The real Patrick is a far more compelling figure than the caricature of snakes and shamrocks, writes Salvador Ryan
Salvador Ryan
Each year as we mark the feast of St Patrick, Ireland’s national patron saint, I cannot help but bemoan the figure of fun and merriment that this “apostle to the Irish” has become.
It seems as if the country, for three days or so, becomes blighted by the spectacle of multiple “Patricks”, many of which are bedecked in loosely-fitting faux-episcopal vestments while sporting dodgy beards and waving clumps of shamrock at the crowds that line the streets of our towns for the annual parade.
I balk, too, at the obligatory mention of the snakes and how Patrick drove them out of Ireland (and I can never get out of my mind the image of a burly, bearded bishop, steering wheel in hand, throwing his head back over his shoulder and bellowing to the reptiles “are ye all right in the back there, lads?”).
The irritation which the elements of the St Patrick’s Day festival mentioned above provoke in me does not constitute the gripe of a kill-joy; neither does my frustration arise from a position of deference or respect for a saintly figure from the past. Moreover, I am not overly bothered by the proliferation of legends surrounding the saint; nor traditions adhering to his cult over the course of history (these are part and parcel of the development of saints’ cults right across the globe, often in the absence of more concrete information about the individual).
Objection
No, my objection is simply that, in perpetuating the carnival image of the saint that we have become so familiar with, the truly historical significance of the figure of Patrick (one that is not simply confined to this island) risks becoming totally obscured. And that would be a real shame.
It could be argued that in an increasingly secular Ireland it behoves us to recover a Patrick who can be celebrated by practising Christians for whom his faith journey is a subject of some interest, but also by persons of other beliefs and, indeed, none, who can appreciate the significance of the historical figure of Patrick in the context, not just of Irish history, but of the history of Britain and Europe as a whole.
For Patrick, and the writings which he left us, open up a fascinating vista on the period in which he lived and the world which he inhabited.
But before we can get to what we actually know about Patrick, we must divest ourselves of all those things which we, in fact cannot know with any certainty. In order, then, to get to know Patrick (insofar as we can do), we must go through a process of un-knowing and un-learning.
First, let’s get some of the better-known traditions about Patrick out of the way by placing them in their proper context. First, the snakes. The earliest written references to Patrick ridding the country of these creatures appear as late as the 12th Century; the Welsh cleric and propagandist, Gerald of Wales (c.1146-1223), mentions the tradition in two of his works, in one casting doubt on it, and in the other accepting it as fact.
It also appears in a life of Patrick written in the late 12th Century by the Cistercian monk, Jocelin of Furness. And what about the shamrock? Evidence for Patrick’s association with the shamrock is much later still, the first image of Patrick holding a shamrock dating from 1674 on a half-penny coin minted in Dublin.
The wearing of shamrocks on St Patrick’s Day is widely attested in the 18th Century, but was somewhat looked down upon, being associated with the poorer social classes.
Snake-banishing
Well, if the figure of Patrick is to be stripped of his shamrock and his feats of snake-banishing, at the very least might he still be regarded as the individual who brought Christianity to Ireland? Alas, that claim has long (indeed from the earliest centuries) been known to be misplaced, for there is another figure, a contemporary of Patrick’s, whose entry into history tells a more complex story. That figure is Palladius, and this is where our story truly begins.
The traditional date of Patrick’s mission to Ireland – 432 – that is, his second visit to Ireland (the first having been as a slave) takes its cue, in fact, from a slightly earlier date, which is found in a continental source, a chronicle written by the churchman, Prosper of Aquitaine, and which has a claim to being the first reliable date in Irish history. In his chronicle entry for 431, Prosper wrote the following: “Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatur a papa Coelistino Palladius, et primus episcopus mittitur” (Palladius, ordained by Pope Celestine, was sent to the Irish who are believers in Christ as their first bishop).
Some scholars surmise that Prosper, who was a close friend of the Pope in question, may very well have been based in Rome at the time and witnessed the commission of Palladius first-hand.
What is most noteworthy, however, is that Bishop Palladius is sent to a community of Irish who already believe in Christ, and, indeed, the fact that the community was given a bishop at all testified to its viability and critical mass.
The implication is that there were already Christians living in Ireland, possibly for some time at this stage, and that Patrick, when he actually did arrive, was not entering virgin territory.
As it happened, Palladius’ contribution to the history of Christianity in Ireland would be largely downplayed and, instead, it would be Patrick who would be adopted and whose cult would be vigorously promoted by the powerful church of Armagh in succeeding centuries.
This may be why the date of Patrick’s arrival on mission to Ireland was attested as occurring in 432 in order to minimise as much as possible the role of Palladius in the story. As a result, Palladius disappears from the pages of history and his role in ministering to the Christian Irish (however cursory that may have been) remains uncelebrated and little acknowledged.
Confession
What sets Patrick apart from Palladius, though, is that he left writings; and not just any writings, but two significant documents entitled the Letter to the Soldiers of Coriticus and, more famously, perhaps, his Confession. It is in the latter document that Patrick details what was, by any measure, a remarkable life.
He identifies himself as Patricius and tells how he grew up on a small estate (villula) in a place called Banaventa Burniae (most likely on the west coast of Roman Britain); it was a family of some means, for they had many servants and his father, Calpurnius, was a decurio, a local government official. Patrick tells us that his father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest.
Patrick relates the story of having been taken into slavery at 16 years of age, along with “thousands” of others by Irish raiders. He would spend six years as a slave in Ireland before escaping back to his homeland, to a family who, very understandably, didn’t want him to leave home again.
There is a recognisably human element to Patrick’s relation of this fact, something which can surely be identified with by any family that has welcomed back a son or daughter from work or travel in one of the world’s troubled spots.
And yet, despite the wishes of his family, Patrick discerns a higher calling (experienced as the voice of those who were beside the “wood of Foclut, near the western sea”) and returns to the land of his servitude, this time as a missionary bishop. And yet, in his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus he is conscious of his acceptance of another form of slavery, encapsulated in the difficult mission he has chosen: “Now, in Christ, I am a slave of a foreign people, for the sake of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Sense of mission
Patrick’s sense of mission overrode the pull of family ties and this mission had an urgency to it, for Patrick believed that he was living in the last days and, in his Confession, rejoiced that: “I can dare to undertake such a holy and wonderful work. In this way I can imitate somewhat those whom the Lord foretold would announce his Gospel in witness to all nations before the end of the world. This is what we see has been fulfilled. Look at us: we are witnesses that the Gospel has been preached right out to where there is nobody else there!”
However, the story that Patrick relates has much more than a religious significance. Having left us two documents written in the 5th Century, he has also gifted us with the earliest documents of Irish history; moreover, he has left us an account that is also simply unique: the story of a Roman citizen who was taken into slavery outside the empire in one of the lands of the “barbarians” and who lived to tell the tale.
Patrick’s story is also the more intriguing since the challenges he faces in Ireland are presented, not necessarily by pagans (as one might expect, and as would be a prominent feature of later hagiographical writing on Patrick), but, instead, by other Christians. A case in point is the opposition that he encountered from some ecclesiastical “superiors” of his who “came and put my sins against my hard work as a bishop”. Patrick explains how they “brought up against me after 30 years something I had already confessed before I was a deacon. What happened was that, one day when I was feeling anxious and low, with a very dear friend of mine I referred to some things I had done one day – rather, in one hour – when I was young, before I overcame my weakness”.
These things which Patrick had many years earlier confessed to “one to whom I had entrusted my very soul” were now coming back to haunt him, and his sense of betrayal is palpable; he wondered “how could he then afterwards come to disgrace me in public before all… about a matter for which he had already freely and joyfully forgiven me, as indeed had God, who is greater than all?”
Indeed, Patrick writes his Confession partly as a defence of his reputation and of the integrity of his ministry and mission in Ireland.
But there were other challenges from fellow Christians as well, and some of these are related in his letter of excommunication to the soldiers of Coroticus, a British warlord who made depredations on Patrick’s newly-converted Christians, killing some and enslaving others.
Although the Irish Church has never had a tradition of commemorating martyrs from this period, Patrick’s account attests to the fact that a number of his new Christian converts were murdered, even if this did not strictly occur in odium fidei (out of hatred for the Faith), for it was perpetrated by Christians who were enslaving other Christians and selling them for profit.
In our own day, when we see the persecution of Christian communities in the Middle East, Patrick’s words are chillingly familiar: “This unspeakably horrifying crime has been carried out. But, thanks to God, you who are baptised believers have moved on from this world to paradise. I see you clearly: you have begun your journey to where there is no night, nor sorrow, nor death, any more.”
Opposition
Patrick also references the opposition that he encountered from the non-Christian families of newly-baptised converts; and especially the resentment of the fathers of women who chose to become “virgins of Christ”. In so doing, he takes the opportunity to recognise the courage of female converts:
“These women suffer persecution and false accusations from their parents, and yet their number grows! … In addition, there are the widows and the celibates. Of all these, those held in slavery work hardest – they bear even terror and threats, but the Lord gives grace to so many of the women who serve him. Even when it is forbidden, they bravely follow his example.”
Being a Christian and/or a celibate in 5th-Century Ireland was clearly a lifestyle choice that both demanded fortitude and attracted opprobrium – it was certainly not for the faint-hearted. Indeed, Patrick himself took very seriously the possibility that he, too, might be called to face martyrdom in the course of his mission. Nearing the end of the Confession he prays:
“May it never happen to me that my God should separate me from his people which he has acquired in the outermost parts of the world… And if at any time I have imitated something that is good for the sake of my God whom I love then I ask him to grant me that I may shed my blood for his name’s sake with those proselytes and captives, even if this means that I should lack even a tomb or that my corpse should be horribly chopped up by dogs and wild beasts, or that the birds of Heaven should devour it. I do hereby declare that should this happen to me I will have gained my soul as well as my body…”
In these words, Patrick’s attitude is reminiscent of many missionaries who have chosen to remain with their people through periods of adversity and persecution, often paying for this with their lives.
In many respects, the “afterlives” of Patrick are reminiscent of the afterlives of the “historical Jesus” in the sense that those who engage in various quests for the “historical Patrick”, either wittingly or unwittingly, end up with a figure that they are invariably comfortable with.
For Patrick’s biographers in the 7th Century, he was a powerful miracle-worker who faced down druidic paganism and crushed its claim to any legitimacy in the land.
Likewise, for the church at Armagh, Patrick became its great patron (even though Patrick makes no mention whatsoever of Armagh in his own writings).
For some 16th and 17th Century Irish Protestant writers, Patrick was the quintessential proto-Protestant, having had no papal commission (in contrast to Palladius) and failing to exhibit any of the suspect trappings of late medieval Catholic piety. For Catholic reformers of the same period, Patrick was a model for the Counter-Reformation episcopacy and becomes increasingly visually depicted as such.
The extent to which such depictions have shaped our view of Patrick was clearly seen in the controversy over plans to erect a statue of a shaven-headed Patrick “in a mini-goatskin” (instead of episcopal robes) on the Hill of Tara in 1997, which provoked intense local opposition resulting in the abandonment of the idea.
The commemoration of St Patrick’s Day on March 17 has a very long pedigree; that we know for sure. Indeed, the first known reference to Patrick having died on this date occurs, not in an Irish source, but in an incidental reference in a continental life of St Gertude of Nivelles, dating from the 7th Century, further evidence that the figure of Patrick transcends Britain and Ireland from very early on.
As we prepare to remember the figure of Patrick this year, we could do worse than affording this flesh-and-blood individual from the 5th Century the courtesy of listening to his story, told in his own words (see www.confessio.ie for a marvellous website on Patrick and his writings).
The Patrick who emerges from these earliest documents of Irish history is someone worth getting to know and a far more compelling figure than the caricature we are so frequently presented with.
Salvador Ryan is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.