Don Philip O'Sullivan, who published "Patriciana Decas" in 1621, strongly upheld this view. Attempts, however, have more recently been made to prove that St. Patrick was a native of Scotland, but there undoubtedly existed a tradition in favour of the belief that St. Patrick came from Gaul to Ireland, and this view is firmly held by Keating and Lanigan, two of our ablest Irish historians.
St. Patrick narrates in his "Confession" that he was born in the suburbs of a town called Bonaven, where there was a Roman encampment, and that, when a youth in his fifteenth year, he was taken prisoner by the Irish Scots, "the nation to whom he showed tender forgiveness." The very year of his capture corresponds with the raid of Niall of the Nine Hostages into Armorica. As the Irish Scots invaded that country just when St. Patrick had attained his fifteenth year, and as the Saint declared that he had been taken prisoner by men of the nation which he had converted, it is more than probable that he was taken prisoner during that raid.
As Bononia, or Boulogne-sur-Mer, was called Bonauen by the Gaulish Celts, and as the "v" and "u" are convertible in Gaelic, the Bonauen of the Gaulish Celts and the Bonaven of St. Patrick's "Confession" may well be one and the same place. Indeed, there are arguments which seem to place their identity beyond reasonable doubt.
St. Fiacc declares that the Apostle of Ireland was born at Nemthur. Now, Nemtor was the name given by the Gaulish Celts to Caligula's tower in the suburbs, and close to the City of Bononia, or Boulogne. St. Fiacc, therefore, gives the name of the district—for the district about Nemthur was named after the prominent landmark in its midst, and St. Patrick the name of the town in the suburbs of which he was born.
According to the Celtic legend, Calphurnius was a Roman officer in charge of the tower, and was slain on the occasion when his son Patrick was made prisoner by the Irish Scots.
A close examination, however, of the "Confession" and of the old Latin lives of the Saint, will, it seems to us, securely determine which of the four theories—the Scotch, the Welsh, the English, or the French—concerning St. Patrick's native country, carried with it the greatest amount of probability.
[Bonaven Taberniae was well known to the Irish Scots]
THIS will appear evident from a close study of the "Confession": "Ego Patritius, peccator, rustissimus et minimus omnium fidelium, et contemptabilissimus apud plurimos, patrem habui Calphurnium diaconum, filium quondam Potiti, presbyteri, qui fuit vico Bonaven Taberniae, villulam enim prope habuit ubi ego in capturam dedi. Annorum tune eram fere XVI."
"I, Patrick, a sinner, the most uncultured and humblest of all the Faithful, and, in the eyes of many, the most contemptible, had for father Calphurnius, a deacon, and the son of Potitus, a priest, who hailed from the suburbs of Bonaven, where the encampment stood, for he possessed a little country seat close by, from whence I was taken captive when I had almost attained my sixteenth year."
The primary meaning of "vicus" is a district, or a quarter of a city, and "villula" signifies "a little country seat" (Smith's "Latin and English Dictionary"). The district of the city of Bonaven alluded to was evidently suburban, because the house in which Calphurnius and his family dwelt was a "little country seat," which was, nevertheless, close to ("prope") the town.