Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1912-03-19
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. NATURE, GRACE AND
TRAINING FITTED
ST. PATRICK TO
HIS TASK
So Well Accomplished,
Ireland Was Known
for Centuries as
the Land of
; Saints"

~ T. PATRICK says of him
| 49, self in his confession that
! LAE9lW he was born at "Bannaven
| w. Taberniae," which is ex-
! VSI tremely hard to identity
sS Some, however, claim that
Kirk Patrick, near Glasgow, in Scot
land, took it's name from st. Patrick.
The saint was born about 372; was
captive and slave of the king Of
Dalaradia, in ireland, from 1888 to 395;
went to Gaul and was there ordained
priest; was consecrated bishop and
sent to Ireland as missionary in 432,
and died at Saul, near Strangford
Tough. County Down, Ulster, where
many years before he had founded his
church, March IT, 465, the day now
sacred to his memory
Ireland was then occupied by
great number of petty tribes, most of
whom were evangelical by Patrick So
well was the work accomplished that
Ireland was known in subsequent cen
turtles as the island of saints and
scholars"
The method employed was that of
dealing cautiously and gently with the
old paganism of the people. The chief
tains were first Won over and then
! through them their clans
Of ST. Patrick himself much that has
been related is fabulous, but his au-
photographed confession and his epis-
tie to Coroticus, both of which are I'M
! questionably genuine, reveal a devout,
simple minded man, and a most dis
Greet and energetic missionary.
In his epistle he states that he was
of noble birth and that his father,
Calphurnicus, was a Roman decuiro.
| His Mother, Conchessa, or Conceis,
was the sister Of St Martin of Tours.
| The family of the saint is affirmed
! by the earliest authorities to have
/ belonged to Britain, but whether the
term refers to Great Britain or Brit
tany or other parts of France is not
ascertained
Some of the quaint stories told in
Ireland about st. Patrick would make
the traveller imagine that the saint
visited the island for the benefit of
witty guides, or 10 promote mirth in
wet weather 1t is not remarkable
that the subject of these stories for 16
centuries, at countless hearths, has
been regarded and is today honored as
the greatest man and the greatest ben
efactor that ever trod the Irish soil.
and considering the versatility of the
| Irish character, it is not strange that
there remains respecting the saint a
vast cycle of legends serious, pathet-
ic and profound
| 1t could not be otherwise. Such a
people could not have forgotten the he
roic figure who led them forth in the
exodus from the bondage of pagan
darkness. In many instances doubt
! less has the tale become a tradition.
the foliage of an ever active popular
Imagination, gathered around the cen
tral stem of fact but the fact re-
NAMED.
A large tract of Irish history is
dark; but the time of st. Patrick and
the three centuries which succeeded
it is clearly, as depicted by history,
time of joy. The chronicle is a song
of gratitude and of hope, as BELTS the
story of a nations conversion to
Christianity
The higher legends, which, how
ever, do not profess to keep close to
the original sources, except as re-
CARDS their spirit and the manners of
the time. are found in some ancient
lives of st. Patrick. the most valu-
able of which is the "Tripartite Life"
ascribed by Colgeu to the century aft
er the saints dealh. The work was
lost for many centuries. but two COP
les Of it were rediscovered, one of
which has been recently translated by
an eminent Irish scholar Mr.. Hen.
messy.
The miracles, however, recorded in
the "Tripartite Life" are neither the
most marvellous nor the most interest
ing portion of that life.
Whether regarded from the religious
or philosophic point of view few
things can be more instructive than
the picture which it delineates of hui
man nature in the period of critical
transition and the dawning of the re
liglon of peace upon race barbaric,
but far, indeed, from savage.
That Tarlike race regarded 1t doubt
less as notable cruelty when the new
faith discouraged an amusement so
popular as battle. But in many re-
spects they were in sympathy with the
faith That race was one of which
the affections as well as the passions
retained an unblunted ardor, and
when nature is stronger and less cor
rupted It must feel the need of some
thing higher than itself, its interpreter
and its supplement- II priced the