Was St Patrick of the tall tales a tax exile and a spin doctor?

NOT ONLY did he introduce Christianity to Ireland in AD 432. If a new study is correct, St Patrick also pioneered another tradition, by becoming the first British celebrity to move here as a tax exile.

Where he differed from writers and rock stars, the Cambridge University research suggests, is that it wasn’t payment of tax he needed to avoid – not primarily. His problem, as a Roman patrician, was being expected to serve as a tax collector, or “decurion”. The role had been prestigious. But by the fifth century, with Roman Britain in decline, it was a thing to be avoided. According to Dr Roy Flechner, of Cambridge’s department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Patrick’s father only escaped it by becoming a clergyman, exploiting a “bailout” clause of Roman law.

Unfortunately for the future saint, the position was hereditary. And in Patrick’s “troubled era”, writes Flechner, “discharging the obligations of a decurion, especially tax collecting, would not only have been difficult but also very risky”.

The revisionism doesn’t end there. Flechner regards as “highly unlikely” the story that Patrick came here as a slave before escaping. On the contrary, he suggests, the holy man may have brought slaves to Ireland, as a form of currency in a country without money. “Slaves were a highly valued commodity and Patrick mentions that his family owned several, as did all aristocratic families in Britain at this time. Slaves were also relatively easy to transport, and in the historical context it makes sense that Patrick would have converted his family wealth .”

Flechner doesn’t question that Patrick was a bishop and missionary. But if he’s right that much of his life story is “fiction”, our national saint should also be patron of spin doctors. The legend was founded on his letters, he says, “because this is how he wanted to be remembered”.