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Patrick

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Fifth-century missionary bishop and apostle of Ireland, who according to tradition used the shamrock to teach the Trinity and drove the snakes from the island. Patron of Ireland, he is one of the most widely celebrated saints. Because of the serpent legend he is syncretized in Haitian Vodou with the primordial snake lwa Damballa.

Facts
Disputed
Lifespan or Floruit
Later medieval tradition supplies two specific death dates for Patrick, 461 and 493, thirty two years apart, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) records both as disputed rather than endorsing either, consistent with its broader dating of his activity only to the fifth century in general. 1
Lifespan or Floruit
Patrick's activity is dated only broadly, to the fifth century, since no strictly contemporary record fixes it more closely; his own surviving writing, the Confessio, supplies his own account of his life but not an exact chronology. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) gives this broad floruit rather than the more precise dates later medieval tradition supplies. 1
Identity
Also Known As
Saint Patrick 1
Gender
Male 1
Attestation
Historicity
Historically attested 1
Canonization
Pre-Congregation: venerated before any formal process existed 1Tradition: Christianity
Position Profile
Key Text
His own writings, the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus, are the only two documents securely attributed to him and the earliest and most reliable sources for his life, most of the later legend, including the shamrock and the snakes, appearing only centuries afterward. 1
Origins
Place of Origin
His own Confessio names the place Bannavem Taburniae 1
Place of Origin
Roman Britain 1
Place of Origin
Which cannot now be located 1
Life
Place of Activity
Ireland 1
Veneration
Feast Day
His feast falls on March 17, traditionally held to be the date of his death, and is celebrated as a national holiday in Ireland and observed by Irish diaspora communities worldwide. 1
Learn More
The Briton Who Converted Ireland

Patrick is the apostle of Ireland, and unusually among early saints he left writings in his own hand, the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus, which let us glimpse the man beneath the legend. He was not Irish but a Romano-Briton, carried off to Ireland as a slave in his teens, who escaped, returned home, entered the Church, and then went back to the land of his captivity as a missionary bishop in the fifth century. His own writings are spiritual and defensive rather than biographical, but they attest to a real and difficult mission among a non-Christian people. The famous legends, driving the snakes from Ireland, using the three-leaved shamrock to explain the Trinity, are later medieval accretions, not found in his own words; Ireland had no snakes to drive out, and the shamrock story appears only centuries later.

What is historical is his role in the Christianization of Ireland, which he helped set in motion and which, within a few generations, made the island a centre of monastic learning that would help re-evangelize parts of Europe. His feast on 17 March has become, far beyond its religious origin, the global celebration of Irish identity.

His Own Words Survive, and So Does a Second Missionary

Patrick is unusual among ancient saints in that two texts widely accepted as genuinely his own writing survive, the autobiographical Confessio and a Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus, giving historians a rare direct primary source rather than only later legend built up around a name. Even with this advantage, his story is genuinely complicated by the existence of Palladius, a bishop the historical record shows was sent to minister to the Christians already in Ireland before Patrick's own mission, a documented earlier figure whose work later Irish tradition appears to have folded into Patrick's own legend over time, a proposal often called the Two Patricks theory among historians of the period.

Untangling which missionary achievements belong to which man is not fully resolved and remains a live question in early Irish church history. The best known popular legend, that Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, has no basis in his own writings and is a considerably later addition, and it is also simply not consistent with the natural history of the island, which had no native snakes for him to banish in the first place, leading most scholars to read the story as allegorical, representing the displacement of pagan practice by Christianity rather than describing any literal event Patrick himself claimed.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Early Christian Ireland, Sources

This source names Patrick directly: "from the far better remembered Patrick, whose traditional 432 arrival date and death, disputed between 461/462 and 492/493, rest on retrospective annalistic reckoning rather than a contemporary..."

Source Early Christian IrelandT.M. Charles-Edwards
Liber Hymnorum, Sources

This source names Patrick directly: "the Deer's Cry, also known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate, together with a prefatory legend explaining its supposed origin."

Source Liber HymnorumAnonymous (Irish compilers)
Milpirri: Winds of Change (Creative Spirits), Sources

This source names Patrick directly: "Warlpiri law man Steve Jampijinpa Patrick directing the Milpirri event with Tracks Dance as central collaborators."

Source Milpirri: Winds of Change (Creative Spirits)
Patrick's Mission to Ireland, Spread Events

This source names Patrick directly: "attested date in this whole story. Patrick, whose own name is now far better remembered, is a separate and much less securely dated figure: his traditional arrival in 432 is a retrospective..."

Source Early Christian IrelandT.M. Charles-Edwards
Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande (St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland), accession 17.50.17-371(89) (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Sources

This source names Patrick directly: "Patrice, eveque d'Irelande (St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland), March 17th," an etching by Jacques Callot, a plate from his calendar series Les Images De Tous Les Saincts et Saintes de L'Annee, 1636."

Source Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande (St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland), accession 17.50.17-371(89) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Depicted In

Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande, St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.50.17-371(89)), Sacred Art & Iconography

The Met's own title for this etching names the subject outright by name and office, from Callot's calendar series of the saints of the year.

Source Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande (St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland), accession 17.50.17-371(89) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Works Attributed

Deer Cry, Hymns & Liturgical Texts

Why this is disputed. The Deer Cry, also called Patrick's Breastplate, is attributed to Patrick in medieval tradition, first recorded by John Colgan in the seventeenth century, though one strand of that same tradition credited it instead to Saint Evin. Modern Celtic philology dates the surviving Old Irish text on linguistic grounds to the eighth century, roughly three hundred years after Patrick's own fifth century mission, placing its composition within early Irish monasticism rather than in Patrick's own hand. The prayer's popular title itself rests on a probable medieval mistranslation of the Old Irish phrase for a mist of concealment.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Patrick of IrelandView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande (St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland), accession 17.50.17-371(89) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Metropolitan Museum of ArtDepicted In: Ste. Patrice, eveque d'Irelande, St. Patrick, Bishop of Ireland (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17.50.17-371(89)), accession 17.50.17-371(89)View the Source
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