White— Latin Writings of St. Patrick. 223 



Church. Moreover, the writer twice speaks of the Picts, or some of 

 them, as apostates. Now the mission of Ninian to the Southern Picts 

 began not later than a.d. 398, and possibly lasted until a.d. 432. 

 Christian remains of an earlier date than jS'inian are said to exist in 

 Pictland (Ferguson, Trans. R.I.A., vol. xxvii., p. 100. Eut see Bishop 

 J. Dowden, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland^ 

 1897-98, p. 247, sqq.), so that this point canuot be pressed as 

 necessarily proving that Patrick wrote after a.d. 398. Again, 

 the trace of Eoman organization implied in the term decurio, and 

 the writer's constant use of Britanniae, implying a knowledge of the 

 Eoman division of Britain into provinces, cannot fairly be urged as 

 proof that he wrote before the Roman legions withdrew from Britain 

 in A.D. 410. The Eoman municipal institutions would no doubt 

 survive for some time, even in the most disturbed districts, and this 

 is still more true of the Eoman nomenclature. 



To resume, the name of the great-grandfather of Patrick, Odissus, 

 is supplied in the margin of A. As regards his boyhood, it would be 

 unreasonable to accept literally his self-depreciatory statements : ''I 

 knew not the true God," "I did not believe in the living God" 

 (Conf. 1, 27). The prayers that he repeated in the land of his 

 captivity, so fervently, and with an ever deepening sense of their 

 meaning {fides augehatur, Conf. 16), must have been learnt at home; 

 and he must also have commenced there the rudiments of other 

 learning, for he tells us that his education had been interrupted by his 

 captivity, " My sins prevented me from mastering what I had read 

 through before " (Conf. 10). He does indeed allude to one definite act 

 of sin committed when he was about fifteen years old (Conf. 27). His 

 moral sensitiveness may be gauged from the fact that this so preyed 

 on his mind, that he felt it necessary to confess it before taking 

 Holy Orders. It was sufliciently pardonable for his confessor at the time 

 not to consider it a bar to ordination, although at a later period tlie 

 memory of it was revived with the object of effecting his ruin. 



AVhen Patrick was sixteen years of age, a raid was made by Irish 

 pirates on the district in which he lived. That they were Irish is 

 proved by Ep. 10, where, speaking of his ministry in Ireland, he 

 asks, " Is it from me that springs that godly compassion which I 

 exercise towards that nation, who once took me captive, and harried 

 the menservants and maidservants of my father's house?" This 

 passage, taken in conjunction with Conf. 1, " a small farm . . . where 

 I was taken captive," justifies us in concluding that Patrick was at 

 the farm when the raid took place, and that he and the farm servants 



