Saint Patrick Still A Man Of Mystery After Centuries
By Linda Wilson

The patron saint of Ireland was not Irish by birth. He was by no means the first Catholic missionary to arrive on Erin’s shores and won appointment as the second bishop of Ireland only after two years of pleading with his superiors to appoint him to the position after they had first passed him over for someone with more tact and learning.

The man who became Saint Patrick was born about 385 A.D. Choices for his birthplace lie among England, Scotland, Wales or France; the most likely spot is a small village at the mouth of the Severn River in present-day Wales, then a part of the Roman Empire. By parentage he was Roman Catholic. but until the age of 16 no one would have characterized Maewyn (or Succat, either could be his given name) as a candidate for sainthood. By his own later admission, as a youth he was covetous, licentious, materialistic and generally heathen.

The turning point in Patrick’s life came when a group of Irish marauders raided his village and carried him and hundreds of other young people into slavery in Ireland. For the next six years Patrick toiled as a sheepherder in County Antrim. On the lonely hillsides where he spent his years in captivity, Patrick first felt an increasing awareness of the presence of God, or so his writings indicate.

Patrick escaped slavery in Ireland and spent some 12 years as a student at a monastery in Gaul, now France, under the tutelage of Saint Germain, Bishop of Auxerre. It was Germain who instilled in the young scholar-priest the desire to convert pagans to Christianity.

Patrick wanted very much to return to Ireland as the island’s first bishop. However, his monastery superiors felt that he lacked the finesse and sophistication and chose Saint Palladius. Patrick importuned for the position for the next two years, and then Palladius transferred to Scotland. Patrick had by then adopted the Christian name by which he is known today.

Returning to Ireland, the former slave was a success as bishop. His immensely winning personality, imposing presence and unaffected manner aided the new bishop in winning converts—and immensely aggravated Celtic Druid priests. Patrick was arrested at least a dozen times, and each time he escaped. He traveled throughout Ireland, founding monasteries, schools and churches, all of which would in time transform Ireland into the "Isle of Saints."

Facts about Patrick have been distorted through centuries of folklore. He did not drive the snakes out of Ireland by preaching a sermon on a hilltop, for example, and he did not raise people from the dead or kindle fire from snow. However, a historically cogent account of some of his teachings explains how Ireland acquired its famous shamrock symbol. Patrick repeatedly preached the doctrine of the Trinity to his converts—the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are separate and distinct but nonetheless co-exist in a single entity. Attempting to find a suitable analogy to explain this concept, Patrick glanced down and spotted a three-leafed shamrock. As he held up the plant, he asked his congregation to imagine the three leaves as each representing the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and the stem from which the three leaves grew as the single Godhead from which they proceeded.

Patrick established his archiepiscopal see at Armagh with the approval of Pope Leo I (440 to 461). After 30 years of exemplary missionary work, Patrick retired to Saul in County Down. He died on Mar. 17th in or about the year 461 in an Ireland that had become entirely Christian. He is believed to be buried in Downpatrick, where many pilgrims each year visit a local tombstone carved with a "P" believed to be his grave. After his death, his converts took to wearing a shamrock as a religious symbol on his feast day, the day of his death.

Saint Patrick’s Day was first celebrated in the New World in Boston in 1737 by the Charitable Irish Society of Boston, a Protestant organization founded that same year to assist ill, homeless and unemployed Irishmen. Its more famous New York City counterpart began in 1762 as a proud display of Irish heritage.

The famous New York City parade began several years later, organized by a group of Irish veterans of the Revolutionary War. As the city spread northward from its roots at the lower end of Manhattan, so did the parade, at one point running as far north as the area now known as Harlem. Over 200,000 people take part in the parade every year, which would have gratified its founders. The Catholics and Presbyterians who made up the group conceived the parade in defiance of "nutty people who didn’t like the Irish very much" and paraded through the streets to demonstrate their numbers.