For many people around the world, St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of green beer and fiddle music, and for people who wear silly hats and throw up in the streets, it’s the second best holiday after Halloween.
But as a child growing up in the Northern Irish town of Downpatrick, the traditional burial site of the saint, attending morning Mass in an Aran-knit jumper and wilted shamrock badge and then skipping school was a pious affair.
So who was the real St. Patrick who left behind so many relics?
In the 1,600 years since this Christian missionary and bishop made his mark in Ireland, the cults and myths surrounding him have surpassed his own.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th, here are some surprising things you may not know about him.
Patrick was born into a Christian family in England in the late 4th century, when the Roman Empire was in decline and vulnerable to cross-border raids.
His comfortable life as a deacon’s son was shattered when he was captured and enslaved by Irish raiders at the age of 16, and spent the next years as a shepherd on a remote, often frozen hillside.
Remarkably for a fifth-century man, he left two written accounts of his life, but “he’s not very good at specifics,” says historian Finn Dwyer, host of the Irish History Podcast and Transatlantic: Irish American History Podcast. “He mentions place names, but they’ve obviously changed.”
Some claim he was enslaved at Mt Slemish in northern County Antrim, others claim he was enslaved at Killala Bay in western County Mayo.
“These things are important to historians,” Dwyer says, but “no one will ever prove this with certainty.”
Patrick, in his early 20s, escaped captivity and returned to his family in Britain, but soon became anxious to return to Ireland and spread the message of Christianity.
“For some reason, he decided to punish himself again and come back,” says Duane Fitzsimmons, a tour guide from my hometown of Downpatrick on the Lecarre Peninsula. The area is home to many sites closely associated with Patrick’s life, including the St. Patrick Center, the world’s only permanent exhibition of Ireland’s patron saint.
I found out at the end of the interview that he was also my once estranged second cousin. Because the cliché that all Irish people know each other sometimes turns out to be true.
“He landed somewhere on the north shore of Lecale” and was discovered by Ditsch, the younger brother of one of the local kings, Fitzsimmons said.
“It’s strange, because they seem to have a lot of trust in Patrick, but back then these kings would have been symbols of society,” and they took a big risk by supporting him.
“If something went wrong within their society, for example if the crops failed for a year or if livestock died due to a sudden disease, their head was the final price paid,” he added.
Patrick was given a barn as a shelter in the village of Saul, outside Downpatrick. It became the site of his first church and still attracts pilgrims.
3. He did not convert Ireland to Christianity alone.
“This is not a story of ‘one man comes and converts an island that was divided into dozens of kingdoms,’ which would have been physically impossible,” Dwyer said.
Although Patrick was not the first Christian missionary in Ireland (Palladius was in the early 5th century), he was the most successful.
The House of Dal Riata in north-east Ireland “was the highest royal power in Ireland”. These were the leaders with whom Patrick quarreled, and who went on to preach and preach throughout the country for decades.
“I think the key to that is this idea of his enslavement, where he would have learned our language and our customs and how to interact with people higher up in society,” Fitzsimmons says.
He also pointed out that false claims on TikTok that Druids were massacred in the process of bringing Christianity to Ireland were “absolute nonsense”. “If Patrick came along and started killing people, there’s no way he would survive and we wouldn’t be able to talk about him as favorably as we do today,” Fitzsimmons says.
“He was the only person we know of who wrote things down in Ireland at the time, and he still survives in some form today,” Dwyer said.
Towards the end of his life, Patrick wrote a short memoir, The Confessions of St. Patrick. This was a rebuttal to his detractors and a defense of his mission in Ireland.
As a big name in the church, “he’s been criticized by a lot of people for doing certain things,” Fitzsimmons said. “They wonder where his money came from.”
For example, female converts were known to have given gold gifts to the superstar preacher, but he denied keeping any money.
“When they threw the ornaments on the altar, I gave them back,” he wrote. “They were hurt that I would do this.”
In 2003, the Iron Age bog remains now known as Old Croghan Man were discovered in County Offaly and are now on display at the National Museum of Ireland.
The man is believed to have been of high status and was killed in a ritual sacrifice that included the removal of his nipples.
In pre-Christian Ireland, suckling was a way of showing obedience to the king, and historians believe that cutting off Old Croghan’s nipples was a sign that he was thus stripped of his royal rights.
Patrick provides further evidence of this practice in his Confessions, a story he tells about his first escape from slavery. He found a ship bound for England, but the captain refused to board.
Patrick returned to his quarters to pray. “That day, out of fear of God, I refused to suck their breasts,” he wrote. “They were pagans, and I desired that they would come to believe in Jesus Christ. So I went with them, and immediately set sail.”
Famously, there are no snakes, toads or moles in Ireland. These animals were unable to cross the land bridge until Ireland was separated from mainland Europe at the end of the last ice age.
Fitzsimmons explains how Patrick became involved with them. One theory is that when the Vikings came to Ireland at the end of the 8th century, they heard stories of this revered figure, Padraig (the Irish version of Patrick).
Padraig’s pronunciation is similar to the Old Norse word “pad lekkur,” which means “toad expeller,” and as there were no toads or snakes in this country, the two may have been confused.
Of course, there are simpler versions as well. The snake is a symbol of evil in the Bible, and Patrick is said to have expelled it by introducing Christianity.
Snake societies were first recorded in the 12th century, when a monk named Jocelyn of Barrow-in-Furness was commissioned by the Norman knight John de Courcy to record them.
The legendary recording work may have taken place at Inch Abbey, a Cistercian monastery outside Downpatrick, which happens to be a filming location for Game of Thrones.
And by coincidence, Conleth Hill, the actor who plays Varys on Game of Thrones, is cousins with Fitzsimmons. It really is a small world for Irish people.
7. His remains were lost for a while and then repacked in a 3-to-1 All-Star grave
If there was one thing that medieval people loved, it was sacred bones.
It is unknown when Patrick died, but the traditional date of his death is March 17, 461 AD, and a cult surrounding him and eventual veneration of him as a saint spread over the centuries.
From the late 8th century onwards, when Ireland was hit by Viking raids, the remains of the reputed Patrick, and later those of the Christian saints Brigid and Colmcille, were sent north to the River Dal Riata for protection.
They had been so cleverly hidden by the local abbot that they were actually missing. That was until it was conveniently rediscovered by John de Courcy in the 12th century and reburied in Down Cathedral, Downpatrick.
There, the tombs of Ireland’s three patron saints still remain, beneath granite slabs added in the early 20th century to prevent pilgrims from stealing soil from the site.
Dwyer said he wouldn’t put any money on the authenticity of the bones, but added: “It’s important to remember that this is a time when everyone from Jerusalem to Dublin wants the relics of a saint.”
But as a Downpatrick woman, I sometimes say that collective belief is what matters.
8. From mountains to monasteries to holy wells, there are little bits of Patrick all over Ireland.
In 2023, Downpatrick and the surrounding area was recognized by UNESCO as the Morne Gullion Strangford Geopark.
The remarkable Morne Mountains are the park’s centerpiece, but Mr Fitzsimmons says the geopark is “more than just the geology, it’s a celebration of people, landscapes, heritage and how we mark that heritage. St Patrick’s is therefore a key part of that.”
St Patrick’s Way is a new 132-mile Camino-style walking trail stretching west from Downpatrick into County Armagh and is part of this flourishing celebration of its history.
Mr Dwyer said there were “more anchor spots” associated with St Patrick in the north of Ireland, but there were sites associated with St Patrick across the length and breadth of the island, from the humble Holy Well to the majestic Croagh Patrick, County Mayo’s ‘sacred mountain’.
“He constantly reflects the changing Irish identity in how we interact with him,” Dwyer says. “He is, in many ways, the embodiment of what it means to be Irish, and that is always changing.”
