H’uh? 
I recommend you read this, by a pagan of Irish extraction:
“A pagan celebrating St Patrick’s Day?” I learned some things.
Guin: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2172408.stm
Note that this is an old story, from shortly before he was inducted as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Background from somebody’s blog on what his motivations allegedly were.
For the second time in this thread, NO. If you’re going to argue, at least do us all the favor of reading all the posts first. I refer you to my second post where I stated that I just included this for the benefit of some people who I a) knew were going to read my OP and b) may not have been aware of this FACT (and it’s triviality) due to their general lack of knowledge on this subject.
I refer you to this document, the basic over view from the horses mouth, and to the cites in my OP. Pat himself referred to the men (druids, pagans) BY NAME.
Now, when he says “Bob was in charge, Bob was an unbeliever, Bob was swallowed by the ground” are you saying that we should read that as “Bob was in charge, I told Bob to shut up, I took over Bob’s job without a fight, Bob dies many years later of natural causes”??? Did Pat lie?
I read it as “Bob disappeared”. Pat says God magically took him. I say he was whacked. The truth may lie somewhere in between, but I think you must agree that Bob got dead in short order and not in his own good time.
Once again, I got my info from Pat’s own account. Was the Saint a liar?
This is very embarassing, given my user name, but I’ve never actually seen Spinal Tap except for a few sound bites.
Coolness, but not surprising. We don’t have any qualms about beliefs in one certain deity or another. All Gods are one, it’s whatever works for you.
Although my opinion may differ, I don’t disagree with any of the facts in this article, and I applaud the author for her presentation. A couple of points:
First, to a couple of people (you know who you are!), LOOK, someone else took quality time to address the snakes thing, neener-neener-neener:p
As far as the title “Druid”, i firmly believe it was once a title of some power, but I’m not surprised that it survived for years after. What better way to reward a key convert than to give him an honorary title that previously held some merit before his conversion?
Second, I agree with everyone who says that Christianity was most likely present long before Pat. I don’t see anything wrong with them doing that. It’s this tradition of agressively going into somewhere and trying to convert the country en masse that bothers me. Why did they do that in so many places? It was so unnecessary.
And third, I wholly agree that Christianity absorbed and incorporated paganism rather than replaced it. This is purely my opinion, but I think I would have more respect for them if they had wiped it out. Taking someones beliefs and twisting them to their own ends as they did seems very disrespectful to me.
I don’t see anything in the Confession, or the letter to Caroticus, which are the only two documents attributed to Patrick, anything about any druids mentioned by name, or any miraculous violence against the druids. In the Confessions, Patrick relates how he and his slavers were miraculously provided with food, that God told him how and when to escape his enslavement, and that he received visions in dreams, and that he was saved by some Irish princes who took him captive and tried to kill him, but that’s basically it on the miracles.
The Letter to Caroticus doesn’t even deal with events in Ireland, but scolds Caroticus, a king of part of Scotland, who ordered some newly baptized Christians killed, and others sold into slavery.
Also, like I mentioned before, Patrick didn’t convert the entire island, just parts of Ulster.
And the reason that people like Patrick and other missionaries went into other countries and aggressively tried to convert people was that they sincerely believed that their religion was the correct one and that the religions they came up against were evil or wrong. So, from their perspective, it was neccessary, because they were fighting for the truth and saving people from worshiping evil, false gods.
OK, I’l concede that they’re not in those teo documents, there were some names in the confession but I haven’t been able to reason out who they refer too. I’m guilty of skimming there. However, the links in the OP do name the Druids specifically, as do many of the other historical accounts. Case in point this story, written by someone who is obviously on the other side of the table from me.
Ditto for the miraculous violence. So, are we to believe that all this stuff is myth? I admit, there are only two documents that are confirmed to be by Pat himself. I’m having trouble getting to the source of the rest of the info. Is it all BS?
I guess this is at the heart of my whole problem with Christianity. I have close friends who are Christians and some of their churches actively send missionaries (I’ve seen these people’s pictures) to South America, where they attempt to convert remote tribes to Christianity.
Why do Christians feel so justified in forcing their beliefs on people who are otherwise minding their own business? I just really hate that whole practice, it really gets under my skin.
Well, the names in the Confession are Victorianus, who appeared in a dream to Patrick telling him to go to Ireland, and Deisignatus, who’s in another vision.
The confrontation with Loegaire, the miracles, the locations that Patrick reportedly blessed, etc., all come from later biographies of Patrick. They’re legends, partly written as inspiration. It’s par for the course if you read lives of the saints. Miracles keep on happening in the stories. A bad guy tries to rape a Christian virgin and is struck dead, dead people are brought back to life by the saint, somebody tries to kill the saint and can’t hit him, the saint carries someone across the river, and then finds out it’s the baby Jesus, there are earthquakes, eclipses, etc. They’re actually pretty fun stories, but they’re legends. More than just legends, they’re oral legends, passed down by word of mouth until somebody writes them down.
Those Christians who do that do so because they believe that the people who are otherwise minding their own business are doomed to hell, or doomed to believe in false gods, or cut off from truth, unless they do. It might bother you, but that is their motivation.
All the names that Patrick cites are of fellow Christians. As for the various miracle stories. If you read a lot of Irish saints’ lives, you will find that most of their miracles are remarkably formulaic. The same acts are attributed over and over again to many different saints. This is a clue to conclude “added centuries later”.
Your vehemence looks about identical to the Christian proselytes, only excepting that it is of the nature of “You must NOT believe!” instead of “You MUST believe.” Likewise, what evidence do you have that all missionary work is of the type done by USA-style Protestantism? Take a look at how the Orthodox Church does missionary work–it’s a little different.
One thing you ahve to remember about religion in the pre-modern world is that it wasn’t an academic excersise, it wasn’t a philosopical question, it wasn’t just about the afterlife. Life was hard, brutal, and amazingly caprious. Religion offered [at least the illusion of] some control over this.
Imagene working all spring and summer in the fields–horrible, back breaking labor, only to see all that work destroyed in a 15 minute hail storm that sprang up out of nowhere and knowing that this means your family won’t make it to next year?
Imagene having your wife complain one morning about a bit of a toothache, and having her be dead three days later.
Imagene having your healthy, happy three year old go from whinning a bit at nap time to having a fever at bed time to having pus and blood coming out of her (burst) ear at breakfast to dead by sundown.
Imagene having half the teenage boys in the town fall over dead within a couple of days, with only headaches?
Imagene being able to remember the last Viking attack, when you were a boy, and watching your sisters–10, 12, and 14–all get gang raped and then carried away, your three month old baby brother killed, your father killed, and rembering having to build back everything, because everything that wasn’t stolen was burnt. Then imagene having no reason to believe that won’t all happen again any day now, with no warning.
To the medieval mind, it was important to get religion right. There was no room for error. Error was punished, if not directly, then by the withdrawl of God’s support, and being left to fend for yourself in that world was an unbearable thought. And it wasn’t an individual choice: hail storms, viking attacks, plauges, these things affected the whole village, and heresy on anyone’s part could be responsible for these things. There’s no room for personal choice wheh YOUR stubborn refusal to give up the old ways might result in MY babies starving.
In a world like
Dude- there is nothing in “this document” about Patrick killing anyone, or God killing anyone, or the earth swallowing up anyone. No killings at all.
Nor does it state that the Druids held the political power.
Been smoking too much mistletoe? 
Captain Amazing, sorry to bring back a moribund thread, but you seem to have the straight bill of goods on Padraig’s writings – what’s the story behind the Lorica? It’s something I very much like, but I do not have a clue about its provenance (beyond the ascription to him) or authenticity.
The Lorica is traditionally attributed to Patrick. In fact, the legend goes that the High King sent warriors to kill him, but that Patrick and his followers sang that hymn and were transformed into a herd of deer, which the warriors walked past.
In reality, though, it probably dates back to the 7th or 8th century…at least, that’s the first written record of it. (which doesn’t mean anything…it could have existed in oral form for some time before that, so it’s possible Patrick composed it, but not likely). It’s pretty definately Celtic and Irish, though. One of the things you notice is the use of triads, three related concepts together as a set, which is a traditional feature of Irish poetry. For example:
[quote]
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise
[/quote)
Actually, that’s good because you get a double triad there. “Idolatry, spells, and corrupt knowledge” is one, and within that, you have another, “women and smiths and wizards”
So it’s early Celtic Christian, but I don’t think the origins can be pinned down more than that.
It’s a pretty standard lorica (which means breastplate), which was a form of hymn or prayer requesting divine protection and strenghtening.
I hope this helps. If you need anything else, let me know and I’ll try to find it for you.
That was most helpful, Cap’n; thanks!
(For anybody who’s wondering what we’re talking about, there’s an ancient hymn attributed to Patrick called the Lorica, or “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.” A modern (19th Century) text and music for it can be found [url\“http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/i/i005.html”]here.)
That was tragic, but not too terribly surprising. One-on-one, clerics will always have the edge over druids. Clerics can wear metal armor and turn undead, after all, and (starting with 2nd Edition) they have access to more spheres of spells. Oh, sure, druids are more useful in an outdoor adventure, but how many adventures have you been on that didn’t center around an underground dungeon crawl?
What?