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St. Patrick and His World
Once again, Mike Aquilina delves into the life and world of a legendary saint too often surrounded by more “legend” and less certainty. While traversing history in an imaginative and engaging way, Aquilina’s keen interest in both historical fact and storytelling combine artfully into a powerful reminder why St. Patrick came to be one of the most beloved and well-known saints of the Catholic Church. "May this book awaken in our hearts the redemptive longings of the Heart of Christ and the heart of St. Patrick. Thank you, Mike, for communicating to us his life and his spirit." -Fr. Colum Power, SHM
144 pages, Paperback
Published November 4, 2023
2 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Mike Aquilina
126 books112 followersMike Aquilina is author or editor of more than thirty books, including The Fathers of the Church, The Mass of the Early Christians, and A Year with the Church Fathers. He has co-hosted eight series that air on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). He has co-authored books with Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., and theologian Scott Hahn. He is past editor of New Covenant magazine and The Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper. He appears weekly on Sirius Radio's "Sonrise Morning Show." Mike and his wife, Terri, have six children, who are the subject of his book Love in the Little Things.
In 2011 Mike was a featured presenter of the U.S. Bishops' Diocesan Educational/Catechetical Leadership Institute. He also wrote the USCCB's theological reflection for Catechetical Sunday in 2011.
His reviews, essays and journalism have appeared in many journals, including First Things, Touchstone, Crisis, Our Sunday Visitor, National Catholic Register, and Catholic Heritage. He contributed work on early Christianity to the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought.
Mike is a also poet whose works have appeared in U.S. literary journals and have been translated into Polish and Spanish. He shared songwriting credits with Grammy Award-winner Dion DiMucci on the forthcoming album "Tank Full of Blues."
In 2011 Mike was a featured presenter of the U.S. Bishops' Diocesan Educational/Catechetical Leadership Institute. He also wrote the USCCB's theological reflection for Catechetical Sunday in 2011.
His reviews, essays and journalism have appeared in many journals, including First Things, Touchstone, Crisis, Our Sunday Visitor, National Catholic Register, and Catholic Heritage. He contributed work on early Christianity to the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought.
Mike is a also poet whose works have appeared in U.S. literary journals and have been translated into Polish and Spanish. He shared songwriting credits with Grammy Award-winner Dion DiMucci on the forthcoming album "Tank Full of Blues."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 4, 2025
Wow what an excellent read. Over the years I have read numerous volumes about Saint Patrick and a few different translations of his surviving 2 works. This one is a most excellent offering. It is a follow up to St. Joseph and His World, which is a worthy read as well. But back to the volume at hand.
The description of this book states:
“Once again, Mike Aquilina delves into the life and world of a legendary saint too often surrounded by more “legend” and less certainty. While traversing history in an imaginative and engaging way, Aquilina’s keen interest in both historical fact and storytelling combine artfully into a powerful reminder why St. Patrick came to be one of the most beloved and well-known saints of the Catholic Church.”
The chapters in this volume are:
Prologue
Introduction
What We Know
Growing up in Britain
The Ends of the Earth
The Escape
Preparing for the Mission (Patrick and His Sources)
Patrick and His Prayer
Patrick and His Work
The Conversion of Ireland
Patrick and His Legacy
Sources
I highlighted a number of passages while working through this book some of them are:
“As a Catholic Irishman I thank God for a book about St. Patrick that distinguishes between fact and legend, expertly presenting the historical evidence without inexpertly dismissing legend as a possible source of truth."
“We also know that a direct descendant and heir to the throne of King Niall later became a Christian in response to the evangelization of Patrick’s disciples, and then a monk, and then a saint: St. Colmcille (variations include Colum or Columba) of Derry, Ireland, and then Iona, Scotland, evangelizer of the Scottish (the Picts) and the English (the Angles and Saxons). St. Colum’s conversion had a huge social impact in the Ireland of his time. Many followed him into the Church’s embrace.”
“The historical and legendary dimensions of truly great men are often difficult to distinguish. According to one St. Patrick legend, for example, after initial failures in his missionary activity, he climbed Ireland’s sacred mountain, Croagh Patrick, to spend forty days and forty nights of prayer and penance on its summit, beseeching God to grant him the blessing of being the Abraham of Ireland with a multitude of descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. According to the legend, his prayers were answered.”
“St. Patrick is a man perhaps more beloved, revered, and celebrated than any other Father of the Church.”
“Everybody knows St. Patrick. He’s ubiquitous in popular culture. He is the patron saint of Ireland—and patron to the enormous Irish diaspora worldwide.”
“What we know for sure about Patrick is what we find in the two pieces of writing that are indisputably his—his Confession and his “Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus.””
“Actually, the first time the story of a saint banishing the snakes from Ireland comes up in literature, the saint isn’t Patrick. It’s St. Columba. Not until about 1200 do we find the story associated with St. Patrick.”
“In another way, though, we know everything that’s really important about St. Patrick. We know him from the inside—how he thought and how he felt. We know him because he put his heart and soul into his own writings.”
“Patrick wrote two things that everybody agrees are his. One is the little book known as the Confession, and the other is the “Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus.” Everyone agrees that they must be authentic, partly because they’re so badly written.”
“If you told Patrick he was a bad writer, he would certainly agree. “And so to-day I blush and am exceedingly afraid to lay bare my lack of education; because I am unable to make my meaning plain in a few words to the learned,” 1 he tells us in one of his many apologies for his poor style.”
“As far as historians know, there is precisely one person who saw Ireland in the 400s, wrote something about it, and left us a record that has survived to the present day. That one person is St. Patrick.”
“For a Roman like Patrick, Ireland was outside. It was outside the Roman Empire and outside Christendom. It was practically outside the world.”
“Almost everything that purports to be a history of that time was written down much later. In fact, there are only two writings in all of history that describe Ireland in the 400s from the point of view of a known eyewitness—and they’re both by St. Patrick.”
“Some people would have just said it was a bad dream. But Patrick remembered this as one of the most important events of his escape. That shows us something about the way he saw the world. Events on the surface were part of the more important spiritual struggle that had been going on since the world began.”
“Patrick’s creed is different. It has all the same ideas in it, but it hits us like an emotional outburst. He has taken the facts of Catholic theology and made them into a love poem. No one could doubt after reading this that Patrick’s theology was orthodox, but more than that, no one could doubt that it was more than mere theology. It was a personal relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity.”
“He would work with the local culture, and if judges expected gifts, then that was how he would deal with them. But he would not get the gifts in any way that was dishonest, or even in any way that might possibly look dishonest. He was too conscious of his status as a walking billboard for Christianity to make such a mistake in marketing. And the man who wrote the Confession was too fundamentally honest to try to get by with anything that his own conscience wouldn’t have approved of.”
“For example, Patrick made it a habit always to refuse gifts from his converts. He dwells on that at length in the Confession, because he was apparently answering accusations that he had profited from his mission.”
“Yet these legends are history themselves. They tell us what St. Patrick meant to the generations who came after him. Looking back from an Ireland that was thoroughly Christianized, they saw St. Patrick as nothing less than the founder of their people. He was the Moses of Ireland.”
“But the life span is not the important part of the parallel with Moses. Moses led his people out of slavery to the heathen Egyptians, and Patrick led his people out of slavery to the heathen Irish pagan religion.”
“For Patrick’s biographers, though, the pagan religion was “false” in a different sense. It had real power, but its power came from the devil. It was demonic. Its power was for the purpose of leading its followers to hell.”
“This is the real Patrick. In spite of his fury—which is boiling over even as he writes these words—he still hopes that Coroticus can be saved. His human instincts may want to see Coroticus in hell, but Patrick is a saint. His prayer is that he will see Coroticus in heaven.”
“Of course, you don’t have to be a botanist to appreciate the symbolism of three leaflets making up one leaf. The important thing is that Ireland identifies itself with Trinitarian theology, and the Irish attribute that Trinitarian tradition to St. Patrick. Even if Patrick himself never plucked a shamrock leaf, he was certainly devoted to the Trinity, and he would be pleased that his disciples had learned their lesson from him so well.”
“Ireland itself has had a famously difficult history. Conquered by the English, it was a second-rate colony of a Protestant power for hundreds of years. And the English did everything they could to bury Catholicism and turn the Irish into good, enlightened Protestants. But the Irish weren’t having it. No matter how difficult it was to be Catholic, the Irish Catholics persisted. The ones who emigrated from Ireland took their Catholic Faith with them. St. Patrick taught them his persistence.”
“Another thing Patrick can teach us is his charity. He could get furiously angry, but he never gave up on anybody.”
“We can learn from Patrick to see that the Bible really is a treasury of all human experience, and that there’s always something in Scripture to help us understand the things that happen in our own lives.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this volume. It is wonderfully written. It is engaging and entertaining. Aquilina does an excellent job so highlighting what might be legend and why, and what is likely build on an older oral tradition. With each new chapter I was more deeply engrossed in the material and how Mike presented it.
Being of Irish descent, and having a father named Patrick and a son; Saint Patrick has always had a certain devotion and fascination in our family. I am always on the lookout for a new volume to read about this saint and his times. My favourites to date had been some of the works of Alice Curtayne, but this is an excellent volume and has eclipsed many I have read about this saint and his times.
This is an excellent volume. Anyone from a high school level or on could easily engage with it. It would be a wonderful addition to any home, school, or church library. I can easily recommend this and the companion volume, and hope that Mike continues the series with more books. I highly recommend this book!
This book is part of a series of reviews: 2025 Catholic Reading Plan!
The description of this book states:
“Once again, Mike Aquilina delves into the life and world of a legendary saint too often surrounded by more “legend” and less certainty. While traversing history in an imaginative and engaging way, Aquilina’s keen interest in both historical fact and storytelling combine artfully into a powerful reminder why St. Patrick came to be one of the most beloved and well-known saints of the Catholic Church.”
The chapters in this volume are:
Prologue
Introduction
What We Know
Growing up in Britain
The Ends of the Earth
The Escape
Preparing for the Mission (Patrick and His Sources)
Patrick and His Prayer
Patrick and His Work
The Conversion of Ireland
Patrick and His Legacy
Sources
I highlighted a number of passages while working through this book some of them are:
“As a Catholic Irishman I thank God for a book about St. Patrick that distinguishes between fact and legend, expertly presenting the historical evidence without inexpertly dismissing legend as a possible source of truth."
“We also know that a direct descendant and heir to the throne of King Niall later became a Christian in response to the evangelization of Patrick’s disciples, and then a monk, and then a saint: St. Colmcille (variations include Colum or Columba) of Derry, Ireland, and then Iona, Scotland, evangelizer of the Scottish (the Picts) and the English (the Angles and Saxons). St. Colum’s conversion had a huge social impact in the Ireland of his time. Many followed him into the Church’s embrace.”
“The historical and legendary dimensions of truly great men are often difficult to distinguish. According to one St. Patrick legend, for example, after initial failures in his missionary activity, he climbed Ireland’s sacred mountain, Croagh Patrick, to spend forty days and forty nights of prayer and penance on its summit, beseeching God to grant him the blessing of being the Abraham of Ireland with a multitude of descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. According to the legend, his prayers were answered.”
“St. Patrick is a man perhaps more beloved, revered, and celebrated than any other Father of the Church.”
“Everybody knows St. Patrick. He’s ubiquitous in popular culture. He is the patron saint of Ireland—and patron to the enormous Irish diaspora worldwide.”
“What we know for sure about Patrick is what we find in the two pieces of writing that are indisputably his—his Confession and his “Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus.””
“Actually, the first time the story of a saint banishing the snakes from Ireland comes up in literature, the saint isn’t Patrick. It’s St. Columba. Not until about 1200 do we find the story associated with St. Patrick.”
“In another way, though, we know everything that’s really important about St. Patrick. We know him from the inside—how he thought and how he felt. We know him because he put his heart and soul into his own writings.”
“Patrick wrote two things that everybody agrees are his. One is the little book known as the Confession, and the other is the “Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus.” Everyone agrees that they must be authentic, partly because they’re so badly written.”
“If you told Patrick he was a bad writer, he would certainly agree. “And so to-day I blush and am exceedingly afraid to lay bare my lack of education; because I am unable to make my meaning plain in a few words to the learned,” 1 he tells us in one of his many apologies for his poor style.”
“As far as historians know, there is precisely one person who saw Ireland in the 400s, wrote something about it, and left us a record that has survived to the present day. That one person is St. Patrick.”
“For a Roman like Patrick, Ireland was outside. It was outside the Roman Empire and outside Christendom. It was practically outside the world.”
“Almost everything that purports to be a history of that time was written down much later. In fact, there are only two writings in all of history that describe Ireland in the 400s from the point of view of a known eyewitness—and they’re both by St. Patrick.”
“Some people would have just said it was a bad dream. But Patrick remembered this as one of the most important events of his escape. That shows us something about the way he saw the world. Events on the surface were part of the more important spiritual struggle that had been going on since the world began.”
“Patrick’s creed is different. It has all the same ideas in it, but it hits us like an emotional outburst. He has taken the facts of Catholic theology and made them into a love poem. No one could doubt after reading this that Patrick’s theology was orthodox, but more than that, no one could doubt that it was more than mere theology. It was a personal relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity.”
“He would work with the local culture, and if judges expected gifts, then that was how he would deal with them. But he would not get the gifts in any way that was dishonest, or even in any way that might possibly look dishonest. He was too conscious of his status as a walking billboard for Christianity to make such a mistake in marketing. And the man who wrote the Confession was too fundamentally honest to try to get by with anything that his own conscience wouldn’t have approved of.”
“For example, Patrick made it a habit always to refuse gifts from his converts. He dwells on that at length in the Confession, because he was apparently answering accusations that he had profited from his mission.”
“Yet these legends are history themselves. They tell us what St. Patrick meant to the generations who came after him. Looking back from an Ireland that was thoroughly Christianized, they saw St. Patrick as nothing less than the founder of their people. He was the Moses of Ireland.”
“But the life span is not the important part of the parallel with Moses. Moses led his people out of slavery to the heathen Egyptians, and Patrick led his people out of slavery to the heathen Irish pagan religion.”
“For Patrick’s biographers, though, the pagan religion was “false” in a different sense. It had real power, but its power came from the devil. It was demonic. Its power was for the purpose of leading its followers to hell.”
“This is the real Patrick. In spite of his fury—which is boiling over even as he writes these words—he still hopes that Coroticus can be saved. His human instincts may want to see Coroticus in hell, but Patrick is a saint. His prayer is that he will see Coroticus in heaven.”
“Of course, you don’t have to be a botanist to appreciate the symbolism of three leaflets making up one leaf. The important thing is that Ireland identifies itself with Trinitarian theology, and the Irish attribute that Trinitarian tradition to St. Patrick. Even if Patrick himself never plucked a shamrock leaf, he was certainly devoted to the Trinity, and he would be pleased that his disciples had learned their lesson from him so well.”
“Ireland itself has had a famously difficult history. Conquered by the English, it was a second-rate colony of a Protestant power for hundreds of years. And the English did everything they could to bury Catholicism and turn the Irish into good, enlightened Protestants. But the Irish weren’t having it. No matter how difficult it was to be Catholic, the Irish Catholics persisted. The ones who emigrated from Ireland took their Catholic Faith with them. St. Patrick taught them his persistence.”
“Another thing Patrick can teach us is his charity. He could get furiously angry, but he never gave up on anybody.”
“We can learn from Patrick to see that the Bible really is a treasury of all human experience, and that there’s always something in Scripture to help us understand the things that happen in our own lives.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this volume. It is wonderfully written. It is engaging and entertaining. Aquilina does an excellent job so highlighting what might be legend and why, and what is likely build on an older oral tradition. With each new chapter I was more deeply engrossed in the material and how Mike presented it.
Being of Irish descent, and having a father named Patrick and a son; Saint Patrick has always had a certain devotion and fascination in our family. I am always on the lookout for a new volume to read about this saint and his times. My favourites to date had been some of the works of Alice Curtayne, but this is an excellent volume and has eclipsed many I have read about this saint and his times.
This is an excellent volume. Anyone from a high school level or on could easily engage with it. It would be a wonderful addition to any home, school, or church library. I can easily recommend this and the companion volume, and hope that Mike continues the series with more books. I highly recommend this book!
This book is part of a series of reviews: 2025 Catholic Reading Plan!
March 21, 2024
Great, easy to read biography of the real life St. Patrick. Separating facts from legend.
March 31, 2025
A loving insight into Patrick the man and preacher and Patrick the legend and myth.
Read
November 15, 2025Pub. 2023
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews