Saint Patrick

Patrick tells his own story in a short, humble work called his Confession, one of the very few writings of the fifth century from these islands. He was born in Roman Britain, the son of a deacon named Calpurnius and grandson of a priest. At sixteen, he says, he “did not know the true God.” Irish raiders seized him and carried him off with thousands of others, and he was sold as a slave to herd animals on a hillside in Ireland.

In his misery he turned to God. He prayed a hundred times a day, and as often at night, in snow and frost and rain. After six years a voice told him in his sleep that a ship was ready. He walked some two hundred miles to the coast, found the ship, and after many hardships reached home.

Some years later he dreamed that a man came from Ireland with letters, and in them he read “the voice of the Irish,” crying: “We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.” He studied for the priesthood and, as a bishop, went back to the land of his slavery. For some thirty years he travelled Ireland, baptizing thousands, ordaining clergy and encouraging the first Irish monks and nuns. He faced danger, arrest and opposition from powerful men, and faced them with a deep trust in God.

The story of the shamrock and of driving out the snakes are later legends, and so is the prayer called Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, though it is old and much loved: “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me…” He died on 17 March, probably in the second half of the fifth century, and is traditionally buried at Downpatrick.