patristic · apology · c. 450 · Latin
A defence written under attack by his own superiors, and the earliest surviving writing from Ireland or Britain by a named author. He begins by calling himself a sinner, the most unlearned of men, and never stops: the rusticity is the argument, because the case against him seems to have been that a man of his education had no business as a bishop. Between the apologies is the only first-person account of the mission - the capture at sixteen, the six years herding sheep, the voice in a dream, the return to the people who enslaved him.
Authorship is not in doubt, which is rare this early and is why the confidence is attested rather than traditional.