Saint Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland
Bishop and Enlightener of Ireland
- Feast day
- March 17
- Lived
- c. 385–461
- Patronage
- Ireland; missionaries, former captives
Saint Patrick belongs to the undivided Church of the first millennium and is venerated by Orthodox Christians as the apostle of Ireland — a former slave who returned to evangelise the people who had enslaved him.
Life
Born in Roman Britain to a deacon's family, Patrick was seized by Irish raiders at sixteen and spent six years herding sheep in captivity, during which, as he writes in his Confession, he prayed a hundred times a day and came to real faith. He escaped, trained for the priesthood in Gaul, and returned to Ireland as a bishop.
He baptised thousands, ordained clergy, established monastic communities, and confronted the druidic order and the local kings, by his own account being beaten, robbed and imprisoned repeatedly.
Orthodox veneration
His Confession and the Letter to Coroticus, in which he denounces a British warlord for enslaving newly baptised Christians, are his only certain writings and are among the earliest Christian texts from these islands. Orthodox parishes across the English-speaking world keep his feast on March 17, and the prayer known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate is widely used.