St Patrick's Confession, circa 460-490
“Ego Patricius, peccator rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilis sum apud plurimos . . . ” – “My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many . . . ”
These artfully humble words mark three immense moments in the development of Irish culture. Firstly, along with Patrick’s Letter to Coroticus, it is the oldest surviving piece of writing done in Ireland, and so signals one immense change: the arrival of literacy. Secondly, Patrick is the first person in Ireland who can, through these texts, be positively identified as an individual with a known life story. This, in other words, is the moment when prehistory ends and Irish history begins.
Thirdly, of course, Patrick’s Confession speaks to us of one of the most paradoxical but profound developments in that Irish history. On the one hand, it is a dramatic narrative of the collapse of the Roman Empire. As he relates, Patrick, son of a noble Romano-British family, has been kidnapped at the age of 16 and enslaved as a herdsman by Irish raiders who no longer fear the might of Rome. On the other, just as Roman power is vanishing, Patrick brings it to Ireland in another form: Christianity.
Patrick was not the first Christian missionary to Ireland. Palladius, probably from Auxerre, in France, was sent in 431 as the first bishop to “the Irish believing in Christ” – a pre-existing Irish Christian community, possibly centred around Cashel. Some of these early Irish Christians may have been, like Patrick himself, slaves captured in Britain.
But Patrick, as he says in the Confession, preached the Gospel “unto those parts beyond which there lives nobody”. Tradition places the hub of his mission in Armagh – not implausible given its proximity to the great royal centre in Ulster, Emain Macha, or Navan Fort. Patrick claims that “in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things, they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children of God; the sons of the Irish and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ.”
This overstates the speed of the movement from the old religion to the new, but it reflects the reality that Patrick played a key role in the spread of Irish Christianity.
This is the earliest surviving manuscript copy, made around 807 by the scribe Ferdomnach in Armagh. (Its opening words appear on folio 22r of the Book of Armagh, which is displayed with the Book of Kells at Trinity.) It leaves out those parts of the Confession in which Patrick mentions his own failures and weaknesses: for the later monks who were involved in establishing his cult, it was important to show him as a powerful worker of wonders. Most probably, while he was alive, it was his humility and simplicity that made Patrick so attractive and persuasive.
Thanks to Pauric Dempsey and Franz Fischer of the Royal Irish Academy and Bernard Meehan of Trinity College Dublin
Where to see itOld Library, Trinity College Dublin, 01-8962320, tcd.ie/library/bookof kells
