By Phillip Campbell, Catholic Exchange, March 15, 2024
Phillip Campbell is a history teacher for Homeschool Connections and the author of many books on Catholic history, most notably the Story of Civilization series from TAN Books. You can learn more about his books and classes on his website, www.phillipcampbell.net. Phillip resides in southern Michigan.
Of all the relics bequeathed to us by Ireland’s catalogue of saints, the greatest was undoubtedly the episcopal crozier used by St. Patrick known as the Bachall Isu. The Irish word Bachall comes from the Latin baculus, a crozier or staff; Isu is a shortened form of the Latin name for our Lord, Iesus. Bachall Isu thus means “Staff of Jesus,” a name reflecting a popular tradition that the staff was given to St. Patrick by Jesus Christ Himself. According to the fourth book of the medieval Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, when Patrick was in Italy preparing for his Irish mission, he traveled to an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea where he encountered a strange prodigy—a young man and and his wife with an elderly woman. The young man told Patrick that the old woman was one of his descendants. Patrick, mystified at how a young man could have an elderly descendant, asked how such a thing could be. He was told: ….
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