Man vyi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
‘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. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time.’ So begins Patrick’s own Confession, written in the 5th century AD. He is famous as an apostle to the Irish, whose mission began there in AD 432. But where was he born?
All of the earliest evidence shows us he was born near Alt Clud, the regal stronghold of the Britons of Strathclyde, or close to today’s Dumbarton in Scotland. In some of the Seven Lives of Patrick, which were written between the 7th and 12th centuries, we are told that he was born at Nemthor. The Tripartite tells us: ‘As to Patrick of the Britons, of Ail Cluade [Alt Clud] was he. In Nemthor, moreover, he was born.’ Nemthor has been identified as Nemeton, where the most westerly of the seven Roman forts was built as part of the Antonine Wall, a construction devised to keep out the warlike Picts and Scots. Most scholars reckon that Bannavem Taburniae was a market place where Roman soldiers would have bought produce from the local Britons. At such a place, Patrick’s grandfather ministered as a Christian priest.
Patrick tells us that at the age of 16 he was captured by the Irish and enslaved, but later managed to escape home. A strong missionary calling meant that he was off again to train in Rome and in Gaul, before being appointed as bishop to Ireland. He met with great success there, as he says: ‘Never before did they know of God except to serve idols and unclean things. But now, they have become the people of the Lord, and are called children of God. The sons and daughters of the leaders of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ… I baptised so many thousands of people.’ His preaching was accompanied by miracles as he saw the powerhouse of the druids broken and hundreds of churches established. His work became the base upon which later Christian movements in Ireland were built, and from which missionaries would come to reach the people of Scotland.