|
Some
1,500 years ago a teenage boy from what is now Great Britain was
kidnapped and enslaved by marauders from a neighboring country.
Not since Paris absconded with Helen of Troy has a kidnapping so
changed the course of history.
The
invading marauders came from fifth-century Ireland. The teenager
they captured eventually escaped, but returned voluntarily some
years later. In the meantime, he had become convinced that he
was handpicked by God to convert the entire country to
Christianity.
Apparently,
he was right.
In
the process of converting the primitive people of Ireland,
however, the former slave experienced a conversion, too. In the
years that followed, he not only shared God with the people of
Ireland, but also grew in his understanding of God through them.
And
so it was that a young Briton named Patricius died an Irishman
named Patrick. And neither Ireland nor Christianity was ever
quite the same. This conviction of Thomas Cahill, Catholic
author of the best-selling book How the Irish Saved
Civilization, was made clear in an exclusive interview for St.
Anthony Messenger last August.
Patrick
in Myth and History
No,
Patrick never chased the snakes out of Ireland. Nor do we really
know whether he used the shamrock to teach converts about the
Trinity. But what we do know about St. Patrick is far more
interesting than many of the legends that grew up around him.
And
the fact that we know anything about him at all is as great a
miracle as any that later traditions ascribe to him. For Patrick
is literally the only individual we know from fifth-century
Ireland or England. Not only do no other written records from
Britain or Ireland exist from that century, but there are simply
no written records at all from Ireland prior to Patrick's.
Surprisingly
enough, however, scholarly debate about the authenticity of what
Patrick left us is almost nonexistent. The chronology of his
life is very confused. Indeed, we can't even identify for sure
when he was born, ordained a bishop or died! Experts agree,
however, that the two examples of his writing that we have are
clearly written by the same man, the man we know as Patrick.
These
two brief documents, Patrick's Confession and his
"Letter to Coroticus," are the basis for all we know
of the historical Patrick. The Confession, because its
purpose was to recount his own call to convert the Irish and to
justify his mission to an apparently unsympathetic audience in
Britain, is not a traditional biography.
And
the "Letter to Coroticus," apparently an Irish warlord
whom Patrick was forced to excommunicate, is a wonderful
illustration of Patrick's prowess as a preacher but doesn't tell
us much by way of traditional biography either.
The
uncontested, if somewhat unspecific, biographical facts about
Patrick are as follows:
Patrick
was born Patricius somewhere in Roman Britain to a relatively
wealthy family. He was not religious as a youth and, in fact,
claims to have practically renounced the faith of his family.
While
in his teens, Patrick was kidnapped in a raid and transported to
Ireland, where he was enslaved to a local warlord and worked as
a shepherd until he escaped six years later.
He
returned home and eventually undertook studies for the
priesthood with the intention of returning to Ireland as a
missionary to his former captors. It is not clear when he
actually made it back to Ireland, or for how long he ministered
there, but it was definitely for a number of years.
By
the time he wrote the Confession and the "Letter to
Coroticus," Patrick was recognized by both Irish natives
and the Church hierarchy as the bishop of Ireland. By this time,
also, he had clearly made a permanent commitment to Ireland and
intended to die there. Scholars have no reason to doubt that he
did.
Stranger
in a Strange Land
Though
Patrick's writings tell us little in terms of names and dates,
they do reveal much about Patrick the man. But traditional
biographies of Patrick, suggests Thomas Cahill, author and
former religion editor for Doubleday, don't really do him
justice.
"I
think they missed a lot of what Patrick was about because they
approached him as a kind of plaster-of-paris saint. Two
things," he says, "really shine through his Confession:
his humility and his strength. That strength is what has been
missing in the earlier biographies and portraits of
Patrick."
In
fact, Cahill says, "The Patrick who came back to Ireland
with the gospel was a real tough guy. He couldn't have been
anything else—only a very tough man could have hoped to
survive those people. I don't mean to say he wasn't a saint—he
was a great saint—but he was a very rough, vigorous man."
And
he was his own man, writes Noel Dermot O'Donoughue, O.D.C., in
his 1987 biography Aristocracy of Soul: Patrick of Ireland.
When Patrick receives the vision that he believes calls him to
evangelize the Irish, he doesn't hesitate, despite the fact that
in 400 years no one had taken the gospel beyond the boundaries
of Roman civilization. "He goes his own way following his
own dreams and divine 'responses,'" says O'Donoughue, even
though by doing so he is challenging the structure and
ordinances of the Church he serves.
It
doesn't take a scholar to recognize how he was able to do this.
Patrick was so certain that he had been specifically called by
God to do exactly what he did—return to the land of his
captivity and convert the barbarians to Christianity—that his Confession
leaves even the modern reader little room for doubt. In this
certainty, Patrick finds his strength—strength sufficient, in
fact, to overcome every obstacle he will encounter in the
remaining years of his life.
The
first obstacle was his education. The six years Patrick was
enslaved in Ireland put him permanently behind his peers in
terms of his classical education. His Latin would always be
poor. Later in life when he used Latin less frequently, it was
practically unintelligible at times.
Despite
the fact that Patrick would be self-conscious about his literary
limitations to the end of his days, he was not uneducated. One
suspects, however, that he was primarily self-educated. His use
of biblical quotations, Cahill says, "is far more accurate
and appropriate than many of the Fathers of the Church."
And
although almost any other qualification pales by comparison to
Patrick's zeal for his mission, he must have set off equipped
with an intellect both subtle and supple. For he not only
decided, unilaterally, to do what no man in 400 years of
Christian history had done before him—to carry the gospel
message to the ends of the earth—but he also found a way to do
it.
It's
hard to grasp just what an accomplishment that was, says Cahill.
When Patrick decided to "willingly go back to the
barbarians with the gospel," Cahill explains, "he had
to figure out how to bring the values of the gospel he loved to
such people. These were people who still practiced human
sacrifice, who warred with each other constantly and who were
renowned as the great slave traders of the day.
"That
was not a simple thing. This was before courses were given to
missionaries in what is now called inculturation—how to plant
the gospel in such a culture," Cahill says. "No one
had ever even thought about how to do it; Patrick had to work
his way through it himself.
"I
know that Paul is referred to as the first missionary,"
Cahill says, "but Paul never got out of the Greco-Roman
world, nor did any of the apostles. And here we are, five
centuries after Jesus, who had urged his disciples to preach to
all nations. They just didn't do that. And the reason they
didn't is because they did not consider the barbarians to be
human."
Patron
Saint of the Excluded
Patrick's
enslavement as an adolescent had to have been a critical factor
in the development of his unique attitude toward the Irish. Even
in captivity, he must have come to know them as human, hence,
deserving of the gospel. This set the stage for his call to
convert them.
As
a result of his enslavement, Cahill, whose particular interest
is the "hinges of history," says, "Patrick grew
into a man that he truly would not otherwise have become. So you
would have to say that Patrick's kidnapping was a great grace,
not just for the people of Ireland, but for all of Western
history."
Had
he never been kidnapped, it seems quite likely that it would
have been decades, probably centuries, before Ireland was
converted. It certainly would not have been in a position to
"save civilization," as Cahill so dramatically puts it
in his book, when the Roman Empire crumbled and literacy was
lost—lost, that is, by all but the Irish monasteries planted
by Patrick and his successors.
Not
surprisingly, his own experience in captivity left Patrick with
a virulent hatred of the institution of slavery, and he would
later become the first human being in the history of the world
to speak out unequivocally against it.
"The
papacy did not condemn slavery as immoral until the end of the
19th century," Cahill says, "but here is Patrick in
the fifth century seeing it for what it is. I think that shows
enormous insight and courage and a tremendous 'fellow
feeling'—the ability to suffer with other people, and to
understand what other people's suffering is like."
In
fact, although he is renowned as the patron saint of the country
and the people he evangelized, a better advocate than Patrick
cannot be found for anyone disadvantaged or living on the
fringes of society.
"He
really is one of the great saints of the downtrodden and
excluded—people that no one else wants anything to do
with," Cahill says.
Women
find a great advocate in Patrick. Unlike his contemporary, St.
Augustine, to whom actual women seemed more like
personifications of the temptations of the flesh than persons,
Patrick's Confession speaks of women as individuals.
Cahill points out, for example, Patrick's account of "a
blessed woman, Irish by birth, noble, extraordinarily
beautiful—a true adult—whom I baptized."
Elsewhere,
he lauds the strength and courage of Irish women: "But it
is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most—and who keep
their spirits up despite the menacing and terrorizing they must
endure. The Lord gives grace to his many handmaids; and though
they are forbidden to do so, they follow him with
backbone." He is actually the first male Christian since
Jesus, Cahill says, to speak well of women.
"The
Fathers of the Church had the most horrible things to say—it's
frightening to read what people like Augustine or John
Chrysostom had to say about women. As remarkable as anything
about Patrick is that in his writings there is never anything
remotely like that."
In
fact, there are clear instances of him saying warm and
appreciative things about women. O'Donoughue adds, "It is
clear that the man who wrote the Confession and "Coroticus"
is deeply and sensitively open to women and womanhood....But he
does not take refuge in either 'the pretentious asceticism, nor
yet in that neurotic fear of and contempt for the feminine' that
has entered so deeply into the attitudes and structures of the
Christian Church....In this respect he is a complete man."
Patrick
the Mystic
Modern
Catholics might have a hard time reconciling the portrait of the
rugged individualist that Cahill describes with the current
notion of a mystic. Yet O'Donoughue says that in the Confession,
"the main lines of Patrick's spiritual development show
through, and they are unmistakably the lines of a mystical
journey." In fact, his biography of Patrick is the first in
a series of works edited by Michael Glazier called "The Way
of the Christian Mystics."
So
what makes Patrick a mystic?
First,
as recounted in the Confession, most of the major events
in Patrick's life are preceded by a dream or vision. The visions
were usually simple—almost self-explanatory—but they were
also very vivid and carried enormous emotional impact with
Patrick.
The
first vision, which he received after six years of servitude in
Ireland, came by way of a mysterious voice, heard in his sleep.
"Your hungers are rewarded: You are going home," the
voice said. "Look, your ship is ready." Indeed, some
200 miles away, there it was. (Patrick was nothing if not
tenacious.)
The
second vision—the one that came to him after he'd returned
home and that called him back to Ireland—was equally
straightforward. Victoricus, a man Patrick knew in Ireland,
appeared to him in this dream, holding countless letters, one of
which he handed to Patrick. The letter was entitled "The
Voice of the Irish." Upon reading just the title, he heard
a multitude of voices crying out to him: "Holy boy, we beg
you to come and walk among us once more." He was so moved
by this that he was unable to read further and woke up.
But
the dream recurred again and again. Eventually Patrick tells his
dismayed family of his plans to return to evangelize Ireland and
soon begins his preparations for the priesthood. What is
interesting about this dream calling Patrick to his lifelong
mission to the Irish is that it comes not as a directive from
God, but as a plea from the Irish.
It
is also significant, O'Donoughue says, that "the voices in
the dream do not ask for preaching or baptism but only that
Patrick as one specially endowed should come back and share
their lives, come and walk once more with them." In other
words, at least according to his recollections decades later,
Patrick wasn't commanded to bring civilization or salvation to
the heathens. He was invited to live among them as Christ's
witness.
When
he finally returns to Ireland, he proceeds to treat the
barbarians with the respect implicit in his dream. From the
outset, Patrick feels humbled and honored that God has selected
him to convert the Irish. Apparently he never doubted that he
would be able to do so.
Patrick
even came to see his own kidnapping as a grace, Cahill says.
From the time Patrick sets off on his 200-mile journey to his
"waiting ship," he is convinced "once and for all
that he is surrounded by Providence and that he is really in the
hands of God. And that is what gets him through the rest of his
life. That is what enables him to do the incredible thing that
he does by returning to the barbarians." And that closeness
to God in no way diminishes as the years progress.
"Patrick
was a mystic who felt the presence of God in every turn of the
road," Cahill says. "God was palpable to him, and his
relationship to him was very, very close." In fact, he
says, it was very much like the relationship in the Bible that
Jesus has with God the Father. "It is very familiar and
comfortable, and that is how Patrick saw God at work in the
world."
Patrick's
Lasting Legacy
When
Patrick looked back at the end of his life on his service to
Ireland, Cahill says, he must have been pleased with his
accomplishments.
By
the time of his death, or shortly thereafter, "the Irish
stopped slave trading and they never took it up again."
Human sacrifice had become unthinkable. And although the Irish
never stopped warring on one another, "war became much more
confined and limited by what we might call the 'rules of
warfare.'
"I
think that though he probably died knowing that he had succeeded
[in his mission]," Cahill adds, "he also died hoping
that success would be permanent and not temporary."
In
fact, Patrick's success couldn't have been more permanent. Not
only had he accomplished what he'd set out to do—convert the
nation to Christ—but in the process he'd retrieved from
obscurity the primary objective set by Christ for his apostles:
the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
The
inadvertent results of his conversion of Ireland, however, were
equally astonishing and long-lasting.
First, as
Cahill makes the strong case in How the Irish Saved
Civilization, it is Patrick's conversion of Ireland that
makes possible the preservation of Western thought through the
early Dark Ages by the Irish monasteries founded by Patrick's
successors. When the lights went out all over Europe, a candle
still burned in Ireland. That candle was lit by Patrick.
Second,
by converting the Irish pagans to Christianity without making
any attempt to romanize them as well, he founded a new kind of
Church, one that was both Catholic and primitive.
Third,
with Patrick's introduction of Christianity to Ireland, Cahill
says, the faith was introduced for the first time into a culture
free of the sociopolitical baggage of Greco-Roman civilization.
Prior to Patrick's gift of the faith to Ireland, to be Christian
was to be Roman, or at least to be a product of Roman
civilization.
The
conversion of Ireland, however, sees the faith thrive in an
entirely different environment—in a culture that celebrates
rather than abnegates the natural, a culture in which, according
to Cahill, there is a "sense of the world as holy, as the
Book of God—as a healing mystery, fraught with divine
messages."
In
this tradition, Cahill explains, "there is a trust in the
objects of sensory perception, which are seen as signposts from
God. But there is also a sensuous reveling in the splendors of
the created world, which would have made Roman Christians
exceedingly uncomfortable."
As
a result, Cahill says, "The early Irish Christianity
planted in Ireland by Patrick is much more joyful and
celebratory [than its Roman predecessor] in the way it
approaches the natural world. It is really not a theology of sin
but of the goodness of creation, and it really is intensely
incarnational."
And
since it was the Irish monks who served as the bridge between
classical Christianity and the Middle Ages, medieval
Christianity tends to reflect the celebratory nature of Irish
spirituality rather than the gloom and sin-centeredness of its
classical predecessor.
Finally,
Patrick gave the Irish himself—knowingly, willingly, joyfully,
proudly. He did this despite the fact that, even at the end of
his life, "after 30 years of missionary activity,"
Cahill says, "he knows he's still living in a very scary
place. You don't change people—people who offer human
sacrifice and who war on one another constantly—you don't
change them overnight."
But
change them he eventually did. And the example of his life—his
courage, his intelligence, his compassion and his incredible,
indomitable faith—made the lives of all Catholics, even those
living 1,500 years later, just a little easier.
To
millions of modern-day Catholics, an Ireland without Patrick is
unthinkable. But so, too, Cahill says, is the prospect of modern
life without saints like him. The saints are for the ages, and
ours no less than any other.
"Life
would be almost unbearable without such people," he says.
"I think it would be unbearable. The saints are for
everyone—believer, unbeliever, Christian, non-Christian—it
doesn't really matter. They are the people who say by their
lives that human life is valuable—that my life is
valuable—and that there is a reason for living. Without them,
history would just be one horror after another."
Patrick
at the Judgment
There
is no question that Patrick taught us by his example that all
life is, indeed, precious. Yet it's hard to imagine that there
isn't a soft spot in his heart reserved just for the Irish.
In
fact, there is an old legend that promises that on the last day,
though Christ will judge all the other nations, it will be St.
Patrick sitting in judgment on the Irish.
When
asked whether that spelled good news or bad news for the Irish,
Cahill doesn't hesitate.
"That's
great news for the Irish," he says with a laugh.
|