saint patrick's twenty-eight days' journey

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

Saint Patrick's Twenty-Eight Days' JourneyAuthor(s): T. Ó RaifeartaighSource: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 64 (Sep., 1969), pp. 395-416Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30005705 .

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IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES

VOL. XVI No. 64 SEPTEMBER 1969

Saint Patrick's twenty-eight days' journey

he sole piece of 'straight' narrative, that is, of incident following closely upon incident, which Patrick has left us is the account of his experiences on the way home from Ireland (chapters 18-23

of the Confession). Briefly, on making land he and the ship's crew pushed inland through a barren and apparently uninhabited region, where they came near to starvation. Such was their plight that the

captain called on Patrick to justify his claim that the Christian god was all-powerful, for it was doubtful, he said, whether they should ever see another human face. Just then, however, they came upon a herd of pigs, on which they regaled themselves. Up to the fourteenth'

day thereafter2 food was available to them in abundance, including a find of tree honey, and, in implicit contrast to their previous situation, they had also fire and siccitas, that is, dry weather (or perhaps shelter)."

On the fourteenth day of the second stage of their travels (the twenty-eighth after their landing) they were again without food, but on that very day they encountered some other human beings.

1 All the manuscripts containing the passage, with the exception of the Book of Armagh, give 'fourteenth'. The Book of Armagh writes

*

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.

395



396 SAINT PATRICK'S TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY

The narrative is interrupted once by an account of a strange dream and again by the mention, apparently in parenthesis, of Patrick having suffered a second captivity, this time for a period of sixty days.

The manuscript order of the passages is as follows: 18 Et illa die qua perveni profecta est navis de loco suo et locutus sum ut haberem unde navigare cum illis et gubernator displicuit illi et acriter cum indignatione respondit: 'Nequaquam tu nobiscum adpetes ire'. Et cum haec audiissem, separavi me ab illis ut venirem ad tegoriolum ubi hospitabam et in itinere coepi orare et antequam orationem consummarem audivi unum ex illis et fortiter exclamavit post me: 'Veni cito, quia vocant te homines isti', et statim ad illos reversus sum et coeperunt mihi dicere: ' Veni, quia ex fide recipimus te: fac nobiscum amicitiam quo modo volueris'--et illa die reppuli sugere mammellas eorum propter timorem Dei, sed verumtamen ab illis speravi venire in fidem Christi, quia gentes erant-et ob hoc obtinui cum illis, et protinus navigavimus.

19 Et post triduum terram cepimus et viginti octo dies per desertum iter fecimus et cibus defuit illis et fames invaluit super eos. Et alio die coepit gubernator mihi dicere: 'Quid est, Christiane? Tu dicis deus tuus magnus et omnipotens est: quare ergo non potes pro nobis orare? quia nos a fame periclitamur; dificile est enim ut aliquem hominem videamus'. Ego enim confidenter dixi illis: 'Convertimini ex fide ex toto corde ad Dominum Deum meum quia nihil est impossibile illi, ut hodie cibum mittat vobis in viam vestram usque dum satiamini, quia ubique habundat illi'. Et adjuvante Deo ita factum est: ecce grex porcorum in via ante oculos nostros apparuit, et multos ex illis interfecerunt et ibi duas noctes manserunt et bene refecti et canes eorum repleti sunt, quia multi ex illis defecerunt et secus viam semivivi relicti sunt.

Et post hoc summas gratias egerunt Deo et ego honorificatus sum sub oculis eorum, et ex hac die cibum habundanter habuerunt: etiam mel silvestre invenerunt et mihi partem obtulerunt et unus ex illis dixit: 'Immolaticium est ': Deo gratias, exinde nihil gustavi.

20 Eadem vero nocte eram dormiens et fortiter tentavit me satanas, quod memor ero quamdiu fuero in hoc corpore, et cecidit super me veluti saxum ingens et nihil membrorum meorum praevalens. Sed unde me venit ignaro in spiritu ut Heliam vocarem? Et inter haec vidi in caelum solem oriri et dum clamarem 'Helia, Helia' viribus meis, ecce splendor solis illius decidit super me et statim discussit a



SAINT PATRICK'S TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY 397 me omnem gravitudinem, et credo quod a Christo Domino meo subventus sum et spiritus eius iam tunc clamabat pro me et spero quod sic erit in die pressurae meae, sicut in evangelio inquit: In illa die, Dominus testatur non vos estis qui loquimini, sed spiritus Patris vestri qui loquitur in vobis.

21 Et iterum post annos multos adhuc capturam dedi. Ea nocte prima itaque mansi cum illis. Responsum autem divinum audivi dicentem mihi: 'Duobus mensibus eris cum illis'. Quod ita factum est: nocte illa sexagesima liberavit me Dominus de manibus eorum.

22 Etiam in itinere praevidit nobis cibum et ignem et siccitatem cotidie donec quarto decimo die pervenimus homines. Sicut superius insinuavi, viginti et octo dies per desertum iter fecimus; et ea nocte qua pervenimus homines de cibo vero nihil habuimus.

23 Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram cum parentibus meis (qui me ut filium susceperunt et ex fide rogaverunt me ut vel modo ego post tantas tribulationes quas ego pertuli nusquam ab illis discederem) et ibi scilicet vidi in visu noctis virum venientem quasi de Hiberione, cui nomen Victoricus....

An examination of the above sequence shows that it is not in accord with the actual order of events. The abundance of food, the availability of fire and the dry weather (or shelter) of chapter 22, which describes the second half of the journey, must have been seen by Patrick and his companions as a continuation of the divine favour which in chapter 19 had sent their way the herd of pigs and the honey. All these phenomena were evidently in sharp contrast to the conditions which had marked the first stage of their twenty-eight days' trudge. Their eventually making human contact was similarly in contrast to the captain's despondency, during the first stage, as to their ever laying eyes on another human being. Finally, at the end of chapter 22 Patrick once again mentions, this time in connection with the period of plenty, the twenty-eight days trek per desertum which followed their landing. Until after the twenty-eight days, therefore, there is no room in time for the sixty-days' captivity of chapter 21. Even if we turn the position around so as to include the twenty-eight days of chapters 9g and 22 in the sixty of chapter 21, again chapter 22, treating, as it does, of the second half of the twenty- eight days, should have preceded chapter 21, which includes mention of how the sixty days' captivity ended.




The essential continuity of the events of Chapter 22 with those of

chapter I9 has indeed never been seriously challenged.4 Nevertheless, all the relevant manuscripts are at one in the Latin sequence set out above. This must therefore have been the sequence in the archetype Z postulated by Bieler for them and dated by him to the first third of the seventh century. The passages were in this order too in the version used later in the seventh century by Muirchi', for he too sets the dream immediately after the finding of the honey and has the

sixty days' captivity follow immediately on the dream.5 In explanation of the discrepancy between the actual order of events

and the manuscript sequence it might be contended that Patrick was not a very coherent narrator. It could, for instance, be argued that the flow of events as related in chapters 26-32 of the Confession likewise fails to follow a strict chronology. On further examination of the latter chapters, however, it will be seen that there the writer was not

tracing, as in chapters 18-23, a succession of fortuitous happenings. Rather was he presenting an expos6, composed under great emotional stress, of the nature and circumstances of a single episode which had

brought him to the verge of spiritual despair. Nor, if chapter 32 be read for what it is, a piece of regretful musing6 on his former friend's volte-face, is there any real chronological inconsequence in the expos6 as a whole.

In fact, the Confession contains a number of 'flash-backs' which belong to the art of telling a story. Chapters 18-23 remain, however, the sole piece of 'straight' narrative to be found in the writings. Can

4 The originality of the entire episode and, in addition, of Patrick's first capture 'with thousands of others ', has been challenged by R. Weijenborg in 'Deux sources grecques de la "Confession de Patrice"' (Rev. d'Hist. Ecc., lxii, no. 2, 1967), where it is asserted that these parts of the Confession derive from 'Narrations du moine ermite Nil', related in turn to the 'Actes d'Archtlaiis'. 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, Muirchii 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 ithen in some form of retirement. Such a situation would give him opportunity to muse over the crises of his career.



SAINT PATRICK'S TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY 399 the putting of the cart before the horse in these chapters really be accounted for by an innate confusion of mind on Patrick's part ?

We must ask ourselves in the first place if he was likely to have suffered from such confusion. It is beyond belief that this could have been so, for, humanly speaking, even that absolute singleness of purpose which was his chief characteristic would not have brought his mission to success if he had not also been endowed with unusual organising ability. That he was a good organiser, and knew it, is shown by his fear that if he were to leave Ireland the enterprise might collapse (Confession 43)-

It is true that the Confession is pervaded by what is to us an exasperating habit of ellipsis, often at points when we should dearly like some glimpse of historical detail, but it is too often forgotten that its writer was not concerned in the least with what future generations might like to know. As is clear from chapter 34 of the Confession, he took it that with the gospel now preached to the end of the earth the course of history was nearing its close. Despite some rhetoric of apparently immediate import in the Confession, his description of it as to some degree his exagalliae or legacy implies that he did not envisage its contents as becoming public property during his lifetime. His chief purpose therefore in setting it down was not the provision of information for its own sake to the 'brethren', its main addressees, who were already fully aware of the principal elements of the story, but the sustaining beyond his death of their confidence that the mission had been carried out under the direct inspiration of the Spirit.

Neither a habit of ellipsis, however, nor, as in his case, a limited command of his medium and almost total lack of a polished style need play any important part in the actual ordering of a piece of simple narrative. Rather was Patrick's lack of polish in some ways an advantage in the telling of a plain story plainly. Indeed it was not beyond him to seek after clarity even to the point of repetition, as when he insists twice over that from the time of landing until he and his companions made contact with other human beings his journey covered in all a period of twenty-eight days. Accordingly, before he is condemned on a charge of incoherence, an explanation of the manuscript arrangement of the order of events must be sought elsewhere.

Kenney, writing of the mention in chapter 21 of a second captivity, has this comment to make:

I do not believe that he could be so incoherent or illogical as to have written this passage as it now stands. I suggest a textual flaw-for which




there is some but very slight, manuscript evidence--older than all our manuscript versions.7

It cannot now be known what Kenney had in mind in the way of such manuscript evidence, but it is proposed here to try to show that the solution does lie further back than our manuscripts and even than their archetype. The flaw in question is not strictly a textual one, for chapter 21 is in itself a perfectly clear statement. The source of the difficulty lies in what would appear to have been a misplacing of two of the chapters concerned, with at least one of these misplacings occurring in a pre-: redaction.

In the whole matter the first question which presents itself is at whose hands Patrick was confined. Was it at those of his fellow- travellers, as believed by, among others, Todd, Newport White and John Gwynn? These, in their endeavours to rationalise the confusion of the manuscript sequence, have him regard his stay with the ship's crew as the second captivity of which he speaks and so include the twenty-eight days in a total of sixty.8 As already seen, however, this theory does not solve the problem of the discrepancy between the actual and the manuscript order of events. Besides, the ship's crew had attributed to their companion's influence with the Christian god their deliverance from starvation, for he tells us that they accorded him honour and that in gratitude they also sacrificed a part of the honey which had come their way. Thereafter, as day followed day and they continued to enjoy an abundance of food, as well as the other favours mentioned, their confidence in the efficacy of Patrick's prayers must, if anything, have increased. Finally, when on what was to be the last day of their wanderings they were again without sustenance, they would undoubtedly have had recourse once more to the good graces of their benefactor.

7 Thought, New York, I93I. 8 Mac Neill (Saint Patrick, 1932) and Bieler (St Patrick and the coming of Christianity, I967) 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.



SAINT PATRICK'S TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY 401

Furthermore, in the unlikely event of their having been in a position to move about unmolested9 for eighty-eight days in all or even sixty days, instead of their assuming the additional chore of guarding an obviously harmless prisoner all their energies would have been directed to regaining their ship or reaching overland some port. In those days it was unusual for even the Romans to attempt navigation of the open sea except between 25 May and 24 September'o and, as will be seen, the time margin for return was drawing in.

These considerations render the conclusion inescapable that Patrick's captors were not the ship's crew. But the only other human

beings in the picture, those to whom he refers in the phrase pervenimus homines, do not make their appearance until the end of the twenty- eight days. Accordingly, it can only have been then and by these that he was made captive.

Not only then does the actual order of events call for chapter 21, with its sixty days, to follow chapter 22, with its twenty-eight days, but in the sequence so established the sense of the opening words of

chapter 21 (Et iterum post annos multos adhuc capturam dedi) fits in perfectly with that of the final words of chapter 22 (pervenimus homines). On their coming across fellow humans, who after twenty- eight days could not have been there by assignation with them and so must have been inhabitants of the country, it was, as will be seen, a natural consequence that they should be placed under restraint by these.

When one end of a piece of jigsaw fits correctly, the other end will also be found to fall into place. This is so here. With the end of

chapter 22 fitted as above into the beginning of chapter 21 (and with the account of the dream in chapter 20 regarded for the moment as

being in parenthesis), the beginning of chapter 22 is seen as the natural and unbroken continuance of chapter 19. The narrative there would run thus: Et ex hac die cibum habundanter habuerunt: etiam mel

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 I 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.)




silvestre invenerunt et mihi partem obtulerunt et unus ex illis dixit: 'Immolaticium est': Deo gratias, exinde nihil gustavi: Etiam in itinere praevidit nobis cibum et ignem et siccitatem cotidie.

In order further to bring out the essential continuity of the thread of narrative as rearranged, it may at this point be well to make the wilderness (desertum) through which the party travelled flower a little. The word desertum does not connote a region which because of devastation or for any other reason had been vacated. It means simply an uninhabited place. Neither need the region concerned have presented a diameter involving a twenty-eight days' journey or one of even half that distance, for, as is clear from the remark of the captain, they were hopelessly lost, and in such circumstances would have walked in a circle or partly so. In the Sunday Times of I Septem- ber I968 there is a description of how two men, lost in a desert, on the ninth day of what they thought was good progress found themselves only 48 miles from their stranded plane. 'To-day ', one of them wrote in his diary, 'we walked in a complete circle and came to a point where we were two days ago.'

Incidentally, the area was not quite devoid of inhabitants, for, as Bieler has shown, porcus is the domestic pig." While therefore the first part of their march was through totally barren territory, the second stage was not, for a herd of domestic pigs was unlikely to be found straying in such a region. This unlikelihood would be even greater if the countryside had been devastated. One could as easily imagine a number of pigs wandering at will during the great Irish famine of 1847 as in the wake of a plundering host such as, say, the Vandals. In the fifth century domestic pigs in a sparsely populated area would have been turned loose to fend for themselves on mast of oak or beech (Caesar noted a supply of both these trees in Britain), in the autumn season, when mast would be on the ground. This points to the party having reached woodland, as do the availability of firewood and the finding of tree honey. Every country schoolboy knows that honey is to be found in meadow (in the wake of the scythe) or in hollows in trees, so that the adjective silvestre here assumes a special significance.

Siccitas normally means dry weather, but here possibly shelter, which too would be afforded by woodland. In either sense its mention

1 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.




is obviously intended as by way of contrast to their having suffered from heavy rains in a bleak countryside during the first stage of the trek. As has been seen, the voyage can only have been started on between late May and early September. The pigs turned loose to find mast, the honey already stored in some quantity by bees and the rainstorms (it is significant that there is no mention of thirst, which is harder to bear than hunger), all these hint at autumn, which season indeed Patrick, as a practical person,12 would have been likely to choose for his flight. Moreover, we are told that during this second

stage they found plenty of food daily. A wooded area would at that season have yielded berries and nuts (the latter an important article of nutrition at the time, as we know from the annals). A further consideration is that countrymen of the time would have been unlikely to have left on an expedition until their own oat harvest had been

saved, say by late August or early in September. Even a thousand

years later it was customary in Ireland as far as possible to avoid absence on campaign or the like during harvest time.

On what proved to be the final day, when the supply of pigs, of which they had killed many (multos), was exhausted, they had no luck in foraging. This may have been because they had broken

through the woods to open country again. In such case a human

group or settlement would, by the light of their fires (he tells us they met after nightfall) or otherwise, have quickly attracted the notice of the travellers or vice versa. At any rate, on a day when once again they were foodless they ran into a party of fellow humans.

It is clear that the pigs, tree honey, firewood, siccitas and the season of the year which is implicit in the narrative are of a piece. However disconnected the mode of telling, it would have been utterly unnatural to split in two the chain which links all these. But this is

exactly what the manuscripts do, by inserting between the first and second halves of the twenty-eight days' journey the long account of the dream and the reference to a sixty days' captivity.

The dream, being a subjective experience, could have occurred at any stage of the proceedings. The description of it could therefore stand in parenthesis at any point, but, as it happens, there is textual evidence that the account of the dream, that is, chapter 20o, has also been misplaced.

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 rdithi na bliana ('The four seasons '), written about 1700.




For the opening words of chapter 20, Eadem vero nocte, the close texture of Latin idiom requires an antecedent nox" or prior reference to such, but as the manuscript order stands there is no such antecedent or prior reference. A possible one is ea nocte qua pervenimus homines, but, as has been seen, this should be followed by capturam dedi. The only other such antecedents are ea nocte prima and nocte illa sexagesima. Of these the latter is the obvious one. Chapter 20, with its account of the dream, must therefore have originally come not before but immediately after chapter 21, thus: Nocte illa sexagesima liberavit me Dominus de manibus eorum: eadem vero nocte eram dormiens et fortiter tentavit me satanas.

Chapters I9-22 must therefore have originally read as follows:

i9 . . . Etiam mel silvestre invenerunt et mihi partem obtulerunt et unus ex illis dixit: 'Immolaticium est ': Deo gratias, exinde nihil gustavi. [22 in the MS order]. Etiam in itinere praevidit nobis cibum et ignem et siccitatem cotidie donec quarto decimo die pervenimus homines. Sicut superius insinuavi, viginti et octo dies per desertum iter fecimus; et ea nocte qua pervenimus homines de cibo vero nihil habuimus.

[2 21 in the MS order]. Et iterum post annos multos adhuc capturam dedi. Ea nocte prima itaque mansi cum illis. Responsum autem divinum audivi dicentem mihi: 'Duobus mensibus eris cum illis '. Quod ita factum est: nocte illa sexagesima liberavit me Dominus de manibus eorum.

[20 in the MS order]. Eadem vero nocte eram dormiens et fortiter tentavit me sa-tanas etc.

23 Et iterum post paucos annos eram in Britanniis cum parentibus meis etc.

The exchange of place between chapters 20o and 22 was not a simple matter of their transposing. The only evident reason for the Z or pre-2 transfer of chapter 22 from its natural position as the continuance of chapter Ig to where it now stands is that a copyist, visually confusing the Et iterum post opening of chapter 21 with the Et iterum post opening of chapter 23, inserted chapter 22 before

IS This is seen in the opening of chapter i8, 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 illa.




chapter 23 instead of where it should have gone, before chapter 2.1. To permit, however, of such a visual error, the two Et iterum openings would have had to be close together. It has been seen that so far from having been close together in the autograph, they were there separated by the lengthy account of the dream (chapter 2o). Before, therefore, a copyist could have committed the visual error in question, the account of the dream must already have been mistransferred to its present position as chapter 20.

The only reason that can be assigned to this misplacing of the 'dream' chapter is simple inadvertence. The length of the passage may have required a folio, which could have been misplaced. An entire folio seems perhaps a tall order, but this would depend on its dimensions and on the size of the lettering originally used. Patrick and his immediate successors were probably far from being the expert penmen of some centuries later. At any rate, the second misplacing (that of chapter 22) would have depended on the first (that of the ' dream ' passage), so that the misplacing of the ' dream' passage must have occurred in, at the latest, manuscript Z - I. Hence 4 - I was not the autograph nor a faithful copy of it.

At this point it is to be noted that in the rearrangement of the passages which is here submitted the escape from the sixty days' captivity connects immediately and naturally with chapter 23, where Patrick is found at home in the bosom of his family. Here it falls to be considered whether all these vicissitudes befell him in Britain or whether the continent could have been the scene of them.

In Roman times 'a ship could sail with a fair wind I,ooo stadia or 125 miles in the revolution of a day and night '." The distance

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 : or in some pre-Y 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 A. S. Cook, 'Augustine's journey from Rome to Richborough', Speculum, i (Boston, i926).




from the Irish to the French coast as the crow flies is approximately 280 miles, so that in theory a three days' crossing was possible. The above quotation, however, refers to Roman ships, and that in the tideless Mediterranean. An Irish ship, according to Caius Julius Solinus, writing apparently in the third century, was a tub-like oxhide-covered osier affair and the Irish Sea undosum inquietumque and navigable only for a few days throughout the entire year. While the last remark is a traveller's exaggeration-ships are not built for only a few days' use annually-, it shows a popular belief that the Irish Sea was far from being as easily navigable as the Mediterranean. Moreover, ships do not sail as the crow flies, so that the 280 miles concerned may be read as in practice at least 375. No craft of the kind known to the informant of Solinus (who was generally well- informed enough on the geography of the imperial frontiers and beyond) could hope to equal, in the Irish Sea and the Atlantic, the rate of 125 miles per twenty-four hours which was achievable under a favourable wind in the Mediterranean by Roman ships. Even, therefore, if by some extraordinary coincidence the very first ship which Patrick encountered were bound for Gaul, to accomplish the voyage in three days over the Irish Sea and the Atlantic it would have had to be superior in speed to a Roman vessel and for that matter to the Santa Maria which carried Columbus on his urgent quest. Columbus, in good weather, during which he was becalmed for two days, averaged about 100 miles per twenty-four hours on his voyage from the Azores to San Salvador. Accordingly, whatever be the theory of the matter, in practice the possibility in the fifth century of passing from Ireland to Gaul in three days was nil.

Even if Gaul were not thus ruled out, good sense would indicate Britain as the ship's destination. For one thing, three days was then a reasonable period for that crossing. It was also to be expected that Patrick would have spared no effort to join a ship sailing directly to his own country. While it is true that in a sense any part of the Roman empire spelt 'home' for him, his not infrequent references to his patria et parentes show these to have been near his heart. Again, a slave taken in war had no rights and so, once he had made his escape from his particular master, it may be that he would not have been considered to have any obligations.16 In this regard his safe

10 This point might repay further examination. The Greeks disting- uished between a person captured in war and sold (dvSpdrrroSov) and a born slave (So0AoS), with the state of the latter superior to that of the




arrival at the coast and especially the word hospitabam in chapter 18 would appear to have some significance. The use of this verb shows him to have been someone's guest for food and shelter in a place where, as he tells us previously, he knew no man. It is reasonable indeed to suppose that the friendly dweller in the tegoriolum had supplied him with the food on which he based his claim to have unde navigare. Neither did the surly captain think of him in terms of a slave on whom it might be profitable to lay hands, but only as a prospective passenger who, unless he was prepared to bind himself by a certain rite to the ship's company, was not to be relied upon.

Incidentally, hospitabam cannot mean that he had been lodging in the hut for more than one night, for he tells us that the ship was ready to depart on the very day he reached it, thus conveying that he had arrived there after the previous midnight. The imperfect tense of hospitabam can only therefore mean that he had arranged to stay with the owner of the hut for as long as might be necessary. In fact, on being refused a passage he had begun to walk back towards the hut when the crew called on him to join them. In other words, his mind was adjusted to a waiting period until, presumably, he should find, not any ship to bring him anywhere away from Ireland, but a suitable one.

There was accordingly no compelling reason for him to escape by the very first ship available,-other of course than a natural desire to return at the earliest possible moment to his family. If it were to be contended that he would have been so impelled by such a natural desire, this would be a further argument, if such were necessary, against his having landed on the continent and there spent several years before turning homeward.

Actually, he had been informed by the Voice that soon he would be going to his native country and shortly afterwards that his ship was ready (presumably set for his voyage there). For him the Voice could not err, any more than it did when later it foretold a captivity of two months for him and the Lord freed him on precisely the sixtieth day. The plain sense of the message was that he would reach home soon and not post paucos annos.

One reason for Bury's and so many other scholars' belief that he landed in Gaul was their view that the ground covered in a twenty-

former. Patrick himself uses servitus for his own original condition in Ireland and for that of the Coroticus captives, but servitium for that of his bondswomen converts.




eight days' journey would have been extensive. As has been shown, in the circumstances this was far from being necessarily so. Secondly, they took it that the area concerned was entirely uninhabited, which, as has been seen, it was not. Proceeding from these premises they argued that nowhere in western Britain or in western Europe generally at that time, any more than now, did there exist an extensive and totally uninhabited region. They concluded that the path of the travellers lay through a countryside which had been vacated and went on to account for this by a recent passage of the Vandals there. As Carney has pointed out, however, not even the resources of modern war could create a total desert of such an extent as they postulated.

The sole point therefore in favour of the Vandals theory is that the date of their irruption (407) fits in conveniently with the known Palladius date of 431 and with an obit of 46I assigned to Patrick in the annals.

Another and perhaps more deeply embedded, though hitherto unnoticed, reason for their bringing him to Gaul before he reached home was their misunderstanding of his use of the word iterum in the sentence Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram. This point has already been brought out by the present writer in 'The life of St Patrick: a new approach' (above, xvi, no. 62, Sept. 1968), but is of central importance and so will bear repetition here.

Patrick's use of the phrase Et iterum is invariably by way of introducing a new incident or a further scriptural quotation. With him it thus means 'And again' in the sense of 'And on another occasion' or 'And also'. It does not mean for him 'And again' in the sense of 'once more'. The distinction is a fine one, but vital. His words for 'again' in the sense of 'once more' are adhuc, rursus and iterum iterumque (the doublet here showing that iterum in isolation had lost its force).'7 In one of the very sentences under review here, Et iterum post annos multos adhuc capturam dedi, the word for ' again' in the sense of ' once more ' is not iterum, but adhuc. (The annos multos here are the 'long years '-or so they would have seemed to him-as a lone herd in a barbarous country.)

The sentence Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram, cum parentibus meis (qui me ut filium susceperunt et ex fide rogaverunt me ut vel modo ego post tantas tribulationes quas ego pertuli nusquam ab illis

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




discederem), et ibi scilicet vidi in visu noctis virum venientem quasi de Hiberione cui nomen Victoricus does not therefore mean 'And after a few years I was once more in Britain ... and there I saw ...'. It is not the equivalent, as sometimes in modem idiom, of an Et iterum post paucos annos in Britannias veni. It means no more and no less than that he was in Britain a few years later, but is not in the least indicative of or even concerned with when he arrived there. It is his cumbrous way of saying 'On another occasion, a few years later, in Britain, I saw ... '. An exact parallel is eram dormiens et fortiter tentavit me satanas of chapter 23.

Apart from this, when one comes to consider the matter fully, it is inconceivable that, having been held for six years as a slave in a barbarous country and, for all his parents or family knew, having long since perished, he should have failed to hasten home from wherever fate had cast him. If we can imagine him not to have done so, it is still inconceivable that, having given a fairly detailed account of his brief period with the ship's crew and in durance, he should be utterly silent on the events (probably much more to his spiritual taste) of an important intervening stretch of several years.

In his usual elliptic fashion he goes on to telescope his warm welcome home and his family's appeal to him to leave them no more. There was no reason why immediately on his return it should be necessary for them to make such a plea. The matter would only have arisen when, after some time at home, apparently the paucos annos, he should have revealed his desire to depart, doubtless to study for the priesthood. His family would be unlikely to favour this idea, if only because, as may be judged from what he has to say of his boyhood feelings and conduct, they were not over-zealous in the matter of religion.

Neither the text therefore nor the circumstances support his having landed elsewhere than in Britain. In that regard, too, the crew's unconditional acceptance of him, after his rejection by their captain, was scarcely due to any hypothetical skill which might be expected of him in the handling of dogs which had not seen him before and which therefore would be more inclined to make strange with him than to obey him. An obvious reason for their decision to bring him along is that a Briton was likely to be useful to them as an interpreter.

Once in Britain, a meeting between a party of wandering Irishmen and a group of inhabitants of the country would inevitably have led to the confining of the former. Even much later, when Patrick was about to set out on his mission, his countrymen spoke of him as

B



4IO SAINT PATRICK S TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY

venturing among public enemies (hostes, Confession 46). Later still the Indignum est illis Hiberione [ms. Hiberia] nati sumus of the Coroticus Letter shows even the Christian Irish still regarded in Britain as ' without the law '.

That the events concerned must have taken place in Britain strengthens further the view that capturam dedi was a direct and inevitable consequence of pervenimus homines and so that originally it followed immediately on pervenimus homines in the order of telling.

This is not of course to say that Patrick never visited the continent. Whether he did so must be considered in the light of the desire he had had (Confession 43) to visit Gaul and see there ' the faces of the saints' and of the reference in Epistola 14 to a custom of the Franks, about which he implicitly purports to give us a piece of first-hand information. There is also the dictum in the Book of Armagh, Timorem Dei habui ducem itineris mei per Gallias atque Italiam, etiam in insolis quae sunt in mari Terreno. Tirechin was acquainted with this dictum, if indeed the Book of Armagh does not ultimately owe it to him. His extension of it, received almost certainly from Ultan, the 'heir' of Mochta, Patrick's best-known and probably longest-surviving disciple, was that the saint vii alliis annis ambulavit et navigavit in fluctibus et in campistribus locis et in convallibus montanis per Gallias atque Italiam totam atque in insolis quae sunt in mari Terreno, ut ipse dixit in commemoratione laborum. To this he added, explicitly from UltAn, Erat hautam in una ex insolis quae dicitur Aralanensis. If all this had originally been spoken or written by an Irishman, he would certainly have had to add per Britannias; if by a native of Gaul or of Italy, it would have been superfluous for him to have mentioned his own country. It originated therefore with some pious Briton who had penetrated to these places before coming to Ireland. If we ask ourselves who might such a pious Briton be who had the means and opportunity of so journeying and who had his saying preserved in Ireland in the seventh century and there attributed to Patrick, there would seem to be only one answer, Patrick himself. Bury, a good judge in such a matter, thought the dictum had a Patrician ring.

It is clear enough as well that the dictum, together with Tirechan's additions to it, formed part, as Grosjean believed, of a piece of narrative of which a section is missing. This total piece of narrative must, however, have been quite brief, for, with what has come down to us of it encompassing Gaul, Italy, the Tyrrhenian Sea and apparently Lerins, there was not much left to tell. It seems unlikely that it contained an Auxerre section, but rather that the Muirch6 and




Tirech'n fragments on Auxerre originally belonged to the Palladius tradition, for, as Grosjean shows, Palladius was probably a native of Auxerre.

The references to Gaul, Italy, the Tyrrhenian Sea and L6rins are not substantial enough to merit the title Commemoratio laborum which Tirechin seems to bestow on them. It has accordingly been

suggested that this title is a way of describing the Confession. In such case the dictum and its extensions would originally have formed part of the Confession, just as the other dictum, De saeculo requissistis ad

paradissum. Deo gratias, set side by side with the first in the Book of Armagh, is obviously an excerpt from chapter 17 of the Coroticus Letter.

The difficulty in this, however, is that there is no particular part of the Confession into which the continental references appear to fit. If one wished to speculate, the only possible place for them would seem to be immediately after the Victoricus vision. Patrick was with his family on that occasion, so that the reference to Britain there is

superfluous. Could its mention have been a lead up to that of Gaul, Italy and the rest? The switch from the Victoricus vision (through two short intervening spiritual experiences of apparently that period) to the charges brought against him long afterwards'8 is certainly very abrupt. On the other hand the series of supernatural experiences spread over chapters I7-34 are a unit and are clearly intended to be so, for immediately afterwards, in chapter 35, he begins the account of his actual missionary activities and there is no further mention of visions.

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).




A residual question is whether the ship carried a cargo of hounds. Later scribes were puzzled by the presence of these, as is evident by their attempts to rationalise the word as carnes and came. Came, referring to the pigs, was no bad effort of theirs, but canes was the archetype reading and, as it makes good sense, must be accepted. Professor Carney has argued that the terms relevati, defecerunt, semivivi and derelicti are too solemn and serious to have been used by Patrick of dogs. It is true that these words were of scriptural proven- ance, but it is to be remembered that the Latin vocabulary of their writer here was limited, being substantially drawn from one Book. It is to be remembered also that the crew must have been bound together by some such rite as the sugere mammellas mentioned and so were unlikely to leave many (multi) of their comrades half-dead along the way. Furthermore, in those days such adventurers were perforce hardy folk and could subsist on little (Solinus states that Irish sailors practised long abstinences, as of course could Patrick, who tells us earlier that he was in the habit of fasting), whereas dogs have poor physical endurance by comparison with human beings and of course have only the moral stamina lent them by their masters.

On the whole, therefore, the picture of dogs lying half-dead here and there on the way has a certain verisimilitude.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the 'dogs' were hounds which were being brought for sale. Before further consideration of this issue, however, it must be asked why should the captain and crew land on an unfamiliar coast and then strike inland, with insufficient supplies, through unknown, bleak, barren and, as far as they knew, uninhabited territory, bringing with them a number of hounds, which are notoriously bad foot-travellers.

If they were a single raiding party, they would have sought an inhabited area, where, more Corotici, they might have pounced on some unarmed group. If they were part of a larger raiding contingent, such as that which first carried off Patrick 'with many thousands of others '," they would have had a rendezvous with the other crews at some point inland, but not far from the coast. It is scarcely imagin- able, however, that in the small Irish ships of the time a raiding party would have cluttered their cargo space with 'many' hounds. A very few of these would have sufficed if there were question of their being used for the rounding up and guarding of captives.

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.




One is driven accordingly to the conclusion that the party were peaceful traders. Indeed this is the impression received from Patrick's account of them and from his taking the hounds for granted. Even, however, if per impossibile the owners of the hounds could have transported them safely and in three days through the difficult waters that lie between Ireland and the west of the continent, it is not open to belief that they would have attempted to do so, since for half the trouble and at very much less risk their wares would have fetched a good price in Britain. Then, as now, Britain must have been a clearing centre for some Irish exports of which the ultimate destination would be the continent.

It can only be concluded that not only was the ship's destination some British port, but that it was a port where a middleman known to the captain would have been accustomed to receive such visits. Why they landed where they did is inexplicable unless they were storm-blown there. That they suffered from storm or at least very bad weather during the first stage of their land journey is implicit in their regarding the siccitas of the second stage as a heaven-sent favour. This storm or bad weather may well have begun while they were still at sea and as a matter of fact the text contains some hints that this was so. As Bieler has pointed out, the idiom terram capere implies here, as often, the notion of effort. It might accordingly be translated 'We made land' or, in view of Patrick's difficulty in expressing himself, even 'We managed to make land'. Again, although he speaks of having returned ad gentem illam unde vix evaseram (Confession 61) there is no hint elsewhere of his having experienced difficulty in escaping. Rather did he come safely and surely 2oo00 Roman miles to receive at the end of it the hospitality afforded by his host of the tegoriolum. The vix cited above can only therefore be associated with the phrase terram cepimus.

Actually, short of the ship having suffered damage, not necessarily very serious but of a kind not there and then open to repair-sailors are not shipwrights-, there is no rational explanation of either their beaching on an unfamiliar and uninhabited coast or of their having struck inland fireless, exposed to the elements, short of provisions and charged with the care of a large number of hounds,-and that on a wildgoose chase through an unknown wilderness at the end of which their best prospect was the hostility of any inhabitants they might eventually come upon. The spur to such a piece of hardihood could only have been the alternative of a lingering death from exposure and starvation.




A very pertinent question raised by Carney is why, when later they were reduced to starvation, they did not eat the hounds. There is mention in the early Irish heroic cycle of how C6 Chulainn, who was under geasa not to eat of his own name (cui = hound), was tricked into partaking of cooked dog-flesh. Where there were no geasa involved, therefore, such a meal was not absolutely repugnant in ancient Ireland. (Patrick's party would, however, have had to eat the hounds raw, as at the time they had no fire.) A reason for their abstention may have been a readiness to risk their lives sooner than abandon hope of salvaging valuable property. This is a well-known phenomenon. The diary of Ann Franck shows sufferers under the Hitler regime declining to flee and clinging grimly to their property until at last they had lost both their property and lives.

It would seem, however, from the fact of the hounds having been left along the way that the men had struggled on hopefully. Nos a fame periclitamur does not quite suggest immediate peril of death. In fact the captain's near-despair was because they had lost their way. The mens' diet, like that of Mac Con Glinne, would have been oatmeal bread. Being hard, it is not quickly perishable, can be carried in small compass and is very sustaining. Their portions of this they would have eked out among themselves, but not among the hounds. To these, being enormous eaters, such a pittance would have been useless. They would therefore have collapsed here and there from a combination of fatigue and hunger. The two nights' rest may have been partly prompted by the opportunity it offered to some of the men of returning on their tracks with a view to restoring any surviving hounds.20

As to the ultimate fate of the party, even the Briton and Christian was placed under guard. A company of hungry Irishmen (and heathens

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 closing 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.




to boot) who were ready to seize on a herd of domestic pigs or any other prey which might come their way would have been received with anything but open arms. Patrick, on escaping, was in his own country and made his way safely home (as previously, with the advantage of his knowledge of the language, he had made his way safely through Ireland to his ship). A party of Irish wanderers in Britain at that time would, however, have been at a total disadvantage and it may be surmised that their lot was never again to see their ship, nor perhaps even their country.

A final problem to be considered is to what circumstance we owe the comparative wealth of detail contained in the description of the twenty-eight days' journey. This adventure, set down many years later, at the end of a long and laborious career, would not normally be expected to call for more than the most perfunctory mention. On the contrary it and the succeeding chapters 24-34 stand in sharp contrast to the remainder of the Confession, which is largely a general survey of the saint's labours and trials during his mission. It is true that this general survey refers in chapters 42, 46, 49 and 52 to particular incidents of great interest, but the meagre detail furnished on these is more tantalising than informative.

At first glance it might be deduced that he had decided to supply his audience with a fairly itemised autobiography, but that following a good start he felt this to be too much for him and them. To some extent this was so, for chapter 35 begins Longum est autem totum per singula enarrare laborem meum vel per partes and continues Nec iniuriam legentibus faciam. As we come to know him, however, we realise that he had not the slightest interest in autobiographical details for their own sake. Any such which he vouchsafes has some spiritual significance, for essentially he was writing not the story of his career but I'histoire d'une ame.

With the application of a little formgeschichte in the literal sense to the whole, chapters 17-34 are clearly seen as the unit they were intended to be. What binds them together and distinguishes them from the rest of the work is that the incidents of which they treat were regarded by Patrick as direct manifestations of the Spirit or as direct divine intervention on his behalf. In the former category are the Voice and the visions. Here the dream too has its place, although it was only later that he realised that even at that early stage (iam tunc) it was the Spirit and not he who had cried within him.




In the second category are his finding of the ship, its readiness to sail, his acceptance on board, the provision of food and other favours in response to his prayers and his deliverance from the second captivity.

While later in life, as he affirms in chapter 33, the Spirit continued to guide him, bringing him back, despite his own misgivings and the doubts of others, to Ireland and insisting that he spend his entire life there, it would appear that, once he had been brought safely home and had had his vocation inspired and sustained, it was only on the occasion of the great spiritual crisis described in chapters 26-34 that he experienced Its palpable presence. This would explain the abrupt leap, made for the sake of continuity, from the Victoricus and the immediately succeeding spiritual experiences to the affair of the seniores. It would explain also why he had little or perhaps nothing to say of his travels on the continent beyond the dictum and its extensions.

Finally, as already mentioned, his public career was well known to most of those to whom the Confession was addressed. As he reminds them in chapter 48, he had lived and moved amongst them since his youth." On the other hand only he and the ship's crew would have known of the events of the twenty-eight days and, as has been seen, the crew may never have returned. Even if they did return, they were illiterate men. The Confession thus offered an opportunity of making public a series of incidents which;, as he believed, redounded greatly to the glory of God. In addition, these incidents demonstrated that, so far from his missionary enterprise having been actuated by unworthy motives (a charge which in his summing up in chapter 6 I he vehemently denies), his career had from the very beginning been under the guidance of the Spirit.

T. 0 RAIFEARTAIGH

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 I5 he tells us that the conversion of the Irish was something which in his youth (in iuventute mea) he had not even thought of.



saint patrick's twenty-eight days' journey

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