
(389–461) In a time of cultural collapse and hooligan violence, Patrick’s missionary work to the Irish was humanist, peacemaking, and expansive. Patrick and his missionary co-workers created a Celtic Christianity that embraced ancient reverence for nature while suppressing old practices like human sacrifice to the nature gods, and that used the bardic traveler’s spirit of old Celtic spirituality to tame the roaming warrior hero tradition. (March 17)
