Saint Patrick

• 1. Introduction

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  Saint Patrick, the fifth-century Romano-British missionary and bishop known as the Apostle of Ireland, left behind two short Latin texts that scholars trust. Nearly everything else said about him was written down by people who lived long after his time. Even so, he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, alongside Brigid of Kildare and Columba. He is also the patron saint of Nigeria. Catholics, members of the Church of Ireland, Lutherans and the Eastern Orthodox all venerate him. In the Orthodox tradition he is called equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland. So who was the man behind the title? Did a teenager really escape slavery and then return to the island of his captors? When did he live, and was he ever confused with another missionary? And how much of the tradition, from snakes to shamrocks, survives a close look at the evidence?

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• 2. Four Names

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  Pātricius is the only name Patrick ever uses for himself in his own writings. From that Latin form come the Irish Pádraig and the English Patrick. Later writers, however, credited him with other names. Tírechán, a seventh-century hagiographer, listed four in his Collectanea: Magonus, Succetus, Patricius and Cothirthiacus. He glossed Magonus as "famous" and Patricius as "father of the citizens." Succetus he took to mean "god of war." Cothirthiacus, he said, came from serving four houses of druids.

  Other writers gave the same names a more earthly meaning. The ninth-century Historia Brittonum records Magonus as Maun, descending from a British word meaning "servant-lad." Mac Neill identified Succetus, which Muirchú spells Sochet, as a British word meaning swineherd. Cothirthiacus appears as Cothraige in Fiacc's Hymn, an eighth-century biographical poem. Some take it to represent Qatrikias, although that reading is disputed. Harvey argues that Cothraige has the form of an Old Irish tribal name, and therefore a place-name. He notes that Ail Coithrigi is a name for the Rock of Cashel. The place-names Cothrugu and Catrige are attested in Counties Antrim and Carlow.

  Muirchú offered a tidy summary. He wrote that "Patrick son of Calforni(us) had four names." The names were "Sochet when he was born, Cothriche when he was a slave, Mauonius when he studied, Patrick when he was consecrated." The list reads like a life in four stages. Whatever its accuracy, the second name points to the years of slavery that Patrick himself describes.

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• 3. Slave and Bishop

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  Patrick's father, Calpurnius, held office as a decurion, a kind of senator and tax collector, in an unnamed Romano-British town. He was also a deacon in the Church, and Patrick's grandfather Potitus was a priest. Patrick was born in Britain at the end of Roman rule, into a Romanized Celtic family. His mother tongue would have been British Celtic, with some Latin. In the Confessio he admits that he was not religious in his youth, calling himself "idle and callow."

  Patrick says his family came from the vicus of Bannavem Taburniae, where his father kept a small villa. Nobody knows where that was. The Irish Sea was probably close, since pirates took him, and a large Roman town was probably near, since his father held office. Candidates include the Roman fort of Banna at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall, Banwen in south Wales, and Banwell-Wint Hill and Avonmouth in Somerset. Muirchú names a place called Nemthor, later identified with a spot near Dumbarton. Nearby Kilpatrick is another proposal.

  At sixteen, Patrick was seized from that villa by Irish pirates and carried to Ireland, where he was enslaved for six years. He worked as a herder. The work introduced him to the Irish culture that would define his life and reputation. In the Confessio he calls the captivity critical to his spiritual growth. Through prayer, he says, God gave him the chance to be forgiven his sins and to deepen his faith.

  After those six years, Patrick heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. He fled his master and travelled 200 Roman miles, about 300 kilometres, to a port. It was presumably on the eastern or southern coast. There he persuaded the captain to take him aboard. They sailed for three days before reaching land, which suggests Gaul, perhaps Armorica. Everyone on board then walked for 28 days through a wilderness, growing faint with hunger. Patrick prayed for food, and about the sixteenth day the party came upon a herd of wild boar. They ate, and eventually they reached civilization.

  A few years later, now in his early twenties, Patrick was back with his family in Britain. His church training followed, but the sources disagree on where it happened. Muirchú says he studied for thirty years at Auxerre in central Gaul. J. B. Bury suggests that Amator ordained him deacon there. Saint Germanus of Auxerre is said to have made him a priest, and Maximus of Turin is said to have consecrated him bishop. Tírechán instead places the thirty years at Lérins Abbey, off the south coast of Gaul.

  A few years after coming home, Patrick had a vision. A man named Victoricus appeared, carrying many letters from Ireland. One was headed "The Voice of the Irish." As Patrick began to read, he imagined he heard the people near the wood of Foclut, beside the western sea. They cried out with one voice, "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us." A. B. E. Hood suggests that Victoricus was Saint Victricius, bishop of Rouen, who visited Britain in an official capacity in 396. Ludwig Bieler disagrees.

  The dream also hints at where Patrick had been enslaved, since Foclut seems to lie near his captivity. Patrick never says where he worked. Most scholars place Foclut at Foghill, near Killala Bay in Connacht. Muirchú instead puts it near Slemish mountain in Ulster.

  In his Epistola, Patrick calls himself a bishop established in Ireland. He says he sold his "nobility... for the sake of others." Scholars presume that the church in Britain sent him, with papal approval, to be bishop for part of Ireland. They also presume he sold his late father's estate to fund the bishopric. Once he landed, his foreign status would make the work harder than any plan.

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• 4. Mission and Accusers

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  Muirchú says Patrick landed at Inber Dea in Cualu, now Arklow in County Wicklow. He then decided to travel north to convert his former master, Miliuc of Dál mBuinne, and to buy his freedom. After resting on an island later named for him, Patrick sailed on and landed at Mag Inis, in the territory of Dál Fiatach. There he converted the local chieftain Díchu, who gave him a barn for a church. It became known as Sabhall Phádraig, Patrick's barn, and is now Saul. Tírechán tells it differently. He has Patrick land in Brega, part of the kingdom of Meath and home to the royal capital of Tara. Patrick founded his first churches there, then travelled clockwise around the island. Benen, also called Benignus, son of the chieftain Secsnán, was his first Irish disciple.

  Patrick's own picture of the mission is vaguer, partly because he wrote for local Christians who already knew his work. He says he "baptised thousands of people," and he even planned to convert his slavers. He ordained priests to lead the new communities. He won over wealthy women, some of whom became nuns despite family opposition. He also converted the sons of kings. He boasts that the Irish, who once served only idols, are now called children of God.

  A foreigner's position was never easy. By refusing gifts from kings, Patrick placed himself outside the usual ties of kinship, fosterage and affinity. He says that on one occasion he was beaten, robbed of all he had and put in chains, perhaps awaiting execution. He also says that "many years later" he was a captive for 60 days, without giving details.

  The Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus is an open letter of excommunication. It targets a British king, Coroticus, and his soldiers, who had killed and enslaved some of Patrick's new converts while raiding in Ireland. Patrick refuses to call them fellow-citizens of the saints of Rome. Instead he calls them "fellow-citizens of demons, because of their evil works." He names them "allies of the Scots and apostate Picts." That wording shows Coroticus was at least nominally Christian. Most believe he was King Ceretic of Alt Clut, the region around Dumbarton. Thompson proposed instead a Romano-British warlord based at Ailech in the north of Ireland.

  After decades in Ireland, Patrick was summoned to Britain by church leaders to answer accusations. He is estimated to have been about 60. Charles Thomas suggests the charges were longstanding, and that excommunicating a king pushed Patrick past his authority. The northern British church then decided to call him to account.

  Patrick never states the accusations outright, but his rebuttals in the Confessio reveal them. He was accused of financial impropriety, and perhaps of seeking his bishopric for personal gain. Specifically, critics said he accepted valuable gifts from Irish nobles, including some hoping to be ordained, and charged for baptisms. Patrick refused to leave Ireland. Instead he issued a lengthy, personal statement, which became the Confessio. He says he gave up his nobility, his family and his homeland, and suffered insult, violence and imprisonment. He returned the gifts that wealthy women gave him and asked no payment for baptisms or ordinations. He even paid for gifts to kings and judges, and compensated chiefs' sons who travelled with him. According to Roy Flechner, the Confessio also answered detractors who did not believe he had been taken to Ireland as a slave, however vigorously he insisted that he was.

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• 5. Dates and Doubts

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  The Irish annals place Patrick's arrival in Ireland at 432, but they were compiled in the mid-6th century at the earliest. That year was probably chosen to shrink the contribution of Palladius, who was known to have been sent to Ireland in 431, and to enlarge Patrick's. Patrick's own writings give nothing more precise than the fifth century. His Biblical quotations mix the Old Latin version with the Vulgate, which was completed in the early fifth century. That suggests he wrote at a point of transition between the two. His letter to Coroticus implies that the Franks were still pagan, and their conversion is dated to 496-508.

  Death dates scatter even more widely. In 457, the annals say, "the elder Patrick" (Patraic Sen) died. That may refer to Palladius, whom the Book of Armagh also calls Patrick. For 461/2 they note that "Here some record the repose of Patrick." For 492/3 they record the death of "Patrick, the arch-apostle (or archbishop and apostle) of the Scoti" on the 17th of March, at the age of 120.

  Some modern historians accept the earlier date of about 460, but scholars of early Irish history tend to prefer about 493. The annals support the later date by recording that Colum Cille placed Patrick's relics in a shrine in 553, sixty years after his death. Patrick's disciple Mochta died in 535 or 537, and the early hagiographies bring Patrick into contact with people who died around the turn of the sixth century. E. A. Thompson considers none of the annalistic death dates reliable. A recent biography suggests that a late fifth-century date is not impossible.

  T. F. O'Rahilly, an Irish academic, proposed the "Two Patricks" theory. In his view, many traditions later attached to Patrick really concerned Palladius. Prosper of Aquitaine's Chronicle says Pope Celestine I sent Palladius in 431 as the first bishop to Irish Christians. A letter from Columbanus to Pope Boniface IV, written about 613, never mentions Patrick. Columbanus says Ireland's Christianity "was first handed to us by you, the successors of the holy apostles," apparently meaning Palladius alone.

  Palladius was not the only early cleric. The Irish-born Saint Ciarán of Saigir lived in the later fourth century (352-402) and became the first bishop of Ossory. He, with Auxilius, Secundinus and Iserninus, is linked to early churches in Munster and Leinster. By this reading, Palladius stayed active in Ireland until the 460s.

  Prosper ties the appointment of Palladius to visits by Germanus of Auxerre to Britain, made to suppress Pelagianism. It has been suggested that Palladius and his colleagues went to stop exiled Pelagians from gaining ground among Irish Christians. Their task was probably to serve existing Christian communities, not to convert the Irish. Secundus is remembered at Dunshaughlin in County Meath, close to the Hill of Tara. Killashee in County Kildare, near Naas, is probably named for Auxilius. No evidence places any of this activity in Ulster or Connacht. Iserninus, probably a Briton, is linked with the Uí Ceinnselaig in Leinster. The Palladian mission therefore forms part of the British missions, and cannot simply be equated with Patrick's work.

  Roy Flechner offers a more radical reading of Patrick's departure for Ireland. As the son of a decurion, Patrick would have been bound by Roman law to serve on the town council. Flechner suggests he fled abroad to escape that duty, as many others did in what became known as the flight of the curiales. He also finds the escape and journey Patrick describes improbable. He notes that a theme of freedom after six years of servitude echoes Exodus 21:2 and Jeremiah 34:14. That suggests parts of the account were never meant literally. If even Patrick's own story invites argument, the tales told about him centuries later deserve a harder look.

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• 6. The Warrior Saint

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  Muirchú moccu Machtheni and Tírechán wrote the two surviving late seventh-century lives of Patrick, roughly a century and a half after his death. Both relied on the Book of Ultán, a work now lost. This Ultán was probably Ultan of Ardbraccan, Tírechán's foster-father, whose obituary the Annals of Ulster give under the year 657.

  The Patrick of these writers is a fighter. He contests with druids, overthrows pagan idols and curses kings and kingdoms. Their accounts sometimes contradict his own words. Tírechán says Patrick accepted gifts from female converts, which Patrick flatly denies. Yet their stress on royal and noble women who became nuns is thought to be a genuine insight into his work. Patrick also worked with the unfree and the poor, encouraging them toward vows of monastic chastity. Tírechán suggests that many early churches founded by Patrick were combined with nunneries started by his noble female converts.

  The martial figure in these lives echoes saints from the conversion of the Roman Empire. Such accounts may not be accurate for Patrick's own time, though violent clashes may well have occurred as Christians grew in strength. Much of the detail about churches and monasteries may instead describe the seventh century. Churches claiming ties to Patrick, above all Armagh, were then spreading their influence across Ireland in competition with the church of Kildare. In the same period, Wilfred, Archbishop of York, told a council in Rome, held in the time of Pope Agatho, that he spoke "for all the northern part of Britain and of Ireland." That claimed authority over the Irish church.

  Other early materials are shakier still. The Irish annals draw on records from the Chronicle of Ireland, and they conflate Palladius with Patrick. The so-called First Synod of Saint Patrick is a seventh-century document, once thought to contain a fifth-century original. It gathers the results of several early synods and reflects an era when pagans were still a major force. Its introduction credits Patrick, Auxilius and Iserninus, a claim that "cannot be taken at face value."

  Muirchú also preserves a supposed druid prophecy that shows how hostile listeners saw the missionaries. It begins, "Across the sea will come Adze-head, crazed in the head." The verse goes on to describe a cloak with a hole for the head and a bent stick. His people, it says, will answer "so be it, so be it."

  Both writers set Patrick against Lóegaire mac Néill, the king of Tara. Muirchú tells a famous story in which Patrick lit a Paschal fire on the Hill of Slane in defiance of the king. No one but Patrick could put it out. Over the following centuries, the stories gathered around him grew stranger.

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• 7. Shamrocks and Serpents

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  The botanist Caleb Threlkeld gave the earliest written version of the shamrock story in his 1726 Synopsis stirpium Hibernicarum. The earliest surviving records linking Patrick to the plant are older. They are coins from the 1680s showing him clutching a shamrock. Legend says he used its three leaves to teach the Trinity. In pagan Ireland three was a significant number, and the Irish had many triple deities, which may have helped his preaching. Patricia Monaghan finds no evidence that the shamrock was sacred to the pagan Irish. Jack Santino speculates that it stood for the regenerative powers of nature and was recast in a Christian setting.

  Gaius Julius Solinus noted in the third century that Ireland had no snakes. The earliest text in which an Irish saint banishes them is the Life of Saint Columba, from the late seventh or early eighth century. Jocelyn of Furness, in the late twelfth century, wrote that Patrick chased snakes into the sea after they attacked him during a fast on a mountain. Gerald of Wales repeated the story in the early thirteenth century, but he doubted it. The naturalist Nigel Monaghan, keeper of natural history at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, searched widely through Irish fossil collections and records. Post-glacial Ireland never had snakes, he found, so there was nothing for Patrick to banish.

  Tírechán wrote that Patrick spent forty days on the summit of Cruachán Aigle, as Moses did on Mount Sinai. The ninth-century Bethu Phátraic adds a flock of black demonic birds. Patrick drove them into the hollow of Lugnademon, the "hollow of the demons," by ringing his bell. He ended his fast when God gave him the right to judge all the Irish at the Last Judgement and agreed to spare Ireland from final desolation. A later legend says a demonic female serpent named Corra or Caorthannach tormented him there. He banished her into Lough Na Corra below the mountain. The peak is now called Croagh Patrick.

  By tradition, Patrick founded his main church at Armagh in 445. Muirchú tells how a pagan chieftain named Dáire refused him the hill of Ard Mhacha and gave him lower ground to the east. When Dáire's horses died after grazing there, he ordered Patrick killed and was himself struck down with illness. Patrick's holy water revived both the chieftain and his horses. Dáire rewarded him with a great bronze cauldron and the hill. Dáire resembles the Dagda, an Irish god who owns a cauldron of plenty.

  In a later legend the chieftain is named Crom. Patrick asks him for food, and Crom sends his bull, hoping it will drive off or kill the saint. Instead the bull meekly submits to be slaughtered and eaten. Crom demands it back, so Patrick has the bones and hide put together and brings the bull to life. In some versions Crom is so impressed that he converts, while in others the bull kills him. In parts of Ireland, Lughnasa on the 1st of August is called Crom's Sunday, and the legend may recall bull sacrifices at the festival.

  The twelfth-century Acallam na Senórach sends two ancient warriors, Caílte mac Rónáin and Oisín, to meet Patrick on his travels. Both once belonged to Fionn mac Cumhaill's warrior band, the Fianna, and somehow survived into his day. Patrick tries to convert them, and they defend their pagan past. The text sets their heroic life of fighting, feasting and living close to nature against a Christian life that is more peaceful but unheroic and non-sensual.

  A much later legend has Patrick scolding an innkeeper who skimped on her guests. He warns that a demon is hiding in her cellar, growing fat on her dishonesty, and that only mending her ways will drive it out. When he returns, she is serving cups of whiskey filled to the brim. He praises her and takes her to the cellar, where the demon is withering away. It flees in a flash of flame. Patrick then decrees that people should drink whiskey on his feast day, which is said to explain "drowning the shamrock."

  The Annals of the Four Masters, an early-modern compilation of earlier annals, tell of a Battle for the Body of Saint Patrick. The Uí Néill and the Airgíalla tried to take the corpse to Armagh, while the Ulaid tried to keep it. A river swelled against the Uí Néill and the Airgíalla when they reached it. After the flood subsided, the rival groups made peace and agreed to carry the body together. Each side then believed it held the body and was bearing it home. It was finally interred at Dun Da Lethglas with great honour. During the twelve nights that the religious seniors kept watch with psalms and hymns, Magh Inis and the neighbouring lands never grew dark.

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• 8. Relics and Remembrance

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  Cummian, writing about the Easter controversy in 632 or 633, called Patrick "our papa," meaning father or primate. No pope ever formally canonised him. For most of Christianity's first thousand years, canonisations were done on a diocesan or regional level, soon after the death of a very holy person. Various churches nonetheless declare him a saint in Heaven. Luke Wadding, a Waterford-born Franciscan scholar on the commission to reform the Breviary in the early 17th century, helped make the 17th of March a feast day in the Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church in Ireland it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation. The Episcopal Church (USA) keeps a feast on that date, and Evangelical Lutheran Worship has a commemoration. The Church of England marks a Lesser Festival. On the 9th of March 2017, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church added his name to its calendar.

  Thomas Dinely, an English traveller in Ireland in 1681, remarked that the Irish of all stations wore crosses in their hats, some of pins and some of green ribbon. Jonathan Swift, writing to "Stella" about Saint Patrick's Day in 1713, said "the Mall was so full of crosses that I thought all the world was Irish." By the 1820s only children wore them, in simple multicoloured daisy patterns. By the 1890s they were almost extinct. The Irish Times reported in 1935 that they were still sold in poorer parts of Dublin, though in smaller numbers than before.

  Two crosses belong to Patrick's iconography. The cross pattée is the older, perhaps because bishops' mitres in ecclesiastical heraldry often carry one. It appears on the coats of arms of both the Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland Archdioceses of Armagh. The red saltire on a white field dates from 1783 and the founding of the Order of Saint Patrick. After the Acts of Union 1800, it was combined with the crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew to form the Union Flag.

  The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin holds a bell called Clog Phádraig. According to the Annals of Ulster, the Book of Cuanu first mentioned it in 552, as one of the relics Colum Cille removed from Patrick's tomb sixty years after his death. It is called the Bell of the Testament. In 1044, a dispute over it between two kings set off rounds of prisoner-taking and cattle theft. King Domnall Ua Lochlainn had a shrine made for it between 1091 and 1105. The shrine is an important example of the final, Viking-influenced style of Irish Celtic art, with intricate Urnes-style decoration in gold and silver. Its inscription names the maker as "U INMAINEN," or Noonan, who enriched it with his sons. The bell itself is plain, hammered from iron and later coated in bronze, and weighs 1.7 kg. In 1356 the annals record the death of Solomon Ua Mellain, Keeper of the Bell of the Testament.

  The folklorist Jenny Butler traces how Patrick's stories and feast-day customs gained new layers of meaning over time. In some portrayals he stands for Christianity itself. Later he came to stand for Catholic Ireland, and then for Irish national identity, alongside the colour green and the shamrock. Many Saint Patrick's Day customs are relatively recent, yet they endure as the strongest of "Irish traditions." Artists have kept returning to him. Pedro Calderón de la Barca wrote El Purgatorio de San Patricio in 1634, and Robert Southey published a ballad on the saint's Purgatory in 1798. A 2000 television drama, St. Patrick: The Irish Legend, starred Patrick Bergin. The 2020 film I am Patrick draws on his own writings and the earliest traditions.

  Pilgrims also keep his memory alive. Thousands climb Croagh Patrick on the last Sunday in July. Each August, pilgrims spend three days fasting and praying on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, where tradition says Patrick killed a large serpent and its blood turned the water red. Armagh is the primary seat of both the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Church of Ireland, and both its cathedrals are named for him. Patrick is said to be buried at Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, though this has never been proven. The Saint Patrick Visitor Centre there is the only permanent exhibition in the world devoted to him. William of Malmesbury, in a work compiled between 1129 and 1135, claimed Patrick was buried at Glastonbury Abbey and was its first abbot. Place-names such as Llanbadrig on Anglesey and Templepatrick in County Antrim also carry his name. In Loíza, Puerto Rico, a church dedicated to San Patricio, completed by 1729 and now a museum, recalls Irish immigrants who settled there by the end of the 18th century.

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