The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick/The Life and Acts of St. Patrick/Chapter 122

180152The Most Ancient Lives of Saint PatrickThe Life and Acts of St. Patrick by Jocelin, translated by Edmund L. Swift
Chapter CXXII: The Sentence prophetically declared
James O'Leary

The Sentence prophetically declared.

A certain man named Dengo, who was wicked and perverse, and powerful in iniquity, prevented the saint from building a church in a convenient place; to whom the saint attesting his Judge, nay, prophesying, said, "In a short time shall thine house be destroyed, and thy substance wasted away; and thy sons that issue from thine impious loins shall of the greater part defile themselves by mutual fratricide; while the remnant of them shall never attain unto dignity or power, but shall be strangers and wanderers on the earth." And the prophecy of Saint Patrick was proved by the subsequent misery visited on the man and on his children.