Surprise! St. Patrick gives us another holy day in which our celebration has little to do with the original person or thing.
Most people probably will not spend St. Patrick’s Day digging through fifth-century church history. Fortunately, getting a little closer to the man behind the holiday does not require abandoning the green clothing for a monastery library.
Here are two quick places to start.
Start With a Short St. Patrick Video
First, watch the video featured above from Christian History Made Easy.
In just a couple of minutes, Timothy Paul Jones introduces Patrick’s story and explains why there is considerably more to remember than green beer, shamrocks and leprechauns.
The historical Patrick was not Irish by birth. According to his own Confessio, raiders captured him from Britain when he was about 16 and carried him to Ireland as a slave.
Patrick spent six years there before escaping and eventually returning home. During his captivity, however, the faith he had largely ignored as a boy became central to his life.
Years later, Patrick returned to Ireland as a missionary. His surviving writings describe baptizing converts, establishing Christian communities and enduring opposition as he carried out that work.
That story alone is stranger and more interesting than most of the things currently printed on St. Patrick’s Day T-shirts.
For Further Reading: Separating Patrick From the Legends
If the video whets your appetite, Kevin DeYoung has a short primer that separates later tradition from what the historical evidence can reasonably support.
“Determining fact from fiction for Patrick is particularly tricky because his writings were not always passed along reliably, and because he wrote in remarkably poor Latin.”
That distinction is useful because Patrick accumulated plenty of legends over the centuries. Some are familiar enough to function almost as biography, even when the historical evidence is much thinner.
What we do have is unusually valuable: writings attributed to Patrick himself, especially his Confessio. They give us a picture of a former slave who returned to the country of his captivity because he believed God had called him there.
That is probably worth remembering for a few minutes before somebody dyes the next river green.
Read Kevin DeYoung’s “Who Was St. Patrick?” at Clearly Reformed.