St. Patrick
A fifth-century Romano-British teenager enslaved by Irish raiders who escaped, returned as a bishop to evangelize Ireland, and left two Latin works, the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus.
Canonized
St Patrick: Through me many peoples were born again in God (Holy See)
Sources
- General Roman Calendar, 17 March — 'St Patrick, Bishop'. Liturgy Office, England and Wales. https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Info/General-Roman-Calendar.pdf
- USCCB Liturgical Calendar 2026, 17 March — 'Saint Patrick, Bishop' (optional memorial in the United States; a solemnity in Ireland, where he is principal patron). https://www.usccb.org/resources/2026cal.pdf
- 'St Patrick: Through me many peoples were born again in God', Holy See, prepared by the Pontifical University Saint Thomas Aquinas — gives his birth as about 385 and his death as 461, and quotes the Confessio directly. https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010316_patrizio_en.html
- Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbermann, 1907-1913), 'St. Patrick' — used here ONLY for the judgment that 'the Confessio and the Epistola ad Coroticum are recognized by all modern critical writers as of unquestionable genuineness.' https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
- DATES DELIBERATELY OMITTED FROM THE ONE_LINE. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives his birth as 387 at Kilpatrick in Scotland and his death as 493; modern scholarship rejects both. The Irish annals preserve two death traditions, c. 460 and c. 493, and his birthplace 'Bannavem Taburniae' has never been identified beyond somewhere in Roman Britain. This is also why read_more points at the Holy See page rather than the Catholic Encyclopedia article — a link is an endorsement.
- HISTORICITY: 'documented' rests on an unusual fact — two of his own Latin works survive, so the core of his life is attested by the man himself rather than by a later hagiographer. The snakes, the shamrock and the confrontation at Tara are all later legend and appear nowhere in this record.