46 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
dream, which decided his calling. He saw a man, Victoricius, who handed him innumerable letters from Ireland, begging him to come over and help them. He obeyed the divine monition, and devoted the remainder of his life to the conversion of Ire land (from A.D. 440 to 493).1
" I am," he says, " greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who never had the knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God." He speaks of having baptized many thousands of men. Armagh seems to have been for some time the centre of his mis sionary operations, and is to this day the seat of the primacy of Ireland, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. He died in peace, and was buried in Downpatrick (or Gabhul), where he began his mission, gained his first converts and spent his de clining years.2
His Roman Catholic biographers have surrounded his life with marvelous achievements, while some modern Protestant hypercritics have questioned even his existence, as there is no certain mention of his name before 634 ; unless it be " the Hymn of St. Sechnall (Secundinus) in praise of St. Patrick," which is assigned to 448. But if we accept his own writings, "there can be no reasonable doubt" (we say with a Pres byterian historian of Ireland) "that he preached the gospel in Hibcrnia in the fifth century; that he was a most zealous and efficient evangelist, and that he is eminently entitled to the honorable designation of the Apostle of Ireland." 3
1 The dates are merely conjectural. Haddan & Stubbs (p. 295) select A.D. 440 for St. Patrick's mission (as did Tillemont & Todd), and 493 as the year of liis death. According to other accounts, his mission began much earlier, and lasted sixty years. The alleged date of the foundation of Armagh is A. D. 445.
2 Afterwards Armagli disputed the claims of Downpatrick. See Killen 1. 71-73.
3 Killen, Vol. 1. 12. Patrick describes himself as " Hiberione constitute episcopus." Afterwards he was called " Episcopus Scotorum," then " Archiapostolus Scotorum" then "Abbat of all Ireland," and "Archbishop, First Primate, and Chief Apos tle of Ireland." See Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.
§ 14. THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 47
The Christianity of Patrick was substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, /. c. Catholic, orthodox, monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the age of Gregory I. in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Con fession he never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in matters of faith. lie quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times ; three times from the Apocrypha. It has been conjectured that the failure and withdrawal of Palladius was due to Patrick, who had already monopolized this mission-field ; but, according to the more probable chronology, the mission of Patrick began about nine years after that of Palladius. From the end of the seventh century, the two persons were confounded, and a part of the history of Palladius, especially his connection with Pope Gelestinc, was transferred to Patrick.1
With St. Patrick there is inseparably connected the most renowned female saint of Ireland, ST. BRIDGET (or Brigid, Brigida, Bride), who prepared his winding sheet and survived him many years. She died Feb. 1, 523 (or 525). She is "the Mary of Ireland,'7 and gave her name to innumerable Irish daughters, churches, and convents. She is not to be confounded with her name-sake, the widow-saint of Sweden. Her life is surrounded even by a still thicker cloud of legendary fiction than that of St. Patrick, so that it is impossible to separate the facts from the ac cretions of a credulous posterity. She was an illegitimate child of a chieftain or bard, and a slave-mother, received holy orders, be came deformed in answer to her own prayer, founded the famous nunnery of Kildare (/. c. the Church of the Oak),2 foretold the birth of Columba, and performed all sorts of signs and wonders.
1 Iluddan & Stubbs, p. 294, note: "The language of the Hymns of S. Sechnall and of S. Fiacc, and of S. Patrick's own Confcssio, and the silence of Prosper, besides chronological difficulties, disprove, upon purely historical grounds, the supposed mission from Rome of S. Patrick himself; which first appears in the Scholia on S. Fiacc's Hymn."
2 The probable date of foundation is A. D. 480. Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.