"THERE was a man named Calphurnius, the son of Potitus, a presbyter, by
nation a Briton, living in the village Taburnia (that is the Field of
Tents), near the town of Empthor, and his habitation was nigh unto the
Irish Sea. This man married a French damsel named Concuessa, niece of
the blessed Martin, Archbishop of Tours, and the damsel was elegant in
her form and in her manners, for, having been brought from France with
her elder sister into the northern parts of Britain, they were sold at
the command of her father. Calphurnius being pleased with her manners,
charmed with her attentions, and attracted by her beauty, very much
loved her, and from the state of serving maid in his household, raised
her to be his companion in wedlock. And her sister, having been
delivered unto another man, lived in the aforementioned town of
Empthor.
"And Calphurnius and his wife were just before God, walking without
offence in the justifications of the Lord, and they were eminent in
their birth, and in their faith, and in their hope, and in their
religion. And though in their outward habit and abiding they seemed to
serve under the yoke of Babylon, yet did they in their acts and in
their conversation show themselves citizens of Jerusalem. Therefore out
of the earth of their flesh, being freed from the tares of sin and from
the noxious weeds of vice by the ploughshare of evangelic and apostolic
learning, and being fruitful in the growth of all virtues, did they, as
the best and richest fruit, bring forth a son, whom, when he had at the
font put off the old man, they caused to be named Patritius, as being
the future father and patron of many nations; of whom, even at his
baptism, the God that is Three in One was pleased by the sign of a
threefold miracle to declare how pure a vessel of election should he
prove, and how devoted a worshipper of the Holy Trinity. But after a
little while, this happy birth being completed, they vowed themselves
by mutual consent unto chastity, and with a holy end rested in the
Lord. But Calphurnius-first served God a long time in the deaconship,
and at length closed his days in the priesthood. . . ."
Chapter XII.--"As, according to the testimony of Holy Writ, the
furnace tries the gold, so did the hour of trial draw near to Patrick
that he might the more provedly receive the crown of life. For when the
illustrious boy had perlustrated three lustres, already attaining his
sixteenth year, he was, with many of his-fellow-countrymen, seized by
the pirates who were ravaging the borders, and was made captive and
carried into Ireland, and was there sold as a slave to a certain pagan
prince named Milcho, who reigned in the Northern parts of the island,
even at the same age when Joseph is recorded to have been sold in
Egypt. . . ."
Chapter XVII.--"And St. Patrick, guided by his angelic guide, came to
the sea, and he there found a ship that was to carry him to Britain,
and a crew of heathens, who were in the ship, freely received him, and
hoisting their sails with a favourable wind, after three days they made
land. And, being come out of the ship, they found a region deserted and
inhabited by none, and they began to travel over the whole country for
the space of twenty-eight days; and for want of food in that fearful
and wild solitude were they perishing of hunger" (Jocelin's "Life of
St. Patrick," translated by E. L. Swift).
Jocelin's "Life of St. Patrick" deserves the harsh sentence pronounced
upon it by Canon O'Hanlon: "It is incomparably the worst" of all the
Latin "Lives" of the Saint. Jocelin represents Conchessa, St. Patrick's
saintly mother, as a niece of St. Martin of Tours, and, almost in the
same breath, suggests that either St. Martin's brother, or his brother-
in-law, sold Conchessa and her elder sister to Calphurnius, a Briton of
Clydesdale, as slaves. Although Conchessa was sold as a slave "at the
command of her father," she is said to have succeeded in captivating
and marrying her master Calphurnius.
Whilst Ware and Usher sneer at Jocelin's statement that Calphurnius and
Conchessa took the vow of celibacy and devoted themselves to a
religious life immediately after St. Patrick's birth, they eagerly
adopt Jocelin's statement that the Apostle of Ireland was born at
"Empthor," and that the home of The Sixth "Life," Calphurnius was "not
far from the Irish Sea," although this untrustworthy author stands
alone among the ancient writers in making this assertion.
Although Jocelin is responsible for the statement that St. Patrick fled
to the island of Britain after his escape from captivity in Ireland,
the subsequent three days' voyage by sea and twenty-eight days' journey
by land before reaching his home are fatal to Jocelin's contention, as
Professor Bury clearly demonstrates.
Ware's Empthor was near Dumbarton; Colgan's, Dumbarton itself; Usher
and the "Aberdeen Breviary" identify it as Kilpatrick; Cardinal Moran
rests sure that it is Hamilton, at the mouth of the Avon in Scotland;
but St. Patrick's ship, chartered by Heaven to carry him to his "own
native land," could, if any of the places named were St. Patrick's
native town, have borne him directly almost to his destination, and
saved part at least of the three days' journey by sea and the whole of
the twenty-eight days' journey by wilderness before joining his
relatives.
THE FIFTH "LIFE," BY PROBUS, PROVES THAT ST. PATRICK WAS BORN IN
BONONIA.
THE Fifth "Life," written by Probus, an Irish monk, who died at Meyence
in the year 859, is regarded as the best of the old Latin "Lives" of
St. Patrick; it is considered to be an amended edition of the "Book of
Armagh," written by Muirchu Macc-Mactheni, so truly that the blank left
by the missing folio in that famous book can be filled in by copying
the "History of Probus." (Canon O'Hanlon's "Lives of the Irish Saints,"
March 17th.)