St. Patrick
He returned as a bishop to the country where he had been a slave, preached across Ireland in the language he learned in captivity, and organized its church: through me many peoples were born again in God.
Canonized
No year here is safe enough to print, and the two documents held disagree about all of them. The Catholic Encyclopedia opens with birth at Kilpatrick near Dumbarton in 387 and death at Saul on 17 March 493 — and then contradicts itself in its own margin, because the New Advent edition carries an editor's insertion immediately after it reading 'Some sources say 460 or 461.' The Holy See's page gives birth 'about the year 385' and says 'It is believed that he died in 461'. A hundred and thirty years separate the two death dates offered by one article, so neither year is recorded. The day is not in doubt: both sources put his death on 17 March, and that is the day the Church keeps.
Patrick was born in Britain to a family of some rank — his father Calphurnius held the office of decurio — though the two documents held here do not agree on where. When he was fifteen, Irish raiders took him and sold him to a chieftain named Milchu in what is now County Antrim, and he spent six years herding flocks on the slopes of Slemish.
He says himself what those years did to him. In the Confessio he writes that he prayed a hundred times in a day and nearly as often at night, out on the mountain before dawn, and 'felt no hurt from it, whether there was snow or ice or rain'. The same captivity taught him the language and the religion of the people he would later spend his life among.
After six years he got away, traveled about two hundred miles to the coast, and talked his way onto a ship. He was home in Britain, and he did not stay. He trained in Gaul and was ordained, and he kept being drawn back: he describes hearing the children of the western sea calling to him, 'O holy youth, come back to Erin, and walk once more amongst us.' He went back as a bishop.
What he did there was preach, baptize and organize — clergy, churches and structure where there had been none — in the language he had learned as a slave. It was not the unbroken triumph it is often made out to be, and the encyclopedia says so plainly. He records being seized and carried off twelve separate times, and once being put in chains with his death already decreed.
He died at Saul, on the site of the barn a chieftain had given him for his first church, and was buried two miles off at the fort where the cathedral of Down was later built.
What they carried
He was taken at fifteen and spent six years herding another man's flocks. What he did with his freedom was go back: by his own count he was seized twelve more times in the country that had enslaved him, and once was put in chains with his death already decided.
State of life
bishop · missionary · slave
Themes
prayer · preaching · courage under pressure · travel · imprisonment
St Patrick: Through me many peoples were born again in God (Holy See)
- PATRICK'S OWN WORDS REACH THIS CORPUS ONLY THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE QUOTING THEM, AND THE RECORD SAYS SO RATHER THAN IMPLYING THE CONFESSIO IS ON THE SHELF. Every first-person sentence here — the hundred prayers, the two hundred miles, the children of the western sea, the twelve captivities, 'through me many peoples were born again in God' — is quoted from inside the Catholic Encyclopedia article or the Holy See page, not read from the text. THE CONFESSIO IS NOT REACHABLE FROM ANY ALLOWLISTED SOURCE. SCOPE OF THE CHECK, run 2026-08-16: newadvent.org's Church Fathers index, which is where this project gets primary patristic texts and already supplies Augustine's Confessions, was read in full; PATRICK DOES NOT APPEAR IN IT AT ALL, neither the Confessio nor the Letter to Coroticus. WHAT WOULD CLOSE THE GAP: a public-domain English text of the Confessio from a source this project can cite. Same posture as 1 Clement on Paul's record, where the corpus reaches the letter only through a pope quoting it and the field names the pope.
- NO PATRONAGE IS RECORDED, AND A CLAIM THAT WAS HERE HAS BEEN REMOVED AS UNSOURCED. This record previously stated that 17 March is 'a solemnity in Ireland, where he is principal patron', attached to a citation of the USCCB Liturgical Calendar 2026. THAT DOCUMENT DOES NOT SAY IT. Checked on 2026-08-16: the USCCB calendar's entry for 17 March reads, in full, 'Saint Patrick, Bishop', and the document contains ZERO occurrences of 'Ireland' and ZERO of 'principal patron'. The Liturgy Office's March page says only 'St Patrick, Bishop'. The claim is very probably true and it was not in the source cited for it, which is the only thing that matters here. SCOPE OF THE PATRONAGE CHECK ITSELF: both narrative documents held were searched for 'patron'. The Holy See page returns zero. The encyclopedia returns exactly one hit AND IT IS ABOUT SOMEBODY ELSE — Patrick's mother Conchessa is described as 'a near relative of the great patron of Gaul, St. Martin of Tours'. So nothing held declares any patronage of Patrick, and none is recorded until something does. Same rule that leaves Peter, John, Mark, Bakhita and Goretti empty.
- THE MIRACLE NARRATIVE IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA IS EXTENSIVE AND NONE OF IT IS CARRIED, WHICH IS A DECISION WORTH STATING BECAUSE THE ARTICLE IS MOSTLY MADE OF IT. Left out: the arch-druid Lochru lifted into the air by demonic power and 'dashed to pieces upon a rock' at Patrick's prayer; Milchu gathering his treasures into his house and burning himself alive rather than be 'vanquished by his former slave'; the chieftain Dichu whose sword-arm 'became rigid as a statue'; the druids covering Tara in 'a cloud of worse than Egyptian darkness' which Patrick's prayer disperses; the light of heaven shining round his bier for days. THE ARTICLE HEDGES TWO OF ITS OWN BEST-KNOWN ITEMS AND THEN UNHEDGES ONE OF THEM. The shamrock: Patrick 'IS SAID TO HAVE plucked a shamrock from the sward, to explain by its triple leaf and single stem, in some rough way, to the assembled chieftains, the great doctrine of the Blessed Trinity'. The Breastplate: in the narrative it 'IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN composed by him', but in the Writings section at the foot of the same article it 'is now universally accepted as genuine'. An article that cannot hold one position across its own length is not a footing for either, so neither the shamrock nor the Breastplate appears above. The snakes are not in the article at all.
- THE STANDING AGE RULE WAS APPLIED AND IT CHANGED THE NUMBER. The article says 'In his SIXTEENTH YEAR, Patrick was carried off into captivity', which by the convention this corpus has already met in Francis, Augustine and Monica means fifteen completed years, not sixteen. The summary and the struggles field both say fifteen. The six years of captivity that follow are stated directly by the article and by the Confessio quotations inside it, so no arithmetic is being done on top of a converted figure.
- TWO CLAIMS PREVIOUSLY IN THIS RECORD ARE NOT IN EITHER DOCUMENT HELD AND HAVE BEEN DROPPED. The first is the patronage of Ireland, treated above. The second is the birthplace 'Bannavem Taburniae': checked 2026-08-16, that phrase has ZERO occurrences in both held documents. What they actually say is that he was 'born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland' (encyclopedia) and 'Born in Great Britain' (Holy See), which is why the summary says only that he was born in Britain and that the sources disagree on where. Both removals are the same class of fault found the same day in the Margaret of Scotland record, and the note there describes it at length: a record can drift past its sources while passing every automated check, because nothing in this project verifies that a sentence is in the document cited behind it.
- convert IS NULL AND THE SOURCES GENUINELY DO NOT SETTLE IT. The field asks whether a person was received into the Church or raised in the faith. Nothing held describes a baptism or a reception. What the Confessio describes, in the passage quoted in the summary, is faith deepening in a boy who already had some — 'the love of God and His fear increased in me more and more, and the faith grew in me' — and a change of heart in someone already within the faith is explicitly not a conversion in this sense, the same reading applied to Peter. Against that, the article says his mother Conchessa was a relative of St Martin of Tours, which suggests a Christian household without stating one. Suggests is not establishes, so the field stays null.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbermann, 1907-1913), 'St. Patrick', vol. 11 — source of the parents Calphurnius and Conchessa and the office of decurio; of the capture 'in his sixteenth year' and the sale to 'a chieftan named Milchu in Dalriada, a territory of the present county of Antrim'; of the six years tending flocks 'in the valley of the Braid and on the slopes of Slemish'; of the Confessio passage on prayer in captivity, quoted in the summary; of the escape and 'he had to travel about 200 miles'; of the training in Gaul and the ordination; of the vision of the children from Focluth; of the twelve captivities — 'no fewer than twelve times he and his companions were seized and carried off as captives, and on one occasion in particular he was loaded with chains, and his death was decreed' — introduced by the article's own corrective, 'It is sometimes supposed that St. Patrick's apostolate in Ireland was an unbroken series of peaceful triumphs, and yet it was quite the reverse'; of the barn at Saul given by Dichu, 'the first sanctuary dedicated by St. Patrick in Erin'; of the death at Saul and the burial 'at the chieftan's Dun or Fort two miles from Saul, where in after times arose the cathedral of Down'; and of the judgment on the writings quoted above. NOTE: predates the 1969 reform and is not a source for the feast day. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
- 'St Patrick: Through me many peoples were born again in God', Holy See, prepared by the Pontifical University Saint Thomas Aquinas — source of the alternative dates, 'Born in Great Britain about the year 385' and 'It is believed that he died in 461'; of the burial at Downpatrick; and of the Confessio line that gives the page its title. https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010316_patrizio_en.html
- Universal Calendar, 17 March — 'St Patrick, Bishop' [optional memorial]. Liturgy Office, Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Universal/MarUC.shtml NOTE: this replaces a citation to that office's General-Roman-Calendar.pdf, which is a stale edition — it carries no John Paul II (2014), Paul VI (2019) or Faustina (2020) — and is a table the column-aware PDF reader takes apart. The HTML pages print date, celebration and rank directly.
- THE SEAM WAS REPAIRED ON 2026-08-17. struggles had restated the summary's first and fourth paragraphs — the capture at fifteen, the six years, the return and the twelve captivities instead of indexing it — the Padre Pio failure named in the docstring. The field now points at those sentences and carries the hinge the summary states as sequence: 'He was home in Britain, and he did not stay.' What he did with his freedom was go back to the people who had taken it, and the twelve later captivities are the price of that decision rather than a separate misfortune. The encyclopedia sets the twelve up with its own corrective — 'It is sometimes supposed that St. Patrick's apostolate in Ireland was an unbroken series of peaceful triumphs, and yet it was quite the reverse.'
- USCCB Liturgical Calendar 2026, 17 March — 'Saint Patrick, Bishop' (optional memorial in the United States). https://www.usccb.org/resources/2026cal.pdf