| St . Patrick ’ s Day |
The truth behind
St . Patrick
At the heart of St . Patrick ’ s Day is a real person
by Adelia Ladson
St . Patrick ’ s Day is one of those holidays that many Americans celebrate without knowing why or what its origins are . It ’ s become a secular holiday like St . Valentine ’ s Day that ’ s been appropriated by restaurants , bars and retail companies .
I was one of those folks that didn ’ t have a clue why a day was set aside to wear green or risk getting pinched , drink beer dyed green at the local watering hole or turn a whole river green in Savannah . ( As a point of interest , the size of the St . Patrick ’ s Day Parade in Savannah is second only to New York City .)
I knew St . Patrick ’ s Day was associated with Irish heritage and I knew that St . Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland but that was about it . Even though , I spent a majority of my life wearing green on March 17 , and decorating with Shamrocks every year of elementary school .
Since he is the patron saint of Ireland was St . Patrick a real person or just a figure out of Irish legends ? As I learned with researching St . Valentine , I thought the actual man might be hard to pin down .
However , St . Patrick wasn ’ t quite elusive as St . Valentine because he actually wrote a kind of “ spiritual biography ” called the “ Confessio ” about his mission and what set him on his path . He also wrote a “ Letter to Coroticus ,” which is a denunciation of the British mistreatment of the Irish Christians . So there is actually some firsthand documentation of his life .
First off , he was born in Great Britain to wealthy parents that didn ’ t really raise him to be religious . He was captured by Irish pirates when he was 16 and then sold into slavery to a Druid high priest . Druids were the most influential religious leaders as Ireland was still a pagan country , at the time .
It was during his enslavement of six years that he became a devout Christian . He escaped from Ireland , under “ miraculous ” circumstances involving a vision , and returned to England . There , he entered the clergy and , eventually , became a bishop of the Catholic Church .
Later , another vision led him to believe that he needed to convert all of Ireland to Christianity . So he returned to Ireland as a missionary to spread Christianity and he is considered Ireland ’ s first Catholic bishop . He has also been called “ The Apostle of Ireland ,” preaching for 40 years . A misconception is that St . Patrick was the first to bring Christianity to Ireland but he wasn ’ t . There was already a small population of Christians living there .
Although he has a Feast Day , St . Patrick was never actually canonized by the Catholic Church but , instead , was proclaimed a saint by popular acclaim . He is claimed as a saint by both Catholics and Protestants .
Unlike many saints , he was not martyred but died of old age on March 17 , in a village in Northern Ireland , which was the site of his first church . And , unlike St . Valentine ( for those of you who read the February issue of the Moultrie Scene Magazine ), his remains are intact and buried in the Cathedral Down in Downpatrick , North Ireland .
38 MoultrieScene MARCH 2025