Speaker 1: Welcome to the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Joy Pullman, the
executive editor here at the Federalist, joining me for a
special edition of the Federalist Radio Hour, Saint Patrick's Day edition.
Speaker 2: We have doctor steel Brand.
Speaker 1: He is a professor at Karen University and he is
the interim executive director of the John Jay Institute and
director of their Statesmanship Initiative. He is also the author
of Killing for the Republic, Citizen Soldiers.
Speaker 2: And the Roman Way of War. And he's here.
Speaker 1: Today to discuss Patrick, Saint Patrick of Ireland, the Great
patron Saint of Ireland. Hopefully we will get into a
lot more than turning the rivers green and drinking a
lot over this day over the next half hour or
so that we're together, because he gave a talk recently
at my alma mater, Hillsdale College, and we're going to
kind of go into some of the details there of
his talk. Doctor Brand, Welcome to the show, Hi, Joyce.
Speaker 3: It's great to be here. Thank you so much for
inviting me, especially to talk about Saint Patrick on Saint
Patrick's Day.
Speaker 2: It is it was a little bit special for me.
Speaker 1: As I told you over email, I have this morning
my corn, beef and cabbage in the crap pot waiting
for dinner.
Speaker 2: I liked it.
Speaker 1: It's actually super easy Saints meal dinner. I like to
do special Saints Day meals with my kids. I am
not a Catholic, but we're into Saints in my home
as liturgical Lutherans. Doctor Brand, would you start by telling
me what is your personal interest in Saint Patrick.
Speaker 3: I can't remember when I first heard the real story
of Saint Patrick. You know, it might have been when
I had I had a I think the when it
really stuck, you know, I remember these moments when I
hear about these historical characters that I really like, the
moment that that sticks and you get intrigued, and then
sometimes you dig and it's like, well, there's nothing to
this story. And then sometimes you dig and there's a
lot to the story. There's a lot of richness, and
it's better than like the legends in the myth. There
are a few people in history that have been that way,
and Patrick was definitely one of them. So I think
when I first heard about it, I was a father
reading a book like a children's book, really really great
thirty two page picture book to my daughter and it
was It's Tomy Topolo is like one of the best
children's off there.
Speaker 1: I was just going to ask you which whether it
was tom Bird or Tommy Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I remember reading that and thinking, well, this is
this is cool. You know, I'd heard about the Patrick story.
I kind of knew bits and pieces here and there,
and so I went to the sources I read, you know,
like a popular biography. I thought, oh, well, that's a
great story, and then I read some scholarship on it.
And then I spent some time with the two texts
that we know a lot about from Patrick. And the
more I read, the deeper I got. The more I
went from kind of casual person interested in good stories
to oh, a historian, and then looking at it as
a scholar. The deeper I got into the wonderful, like
plain beauty of the story of Saint Patrick.
Speaker 2: And we'll tell us a little can you recap?
Speaker 1: I would bet that a lot of our listeners don't
know even just the Wikipedia version of you know, the
Saint Patrick's Dade Tailor, or you know, the picture book
version that you read with one of your children, that
I read with my children yesterday and today. Can you
just give them, give them the summary of his biography.
Speaker 3: Yeah so, uh. Patrick is actually not Irish by birth.
He is a Romano Britton, probably from Wales, maybe from
Cornwall or thereabouts. But it looked a little different then
loosely or not loosely but under the control of the Romans.
But it's still CAUs a lot of It's like British
and Celtic character in some ways he is. From what
we know about him. He's probably named Patrick after his family,
being like a Roman family, like Patrick from Patrician, they're noble,
they're different. Theories is to where his name come from.
Name came from, but we don't know much about him
as a kid. What we do learn about him is
that he's raised by people who are a Christian, and
we're not sure why. We know his great grandfather and
his grandfather are a priest. His father's a deacon. It's
an interesting note that obviously we still have married clergy
at this time. But Patrick doesn't take his family and
the sort of urban elites Christianity very seriously. And the
first thing we know for certain about him, aside from
his name and the fact that he is the son
of a local big wig and a town called Benevem
Tabernie Eye, which we're not even entirely certain way it was.
The first thing we know about Patrick is he commits
some ray great sin and we don't even know what
the sin is, but it's bad. And theories are maybe
it's some sort of like sexual indiscretion, some kind of
fornication or something, but the way he talks about it
actually sounds more serious than that. Some people have suggested
maybe it's murder, or some people have said, well, maybe
it was, Maybe it's it's idolatry. What about all three?
Maybe he's a part of some horribleli Maybe he's part
of some horrible religious ceremony where he's there's like there
it's like sacrifice or some kind of fornication or something
related to the gods. It doesn't matter. We don't know.
It's it's serious. And then we know that as right
after this happens, he's taken as a slave. He's seen
the Irish raiders pop in, they hit the coast, they
come to his house. His father's not there. Maybe he's
out doing Decourryan duties because they've heard there's a raid.
We don't know his family isn't there. But he's there,
he gets captured, he gets put on a boat and
cart it off to Ireland and his life completely changes.
That's how we get Patrick from Britain to Ireland, and
then he goes to Ireland and in Ireland he's a
slave for six years and that's that's the beginning of
the story of Patrick. And that's when Patrick starts to
turn into the Patrick we know because when he's there,
he's not. He's heard stories as a little kid, probably
about how the Irish are kind of like monsters and
those barbarians over there on that island. And once you
get inside the interior, you know, beyond the pale literally,
because that's the way that later generations would talk about
going into the interior of Ireland. Once you go beyond
the pale, h then you're in a land where these
these Irish will just attack you and they'll they'll eat
you alive, or they'll like they'll steal everything you have
and then the least she'll do. Yeah, it's it's you know,
there's all these horror stories about them. But what he
ends up, what ends up happening, is he is uh,
he's enslaved, he's bought probably on the eastern coast of Ireland,
and he's taken all the way to the western coast,
and he has a different kind of torture that's inflicted
on him. He's left alone. He's left to be a
slave shepherd of somebody we don't know. Later generations say
the guy's name who takes him as Miluke. So he's
made a slave and he ends up watching cheap for
six years. And we get the sense from his writings
because he tells us heyes, we have two letters from Patrick.
We get the sense that he is all alone for
hours and days and months at a time, and this
is when he has to confront his own existence, his
maker life, with what it's meaning, is what its purpose is,
because it's very different than being the spoiled aristocrat that
he was. Now he's a slave who's actually being hardened
to living life out in the woods, in the wilderness,
in the forest. And what he does is he tells
us this in one of his letters that probably the
second of his letters. He tells us, I begin to pray,
and I begin to pray a lot, and I prayed
one hundred times a day, and I prayed one hundred
times at night and so he's praying all the time.
He's doing you know, like the movie Castaway, So Tom
Hanks is alone, he's out on the island, and Tom
Hanks talks his own God figure. You know, it's a volleyball, right,
It's kind of a stupid idea, but like what are
you going to do when you're left alone? Castaway kind
of captures it with like you've got to talk to somebody,
So who's going to talk to volleyball? I think what
really would have happened is in Castaway, I would have
been talking to God, like why am I here?
Speaker 4: What were you?
Speaker 3: What does this happen? And that's exactly what Patrick does.
But for Patrick, he starts really taking seriously the things
that he already knew about it, that he learned from
his parents. And it's in Ireland, the land where he's
been enslaved, the land where everything has been taken away
from him, that it begins to become a Christian. I
mean that's just sort of the that's the tippety icebery
of the beginning of Patrick's story, and that's what we
know about him. Should probably address a little bit of
like how do we know about Patrick? Before we get
deeper into the story. Sure, So what are the sources
about Patrick we've got I almost want to work backwards.
We have lots of legends that have accumulated. You know,
he scares all the snakes out of Ireland, he teaches
with the shamrock. There are sources and there are annals
that are written in the medieval period, the late medieval period,
and they put dates with all of the things about Patrick.
If we go back a little further, we have two
biographies that are written two hundred years after Patrick died.
These two biographies are written by the one by mir Chu,
there's one by Trechin, and they have a lot of
similarity to Patrick's own story, but they put in a
lot of new information into the story. And so then
we go back a couple hundred years before that, we
have a maybe some sayings. There are some canons that
are called the Cannons of Saint Patrick, but they're probably
by later Christians. Really, the only thing we know for
certain that is true and is good historical information about
Patrick comes from two letters. One is called the Declaration
or the Confession, and the second letter is called the
Letter to the Soldiers of Krotacus. And these two letters.
Nearly all scholars have joined in a consensus that they're authentic.
There's some who don't think that, but most scholars think
they're authentic. And these two letters are written by Patrick,
and they tell us the story of someone who is
very sincere, but he doesn't have the best education, and
he longs he wishes that he could have been a
better writer in Latin. You can see that in the Latin,
the Latin of his two letters, they're clunky, they're not sophisticated.
If you compare it to another Britain like lagis he's
a guy, he's a heretic in Britain he's writing at
the same time, or if we compare him to Augustine
the contemporary, the Latin is like terrible compared to Augustine's confessions,
but Patrick's Latin is really bad. Okay, Well, why Well?
Because he was kidnapped as a fifteen year old or
sixteen year old right about the time he would have
begun a really sophisticated education he would have been getting
he would have started his track on rhetoric. And the
time that he's a slave learning how to endure like ours,
temperatures take care of sheep, discovering God. When he's doing
all that he normally back home would have been learning rhetoric.
Speaker 2: So in the school of hard knocks, since yeah, he's.
Speaker 3: At the School of hard knocks, right, he's not doing that.
Like everything else that everyone would have seen that he
would have enjoyed, he would have experienced if he'd been
back home. And so it's but it's these two stories
I think that are the most accurate that we can
get a lot of information out of them. So he's
a slave in Ireland, he writes us about this. He
tells us about this in his book The Confession where
he has this autobiographical sections that pop in, but especially
at the beginning, and Patrick's big moment where he shifts
from being a slave to being something else is when
he says he had a dream and there was a
voice and it's probably Victoricus, this person who comes to
visit him a couple of times, and Patrick has lots
of dreams, but in this dream, the voice comes up
and says, see, your ship is ready. You need to
go to the coast. So he basically breaks the law.
He escapes, but he doesn't go back east because that's
where everyone would have been looking for He probably goes
two hundred miles of the south, and he's broken the
law to be a runaway slave. He probably breaks the
law a lot more as he's stealing and trying to survive,
taking his food. And then he gets all the way
to the southern coast and the people there. He goes
up to a boat and he says, hey, can you
take me probably back home, but can you take me
with you? And you get this into that these people
look at them and say.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: But then he goes and he praised, and then he
goes back and then they take him on the ship.
Now what happens there, Well, we hear about the story.
They get on the ship. We don't know why they
took him when they wouldn't take him at first. And
then the travel for three days. They have trouble finding
a place to go. It takes them a long time
to get there. So they're not sailing back to Britain,
or if they are, they're going in a roundabout way
and we don't know where they land. But then once
they land, for twenty eight days they're wondering around and
they can't find any food. Well, if you're landing in
Brittany or even Cornwall or whales. That's weird. So there
have been lots of theories as to what's going on. Why,
Like was there some sort of devastation, this is the
time of the Roman Empires having trouble. It's like it's
a mystery. Well, if we put all the pieces together,
we know that several times the pagan people on the
boat ask him to do strange things. One of the
guys says, well, we want you to suck our nipples.
What is that? Like, that's just strange right, Well, wi's
Patrick telling us this because that's a pagan ceremony and
he would not partake in the pagan ceremony. And then
they say later that they had like some honey that
they like consecrated or did something strange with and he says, oh,
I didn't take any of that either. So we get
the sense these guys are pagans. But why are they
having so much trouble getting places and why are they
having trouble getting food? It's probably because these guys are
slavers themselves. They're slavers or pirates. They don't seem to
be law abiding people. And we get the sense that
either Patrick sold himself into slavery to get passage, or
they took him and enslaved him again, and we don't
even know how long they're there. This part of the confession,
it's about eight paragraphs, is the fuzziest part of the
whole confession. But one gets the sense that this is
not a good part of Patrick's life. And there's some again,
there's some sort of legal and moral boundaries that are pressed,
and he's enslaved again. But after a few years he
finally gets loose from these people, whoever they are, and
he goes back home. But the moment he gets back home,
he gets educated. Now his later biographers want to tell
us a whole cool story. Later biographers want to say,
and you know what he did. He went back home,
and then he went down to the continent and he
interacted with all the most famous people. There are these
great bishops, Bishop Grimanis and Amateur and Honoratus, and then
he studied under them like Paul studied under the feet
of Gamaliel. And basically they're saying, he went to Harvard
and Cambridge and Oxford, and then where did he go, Well,
he traveled down to Laryn. This is this great place
where there's a big monastery that has been built. That's
where he studied. And then eventually he made his way
to Rome. He even goes to Italy and he meets
the Pope, and the Pope is eventually going to make
him a bishop. And when he goes and then he
goes back to Ireland. And when he gets to Ireland,
he fights all the wizards and the Druids, and he
brings Christianity by defeating the wizards and the druids. And
there's these famous confrontations that he has with the Druids
in Ireland where he defeats them with magic, and like
they try to poison him and then he freezes the poison.
And they try to bring snow and he dissolves it.
He brings sunshine, and we almost get the sense it's
like double Door fighting Voldemort a tour. It's like superheroes
battling one another. That's the biographer's story, right. Well, when
you read Patrick, none of those details are in there,
none of them, because that's not what really happened. What
really happened is Patrick. It seems the simplest explanation is
he went back home and he was educated in Britain.
But then when he was educated in Britain as a
part of being back home, part of trying to get
his education back, which he never does a really good job.
He's never a crackerjack like writer. His Latin just never
turns out that good. But the important thing that happens
to him when he's back home is Victor Ricus comes back,
and Victor Ricus comes to him, and there's this really memorable,
vivid scene that Patrick describes in his confession where Victor
Ricus comes and he's got a handful of this like
piles of letters, and he shows the letters to Patrick
and Patrick takes them and he looks at the letters
and what are the letters that the voice of the
Irish and the voice of the Irish are saying, Holy boy,
come back, Holy boy, come back and live among us.
And he says they were calling from the forest of Fulkoot,
which is probably where he was in the region of
County Mayo. And this is where Patrick is summoned to
return again by a dream and it's his call, it's
his call to a mission, and his mission is going
to be to go back to Ireland and to completely
change the fabric of Ireland and what it means to
be Irish. Now, he doesn't fully understand how that's going
to happen. We know that's what ends up happening. But
he decides that I'm going to go back to the
land of my slavery, but I'm going to go back
and I'm going to bring them Christianity. But I'm not
just going to tell them the story of the Gospel.
When you bring Christianity, Christianity in Patrick's mind, you're going
to bring a whole host of things. You're going to
be able to change people's souls. You're going to put
things into their minds. You're going to alter the way
that they think about society. You're going to completely restructure
their social and political ethics. You're going to bring literacy
because Christians there are people of the book. So when
Christianity comes to a place, stories start to be written
down and we get history and we know what happens
to people. A lot of times in Pagan's societies, we
don't know what's going on. We don't know exactly what
happened because they're not literate. Well, Patrick is going to
bring all of these things back to Ireland, and he's
going to go as a bishop. Well, then the question
is okay, Well when does he go as a bishop? Well,
there are are there's there's another guy that enters into
the story of the conversion of Ireland. And this is
a guy by the name of Palladius. Now who is Palladius.
Palladius seems to be chummy with all the most important
people in Italy, and especially the Reme the excuse me,
the Pope in Rome. And Palladius is the deacon to
the Pope, and he knows Prosper of Aquitaine. This guy,
this analyst who writes sort of the story of what's
going on with Christianity from the perspective of the papal
court in Rome. And Palladius is sent, we are told
by Prosper as the first bishop to Ireland. He probably
goes to the south. And Palladius is the guy who
supposedly begins the Christianization of Ireland. But the Irish themselves,
when they talk about Palladius, they have a very different account.
First of all, they hardly mention him at all, at
least in terms of the Christianization factor. But we have
a couple of traditions that come down. And one of
the traditions is that he gets martyred, so he goes there,
he's just like he gets overwhelmed and martyred. Another tradition
is that he goes and he's only there for a
little bit and then he flees. He goes up to
Scotland or somewhere else. Maybe he had some limited success.
But the strongest tradition is that he goes and he's
absolutely terrified by what he sees. And this is a
guy who's been hanging out in some of the nicest
places in the Roman Empire, and now he goes up
to this land beyond the frontier and he just can't
deal with it. Either way, whatever happens with Palladius, most
of the accounts need to indicate his mission is a failure.
Why because he's not the guy. He doesn't have the
skill set, he doesn't have the experiences that are needed.
He had really learned, he's got great connections, but he
doesn't have what Patrick has. That's two things, experience, but
more important, a really really clear understanding of his mission.
And Patrick has the mission on the mind all the time.
When I teach Patrick to my students, I said, read
the Confession and you tell me if you can find
a single person in history who is more dedicated to
his mission than Patrick. It's very very clear for him.
And so this is what gets us to the mission
of Patrick and him finally coming to Ireland. Maybe he
begins as a deacon or a priest under Palladius, but
maybe he's just sent. It seems like when he gets
to when he becomes bishop, he's already in Ireland. That
seems to be the case. Scholars disagree. Is he made
a bishop and then he goes or is their problems
with making him bishop. It seems like his family and
the British bishops are reluctant to make him bishop. And
there will be a couple of reasons for that. First
of all, he doesn't have good connections. Second of all,
he's not polished, and third of all, he's got a
crazy idea. His crazy idea isn't let's just stay along
the coast. Let's christianize the areas along the coast, kind
of increased trade, bring literacy that way, maybe increase some revenue.
Speaker 2: For the church.
Speaker 3: No. No, Patrick's idea is really intense. I'm going to
take Christianity deep into the interior as far as I can,
into Ireland. And he would know that because that's where
he lived. And when people hear this, his family is like,
don't do this, don't leave us. We've already lost you.
We don't want to leave you again. And one gets
the sinks that the British bishops in Ireland really don't
want him to go do this either. But who else
is going to do it? Who else has the talents,
who else really wants to go and take on this
huge project of going beyond the Roman frontier into what
everyone calls the ends of the earth, how Patrick describes Ireland.
Only Patrick can do that sort of thing. So at
some point we have Patrick, probably in the four thirties
or forties, becoming a bishop with the support, probably not
of the pope. It's not that the Pope is appointing him.
That's what later Irish analysts want to tell us that
probably the people who reluctantly appointed him as the Bishop
of the Irish are the British bishops in Britain, who
then want Patrick to go and be an Irish bishop
that can connect Ireland in some ways to the British.
But this is probably a good point for me to
pause and see if you have any questions or follow up.
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Speaker 2: I'm glad you mentioned the timeframe.
Speaker 1: That was one thing I was thinking that helps, you know,
folks place it in their mental timeline if they keep one,
which I hope most of our listeners do. You know,
so early four hundreds to mid late four hundreds is
about the estimated time of Patrick's life, as I understand,
and so I mean for me, I'm thinking, like you're saying,
this is really the end of the Roman Empire, and
as you're saying, you know he's going into Ireland. It's
very It's you know, the hinterlands, right, It's a place
where people tell tales because they don't actually know the
so called civilized world doesn't really know what's going on
in there, so they just make things, scary things up.
One of the things that I personally love about Patrick
is the Saint Patrick's breastplate, the hymn as well as
poem and.
Speaker 2: Prayer that's come down. And I just love just how
old it is.
Speaker 1: Right if you think this is four hundred a d.
You know, that's sixteen hundred years ago and we still
you know, and as you're saying, there's very good evidence
for him being alive.
Speaker 2: So there's you.
Speaker 1: Know, some of the saints, like Saint Valentine, right, there's
not very good, if any, historical evidence, or there's conflicting accounts.
Saint Patrick has a pretty good you know, historical historical
lineage and and reliable sources for him. And so I think,
you know, there's something that people have for many many
centuries found compelling about him, And what do you think
those things are? Obviously he's very vibrant, maybe you might
even say, you know, one might even say aggressive, right,
the courage to go to basically the outer wilderness, to
go back and face people who had formerly enslaved you.
That always, you know, courage always in life and people.
What else do you think Saint Patrick accounts for how
compelling he is?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I love that you pointed out the broader,
the broader context. So we have a collapsing Roman world,
and in Britain it collapses soon. It's probably the Roman
legions are withdrawing out of Britain around the time that
he's probably enslaved. So there's a there's a space of
peace in there for the Britons until they get overwhelmed
by what they call the Barbarian conspiracy, the Picks coming
down from the north, the Irish rating from the west,
and then the Anglo Saxon's and jew to eventually take
over most of what we would know is England. So
this he's living in a world where there's a lot
to be afraid of, and yet he has courage. He
has his courage to go to where the places where
no one else would want to go. I think, like,
if we think about Patrick and what is the most
noble about him, I think I want us to have
like under two things that are really important to notice.
First of all, his vision of what it means to
be a leader and then second of all his political
theology for Ireland. And I think we can get a
good sense for those based on those two letters that
we have. So the two letters that we have, we
have one that's the Letter to the Soldiers of Kroaticus.
And then the second one is the one that I've
referenced because it has a lot of autobiographical information. That's
the Confession. The confession was probably written at the very
end of his life, so maybe four fifties were entirely
certainly lived. There's a debate of whether he should be
earlier or late, but this consensus is probably that he
dies sometime around seventeen March four fifty nine, although some
people think it's a little later. Some people that gets
a little earlier. But what are these two letters tell
us about him and his vision of leadership and then
his vision for what should define what it means to
be Irish. Well, let's talk about his understanding of leadership.
He references, I mean, it's about a dozen or more
times in these two short letters that Ireland is the
land of his slavery. Now, when he went there the
first time, it was involuntary slavery, but when he went
back the second time, it was voluntary slavery. And this
is how he describes his being, how he describes his
being in Ireland. This is the land where God is
his master, and he's taking the gospel of them, and
he's reshaping their society. But the Irish are his service.
That's the task. So as Milieu could set him out
in the wilderness, you know, in the forest to watch
the sheep, God is sending him out to take care
of the Irish sheep. And not only so, what's really
beautiful is he talks about frequently. So he says, like,
here's a quote, this is a land of my captivity.
I'm bound by the spirit. There's another quote. To come
to be with them for the rest of my life,
he says. In the Confession, I give my freedom for
the benefit of others. He frequently says, I'm ready to
give even my life. I want to expend it to
the point of death. And both of his letters, he's
always talking about it this way. In fact, we know
that he gets enslaved twelve more times. He talks about
getting captured twelve more times, several times almost being put
to death. Well, who's capturing him. Well, he's gone into
Ireland and he is interacting with these Irish tyrants, these
little chiefs, and there's a little bit of a disturbance
in the fifth century and this north central part of Ireland,
and he's going in and how is he getting there,
he's probably sold everything he has back home. He sells
everything he's got. He's maybe got some backing from some
British tyrants back home. And when I say tyrants, I
mean like that's just kind of a form of lord
like that. Yeah, but it's like an an extraordinary form
of rule. They don't necessarily need to be vicious, although
many times they are. But he gets probably sells everything
he's got or he can from his inheritance, and then
he comes into Ireland. He'd probably starts spending this pretty soon.
He wants to build churches, and he needs to get oil.
He us to pay for food, and he's start negotiating
with the chiefs and the little kinglets in Ireland, and
he's interacting with princes and they're giving a passage, and
you get this sense that he's actually really good at
diplomacy and networking. But he also is again sort of
pushing those legal boundaries about what is acceptable. And this
is the kind of behavior that he has to he's
really good at. He knows very clearly where his moral
center is, but he's going to break some of those
social and legal boundaries. Like when he ran away from
being a slave in the first place. But this means
that sometimes when he goes into a place and he
converts the princess, or even worse, when he converts princesses
and they no longer become marital bargaining chips for the
great kings, the great kinglets in Ireland. That makes them
angry and they want to do something about it. And
so they'll imprison him, or they'll threaten him with death,
or they'll betray him, or they'll sell him to like
another arrival. And so this happens to him twelve times,
but repeatedly he says, these are my people, this is
where I am to be. This was the land my salvation,
and now one has become my home. So his vision
is that you want to be a leader, then you
have to enslave yourself to your people. Not that you
do everything they want. No, No, he does everything that
God wants because God is his master. His ethics are
very clear that I'm like Christian ethics, an understanding of truth, honesty, beauty, goodness, justice,
All these things are informed by Christianity. But he uses
them to serve other people, and he finds himself bound
to them. In fact, he's asked to go back to Britain,
he says, I will never go back home, and he
doesn't because this is the land where he's supposed to be.
And so at some point there is another major incident
that occurs, and we know a lot more about this one,
but it's not with an Irish tyrant. It's with a
British tyrant. We get the sense that there's this British guy,
this British tyrant named Kartacus and Karatecus. Right after Easter,
right after Patrick had baptized and confirmed a whole number
of people, and right after they were walking out they
had the like special white robes that they have. Karatecas
soldiers had swept into the region, killed a bunch of them,
taken the rest of them captive, and they'd sailed right
back to Britain. So it's kind of like the Barbarian
conspiracy in reverse. What the Irish had done to the British,
now Kroaticus is doing to the Irish. And Patrick actually
goes out to where this had happened and he sees
his friends, his spiritual sons and daughters. He's like people
that he just brought into the church. He says they're
white robes stained with blood, and he just weeps. But
then he gets angry and he goes back and he
does what a bishop would do. He writes a letter.
He sends it to Karatcus. Kroticus takes captive the guy
who got the letter, so he sends another one, and
this time it's a letter to all the Irish and
the British Christians. And in this letter it's called the
Letter to the Soldiers of Karatecus. He makes it really
clear that he is a bishop, and he's a bishop
of authority to confront bad behavior. And he doesn't care
that it's bad behavior of Romano Britain. That doesn't matter,
that's not what he is concerned with. He's concerned that
someone has done injustice and it has afflicted the people
that are under his care. And so he as he
describes himself to the soldiers of Carotacus, I am their ambassador,
I am their shepherd, I am their father, I am
their bishop. And a bishop means you are a man
with authority, and in the late Roman Empire, you actually
had certain legal and political responsibilities as a bishop. And
he lambasted the soldiers of Kurtacus and then he leverages
the one thing for certain that a bishop has that
no one else has, and that is excommunication. And he says,
and this is why this is a letter that goes
out to all the Irish and the British Christians. He tells,
he tells all the Irish and British Christians do not
have anything to do with these men. They must be punished.
Why is he doing this because he wants them to
be reoriented. He wants those slaves that have now been
captured that were his friends. So there were some that
were killed, there were some that enslaved. He wants to
pull all the strings that he can to get those
people freed and to get them back home, because what
the soldiers of Rotas is going to do is probably
going to sell them to the Picks or somewhere else.
But here's what's really wonderful in the letter. A couple
of times he lets lose how sad he is about
losing his friends. But when he closes the letter, he
opens up with this really ferocious broad said, they're not
the Romanto British citizens, they're not citizens of Roman civilization.
They're citizens of the demons. But when he closes the letter,
he actually invites the soldiers of Kartacus to do the
right thing. Why because he cares about the soldiers of
Karatacus too, and he thinks that if those soldiers of
Karatacas can take very seriously his warnings and his threats
and his excommunication, that maybe they can be brought back
into justice and just behavior. And so he wants to
save the bodies of those that have been slaved, but
he wants to save the souls of those who have
enslaved them. This is Patrick's political theology. It goes past
tribes and races and even to a certain extent, nations
about justice for both those who have done wrong and
for those who have had wrong done to them. And
Patrick wants restoration and rehabilitation, and he's willing to use
the tools that he has to punish people who refuse
to be reconciled and recentered. But this letter, it's this
fiery letter with these interesting moments of tenderness from a
man who is a man in authority. And this letter,
We're really glad we have this letter because it contrasts
deeply with that second letter. And I'll tell you about
the second letter. Now. The second letters is confession. I've
already mentioned it several times. This letter's probably written at
the very end of his life, and we're not entirely
certain about the exact timing of when it came, but
when Patrick is writing it, we get the sense that
his death is right around the corner. He's an old
man by this time, and he's baptized thousands of people,
countless numbers have been confirmed. He's ordained a number of
deacons and priests. He started to really change the structure
of Irish societ and we can sort of see that
with the way that he writes in the letters to
the soldiers of Karatacus. No one would have written a
letter like that two decades before. But now he's talking.
He's representing the Irish in ways that represent Christian ethics
that never would have happened before Patrick's day. So, at
the very end of his life he writes the second letter.
And why does he write it? This opposition? It's probably
the second oppositions. The first opposition by British bishops is
probably when he became bishops, so that opposition is overcome. Well,
there's this second opposition that occurs, and one gets the
sense the British bishops are very concerned about three things.
Patrick has been wildly successful, so he has a lot
of power in Ireland, and we see that with a
letter to Caroticus. It could even be that the Confession
is his people being concerned about how powerful he is
because of that letter to Kroticus. We're not entirely certain,
but Patrick seems to be pretty powerful, and he's got
this independent church in Ireland. The second thing is that's
probably brought a lot of wealth. In fact, several times
the Confession he emphasizes everything I get I give away,
I give to the poor. I will ransom captives, I
will buy slaves and set them free. Every single penny
that I get from everyone I use for the church
and for the mission. And he's insistent upon and he
tells them, you come, you ask the Irish, because these
British bishops are in Britain. What do they know? He says,
you come, you ask the Irish what I have kept?
And they'll testify that he's kept nothing. And so there's
this concern with the money, and you get the sense
the British are bummed out because they're not a part
of the take. They want the take they want the
tribute that can come in from a great wealthy church
that's starting to begin in Ireland. And then the third
accusation that I would say we see in the confession
is that when he was becoming a deacon or a priest,
as as a young man, when he after he'd been
freed from his slavery, he confessed his sin to a
very close friend, his confessor, that great sin that we
know about. This is why we know about the great sin.
He confessed that thirty years ago. Well, these British bishops,
doing what you know politicians and leaders do it, said
let's dig up whatever dirt we've got on Patrick, because
we can't really get anything specific about him. Well, this friend,
to his everlasting shame, divulged what had been confessed. And Patrick,
when he hears about this, is devastated because this friend
told everyone in Britain, or at least the British bishops,
what the great sin was. And Patrick has devastated, not
because everyone knows what the sin is, but because that
had caused a rift in the friendship and he felt betrayed.
But he also worried about his friend, who'd done something
very immoral. He violated the sanctity of the confessional. Okay,
so the bishops send this let like they're sending some
sort of letters envoys saying you need to come back
to Britain to give an account. And that's why Patrick
sifths Downer writes the letter, because he wants to give
an account of what he's done, how he's been pactilious
with everything, and how everything has been driven by the mission,
the mission to convert Ireland, to change what we know
of as Ireland. And you get this in the letter
he written mentions it over and over again. The Great
Commission is very important. His dreams have pointed him to
this place. He reference to how many times he's baptized
countless he's baptized thousands, he's confirmed thousands or countless numbers.
He has worked with the princes and he has there
have been a number of consecrated virgins who have also
joined his numbers. And you understand in the writing that
he's actually changing the fabric of Irish society, at least
where he is and that north central part of Ireland
with these mass conversions. And he is repeatedly emphasizing that
it is his only motivation. But when you get to
the end of the confession, there's these other telling remarks.
See we look back on Patrick's confession where like, oh, yeah,
well we know what happens. Ireland becomes Christian. Kings want
to be Christian, the politicians want to be Christian, even
to this day. They want to showcase their cddentals. They
want to trace themselves back to fact, to Patrick. But
Patrick has no idea that any of that's going to happen.
And he has a couple of these remarks that are
really heart wrenching. He says, you know, when I die,
I don't even know if people are going to save
my body. Now there's a tomb in Don Patrick, which
supposedly has his body. We have no idea what's in it.
We don't know where Patrick's body is. We don't know
if what he said would come true, that the birds
and the dogs would devour his body came true. We
don't have a Bible with Patrick. We don't have a
letter of Patrick, or we have the two letters. We
don't have it written by his hand, We just have
copies of them. We don't have a church that we
know is built by him, or like a Crozier or
a miter or any of the trappings of power. All
we have is the legacy in those two letters that
were copied from generation to generation, and that's it. And
Patrick actually dies without knowing if he really made any
long lasting difference. But the two things that matter to
him is I save souls here, and I have friends
here and they may be poor, but they know me
and I know them, and they're my family here in Ireland.
And he also knows I did the mission. I did
what I was supposed to do, what I was asked
to do.
Speaker 2: So I bought the fight. I have kept the faith.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think when he gets to when he got to,
his his mind was always when I get to have
an I only want God to say well done, good
and faithful servant and everything else it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting that, while you're talking about,
especially his confession, if he hadn't it sounds to me
like if he hadn't been had that sin, divulged in
that betrayal of his friend, he wouldn't have written the
second of the only two, you know, the two pieces
that we have from him that survived till today.
Speaker 3: That, Yeah, that is the case.
Speaker 2: Most of the biographical information I think that you know we.
Speaker 1: Have comes from that particular one, and think about Patrick's
whole story he would have who knows, he.
Speaker 3: Probably would have turned out to be not a very
good person, had that other horrible thing that happened, and
that him being enslaved. And it's a testimony of God
turning good things, or excuse me, God turning really horrific
or bad things into amazingly beautiful and good things that
impact thousands and thousands of people and hundreds of generations
of people. Now it's a powerful message of how that
can happen in the life of one person.
Speaker 2: Well, we just have a few minutes here.
Speaker 1: I wonder what would you recommend to people who want
to learn more about Saint Patrick, the history, the real
history behind him.
Speaker 2: You know, while we are enjoying.
Speaker 1: The dancing leprechauns and the disgusting green beer, which I
won't be having any of. My husband is a little
bit picky. Well he's actually he's not super picky, but
he knows how to pick good beer. So we'll be
enjoying something better tonight. But sure, you know, aside for
all the kind of kitsch, you know that's modern and
cheap Chinese decorations. What what would be something of more
lasting value that people could devote a couple, you know,
a little bit of their time or you know, going
forward to learning more about this great America.
Speaker 2: American, this great Christian historical figure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I give the same recommendation to everyone who asked this,
because you know, Saint Patrick's day's fun. It has all
sorts of like you know, light things that you can do.
But I would say, if you want to make Saint
Patrick meaningful, and if you actually want to know about
the guy, the amazing person who's better than all of
the legends, just read his confession. It's short, it has
like sixty things.
Speaker 2: You can find it out line, you can.
Speaker 3: Find it online. There are you know, hundreds of versions
that are out there. It's very easy to sit down
and read through. And just I mean you could read
it and in less than an hour easily, you know,
maybe thirty minutes, so you don't want to slow read
read the read the confession and you really get a
sense for him, and everyone acknowledges this. It's a remarkably sincere,
if ineloquent, but a very beautiful letter. And then if
you can't. If you want more, go read the letter
to the Soldiers of Caroticas and you'll get a different
side of the same man who talks the same way
in both letters. But you see one is a man
who was searching to defend his purpose in life, and
then the other is someone who is writing in a
moment of grave concern and legitimate outrage that both of
them present the story of a truly wonderful leader. And
I think we need really good stories of truly wonderful
leaders today because there's such a dearth of that.
Speaker 2: Folks.
Speaker 1: You can find a doctor Steel brand on X at
s T E E L E. Underscore brand like branding
a cow. That that's his handle X dot com slash
what I just noted, Doctor Brand. Thank you for your
time today.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 4: Was great.
Speaker 1: All right, listeners, this has been another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm going to say next be
Speaker 1: Lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray and happy
Saint Patrick's Day.