Where are St. Patrick’s remains? It’s a hot debate.

With a feast day full of the color green, Irish dancing, parades, and beer, Saint Patrick is arguably among the most famous saints in the world. You don’t have to be Irish or even Catholic to celebrate Ireland’s patron saint. 

Yet, for a faith steeped in the veneration of the remains–or relics–of saints, St. Patrick’s relics have been debated by historians, archeologists, and the clergy for centuries. Despite the large granite stone that marks the spot where his bones are laid outside Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland, it’s not entirely clear if that is Patrick’s true final resting place. 

“Essentially, this is tied into the cult of relics,” Niamh Wycherley, a medieval historian at Maynooth University in Kildare, Ireland and host of The Medieval Irish History Podcast, tells Popular Science. “Ireland was in the jurisdiction of what we would have referred to then as Western Christendom. The veneration of the saints, and then by extension the veneration of their bodily remains or of items associated with them, is just a fundamental part of Catholicism.”

Who was the real Patrick?

While he didn’t really use a drum to get all of the snakes out of Ireland, Patrick was a real person. He was a fifth century missionary credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. He was born in Britain and was captured and enslaved by Irish raiders when he was only 16-years-old. Patrick’s six years as a slave would reinvigorate his Christian faith and fundamentally change him. While he initially doubted his abilities as a missionary, Patrick returned to Ireland in 433 CE where he baptized and confirmed the masses. Most historical sources say that he died on or around March 17 in the year 461 CE. 

The majority of what historians know about him come from two short written works. In the Confessio, he details his spiritual autobiography and his Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus denounces British mistreatment of Irish Christians. 

“For me as a historian, the most important thing about Patrick is that we have surviving documents by him,” says Wycherley. “And despite that, most of our understanding of Patrick today completely ignores these two texts. I kind of find it funny and I think there’s something really deep going on there. You can give someone a firsthand testimony of something, and it doesn’t matter, people will believe what they want to believe. Fake news is not a new invention. Fake news has been around forever.”

The bone(s) of contention

For historians and archeologists, this debate and the importance of relics and remains is not fully surprising. Humans as a species have a tangible pull to the remains of their dead, items of clothing, books, or other possessions of lost loved ones or icons.

“This kind of a veneration of the bodies of revered ancestors and respected individuals and communities, is something that cuts across a lot of organized religions,” says Wycherley. 

In Catholicism, churches all around the world hold relics of saints and even Jesus Christ himself that serve as places of pilgrimage and for a connection to the greater Roman Church. 

“It was important for a church to have this tangible connection with their own patron saint,” says Wycherley. “Patrick’s church was in Armagh and in texts, it mentions that the Armagh church has relics from Rome. But what Armagh doesn’t have in the seventh century is a tomb or the body of St. Patrick.”

In addition to being important places of pilgrimage, relics can bring in fame and quite a bit of profit and prestige to a church. According to Wycherley, churches have fought one another over the remains of saints and some relics were stolen.

“Armagh ultimately became the most powerful church in Ireland for many centuries, but it seems that maybe that wasn’t necessarily a given,” says Wycherley. “There was a time period where maybe Kildare might have been the most powerful church. In the surviving texts from the 600s, Armagh seems to be trying to explain their way out of why they don’t have the grave or the tomb of St. Patrick.”

Historians believe that if the church really had access to Patrick’s remains there likely would have been a ceremony, where the bones might have been dug up from a humble grave and then placed into a fancy tomb or inside the church.

[ Related: Ireland was once home to deer with massive 12-foot antlers. ]

Propaganda, 1185 style

The story that Patrick was buried at Downpatrick is also based on some propaganda during the late 12th century CE–about 700 years after Patrick’s death. In 1185, Anglo-Norman knight John de Courcy reportedly staged the “discovery” of the relics belonging to three saints including Patrick. He claimed to have dug up Patrick’s body and brought the relics into a new tomb at Downpatrick. While there is no way of really knowing if these were the actual bones of Patrick, the strongest evidence still supports that he was buried somewhere in Downpatrick. 

“People have gotten permission to subject these bones to scientific analysis, which still won’t tell you who the person exactly is,” says Wycherley. “But they can tell you if they are the remains of someone from that time period, what geographical area they are from.”

The best account we have is the Life of St. Patrick by a scholar named Muirchú. This hagiography–or biography of a saint–was written in the late 600s. The hagiography is more of a religious work and not an account of Patrick’s actual life, it’s valuable for understanding the greater Irish church in the seventh century and Patrick’s impact. 

While we may not know the precise location of Patrick’s remains, his voice is preserved in his accessible writings–whether we want to listen to it or not. 

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