Every year on March 17, people all across the United States celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but only a few people actually know who Saint Patrick really was.
The historical Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary who lived during the middle part of the fifth century A.D. Most early saints do not have any extant writings. Consequently, all information about these saints can only come from records written by others, who sometimes lived much later than the saint him or herself. This, however, is not the case with Saint Patrick. Two documents written by Patrick himself have survived to the present day. The first of these documents is a brief autobiography entitled Confession. The second is a letter written to the soldiers of Coroticus. These sources provide us with a great deal of firsthand information about Saint Patrick’s life.
According to Patrick’s own account in his Confession, his father Calpurnius was the deacon of Bannavem Taburniae in Britain. Nonetheless, it seems that his father was not particularly religious and only held the position mainly due to the financial stability it provided. Patrick himself was as irreligious as they came and he frequently engaged in all forms of misbehavior.
When he was around sixteen years of age, Patrick was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland, where he was forced to serve as a shepherd to his master’s flocks. At the time, most of the inhabitants of Britain had already converted to Christianity, but nearly all the inhabitants of Ireland were still pagan.
During his time as a shepherd, Patrick, who had never been a particularly devout Christian in the past, became desperate. He devoted himself wholly to God and began praying constantly. He repented of all his past misdoings and quickly became a model Christian.
Eventually, Patrick’s prayers apparently paid off. He experienced a dream in which a loud, thundering voice commanded him to escape his master and flee to freedom. Patrick obeyed and boarded a ship, which took him overseas, probably to northwest coast of France.
In France, however, Patrick only experienced even greater hardship. His company passed through the wilderness, where they ran out of food. Soon, members of the company began to starve to death. The leader of expedition mocked Patrick for his faith, telling him that his God could not save them. Patrick responded by praying fervently. It so happened that, shortly after Patrick’s prayer, the company came across a herd of swine, which they slaughtered and feasted upon. Patrick, however, refused to eat any of the swine.
Eventually, Patrick managed to make his way back home to Britain, where he took up residence with his old family. Then, on the night when he arrived home, he had a dream in which a messenger arrived carrying a bundle of letters and handed one of them to him, which was entitled “The Voice of the Irish.” Patrick opened the letter and heard the voices of the Irish people calling out to him, begging him to return to convert them to Christianity. He had a number of similar dreams in the nights following.
Patrick grew up and became a deacon like his father, but, then, when Patrick was in his mid-forties, the town elders brought up a terrible crime he had committed when he was only fifteen, before his capture and enslavement. The townsfolk banished Patrick from the village.
Having nowhere else to go, Saint Patrick reluctantly returned to Ireland as a missionary, where he expected to be treated with scorn and indignation. To Patrick’s great surprise, however, the Irish were receptive to his message and, thanks in large part to his powerful rhetoric and willingness to allow the Irish to continue many of their old traditions, Saint Patrick succeeded in single-handedly converting almost the entire island of Ireland to Christianity.
There are a number of apocryphal stories told about Saint Patrick that are not mentioned in his Confession. For instance, one story claims that he stood atop a hill holding a wooden stick and banished all the serpents from Ireland. This story, however, cannot possibly be true since there were never any snakes in Ireland to begin with. Furthermore, Saint Patrick himself never mentions anything about banishing the snakes from Ireland in any of his extant writings, nor do any of the earliest sources that mention him. Many scholars believe that the story about banishing the serpents is probably either a Christianization of a story from Celtic mythology or perhaps a metaphor for Saint Patrick banishing paganism itself from Ireland.
Another well-known story claims that Saint Patrick used the shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, teaching that, though it has three leaves, it is still one plant. This story, however, is not attested in Saint Patrick’s own writings and is probably apocryphal as well.
Saint Patrick died in Ireland and is buried there. After his death, Saint Patrick was declared Ireland’s patron saint.
In Ireland, Saint Patrick continued to be revered as among the greatest of all saints, but, outside of Ireland, he was not seen as particularly notable. It was not until the late nineteenth century when an influx of Irish immigrants came over to the United States that Saint Patrick first became widely recognized here in America.
Most modern Saint Patrick’s Day traditions actually originated here in the United States among Irish immigrants as a way to honor their heritage. As a result of this, many attributes traditionally associated with Ireland in general became specifically applied to the holiday of Ireland’s patron saint. For instance, the association between Saint Patrick and the color green arose in the late 1800s because Ireland itself is associated with the color green, mainly due to its abundance of lush, green grass. Ireland is often referred to as the “Emerald Isle.”
Similarly, leprechauns actually have nothing at all to do with Saint Patrick either. They are actually creatures from traditional Irish folklore. Leprechauns are said to be tiny, little men who live in the forests and woodlands. They are said to be exceptionally skilled in the art of shoemaking. Each leprechaun is said to guard a pot of gold, which he will defend with his life.
There are many Irish folktales about people who capture leprechauns and demand the leprechaun to reveal his pot of gold, only to be outsmarted by the leprechaun himself. In one such story, the man captures the leprechaun after a heavy rain and the leprechaun tells the man that his gold is hidden at the end of the rainbow. The man releases the leprechaun and chases after the rainbow, not realizing that the rainbow is only an illusion and that it as he pursues it, it only moves further away.
In another story, the leprechaun actually shows the man to the location of his gold, but refuses to let the man have any of it. The man marks a nearby tree with a special symbol so that he will be able to come back and take the gold later on, but, when he returns, he discovers that every single tree in the entire forest has been marked with exactly the same symbol.
It is said that if someone puts leprechaun gold in his pocket, then, when he reaches into his pocket to take it out, the gold will have turned into nothing but leaves and ashes.
Modern depictions of leprechauns are actually based off racist stereotypes of Irish-American immigrants, who were characterized as short, fat, red-haired, bearded, and balding, wearing shoes, hats, and belts with buckles.
Prior to around 1900, leprechauns were almost always said to wear red, not green, but, due to Ireland’s associations with the color green, in the early twentieth century, leprechauns began to be envisioned wearing this color instead.
The connection between Saint Patrick’s Day and drinking comes from the fact that many early Irish immigrants to the United States were heavy-drinkers.
The association between Saint Patrick and the shamrock is, of course, because of the apocryphal story claiming that he once used a shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity.
IMAGE CREDITS
The featured image for this article is a stained-glass window of Saint Patrick. The miniature church in his right hand represents the church in Ireland, which he allegedly established almost single-handedly. All images used in this article were retrieved from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain in the United States of America.
Well done!
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