Ceretic Guletic

Who is Ceretic Guletic?

Ceretic Guletic of Alt Clut was a king of Alt Clut in the 5th century. He has been identified with Coroticus, a Britonnic warrior addressed in a letter by Saint Patrick. Of Patrick's two surviving letters, one is addressed to the warband of this Coroticus. Bemoaning the capture and enslavement of newly Christianised Irish and their sale to non-Christians, Patrick includes the imprecation:

Soldiers whom I no longer call my fellow citizens, or citizens of the Roman saints, but fellow citizens of the devils, in consequence of their evil deeds; who live in death, after the hostile rite of the barbarians; associates of the Scots and Apostate Picts; desirous of glutting themselves with the blood of innocent Christians, multitudes of whom I have begotten in God and confirmed in Christ.

In the letter Patrick announces that he has excommunicated Coroticus' men. The identification of Coroticus with Ceretic Guletic is based largely on an 8th-century gloss to Patrick's letter. It has been suggested that it was the sending of this letter which provoked the trial which Patrick mentions in the Confession. The "Apostate Picts" are the Southern Picts converted by Saint Ninian and ministered to by Palladius, and who had subsequently left Christianity. The Northern Picts of Fortriu were later converted by Saint Columba in the 6th century, and as they were not yet Christian, they could not be called "apostate".