Laidcenn: Lorica

The Lorica, or breastplate prayer, beginning Suffragare, trinitatis unitas, is ascribed to Laidcenn, an Irish monk who died in 661. The speaker, as if in peril on the great sea, asks the Trinity, the angels, the patriarchs, prophets and apostles to defend him from the enemy and from death, and then calls for protection over each part of his body in turn, naming them in a long catalogue that includes rare Greek and Hebrew-derived words.

The Lorica is a key text of Hiberno-Latin literature, showing the learned and exotic vocabulary cultivated in seventh-century Irish monasteries. Its anatomical list made it valuable as a vocabulary of the body, and it was copied with glosses in Old English and other languages. It belongs to a genre of protective prayers that were believed to guard the one who recited them, and its rhythmical lines and heaped-up synonyms show the distinctive style of early Irish Latin.