is not precisely known where the Island of Sylena was situated, except that it was somewhere beyond Britain, the Britain referred to surely must be Britain in Gaul, for it is incredible that the Gauls should possess a penal settlement in the North of Scotland, where Sylena must have been situated, if the words "beyond Britain" refer to the Island of Britain.
It is evident that if Sulpicius, who was born in 360—thirteen years before St. Patrick—could speak of Armorica as Britannia, and the Armorican Bishops as Britons, when he wrote his "Sacred Histories," it cannot be a matter of surprise that St. Patrick, if born in Armorica at a later period, should speak of himself as a Briton, and say that he had relatives among the Britons.
Armorica was called Britannia by Sulpicius Severus, but Sidonius Apollinarus, who flourished some time after, called the same country Armorica. It was not, however, unusual, as Carte points out, for the same people and the same country to be called by different names; for example, the Armorici and the Morini were one and the same people, whose names had the same signification—dwellers on the sea coast. (Carte, p. 16; Whitaker's "Genuine History of the Briton," pp. 216—219.)
As the historians just quoted are not concerned with the history of St. Patrick, but are simply tracing the origin and history of the Britons, their testimony is impartial.
Even Camden admits that Dionysius places the Britons on the maritime coast of Gaul, and renders his verses into English:—
"Near the great pillars of the farthest land,
The old Iberians, haughty souls, command
Along the continent, where northern seas
Roll their vast tides, and in cold billows rise:
Where British nations in long tracts appear
And fair-haired Germans ever famed in war."
The early existence of the Britons in Armorica did not depend on the settlement of the veteran Britons, who, having served under Constantino the Great, were rewarded by a gift of the vacant lands in Armorica, as William of Malmesbury narrates in his "History of the Kings"; or on the still larger settlement of Britons who fought for the usurper Maximus, which Ninius mentions, in the mysterious reference which embraced the whole country "from the Great St. Bernard in Piedmont to Cantavic in Picardy, and from Picardy to the western coast of France." The latter settlement took place between the years 383 and 388. The British refugees, who fled in terror from the Picts, Scots, and Saxons, may indeed have added to the numbers of Britons in Gaul from time immemorial, but they certainly were not the first to give the name Britannia to that country.
[Britanniae in the Plural not appropriated to Great Britain]
IT has been often urged, without any solid reason, that the plural Britannise used for Britain in the "Confession" can only refer to Great Britain, because that country was sub-divided by the Romans into five distinct provinces. The reason given cannot be convincing, because Catullus, who died in the year 54, used the plural for Britain before the Roman sub-divisions were made, when he wrote, "Nunc timent Galliae, timent Britanniae"—Caesar, "the Gauls and the Britons fear." The plural was used by St. Patrick when writing the "Confession" nearly one hundred years after the Romans with their divisions had left the country. It was used by Probus, who undoubtedly referred to Armoric Britain when writing about St. Patrick's native country, for he tells us in the plural that the Saint was born in Britain (natus in Britanniis). The plural was, therefore, used both for Britain in Gaul and for the Island of Britain.