Who was the real St. Patrick?
Who was the real St. Patrick?
Learn more about the life and career of St. Patrick.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn more about the life and career of St. Patrick.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn more about the holiday of St. Patrick's Day.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Overview of the people of Ireland, with a focus on the impact of the mass emigration to the United States during the 19th century.
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Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library; CC-BY-SA 4.0 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)A discussion of Irish titles of nobility between 1541, when Henry VIII of England made himself king of Ireland, and the reign (1603–25) of James I.
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University College Cork, Ireland (A Britannica Publishing Partner)The Great Book of Ireland is a manuscript book containing hundreds of Irish poems, music compositions, and drawings. Each is handwritten by the author or composer or hand-drawn by the artist. The book was compiled between 1989 and 1991.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about Irish culture in this visit to Chief O'Neill's pub in Chicago.
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© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Discover the chemistry of brewing different types and colours of beer.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.A brief overview of rural Ireland, its fields of heather and abandoned villages.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.An overview of the Great Famine in Ireland.
Transcript
St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland who is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland during the 5th century.
St. Patrick was born in Britain to a Romanized family.
When Patrick was 16, his father’s villa was attacked by Irish raiders, who carried Patrick into enslavement in Ireland.
He spent six years working there as a herdsman before escaping back to Britain.
While in Britain, St. Patrick wrote that he had a dream in which Irish people begged him to return to them.
Though he was reluctant to go back to Ireland, he viewed the dream as a calling from God.
He spent years traveling through Ireland, converting and baptizing people into Christianity wherever he went.
By the end of the 7th century, St. Patrick had become a figure of legend.
He was said to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland, summoned food for the hungry, and even raised the dead.
A legend of St. Patrick explaining the Holy Trinity by way of a shamrock resulted in the tradition of wearing a shamrock in one’s lapel on St. Patrick’s feast day, March 17.
"I live for my God to teach unbelievers, if I am worthy, even if some people hate me." — St. Patrick
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