Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Muirchú's Life of Patrick (Author: Muirchú maccu Machtheni)

Chapter 7

7

I 8 (7). (1) Now that the right moment had come he set out, with God's help for the work for which he had prepared himself all that time, that is, the work of the Gospel. And Germanus sent with him a senior, the priest Segitius, so as to have as companion a witness, because until then he had not yet been consecrated a bishop by the holy lord Germanus. (2) They knew for certain that Palladius, archdeacon of Pope Celestine, the bishop of Rome, who was then occupying the apostolic see as the forty-fifth successor of St. Peter the apostle, had been consecrated and sent to this island in the cold north in order to convert it. (3) But he was prevented from doing so (by the fact that) nobody can receive anything from the earth unless it be given him from heaven. Neither were these wild and harsh men inclined to accept his teaching nor did he himself wish to spend a long time in a foreign country, but (decided to) return to him who had sent him. On his way back from here, having crossed the first sea and begun his journey by land, he ended his life in the territory of the Britons.