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Did St. Patrick sell slaves to the Irish?
MSNBC ^ | 3/16/2012 | MSNBC Staff

Posted on 03/17/2012 3:03:31 PM PDT by caldera599

LONDON -- St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, may well have been a tax collector for the Romans who fled to Ireland where he could have traded slaves to pay his way, according to new research by a University of Cambridge academic published on Saturday.

The generally accepted account of the saint's life, albeit based on scant evidence, says Patrick was abducted from western Britain as a teenager and forced into slavery in Ireland for six years during which time he developed a strong Christian faith.

Afterwards, the account continues, he escaped his captors and went back to Britain before eventually returning to Ireland as a missionary.

But Roy Flechner, from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, believes there are reasonable grounds to question the popular version which is based partly on Patrick's own words.

(Excerpt) Read more at worldnews.msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: confessi; confessio; coroticus; fartyshadesofgreen; godsgravesglyphs; ireland; ironage; liberalnonsense; patricius; romancatholicism; romanempire; saintpatrick; saintpatricksday; slavery; slaves; stpatrick; stpatricksday; ugh
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To: caldera599

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! :)

You might get a kick out of this Irish Jig! http://lizabdesired.hubpages.com/_wh3d3iyg0t1q/video/happy-st-patricks-day-2012


21 posted on 03/17/2012 4:52:23 PM PDT by sarah palin rocks
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To: sarah palin rocks

Sorry bad link.


22 posted on 03/17/2012 5:05:48 PM PDT by sarah palin rocks
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To: caldera599

This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things that ever came out of the academic mind. St Patrick wrote an autobiography and was not responding to “charges” of any kind. Kidnapping by Irish raiders was quite common, and he went and worked peacefully as a shepherd for 6 years until he had a dream of an angel telling him to go down to the harbor and he would find a ship that could take him away. The legend is that he went to the Continent with a shipload of Irish hounds being sent to France to be sold for hunting dogs for the nobility.

His Latin was very poor when he arrived in Europe and he actually had to relearn it so that he could make it through his priestly training, although it is not known where he did this.

When he returned to Ireland at the Pope’s orders (after the Briton Pelagius had failed in his commission) he looked up his former owner and paid him the price that the owner had paid for him when the owner bought him.

St Patrick’s father was a Christian Roman and does not seem to have been trying to “get out” of anything. He was not a very high-ranking official and certainly calling him “aristocracy” is a bit of an overreach.

But nothing is too much of an overreach for a loser academic who’s going nowhere with his life and doing nothing but sniping.


23 posted on 03/17/2012 5:25:17 PM PDT by livius
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To: caldera599

Leave St. Patrick alone!! I like the legend I’ve known since I was a wee lass!


24 posted on 03/17/2012 6:04:01 PM PDT by jch10
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To: Petrosius

More like a story line for a movie script.


25 posted on 03/17/2012 6:08:08 PM PDT by RobbyS (Christus rex.)
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To: Petrosius

More like a story line for a movie script.


26 posted on 03/17/2012 6:08:19 PM PDT by RobbyS (Christus rex.)
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To: livius

Revisionism is seldom more than a way of making a buck; rare is it based on discovering a new cache of evidence, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even there Wilson seized upon partial reports to conjure all sorts of fanciful stuff.


27 posted on 03/17/2012 6:14:22 PM PDT by RobbyS (Christus rex.)
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If MSNBC doesn’t survey the sewers for stories, who will?


28 posted on 03/17/2012 6:14:22 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Newt/Sarah 2012)
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To: caldera599

St. Patrick WAS a slave for many years.


29 posted on 03/17/2012 8:43:10 PM PDT by redhead (Alaska: Step out of the bus and into the food chain.)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks caldera599.

Note: this topic is from 3/17/2012.

Blast from the Past.

Still sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


30 posted on 06/20/2012 6:40:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: caldera599
Could have- might have- maybe- blah blah...In Ireland, they have, like we, a leftist iconoclastic movement that is firmly entrenched in academia. They've been pushing this St Patrick narrative, as well chipping away at the Celtic legacy of Ireland, asserting the Irish are no more or less Celtic in origin than any other W European country.

It's unclear to me why these (in lieu of a better description) almost ethnically suicidal elements exist; to what end? Maybe someone can offer up some explanation. They make me want to puke all over their loafers.

31 posted on 06/20/2012 7:02:27 PM PDT by Dysart
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To: SunkenCiv

Saint Patrick was a gentleman, he came from decent people,
In Dublin town he built a church and on it put a steeple
His father was a Callahan, his mother was a Grady,
His aunt was O’Shaughnessy and uncle he was Brady

Chorus :
Success to bold Saint Patrick’s fist,
He was a Saint so clever,
He gave the snakes an awful twist
And banished them forever

There’s not a smile in Ireland’s isle where the dirty vermin musters
Where’er he put his dear forefoot he murder’d them in clusters
The toads went hop, the frogs went plop, slap dash into the water
And the beasts committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter

Nine hundred thousand vipers blue he charm’d with sweet discourses
And dined on them at Killaloo an’ in the second courses
When blind worms crawling on the grass disgusted all the nation
He gave them a rise and open’d their eyes to a sense of their situation

The Wicklow hills are very high and so’s the hill of Howth, sir
But there’s a hill much higher still, Ay, higher then them both, sir
And it was on the top of his hill, Saint Patrick preach’d the “Sarmint”
That drove the frogs into the bogs and bothered all the “varmint”


32 posted on 06/20/2012 7:17:14 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: caldera599
no proof, of course.

And why does he say slaves, when the most recent archeology (at U Penn museum lecture) says that western areas of what is now England had trade with the Mediterranean up to and after Roman times, so they are rewriting the books on that period. link

33 posted on 06/21/2012 3:47:29 AM PDT by LadyDoc
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To: caldera599

BULL$%#&@!!!

Once again, some atheistic, sophomoric (sophos = wise, moros = fool) idiot is promulgating an anti-western, anti-Christian personal opinion of a western hero based on his own personal opinion totally divorced from any real facts to substantiate them.

Sub-Roman Britain has provided very little written documentaiton of what was going on there. Absent any other legimitimate source of information on this subject aside from St. Patrick’s writings, I will take the Saint’s views over those of this revisionist academic.

We KNOW Mohammad WAS a slave trader, desert bandit and pedophile, but the verminous source of this scurrilous article would NEVER present THAT view of Mohammad in his writings!!!!


34 posted on 06/21/2012 5:43:13 AM PDT by ZULU (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=D9vQt6IXXaM&hd)
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To: JimSEA

There are multiple writings unquestionably from St Patrick himself. What are these people smoking?


35 posted on 06/21/2012 8:08:33 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who truly support our troops pray for their victory!)
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To: xzins

Like with the Bible or other religious writings, some academics like to assume the writers are intentionally lying. I’ve never really understood the logic but the motivation is anti religion.


36 posted on 06/21/2012 9:56:04 AM PDT by JimSEA
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