[A.D. 378-432.]

It has been conjectured that the great Apostle of Ireland, St. Patrick, was carried captive to the land of his adoption, in one of the plundering expeditions of the monarch Nial—­an eminent instance of the overruling power of Providence, and of the mighty effects produced by causes the most insignificant and unconscious.  As we are not writing an ecclesiastical history of Ireland, and as we have a work of that nature in contemplation, we shall only make brief mention of the events connected with the life and mission of the saint at present; but the Christianizing of any country must always form an important epoch, politically and socially, and, as such, demands the careful consideration of the historian.  How and when the seed of faith was sown in ancient Erinn before the time of the great Apostle, cannot now be ascertained.  We know the silent rapidity with which that faith spread, from its first promulgation by the shores of the Galilean lake, until it became the recognized religion of earth’s mightiest empire.  We know, also, that, by a noticeable providence, Rome was chosen from the beginning as the source from whence the light should emanate.  We know how pagan Rome, which had subdued and crushed material empires, and scattered nations and national customs as chaff before the wind, failed utterly to subdue or crush this religion, though promulgated by the feeblest of its plebeians.  We know how the material prosperity of that mighty people was overruled for the furtherance of eternal designs; and as the invincible legions continually added to the geographical extent of the empire they also added to the number of those to whom the gospel of peace should be proclaimed.

The first Christian mission to Ireland, for which we have definite and reliable data, was that of St. Palladius.  St. Prosper, who held a high position in the Roman Church, published a chronicle in the year 433, in which we find the following register:  “Palladius was consecrated by Pope Celestine, and sent as the first Bishop to the Irish believing in Christ."[110] This mission was unsuccessful.  Palladius was repulsed by the inhabitants of Wicklow,[111] where he landed.  He then sailed northward, and was at last driven by stress of weather towards the Orkneys, finding harbour, eventually, on the shores of Kincardineshire.  Several ancient tracts give the details of his mission, its failure, and his subsequent career.  The first of those authorities is the Life of St. Patrick in the Book of Armagh; and in this it is stated that he died in the “land of the Britons.”  The second Life of St. Patrick, in Colgan’s collection, has changed Britons into “Picts.”  In the “Annotations of Tierchan,” also preserved in the Book of Armagh,[112] it is said that Palladius was also called Patricius,[113] and that he suffered martyrdom among the Scots, “as ancient saints relate.”