St. Patrick: a scholarly approach
An email group I belong to includes a learned gentleman who has kindly consented to let me post his short essay on Patrick here. I shall cut for those not interested in it. It is rather long for an LJ post; it is, IMO, well worth reading just for the excellent citations provided.
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The history is complicated (believe me, with Patrick as my middle name, I've wrestled with this one).
He was said to have cut down groves of trees sacred to the Druids. As one whose spent most of his life talking to trees, we're going to have to have a word or two on that one when we meet.
At the same time, those groves may have, at some point at least been associated with human sacrifice... Ireland, like nearly every other civilization on Earth has a history of that, although the propaganda of the colonizers (be they Roman or post-conversion Christian historians) must always be considered carefully.
Tom Cahill, a good Irish Jesuit like my dad writes very sensitively about all of this in his "How the Irish Saved Civilization." I definately recommend reading it to anyone interested. He handles the human sacrifice question with an attempt to get into the ancient Irish worldview which, verified with one of the best-preserved human bodies in existence (right down to skin and facial expressions, thanks to a peat-bog), suggests these sacrifices may have been willing, or at least seen as neccessary for the survival of the people in a time of crisis (which, to some degree is echoed in at least some Aztec sacrifices). He ponders how aspects of Christianity might have appealed to the Irish soul, even as much of the ancient religion and its stories seems to have been slipped wholesale into the early irish church.
Cahill ponders how this great race of warrior heroes (who not only beserked, like the Norse, but also did so while charging naked into battle- they REALLY freaked out the Romans, whose accouts are fun to read) converted to a religion of peace nearly overnight by the efforts of a former slave. He ponders how the Irish bardic, magical and heroic spirit seemed to naturally embrace books and writing on their own terms (including "self-portraits" of authors with erect, fertile phalli snuck into the corners of Biblical texts, perhaps as a magical blessing!). And the warrior spirit, which seemed to inspire radical monastics to climb mountains, sail Oceans and commit other acts of insane "penance" nevertheless had enough of its old fire to give us reason to believe actual battles between monasteries, often over books were not uncommon (St. Brendan was specifically disciplined for this, though the "rule" applied to him seems to suggest it was a regular occurance)!
Cahill and others, in fact suggest the Druids seem to have integrated into Christian ecclessial, monastic and scholarly structures fairly heavily- leading to Saintly figures, including my own namesake (Kieran/Ciran), who were said to cast spells on disobedient kings, and at least one story of a "Roman" Bishop who arrived in Ireland, only to find a whole bunch of Druid-like characters claiming "oh, we already have those" (the story goes he told them to go away, and they obliged him vanishing back into the forest! :) )
Ireland is one of the few places on Earth where Christianity seems to have arrived with barely any bloodshed- so much so that warrior-spirited Irish converts grumbled about a lack of opportunities for heroic martyrdom (one of their reasons for throwing themselves recklessly at nature and acetiscm). One should also recall that Patrick, an escaped slave would later write one of the earliest, most impassioned anti-slave tracts when an Irish warlord cruely kidnapped (and likely sexually violated, in Patrick's opinion) a new community of Irish converts who had been Baptized and committed to living peacefully days earlier.
Its a complicated and still largely mysterious history... but one the Irish seem to have had a firm hand in- along with preserving most of the rest of the Western world's histories to boot, ironically. One thing I try to recall is that the same pained interest with which I and others long for lost knowledge of "indigenous" Celtic traditions (often out of disatisfaction with aspects of present Christianity/dominant religion) seems in all likely hood to have been the way many people, particularly the poor or disinfranchised greeted Christianity. This has held out across the Greco-Roman and Celtic world, from all I've studied. Any faith that speaks to the marginalized, or which answers questions the dominant religion seems to silence shows great historical power- and we should not assume it is always a matter of imperialist conversion (though Christianity's history is FAR too full of this- bearing in mind that in these times, ANY religion was expected to be tied to state and military power, its just the way the world worked).
In many ways, what "converted" many Irish to Christ was, in all likelihood the same longing for spiritual authenticity and experience that attracts so many to neo-pagan, indigenous and shamanic traditions today. It is, I believe something holy, placed in us by Creator, that longs for truth, justice and authentic faith.
As a final aside, evidence from Irish-mountain stories and traditions seems to show that Patrick was very much expected to convert the Irish on "their" terms. He was sent up to the tops of mountains to battle spirits, and prove his mettle in a very shamanic fashion. Thousands of Irish still make pilgrimage 7 of these mountains, originally ancient pagan shrines- the scholar Michael Gibbons, who just spoke at Harvard claims it to be Irish's most stable religious institution, independent of any church (and outlasting all of them amidst revolutions and today's apathy).
I'd be glad to privately provide information about the email group. madfedor@yahoo.com
Begin copied text...
The history is complicated (believe me, with Patrick as my middle name, I've wrestled with this one).
He was said to have cut down groves of trees sacred to the Druids. As one whose spent most of his life talking to trees, we're going to have to have a word or two on that one when we meet.
At the same time, those groves may have, at some point at least been associated with human sacrifice... Ireland, like nearly every other civilization on Earth has a history of that, although the propaganda of the colonizers (be they Roman or post-conversion Christian historians) must always be considered carefully.
Tom Cahill, a good Irish Jesuit like my dad writes very sensitively about all of this in his "How the Irish Saved Civilization." I definately recommend reading it to anyone interested. He handles the human sacrifice question with an attempt to get into the ancient Irish worldview which, verified with one of the best-preserved human bodies in existence (right down to skin and facial expressions, thanks to a peat-bog), suggests these sacrifices may have been willing, or at least seen as neccessary for the survival of the people in a time of crisis (which, to some degree is echoed in at least some Aztec sacrifices). He ponders how aspects of Christianity might have appealed to the Irish soul, even as much of the ancient religion and its stories seems to have been slipped wholesale into the early irish church.
Cahill ponders how this great race of warrior heroes (who not only beserked, like the Norse, but also did so while charging naked into battle- they REALLY freaked out the Romans, whose accouts are fun to read) converted to a religion of peace nearly overnight by the efforts of a former slave. He ponders how the Irish bardic, magical and heroic spirit seemed to naturally embrace books and writing on their own terms (including "self-portraits" of authors with erect, fertile phalli snuck into the corners of Biblical texts, perhaps as a magical blessing!). And the warrior spirit, which seemed to inspire radical monastics to climb mountains, sail Oceans and commit other acts of insane "penance" nevertheless had enough of its old fire to give us reason to believe actual battles between monasteries, often over books were not uncommon (St. Brendan was specifically disciplined for this, though the "rule" applied to him seems to suggest it was a regular occurance)!
Cahill and others, in fact suggest the Druids seem to have integrated into Christian ecclessial, monastic and scholarly structures fairly heavily- leading to Saintly figures, including my own namesake (Kieran/Ciran), who were said to cast spells on disobedient kings, and at least one story of a "Roman" Bishop who arrived in Ireland, only to find a whole bunch of Druid-like characters claiming "oh, we already have those" (the story goes he told them to go away, and they obliged him vanishing back into the forest! :) )
Ireland is one of the few places on Earth where Christianity seems to have arrived with barely any bloodshed- so much so that warrior-spirited Irish converts grumbled about a lack of opportunities for heroic martyrdom (one of their reasons for throwing themselves recklessly at nature and acetiscm). One should also recall that Patrick, an escaped slave would later write one of the earliest, most impassioned anti-slave tracts when an Irish warlord cruely kidnapped (and likely sexually violated, in Patrick's opinion) a new community of Irish converts who had been Baptized and committed to living peacefully days earlier.
Its a complicated and still largely mysterious history... but one the Irish seem to have had a firm hand in- along with preserving most of the rest of the Western world's histories to boot, ironically. One thing I try to recall is that the same pained interest with which I and others long for lost knowledge of "indigenous" Celtic traditions (often out of disatisfaction with aspects of present Christianity/dominant religion) seems in all likely hood to have been the way many people, particularly the poor or disinfranchised greeted Christianity. This has held out across the Greco-Roman and Celtic world, from all I've studied. Any faith that speaks to the marginalized, or which answers questions the dominant religion seems to silence shows great historical power- and we should not assume it is always a matter of imperialist conversion (though Christianity's history is FAR too full of this- bearing in mind that in these times, ANY religion was expected to be tied to state and military power, its just the way the world worked).
In many ways, what "converted" many Irish to Christ was, in all likelihood the same longing for spiritual authenticity and experience that attracts so many to neo-pagan, indigenous and shamanic traditions today. It is, I believe something holy, placed in us by Creator, that longs for truth, justice and authentic faith.
As a final aside, evidence from Irish-mountain stories and traditions seems to show that Patrick was very much expected to convert the Irish on "their" terms. He was sent up to the tops of mountains to battle spirits, and prove his mettle in a very shamanic fashion. Thousands of Irish still make pilgrimage 7 of these mountains, originally ancient pagan shrines- the scholar Michael Gibbons, who just spoke at Harvard claims it to be Irish's most stable religious institution, independent of any church (and outlasting all of them amidst revolutions and today's apathy).
I'd be glad to privately provide information about the email group. madfedor@yahoo.com