Saint Patrick and the coming of Christianity
A Romano-British former slave returns to Ireland as a missionary, and Christianity takes root on an island Rome never conquered.
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Almost everything reliable we know about Patrick comes from two short Latin texts he wrote himself, the Confessio and a letter to the soldiers of a British chieftain called Coroticus. In them he says he was the son of a deacon in Roman Britain, was captured by Irish raiders at sixteen and spent six years herding animals in Ireland before escaping. Later, after a dream in which “the voice of the Irish” called him back, he returned as a bishop.
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
The traditional date of his mission, 432, comes from later medieval annals, and historians are cautious about it; he probably worked in the fifth century, and other missionaries such as Palladius, sent by the pope in 431, were active too. Much of what later grew up around him, from the shamrock as an image of the Trinity to banishing the snakes, is legend.
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
What is clear is the result. Over the following centuries Ireland became a land of monasteries, such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough, which preserved Latin learning and produced masterpieces like the Book of Kells. Irish monks such as Columba and Columbanus carried Christianity to Scotland and continental Europe.
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
Patrick is the patron saint and 17 March is the national day, celebrated worldwide. The monastic Christianity that followed made Ireland famous as an "island of saints and scholars", and religion became bound up with Irish identity for the next fifteen centuries.