The Real Saint Patrick: 'an intensely loveable character'

 

We close the octave of posts on Saint Patrick's Confession by leaving the last word to Father Francis Shaw SJ. In the stirring quote below, taken from his 1931 work The Real Saint Patrick, Father Shaw brings together many of the themes we have looked at in this series:

By becoming familiar with the Confession, we shall secure certainly that Patrick will "come again and walk once more amongst us". For here in his own writings, shall we find the real Patrick an intensely loveable character, a man human like ourselves, grieved by the treachery of a friend, longing for the companionship of home and brethren, hurt by the sneers of critics, yet a man truly Christlike in spirit, meek and humble, simple and straightforward, practicing Evangelical poverty, a man filled with ardent personal love for Christ and burning with zeal for the salvation of souls, trusting in God for all things, desiring with great desire to die for Christ, in natural character a man energetic, resolute, indomitable, and possessed of an exceptional talent for organization and for government. Such a one was Patrick, the missioner whom God elected in those days out of all the world to bring "tidings of great joy" to those "men of good will" "who dwelt by the western sea".

Rev Francis Shaw, SJ, The Real St Patrick,  (Irish Messenger, Dublin, 1931). 

 

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Saint Patrick in His "Confession"

 

 Today we examine the views of Irish writer Alice Curtayne (1901–81) on the Confession of Saint Patrick. In 1931 the Anthonian Press published her Saint Patrick: Apostle of Ireland, a short illustrated biography in the style of her Saint Brigid:The Mary of Ireland which the same company issued two years later. But in 1951, a year after its founding at Maynooth, she contributed an article entitled Saint Patrick in His "Confession" to the Irish religious periodical The Furrow. She begins by acknowledging the authenticity of the work, adding that 'its chief interest is the striking portrait it presents of its author'. Yet it isn't long before she too expresses a sense of frustration with the way the Confession was framed: 

 He had indeed written a golden page in the history of the Christian Church. We know now that his was permanent achievement if ever a man's life-work could be so described, But does he give an account of himself in the terms of a success story?  By no means. His brief record, which can be read attentively in less than half an hour, is a humble, laborious and at time incoherent, effort to tell with absolute honesty the work of God in himself. It is of particularly curious interest to read the "Confession" during March, when the churches of Ireland and in the far-flung empire of Ireland overseas are resounding with hymns to his praise, and see what he wrote about himself fifteen hundred years ago. His opening is like a douche of cold water:

I Patrick, the sinner, am the most illiterate and the least of all the faithful and contemptible in the eyes of very many. 

He then tells the facts of his life with the extremist brevity.....  

Alice Curtayne, is not, of course alone in her frustration with the lack of biographical detail in Saint Patrick's writing. As she goes through the main details of his career acknowledging that 'Patrick's "Confession " incidentally reveals a man of great physical courage', her irritation re-surfaces:

 But the whole message of the "Confession" is the wonderful work of God through such a despicable instrument as himself, "a fool" (he says), "the abhorred of this world". He returns again and again, with a repetition that is almost wearisome, to the subject of his ignorance:

I had long since thought of writing; but I hesitated until now... today I blush and am exceedingly afraid to lay bare my lack of education; because I am unable to make my meaning plain in a few words to the learned...Perchance it seems to not a few that I am thrusting myself forward in this matter with my want of knowledge and my slow tongue...

 Alice Curtayne suggests that the slowness of tongue could only have applied to his Latin as Saint Patrick acquired Irish during his captivity which gave him a considerable advantage in his missionary work:

He could peach to the people in their own language. His phenomenal success with them does not argue any lack of either intelligibility or fluency.  

 But despite her frustration with Saint Patrick as a writer, the article ends on a positive note:

 In another part of the "Confession", he summarizes his work in Ireland as "to define doctrine and make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation". It is particularly fitting that his feast-day should occur in the fullness of spring-time, the season of hope. Even the brief extracts given above show how radiant with hope is the testimony that Saint Patrick has left us. 

 Curtayne, A. (1951). Saint Patrick in His “Confession.” The Furrow, 2(3), 150–160. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27655737

 

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THE CONFESSION OF ST. PATRICK

 

 

 'The Confession of Saint Patrick' is an article from an Australian Catholic news magazine published in 1937. The anonymous author declares that 'There is no more affecting document in any literature than the “Confession of St. Patrick' and feels that its unpolished nature reveals the human Patrick in all his frailty. Just how rustic and unlearned Saint Patrick actually was is still the subject of scholarly debate. Some feel that despite his protestations, the writer and his work were rather more sophisticated than he would have us believe. But the writer of this article sees the literary shortcomings of the Confession as adding immeasurably to its appeal and to the humanity of its writer. He closes with a moving tribute to the faith of Saint Patrick, discovered on the 'desolate slopes of Slemish'. 

THE CONFESSION OF ST. PATRICK.

 “And this is my confession before I die!” It is not the great Thaumaturgus, looking back on a road made straight and smooth by miracles, but just a tired old man, worn out with age, and great labours, and great sorrows, and disappointments; this Patrick, who sits him down in the quiet hour before the darkness to defend his Mission, and, incidentally, to tell the story of his life. We feel we can come very close to the aged missioner, who has known so much of life’s troubles, whose successes have been achieved at the cost of so much toil, and sacrifice, and suffering, and who has had to endure the keenest pain of all — to be betrayed by his trusted friend, and to be misunderstood and unjustly charged by his superiors. Beautiful and majestic is the St. Patrick beloved by poets and artists, overcoming the Druids on Tara by the might of his miracle-working crozier. But this human Patrick of the “Confession” so simple, so direct, so conscious of his own failings and limitations—and at the same time so conscious of the “great things” wrought by the Spirit through his instrumentality — this is the Patrick who is dear to us, even as our own fathers! 

There is no more affecting document in any literature than the “Confession of St. Patrick,” and the halting language in which it is written, the absence of all art, or literary craftsmanship, in its composition, the uncouth “rusticity” of its phrasing, add immeasurably to its appeal. We seem to see the old man “screwing himself up,” so to speak, to write it. He knows to what criticism his want of scholarship is going to expose him—especially from those learned brethren who have so often objected to an “unlettered man like him being left in charge of a Mission to such a cultured race as the Irish; “Behind my back they were speaking one with another and saying, ‘Why does this man put himself into danger amongst hostile people who know not God?’ This they did not put forward through malice, but it did not seem right to them on account of my being untutored, as, according to my own testimony, I have understood.” This want of education, which is the most serious of his opponents’ charges against his fitness for the post, is he not going to deliver the very proof of it in the document that presents his defence? He knows it: “For this reason I have long since thought of writing, but even until now I hesitate, for I feared I should incur the censure of the tongues of men; for I have not been educated as others have, who, accordingly, in an excellent manner, have imbibed both Law and Sacred Scripture alike, and have never changed their speech from childhood, but rather have ever been bringing it to perfection. For my speech and word has been translated into a foreign tongue, as may be easily proved from the flavour of my writing.” Not unskilful pleading this, for all its lack of the advocate’s gift of “form.” There emerges from it the first point of his defence—viz., that if he had not as much Latin as his critics, he had something more immediately useful to him for the purposes of his Mission: a good knowledge of Irish. 

He, himself, seems conscious that better than long years of college has been the training he has got fop his Mission through the hard things that befell him in his youth. Scene after scene rises up before him out of the past, and he sees how God was following a plan with him all the time, moulding and shaping him for the work He had designed for him. He sees himself again—a merry, thoughtless boy in his father’s comfortable home.Idle and careless he may have been, not very fond of school —he remembers now ruefully the opportunities he missed fonder of passing his days on his father’s farm, near Bannavem Taberniae, than in the township school, where doubtless Calpurnius would have liked to see this high-spirited lad of his preparing himself, by serious study, to follow his own decorous footsteps in a prosperous official career. Perhaps, if he had been at school instead of out at the “villula” that terrible day of the Slave Raid he might have lived and died, like his father and grandfather before him, a smug “decurion” of a small provincial Roman township But he would never have grown into the St. Patrick whose God-given Mission it was to lead Eire “virgin to Christ.”

 For that Mission’s accomplishment he had first to find Christ himself. Exquisite the passage of the “Confession” in which he tells us how he found Him—amid the solitude of the wintry hills, where, a poor slave boy, he tended his master’s flocks for six long years. Forgotten were cold, and hunger, and loneliness, and grief for the loss of home and kindred, in the warm glow of the Presence of which he had suddenly become conscious, on the desolate slopes of Slemish. 

'SAINT PATRICK'.THE NEWCASTLE AND MAITLAND CATHOLIC SENTINEL,  March 1, 1937, p.200.

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Discovering the Real Saint Patrick through his Confession

 

Last month the blog featured the work of Irish writer Alice Curtayne on Saint Brigid. Today we can look at the work of one of her contemporaries, Father Francis Shaw (1907–70), described by the Dictionary of Irish Biography online as a 'Jesuit priest, Celtic scholar and historical polemicist'. But three decades before he famously became embroiled in the reassessment of Patrick Pearse and the Easter Rising, Father Shaw wrote about the mission of Saint Patrick. It is interesting to see how his critique of the relationship between our national patron and his people in some ways mirrors that of Alice Curtayne on Saint Brigid. She questioned, for example, whether artistic depictions of our patroness only served to further obscure an already shadowy figure. In his 1930 article St. Patrick: A Study in Missionary Achievement, Father Shaw echoed these concerns: 

Certain aspects of St. Patrick's character and career have been worn threadbare in modern literature. In some respects, it may be said that the work of this Saint is well known. Of the strength of the popular devotion to St Patrick, there can be no doubt. Professor MacNeill has said "No one man has ever left so strong and permanent impression on a people, with the single and eminent exception of Moses." While this is undoubtedly true, is it not also true to say that our conception of St. Patrick is, to say the least of it, often hazy and vague? Little attempt is ever made to understand the man himself as he truly was. Are we not too ready to accept the conventional portrait of the tall, bearded man, dressed in green vestments, mitred and with crozier in hand, who stands stiffly on the green sward of Eire and ushers into the sea a whole herd of singularly inoffensive-looking snakes?

For Father Shaw iconography was just a part of the problem. Hagiography, which was still not fully understood at the time he was writing, in his eyes made of Saint Patrick 'an impossible and even a ludicrous figure'. But Father Shaw has the key to uncovering the man both the portrait makers and the medieval writers served to make less real. For, unlike Saint Brigid, our chief patron has left us an account of his mission written in his own words and it is here that the 'real Patrick' will be found:

We have quoted frequently from the Confession and it is in this document that we must find the real Patrick..."Because I wish my brethren and kinsfolk to know what manner of man I am, and that they may be able to understand the desire of my soul." The Confession is not then an autobiography of the saint. It is rather a revelation of the workings of God's grace in the heart of Patrick the missionary, and as such, it has an interest for us far greater than a mere record of events would have. 

And Father Shaw concludes that the real Patrick revealed by the Confession is a powerful figure:

 In studying the work and achievement of the Saint, we have seen evidence of "a strong personality, energetic in action, steadfast, resolute, indomitably persevering," of a practical capacity for organisation and of a natural talent for government. The secret of these qualities is revealed in the Confession. Here we find the motive force for all this energy. On every line of this passionate revelation of soul, the Saint's strong personal love for Christ is shown forth. He has left his home and people to be an exile for the love of Christ. He has endured suffering and tribulation for the love of Christ.

Rev. Francis Shaw, S.J., “St. Patrick: A Study in Missionary Achievement.” The Irish Monthly Volume 58, (1930) 132–49. 

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What is a Confessio?

Yesterday Sister Máire B. de Paor reminded us of the unique privilege we have as Irish people in having Saint Patrick's Confessio in which we can read his own account of his mission. But what is a Confessio? Sister de Paor provides this useful historical sketch:

The Confessio is a literary genre, of which two major extant examples in ancient literature are the Confessions of St Augustine, written about AD 400 when he was a comparatively young man, and the Confessio of St Patrick, written during the fifth century, possibly some short time before his death (C 62:12). In ecclesiastical Latin the term confessio has a threefold significance: confessio peccati, confessio laudis and confessio fidei, i.e. the penitential discipline, the praise of God, and the confession of faith of the martyrs before a tribunal. Confessio in this third context was also termed depositio, or deposition, and the confessors were those who made a deposition or, in other words, subscribed to the faith during the persecution of Christians in the early centuries of the Church. It has been argued cogently by Botte that the word, in the sense of 'subscribing to the faith' was extended in the fourth and fifth centuries to denote those who defended it against heresy, and that Augustine used it in this sense. 

But while a refutation of both the Arianism of the fourth century and the Pelagianism of the fifth are implicit in Patrick's Confessio, it does not appear to be its overt purpose, nor would Patrick have considered himself qualified for such an undertaking....

His Confessio, therefore, defines itself by its own title. It is not an autobiography in the strict sense, because the saint does not tell the story of his life in chronological order and plain narrative, nor is this his sole or main purpose. Neither, as some scholars suggest, is it merely a defence of himself against false accusation, an apologia pro vita sua. While his initial inspiration may well have been the refutation of certain allegations made by his enemies against him and his mission, it evolved into something greater, something more timeless and universal, in the process.

 Máire B. de Paor, PBVM, Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland- An Analysis of St Patrick's Confessio and Epistola (Dublin, 1998), 9-10.

 I found this three-fold definition of a Confessio useful. Much of the frustration with Saint Patrick's Confessio seems to lie in the fact that it is not an autobiography in the modern sense. In which year exactly did he commence his ministry? What motivated his enemies criticism of it? to name but two of the many questions which modern readers might wish had been addressed explicitly. But Sister de Paor concludes by reminding us that Saint Patrick's work

 'is, like St Augustine's, a magnificent, threefold Confessio of repentance, praise and faith as a lived reality. This threefold Confessio evolves out of a retrospective contemplative reflection on the events of Patrick's life.'

 even if historians might continue to regret that it leaves so many aspects of Saint Patrick's life and career open to speculation.  

 

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Treasuring the Writings of our Father in the Faith

In yesterday's post we were reminded of Saint Patrick's unique status as a documented saint of fifth-century Britain and Ireland. This is a point reiterated by one of Saint Patrick's more recent translators, Sister Máire B. de Paor, PBVM. In the introduction to her 1998 analysis of Saint Patrick's writings she states:

Saint Patrick is known to many as Apostle of Ireland; as first Romano-British missionary bishop, beyond the pale of Roman civilisation, he is known to a few; but as a littérateur of stature and genius and a spiritual thinker of great depth and originality, he is relatively little appreciated...Yet, in Patrick's writings we have two unique, personal, spiritual documents from the darkest of the Dark Ages, fifth-century Northern Europe. Indeed, they are the only personal documents that can be claimed by either the Church in Britain or the Church in Ireland from that troubled century.

..We Irish are, moreover, the only nation who have the great privilege of treasuring the writings of our Father in the faith about his founding of the Christian Church in our country. Conscious of the unique Christian heritage bequeathed to us by our national apostle who has left such an indelible impression on his people, I have attempted a modest literary and spiritual exposé of his writings to mark the fifteenth centenary of his death.

Máire B. de Paor, PBVM, Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland- An Analysis of St Patrick's Confessio and Epistola (Dublin, 1998), 6-7.

Having witnessed the attempts to de-Christianize the celebration of Saint Patrick's Day 2026 here in Ireland, it would seem that our need to appreciate the privilege of treasuring our national apostle's writings has become more pressing.

 

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Saint Patrick: The Documented Saint

Today we begin a series of posts exploring some opinions, old and new, about Saint Patrick's Confession. I have often thought that we do not sufficiently appreciate what a blessing it is to be able to read our national apostle's own words. Yes, the Confession raises tantalizing glimpses of Saint Patrick's life and mission, only to leave us with many unanswered questions. Yet we are privileged to be able to hear the voice of a man of the fifth century in these islands at all, as  this is a century noted for a dearth of historical sources. It was only in the nineteenth century when the first English translations appeared that Saint Patrick's writings were made available to the wider Irish public. Now in the twenty-first century we can readily access translations online as well as an entire site dedicated to Saint Patrick's writings courtesy of the Royal Irish Academy's Confessio site which reminds us that 'Patrick is the first identifiable person in Irish history to have his life story recorded'. It is the idea of Saint Patrick being a documented saint which also impressed the anonymous writer of the 1936 Australian newspaper article below. Curiously,  he does not draw on the actual writings in the piece but the point that alone of all the patrons of Britain and Ireland, it is only Saint Patrick whose 'writings are his great and enduring monument' is well made:

 

ST. PATRICK

The Documented Saint

Little is known of the patron saints of  England, Scotland and W ales. But  the patron Saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, is quite another matter. His name is imperishably associated with Slemish and Slane, with Fochlut or Trelawley and Downpatrick. But his writings are his great and enduring monument — his confession, his letter to Caroticus, and his immortal breastplate. 

WHO St. George was remains a mystery, and his connection with England is mythical. St. Andrew was the brother of Peter, and his one great good deed was the bringing of that brother to Jesus. We know little else of him and that he ever reached the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond by either the high road or the low road is highly improbable. St David of Wales has left no relic in building, grave, or writing, only a fragrant memory of devotion and zeal. 

BIRTHPLACE UNCERTAIN. 

YET with all the information contained in the priceless St. Patrick documents there is considerable uncertainty about his birthplace— and some features, of his work are puzzling. Scotland, Wales,  and France claim him as a son of their soil. He had associations with all three, but which gave. him birth remains in doubt There is a controversy as to whether he introduced Christianity to Ireland or whether there were not a number of churches in the land when he began his mission. Some usages of the Irish Church differ widely from those in vogue on the Continent. The rapidity with which he accomplished the conversion of Ireland seems miraculous. In one short lifetime he founded churches in every province and consecrated many bishops. 

CELEBRATION OF EASTER. 

THE great difference between the Celtic Church and the Roman was the date of the celebration of Easter, The Irish followed the Eastern custom, which synchronised Easter with the date of the Jewish Passover, the 14th day of the first month (Nisan or Abib). This provided that Easter Day might not fall on a Sunday. But the Western Church insisted that it should fall on the first Sunday after the full moon — so that if the 14th were a Sunday — Easter would be celebrated on the 21st to keep it apart from the Jewish rite. This was decided by the Roman Church in 198 A.D. The remarkable fact is that Ireland did not concur with this decision until the seventh century. Tradition places the education of St Patrick in the south of Gaul. At that time (the second century) St. Irenaeus of Lyons was the leading Christian' there. He was a native of Asia Minor and favoured the Eastern usage of observing Easter for a- time, hut later conformed to the usage of the West. The supposition is that St Patrick came under the tutelage of St Irenaeus and knew only his earlier custom, and so brought that custom to Ireland. There seems some plausibility in this contention. 

ST. PATRICK'S CREED. 

ONE of the most interesting relics of St. Patrick is his Creed, which is given in full: — 

"There is no other God, nor was there ever any in time past, nor shall there be hereafter, except God the Father, un-begotten, without beginning, almighty,' as we say. And His Son, Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always existed with the Father, from the beginning of the world, after the manner of a spiritual existence begotten .Ineffably before all beginning. And by Hjm were made things visible and invisible. He. was made man, and having overcome death He was received up into Heaven by the Father. And he gave to Him all power above every name of things in Heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. And let every tongue confess to Hjm that Jesus Christ is Lord and God in whom we believe. And we look for His coming soon to judge the quick and the dead, who will render to every man according to his deeds. And He shed on us abundantly the Holy Ghost, the gift and earnest of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey to become children of God, and joint heirs with Christ, whom we confess and adore as One God in the Trinity of the Holy Name." 

The power of one consecrated life is immensely great. In whatever century he lived and worked he made a marvellous transformation in Ireland. He may not have accomplished all that is ascribed to him. but he initiated a movement that still pulsates with life. He was ill-treated in his youth by Irish people, made a slave, hardly used by unkind masters, yet he returned good for evil, brought news of the noblest freedom to those who deprived him of liberty, prayed, toiled and died for those who despised him.

 

ST. PATRICK, The Telegraph  (Brisbane 1936, March 17), p. 12. 

 

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