Saint Patrick & Names along the Antonine wall

[Nathan Ross]

I suggest it is you that is being misled. The British church was established long before St. Augustine came to Canterbury in 597AD as the multitude of early Christian artefacts & known parsonalities show. Indeed, even the British mother of emperor Constantine who made Christianity official c312AD is said by Sozomen's Historia Ecclesiastica, to have picked up her Christianity in Britain... there is ample evidence for early Christianity... it if far more likely you are restating "pro-Rome" propaganda downplaying the importance of the early church in Britain.

There's plenty of evidence (archeological and literary) for early Christianity in Britain in the 4th century, but we really don't need to rely on spurious and unlikely saints' lives composed centuries later, nor pious myths about the mother of Constantine and conspiracy theories about the Catholic church!

Tertullian mentions Christians in Britain c.AD200, but the earliest real evidence for Christianity in the province is the appearance of three British bishops at the Synod of Arles in AD314 - they probably represented London, York and Lincoln. So the faith had already attracted devotees by the early Constantinian period at least. Constantine did not make Christianity 'official', of course - that would be Theodosius. No contemporary source mentions persecution in Britain, or any martyrs being killed there (and they were pretty beady-eyed about their martyrs!)

Christian iconography only starts appearing in noticeable form in Britain from the later 4th century - slightly later than in continental Europe - and it's only by the end of the 4th century that we see major expressions of the faith like the 'house church' at Lullingstone (perhaps more likely an audience chamber for the villa's patronus) or the smaller items in the Mildenhall hoard.

You've made a lot of criticism of Old Kilpatrick

I haven't really. I just don't think it a very likely place for several generations of Roman Christians to find themselves in the early 5th century!

And since there is no actual evidence to say that Patrick was from there - your Fiacc scholiast, or Probus, specifically names 'nem thur' as Alt Clud, which as far as I know is Dumbarton, not Old Kilpatrick - it seems at best a vague sort of guess. People have been doing this sort of thing for centuries (and some of them suggesting Kilpatrick too!) without coming up with anything conclusive.

Similarly, the game of pinning place names from ancient sources onto unnamed sites can be fun for a while, but it has diminishing returns I'd say. Or perhaps I just lack imagination?


EDIT - here's the stone with the inscription from near Mumrills. I wouldn't say there's much chance of that VAL being a VOL, or of being anything but the first part of Valerius. The name comes after the word 'sacrum':

ALTAR DEDICATED TO HERCULES MAGUSANUS