Who Was Saint Patrick? - Hardcover

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E.A. Thompson, emeritus professor of classics at Nottingham University, holds that absolutely all we know about St. Patrick comes from his Confession and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. His analysis of these documents gives many details of life in 5th-century Britain and Ireland, debunks medieval lives of Patrick and much modern scholarship, and shows that Patrick was not Ireland's first bishop, did not work miracles, and did not drive the snakes from Ireland. What he did do was decide, against much opposition, to devote his old age to converting Irish pagans, and thus he became the first Western bishop to evangelize outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire. For professional and amateur, especially Irish, historians. W. Charles Heiser, S.J., St. Louis Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Scheduled for publication on St. Patrick's day, this study of the elusive patron saint of the Irish is unique in at least one respect. Thompson (emeritus professor of Nottingham University, England) relies solely on evidence gathered from Patrick's own writingstwo books in Latin: Epistle to the Soldiers of Coroticus and Confessionto form a biography. He eschews the legends and apocrypha, many amusing, that have over the centuries embellished the meager facts known about Patrick, yet Thompson strives to appeal to general readers as well as theologians and scholars. Terming Patrick "a bad writer but . . . not an out-and-out crackpot," he poses credible hypotheses about Patrick's origins as a Briton, his enslavement in County Mayo, his delayed rise to the bishopric and his unusual reaching out to the non-Christian barbarians of fifth-century Ireland. An intriguing story filled with unanswerable questions but highly readable and satisfying. Photos not seen by PW. History Book Club selection.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.