Although we’re still almost a
week away from St. Patrick’s Day, this is the last chance I’ll have to
retell an old tale before then, so here goes.
I’ve been studying the Irish
language (conveniently called Irish) for three years now. Irish is a difficult language, but it is my goal
to become completely fluent. So far, I’m as fluent as an Irish infant, but I’m still trying.
And you can’t study things
Irish without bumping into the stories of old.
And although it’s not often discussed in polite circles, the Irish of
old had a disturbing history of slavery.
In all the Celtic world, the
Irish were the most feared slavers. They
would sail to the coasts of Britain searching for isolated villages, grab the
children in the night, and sail away with them.
These children would then be
bartered in the slave markets of Ireland, and most would become servants or shepherds. We have first-hand testimony
of one of these slaves. In about 400 A.D.
a sixteen-year-old boy was captured by Irish slavers, taken in the night from
his home in Britain and trundled off to Ireland.
He was a Christian boy, the
grandson of a priest, and his name was Maewyn
Succat. Maewyn spent six years as a slave, hungry and cold working as a shepherd
before he escaped back to Britain. But
even as he endured hunger and cold, something about Ireland caught hold of him,
and called on him to return.
While the druids prayed in
their sacred groves, making sacrifices to the gods and goddesses, a new
religion was on the march. Christianity
had already taken hold throughout much of Europe and Britain, and it was about
to reach Ireland.
Having escaped slavery in
Ireland, Maewyn never felt at home in Britain.
He heard voices calling him to God and decided to join the Church. He studied in a French monastery, was
ordained priest, and became a missionary.
He would take the Good Spell
– the Gospel of Jesus to the Irish.
He made it his mission to
walk the pagus – Latin for countryside. And Ireland, having not one city, was all
pagus. And in this matter, the inhabitants,
the pagans, would hear the word of God.
As a missionary, Maewyn took
the name Patricius, meaning noble born. And so the French-trained British
man who would forever be known at St.
Patrick set sail in the year 432 to convert the Irish.
The druids were skeptical,
and the kings no less so, but Patrick moved north to the Hill of Tara, where the Irish high kings were crowned.
According to legend, Patrick
met High King Oengus at Tara, held up a shamrock and used it to explain the holy trinity, how three things can be
one thing, how shapes and forms can shift.
And he introduced the Celtic
cross, combining the cross with the symbol for the sun, which respected the
pagan reverence for the natural world.
Patrick established monasteries
from one end of Ireland to the other. And
Ireland became the one country in the world where Christianity was spread
without bloodshed.
Since Ireland had no
cities, these monasteries became centers of communities. And the natural mysticism of the Irish people
was respected and welcomed by these new holy men. The druids were welcomed, and even the pagan
festivals were respected and celebrated.
Patrick had made one other
significant contribution – wherever he traveled, he condemned the institution
of slavery. And who better than a former
slave to do that?
By the time of his death in
461or shortly thereafter, Christianity was well established, and the Irish
slave trade was no more. And Patrick,
the British-born former-slave became the most famous Irishman of all.
