Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland

." . . whoever is pleased to look at or receive this writing, which Patrick, a sinner, untaught, to be sure, has composed in Ireland . . . this is my Confession before I die."Who was St Patrick? In the modern era his name still carries the aura of legend -- yet the truths of his life remain unknown to most readers. Now, in this new work of biographical reconstruction, Maire B. de Paor brings us as close as possible to the man behind the myth. Through a combination of painstaking research and a close reading of Patrick's two surviving works -- the "Confessio" and the "Epistola," their texts included in full in this edition -- de Paor reveals a man at once poet and pilgrim, artist and apostle.The story of St Patrick, known to many as the patron saint of Ireland, is as complex and mythic as the Irish culture he took as his own. Kidnapped at the age of fifteen, Patrick was smuggled to Ireland in a time of Christian upheaval in Europe. On the rocky coasts of his new home, Patrick adopted the life of a shepherd and the words of his Gaelic companions. At night, however, the Irish hills darkened to reveal the pagan gods and monsters so foreign to Patrick's Christian sensibilities. Patrick prayed for release for six years, only to return to evangelize his pagan captors.Until recently, the modern consensus was that Patrick was a barely literate rustic struggling with a sense of inadequacy in a language he could not master. In her exhaustively researched biography, MaireDe Paor, Maire B. is the author of 'Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland' with ISBN 9780060009021 and ISBN 0060009020.