St. Patrick's Day is an Irish holiday celebrated all around the globe to honor the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick. Read on to learn more about the origin of the holiday and about the man who inspired it or visit our "Fun Facts about St. Patrick's Day" story.
When Is St. Patrick's Day?
Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated each year on March 17th.
Who Was Saint Patrick?
Even though Saint Patrick the patron saint of Ireland and one of the most celebrated religious figures around the world, the factual information about his life and times is quite vague. Most information about St. Patrick has been twisted, embellished, or simply made up over centuries by storytellers, causing much ambiguity about the real life of St. Patrick. However, there are a some elements of his story about which most scholars accept to be true.
According to Coilin Owens, Irish literature expert and Professor Emeritus of English at George Mason University, Saint Patrick is traditionally thought to have lived "between 432-461 A.D., but more recent scholarship moves the dates up a bit." At the age of sixteen he was kidnapped from his native land of the Roman British Isles by a band pirates, and sold into slavery in Ireland. Saint Patrick worked as a shepherd and turned to religion for solace. After six years of slavery he escaped to the Irish coast and fled home to Britain.
While back in his homeland, Patrick decided to become a priest and then decided to return to Ireland after dreaming that the voices of the Irish people were calling him to convert them to Christianity.
After studying and preparing for several years, Patrick traveled back to Ireland as a Christian missionary. Although there were already some Christians living in Ireland, St. Patrick was able to bring upon a massive religious shift to Christianity by converting people of power. Says Prof. Owens, "[St. Patrick] is credited with converting the nobles; who set an example which the people followed."
But Patrick's desire to spread of Christianity was not met without mighty opposition. Prof. Owens explains, "Patrick ran into trouble with the local pagan priesthood, the druids: and there are many stories about his arguments with them as well as his survival of plots against them." He laid the groundwork for the establishment of hundreds of monasteries and churches that eventually popped up across the Irish country to promote Christianity.
Saint Patrick is also credited with bringing written word to Ireland through the promotion of the study of legal texts and the Bible, says Prof. Owens. Previous to Patrick, storytelling and history were reliant on memory and orally passing down stories.
Patrick's mission in Ireland is said to have lasted for thirty years. It is believe he died in the 5th century on March 17, which is the day St. Patrick's Day is commemorated each year.
The first year St. Patrick's Day was celebrated in America in 1737 in Boston, Massachusetts. The first official St. Patrick's Day parade was held in New York City in 1766. As the saying goes, on this day "everybody is Irish!" Over 100 U.S. cities now hold Saint Patrick's Day parades.
Alecia Dixon is a freelance contributor. Laura Young is editor of Crafts and Holidays & Fun on Kaboose.com.
http://holidays.kaboose.com/patrick-history.html
Showing posts with label march. Show all posts
Showing posts with label march. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
We Come To Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him
The bloody end of Julius Caesar forever darkened the Ides of March.
Updated March 15, 2011
Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.
—Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1
Thanks to Shakespeare's indelible dramatization, March 15—also called the Ides of March—is forever linked with the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar, and with prophecies of doom.
"That line of the soothsayer, 'Beware the ides of March,' is a pithy line, and people remember it, even if they don't know why," said Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library.
Until that day Julius Caesar ruled Rome. The traditional Republican government had been supplanted by a temporary dictatorship, one that Caesar very much wished to make permanent.
But Caesar's quest for power spawned a conspiracy to have him killed, and on the Ides of March, a group of prominent Romans brought him to an untimely end in the Senate House.
It Wasn't Just Caesar Who Paid the Price on Ides of March
Aside from its historical connection, the concept of the Ides of March would have resonated with English citizens in 1599, the year Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar was probably performed, Ziegler said.
"This whole business of the Ides of March and timekeeping in the play would have had a strong impact on audiences," she said.
"They were really struck by the differences between their Julian calendar [a revision of the Roman calendar created by Caesar] and the Gregorian calendar kept in Catholic countries on the continent."
Because the two calendars featured years of slightly different lengths, they had diverged significantly by the late 16th century and were several days apart.
(Related: "Leap Year: How the World Makes Up for Lost Time.")
In Roman times the Ides of March was mostly notable as a deadline for settling debts.
That calendar featured ides on the 15th in March, May, July, and October or on the 13th in the other months. The word's Latin roots mean "divide," and the date sought to split the month, originally at the rise of the full moon.
But because calendar months and the lunar cycle are slightly out of sync, this connection was soon lost.
Ides of March Assassins: Heroes or Murderers?
The Ides of March took on special significance after Caesar's assassination—but observance of the anniversary at the time varied among Roman citizens.
"How they felt depended on their political position," said Philip Freeman, a classicist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and the author of Julius Caesar.
"Some were thrilled that Caesar had died, and some were horrified," he said.
The debate about Caesar's fate has extended through the ages and was taken up by some major literary figures. In Dante's Inferno, for example, Caesar is in Limbo, a relatively pleasant place in hell reserved for virtuous non-Christians.
"But Brutus [one of the leaders of the assassination] is down in the very center of hell with Judas, being munched on by Satan—it's about as bad as you can get," Freeman said.
The Folger library's Ziegler thinks the Bard had a more balanced view.
"I think Shakespeare shows both of them as being humans with their own weaknesses and strong points," she said.
Whether they were heroes or murderers, the real-life Ides of March assassins were subjected to less than pleasant outcomes.
"Within a couple of years Brutus and [fellow assassin] Cassius were dead," Freeman noted.
"They were not able to bring back the Republic, and really what they did was usher in more of a permanent dictatorship under the future Roman emperors—the opposite of what they intended."
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.
—Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1
Thanks to Shakespeare's indelible dramatization, March 15—also called the Ides of March—is forever linked with the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar, and with prophecies of doom.
"That line of the soothsayer, 'Beware the ides of March,' is a pithy line, and people remember it, even if they don't know why," said Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library.
Until that day Julius Caesar ruled Rome. The traditional Republican government had been supplanted by a temporary dictatorship, one that Caesar very much wished to make permanent.
But Caesar's quest for power spawned a conspiracy to have him killed, and on the Ides of March, a group of prominent Romans brought him to an untimely end in the Senate House.
It Wasn't Just Caesar Who Paid the Price on Ides of March
Aside from its historical connection, the concept of the Ides of March would have resonated with English citizens in 1599, the year Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar was probably performed, Ziegler said.
"This whole business of the Ides of March and timekeeping in the play would have had a strong impact on audiences," she said.
"They were really struck by the differences between their Julian calendar [a revision of the Roman calendar created by Caesar] and the Gregorian calendar kept in Catholic countries on the continent."
Because the two calendars featured years of slightly different lengths, they had diverged significantly by the late 16th century and were several days apart.
(Related: "Leap Year: How the World Makes Up for Lost Time.")
In Roman times the Ides of March was mostly notable as a deadline for settling debts.
That calendar featured ides on the 15th in March, May, July, and October or on the 13th in the other months. The word's Latin roots mean "divide," and the date sought to split the month, originally at the rise of the full moon.
But because calendar months and the lunar cycle are slightly out of sync, this connection was soon lost.
Ides of March Assassins: Heroes or Murderers?
The Ides of March took on special significance after Caesar's assassination—but observance of the anniversary at the time varied among Roman citizens.
"How they felt depended on their political position," said Philip Freeman, a classicist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and the author of Julius Caesar.
"Some were thrilled that Caesar had died, and some were horrified," he said.
The debate about Caesar's fate has extended through the ages and was taken up by some major literary figures. In Dante's Inferno, for example, Caesar is in Limbo, a relatively pleasant place in hell reserved for virtuous non-Christians.
"But Brutus [one of the leaders of the assassination] is down in the very center of hell with Judas, being munched on by Satan—it's about as bad as you can get," Freeman said.
The Folger library's Ziegler thinks the Bard had a more balanced view.
"I think Shakespeare shows both of them as being humans with their own weaknesses and strong points," she said.
Whether they were heroes or murderers, the real-life Ides of March assassins were subjected to less than pleasant outcomes.
"Within a couple of years Brutus and [fellow assassin] Cassius were dead," Freeman noted.
"They were not able to bring back the Republic, and really what they did was usher in more of a permanent dictatorship under the future Roman emperors—the opposite of what they intended."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110315-ides-of-march-2011-facts-beware-caesar-what-when/
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