A Roman Briton carried off by Irish raiders at sixteen and enslaved as a shepherd, who escaped, took orders, and came back to the country that had held him. His own Confessio survives — one of the very few genuinely personal voices from fifth-century Europe, written by a man who calls himself unlearned and means it. Tradition puts his grave at Downpatrick alongside Brigid and Colmcille.
Worth knowing
The shamrock story and the banishing of the snakes are both later legends; Ireland has had no snakes since the Ice Age.
