the Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick: Including Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings

here was once a man named Calphurnius, the son of Potitus, a presbyter,by nation a Briton, living in the village Taburnia (that is, the field of thetents, for that the Roman army had there pitched their tents), near the townof Empthor, and his habitation was nigh unto the Irish Sea. This man mar-ried a French damsel named Conchessa, niece of the blessed Martin, Arch-bishop of Tours; and the damsel was elegant in her form and in her manners,for, having been brought from France with her elder sister into the northernparts of Britain, and there sold at the command of her father, Calphurnius,being pleased with her manners, charmed with her attentions, and attractedwith her beauty, very much loved her, and, from the state of a serving-maidin his household, raised her to be his companion in wedlock. And her sister,having been delivered unto another man, lived in the aforementioned townof Empthor.And Calphurnius and his wife were both just before God, walking with-out offence in the justifications of the Lord; and they were eminent in theirbirth, and in their faith, and in their hope, and in their religion. And thoughin their outward habit and abiding they seemed to serve under the yoke ofBabylon, yet did they in their acts and in their conversation show themselves3 UNKNOWNto be citizens of Jerusalem. Therefore, out of the earth of their flesh, be-ing freed from the tares of sin and from the noxious weeds of vice by theploughshare of evangelic and apostolic learning, and being fruitful in thegrowth of all virtues, did they, as the best and richest fruit, bring forth a son,whom, when he had at the holy font put off the old man, they caused to benamed Patricius, as being the future father and patron of many nations; ofwhom, even at his baptism, the God which is three in one was pleased, by thesign of a threefold miracle, to declare how pure a vessel of election should heprove, and how devoted a worshipper of the Holy Trinity. But after a littlewhile, this happy birth being completed, they vowed themselves by mutualconsent unto chastity, and with an holy end rested in the Lord. But Cal-phurnius first served God a long time in the deaconship, and at length closedhis days in the priesthood.CHAPTER II.H