ORIGIN OF ST.  PATRICK'S DAY

THE BUILDER OCTOBER 1922

Will you please inform me of the (origin of St. Patrick's Day and why the Roman Catholics celebrate on that day?
O.C.S., Texas.

St. Patrick was made a saint by the Church of Rome, and therefore a day was officially set aside for him in the Calendar of Saints.  St. Patrick was a great and noble man whose personality and career appealed to the Irish people and this popularity caused the celebration of his day to become a popular holiday. This may appear to be a very indefinite reply but it is difficult to know how else to frame it, seeing that the "origin of St. Patrick's Day" cannot be referred to any one individual or act.

You may care to know something about St. Patrick himself who, though his own proper person became almost entirely hidden behind a great smoke-screen of legends and miracle-stories, was really a hero worthy of every man's reverence.  Patrick, whose British name was Sucat, was born in Britain - some think it may have been in Scotland - about 390 to 400, therefore this famous Irish Saint was not himself an Irishman, which is a kind of Irish bull that history has played on us.  He was the son of a deacon in the church and the grandson of a priest - in those days the clergy married like other human beings - nevertheless he was not, as a youth, particularly religious.  When about fourteen or fifteen years of age he was captured by a gang of Irish pirates and sold off to slavery in Ireland, where he resided for six years, when he made his escape.  Some historians believe he went to Gaul, others that he returned home; be that as it may we know that he became very devout and determined to return to the Irish heathen as a missionary.  This he did in 432.  He was so successful that when he died in 461 he had established an everlasting fame, and had made that appeal to the popular imagination which inspired such a wealth of legends.

Was Patrick a Roman Catholic? The evidence goes to show to a fair and candid mind that he was not a follower of the pope.  Space does not permit here an exhibition of all the evidences on this famous question so I shall content myself with two: first, the evidence from the history of early British Christianity; second, the evidence left by Patrick himself.


Christianity was planted in Britain at an early date - so early, that British bishops sat in the Synod of Arles in 314.  The faith was very probably introduced by the Roman army.  That army withdrew in 410 or thereabouts, after which time there was little or no intercourse between the British churches and Rome. The Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc., came in and drove the British Christians into Wales where gradually there grew up a powerful British Church, owing no allegiance whatsoever to the Roman popes. The popes made overtures to this Church in the sixth century - 100 years after Patrick's time - but to no avail.  On this point two historians may be quoted.  Gieseler says that "the union was close between the British and Irish churches; they retained many old arrangements.  That the Britons acknowledged no ecclesiastical power of the pope over them is proved by their opposition to the Roman regulations, an opposition which continued in Ireland down to the twelfth century." Lappenberg makes the same point, and as clearly: "The points of difference between the Roman and British Churches (established probably on the oldest direct tradition from Judea) were, the time of celebrating Easter, the form of tonsure, the administration of baptism, the ecclesiastical benediction of matrimony, the manner of ordination, but above all, the refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope."

Since Patrick was a British Christian and since the British Church owed no allegiance to Rome it is very probable that Patrick himself was not a Romanist.

In his old age Patrick wrote an account of his own career and his religious faith.  Among historians this work, named "Confessions," is very generally held to be genuine.  In this autobiographical account Patrick not only says absolutely nothing about any connection with Rome but sets forth a creed very different from that officially promulgated by Rome at that period.  Here is what Neander has to say on this: "If Patrick came to Ireland as a deputy from Rome, it might have been expected that in the Irish Church a certain sense of dependence would always have been preserved towards the mother Church at Rome. But we find, on the contrary, in the Irish Church afterwards, a spirit of Church freedom similar to that shown by the ancient British Church, which struggled against the yoke of Romish ordinances.

"We find subsequently among the Irish, a much greater agreement with the ancient British than with Roman Ecclesiastical usages.  This goes to prove that the origin of the Irish Church was independent of Rome.

"Again, no indication of his connection with the Roman Church is to be found in St. Patrick's Confession; rather everything seems to favour the supposition that he was ordained Bishop in Britain itself, in his forty-fifth year."

From all this it would appear that, strange as it may sound, Patrick was neither an Irishman nor a Roman Catholic.
