St Patrick  - Did he bring Christianity to Ireland?  Article in progress, updated Dec 2003. Comments welcome.

St Patrick brought the 'light' of Christianity to pagan Ireland in 432 AD. He wrought many spectacular miracles and fought with druids and sorcerers. Famously, he demonstrated the Trinity with the shamrock. He banished snakes from the island and assured the favoured Irish they wouldn't be burned in the final Apocalypse - they would mercifully be drowned in a Second Flood instead. He was a tall, bearded man, wearing a conical bishop's mitre and carried a crooked crozier.
This is Patrick, Apostle of the Irish, as he was revealed to us by our school teachers, elders and popular storytelling. This is St Patrick, more or less, in all his sainted glory as he had been for well over a thousand years. 
It therefore comes as a shock to find that hardly any of the above is true; that instead, this Patrick is a construct, a fictional figure put together centuries after his alleged mission by professional hagioghraphers in order, it would seem, to cover up some very unpalatable facts.
This was not unusual; in fact it was very much the order of the day. The Church, in the Dark Ages and Early Mediaeval period, had a monopoly on scribes and 'learning' and consequently was the undisputed keeper of records and could write and amend history at will. It wasn't so much Revisionism as Rewriting. 
As the dust of time settled on the forged documents, and nobody dared contradict them, they become dogma. And what they didn't want you to know, became non-facts, airbushed from the record. When the writers of history in the first millenium were almost exclusively clerics themselves, the past - and not just church history -  was an infinitely malleable resource. 
It is comforting however to find that there was an historically verifiable, Christian missionary figure in Ireland in the 5th century, who was appointed by a pope and seemed to be answerable to British superiors. He also had, if not the name (he called himself Succat), at least the title of Patricius.That he converted many of the "heathen" Irish is also not questioned. The sources for this information are two extraordinary documents, Il Confessio  and Epistle to Coroticus. A careful reading of these brings to light a more complex Christian situation in Ireland than the official Church version would have us believe. Also revealed, is a flawed, humane, and characterful Patrick; and one too who is very defensive about his lack of formal learning and prickly about an accusation of a sin committed in his adolescence betrayed to the Church authorities (he tells us) by a close friend.
Even the orthodox theological historians have always allowed the veracity of these documents, at least in the rarefied atmosphere of thological historical debate.
The common man however was certainly not encouraged to explore this area and was handed historically and politically massaged 'Lives'  written centuries after the death of the historical Patrick. In fact, for the first two hundred years after his time, there was little if any prominence given to the man. Even the Venerable Bede, the English chronicler of the early church in the British Isles, doesn't mention any Patrick! 
There is no historical evidence of his grave, of the founding of churches, schools or monasteries;  these 'facts' were assigned to the interesting and humble Patrick almost two centuries after his death in the first attempt to use him and his life for political/religious purposes. 

The earliest agreed date for an arrival in Ireland of a missionary called Patrick, or Patricius, is 432 AD. There is some evidence that he did not arrive here until 461. There is also argument that there were several St Patricks: and one 19th C expert opinion that there was none!
But, even taking the earliest date, there is first class documentary evidence that a bishop was sent to Ireland before Patrick. In 431 AD a bishop, Palladius, "was appointed to the Irish believing in Christ". This was recorded contemporaneously by the usually accurate Prosper of Aquitane. The Pope that made the appointment was Celestius. It was the usual practice at the time (and just common and personnel-saving sense!) to send a bishop to a community only after groundwork conversion had been done by lowlier prelates. A general would hardly be sent on his own to pacify an enemy.
There is only the most paltry information about Palladius. He did not seem to stay long on these shores. It is mostly agreed that he died in 432 AD probably on his way to Scotland.
One of the contrarian  theories is that he was in fact the first of two Patricks, Palladius Patrick, and that he was active in the country until 461 (O'Rahilly, The Two Patricks, 1942 ).
Setting the Patricks aside for the moment, there is goodly evidence also that there were other "saints" in Ireland before Patrick. Ciaran, Ailbe and Kevin have huge pre-Patrician traditions and foundations in the midlands, east and south of the country. They are said to have been sent by the Gallic church, arriving in Ireland at least several decades before the 430s. The implication is that Patrick's mission, funded by the British church was confined to the "barbarian" north and west of the country.
The stories of these intriguing figures, allied to others like the enigmatic and possibly pre-christian St. Bridget, is evidence of a substantial pre-Patrician christian presence in the island.

But there is more, much more: half a century before Patrick's time an Irishman, Pelagius, appeared in Rome and sermonised all and sundry in the most eloquent Latin (and Greek later). He had an extraordinary message: there was, according to the striking, personable preacher, no foundation in Scripture for the then newly-promulgated doctrine of original sin. He furthermore taught, and this was probably the main reason for his eventual downfall, there was no need for a clergy to act as mediators between God and man.
Pelagius, was preaching Reformation - almost a thousand years before Luther. 
And this learned and disputatious theologian, taking on the big guns - the Early Fathers of the Church, St. Augustine and St. Jerome - came from Ireland where, officially, Christianity didn't even exist at that time.  

Note; will write up the rest of this on Pelagius early in 2004.

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