OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Beatha Mhuire Eigiptacdha – The Irish Life of Saint Mary of Egypt

    French 15th c. illustration.
    Photo credit: Wikipedia

    March 28 is one of the commemorations of the female ascetic, Saint Mary of Egypt, c. 344-421. This was the date at which her feast day was entered in the Hironymian Martyrology, a possible source for the Irish Martyrology of Tallaght, even though the feast does not appear in the Irish calendar. Saint Mary’s feast is today celebrated by the Orthodox on April 1, according to the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia it is entered in the Roman Martyrology on April 2 and the Roman calendar on April 3.

    The story of Saint Mary is told in an early Life composed in the east in the sixth century and brought to the west in the eighth century when a Latin translation was made. Saint Mary was an archetype of the repentant fallen woman, and her Life was remarkably popular in medieval Europe, appearing in a number of European language versions. The Life of Saint Mary is also known in an Irish version, indeed it has survived in three recensions, the most well-known of which, Recension 1, is a 15th-century adaptation attributed to a prolific scribe, Uilliam Mac an Leagha, who was possibly using an English source. The basics of the story are the same in the Irish version – Mary is born into a life of privilege and devotes herself to a life of hedonism and sexual excess. She eventually comes to her senses and retreats to the desert to repent, meeting a monk called Zosimas at her life’s end. Yet our Irish scribe does not appear to have merely copied his unknown English source but to have actually translated or adapted it. Whilst in other versions the desert-dwelling penitent Saint Mary cuts an extraordinary figure as a weatherbeaten naked woman, Uilliam depicts her as actually bestial in appearance. The monk Zosimas is called Damsosmais in this Irish version, and unlike the eastern version, he does not appear at the beginning of the Life but later on in the text. Uilliam also begins his account by associating Saint Mary of Egypt with Saint Mary Magdalene, who was the exemplar of the penitent woman for the western church:

    I. Incipit uita Mariae Aegyptianae, that is Here beginneth the life of Mary of Egypt. When the Lark ceases her singing at eventide her heart mourns for the day in sadness and sorrow; for she hath no love or liking for the night but is lonely for the day all the while. Even so the man who has no pleasure [?] in praising another but regards his good deeds and disdains his virtues; that man is lonely for the great glory compact of glories, the noble house of Heaven, where is life without death, love without darkness, cheer without gloom and all other glories besides. For tongue cannot tell, nor eye attain, nor ear receive, nor heart mediate the glory of that house; and he who is not in deadly sin will have his share of that glory. No man can sleep or rest, sit or stand, fast or feast, without sin; but, O mortal, if thou sin, be not downcast and despairing of God’s mercy, but make confession quickly afterwards and God will forgive thee thy vices. For consider how Peter sinned, and Paul and Longinus and Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt and many others likewise; yet these were all saved after repentance, since God longeth more for the sinner to pray that his sins may be forgiven than doth the sinner to obtain forgiveness.

    Uilliam is also at pains to point out how beautiful Saint Mary was originally, telling us that she ‘became fairer of form than any other woman in the world at that time’. The contrast with what she later becomes during her penitential life in the desert is thus all the more striking:

    9. …. And she ranged the desert on her feet and hands; her smooth body put forth a long hideous hairy coat, so that her own fur was her covering in place of clothes. The polished rosy nails fell from her toes and fingers and she grew long, sloping, sharp, savage nails after the likeness of the hideous hooves of a goat….    

    A. M. Freeman, ‘Betha Mhuire Eigiptachdha’, Études Celtiques, Vol. I
    (1936), 78-113 in Máirín Ní Dhonnchada, ed., The Field Day Anthology of
    Irish Writing, Vol. IV, Irish Women’s Writings and Traditions (Cork
    University Press, 2002), 143-148.

    It is the sight of this extraordinary creature which forty-seven years later confronts the monk Damsosmais, he commands her in the name of Christ to stop as she flees from him and she tells him her story. The Life ends with Damsosmais discovering Mary’s body in the following year. He buries it with the assistance of a lion, no less, an episode also found in the original Life from the east. The lion helps to dig a grave and whilst the man takes the head of Mary in his hands, the big cat ‘took the feet of the holy woman in his fore-feet, and together they laid her in the grave and the lion quickly covered her up with earth’. There is also a rather touching detail added of the parting of these strange mourners: ‘Then the lion gave a kiss of peace on the monk’s feet and the monk blessed the lion and the lion went his way into the forest fastnesses….’ The monk then returns to his community and shares the salutary tale of Saint Mary with them. I am glad that the scribe Uilliam Mac an Leagha shared it with the people of Ireland too, albeit with a few embellishments to an already strange tale!

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2016. All rights reserved.

  • The Feast Which Surpasses All Others

    And though all feasts fully deserve their celebration and honour in these three ways, still more does this festival; for in it is the assembling together of the folk of heaven and earth; it is the festival alike of the Old and the New Testament; it is the peculiar feast of the heavenly Father; the feast of the Lord’s resurrection; the feast which surpasses all others; the honoured and venerable festival of the people of heaven and earth, is this festival of Easter. For many are its wonders and marvels: in it the angel passed over the houses of the children of Israel, when he slew all the first-born of Egypt; in it the people of Israel went forth from Egypt, to go up to the land of promise; in it Christ arose from the dead, after binding the devil in hell; in it the souls of the holy and righteous of the five ages of the world came out of hell into paradise; in it will be the famous day, the Day of Judgment.


    Homily XIX, ‘On the Resurrection’ – The Passions and the Homilies from Leabhar Breac – Text, Translation and Glossary by Robert Atkinson (Dublin, 1887), 390.


    Beannachtaí na Cásca oraibh!

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2016. All rights reserved.

  • The Church at Killiney

    March 6 is the commemoration of a group of County Dublin holy women, the Daughters of Leinin. Canon O’Hanlon’s account of them can be found here but below is another nineteenth century account, this time of the church that still bears their name at Killiney. It was one of the places visited on a field trip of the 1890s to sites in the greater Dublin area. I have reproduced the accompanying figural illustrations from the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. It would be interesting to know what more recent archaeological opinion has to say of the dating of the church and the claimed Syrian parallels for the engraved crosses found at this and other Irish sites.

    KILLINEY.

    The name of this place, originally written Cill-Ingen, or Cill-ingen-leinin, as explained by Dr. Joyce, refers to certain daughters of Lenin, five in number. Though the father is said to have been a person of high position, and even of royal descent, we know nothing further of him, nor of his daughters, except that the latter are recorded to rank amongst the saintly women of Ireland. They appear to have flourished some time in the seventh century of our era. Whether the older portion of the existing ruin belongs to their time, or is of their foundation, it is not necessary here to discuss; but Petrie, in his great work on the “Ancient Architecture of Ireland,” pronounced his opinion that it must be assigned to the sixth or seventh century. At any rate the church belongs to two distinct and widely separated periods, and, in an examination of the ruin as it stands, the student of Irish ecclesiastical architecture will find an interesting and highly instructive study (see fig. 3, p. 409). The original building, except wanting a roof, is still almost entire. It consists of nave and chancel connected by a semicircular arch, truly Roman in character, though the jambs of course incline in Celtic style (see fig. 1, p. 409). The extreme dimensions of the church upon the interior are 85 feet; the nave measures but 12 feet 8 inches, and the chancel 9 feet 6 inches, in breadth.

    In our Journal, Part 2, vol. ii., Fifth Series, Second Quarter, 1892, will be found a description in detail of all the features of this venerable Cill, but a notice of its characteristic doorway may very fittingly be here reproduced: – It occupies a position in the centre of the west gable, is flat-headed, a splendid example of its class, measuring 6 feet 1 inch in height, by 2 feet in breadth, at the top, and 2 feet 4 inches at the base. In one respect this doorway is very remarkable, presenting, as it does, what Bishop Graves would style a “Greek cross,” carved in relief upon the under side of its lintel (see fig. 4, p. 409). Only one other instance of the kind, as far as I know, can be pointed to, although at Fore, in the county Westmeath, Inismurray, county Sligo, and elsewhere, the sacred emblem may be seen sculptured over the opening on the exterior of the wall. A cross of the St. Andrew type occurs on the nether side of the lintel of Our Lady’s Church, Glendalough, a structure, which there is reason to believe was erected by St. Kevin, himself, and in which, according to tradition, he was buried. In  Comte Melchior de Vogue’s exquisitely illustrated work on the “Architecture of Central Syria ” (a copy of which may be seen in our National Library) will be found engravings of a considerable number of crosses which occur carved over the doorways or on the friezes of churches and monastic buildings of that country. These crosses are wonderfully like those which we find similarly placed upon portions of several of our earlier, if not earliest, Irish churches.

    A comparatively modern addition on the northern side of the nave, which appears to have been erected as a kind of aisle, is connected with the ancient church by several openings broken through the north side wall. It will be well to compare its architectural features with those of the original structure. (See fig. 3, p. 409.)

    So much for Killiney Church; but before leaving, visitors should search for the rude and very ancient stone font (see fig. 5, p. 409), which probably still remains, though I could not find it when examing the ruins on a recent occasion.

    Not many years ago, the time-stained teampull or cill under notice was approached from the main road by a rude “boreen” on the left-hand side of which stood a hoary thorn tree, which must have been several centuries old ; beside it was a carn, station, or altar, like those one sometimes meets with in the south or west. Both were considered by ancient people of the neighbourhood as very sacred. Alas! they have totally disappeared before the march of “improvements” as has also the original “Mur” or well-marked earthen rath by which the venerable cemetery was environed. Instead of this we find a hideous stone wall, built in the style usually adopted by the taste and feeling of Poor Law Guardians, who, all over the country, are destroying every trace of the picturesque which remained with our ancient parish churches.

    NOTE ADDED IN THE PRESS.

    Happily the font of Killiney Church has been found, and may be seen within the nave of that venerable cill.

    JRSAI VOL. VI. FIFTH SERIES (VOL. XXVI. CONSECUTIVE SERIES), 1896, 409-411; 418.