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Leprechauns, snakes and shamrocks may come to mind when you think of St. Patrick, but the real man never met a leprechaun, nor did he encounter any snakes \u2014 at least in 5th century Ireland. What St.\u00a0 Patrick did encounter were pirates and slavery, Druids and Christianity, and they all influenced his life. So, let\u2019s meet the man behind the legend. Let\u2019s meet the real St. Patrick.<\/p>\n
Who Was He?<\/h3>\n
The man we know as St. Patrick was born in late 4th<\/sup> century Britain to wealthy Romanized parents \u2014 probably around 390 A.D. He was neither Irish nor an actual saint. His birthplace could have been England, Scotland or Wales, Britannica says, but even experts can\u2019t identify his actual birthplace with any certainty.<\/p>\n Various accounts say that St. Patrick\u2019s birth name was probably Maewyn Succat, though the spelling varies depending on your source. The name \u201cPatrick\u201d came later.<\/p>\n Determining the truth about the man behind the legend is difficult. Records of the sort we have today were nonexistent in St. Patrick\u2019s time, and conflicting myths confused the truth. As time passed, actual events faded from memory and fanciful stories filled the void.<\/p>\n Maewyn\u2019s parents were Christian, several sources say. His father may have been a man named Calpurnius, who was a Christian deacon and officer, while his grandfather may have been a priest. Nothing much is known about his mother since she was female and considered unimportant.<\/p>\n The boy lived in a Christian home, but religion wasn\u2019t important to him until\u2026.<\/p>\n Maewyn\u2019s first encounter with the Irish wasn\u2019t a pleasant one, as he later recounted in his writing called Confessio<\/em> or Confession<\/em>. It occurred one day when the then-16-year-old was minding his own business on his family\u2019s estate. Irish pirates attacked the villa and took the boy prisoner, Britannica tells us.<\/p>\n You might envision the teen being held hostage until his wealthy parents paid a hefty ransom, but you would be wrong. His capture was more akin to being shanghaied.<\/p>\n Irish pirates or raiders were notorious for snatching people and selling them into slavery. It was a common occurrence. Over time, pirates took \u201cmany thousands\u201d of people, and Maewyn was unfortunate enough to be one of them.<\/p>\n The pirates or raiders took him to Ireland, where they apparently sold him to a Druid chieftain, according to LifeWay Research, a research organization of the Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p>\n Druids were priests who \u201cconducted religious rituals, foretold the future through soothsaying, used herbs and plants for healings, and were itinerant storytellers and historians,\u201d according to \u201cWhat Are Druids\u201d on the Patheos website. Roman oppression and the rise of Christianity led to their decline. Read more\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n Ireland was still radically pagan during Maewyn\u2019s life, and the man behind the legend turned to the Christian faith he had previously ignored. Consequently, he became a devout follower of the Lord.<\/p>\n Maewyn lived in captivity as a herdsman for six or seven long years before he had a vision or dream about escaping. He devised a plan, broke free, and made his way to modern-day France before heading home.<\/p>\n The journey wasn\u2019t easy. He nearly starved and was held captive for a brief time before finally reuniting with his family.<\/p>\n Maewyn had dreams or visions of returning to Ireland. Why, you may wonder, would he want to return to a land where he had been enslaved?<\/p>\n One story tells us that Maewyn had a second life-changing dream in which Irishmen asked him to help them escape slavery. Another tells of him dreaming that Irish pagans begged him to teach them.<\/p>\n Whatever the truth, the man behind the legend \u201cstudied in France to learn more about Christianity and become a priest before going to Ireland to become a missionary.\u201d Learn more from Lifeway here.<\/a><\/p>\n Maewyn \u2014 or Patrick as he soon was called \u2014 convinced the pope to send him to Ireland as a missionary, and the pope did so, naming him \u201cPatritius,\u201d or \u201cPatrick,\u201d which means \u201cfather of his people.\u201d<\/p>\n Britannica explains that Patrick \u201cconcentrated on the north and west of the country, achieving remarkable success; he did not himself claim to have converted all of Ireland,\u201d although he is credited with bringing Christianity to the country.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re getting ahead of ourselves.<\/p>\n As I mentioned, legend has it that St. Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland, but that\u2019s an exaggeration. He did spread the Christian faith, but traditions in the south and southeast of Ireland mention saints who may have preceded St. Patrick, Britannica notes.<\/p>\n The first firm date associated with Christianity in Ireland is 431 A.D. In that year, the bishop of Auxerre in modern-day France proposed \u2014 and Pope Celestine I approved \u2014 a mission to Ireland by a man named Palladius, not Patrick.<\/p>\n There has been speculation that Palladius and Patrick might be the same man. The thought crossed my mind, but several sources tell us that they were two different men. I stand corrected.<\/p>\n \u201cConfusion exists regarding the chronology of Patrick\u2019s life and it is seriously contended that tradition came to merge the experience of two men, the continental Palladius and the Patrick of the Confessio,\u201d <\/em>according to Britannica.<\/p>\n Palladius is known as the first bishop of Irish Christians. According to Lifeway, he was sent to Ireland five years before Patrick was. His mission was twofold: eliminate heresy and convert non-Christians to Catholicism. It failed.<\/p>\n \u201cPalladius was repulsed by the inhabitants of Wicklow, where he landed. He then sailed northward and was at last driven by stress of weather toward the Orkneys, finding harbour, eventually, on the shores of Kincardineshire,\u201d according to Library Ireland, an online organization that\u2019s filled with information about Irish folklore, genealogy, history, social history and people.<\/p>\n Christianity already existed in Ireland by the time Patrick arrived there as a missionary. It probably had spread slowly and haphazardly through a combination of trading with the European continent, Irish emigres <\/em>and British captives taken prisoner by Irish raiders, according to the Irish Catholic Church. Read more\u00a0<\/strong>here.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAll we can say with confidence is that British Christians, either directly or indirectly, influenced the spread of the faith to Ireland and that this influence may have been exerted before 431,\u201d the church says.<\/p>\n Patrick\u2019s experience with the Irish language and culture apparently helped him succeed where previous missionaries to Ireland had failed, and the real legend of St. Patrick began to spread.<\/p>\n \u201cEstimates are he baptized 10,000 Irish people and planted 300 churches,\u201d Lifeway says. Those are amazing numbers.<\/p>\n He took an intelligent approach to evangelizing by focusing on chiefs and other influential people \u2013 the people we would call influencers. \u201cAs these people were converted, they could sway others. Successful missionaries today still recognize the value of Patrick\u2019s strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, missionary work wasn\u2019t easy for the man behind the legend. \u201cPatrick knew the Irish people. He loved the Irish people. As a result, he reached them for Christ \u2013 despite being beaten, robbed, and threatened with death,\u201d Lifeway explained.<\/p>\n Patrick may have combined pagan rituals with church practices in order to succeed where previous missionaries failed. He knew people wouldn\u2019t be receptive to his message if he tried to eliminate all of their existing pagan beliefs and rituals.<\/p>\n \u201cPatrick chose to incorporate traditional (pagan) rituals into his lessons of Christianity instead of attempting to eradicate native Irish beliefs,\u201d explains Learn Religions in a post called \u201cSt. Patrick and the Snakes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor instance, he used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire. He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSt. Patrick is known as a symbol of Ireland, particularly around every March. While he is obviously not pagan at all \u2013 the title of Saint<\/em> should give that away \u2013 there\u2019s often some discussion about him each year, because he\u2019s allegedly the guy who drove ancient Irish Paganism away from the Emerald Isle,\u201d Learn Religions continues.<\/p>\n That myth combines pagans and snakes. According to legend, St. Patrick stood on an Irish hillside and gave a sermon that sent all of Ireland\u2019s snakes slithering into the sea. The snakes, it seems, were symbols of paganism.<\/p>\n There are some problems with this story. One is that all of Ireland\u2019s snakes were long gone before St. Patrick lived. They had been killed during the last ice age roughly 10,000 years earlier and had never returned because they couldn\u2019t survive the cold climate. It\u2019s also untrue because major centers of paganism remained after his death.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s also the fact that where the Christian religion was embraced, \u201cit was often taken on in an enculturated form, so that Christians continued to follow many of the practices and traditions which were handed to them by their pre-Christian forefathers.\u201d So says Patheos contributor Henry Karlson in his post \u201cSt. Patrick and the Snakes.\u201d Read his post\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n Pagans still exist, and some of them still rail against St. Patrick. One of the unhappy ones is Patheos contributor Galina Kraskova. Read her post about a holiday she could live without \u2014 \u201cHappy St. Patrick\u2019s Day? I Don\u2019t Think So,\u201d \u2014 here.<\/a><\/p>\n Millions of people around the world know Patrick as \u201cSaint\u201d Patrick, yet he never attained true sainthood. He wasn\u2019t really a saint.<\/p>\n The Catholic Church didn\u2019t officially canonize him because it had no formal canonization process during the 5th<\/sup> century. He became known as St. Patrick when local Irish leaders recognized him for spending decades \u201cproclaiming the gospel across Ireland,\u201d Lifeway says.<\/p>\n St. Patrick reportedly died on March 17, 460 A.D., having \u201cpaved the way for Ireland to become one of the centers of European Christianity,\u201d the organization tells tells us.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the real tale of St. Patrick\u2026more or less\u2026if you take into account that people were terrible recordkeepers in St. Patrick\u2019s time\u2026and remember that people have had more than 1,600 years to embellish the story.<\/p>\n In modern times, people celebrate St. Patrick\u2019s Day with shamrocks and tales of leprechauns, corn beef and cabbage, colorful parades, Irish music, and lots of green \u2014 green clothing, green hair and makeup, green beer and even green rivers.<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite a change from the years immediately after St. Patrick\u2019s death, when he was mostly forgotten. His legend didn\u2019t begin to grow until centuries later, and even then, it developed slowly, and stories became a tangled web of myths.<\/p>\n \u2663<\/span> The shamrock is associated with St. Patrick in tradition if not fact. The shamrock is a three-leaf plant that he may have used it to explain the Trinity to newly converted Christians. There\u2019s always the chance that he never used a shamrock to teach, but it\u2019s a nice story.<\/p>\n \u2663<\/span> The first St. Patrick\u2019s parade was held in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Fla., in 1601. It honored the settlement\u2019s patron saint of corn: St. Patrick. The idea of holding parades spread from the United States to Ireland sometime later.<\/p>\nKidnapped!<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Finding God<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Man Behind the Legend<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Plot Thickens<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Christianity Comes to Ireland<\/h3>\n
Christianity Spreads<\/strong><\/h3>\n
An Effective \u201cInfluencer\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Christianity Meets Paganism<\/strong><\/h3>\n
St. Patrick and the Snakes<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Never a \u201cSaint\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
St. Patrick\u2019s Day Traditions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Trivia<\/strong><\/h3>\n