Patrick was born in Roman Britain to a Christian family: his father Calpurnius was a deacon and a town councillor, and his grandfather Potitus a priest. At sixteen, he tells us, he did not know the true God when Irish raiders carried him off with thousands of others. For six years he herded flocks in Ireland, and there he turned to God, praying as many as a hundred times a day and nearly as often at night.
A voice in his sleep told him that a ship was ready, and he escaped, travelling some two hundred miles to the coast and so home. Back in Britain he dreamed that a man named Victoricus brought him a letter headed “The Voice of the Irish”, and he heard them cry, “We beseech thee, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.” After years of preparation he returned to Ireland as a bishop.
Patrick of Ireland in the library (1 work)
- St Patrick: His Writings and Life — 5th century; translation 1920
Patrick's own Confession and Letter to Coroticus, with the Lorica (Breastplate), the Sayings attributed to him, and Muirchú's early Life.