WI: St. Patrick doesn't reach Ireland

What if Patrick died before he could return to Ireland ? If his mission to Ireland doesn't happen would there be subsequent attempts to convert the Irish? What would be the immediate impact of no Irish Christianity or Irish monastic culture on Western Europe?
 
I don't think it would be too long before Rome got someone into Ireland. And at the time Ireland was still a divided nation, so it could not have to large of an effect on the rest of Europe.

Now what could be interesting is if someone could get into Ireland and use Christianity as a proper unifying force and we could have an Irish kingdom set up before the English invade.
 
There is a view that the work of Saint Patrick was actually that of a combination of missionaries in Ireland at the time, not a single person!
 
That's going to need a citation.

My notes are boxed, but that was what I was taught at trinity in Dublin, too. The biggest problem is untangling which piece refers to the Patrician mission and which to the Palladian. There seems little doubt that Patrick was real, and his confessio is attributed to him personally by most scholars, but a large part of the historical records and legenda weren't written down until over a century later, and a good deal of it probably got garbled.
 

Orry

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Do we assume that he at least got to the IoM and removed our snakes?

Maybe he likes the Island so much he stays and has a long happy life here.....
 
1) he wasnt the first missionary, just the most sucessful.

2) he really, REALLY didnt want to go back and save the people who had made him a slave. One gets the impression that at the start he might have been just as glad that all irish burn in hell. So it would be pretty easy to have him either not go at all, or to not put his heart into it if he did go.

3) one of the things that seem to have made patrick so very effective is his ability to create parallels and analogies that resonated so effectively with his listeners. The shamrock as a model of the Trinity is only the tip of the iceberg. His coopting of the native intelligentsia into christianity, the bards particularly, but also brehons iirc, was a stroke of genius.


My guess is that without patrick ireland converts a bit slower, and is more roman. The biggest difference may well be that its not nearly as literate, no irish beacon keeping the flame of learning burning in the dark. Without the enthusiasm generated by the grafting of christianity onto the native culture, your not going to get so many missionaries fanning out from ireland to england and the continent. Which means no alcuin of york, which means no carolingian rennaissance, or at least a feebler one.
The effects may well have huge global impact, not just on ireland.


No cooption of nearly as much culture, so no glorious celtic knotwork in thebook of kells. Minimal compared to some of the other stuff, but that world would e a poorer place to live.
 
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Rex Mundi

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That's going to need a citation.

Not really. If anything, the opposing claim - that the conversion of Ireland to Christianity was the work of a single man, St. Patrick - would be the one that needs citation, being the counter-intuitive and generally far less probable claim.
 
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