How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

Patricius (Patrick) was kidnapped from Romano-British society and forced into enslaved service as a shepherd toiling under a local chieftain called Miliucc. Isolated in the hills with his herds, Patrick took refuge in his Christianity. He escaped his enslavement to devote his life to religion after receiving a divine vision. He fled Ireland on a ship headed for Gaul, arriving around 407 CE, when the former Roman province was largely “deserted,” except for some newly-arrived Germanic-speaking peoples (104).

His Irish companions struggled to find resources in Gaul, prompting them to heed Patrick’s advice to pray to the Christian God, who would provide substance. Shortly thereafter, a herd of pigs appeared. Within a few years, Patrick returned home to Britain but was restless and unsettled. After a vision in which he was called to become a “voice” to the Irish, he embarked on his mission, despite his family's resistance.

First, Patrick made his way to Gaul to acquire the necessary religious education that his enslavement hindered. He was eventually consecrated as a deacon and then a priest before finally being ordained as a bishop. Cahill describes him as “the first missionary bishop in history” (107). Patrick followed in the apostle Paul’s footsteps, as Paul also claimed a divine mission inspired by a vision, and he filled a need for missionaries that had existed since Paul’s first-century travels. Patrick was unique, however, as “the first missionary to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law” (108). He loved the Irish, and his writings show that he “bec[a]me an Irishman” (109).

Patrick was responsible for the foundation of bishoprics across Ireland, drawing on models he encountered while on the Continent. He was like St. Augustine of Hippo in many ways but differed from his forefather in that classical urban culture did not influence him. Instead, "Patrick hoped to keep an eye on the most powerful raiders and rustlers and limit their depredations” (110).

He managed to bring the Irish slave trade to an end and composed an extant letter begging a Briton chieftain to free Irish Christians who were captured in a coastal raid. This letter shows that Patrick was no longer a Romano-Briton, because the Romanized Britons treated “Christian” and “Roman” as synonymous. Their enslavement of Irish Christians shows that they did not think of these people “as full-fledged Christians or as human beings—because they were not Roman” (112).

His fellow Britons failed to understand Patrick as the Irish did: “In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life” (115). Cahill writes that Patrick rivals Augustine as a theologian because of his “emotional grasp of Christian truth” (115). This is epitomized in the vernacular prayer “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” which is characteristically medieval and Irish in tone.