This Day in Irish History (Death of St. Patrick, The Exile Who Became a Saint)

March 17, 461 (or 493)—St. Patrick, the dream-driven missionary who returned to the land where he had been enslaved as a teenager, died, by popular tradition, in mid-March, after having converted the inhabitants of Ireland. The exact year of his death, however, like much else about his life, remains shrouded in misty legend.

The patron saint of Ireland, of course, is credited with driving the snakes out of that country. (Too bad he didn’t finish the job and expel all the lawyers and politicians while he was at it – but, as the proverb goes, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”) Other traditions about his life exist, too many to be enumerated, let alone commented on. I prefer what we do know about him, which is so remarkable in and of itself that it needs little elaboration from me (though, of course, it’s about to receive it).

As recounted by Thomas Cahill in How the Irish Saved Civilization (which I regard as a decidedly understated title), Patrick, in his Confessio (translated as “Declaration”), became “the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery.'' He was at least a millennium ahead of his time, criticizing publicly an age-old institution that even those proud American products of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, found difficult to do.

Why did Ireland (and, perhaps even more so, Irish America) embrace this saint so deeply? It might have something to do with his description of himself—“I am, then, first of all, countrified, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future.” He was one of Christ’s “poor in spirit,” and (though probably born in England or Scotland) the psychological ancestor of the millions driven out of their country by the Great Famine.

I have particular affection for one prayer associated with the missionary: “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”—and especially this passage.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson commemorated the “embattled farmer” that stood against an empire’s might at Concord. Today, when so many lift their Guinness or other libation of choice, I prefer to salute the “embattled farmers” from Counties Clare and Cork who were my ancestors—for withstanding that same empire by clutching to Patrick’s faith, ignoring the small insistent voice of self-interest, self-doubt, injustice, privation, death, and all the other “snares of devils.”

I hope that I have even one-tenth of their mettle—and that I never have occasion to exercise it.