St Patrick

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St Patrick's Day's coming up. Who was St Paddy?

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Saint Patrick patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Epistola, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians.
He was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At the age of 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland, where during six bleak years spent as a herdsman, he turned with fervour to his faith. It is not possible to say with any assurance when Patrick was born. There are however a number of pointers to his missionary career having lain within the second half of the 5th century.One of the legends of St Patrick was that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction.

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