This image is from the 1907 book Calendar

This image is also from the 1907 book Calendar

Woodcut illustration of St. Patrick from the 1907 book Calendar

Today, while drinking your green beer and eating your corned beef, be sure to take a moment to remember the man behind the green holiday.

You know, the REAL St. Patrick – the one who drove the snakes out of Ireland, who fought the Druids and who used a shamrock to teach about the holy trinity.

Oops. Turns out even those supposed facts about the patron saint of Ireland are just legends.

“I’ve talked to ancient historians with Ph.D.s,” says St. Patrick biographer Philip Freeman, “and some of them don’t realize Patrick was a real person.”

Not only that, but his life was pretty interesting – even without the legends.

Exactly when Patrick lived is somewhat of a mystery, though it was almost certainly sometime between the years 300 and 500. All we know about his life comes from a pair of letters written late in his ministry.

He grew up in Britain but was kidnapped at age 15 by pirates from Ireland. He was taken back to Ireland, where he was forced to watch over sheep for six years.

Religious conversion

Freeman, a professor of classics at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and author of “St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography,” says the saint’s strong faith developed during his time in slavery.

Patrick considered himself an atheist, though his father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest.

“He gets over in Ireland, and he had lost everything,” Freeman says. “He was a slave, he was taking care of sheep on the hillside, and he has nothing else to turn to but the faith of his childhood.”

Patrick eventually managed to escape his captors, and he returned to Britain on a ship. Few slaves escaped from Ireland, Freeman says, which makes Patrick’s story unique to begin with.

But what happened later was even more unusual. According to his letters, Patrick had three dreams which told him to return to Ireland to convert the Irish to Christianity.

“He came back to Ireland, and it was pretty much the same as when he left it,” Freeman says. “During his years in Ireland, he was regularly beaten up and threatened with death. He expected to die at any moment.”

Legendary tales

Daniel Melia, a professor of rhetoric and Celtic studies at the University of California at Berkeley, says Patrick’s mission work in Ireland was unusual because he was trying to convert the Irish. Most British missionaries chose to focus on converting slaves.

“They were just as happy having (the Irish) go to hell,” Melia says.

He also was concerned about the conversion of women slaves, which was unusual for the times.

Most of the legends surrounding Patrick came several hundred years after his death, when the churches of northern and southern Ireland were jockeying for power, Freeman says. The southern churches centered their attention on St. Bridgid, who helped start convents throughout Ireland.

The northern churches decided to focus on St. Patrick and stretched the truth about his ministry.

“There are these wonderful stories Patrick told in his letters,” Freeman says. “Those are nice, but you need superhero stories to boost your claim to primacy.”

Celebrating Patrick

The most common example would be the story about driving the snakes out of Ireland.

“There were never any snakes in Ireland,” Freeman says. “Snakes are always a symbol of evil, going back to the Garden of Eden story and a snake tempting Eve. It’s not literally true, but there’s some great symbolism.”

Other common legends include Patrick leading great battles against the Druids, or using the three-leaf shamrock to teach about the father, son and holy spirit. The latter may have been true, Freeman says, but there’s no evidence that it was.

The holiday dedicated to St. Patrick originated as a small religious holiday in Ireland. It wasn’t until Irish-Americans started parades to celebrate their heritage – and partially to prove their power as a voting bloc – that it started developing into the holiday it is today.

Melia, the Berkeley professor, says that in the big picture, there’s not much that differentiates Patrick from other saints doing good deeds. His importance, she says, comes from how he was reinvented after his death.

“Now, the Irish (in Ireland) have taken up St. Patrick’s Day parades,” Melia says. “It seems strange to send (the holiday) back. Nobody in Ireland has to prove they’re Irish.”