PATRICK, Saint. - Apostle of Ireland. He was born in Britain to the deacon Calpurnius, who owned a small estate at Bannaven Taberniae, a locality that has not been identified. At the age of 16 he was taken as a slave to Ireland, where he spent six years herding flocks. He fled twice and returned to his family, where, against its advice, he clearly heard the voice that called him to the apostolate in Ireland. Before going there he went to Gaul to Germanus of Auxerre, who initiated him into the ecclesiastical life and learning, then to some islands of the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, and finally he landed in Ireland in 432.
Christianity had already been introduced into the island by Palladius (v.) sent by Pope Celestine, but the island was for the most part pagan. P., having been ordained bishop, devoted himself to an intensely active apostolate, baptizing, visiting the whole country, and working especially in Ulster, Meath and Connaught. He died in 461.
The most certain information about his life is gleaned from two of his Latin writings, known collectively as the "Books of St. Patrick", namely the Confessio, a kind of autobiography in which he recalls, against certain detractors, the path by which God guided him to the apostolate of Ireland, and the Epistola ad Coroticum, to the British king of Strathclyde, in which he deplores the violence committed by that king's soldiers, in a raid on the Irish coasts, against the Christian communities of the island. A prayer in Gaelic known as Faed Fiada, the "Cry of the Deer", is also attributed to him; it is also called Lorica inasmuch as it is like a defense which, with its mighty invocations, protects the Saint against the snares of enemies. The feast of St. P. falls on 17 March; his cult had from the 8th century onward a great diffusion also on the continent (cf. L. Gougaud, Les Saints Irlandais hors d'Irlande, Louvain 1936, pp. 142-58).
Legend, naturally, knows far more: P. is said to have been born at Ail Claude (Dumbarton) and to have worked prodigies from earliest infancy. At 30 he received the call to the apostolate, for another 30 years he studied under Germanus of Auxerre, and at 60 he began his mission in Ireland. He began by heading for Tara, seat of the supreme king of Ireland Loegaire, before whom he worked, in competition with the druids, grandiose prodigies, which nevertheless did not convert the king. Then he went to Connaught, where he converted Loegaire's two daughters, and spent 40 days in fasting on the mountain known as Croagh-Patrick. From there he returned to Leinster and then headed to Munster where, at Cashel, he baptized the king Oengus. Finally he went up into Ulster, where he founded the primatial see of Armagh. He died at Saul on 17 March 493, at the age of 120. Since the possession of his body was disputed, two yoked oxen, without a guide, fixed the place of his burial by stopping at Down Patrick.
THE PURGATORY OF ST. PATRICK
The Patrician legend, considered one of the sources of Dante's Inferno, dating from six hundred years after St. Patrick, is due to the English monk Henry of Saltrey (ca. 1190); it narrates that the Saint, wishing to dispel the unbelief of certain Irishmen regarding the punishments of the afterlife, was shown by the Lord a cave that led into the underworld: whoever remained there a day and a night with faith would obtain forgiveness of sins and, persevering in good, eternal salvation. The cave, walled up in 1497 by order of Alexander VI, is located on an island in Loug Derg (Lake of the cave) in Donegal (Ulster), and is the destination of an annual pilgrimage (15 June-15 Aug.) whose ceremonies take place around the church of St. Patrick, called Regles, and the four "penitential beds" or circular enclosures named after St. Brigid, St. Brendan, St. Catherine and St. Columba. The stay on the Island lasts three days, during which penitential rites are performed (3 times a day), with a sevenfold circumambulation of the church of St. Patrick and prayer with arms outstretched (crossfigli).
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Nicola Turchi