Saint Patrick and the Phenomenon of the Irish Church

Peter Volyak

(Provisional translation from the original Russian)

 

1. Europe at the Beginning of the 5th Century

Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland, was born in the year 389 on the island of Britain, the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. At that time, the island was inhabited by Celtic tribes; in addition, there were Roman settlements there. The Celts (Greek keltoi, galatios; Latin gallae – roosters) were an Indo-European people who appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. They were divided into two groups: the so-called P-Celts, the Britons (brythons, or more archaically pretani), who settled in northern Gaul and on the island of Britain; and the Q-Celts, the Goidels or Gaels, who occupied western and central Gaul, Ireland, and the smaller islands. They spoke different dialects—the Gaels pronounced [k]-[kw] instead of the Brittonic [p]; thus, the Gaels called the Ulster Britons cruithin. Both of these peoples were driven from the continent at the end of the 1st millennium B.C. by strong and numerous Germanic tribes.

The first attempts to conquer the Celtic islands were undertaken as early as by Consul Gaius Julius Caesar, and later by Emperor Caligula, but it was only Emperor Claudius who succeeded in firmly establishing control in Britain with the help of his general Agricola. The Romans called the free Celts who did not live on Roman lands Scotti, and the Celts who had migrated to the north of Britain even before the arrival of the Romans and who constantly attempted to breach the Empire’s border were called Picts (“painted,” from picti)—these semi-wild people covered their bodies with tattoos.

In the north, life was very uneasy for the Romans; by the end of the 4th century A.D., their holdings on the island of the Britons had been reduced to a minimum—relative safety existed only in large cities and their suburbs. The Romans constantly repelled attacks from the Picts coming from the north; after the raids of these tribes, the fields were left as scorched earth, and the cities and villages as smoldering ruins. Their inhabitants were either mercilessly killed or taken into slavery. At the same time, in the west, in the Irish Sea and along the British coast, the Scotti raiders held sway. The piracy of the Scotti kings reached its greatest scale precisely in the 4th century under the famous king Niall (Neill)—their art of plundering anticipated the skill of the later Vikings, whose drakkars became a true terror of the seas at the turn of the millennium. Arriving in their curraghs—frame boats covered with leather—the Scotti would unexpectedly attack a settlement, seize and plunder it, sometimes carrying off thousands into slavery (according to the testimony of St. Patrick; see the “Confession”).

And the final reason for the weakening of Roman positions in Britain was probably the most pressing. Closer to Rome, the center of the Empire, many legions were being withdrawn from the periphery, including from Britain. In the central provinces, a struggle was underway against the main enemy—the Germanic tribes, whose invasions were the most dangerous, for defeat threatened the collapse of the Empire. Therefore, in the year 407, all troops were withdrawn from Britain.

While the Eastern Empire was desperately fending off the Goths, the West was drowning in endless wars with the Marcomanni—border tribes, neighbors of the Empire, who gazed greedily upon the wealth of the Roman cities. Having escaped captivity in 406 and arrived in Brittany (northwestern Gaul), St. Patrick found a scorched wasteland, where not only food but even water could not be found—a desert into which a once-flourishing land had been turned after the devastating raid of the Vandals.

No matter how hard the Latins resisted, the barbarians weakened them to such an extent that in 410 the Visigoth leader Alaric, having accepted tribute from Constantinople, carried out a campaign without resistance and occupied Rome—the symbolic stronghold of the old Empire. The aristocrats and citizens were deeply shaken—the unshakable foundation of laws, order, and the power of the civilized world had fallen into the hands of a barbarian! Rumors began to spread about the end of the world, of which the fall of Rome seemed to be a harbinger. St. Augustine (354–430) wrote his famous work The City of God, in which he argued that Rome was punished for its sins, that no earthly city can be unshakable, and that only the City of God in the heavenly realm, to which the heart must aspire, will never be overtaken by misfortune.

At that time in the East, as already mentioned, war was being waged against the Goths—a Germanic tribe displaced from the Black Sea region by the Huns and other peoples during the Great Migration. The Western Goths (Visigoths) were granted the rights of foederati and lands along the Danube frontier, while the Eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) were subjugated by the Huns. However, Roman officials stole the funds allocated by the Emperor in Constantinople for the Visigoths to guard the border, and the latter rebelled. They did not wish to march westward toward war-torn Rome, and beyond the Danube stood the Huns. In 378, the troops of the Roman Emperor Valens gave battle to the rebels led by Fritigern at the walls of Adrianople in Thrace... and the brilliant imperial army was utterly crushed by the cavalry of the semi-wild Goths: archers with heavy bows, guiding their horses using only stirrups, shot down the famed legions of the Eternal City from afar.

The emperor also perished in this battle. It was the first defeat of Roman forces by barbarians on such a scale. The famous massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, which claimed the lives of twenty thousand Romans in 9 A.D., pales in comparison to the defeat at Adrianople. The Empire was weakened for a good five years, until the new emperor, Theodosius, with a firm hand, halted the devastation and restored order in the country. During his reign, Christianity was strengthened, and around the year 390 he banned all practice of pagan cults, including the Olympic Games, which were only revived in 1896.

In 395, after the death of Theodosius, the Empire, which until then had been administratively unified, was divided into the Western Roman Empire, which lasted until the memorable year 476, and the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, which, with a break in the 13th century, endured until the equally memorable year 1453. By the end of the 4th century, the Roman army had also been reformed: after Adrianople, it saw an increasing number of barbarian mercenaries, some of whom even ruled in the Latin provinces as regents, like Stilicho, or even as independent monarchs, like Odoacer. However, the citizens of both Empires, though divided by authority, did not consider themselves residents of different states. Therefore, any events that occurred in one Empire were significant for the other as well. Thus, in both the West and the East, a chain of historical events unfolded that had a great influence on St. Patrick and determined his fate.

In that same East, at the beginning of the 2nd century, events were taking place that were no less significant for the life of St. Patrick and his spiritual mission in the history of the Church. This was the beginning of the monastic movement. After the period of Roman persecutions of Christians in the 1st century, it became difficult for them to lead a Gospel-centered life in the world, and therefore many Christians in the East withdrew into the deserts of Syria and Egypt, where they became anchorites—that is, hermits leading a righteous ascetic life. For example, St. Macarius of Egypt needed only a few cabbage leaves for forty days of fasting. Gradually, around prominent anchorites such as St. Anthony the Great, groups of disciples yearning for truth began to gather. Thus, entire monastic settlements arose—lavras, where churches, cells, and utility buildings gradually appeared.

A lavra, of course, was not a monastery in the modern sense of the word, since each cenobite (inhabitant of the lavra) had an independent way of life, and each chose for himself the path of serving the Lord. The growth of lavras was aided by Christian enlightenment—St. Athanasius wrote the Life of St. Anthony in 357, and St. Palladius of Helenopolis compiled around the same time the Historia Lausaica. At the beginning of the 4th century, the cenobites in the lavra already required a common rule, and it was created by St. Pachomius. Lavras attracted new monks, and later entire cities grew out of them. By 346, the year of St. Pachomius’s death, many lavras were flourishing in Egypt, governed by his rule, the largest of which were the Nitrian and Scetis lavras, where, according to various sources, from 2,000 to 15,000 cenobites lived. Through the labors of the monks, the Egyptian deserts were transformed into blooming lands. The monastic life according to St. Pachomius had a very simple ascetic form and was accessible to all Christians.

In the middle of the same century, St. Basil the Great, who is rightly called the father of Eastern monasticism, created a new rule based on the rule of St. Pachomius. The monks of St. Basil settled in small communities and, in addition to rule-based prayers and necessary labor, engaged in Christian self-perfection, copied books, and wrote their own works. Unlike the lavras of the anchorites and even more so of the stylites, the monasteries of St. Basil’s rule were located in long-inhabited regions of Asia Minor. This ideal of monastic life later had a tremendous influence on all Western monasticism in general and on Irish monasticism in particular. The Cappadocian Holy Fathers—St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory Nazianzen (the Theologian)—greatly assisted St. Basil in providing a firm dogmatic foundation for the practice of Eastern monasticism.

At the same time, in the 4th century, St. Athanasius traveled from Egypt to Trier and Rome and spread the monastic idea in the West. St. Ambrose of Milan and Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli organized their own ascetic communities in Italy and also supported other communities. Likewise, St. Jerome of Stridon, after staying in the East, called noble Romans to the ascetic life and, it must be said, achieved some success, mainly among matrons. In 384, due to attacks against him in Rome, Jerome moved to Palestine and there organized two monasteries, which he governed according to the rule of Pachomius, which he translated into Latin. Slightly earlier, his friend Rufinus translated into Latin the rule of St. Basil, as well as the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto.

Cenobitic monasticism was widely spread in the West by St. Martin of Tours, who organized several dozen monasteries in Gaul (Poitou and Touraine), among them the famous Ligugé and Marmoutier. The veneration of St. Martin was so great that later St. Benedict of Nursia dedicated a chapel to him in his Monte Cassino. After the death of St. Martin, between the years 400 and 410, St. Honoratus founded the renowned monastery on the island of Lérins in the Ligurian Sea, from which many theologians and philosophers emerged; St. Patrick also studied there. Alongside him in the monastery lived St. Caesarius, author of a well-known monastic rule, and Vincent of Lérins, author of a treatise presenting the Western Christian doctrine.

2. Spiritual Mentors of Saint Patrick.

The teachers of the monk Patrick were St. John Cassian and St. Germanus of Auxerre. John Cassian was born in 360 in Provence; in his youth, together with his friend Germanus, he went to Palestine, to the cenobitic monastery in Bethlehem. From there, the monk-friends, in their mature years, traveled to the Egyptian monasteries, where in 399 they spoke, among other elders, with the anchorite Evagrius of Pontus, known for his theology of the spiritual life. In 400 they arrived in Constantinople, to St. John Chrysostom, who ordained John Cassian as a deacon (incidentally, Cassian chose the name John specifically in honor of John Chrysostom). It is also known that when St. John was exiled in 405, Cassian and Germanus went to Rome to intercede for him before the pope. After that, St. Cassian remained near Marseille, in his homeland. It is also known that St. John Cassian was ordained a presbyter in 415, and around the same time St. Germanus became bishop of the Gallic city of Auxerre.

Saint John Cassian devoted himself to writing theological works. In his composition On the Institutions, he speaks about the formal-ritual side of monasticism, such as clothing, the reading of psalms and prayers, ascetic labors, and the overcoming of the passions. As a direct researcher of monasticism across various rules and dioceses, he thinks with extraordinary depth and generalization, going further than many authors of his time.

The second work is called Conferences (Collationes), in which St. John, in the form of dialogues of elder cenobites, reflects on the spiritual aspect of monastic life: its essence, discernment, the three renunciations of the world, the origins of temptation, prayer (inner prayer), Christian self-perfection, and spiritual knowledge. According to Cassian, the monastic way of life is not an end in itself, but a means to acquire virtues and other Christian spiritual values through asceticism.

After renouncing the world, the Christian, in constant prayer, immerses himself in ecstatic contemplation of God. Such contemplative prayer is very important for St. John Cassian; it cannot be attained without the virtue of the one who prays, and virtue cannot be perfect without prayer.

In the Conferences, Cassian distinguishes four degrees of prayer. We must list them, as they became part of the religious experience of St. Patrick. These are: prayer for the forgiveness of sins, characteristic of those who have just entered the spiritual life; prayer for good intentions, typical of those who have advanced in the spiritual life; prayer for the forgiveness and salvation of others, offered by those who have attained the state of love for God and love for their neighbor; and the final prayer—thanksgiving for God’s blessings, offered by those who contemplate God. This prayer St. John Cassian highlights especially and calls it “fiery prayer.” This tradition of “fiery prayer” is very important for the later development of Gallic monasticism (and of Irish monasticism as its successor). The form of contemplative prayer is very similar to Gnostic meditation. To show the fundamental difference between them, St. John Cassian emphasizes that prayer is inspired by the reading of Holy Scripture, the monk contemplates God as he receives the one perfect good, and he completes the prayer by returning to the Bible.

St. Germanus of Auxerre, being the monastic teacher of St. Patrick, undoubtedly acquainted him with the works of John Cassian.

St. Germanus raised Patrick in the tradition of the so-called Semi-Pelagianism, which prevailed in the Gallic Church of that time. It must be noted that this term is only outwardly connected with the heresy of Pelagius the Briton, who claimed that human nature was almost entirely uncorrupted by original sin and that man could attain salvation on his own. The Semi-Pelagians (“semi” – Latin for “half”), among whom were St. Cassian and St. Germanus, held the view that a person is obliged to participate in his own salvation just as much as he is saved by the Lord. An example of this is found in the episodes of divine revelation described by St. Patrick in his Confession. Semi-Pelagianism expressed a contrast between the Eastern and Gallic (and later Irish) Churches and the Roman pope, who had accepted the teaching of St. Augustine. According to Augustine, the Christian, for the sake of salvation, must unquestioningly fulfill all commands of God, whether received through revelation or through intermediaries. The difference in these views is shown in the life of Irish (or Eastern) and Benedictine monasteries of the 6th century: in the former, monks undertake ascetic labor for the sake of eternal life; in the latter, a hierarchically organized brotherhood, awaiting salvation, silently and obediently carries out any orders.

3. Confession of Saint Patrick of Ireland

The principal work of St. Patrick is rightly considered to be the Confessio (Confession). In it, he describes his life as an unbroken chain of seeking God and His truth. The Confession was written around the year 460 and is known to us from a later copy made in the archbishopric of Armagh in the 9th century. The authenticity of the text is beyond dispute. It is written in rather artless, somewhat simple (yet by no means crude) Latin, in which grammatical mistakes and other flaws, such as stylistic ones, are present. It is inconceivable that a pious and learned medieval Irish monk would have composed a future sacred text of his Church in such a style(!), and even more unlikely that a 9th-century monastic scribe would have introduced such errors, since the Irish at that time were among the most educated people. Also of great importance is the fact that ALL of Patrick’s quotations from the Bible are taken from a pre-Hieronymian translation, not from the Vulgate, which, although it already existed in the 5th century, became universally accepted only in the following century. In the life of St. Columba, it is mentioned that a certain learned man, Finnian of Movilla, brought a copy of the Vulgate from Rome, which so delighted Columba that he, violating his promise, copied it. Finnian took offense and sought justice from the king, who ruled that the copy should be given to the owner of the original. Then St. Columba, being, like Finnian, a local ríg (king), went to war against the offended party, which ended in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, where many people perished. Later, St. Columba organized all the main monastic schools of Ireland and, as is easy to understand, introduced the Vulgate there. Therefore, the terminus ante quem for the writing of the Confessio is the mid-6th century (based on the dating of events in the saint’s life). If the Confession had been composed later, it would have contained quotations from the Vulgate and not from an earlier translation of the Bible.

An additional argument in favor of the authenticity of the Confession is, perhaps, the author's remarkable tendency—namely Patrick’s—toward artless self-accusation and self-abasement, both before God and before others. The Confession begins with the words: “I, Patrick, a sinner, the most ignorant and least among the faithful, and to many deemed contemptible…” and continues throughout the text with a listing of various sins (as is fitting in a true confession), and ends with the words: “And I ask... that this letter, written by the sinful ignoramus Patrick, be read...” To this also belongs the author's criticism of the style and language of the work: “That is why I had long been intending to write, but until today kept putting it off; I hesitated—for I feared giving occasion for mockery—because I am not well-read, like others who have thoroughly mastered the Holy Scriptures, and who from childhood have not changed their language but have only refined it further. Since our words and speech have been translated into a foreign tongue, the structure of my writing makes it easy to judge whether I am educated and skilled in the art of rhetoric...” In the entire fourth section of the Confession, St. Patrick castigates his “ignorance,” his “clumsy speech,” and his “tongue-tiedness.”

Moreover, in his life account, Patrick is inattentive to rather important episodes and periods of his life from a biographical point of view, such as: his discipleship in the Gallic monasteries of Lérins and Marmoutier, his ordination to the episcopate, the attempt on his life made by envoys of the High King of Ireland Loegaire, and so on. A truly serious biographer would undoubtedly have at least mentioned these events, not to mention that many of them merit detailed description.

Having established the authorship of St. Patrick, we should proceed to the next stage of the analysis of the Confession, namely to the examination of the author’s internal awareness of his apostolic mission, setting aside his self-criticism. Patrick himself, however, fully allows for the fulfillment of the Divine will through an ignorant person. Therefore, it is important to consider which biographical facts Patrick reports about himself in the Confession.

At the beginning, the saint names his father and grandfather, not forgetting to indicate their ecclesiastical rank—deacon Calpornius and presbyter Potitus. He then speaks of the place of his birth, Bannavem Taburniae, and immediately reports that he was kidnapped as a youth by pirates from an estate nearby. Patrick does not speak about the first sixteen years of his life and lets the reader understand that the years of unbelief are of no interest to the saint: “God brought down upon us the flame of His wrath.” After this, he speaks of life in captivity and of the knowledge of divine truth: “And there the Lord opened to me the awareness of my unbelief.”

In the description of captivity, there are very important lines: “…Each day I tended the flock, and many times a day I prayed; and more and more the love of God and the fear of Him increased within me, and faith was stirred, and the spirit grew, so that I prayed up to a hundred prayers in a day, and as many at night. Even when I remained in the forests and on the mountains, I would rise before dawn for prayer, in snow, in frost, in rain, and—as I now recall—I felt no discomfort and no laziness: for then the spirit burned within me.” These lines contain the key to understanding the entire Confession. In this detailed description, St. Patrick reformulates the first prayer of St. John Cassian—the prayer for the forgiveness of sins, characteristic of spiritual neophytes. Patrick identifies his path within an already established spiritual framework and by this reveals the continuity of the Irish Christian tradition from Gallic monasticism. Let us recall that St. Cassian was a disciple of John Chrysostom, who formed his spiritual views under the influence of St. Basil of Caesarea and St. Gregory the Theologian—foremost Fathers of the Church and pillars of Christianity, whose biblical exegesis leads directly back to the dawn of Christianity and to the teaching of the Holy Apostles. In this way, one can see a chain of succession linking the Irish Church with the very source of Christianity, and on this basis demonstrate the equal origin of the early Irish and Roman Catholic Churches.

After his ascetic prayers, St. Patrick heard a Voice, which told him of his imminent liberation. In general, spiritual experiences are of great importance to Patrick; he describes them in great detail and with exaltation. In many places in the Confession, the saint, addressing God, receives His direct instructions and help precisely in the form of voices and visions, which almost always follow prayer. This mystical practice is close to the experience of Eastern Christian anchorites and desert-dwellers, which once again emphasizes the connection of the founder of the Irish Church with the first Christians.

Another miracle was the Voice concerning a ship two hundred miles from the place of his captivity. Patrick set out for the ship, leaving the master with whom he had lived for six years. He was not allowed on board, and so he turned back to where he had been given shelter the day before; on the way, he began to pray: “And before I finished the prayer, I heard one of them (the sailors) shouting loudly after me: ‘Come quickly, these men are calling you.’ I returned to them, and they began to say to me: ‘Come, for the sake of your faith we are accepting you; be our friend, if you wish.’ Thus on that day, through the fear of God, my flight came to an end.” In the cited passage, the prayer of good intentions offered to God is clearly described. It is most likely that on the way from the ship, St. Patrick prayed that he might “be able to sail with them,” and he could ask this of God only after making a vow—according to Cassian—of “good intentions.” And the Lord helped him.

Let us cite another passage from the Confession: “After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days we traveled through uninhabited places, and we lacked food, and hunger began. And one day the helmsman said to me: ‘What do you say, Christian? Is your God great and almighty? Then why can’t you pray for us, so that we may be delivered from the danger of hunger? It is unlikely we’ll meet anyone here.’ I said to them loudly: ‘Turn with faith and all your heart to the Lord our God, that today He may send us food on our journey for our nourishment, for with Him there is abundance everywhere.’ And with God’s help, so it happened. … After that, they gave earnest praise to God, and I was held in honor in their eyes.”

Here St. Patrick speaks of the third level of prayer—the prayer of intercession for others. According to John Cassian, this prayer is characteristic of those who have attained the state of love for their neighbor, and St. Patrick had undoubtedly already reached this state. By the time of his escape from captivity, the future path of the saint had apparently already been determined. Patrick could not leave the Hibernians (the Irish) without the grace of God (spiritual nourishment), which is received through prayer. The sailors, led by the saint, offered God a prayer for sustenance (spiritual). Thus, St. Patrick began his preaching activity among the pagan inhabitants of Hibernia.

Then Patrick writes: “And one day they even found wild honey, and a portion of it was given to me. And one of them said: ‘This is a sacrifice. Never before have I felt gratitude to God.’ But that very night, while I was sleeping, Satan began to tempt me severely—I will not forget it as long as I remain in this body. It was as if a great stone had fallen upon me, and I could not move either hand or foot. And I do not know how it happened, but I called out to the Spirit, naming Him Eliam. And at that moment I saw the sun rising in the sky, and I cried out with all my strength:”

Then Patrick writes: “And one day they even found wild honey, and a portion of it was given to me. And one of them said: ‘This is a sacrifice. Never before have I felt gratitude to God.’ But that very night, while I was sleeping, Satan began to tempt me severely—I will not forget it as long as I remain in this body. It was as if a great stone had fallen upon me, and I could not move either hand or foot. And I do not know how it happened, but I called out to the Spirit, naming Him Eliam. And at that moment I saw the sun rising in the sky, and I cried out with all my strength: ‘Eliam! Eliam!’ And behold, the sunlight fell upon me, and the weight immediately disappeared.” Here the saint rises to the fourth, fiery level of prayer—the prayer of contemplation of God, which, according to Cassian, is the goal of all Christian ascetics. At the same time, the saint’s companions (already Christians?) had learned the prayer of thanksgiving (of good intentions).

After this follow various details of the journey, and Patrick finally arrives in Britain, at his parents’ home. Most likely, these “several years of separation” were spent in the Gallic monasteries, and St. Patrick seems to have returned to Britain only in 429, accompanying St. Germanus, who was sent to eradicate the heresy of Pelagianism. There, in Britain, Patrick had a vision of a man named Victoricus, who came from Ireland with letters. In one of these letters, The Voice of the Hibernians, St. Patrick heard their request for him to come to Ireland and “be” with them.

Then in the Confession follows one of the most obscure episodes. Patrick seeks to receive the episcopal rank, but certain high-ranking hierarchs of Gaul opposed him, and even his closest friend rose against him. But the saint endures the trials and, as is evident from what follows, ultimately becomes a bishop. Here Patrick mentions two dates that help us understand the chronology. At around the age of 15, he committed some transgression, which he told a companion about, and this person later reproached St. Patrick for it. Patrick writes: “And when I was tested by some of my elders, who because of my sins rose up against my episcopal labors, I was so shaken that I almost perished both then and for eternity. But the Lord mercifully spared the new convert and stranger for His name’s sake, and helped me in this sorrow, so that I was not touched by shame or disgrace. I pray to God that this matter not be counted to them as a sin, for even after thirty years they found me and rose up against words which I had spoken when I was not yet a deacon.” Thus, the author of the Confession was about 45 years old when he entered the episcopal office in 432, which fits well with the biography of St. Patrick, who indeed was 43 years old at that time.

The Confession then goes on to describe in detail the baptism of Ireland.

4. Biography of Saint Patrick

What we know about the life of St. Patrick comes either from quite authoritative but later medieval sources, or from biographies written in the 6th–7th centuries, which are closer to the saint in time but of questionable reliability. The only sufficiently detailed source from his lifetime is the Confession, yet this autobiography cannot be taken literally. Therefore, inevitably, there exist many different versions of the same episodes and periods of the saint’s life; in particular, even the year of Patrick’s birth has been a matter of debate.

Many scholars previously believed that St. Patrick was born in 372, but the currently accepted year of his birth is 389. There are important arguments in favor of this later date: first, it corresponds well with the life periods of St. Patrick directly indicated in the Confession (see above); moreover, the date of the Vandal invasion of northern Gaul also aligns with the chronology of the Confession. Had he been born in 372, St. Patrick would have baptized the Irish at such an advanced age that one can only marvel at the success of his long mission. Though still elderly, Patrick’s age of 104 at the time of his death in 493 is nevertheless more plausible than 121 for one born in 372.

The next debate concerns the place of the saint’s birth. There are three versions: Picardy in the northeast of modern France, an unknown settlement at the mouth of the River Severn in Britain, or the modern town of Kilpatrick (then Bonaven Taberniae) near Dumbarton in southern Scotland. Picardy is too far for a raid by the Scotti who captured St. Patrick, and Patrick himself writes that his parents lived in Britain. This leaves two versions—Severn and Dumbarton. The latter is geographically more favorable for a pirate raid from Antrim, where the young Patrick was taken captive. Certain places mentioned in the Confession indicate that Patrick indeed lived there. Let us attempt to reconstruct the saint’s biography using various sources.

The boy (at that time named Succat) was born into a fairly wealthy British family; his parents were Christians. It is known that his father, Calpornius, was first a Roman decurion and later became a deacon. Succat’s grandfather, Potitus, was a presbyter. Succat was not a believer, and later St. Patrick wrote that he suffered for his sins. Around the year 405, Patrick was taken captive by the Irish after a raid on the estate of his grandfather, Enon, located near Bonaven Taberniae. In Ireland, he was sold into slavery in Antrim, where he tended sheep for a certain Milchu (Milcho) of the clan Dál Araide. The locals there called the youth Cothraige (Gothraidge).

After six or seven years, Patrick managed to escape, and after wandering for quite some time throughout Ireland, he boarded a ship transporting wolfhounds (these dogs remain to this day an important item of Irish export) and arrived in Armorica (modern-day Brittany) in the northwest of Gaul. During the years of captivity, Patrick endured much and by the time of his escape had become a deeply believing man. Therefore, in Gaul, devastated by the barbarians, the future saint easily found refuge among the monks of local monasteries. He spent several years in the monastery of Marmoutier near Tours, founded by St. Martin, the apostle and patron of Gaul. There he received the name Magonus, also known as Munn. After this, Patrick labored on the “Blessed Isle” of Lérins (near present-day Cannes in Provence), in the monastery of St. Honoratus.

But the memories of his “second homeland,” Ireland, and of the people living there gave the monk no rest: around the years 415–420, St. Patrick went to Rome with a request to organize a mission for the baptism of the country. He was refused—given the political and military situation of the time, it was not difficult to deny an obscure monk the resources for the Christianization of some barbarian island. Patrick then returned to Gaul, where he settled in the city of Auxerre under the renowned bishop Germanus, to whom many monks from all over Europe gathered.

There Patrick completes the education he had begun in other monasteries and acquires the authority in theological circles necessary for receiving episcopal rank and organizing the Irish mission. He first becomes a disciple and later a close friend of St. Germanus; it is Germanus who ordains the monk as a deacon under the name Patrick (Patricius). When Germanus is sent to Britain in 429 to combat the Pelagians, St. Patrick travels in the bishop’s retinue. There he meets with his parents and is strengthened in his hope to baptize Ireland.

Judging by the description of this journey in Nennius's History of the Britons, St. Germanus had to not only carry out the main task of the mission but also quite often convert local princes to Christianity. This served as a good example for Patrick; later, in Ireland, he employed the methods of his teacher. Saint Patrick closely embraced the ideas of Bishop Germanus (see above on the so-called Semi-Pelagianism and how it influenced Irish monasticism). In turn, Germanus supported Patrick, and upon returning from Britain, the latter was ordained a presbyter.

In 431, the pope remembered Ireland and sent Bishop Palladius to baptize it. He began preaching Christianity in the south of the island, but that same year he died, having not fulfilled his mission. In 432, Patrick went to Rome for the second time with the same purpose, but now with recommendations from Bishop Germanus and the presbyter Segetius. Pope Celestine II listened attentively to Patrick and gave his blessing for the Christianization of Ireland. The Gallic bishop Amator ordained Patrick to the rank of the first bishop of Ireland, and in that same year, 432, the saint set out with his companions on his long mission.

At first, St. Patrick landed in Wicklow on the southeast coast of the island, but due to a bad omen, he decided to sail further north, where he came ashore in Down. There, the missionaries built the first church in Ireland and baptized many people. From Down, the saint went to Antrim, where he attempted to convert his former master Milchu, but the latter, afraid of his escaped slave, burned himself along with all his possessions. The next thirty years of Patrick’s life consisted of constant journeys through the island’s four kingdoms: Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and Munster. Each day brought dozens, if not hundreds, of new converts.

The saint explained to the Celts the dogma of the Trinity and the triune nature of God in a visual way: he showed them a single clover leaf (a shamrock). Typically, the effort was first made to convert the chieftain of a clan; after him, the entire clan would be baptized by his example. Often, local chieftains would donate land for the construction of churches. In some places, St. Patrick baptized only a few people, taught them to read and write, gave them a copy of the Gospel, ordained them to the priesthood, and moved on to labor elsewhere, leaving the task of baptizing their neighbors to them. Many followed Patrick after witnessing miracles performed for the people: he put the druids to shame and toppled the idol of Crom Cruach; moreover, he came to the druidic festival in their capital Tara and burned their principal books.

This appeared very strange; it is unclear how such an ancient, strong, and authoritative organization as the druids could have instantly fallen under the pressure of Christianity, which had no established support in Ireland. However, there is an interesting hypothesis that explains this puzzling phenomenon. The spread of Christianity relied heavily on chieftains and the local nobility, and it is quite likely that the druids, through their conservatism, restricted the actions of the aristocracy. The latter used Christianity as a counterbalance to the dominant cult. A parallel may be drawn here with India: almost immediately after its emergence, Buddhism spread widely among the kshatriyas, who were burdened by the power of the brahmins. One may also recall the baptism of Kievan Rus in the Dnieper, carried out practically in a single day.

Not all kings and rígs wished to accept the true faith: among them, the most well-known are Loegaire of Tara, the High King of Ireland, and Coroticus, a prince of Dumbarton in southern Scotland. The druids, according to tradition, prophesied to Loegaire that Patrick would take from him power over both the living and the dead. The king was frightened and sent assassins to intercept the saint on his way to Tara. But as soon as St. Patrick recited his hymn The Cry of the Deer, the assassins, instead of seeing the saint and his companions, saw a passing herd of wild deer. This hymn has been preserved to this day and, judging by its archaic Irish language, may well have belonged to Patrick.

Coroticus, a Brittonic prince, gathered a band of Scotti and southern Picts and carried out a raid on the southern Munster coast, where he killed many of the newly converted and took several thousand into captivity. Patrick wrote him two letters in Latin, now known as the Epistola ad Coroticum. In the first, the saint asks the chieftain to release the captives in peace. This had no effect, and so in the second letter, St. Patrick addresses the subjects of Coroticus and demands that they shame their prince and refrain from breaking bread with him until he repents. Most likely, the bishop of Ireland paid Coroticus money, and he released the Christian captives.

Patrick himself more than once found himself in dangerous situations—sometimes his eloquence helped him escape, sometimes loyal friends, and at other times, the Church’s gold. Fifteen years after the beginning of the mission, Christianity was finally established on Irish soil, and in 445 St. Patrick founded the chief archbishopric in Armagh, in County Down. Saint Patrick became the first Primate of Ireland, and for centuries to come, Armagh remained the center of the Irish Christian Church.

Among the legends about St. Patrick, there is one very unusual yet popular tale: once, at the request of the people, the saint gathered all the snakes and other reptiles in Ireland into one box and cast it into the sea. Since then, there have been no snakes on the island, and the Irish Sea is very rough and foamy.

Many questions surround the date of St. Patrick’s death. Two different dates have been preserved in various traditions: 461 and 493. This discrepancy seems to be clarified by the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine: Bishop Palladius was sent to Ireland before Patrick with the same purpose. Thus, there were two baptizers of Ireland—Palladius, who died in 461, and St. Patrick, who died in 493. However, according to the scant information in the Chronicle, the first attempt to baptize Ireland was undertaken and ended in the same year, 431, with the death of the bishop. Therefore, the well-known Christian writer Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis, who died in 431, may be identified with the first, unsuccessful baptizer of Ireland.

The true baptizer of the Irish, St. Patrick, most likely died in the year 493—over the course of his 104 years of difficult life, he accomplished many spiritual labors and left an indelible mark on the history of Ireland, the world at large, and the Christian Church. The feast day of St. Patrick is observed by the Roman Catholic Church on March 17.

5. The Irish Church and Culture

Thus, in 493 St. Patrick died in Armagh, but the legacy he left to his descendants is priceless. To see the rise of all Irish culture initiated by the baptism, let us consider the social structure of Ireland in the first third of the 5th century, before the beginning of the apostolic mission of St. Patrick.

All of society was divided into numerous clans (tuatha), each with its own chieftains—rígs, who were subject to the seven principal rígs of the provinces, and they, in turn, were subordinate to two High rígs residing in the two administrative capitals, Cashel and Tara. Three cities were considered sacred—Emain Macha, Tara, and Cruachan Ai. The pagan cult on the island was conducted by Celtic priests—the druids; history, high poetry, and philosophy were preserved by the seers—the filid; and songs and tales were composed and performed by the singers—the bards.

The settlements of the Celts were very simple—a few wooden structures surrounded by an earthen rampart. Later, all Irish monasteries would come to resemble this layout. The objects crafted by local artisans were of very fine workmanship and revealed a striving for perfection. The Irish lived in complete harmony with nature. Celtic pagan beliefs allowed the world to be perceived not as divided into fragments, but as a single, though formidable, whole. It is no coincidence that poems about nature appear among Irish monks as early as the 8th century—well before works such as The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. On such fertile ground, Christianity flourished with extraordinary speed. The system of subordination of abbots to bishops, and bishops to archbishops, was successfully projected onto the existing hierarchy of the rígs, and the monasteries blended perfectly with the clan-based structure of society. The Irish were raised in monasteries, then worked in them, and in old age lived there as monks.

But the principal gift of St. Patrick to the Irish was the alphabet, writing. In the second half of the first millennium, nearly all Irish people were literate, many knew Latin and even Ancient Greek. The first school was opened in Armagh in 450, and based on the caste of the filid, Christian schools appeared in all corners of Ireland. Later, the most famous of these attracted many students from all over Europe, especially from England. An important occupation of Irish monks was copying books and adorning them magnificently. Examples of this are the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow. Thanks to Irish scribes, many monuments of ancient literature have reached us, which were not preserved in any other European countries.

For Irish monks, antiquity was not an immediate or threatening past, as it was for the clergy of the Continental Church, and it did not pose a danger of leading away from Christianity, whereas Italian and Gallic monks feared pagan antiquity. An example of the Irish reverence for books is the above-mentioned legend of St. Columba’s war over the Vulgate. For the service of the Lord, beautiful works of art were created—precious church vessels. However, as mentioned above, the spiritual writings of St. Patrick came directly from the sources of Christianity and, in particular, from early monasticism.

The monks—heirs to the tradition of St. Patrick—followed the path of the anchorites: they introduced into their lives the strictest asceticism. For them, ascetic labor was a deeply meaningful striving toward the contemplative prayer of St. John Cassian. The Irish anchorites found their “desert” in the ocean. Following the example of St. Enda, who was the first to settle on the rocky Aran Islands west of the Emerald Isle, many monks reached the Shetland, Orkney, and Hebrides islands in fragile boats, settled Cornwall, and St. Brendan even founded a monastery in Iceland.

Another saint whom we have already mentioned is St. Columba Columcille (“pillar of the Church,” 521–597), founder of the monastery in Derry. He organized the renowned theological schools in Derry, Kells, and Durrow, and also composed many religious and non-religious poems. In 593, after the memorable Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, St. Columba vowed to convert to Christianity as many people as had perished in the battle, and set out for Scotland with twelve companions to establish a monastery on the small island of Iona. This monastery would become the main missionary center of northern England and Scotland. At the same time, St. Comgall founded the famous Bangor Monastery, from which in 590 St. Columbanus set sail to enlighten a dark and brutal Europe in a time of turmoil.

At first, Columbanus went to Gaul, where he founded two large monasteries—Annegray and Luxeuil—and many smaller ones. But he soon came into conflict with the French episcopate due to the non-subordination of his abbots to the bishops and because of his criticism of the royal family. As a result, the saint was expelled from France. Through Switzerland, he made his way to Italy, where, on land granted to him by the Lombard king, he founded the monastery of Bobbio, where he reposed in 615. The monasteries he founded later became major centers of Christian learning and education. St. Columbanus wrote the Regula Monachorum, but this rule proved so strict that his monks fled to Benedictine monasteries, which, by the standards of that time, were also considered to have a rather strict rule.

The Irish ascetics had an enormous influence on Europe—their asceticism was especially striking against the backdrop of the morals of the local clergy. It was precisely the Irish monks who initiated the Carolingian Renaissance, which led Europe out of the “Dark Ages,” and who also laid the groundwork for the Cluniac Reform, which transformed the Western Church. In general, it is logical to view the early Irish Church as entirely original and equal to the contemporary Eastern and Western Churches. The independence of the Irish Church was feared by the wise Pope Gregory the Great, who sent St. Augustine of Canterbury to England to counter Celtic influence on Christianity. At that time, many bishoprics did not wish to listen to papal envoys, and even after all Irish Christians, in 704, began to calculate feasts according to the Roman system, formally recognizing dependence on the pope, they continued—up to the 12th century—to appoint bishops and archbishops independently. However, in the 12th century the Irish Church weakened under the raids of the Vikings, while the Roman Church, on the contrary, grew stronger after the first Crusades, and it was then that the Primate of Ireland in Armagh came under papal authority.

 

Russian source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180226183203/http://krotov.info/history/05/01/volyak.html