Saint Patrick

Patrick was born in Britain - the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia says at Kilpatrick near Dumbarton in 387, while Franciscan Media gives a more cautious c. 415. ¹² At the age of sixteen he was "carried off into captivity by Irish marauders and was sold as a slave" to a chieftain named Milchu, and spent six years herding flocks. ¹

He was a teenager, alone, in a country he did not know, belonging to somebody. The faith he had grown up around and largely ignored became, in those years, the only thing he had.

He escaped and made his way home. He then trained for years - at Saint Martin's monastery at Tours, at the island sanctuary of Lerins, and under Saint Germain at Auxerre - and received episcopal consecration before returning. ¹

The return is the part worth stopping on. Having got out of Ireland, he went back to it, deliberately, as a bishop, to preach to the people whose countrymen had stolen him. He landed around 433. ¹

The best-known episode of his mission is the Paschal fire he kindled at Slane on Easter Eve in 433, in defiance of the druidical assembly gathered at Tara, where no fire was to be lit before the king's. ¹ It is the founding scene of Irish Christianity, and it was an act of open provocation.

He died on 17 March 493 at Saul, near Downpatrick, though the 1913 article notes that some sources give 460 or 461. ¹

Patrick wrote his own account of his life, the Confessio, and modern scholars accept it as genuinely his. ¹ That is rare: a fifth-century saint who left a first-person document. Anyone who wants Patrick rather than the legend can simply read what he wrote.

The snakes and the shamrock, it is worth saying, are not in it, and are not in either source cited here.

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. ²³ Franciscan Media also lists him as patron of engineers and of Nigeria. ²

The feast of Saint Patrick is celebrated on March 17, the traditional date of his death. ¹² Franciscan Media's reflection is the useful corrective to how the day is usually spent: "The holiness of a person is known only by the fruits of his or her work." ²

Patrick's faith did not come from the Christian household he grew up in. It came from six years of slavery, alone, herding animals for a man who owned him. ¹ If the deepest thing in your life arrived through the worst part of it, he understands that arithmetic.

Then he went back. Trained, consecrated a bishop, and returned to the country whose raiders had stolen him at sixteen. ¹ Forgiveness in Patrick is not a feeling he worked his way around to. It is a boat he got on.

He lit the Paschal fire at Slane on Easter Eve knowing perfectly well whose fire was supposed to be lit first. ¹ There are moments when discretion stops being a virtue, and he picked one deliberately.

He wrote his own account, the Confessio, and scholars accept it as genuinely his. ¹ Very few saints of that era can be read in their own words, so you can meet him directly instead of through what has been made of him since.