OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • A Legend of Saint Scothine

    January 2 is the feast of Saint Scothin, an account of whose life can be found here. Below is a retelling of the most famous of the legends associated with him, by the Irish Anglican writer Maud Joynt:

    LEGEND OF SAINT SCOTHINE

    SCOTHINE, who dwelt at Tech Scothine, in Leinster, was a saint of great piety and of wondrous power;  for he could make the journey from Ireland to Rome in one day and return the next; moreover, he could walk dryshod on the sea. One day while he was walking on the sea he met Saint Barre of Cork, who was in a boat.

    ” How comes it that thou art walking on the sea?” asked Barre .

    ” ‘Tis no sea, but a plain covered with clover,” said Scothine, and, with that, he plucked a clover blossom and threw it to Saint Barre in the boat.

    “But thou, how comes it that thy boat floats on a plain?”

    Thereupon Barre dipped his hand into the water, drew out a salmon and threw it to Scothine; and that was all the answer he made.

    Maud Joynt, The Golden Legends of the Gael, (Dublin, n.d.), Part II, 80.

  • Saints Lochan and Enda of Kilnamanagh, December 31

    The Irish Calendars for December 31 agree in commemorating two saints, Lochan and Enda of Kilnamanagh. The Martyrology of Oengus reads:

    31. Lochan and Endae.
    Silvester, noble desire!
    from their feast – no very feeble leap
    let us strive to step to the calends (of January).

    The scholiast notes:

    31. Lochan and Enda, in Cell na manach in Hui Dunchada are those two, and in Cell maic Cathail in Hui Bairrchi, i.e. in Belach Giabrain.

     The later Martyrology of Donegal concurs:

    31. A. PRIDIE KAL. JANUARII. 31.

    ENDA and LOCHAN, of Cill-na-manach, in Ui-Dunchadha, or of Cill-mac-Cathail, in Ui-Bairche; and of Bealach Gabhrain. Lochan was of the race of Dathi, son of Fiachra.

    I haven’t been able to discover a great deal about these two saints but they are mentioned in a nineteenth-century paper by Father J.F. Shearman. He produced a most interesting series of articles looking at places associated with Saint Patrick under the title Loca Patriciana and attached an appendix on the Monastery of Kilnamanagh to part ten. He writes:

    Lochan, son of Cathal, the grandson of Oilill, K.I., 463-483, son of Dathi, K.I., 405-428, and Enda were connected with Acadh Finnech (December 13th, “Martyrology of Donegal”). Lochan was also connected with a church in the diocese of Leithglin, now Kilmacahil (Cill Mic Cathail), in the county Kilkenny. The Abbot Garbhan, the friend of St. Kevin, was of this monastery. 

    Rev. J. F. Shearman, Loca Patriciana – Part X, Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, 4th series, Vol. 4, (1876-8) 88-9. 

    I think the writer has accidentally transposed the date from the Martyrology of Donegal to read December 13 instead of 31.

    However, more recent scholarship has established that Saints Enda and Lochán are associated with the tribal grouping of the Dál Messin Corb, the people of Saint Kevin of Glendalough and thus with  Kilnamanagh near Tallaght, County Dublin. Indeed, they comprise two of the ‘three holy seniors’ to whom St Kevin went as a boy “that he might be brought up to Christ in their cell.” Scholar A. P. Smyth comments: 

    The names of Kevin’s earliest monastic tutors – Éogan, Lochán and Énna – identify their base as being at Cell na Manach (Kilnamanagh, near Tallaght, Co. Dublin) rather than at Kilnamanagh near Glenealy in Co. Wicklow. Significantly, we find from the earliest Rawlinson genealogies, that Kevin’s tutors, like their pupil, were all from the Uí Náir, a sept of the Dál Messin Corb. 

    Alfred P. Smyth, ‘Kings, Saints and Sagas’ in K.Hannigan and W. Nolan eds., Wicklow: History and Society – Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1994), p. 49.

    Note: This post, first published in 2015 was revised in 2024 to correct the identification of these saints with Kilkenny and to establish them at Kilnamanagh near Tallaght as the earliest tutors of Saint Kevin of Glendalough.

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  • Saint Aileran the Wise of Clonard, December 29

    December 29 sees the commemoration of one of the great scholars of the monastic school of Clonard – Aileran  (also known as Aireran ) the Wise. The Martyrology of Oengus records:

    29. Swift will be their aid:
    at every hour may it shelter us!
    Victor and a famous host,
    with Aireran the sage.

    to which the scholiast adds:

    29. Victor, i.e. a martyr and pope of Rome.
    Aireran, i.e. lector of Cluain Iraird (Clonard).

    Archbishop John Healy gives an account of the life and works of Saint Aileran in his classic work on the monastic schools of Ireland:

    The school of Clonard, too, for many centuries retained its ancient fame, and from time to time produced distinguished saints and scholars. St.Aileran the Wise, who, like many other Irish saints, died of the fatal yellow plague that devastated the country in A.D. 664, is described as chief professor of the schools of Clonard.

    He was also, in Colgan’s opinion, the author of what is known as the Fourth Life of St. Patrick, as well as of Lives of St. Brigid, and St. Fechin of Fore, in Westmeath. Moreover, he composed a Litany partly in Latin and partly in Irish, which O’Curry discovered in the Yellow Book of Lecain in Trinity College. Fleming, too, has published a fragment of a Latin treatise by St. Aileran on the “Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ” This fragment was found in the Irish monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland. It was first published by Fleming in A.D. 1667, and reprinted in the famous Benedictine edition of the Fathers in A.D. 1677. It may, perhaps, with greater readiness be referred to in Mignes Patrology (vol. 80, page 328).

    We make special reference to this fragment because we have no other writings of the Clonard school remaining, either of St. Finnian himself or of his immediate successors; and secondly because of itself it furnishes ample proof of the high culture attained at that early age in this great Irish seminary. The Benedictine editors say that although the writer did not belong to their order, they publish it because Aileran “unfolded the meaning of Sacred Scripture with so much learning and ingenuity that every student of the sacred volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will regard the publication as most acceptable (acceptissima).”

    This is high praise from perfectly impartial and competent judges, and in that opinion we cordially agree. We read over both fragments carefully, that mentioned above, and also a “Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred Names,’ by the same author, and we have no hesitation in saying that whether we consider the style of the latinity, the learning, or the ingenuity of the writer, it is equally marvellous and equally honourable to the School of Clonard. The writer cites not only St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and the author of the “Imperfect Work,” but what is more wonderful still, he quotes Origen repeatedly, as well as Philo, the Alexandrine Jew. We cannot undertake to say that he was familiar with these two authors in the original Greek, but even a knowledge of the Latin versions in that rude age is highly honourable to our Irish schools. This fragment shows, too, that a century after the death of the holy founder scriptural studies of the most profound character were still cultivated with eagerness and success in the great school of Clonard.


    Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum or Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars by the Most Rev. John Healy (6th edition, Dublin, 1912), 206-7.

    Note: An example of Saint Aileran’s work, The Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ can be found in a 2021 post here.

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