Saint Patrick’s mission in Ireland

In his Confession and his Letter Patrick says that he was the son of Calpurnius, a deacon and a decurion — a member of a town council — in Roman Britain, and the grandson of a priest. At about sixteen he was seized by Irish raiders at his family’s estate near a place he calls Bannavem Taburniae and spent six years herding flocks in Ireland, where he turned to prayer; then he escaped, found a ship and after many hardships returned home. Later, in a vision, he heard “the voice of the Irish” calling him back. After many years of study, probably in Gaul, he went back to Ireland as a bishop.

Patrick writes that he baptised thousands, ordained clergy, converted sons of kings and noblewomen who became nuns, refused the gifts of the powerful and was once robbed and put in chains. His Letter excommunicates Coroticus, a British king (perhaps the ruler of Alt Clut, around Dumbarton), and his soldiers, who had killed and enslaved newly baptised converts; the Confession answers accusations brought against him by churchmen in Britain. Christians already lived in Ireland before him: in 431, according to Prosper of Aquitaine, Pope Celestine I sent Palladius as the first bishop “to the Scotti believing in Christ”, as the Irish were then called.

The dates of Patrick’s life cannot be fixed. The Irish annals, compiled no earlier than the 6th century, place his arrival in 432 — a date probably chosen to minimise the role of Palladius, sent in 431 — and record his death both in 461/462 and in 492/493; many specialists in early Irish history prefer the later date, while E. A. Thompson considered none of these dates reliable. The seventh-century Lives by Muirchú and Tírechán portray a combative Patrick contending with druids and with Lóegaire, king of Tara, and reflect the claims of the churches linked to him — above all Armagh, which tradition makes his see. 17 March, the traditional day of his death, became Saint Patrick’s Day.