The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick: Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings
History
The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick: Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings
Patrick, Saint, 373?-463?
The man of God landed with the companions of his voyage within the
borders of Leinster, in the port of Innbherde, where a river flowing
into the sea then abounded with many fishes. And the fishermen were
quitting the water, and drawing after them to the bank their loaded
nets, when the servants of the holy prelate, being wearied with their
travel and with hunger, earnestly besought that they would bestow on
them some of their fishes; but they, barbarous, brutal, and inhuman,
answered the entreaty, not only with refusal, but with insult. Whereat
the saint, being displeased, pronounced on them this sentence, even his
malediction: that the river should no longer produce fishes, from the
abundance of which idolaters might send empty away the worshippers of
the true God. From that day, therefore, is the river condemned to
unfruitfulness, so that the sentence uttered by the mouth of Patrick
might be known to proceed from the face of the Lord.
CHAPTER XXX.
_How the Dry Land was turned into a Marsh._
And going forward, he arrived at a place which was called Aonach
Tailltion, and there he made ready to refresh himself and his people,
and to announce the office of his ministry. But the idolatrous
inhabitants, not enduring the presence of the man of God, gathered
together and violently drove him thence, as the light of the sun is
intolerable to the weak-eyed. Yet the God whom Patrick bore about him,
and glorified in his body, permitted not that an affront offered unto
His servant for the sake of His name should go unpunished; but quickly
did he bring on them his deserved wrath, inasmuch as for the wickedness
of them who dwelt therein the Lord converted their fruitful land into a
salt marsh; and the sea, with the foreflowing of an unwonted tide,
covered it, and, that it might even for ever be unhabitable, changed
the dry land into a plashy lake. Then the saint, going unto a small
island not far from the main shore, abided there certain days, and it
is called unto this time Saint Patrick's Island.
CHAPTER XXXI.
_Of his coming into Ulidia, and of the Prophecy of the Magicians on his
coming._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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