Patrick, Saint

flourished 5th century; feast day March 17

Patron saint of Ireland.

Born in Britain of a Romanized family, he was captured at age 16 by Irish raiders and carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six years as a herdsman before escaping from his master and being reunited with his family in Britain. Called in a dream to bring Christianity to the Irish, he returned to Ireland and journeyed far and wide, baptizing chiefs and kings and converting whole clans. One popular legend says that he explained the notion of the Holy Trinity using the shamrock, now the national flower of Ireland. He is also said to have rid Ireland of snakes.

* * *

▪ bishop and patron saint of Ireland

Introduction

flourished 5th century, Britain and Ireland; feast day March 17

      patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity (mission) to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians.

Life.

      He was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At the age of 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland, where, during six bleak years spent as a herdsman, he turned with fervour to his faith. Hearing at last in a dream that the ship in which he was to escape was ready, he fled his master and found passage to Britain. There he came near to starvation and suffered a second brief captivity before he was reunited with his family. Thereafter, he may have paid a short visit to the Continent.

      The best known passage in the Confessio, his spiritual autobiography, tells of a dream, after his return to Britain, in which one Victoricus delivered him a letter headed “The Voice of the Irish.” As he read it he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish beseeching him to walk once more among them. “Deeply moved,” he says, “I could read no more.” Nevertheless, because of the shortcomings of his education he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call. Even on the eve of reembarkation for Ireland he was beset by doubts of his fitness for the task. Once in the field, however, his hesitations vanished. Utterly confident in the Lord, he journeyed far and wide, baptizing and confirming with untiring zeal. In diplomatic fashion he brought gifts to a kinglet here and a lawgiver there but accepted none from any. On at least one occasion he was cast into chains. On another, he addressed with lyrical pathos a last farewell to his converts who had been slain or kidnapped by the soldiers of Coroticus.

      Careful to deal fairly with the heathen, he nevertheless lived in constant danger of martyrdom. The evocation of such incidents of what he called his “laborious episcopate” was his reply to a charge, to his great grief endorsed by his ecclesiastical superiors in Britain, that he had originally sought office for the sake of office. In point of fact, he was a most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped “idols and unclean things” had become “the people of God.”

      The phenomenal success of Patrick's mission is not, however, the full measure of his personality. Since his writings have come to be better understood, it is increasingly recognized that, despite their occasional incoherence, they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality. No diarist has ever bared his inmost soul to the same degree as did the patron saint of Ireland. As D.A. Binchy, the most austerely critical of Patrician (i.e., of Patrick) scholars, has put it, “The moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his ‘rustic' Latin.”

      It is not possible to say with any assurance when Patrick was born. There are, however, a number of pointers to his missionary career having lain within the second half of the 5th century. In the Coroticus letter, his mention of the Franks as still heathen indicates that the letter must have been written between 451, the date generally accepted as that of the Franks' irruption into Gaul as far as the Somme River, and 496, when they were baptized en masse. Patrick, who speaks of himself as having evangelized heathen Ireland, is not to be confused with Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine in 431 as “first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.”

Legends.

      Before the end of the 7th century Patrick had become a legendary figure, and the legends have continued to grow. One of these would have it that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction. Another, probably the most popular, is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three Persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk. Today Irishmen wear shamrocks, the national flower of Ireland, in their lapels on St. Patrick's Day (Saint Patrick's Day), March 17.

Tarlach O'Raifeartaigh

Additional Reading

For particulars as to the extant manuscript sources, see the definitive edition by L. Bieler of the Confessio and Epistola in Libri Epistolarum Sancti Patricii Episcopi, 2 vol. (1952), and for an English translation of the writings, Bieler's Works of St. Patrick (1953). Bibliographical references are covered exhaustively up to 1929 in J.K. Kenney (ed.), Sources for the Early History of Ireland, vol. 1 (1929); studies published from then until 1962 are amply treated in D.A. Binchy, “Saint Patrick and His Biographers, Ancient and Modern,” Studia Hibernica, 2:7–173 (1962), an incomparable critical analysis of the Patrician problem. Other useful works include: L. Bieler, St. Patrick and the Coming of Christianity (1967); R.P.C. Hanson, Saint Patrick: His Origins and Career (1968); T. O'Raifeartaigh, “Saint Patrick's Twenty-Eight Days Journey,” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 16, no. 64 (1969); and David N. Dumville, St. Patrick: A.D. 493–1993 (1993).

* * *