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- [00:00]
Dr. Steele Brand
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- [00:38]
Joy Pullman
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- [01:24]
Dr. Steele Brand
Foreign.
- [01:30]
Joy Pullman
Welcome to the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Joy Pullman, the executive editor here at the Federalist. Joining me for a special edition of the Federalist Radio Hour St. Patrick's Day edition, we have Dr. Steel Brand. He is a professor at Karen University and he is the interim executive director of the John Jay Institute and director of their Statesmanship Initiative. He is also the author of Killing for the Republic, Citizen Soldiers and the Roman Way of War. And he's here today to discuss Patrick St Patrick of Ireland, the great patron saint of Ireland. Hopefully we'll get into a lot more than turning the rivers green and drinking a lot over this day over the next half hour or so that we're together because he gave a talk recently at my alma mater, Hillsdale College, and we're going to kind of go into some of the details there of his talk. Dr. Brand, welcome to the show.
- [02:28]
Dr. Steele Brand
Hi Joy. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me especially to talk about St. Patrick on St. Patrick's Day.
- [02:36]
Joy Pullman
It is, it was a little bit special for me. As I told you over email, I have this morning my corned beef and cabbage in the crock pot. Waiting for dinner. I like to, it's actually super easy. Saints meal dinner. I like to do special Saints Day meals with my kids. I am not a Catholic, but we're into saints in my home as, as liturgical Lutherans. Doctor, would you start by telling me what is your personal interest in St. Patrick?
- [03:05]
Dr. Steele Brand
I can't remember when I first heard the real story of St. Patrick. You know, it might have been when I had, I had a. I think that when it really stuck, you know, I remember these moments when I hear about these historical characters that I really like the moment that, that sticks and you get intrigued and then sometimes you dig and it's like, well, there's nothing to the story and then sometimes you dig and there's a lot to the story. There's a lot of richness. And it's better than like the legends and the myth. There are a few people in history that have been that way, and Patrick definitely one of them. So I think when I first heard about it, I was a father reading a book, like a children's book, a really, really great 32 page picture book to my daughter. And it was, it's Toma Depalo is like one of the best children's authors.
- [03:49]
Joy Pullman
I was just going to ask you which. Whether it was the Tom or Tommy. Tommy Depal.
- [03:53]
Dr. Steele Brand
Okay. Yeah. And I remember reading that and thinking, well, what. This is, this is cool. You know, I'd heard about the Patrick story. I kind of knew bits and pieces here and there. And so I, I went to the sources I read, you know, like a popular biography. I thought, oh, well, that's a great story. And then I read some scholarship on it, and then I spent some time with the two texts that we know a lot about from Patrick. And the, the, the more I read, the deeper I got, the more I went from kind of casual person interested in good stories to, oh, a historian. And then looking at it as a scholar, the deeper I got into the wonderful, like, plain beauty of the story of St. Patrick.
- [04:34]
Joy Pullman
And. Well, tell us a little. Can you recap. I would bet that a lot of our listeners don't know even just the Wikipedia version of, you know, the St. Patrick's Day Taylor or you know, the picture book version that you read with one of your children. That I read with my children yesterday and today. Can you just give them, give them the summary of his biography. Yeah.
- [04:56]
Dr. Steele Brand
So Patrick is actually not Irish by birth. He is a Romano Britain, probably from Wales, maybe from Cornwall or thereabouts. But it looked a little different then, loosely, or not loosely, but under the control of, of. Of the Romans. But it still has a lot of. It's Like British and Celtic character. In some ways he is. From what we know about him, he is probably named Patrick after his family being like a Roman family, like Patrick from Patrician. They're noble. There's different theories as to where his name come from, name came from, but we don't know much about him as, as a kid. But what we do learn about him is that he's raised by people who are Christian and we're not sure why. We know his great grandfather and his grandfather are priests. His father's a deacon. It's an interesting note that obviously we still have married clergy at this time, but Patrick doesn't take his family and the sort of urban elites Christianity very seriously. And the first thing we know for certain about him, aside from his name and the fact that he is the son of a local bigwig and a town called Bed of Him Tabernii, which we're not even entirely certain where it was, the first thing we know about Patrick is he commits some grave great sin. And we don't even know what the sin is, but it's bad. Theories are maybe it's some sort of like sexual indiscretion, some kind of fornication or something. But he talks about it actually sounds more serious than that. Some people have suggested maybe it's murder or some people have said, well maybe it was. Maybe it's. It's idolatry. What about all three? Maybe he's a part of some horrible. Maybe he's part of some horrible religious ceremony where he's. There's like. There's like sacrifice or some kind of fornication or something related to the gods. It doesn't matter. We don't know it's. It's serious. And then we know that as right after this happens, he's taken as a slave. You see the Irish raiders pop in, they hit the coast, they come to his house. His father's not there. Maybe he's out doing decoran duties because they've heard there's a raid. We don't know his family isn't there, but he's there. He gets captured, he gets put on a boat and carted off to Ireland and his life completely changes. That's how we get Patrick from Britain to Ireland. And then he goes to Ireland and in Ireland he's a slave for six years. And that's. That's the beginning of the story of Patrick. And that's when Patrick starts to turn into the Patrick we know. Because when he's there he's not. He's heard Stories as a little kid probably about how, you know, the Irish are kind of like monsters and those barbarians over there on that island. And once you get inside the interior, you know, beyond the pale, literally, because that's the way that later generations would talk about going into the interior of Ireland. Once you go beyond the pale, then you're in a land where these. These Irish will just attack you and they'll. They'll eat you alive. Or they'll, like. They'll steal everything you have and. And then they'll eat.
- [07:52]
Joy Pullman
They still do.
- [07:53]
Dr. Steele Brand
Yeah.
- [07:55]
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It's.
- [07:55]
Dr. Steele Brand
It's. You know, there's all these horror stories about them. But what he ends up. What ends up happening is he is. He's enslaved, he's bought, probably on the eastern coast of Ireland, and he's taken all the way to the western coast. And he has a different kind of torture that's inflicted on him. He's left alone. He's left to be a slave, shepherd of somebody we don't know. Later generations say the guy's name who takes him is Milyuk. So he's made us. He's made a slave, and he ends up watching sheep for six years. And we get the sense from his writings because he tells us, yes, we have two letters from Patrick. We get the sense that he is all alone for. For hours and days and months at a time. And this is when he has to confront the. The. The. His own existence, his maker life, what its meaning is, what its purpose is, because it's very different than being the spoiled aristocrat that he was. Now he's a slave who's actually being hardened to living life out in the woods, in the wilderness, in the forest. And does is. He tells us this in his. In one of his letters, the probably the second of his letters, he tells us, I begin to pray, and I begin to pray a lot. I prayed a hundred times a day, and I prayed a hundred times at night. And so he's praying all the time. He's doing, you know, like the movie Castaway. So Tom Hanks is alone. He's out on the island, and Tom Hanks talks to his own God figure, you know, it's a volleyball, right? It's kind of a stupid idea, but, like, what are you going to do when you're left alone? Castaway kind of captures it with, like, you got to talk to somebody. So he's going to talk to a volleyball. I think what really would have happened is in Castaway would have been talking to God, like, why am I here? What. Who are you? What does this happen? And that's exactly what Patrick does. But for Patrick, he starts really taking seriously the things that he already knew about it, that he learned from his parents. And it's in Ireland, the land where he's been enslaved, the land where everything has been taken away from him, that he begins to become a Christian. I mean, that's just sort of the. That's the tip of the iceberg of, of the beginning of Patrick's story. And that's what we know about him. Should probably address a little bit of, like, how do we know about Patrick before we get deeper into the story. Sure. So one of the sources about Patrick we've got. I almost want to work backwards. We have lots of legends that have accumulated. You know, he scares all the snakes out of Ireland. He teaches with the shamrock. There are. There are sources and there are annals that are written like in the medieval period, the late medieval period. And they put dates with all the things about Patrick. If we go back a little further, we have two biographies that are written 200 years after Patrick died. And these two biographies are written by. There's one by Miru, there's one by Tarichin. And they have a lot of similarity to Patrick's own story, but they put in a lot of new information into the story. And so then we go back a couple hundred years before that. We have maybe some sayings. There are some canons that are called the canons of St. Patrick, but they're probably by later Christians. Really, the only thing we know for certain that is true and, and is good historical information about Patrick comes from two letters. One is called the Declaration or the Confession, and the second letter is called the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. And these two letters, nearly all scholars are. Have joined in a consensus that they're authentic. There are some who don't think that, but most scholars think they're authentic. And these two letters are written by Patrick. And they tell us the story of someone who is very sincere, but he doesn't have the best education. And he. He longs, he. He wishes that he could have been a better writer in Latin. And you can see that in the, in the, in the Latin of his two letters. They're clunky, they're not sophisticated. If you compare it to another Britain, like Pelagius, he's a guy who's a heretic, and, And Britain, he's writing at the same time. Or if we compare him to Augustine, a contemporary, the Latin is like, terrible compared to Augustine's. Confessions. But Patrick's Latin is really bad. Okay, well. Well, why? Well, because he was kidnapped as a 15 year old or 16. The time he would have begun a really sophisticated education, he would have been getting. He would have started his track on rhetoric. And the time that he's a slave learning how to endure like harsh temperatures, take care of sheep, discovering God, when he's doing all of that, he normally back home would have been learning rhetoric.
- [12:05]
Joy Pullman
So the school of hard knocks.
- [12:07]
Dr. Steele Brand
And yeah, he's in the school of hard knocks. Right. He's not doing the like everything else that everyone would have seen that he would have enjoyed or he would have experienced if he'd been back home. And so it's. But it's these two stories, I think that are the most accurate and that we can get a lot of information out of them. So he's a slave in Ireland. He writes us about this. He tells us about this in his book the Confession where he has this autobiographical sections that pop in, but especially at the beginning. And Patrick's big moment where he shifts from being a slave to being something else is when he says he had a dream and there was a voice. And we. It's probably Victoricus, this person who comes to, to visit him a couple of times. And you know, Patrick has lots of dreams, but in this dream the voice comes to him and says, see, your ship is ready. You need to go to the coast. So he basically breaks the law.
- [12:52]
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- [14:52]
Dr. Steele Brand
He escapes, but he doesn't go back east because that's where everyone would have been looking for. He probably goes 200 miles to the south and he's broken the law to be a runaway slave. He probably breaks the law a lot more as he's stealing and trying to survive and taking his food. And then he gets all the way to the southern coast and the people there. He goes up to a boat and he says, hey, can you take me probably back home, but can you take me with you? And you get the sense that these people look at him and say no, but then he goes and he prays and then he goes back and then they take him on the ship. Now what happens there? Well, we hear about the story. They get on the ship. We don't know why they took him when they wouldn't take him at first. And then they travel for three days. They have trouble finding a place to go. It takes them a long time to get there. So they're not sailing back to Britain. Or if they are, they're going in a roundabout way and we don't know where they land. But then once they land for 28 days they're wandering around and they can't find any food. Well, if you're landing in Brittany or even Cornwall or Wales, that's weird. So there have been lots of theories as to what's going on. Why, like, was there some sort of devastation? This is the time of the Roman Empire is having trouble. Like, it's like it's a mystery. Well, if we put all the pieces together, we know that several times the pagan people on the boat ask him to do strange things. One of the guys says well, we want you to suck our nipples. What is that? Like, that's just strange, right? Well, why is Patrick telling us this? Because that's a pagan ceremony and he would not partake in the pagan ceremony. And they say later that they had like some honey that they like consecrated or did something strange with. And he says, oh, I didn't take any of that either. So we get the sense these guys are pagans. But why are they having so much trouble getting places? And why are they, why are they having trouble getting food? It's probably because these guys are slavers themselves. They're slavers or pirates. They don't, they don't seem to be law abiding people. And we get the sense that either Patrick sold himself into slavery to get passage or they took him and enslaved him again. And we don't even know how long they're there. This part of the confession, it's about eight paragraphs, is the fuzziest part of the whole confession. But it. One gets the sense that this is not a good part of Patrick's life. And there's some, again, there's some sort of legal and moral boundaries that are pressed and he's enslaved again. But after a few, few years, he finally gets loose from these people, whoever they are, and he goes back home. But the moment he gets back home, he gets educated. Now his later biographers want to tell us a whole a cool story. Later biographers want to say, and you know what he did? He went back home and then he went down to the continent and he interacted with all the most famous people. They're these great bishops, Bishop Germanus and amateur and Honoratus. And then he, he, he studied under them like Paul studied under the feet of Gamaliel. And basically they're saying he went to Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford. And then where did he go? Well, he traveled down to Laryn. So this is this great place where there a big monastery that has been built. That's where he studied and then eventually made his way to Rome. He even goes to Italy and he meets the Pope. And the Pope is eventually going to make him a bishop. And when he goes, and then he goes back to Ireland and when he gets to Ireland, he fights all the wizards and the druids and he brings Christianity by defeating the wizards and the druids. And there's these famous confrontations that, that he has with the druids in Ireland where he defeats them with magic. And like they try to poison him and then he freezes the poison and they try to bring snow. But he dissolves it, he brings sunshine and we almost get sense. It's like double door fighting Voldemort or it's like superheroes battling one another. That's the biographer story, right? But when you read Patrick, none of those details are in there. None of them, because that's not what really happened. What really happened is Patrick. But it seems the simplest explanation is he went back home and he was educated in Britain. But then when he was educated in Britain, as a part of being back home, part of trying to get his education back, which he never does a really good job. He's never a cracker Jack, like writer, his. His Latin never turns out that good. But the important thing that happens to him when he's back home is Victorus comes back and Victorus comes to him and he. There's this really memorable, vivid scene that Patrick describes in his confession where Victor comes and he's got a handful, this, like piles of letters. And like he shows the letters to Patrick and Patrick takes them and he looks at the letters and what are the letters? They're the voice of the Irish. And the voice of the Irish are saying, holy boy, come back. Holy boy, come back and live among us. And he says they came, they were calling from the forest of folklore, which is probably where he was in the region of County Mayo. And this is where Patrick is summoned to return again by a dream. And is. It's his call. It's his call to a mission. And his mission is going to be to go back to Ireland and to completely change the fabric of Ireland and what it means to be Irish. Now, he doesn't fully understand how that's going to happen. We know that's what ends up happening. But he decides that I'm going to go back to the land of my slavery, but I'm going to go back and I'm going to bring them Christianity. But I'm not just going to tell them the story of the gospel. When you bring Christianity, Christianity in Patrick's mind, you're going to bring a whole host of things. You're going to be able to change people's souls. You're going to put things into their minds. You're going to alter the way that they think about society. You're going to completely restructure their social and political ethics. You're going to bring literacy, because Christians are people of the book. So when. When Christianity comes to a place, stories start to be written down and we get history and we know what happens to people. A lot of Times in pagan societies. We don't know what's going on. We don't know exactly what happened because they're not literate. Well, Patrick is going to bring all of these things back to Ireland, and he's going to go as a bishop. Bishop. Well, then the question is, okay, well, when does he go as a bishop? Well, there are. There's. There's another guy that enters into the story of the conversion of Ireland. And this is a guy by the name of Palladius. Now, who is Palladius? Palladius seems to be chummy with all the most important people in Italy, and especially the Rome. The. Excuse me, the pope in Rome. And Palladius is the deacon to the pope. And he knows Prosper of Aqu Guy, this analyst who writes sort of the story of what's going on with Christianity from the perspective of the papal court in Rome. And Palladius is sent, we are told, by Prosper, as the first bishop to Ireland. He probably goes to the south. And Palladius is the guy who supposedly begins the Christianization of Ireland. But the Irish themselves, when they talk about Palladius, they have a very different account. First of all, they hardly mention him at all, at least in terms of the Christianization factor. But we have a couple of traditions that come down. And one of the traditions is that he gets martyred. So he goes there. He's just like. He gets overwhelmed and martyred. Another tradition is that he goes and he's only there for a little bit, and then he flees. He goes up to Scotland or somewhere else. Maybe he had some limited success, but the strongest tradition is that he goes and he's absolutely terrified by what he sees. And this is a guy who's been hanging out in some of the nicest places in the Roman Empire, and now he goes up to this, like, land beyond the frontier here, and he just can't deal with it either way. Whatever happens with Padius, most of the account seem to indicate his mission is a failure. Why? Because he's not the guy. He doesn't have the skill set. He doesn't have the experiences that are needed. He really learned. He's got great connections, but he doesn't have what Patrick has. And that's two things. Experience, but more important, a really, really clear understanding of his mission. And Patrick has the mission on the mind all the time. When I teach Patrick to my students, I say read the confession and you tell me if you can find a single person in history who is more dedicated to his mission than Patrick, it's very, very clear for him. And so this is what gets us to the mission of Patrick and him finally coming to Ireland. Maybe he begins as a deacon or a priest under Palladius, but maybe he's just sent. It seems like when he gets to. When he becomes bishop, he's already in Ireland. That seems to be the case. Scholars disagree. Is he made a bishop and then he goes? Or is. Is there problems with making him bishop? It seems like his family and the British bishops are reluctant to make him bishop. And there will be a couple reasons for that. First of all, he doesn't have good connections. Second of all, he's not polished. And third of all, all he's got a crazy idea. His crazy idea isn't, let's just stay along the coast, let's Christianize the areas along the coast, kind of increase trade, bring literacy that way, maybe increase some revenue for the church. No, no. Patrick's idea is really intense. I'm going to take Christianity deep into the interior as far as I can into Ireland. And he would know that because that's where he lived. And when people hear this, his family's like, don't do this. Don't leave us. We've already lost you. We don't want to leave you again. And one gets the sense that the British bishops in Ireland really don't want him to go do this either. But who else is going to do it? Who else has the talents? Who else really wants to go and take on this huge project of going beyond the Roman frontier into what everyone calls the ends of the earth? That's how Patrick describes Ireland. Only Patrick can do that sort of thing. So at some point we have Patrick, probably in the four 30s or 40s, becoming a bishop with the support, probably not of the Pope. It's not that the Pope is appointing him. That's what later Irish analysts want to tell us. But probably the people who reluctantly appointed him as the bishop to the Irish are the British bishops in Britain who then want Patrick to go and be an Irish bishop. That can connect Ireland in some ways to the British. But this is probably a good point for me to pause and see if you have any questions or follow up.
- [24:56]
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- [26:34]
Dr. Steele Brand
I've got Dan Morgan here on the pod. Say hi, Dan.
- [26:37]
Dan Morgan
Hey. How's it going today?
- [26:38]
Dr. Steele Brand
It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.
- [26:41]
Dan Morgan
I'm Dan Morgan. I'm an attorney and a managing partner at Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm.
- [26:47]
Dr. Steele Brand
That's pretty awesome. Why do you guys think you win so many cases?
- [26:51]
Dan Morgan
The insurance companies and other companies that we go against know that we're going to take it to the end that we believe in the case. So we fight for every dollar and we're not afraid to go that extra mile for our clients.
- [27:00]
Dr. Steele Brand
Are insurance companies like actually afraid of you guys?
- [27:03]
Dan Morgan
We don't bluff. We take it to trial. And we are not strangers of getting very, very, very large verdicts.
- [27:09]
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- [27:10]
Dr. Steele Brand
So how does someone get in contact with Morgan and Morgan? What would I do if I got into an accident?
- [27:14]
Joy Pullman
Accident?
- [27:14]
Dan Morgan
Probably the easiest way is dialing pound law. That's £529 from your cell phone. And our call center is always waiting to take your call. 247 365.
- [27:23]
Dr. Steele Brand
Wow. Dan Morgan from Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Thanks for coming by the show.
- [27:28]
Dan Morgan
Thanks for having me. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.
- [27:34]
Joy Pullman
I'm glad you mentioned the time frame. That was one thing I was thinking that helps, you know, folks place it in their mental timeline if they keep one, which I hope most of our listeners do. You know, so early 400s to mid late 400s is about the estimated time of Patrick's life, as I understand. And so, I mean, for Me, I'm thinking, you know, like you're saying this is really the end of the Roman Empire. And as you're saying, you know, he's going into Ireland. It's very, it's, you know, the hinterlands. Right. It's a place where people tell tales because they don't actually know the so called civilized world doesn't really know what's going on in there. Yeah. So they just make things, scary things up. One of the things that I personally love about Patrick is the St. Patrick's breastplate, the hymn as well as poem and prayer that's come down and I, I just love just how old it is. Right. If you think this is 400 AD, you know, that's 1600 years ago and we still, you know, and, and as you're saying, there's very good evidence for, for him being alive. So there's, you know, some of the saints like St. Valentine. Right. There's not very good if any historical evidence or there's conflic. St. Patrick has a pretty good, you know, historic, historical lineage and reliable sources for him. And, and so I think, you know, there's something that people have for many, many centuries found compelling about him. And I. What do you think those things are? Obviously he's very vibrant. Maybe you might even say, you know, one might even say aggressive. Right. The courage to go to basically the outer wilderness, to go back and face people who had formerly enslaved you. That always, you know, courage always enlivens people. What, what else do you think St. Patrick accounts for how compelling he is?
- [29:18]
Dr. Steele Brand
Yeah. And I love that you pointed out the broader, the broader context. So yeah, we, we, we have a collapsing Roman world and in Britain it collapses. Soon it's probably the, the, the Roman legions are withdrawing out of, out of Britain around the time that he's probably enslaved. So there's a, there's a space of peace in there for the Britons until they get overwhelmed by what they call the barbarian conspiracy. The, the Picts coming down from the north, the Irish raiding from the west and then the Anglo Saxons Jew to most of what we would know as England. So this, he's living in a world where you, there's a lot to be afraid of and yet he has courage, he has this courage to go to where, places where no one else would want to go. I think like if we think about Patrick and what is the most noble about him, I think I want us to have like two under two things that are really important to notice. First of all, his vision of what it means to be a leader, and then second of all, his political theology for Ireland. And I think we can get a good sense for those based on those two letters that we. We have. So the two letters that we have, we have one that's the letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, and then the second one is the one that I've referenced because it has a lot of autobiographical information. That's the confession. The confession was probably written at the very end of his life, so maybe 450s, we're not entirely certain we live. There's a debate of whether he should be early or late, but the consensus is probably that he dies sometime around 17 March, 459, although some people think it's a little later, some people think it's a little earlier. But. But the. What. What do these two letters tell us about him and his vision of leadership and then his vision for what should define what it means to be Irish? Well, let's talk about his understanding of leadership. He references. I mean, it's. It's about a dozen or more times in these two short letters that Ireland is the land of his slavery. Now, when he went there the first time, it was involuntary slavery, but when he went back the second time time it was voluntary slavery. And this is how he describes his being. How he describes his being in Ireland. It. This is the. This is the land where God is his master and he's taking the gospel to them and he's. He's reshaping their society. But the Irish are his service. That's the task. So as Milu could set him out in the. The wilderness, you know, in the. In the forest to wash the sheep, God is sending him out to take care of. Of the Irish sheep. And not only. So what's really beautiful is he talks about frequently. So he says, like, here's a quote. This is a land of my captivity. I'm bound by the spirit. There's another quote. To come to be with them for the rest of my life. He says in the confession, I give my freedom for the benefit of others. He frequently says, I'm ready to give even my life. I want to expend it to the point of death. In both of his letters, he's always talking about it this way. In fact, we know that. That he gets enslaved 12 more times. He talks about getting captured 12 more times, several times almost being put to death. Well, who's capturing him? Well, he's gone into Ireland and he is interacting with these Irish tyrants, these little chiefs. And there's a little bit of a disturbance in the 5th century and this north central part of Ireland. And he's going in. And how is he getting there? Well, he's probably sold everything he has back home. He sells everything he's got. He's maybe got some backing from some, some British tyrants back home. And when I say tyrants, I mean, like, that's just kind of a form of that. Yeah, but it's like an, an ordinary, an extraordinary form of rule. They don't necessarily need to be vicious, although many times they are. But he gets some. Probably sells everything he's got or he can from his inheritance. And then he comes into Ireland, he probably starts spinning this. Pretty soon he wants to build churches, he needs to get oil, he needs to pay for food. And he starts negotiating with the, the chiefs and the little kinglets in Ireland. And he's interacting with princes and they're giving a passage. And you get the sense that he's actually really good at diplomacy and networking, but he also is, again, sort of pushing those legal boundaries about what is acceptable. And this is the kind of behavior that he has to, that he's really good at. He, he knows very clearly where his moral center is, but he's going to break some of those social and legal boundaries. Boundaries like when he ran away from being a slave in the first place. But this means that sometimes when he goes into a place and he converts the princess, or even worse, when he converts princesses and they no longer become marital like bargaining chips for the great kings, the great kinglets in Ireland, that makes them angry and they want to do something about it. And so they'll imprison him, or they'll threaten him with death, or they'll betray him, or they'll sell them to like, another arrival. And so this happens to him 12 times, but repeatedly he says, these are my people. This is where am to be. This was the land of my salvation, and now it has become my home. So his vision is that you want to be a leader, then you have to enslave yourself to your people. Not that you do everything they want. No, no, he does everything that God wants because God is his master. His ethics are very clear that I'm like Christian ethics and understanding of truth, honesty, like beauty, goodness, justice, all of these things are informed by Christianity. But he uses them to serve other people. And he finds himself bound to. To them. In fact, he's asked to go back to Britain. He says, I will never go back home. And he doesn't because this is the land where he's supposed to be. And so at some point, there is another major incident that occurs. And we know a lot more about this one, but it's not with an Irish tyrant, it's with a British tyrant. We get the sense that there's this British guy, this British tyrant named Coroticus and Karatecas. Right after Easter, right after Patrick had baptized and confirmed a whole number of people. And right after they were walking out, they had these like special white robes that they have. Karateka soldiers had swept into the region, killed a bunch of them, taken the rest of them captive, and they'd sailed right back to Britain. So it's kind of like the barbarian conspiracy in reverse. What the Irish had done to the British, now Karatekus is doing to the Irish. And Patrick actually goes out to where this has had happened. And he sees his friends, his spiritual sons and daughters. He's like people that he just brought into the church, he says their white, white robes stained with blood. And he just weeps. But then he gets angry and he goes back and he does what a bishop would do. He writes a letter, he sends it to, to Coroticus. Karatecas takes captive the guy who, who got the letter. So he sends another one. And this time it's a letter to all the Irish and the British Christians. And in this letter, it's called the letter to the soldiers of Coroticus. He makes it really clear that he is a bishop. And he's a bishop with authority to confront bad behavior. And he doesn't care that it's bad behavior of Romano Britain. That doesn't matter. That not what he's concerned with. He's concerned that someone has done injustice and it has afflicted the people that are under his care. And so he as. And he describes himself to the soldiers of Karateus. I am their ambassador, I am their shepherd, I am their father, I am their bishop. And a bishop means you are a man with authority. And in the late Roman Empire you actually had certain legal and political responsibilities as a bishop. And he lambast the soldiers of Coroticus. And then he leverages the one thing for certain that a bishop has that no one else has, and that is excluding communication. And he says, and this is why this is a letter that goes out to all the Irish and the British Christians. He tells, he tells all the Irish and British Christians do not have anything to do with these men. They must be punished. Why is he doing this? Because he wants them to be reoriented. He wants those slaves that have now been captured that were his friends. So there were some that were killed, there were some that enslaved. He wants to pull all the strings that he can to get those people freed and to get them back to home. Because what the soldiers of Karate is going to do is probably going to sell them to the pics or somewhere else. But here's what's really wonderful in the letter. A couple of times he lets loose how sad he is about losing his friends. But when he closes the letter, he opens up with this really ferocious broad set. They're. They're not the Romano British citizens. They're not citizens of Roman civilization. They're citizens of the demons. But when he closes the letter, he actually invites the soldiers of Coroticus to do the right thing. Watch.
- [37:40]
Joy Pullman
Why?
- [37:40]
Dr. Steele Brand
Because he cares about the soldiers of Coroticus too. And he thinks that if those soldiers of Kus can take very seriously his warnings and his threats and his excommunication, that maybe they can be brought back into justice and just behavior. And so he wants to save the bodies of those that have been slaved, but he wants to s. Save the souls of those who have enslaved them. This is Patrick's political theology. It's, it's. It goes past tribes and races and even to a certain extent, nations. It's about justice for both those who have done wrong and for those whom have had wrong done to them. And Patrick wants restoration and rehabilitation, and he's willing to use the tools that he has to punish people who refuse to be reconciled and re. Centered. But this letter, it's this fiery letter with these really, these interesting moments of tenderness from a man who is a man in authority. This letter. We're really glad we have this letter because it contrasts deeply with that second letter. And, and I'll tell you about the second letter now. The second letter is his confession. I've already mentioned it several times. This letter is probably written at the very end of his life. And we're not entirely certain about the exact timing of when it came, but when Patrick is writing it, we get the sense that his death is right around the corner. He's an old man by this time, and he's baptized thousands of people. Countless numbers have been confirmed. He's ordained a number of deacons and priests.
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Dr. Steele Brand
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It's going good, man. Tell us who you are and what you do.
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Dr. Steele Brand
Year. He started to really change the structure of Irish society. And we can sort of see that with the way that he writes in the letter to the soldiers of Coroticus. No one would have written a letter like that two decades before. Before, but now he's talking. He's representing the Irish in ways that that represent Christian ethics that never would have happened before Patrick's day. So at the very end of his life he writes the second letter. And why does he write it? There's this, this opposition. It's probably the second opposition. The first opposition by British bishops is probably when he became bishop so that that opposition is overcome. Well, there's this second opposition that occurs and one gets the sense the British bishop are very concerned about three things. Patrick has been wildly successful, so he has a lot of power in Ireland. And we see that with the letter to Caroticus. It could even be that the confession is people being concerned about how powerful he is because of that letter to Karateus, we're not entirely certain. But Patrick seems to be pretty powerful, and he's got this independent church in Ireland. The second thing is that's probably brought a lot of wealth. In fact, several times in the confession, he emphasizes, everything I do get, I give away. I give to the poor. I will ransom captives, I will buy slaves and set them free. Every single penny that I get from everyone, I use for the church and for the mission. And he's insistent upon that. He tells them, you come, you ask the Irish, because these British bishops are in Britain. What do they know? He says, you come, you ask the Irish what I. What I have kept. And they'll testify that he's kept nothing. And so there's this concern with, with like, the, the money. And you get the sense the British, British are bummed out because they're not a part of the take. They want the take. They want the tribute that can come in from a great wealthy church that's starting to begin in Ireland. And then the third accusation that I would say we see in the confession is that when he was becoming a deacon or a priest as, As a young man, when he, after he'd been freed from his slavery, he confessed his sin to a very close friend, his confessor, that great sin that we know about. This is why we know about the great sin he confessed. Confess that 30 years ago. Well, these British bishops, doing what, you know, politicians and leaders do, it said, let's dig up whatever dirt we've got on Patrick because we can't really get anything specific about him. Well, this friend, to his everlasting shame, divulged what had been confessed. And Patrick, when he hears about this, is devastated because this friend told everyone in Britain, or at least the British bishops, what the great sin was. And Patrick is devastated not because everyone knows what the sin is, but because that had caused a rift in the friendship. And he, he felt trade. But he also worried about his friend who done something very immoral. He violated the sanctity of the confessional. Okay, so the bishops send this like they, they. They're sending some sort of letters or envoys saying you need to come back to Britain and give an account. And that's why Patrick sits down and writes the letter, because he wants to give an account of what he's done, how he's been pilious with everything and how everything has been driven by the mission, the mission to convert Ireland, to change what we know of as Ireland. And you get this in the letter he wr mentions it over and over again. The Great Commission is very important. His dreams have pointed him to this, this place. He references how many times he's. He's baptized countless. He's baptized thousands. He's. He's confirmed thousands or countless numbers. He has worked with the princes and he has, there have been a number of consecrated virgins who have also joined his numbers. And you understand in the writing that he's actually changing the fabric of Irish society, at least where he is. And that north central part of Ireland, Ireland with these mass conversions. And he is repeatedly emphasizing that it's his only motivation. But when you get to the end of the confession, there's these other telling remarks. See, we look back on Patrick's confession, we're like, oh yeah, well we know what happens. Ireland becomes Christian. Kings want to be Christian, the politicians want to be Christian. Even to this day, they want to like, like showcase their credentials. They want to trace themselves back to, back to Patrick. But Patrick has no idea that any of that's going to happen. And he has a couple of these remarks that are really heart wrenching. He says, you know, when I die, I don't even know if people are going to save my body. Now there's a tomb in Down Patrick which supposedly has his body. We have no idea what's in it. We don't know where Patrick's body is. We don't know if what he said would come true. That the birds and the dogs would devour his body came true. We don't have a Bible of Patrick. We don't, we don't have a letter of Patrick or we have the two letters. We don't have it written by his hand. We just have copies of them. We don't have a church that we know was built by him or like a crozier or a miter or any of the trappings of power. All we have is the legacy in those two letters that were copied from generation to generation and that's it. And Patrick actually dies without knowing if he really made any long lasting difference. Difference. But the two things that matter to him is I save souls here and I have friends here and they may be poor, but they know me and I know them and they're my family here in Ireland. And he also knows I did the mission. I did what I was supposed to do, what I was asked to.
- [46:08]
Joy Pullman
Do. So I fought the fight. I have kept the.
- [46:10]
Dr. Steele Brand
Faith. Yeah. And I think when he gets to, when he, he got to his, his mind was always when I get to heaven, I only want God to say, well done, good and faithful servant, and everything else. It doesn't.
- [46:22]
Joy Pullman
Matter. It is. I think it's so interesting that while you're talking about. Especially his confession, if he hadn't. It sounds to me like if he hadn't been. Had that sin divulged in that betrayal of his friend, he wouldn't have written the second of the only two, you know, the two pieces that we have from him that survived till.
- [46:46]
Sponsor Voice (Incogni)
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- [46:47]
Dr. Steele Brand
That. Yeah, that is the.
- [46:48]
Joy Pullman
Case. Most of the biographical information I think that, you know, we have comes from that particular.
- [46:53]
Dr. Steele Brand
One. And think about, like, Patrick's whole story. He would have. Who knows, he probably would have turned out to be not a very good person had that other horrible thing that happened and that him being enslaved and it. It's a testimony of God turning good things, or. Excuse me, God turning really horrific or bad things, things into amazingly beautiful and good things that impact thousands and thousands of people and. And hundreds of generations of people now. It's. It's a powerful message of how that can happen in the life of one.
- [47:24]
Joy Pullman
Person. Well, we. We just have a few minutes here. I wonder, what would you recommend to people who want to Learn more about St. Patrick? The history, the real history behind him. You know, while. While we are enjoying the dancing leprechauns and the disgusting green beer, which I won't be. My husband is a little bit picky. Well, he's actually. He's not super picky, but he knows how to pick good beer, so he'll be enjoying something better.
- [47:50]
Dr. Steele Brand
Tonight. But.
- [47:51]
Joy Pullman
Sure. You know, aside from all the kind of kitsch, you know, that's modern, the cheap Chinese decorations. What. What would be something of more lasting value, that people could devote a couple, you know, a little bit of their time or, you know, going forward to learning more about this great American. It's not American. This great Christian historical.
- [48:11]
Dr. Steele Brand
Figure. Yeah, the. I give the same recommendation to everyone who asked this because, you know, St. Patrick's Day is fun. It has all sorts of, like, you know, light things that you can do. But I. I would say if you want to make St. Patrick meaningful and if you actually want to know about the guy, the amazing person who's better than all the legends, just read his confession. It's short. It has like.
- [48:33]
Joy Pullman
63. You can find it.
- [48:34]
Dr. Steele Brand
Online. You can find it online. There are, you know, hundreds of versions that are out there. It's very easy. Easy to sit down and read through and just. I mean, you could read it in I mean, in less than an hour, easily, you know, maybe 30 minutes even on a slow read. Read the, read the confession and you really get a sense for him. And everyone acknowledges this. It's a remarkably sincere, if ineloquent, but a very beautiful letter. And then if you can't, if you want more, go read the letter to the soldiers of Coroticus and you'll get a different side of the same man who talks the same way in both letters. Letters. But you see, one is a man who's, who's searching to defend his purpose in life. And then the other is someone who is, is writing in a moment of grave concern and legitimate outrage that both of them present the story of a truly wonderful leader. And I think we need really good stories of truly wonderful leaders today because there's such a dearth of.
- [49:32]
Joy Pullman
That. Folks, you can find Dr. Steele Brand on X at S T E E L E. Underscore brand. Like branding a cow that that says handlex.com what I just noted. Dr. Brand, thank you for your time.
- [49:48]
Dr. Steele Brand
Today. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It was.
- [49:51]
Joy Pullman
Great. All right, listeners, this has been another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. You know what I'm going to say next. Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the Fray and Happy St. Patrick's.
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