Dr. Todd, by joining these two separate titles, with more ingenuity than fairness, has made it appear that “St. Patrick desired to visit the Apostolic See, and there to learn wisdom, but that meeting with St. Germanus in Gaul he went no further."[124] Even could the headings of two separate chapters be thus joined together, the real meaning of et ideo non exivit ultra would be, that St. Patrick never again left Germanus,—­a meaning too obviously inadmissible to require further comment.  But it is well known that the life of St. Patrick which bears the name of Probus, is founded almost verbally on the text of Macutenius, and this work supplies the missing chapters.  They clearly relate not only the Roman mission of the saint, but also the saint’s love of Rome, and his desire to obtain from thence “due authority” that he might “preach with confidence.”

[Illustration:  ANCIENT SWORD, FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE R.I.A., FOUND AT HILLSWOOD, CO.  GALWAY.]

[Illustration:  SCULPTURES AT DEVENISH.]

FOOTNOTES: 

[110] Christ.—­“Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatur a papa Caelestino Palladius et primus episcopus mittitur.”—­Vet.  Lat.  Scrip.  Chron.  Roncallius, Padua, 1787.

[111] Wicklow.—­Probably on the spot where the town of Wicklow now stands.  It was then called the region of Hy-Garchon.  It is also designated Fortreatha Laighen by the Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn.  The district, probably, received this name from the family of Eoichaidh Finn Fothart, a brother of Conn of the Hundred Battles.

[112] Armagh—­Fol. 16, a.a.

[113] Patricius.—­This name was but an indication of rank.  In the later years of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says, “the meanest subjects of the Roman Empire [5th century] assumed the illustrious name of Patricius.”—­Decline and Fall, vol. viii. p. 300.  Hence the confusion that arose amongst Celtic hagiographers, and the interchanging of the acts of several saints who bore the same name.

[114] Deacon.—­This was an important office in the early Roman Church.

[115] Heresy.—­The Pelagian.

[116] Followed him.—­The Four Masters imply, however, that they remained in Ireland.  They also name the three wooden churches which he erected.  Celafine, which has not been identified; Teach-na-Romhan, House of the Romans, probably Tigroni; and Domhnach-Arta, probably the present Dunard.—­Annals, p. 129.

[117] Nemthur.—­The n is merely a prefix; it should read Em-tur.

[118] Celestine.—­See the Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn.