Saint Patrick: Renowned Celtic Missionary to Ireland

Saint Patrick (389-461) was the  "apostle to Ireland", and arguably the most famous missionary, other than the Apostle Paul of the Bible. He was from a family who had been Christians for at least two generations. He wrote that his father was a deacon and his paternal grandfather a presbyter.

His life remains, to this day, obscured and enveloped in controversy, conjecture, legend, and myth.

Saint Patrick left only two known, brief literary works for posterity, his Confessio and his Epistola . Confessio, the more important of the two, outlines the story of his life, a pilgrim's progress from youth to old age. The structure of Patrick's writing, in Latin, is of classical drama, and uses inverted parallelism.  Confessio is not really what we call an autobiography, by today's standards, as it leaves wide gaps in the story of his life. He relates his conversion to Christ in beautiful, lyrical  manner, " I was like a stone lying in the deepest mire; and then, 'he who is mighty' came and, in his mercy, raised me up. He most truly raised me up on high and set me on top of the rampart." The Confessio was a song of "gratitude to God who made him what he was and enabled him to achieve what he did" (Thomas A. Finnegan).

Patrick's Confessio, though not written as a theological treatise, upholds the doctrine of the Trinity (Trinitarianism) and refutes 4th century Arianism and 5th century Pelagianism. 

Patrick was both an artist of literary skill (not a barely literate rustic as some have implied) and a man of spiritual depth. In keeping with his poetic writing style, Patrick quotes from the Psalms more than from any other book of the Bible.

Patrick, like Jesus Christ himself, used simple illustrations crafted from the ordinary world around him, to explain God and the Christian faith to the Irish, which may partially explain the tens of thousands of conversions to Christ in fifth century Ireland.

His life exemplifies the enthusiasm and dedication of the Celtic Church itself. He frequently quoted the other great missionary, the Apostle Paul. After thirty years of arduous and perilous missionary ministry to the Irish, he founded as many as 300 churches and baptized upwards of 120,000 believers. Ireland, which had been pagan when Patrick began his ministry, became a center from which Christianity spread to the British Isles and the continent of Europe.

Ireland became a center of Celtic monasticism (though Patrick was never himself a monk), Christian culture, and missionary zeal. The monasteries became the repositories of ancient Christian writings, as the barbarian hordes descended on the continent of Europe, destroying many ancient texts there.

Ireland, it should be noted, did not officially become a Roman Catholic country until the 12th century, long after Patrick's death. Patrick, though later sainted by the Catholic church, was in his lifetime, a Celtic Christian, not a Roman Catholic.

August Neander, a  mid-nineteenth century historian, states that Patrick "conquered by steadfastness of faith, by glowing zeal, and by the attractive power of love."

For further reading:

Cahill, Thomas, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, New York: Random House, 1995

de Paor, Maire B., Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland Including St Patrick's Confessio and Epistola, New York: HarperCollins, 1998

Freeman, Philip, St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Hanson, R. P. C., The Life and Writings of the Historic Saint Patrick, San Francisco: Harper, 1984

Olsen, Ted, Christianity and the Celts, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.