The history of God's faithful people during the ages of Rome's supremacy are written in heaven, but they have little place in human history books. Rome endeavors to write history to show herself in the best light. But the stories can still be found.
Here is the story of St. Patrick and the Christianity he and his converts established in Northern Briton.
The Irish "Celtic" people trace their conversion to Christianity to Patrick, who came to them early in the fifth century:
It all began when the great empire of Roman declined and its legions were withdrawn from the defense of the British Continent. From the north the Irish, then called Scots, began swooping down on the English coast, sailing up the rivers, raiding the settlements, and carrying off plunder and slaves. Among those captured was a young man named Patrick. So Ireland's patron saint was not Irish! Patrick had been reared in a Christian home. His father was a deacon. Yet Patrick did not take religion serious until he was captured and sat as a swineherd in a foreign country. Here he began to pray for his freedom. His conversion dates from this captivity. "The Lord opened to me the sense of my unbelief," he says. After six years he managed to escape and found his way to the coast where he boarded a ship carrying a cargo of hounds.
He would have gladly remained in England had he not had a dream one night in which the babies of Ireland pleaded with him to come back to their country and tell them about Christ. Patrick decided to return, but first he had to learn more about Christianity. Ordained a priest, at length he was sent out, to be a missionary to the people among whom he had once been a slave. He was appointed, sometime after 431A.D., as successor to St. Palladius, first bishop of Ireland.
From this point we have only legends. We know, however, that a century later the entire structure of the church in Ireland was monastic. Presumably, the monastic community, maintaining itself on the land, fitted the agricultural communities of the Celts better than the parish-church system, which was more common elsewhere.
We also know that Ireland became the base for the evangelization of Britain.
In fact one historian (Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History Of The Catholic Church, p. 94), says that "these Irish monks were the leading missionaries of the age, and they carried their monastic ideal across the length and breadth of Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries."
Then in the 6th century the Roman pope sent Augustine (of Canterbury) to evangelize the Anglo Saxons. So the missionaries from Rome were working up from the south, while the missionaries from Ireland and Scotland were working from the north. As they worked, the papal missionaries and their converts met the primitive Christians from the north. There was a striking contrasted between them. The northern Christians were simple, humble, while the papal representatives manifested the pomp and arrogance of popery. The later demanded that these Christian churches acknowledge the supremacy of the sovereign pontiff. The Britons meekly replied that they desired to love all men, but that the pope was not entitled to supremacy in the church, and they could render to him only that submission which was due to every follower of Christ. They acknowledged no other master than Christ.
According to Merle D'Aubigne, in History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, b. 17, ch. 2, the Roman missionaries said, "If you will not unite with us in showing the Saxons the way of life, you shall receive from them the stroke of death."
Did you know that Patrick may very well have been a Seventh-day Sabbath keeper.