In Confessio, Saint Patrick didn’t mince words. He proclaimed the Christian holy book as the true word of God, denouncing the druids’ texts as not only false but dangerously unholy.
Corc, a revered Irish druid, was outraged by this bold accusation. He defended the sanctity of the druids’ knowledge, earned only through at least a minimum of seven years of dedicated study and discipline. Incensed, he challenged Patrick, determined to prove the purity of the druidic faith.
Patrick accepted with a glint in his eye. Knowing how deeply the druids revered water as a bridge to the spirit world, he proposed a trial by water. “We’ll place our sacred books in a barrel,” he declared (though some say it was a river). “The holiest book will float, upheld by its truth. The unholy will sink.”
Confident in his gods, Corc lowered his dense, and heavy volume into the water, whispering a prayer to the spirits. Patrick placed his book beside it and stepped back. Within seconds, Corc’s book plummeted to the bottom like a stone, while Patrick’s floated serenely atop the water’s surface.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Patrick turned to them, seizing the moment. “Behold!” he declared. “The power of the Christian God, the one true God, who has lifted His word and proven it pure. And look-your own text has sunk, abandoned by the Pagan Gods.”
A silence settled over the people as Corc, pale with disbelief, lifted Patrick’s book, inspecting it closely. It was thinner, yes, but solid and substantial enough to sink, just as his own should have.
It was then that Patrick, his gaze sly and triumphant, dried off his book-a book not bound in ordinary wood, leather or heavy slate like Corc’s, but in a material the Pagans hadn’t considered: cork.
But weren’t we always taught that the Irish Pagans couldn’t read or write, that they were illiterate? Yet Corc held a thick, heavy volume—filled with years of druidic knowledge, far greater in depth than Patrick’s holy book..
