savant garde

Saint Patrick

As we approach another St. Patrick’s Day I wanted to get up on my soapbox a little. This is always a touch personal for me as Saint Patrick is, obviously, my namesake.

While this day has become a celebration of the Irish, of knowing someone who is Irish, wearing something green, or establishing a first name basis with the bartender at your favorite Irish pub, please don’t forget that this is about a man. An absolutely amazing man.

I’m very proud to be Irish.
I’m very proud to be Celtic.
I love that once a year the entire world focuses on Ireland, and what it is to be Irish.

I don’t really love that this day has become more a day to ingest copious amounts of green beer and Irish whiskey than to focus on the man.
I don’t really love, though I don’t begrudge, that this has become an economic stimulus package for bars, alcohol distributors, and the marketing firms behind them.

Does anybody know why St. Patrick is revered?

Ask a passerby on the street that and you may get the, “He chased the snakes from Ireland.”, story.
I remember hearing that as a boy.
The trouble is… it’s not true. No snakes in Ireland. At least, not since the last ice age.

Saint Patrick was a spiritual man of unfathomable love and dedicated to enlightenment.
That is why he is remembered, revered, and loved by a nation that brought him first to it’s shores in shackles.
Patrick was born in modern day England. Not Ireland. He was a Romanized Briton (Celtic people).
A noble. He was not Patrick, he was Patricius (puh-tree-see-oos).
The Irish at the time were quite barbaric and feared for their prowess in taking slaves in the middle of the night. They would make across the Irish Sea in flotillas of small boats and raid villages with the intent of stealing children to enslave.
That is how Patrick ended up in Ireland.
He toiled as a slave there for many, many years. Primarily as a shepherd. Perhaps a decade.
Finally, as he neared his late teens, perhaps 20 years old, he managed to escape.
They say it was on this journey of escape, back to his home, that the first miracles in Patrick’s life occur.
Miracles or not, Patrick made it back to his noble family in present day England.
As a noble he had the duty, right and responsibility of finishing his education.
After his escape, Patrick chose the cloth. He chose to be a man of God.
At this time in the Roman Empire, this is post-Constantine, most are Christian.
So Patrick completes his studies as, what we would probably now view, a Catholic Priest.

What does Patrick do with his education? And this is why this guy is cool.
He returns to Ireland.
He returns to the very people that enslaved him.
Why? Why do such a thing? What kind of person can do such a thing?
As an Irish-American, I like to think that Patrick saw something in the Irish that he could not help but love.
One can only imagine what it might be. The spirit of the people?
Art, music, dance? Something about those people made him love them.
Something made him love his enslavers!? It’s absolutely incredible if you think about it.
To me, this is “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” stuff. But on an exponentially greater level.
This is a Christian in a whole nation of Pagan’s. There may have been some other Christian presence there at the time, but it was not the pervasive mode of worship.

Patrick was undeterred.
He went to Ireland and started his ministry.
And then he built a monastery. Excuse me, monasteries. A lot of them.
All over Ireland. I mean all over. North, south, east, west.
And he conquered with love and illumination.
He was a peacemaker. Tribal chieftains sought him out for judicial settlements of disputes.

The significance of the monasteries is education. That is the illumination I’m writing about.
In the 5th Century, in Ireland, there were no schools. There was no importance on education.
The importance was on survival. Learn a skill and survive.
Patrick added education to that.
And he taught everyone. Powerful warlords and poor shepherdesses.
He did not discriminate his teachings by wealth, power, sex or class.
He converted a whole Pagan nation. One man.
And he did it with love, not the sword.
And he did it with knowledge, not oppression.

You may be a Christian or not. You may be bored to tears with this story about a Christian leader like Patrick. That’s not what is important about this story. That’s not what is important about this man.
The significance of Saint Patrick is love and enlightenment.
Love that allowed a man to walk all over an island, filled with barbaric tribes who could strike him dead at any moment, and teach them a few things.
Till their soil with them.
Solve their disputes.
Teach their children.

The legacy of Saint Patrick is just as important as the man.
While the Roman Empire in Europe disintegrated under the boot of barbarian horde after barbarian horde, Patrick’s monks in Ireland were transcribing and copying all the important books of Rome.
That’s pretty much a monk’s life in that epoch. Be pious and copy books.
While Europe entered the “Dark Ages” and the barbarian tribes were using the great libraries of the Roman Empire as tinder for their fires, the Irish were busy keeping the great literal works of antiquity alive. Our universities have them today thanks to St. Patrick.

So, before you drink your pint of Guiness, or cheers your mates with a pour of Tullamore Dew, remember that this day is important because one man so loved a people that he could forgive them his enslavement and teach their children, and therefore the world.

p.