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Historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín from NUI Galway shattered some of The Dealer’s beliefs on the Leap of Faith show on RTÉ Radio 1 last Friday, suggesting that St Patrick did not single-handedly convert the Irish.
“This idea that Patrick was driving around Ireland like a farmer on a tractor spreading Christianity like slurry – that’s not possible,” Prof Ó Cróinín said.
Instead, the mass conversion of this island’s population could only have been the work of a large number of missionaries. Not to mention the poor availability of slurry spreaders in the fifth century.
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