acceptable to God. He gave God thanks, and she made her vows with
extraordinary fervor six days before he wrote this letter.

St. Patrick held several councils to settle the discipline of the church
which he had planted. The first, the acts of which are extant under his
name in the editions of the councils, is certainly genuine. Its canons
regulate several points of discipline, especially relating to
penance.[4] St. Bernard and the tradition of the country testify, that
St. Patrick fixed his metropolitan see at Armagh. He established some
other bishops, as appears by his Council and other monuments. He not
only converted the whole country by his preaching and wonderful
miracles, but also cultivated this vineyard with so fruitful a
benediction and increase from heaven, as to render Ireland a most
flourishing garden in the church of God, and a country of saints. And
those nations, which had for many ages esteemed all others barbarians,
did not blush to receive from the utmost extremity of {603} the
uncivilized or barbarous world, their most renowned teachers and guides
in the greatest of all sciences, that of the saints.

Many particulars are related of the labors of St. Patrick, which we pass
over. In the first year of his mission he attempted to preach Christ in
the general assembly of the kings and states of all Ireland, held yearly
at Taraghe, or Themoria, in East-Meath, the residence of the chief king,
styled the monarch of the whole island, and the principal seat of the
Druids or priests, and their paganish rites. The son of Neill, the chief
monarch, declared himself against the preacher: however, he converted
several, and, on his road to that place, the father of St. Benen, or
Benignus, his immediate successor in the see of Armagh. He afterwards
converted and baptized the kings of Dublin and Munster, and the seven
sons of the king of Connaught, with the greatest part of their subjects,
and before his death almost the whole island. He founded a monastery at
Armagh; another called Domnach-Padraig, or Patrick's church; also a
third, named Sabhal-Padraig, and filled the country with churches and
schools of piety and learning; the reputation of which, for the three
succeeding centuries, drew many foreigners into Ireland.[5] Nennius,
abbot of Bangor, in 620, in his history of the Britons,[6] published by
the learned Thomas Gale, says, that St. Patrick took that name only when
he was ordained bishop, being before called M