libus propries sumptibus vivere maluerunt. Tres
autem ex Britannia inopia proprii, publico usi sunt, cum oblatum a
ceteris collationem respuissent; sanctius putantes, fescum gravare,
quam singulos" (Lib. ji,, p. 401).

"The proposal seemed shameful to us, Aquitanians, Gauls, and Britons,
who, rejecting the offer of help from the treasury, preferred to live
at our own expense. Three, however, of the Bishops from Britannia,
possessing no means of their own, refused to accept the maintenance
offered by their brethren, deeming it a holier thing to burden the
treasury than to accept aid from individuals" (Lib. ii., p. 401).

If any doubt exists as to the Britannia referred to, it is solved in
the same book, p. 431. Sulpicius Severusi an Aquitanian by birth,
speaks of the trial, condemnation and punishment of the Priscillian
heretics by the secular Court at Treves in the year 389. Prisciallanus
and his followers, Felicissimus, Armenianus, and a woman named
Euchrosia were condemned to death and beheaded, but Instantias and
Liberianus were banished to the Island of Sylena, "quas ultra
Britanniarn sita est" (which is situated beyond Britain). Although it
is not precisely known where the Island of Sylena was situated, except
that it was somewhere beyond Britain, the Britain referred to surely
must be Britain in Gaul, for it is incredible that the Gauls should
possess a penal settlement in the North of Scotland, where Sylena must
have been situated, if the words "beyond Britain" refer to the Island
of Britain.

It is evident that if Sulpicius, who was born in 360--thirteen years
before St. Patrick--could speak of Armorica as Britannia, and the
Armorican Bishops as Britons, when he wrote his "Sacred Histories," it
cannot be a matter of surprise that St. Patrick, if born in Armorica at
a later period, should speak of himself as a Briton, and say that he
had relatives among the Britons.

Armorica was called Britannia by Sulpicius Severus, but Sidonius
Apollinarus, who flourished some time after, called the same country
Armorica. It was not, however, unusual, as Carte points out, for the
same people and the same country to be called by different names; for
example, the Armorici and the Morini were one and the same people,
whose names had the same signification--dwellers on the sea coast.
(Carte, p. 16; Whitaker's "Genuine History of the Briton," pp. 216--
219.)

As the historians just quoted are not concerned with the history of