There was nothing Irish about perhaps the most famous figure in Irish history and culture: Patrick was likely born on what is today the western coast of Great Britain in the last decades of Roman rule there. In Saint Patrick Retold, Roy Flechner explores the history of how this Romanised Briton became such a key figure in Irish history and memory, and makes excellent use of the incredibly fragmentary source base in doing so. We are asked to reconsider the St. Patrick whom we learn about in primary school or whose words we might later read in the Confessio as a Patricius born into a world undergoing immense social and economic upheaval. Was Patrick truly first taken to Ireland by slavers, Flechner speculates, or was he dodging enforced administrative service at home? Is Patrick one of Ireland's three patron saints now because of the scope of his contribution to the conversion of the island, or simply because he was a useful figurehead in later medieval ecclesiastical in-fighting?

Flechner is also very upfront about some of the methodological difficulties and ambiguities that historians have to confront when writing about a period of history from which vanishingly few documents survive.

A note about audience: I've seen a couple of reviews which complains about Saint Patrick Retold being overly dry and detailed despite the author claiming that it's written for a general audience. What Flechner actually wrote in the introduction is that the book is "not strictly academic and was written with a wider popular appeal in mind [although] some discussions are nevertheless denser in detail in order to satisfy a more specialist readership but also inform nonexperts." (xvi-xvii) That's not telling you to expect a work of pop history, and having read several of the modern scholars whom he cites here I can tell you that Flechner is doing a lot of work here to make the conclusion of studies in palaeography, diplomatics, etc, accessible to a non-specialist audience. "Accessible", however, doesn't mean "turn your brain off when you pick up the book." You will have to work a little as a general reader while reading this book, but I think the rewards are worth it. ( )