NO WONDER WE TRIED KEEPING THE IRISH OUT:

Up Next for Mel: The passion of St. Patrick. (MICHAEL JUDGE, March 12, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

In St. Patrick: A Biography, just published by Simon & Schuster, Philip Freeman skillfully weaves together the threads of Patrick's life, at least those that we have. It's fairly certain that Patrick was born around 390, in the reign of Emperor Theodosius, and died in the 460s, in the declining years of the Roman Empire. The details of his life come mainly from two of his letters written late in life. The first, Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, chastises the soldiers of a British tyrant for slaughtering and enslaving Patrick's converts. "Notice I don't call you my fellow Romans--no, your crimes have made you citizens of Hell!"

The second, Confession, is a long and impassioned plea from Patrick to his British bishops asking that he be allowed to fulfill his mission in Ireland despite their accusations of incompetence and pilfering. "So listen to me well, all of you, great and small, everyone who has any fear of God--especially you wealthy landowners so proud of your education--listen and consider this carefully: God chose foolish little me from among all of you . . . to serve the Irish faithfully."

Using these documents, and his knowledge of Roman and Celtic culture, Mr. Freeman fleshes out the life of Patrick and the world he inhabited. We learn that it was in Ireland, when Patrick was a slave, that "God first opened [his] heart." We learn that after six years of enslavement he escaped and found passage back to Britain. We learn that he turned his back on the aristocratic life of his family, trained as a priest and returned to Ireland to spread the word of God.

Mr. Freeman's book succeeds where others have failed by giving us a wholly human portrait of Patrick the boy, the slave and the missionary. He juxtaposes vivid descriptions of cultured Roman life with the barmy traditions of Irish kings and Druid priests, thereby revealing all that Patrick left behind on his mission "to the end of the earth."

One passage describes how Irish kings--really village chieftains--were crowned. It is, one might say, particularly revealing: "A white female horse was led into the crowd. . . . The royal candidate then had sexual intercourse with the horse in full view of the people while proclaiming that he too was a beast." Unlike Shakespeare's Richard III, an Irish king had both his kingdom and his horse.

Isn't that how they inaugurate the mayor of San Francisco?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 12, 2004 6:38 PM