S. Agricola was born of a senatorial family. In stature he was diminutive, but the greatness of his soul redeemed him from that disrespect which his short stature might have brought upon him. He was eloquent, of refined manners, prudent in judgment. In his youth he formed a warm attachment for S. Venantius Fortunatus, the Christian poet, and author of the magnificent hymn, _Vexilla regis_, "The royal banners forward go." In 532, he was appointed bishop of Châlons-sur-Saône. He died at the age of eighty-three, in the year 580, and was buried in the Church of S. Marcellus, near Châlons, where his relics are preserved over the high altar. S. PATRICK, AP. OF IRELAND. (ABOUT A.D. 465.) [Roman, and almost all Western Martyrologies, Bede, Usuardus, Ado, &c. Authorities:--The most authentic are S. Patrick's Confession, and his letter against Coroticus, Fiech's hymn, or metrical sketch of the life of the saint, and the life by Probus. The hymn is attributed to Fiech, bishop of Sletty, who lived in the 5th cent. The Bollandists and other critics doubt his having been the author of it; but at any rate it is very ancient, and not later than the 7th, or perhaps the 6th cent. Probus is supposed to have been teacher of a school at Slane, who was burnt in a tower fired by the Danes, in 950. There is also a hymn attributed to Secundinus, one of S. Patrick's first companions, in which the saint is spoken of as still living. A very interesting document, of the early part of the 7th cent., is a litany in Anglo-Saxon characters, published by Mabillon, in which S. Patrick is invoked. The Antiphonarium Benchorense, apparently of the 8th cent., contains a hymn in honour of S. Patrick. There exist some notes or scholia on Fiech's metrical life, which are usually quoted under the title of Fiech's Scholiast. They were written partly in Irish, and partly in Latin. These notes are of various dates, and by different hands, and consequently of very different values. Colgan gives some lives, which he calls the second, third, and fourth, but these are full of fables, and seem to have been copied either from each other, or from some common original. Here and there they contain facts, but these are smothered in fable. Colgan is utterly wrong in assigning to them a high antiquity. The Tripartite Life, so called because it is divided into three parts, is published by Colgan, and attributed by him wrongly to S. Evin, who lived in the 6th cent. This work, though founded on older lives, was really put together in the 10th century, as certain persons are named in it who lived about that period. With the exception of certain fables it contains, it is a very useful work, and contains a much greater variety of details concerning the proceedings of S. Patrick during his mission in Ireland than any other of his lives. It is not to be confounded with a Latin work quoted by Usher under the same title, and which belongs to a later period.