Patrick, The Patron Saint of Ireland, was actually English by birth but Irish by choice. Born circa 373 AD as Patricius, the son of a Roman-British deacon, he was captured as a teenager by slave raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland. In his book The Confession, Patrick recounts how one night a voice in a dream told him to escape to the coast where he would find a ship. After a long journey avoiding capture, he boarded a boat bound for Britain and was reunited with his parents.  Later, he was ordained a priest and then a  bishop. Since the first bishop sent to Ireland had failed to convert the Irish, Patrick requested permission to try. His superiors expected only failure, but volunteers being scarce, they grudgingly granted him leave to go.

But the Church fathers badly misjudged their man. In the space of a generation, Patrick would change history.

His mission to Ireland still stands as one of the great success stories of Christianity. While resistance to change made his task difficult, it is a monumental testament to Patrick's character and his love of his people that the conversion of the Irish was perhaps the most bloodshed-free in all history. Within a century of his death at 90 in 463 AD, Patrick's Ireland had peacefully adopted the new religion while retaining many of the traditions of the old.

In Michael Carroll's SAINT PATRICK, the saint is portrayed in profile looking from east to west, from Roman Britain to Celtic Ireland. Having spent his youth and later most of his adult life among the Irish, Patrick shared a bond with them close to kinship. Thus his preaching stressed the similarities between the old religion and the new, rather than the differences. This bishop brought his people to Christianity with words, not swords.

Red Version

Green Version 

Patrick was especially devoted to the Trinity, and his symbol is the shamrock, which he holds aloft in his left hand. Legend has it that he  used it to explain the concept: Three leaves yet one shamrock, three Persons yet one God. The most famous legend of course is that Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, which is a myth based in truth. One of the symbols of the old Celtic religion was the snake or reptile, which can be seen here at the bottom beneath the saint's feet.

In SAINT PATRICK, the saint wears not the formal robes and mitre of a bishop, but the plain robes of a shepherd, Patrick's job as a slave.  Across his shoulder rests his shepherd's staff: the symbol of both his early suffering and his later glory as a shepherd of souls. Beneath the staff and tucked under his arm, his faithful flock of converts are protected from the wild swirling chaos of spiral ornament to the left. While Patrick's arm is upraised against the native tide, his gesture is also one of welcome.