Confession
Patrick’s account of his own life, written in Ireland in old age: his capture and slavery, his escape, his return as a bishop and the charges brought against him. With his letter to Coroticus it is the main evidence for his mission.
Read the text at confessio.ie ↗Latin text, edited by Ludwig Bieler (Royal Irish Academy) ↗The oldest copy, in the Book of Armagh, Trinity College Dublin MS 52 (images) ↗
The Confession (Latin Confessio) is a defence and a thanksgiving in sixty-two short sections. Patrick wrote it in Ireland, in old age, to answer critics among the clergy of Britain who had questioned his fitness to be a bishop. It is addressed to fellow Christians, and it explains his mission by telling how he first came to Ireland as a slave.
It is not a biography. Patrick names his father, his grandfather and his home village, but no king, no pope, no Irish place except a wood “near the western sea”, and no date. It does not mention Armagh or Tara; the stories that link him with those places are found in Lives written some two centuries later. The text survives in eight manuscripts, the oldest being the Book of Armagh, copied in Ireland about 807.
Cited in
- c. AD 432–461 or 493 (traditional), traditional date