The Real Story of the Runaway Slave Who Became Known as St. Patrick

 

On the evening of March 17th, 2021, I finally learned the story of St. Patrick, the runaway slave who converted many thousands of Irish souls to Christianity & whose efforts led to the establishment of 350 churches across Ireland.

Around 405 AD, Patricius, who we know today as St. Patrick, was a rather irreligious Romano-British 16 year old, “a simple country person” who “did not know the true God,” when his family’s rustic British estate was raided by pirates, who kidnapped him. His “Confessio” indicates that he’d committed some grievous sin at around age 15. He does not specify its nature, but describes it this way:

“some things I had done one day – rather, in one hour – when I was young, before I overcame my weakness. I don’t know – God knows – whether I was then fifteen years old at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, not even when I was a child. In fact, I remained in death and unbelief until I was reproved strongly, and actually brought low by hunger and nakedness daily.” (Confessio 27)

Patricius was transported to Ireland & sold into slavery. For six years, he tended his master's sheep. In time, he began to pray with some devotion:

“After I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day. More and more the love of God increased, and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow and ice and rain. I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy – as I realise now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.” (Conf 16)

Patricius took to fasting & became quite pious. He discusses his period of captivity - & the combination of humility & enlightenment it provided - in his "Confessio," written shortly before his death, which is fairly brief (~13 pages.) I found his writing fascinating & quite moving, especially how this man found meaning in his travails & credited them with opening him up to God & ultimately inspiring him to brave persecution, imprisonments, & threats of death to bring faith & salvation to the Irish people.

One night, the enslaved Patricius heard a voice telling him a ship was waiting for him, so he escaped & hiked ~200 miles across Ireland. As Patrick writes:

“It was there one night in my sleep that I heard a voice saying to me: ‘You have fasted well. Very soon you will return to your native country.’ Again after a short while, I heard a someone saying to me: ‘Look – your ship is ready.’ It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years. It was in the strength of God that I went – God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.” (Conf 17)

He managed to win passage on a ship – despite declining to engage in a rather colorful ancient custom then common in North Africa, Turkey, the Caucasus region, & Ireland, because he deemed it would be offensive to God - & when the ship made landfall, he & others travelled 28 days by foot until they reached inhabited lands. He discusses this period in Conf 18-20 & 22.

After a few years, Patrick reunited with his family in Britain. While there, he had a vision as he slept of a man called Victoricus "coming ... from Ireland" carrying "so many letters they could not be counted." As he read one, he heard a chorus of voices: “We beg you, holy boy, to come & walk again among us.” (Conf 23)

Patrick departed his parents’ home, studied at a monastery, was ordained as a priest, & was later made a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. ~21 yrs after fleeing bondage, he was sent back to evangelize to people in the land of his former captivity.

It was treacherous work. There were few Christians in Ireland then, & Druid warlords held (& fought one another for) power. His predecessor’s missionary efforts had led to his slaughter in Scotland. The assignment wasn’t for the faint of heart. Yet Patrick took the risk on willingly & enthusiastically, as he felt the Holy Spirit & God were commanding him to go into Ireland to help alleviate suffering by testifying to the power of repentance, redemption, & salvation among people long at the mercy of violence, oppression, & fear.

Patrick is believed to have started his mission up in Ulster, where he established a monastic center. His first major victory in spreading the gospel came when he sought & obtained Druid King Laeghaire (Leary) of Tara’s sanction to proselytize his people, allegedly via successful spiritual warfare against the king's Druid priests & through the work of signs & miracles. As is written in the introduction to extant versions of the ancient Irish legal code, the Senchus Mor*, which governed social relations throughout much of Ireland until the Norman invasion of 1169, then enjoyed a resurgence from the 13th through the 17th century:

“[St. Patrick] requested the men of Erinn to come to one place to hold a conference with him. When they came to the conference the Gospel of Christ was preached to them all … & when they saw Laeghaire & his druids overcome by the great science & miracles wrought in the presence of the men of Erinn, they bowed down in obedience to the will of God & Patrick, in the presence of every chief in Erinn.” (Ginnell, Laurence “The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook,” 1894)

*Sidenote: Authorship of Senchus Mor is itself attributed in its ancient introductions to a council comprised of St. Patrick & two other bishops, King Laeghaire & two other kings, & three other learned men, who collected the extant laws & mores that had governed social relations in & among tribes on the island, then removed elements that clashed with the Bible & harmonized the remainder with it. See Ginnell link above, pp 2-5, & Joyce, PW, “A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland,” 1906 (So far, I’ve been unable to determine just how ancient the still extant manuscripts are. Many copies were a casualty of time’s passage & the ugly side of colonization.)

In Confessio, Patrick himself makes no claims of working miracles before King Laeghaire & his Druid priests. What we do know is that, although the King himself did not convert to Christianity, Patrick won his permission to evangelize among the King’s people & successfully converted Laeghaire’s two daughters, chief bard, & a brother, who donated land for a church.

Many Druid priests were not amused by the Romano-Brit bishop & aptly perceived Patrick as a threat to their power & social position. Irish kings imprisoned Patrick multiple times. He always managed to escape their captivity. Patrick refers to such incidents in Conf 21, 35, 37, & 52.

Yet Patrick persevered in his work, despite persecution & risk of death. He had faith that people needed to hear the message of salvation, & that he would survive any toils & snares he encountered, or that if he died, it would nonetheless be for the good. But he also worked pragmatically to persuade powerful people to allow & even support his work.

 

 

During St. Patrick's thirty years of ministry in Ireland, he converted an Irish chieftain who became his disciple & successor, consecrated ~350 bishops & churches across Ireland, & converted many thousands of souls to Christianity.

 

This is why St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. He wasn't even Irish. To the contrary, he’d been enslaved by an Irish man. But he won Irish souls to God, following in the footsteps of a predecessor who'd been killed in Scotland doing the same work. He was an extremely pious, humble, & brave man who felt called to spread the good news of personal salvation available to all through Christ & commitment to Biblical principles & Christ’s teachings.

 

As a YouTuber I listened to while cooking dinner last night (which was when I was inspired to learn something about him) put it, it's ironic that so many of us now celebrate St. Patrick's feast day as some sort of festive nationalist holiday & an opportunity to drink heavily. Patrick’s story & teachings are much more interesting than all of that. He was a humble man transformed by adversity, which led him to God, and later accepted a calling he did not feel himself equipped to achieve on his own – but he knew he wasn’t alone or left to his own devices. He had a rich Biblical tradition to rely upon & consult, a heart for all people, & strength from a God through whom all things are possible. He was a man whose story deserves to be remembered.

Previously, my most vivid St. Patrick's Day memory was one I shared on social on March 17th, where – hopped up on a combo of antibiotics & adult beverages – I jumped into the middle of some guys beating down a dude in a Galway, Ireland nightclub. But learning about the actual man who was the source of my beloved grandpa’s middle name, & his inspiring story, work, & writing, has made 2021's St. Patrick's Day one for my personal record books.

Resources to learn more about St. Patrick:

St. Patrick’s Confessio

A bio of St. Patrick from Catholic media site EWTN

The Breastplate of St. Patrick, a prayer attributed to him