A boy at prayer

Patrick was born in Roman Britain between 385 and 392, to a Christian family. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he was kidnapped by a handful of Irish pirates who took him with them to Northern Ireland and sold him as a slave. In his Confession, in which he tells the experience of those years, he writes, “Love for God and His fear grew in me, and so faith. In a single day I recited one hundred prayers, and at night almost as many. I prayed in the woods and mountains, even before the dawn. Neither the snow, nor the ice, nor the rain seemed to touch me.”

After six years of imprisonment, Patrick had in a dream, a premonition of freedom, and, obeying the vision he had as he slept, escaped surveillance and went the roughly 200 kilometers that separated him from the coast, on foot. There he was able to induce some sailors to have pity on him, who took him aboard their ship and carried him back to Britain where he could embrace his family once again.

A vision

A few years later, Patrick had another vision, which he also described in his Confession: “I saw a man coming to me as coming from Ireland; His name was Victoricus, he had some letters with him, and he handed me one. I read the first line: ‘The Voice of the Irish’. While I was reading, I seemed to hear the voice of the people living in the  Forest of Voclutus [the place of his captivity] near the western sea, and their voices as one seemed to beg me, calling me 'young servant of God', and bidding us all walk together.”

This vision galvanized Patrick, who continued his studies and training, and was ordained to the presbyterate by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre.