St. Patrick's Day: No it's not about snakes, but it's not about Pagans either...

Ok, so every year it seems my social media is bombarded with angry Pagans decrying the celebration of St. Patrick's Day because he is being celebrated for driving all the Snakes out of Ireland... and "snakes" means "pagans", right? Wrong.

This is a misrepresentation that comes from people skipping over a couple of pretty important historical points for a number of years.

By Nheyob - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39732088

St. Patrick was born in Roman Britain, and despite having a Decon for a father and a priest for a grandfather, he didn't find faith himself until he was kidnapped by Irish pirates at 16 and lived as a slave for 6 years. Upon escaping he returned to England and continued to study Christianity, eventually returning to Ireland as a missionary.

St Patrick did not arrive in Ireland to drive out Paganism and replace it with Christianity. When he arrived, there were already Christians in Ireland, quite a lot of them. A whole host of historical figures were associated with spreading Christianity in Ireland, from Finnian of Clonard, who trained the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, through Palladius. Only then did the subject of this article himself come into the equation.

The misconceptions about St. Patrick aren't limited to the Pagan community. Even the church itself is thought to have fudged the dates, placing Patrick in Ireland 30 years earlier than he actually arrived. This is believed to be because they grew to prefer him as a figure to Palladius, and it allowed them to pass credit for a lot of the work Palladius did to Patrick.

There is evidence to suggest Palladius was sent to Ireland to stop Pelagianism - (a belief system within Christianity that believes people can earn salvation by their own efforts, rather than just by the grace of God) - from establishing among the Christian community.

Snakes were much more commonly associated with the Devil or evil, than they were with Pagainism. They could have been used as a symbol of many things, from original sin through to the afore mentioned  Phelagians (the theory I favor).

So when you see cartoons of St. Patrick driving snakes out of Irelands, what you're actually seeing is Palladius stopping Pelagians entering Ireland... or at least keeping them quiet when they got there.