Patrick, apostle of the Irish

Abstract

Two authentic works have survived to the modern era, an Epistola ad milites Corotici , ‘Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus’, in which Patrick excommunicates a post-Roman British tyrant who had murdered some Christian catechumens and sold others into slavery, and a Confessio , ‘Confession’, in which Patrick explains himself to those whom he had converted in Ireland and justifies his mission to those who had opposed it in Britain. The letters survive in eight manuscripts: the earliest giving an abridged text copied at the beginning of the ninth century in Armagh; a second during the tenth century, perhaps in the diocese of Soissons; a third about the year 1000 at Worcester; a fourth during the eleventh century, owned if not written at Jumièges; three during the twelfth century in northern France and in England; and one during the seventeenth century. As among these eight manuscripts seven are independent of each other, the text of the letters is fairly secure. In these compositions Patrick describes his fatherland as Brittanniae ‘the Britains’ and neighbouring regions as Galliae ‘the Gauls’, and he refers incidentally to coinage, solidi and scriptulae , implying that he was born while Roman administration still functioned in a Britain divided into several provinces, perhaps about ad 390, certainly before 410. He states that he was born into a family of landowners, slaveholders, civil servants and churchmen.

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