![]() Later in Britain he experienced a vision which called him to spread the gospel to Ireland, and so there he returned, preaching and baptising in spite of hostility from some of the Scotti (the people who lived in Ireland, who later populated what is now known as “Scotland”). After six years of forced labour he escaped and was eventually reunited with his family in Britain. When he was about sixteen years old, Irish raiders took him captive along with thousands of other people and set him to work herding pigs in Ireland. ![]() Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the fifth century, in a small town called Bannavem Taberniae (possibly Bannaventa). It was a window into a world I had barely glimpsed before – the life of an early British missionary in Ireland. The Patrick of the Confession was a refreshing change from the Patrick of legend. ( Here’s a free English translation, and here’s a Latin version.) I didn’t know any of his writings had actually survived. He was more of a cartoon figure than a man, a cheesy one-dimensional character not really much more credible than Santa Claus.īut then some months ago I stumbled across his Confession, a fifth century work in Latin. ![]() And yet for a long time, all I had associated with this saint was his holiday, drunken green-clad revellers, the Irish, leprechauns, and a story about snakes. ![]()
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