6 The Escape to Gaul. The State of Gaul, A.D. 409-416
The Vandals, Sueves, and Alans, who entered Gaul at the end of A.D. 406, remained in the land, devastating, slaying, and burning until A.D. 409, in which year they crossed the Pyrenees, to find homes in Spain. The extent of their ravages is indicated by Jerome, in a letter of A.D. 411, in which he mentions the devastation of Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Narbonensis, and the destruction of Mainz, Rheims, and Speyer.385 It is also described by Salvian, writing at a much later date,386 in the De Gubernatione Dei, who tells387 how the Vandals, gens ignavissima, de loco ad locum pergens de urbe in urbem transiens laid all things waste. Arsit regio Belgarum deinde opes Aquitanorum luxuriantium et posthaec corpus omnium Galliarum. But more valuable as genuine pictures by eye-witnesses, men who had themselves suffered with the sufferings of Gaul, are the Commonitorium of Orientius, and an anonymous poem entitled De Providentia Divina. Both these poems can be approximately dated to A.D. 415-416, and they describe the condition of the country at the time, enabling us to realise the long misery and desolation produced by the scourge of the years A.D. 407-409 Nor had Gaul, at least southern Gaul, been allowed a respite of peace to recover from the effects of that scourge, for the provincials had hardly become conscious that the Vandals had passed into Spain when Athaulf and his Visigoths entered Gaul. Moreover, a large body of Alans had remained behind, instead of accompanying their fellows across the Pyrenees. We derive a vivid picture of the unsettled state of Aquitaine from the Eucharisticon of Paulinus of Pella.388
Some passages in Orientius, the De Providentia Divina, and another anonymous poem Ad Uxorem, of the same period, illustrate the condition of the Gallic provinces.389
(1) Orientius (ed. Ellis, in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum), ii. 165 sqq.:—
Non castella locis, non tutae moenibus urbes,
invia non pelago, tristia non heremo,
non cava, non etiam nudis390 sub rupibus antra
ludere barbaricas praevaluere manus.
(2) De Providentia Dei, in Migne, Patr. Gr. lxi. c. 617:—
Si totus Gallos, etc.
(3) Ad Uxorem, in Migne, ib. c. 611.
Non idem status est agris, etc.
It is possible, but I can find no direct evidence to show that the devastation had extended down the Loire. It might be considered whether the words of Orientius invia non pelago, which imply that the invaders attacked islands, allude to the islands of Noirmoutier, Rhé, etc.
Thus considerable regions of Gaul were a desolate wilderness, according to contemporary, rhetorical and poetical, evidence, from A.D. 408-409 to 416; and therefore, it might be argued, Gaul suits the narrative of St. Patrick in his Confession (362₂₂₋363₃₄). He and his companions reached land three days (post triduum) after they left the coast of Ireland, so that our choice lies between Britain and Gaul. The data do not suit Britain. We cannot imagine what inland part of Britain they could have wished to reach, which would have necessitated a journey of twenty-eight days per disertum. Suppose that the crew disembarked on the south coast of Britain, and that the southern regions had been recently ravaged by the Saxons, yet a journey of a few days would have brought them to Londinium or any other place they could have desired to reach from a south-coast port. Moreover, if they had landed in Britain, Patrick, when he once escaped from their company, could have reached the home of his parents in a few days; whereas he did not return home for a few years (ib. 364). His own words exclude Britain. Having mentioned his final escape from the traders, he proceeds: Et iterum post paucos annos in Britannis eram cum parentibus meis. I believe that post paucos annos has been interpreted by some in the sense “a few years after my capture.” But this is an unnatural explanation. The words naturally refer to what immediately precedes, viz. his escape. The only thing which can be alleged in favour of Britain is the intimation in the dream that he would “quickly come to his native land” (cito iturus ad patriam tuam). This of course represents his expectation at the time of his escape. But the very fact that he fails to say that the promise was literally fulfilled, and glides over intervening years in silence, strongly suggests that his expectation was not realised.
I observe that Mr. T. Olden, in his short history of The Church of Ireland, arrived at the conclusion that Patrick’s disertum must be placed in Gaul. His subject, as a whole, lies outside my knowledge, but his chapters on Patrick would not lead one to form a favourable opinion of his work. His whole argument and narrative are vitiated by his astonishing ignorance of Imperial history. He quotes391 a passage of Jerome to prove barbarian devastations in Gaul. He quotes it not from the original text, but at second hand from Montalembert’s Les moines d’occident, a book which should be used with extreme caution. The passage cited by Mr. Olden has no bearing on Gaul at the time at which Mr. Olden sets St. Patrick’s escape from his captivity, A.D. 395. The devastations did not begin till A.D. 407. This gross ignorance of the superficial facts of the general history of the period damages Mr. Olden’s credit.
Mr. Olden, however, has made one useful contribution to the question—the only good thing in his account of St. Patrick.392 He has brought out the significance of the dogs, which are mentioned incidentally in Patrick’s narrative. He has pointed out that the dogs—which, it is implied, were numerous and valuable—must have been part of the merchandise which the traders shipped in Ireland. Celtic hounds were highly valued in the south,393 and it would be probable a priori that they were exported from Ireland as well as from Britain. The route of this trade would have been overland through Gaul, from the north of the Loire or Garonne to a port on the coast of Provence, or to Italy.394 Mr. Olden acutely suggests that Patrick, so long the servant of an Irish chieftain, had become skilled in the management of wolf-hounds, and that this consideration may have determined the traders to take him on board.
Thus the cargo of dogs seems to support the conclusion that it was to Gaul, not to Britain, that the traders sailed. They might have landed at either Nantes or Bordeaux. Now the only positive statement that we find anywhere as to the landing-place is in the Life by Probus (see above, Appendix A, ii. 9), where it is said to be Brotgalum. Bordeaux is obviously meant, and the form should probably be Bortgalum, as the Irish was Bordgal. See the instructive passage in Vit. Trip. p. 238, where Patrick, intending to visit Rome, is said to have waited for a ship o Bordgail Letha (from Bordeaux in Gaul). Probus did not invent the statement; the form of the name shows that he got it from a source of Irish origin. He adds, evidently from the same source, that the company then went to Trajectus, but we cannot identify the Gallic “Utrecht” which is intended. It is of course impossible to say whether there was any positive tradition at the back of this statement, or if it was only a deduction from the fact that Bordeaux was a regular port for travellers from Ireland to south Gaul.
Admitting, then, as a conclusion from which we can hardly escape that the landing-place was on the west coast of Gaul, it follows that if the traders marched for four weeks per disertum, they must have designedly avoided the beaten routes and the habitations of men. Aquitaine was at the time in an unsettled condition, on account of the barbarian invasion; but no devastations would account for a month’s wandering in a wilderness, unless such wandering was deliberate.
The corroboration of our general conclusion is supplied by Patrick himself. It was inferred above from his Confession that Britain was excluded; one of his Sayings, which we saw reason to believe genuine, points distinctly to Gaul (Dicta, i., see above, Appendix A, i. 3). It is clear that the “journey through Gaul and Italy” must have been one beset by particular dangers and hardships; and a little reflexion will show that we are justified in identifying it with the journey described in the Confession. It is a case where the argument from silence is valid. The motive of the Confession is to set forth the crises in his life at which the writer conceived that he was conspicuously guided by Heaven. It is clear that the “journey through Gaul and Italy,” in which he used to tell his companions that he had “the fear of God as a guide,” was one of those crises which had made a deep impression upon his mind, and which we should expect to find mentioned in the Confession. It is therefore fair to identify it with his perilous journey in the company of the traders, especially as it is not easy to imagine that at a later period, when he was at Auxerre, a journey which he might have made through Gaul would have been so memorable or exceptional. The Dictum, in conjunction with the other considerations which point to Gaul, justifies the conclusion that, having travelled with the traders through Gaul into Italy, he escaped from them in Italy.
The last words of the Dictum, “in islands in the Mediterranean,” taken in conjunction with Tírechán, 302₂₄, point to his having gone to Lérins after his escape, and a protracted stay at Lérins395 would account for the few years which elapsed before his return to Britain.