Most of what you see on modern films is untrue.
Nor can you rely on most encyclopedias.
St Parick was a Romanized Celt, a Briton.
He was born abt ad 390.
This was near the end of Roman rule in Britannia, the Roman province which covered the modern countries of England and Wales, or about 50% of the area of the islands.
Some sources give his birth in what nowadays is Scotland, others in what today is Wales.(Logical, because Wales and the Welsh are the surviving Romanized Celtic Britons, 1600 years later.)
In his own lifetime, the germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, began their genoicide and occupation of what is now England .
Although the last Roman soldiers had not left (they left when he was in his teens). the province had already been ravaged by invaders, pirates from ireland, picts from modern scotland , and saxon pirates.
Roman urban life had been smashed.
Christianity was now permitted and increasing, after Constantine in 315.A.D.
At the same time, there was a great pagan revival, of both Roman and Celtic religion. However, Ireland still had Druids.
Britannia did not.
His very name, Patricius, indicates that his parents belonged to the Ambrosian way of thinking, , those who wished to retain as much Roman culture as possible.(A little later, "king" Arthur was an Ambrosian)
Christians- still a minority - belonged to the Ambrosian tendency.By default.
But the Ambrosians did not consist only of Christains.
The Ambrosians accepted the return to Celtic tribal social structure and methods of production. Their opponents wanted to go further.
They wanted to return to before Roman times in every way and be like their never-Roman Celtic cousins in Ireland, etc.They rejected Latin and all classical learning and Roman religion.( The indications are that Latin never replaced Celtic as a common language, unlike most of the Roman Empire.)
Naturally, although it was only newly permitted, . this rejection included Christianity. Illegal and persucuted, it had still arrived via Rome.
Except for receiving some sort of classical education and being ( he says nominally?) Christian , we cannot know what adult part St Patrick would have played in Britannia.
At 16 Irish Pirates captured him, and took him to Ireland
He was sold as a slave.
He was a slave in Ireland for six years.
Slaves usually suffer terrible treatment.
In his confessio(click) he says he looked after his master's animals , which gave him the opportunity to pray.
That doesn't sound too bad.
He doesn't mention much abusive treatment.
But we can suppose that as a slave, he got it.
After six years slavery he escaped.
He returned Good for the Evil done to him.
He became a priest,spent time with St Germanus in France ( an important figure who is vilified in modern Hollywood)
Recieved Rome's Ok to evangelize Ireland and ordained a bishop.(replacing Palladius, who had had comparitively little sucess)
He was immensly sucessful.
Not without problems ... captured and put in chains a dozen times.
If you want to believe the simplification that the church in the Roman Empire was imposed by that same empire, I can't stop you. (Constantine permitted and encouraged it, about 400 ad it was made THE official religion. It has been estimated that in 315 the East was perhaps 1/2 to 3/4 Christian, the West 1/4 to 1/3)
It Isn''t true of Britannia.
That's just part of the same modern myth.
It is least true in the never Roman areas of Ireland and what is now Scotland.
to be continued -The relationship of British nations is more like a fossilized family quarrel than anything else.
