PATRICK, Saint. – Apostle of Ireland. He was born in Britain to the deacon Calpurnius, who owned a small farm at Bannaven Taberniae, a locality that has not been identified. At the age of sixteen he was taken as a slave to Ireland, where he spent six years tending herds. He twice escaped and returned home, but against the advice of his family he heard a clear call inviting him to the apostolate in Ireland. Before going there, he went to Gaul to Germano of Auxerre, who initiated him into the ecclesiastical life and learning; then he went to some islands in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, and finally landed in Ireland in 432.
Christianity had already been introduced to the island by Palladius (q.v.), sent by Pope Celestine, but the island was largely pagan. Patrick, ordained bishop, devoted himself to an intense apostolate, baptizing, visiting the entire region, and working especially in Ulster, Meath, and Connaught. He died in 461.
The most reliable information about his life comes from two of his Latin writings, collectively known as the Books of St. Patrick: the Confessio, a kind of autobiography in which he recalls, against certain detractors, the path by which God guided him to the apostolate in Ireland, and the Epistola ad Coroticum, addressed to Coroticus, a British king of Strathclyde, in which he deplores the violence committed by that king’s soldiers, during a raid on the Irish coasts, against the Christian communities of the island. A prayer in Gaelic, called the Faed Fiada (Deer’s Cry), also known as the Lorica because it acts as a defense, with its powerful invocations protecting the saint against the snares of enemies, is also attributed to him. The feast of St. Patrick is celebrated on March 17; his cult spread widely to the continent as early as the eighth century (cf. L. Gougaud, Les Saints Irlandais hors d'Irlande, Louvain 1936, pp. 142-58).
Legend, of course, knows much more: Patrick is said to have been born at Ail Cluade (Dumbarton) and to have performed miracles from earliest childhood. At the age of thirty he received his call to the apostolate, and for another thirty years he studied under Germano of Auxerre, and at sixty he began his mission in Ireland. He first went to Tara, the seat of the High King of Ireland Loegaire, before whom he performed, in competition with the druids, great miracles that nonetheless did not convert the king. Then he went to Connaught, where he converted the king’s two daughters, and spent forty days fasting on the mountain called Croagh Patrick. From there he returned to Leinster and then went to Munster, where at Cashel he baptized King Oengus. Finally he went to Ulster, where he founded the primatial see of Armagh. He died at Saul on March 17, 493, at the age of 120. Since possession of his body was contested, two oxen yoked and unguided stopped and fixed the place of his burial at Down Patrick.
ST. PATRICK’S PURGATORY. – The legendary tale of Patrick, considered one of the sources of Dante’s Inferno and six hundred years later than St. Patrick himself, is due to the English monk Henry of Saltrey (ca. 1190). It tells that the saint, wishing to dispel the unbelief of certain Irish about the pains of the afterlife, was shown by the Lord a cave that led into hell; whoever remained there for a day and a night in 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 Lough Derg (Lake of the Cave) in Donegal (Ulster), and is the destination of an annual pilgrimage from June 15 to August 15, whose ceremonies take place around the church of St. Patrick, called Regles, and the four “beds of penance” 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 exercises are performed (three times a day), with sevenfold circumambulation of the church of St. Patrick and prayer with outstretched arms (crossfigil).