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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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Stan Mellett calls for a little thinking ‘outside the box’ when it comes to celebrating God’s mercy and forgiveness.
“How are we to celebrate the mystery and miracle of our forgiveness?” Stan argues that in the past we got it wrong. “God was a hard taskmaster; grudgingly would forgive but all the conditions had to be met. What a travesty of the Gospel! What an abuse of Church authority!”
“Any hope that the faithful and the unfaithful will once again wait in queue to whisper their ‘sins’ in a box, behind a curtain or in a private encounter, is, I think, remote.”
“Why hesitate to celebrate forgiveness for congregations in one liturgical celebration? “

One Comment

  1. Peter O'Reilly says:

    This is a brilliant resource for getting in touch with the heart of Patrick cutting through the fog of uncertainty that some scholars surround the saint with.

    Reply

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