THE CAPTIVITY AND ESCAPE OF PATRICK
§ 1. _Parentage and Capture_
The conversion of Ireland to Christianity has, as we have seen, its
modest place among those manifold changes by which a new Europe was
being formed in the fifth century. The beginnings of the work had been
noiseless and dateless, due to the play of accident and the obscure zeal
of nameless pioneers; but it was organised and established, so that it
could never be undone, mainly by the efforts of one man, a Roman citizen
of Britain, who devoted his life to the task.
[Sidenote: HOME OF PATRICK]
The child who was destined to play this part in the shaping of a new
Europe was born before the close of the fourth century, perhaps in
the year 389 A.D. His father, Calpurnius, was a Briton; like all free
subjects of the Empire, he was a Roman citizen; and, like his father
Potitus before him, he bore a Roman name. He belonged to the middle class
of landed proprietors, and was a decurion or member of the municipal
council of a Roman town. His home was in a village named Bannaventa,
but we cannot with any certainty identify its locality.[21] The only
Bannaventa that we know lay near Daventry, but this position does not
agree with an ancient indication that the village of Calpurnius was
close to the western sea. As the two elements of the name Bannaventa
were probably not uncommon in British geographical nomenclature, it
is not a rash assumption that there were other small places so called
besides the only Bannaventa which happens to appear in Roman geographical
sources, and we may be inclined to look for the Bannaventa of Calpurnius
in south-western Britain, perhaps in the regions of the lower Severn.
The village must have been in the neighbourhood of a town possessing a
municipal council of decurions, to which Calpurnius belonged. It would
not be right to infer that it was a town with the rank of a _colonia_,
like Gloucester, or of a _municipium_, like St. Albans; for smaller Roman
towns, such as were technically known as _praefecturae_, _fora_, and
_conciliabula_, might be managed by municipal councils.[22]
To be a decurion, or member of the governing council, of a Roman town
in the days of Calpurnius and his father was, throughout the greater
part of the Roman dominion, an unenvied dignity. Every landowner in a
municipality who did not belong to the senatorial class was obliged to
be a decurion, provided he possessed sixteen acres or upwards; and on
these landowners the chief burden of imperial taxation fell. They were
in this sense “the sinews of the republic.” They were bound to deliver
to the officials of the imperial treasury the amount of taxation levied
upon their community; it was their duty both to collect the tax and to
assess the proportion payable by the individual proprietor. In the fourth
century, while the class of great landed proprietors, who were mainly
senators and entirely free from municipal obligations, was increasing,
the class of small landowners diminished in numbers and declined in
prosperity. This decline progressed rapidly, and the imperial laws which
sought to arrest it suggest an appalling picture of economic decay
and hopeless misery throughout the provinces. The evils of perverse
legislation were aggravated by the corruption and tyranny of the treasury
officials, which the Emperors, with the best purposes, seemed powerless
to prevent. Men devised and sought all possible means of escaping from
the sad fate of a decurion’s dignity. Many a harassed taxpayer abandoned
his land, surrendered his freedom, and became a labourer on the estate of
a rich landlord to escape the miseries of a decayed decurion’s life. We
find the Emperor Maxentius punishing Christians by promoting them to the
dignity of a decurion.
It is unknown to us whether the municipal classes in Britain suffered
as cruelly as their brethren in other parts of the Empire. The history
of this island throughout the last century of Roman rule is almost a
blank. It would be hazardous to draw any inferences from the agricultural
prosperity of Britain, whose corn-fields, notwithstanding the fact that
large tracts of land which is now under tillage were then woodland,
sometimes supplied the Roman legions on the Rhine with their daily
bread. But it is possible, for all we know, that members of the British
municipalities may have enjoyed a less dreary lot than the downtrodden
decurions of other provinces.
[Sidenote: DECURIONS]
There was one class of decurions which seems to have caused the Emperors
considerable perplexity. It was those who, whether from a genuine
religious motive or in order to shirk the municipal burdens, took orders
in the Christian Church. A pagan Emperor like Julian had no scruple in
recalling them sternly to their civil duties, but Christian Emperors
found it difficult to assert such a principle. They had to sustain the
curial system at all costs, and yet avoid giving offence to the Church.
Theodosius the Great laid down that the estates of decurions who had
become presbyters or deacons before a certain year should be exempt from
municipal obligations, but that those who had taken orders after that
year should forfeit their lands to the State. He qualified this law,
however, by a later enactment, which provided that if the presbyter or
deacon had a son who was not in orders, the son might keep the paternal
property and perform the accompanying duties.
Now Calpurnius belonged to this class of decurions who had sought
ordination. He was a Christian deacon, and his father before him had been
a Christian presbyter. And it would seem as if they had found it feasible
to combine their spiritual with their worldly duties. In any case, we may
assume that the property remained in the family; it was not forfeited to
the State.
[Sidenote: INVASIONS OF BRITAIN]
Whether the burdens laid upon them from Milan or Constantinople were
heavy or light, Calpurnius and his fellows in the northern island
were keenly conscious that the rule of their Roman lords had its
compensations. For Britain was beset by three bold and ruthless foes.[23]
The northern frontier of the province was ever threatened by the Picts
of Caledonia. Her western shores dreaded the descents of the Gaels and
Scots of Ireland, while the south and east were exposed to those Saxon
freebooters who were ultimately to conquer the island. Against these
enemies, ever watching for a favourable opportunity to spoil their rich
neighbour, the Roman garrison was usually a strong and sure protection
for the peaceful Britons. But favourable opportunities sometimes came.
Potitus, at least, if not Calpurnius, must have shared in the agonies
which Britain felt in those two terrible years when she was attacked on
all sides, by Pict, by Scot, and by Saxon, when Theodosius, the great
Emperor’s father, had to come in haste and put forth all his strength to
deliver the province from the barbarians. In the valley of the Severn
the foes whom men had to dread now were Irish freebooters, and we need
not doubt that in those years their pirate crafts sailed up the river
and brought death and ruin to many. Theodosius defeated Saxon, Pict, and
Scot, and it would seem that he pursued the Scots across the sea, driving
them back to their own shores. The Court poet of his grandson sings how
icebound Hiverne wept for the heaps of her slain children. After this,
the land had peace for a space. Serious and thoroughgoing measures were
taken for its defence, and an adequate army was left under a capable
commander. Men could breathe freely once more. But the breathing space
lasted less than fifteen years. The usurpation of the tyrant Maximus
brought new calamities to Britain. Maximus assumed the purple (A.D. 383)
by the will of the soldiers, who were ill-satisfied with the government
of Gratian; and if the provincials approved of this rash act, they
perhaps hoped that Maximus would be content with exercising authority
in their own island. But even if Maximus did not desire a more spacious
field for his ambition, such a course was perhaps impracticable. It
would have been difficult for any usurper to maintain himself, with the
adhesion of Britain alone, against the power of the lord of the West.
Probably the best chance of success, the best chance of life, for the
tyrant lay in winning Gaul. And so Maximus crossed the Channel, taking
the army, or a part of it, with him. His own safety was at stake; he
recked not of the safety of the province; and whatever forces he left
on the shores and on the northern frontier were unequal to the task
of protecting the island against the foes who were ever awaiting a
propitious hour to pounce upon their prey. Bitterly were the Britons
destined to rue the day when Maximus was invested with the purple.
Denuded of defenders, they had again to bear the inroads of Pict, Saxon,
and Scot. Rescue came after the fall of Maximus (A.D. 388), and the son
of their former defender, the Emperor Theodosius, empowered his most
trusted general, Stilicho, to make all needed provision for the defence
of the remote province. The enemies seem to have escaped, safe and sated,
from the shores of Britain before the return of the army; no fighting
devolved on Stilicho; he had only to see to works of fortification and
defence. But it was high time for legions to return; Britain, says a
contemporary poet, was well-nigh done to death.
[Sidenote: BIRTH OF PATRICK]
The woes and distresses of these years must have been witnessed and
felt by Calpurnius and his household, and they must have experienced
profoundly the joy of relief when their country was once more defended
by an adequate army. It was probably just before or just after this new
period of security had begun that a son was born to Calpurnius and his
wife Concessa.[24] It may have been the habit of the native provincials
to give their children two names, a Latin name, which stamped them as
Romans, as well as a British name, which would naturally be used in
home life. Calpurnius called his son Patricius.[25] But if Patricius
talked as a child with his father and mother the Brythonic tongue of
his forefathers, he bore the name of Sucat. He was thus double-named,
like the Apostle Paul, who bore a Roman as well as a Jewish name from
his youth up.[26] But another Roman name, Magonus, is also ascribed
to Patrick; and possibly his full style—as it would appear in the
town registry when he should come of age to exercise the rights of a
citizen—was Patricius Magonus Sucatus. Such a name would be strictly
analogous to that of a Roman historian of Gothic family who lived in a
later generation, Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus.[27]
As the son of a deacon, Patrick was educated in the Christian faith,
and was taught the Christian scriptures. And we may be sure that he was
brought up to feel a deep reverence for the Empire in which he was born
a freeman and citizen, and to regard Rome as the mighty bulwark of the
world—
qua nihil in terris complectitur altius aether.
This feeling comes out in his writings; it may have been strengthened
by the experiences of his life, but the idea must have been with him
from his very cradle. Peaceful folk in Britain in those days could
have imagined no more terrible disaster than to be sundered from the
Empire; Rome was the symbol of peace and civilisation, and to Rome they
passionately clung. The worst thing they had to dread from year to year
was that the Roman army should be summoned to meet some sudden need in
another province.
But as Patrick grew up, the waves were already gathering, to close slowly
over the island, and to sweep the whole of western Europe. The great
Theodosius died, and his two feeble successors slumbered at Milan and
Constantinople, while along all the borders, or even pressing through the
gates, were the barbarians, armed and ready, impressed by the majesty
of Rome, but hungry for the spoils of the world. Hardly was Theodosius
at rest in his tomb when Greece was laid waste by the Goths, and Athens
trembled at the presence of Alaric. But men did not yet realise, even in
their dreams, the strange things to come, whereof this was the menace
and the presage. When the rumour of Alaric and his Goths reached the
homesteads of Britain, it must have struck men’s ears as a thing far
off, a trouble in which they could have no part. And the danger that
stole upon the Empire was muffled and disguised. Alaric was a Goth, but
at the same time he was an imperial general, a Master of Soldiers, a
servant of the Roman State, profoundly loyal to the Empire, the integrity
of which he was undermining.
A few years later Britain was startled by sudden tidings. Alaric and his
Goths had entered Italy itself; the Emperor Honorius was trembling on his
throne, and the armies of the west must hasten to defend him. The message
came from Stilicho, the general on whose strength and craft the safety of
western Europe in these years depended, and one Britannic legion obeyed
the summons to Italy. The islanders must again have been sick at heart in
daily expectation of the assaults of their old enemies.
[Sidenote: KING NIALL’S INVASION]
Those enemies were not asleep, and they rose up presently to take
advantage of the favourable time. At this point we encounter an Irish
king, whose name is famous in the obscure history of his own land. King
Niall was the High-king of Ireland in the days of the rebellion of
Maximus, and may possibly have joined in the marauding expeditions which
vexed Britain during those years. His deeds are enveloped in legend,
but the exalted notion which his countrymen formed of his prowess is
expressed in the vain tale that he invaded Gaul and conquered as far as
the Alps. To the annals of the Empire king Niall is as unknown as the
princelings of remotest Scythia, but in Britain his name must have been
a familiar word. The tradition that he died out of his own country, but
slain by the hand of a fellow-countryman, can hardly fail to be founded
on fact; and when the Irish annals tell us that he met his death “by the
Sea of Wight,” there is nothing in the circumstances of the time which
forbids us to believe the record. If the date assigned to his death, A.D.
405, is roughly correct, this last hosting of Niall was made before the
Roman army had finally left the island, but during the disorders which
preceded its departure.
It may have been at this crisis[28] in the history of Britain that the
event happened which shaped the whole life of the son of Calpurnius, who
had now reached the age of sixteen, in his home near the western sea.
A fleet of Irish freebooters came to the coasts or river-banks in the
neighbourhood seeking plunder and loading their vessels with captives.
Patrick was at his father’s farmstead, and was one of the victims.
Men-servants and maid-servants were taken, but his parents escaped;
perhaps they were not there, or perhaps the pirates could not carry more
than a certain number of slaves, and chose the young.
Thus was Patrick, in his seventeenth year, carried into captivity in
Ireland—“to the ultimate places of the earth,” as he says himself, as if
Ireland were severed by half the globe from Britain. The phrase shows
how thoroughly, how touchingly Roman was Patrick’s geographical view. The
Roman Empire was the world, and all outside its fringe was in darkness,
the ultimate places of the earth.
§ 2. _Captivity and Escape_
[Sidenote: CAPTURE OF PATRICK]
Of all that befell Patrick during his captivity in Ireland we know
little, yet the little knowledge we possess is more immediate and
authentic than our acquaintance with any other episode of his life,
because it comes from his own pen. But at the outset we encounter a
puzzling contradiction between Patrick’s own words and the tradition
which was afterwards current in Ireland as to the place of his
bondage.[29]
When the boats of his captors reached their haven, Patrick was led—so we
should conclude from his own story—across the island into the kingdom of
Connaught, to serve a master in the very furthest parts of the “ultimate
land.” His master dwelled near the wood of Fochlad, “nigh to the western
sea,” in north-western Connaught, to this day a wild and desolate land,
though the forest has long since been cleared away. A part of this bleak
country belonged to Amolngaid, who afterwards became king of Connaught,
and it is still called by his name, Tirawley, “the land of Amolngaid.”
But the wood of Fochlad was probably of larger extent than the district
of Tirawley; it may have stretched over Mayo to the western promontory
of Murrisk. Here, we should perhaps suppose, close to Crochan Aigli, the
mount which has been immemorially associated with Patrick’s name,[30] the
British slave served his master for six years.
But our other records transport us to a distant part of Ireland, far
away from the forest of Fochlad, to Pictish soil near the eastern coast
of Ulster. Here in the lands east of Lough Neagh, the old race, driven
eastward from central Ulster, still held out. The name Ulaid, which
originally designated the whole of northern Ireland—even as now in its
Danish form of Ulster—had come to be specially applied to the eastern
corner, whither the true Ulidians had been driven. It seemed now to be
the true Ulaid. Within the borders of Ulidia, in this restricted sense,
there was a marked division. In the extreme north were the Scots, and
in the south were the Picts. The small land of the Scots was known as
Dal-riada, and the larger land of the Picts as Dal-aradia.[31] It is
supposed that both peoples, those known as Scots and those known as
Picts, represented the older races, which possessed Ireland before the
coming of the Goidelic invaders, whose language ultimately prevailed
throughout the whole island.
[Sidenote: PLACE OF CAPTIVITY]
Here, it was believed and recorded, Patrick served a master whose name
was Miliucc. His lands and his homestead were in northern Dalaradia,
and Patrick herded his droves of pigs on Mount Miss. The name of this
mountain still abides unchanged, though by coalescing with _sliabh_,
the Gaelic word for “mountain,” it is slightly disguised in the form
Slemish. Not really lofty, and not visible at a distance of many miles,
yet, when you come within its range, Mount Miss dominates the whole scene
and produces the impression of a massive mountain. Its curious, striking
shape, like an inverted bowl, round and wide-brimmed, exercises a sort
of charm on the eye, and haunts one who is walking in the valley of the
Braid, somewhat as the triangular form of Pentelicus, clear-cut like the
pediment of a temple, follows one about in the plain of Athens.
It was in this valley of the Braid and on the slopes of Miss that,
according to the common tradition and general belief, Patrick for six
years did the bidding of his lord.[32] But it is certain, from his own
words, that he served near the forest of Fochlad. An attempt may be made
to reconcile the contradiction by assuming that he changed masters, and
that, having dwelled at first in the west, he was sold to another master
in Dalaradia;[33] but his own description of his bondage seems hardly
compatible with such a conjecture. The simplest solution seems to be a
frank rejection of the story which connected his captivity with Mount
Miss in the land of the Picts.
While he ate the bitter bread of bondage in a foreign land, a profound
spiritual change came over him. He had never given much thought to his
religion, but now that he was a thrall amid strangers, “the Lord,” he
says, “opened the sense of my unbelief.” The ardour of religious emotion,
“the love and fear of God,” so fully consumed his soul that in a single
day or night he would offer a hundred prayers; and he describes himself,
in woodland or on mountain-side, rising from his bed before dawn and
going forth to pray in hail, or rain, or snow.
His contemplation was above the earth,
And fixed on spiritual object.
Thus the years of his bondage were also the years of his “conversion,”
and he looked back upon this stage in his spiritual development as the
most important and critical in his life.
[Sidenote: THE ESCAPE]
But he was homesick, and he was too young to abandon hope of deliverance
and escape from the wild outland into which fate had cast him. He longed
and hoped, and we may be sure that he prayed, to win his way back within
the borders of the Roman Empire. His waking hopes came back to him at
night as responsive voices in his dreams. He heard a voice that said
to him in his sleep, “Thou doest well to fast; thou shalt soon return
to thy native land.” And another night it said, “Behold, thy ship is
ready.” Patrick took these dream-voices for divine intimations, and they
heartened him to make an attempt to escape. Escape was not easy, and
was beset with many perils. For the port where he might hope to find a
foreign vessel was about a hundred and eighty miles from his master’s
house. Patrick, in describing his escape, does not name the port, but
we may conjecture that it was Inver-dea, at the mouth of the stream,
which is now called the Vartry, and reaches the sea near the town of
Wicklow. The resolution of attempting this long flight, with the danger
of falling into the hands of some other master, if not of being overtaken
by his own, is ascribed by Patrick to the promptings of a higher will
than his. He escaped all dangers and reached the port, where he knew
no man. But at all events he had chosen the season of his flight well.
The ship of his dreams was there, and was soon to sail. It was a ship
of traders; their cargo was aboard, and part of the cargo consisted of
dogs, probably Irish wolf-hounds. Patrick spoke to some of the crew,
and made a proposal of service. He was willing to work his passage to
the port to which the vessel was bound. The proposal seems to have been
at first entertained, but afterwards the shipmaster objected, and said
sharply, “Nay, in no wise shalt thou come with us.” The disappointment,
as safety seemed within grasp, must have been bitter, and Patrick turned
away from the mariners to seek the lodging where he had found shelter. As
he went he prayed, and before he finished his prayer he heard one of the
crew shouting behind him, “Come quickly, for they are calling you.” The
shipmaster had been persuaded to forego his objections, and Patrick set
sail from the shores of Ireland with this rough company.
To what country or race the crew belonged we are not told; we learn only
that they were heathen. They wished to enter into some solemn compact of
abiding friendship with Patrick, but he refused to be adopted by them.
“I would not,” he says, using a quaint phrase,[34] “suck their breasts
because of the fear of God. Nevertheless I hoped of them that they might
come to the faith of Christ, for they were heathen, and therefore I held
on with them.”
They sailed for three days before they made land. The name of the coast
which they reached is hidden from us, and there is something very
strange about the whole story. The voyage was clearly uneventful. They
were not driven by storm or stress of weather out of their course to
some undesired shore. There is nothing in the tale, as Patrick tells
it himself, to suggest that the ship did not reach the port to which
it was bound. Yet when they landed, their way lay through a desert,
and they journeyed through the desert for eight and twenty days in
all. Their food ran short, and at last starvation threatened them;
many of their dogs were exhausted and left to die on the wayside. Then
the shipmaster said to Patrick, “Now, O Christian, thou sayest thy God
is great and almighty. Why then dost thou not pray for us? For we are
in danger of starvation, and there is no likelihood of our seeing any
man.” And Patrick, in the spirit of the missionary, replied, “Nothing is
impossible to the Lord, my God. Turn to him truly, that he may send you
food in your path this day till ye are filled, for he has plenty in all
places.” Presently a drove of pigs appeared on the road, and the starving
wayfarers killed many, and rested there two nights, and were refreshed.
They were as ready as Patrick himself to believe that the appearance of
the swine was a miraculous answer to his prayer, and he won high esteem
in their eyes.
As Patrick slept here, his body satisfied, after long privation, by a
plenteous meal, he had a dream, which he remembered vividly as long as
he lived. He dreamed that a great stone fell upon him, and that he could
not move his limbs. Then he called upon Elias,[35] and the beams of the
rising sun awoke him, and the feeling of heaviness fell away. Patrick
regarded this nightmare as a temptation of Satan, and imagined that
Christ had come to his aid. The incident has a ridiculous side, but it
shows the intense religious excitement of Patrick at this period, ready
to see in the most trivial occurrence a direct interposition from heaven;
and we must remember how in those days dreams were universally invested
with a certain mystery and dread.
For nine days more Patrick and his companions travelled through deserted
places, but were not in want of food or shelter; on the tenth they came
to the habitations of men. Patrick had no thoughts of remaining with them
longer than he needed. He had heard in a dream a divine voice answering
his thoughts and saying, “Thou shalt remain with them two months.” This
dream naturally guided him in choosing the time of his escape. At the end
of two months he succeeded in releasing himself from his masters.
[Sidenote: JOURNEY IN GAUL]
In his description of this strange adventure he leaves us to divine
the geography as best we may, for he relates it as if it had happened
in some nameless land beyond the borders of the known world. But the
circumstances enable us to determine that the ship made for the coast
of Gaul. It can be shown that its destination was not Britain, and Gaul
is the only other land which could have been reached in three days or
thereabouts. The aim of the traders with their Irish dogs must have been
to reach southern Europe, and the place of disembarkation would naturally
have been Nantes or Bordeaux. The story of the long faring through a
wilderness might be taken to illustrate the condition of western and
south-western Gaul at this period.[36] For much about the time at which
Patrick’s adventures happened, Gallic poets were writing heartbreaking
descriptions of the desolation which had been brought upon this country
by the great invasion of Vandals and Sueves and other barbarous peoples.
The Vandals and Sueves had indeed already left it to pass into Spain, but
they had left it waste. Strong castles, walled cities, sings one poet,
could not escape; the hands of the barbarians reached even lonely lodges
in dismal wilds and the very caves in the hills. “If the whole ocean,”
cries another, “had poured its waters into the fields of Gaul, its vasty
waves would have spared more than the invaders.”
But even in the exceptional conditions of the time, it is surprising that
a party, starting from a port on the west coast and travelling to the
Mediterranean, should have walked for four weeks without seeing a human
abode and in dire peril of starvation. We must suppose that they avoided,
deliberately and carefully, beaten roads, and perhaps made considerable
halts, in order to avoid encounters with roaming bands of the Teutonic
barbarians.
Though Patrick did not mention the scene of his journey in the narrative
which he left behind him, he used to tell his disciples how he had “the
fear of God as a guide in his journey through Gaul and Italy.” This
confirms the conclusion, to which the other evidence points, that Gaul
was the destination of the crew, and also intimates that he travelled
with his companions through Gaul to Italy. It was in Italy, then, we must
suppose, that he succeeded in escaping from them.
The book in which he described this episode was written by Patrick, as
we shall see hereafter, when he was an old man. He rigidly omitted all
details which did not bear upon his special purpose in writing it. The
whole tale of his captivity and escape, undefined or vaguely defined by
landmarks or seamarks, as if the places of the adventures had no name
or lay beyond the range of all human charts, is designed to display
exclusively the spiritual significance of those experiences. That the
land of his captivity was Ireland, this was indeed significant; but
otherwise names of men and places were of no concern and might be allowed
to drop away. Patrick, in reviewing this critical period of his life,
reproduces the select incidents as they impressed him at the moment,
contributing, as he believed, to his own spiritual development, or
illustrating the wonderful ways in which Heaven had dealt with him.