How Patrick Became Our Patron Saint

I’m releasing this on St. Patrick’s Day and thought I’d take a break from our regular scheduled programming to dive into the history and mythology surrounding Ireland’s patron saint. Both what we know about St. Patrick and the stories we tell to fill in the gaps of what we don’t know about the man are absolutely fascinating. An amazing mix of history and mythology. And maybe not what you’d quite expect. So today we’ll start with what we know of Patrick the person and then unpack how he became St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Let’s dive in.

First of all, St. Patrick was one of those people that historians are pretty certain was an actual living, breathing human being. All but impossible to accurately provide dates of when he was born or when he lived, but we’re pretty confident that he was bopping around Great Britain and Ireland in the 5th century. Our best source for St. Patrick’s life actually comes from his own writing, though they’re fairly limited in scope. St. Patrick wrote two pieces that we still have today, his Confesso and his Letters to the Soldiers of Coroticus. Both of these texts give us a fascinating insight into life in Ireland and the British Isles in the 5th century.

I’ll start with the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus as it gives us good context for the period. Then we’ll look at Confessio which gives us more detail about Patrick’s life. In the Coroticus letter, Patrick is writing to an Englishman named Coroticus, denouncing him for enslaving Irish Christians. Now technically he wouldn’t have been an Englishman at this point, but you know what I mean.

You see, at the start of the 5th century, the Romans had left Britain and any semblance of the rule of law was all but disappearing. Local rulers, like Coroticus, were popping up everywhere and acting as independent warlords. But Rome’s influence was still felt, with Patrick referring to Coroticus as a Roman Christian and fellow citizen. So imagine a world in which slavery is rampant, the Roman empire has collapsed and the world is slipping into the dark ages.

Weirdly, Patrick would step into all of this and help shape what would become one of the few bastions of learning over the next few centuries, Christian Ireland. And that’s where we come to Confessio. This is a text in which Patrick lays out his life. It’s actually something that was written to defend himself against attacks from other bishops, but we’ll get to that later.

From the Confessio, Patrick tells us that he was born in Britain, most likely Wales and most likely to a Roman Christian family. His father’s name was Calpurnius, who was a deacon, but probably more for tax reasons than any real devotion to the faith. Patrick himself admits to being uneducated and unreligious as a child, and at the age of 16, famously he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and enslaved for six years. During this time, he says he found his faith, praying 100 times a day, having visions and generally feeling very godly.

As he tells it, God sent him a message telling him a ship was waiting for him to escape, and so he fled across the country and convinced some sailors to take him out of Ireland. He escaped to Gaul, made his way back to Britain and was reunited with his family. But while settling back into his normal life, he had another vision, of a man named Victorious bringing him letters from the Irish people who begged him to return to Ireland and convert them to Christianity. So he trained as a priest, became a bishop and returned to Ireland. By this stage he would have been at least in his 40s.

And all of this is basically the story we hear in Ireland when we’re kids, and there’s no reason to doubt any of Patrick’s telling of events up to this point. But it’s what happens next that gets a bit murky and more interesting. As Patrick tells it, and as the stories would have it, he was one of, if not the first, person to start spreading Christianity in Ireland. This is most likely definitely untrue.

We know of another bishop, Palladius, who was actually sent by the Pope to Ireland to convert the Irish. And Palladius and Patrick were probably one of the many priests and bishops who were slowly working across the country converting people as best they could. What’s interesting is why we have St Patrick’s day and not St Palladius’ day. There are a few reasons for this, and it comes back to Confessio and the nature of St Patrick’s version of Christianity.

Some historians believe that Patrick was a bit of a maverick who believed in a more of a fringe version of Christianity, one that advocated that the end of the world was coming, and the only thing stopping the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse was that not everyone was converted to Christianity. Patrick believed that Ireland was the last holdout of paganism and that by converting its people he would usher in the end of the world and a rebirth. Basically, he was wandering around Ireland declaring to anyone who would listen that the apocalypse was coming.

What’s interesting about this is that some historians also argue that this gels with what the Irish pagan druids were espousing at the same time. Historian John Carey does a deep dive into some ancient Irish linguistics to explore the druid’s own term for the day of judgment, a word that would have sounded something like Eorath, I think. Anyone can correct me if I’m wrong.

This is total conjecture on my part, but you could imagine that Patrick who had lived among the pagans took on board this concept of an apocalypse and then served it back to the Irish pagans in a Christianised form, in a way that worked nicely with their understanding of the world as it was. Remember, the Roman empire was collapsing and though the Irish had never been conquered by Rome they still would have felt the chaos that was going on at this period of time.

This mixing of the druidic idea of the end of the world and Patrick’s version of Christianity is interesting because it is similar to a lot of what we know about Irish Christianity at this time. More than a lot of places Ireland would keep elements of its pre-Christian paganism and as we’ve discussed a lot the Irish pre-Christian gods did hang around post the Christianisation of the country.

Now in a roundabout way it’s because of this apocalypse and the rogue interpretation of Christianity that Patrick built out of it that he became our patron saint. Basically from what we can infer it seems the more traditional British bishops did not like this version of Christianity that Patrick was spreading in Ireland and so he wrote his confessio defending himself against their attacks. Sadly we don’t have their attacks but we know he was defending the idea of the judgement day and he was also defending himself against the idea that he was mishandling money, that money was just resting in his account.

And that could have been the last we ever heard of Patrick, an apocalyptic rogue preacher who was active in the 5th century along with a series of other bishops. Had it not been for the work of a writer Moircú Mac Uachteanní. Moircú was a monk and historian working in 7th century Ireland 150 years or thereabouts after Patrick.

By this time Christianity had taken hold of Ireland becoming the firmly established dominant religion. But as we know Irish Christianity was a little different. It kept some of its paganisms and unlike the rest of Europe where bishops held sway, Ireland’s Christianity was built around monasteries. To simplify things a tad this was most likely due to the fact that as we’ve discussed in previous episodes the filly had set up centres of learning throughout Ireland pre-Christianity and then had basically merged with monks and monasteries as Ireland was Christianised.

Many monasteries were built in areas that had been important pagan centres. For example in Kildare it’s said a pagan site dedicated to the goddess Bridget became a Christian monastery dedicated to St. Bridget. Maybe next year I’ll do a whole episode on Bridget for St. Bridget’s day. And much like the filly and druids in pre-Christian Ireland Christianity was deeply connected to politics with monasteries being linked to powerful ruling dynasties. In fact the kings and noble families competed heavily for control of these major religious centres.

Which brings us back to Mirku. In this politicalised, paganised, uniquely Irish version of Christianity Mirku was looking to create the sense of a single Irish Christian identity. Basically forming a single Irish Christian nation that would be ruled from Armagh. Conveniently for Mirku’s backers who, you know, happen to live in Armagh. Side note, interestingly historian Thomas O’Loughlin argues that this idea of trying to make a single Irish nation may make Mirku one of the first Irish nationalists. So maybe he should get a shout out on St. Patrick’s day as well.

To do all this Mirku wanted to create quote one baptiser and position that baptiser as the nation’s apostle and its heavenly protector. But he had very little to go on. He had a one-line reference to Pope Celestine sending Bishop Palladius from Rome and he had a couple of letters from a British bishop who worked in Ireland around the time the country was first Christianised defending his crazy ideas. It helped that this bishop also did have a few people who celebrated him on March 17th.

So yes, Mirku latched on to Patrick’s confessio and from it wrote the life of Patrick. From this document in which Patrick told his life story and defended himself as a good devout Christian who wasn’t stealing any money, Mirku built out a story that positioned Patrick as a Moses-like figure who had worked wonders to prove how much more powerful God was than the druids of pagan Ireland.

Mirku starts with pretty much what we’ve covered. Patrick being enslaved, finding his faith, escaping to Ireland and then returning. Once Patrick returns to Ireland Mirku starts creating the myth of St. Patrick. In Mirku’s story Patrick and his men meet a pig herder who, thinking they were thieves, ran off to warn his master, a man by the name of Deku. Deku went to kill Patrick but as Mirku writes when he saw the face of holy Patrick the Lord changed his mind for the better. Deku then became Patrick’s first convert.

Next Patrick went on to meet his old slave master, a man by the name of Milch. But when Milch heard an ex-slave was coming, fearing the consequences, Milch took all his belongings, set them on fire and burned himself alive in a huge pyre. Mirku says, quote, Stunned by this sight, Patrick stood there for two or three hours without uttering a word, sighing and mourning and weeping, and then spoke these words. I know not, God knows, this man and king who chose to burn himself in fire rather than believe at the end of his life and serve eternal God. I know not, God knows, none of his sons shall sit on this throne as king of his kingdom in generations to come. What is more, his line shall be subordinate forever. Harsh, but I guess the slaver had it coming.

From there Patrick continues his journey around Ireland, with Mirku writing that in the days when this took place there was in those parts a great king, a fierce pagan, an emperor of non-Romans, with his royal seat at Tarra, which was then the capital of the realm of the Irish, by name Loigar son of Neill, a scion of the family that held the kingship of almost the entire island. He had around him sages and druids, fortune-tellers and sorcerers, and the inventors of every evil craft, who according to the custom of paganism and idolatry, not adultery, were able to know and foresee everything before it happened.

And the interactions between Patrick and Loigar’s druids is the most exciting bit of the whole story. For Easter Patrick celebrated by breaking a bunch of pagan rules and lighting a fire on a hill. When King Loigar saw this he said, Who is the man who has dared to do such a wicked thing in my kingdom? He shall die. Loigar’s druids replied saying, King may you live forever. Unless this fire which we see and which has been lit on this night, before the fire was lit in your house, is extinguished on the same night on which it has been lit, it will never be extinguished at all. This fire obviously being a metaphor for Christianity.

So Loigar summons Patrick to Tara and Patrick and the druids then basically have a wizard’s duel. The druids conjure snow storms, throw the land into darkness and poison Patrick’s drink. Patrick in turn prays away the storm, banishes the darkness and blesses his own drink, removing any poison. One druid even tries to levitate but Patrick prays and the druid falls to the ground and dies. Finally to really prove his point Patrick prays to God and a storm strikes the King’s army scattering them far and wide.

After all of this King Loigar pretends to convert but never does. And Patrick escapes by turning into a deer and eventually Loigar allows him to continue preaching across the country. It’s all not a million miles from the two-a-day stories we’ve been telling to date and again it’s a great example of the imagination of this early Irish writing.

And so basically over the course of the story Patrick breaks the power of the druids across Ireland and cements Christianity baptizing thousands of people in one huge baptism that was most likely a total piece of fiction. But it did the job. Before long Mirko’s life of Patrick had done exactly as he had intended and positioned Saint Patrick as Ireland’s patron saint. Not a bad day’s work eh?

But the one thing you’ll not find in Mirko’s life of Patrick is any mention of snakes. So first of all as any primary school teacher will tell you this is because there were never any snakes in Ireland. No fossil evidence of any snakes at any point. So yeah it’s more of a metaphorical thing representing how Patrick kicked out the druids.

And the story itself wasn’t added to the Patrick myth until Jocelyn of Furness wrote a new version of the life of Saint Patrick in the 12th century another couple of hundred years after Mirko. Jocelyn was an English monk who wrote a bunch of biographies of various saints. Why he decided to add the snake myth and how it became so integral to the idea of Saint Patrick well that’s anyone’s guess.

And there you have it a little bit about the life of Saint Patrick. A rogue bishop made famous by a bunch of tall tales with money that was just resting in his account. Doesn’t get much more Irish than that does it? Enjoy Saint Patrick’s day and why not pour a drink for the monk Mirko who made Patrick famous. Next episode we’ll be back into the ruling of Aideen.