Patrick, Saint

Patrick, Saint, Pátraic, Saint (OIr.), Pádraig, Saint, Pádraic, Saint (ModIr.), [L Patricius, well-born, patrician]. Evangelist to and national saint of Ireland who flourished in the 5th century. Details of St Patrick's life have been traced to five documents, a Confessio and ‘Epistle to Coroticus’ attributed to him and thought reliable, and three memoirs/biographies written long after his death, that of Muirchú (late 7th cent.), Tírechán (late 7th cent.), and the anonymous Bethu Phátraic or Vita Tripartita [Tripartite Life] (c.896–901), which draws on the first two texts and adds much material. Learned opinion (see D. A. Binchy, 1962, below) now accepts the authenticity of the Confessio and ‘Epistle’ but regards the three later texts as unhistorical and deriving from native hagiographic tradition. None of these documents has allowed us to date St Patrick's mission with certainty. The once-accepted dates of 432–61 are now rejected, in part because ‘432’ is a magical numerical formula, and 456–93 are now favoured. The uncertainty of Patrick's death-date, once given as early as 431, occasioned T. F. O'Rahilly's theory (1941) of the Two Patricks, the ‘second’ being a Gaul named Palladius, which has not gained wide acceptance. Further lives of St Patrick were written after the coming of the Anglo-Normans (1169), in which some of the more fabulous motifs attached to the biography were first given credence. Additionally, St Patrick is also a character in early Irish literary texts, such as Altrom Tige Dá Medar [The Nurture of the Houses of the Two Milk Vessels] and more importantly Acallam na Senórach [The Colloquy of the Elders], in which he makes contentious dialogue with the Fenian heroes Oisín and Caílte. Subsequently St Patrick became a figure in a huge number of stories from Irish oral tradition, many of which remain alive in the popular imagination.

According to the Confessio, supposedly written in rough Latin in the author's old age, Patrick was a native of Roman Britain, the son of one Calpurnius, the deacon of the village of Bannaven Taberniae, which has been ascribed to Cumberland, Northampton, the Severn valley, the Isle of Anglesey, and two points in southern Scotland, one near Hadrian's Wall and another near Carlisle. His original Celtic name is alleged to have been Succat. Captured by Irish raiders at 16, Patrick was sold into bondage to herd pigs and sheep for a chief named Milchú in ‘a lonely place’, possibly the north-west or the Slemish Mountains of Co. Antrim. During six years of slavery he thought often of the Christian message and realized he had a vocation to the priesthood. Then guided by a dream, he escaped and walked a very long way, presumably to the southern coast, where he found passage on a merchant craft with a pagan crew for a three-day voyage. Eventually he returned to his home in Britain. He does not say where he was trained, but tradition suggests he was the disciple of St Germanus of Auxerre. Later chosen to be bishop, he returned to Ireland to become ‘a slave for Christ’ among the people who had enslaved him. Other Christian missionaries, notably the Gaulish Palladius, would have preceded him, but St Patrick was more successful and left a more lasting heritage. In his own words, during a thirty-year mission he ‘baptized thousands, ordained clerics everywhere and rejoiced to see the flock of the Lord in Ireland growing splendidly’. Given that 5th-century Ireland lacked cities and towns in the European sense, St Patrick could not be expected to have founded permanent churches, but he is traditionally thought to have established his see at Armagh near the Ulster ‘capital’ of Emain Macha. The Primate of Ireland still resides there as Comharba Phádraig [the successor of Patrick], but recent scholarship (Sharpe, 1982) challenges Armagh's claim. By tradition alone he is thought to have died on 17 March at Sabhall [Ir., barn], coextensive with the town of Saul, near Downpatrick, Co. Down. The other text thought authentic, the Latin ‘Epistle to Coroticus’, beseeches a British chieftain to free Irish Christian captives. Lastly, the saint is thought to have composed the prayer-poem ‘St Patrick's Breastplate’ or ‘The Deer's Cry’, in which the saint avoids an ambush on the way to evangelize Tara by turning himself and a companion, Benén, into a deer and a fawn, a Christian usage of the power of féth fíada.

Other episodes in St Patrick's life, still in wide circulation at the end of the 20th century, lack reliable documentation. These include: the lighting of the first Paschal fire at Slane; the use of the three-leafed shamrock to explain the mystery of the Christian Trinity; the destruction of the idol Crom Crúaich in Co. Cavan; the conversion of Lóegaire mac Néill of Tara; the conversion of Angus mac Natfráich of Cashel, who did not cry out when Patrick punctured his foot during baptism because he thought it was part of the ceremony; the banishing of the monster Caoránach, ‘the mother of the devil’, to Lough Derg, Co. Donegal, or the inauguration of pilgrimages there. The association with Croagh Patrick, a place of pilgrimage in Co. Mayo, is cited in the memoir of Tírechán, a writer himself from north Connacht. The most famous of all apocryphal attributions, the driving of snakes from Ireland, first appears in the credulous Anglo-Norman biographies of the 12th and 13th centuries; the absence of snakes on the island had been noted as early as AD 200 by the Roman geographer Solinus.

Apart from the additional works of wonder and attributed magical powers (e.g. the fairy herb plantain is known as capóg Phadraig [Patrick's leaf] in Irish), the most significant addition to St Patrick's persona comes in his contentious dialogues with the Fenian heroes Caílte and Oisín, first in Acallam na Senórach [The Colloquy of the Elders] and in the many poems in Fenian popular tradition, sometimes called Ossianic. Here St Patrick is sometimes on the losing end of arguments pitting the values of the lost pagan tradition, often embodied in Fionn mac Cumhaill, against the discipline of the new faith, which is often portrayed as severe and joyless. Patrick's nickname in these dialogues is Tálcend [adze-head], presumably making a pun on his bishop's mitre and his hard-headed unwillingness to hear the other side. Frequent mention is also made of his bell, Finnfaídech, which orders time.

Bibliography

See: The Life and Writings of the Historical St. Patrick , ed. R. P. C. Hanson (New York,1983);
Four Latin Lives of St. Patrick, ed. and trans. Ludwig Bieler (1971);
The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh, ed. and trans. Ludwig Bieler (Dublin, 1979);
St. Patrick: His Writings and Muirchú's Life, ed. and trans. A. B. E. Hood (Totowa, NJ, 1978);
Bethu Phátraic: The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, ed. and trans. Kathleen Mulchrone (Dublin, 1939);
The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick and Other Documents Relating to the Saint, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes (2 vols., London, 1887;
repr. New York, 1965). Commentary: Ludwig Bieler, The Life and Legend of St. Patrick (Dublin, 1949);
D. A. Binchy , ‘Patrick and His Biographers: Ancient and Modern’, Studia Hibernica, 2 (1962), 7–173;
James Carney , The Problem of St. Patrick (Dublin, 1961, 1973);
R. P. C. Hanson , Saint Patrick: His Origins and Career (Oxford, 1968);
Alannah Hopkin , The Living Legend of St. Patrick (London, 1989);
Thomas F. O'Rahilly , The Two Patricks (Dublin, 1942, 1971);
Richard Sharpe , ‘St. Patrick and the See of Armagh’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 4 (Winter 1982), 33–59;
cf. B. K. Lambkin , ‘Patrick, Armagh, and Emain Macha’, Emania [Belfast], 2 (1987), 29–31;
David Dumville , St. Patrick, A.D. 493–1993 (Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY, 1993);
George Otto Simms , The Real Story of St. Patrick (Dublin, 1993);
E. A. Thompson , Who Was St. Patrick? (Suffolk, 1985;
New York, 1986).