Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick (; Primitive Irish: *Qatrikias;Old Irish is a Q-Celtic language, which means that the sound /p/ in other languages is converted to the sound /k/. ; ; British: *Patrikios; ; ; ; ; c. 387 – 17 March, 493St Patrick in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, The Calendar, p. 7) was a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary, who is the most generally recognized patron saint of Ireland or the Apostle of Ireland, although Brigid of Kildare and Colmcille are also formally patron saints.

Two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only universally accepted details of his life. When he was about 16, he was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the Church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he worked. By the seventh century, he had come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.

Most available details of his life are from later hagiographies from the seventh century onwards, and these are now not accepted without detailed criticism. Uncritical acceptance of the Annals of Ulster would imply that he lived from 340 to 440, and ministered in what...
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