The Fourth “Life”
“Some say that St. Patrick was of Jewish origin. After Our Lord had died on the Cross for the sins of the human race, a Roman army, avenging His Passion, laid Judea waste, and the captive Jews were dispersed amongst all the nations of the earth. Some of their number settled down among the Armorican Britons, and it is stated that it was from them that St. Patrick traced his origin.” This may be gathered from the book of Epistles composed by himself, “on account of our sins, and because we had neither observed the precepts of the Lord nor obeyed His Commandments, we are dispersed to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
“But, however, it is more credible and more certain that he speaks of that dispersion into which the Britons were driven by the Romans, in order that they might become possessed of the land near the Tuscan Sea which is called Armorica. After that dispersion, therefore, his parents went straight to Strath Clyde. There St. Patrick was conceived and born, his father being ‘Kalburnius,’ and his mother Conchessa, as he testifies in the book of his Epistles: ‘I am Patrick, the son of Kalburnius, and Conchessa is my mother.’ St. Patrick was, therefore, born in a town called Nemthur, which signifies a heavenly tower. This town was situated in Campo Taberniæ, which is called the Field of Tents because, at one time, the Roman army pitched their tents there. In the British tongue Campus Tabern is the same as Campus Tabernaculorum.
“XV.—But the first cause of his coming to Ireland, and the sequence of events which hurried him there, are not to be passed over in silence. By the divine providence of God, it so happened that in his tender years he should be led to that nation, so that in his youth he should learn the language of the people, whose apostle he was afterwards destined to become. At that period Irish fleets were accustomed to sail over to Britain for the sake of plunder, and to bring back to Ireland whomsoever they made prisoners. It chanced, therefore, that the venerated youth, with his sister, named Lupita, should be taken captives amongst others. Some have written that the Saint at the time was but seven years of age. It seems to me, however, more credible what he himself states: ‘When I fell into captivity I was sixteen years of age.’ He was taken to Ireland and sold in the northern regions to four brothers, whom he served with a simple and devout heart. On that account he was called Cothraigh. But he had four names, for he received the name of Suchet at baptism; he was called Magonius by Germanus, Bishop; lastly, when he was elevated to the Episcopal dignity, he received his fourth name, Patrick.”
It is suggestive how the Armorican tradition seems to manifest itself, either directly or indirectly, in nearly all the “Lives” of the Saint which are considered the best; in St. Fiacc’s, in the annotations of the Scholiast, in the “Tripartite Life,” in the Fourth “Life,” and in the Fifth by Probus. In the Fourth “Life” it is stated that both parents of the Saint were Armorican Britons, and that St. Patrick, except for the accident of his place of birth, was an Armorican Briton. The author of the Fourth “Life,” moreover, calls Calphurnius and Conchessa Armorican Britons, which serves to demonstrate that Armorica, even in the early years of St. Patrick, fell under the name of Britannia, and that its inhabitants were called Britons.
In this “Life” is to be found the mistake of the Scholiast, and of the other “Lives” who have adopted his suggestion, that Nemthur was the name of a town, and not of a tower or district, as may be gathered from the history of the tower itself.
The Second, Third, and Fourth “Lives” of the Saint, however, “are filled with fables,” according to Canon O’Hanlon. “Their acts seem to have been either borrowed from one another, or are copies of versions taken from the same source” (“Lives of the Irish Saints,” March 17th).
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