PATRICK THE SINNER

PATRICK THE SINNER
Míceál Ledwith.

When the river in Chicago and the beer in Boston and Savannah turn green, everyone knows it's St. Patrick's Day again. But if we compare what St. Patrick wrote about himself nearly sixteen hundred years ago to the form in which almost the entire world now keeps his memory on the anniversary of his death, then we would have to admit he has certainly come a long way.

In his autobiography Patrick described himself as a sinner, bothered by the fact that his education and skill in expression was only rudimentary.

The familiar picture of Patrick has him dressed in the flowing robes of a bishop (of a much later period), carrying a bishop's crosier and standing on the heads of serpents. This image grew out of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Irish movements in the United States, such as the Hibernian Society^f, and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. The members of these organizations banded together to combat the Protestant and anti-Irish sentiments that were rampant in parts of the United States at that time. Patrick became their Patron, their symbol and their ideal. He was regarded as the one who first brought the Christianity to Ireland, he was the figure who in his own person symbolized the opposition to English prejudice against the Irish and who was regarded as the quintessential Irish Catholic. Such is the way with people who are the stuff of which legends are made, and Patrick's person and work amply provided raw material for a host of them.

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^f Founded in Philadelphia in 1793 and originally called "The Hibernian Society for the Relief of Immigrants from Ireland."
   The Savannah, Georgia, Hibernian Society was founded in 1812.
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Nearly seventy years ago T.F. O'Rahilly published a groundbreaking study titled "The Two Patricks" which contested that the traditional figure of Patrick was actually the conflation of accounts of the lives of two different Christian missionaries², Palladius, from Gaul, who was sent by Pope Celestine as the first bishop to the Christians in Ireland in 431³ before Patrick came. He came not to convert the Irish to Christianity, but to minister to the Christians who were already there. So even if O'Rahilly is correct that there were two "Patricks," neither of them was the original Christian missionary in Ireland which is how St. Patrick is popularly regarded. There were also at least three other Christian missionaries in Ireland at the time whose names we know, Auxilius, Secundinus and Iserinus.

The mission of Palladius was associated with the eastern province of Leinster, especially with the area of Clonard in County Meath. He died at Killeen Cormac, County Kildare, probably between the years 457-461. This has often been confused with the date of the death of the actual St. Patrick, who however seems to have lived on another thirty years,⁴ even though the fifteenth centenary of his death was commemorated with great panoply in Ireland in 1961. His mission seems to have been confined to the northern and western provinces of Ulster and Connaught.

Two documents from Patrick's hand survive, his "Confessio" or "Statement" written probably about 450, and his "Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus." The former is much more significant historically.

From evidence in his autobiography the actual St. Patrick was born at a place called "Banna Venta Berniae," which it is simply not possible to locate it with certitude to day. It may have been in Wales, but most scholars now believe that his birthplace was near the town of Carlyle in northeast England.

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² O'Rahilly, Thomas F., The Two Patricks: A Lecture on the History of Christianity
    in Fifth-Century Ireland. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin, 1942.
³ Entry for the year AD 431 in the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine
⁴ The writer of the "Annals of Ulster," under the entry for the year 553, states that in that year
    the body of Patrick was placed in a new shrine, sixty years after his death. That would date his death to the year 493.
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There are many hints of contacts between Roman Britain and the Ireland of St. Patrick's time. His very name suggests this, coming from the Latin word for the wealthy upper classes in Roman society. But it is also suggested that in Ireland Patrick went by the Irish language name of "Padraig Daorbe" "Saor" means 'free' in the Irish language, and its opposite "Daor" means 'enslaved.' So "Padraig Daorbe" would translate as 'Patrick the Slave."

His father Calpurnius was a Deacon of the Church, his mother was named Concessa, and his grandfather, Potius, was a priest. He was probably born about 396. When he was sixteen he was kidnapped by raiders and taken to Ireland to be sold into slavery. He spent six years herding sheep on a mountain, probably in the west of Ireland near present day Killala in County Mayo. Eventually he escaped and walked 200 miles to the east where he persuaded a ship's captain to take him on board to cross the Irish Sea. He reports that he was guided by voices from the unseen in his efforts to escape. He was guided by those same voices to return to the land of his enslavement fifteen years later. He was about 37 when he came to Ireland as a bishop, to free it, as he saw the matter, from its enslavement to pagan idolatry. He continued that mission for sixty years.

Patrick's mission in Ireland could not have been easy. He tells us that at least on one occasion he was robbed, beaten, arrested and imprisoned, perhaps at the risk of his life. Much of his autobiography is taken up with refuting false charges made against him at a trial, and while he does not explicitly state what the charges were it seems from the context that it had something to do with financial impropriety.

He emphasizes at length that he took no money for performing baptisms or ordinations, that he returned the gifts which wealthy women had given him and paid for the sons of chiefs to accompany him, while giving many gifts to chiefs and judges out of his own resources.

Women had a major role in his mission and many royal and noble women were among his most faithful converts. Some became nuns despite enormous family opposition. The status of women had always been extremely high in Druid Ireland and many of those who led the mystery cult practices were female. He was also extremely active among the slaves and the poor, not surprising given his own history. He says he baptized "thousands" of people during his mission, but apart from knowing that his mission centered on the chiefs and the kings it is difficult to say numerically how significant the numbers converted actually were. What is clear is that Patrick had laid his finger on the pulse of the nation that came to be called Ireland, and whatever his numerical success in terms of converts, his own status and the status of those he influenced certainly had sounded a chord that never ceased to reverberate through the hearts of the Irish people. It was probably this rather than any other cause that brought about his recognition in the seventh and eight centuries as the quintessential apostle of Ireland. The fact that the church in Armagh at the time was valiantly competing with the church of Kildare to establish a claim to be the chief church in the country of course helped matters, an advantage which Palladius and Iserinus, for example, did not have. Apparently Patrick's method was to incorporate the elements of Druid religion into Christianity so that their veneration of the sacred wells, fires, mountains, trees and forests became part of the warp and woof of Celtic Christianity right down to the present day, thus avoiding totally the enormous clash between Christianity and Druidism that was taking place in Gaul at the same time.

Unfortunately for the legends Patrick did not banish the snakes from Ireland either, for no better reason than that there were no snakes to banish. Apparently there were no snakes in Ireland after the last ice age. Several decades ago I wrote an article suggesting that the serpents associated with Patrick may have been symbols of the matriarchal snake goddesses of the Druids, which he had banished.

The shamrock was a sacred plant to the Druids and signified for them eternal life; Patrick's use of it to symbolize the core of the doctrine of the Christian God would have been an inspired choice.

He is also credited with drawing a cross on top of the Druid image of the sun to form the traditional Celtic Cross we know today, but of course a four spoke wheel inside a circle has been a universal symbol since the new Stone Age.

However mighty a figure he was in the history of Irish Christianity, he was not the first and never claimed to be the first, to bring the Christian faith to Ireland. In addition, however much he has served for centuries as the badge of Catholic opposition to Protestantism, when you read through the spiritual autobiography he wrote in his own hand about the year 450, you can see clearly what he believed. But that collection far more closely resembles what we would describe in today's terms as a Protestant version of the Christian faith rather than a traditionally Catholic one. And further if we study the clues he left as to the place of his birth and teenage years, we realize he was also most likely an Englishman by birth.

So to use the terminology of much later times must we not conclude that St. Patrick was not the apostle of Ireland, and furthermore was an English Protestant? That's a realization that must surely rival the recent discovery that the Pope backed the Protestant King William of Orange in his campaign to oust the Catholic King James II from the throne, which came to its climax at the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July 1690 (in the new calendar). Placed beside those facts, not having banished the snakes or invented the Celtic cross are relatively minor shocks.

There are two great traditional marching dates in Irish culture; the great Irish nationalist and Catholic festival, St. Patrick's Day, and the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July, its Protestant counterpart. Both were dates when sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics were most likely to occur. And both events undoubtedly deserved commemoration by those who cherished them.

But what do we do now when we discover that March 17^th. actually celebrates the life of an English Protestant, and that 12 July commemorates the victory of a Protestant King backed by the Pope at the Battle of the Boyne?

As they might well say in Boston, Chicago, Savannah, or even in Belfast or Dublin, "Now, isn't that something!"

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