Bolougne-Sur-Mer | Page 4

inform his readers where the Saint was born, would say that he came
into the world in a tower" ("Eccl. Hist.," vol. i., p. 101).
Nemthur may indeed be a corruption of Neustria, as Dr. Lanigan
suggests; but it must not be forgotten that districts not unfrequently
derive their names from famous monuments that either stand or have
stood in their midst. We have an illustration of this in the very locality
where many believe that St. Patrick was born. The high level on the
north-eastern cliff's of Boulogne is called even at the present time
"Tour d'Ordre," deriving its name from Caligula's tower, which the
Romans called Turris Ordinis, and the Gaulish Celts called Nemtor,

which once stood on the lofty plateau, but is no longer in existence.
Ware's theory, in his own words, is this: "I must dissent from the
Scholiast that Nemthur and Alcuid were the same place; though it must
be granted that they stood near each other, as appears from a passage
of Jocelin: 'there was a promontory hanging over the town of Empthor,
a certain fortification, the ruins of which are yet visible,' and a little
later: 'this celebrated place, seated in the valley of the Clyde, is, in the
language of the country, called "Dunbreaton," that is, the Fort of the
Britons'" (Ware, vol. i., p. 6).
Relying also on Jocelin's statement that Tabernise signified a "Field of
Tents"--"Tabernaculorum Campus"--and on his unwarranted assertion
that the habitation of Calphurnius was "not far from the Irish Sea,"
Usher pointed out Kilpatrick, a town situated between Dumbarton and
the city of Glasgow, as St. Patrick's native town.
Jocelin's "Life of St. Patrick," as Canon O'Hanlon has said, is
"incomparably the worst" of the Latin lives of the Saint, and yet it is on
this untrustworthy foundation, and on the contradictions of the
Scholiast, that Usher and Ware rest their respective theories. Usher
discovered a Roman camp at Kilpatrick, and found that the town was
"not far from the Irish Sea," and it is upon this weak hypothesis that the
Kilpatrick theory rests.
The Aberdeen Breviary coincides with Usher, and the lesson referring
to St. Patrick is as follows: "St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, was
born of Calphurnius, a man of illustrious Celtic descent, and of
Conchessa, a native of Gaul and a sister of St. Martin, Bishop of Tours.
He was conceived with many miraculous signs at Dumbarton Castle,
but was born and reared at Kilpatrick in Scotland, near the Castle."
But if the Aberdeen Breviary asserts that St. Patrick was born at
Kilpatrick, the Continental Breviaries, as Colgan freely admits, are
equally positive that he was a native of Armoric Gaul.
Cardinal Moran, in an article contributed to the Dublin Review in the
spring of 1880, insisted rightly that the solution of the difficulty is to be

found in the word Bonaven. Bon, or Ban, he tells us, is a Celtic word
which signifies the mouth of a river, and Avon is the river itself. From
this, he argues that the Saint was born at a town which once stood on
the present site of Hamilton, which is situated at the mouth of the Avon,
just where that river discharges itself into the Clyde. The same
argument would apply with equal force to a town situated at the mouth
of the River Aven on the French coast, which flows into the harbour of
Concarneu in Brittany.
Anyone who accepts the authority of Probus, who asserts that Bonaven
Tabernise "was not far from the Western sea," or of the Scholiast, who
is the author of the Dumbarton theory, will see a grave objection to
accepting the Cardinal's solution of the problem: Hamilton is about
fifty miles distant from Dumbarton, and far away from the Atlantic
Ocean.
None of the authors mentioned make any attempt to reconcile the two
contradictory statements of the Scholiast: (1) that St. Patrick was born
at Dumbarton, and (2) that he was captured in Armorica. They have
failed to notice that, if the Saint was captured in Armorica, he could
not have been born at Dumbarton, because he assures us in his
"Confession" that he was captured at his father's home. Even
according to the admissions of the Scholiast, therefore, Bonaven
Tabernise, St. Patrick's home, was situated in Armorica. Usher, Ware,
and Cardinal Moran, while contending that the Apostle of Ireland was
born in North Britain, refuse to accept the Scholiast's statement that he
was a native of Dumbarton.
ST. PATRICK WAS NOT BORN IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Ignoring altogether both the Scotch and Welsh theories as to the
birthplace of St. Patrick, Professor Bury, in his Life of the Saint, holds
that Ireland's Apostle was born in a village named Bannaventa; not,
however, Bannaventa now known as Daventry in Northamptonshire,
seeing that