Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/433

P A T P A T ority over its sole surviving Eastern rival. Finding it difficult, however, to avoid the appearance of equality that was involved in the name of "patriarch," now convention ally bestowed on the occupants of other ancient and apostolic sees, the bishops of Kome rather avoided the title, preferring the more colourless designation of papa or pope (see POPE). PATRICIAN. The history, in the Roman state, of the hereditary patrician order (patricii, patres, house-fathers, goodmen) who originally constituted the entire popuhis Romanus has been traced in the article NOBILITY (vol. xvii. pp. 525-6). With the transference of the imperial capital to Byzantium under Constantino, the title patridus became a personal and not an hereditary distinction ; the name was held to denote a fatherly relation to the emperor, and those who bore it stood first among the illustres, re ceiving such appellations as " magnificentia," " celsitudo," "eminentia," "magnitude." High civil and military office was usually conferred on them, and they were frequently sent into the provinces as viceroys. After the overthrow of Romulus Augustulus in the West, Odoacer claimed and, practically at least, received from the emperor Zeno the title of "patricius," in virtue of which he governed Italy. It was similarly assumed by other barbarian conquerors. In 754 it was conferred by Pope Stephen on Pippin the Short, and it was afterwards borne by Charlemagne. It was as patrician of Rome that the emperor Henry IV. claimed the right to depose Pope Gregory VII. The title was abolished by Pope Eugenius III. in 114-5. PATRICK, ST. In one of the incursions of the Scots and Picts upon the neighbouring Roman province south of the wall of Severus, probably that of 411 A.D., the year after Honorius had refused aid to the Britons, a youth of about fifteen was carried off with many others from the district in the neighbourhood of the wall at the head of the Solway, and sold as a slave on the opposite coast of Ireland in the territory of the Irish Picts called Dal Araicle. 1 This youth was the future apostle of the Irish. As his name implies, he was of noble birth, and he tells us so himself. He was the son of the deacon Calpurnius, who was the son of Potitus, a priest. His father was a clecurio or magistrate, and, as Patrick according to tradi tion was born at Xemthur, 2 he must have exercised his functions of magistrate at that place, but on the with drawal of the Roman garrisons from Britain probably 1 The province of Valentia, reorganized by Theodosius I., was com prised between the wall of Antonimis, which extended from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, and the wall of Severus, which extended from the Solway to Tynernouth. Although the destruction of the pagan temples was decreed in 381, and the pagan religion prohibited in 390, that is, a few years after the restoration of Roman power in Britain and the reorganization of this province by Theodosius, the greater part of the Romanized population of Britain seems to have been pagan at the end of the 4th century, and especially in Valentia, where Patrick was born about 396. Amidst the many evidences of Roman occupa tion that have been found there not a relic of Roman Christianity has, so far as we know, been yet discovered. In the south-west part of Valentia, along the north shore of the Solway Firth from the Nitli to the Irish Channel, Ptolemy placed the tribe of the Novantre, its principal dun or oppidum being on the west side of Wigtown Bay, and called by him Leukopibia, a name still preserved in Whithorn. During the great displacements of tribes consequent upon the Roman conquests and the inroads of the Scots and Picts, the British Novantsj disappear, and in their place we find at the end of the 4th century Goidelic Cruithni or Picts. Their position in the midst of a British population, and their contiguity to the part of Ulster occupied by the Irish Cruithni or Picts, clearly indicate that the Picts of Galloway were part of the Ulidian or Irish Picts pressed out of Ireland by the intru sion of the Scots. This settlement of the Irish Picts in Galloway afforded an excellent vantage-ground for such attacks as that spoken of in the text. 2 There can be no doubt that Nemthur was situated at the Clyde end of the wall of Antoninus, where Dumbarton no? is. It is called Nevtur in the Old Welsh MS. known as the "Black Book of Car marthen." retired for safety south of the wall of Severus, where, as Patrick tells us, he had a small country place (villula) near the town (vicus) of Bannavem Taberniaj, whence Patrick was carried off. The country along the south of the wall, especially near the Solway, was a region of camps or military posts to which the designation Tabernia would be appropriate. Bannavem seems to be a Romanized form of a British name signifying "river foot," and most probably was the Banna of the Chorography of Ravenas, and of the inscription on an altar said to have been found at Birdoswald (the Romano-British Amboglanna), and now at Lanercost Priory. The name also occurs on the well- known bronze cup found about two hundred years ago at Rudge in Wiltshire, which dates from about 350. Banna must have been near Petriana, the former being probably the vicus or town, and the latter the military station proper. Towards the end of the 4th century, before the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons, there were along the wall 10,300 foot and 1500 horse according to the Notitia Imperii, so that Bannavem Tabernias, or Bannavem of the military posts or encampments, was descriptive of the district, and the office of decurio in such a place one of considerable dignity. The youth Succat or Patrick remained in hard slavery for six years, tending cattle, probably on Slemish Mountain in the county Antrim. He seems to have been of an enthusiastic temperament, and much given to prayer and meditation. Learning of a means of escape, it so filled his mind as to give rise to visions. The bays and creeks of the west and north-west of Ireland, especially Killala Bay, were much frequented in ancient times, for they afforded secure retreats to sea-rovers when they crept round the coast of Ireland and swooped down on that of Roman Britain. Ptolemy s town of Nagnata was probably on the bay just named ; it is celebrated in the stories of Fomorians, Norsemen, and other sea-rovers. The kindred of the Ard Ri or paramount king of Ireland of the time, Dathi or rather Athi, one of the greatest leaders among the invading Scots, dwelt there ; it was consequently a place which offered facilities for going to Britain, and from that place most probably Patrick succeeded in escaping. After his escape he appears to have conceived the noble idea of devoting himself to the conversion of the Irish, and to have gone somewhere for a few years to prepare himself for the priesthood. His biographers take him to Tours to St Martin, who was then dead several years, afterwards to the island of Lerins in the Mediterranean, and lastly to Rome, where he received a mission from Pope Celestine. For all this there is no evidence whatever, the whole story being the result of the confusion of Palladius with the real Patrick. The tradition of some connexion between the Irish apostle and St Martin of Tours, the monastic type of the earliest Irish Church, the doubts as to Patrick s fitness for the work which led to his writing his Confession, and indeed all the difficulties that beset the question of the origin of the Irish Church, receive a simple and satisfactory explanation upon the hypothesis of Patrick having pre pared himself for the priesthood at Candida Casa, the monastic institution founded by St NIXIAN (q.v.). Patrick tells us that after a few years (i.e., after his escape) he was among the Britons with his kindred, who received him as a son. He was evidently bent upon his mission, for they besought him after such tribulations not to part from them again. Full of it, he dreams that a man whose name was Victorious came to him bearing innumerable epistles, one of which he received and read ; the beginning of it contained the words, "The voice of the Irish"; whilst repeating these words he says, "I imagined that I heard in my mind (in mente) the voice of those who were near the wood of Fochlad. which is near