Saint Fiacre is the earliest canonized Patron Saint of herbal medicine, but his story really begins with the evangelization of pagan Ireland. And that, (of course) begins with Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick was born in Roman Britain in 385. When he was approximately age 14, he was captured by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave to work as a shepherd. When he was 20 he escaped from Ireland, having been told by God in a dream to go to a place on the coast where he would find sailors who took him back to Britain and reunited him with his family. Through this experience, Patrick had become a man of very deep faith. He wrote in his memoir, about a vision he received after returning home, "I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: 'The Voice of the Irish.' As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea-and they cried out, as with one voice: 'We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.'" This vision prompted Patrick to become a priest, with a mission of returning to Ireland to evangelize the island of my ancestors.