This man and his whole family were baptized, and one of his sons received the name of Benignus from St.Patrick, on account of the gentleness of his manner.

The holy youth attached himself from this moment to his master, and was his successor in the primatial see of Armagh.
Those who are anxious, for obvious reasons, to deny the fact of St.
Patrick's mission from Rome, do so on two grounds: first, the absence of a distinct statement of this mission in one or two of the earliest lives of the saints; and his not having mentioned it himself in his genuine writings.

Second, by underrating the value of those documents which do mention this Roman mission.

With regard to the first objection, it is obvious that a hymn which was written merely as a panegyric (the Hymn of St.Fiacc) was not the place for such details.

But St.Fiacc _does_ mention that Germanus was the saint's instructor, and that "he read his canons," _i.e._, studied theology under him.
St.Patrick's Canons,[123] which even Usher admits to be genuine, contain the following passage.