Page:Writings of Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.djvu/106

Rh that this confession was discovered in the library of the town of Angers, capital of the Department of Maine and Loire. The manuscript is numbered Angers 14, and is a MS. of the ninth, or rather of the ninth or tenth century. The Confessio begins at folio 180 verso, at the end of the Gallican Psalter, immediately followed by canticles and a litany, in which are invocations addressed to the saints of the centre and north of France (from Bourges and Poitiers to Cologne and Liege), together with St. Boniface, St. Columba, and St. Gall. St. Boniface was an English missionary; but St. Columba and St. Gall, it may be noted, were both missionaries from Ireland. The Confession of St. Patrick is followed at folio 183 verso by the 'Confessio quam beatus Alcuinus composuit Domino Karolo imperatori,' or the confession which St. Alcuin composed for the use of the Emperor Charles the Great. Alcuin was a native of York, trained and educated in that city. He established a school in connection with the monastery of Tours about A.D. 796. The MS. contains other pieces, especially prayers. M. Berger thinks the MS. must have been written at Tours, for the writing exhibits the marks specially characteristic of the MSS. written in that famous monastery. Tours, it must be remembered, is not very far distant further up the Loire.

When one examines into the style of the Confessio before us, it cannot be denied that its Latin is very different from that which appears in the Confession or autobiography preserved in the Book of Armagh and the other ancient MSS. noticed in our Introduction. In a piece of this charaftcr, copied into the Angers MS., as a confession for the use of private Christians, and not because of any special value in relation to the