Info on St Patrick available on new website

You may like to explore a website with material about the Confessio of St Patrick: www.confessio.ie
It was set up by the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
It has a lot of material about the writings of St Patrick. You can examine and read the eight surviving manuscripts of the Confessio. The oldest, in the Book of Armagh in Dublin, was copied in Armagh about the year 807 AD by a monk named Ferdomhnach.

We have two documents written by Patrick (in the 5th century): The “Confessio”, and a letter to Soldiers of Coroticus, who took some Christians whom Patrick had baptised into slavery.

On the website, you can read or download the Confessio in Latin, Irish, English, German, Italian or Portuguese.
It has a “Hyperstack” of studies of the documents, and a variety of other material, if you want to get into the fine detail of the matter.
Don’t look here for snakes and shamrocks – here we get to the real St Patrick before the various traditions and legends grew up.

On the musical side, I would recommend a recording of a medieval Office for St Patrick, from manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin. Contemplative and captivating.
It is available, sung by Canty, from http://www.divine-art.co.uk/CD/25065info.htm, on CD or download.

Pádraig McCarthy

 

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