Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Saint Patrick: About 389-461
The Evangelisation of Ireland, mingled as it is with the life of St Patrick, is one of the most surprising facts in the life of the Church in the fifth century.
Beyond the limits of the Roman world, the conquest of a whole country was achieved in a few years by the initiative of one man.
True, Christianity had become the State religion of the Roman Empire. But Rome had never penetrated into Ireland. Thus, as regards the heathen population of that island, St Patrick found himself confronted with the same situation as were the Apostles in face of the Greco-Roman paganism.
The conversion of Ireland was effected during a period when it seemed that civilisation and the new religion must both disappear, swept away by the tide of barbarian invasion.
Yet Providence was even then preparing reserves of sanctity and learning, which in Gaul and Italy would, in the seventh century, be the leaven of monastic life and of that of the Christian people.
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