OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Saint Gerald: Legends of a Great Saint of County Mayo

    March 13 is the feast of Saint Gerald of Mayo, an English saint who came to Ireland as a result of the controversy surrounding the dating of Easter. I have previously posted about the circumstances in which he came to be at Mayo of the Saxons here. Below is a 1928 newspaper account of Saint Gerald which looks at his career in Ireland drawing on the fourteenth-century Life of the saint produced by the Augustinian canons who were his later successors at Mayo Abbey. It begins in a rather disjointed way with an account of a powerful local druid being vanquished. Perhaps this is just a legend added for a bit of extra local colour as one assumes the champions of paganism had been seen off long before the time of Saint Gerald, who is not mentioned directly in the tale. Author P. L. O’Madden is correct to point out in his postscript that some of the events contained within the Life of Saint Gerald cannot be reconciled with other historical sources. Today, almost a century after he was writing, the difference between hagiography and history has been clearly established. That said, however, there are some enjoyable hagiographical tropes here as Saint Gerald parts the sea, performs healings, participates in a royal synod with Saint Fechin of Fore and tackles the spectre of the dreaded buidhe Conaill plague which took the lives of so many of the Irish saints, including that of Saint Fechin himself. I particularly enjoyed the description of how Saint Gerald’s monastic cowl grew large enough to encompass all of the people who sought his help, cowls were often listed among the most powerful relics of monastic saints as they were something the saint had actually worn next to his own body: 

    SAINT GERALD

    Legends of a Great Saint of County Mayo

    By P. L. O’Madden

     In that district there dwelt at that time a famous druid who had many disciples. He had his abode nigh to the monastery of the saints, claiming a hereditary right in the place, known to this day as Druid Hill.

    The disciples of the man of God, with great fervour of spirit, impelled therein, made a large fire. The druid on seeing the smoke, said to his disciples “I know by my magical powers that that fire now burning will never be extinguished if it be not put out at once”; and going forth he donned his armour and mounted his charger to extinguish the fire forthwith.

    But it was the will of God that his horse’s feet remained immoveably fixed in the ground, and the druid himself became glued to his horse so that he was unable to move. The amazed magician seeing the Divine Goodnews prevail over his magical arts, thus addressed his followers:

    “Hearken to me, my friends, and know that the prayers of these men of God have conquered my druidic arts, therefore I implore ye to petition those Christians to release me from this dreadful torment, and I promise that myself and my posterity shall be their servants henceforth forever. Having thus avowed, both himself and his horse are miraculously released, but there remain to this day the indelible traces in the rock.

     St. Gerald divided his disciples into three groups: one party to be deputed to England to collect the necessary requirements for the labouring brotherhood; a second group to be employed in building a wall to enclose the monastery establishment, and after that to build a church and monastery; a third division he assigned to sing the Divine Office, and to pray for the Christian people.

    With such regulations inspired by Heaven, under the zealous pastor the flock of Christ advanced daily in fervour and virtue. 

    When all had been accomplished there came a party of robbers, numbering nine, and seized some oxen from the monastery lands. When St Gerald heard this he had them pursued, and discovered them in a certain island wherein they were accustomed to hide their booty, God, who dried up the Red Sea for his servant Moses, caused the water to disappear so as to open a passage for his servant.

    The robbers, on witnessing this miracle, prostrated themselves before the servant of God, repented of their crime, and avowed themselves to him and his successors forever.

    At that time two kings reigned jointly in Ireland, namely Diarmaid and Blathmac, and they issued an edict that the people – clergy and laity- should assemble at Tara,  for there was then a great famine in the land. The population had become so great that there was not sufficient to feed them all. It was ordered that all, clergy and laity should fast and pray that God might remove by a pestilence some of the people so that the rest might be able to live. And when they assembled, and a difference of opinion manifested itself them, they elected the two illustrious abbots, St. Gerald and St. Fechin, to arbitrate on the matter at issue. But even the saints could not agree. St. Gerald maintained that it was not just to ask God to remove some of the people by a plague, for he is all powerful and able to feed the many out of a small supply, as he did the Israelites in the desert with manna, and the  five thousand with five loaves and a few fishes. St. Fechin, however, maintained the justice of the petition, for the famine was occasioned by  the surplus population; and when the popular party prevailed in seeking pestilence, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to a certain holy man saying: “Why do you not seek food from the source of all bounty. He will not refuse you, for it is not more difficult for God to multiply food than men. But, because, contrary to his will, you seek the death of the lower order of people, by a just dispensation of Heaven the elder will die.” And so it befell. For the anger of God was made manifest, in that the two reigning kings and also the kings of Ulster and Munster with many others died of the plague  called in Irish “Buidh Conaill” so many died of this pestilence that there scarcely remained a third of the population.

    Afterwards St. Gerald came in a district called Corran, where he found a vast number of inhabitants stricken with the plague. The famous chief Etran was stricken also. Seeing the holy man St. Gerald in their midst, the people hastened to him, firmly believing he had power to free them from the dread visitation. They cried out to the man of God, saying: “Have pity on us and heal us of our infirmities, which press so heavily on us; we shall surely perish unless you come to our assistance.” And the holy man bade the chief Etran hasten with his son and came under his cowl. At the same time the people also hastened to do likewise. But the modest dimensions of the garment were not sufficient to cover them all, but so great was the efficacy of the saint’s prayers that the cowl (or cloak) grew large enough to cover the multitude, and all were cured of their infirmities.

    Afterwards St. Gerald went forth in the monastery of Eltheria. He learned there of the death of his beloved sister Sigretia, who, together with a hundred nuns of the convent and fifty of his disciples, had perished in the plague. He went forth to Mayo, accompanied by his disciple, and there the saint remained to the end in the love of God and his neighbour. The holy abbot, Adamnan, having made the visitation of all Ireland, came at length to St. Gerald at Mayo to enjoy the sweet society of his friend.

    Not long afterwards St Gerald, having performed countless miracles, and founded many monasteries, rested at peace at Mayo Abbey, on the 13th day of March (tertio idea Martii) A.D. 732.

    P.S. – The Chronology of these legends of St. Gerald is very confused. It is to be remembered that these records were not written down for many centuries – some five or six at all events – afterwards. And while many of the traditions herein related are corroborated by the ‘Irish Annals’ it is impossible to reconcile others with  the known facts of Irish history.

    Catholic Advocate, Thursday 23 February 1928, page 42.


     

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  • Saint Bríg of Annaghdown: Ireland's Saint Scholastica

    February 10 is the feast of Saint Scholastica, twin sister of Saint Benedict, the father of western monasticism.  The pair enjoyed what modern scholar Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg has described as ‘perhaps one of the most famous examples of affection and love within the saintly sibling relationship’. I have always enjoyed how the Irish priest, Father Jerome Fahy, in an article on the Diocese of Annaghdown which you can read at the blog here, likened their relationship to that of the Irish saints Brendan and Bríg, describing them as ‘the Benedict and Scholastica of Ireland’. Unfortunately, whilst Saint Scholastica has her own day defined on the calendars of the saints, her Irish counterpart does not. There are over a dozen Irish female saints who share the name Bríg (Briga, Brígh), most of whom are untraceable. Canon O’Hanlon suggested in his entry for Saint Bríg of Coirpre on January 7 that she may be Brendan’s sister, but provided no supporting evidence. The place name Coirpre (Cairbre, modern Carbury) occurs in a number of different localities in Ireland. However, the Life of Saint Brendan clearly associates his sister with the County Galway monastery of Annaghdown, yet no feast for Bríg of Annaghdown is to be found on the calendars. Like other Irish female saints who have no written Life of their own, what we know of Bríg is drawn from the Life of her famous brother, just as our knowledge of Scholastica is founded on the Dialogues of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who dedicated Book II of his four-volume collection on the lives and miracles of Italian saints to Saint Benedict. The Lives tell us that Saint Scholastica was the abbess of Plumbariola, just a few miles away from her brother’s foundation at Monte Cassino, whilst Bríga was at the convent of Annaghdown, County Galway, where the local church to this day remains dedicated to Saint Brendan. Scholastica seems to have visited her saintly sibling on an annual basis, the leadership of a monastic familia taking precedence over biological family ties for those dedicated to the religious life. As Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg points out:

    It was only with the realization of impending death that some of these male siblings finally felt free to see their sisters and express the affection which they had withheld for ascetic purposes during their lifetime. A primary focus of many of the vitae is on the saint’s final hours and deathbed scene: this was an especially important moment to be shared with one’s closest relatives and friends. Therefore, sisters and brothers often assumed a crucial role in the events surrounding the death of their saintly siblings: they were designated to carry out special instructions for burial; they remembered each other in prayers…; they frequently expressed a final wish that they be buried together, and promised each other that they would meet again in the celestial realm.

    Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (University of Chicago Press, 1998), 297.

    The author also points out a further trope found in a number of the vitae – the foreknowledge of a sibling’s death or a description of their arrival in heaven. This is the case with Saint Benedict and his sister, described below by Pope Saint Gregory the Great who first establishes the background to the death of Saint Scholastica. I noted here that, unusually for hagiography, it is the woman, Scholastica, who seems to meet with the writer’s approval rather than the  subject of the Life, Saint Benedict:

    CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Of a Miracle Wrought by his Sister, Scholastica.

    ….I must tell you how there was one thing which the venerable father Benedict would have liked to do, but he could not.

    His sister, named Scholastica, was dedicated from her infancy to our Lord. Once a year she came to visit her brother. The man of God went to her not far from the gate of his monastery, at a place that belonged to the Abbey. It was there he would entertain her. Once upon a time she came to visit according to her custom, and her venerable brother with his monks went there to meet her.

    They spent the whole day in the praises of God and spiritual talk, and when it was almost night, they dined together. As they were yet sitting at the table, talking of devout matters, it began to get dark. The holy Nun, his sister, entreated him to stay there all night that they might spend it in discoursing of the joys of heaven. By no persuasion, however, would he agree to that, saying that he might not by any means stay all night outside of his Abbey.

    At that time, the sky was so clear that no cloud was to be seen. The Nun, hearing this denial of her brother, joined her hands together, laid them on the table, bowed her head on her hands, and prayed to almighty God.

    Lifting her head from the table, there fell suddenly such a tempest of
    lightning and thundering, and such abundance of rain, that neither venerable Benedict, nor his monks that were with him, could put their heads out of doors. The holy Nun, having rested her head on her hands, poured forth such a flood of tears on the table, that she transformed the clear air to a watery sky.

    After the end of her devotions, that storm of rain followed; her prayer and the rain so met together, that as she lifted up her head from the table, the thunder began.  So it was that in one and the very same instant that she lifted up her head, she brought down the rain.

    The man of God, seeing that he could not, in the midst of such thunder and lightning and great abundance of rain return to his Abbey, began to be heavy and to complain to his sister, saying: “God forgive you, what have you done?” She answered him, “I desired you to stay, and you would not hear me; I have desired it of our good Lord, and he has granted my petition. Therefore if you can now depart, in God’s name return to your monastery, and leave me here alone.”

    But the good father, not being able to leave, tarried there against his will where before he would not have stayed willingly. By that means, they watched all night and with spiritual and heavenly talk mutually comforted one another.

    Therefore, by this we see, as I said before, that he would have had one thing, but he could not effect it.  For if we know the venerable man’s mind, there is no question but that he would have had the same fair weather to have continued as it was when he left his monastery.  He found, however, that a miracle prevented his desire. A miracle that, by the power of almighty God, a woman’s prayers had wrought.

    Is it not a thing to be marveled at, that a woman, who for a long time had not seen her brother, might do more in that instance than he could? She realized, according to the saying of St. John, “God is charity” [1 John 4:8]. Therefore, as is right, she who loved more, did more.

    This proves to be the last encounter between the siblings as the next chapter describes Saint Benedict’s vision of his sister’s death and his determination that they would remain united:

    CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: How Benedict Saw the Soul of his Sister Ascend into Heavenly Glory.

    GREGORY: The next day the venerable woman returned to her nunnery, and the man of God to his abbey. Three days later, standing in his cell, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he beheld the soul of his sister (which was departed from her body) ascend into heaven in the likeness of a dove.

    Rejoicing much to see her great glory, with hymns and praise he gave thanks to almighty God, and imparted the news of her death to his monks.  He sent them presently to bring her corpse to his Abbey, to have it buried in that grave which he had provided for himself. By this means it fell out that, as their souls were always one in God while they lived, so their bodies continued together after their death.

    Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), Dialogues, Book II (Life and Miracles of St. Benedict).

    Sadly, the accounts of the Irish Benedict and Scholastica are not quite so detailed. In the Betha Brendain, the Irish Life of Saint Brendan, we first meet Saint Bríg when the young Brendan is studying with his foster father Bishop Erc and the hagiographer leaves us in no doubt about the strong bond of love between the siblings:

    (12) Brig, daughter of Findlug, his sister, was with him there, and great was his love for her, for he saw the attendance of angels above her.

    Having established this affectionate relationship between the siblings in childhood, it is at the end of his life that we encounter Saint Bríg once again:

    (206) Brendan after this went to visit his sister Brig at the fort of Aed son of Eochaid, which is now called Enach Duin. So then, after traversing sea and land, after raising dead men, healing lepers, blind, deaf, lame, and all kinds of sick folk, after founding many cells, and monasteries, and holy churches, after appointing abbots and masters, after blessing cataracts and estuaries, after consecrating districts and tribes, after putting down crimes and sins, after great perils by sea and land, after expelling demons and vices, after pre-eminence in pilgrimage and (ascetic) devotion, after performance of mighty works and miracles too numerous to mention, St. Brendan drew near to the day of his death.

    (207) Then said Brendan to the brethren after Mass on the Sunday, and after receiving the body of Christ and His blood: ‘God,’ said he, is calling me to the eternal kingdom; and my body must be taken to Clonfert, for there will be attendance of angels there, and there will be my resurrection…..

    (208) When he had finished saying all this, he blessed the brethren and his sister Brig, and when he reached the threshold of the church, he said: ‘In manus tuas, Domine,’ etc, Then he sent forth his spirit….

    C. Plummer, ed. and trans., Bethada Náem nÉrenn – Lives of Irish Saints, Vol. II (Oxford, 1922), 46; 91.

    It is at Annaghdown then, his beloved sister present among the monastic brethren that Saint Brendan’s earthly life ends. I noted too how the hagiographer specifically named Saint Bríg as a recipient of her brother’s final blessing, thus putting her, along with Saint Scholastica, into the category of Sorores Sanctae identified by Tibbetts Schulenburg.

    Deus, qui beátae Vírginis tuæ Scholásticæ ánimam ad ostendéndam [innocéntiæ viam in colúmbæ spécie cælum penetráre fecísti: da nobis eius méritis et précibus ita innocénter vivere; ut ad ætérna mereámur gáudia perveníre. Per Dóminum.]

    Let us pray: O God, Who, to show the innocence of her life, didst cause the soul of Thy blessed Virgin Scholastica to ascend to Heaven in the form of a dove: grant, we beseech Thee, by her merits and prayers, that we may live so innocently, as to deserve to arrive at eternal joys. Through Jesus Christ, Thine only-begotten Son, Our Lord, Who with Thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, God, for ever and ever.

    R. Amen.

    Collect for the Feast of Saint Scholastica, February 10.

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  • Saint Columbanus

    In 1923 the 1300th anniversary of Saint Columbanus was celebrated at Bobbio and below is a report from The New Zealand Tablet describing the festivities. In addition to capturing something of the pride with which the newly-established Irish Free State regarded this important saint, it also links the spiritual and secular European dimension as the Irish delegates leave Bobbio to seek admission to the League of Nations: 

    The New Zealand Tablet 

    THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1923. 

    ST COLUMBANUS
     

    LAST week we published accounts of the centenary celebrations held at Bobbio in honor of St. Columbanus, giving such extracts from the Pope’s brief as had come to hand. The latest mails brought us the complete text of this edifying and masterly review of the labors of the great Irish missionary saint. Our readers will find the Pope’s glowing and eloquent words in another page of our present issue, and they will note for themselves how the Supreme Pontiff honors Columbanus by placing him among the men of Providence, chosen in the designs of God to protect the Church and safeguard her interests in times of storm and stress. In the person of her Primate, the land of St. Columbanus was worthily represented at the ceremonies, while the presence of the President of the Free State, with his attendant staff, further identified Catholic Ireland with the extraordinary memorial of her glorious past which took place in that Italian town in September last, thirteen hundred years after the death of the Saint.

    The celebrations, and the Papal brief, bring into brighter light the pictures of the far-away years painted for us by historians who love to dwell on the Golden Age of the Island of Saints and Scholars. It was in Irish schools and by Irish monks that Columbanus was educated; and, equipped with the learning acquired there in his youth, he was called by God to leave his own native land and to become as a torch-bearer in many parts of the Continent of Europe. Other Irish missionaries received the same call and answered it as gladly as the Saint whose ashes are honored at Bobbio. Memory readily recalls a long bead-roll of their bright names, and the map of Europe has preserved many of them to the present day. But that a special mission was given Columbanus is evident from the remarkable testimony of Pope Pius XI., that this Irish monk, by his zeal and learning, had an influence on the rebirth of Christian knowledge and civilisation throughout France, Germany, and Italy, so great that it is only now becoming adequately appreciated by the students of history. He was a luminous example of the virtues of the priesthood, a man of profound learning, a courageous champion of the truth, a fearless lover of Christ, a captain among that chosen band of exiles from Erin who in different ages were inspired by the desire to become pilgrims for their Lord — Peregrinari pro Christo, was their watchword. With gratitude, all sons of Ireland will read the passage in which the Pope bears witness to the purity of faith and the excellence of learning which in those distant ages fitted Ireland to be the fruitful mother of missionaries: 

    Christian civilisation (he says) had almost collapsed, and the glory of the arts which are the ornament of civil life seemed to be gone forever. It is marvellous how Ireland, justly called the Island of Saints; and no less justly the home of the arts and sciences, shone forth amid the darkness and the clouds of those days in her love of religion and civilisation. History tells us that the deep recesses of her valleys and forests echoed with the prayers and the works of her hermits, and that there arose numerous monasteries, which stood as so many schools of sanctity, and, for those times, of perfect learning in every branch of knowledge. 

    Thither eager young men hurried to learn literature and science. Excellently prepared in the various branches of learning, trained in the virtues under the holy discipline of Cungallius, and burning with desire to accomplish great —and these were times that required his zeal —Columbanus, accompanied by a few companions, abandoned his fatherland and commenced those successive migrations from Ireland, which down through the centuries have brought blessings innumerable to so many peoples. 

     Columbanus, thirteen centuries ago, inspired a new spirit into a Europe that was sick almost unto death from wars and barbarian invasions. His voice— voice of the schools of Ireland— a message of hope, of faith, of charity, of consolation to the struggling peoples. To him was it, under God, due that the reconstruction which then began moved along Christian lines, and, by paths of sanity and reasonableness, achieved a success that endured for centuries. Ireland, still the most Catholic country in the world, still, the most faithful to the teachings of Christ, again comes into the midst of a gathering of nations groping helplessly towards the light and needing, just as the peoples did in the days of Columbanus, all the guidance and all the inspiration that Christianity can give them. “In the name of God, to this assembly, life and health!”‘ were the words with which President Cosgrave greeted the nations on behalf of Ireland. May it be her mission once more to recall them all to God, in whom alone is the healing of their wounds, as He alone is the source of life, here and hereafter. From Bobbio, full of the inspiration of the past, the Irish delegates went to seek admission to the League of Nations. And from that little town in the Apennines, the spirit of the great missionary saint will surely be with his countrymen to-day when a task not unlike his own is before them. 

    ST COLUMBANUS,New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLVIII, Issue 46, 22 November 1923.

     The Papal address referred to in this article was published previously at the blog and can be read here.  

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