A WEE BIT O HISTORY ON ST PATRICK

St. Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland. March 17 is the feast day of St. Patrick; it's a day to celebrate being Irish (they say that everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick's Day!)

St. Patrick is celebrated for bringing Christianity to Ireland. He was born about 373 A.D., in either Scotland or Roman England. His real name was probably Maewyn Succat. After becoming a priest he took the name of Patrick, or Patricus.

He was kidnapped at the age of 16 by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland He was a slave in Ireland for 6 years, when God started to speak to him in dreams and visions. He escaped (after voices in one of his visions told him where he could find a getaway ship) and went to France, where he became a priest and later a bishop. But then St. Patrick had a dream, and he dreamed that the Irish were calling him back to Ireland to tell them about God.

When he was about 60 years old, St. Patrick travelled to Ireland to spread the Christian gospel. He used the shamrock (a three-leafed plant) as a metaphor to explain the concept of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Legend has it that Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland -- that they all went into the sea and drowned. We do have some writings of St. Patrick, but legend and fact are intertwined!

Some amazing facts about St. Patrick:

St. Patrick wasn't Irish, he was British.

The colour of St Patrick isn't green, it is blue.

There might have been TWO Saint Patricks.

Christianity had probably come to Ireland before St. Patrick arrived, since he was sent to minister to the Christians in Ireland.

According to tradition St. Patrick died in A.D. 493 and was buried in the same grave as St. Bridget and St. Columba, at Downpatrick, County Down. The jawbone of St. Patrick was preserved in a silver shrine and was often requested in times of childbirth, epileptic fits and as a preservative against the evil eye. Another legend says St. Patrick ended his days at Glastonbury and was buried there. The Chapel of St. Patrick still exists as part of Glastonbury Abbey. There is evidence of an Irish pilgrimage to his tomb during the reign of the Saxon King Ine in A.D. 688, when a group of pilgrims headed by St. Indractus were murdered. The great anxiety displayed in the middle ages to possess the bodies, or at least the relics of saints, accounts for the many discrepant traditions as to the burial places of St. Patrick and others.

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