Today in History: St. Patrick

On this day (March 17) sometime in the fifth century, St. Patrick is believed to have died. He was born into a wealthy Romano-British family in Britain, the son of a deacon and the grandson of a priest. (Priests were permitted to get married for the first millennia of Christianity.) At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland where over the next six years he learned to speak Gaelic. At the age of 22 he believed that God directed him to flee to the coast where he convinced sailors to return him to Britain, but he didn’t stay there. After becoming a priest, he returned to Ireland where his fluency in the local language made him a much more effective missionary than those who had preceded him. He converted thousands starting a process which eventually drove the druids (i.e. the snakes) out of Ireland.