He in chance says that he went where no men went before. It’s a famous expression that survives down to the present day, and he clearly did go where no other Christian missionary had gone before. And that’s important because in the history of the Western Christian Church, that wasn’t the practice. People, generally speaking, didn’t head out into the brave, blue yonder because it was too dangerous a thing to do. And you certainly get the impression from his own writings that he was able to get on with the Irish to a degree which wasn’t impossible, say, for continental missionaries. 

 

Patrick was not the Druid-destroying figure of myth. He left two documents, the most important, his confession, notable for its humility. “I’m a sinner”, he apologised, “the least among all Christians.” It was these writings that would provide the later church with a vital, unifying symbol. 

 

At the end of the 7th century, the church has an interest in a far more stable society, the idea of a single island, and therefore a single people, and therefore a single nation, and therefore a single faith. Every other church could look back to the great converting Saint. “Gosh, we need to be as good as that.” And it looked back to its origins and it had no documents with one exception, and that was Patrick’s apology. So that had to be carefully edited, and that becomes the myth of the great patron saint.

 

Patrick died around 460 A.D., but there were other missionaries who blended Gaelic traditions with the Christian faith. Monasteries were founded. As a later Gaelic poem put it, “Heathendom has gone down, God, the Father’s kingdom fills heaven, earth and air.” But Ireland was not luxuriating in a Celtic idyll. The early missionaries moved through kingdoms frequently at war with each other.