I do not normally write blogs pandering to holidays but I watched a quick documentary last night on St Patrick and I realized that what I thought I knew about him was completely wrong.
First of all, he wasn’t Irish. But we will get to that in a moment. I want to outline what was happening in the world at this time because it puts into perspective St Patrick’s life.
St. Patrick was born in about 386 A.D. to a roman family of prominent social standing in Britain. His family had ties to the church but he apparently wasn’t raised with any sort of strict religious upbringing.
It is around this time of St Patrick’s birth that Rome begins to implode in on itself. Increasing attacks from Germanic armies, Saxons and other groups caused Rome to raise taxes on its’ citizens to increase its’ army. This left the Roman citizens starved and desolate. Not to mention the rise of Christianity created other problems. Many men devoted themselves to being priests and therefore refused to marry, have children and participate in violence. This coupled with disease outbreaks that was killing off Romans at an alarming rate of 5,000 people a day; led to a rapid decline in population. Without replacing the population, the Romans simply did not have enough men to defend their city and their extended territories. Rome had to almost completely abandon its’ citizens living in Britain, they simply didn’t have the manpower to protect them.
In 402AD, at the age of 16, St Patrick was kidnapped by the Irish and taken back to Ireland and enslaved for 6 years. After 6 years and a vision of his future in the church, he escaped slavery and walked the 200 miles back to Britain and his family where he subsequently decided to become a priest. Given that many men of this time were choosing this route, St. Patrick was actually pretty basic.
But what made him unique was that in 432AD, he went back to Ireland, intent on converting them to Christianity. He went back to the land that had enslaved them. I wonder about his motivations here. Did he do this because he believed in Christianity so much that felt that the Irish, even though they had enslaved him, deserved to be saved? Or during the 6 years he was held captive, did what he learn about the Celtic religion motivate him to eradicate it? Or had he actually fallen in love with Irish and their culture and was simply worried about their fate in the afterlife?
He was met with resistance on his return to Ireland but he continued persevere and established many churches, taught people to read and write and slowly he won over the population so that he was christened a Saint by the people. The church never actually gave him the title of Saint. (Because as I mentioned, the Roman empire and thus the Catholic church wasn’t in the greatest of order during his life. ) But many people give him a lot of credit for establishing the value of literacy in Ireland and the fact that he saved many old roman books by establishing the tradition of copying books in the far north. Critiques claim that he forcefully wiped out the religious tradition of the Celts and the pagans but the it will always be hard to say how much of the story is true or false. But either way, is an interesting chapter in world history that undoubtedly affected a large portion of western culture.
St. Patrick and his Legacy
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