17. Saint Patrick Didn’t Banish Snakes… and He Wasn’t Even Irish
Saint Patrick might be the world’s most famous saint thanks to holidays that bear his name that are celebrated in the United States and other countries. The beloved saint’s life story is full of many myths, legends, and untrue accounts. Of those, the best known are probably the one in which he banishes the snakes from Ireland, and another in which he popularized the shamrock and made it an Irish symbol. It is taken for granted by many that Saint Patrick was Irish, but that is inaccurate. He was born circa 390 AD to a Christian deacon and his wife in the Roman province of Britain in what is now England, Wales, or Scotland – accounts vary.
Patrick, or “Patricius” as he wrote his name, was seized by Irish raiders when he was sixteen-years-old, and taken to Ireland as a slave. After six years of slavery, he fled and returned to England. There, he received religious instruction, before he returned to Ireland – voluntarily, this time – as a missionary. The perception that he introduced Christianity to Ireland is also inaccurate. Patrick might have helped spread that faith there, but Ireland already had a Christian community before his arrival. In 431, for example, before the earliest estimate of Patrick’s arrival in Ireland, Pope Celestine sent a bishop named Palladius “to the Irish believing in Christ“. Ireland already had a Christian community big enough to warrant a bishop.
