 Hey everyone, Adam Shaw here from Bervera Media Company. Today we're going to be talking about the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick. We're going to be going over his history, his biography, we're going to be looking at various visual elements depicting his influence of Christianity on Ireland and we're really doing this video in connection with our Irish history, Irish cultural series pertaining to upcoming Saint Patrick's Day. We like doing historical videos on current events and holidays. If you like that sort of thing, definitely subscribe to us. We like talking about history and tying it all together to make this channel fun. So without further ado, let's get to it right in front of you. We have a vintage postcard of a young Saint Patrick. This postcard was produced in 1910. It gives off certain elements of Celtic culture, certainly with the shamrocks. To get into the history of Saint Patrick, Saint Patrick was a 5th century Christian missionary and bishop of Ireland. He was regarded, as we said before, as the patron saint of Ireland because of his massive converting of Celtic polytheism believers into Christians. He has been regarded as the primary historical source of Christian influence by the church, but archaeologists are now discovering that there were essentially Christian influence before his arrival via Irish pirates bringing back missionary slaves and merchants, people who essentially had Christian faith. So there was a Christian element even before Saint Patrick arrived. Saint Patrick was eventually amongst those captured by Irish pirates at a young age. According to the Confessio of Patrick, he was about 16 when he was captured and then he was taken as a slave while in Ireland. He tended to the animals on a farm and eventually escaped six years later returning back to his family in Britain. He then became a cleric and eventually returned back to Ireland in the northern and western regions by the 17th century. After he became a massive Christian influence, he was revered as we said before, the patron saint of Ireland. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17th because people, for the most part, believe that was the date of his death. While he was enslaved, this is kind of interesting, while he was enslaved and captive by Irish pirates, this really contributed to the beginning steps of his faith conversion into Christianity. According to his written confessions, he explained that the Lord had mercy on his youth and ignorance and afforded him the opportunity to be forgiven of his sins and he converted Christianity. While Patrick, as we said before, while he was captive, he tended as a shepherd and he prayed to God and this strengthened his relationship with religion and his ability to convert. We're going to show you some different visual examples of his capturing by Irish pirates. We're going to show you some Irish pirates. Let's go down to our images. This is a depiction of Irish pirates. It was produced in 1910 but you can see that these Celtic pirates kind of gave off the Viking look and style, especially with their boats and the shields on the ends of boats. A very interesting perspective here. If we go, this is a book. We talked about St. Patrick tending to animals on a farm. We can see it right here. Animals in the background, he was referred to as a shepherd, his is a shepherd stick and we can see the halo above his head. This is a book that you can actually, if you'd like to search online, the life of St. Patrick. I believe it's freely, you can freely download this online from archive.org. It might even be on Project Gutenberg but I know the book's free and it's got some great artwork in it so feel free to go find that book and download it for free. But here's an example and we can see of the authorities of life of St. Patrick. We can even see, I've got a picture of him being captured by pirates. Can you see these boats? Remember we said those Irish pirates, man they look like Normans, I mean it's almost identical and you know, we can see him being taken right here by the Irish pirates as a young boy. I love this artwork. This is from the book, The Life of St. Patrick. The book I believe was produced in 1899 so definitely check that out. Let's go further into the history. So he was essentially a slave and he was tending to a flock of animals and praying, oh let me move this over, he was praying a lot which helped to his conversion. Six years into his enslavement St. Patrick actually heard, he told himself that he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home and that his ship was ready. So eventually he decided, well I'm going to flee my master. He traveled to a port 200 miles away where he found a ship and with immense amounts of tenacity he persuaded a captain to take him back to Britain. So he convinced this guy to go back to Britain. After three days of sailing they arrived in Britain and abandoned the ship and began walking for 28 days in the wilderness. They were essentially scavenging for supplies and food, that's what people believe. The crew and Patrick were on the verge of starvation for which Patrick took to prayer and asked God for sustenance. After his prayer they encountered a herd, the crew encountered a herd of wild boar. Since this was shortly after Patrick told them to put their faith in God, his prestige in the group, I mean they became believers. Eventually after various adventures Patrick would return home in his early 20s and would continue his study of the Christian faith. Patrick's return to Ireland some years later is recounted in his writings when he describes having a vision which he states. Let's see if we can kind of also go over. Here's another example of St. Patrick holding a clover. I saw a man coming as it were from Ireland. His name was Victorius and he carried many letters and gave me one of them. I read the heading the voice of the Irish as I began the letter. I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of the very people who were near the wood of Folcott which is beside the western sea and they cried out as with one voice we appeal to you holy servant boy to come and walk among us. So essentially here this voice essentially saying you need to come help the Irish people. The Irish people need assistance. They need guidance. Patrick then decided to act on his vision and return to Ireland as a Christian missionary. His landing place based on research seems to be Wicklow Ireland at the mouth of the Invertaire River what we know now as the Verate River and I can actually show you where that is. So Wicklow is right here you see Wicklow and we see the Verate River so right here this is where St. Patrick came back into port right about here it's south of Dublin not too far outside of Dublin right here and so his landing place was based in Wicklow Ireland research now suggests this is kind of interesting that this is the place he escaped from the port that he escaped never we talked about he he convinced a captain of a ship to escape Ireland so we traveled about 200 miles throughout Ireland all the way to Wicklow to right here and escaped and then he returned through port through right here probably because he knew the lay of the land kind of legend has it that St. Patrick taught the native pagan Irish about the Holy Trinity using a shamrock this is okay now we're getting we're getting into some good stuff okay a lot of artwork depicting St. Patrick with a three leafed clover shamrock so he was essentially teaching the Holy Trinity using a shamrock using it to illustrate the Christians of the three persons in one God if you're not familiar with the Holy Trinity it essentially is the the father the son the Holy Spirit you know how you do the cross the father the son and the Holy Spirit threes pagans were at the time very nature-esque they believed in aspects of nature the winter solstices the seasonal solstices they they believed in nature very heavily and the shamrock was really a a cultural phenomenon they related to revitalization and kind of revitalization of nature and life and what St. Patrick did very well was tie the nature aspect of Celtic polytheism to Christianity and we see we see this artwork of him depicting the shamrocks here the shamrocks again this is night you know this is 1910 artwork but look he's holding a shamrock right there and this is how it got tied together with Christianity and St. Patrick and you we can see the threes here's just some artwork of shamrocks but you know very reminiscent of a cross and I thought I thought that was interesting to share with you guys you know and it's kind of you know he manipulated Celtic polytheism into Christianity so you know just one of the many reasons why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day because of in the shamrock in green green is a predominant element you know that probably emanated from the shamrock so let's move on to two more aspects of this history we even see you know the legend that St. Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland we've heard this common term before really was a metaphor a religious metaphor for banishing all out Celtic polytheism or paganism because if you look at the the Christian church the snake right was a symbol of evil and corruption and sin and so they I want to say that St. Patrick used metaphors very very well in terms of converting pagans to Christians by kind of creating these elements because there were no snakes in Ireland back then and even this is kind of funny naturalists are now saying snakes never existed on the island back then and he used that to his advantage kind of his this mystical nature that he everything was banished the church really utilized this and he utilized this so so that's kind of a myth that he banished all the snakes out of Ireland so I thought that was interesting and I wanted to bring that up as well so let's look at this is kind of a basic look at the the Celtic polytheism these these monolith essential stones and look we've got snakes illustrated isn't that ironic that snakes are illustrated on on these stones and also what I find interesting about this artwork is threes because oftentimes the Celts would would celebrate three deities that's another thing that goes into shamrock Celtic people celebrated they saw something in three gods they always celebrated in threes and certainly we've got a celebration of snakes in threes right here the shamrock has three clothes three clothes and the cross has three sides so very you know that it was easy to manipulate the pagans using using the threes and we can we'll show the an illustration of the death of St. Patrick we can see that right here we celebrate St. Patrick because on the 17th because it was the date of supposed death notice on the sides shamrocks right so a very potent symbol of Celtic I guess you could say history and religious history so I just wanted to share a little bit of background in history to St. Patrick in his converting of the Irish pagans to Christianity I hope you've learned something from this video definitely check out the rest of our channel we were doing many many other videos on Celtic pagan culture on Irish history and we've done like five different videos a map of Boston a map of Ireland Dublin we're gonna be drinking some Guinness beer definitely check out the rest of our channel give us a subscribe and I will see everyone soon okay take care now all right bye