OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Saint Ursan of St Ursitz, December 20

     

     

     

     

     

     

    On December 20 we commemorate an Irish saint who travelled to Europe with Saint Columbanus and laboured among the Alemanni in the Swiss Jura – Ursan ‘The Bear Man’. Below is an account of his life by Roísín Ní Mheara:

    Ursan or Ursin as he came to be known, is an Irish monk with a book and a heraldic lily as his attribute. A saint of the great Burgundian abbey of Luxeuil, he belongs to the group that joined Columban on an arduous Alemannic mission which led them into the utmost eastern limits of Frankish suzerainty, the far end of Lake Constance. Changes at the Merovingian court with a new hostile ruler brought the campaign to an abortive end. The brotherhood dispersed. Columban headed south for Italy… Ursan with a comrade named Fromont, of whom we know little, retraced his steps down the river Rhine towards Basel. They reached the abandoned Roman post of Verena, now Zurzach, and took course up the Aare tributary to the lake of Biel in Helvetia, where there are traces of a brief sojourn, before launching out into the forests of the Swiss Jura, then a no man’s land for the taking.

    A prehistoric route led from Biel up through a gorge of the river Birs, and over it the pair must have trudged into the wilds until they reached the coast of Mount Terri. For them the prospect from the height would have been tantalising – Alsace with its fruitful plains to the north and further west, beyond the Vosges mountains. Burgundy with their home monastery Luxeuil. Was that perhaps their aim? Did fatigue overcome them here? We can only guess. Certain is, that in Ursan’s immediate vicinity lay a deep and tortuous river gorge, cutting deeply into the rock of the primeval forest surrounding him, and in its density fugitives of German Alemannic stock were putting up a fight for survival. The plight of these pagans was to be Ursan’s destiny. Here where the river Doubs (dubh indeed, the Celts had christened it well) blocked by Mount Terri, makes a hairpin turn our peregrinus decided to cast his lot. As a result, by the Middle Ages a sedate little town had emerged in the dark valley, dutifully walled with a bridge over the Doubs, its inhabitants grouped round the monastery of St.Ursitz, the site or seat of Ursan. The town in the French idiom answers to Saint-Ursanne.

    Above on the plateau of Mount Terri where two tired disciples of Columban stopped and decided to part, it all began. Fromont travelled on to find a place of his own liking. This is today the little town of Bonfol, with its parish church under his patronage.

    Ursan, the Bear Man

    In the meantime Ursan was causing quite a flurry in the Doubs valley by making himself at home in a cave on the slope of Mount Terri beside a fresh mountain spring. Known to be the habitat of a brown bear, the hillside was considered off-limits for humans. But it became apparent that the poor hermit remained unmolested by the bear, who even ceded his den for him to sleep in. Soon curiousity got the better of fear and up Mount Terri the Alemanni clambered in growing numbers to pay their respect to the ‘Bear Man’ as they called their guest. Indeed the nickname is all hagiography has to offer in the way of identification (latinized ‘Usinicus’, ‘Ursinicus’). The name Urs being widespread we will call him Ursan.

    Was it the hermit’s gentle manner or the message of cheer he bought? Some salutary charisma must account for his popularity for huts were set up in the small clearing before the cave, the source became a spring of spiritual refreshment and the nucleus of a Christian cell was born. The site being limited, Ursan was persuaded to descend into the valley and space was made on the riverside to accommodate those who considered themselves his followers. With a sanctuary dedicated to St. Peter, after Ursan’s home church in Luxeuil, the rudiments of a religious settlement were provided. The Rule observed was naturally that of Columban – the principal Order of the Western Church.

    Ursan did not confine himself to preaching, He built an asylum for the many immigrants he found weakened and bowed down with the hardships of those Dark Ages… Tradition recalls the pack animals Ursan kept for the benefit of mountain dwellers. We hear too of his iron handbell, an instrument of Irish make – an innovation!- later to become an honoured relic. Deeply mourned when he died around the year 620, the Alemanni buried their ‘Bear Man’ in his oratory, and for a long time afterwards his eremitic community adhered to the precepts he had laid down for them. This is known from the records of St. Wandregisel (Wandrille). As a young Frank nobleman Wandregeisel, impressed by the example of Ursan, spent some time in the Doubs hermitage after the saint’s demise, an experience that changed the course of his life. He became a strong advocate of Columban’s teaching, founding many important monasteries in France, such as Fontanelle at the mouth of the Seine. He did not forget Ursan either, for it was Wandregeisel who, with wealth at his disposal, transformed the shacks of the initial hermitage into a monastery of stature fit to house the remains of a saint.

    …Entering, church splendour awaits the visitor in a mixture of period elements and trappings that blend surreptitiously. A golden crown above the high altar with its oil painting depicting the glorification of Ursan signalizes the presence of his remains under the mensa in a medieval sarcophagus, hidden behind a costly silk antependium. Large effigies of the apostles Peter and Paul guard his sanctuary… Earlier on, the founder’s tomb was kept in a spacious crypt built by the Augustinians in the twelfth century under the apse for pilgrims to file through.

    Grateful to the canton of Jura for crediting the work of our lonely evangelist, we may complete our tour with a visit to the ‘Eremitage Saint-Ursanne’, a Gothic scenario with the Bear Man sculptured reclining pensively with his missal in a cave opening, much to the astonishment of a wooden bear planted before him!

    Let us hope that ‘La Fontaine de Saint Ursanne’, the source on the slope of Mount Terri, still serving the town with its pure drinking water, will never run dry, figuring as it does the spirit of Columban, that turned a dark Swiss mountain hideaway into a beacon of light burning still.

    Roísín Ní Mheara, Early Irish Saints in Europe – Their Sites and their Stories (Seanchas Ard Mhacha, 2001), 145-149.

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

  • The Life of the Holy Virgin Samthann

    December 19 is the feast of Saint Samthann of Clonbroney and last year’s post on her life can be found here. The Life of Samthann is known mainly from an early 14th-century manuscript, Rawlinson B.485. Richard Sharpe, who has studied the various collections of Irish saints’ Lives argues that the ‘Oxford group’ in which the Life of Samthann is included may have originated in the Longford/Westmeath region. Saint Samthann’s monastery of Clonbroney was in County Longford, so this may explain why her Life forms part of that collection. Unusually among the monastic saints, Samthann was not the founder of her community and I looked at the circumstances in which the leadership of Clonbroney was passed to her in last year’s post. Furthermore, the Life does not include an account of her birth and early years, as one usually finds in other saints’ Lives. Dorothy Africa, who has published a translation of the Life of Saint Samthann, comments on some of the text’s other unusual features, the first of which we will now turn to:

    Except for the omission of an account of her early life, the Life of St. Samthann follows the general pattern of Irish saint’s Lives. It has, however several distinctive features worthy of comment. Few saints Lives display such an opening sequence as this one, with the protagonist entering her own life sound asleep and hurtling within a few sentences into full dramatic action. It is common, however, in the Lives of women saints for the saint to struggle heroically to avoid a marriage forced upon her by parents and kin. Fosterage was a common practice in Ireland for children of both sexes. Usually a woman’s own family, not her foster father, would make arrangements for her marriage, but if they were distant, as appears to be the case here, responsibility might pass to a fosterer.

    Dorothy Africa, trans., Life of the Holy Virgin Samthann, in T. Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography – An Anthology (Routledge, 2001), 99.

    So, here is that dramatic beginning to the Life of Saint Samthann, taken from a translation made by two Irish priests, Fathers Diamuid O’Laoghaire and Peter O’Dwyer:

    Samthann’s father’s name was Diamramus, and her mother’s Columba. As she matured her foster-father, Cridan, king of the Ui Coirpri, gave her in marriage to a nobleman. Before the marriage solemnities were celebrated, the nobleman saw at midnight something like a ray of the sun extended through the roof of the house onto the bed in which Samthann was sleeping with the king’s two daughters. Amazed by the unusual vision of light at such an hour, he rose immediately and, advancing toward his spouse’s bed, found that her face was illumined by that ray. He was very happy that he was gifted with a spouse who was surrounded by heavenly light.

    The following night, when the solemnities had been celebrated, both were entering the marriage bed, as is customary, when her husband said to her, “Undress yourself so that we may become one”. But she replies, “I ask you to wait until all who are in this house are asleep.” Her husband agreed. After a short time tiredness overcame him. Then Samthann gave herself to prayer, knocking at the doors of divine mercy so that God might keep her virginity unblemished. And God heard her prayer, for about midnight that town in which they lived seemed to outsiders to be on fire. A flame of extraordinary magnitude was seen ascending from the mouth of the holy virgin to the roof of the house. A mighty cry was raised outside in the town and those who were asleep within were awakened. Together, they hastened to extinguish the fire.

    In the meantime the holy virgin Samthann hid herself in a cluster of ferns nearby. The fire vanished immediately without doing any damage to the town. When morning came, her foster-father, the king, set out to look for her. When he found her, she said to the king, “Was your town burned last night?” The king replied, “No.” She said, “I thank God that it was not burned.” Then she spoke to the king again, “Why did you wish to give this poor servant of the Almighty God to any spouse without her consent?” The king replied, “All right, I will not give you to a man, but let you be the judge.” Samthann said, “This is not my decision: as of now you give me as a spouse to God and not to man.” Then the king said, “We offer you to God, the spouse whom you choose.” Then she, with her husband’s permission, entered the monastery of the virgin Cognat where she remained for a time.

    ‘Samthann of Clonbroney” in E.C.Sellner, Wisdom of the Celtic Saints (Indiana, 1993), 194-5.

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

  • Saint Maignenn of Kilmainham, December 18

    December 18 is the feast of a County Dublin saint, Maignenn (Maignan, Magnenn) whose name is still recalled today in the placename Kilmainham. Saint Maignenn is a fascinating saint whose Vita contains many weird and wonderful episodes which rather shocked some of the 19th-century churchmen who wrote about the lives of the saints. He had, for example, a ram which used to carry his prayer books, as the Martyrology of Donegal explains in its entry for the day:

    18. B. QUINTO DECIMO KAL. JANUARII. 18.

    MAIGHNENN, Bishop and Abbot, of Cill-Maighnenn, near Athcliath. He was of the race of Colla-da-crioch. Sinell, daughter of Cenannan, sister of Old Senchell the saint, was his mother. He had a ram which used to carry his psalter and his prayerbook. There came a certain robber and thief, and stole the ram. Maighnenn, with his thrice nine clerics, went after the robber to his house. The robber denied having stolen the ram by oath on the relics, and on the hand of Maighnenn himself. The ram was cut up in quarters in a hole in the ground, after the robber had eaten what was in his belly. The ram spoke below in the hole. Maighnenn and his thrice nine persons looked up to heaven, and gave thanks to God for this miracle. But the robber was deprived of his eyesight, and their strength left his feet and his hands, and he said in a loud voice, “For God’s sake,” said he, “O Maighnenn, do not deprive me of the light of heaven for the future.” When Maighnenn heard the repentance of the sinner, he prayed fervently to God for him, and he recovered his eyesight again, and he was eminent in religion as long as he lived. And the name of God and of Maighnenn was magnified by that miracle.

    In his notes to Archdall’s Monasticon Hibernicum, the then Bishop of Ossory P.F. Moran lamented “It is a pity that such a ridiculous fable should usurp the place of more authentic history about this holy man.” Yet modern scholars would readily recognize a number of hagiographical motifs from this story of the ram and the robber. First, there is the slight done to the saint’s honour by the robber, who compounds his sin by swearing his innocence not only on the relics but on the very hand of the saint himself. That cries out for punishment and it is duly delivered as his perjury is exposed by the miraculous cries of the ram. The thief is then deprived of his eyesight, and this is a motif which operates on more than one level, denoting spiritual blindness for example and recalling the encounter between Christ and the blind man in the Scriptures. Then there is the fact that this ‘ridiculous fable’ is actually a vehicle for conveying the mercy and sanctity of Saint Maignenn whose actions lead to a sinner being turned around and to the name of God being magnified. I think, therefore, that Bishop Moran perhaps missed the point of this hagiographical account with all of its rich symbolism – the three times nine clerics in attendance on the saint, the fact that a beast is subject to his will and the ability of Maignenn to successfully intercede for a sinner such as this – all tell me quite a lot about this holy man and in a much deeper way than ‘authentic history’ might have done.

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