(Stained glass image of Saint Patrick in the Church of the Assumption, Our Lady's Island, County Wexford, Ireland, 26 September 2010/Andreas F. Borchert)
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 in his “Confessio”.
