Ireland was always different. It knew nothing of the Roman Empire’s rule or language, remaining the last Celtic bastion in Europe, she proudly stood apart. Here to the classical mind was the very edge of the world, a Barbarian island lost in the mists of the Atlantic Ocean, outside of the Roman Empire and outside of the Church. Christians in the fifth century generally did not want to evangelize beyond the Empire’s frontiers to Barbarians. Whereas the early Christians had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Roman Empire by the fourth and fifth centuries, Christianity was supported, protected and even privileged by the Empire. Emperor Theodosius’ edict of A.D. 380 established Christianity as the Roman Empire’s official state religion, the kingdom of God was now the Empire of Rome, and to be a Roman was to be a Christian. The state took on the role of “evangelist” in the sense that the Empire’s expanding borders created Christians within it either through conquest or compulsion. No need for missionaries and martyrs; the Legions did just fine.

Too Savage for the Gospel

The prevailing Christian view of the Barbarians as either too savage or brutish to understand the Gospel message was linked to the threat the Barbarians posed to Roman order and civilization. The Spanish theologian Prudentius (c. 400) concluded after some pious reflection that a Barbarian was technically a species of wild animal and not fully human. It was folly to send missionaries to these Barbarians since they were simply too savage to embrace Christianity. Severian of Gabala (c.400), a highly regarded preacher at the imperial court, boldly if wrongly declared, “The gospel has come to the whole world!” Severian was obviously wrong, but when one’s whole world was the Roman Empire, it was easy to forget that Irish Barbarians were part of a very different world.

Ireland in the fifth century was tribal, violent and terrifying. The classical geographer Strabo (d. A.D. 24) described how the natives of Ireland were “wholly savage.” Human sacrifice to the dreaded Celtic gods was still practiced, and Irish warriors proudly hung the severed heads of their enemies from their chariots. Alongside sacrifice and warfare was the concept of one’s honor price. Ireland did not have a system of law based on equal citizenship; rather, every man or woman had their own particular honor price based on wealth, family and occupation. Within this ancient system, a person was said to have what the Irish called “lóg n-enech” (/ˈlōɣː v’ev’əx/)– literally “the price of their face.” In the old Irish language, “honor” and “face” are the same word. If you wronged someone more powerful than you, then you had a legal obligation to make financial restitution to them. The Irish expression for this restitution was “eneclann,” literally to “wash the face” of the one whom you had wronged; that is, to pay to them their honor price. If you could not pay the honor price you owed, it meant you became a “Cimbid” (/ˈkɪm:.bɪd/) In the words of the historian Kathleen Hughes, “The Cimbid was a person whose life was forfeit to another, and who might be imprisoned or slain at will.” The Cimbid was kept in chains as they awaited a certain and cruel death, a death without honor. Besides the Cimbid, there were others in Ireland without an honor price; slaves certainly had none, and neither did the “Cú Glas” (/ˌkuː glɑːz/), or “Grey Wolves”. These were foreigners from outside Ireland. As Grey Wolves, they existed outside the clan without a name and without an honor price.

The First Missionaries to Ireland

This was the Ireland that the first courageous missionaries came to in the fifth century. We know from a reliable, contemporary source (Prosper of Aquitaine) that the first missionary to Ireland was a man called Palladius. He came from Gaul (France) and arrived in Ireland in the year 431. He ministered to a small community of Christians in Ireland (most probably British slaves) and worked to evangelize the pagan Irish. Palladius came from a small circle of Christians in Gaul that rejected the prevailing Imperial Christianity of their day with its refusal to reach out to the Barbarians with the Gospel. Instead, they were convinced of the Church’s call to evangelism, even to pagans outside the Empire. One of the central figures in this movement was Prosper of Aquitaine who wrote the first Christian book addressing the mission to Barbarians outside the Empire; the book was titled The Call of All Nations. Central to the theology of Palladius and Prosper was the supremacy of God’s grace, a grace that “is not content with the boundaries that are Rome’s.” Little is known of Palladius’ mission in Ireland; he would have been viewed as a Grey Wolf, an outsider, a man without an honor price. While Palladius was the first he was by no means the last Grey Wolf to come to Ireland in the fifth century to proclaim the Gospel.

In the latter part of the fifth century, a Briton called Patrick came to Ireland as a missionary. Today we call him Saint Patrick. When he was 16, Patrick had been kidnapped from Britain by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland in chains as a slave. His own account of these events has survived and offers a unique insight into his life and later mission to Ireland. In Patrick’s own words, he was at best a nominal Christian, though having been raised in a Christian home, his youth was one of unbelief and even mockery of the Church. Having lost everything as a slave in Ireland, he turned to the God he had spurned and to his surprise, he came to see that it was God who had pursued Patrick all along.

After six years of slavery, he managed to escape and eventually made it back home to Britain. It was in Britain that he heard the voice of the Irish in a dream calling him, begging him to return to them. Convinced it was God’s call on his life to return to Ireland to preach the Gospel, he entered into ministry training, and after several years, was ordained. The remarkable thing about Patrick, the Roman Briton, is that he chose to lay aside his citizenship and status, as a freeborn Roman, and return to Ireland as a man with no honor price.

The Grey Wolf Evangelist

From what he tells us, ministry in Ireland was dangerous and discouraging. Apart from the dangers he faced from the pagan Irish, he also endured the bitter criticism of the British Church who refused to accept a mission to the Irish Barbarians as appropriate. Patrick writes of “…Many who forbade this mission. They even told stories among themselves behind my back, and they said: ‘Why does he put himself in danger among hostile people who do not know God?’” Why would any Roman risk their life for such as these? Why indeed. Patrick’s answer to the criticism was simply that he “never had any other reason for returning to that nation from which I had earlier escaped, except the gospel and God’s promises.” For Patrick, it was all about the Gospel, that message of grace that had changed him and would ultimately, Patrick believed, change Ireland.

Through it all God preserved Patrick, and in his own words, many thousands came to faith in Christ in Ireland. Patrick’s mission was the opposite of Imperial Christianity; he ministered from a position of weakness, as a man without an honor price, as an outsider, a Grey Wolf. The power of Patrick’s mission was not in the might of the Roman Empire, for Ireland knew nothing of that, nor in the status and privileges of the state Church, for Ireland knew nothing of that too. Instead, the power of Patrick’s mission was the Gospel, the message of God’s love for the lost, be they Barbarian or Roman. As Ireland had no centralized government at this time, the Christian faith was not established from above as an act of state, rather it was established from below, though the life and message of Patrick and the fearless witness of the first generations of Irish Christians, many of whom Patrick tells us, suffered severe persecution for their faith.

The Cimbid King

As early Christians in Ireland read their Latin manuscripts of the Bible, they began to heavily annotate them with translations and commentary in their own Irish language. One such manuscript of Matthew’s Gospel has a curious note written in the margin at Matthew 27:26 “… Then he [Pilate] released to them Barabbas: and having scourged Jesus, delivered him unto them to be crucified.” In the margin of the Bible, the Irish reader simply noted dilse cimbeto, “the penalty of a Cimbid.” For the Irish, the Gospel was the story of God sending His Son, the beloved Son who had the highest of all honor prices, to take our place as a Cimbid, a man handed over to death, a man without an honor price. No one ever spoke of God like this in Ireland until Christianity came. No one ever conceived of the Celtic gods as voluntarily taking the place of a Cimbid.

Grace did not even exist as a word in old Irish, for they never knew it until they heard the Gospel preached.

Early Irish Christians like Blathmac often described Christ as the substitutionary Cimbid. Jesus Christ, so Blathmac wrote, “Was the Cimbid who paid the greatest debt.” To pay what we owed, to restore us to freedom, to break the chains of sin and death, Christ took our place as a Cimbid. Another early Irish theologian, Cummian Fota from Co. Galway, wrote a commentary on Mark’s Gospel around the year 610. Reflecting on the trial of Jesus he wrote:

“The High Priest standing interrogates Jesus but he remained silent…The silence of Christ absolves the excuses of Adam…[Christ is declared guilty] This was so that by the guilt he received He might remove our guilt; that by the blindfold on his face he might take the blindfold from our hearts; that by receiving the hateful spits, he might wash the face of our soul, that by the beating, by which he was struck on the head, he might heal the head of the human race, which is Adam… So that with his cross He might cancel our own crucifixion, and by his death He might destroy our death. …As He said through the prophet: ‘I will be your death, O death, and your destruction, O Hades’ (Hosea 13:14). His reproach has removed our dishonor. His chains have set us free. By the crown of thorns on His head we have gained the diadem of the kingdom. With His wounds we are healed. By his burial we are resurrected. By His descent into grave we will rise to heaven. Foreseeing all this, the prophet of old said, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” (Psalm 116:12).”

The marvel of God’s grace that the Irish encountered is that though they had sinned and dishonored God, it was God in Christ Jesus who set them free by becoming a Cimbid in their place. Instead of demanding His divine honor price, as was His right, He instead washed the face of sinners. That is, He honored those without an honor price by giving all who believe in Him His righteousness, His forgiveness, His honor price. The remarkable story of the first Christians in Ireland is unique in the history of the fifth century. Where the Roman Empire failed to conquer, the Gospel of Grace as preached by Grey Wolves triumphed.

_Bibliography

_{. Cahill, Michael [ed.], Expositio evangelii secundum Marcum, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 82, Scriptores Celtigenae 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997.}

_{. Carney, James [ed.]. The Poems of Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan. Irish Texts Society 47. Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1964.}

_{. Charles-Edwards, T. M. Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.}

_{. Charles-Edwards, T. M. “The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio.” Celtica 11 (1976): 43-59.}

_{. Conneely, Daniel. St. Patrick’s Letters: A Study of their Theological Dimension. Maynooth: An Sagart, 1993.}

_{. Freeman, Philip. Ireland and the Classical World. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001.}

_{. Hughes, Kathleen. The Church in Early Irish Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966.}

_{. Kelly, Fergus. A Guide to Early Irish Law. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988.}

_{. Prosper. The Call of All Nations. Ancient Christian Writers; the Works of the Fathers in Translation. Vol. 14. Translated by P. De Letter. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1952.}

_{. Stokes, W. and Strachan, J. Thesaurus Paleohibernicus – Vol. 1, A Collection of Old Irish Glosses Scholia Prose and Verse. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1987.}

The rope was so tight round sixteen-year-old Patricius’ wrists they’d bitten into the flesh. He no longer felt the sting of the saltwater from the wind-tossed waves splashing over the side of the boat headed back to the home of his Irish captors. They’d nabbed him during a raid on the west coast of Britain where he lived with his Romano-British noble family.

Patrick recounts little of his six years as a slave except to say he was a swine-herd who regularly knew hunger, thirst and isolation. The loneliness moved him to seek the God of his Christian parents. God answered.

At twenty-two, Patrick heard a voice telling him to fast in preparation for a return home. A short time later the voice spoke again: “Behold! Your ship is prepared.” He struck out for the coast, 200 miles away. When he arrived and informed the captain he was supposed to board, the captain recognized him as a runaway and refused. Now fearful of being turned in, Patrick began to move away. He made it no further than the other end of the ship when one of the crew shouted at him to hurry up and board. They were short-handed and thought to use him as a novice seaman, paying his fare by the hard work of a lowly deckhand.

After a short foray in Northern France, Patrick finally made it back to his home in Britain.

Try as he might to settle down, he sensed God’s Spirit calling him to back to the land of his captivity. But he regarded himself as ill-prepared and sought theological training and ordination. Once obtained. He set sail for the Green Isle.

How Patrick evangelized Ireland is an important case study because it opens to us the mind of Christian missionaries during this period. It also helps us understand the troubling religious syncretism that infected the medieval church.

The native religion of Ireland at that time was dominated by the Druids who held near complete control over the Irish, a control enforced by abject terror. Human sacrifice was a regular practice. Patrick’s plan was to confront the Druids on their own turf. He understood the only way to make headway among the Irish was by freeing them from their fear. To do that, he’d need to look to the power of God to trump any demonstrations of demonic power the Druids conjured up.

Patrick’s medieval biographers take this kernel of truth and spin elaborate yarns about his confrontations. Many of those stories are likely fictional while a few are based on real events. The larger lesson for us to glean is Patrick’s method of evangelism.

The idea had grown among theologians of that time that pagan religions weren’t so much anti-Christian as they were pre-Christian.

Patrick and those who followed after looked for how to bring the truth of Christ to the lost by using whatever elements of their native faith they could, converting it to the truth of Christ.

Patrick in no way approved of paganism or considered it an acceptable variant of the Gospel. He believed there were supernatural beings behind the idols and ideals of paganism; demons who kept people in spiritual bondage. He believed miracles and magic did occur. After all, Pharaoh’s magicians used supernatural power. But—and here’s the key to Patrick’s methodology; the God of Moses was more powerful, and used His power to bring good while demonic power served only to promote ruin.

So when Patrick arrived with the Gospel, the druids moved swiftly to kill him. They found it harder than they thought. None of their plots worked. It was as if a supernatural wall protected him. While trusting himself to the protection of God, he also took practical measures to gain allies among the Irish by building amiable relationships with them. These allies kept him informed of the various plots.

A turning point in Patrick’s mission came when an Irish chieftain named Laoghaire came to faith.

This chieftain had a group of powerful druids who advised him but who were unable to defeat Patrick in demonstrations of supernatural power. When a couple of those Druids fell ill, Laoghaire was convinced of the superiority of Patrick’s God and professed faith in Christ. As was common to that culture, with his conversion, the people of His clan also came to faith. Their alliance with other clans opened the doors for the Gospel.

This then was Patrick’s method of evangelism as he made his way across Ireland. He confronted the Druids head on, showing the superiority of God’s power, breaking their monopoly on the minds of the Irish first, then going after their hearts with the Grace of God in the Gospel of Christ.

Another turning point was the conversion of some of the Druids themselves.

Patrick was driven to bring the Gospel to Ireland because it was considered the end of the World and Jesus had said the Gospel would be preached to the ends of the Earth, then the end would come. Patrick thought he was hastening Christ’s return. In his writings, he repeatedly mentions he was in ‘the last days’, and quoted Matthew 24:14. He wrote, “It has been fulfilled. Behold! We are witnesses to the fact that the Gospel has been preached out to beyond where anyone lives.’

Patrick was less concerned with planting churches as he was in making converts and was tireless in his journeys back and forth across the island. Following the pattern of the time, he considered the ascetic life of the monastery as the purest form of the Faith and encouraged his converts to be monks and nuns. This led to the building of dozens of monasteries and nunneries in Ireland. The rural nature of the island also encourage this form of the Church. Without major urban centers, large churches overseen by bishops were rare.

So Irish Christianity was centered in communal monastic life.

Patrick died of natural causes on March 17th, 493. Today, he’s one of the most famous figures from the 5th C. Like so many others of the past who accomplished great things, we’d probably not even know of him were it not for the dynamic missions outreach that came from Ireland. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland was British. And the Faith he transplanted across the Irish Sea eventually came back to Britain.

In his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill says of Patrick:

“The Irish gave Patrick more than a home—they gave him a role, a meaning to his life. For only this former slave had the right instincts to impart to the Irish a New Story, one that made new sense of all their old stories and brought them a peace they had never known before.”

St. Patrick’s Day is approaching, and Ireland is ramping up preparations for a colossal national celebration. There’s the quintessential St. Patrick’s Day parade, street parties and festivals around the country, and of course, the pubs of the nation are stocking up for a busy and boozy weekend. How did we get here? Many of these celebrations are a far cry from the man who devoted his whole life to bring the Gospel to the people of Ireland.

Let’s take a moment to have a look at the real life Patrick and learn some lessons from this faithful man of God. This article will focus on three important lessons we can learn from the life of Patrick.

1. God is sovereign.

Patrick was raised in England, the son of a Deacon. At the young age of sixteen, he was captured by a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave; there, he was forced to be a shepherd tending sheep outside in the cold, in almost total isolation for six long years.

There are a number of biblical parallels that are evident here. We think of Joseph who was also sold into slavery as a young man and also of David who spent many years in the isolated life of a shepherd as a young man.

The common denominator between all these stories is the sovereignty of God.

Patrick spent these years, in close communion and prayer with God. Although they were hard, lonely years, they were by no means wasted. It was during this period of time that God prepared Patrick for the work he would one day engage in, in bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Ireland. Indeed, the very island that had taken his freedom and kept him as a slave, would one day be set free by the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, brought faithfully by Patrick himself.

Just as God used the difficult, seemingly hopeless periods of Joseph and King David’s life to prepare them for the work he had prepared for them to do, so too with Patrick, and so too with you!

Maybe you feel like you are living through a very isolated season; perhaps you feel as if no one sees you; maybe you feel hopelessly bound up in the situation you are living through. Let me encourage you; God sees you. He is faithful and He works everything for our good. Even this situation can be redeemed and used by God in beautiful ways you cannot yet comprehend. One of the common factors in the lives of David, Joseph and Patrick, was that during the difficult periods of their lives, they put their trust fully in God and did not give way to the fear that He had given up on them. Run to Him for help; He will prove Himself faithful in your life.

2. God is present in our isolation.

When Patrick lived in the damp, cold, miserable fields of County Antrim, totally alone, a slave, taken from his family and all he held dear, he could so easily have turned away from God, thinking himself abandoned by his Savior. But instead, he ran to Christ for comfort, guidance and protection during his time of slavery. He became so well acquainted with his Savior during this time, that instead of hating the people who kept him captive, the love of God was shed abroad in his heart for them. He saw how lost they were in their pagan religions, and he longed to bring the Gospel to them.

God was present and working during Patrick’s period of isolation and slavery, and He is present with you too. Sometimes we need to change our perspective and see these seasons of our life as precious moments of intimacy and preparation with our Savior, for the work He has for us to do.

3. Obedience to God is always worth it.

After six years in slavery, Patrick was finally able to escape and return home. He was reunited with his beloved family. He could have easily lived out the rest of his life in the safety and comfort of his home and family. But the years spent in the company of Jesus on the bitterly cold hills of Antrim had forever changed him. In his confessions, he writes that at night he was tormented by the voices of the Irish people who he knew were totally lost.

So it was that after Patrick had completed his time in seminary and become a priest, he traveled back to the Island of his captivity, and walked the wet and dreary highways and byways of Ireland, bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to a pagan nation. God blessed Patrick’s work abundantly, and the nation was converted almost entirely, imagine that, a whole nation!

I’m sure there were struggles in Patrick’s heart as he considered moving back to Ireland. But he knew God had a call on his life. His obedience to God’s call brought so many to salvation. Our obedience to God is never a mistake, never wasted, and no matter how challenging the call seems, God will take your right hand and lead you every step of the way. Just as Patrick did, step out and trust the Lord’s faithfulness to walk with you and empower you to do whatever He is calling you to.

It is a strange thing to live in Ireland today. Because just as Patrick did, I sometimes feel tormented by the voices of the Irish people, many who are just as lost today as they were back when Ireland was a pagan nation. I pray I can follow in Patrick’s footsteps and faithfully bring the gospel to a modern day Ireland that needs the light of Christ just as much as it ever has.

If Ireland is my mission field, where is yours? Where do your feet tread daily? What is your sphere of influence? Where is God calling you? Let us learn from the life of Patrick and the others who have gone before. Let’s trust God in the hard times that He is still working; let’s listen to His voice and step out in faith as He calls us, and like Patrick, let’s bring the gospel to those God has called us to. There is no greater work.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

While much of the story of Saint Patrick, as he is commonly known, has been fabricated into legend, he was in reality a fascinating historic figure; in fact, he was a missionary to Ireland and one of the first Christian missionaries after the Early Church Era!

PATRICK LIVED IN THE EARLY 400S.

He was a Roman citizen living in Briton (modern-day England/Scotland), but when he was 16, he was captured by warriors from Northern Ireland. He became their slave, tending their pigs (and having to live like one!), for six years, during which time he truly committed his life to Jesus Christ. One day, he heard a voice say to him, “Soon you will return to your homeland.” Shortly thereafter he escaped captivity and boarded a ship bound for Europe.

Once back home in Briton, Patrick received his calling from the Lord in an unusual way. In the middle of the night, he had a vision of a man coming to him from Ireland with countless letters from the Irish people. As he began to read the letters, he said, “I seemed to hear the voice of the same men…and they cried out as with one voice, ‘We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.’ I was deeply moved in heart and I could read no further, so I awoke.” Patrick recognized this as a clear call from God, but he wisely spent time equipping himself and growing in his Christian faith before returning to Ireland, the land of his captivity.

THIS WAS INDEED A UNIQUE CALL—ONLY GOD COULD PUT IT ON SOMEONE’S HEART TO GO BACK TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAD ENSLAVED HIM!

As Patrick ministered to the pagan people of Ireland, his influence spread far and wide; in fact, by the end of his life, only the “inaccessible south” of Ireland remained untouched by his ministry. He not only shared the Gospel everywhere he went, but he became one of the first Christians to speak out strongly against slavery. In fact, within his lifetime, the entire Irish slave trade was abolished!

HOWEVER, HIS LIFE WAS NOT WITHOUT TRIALS AND OBSTACLES.

In one instance, a British prince came and massacred Patrick’s newly baptized converts. What’s more, the druids, who practiced black magic, had a grip on the country and its kings that they would not easily relinquish! This is where most of the legends surrounding Patrick originate, as there are many stories of his wars with the druids and how God performed miracles to thwart their magic. Whether these stories were exaggerated or not, what is certain is that Patrick had great faith in his God. He once wrote, “Daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity, but I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God Almighty who rules everywhere.” Clearly, his great vision of God compelled him. He had no fear because he knew God was almighty and trustworthy!

PATRICK HAD AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS CHRIST AND A TRULY INSPIRING MISSIONARY VISION.

He once wrote, “I am not able, nor would it be right, to be silent on such great benefits and such great grace as [God] has vouchsafed unto me in the land of my captivity, for this is our recompense, that after we have been corrected and brought to know God, we should exalt and confess His wondrous works before every nation which is under the whole heaven.”

“They will come from the east and the west, and they will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, just as we believe that believers will come from all parts of the world. For that reason, consequently, it is indeed our duty to fish well and diligently, as the Lord admonishes in advance and teaches, saying, ‘Come after me and I will make you fishers of people…’ and again He says, ‘Go therefore into the entire world, proclaim the Gospel to every creature.’”

What incredible vision Patrick had of the glory of God, a vision that would be echoed down through the centuries by those who would take up the call of the Great Commission in obedience to the One who lovingly desires to draw all men to Himself. May we likewise take up that call, like Patrick, to “fish well and diligently” for the lost souls around us!