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Saint Patrick (386–March 17, 493, see below) was a missionary and is regarded as the patron saint of Ireland (along with Saint Brigid and Saint Columba). He is also the patron saint of excluded people, engineers, and Nigeria, which was evangelized primarily by Irish missionaries, especially priests from Saint Patrick's Missionary Society (also known as the Kiltegan Missionaries).

Contents

Birth

According to his Confessio, Patrick was born in vico banavem taburniae, somewhere along the west coast of Great Britain. Vico means 'little settlement' or 'village'. Bannavem is the placename. Taburniae is a suffix meaning 'of the Taburnia', probably relating to a tribal group. However, it has been argued that the correct spelling should be Bannaventa Burniae possibly meaning the 'Promontory Hill of the Burnia'.

The place has never been identified with certainty. Suggested sites include Dumbarton in Dunbartonshire, Kirkpatrick in Dumfries and Galloway, Urswick [link] and Birdoswald (Latin: Banna) in Cumbria, Banwen in West Glamorgan, Banwell in Somerset and Norton (Latin: Bannaventa) in Northamptonshire. A further claim is for Boulogne-sur-Mer , then a part of Armorica.

Early life

Although Patrick came from a Christian family, he was not particularly religious before his capture with "many thousands of people" by raiders and sold as a slave in Ireland. Patrick's enslavement, however, markedly strengthened his faith. In his confession of faith Patrick writes how, "In that strange land (Ireland) the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes."

He escaped, as legend has it, under the direction of an angel, and after a number of adventures returned home to his parents. One night he heard voices begging him to return to Ireland.

Great Britain at this time was undergoing turmoil following the withdrawal of Roman troops in 407 and Roman central authority in 410. Populations were on the move on the European continent, and the recently converted Christian Britain was being colonised by pagan Anglo-Saxons.

Mission

His first converted patron was Saint Dichu, who made a gift of a large sabhall (barn) for a church sanctuary. This first sanctuary dedicated by St Patrick became in later years his chosen retreat. A monastery and church were erected there, and there Patrick died; the site, Saul, County Down, retains the name Sabhall (pronounced "Sowel").

Patrick set up his see at Armagh and organized the church into territorial sees, as elsewhere in the West and East. While Patrick encouraged the Irish to become monks and nuns, it is not certain that he was a monk himself. It is even less likely that in his time the monastery became the principal unit of the Irish Church, although it was in later periods. The choice of Armagh may have been determined by the presence of a powerful king. There Patrick had a school and presumably a small familia in residence; from this base he made his missionary journeys. There seems to have been little contact with the Palladian Christianity of the southeast.

One famous story relates that at the annual vernal fire that was to be lit by the High King at Tara, when all the fires were extinguished so they could be renewed from the sacred fire from Tara, Patrick lit a rival, miraculously inextinguishable Christian bonfire on the hill of Slane at the opposite end of the valley. The season was associated with Easter by chroniclers who followed Patrick's own account in his Confessio.

Patrick was not the first Christian missionary to Ireland, as men such as Secundus and Palladius were active there before him. However, tradition accords him the most impact, and his missions seem to have been concentrated in the provinces of Ulster and Connaught which had never received Christians before. He established the Church throughout Ireland on lasting foundations: he travelled throughout the country preaching, teaching, building churches, opening schools and monasteries, converting chiefs and bards, and everywhere supporting his preaching with miracles. He threw down the idol of Crom Cruach in Leitrim.

Patrick wrote that he daily expected to be violently killed or enslaved again. His Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus protested British slave trading and the slaughter of a group of Irish Christians by Coroticus's raiding Christian Welshmen, and is the first surely identified literature of the British or Celtic Catholic Church[link]. Patrick gathered many followers, including Saint Benignus, who would become his successor. His chief concerns were the raising up of native clergy, and abolishing Paganism, idolatry, and Sun-worship. He made no distinction of classes in his preaching and was himself ready for imprisonment or death. He was the first writer to condemn all forms of slavery#redirect .

Pious legend credits Patrick with banishing snakes from the island, though post-glacial Ireland never actually had snakes [link]; one suggestion is that snakes referred to the serpent symbolism of the Druids of that time and place, as shown for instance on coins minted in Gaul (see Carnutes), or that it could have referred to beliefs such as Pelagianism, symbolized as "serpents." Legend also credits Patrick with teaching the Irish about the concept of the Trinity by showing people the shamrock, a three-leaved clover, using it to highlight the Christian dogma of 'three divine persons in the one God' (as opposed to the Arian belief that was popular in Patrick's time). Whether or not these legends are true, the very fact that there are so many legends about Patrick shows how important his ministry was to Ireland.

In his use of Scripture and eschatological expectations, Patrick was typical of the 5th-century bishop. One of the traits which he retained as an old man was a consciousness of being an unlearned exile and former slave and fugitive, who learned to trust God completely.

Death: a contentious date

Patrick died in AD 493 according to the latest reconstruction of the old Irish annals. Prior to the 1940's it was believed without doubt that he died in 461 and thus had lived in the first half of the 5th century. A lecture entitled "The Two Patricks", published in 1942 by T. F. O'Rahilly, caused enormous controversy by proposing that there had been two "Patricks", Palladius and Patrick, and that what we now know of St. Patrick was in fact in part a conscious effort to meld the two into one hagiographic personality. Decades of contention eventually ended with most historians now asserting that Patrick was indeed most likely to have been active in the mid-to-late 5th century.

The compiler of the Annals of Ulster stated that in the year 553:

I have found this in the Book of Cuanu: The relics of Patrick were placed sixty years after his death in a shrine by Colum Cille. Three splendid halidoms were found in the burial-place: his goblet, the Angel's Gospel, and the Bell of the Testament. This is how the angel distributed the halidoms: the goblet to Dún, the Bell of the Testament to Ard Macha, and the Angel's Gospel to Colum Cille himself. The reason it is called the Angel's Gospel is that Colum Cille received it from the hand of the angel.

The placement of this event under the year 553 would certainly seem to place Patrick's death in 493, or at least in the early years of that decade, and indeed the Annals of Ulster report in 493:

Patrick, arch-apostle, or archbishop and apostle of the Irish, rested on the 16th of the Kalends of April in the 120th year of his age, in the 60th year after he had come to Ireland to baptize the Irish.

There is also the additional evidence of his disiple, Mochta, who died in 535.

March 17, popularly known as St. Patrick's Day, is believed to be his death date (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica) and is the date celebrated as his feast day.

For most of Christianity's first thousand years, canonizations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon after the death of people considered to be very holy people, the local Church affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints. [link]

As a result of this informal process, St. Patrick has never been formally canonized by a Pope.

St. Patrick is said to be buried under Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, County Down alongside St. Brigid and St. Columba, although this has never been proven.

The cult of Patrick

Muirchú and Tírechán, the late seventh-century authors of the Life and Times of Patrick and Memoir of Patrick, are believed to have contributed to a cult of Patrick. They emphasized (perhaps too strongly) Patrick's associations with Armagh, thereby bolstering the claim of that church of that town to be pre-eminent in Ireland.

Orthodox Church

St. Patrick is also venerated in the Orthodox Church, especially among English-speaking Orthodox Christians living in the British Isles and North America. There are even Orthodox icons dedicated to him.[link] The inclusion of this Western saint in Eastern tradition is not unusual, as all pre-schismatic saints, from East or West, are venerated equally in Orthodox Christianity.

Methods of Conversion

In his letter to Coroticus, who stole a band of newly baptized young men and virgin women, Patrick asks for the letter to be delivered to Coroticus, but that along the way that the letter be read in each and every tavern and city and that the local populace not provide food or shelter to Coroticus and his band of followers. This is an example of an informal social excommunication to assert the Church's power. In his "Confessions of St. Patrick" Patrick discusses some of the various methods he used to convert the native Irish population. In this work, he states that he has never embezzled funds, despite what his enemies in Britain said when his mission was being reviewed, but that he did give money to nobles in exchange for having these nobles taught at monasteries. While Druids also provided education to the children of nobles, this education would have been unappealing when compared to education as offered by the Roman tradition, which would have included Greek science and philosophy and Roman law and rhetoric. Finally, Patrick describes how he used various symbols from Druidism to illustrate Christian ideas and made subtle changes to doctrine. For example, the Sun was associated with the deity Lugh, but Patrick reinterpretted it as certainly being a symbol of a deity, but that deity was the Christian God.

See also

References

External Links

Further reading

 

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