St. Patrick's Vision
It was about this period that he was favoured with the remarkable vision or dream relating to his Irish apostolate. He thus describes it in his Confessio:—
“I saw, in a nocturnal vision, a man named Victoricus [3] coming as if from Ireland, with a large parcel of letters, one of which he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it, I found it contained these words: ‘The voice of the Irish;’ and while reading it I thought I heard, at the same moment, the voice of a multitude of persons near the Wood of Foclut, which is near the western sea; and they cried out, as if with one voice, ‘We entreat thee, holy youth, to come and henceforth walk amongst us.’ And I was greatly affected in my heart, and could read no longer; and then I awoke.”
Notes
[3] Victoricus.—There were two saints, either of whom might have been the mysterious visitant who invited St. Patrick to Ireland. St. Victorious was the great missionary of the Morini, at the end of the fourth century. There was also a St. Victoricus who suffered martyrdom at Amiens, A.D. 286. Those who do not believe that the saints were and are favoured with supernatural communications, and whose honesty compels them to admit the genuineness of such documents as the Confession of St. Patrick, are put to sad straits to explain away what he writes.