St Patrick's Day

To celebrate St Patrick's Day the Daily Mail reports that an expert in ancient and medieval history from Cambridge University, has asserted that St Patrick, whose father was a Decurion, a Roman tax collector, was not captured and taken to Ireland as a boy-slave as he claimed but that he emigrated to avoid becoming a tax collector. 

Patrick was born around 390 AD and Roman rule was abandoned when he was about twenty so it's likely this career was in any case closed to him before he reached maturity.  Was his story of the slave shepherd boy who received his calling while watching his flocks by night  invented by the saint himself.  This may well be true.  Aside from Patrick's own account there is no reason to believe he ever went to Ireland prior to taking up the post of Bishop there in 432 AD.  What we do know is that he studied at the monastery of Lerins on the French Riviera where he would have been influenced by the monastic ideals of John Cassian and then at the monastery of Auxerre under St Germanus.  Auxerre is very interesting as it seems to be the focus of a movement to create an independent church in northern Gaul and Britain.  Patrick's pupil, Dubronius or Dyfrig, who is my prime suspect as the author of The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone, also trained at Auxerre. 

The collapse of the Roman Empire meant that Gaul was ruled by the Franks - whose name means free people - who had never been subject to Roman rule.  The same was true of the Irish and the Romans had abandoned the Britons in 410 AD.  You have to remember that at this time the Pope was only one of five patriarchs all answerable to the Emperor in Constantinople.  To the people of northern Europe the Roman Catholic Church was highly suspect.  Having thrown off the yoke of the Roman Empire they had no desire to be indirectly ruled from Constantinople through the dictates of the Roman Church. 

Patrick came to Britain on two preaching tours with St Germanus. On the second tour while in Britain they heard that Palladius the Bishop of Ireland had died.  Patrick immediately went to Ireland and took over his position.  This is interesting because in the first place he was not the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland or attempt to establish the church there.  Secondly Palladius was a Metropolitan Bishop.  Patrick had been trained in monasteries - monks were not necessarily priests and were outside the episcopalian system.  How then did he manage to get himself appointed Bishop of Ireland?  This would normally have been an appointment in the gift of the Pope.  It is entirely possible that Patrick did invent the story of his days as a slave in Ireland and his mystical calling on the hillside to justify taking over the position of Palladius without authorisation.  After all a divine appointment trumps one even by the Pope. 

However there is a slight suggestion that his story may not have been entirely baloney.  At Caermead, just outside Llantwit Major in South Wales, there are the remains of a Roman villa.  Excavations in 1888 uncovered the skeletons of forty-three humans and three horses and evidence of burned masonry suggesting that the estate was attacked by Irish raiders in the fourth century and its inhabitants massacred backing up Patrick's story of abduction by Irish raiders.  Was this villa at Caermead Patrick's birthplace?  His place of birth is uncertain but it would explain why in 500 AD a decade or so after his death, Illtud chose to site his great monastery beside the ruins of the villa.

Whether Patrick's story of his early life is true or not all of us in the British Isles, not just in Ireland, owe a great debt to this wandering scholar.  Llanilltud Fawr, as it should be properly known, became one of the great centres of scholarship in the early middle ages and sent its scholars out across Europe challenging imperial power and changing the way we think and our ideas about who we are.

Happy St Patrick's Day.