ALONG THE ANGLOSPHERE:

What Irish Protestants of all social backgrounds often share is a sort of ambivalence about their cultural or ethnic identity and the desire to assert themselves as truly Irish while at the same time recognising that history and their cultural experiences are "different" in various ways.

One of the most intriguing cultural manifestations of this ambivalence and assertion of Irishness is found in the view of St Patrick as Ireland's original Protestant. Given that Patrick was engaged in missionary work in Ireland long before the Reformation, it is interesting to explore this point of view, which developed as an important origin story of the Protestants of Ireland, helping them to assert the essential Irishness of their faith while also making a firm statement about identity.

James Ussher 1580-1656, Archbishop of Armagh, originally introduced the idea that the Anglican Church of Ireland is the true Celtic religion of Ireland, founded by St Patrick in the fifth century. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

The idea that the Anglican Church of Ireland is the true Celtic religion of Ireland, founded by St Patrick in the fifth century, crystallised in the 18th century (having been originally introduced by Archbishop Ussher in the 17th century) in the context of a surge of intellectual interest in Gaelic culture. Later, during the Gaelic revival and intense interest in Ireland's Celtic past, various Protestant intellectuals and churchmen studied Irish as part of their quest to prove that St Patrick was a Protestant. They maintained Catholicism entered Ireland only in the 12th century, under Henry II, ushering in a dark period that ended when the Protestant faith reintroduced 'true' Christianity to the island.

This belief came to be very important to the self-image of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian church in particular. In 1885 a group of clergymen anonymously published a Historical Catechism, on the title page of which the words Erin Go Bragh appear, in which they discuss their belief that Patrick introduced Protestantism to Ireland. They also claim numerous other Irish saints for the Church of Ireland, including Columba, Columbanus and Aidan, and claim that the arrival of Catholicism in 1172 forced "a series of calamities hardly to be equalled in the world" on Ireland, from which the Irish could only be saved by a return to the "ancient [Protestant] faith".

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland also claimed St Patrick. A history of Presbyterianism published in 1959 affirms that his teachings "are in harmony with evangelical Christianity", and that Patrick's form of Christianity, interpreted as being close to Presbyterianism, was not subjected to "Roman practice" until after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century.

These ideas - deeply irritating, for obvious reasons, to the Catholic clergy and to many politicians in a new, and deeply religious, Catholic state - persisted.

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