[light orchestral music]
[light orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
To narrate in detail either the whole story of my labors or even parts of it would take a long time.
So, I shall tell you briefly how God, the all-holy one, often freed me from sl*very and from 12 dangers which threatened my life, as well as from many snares and from things which I am unable to express in words.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[narrator]
To find the real St.
Patrick, you have to peel back centuries of legend and myth.
[Henry]
There's the image of him driving out snakes from Ireland.
[Billy]
The bishop with the miter and the staff and the crozier.
[Elva]
He's also associated very strongly with the shamrock.
[Thomas]
And then Shamrock gives us green.
[Charles]
People think he's Irish when in fact he's British.
[Tim]
Most of the preconception that we've got about St.
Patrick actually is completely wrong.
[narrator]
Most of what we know about the real Patrick comes from his own 5th century letter, known as the Confessio or Confession.
It is one of the earliest surviving documents in Irish history.
[Tim quoting Patrick's Confession in Latin]
"I, Patrick, a sinner, least faithful of many." Those are the words that begin the history of Ireland.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[groaning]
I am Patrick.
I am a sinner, the most unsophisticated of people; the least among all the Christians; and, to some, the most contemptible.
Patrick was writing his message to people who had allowed him to come here to Ireland as a missionary.
There's various controversies that become associated with Patrick and he's defending his good name and character.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Even if I am imperfect in many things I want my brothers and relatives to know the sort of man I am, so that they may understand what it is to which I have committed my soul.
[man speaking foreign language]
[tutor]
Again Patrick.
[Potitus]
Shouldn't we wait and see what happens?
I understand the plight, but we still must collect.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I am the son of deacon Calpornius, as he was the son of the priest Potitus who belonged to the village of Bannavem Taburniae.
[speaking foreign language]
[narrator]
Bannavem Taburniae was a village located somewhere along the western coast of Britain, which at the time was part of the Roman Empire.
[Tim]
The Roman Empire was disintegrating.
The legions were called back to Rome to defend it against the barbarians.
As the Roman administration and structures shrank in Britain it allowed for local leaders to come to the fore.
All the gold coins first.
Yes.
We stack them here.
[narrator]
One of those leaders was Patrick's father, whom he also describes as a Decurion.
- You understand?
- Yes.
[Thomas]
The Decurions are basically the local Roman civil service.
In other words, they keep the tax books.
But if there was a shortfall, then it had to come out of their own resources.
So, we find that in the late Roman Empire, a lot of these people began to join the church because they had an exemption or at least a tax rebate, shall we say.
[speaking foreign language]
[Charles]
Patrick says, "Oh we didn't pay too much attention "to our religion," et cetera.
It would suggest that his people were Christian, of course, but you know, money counts.
The blood of Christ Jesus.
Amen.
Would you like some prunes?
[Charles]
These people were well off.
They had a villa outside the town.
They had male and female slaves.
sl*ve!
[Calpornius]
Enjoy the bread.
He would have been taught to read and write, not only so that he could take over the clerical aspect of his parents, but the tax aspect, which would have required literacy.
[speaking foreign language]
Much better.
[narrator]
Patrick had a bright future.
But living on the edge of the Roman Empire was dangerous.
11!
[laughing]
All right, here we go!
[woman screaming]
[suspenseful orchestral music]
[woman screaming]
[grunting]
[grunting]
[singing in foreign language]
[narrator]
Patrick was taken c*ptive by Irish raiders.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Thomas]
The reason they didn't k*ll him was that he was valuable.
Slaves are a valuable commodity.
[Billy]
He probably thought that he would never see his home again, never see his parents, never see his family.
[Tim]
It was a one-way ticket to the unknown.
[singing in foreign language]
[narrator]
Patrick endured a dangerous voyage across the sea to the eastern coast of Ireland.
[Tim]
The Roman Britain view was Ireland was a place of Barbarians at the end of the world.
[Elva]
Clearly at this point there is some sort of market for British slaves in Ireland.
And Patrick himself tells us that there are many, many of his countrymen who are also slaves in Ireland as well.
[speaking foreign language]
Get going, boy!
Celtic people did not work with slaves the same way that the Romans did.
They treated their slaves pretty badly, like cattle, and would've worked you until you d*ed.
[Elva]
Particularly as a non-Irish sl*ve, he would have been at an even greater disadvantage because he wouldn't have been recognized almost as a person.
Presumably it is a sort of meant-to-be sl*very for life.
[Patrick]
We had pulled back from God; we did not keep his commandments; and we did not listen to our priests who kept on warning us regarding our salvation.
[dramatic orchestral music]
And so the Lord poured upon us the heat of his anger and dispersed us among many peoples right out to the very ends of the earth, where now my utter insignificance is seen among these men of an alien land.
[Father Swan]
He begins to conclude that this has happened because I deserved it basically and this happened to shake me out of my complacency and to shake me out of a way of life I was living, in which God didn't matter for me.
[Charles]
The idea that he was now a sl*ve, it's the world turned upside down.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I remained in death and unbelief until I was truly punished and, in truth, brought low by daily deprivations of hunger and nakedness.
[clattering]
[Charles]
There would have been raiding parties learning m*llitary tactics and they had to go off and get the head of a person from another tribe.
So these were dangerous people, they were dangerous to their own people as well.
And it was under those conditions that he began to reflect upon himself, his life, and his relationship with God and the other world.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
There the Lord opened my understanding to my unbelief, so that however late, I might become conscious of my failings.
Then remembering my need, I might turn with all my heart to the Lord my God.
For it was He who looked after me before I knew Him.
Indeed, as a father consoles his son, so He protected me.
He's learning that God is a father he can trust, and who wants what's best for him.
Then something began in him that was destined to continue.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day.
And more and more, the love of God and the fear of Him grew in me, and my faith was increased and my spirit was quickened, so that in a day I prayed up to 100 times, and almost as many in the night.
Indeed, I even remained in the wood and on the mountain to pray.
And come hail, rain or snow, I was up before dawn to pray; the Spirit was fervent in me.
[Billy]
Something new is happening, something that hadn't happened before.
That personal relationship, the dimension of a personal relationship with God.
This sears his soul.
So much so that he describes it almost as a conversion experience.
[narrator]
Patrick's zeal for God grew so much that even though he was starving, he fasted.
[Thomas]
Fasting was the way you demonstrated you were really feeling your prayer.
You were not just saying words.
[Patrick, voiceover]
It was there indeed, that one night I heard a voice.
[God]
Patrick.
Well have you fasted.
Very soon you are to travel to your homeland.
Behold, your ship is prepared.
[gasping]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
I took flight, leaving the man I had been bound to for six years.
The ship was not nearby, but maybe 200 miles away where I had never been and where I knew nobody.
[Charles]
When you left your tribal group, you were really going into unknown territory and you were losing protection immediately.
[narrator]
The real challenge was traveling through Ireland as a foreigner.
Although he could now speak the Irish language, his accent and appearance would give him away at once.
The biggest danger is someone says, you're a sl*ve.
I'll find out where you come from and I'll take you back and I'll claim a reward.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
I traveled in the power of God, who directed my path towards the good, and I feared nothing.
[Billy]
He wasn't afraid because he had come to know God whose plans for Patrick's life were going to be worked out and realized, with Patrick's consent and with Patrick's cooperation in the Spirit.
[Tim]
In those days, Ireland was a patchwork quilt of little kingdoms.
There were no roads, there were no towns.
[Elva]
This would have been mainly bog land.
How would have Patrick concealed himself?
[Thomas]
You have to think of him in terms of the way prisoners of w*r have to get back over enemy territory.
You've got to be fast on your feet, fast with your tongue, and keep your eyes wide open.
[Charles]
By being fairly stealthful, he could have worked his way to a point in which he knew there were ships leaving for Britain.
[men chattering]
[Patrick, voiceover]
The ship was about to depart on the very day I arrived.
I want to set sail with you.
By no means are you coming with us!
Go on!
Go on!
[Patrick, voiceover]
I began to pray.
And before I finished my prayer, I heard one of the crew shouting.
Come quickly!
Come on, we're taking you on faith.
[narrator]
Patrick was then asked to pledge himself to the crew through a Celtic tradition that involved sucking on their chests.
These days we would shake hands.
In those days that was a-- a way of bonding with each other to show that you would be loyal to them.
He didn't want to do that because he was Christian.
I can't.
Go on.
Move!
[Patrick, voiceover]
Despite this, I stayed with them but I hoped that some of them would come to faith in Jesus Christ, for they were all pagans.
Give me that.
Put that on.
Load it.
[Patrick, voiceover]
And without further ado, we got underway.
[Captain]
Come on, put your back in it!
Yah!
There must be a tremendous sense of elation.
"Yes!
"This is right!
"I have had a vision, I've followed God.
It's worked out." [Thomas]
The way Patrick remembers it, it's not his efforts or his good luck, but it's the grace of God.
[Patrick, voiceover]
We landed after three days and for the next 28 days we made our way through the wilderness.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Elva]
Either the boat gets blown off course, they land beyond the Roman frontiers, or alternatively the port they arrive in may have been subject to barbarian raiding that's been laid-waste in some way.
[Charles]
Maybe they were going on a raid and didn't want to be seen.
So, they land in a part of the country far from habitation.
[Patrick, voiceover]
When their food ran out, starvation overcame them.
So now Christian, you explain to us how we're in this bad state.
Your God is great and all powerful, so why are you not able to pray for us, huh?
We who are on the very brink of starvation.
Turn in trust...
and with your whole heart to the Lord, my God to whom nothing is impossible, that today He may send food to satisfy you on your journey, for He has abundance everywhere.
[roaring]
[narrator]
They made camp there for two nights, and they were well restored, for many of them had dropped out and had been left half dead by the roadside.
And after this they thanked God mightily, and I became honorable in their eyes.
[laughing]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
That very night, while I was sleeping, Satan strongly tried me.
Something like an enormous rock fell on top of me and I lost all power over my limbs.
[narrator]
In his distress, Patrick says he called on Elias.
[Billy]
Elias in Latin means Elijah.
And there are a number of people who believe it's a parallel with Christ on the cross who calls out "Eli Eli" as he was dying.
Elias!
Elias!
Elias!
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
Behold the sun's splendor fell on me and dispelled immediately all the heaviness from upon me.
And I believe that Christ, my Lord assisted me and his Spirit had already cried out through me.
As we traveled, the Lord looked after us with food, fire and dry shelter each day.
And on the very night we reached humanity, we had no food left.
[Captain]
We're looking for food and lodging.
Can you show us where?
Can you take us?
[narrator]
For Patrick, finding civilization only led to more problems.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I was once again taken c*ptive.
Take him.
[Patrick, voiceover]
On the very first night I was with them, I received a divine revelation.
[God]
Patrick, you will remain with them for two months.
[Patrick, voiceover]
On the 60th night, this is exactly what happened.
The Lord freed me from their hands.
[grand orchestral music]
Patrick?
Oh, Patrick.
My son.
Patrick!
He's alive.
You're alive.
Ohhh!
Oh!
[Calpornius]
Thank God.
We thought you were dead.
[Thomas]
Of all of the many slaves that were taken from the Roman Empire, we know the name of only one that was taken and escaped, Patrick.
They gave me a son's welcome, and in good faith, begged me, after all those great tribulations I had been through, that I should go nowhere, nor ever leave them.
Get you some bread!
[Elva]
The Patrick who returned to them was very different than the Patrick that had left, and his experiences had changed him so much as an individual that he was no longer interested in going back to the life as he had it.
You're home Patrick.
You're home.
[narrator]
Soon after his return, Patrick had another vision.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
A man named Victoricus arrived from Ireland with countless letters.
He gave me one of them and I began to read what was in it.
[Billy]
In all probability it was someone that Patrick knew from Ireland.
[Patrick, voiceover]
The voice of the Irish?
At that very moment, [thunder crashing]
I thought I heard the voice of those around the Wood of Foclut which is close to the Western Sea.
[woman]
'O Holy Boy-- [man]
We beg you to come again-- [man 2]
And walk among us.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I was brokenhearted and could not read anything more.
And at that moment I woke up!
[breathing heavily]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Henry]
That transforms Patrick.
That is his call to be a missionary.
I was not quick in accepting what He had made clear to me and the Spirit reminded me.
[speaking foreign language]
[Patrick, voiceover]
And the Lord was merciful to me thousands upon thousands of times because He saw what was within me and that I was ready but I did not know what I should do about the state of my life.
The blood of Christ Jesus.
[woman]
We beg you to come again and walk among us.
Amen.
Can I speak with you?
[Thomas]
No one in Christianity before the 16th century thinks you can just have a ministry because you just have a ministry.
You have to think of ministry through the ministry of the church.
What brings you here?
I wish to be a cleric.
[narrator]
Patrick had to work his way up the ranks to become a bishop.
Bishops can ordain priests so you can create a hierarchy that will survive after your death.
You have to have a bishop in order to establish a Church.
[speaking foreign language]
Amen.
[Billy]
The style of formation training would have been mentoring in basic responsibilities of how to celebrate the liturgy, pastoral duties towards people, preaching, sacramental celebration.
I'm here to learn about the Lord.
There are many scrolls.
[narrator]
It's believed that Patrick's apprenticeship took him to Gaul, Northern France, for a time.
[Thomas]
It would have been the equivalent of going from Alaska to New York.
If he wanted to meet lots of other Christians whom he could talk to about theology and about faith and about belief, then Gaul would be the place to go.
[laughing]
Of course it was always, you know.
[narrator]
During his training, Patrick developed a close friendship with a young clergyman in whom he felt he could confide.
Felix.
I am a sinner.
I must confess what I have done.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Once when I was anxious and worried I hinted to my dearest friend about something I had done one day, indeed in one hour of my youth, for I had not then prevailed over my sinfulness and I was not a believer in the true God.
[narrator]
Many have tried to guess what Patrick's boyhood sin might have been.
Some say it was immorality.
Others, idolatry or even m*rder.
But the truth is that no one knows, because Patrick doesn't tell us.
Am I ever to be forgiven?
You are forgiven.
[mentor]
Patrick.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[father]
Patrick!
You have a visitor.
Felix.
Patrick.
Please, help yourself.
What is it that brings you all the way out here?
It appears that you are to be given the rank of bishop.
I am unworthy.
It is the will of the elders.
This is quite a surprise.
I'm not sure I-- I am expected in Cardiff by nightfall.
I must go.
Of course.
Wait!
[dramatic orchestral music]
[singing in foreign language]
[speaking foreign language]
Amen.
Go in peace, friend.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Many were forbidding my mission.
Behind my back, they were telling stories.
To Ireland?
Well, why would this man put himself in danger among enemies who do not know God?
For what reason?
[Billy]
People thought that this mission was crazy, the Irish people were beyond redemption, that even the Roman Empire had not gone that far, and that his efforts to Christianize Ireland were doomed to failure.
[Bishop]
They're savages!
These heathen!
[Elva]
Patrick really believes that if he preaches to the end of the earth this will complete God's mission and will usher in the Second Coming, which Patrick presumably hoped would happen in his lifetime and maybe even as a result of his activities.
[narrator]
Against all odds, Patrick was eventually permitted to return to Ireland as a missionary bishop.
While the British Church most likely funded the mission continually, some scholars believe that Patrick paid the initial cost himself.
[Elva]
He sells his nobility, which I take to be a reference to him selling, essentially his inheritance.
It's almost like a form of seed funding, which will enable him to get to Ireland.
I imagine that Patrick's parents had fully expected him to take on the role, as maybe the heir of the family.
[Charles]
He would have been opting out of any responsibility for running estates, et cetera.
This does not have to be, Patrick.
It is the will of God.
For the journey.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Many gifts were offered to me with sorrow and tears and I offended them and went against the will of some of my elders.
Father.
[Patrick, voiceover]
It was not my grace, but God who conquered in me and who resisted them all that I might come to the Irish nations to preach the gospel.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[Father Swan]
In terms of the challenge of it, it was just awesome.
He didn't know what he faced, possible death and persecution, more sl*very, imprisonment.
[narrator]
Patrick was not the first bishop to be sent to Ireland.
He was preceded by a man named Palladius who had been sent by the pope a year earlier.
[Thomas]
Palladius is most likely ministering to a sl*ve community and to traders.
So, there were Christians in Ireland, and in fact, Patrick never assumes that he converts people from nothing to Christianity.
[narrator]
According to the Annals of Ulster, Patrick arrived in Ireland sometime in AD 432.
Exactly where he went is not known.
But we do know that according to Irish law, Patrick was still a fugitive.
[Thomas]
Probably he stayed far away from the places that he had been enslaved.
You get a constant sense that Patrick is living on his wits.
[Billy]
He seems to be pervaded by the spirit of mission that is taking him beyond and abroad bringing the gospel where it had not reached before out to the very edge, out to the very periphery of Ireland.
He seems to have this collective consciousness of the Irish as a nation, so that leaves him free to go wherever those Irish people are to be found.
He's responding just purely on faith that God would take him where he wanted him to go and where he would give witness.
[Tim]
Patrick was equipped for the job because he would have been able to communicate to the Irish and bring Christianity by talking to them more or less in their own tongue.
[narrator]
Evangelizing the Irish would prove to be a challenging task.
Although Christianity was present in parts of Ireland, the country was predominantly pagan.
[speaking foreign language]
Though I am not from this land, I spent many years here.
And I have returned with a message.
What is the message you bring?
If you let me inside, I will tell you.
[Thomas]
It's a big deal if you become a Christian because you're changing a set of gods for one God.
You're buying into a different calendar.
You're changing the people you associate with.
It's far more like thinking of someone who lives in a completely Buddhist society becoming a Christian.
And the prophet Hosea says, "Those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call my beloved.
And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, they will be called sons of the living God." Who among you heeds the call?
[Billy]
The content of his message is not doomsday.
It's preaching the love of God, and how others can come to know God as a person-loving father, just as he did.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Truly it is our task to cast our nets and catch a great multitude and crowd for God; to make sure that there are clergy everywhere to baptize and preach to a people who are in need.
Baptism for early Christians was the moment of commitment when you became a true Christian.
And it was believed in the early Church that baptism was the one point in your life when your sins were washed away.
[narrator]
For the Irish, baptism had a deeper significance because of their mythology.
[Charles]
Water was associated with kingship.
These waters all flowed together, entered the ocean, and returns as rain and falls upon the earth creating the great cycle of life.
[Elva]
Having baptisms, having these public rituals in which people identify as Christians is really powerful and is probably one that transfers over quite easily and is something which the pagans could also understand and could see its significance.
[Patrick, voiceover]
And I am greatly in God's debt.
He has given me a great grace, that through me many people might be reborn and later brought to perfection.
And also, that from among them everywhere clerics should be ordained to serve this people, who have but recently come to belief.
And again, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He who believes and is baptized will be saved.
He who does not believe will be condemned." Now go.
[Billy]
Patrick's ministry was extremely effective.
Each time a new priest was ordained, then you had the center of a community.
He was trying to create small communities of Christians because that is how Christianity spread through the Roman Empire.
[narrator]
As Patrick's ministry grew, he trained other clerics to continue his work and went on to the next community.
[Charles]
As that went on year after year after year, his mission was extremely successful.
And so it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and indeed, in that time on my manservants and my maidservants I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
The bread of heaven in Christ Jesus.
[woman]
Amen.
[Patrick]
How has this happened in Ireland?
Never before did they know of God except to serve idols and unclean things.
Yet recently, what a change.
[Billy]
Christianity was beginning to take hold.
That's the transformation he marvels at.
And he's saying, "Listen, don't believe the evidence of my word only, look what's happening." [all chattering]
[Patrick, voiceover]
They have become a prepared people of the Lord, and they are now called sons of God.
And the Irish leaders' sons and daughters are seen to become the monks and virgins of Christ.
[laughing]
[bell ringing]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[narrator]
But while Patrick had great success among the pagans in Ireland, he quickly lost favor with the Church back in Britain.
Patrick is preaching the Gospel in a way very different to the way other Christians are preaching the Gospel in Ireland.
There were rules and stipulations by the church at the time.
Bishops were not to stray out beyond their own dioceses or own areas of responsibility.
In Patrick we see something different.
[narrator]
It's also believed that Patrick ministered in the Irish language instead of Latin and established many monasteries for the ordination of uneducated people.
I mean, who is this man to do such things?
And who does he think he is?
[narrator]
Patrick's superiors started digging for anything they could find to discredit him.
[Patrick]
On one occasion, a blessed Irish woman of noble birth whom I had baptized came back to us.
I must see Patrick.
What brings you here, child?
I received a divine revelation from a messenger of God who advised me to become a virgin of Christ.
Thanks be to God.
[Thomas]
If a woman decides to become a virgin, a female monk, she can only do that with the permission of her father.
They have brought this girl up and this girl is now no benefit to the family at all.
[Patrick, voiceover]
This, of course, is not to the liking of their fathers and they have to suffer persecutions and false accusations from their parents.
God has called me to serve Him.
[speaking foreign language]
Go home.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[speaking foreign language]
[Patrick, voiceover]
Yet despite this, their number keeps increasing.
[vocalizing]
[narrator]
Another challenge Patrick faced was protecting his Irish converts from sl*ve traders.
In his second writing, the Epistola, Patrick responds to the att*cks of a British w*rlord named Coroticus.
He is a slaver who has taken some of the people that Patrick has converted to Christianity.
And his men k*lled many people because people don't go willingly into sl*very.
-[dramatic orchestral music]
-[vocalizing]
[Patrick, voiceover]
They are blood-stained; blood-stained with the blood of innocent Christians, whose numbers I have given birth to in God and confirmed in Christ.
[vocalizing]
I sent a letter by a holy priest, with clerics, to ask that Coroticus and his men return to us some of the baptized prisoners they had captured.
They scoffed at them.
[Father Swan]
The people who were responsible for the slaughter of his newly baptized Christians were nominally Christian, which gives him the authority to excommunicate them, to declare what was already true, basically the people who are responsible for m*rder can no longer be called Christian.
Patrick, by writing this letter, is making a formal statement, which says, "Coroticus, unless you change, you are damned.
And God will back me on this one!" [Patrick]
The church mourns and weeps for its sons and daughters who were taken away and exported to far distant lands, where grave sin openly flourishes without shame, where freeborn people have been sold off, Christians reduced to sl*very.
[sobbing]
I do not know what to say, or how I can say any more, about the children of God who are dead, whom the sword has touched so cruelly.
All I can do is what is written: "Weep with those who weep"; and again: "If one member suffers pain, let all the members suffer the pain with it." [Patrick, voiceover]
The evil of evil people has prevailed over us.
We have been made as if we were complete outsiders.
For them, it is a disgrace that we are from Ireland.
[Charles]
He said, "They hate us because we are Irish." That's extraordinary.
That Patrick had come to feel himself to be just as Irish as his followers.
Let it be read before all the people, especially in the presence of Coroticus himself.
God may inspire them to come back to their right senses, however late it may be.
[Elizabeth]
Unfortunately, we simply don't know if Coroticus returned any of the slaves.
And I think it's probably unlikely that he did.
But simply that is something that the sources just don't show us.
[light orchestral music]
[Patrick, voiceover]
I wish to leave them to go to Britain.
I would willingly do this, and I am prepared for this, as if to visit my home country and my parents.
Not only that, but I would like to go to Gaul to visit the brothers and see the faces of the saints of my Lord.
God knows what I would dearly like to do.
But I am bound in the Spirit, who assures me that if I were to do this, I would be held guilty.
And I fear, also, to lose the work which I began, not so much I, but Christ the Lord, who told me to come here to be with these people for the rest of my life.
Tell us this secret you know about Patrick.
Patrick isn't the man people think he is.
He's committed unpardonable sins.
Tell me everything you know.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[narrator]
As Patrick's mission expanded throughout Ireland, he wandered between territories owned by different tribes.
[Billy]
A lot of those tribes were at w*r or at least at rivalry with each other.
The whole country of Ireland was certainly not unified.
[narrator]
Crossing territorial boundaries was dangerous.
The only people who were able to travel freely were poets, tribal leaders and their sons.
Patrick talks about traveling with the sons of petty kings, probably as a kind of bodyguard.
But also, as people he was educating as he moved about the countryside.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Every day there is the chance that I will be k*lled, surrounded, or taken into sl*very, or some other such happening.
[speaking foreign language]
[light harp music]
What brings you back, Roman?
We come in peace.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Sometimes I gave presents to kings, over and above the wages I gave their sons who traveled with me.
[Elva]
They're a bit like gangs.
He has to pay protection money.
[Thomas]
And of course, that is always going to be seen as problematic, because it's no more than greasing the wheels.
Is this all?
[ominous orchestral music]
Take him.
[Patrick, voiceover]
On that day they avidly sought to k*ll me.
[grunting]
[grunting]
[yelling]
[grunting]
Enough!
[Patrick, voiceover]
But the time had not yet come.
[exhaling]
Still they looted us, took everything of value, and bound me in iron.
On the 14th day, the Lord set me free from their power; all our possessions were returned to us for God's sake and for the sake of the close friendship we had previously.
This is who we confess and adore, [all]
One God in Trinity of sacred name.
Amen.
[Tim]
He'd make a congregation.
He'd go to the next little place where they didn't like the look of him, and the same thing would happen all over again.
So he's imprisoned many times.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[narrator]
Patrick also had to strike deals with a group of people he calls judges.
[Elva]
Patrick, very interestingly, does not say who the judges are.
I think he's making deals with local druids, that he's asking them for safe passage through their territories.
He's probably asking them for permission to engage in preaching.
[narrator]
The druids were a powerful force in fifth century Ireland.
These Celtic religious leaders were part of a pagan priesthood that supervised sacred rites, presided over public and private disputes, and were said to be prophets.
I suppose they would have been the people that Patrick would have been facing.
They would have been the rivals to Patrick's new ministry.
You do get the impression that there must have been many clashes.
[goat bleating]
[narrator]
Legend has it that such a clash happened on the Hill of Slane.
Patrick's seventh century biographer Muirchú tells how Patrick opposed the druids, and defied a king.
[Patrick, voiceover]
They held and celebrated their pagan feast on the same night on which holy Patrick celebrated Easter.
They also had a custom, which was announced to all publicly, that whoever lit a fire on that night before it was lit in the king's house, would have forfeited his life.
It shone in the night and it was seen by almost all of the people who lived in the plain, and as they saw it they all gazed at it and wondered.
[dramatic orchestral music]
Who is the man who has dared to do such a wicked thing in my kingdom?
We do not know who has done this, King, may you live forever!
Unless this fire which we see is extinguished on this same night on which it has been lit, then it will never be extinguished at all and it will spread over the whole country and it will reign in all eternity.
[Billy]
It's a prophecy that the light of Christianity triumphs over every evil, over every secular authority.
And the fire would never go out.
I think we should continue to move northwest and eventually be able to split up and cross into higher country.
My dear friends.
Such a surprise to see you.
[Patrick, voiceover]
They came and put my sins against my hard work as a bishop.
The charge they brought against me was something from 30 years earlier, which I had admitted before I was even a deacon.
I am a sinner.
Patrick isn't the man people think he is.
[Patrick]
I must confess what I have done.
He's committed unpardonable sins.
[Patrick]
Am I ever to be forgiven?
Tell me everything you know.
[Billy]
This friend of his disclosed the sin of Patrick and that this has been used to discredit him.
[Patrick, voiceover]
This hit me very hard, so much so that it seemed I was about to fall, both here and in eternity.
[grunting]
[screaming]
[dramatic orchestral music]
I am very sorry for my dearest friend, to whom I trusted even my soul.
That same night I saw in a vision some writing before my dishonored face.
[God]
We have seen with anger the face of our chosen one with his name laid bare of respect.
[Patrick, voiceover]
God did not say, you have seen with anger, but "we have seen with anger" as if in this matter He were joined to me.
Patrick, the boat is ready, and it's time to go.
[dramatic orchestral music]
I am not finished.
Damn him!
He powerfully came to my aid in this battering so that I did not slip badly into the wreckage of sin and into infamy.
I pray God that it may not be charged against them as sin.
Amen.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[narrator]
As Patrick got older, criticism of his mission and methods had only grown, which prompted him to write the Confessio.
[Patrick, voiceover]
Maybe when I baptized all those thousands, I hoped to get even half a penny from one of them?
Tell me and I will return it to you!
Or when the Lord ordained clergy everywhere through me as his mediocre instrument, and I gave my ministry to them for free, did I even charge them the cost of my shoes?
Tell it against me and I will all the more return it to you!
[Father Swan]
He scrupulously defends himself saying that his motives and his reasons for his presence in Ireland, for his return to Ireland was nothing except that the Irish would come to know Christ and come to know the Father as he did.
[narrator]
It's believed that Patrick was ordered to give up his mission and return to Britain.
[Elva]
Patrick faces this question, "If I'm not accepted by the hierarchy of the British Church, is my mission something which is acceptable?" His ultimate line of defense is to say, "I'm carrying on with my mission.
I'm not going to go back to Britain because I have been chosen to be a bishop by God." [Billy]
Patrick went AWOL.
And we just don't know how that all panned out.
He said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life in Ireland because that's what God demanded.
Therefore, we've got to guess that he never did go back.
[Patrick]
I pray that God give me perseverance, and that he grant me to bear faithful witness to Him right up to my passing from this life, for the sake of my God.
[narrator]
Patrick d*ed sometime in the late fifth century.
The exact date, location, and circumstances of his death are unknown.
Later traditions claimed that he d*ed of old age on March 17th, AD 461 and was buried in Saul, Northern Ireland.
Nearby at Down Cathedral, this granite slab marks the traditional spot of his burial.
[dramatic orchestral music]
Not long after Patrick's death, the Roman Empire fell, and Western Europe drifted into the Dark Ages.
But Patrick's work was not in vain.
[Billy]
As Christianity established itself, as it became more vibrant, it became known as the Land of Saints and Scholars, and that led, in turn, to a whole proliferation of Christian missionaries leaving Ireland and flooding continental Europe.
Patrick's story began a chain of events that is quite remarkable in the impact that it had.
[Tim]
He wore out many more pairs of sandals in death than he did in life.
And he's still going, people are still reading his Confession and still being interested in Christianity because he wrote his message down.
[Patrick, voiceover]
I pray for those who believe in and have reverence for God.
Some of them may come upon this writing which Patrick, a sinner, wrote in Ireland.
May none of them ever say that whatever little I did or made known to please God was done through ignorance.
Instead, you can judge and believe in all truth that it was a gift of God.
This is my confession before I die.
[dramatic orchestral music]
[dramatic orchestral music]
[vocalizing]
[dramatic orchestral music]
I Am Patrick (2020)
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