Bolougne-Sur-Mer | Page 4

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 that town would be too far "from the Western sea," but another Bannaventa somewhere on the sea coast, and "perhaps in the region of the Severn" (chap, ii., p. 17, and Appendix, 323).
The whole of Professor Bury's new theory rests on a very faint similarity between Bonaven or Bannaven--the name which