¹ All the manuscripts containing the passage, with the exception of the Book of Armagh, give ‘ fourteenth ’. The Book of Armagh writes X decimo. There it would seem that the scribe began to write XIIII, changed his mind, inserted the punctum of deletion on the X, wrote decimo and neglected to add quarto.

² The affair of the pigs was followed by two nights’ recuperation. These two nights would seem to be included in the remaining fourteen days of the journey.

³ John Gwynn in his edition of the Book of Armagh (Dublin, 1912) accepts siccitas as meaning either, but inclines to the view that what it is here intended to convey is shelter.

⁴ The originality of the entire episode and, in addition, of Patrick’s first capture ‘ with thousands of others ’, has been challenged by Weijenborg, R. in ‘ Deux sources grecques de la “Confession de Patrice” ’ (Rev. d’Hist. Ecc. 62, no. 2, 1967)Google Scholar, where it is asserted that these parts of the Confession derive from ‘ Narrations du moine ermite Nil ’, related in turn to the ‘ Actes d’Archëlaüs ’. The comparison made in the article concerned between these Narrations and Actes and the Confession is, however, so strained and some of the etymologies submitted there so fanciful as not to merit serious consideration.

⁵ Strangely enough, Muirchú ignores completely the description given in chapter 22 of the second stage of the twenty-eight days. Possibly he felt that the appearance of the pigs and the find of honey were sufficient evidence, at that point, of Patrick’s miraculous powers.

⁶ As pointed out in Hanson’s Saint Patrick: his origins and career (1968), his use of the past habitual in Confession 49–51 shows him as being by then in some form of retirement. Such a situation would give him opportunity to muse over the crises of his career.

⁷ Thought, New York, 1931.

⁸ Mac Neill (Saint Patrick, 1932) and Bieler (St Patrick and the coming of Christianity, 1967) think that the sixty days episode belongs to some later phase of his life. If that were so, it would have no relevance at this particular point in the story save as an instance of in die pressurae meae mentioned in (chapter 20. But in the light of what he adds to in die pressurae meae about the Spirit calling out in his stead, it is clear that the reference there is to a spiritual testing. As well as that, if the sixty days captivity occurred at some later stage, it would be to be expected that he would have instanced it in chapter 52, instead of a mere fourteen days’ captivity there recalled by him as one of his trials.

⁹ As will be shown later in this article, in the Britain of the time a group of wandering Irishmen would have been regarded as public enemies. This would probably be so also in fifth–century Gaul, but, as will be seen, the chance of their having been headed for Gaul, or of their having reached there by accident, was nil.

¹⁰ ‘From il March to 26 May and again from 15 September to 9 November navigation was possible but incerta et discrimini propior ’ (Journal of Roman studies, XV, 69, footnote 3). (Incidentally, this renders it extremely unlikely that in any given year Patrick returned to Ireland just in time to celebrate Easter.)

¹¹ St Patrick and the coming of Christianity. Their lone swineherd may have fled or gone into concealment before what he would take to be a raiding party, that is, if he was aware at all of their presence.

¹² For a rural population with a primitive standard of subsistence summer is the time of greatest scarcity– On this see Mac Cuarta’s poem Ceithre ráithí na bliana (‘The four seasons’), written about 1700.

¹³ This is seen in the opening of chapter 18, where Patrick, in an effort to show the working of Providence in his favour, wishes to say that the ship had been moved from its slip on the same day on which he arrived, but for want of an antecedent dies or other prior reference to that day cannot use eadem and has recourse to ilia.

¹⁴ It is curious that the Bollandists have MS ch. 22 immediately precede MS ch. 21. Whether this was the order in their exemplar or was due to their copyist’s eye straying (conversely to the eye of the scribe who made the original error in 2 or in some pre–S redaction) or whether their copyist or Papebroch himself made the change deliberately, we cannot tell. Todd in his Life believes that this transposition and their writing of ‘Et iterum post annos [non] multos’ were done deliberately, in an effort to mend the confusion. He classes both of these as ‘ violent alterations ’, but in the former it would now appear that they were on the right track.

(When we speak of the manuscript chapter or chapters, this is merely for convenience in relation to the manuscript sequence. The manuscript passages are of course not numbered. The accepted numbering is that of Newport White.)

¹⁵ Cook, A. S., ‘Augustine’s journey from Rome to Richborough’, Speculum, 1 (Boston, 1926).Google Scholar

¹⁶ This –point might repay further examination. The Greeks distinguished between a person captured in war and sold (νδρττοδον) and a born slave (δοΟλος), with the state of the latter superior to that of the former. Patrick himself uses seruitus for his own original condition in Ireland and for that of the Coroticus captives, but seruitium for that of his bondswomen converts.

¹⁷ This is to be seen also in iterum reddebam (Conf. 49), where iterum adds nothing save emphasis to reddo.

¹⁸ If it be accepted that the defensio took place before his return to Ireland, then it must also be accepted that he visited the continent, for he explicitly informs us that he was not in Britain at the time. The objections to the defensio having occurred at an early stage, however, are formidable. It seems unthinkable that the writer of the Confession, a man of the utmost humility and of the most perfect trust in the Lord’s design, should have been on the edge of spiritual despair because his superiors, for any or no reason, failed to select him as a bishop–leader of the Irish mission. This view is reinforced by his telling us that he felt himself unworthy to be a bishop (Confession 32), that he wavered seriously in his vocation for the Irish mission (Confession 28) and that almost up to the moment of departure for Ireland he had hesitations and self–questionings on the propriety of his going (Confession 46).

On the other hand, an ageing bishop with a long, laborious and successful missionary episcopate to his credit might well be pardoned for falling into near–despair in the face of a verdict from his superiors that he had undertaken his life’s work from unworthy motives (Confession 26, 61).

¹⁹ Some pardonable exaggeration must be allowed for in this phrase. It is probably an unconscious parallel to the ‘ tot milia ’ whom Patrick later converted.

²⁰ All this is a further argument, if such were necessary, against a voyage to Gaul. If they were bound for Britain, they would have brought enough provisions for the crossing there and back, say six days in all, and for a day or two on shore, but no more than that, for the navigation season was dosing in. This eight days’ provisions would have seen them through five days of their overland journey. They would not necessarily have rationed themselves, as in the beginning they would have hoped shortly to come across a human habitation or somehow to have procured food. If on the other hand they were bound for Gaul, the provision for the voyage there and back, including a short stay on shore, should have lasted them for most, if not all, of the first half of their overland journey. In either case their provision for the hounds would not of course have been intended to cover a return journey for these.

²¹ Incidentally, this points to his having been over thirty years of age (iuventus ended about then) before he began even to consider returning to Ireland, for in chapter 15 he tells us that the conversion of the Irish was something which in his youth (in iuventute mea) he had not even thought of.