Saint Patrick

Patrick wrote that he was born in Britain, where his father Calpornius was a deacon and a town councillor and his grandfather Potitus a priest. The family lived near a place he calls Bannavem Taburniae, which has never been securely identified.

He tells us that at about sixteen he was captured by raiders and taken to Ireland, where he herded animals for some six years. There, he says, his faith deepened. After a dream he escaped, travelled a long distance to a ship, and eventually returned to his family in Britain.

He later returned to Ireland as a bishop, describing in another dream “the voice of the Irish” calling him back. He writes of baptising converts and ordaining clergy, of danger and of criticism from fellow churchmen in Britain.

Patrick was not the first Christian mission to Ireland. A contemporary chronicler, Prosper of Aquitaine, records that Pope Celestine sent Palladius in 431 as first bishop “to the Irish believing in Christ”.

The dates often quoted — arrival in 432, death in 461 or 493 — come from medieval Irish annals compiled long afterwards, and historians treat them with caution. The Atlas therefore gives his period simply as the fifth century.

By the late 7th century, Armagh was promoting Patrick as the apostle of all Ireland. The Lives written then by Muirchú and Tírechán shaped his later image, adding contests with druids and royal conversions not found in his own writings.

He is honoured as patron of Ireland alongside Brigid and Columba. His feast on 17 March is kept by Catholic, Anglican and other churches and has become an international celebration of Irish identity. Pilgrimages associated with him include Croagh Patrick in County Mayo and Lough Derg in County Donegal.

The Book of Armagh, copied around 807 (Trinity College Dublin, MS 52), preserves important Patrician texts, including a version of the Confessio. It is a much later manuscript and was not written by Patrick.

These stories are part of how Saint Patrick has been remembered, but they are not established biography. Each is labelled with when it first appears in writing.

• The shamrockLegend · first recorded in the 18th century

  The idea that Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity is the best-known Patrick story, but no early source mentions it. Coins of the later 17th century link him with a three-leafed plant, and the botanist Caleb Threlkeld gave the earliest written version of the teaching story in 1726. Wearing shamrock on 17 March is a custom of the same period.

• Banishing the snakesLegend · first recorded in the late 12th century

  Ireland has had no native snakes since the end of the last Ice Age, and the Roman-era writer Solinus already remarked on this. The story that Patrick drove them out appears in the Life written by Jocelin of Furness in the late 12th century. Many read it as an image of the triumph of Christianity over paganism.

• The Easter fire at SlaneHagiography · late 7th century

  Muirchú tells how Patrick lit a paschal fire on the hill of Slane in defiance of the king at Tara, then out-performed the king’s druids in a contest of wonders. The story is modelled on biblical confrontations and is not in Patrick’s own writings.

• St Patrick’s PurgatoryMedieval tradition · 12th century

  A cave on Station Island in Lough Derg was believed to be an entrance to purgatory shown to Patrick by Christ. A 12th-century account made it famous across Europe, and the island remains a place of pilgrimage.