St. Patrick Tales

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Is there any church teaching on St. Patrick driving all snakes out of Ireland? I remember learning it as a kid, and I know there aren’t any snakes in Ireland today, but did he really drive them all into the sea or could this just be an analogy to him driving out evil from Ireland?
 
I’ve looked in to this several times. The consensus seems to be that it’s almst for sure legend and there never were snakes in Ireland in the first place. Something about the water being too chilly for snakes to migrate there. The idea that it may be a symbolic way of honoring his evangelization of the Irish drove evil out of Ireland I think makes sense. Considering that he was working in Ireland during the 5th Century, as I understand it, it makes sense that people would choose a symbolic way of transmitting the history of St. Patrick’s work in Ireland in a symbolic way since written texts were probably all but unavailable. This meant that the history would have to be transmitted orally and thus symbolism and story telling is more effective.

I was reading just today an article in Yahoo that said that St. Patrick may be the first person in history to speak out against slavery. This is awesome. The Church does not officially speak out against salvery until the late 1800’s, according ot the article. He was way ahead of his time. Good for him!
 
The Lord works in mysterious ways, through His obedient servant, St Patrick. Only he can tell. Not some website or any of us, at all.

Happy St Patricks Day everyone. 🙂
 
St. Patrick (born 387, died March 17, 493 or 460) was a Romano-Briton, originally enslaved to the people who inhabited the region of Ireland (not yet so named) and who practiced Druidism.

Upon his escape, Patrick returned to his home & became a Catholic priest in the Early Church. In 431, Pope Celestine I sent (now Bishop Patrick) back to the area of his captivity. Bishop Patrick made it his mission to convert the Druids to Chrisitanity.

The “snakes” are representations of Paganism & Druidism.

Great Britian, Scotland, & Ireland’s ecology & geology either supports few species or no species of snakes.
 
Big_Ro said:
St. Patrick may be the first person in history to speak out against slavery. This is awesome. The Church does not officially speak out against salvery until the late 1800’s, according ot the article. He was way ahead of his time. Good for him!
Click to expand...
“At the age of 16, Saint Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland where he became a slave to the chieftain of Ulster. …”
Click to expand...
christianpost.com/news/saint-patrick-49464/

St. Patrick was a slave for 6 years to a Druid cheiftain.
 
He must have been in NZ as well, no snakes here!!

At Mass I heard that St. Patrick did some pretty amazing penance, such as plunging into freezing water and saying the 7 penitential psalms. I tried turning the shower to plain cold and managed " Oh dear God!" before leaping out.
 
marie0014 said:
Is there any church teaching on St. Patrick driving all snakes out of Ireland? I remember learning it as a kid, and I know there aren’t any snakes in Ireland today, but did he really drive them all into the sea or could this just be an analogy to him driving out evil from Ireland?
Click to expand...
That is a legend based upon St Patrick ending paganism in Ireland. The symbol of the Druid was the snake. Geologically, Ireland was once covered in ice and could never have harbored snakes, so it fits.

We young Irish-American kids always liked him because Irishmen traditionally hate snakes - or so we were told. And it’s been true in my family and my husband’s!
 
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