Patrick: A Slave to Ireland

Fifteen hundred years ago, the man we know as Saint Patrick embarked on an extraordinary mission: to bring Christianity to Ireland, then seen by the Roman world as a distant and barbarian land. Yet Patrick’s connection to Ireland began in tragedy. As a teenager in Roman Britain, he was kidnapped and taken across the sea, where he spent six years enslaved before escaping after a visionary dream. Returning home, he trained as a priest but made the remarkable decision to go back to the land of his captivity. His return would transform Ireland and leave a lasting mark on Europe. Challenging familiar myths, this documentary places the British-born Patrick within his wider Roman and European context, revealing him as part of a dynamic Christian movement reshaping the continent. Drawing on Patrick’s own fifth-century writings—the oldest surviving texts in Irish history—it explores the world before his arrival and the enduring legacy of the church he founded.