'Ego Patricius peccator rusticissimus . . . Mise Pádraig, peacach róthuatach . . . I Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman . . .'

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St Benin's Church, Kilbennan, County Galway, Ireland [Wikipedia]

'Ego Patricius peccator rusticissimus . . . Mise Pádraig, peacach róthuatach . . . I Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman . . .'

The opening words of St Patrick's Confession in Latin, Irish and English.

Please pray earnestly to St Patrick for a renewal of the Christian faith in Ireland. 

Extracts from St Patrick's Confessio 

I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement [vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

The Angel Victoricus over Glendalough, Ireland

One of a set of four airmail stamps used in Ireland between 1948 and 1965 featuring the Angel Victoricus  carrying the words of the beginning of the letter mentioned by St Patrick below, 'Vox Hiberniae', Latin for 'The Voice of Ireland'. The stamps were designed byRichard J. King who died in Dublin on St Patrick's Day 1974.

And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents [kinsfolk], and they welcomed me as a son, and asked me, in faith, that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go anywhere else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as if from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’; and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and they were crying as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many years the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.


St Patrick's Breastplate is attributed to the saint but was probably written some centuries after his death.

Full post here.

Comments

  1. Melanie Jean Juneau6:53 am, March 17, 2014

    beautiful, stunning stained glass- unique. thank-you for all your research, experience and words of wisdom

    ReplyDelete

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