Early Irish Christianity

The conversion of Ireland

In the tangled maze of Irish church history, few questions are more controversial or more intractable than the one which is the most fundamental of all - when and how did the Christian faith first reach the island of Ireland? About all that we can say for certain is that in the year 431 Pope Celestine I consecrated a man called Palladius as bishop to the Christians in Ireland - whoever and wherever they were. Hints from place names and the probabilities of geography suggest that these Christians lived somewhere in the south-east of the country, but it is impossible to know how many or how widely scattered they were. It is quite likely that most of them were British people who had gone to Ireland, either voluntarily as merchants or involuntarily as slaves or refugees. When that migration started is completely unknown, but after the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the fourth century, the chances that Roman citizens in Ireland would have been Christians increase dramatically, whether they were of British or of continental origin. Some of them were probably slaves who had been captured during one of the frequent Irish raids on Britain, while others may have gone to Ireland to escape religious repression after the condemnation of the British-born Pelagius in 429 but this cannot be proved and it left no trace on future developments. Whether these Christians made any effort to convert the native Irish is unknown, as is the ultimate fate of the Palladian mission. It seems that Palladius went to Ireland as planned and had a successful ministry there, but that after he died there was no attempt to follow up his efforts and the Christians of Ireland were left once more to their own devices.

The traditional evangelist of Ireland was Patrick, a Briton who was captured by Irish raiders and enslaved as a young man. He escaped from his captivity and managed to return home, but his experiences in Ireland had left him with a burning determination to return and preach the Gospel in that country. He went back, either to what is now County Down or to somewhere in the northwest, and launched a missionary effort which would eventually see the conversion of the Irish people to Christianity.