OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Irish Devotion to Saint Martin of Tours

    November 11 is the feastday of one of the fathers of Gaulish monasticism, Saint Martin of Tours, whose Life by Sulpicius Severus influenced the future writing of hagiography. Martin was a saint much venerated by the early Irish Church. The Martyrology of Oengus pays him a glowing tribute in its entry for November 11:

    Saint Martin

    a noble simile
    the mount of gold

    of the western world.

    while the scholiast adds:

    Saint Martin of Tours, of Gaul was he.


    Martin a soldier, honour not slight, of Gallia Lugdunensis, a fully-gentle son of the race of the kings, son of Manualt and Abrasin.


    noble simile etc., i.e. noble for him is his resemblance to gold propter etc. Martin out of Martin’s Tours in the south of Frankland : of the Gauls was he, ut dixit quidam : Martin a soldier, honour without prohibition etc. Gold is he propter etc.

    Michael Richter has a chapter on the Irish devotion to Saint Martin in his book ‘Ireland and her Neighbours in the Seventh Century’. He takes as a starting point the early 9th-century Book of Armagh, a manuscript containing three distinct groups of material (1) A complete text of the New Testament, (2) A dossier of materials on Saint Patrick and (3) almost the complete body of writings on Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

    Contemporaneous with the Book of Armagh was the Martyrology of Tallaght which records a special tribute to Saint Martin among the saints of Europe in its entry for 20 April:

    Communis sollemnitas omnium sanctorum et virginum Hiberniae et Britanniae et totius Europae et specialiter in honorem sancti Martini episcopi.


    So, it would appear that in the early 9th century, respect for Saint Martin was well-established in Ireland, but as such devotion would not have arisen from a vacuum, Richter is keen to track its history. He finds evidence for Saint Martin in other sources before 800:

    1. Jonas of Bobbio’s Vita Columbani. Jonas relates that the saint while travelling requested to be allowed to pray at the tomb of St Martin. His companions did not intend to make this possible for him and so it took a miracle to allow Columbanus to pay his respects to Martin. Richter wonders where Columbanus may have acquired this devotion to St Martin. Was it while on his travels in Gaul or did he become acquainted with the works of Sulpicius in Ireland? If the latter, then Bangor would be the obvious place.

    2. The Irish palimpsest sacramentary from the mid-7th century contains the text of a mass for St Martin.

    3. In the Life of Columba, Adamnan mentions in passing that St Martin was commemorated during Mass at Iona. We cannot be sure, of course, whether Adamnan is reflecting the practice of his own time in the late 7th century or that of St Columba a century earlier. Furthermore, in writing his Life of Columba, Adamnan was clearly influenced by The Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

    Richter then goes on to see just how far back in the history of Irish Christianity this devotion to Saint Martin might go. Traditionally, the earliest Gaulish connection was taken right back to Saint Patrick, who was said to have spent time training and travelling in Gaul, where he encountered the Life of Martin of Tours. Later sources, indeed, even claimed that Patrick’s mother was Martin’s sister! Richter, like other modern scholars, rejects this and suggests rather that the mission of Palladius to the Irish is a more likely conduit for the earliest transmission of the Martinian tradition. The mission of Palladius is now seen within the wider context of the mission of Germanus of Auxerre to Britain around 429. Thus, this could be the context in which the Life of St Martin was brought from Gaul to Ireland at an early date, and could explain how Columbanus was familiar with it before he ever left Ireland.

    Richter concludes:

    When taking all the fragments of information from Ireland altogether, textual, liturgical and hagiographical, it may be said that St Martin was a familiar and revered figure in Ireland in the mid-seventh century at the least. This would be easiest explained if the texts which praised him were known widely. The most plausible context for the arrival of the text of Sulpicius Severus remains the Palladian mission.

    Michael Richter, Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century (Dublin, 1999), 225-230.

    Update for 2015: At my other site I have looked at another aspect of Irish devotion to Saint Martin: the tradition that Saint Colum Cille went to Tours and returned with the Gospel Book which had been buried with the saint. Read it here.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Áed Mac Bricc, November 10

    November 10 is the feast of Saint Áed Mac Bricc and below is a paper on his life and the locality associated with him by the nineteenth-century scholarly Anglican cleric, George T. Stokes.  As I remarked in my post for the saint last year, Rahugh in County Westmeath is only one of a number of places associated with this fascinating saint, but the Reverend Stokes gives a full account of the church there based on an excursion with the Antiquarian Society of which he was a member.

    ST. HUGH OF RAHUE: HIS CHURCH, HIS LIFE, AND HIS TIMES.

    BY THE REV. PROFESSOR STOKES, D.D., M.R.I.A.

    THE great advantages connected with our one-day Excursions throughout the country were admirably illustrated for me by the examination last summer (August, 1896) of the ancient parish church of Rahue, belonging to the saint whose life and times I propose now to describe. St. Hugh, or St. Aedh, was one of the really primitive saints of Ireland, a friend and associate of St. Columba, and the apostle of Westmeath, the central county of Ireland. Westmeath is, from an archaeological and historical point of view, one of the most interesting districts of Ireland. East Meath has, indeed, more striking monuments in Tara, New Grange, and Telltown, but Westmeath surpasses it in the number of its archaeological remains. There is scarcely a field in parts of Westmeath where a rath of some sort is not found; while Sir Henry Piers’ “History of Westmeath,” written 200 years ago, Dean Swift’s poems on his Westmeath visits, Colgan’s” Acta Sanctorum,” and the Ordnance Survey Letters, four very different kinds of authorities, will show what a fruitful field for the investigator Westmeath offers. I shall take the subject in the following order, merely prefacing that the subject has been already touched upon by Dr. Reeves, our own Dr. Joyce, and by the Very Rev. A. Cogan, in his account of the Diocese of Meath. I shall inquire who St. Hugh of Rahue was, and then treat of the church and parish which bear his name; and I think we shall find, in both, interesting matter, illustrating how fruitful local study might be made by our Members resident in country districts.

    Where, then, some one may ask, is Rahue? It is, I answer, a district in the county Westmeath, about 4 miles from Tullamore, on the Tyrrell’s Pass road. It is the very next parish to Durrow, and as such necessarily came much in contact with St. Columba’s celebrated religious community. Its present name is Rahue, which is simply a contraction of Rath-Hugh, which Ussher, in his ” Account of Meath Diocese,” makes Rathewe. The name bears its origin plain upon its face, and throws us back upon the ancient worthy whose personality still dominates the minds and memories of the people who live there, just as much as that of St. Columba dominates Durrow and Kells, Derry and Iona. Who, then, was St. Hugh, whose name is still embodied in the designation of this Central Ireland parish ? He was one of the genuine sixth-century Celtic saints of the Second Order, who helped much to propagate Christianity when a large portion of Ireland was still pagan. His birth was noble. He belonged to a branch of the royal family of that day descended from Conn of the Hundred Battles, who was famous in the second century. St. Hugh was a direct descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who reigned in Ireland towards the conclusion of the fourth century, from whom, as I have elsewhere shown, Queen Victoria herself is also descended. St. Columba was also drawn from the same stock. He was great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages by one of his younger sons; while St. Hugh was that monarch’s great-great-grandson by his eldest son, Fiachach. His father’s name was Breacc or Bric, whence, in vulgar phrase, the Donegal people speak of him now as Hugh Mac Brackan, or Bishop Hugh Breakey, a form under which we should find it somewhat difficult to recognise our ancient missionary saint. O’Clery and Colgan place his birthplace in Killare, a well-known spot near the Hill of Usnach and the town of Ballymore, in Westmeath ; but for reasons, which I shall state hereafter, I think he was born in Rahue. His mother was a Munster woman, born in Tipperary, in the barony of Upper or Lower Ormond, a district which, at its nearest point, is not more than ten or fifteen miles distant from Rahue.

    Just as it is with St. Columba, his cousin, so was it with St. Hugh. Prophecies gathered round his birth clearly modelled after Scripture fashion. A man of God, a prophet, came by his father’s house one day, and foretold to a little maid that her mistress would shortly bring forth a son, who, if he were born at the morning hour, would be great in the sight of God and of man. The maid reported this speech to her mistress, and she being evidently a strong-willed and determined lady, decided that the prophet’s conditions should be fulfilled. She sat down upon a large stone lying near, and though the pangs with which nature perpetually avenges the transgression of our first mother, Eve, were upon her, she avowed her determination that the child should not be born till the appointed time arrived. The ancient Life in Colgan then tells us how, at his birth, the baby’s head struck upon the stone whereon his mother had been sitting, and formed a hollow depression, the exact size of his head, and further informs us that the water which collects in this little hole still avails for the cure of all kinds of diseases. Now I will ask you to bear this miraculous story in mind, as I shall have hereafter to refer specially to it.

    His Life then tells us how originally he was not destined for the clerical life. He was reared up among his mother’s people in northern Tipperary. It was only when his father died that he returned into Meath to claim his share in the paternal estate, of which his brothers sought to deprive him. He had lived up to this a very pure and steady life ; but he at once showed that he had an Irishman’s nature and temper, and was quite able to take care of himself after the fashion of his times. He went back to Rahue, his birthplace, determined to get his rights, and in order to secure his purpose the more effectually, he seized the daughter of a wealthy man living in his father’s neighbourhood, and carried her off to Tipperary, as many a man, following his example, has since done, trusting that the injured and outraged family would compel his brothers to surrender his share for the sake of their own daughter. His plan of campaign was well laid, but he omitted to take cognizance of his conscience, and of the power of the Church. On his road from Rahue to the North Riding of Tipperary, he had to pass by a monastery called Rathliphthen, where a notable saint, named Illandus, lived. This Illandus was a cousin of his own, being a descendant of Laeghaire, the King of Tara, whom St. Patrick converted. He had founded his monastery in the great forest of Fercall, over which he presided as bishop. St. Hugh, with his fair captive, stopped there for rest and refreshment, somewhere, I would suppose, in the neighbourhood of the modern Frankford, where afterwards stood the Molloy foundation of Kilcormack Abbey. St. Illandus heard a report of St. Hugh’s action, and was scandalised at his cousin’s conduct. He sent for him, expostulated with him, and was successful in calling him back from the dangerous paths on which he was entering. St. Hugh sent the young lady back to her friends, renounced the world, and entered the establishment of St. Illandus.

    His Life, which can be read in Colgan, then tells of nothing else save his miracles and good works. He founded a monastery in the North Riding of Tipperary called Enach Midbrenin, a name and spot which I cannot identify. Some of his miracles are strange enough. One of them must have been rather inconvenient for his neighbours. There was a lake in North Tipperary in which there was a crannog, or fortified island, held by a band of robbers, who plundered all the adjoining country. They could not be got rid of in any way. So the troubled people resorted to the saint, who prayed, and one fine night lake, island, robbers, and all were removed miraculously across the Shannon into Connaught; so that evidently a thousand years before Cromwell, banishment into Connaught was regarded as a fate specially reserved for troublesome customers.

    St. Hugh’s activity as a missionary was very great. The royal family descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, and from Laeghaire, or Leary, of Tara, seem to have been principal agents in the conversion of Ireland. Large numbers of them devoted themselves to the work amongst their countrymen, and their high social position ensured their success. The Celts, with their strong notions of loyalty to their princes, followed them therefore, en masse, into the bosom of the Christian Church. We are told, in Colgan’s “Life of St. Aid,” of the labours of St. Hugh among the islands of Lough Ree. He visited St. Rioch’s Abbey, on Inisbofin, now in ruins; the monastery of St. Henanus, a celebrated hermit, at Drumrainey, near Ballymore-Loughseudy, converting great multitudes throughout the county Westmeath, and specially among his own clansmen and relations, the Mac Geoghegans of Moycashel. He went north, too.

    The Westmeath and Cavan lakes form a regular chain, by which an active oarsman can even still reach the waters of Lough Erne, and, in those early days, when the light and portable currach was in common use, must have proved a much-used highway from the central to the north-western parts of Ireland. Now-a-days, when everyone is looking out for a new and untried route to follow and explore, I might suggest that some should make the attempt to follow St. Hugh’s footsteps, and proceed by the route I have indicated, from Mullingar to Ballyshannon. For a trip right through the hills and lakes of Westmeath, Cavan, Leitrim, and Fermanagh, during weather such as we have enjoyed this summer would, I should think, prove an experience simply charming.

    But to return to St. Hugh. St. Molaise was a very distinguished character in the sixth century. He was the founder of Inismurray, where his memory and image are still reverenced under the name of Father Molash. He was the founder also of the monastic establishment on Devenish Island, in Lough Erne, and he was the spiritual adviser and guide of the great St. Columba himself. St. Hugh also came to Lough Erne to seek his advice, and just as, by St. Molaise’s advice, St. Columba is said to have gone on his missionary expedition to Scotland, so by the same holy man’s advice St. Hugh may have gone off to Slieve Liag, where there remains to this day his oratory and holy well, on the very highest summit of that wild sea-cliff. As St. Molaise died in 563, this proves that St. Hugh’s activity must have been contemporaneous with that of St. Columba. He may, however, have been an older man, as St. Aed, or St. Hugh, died in the year 589, the very year St. Columbanus left the Hibernian Bangor for Gaul, and eight years before St. Columba, who departed this life, as I need scarcely remind you, on June 10th, 597.

    This long story has been told simply as an introduction to the narrative of what I found at his church of Rahue, in Westmeath, which forms an extraordinary illustration of the truth, the accuracy, and the permanent character of Celtic tradition, as well as of the vast importance of the personal visitation of our ancient sacred places, and of investigation and inquiry conducted on the very spot. But let me not frighten you lest I should go on for ever. My story will not be a long one, though my preface was very prolonged.

    On August 1st, I went to Rahue with a party of friends, one or two of whom were Members of our own Society. We first climbed a very fine moat surrounded by a double line of circumvallations, and capped by a crown of aged hawthorn-trees, the descendants of those with which it once was fortified. This moat, which is a very lofty one, is situated in the townland of Kiltobber, or ”Church of the Well,” and may have been the residence of St. Hugh’s father. It is distant little more than a quarter of a mile from his ancient church. We then visited the church and churchyard, which are situated beside Rahue House, whose owner, Mr. Newburn, acted as a very intelligent guide, and communicated to us all the traditions of the neighbourhood. The church is a primitive oblong, about 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. The churchyard is in a state of the most terrible confusion, the tombstones lying two or three deep within a circular cashel. I am sure there must be in that churchyard some rare treasures of ancient Celtic tombstones, going back a thousand years, if the confused mass were only intelligently investigated. St. Hugh’s holy well still flowing, still used, and still reverenced is situated about 250 yards east of the church; while last of all, and most interesting of all, through the kind assistance of Mr. Newburn, we lighted upon the very stone of which the ancient Life, in Colgan, speaks as that on which St. Hugh was born, about 200 yards south-west of the churchyard. It is an immense block of stone, lying in a ditch in the same field as the holy well. It is called, by the peasantry, St. Hugh’s tombstone. It has a large Celtic circle and cross incised upon its face. The arms of the cross extend beyond the circle. But the most curious thing about it is this; in the very centre of the circle there is a hole, the size of the crown of a human head, with a smaller hole beside it on the right, into which the elbow is to be inserted. The local living tradition is just as Colgan reports, that if the head of a person, afflicted with headache, be placed in the larger hole, the body supported meanwhile by the right arm, the disease will be cured by St. Hugh’s power. This is evidently not the gravestone, but the birthstone, of St. Hugh, which Colgan placed in the cemetery of Killare, in the same county, Westmeath. But, then, we must remember that Colgan was a Donegal man, and might easily make a mistake between the barony of Moycashel, which was, till 1641, or 1650, the property of St. Hugh’s own family, the Mac Geoghegans, and the barony of Rathconrath, which was beyond their limits.

    It is well worth while, however, to go and pay a visit to Rahue to see this ancient sixth-century cross, just like one of those in Glen-Columcille, erected by St. Columba, for the purpose of teaching the rude pagans the primary lessons of the faith. Surely, as I have just said, nothing can prove better the abiding and trustworthy character of Celtic tradition than thus to find, in the year 1896, precisely the same traditions, and the same objects, as those which Colgan reported 250 years ago, and which the ancient Life he printed described 900 years ago, still existing in exactly the same shape, and that among people who never had heard of Colgan, and have had no other instructors save oral tradition. But, perhaps, the strangest point of all remains untold. Reading over, the other day, that charming work published by one of our own Members, Joyce’s ” Irish Names,” and consulting it, as I always do on the subject of our Celtic topography, I came across a notice of Rahue, which directed me to a Paper by Dr. Reeves, on the “Hymn of St. Aid, or St. Hugh.” You will find the Paper in the Proceedings, Royal Irish Academy, vol. vii., p. 92. This hymn once belonged to the famous Irish Monastery of Reichenau, on Lake Constance, and was published some forty years ago by Francis Joseph Mone, Director of the State Archives at Carlsruhe. This hymn was written in the eighth century, say about 750, by an Irish monk in that monastery, and it celebrates the power of St. Hugh, or St. Aid, in the very same matter of headaches, just in the same way as the ancient Life in Colgan, and the living tradition of the Rahue people celebrate it down to this day.

    Rahue was of interest to me for another reason, and that, too, of a historical character. I knew that it had been, in modern times, the seat of a colony of Cromwell’s Ironsides, all of them extreme Puritans. They belonged almost entirely to the Anabaptist sect, the most violent and determined of the English Republican party. I knew that this colony was there early in the last century, and I wished to find out if any traces of it still survived. I was not disappointed in this respect again. I found, a little beyond the ancient church of St. Hugh, the ruins of an ancient Baptist chapel. In St. Hugh’s graveyard I found inscriptions in abundance, with those Scriptural names Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, and Sarah in which the Puritans delighted. The Rector of Tullamore, too, told me how he had baptized some of the last descendants of these Cromwellian colonists, and then, in the Record Office, I solved the riddle which always puzzled me, which was this What led this Anabaptist colony from England over to the centre of Ireland? I knew, indeed, that a similar colony of Baptists had settled not very far away in and around Cloughjordan, in the North Riding of Tipperary, and that their Baptist chapel had only become extinct early in this century; but then I also knew that the North Riding of Tipperary, and the Golden Vale, were largely settled by Cromwellian officers and soldiers.

    This was not, however, the case with Westmeath. The documents in the Record Office solved the difficulty. Major William Low was the son of a Dublin citizen named John Low, whose tomb, dated 1638, stands in the churchyard of Chapelizod. Major William Low was a fierce Republican, obtained the rank of Major in Cromwell’s army, and was an ardent Anabaptist. He was one of those officers who were rewarded with grants of estates in various parts of the country. His share fell in Westmeath. He obtained the property of the Mac Geoghegans in Rahue and its neighbourhood, where he built a mansion-house, now in ruins, which he called Newtown Loe. If you take up that curious book, Lyons’ “Grand Juries of “Westmeath,” you will find the Low family occupying a high position on the Grand Jury all through the last century. Now in Major William Low’s will, dated 1678, the original of which is in the Record Office, you will find that he there leaves the sum of £4 per annum, charged on his real estate, for the support of a “baptized minister,” to preach at Newtown to the colony of English Anabaptists which he settled in Rahugh and its neighbourhood.

    Rahue, then, I conclude, played no unimportant part in ancient times towards making Celtic Ireland what it once was religiously; and the same Rahue and its history gives us a glimpse into a stirring though bloody period, which largely contributed towards the Ireland of to-day, with its manifold questions social and political, economic and religious.

    The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume 26 (1896), 325-335.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Benen of Armagh, November 9

    November 9 is the feast of Saint Benen (Benignus), a saint listed in the household of Saint Patrick as the chanter or psalm-singer. Last year I presented an account of his life by Archbishop John Healy  along with a contrasting modern scholarly view here. Below is another traditional account of the saint, taken from what seems to have been a series on the Irish saints in the Irish Rosary magazine, one of a number of Catholic periodicals which flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is interesting to see the author bewail the lack of knowledge of our native saints among the people of his time and his decision to concentrate on the lesser-known ones among them. I only wish there were more issues of this magazine available online as I would have been keen to see which other saints were covered in the series. For now, however, we can enjoy a portrait of Saint Benen or Benignus as a man of learning in both the ecclesiastical and the secular sphere.

    The Saints of Erin

    St. Benignus

    By J.P. O’CALLAGHAN. B. A.

    I was much struck by the remark of “Sagart Cluain” in a recent number of The Irish Rosary, that “there is one department of the Irish revival which is being somewhat neglected and yet is of paramount importance, I mean the revival of devotion to our saints.” Now there are many of our Irish saints of whom very little is known to the average Irish Catholic, and hence I purpose to give an account of some of the most prominent of the holy men and women who devoted themselves to God in such vast numbers that they won for the island the glorious title of the “Island of Saints and Scholars.”

    I shall pass over the names of our three greatest saints — Patrick, Bridget, and Columbkille — for their record is well known and is often referred to in sermons and newspaper articles. It is otherwise, however, with most of our other saints. Hence the necessity of briefly re-telling the story of their lives in a magazine which reaches the hands of so many Catholics of Irish birth or descent as The Rosary Magazine.

    The story of St. Patrick’s first meeting with St. Benignus is a very beautiful one, and is charmingly told in Dr. Healy’s book, “The Island of Saints and Scholars.”

    When the great apostle first came to preach the Gospel in Ireland he coasted northward, seeking a suitable spot to land, and, amongst other places, put in for a little while at the stream now called the Nanny Water, a little south of Drogheda. He there visited the house of a certain man of noble birth named Sescnen whom after due instruction he baptised, together with his wife and family. “Amongst the children there was one, a fair and gentle boy, to whom the saint, on account of the sweetness and meekness of his disposition, gave in baptism the appropriate name of Benignus. Shortly after the baptism, Patrick, wearied out with his labors by sea and land, fell asleep where he sat, as it would seem on the green sward before the house of Sescnen. Then the loving child, robed in his baptismal whiteness, gathered together bunches of fragrant flowers and sweet-smelling herbs and strewed them gently over the head and face of the weary saint; the child then sat at his feet and pressed Patrick’s tired limbs close to his own pure heart and kissed them tenderly. The saint’s companions were in the act of chiding the boy lest he might disturb Patrick, who thereupon awaking and perceiving what took place thanked the tender-hearted child for his kindness, and said to those standing by: ‘Leave him so, he shall be the heir of my kingdom,’ by which he meant, says the author of the Tripartite Life,’ to signify that God had destined Benignus to succeed Patrick in the primatial chair as ruler of the Irish Church.”

    After this the child and the saint were inseparable. In all his wanderings he was accompanied by the youth, whom he himself took care to instruct in all divine and human knowledge to fit him for his great destiny.

    St. Benignus, or Benen, had a very pleasing voice and possessed an extensive acquaintance with the chants of the Church, hence he was called St. Patrick’s “Psalmist.” He was, according to the “Tripartite Life,” “adolescens facie decorus, vultu modestus moribus integer, nomine uti et in re, Benignus.” Hence it came about that Ercuat, the beautiful daughter of King Daire, fell deeply in love with him. Though as yet unbaptised she was, it seems, chiefly attracted by his sweet voice chanting in the choir. The incident and its result is thus related by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful “Legends of St. Patrick:”

    “The best and fairest, Ercnat by name.
    Had loved Benignus in her Pagan years.
    He knew it not; full sweet to her his voice
    Chanting in choir. One day through grief of
    love
    The maiden lay as dead; Benignus shook
    Dews from the font above her, and she woke
    With heart emancipate that out-soared the
    lark
    Lost in the blue-heavens. She loved the
    Spouse of Souls.”

    This daughter of King Daire was one of the very first of our Irish maidens who received the veil from the hands of the great apostle. She spent the remainder of her holy life, along with several companions, making vestments for the priests, and altar-cloths for the use of the cathedral.

    When St. Patrick founded the churches and schools of Armagh (which he did about 450 A. D.) he chose as his coadjutor Benignus, his young and faithful disciple. Dr. Healy says it is generally stated that the latter died on the 9th of November, 468. “A short time before his death he is said to have resigned his primatial coadjutorship, for St. Patrick was still alive, at least according to the much more general and more probable opinion which places his death in 492, at the great age of one hundred and twenty years.”

    That celebrated Irish work called “Leabhar na gCeart,” or “Book of Rights,” has been generally attributed to St. Benen, or Benignus, though Dr. Healy is of opinion that there seems to be good reason for doubting if he was really its author, at least in its present form. O’Curry in his “Lectures on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” says it contains a great portion of the law which in ancient Erin settled the relations between the several classes of society, and especially the relations between the local authorities and the central and provincial kings. “It gives,” says the Introduction to the edition published by the Celtic Society, Dublin, 1847 (quoted by O’Curry), “an account of the rights of the monarchs of all Ireland and the revenues payable to them by the principal kings of the several provinces, and of the stipends paid by the monarchs to the inferior kings for their services. It also treats of the rights of each of the provincial kings, and the revenue payable to them from the inferior kings of the districts or tribes subsidiary to them, and of the stipends paid by the superior to the provincial kings for their services.”

    Professor O’Curry adds that this book was also called the “Law of Benen,” and the inscription on the book itself certainly attributes its authorship to the same learned and holy man — “The beginning of the ‘Book of Rights’ which relates to the revenues and subsidies of Ireland, as ordered by Benen, son of Sescnen, Psalmist of Patrick, as is related in the ‘Book of Glendaloch.’”

    Whoever wrote the book — and it is at least probable that St. Benen furnished the first rough draft, though it was no doubt revised and extended subsequently — it is by all antiquarians acknowledged to be an exceedingly valuable authority on the entire internal organization of Ireland in these remote times.

    But though there is some doubt as to St. Benignus being the author of “Leabhar na gCeart,” there is none at all as to his share in composing the “Senchus Mor,” that vast work which a competent authority has declared to be “the greatest monument in existence of the learning and civilization of the ancient Gaedhlic race in Erin.”

    As is well known to all students of Irish history, one of St. Patrick’s greatest undertakings was the purification from paganism and the amending and extension of the great body of laws known as the “Brehon Code.” His labors in this respect claim special attention, for the Brehon Code prevailed in the greater part of Ireland down to the year A.D. 1600, and even still its influence is felt in the feelings and habits of the people. To carry out this stupendous task the national apostle appointed a commission of nine, consisting of three kings, three bishops and three men of science, or, as O’Curry calls them, “lay philosophers.” The three kings were Laeghaire, the Ard-Ri, or High King, Core, king of Munster and Daire, king of Ulster. The latter is supposed to have granted Armagh to St. Patrick as a site for his church and schools. His daughter, as already mentioned, fell in love with St. Benignus, but being cured of her earthly affection was received into the Church and took the veil from the hands of St. Patrick.

    The three holy bishops were St. Patrick himself, St. Benignus, or Benen, and St. Cairnech, and the three men of science, “lay philosophers” or “antiquaries,” as the Four Masters style them, were “Dubhthach Mac Uahugair, Chief Poet and Brehon of Erin, Rossa, a doctor of the Berla Feini, or legal dialect, which was very abstruse, and Fergus, a poet who represented the most learned and influential class in the country.” The first meeting was in A.D. 438, and Dr. Healy says that “Benignus, being young and carefully trained by St. Patrick, and also learned in the Irish tongue, in all probability acted as secretary to the Commission, and drafted with his own hands the laws that were sanctioned by the Seniors.”

    The learned Bishop of Clonfert speaks with great authority on these matters, for he was one of the Commission appointed by the government for the publication of the Brehon laws. He, therefore, had peculiar sources of information, and being an eminent antiquarian and competent Irish scholar, he was able to make good use of his opportunities. In his great book, the “Island of Saints and Scholars,” he has given a most interesting account of the labors of the conference.

    He begins by explaining that the Brehon Code, which St. Patrick found in existence here when he came to our shores, owed its existence mainly to three sources: First, to decisions of the ancient judges given in accordance with the principles of natural justice, and handed down by tradition; secondly, to the enactments of the Triennial Parliaments, known as the great Feis of Tara; and thirdly, to the customary laws which grew up in the course of ages and regulated the social relations of the people. “This great code naturally contained many provisions that regulated the druidical rights, privileges, and worship, all of which had to be expunged. The Irish, too, were a passionate and war-like race who rarely forgave injuries or insults until they were atoned for according to the strict law of retaliation, which was by no means in accordance with the mild and forgiving spirit of the Gospel. In so far as the Brehon Code was founded on this principle it was necessary for St. Patrick to abolish or amend its provisions. Moreover, the new Church claimed its own rights and privileges, for which it was important to secure formal legal sanction and to have embodied in the great Code of the Nation. This was of itself a difficult and important task.”

    The “Senchus Mor” itself explains what led to the revision of the Brehon Code, and the explanation is very interesting. As is well known, the only life that was lost for the faith during St. Patrick’s mission in Ireland was that of his charioteer, Odhran. He was killed by a miscreant who wanted to take the life of the saint and who mistook the servant for the master.

    It was the duty of the chief Brehon Dubhthach (Subicic), who was one of the first to accept Patrick’s teaching at Tara, to pronounce judgment on the criminal. The occasion was, it is said, made use of by St. Patrick and Dubhthach (or Duffy, as the name has been Anglicised) to convene an assembly of the men of Erin at Tara. Here the Chief Brehon explained all that Patrick had done since his arrival in Ireland, and how he had overcome Laeghaire and the Druids by his miracles and preaching.

    “Then,” continues the volume, “all the men of Erin bowed down in obedience to the will of God and St. Patrick. It was then that all the professors of the sciences in Erin were assembled and each of them exhibited his art before Patrick in the presence of every chief in Erin. It was then, too, that Dubhthach was ordered to exhibit the judgments and all the poetry of Erin and every law which prevailed among the men of Erin through the law of nature and the law of the seers and in the judgment of the island of Erin and in the poets.”

    According to O’Donovan, St. Benen was also the original author of the famous chronicle called the “Psalter of Cashel.” This great work is generally ascribed to Cormac Mac Cullenan, who lived more than three hundred years later. It is ascribed, on the other hand, by Connell Macgeoghan, the translator of the “Annals of Clonmacnoise,” to no less a person than Brian Boroimhe (or Boru). O’Donovan reconciles these conflicting statements by saying that Benignus probably began the work, that Cormac Mac Cullenan revised and enlarged it and made it applicable to his own times, and that Brian Boroimhe subsequently “re-edited” it in like manner.

    Dr. Healy adopts this view, and gives a very interesting account of how the book came at first to be written. It seems that St. Benignus was of Munster origin, though born in Meath. St. Patrick, knowing his worth, sent him to preach especially in those districts which he was himself unable to visit. Hence Benignus, we are told, went through Kerry and Corcomroe in his missionary labors; but particularly devoted himself to southwestern Connaught, and built his chief church at Kilbannon, near Tuam. He also specially built that province, the natives of which still affectionately revere the memory of the gentle saint with the sweet voice and winning, gracious ways.

    “Now when the Munstermen heard of the preference and the blessings which Benignus gave to Galway, they were jealous and complained that he slighted his own kindred. So to please them Benignus went down to Caiseal (Cashel) and remained there from Shrovetide to Easter, composing in his own sweet numbers a learned book which would immortalize the province of his kinsmen and be useful, moreover, both to her princes and to her people.”

    Such was St. Benignus, Primate of Armagh, whose feast day is given as November 8th in the “Martyrology of Donegal.” The subsequent history of Armagh does not concern us here. Suffice it to say that the heirs of St. Patrick and St. Benignus were worthy of their glorious predecessors. The school was long one of the most celebrated in the world. Hither flocked crowds of students from all parts of Europe, and so many came from the land of the Saxons that a certain section of the town was entirely set aside for their residence and designated by a name that we would now translate “the English quarter.” Here they were received with true Irish hospitality, obtaining, according to the testimony of one of their own contemporary writers — Venerable Bede — support, education, and books, free.

    Here, too, was transcribed the “Book of Armagh,” that splendid volume whose beautiful penmanship and illuminations have excited the wonder and delight of all who have beheld it. It was copied in A.D. 807 from a still older work, and contains besides the oldest and most authentic “Life of St. Patrick and his Confessions,” a complete copy of the New Testament and the life of St. Martin of Tours. Though written throughout in Irish, many of the Gospel headings are in Greek characters, says Dr. Healy, and the last entry of all is a colophon of four Latin lines, but written in Greek characters, showing that even at this early date a knowledge of Greek was general in the Irish schools.

    This latter fact and the learned labors of St. Benignus himself are some of the things we ought to remember when we hear, as we often do nowadays, people who claim to be educated repeating the old shibboleth that not only is there no literature worth mentioning in the Irish language, but that the ancient Irish were a semi-savage race whose whole energies were given up to petty tribal wars and dissensions, and who were altogether devoid of culture.

    The Rosary magazine, Volume 26 (1905), 263-267.

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