US expert casts doubt on date of St Patrick's birth

A leading US academic is suggesting that St Patrick was born 40 years before the accepted estimates of when he lived.

Rewriting the history of the saint is University of California, Berkeley, professor of Celtic studies Daniel Melia, who has studied the few writings St Patrick left behind.

If his theory is accepted, he says it will also necessitate a redating of the conversion of Ireland to Christianity.

Prof Melia will outline his arguments in public for the first time at a lecture, The Real St Patrick, in Berkeley tonight.

While the exact dates of the saint's life have never been certain, the commonly accepted theory is that he lived between 390 to 460 or 490.

A native of Roman Britain, Patrick is said to have been captured by Irish raiders as a teenager and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping to return home. He then entered the church and became a deacon and a bishop, before returning to Ireland as a missionary.

Prof Melia found clues about St Patrick in his writings. Interpretations since the 9th century of St Patrick's Confessio - a short account of his life and his mission - and Letter to Caroticus led to the estimates of when he lived.

However Prof Melia's re-evaluation of the character of Patrick's written Latin, in conjunction with what he wrote about his life, indicates he must have lived from about 350 to 425 or 430.

"Patrick's knowledge of Latin technical idiom and formal rhetoric is far more sophisticated than previously believed," Prof Melia says. He believes the saint's style of written Latin has gone unnoticed and has been mistranslated up until now.

"Patrick's language shows that he was educated well before the collapse of Roman Britain in the period AD 400-410 and thus more likely to have been born around AD 350.

"An earlier date for Patrick's birth simplifies the explanations for many of his own statements and other facts about his life," he adds.

"For instance, his statement that he was taken hostage by Irish raiders 'along with many thousands of others' need not be explained away as hyperbole if he is referring to the 'great barbarian uprising' of 367, the only such event between 350 and 420 that we know about."