Patrick, St., a distinguished missionary of the 5th century, commonly known as the Apostle of Ireland. There is some uncertainty as to the date and place of his birth. His birth is assigned to the year 372 by Ussher (Eccl. Brit. Antiq., in vi. pp. 375-380, with which compare Wh. Stokes's Introduction to Tripartite Life of St Patrick, p. cxxxvii., Rolls series, Lond. 1887). Of the place, it is only known for certain, from his own Confession, that his father had a small farm near
Bannavem Taberniæ; and in one of the ancient lives he is said to have been born at Nemthur. Arguing on these data, together with other collateral indications, some writers assign his birth-place to the present Boulogne-sur-Mer; others to a place on the estuary of the Clyde (called from him Kilpatrick) near Dumbarton. His father, as he himself tells, was a deacon named Calpurnius, and his grandfather, Potitus, a priest; his mother, according to the ancient biographers, was named Conches or Conchessa, and was a sister of St Martin of Tours. Patrick's original Celtic name is said to have been Succat, Patricius being his Latin designation. In his sixteenth year he was seized, while at his father's farm of Bannavem Taberniæ, by a band of pirates, and with a number of others was carried to Ireland and sold to a petty chief, in whose service he remained for six years. This chief's name was Miluic or Milchu. He lived in the valley of the Braid near Slemish Mountain, just outside the town of Broughshane, in the centre of the County Antrim, where a town-land called Bally-lig-patrick ('the town of Patrick's hollow') still preserves the memory of his residence. This district of Antrim was then famous for its piratical expeditions into Britain, as the vast finds of Roman coins all along the Antrim coast as far as Coleraine amply prove. After six years Patrick succeeded in effecting his escape, and, probably after a second captivity, went to France, where he became a monk, first at Tours and afterwards in the celebrated monastery of Lerins, which was then the residence of John Cassian, the admirer of Egyptian monasticism, and of vast numbers of Egyptian monks; hence the numerous points of contact with Egyptian customs which have been noticed in the ancient Irish Church (see IRELAND, Vol. VI. p. 210, G. T. Stokes's Celtic Church, p. 188, and Butler's Coptic Churches, passim). In the year 432 he went as a missionary to Ireland when sixty years of age, after he had been ordained by an unknown Gallic bishop named Matorix or Amatorix, or else by Germanus of Auxerre; Palladius, who had been sent by Pope Celestine as missionary to that country a short time before, having died. He seems to have been made a bishop in his forty-fifth year.
The leading facts of Patrick's life in Ireland as they are collected out of the various documents are these. He sailed from France to Wales or Ireland. The Welsh claim that he landed in Wales before he went to Ireland (see Giraldus Cambrensis, iii. 379, Rolls series). The communication, however, between Wales and the east coast of Ireland has been very frequent from the earliest ages. He first landed as a missionary in Ireland at the town of Wicklow at the mouth of the river Vartry; thence he sailed north to convert his old master Milchu, who destroyed himself at his approach. Milchu was a chief of Northern Dalriada, a district which extended from the middle of Antrim to Newry. In the County Down, in the south of the same Dalriada, he converted another chief named Dichu, who bestowed upon him the first Christian church that St Patrick possessed. It was called Sabhall (Saul) or 'the barn,' and it is still a church called by exactly the same name. St Patrick then set out to Tara in the County Meath, which was at that period the central point of meeting for all the tribes of Ireland. There he preached to the king of Tara, Laoghaire, or Leary (as the name should be pronounced), where Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity; this is, however, a mere modern legend. Thence he proceeded to Connaught, as far as Croagh-Patrick in Mayo, to Ulster, and as far as Cashel in the south. We can trace his footsteps in all these directions by the topography of the country as well as by the documents which are extant. His mission was eminently successful. He adopted the expedient of addressing himself first to the chiefs, and of improving, as far as possible, the spirit of clanship and other existing usages of the Irish for the furtherance of his preaching; nor can it be doubted that he had much success in Christianising the ancient Irish system of belief and of practice. According to the accounts of his Irish biographers, he founded 365 churches and baptised with his own hand 12,000 persons. He is said also to have consecrated 450 bishops, ordained a vast number of priests, and to have blessed very many monks and nuns. After he had been some twenty years engaged in his missionary enterprise, he is said to have fixed his see at Armagh about the year 454, where he held probably more than one synod, the decrees of which have been a subject of much controversy. He died at Saul, the spot which Diehu had given him on his first arrival, and was buried at Downpatrick, where his relics were preserved down to the period of the Reformation. The place is still venerated by the people. The date of his death is much disputed, the Bollandists placing it in 460, while Ussher holds it to have been 493. Dr Todd inclines strongly to the latter opinion, in which case Patrick's age would have been quite 120. The only certainly authentic literary remains of St Patrick are his 'Confession' and a letter, both of very rude Latinity, but of much historical interest. The letter is addressed to Coroticus, by some supposed to have been a Welsh chieftain named Caradoc (from whom Cardigan is named), by others regarded as a pirate chief from near Dumbarton (W. Stokes's Tripartite Life of St Patrick, Introd. p. c.), who had made a descent on the Irish coast, and slain or carried off, with circumstances of great cruelty, a number of the Irish, many of whom were neophytes. These, with some other remains ascribed to him, as also decrees of synods, were published in Wilkins' Concilia, and separately by Ware, Opuscula S. Patricii (1656). The Book of Armagh is in MS. in Trinity College, Dublin, dating from the 8th century. The copy in it of St Patrick's Confession claims to have been made from St Patrick's autograph. For this MS., see Stokes's Celtic Church.
A good biography of St Patrick is that of the Rev. J. H. Todd (Dublin, 1863); a more recent one is by E. J. Newell (1890). The best and latest edition of all the documents concerning St Patrick is Dr Whitley Stokes's two vols. in the Rolls series (1887) styled the Tripartite Life of St Patrick, where every fragment bearing upon his history has been industriously gathered and critically estimated. Dr Whitley Stokes has there printed the documents from the Book of Armagh which are the earliest authentic notices of the saint, and the foundation upon which all later lives have been built.