Ireland: Conversion without Martyrdom

By Ken Concannon
Special to the Herald
(From the issue of 3/17/05)

Each year during the month of March people of Irish descent celebrate their Irishness with parades dedicated to the man credited with converting the original Irish, the Gaels, to Christianity some 1,500 years ago. The man, of course, was St. Patrick who, according to legend, drove out the snakes from Ireland and used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity.

More importantly, he managed to convert the Gaels without getting anybody killed. In his best seller How the Irish Saved Civilization, published about 10 years ago, Thomas Cahill described Ireland as "the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed." Unlike every other Christian country, Ireland’s conversion to Christianity was accomplished without martyrs. There would be martyrs in the Emerald Isle a thousand years later, when the Irish died by the thousands for their Catholic faith. But not then, not on Patrick’s watch.

How did he do it? Was he a miracle worker? Or were the Gaels easier to convert to Christianity than other people? The answer to both questions is probably "Yes!"

Patrick was clearly a man with a calling, and his calling was to convert the Gaels. As a youth he had spent several years in captivity as a slave in Ireland, where he learned the language, the character, and the customs of the people who enslaved him. Born into a Christian family, he began his slavery as a callous teenager who didn’t take his religion very seriously. He turned to God during that period, and after he finally escaped he heard voices, Gaelic voices, calling him back, asking him to bring Christianity to them. He then made it his mission in life to become a priest, and to eventually return to the land of his captivity as a missionary.

It took him 30 years or more to, first, become a priest, and then convince the pope to send him back to Ireland as a missionary, where he would bring the Gospel of Christ to a people he most likely understood better than anyone living outside of Ireland at that time. The Gaels, as Patrick well knew, were unique in the known world. They were Celts, which made them different to begin with. But they were Celts who, unlike the Gauls, and Patrick’s fellow Britons, had never been conquered by Rome or influenced by its culture and traditions.

The Gaels had a unique societal structure of their own that had been working quite well for them for about 800 years, since before the birth of Christ. When Patrick arrived in Ireland in the 5th century, the country was divided into five provinces, each with its own king. Each Gael was a member of one of approximately 200 territorial tribes, or tuaths, which were distributed among the five provinces. Tribal chiefs were frequently referred to as kings, but the territory controlled by a given tuath belonged to the entire tribe, not to any one individual. In addition to the provincial and tribal kings was the High King of Ireland, whose primary responsibility was keeping the peace among the frequently feuding tribes and provinces — an especially difficult task, given the limits of the High King's authority and the temperament of his subjects.

Irish kings were anything but absolute monarchs. They and their subjects were governed by an elaborate legal system called the Brehon laws, which established modes of conduct for all classes of Irish society as well as penalties for disobeying those laws. The system was quite sophisticated. It set down rules of acceptable behavior for all classes of society, protected the rights of individuals (including women), and provided a system for redress of alleged violations of the law. Complainants could sue for damages before a Brehon judge.

Although the Ireland to which Patrick had been brought as a slave was a pagan country, it was in many respects more civilized than the society he was born into. The Gaels, though hot-tempered and often violent, were not a cruel people. To the Gaels torture was unconscionable and capital punishment unknown. Women, who were treated as chattel in most of the world right up to the modern era, enjoyed a status in Ireland 1,500 years ago unknown on the European continent and elsewhere. The Brehon laws required that wives be consulted on all matters relating to their families and women could actually sue for divorce.

Moreover, the Gaels believed in their own immortality, and they saw in the world around them constant evidence of higher powers that they did not quite understand. The combination of their spiritual beliefs and their cultural reality tended to make the Gaels more independent than most, more confident, less fearful, and, very important for Patrick’s mission, more tolerant.

How many of these things Patrick had figured out during his first sojourn in Ireland is unknown, but what he certainly did know before he was sent back there as the world’s first missionary bishop was that Christianity already had a foothold in Ireland. Tolerant Ireland had become a safe haven for persecuted Christians escaping from less hospitable parts of largely barbarian Europe. Patrick was sent to Ireland as bishop to the Christians already there and those soon to be converted.

His mission had one other thing going for it — the poets. The Gaelic social order regarded poets as part of the aristocracy. The Gaelic poets — chroniclers of Gaelic history, storytellers at Gaelic courts — stood second only to kings in that aristocracy, but enjoyed a popularity and reverence rarely conferred upon royalty. The Gaels enjoyed a good story even more than fighting.

Along comes Patrick with the greatest story ever told, a story that appealed to the very best in those good people.

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