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On New York's Fifth Avenue, a 12-year-old boy is marching along the street, holding his father's hand in a tight grip. He's been warned that on no account are they to be separated, not if they ever want to see each other again. The avenue is a joyous cacophony of noise. The boy can hardly hear himself think over the band just ahead. Its drummers beat a heart-rousing rhythm competing against the hum of a crowd of thousands. It's exhilarating, overwhelming. Never before has he experienced such a sense of collective excitement.
Everywhere is a sea of green. He himself is wearing a green t-shirt and a fluffy leprechaun hat that he's persuaded his dad to buy from one of the multitude of street vendors. A young woman skips over, pirouetting around them with a grin on her face and a whistle in her mouth. When she rejoins her group of friends, his dad says, it looks like they've already had a Guinness or two. It is the first time that the boy has taken part in a St. Patrick's Day parade, New York's biggest annual street party.
And though it's taking place the day before the traditional date of the 17th, to avoid falling on a Sunday, it feels like a special one. It is just six months since the dreadful terrorist attacks felled the twin towers of the World Trade Center here. New York has been living under a terrible shadow, facing up to the grim reality of a new world, processing its shock, grief, and fear. But today is an opportunity for the Big Apple to remind itself and the wider world about just what a spirit it has.
that it hasn't forgotten how to party. It's been 245 years since a homesick crowd of Irish soldiers and expats first gathered near here to celebrate their home nation's patron saint. They could not have imagined how the city would come to take the parade to its heart. Today, the boy is one of 300,000 marchers, watched on by a crowd of three million more, an historic turnout.
Among them is the New York Senator, Hillary Clinton, and for the first time ever, the serving Irish President, Mary McAleese. At midday, though, there is a change in tone. The parade, all one and a half miles of it, comes to a halt. The boy feels his father rest a hand on his shoulder. The bands, ringing out tunes on every street corner, stop playing. The marchers cease their rounds of traditional Irish songs. A calm descends.
As one, the parade turns south to face the direction of the Twin Towers where 3,000 people lost their lives last year. The boy stares at the ground below him as a tannoy conveys the prayer of the Archbishop of New York. All else is silence as the huge crowd honor the dead as well as emergency workers who faced so much on 9/11. Then the two-minute silence is over.
A raucous cheer goes up, and the parade resumes its journey onwards to St. Patrick's Cathedral, music and laughter once more filling the sky. That is the power of the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York. Less a chance to contemplate the life of an ancient Catholic saint than an opportunity to come together as a community, whatever your religious beliefs or cultural roots. As the popular saying goes, on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish.
While New York's parade may be the biggest in the world to Oneson Patrick, it is just one of many held throughout North America, Australia, Ireland, Britain and beyond. But few of the millions of revelers who celebrate it know more than the popular myths about Patrick himself. That he chased all the snakes from Ireland or that he used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity. In truth, Patrick has become less a figure of genuine historical importance than a cipher for the idea of Irishness.
a figure to sit alongside the leprechaun and the pint of Guinness as a sort of shorthand for nationhood. The real Patrick lived some 16 centuries ago, but though much of his life is shrouded in mystery, much of what we do know reads like an adventure story. So how did the story of this man of God involve kidnapping and enslavement, druidism and paganism, daring escapes, feuds and accusations?
How did his commitment to spreading the word of God lead him to become the embodiment of all things Irish? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of St. Patrick. Patrick is born sometime in the late 4th century AD as a Roman citizen in Britain. He has no birth connection to Ireland at all. Indeed, Ireland, at the very edge of Europe, is one of the few places the Romans have never seriously attempted to invade.
Patrick's father, Calporius, like his father before him, is a clergyman, Rome having adopted Christianity back in 323 under the Emperor Constantine. Since the priesthood do not yet have to take vows of chastity, it is no problem that Calporius is married with the family. He is also a city councillor, a role that gives the family yet more prestige and entitles him to wear a prized purple stripe on his toga to denote authority.
Better still, the position is hereditary. Patrick is destined to take over from him, guaranteeing a good life for the family line to come. Patrick, then, is born into privilege and property too. His very name, which Romanized is Patricius, means "of the patrician" or "aristocratic class." His writings tell us he grows up on the family estate near the town of Bannaventa Bernier.
Though the exact location is uncertain, it's likely a typical walled town on the English west coast, complete with a forum, a bathhouse, and a Christian church. Patrick is given an education in Latin, as befits his class. Unlike most of the population, he learns how to read and write, something which turns out to be of particular benefit to future historians. Because, rather unusually for this period when the Roman Empire is in its dying days and the Dark Ages are about to descend,
Patrick later leaves vivid first-person accounts of events in his life. Philip Freeman is professor of history at Pepperdine University and author of St. Patrick of Ireland, a Biography.
We are so lucky when it comes to Saint Patrick. We have two documents that he actually wrote himself. We have two letters that have survived the centuries. This is very rare from this early medieval or period of late antiquity. But we have, first of all, a letter to the soldiers of Caratacus is his first letter.
But then we have a longer letter which is called his confession, his confessio in Latin, which is a little bit misleading because it's not a confession in the modern sense. It's much more of a declaration of his life and his work and his intents.
Of course, whenever you have people writing about themselves, you have to look at it a little closely. We all tend to be sometimes a little bit dishonest and we try to paint the best picture of ourself. But the letters are actually interesting in that aspect too, in that Patrick
reveals his faults and his problems and his shortcomings in a way that very few other ancient authors will admit to. When you read Julius Caesar, when you read Cicero, when you read Plato, they don't talk about all of their insecurities and doubts and fears and problems, but Patrick is not afraid to do that. And so I tend to take the letters fairly seriously and as really good historical sources.
As he grows older, the strong-willed boy starts to assert his independence and challenge the ways of his parents. He was raised in a Christian household, but by the time he was a teenager, he had become an atheist. He no longer believed in any of the Christian teachings that his family told him, but he was brought up in them. And so he, you know, read the Bible, he was trained, he knew the stories, he knew all of the Christian background, but he wanted nothing to do with it.
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Extreme muscle men. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. As a hot-headed and rebellious teenager, Patrick gets himself into scrapes. When he's 15, he takes a friend aside and confides in him that he has done something truly shameful. Exactly what his sin is, unfortunately, is lost to history. But it is a confession that will come back to haunt him in years to come. It's now, though, that Patrick's world is turned on its head and his life is set off on a whole new trajectory.
It's a moonless late summer night, sometime in the early 15th century, in the narrow strait between Ireland and Britain. A coast of Ireland some distance behind him, a man is maneuvering his boat across calm waters on his way to the British mainland. The gentle breeze is just strong enough to fill the vessel's single sail. But every now and then, when the wind dies down, he uses his wooden oar to steer a course. Not so many years ago, when the Romans were regularly patrolling this strait, this trip would have been impossible.
But tonight, the sailor's not worried. Everybody knows the Romans are a spent force, so there's no one now to intercept him and a handful of other boats in this mini-armada. A squinting, he can just about make out the landing spot, with the silhouettes of a row of Roman villas rising up above it. Soon, the water becomes too shallow to sail. The man jumps from the boat and drags it up the beach, the wet sand crunching beneath his feet.
He leaves his boat with the smaller group chosen to keep watch, then marches off in the direction of one of the villas. They walk in silence, save for the occasional metallic clang of the weapons and chains they carry. Because tonight they are going slave hunting. With Rome's authority waning, there are rich and easy pickings to be had. The most prized are young women, who can double as wives and laborers, or boys big enough to follow orders and get the work done.
But there's every chance the house they're targeting will include grown men, and that's when things can get messy. The sailor speedily strides up the beach and along a rocky path that leads onto farmland. Squelching across a muddy field, he hears a distant sound. He alerts the crew, who quickly slip down out of sight for a moment, wary. The Romans might be gone, but local militia still patrol these parts, looking for gangs exactly like this one.
The moment passes, and they continue crossing the field to the smart two-story villa surrounded by a low wall. The sailor vaults it in a single motion. He creeps to the smart main house and tries the door. It is held in place by a plank of wood, but it splinters when he leans forcefully against it. The men creep inside, across a clean stone floor and past the dying embers of a fire. While some check downstairs, the sailor climbs the wooden stairs and into a room from where he can hear snoring.
Here there is a youth, deep in sleep. Sixteen years old at a guess and healthy looking. The sailor gestures to the men behind him, who quietly follow him inside. They are already bearing down on the boy when he awakens. Before he can cry out, the sailor claps his hand over his mouth, while the others grab his arms. Another raider comes in to report that the boy is alone in the house. His parents, it seems, are away on business. They gag the boy and shackle him.
A chain is fastened round his neck. Then, manhandle him down the stairs and into the courtyard. Before long, more victims appear. Servants rounded up from the outside accommodation. They are joined together with three-foot-long chains and frog-marched back to the boats. For the sailor, it is a good night's business. But for those in chains, it is the end of their lives as they know them. None will have a sharper fall than the boy.
Until now, he has enjoyed a life of relative comfort and ease. But for this boy, whose name is Patrick, all of that is gone. The voyage from Britain to Ireland takes a day or two, but soon green hills emerge on the horizon. The boats are hauled into shore, and Patrick and the other captives are unceremoniously thrown out. Hungry and thirsty, Patrick struggles to keep pace as he is route-marched to a slave market in a nearby village. His teen bravura quickly ebbs away.
Men circle round, sneeringly inspecting the chattel. He flinches when they squeeze his biceps to gauge his strength, or poke their fingers in his mouth to see his teeth. A discussion between buyers and sellers follows, haggling over price. Patrick cannot understand the language, and does not want to think how much or how little his life is considered to be worth. A couple of minutes later, and the deal is done. He has been bought by a farmer from the northwest of the country, probably around where County Mayo is today.
He is soon on the move again, rattling about in a rickety old ox-drawn cart, and then back on his feet for a trek to what will be his new home. His legs ache with the effort, but each time his pace slows or his shoulders slump, the point of a blade pushes him on. He dares not make a sound in protest or catch the eye of his new owner. He senses that he is not only being introduced to a new country, but to an entirely different way of life.
The distance between Ireland and Britain may be small, but the cultural differences are vast.
Ireland was a very agricultural society, as it still is today. There were cattle, there were sheep, and because of the Gulf Stream, it never got particularly cold. At least it didn't snow and ice too much in Ireland. And so it was a rich agricultural place. It traded with the Roman Empire. They exported probably cattle and especially Irish dogs, Irish wolfhounds.
And so there was trade that had gone on for centuries, but it was an entirely different world. To use the word uncivilized and barbaric, that probably isn't stretching it too far. It was a very, very different place than the civilized Roman Empire.
Irish culture, Irish society was set up according to tribes. There were at least a hundred independent tribes in Ireland. They were always fighting with each other. Sometimes they would cooperate with each other, sometimes they wouldn't. It was a society of warriors where the kings and the warriors were on the top and there were farmers, there were laborers. Patrick has grown up with stories about the ferocity of the Irish.
Back in the 360s, they, along with the Picts and Saxons, had launched wave after wave of attacks on British soil. There were plenty of people in Patrick's own town who still shared stories of their battles with the invaders. The Irish, they would whisper after a drink or two, are devils. Not that forced labour is anything new to Patrick, whose own family enslaved people. It is the way of the world. But rumour has it that life in chains in Ireland is harder than in Roman society.
For starters, here it is impossible to work your way out of servitude. Patrick can harbor no hope of ever buying his way back to freedom. The farm on which he finds himself is far more primitive than the one his family owns. None of the multi-story stone buildings and sturdy perimeter walls here. The family that own it live in a round house constructed from mud, clay, and branches, with a conical roof of reeds to keep out the rain. Around their land is a fence of sharpened wooden poles.
he feels like he's stepping backwards in history patrick's job is to look after the sheep it's a lowly position in an agricultural hierarchy where cows and pigs are considered more important a shepherd can have no doubt about his place in the social order life is governed by the seasons in the springtime he helps with the lambing and the castrating of rams in the summer he shares the flock
In the winter, it's time for the slaughter, a rhythm of life that the high-born Patrick never expected to be a part of. At night, he shares a rudimentary hut with his animals. The smell, especially on a hot summer evening, can be overwhelming. But heat is not usually the problem.
It's the coldest and wettest part of Ireland. And Patrick writes that he spent seven years there as a slave, and his main job was herding sheep in the mountains. And he was left alone with the sheep to guard them from wolves. There were still wolves in Ireland. And he writes about what an absolutely miserable life it was. He was freezing cold most of the time and wet, and it was just a miserable situation.
To make matters worse, his master is an utter bully who beats and abuses him. It is a terrible life. Sometimes he spirals into deep depression, mourning for the life he once had, for his warm bed on the estate, lavish meals and comfortable clothes, even the chance to work at his lessons. The days roll into each other, the weeks turn into months and years. Patrick realizes that if he doesn't want to spend his life wallowing in all that he has lost,
he must attempt to make the best of the lot he has been given. Now, he starts to use the few social interactions he has to pick up some of the local language, a bid to reduce his isolation. He begins a spiritual re-engagement too, turning his back on the cocksure youth who not so long ago had been rolling his eyes with his mates in church back home. Now, he prays not just once or twice a day, but almost constantly, as his faith deepens. He fasts too,
denying his body food both as an act of purification and as a recompense for previous sins. As Patrick tells it, he is asleep one night in his dank hut when he hears a voice from somewhere. It tells him that he has been doing well in his religious observance and that he will be going home soon. Without hesitation, he believes that these are the words of God himself.
In this period, adherents of many different religions believe dreams provide the perfect environment for divine intercession. The following night, he goes to bed with eager anticipation of another message and he is not disappointed. The voice returns, confirming that he will shortly be on his way home. But there is additional detail this time. His ship, the voice tells him, is ready. What can this mean? What ship? How is he meant to find it? If he's found trying to escape, he could face execution.
There are the harshest punishments for anyone aiding an escape too. So whatever he might do, Patrick knows he will have to go it alone. It seems an impossible challenge. But though the odds are against him, his faith is strong. Certain that he has been given a message from God, Patrick is determined to follow its instructions. Patrick steals away from his hut in the dead of night without a word. The fewer who know of his scheme, the lower the danger to everyone.
With no possessions of note, all he carries is enough food and drink to last him a day or two. His plan is to travel cross-country, bypassing the most populous places to avoid detection. The nearest useful ports are in the south of the country, not far off 200 miles away. To get there he must contend with mountains, wide rivers, and muddy bogs. When his food runs out, he takes to foraging and fishing, making do with whatever meager rations he can gather.
It is summer, so at least he doesn't have the cold to worry about. But there are wild animals, and most dangerous of all, humans. Now a fugitive, he knows there is a price on his head. But if he has nothing else, he at least has plenty of time to reflect. Despite the dangers and hardships, his faith doesn't waver, and after several weeks of journeying, he arrives at a port.
And so he flees across Ireland and he talks about fleeing about 200 Roman miles, which is the entire length of Ireland. So if he's up in Mayo, he's fleeing somewhere down near Cork or on the southern coast. He's more careful than ever. His Romano-British accent is an instant giveaway that he does not belong here. It would not take long to figure out that someone dressed like him with that accent is likely an enslaved man on the run.
On the bustling dockside, traders haggle over the price of the jugs of wine and saltfish that has just landed. A child in tunic and leggings chases a puppy. But Patrick keeps a low profile, trying to look inconspicuous next to a wooden hut and avoiding all eye contact. He's watching a ship readying itself for a long voyage. It's larger than the one that transported him to Ireland all those years ago, big enough to accommodate a crew of twenty. It could be the ship from his divine message.
A dozen men are loading supplies on board, grumbling to each other about the heavy lifting. Might this be his ticket out? He decides to chance his luck. He approaches the captain and asks if he might have free passage in return for labor. The captain stares at him, nonplussed. He takes in his raggedy dress and Patrick fears he suspects the truth. But the captain just shrugs his shoulders and says that he already has a crew. He doesn't need the hassle of taking on anyone new, especially if they're someone else's property.
Patrick pleads with him, but the captain turns his back and gets on with directing his men. Crestfallen, exhausted, Patrick walks away. It is an effort not to cry. What else can he do? Has he not followed his lord's orders? And to what end, to be stranded here, an outlaw in a strange place, a hostage to fortune? He hardly notices the footsteps coming up behind him, and jumps when he feels a hand on his shoulder. It is one of the sailors from the ship.
The captain has changed his mind about that extra pair of hands, he explains. They're almost ready to leave, and once they're at sea, no one's going to care who's on board. If there are questions asked later, the captain will deny all knowledge of escaped slaves. Patrick doesn't need asking twice. He rushes back to the vessel with his new shipmate and begins heaving supplies on board. There is the sound of barking from within the vessel, the cargo of wolfhounds being taken to sell in Britain.
It is not long before the dockside is clear and the ship ready to set sail. But before he is allowed on, Patrick is given an order. He is told to suck each of the crew's breasts. For sailors of this time, it is not such a strange request. A sort of initiation ceremony, designed to bond them to each other before they face whatever lies ahead. To Patrick, though, it's a pagan custom that conflicts with his own Christian faith.
His refusal is met with some grumbles of annoyance from the crew, but time is pushing on, so he is forgiven this time. While the sun is still high in the sky, the ship's ropes are untied and the vessel casts off. Patrick is homeward bound. They sail for three days and then set out on another cross-country trek.
For what seems like weeks, they hike across expanses of open countryside, over hills, across rivers, and through marshland. The crew soon uses up all their supplies and begin to gripe with hunger. Patrick comes in for some particular baiting from the captain. "If your God is so great," he says, "what is he going to do for us?" Patrick, as ever, turns to prayer, and a day or two later they are seemingly answered. The group stumble upon a herd of pigs and embark on a two-day feast.
There is wild honey, too. Although when Patrick learns that it has already been offered up to his companions, pagan gods, for blessing, he refuses to eat it. With their energies renewed, the rest of the journey goes smoothly, and Patrick finds his way back to his family. Like the prodigal son, he is welcomed back with open arms and more feasting. But he is no longer the callow youth they once knew. His mother barely recognizes the tall, strong, pious man that her son has become.
exhausted both physically by his forced labor and mentally from the trauma he has suffered.
He says that his parents were overjoyed to see him. They had assumed that he had been dead because nobody ever returned from Ireland. Patrick is the only person we know to have ever escaped slavery from Ireland and returned to Britain. So he is there. He settles back into his life at the villa, but it's not comfortable for him anymore in many ways because he's seen a different world.
Thrilled to have his heir back in the fold, Patrick's father attempts to groom his son for the responsibilities that will eventually come his way. But years of vital education have been lost. It is difficult to know whether that gap can be closed. There is a further complication too. Patrick's father may be a deacon, but Patrick's own religious calling is on another level entirely. One night, shortly after his return, he reports another vision while lying in bed.
A man named Victoricus comes from Ireland laden with letters and plucks one from the pile, breaks its seal, unraveling it and handing it to Patrick. It is headed, Voice of the Irish. Patrick says he suddenly hears a choir of voices addressing him as if from the letter. They call out, Holy Boy.
the nickname he had received as a slave. The chorus bids him to return to Ireland and walk among them just as Jesus had taught to "love your enemies" in the Sermon on the Mount. And Patrick says, "No way am I going to go back to Ireland. These people kidnapped me, they treated me horribly. That's the last place that I want to go." But he keeps having these dreams and God keeps telling him, "The Irish need you."
We really don't know a lot about the period between when Patrick leaves Ireland, when he escapes Ireland, and when he returns. And so eventually, Patrick says, "Okay, I will do it."
But he can't just pack up and head back to Ireland. He needs to be trained. And so he had to spend at least several years training for the ministry, learning getting ordained first as a deacon and then eventually as a priest. And he could have done this in Britain.
There were bishops in London and in York and several other places. Or he could have gone to the continent and done it in Gaul or even Italy. But probably he trained to be a priest in Britain. And then finally, after a number of years, and we don't know how long, he sets sail and goes back to Ireland. In 431, a flotilla of small boats moor up on a stretch of rocky coast beneath Dublin Bay in the shadow of the Wickler Mountains.
The sailors decamp to a nearby cove, led by a man named Palladius, an envoy of the Pope. Palladius has just been appointed the first bishop of Ireland and is charged with converting the country's pagan masses. But it is far too big a job for one man alone, so he has come with assistance to help spread the word. While we do not know for sure, it is a fair guess that Patrick travels with him.
Maybe in his mid-thirties by now, Patrick is still full of zeal and has several years' training in the church under his belt. But even with his prior knowledge of the country and its people, there's a lot of work to be done.
In Ireland, before Patrick got there, before the Roman missionaries got there, it was very much a part of the general Celtic religion which had stretched all the way across Europe. They were polytheistic. They had many different gods, and the religion was overseen by a class of priests called the Druids.
which could be either male or female, but the Druids were the ones who did the sacrifices, they acted as intermediaries, they acted as judges, and so it was a religious society, very religious in many ways, but it was much more like the old pagan Greeks and Romans than like Christianity. Palladius' involvement in the mission, however, is unspectacular.
It is not long before he drops out of the historical record and Patrick takes over as the church's main representative in Ireland. His mission is twofold: to protect the relatively small pool of existing Christians and to add to it by converting non-believers. Much of his work is focused in the north of the country, especially around Armagh,
Patrick was not the first Christian in Ireland. He was not even the first Christian missionary in Ireland, but he was the first one we know about to go to the northern part of the island. There previously were Christians working as missionaries in the southern part. And we know that a number of the people who had been kidnapped from Britain over the years were Christians, especially the women.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Church is ripping itself apart with esoteric doctrinal debates, such as the extent to which Jesus should be regarded as human or divine. Patrick, though, adopts a much simpler message. He concentrates on the idea of a single Creator God and preaches a credo of love and grace. It is a step change from the magical mythology of the many Celtic gods. But not all his fellow bishops back in Britain are fully supportive of his efforts.
We get the feeling from his letters that not everybody was particularly thrilled about it. Many of them wanted nothing to do with the Irish but enough of them approved of Patrick's mission so that he went back to Ireland with the full support of the church. His ministry relies on the hospitality of others. Moving around with no more than a handful of followers to spread the gospel Patrick stays in strangers' homes where he also conducts services.
But changing hearts and minds is a slow process, strewn with obstacles. He did not sweep across the island and convert everybody to Christianity, not at all. He had to work very slowly because Ireland was divided into independent tribes and so he had to do it tribe by tribe.
He could not cross tribal boundaries without having some sort of Irish nobleman with him. And so what he would have done is gone to the king of a particular tribe and offered gifts to the king and said, may I preach here? And the king would have said yes or no. But enough of them said yes, that he was able to establish a ministry, he was able to
established churches, and he was able to have some converts. And he talks about having hundreds, but that probably took quite a few years to do it. He increases his flock among the enslaved, many of whom are Romans and Christians anyway. But he has some success among the indigenous community too, not least among the higher ranks. Eventually, he comes to count the sons and daughters of Irish kings among his followers. Women of all ranks prove a natural constituency for him.
by urging as many of them as possible to maintain their virginity and become "brides of God." His message can sound austere to a modern ear, but to some well-born women destined to be married off into strategic unions, dedicating oneself to Christ and taking oneself out of the marriage market is an appealing option. Similarly to the enslaved, whose bodies were considered the property of their masters,
The idea of sexual abstinence is a welcome one. Devotion to Christ becomes a means of winning back some bodily autonomy, at least psychologically. As Patrick himself notes, "The ones who suffer most are the slaves. They face rape and constant threats, but suffer this abuse bravely. God gives these women the grace to follow courageously in His path, even though they are forbidden to do so."
With the top of his head shaved in the Roman fashion and carrying his bishop's staff, he moves from community to community, bearing gifts of woolen cloaks or jars of wine and holding worship services in people's homes. He conducts baptisms for the converts too. The new believers strip naked, a customary Christian tradition of the time, to represent new life as if new-born. They turn first west to renounce the devil, then east to receive the creed and affirm the faith.
Then Patrick pours water, warmed in a small cauldron over them, and anoints their foreheads with oil. Eventually he has enough followers to start building simple but permanent wooden churches too. But this putting down of roots doesn't go down well with everybody. He actually gets in a little bit of trouble because the sons and daughters of the nobility that convert to Christianity
Their parents don't like this, and especially the women who he converts, those who decide that they want to become nuns, they want to become celibate nuns. This messes up everything. They had been pledged in marriage years before. And so Patrick gets a lot of grief from people in Ireland who are members of the nobility, the people in charge, for his work. So he talks about being beaten regularly. He talks about being kidnapped. He had a really, really hard time.
By the second half of the 5th century, Patrick has established a significant congregation spread through the north of Ireland in particular. Now, a band of raiders arrive from Britain under the ruler of a local Christian leader called Caroticus. He is one of a new breed of local strongmen who have emerged in Britain to fill the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire, a process that culminates with the fall of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476.
It is a spring day, and Patrick has just finished a baptism service for a clan comprising several extended families. Everyone is in good spirits, and Patrick is looking forward to a few well-earned days of quiet after Easter. Shortly after his new converts leave, a messenger arrives at the door of the church where he's been staying. The messenger is red-faced as he breathlessly delivers his news. The converts, he says, have been attacked on their way home. It is carnage. Most of the men are dead.
The women and children, still in their baptismal robes and with the sweet scent of anointing oil clinging to them, have been kidnapped and taken back to Britain. Patrick is furious. How can this happen? He knows from bitter experience the terror of those poor people. He has spent years of hard work to spread the word, and now it threatens to be all undone by one of his own countrymen and a supposed Christian at that.
Patrick opens up a line of communication with Caroticus, desperate to negotiate a return of the prisoners and their property. Caroticus, however, laughs the suggestion off. Incensed, Patrick writes an open letter to him. He tells Caroticus and his followers that their crimes have made them citizens of hell. Patrick writes a letter to Caroticus and to his soldiers, and he says, how can you do this? You are like wolves.
These are your brothers and sisters. Send them back. You have to stop this. But they just laugh at him. They want nothing to do with Patrick because they consider the Irish subhuman. The episode deeply wounds Patrick, who fears that the wicked with their evil deeds have won. Worse still, he finds himself receiving condemnation from his own church for his intervention.
He actually gets in trouble with the British bishops because it was one of the rules in early Christianity that a bishop stays within his own jurisdiction. He doesn't meddle outside. And so when Patrick writes a letter as a bishop to British Christians, he really is overstepping his bounds. They get very upset, very angry with him. Those who had never really supported his mission to Ireland see their chance for revenge. They send a list of charges against him and summon him back to Britain.
One of his supposed crimes is the use of gifts from his congregation to bribe local chieftains to let him preach in their communities. Patrick considers it a means of doing God's greater work, but his opponents claim it is a misuse of church property. Even more seriously, they say they have evidence of a terrible sin that he committed when he was 15 before he was kidnapped. It seems a friend in whom he confided must have betrayed his secret.
This is, you know, a terrible sin, but the problem is they don't identify what it is. And so it must have been something scandalous, murder, idolatry, something we don't know about. Patrick feels utterly let down by the people he had once considered friends and collapses into a spiral of depression, but he will not be broken. He writes back to the bishops, refusing to return home. "My work is here in Ireland," he tells them, "and I will not leave until I am dead."
Presumably, the effort and expense required to chase him down and bring him back eventually deters his detractors. Though disengaged from the church he loves, he's free to carry on his life's mission. Patrick's later years are as uncertain as any period of his life, just as we do not know exactly when he was born, nor do we know when he died. There are different dates, some people say in the 460s, maybe even in the 490s, but we don't know.
There are plenty of stories that come along later that want to tell us Patrick died and was buried in Downpatrick or over here. And if you go visit Ireland today, you can find three or four different graves of Patrick, people who want to claim him. But we really don't know what happened to Patrick or when exactly he died. Nor should we imagine that the island he leaves behind is now a Christian country.
When Patrick dies, Ireland is still very much pagan. The majority of the people are not Christians at all. And it's going to take two or three hundred years before Christianity is really going to take over. The stories that came along later that said that Patrick came in and he converted tens of thousands of people in mass gatherings, it didn't happen that way. It was a very slow process.
with Patrick and with many other people working. So it took Ireland several centuries until it became fully Christian. For many years after he dies, he's reduced to a minor historical footnote, just one of many missionaries who helped convert Ireland. But about 200 years later, in the 6th and 7th centuries, there is a power struggle within the Irish Church, with rivals jostling to lead it.
One of the regional churches is that of Armagh, which was probably founded by Patrick and has long been associated with him. Armagh makes Patrick its poster boy. His life begins to be mythologized, with Patrick cast as hero and miracle worker, a process that takes on a life of its own as the decades and centuries pass.
The latter-day myths about Patrick don't have a historical basis in Patrick himself, but they do go fairly far back in the legend of Patrick. For example, when the story that he drove the snakes out of Ireland isn't true. There never were any snakes in Ireland. If you go to the National Museum of Natural History in Dublin, you won't find any snakes there at all.
There never have been. But the idea that he drove the snakes out is just a symbolic way of saying he drove the evil out of Ireland. Ever since the book of Genesis, snakes have been associated with evil. And the idea that he used the shamrock, the three-leaf clover, to explain the Christian trinity, well, that's nothing that we have in the historical documents early on about Patrick either.
But that's actually more plausible. It's the sort of thing that Patrick might have done, that any good missionary might have done. And so that's possible, but they're both modern inventions. Regardless, the movement to have him recognized as a saint gains momentum and by the end of the 7th century he is widely accepted as the nation's patron saint. His feast day falls on the 17th of March, which some say is the date that he died.
But the reinvention of St. Patrick as a cultural totem, the personification of Irish culture in all its ancient and modern aspects, is far more recent. It's rooted in the homesickness of Irish expats thousands of miles from home about a millennium later.
It was a minor religious holiday. It was not a particularly big deal. The St. Patrick's Day as we know it now was actually not invented in Ireland at all. It was invented in Boston and Chicago and New York and Sydney, Australia. And it was invented by Irish immigrants. So when the Irish immigrants came over to America, for example, in the 1800s,
They were not treated well. They were at the bottom of the social class. So they really wanted something to rally around, somebody to rally around. And so they began to hold the St. Patrick's Day festivals. And it took many years until they started dyeing the Chicago River green and doing such things. But eventually, St. Patrick's Day became a big deal in America and then spread to Canada and to other places as well.
And eventually, even back to Ireland. I remember going to Ireland in the early 1980s around St. Patrick's Day, and it wasn't that big of a celebration. But you go over to Dublin nowadays on St. Patrick's Day, and you can't get a room, and the pubs are just overflowing.
Patricius' journey from Romano-British slave to missionary to patron saint to international figurehead of the Irish is complete. His name today is less associated with biblical teaching and more so with national pride, carousing, and festivities. Quite what Patrick himself would make of that, a man who suffered great deprivation and who preached total devotion to God, is anyone's guess. Next time on Short History Of we'll bring you A Short History of Frida Kahlo.
I personally don't like her being portrayed as a victim because if you see, I think Kahlo's image endures because she was able to break a lot of taboos about women's experiences, about challenges to overcome illness, physical injury, both exposing them and working through this trauma in creative ways.
So I feel that this resilience and her fighting attitude and determination to enjoy life despite of the difficulties she encountered makes her a powerful symbol as she continues to speak to many different groups. And her iconic image that, you know, that iconic image that we know today communicates strength and possibility for change.
That's next time on Short History Huff.