So, you think you know everything there is to know about St. Paddy, do you
Did you know Paddy actually opened a portal to Purgatory to troll the pagans
Oh, and that he was about as authentically Irish as me accent
Let's get into it. There's three things you know about Ireland's St. Patrick that are full of Blarney
but let's get to that in a minute. While it's certainly true he really existed back in the 5th century
most of the things we know about him were made up to make him seem cooler than he ever was in real life
And to be fair, it worked. But the truth is that the only things we know for sure about the dude come from two of his own works
the Epistola, or Letter, and the Confessio, which is basically Paddy's autobiography
So about those three things that we believe about St. Patrick that aren't true
Well, first off, St. Patrick wasn't Irish. Oh, and also, number two, his real name wasn't even Patrick
His name was Maywin Sukat, and he was the son of a Christian deacon in Roman Britain
who was kidnapped by Irish pirates at age 16. He spent six years in slavery herding sheep
Eventually, he got a letter, or had a vision, or heard a mysterious voice, telling him to escape
and where to find a ship home. That ship was 200 miles away, but somehow Maewyn got there and made
it home to Britain. The third thing? Well, we're going to save that part for later. We'll have to
explain the snakes and the fox turning thing. Wait till you hear the fox part. According to the
confessio, at one point, St. Patrick and the sailors who brought him home were starving to
death. That is, until Patrick prayed and God sent them enough pigs for a two-day feast
After that, Patrick devoted his life to God until he once again got a letter or had a vision or some
combo of the two. Then he heard a voice coming out of this letter that said
Holy boy, please return to us. We need you. Since Patrick had had good luck the last time
he listened to a vision or read the letter, he sailed back to the Emerald Isle. But this time
as a missionary rather than a slave. Not everyone was happy to see him, though
Much of the rest of the confessio was about Patrick, now a bishop, being on trial for
mysterious reasons that he never really discloses. But while he never, um, confessios to any crimes
he does mention returning gifts given to him by rich ladies, not charging for thousands of
baptisms and ordinations, and paying for a bunch of gifts he gave to kings and judges
It all sounds a bit friby, but who knows? He's building churches and paying chieftains so that members of their tribes can join his
order and become ordained. He's using church money to buy slaves. The whole thing does kind of point to money trouble, maybe using his job as a bishop to
get that paper as some do. But that's it. Besides a little more detail about dealing with chiefs and converting Christians, that's
where the facts about St. Pat and the legend begins. The first major addendum to the legend of St. Patrick came from a 7th century monk and
historian named Muirchu Makiu MacDani and no that name not made up He wrote a work called the Vita Sancti Patrici or The Life of St Patrick The work credits Patrick with converting all of Ireland to Christianity through various
miraculous means. In truth, Christianity probably came to Ireland via traitors and slaves from Roman Britain
like Patrick himself. In fact, there were so many Christians in Ireland by Patrick's time that the Pope sent
a bishop named Palladius to tend to them all in 431 AD. Some scholars believe that many of the traditions that attached themselves to St. Patrick were
originally about Palladius, but Wirtu and other Hachyographers — those are people who write about
the lives of saints — wanted to build St. Patrick into a national hero in order to unify
Irish Christians. And Wirtu did a great job, throwing Palladius under the bus and turning
Patrick into a mass-converting, miracle-working, druid-stomping wizard for Christ. One of the first things Wirtu does to beef up St. Patrick's resume is to give him an
angel for a BFF. In the Confessio, Pat talks about a man named Victoricus who brought him the letter
telling him to return to Ireland. But Weirchu thought the story needed punching up, and recast
Victoricus as both the angels sent by God to tell Patrick his ship had come in, then reappeared to
tell him, "...the sons and daughters of the Wood of Folkloot are calling you." Apparently, this means
go to Ireland. Then, to make it a three-peat, Weirchu's new and improved Victoricus appears to
Patrick as a burning bush to cement Pat's reputation as the Irish Moses
The rest of Muirchu's Vita relates all sorts of miracles and hideous magical murders performed
by St. Patrick. But if you were thinking, sure, he telekinetically smashed a man's head into paste and destroyed
an army by summoning an earthquake, but there's no way he turned a man into a fox
Well, think again. According to Muirchu, there was a king named Coroticus who liked to murder Christians
Patrick sent the guy a sternly worded letter saying, you know, come on, dude, cut it out
Surprisingly, Carotacus did not cut it out. In fact, he made fun of Patrick's request
So Patrick asked God to do something about this uncouth fellow. Well, at Carotacus' next public appearance, some guy recited a poem about how the king
was bad and should feel bad about being bad, and everyone started chanting
the king sucks, like it was the WWE. They sticked off the king so much that he turned into a fox and ran away
Problem solved, right? When you think of St. Patrick, if you do, you might think he drove the snakes out of Ireland
followed by something about a shamrock. In the name of the Lord
Problem is, there haven't been any snakes in Ireland since before the last ice age
so that actually didn't happen. Now, some of you may have heard that the snakes were a metaphor for the Druids
as Patrick is credited with driving paganism out of Ireland, and snakes are symbols of wisdom and healing to Druids. Paganism
Yes Instead of praying to God pagans pray to things like twigs Look sometimes a snake is just a snake man The idea that the snakes were a metaphor is super recent
The addition of this story to Patrick's life is pretty late, and as we've already discussed
Patrick's role in Christianizing Ireland has been pretty exaggerated. Plus, Myrchu is totally cool with talking about Patrick killing a druid
Now, as the Shamrock story goes, Patrick used the common three-leaf clover
to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. Oh, great shamrock, you are powerful
No, no, no, no, no, no. This is simply a metaphor. The same way that the clover is one thing with three separate elements
God is three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But the earliest written account of Patrick using the shamrock to explain the Trinity
doesn't pop up until 1726. That's like 1,300 years after Patrick died
The story was most likely a convenient way to connect Patrick and the shamrock, both of which had become national symbols of Ireland by the 18th century
National branding at work. Everyone knows if you don't wear green on St. Paddy's, you get pinched
The next time someone pinches you for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day
pinch them back and tell them St. Patrick's color should be blue, not green
And mention the Fox story, because that's just amazing. Anyway, although Ireland is known for its lovely rolling green hills
blue was the quintessential Irish color from most of the country's history. St. Patrick himself used to be shown wearing blue, as was Flaas Aran
the ancient female personification of the island. Blue became a patriotic color for the Irish, and St. Patrick's blue in particular
was worn by the chivalric order of St. Patrick in the 1700s
Traces of blue can still be seen in Irish guards' uniforms. By the modern era, St. Patrick's blue had been largely forgotten
and green was heavily incorporated into popular St. Patrick's Day celebrations, traditions, particularly in the U.S. The idea that the color green is the first line of defense
against leprechauns, for example, is a fairly unknown, albeit charming, Irish-American myth
A further bit of evidence that Patrick didn't wipe out all the Irish pagans in his lifetime
is that pagan arguments against Christianity were still widespread in Ireland a thousand years after
Patrick's death. But perhaps the best-known argument during the 5th century came in the
form of a series of debates between St. Patrick and pagan warrior Ushin. Ushin was the son of one
of the greatest warriors of Irish myth, Finn McCool. Oshin managed to outlive the rest of Finn's warriors by marrying a fairy princess who
took him to the land of the young. When he finds out that what he thought was a few months there turned out to be 200 years
he returns to Ireland during Patrick's time to find things have much changed
Instead of the warrior clans he's used to, he found priests, monks, and churches everywhere
Patrick's the only person in Ireland who recognizes the once-great Celtic warrior, and the two
engage in a lengthy series of debates over the value of a pagan life versus a Christian one
Ashin argues that Christians are small intolerant and mean while Patrick condemns the violence of Ashin way of life and extols the greatness of God The way he does this is by spouting bigotry and fire dogma inspiring Asheen
to call him Patrick of the Closed Mind. And he's not wrong
On the balance, Patrick — and by extension, Christianity — come off looking pretty bad
According to 13th-century legend, at one point in his mission to Ireland, St. Patrick despaired
that he might never get through to the crazy pagans and begged God to send him a sign that
he was doing the right thing. God told him to draw a giant circle in the dirt with his staff
and when he did, a literal hellmouth opened within the circle. And by hellmouth, we mean a gate to
purgatory, the afterlife's waiting room where people cleanse themselves of sin. From this almost
literal hellhole, one could hear the wailing of sinners, and Patrick used the sight to prove the
existence of the Christian afterlife. Stories of medieval heroes trying to enter this portal and
survive are fairly common. What the hell? Your eyes should have been ripped out hours ago
I know, I know. I was able to chew my legs off by myself, but I can't get my teeth around my eyes
Here's the thing, though. The place, Patrick's Hellmouth, is totally real, and you can get there
Not like, casually, the way you might get to, say, Disneyland, but annual pilgrimages to the
monastic compound built over the gate to the afterlife continue to this day
It's on an island in the middle of a lake called Loch D'Or. The pilgrimage requires visitors to
walk barefoot in contemplation in what's known to be one of the hardest pilgrimages in the Christian
world. But is the hellmouth part real? You'll have to make the trip to find out
Okay, so that third thing? Well, if you've been following along, you probably guessed
St. Patrick is technically not a saint because he was never canonized. While this is sort of true
it's a little unfair because the process of canonization changed a great deal in the High
Middle Ages. In the 12th century, Pope Alexander III made up a new rule that saints had to be
approved by Rome, no exceptions. The process evolved over time, but it eventually came to
involve an investigation into the holiness of the person in question, along with evidence that they
performed miracles. There's one loophole. A pope can simply declare that an ancient saint is a saint
via extraordinary canonization. St. Patrick was referred to as a saint long before these rules
came down, but for some reason, he never got the official nod from any pope. Ergo, not really a
saint. You can certainly make the case that this is nothing more than hair splitting. Hundreds of
people became saints before the 12th century, and they're still treated as saints today
Furthermore, as noted by one horrified author from the ancient order of Hibernaeans
St. Patrick's relics were formerly interred at a monastery under the watchful eyes of a cardinal
shortly after the rule change. This ritual was often used to identify a saintly person before
a more formal process was developed, and the presence of the cardinal was effectively a
form of consent from Rome. But as far as getting the nod from the Vatican, Patrick's still waiting