I have withdrawn the former post for Saint Craebhnat (Craobhnad) of Clenor at this date as I realized I had been misled by a nineteenth-century writer into misidentifying this holy woman with the County Cork Saint Cránaid, subject of a very brief late ‘Life’ detailing the lengths to which she went to discourage a potential suitor. As we can see from Canon O’Hanlon’s account below, he shared this opinion, but modern scholar Pádraig Ó Riain in his 2011 Dictionary of Irish Saints suggests that the Saint Craobhnad commemorated on July 17 is more likely to be Craobhnad of Kilcreevanty, County Galway. He tells us that there is nothing recorded of the saint, although her church is mentioned in the Annals. She is thus distinct from the Saint Cránaid associated with Clenor, who is the actual subject of the Life. Before moving to Canon O’Hanlon’s account, we can turn to the Irish calendars which are the only source for Saint Craobhnad. On July 17 The Martyrology of Gorman records the name ‘Craebnat’, with a note adding ‘virgin’, whilst the Martyrology of Donegal records ‘Craebhnat, Virgin’ . Her name is not found on the earlier Martyrology of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght records a Saint Corpnata on this day, whom Canon O’Hanlon suggests might be our elusive Saint Craebhnat (Craobhnad):
St. Craebhnat, Virgin
The name, Corpnata, occurs in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 17th of July. It seems very possible, that an Irish Life of St. Creunata, transcribed by Brother Michael O’Cleary, had reference to this holy woman, and it yet exists in the Burgundian Library at Bruxelles. Some notices—most probably regarding this saint—or it may have been a Life, seem to have been prepared by Colgan for publication, at the 17th of July, as on the posthumous list of his Manuscripts we find a St. Cranata, Virgin, entered. It is likely, this was another form of St.Craebhnat’s or Corpnata’s name. In the Martyrology of Donegal, Craebhnat, Virgin, is recorded at this same date.
June 9 is the feast day of Saint Colum Cille/Columba of Iona, tertiary patron of Ireland. At my blog Trias Thaumaturga, which is dedicated to the three wonderworking patrons of Ireland, this year I have decided not to post yet another account of his career by a Victorian worthy but instead to look at one of the other Scottish islands associated with Columba. The article below was syndicated in the New Zealand press in 1910 and describes a visit to Eileach an Naoimh the Island of the Saints, linked to Saint Columba, yet overlooked by pilgrims and travellers. The writer, Thomas Hannan, argues that this island, claimed to be the burial place of Saint Columba’s mother, Eithne, is also the elusive island of Hinba known from Saint Adomnán’s Vita Columbae. There it was described as a dependency of Iona which Columba visited and sometimes stayed in. We also learn from the Life that two of Columba’s most important disciples, Baithéne, his successor and Ernán, his uncle, are named as abbots of Hinba’s monastery. The exact location of this island continues to be debated. At the time this article was written Eileach an Naoimh was widely identified as Hinba, but although there is still no modern scholarly consensus, a number of more recent writers have argued for the claims of the island of Oronsay. They include Richard Sharpe, translator of the Vita Columbae for the Penguin Classics series, who wrote:
On the island of Oronsay is a medieval priory; does this perhaps continue the site of the Columban foundation?
R. Sharpe, ed. and trans. Adomnán of Iona – Life of St Columba (Penguin Books, 1995), n. 194, p. 308.
Whatever the truth, our writer from 1910 has at least made us consider that Iona, whilst it may be in the words of Saint Adomnán himself ‘our principal island’ (1:1), is not the only island with which Saint Columba is associated. And I remain fascinated by the link between Eileach an Naoimh and Eithne, the mother of Saint Colum Cille. May I wish everyone the blessings of the feast of her famous son and close with a prayer from the Office appointed for the Feast of Saint Columba in the Aberdeen Breviary:
Inspire the desire of heavenly glory in our hearts, we pray, O Lord, and grant that we may carry sheaves of righteousness thither in our right hands, where the golden star, the holy abbot Columba, shines with Thee. Through our Lord, etc.
AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN SHRINE.
Multitudes of men and women make their summer and autumn holiday the occasion of a visit to the great shrine of St. Columba at Iona. It is certainly a fully remembered shrine. And yet the pilgrim to Iona, probably looks upon nothing which the saint saw except the natural scenery. But if the pilgrim only knew it, he is not very far from a hallowed spot where he might stand within the very walls which St. Columba raised; and it is of this almost forgotten shrine that the writer fain would tell.
To the west of the peninsula of Cantyre and stretching from south-west to northeast, lie in a line the islands of Isla, Jura, Scarba, Luing, and Seil. Almost due west of Luing is the large and picturesque Isle of Mull; and between the two is a line of islets known as the Garvelloch Isles, or the Isles of the Sea. Extending from south-west to north-east, their names in order are Eileach an Naoimh, A’Chuli, Garbh Eileach, and Dunchonill. It is on Eileach an Naoimh—pronounced I-le-ach an Na-ov—that the “almost forgotten shrine” is to be found. This is the island referred to by Adamnan as “Insula Hinba,” and its Gaelic name is generally interpreted “Isle of the Saints,” although a Gaelic scholar informs the writer that the name may be somewhat equivalent to “the Training-place of the Saints.” The general character of the islets is forbidding. They rise abruptly from the sea, presenting sides that look like walls; and on the west they are exposed to the unbroken force of the winds and waves of the Atlantic. Eileach an Naoimh is about one mile in length, and its greatest width does not exceed a quarter of a mile. It partakes in a superlative degree of the stern and wild characteristics of the group, and possesses only one landing-place, which it is possible to make in nothing but the most favourable weather. The writer has spent four somewhat long summer holidays in succession at a point on the shores of Mull, not very far from Iona, whence he could view the Isles of the Sea; each year he has made arrangements to visit the shrine in a fisherman’s boat, when weather should be favourable for sailing, but not too rough for landing; and yet it was only a few days ago that the wish was accomplished, a friend of like tastes having brought round his little sailing yacht for the attempt.
At close quarters the island is more awe-inspiring than at a distance. To effect a landing it is necessary to round the southern end of the island. This end is guarded by three huge jagged rocks which stand high and black out of the water. Passing the three, we swung round the third, and anchored on the inner side of it, finding ourselves in a natural harbour with bad anchorage and little protection from wind and wave. We got out the dinghy, and made for the “Port,” which looks like a hole in the wall of rock. When we reached it, we found it about the width of the doorway of a house, with a turn to the left after entering. At high water this would have brought us to a shelving beach; but as it was only half-tide we had to do some goat-climbing. The first thing which we observed, at the head of the “Port,” and only about a dozen feet above sea-level, was a spring of water, —”Tober Chalhim-chille,” Columba’s Well. As faithful pilgrims, we drank at the well from which the holy man had often drunk; and at once proceeded to the interior, which consists of of grassy hollows in the rock.
The principal hollow presents a most interesting view of several remains. In the foreground is an enclosed space, now almost overgrown with grass and bracken, which was the old burial-ground. Looking towards the north-east, there is seen behind the burial-ground a small square on the east of which are the remains of domestic buildings. Beyond this, and still in the same line, stands the church, roofless, but with the walls almost entire. These walls are beautifully built of slabs of slate, without mortar. Absolutely primitive in structure, the slabs are yet laid in tiers, or courses, with great regularity. The church is correctly oriented, and the east wall contains one small window, from the lower part of which extends to the south wall a slab of slate which a visitor of half a century ago conjectured to be the remains of an altar. This slab stands about five feet above the present level of the ground. At the west end of the south wall, outside, is lying a beautifully-carved stone, in two pieces, but the nature of the carving is indecipherable. It is evidently a stone centuries later than the building. To the right, at a distance, is a small ruined building which we did not examine – it is only a photograph which reveals it to be a building instead of a mass of broken rock: and to the left, also at a distance, is what seems to be a chapel, although it may be identical with what the late Dr Skene described as a kiln. As there is no trace of either bricks or mortar, it is difficult to account for a kiln. The building is approximately oriented, with an apse.
Away from this hollow, on a slope descending to the sea, are two “beehive cells.” These are of remarkable interest, built of stones without mortar. The part facing the sea is greatly broken down, and shows no trace of an entrance. On the opposite side the wall stands probably 10 feet high, and gives the impression that the two cells were under one roof. A photograph reveals markings suggesting that the entrance was on this side. On another part of the island, at the summit of a ridge, is the grave of Eithne, the mother of Columba, marked by a rough stone with a plain cross rudely engraved upon it, but with no inscription.
There is no very deep, mystery surrounding the history of the buildings which have thus been described —they are very early, and they are Celtic. Thus they are centuries older than any building at present existing upon Iona. The oldest building in Iona is not the Cathedral, but St Oran’s Chapel, which is not earlier than 1070, and not much later. It is practically identical in style and date with St. Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, and it is therefore mediaeval in date and Roman in ecclesiastical influence. The island of the saints has not been occupied since the monks left it. There is only one inhabited house in the whole group, and that is on Garbh Eileach. Dr Skene described the remains as “ecclesiastical buildings which we can identify with Columba’s monastery, the first which he founded after Iona, and which, fortunately for us, owing to the islands being uninhabited, not very accessible, and little visited, have not disappeared before the improving hand of man.”
Columba, known to the Celts as “Challum Chille”—Columba of the churches—is said to have made his first landing at Knapdale in Cantyre, after which he proceeded to the island of Oronsay, and thence to Iona. St. Brendan is said to have founded a monastery on Eileach an Naoimh about 545; but this was destroyed in 560. Columba is said to have re-founded it soon after his settlement of Iona, which is usually placed in the year 563. The buildings have absolutely nothing of what we generally understand by “architecture” about them; they are interesting purely from the fact that they project us further back into the Celtic Church than any others, probably to the very times of Challum Chille himself. The only element of doubt lies in the fact that the first Columban buildings on Iona were of wood and wattles; but wood and wattles would be difficult to find on Eileach an Naoimh, while stones are plentiful. It is not a vain imagining that the voice of Columba raised the Eucharistie Prayer and the Evening Psalm within the walls of that drystone church of which a portion of the altar yet remains.
The existence of the remains is known to some learned men, and a few have written about them. Still fewer have seen them. Comparing an account of a visit made by an enthusiast in 1852 with what the writer has seen himself, it is plain that half a century has made some in roads. It is now an almost forgotten shrine: in time it seems likely to be completely forgotten. And yet it is the most real and the greatest shrine of Columba and the Celtic Church in Britain.
Although the early medieval Irish saints are the usual focus of this blog, its title is ‘All the Saints of Ireland’ and thus by marking the centenary of the death of The Venerable Matthew Talbot, I am not straying from my brief. For by his ascetical lifestyle, Matt Talbot (May 2 1856-June 7 1925) has a particular link to the early Irish saints, one which Father James Cassidy, writing just a few years after Matt’s death, identified:
IN the golden days of her early monastic church Ireland could boast of an asceticism most probably unrivalled throughout the whole Christian world. Great austerities were a part of the daily life of the monk, and, because the monastic ideal governed the Celtic church, the monk demanded that the ordinary layman doing penance for his sins should do so in the most thorough fashion. Thus it came to pass that severe self-discipline became a marked feature of Irish Christian tradition and a virtue sorely needed in later days to maintain the faith in the land when the cross of persecution dwelt therein for centuries. Thanks to these facts, there is still in Ireland a clear recognition of the cross as something necessary and blessed in the Christian life.
Of the survival of this tradition of the Cross in modern days we have splendid proof in the life of MattTalbot. Though only a humble labourer far removed from the influence of conventual discipline, the record of his austerities bears comparison with the best of saintly anchorite or monk of old.
Accordingly we find him in the first days of his changed life never in the enjoyment of a full meal, and partaking of no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays or Saturdays. Night-time saw him stretch his weary limbs on a plank-bed with very scanty covering. And to add to the sacrifice of abstention from drink, he forsook the pipe which most manual workers love so much. All this, surely, was a respectable start on the way of the Cross for one whose day’s work made such a demand on his physical resources.
All this, however, was little compared with the sacrifices he made when he began to find his full spiritual stride. On Sundays he was content with one fairly substantial meal, or two very light ones. Dry bread and black tea was his fare for Mondays. Tuesdays and Thursdays were as rigorous, as Mondays, except for the taking of a little meat. Wednesdays excluded meat, but sometimes permitted a little butter. Fridays were days of full fast, whilst Saturdays and vigils of feasts added to rigid fasting the exclusion of milk. Lent he observed daily by two slight meals without meat, butter or milk. Every day in June witnessed a, similar fast in honour of the Sacred Heart….
…Profoundly, indeed, did he share in the sacrificial folly of the “King of Penitents ” – as a note of his expressed it- “who pass for fools in the opinion of the world.”
Rev. James F. Cassidy, ‘Matt. Talbot: A Great Penitent’. The Irish Monthly, 61 (No. 720), (Jun., 1933), 374–379.
Passionist Father Edmund of Mount Argus in Dublin, who wrote the foreword to Father Cassidy’s book Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory, commented in like vein:
The emergence of a figure like Matt Talbot in our days is an unique thing. In the jargon of modern psychologists, it is a spiritual atavism, a throw-back to days long passed away. It is equivalent to the apparition of the sixth-century hermit amidst the rush and bustle of to-day. Considered under this aspect, the figure of Matt Talbot has a two-fold significance.
He is in the great tradition of Gaelic spirituality. Despite the lapse of centuries, despite the vast change of conditions and circumstances, despite the vicissitudes of the race, Matt Talbot is spiritually akin to the great heroes of the ancient Irish Church. Their austerities were the austerities which he practised; St. Kevin of Glendalough, or St. Enda of Aran would recognise in him the essential outline of their own lives. The extraordinary nature of this thing is not at first obvious. The same truth appears at two ends of a tradition which has stretched-unobserved but imperishable-over an interval of a thousand years.
And this, moreover, has happened apparently without any conscious striving or deliberate imitation, for in the books used by Matt Talbot there are none which treat of the Saints of Ireland. This remarkable fact deserves prominence, for as Chesterton has well said, using a similar argument in favour of St. Francis of Assisi, “the tradition has preserved the truth.” …
But it is the mode of his being Catholic that lends such vital importance to his life. For Matt Talbot was a contemplative, one whose soul continually turned towards God, one whose mind was absorbed in God. The magnitude of this achievement has not, we think, been sufficiently recognised. By far the great majority of contemplatives, whether canonised or not, have been members of religious orders. Their lives were sheltered by the walls of monastery or convent, the distractions of the world were reduced to a minimum or eliminated altogether; they were helped by the good example of companions, and were assisted by assiduous direction and frequent spiritual conferences. Not so with Matt Talbot. For a cloister he had the busy streets of his native city; for a cell the back room of a tenement house; for companions men who had little appreciation of spiritual realities; for a place of retirement a shed in the corner of the timber-yard.
Rev. J. F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory (Newman Press, 1948), ix-xi.
Whilst I appreciate that for many people today it is Matt’s patronage of those who struggle with addiction which they find most compelling, for me it is what Fathers Cassidy and Edmund CP have identified above – the adoption by a layman of the modern era of the ascetical discipline more usually associated with the early monastic saints of Ireland. Unlike Saint Kevin, surrounded by the natural beauty of the monastic city of Glendalough, Matt was an urban hermit in a very different environment. I found Father Edmund’s contention that Matt had adopted this lifestyle without any conscious desire to imitate the Irish saints, particularly interesting. Mary Purcell in the appendices to her book Remembering Matt Talbot lists Lives of the Irish Saints among the tomes read by Matt and the Life of Saint Patrick by Father Morris, the Life of Saint Laurence O’Toole and The Ancient Irish Church by Father Gaffney among those lent to him by a friend. Whilst the Life of Saint Laurence O’Toole may well be that published in 1877 by Canon O’Hanlon, the Lives of the Irish Saints read by Matt may not be his multi-volume magnum opus but rather a series of penny pamphlets called Footprints of Ireland’s Saints issued by the Irish Messenger and issued in at least two small bound volumes with the title Lives of the Irish Saints. I have Volume II on my own bookshelves and given Matt’s fondness for this type of popular literature I wonder if this might have been the Lives of the Irish Saints collection which he read. In any case it remains true that books on the early Irish church and its saints form only a tiny fraction of the titles identified by Mary Purcell. Father Edmund’s point that Matt does not seem to have consciously read himself into adopting the austerities of historic Irish monasticism is therefore something to consider.
Another practice of Matt’s which Mary Purcell describes also struck a chord with me:
Several of his fellow-workers testified to a habit Matt had of keeping a pebble in his mouth – a small, smooth white pebble which he carried about with him. No one asked him why, nor did he volunteer any explanation.
but she went on to describe how the pebble was employed during the visits of a friend who enjoyed smoking his pipe whilst he and Matt discussed their latest reading:
When Mr Robbins called, Matt would ask him to take out his pipe and light up; the visitor did not like doing this as he thought it not quite right to enjoy in the other’s company a comfort of which Matt was depriving himself. But Matt would insist; “I have this” he would say going to the mantelpiece and fetching the pebble; “now, light up, John, and enjoy your smoke.” Then there were would follow a discussion of the last book read, while John Robbins puffed away at his pipe and Matt sucked meditatively on his pebble.
Mary Purcell, Matt Talbot And His Times: a New Authentic Life of the Servant of God (1954), 134.
The image of a man with a pebble in his mouth immediately brought to my mind the unusual Lenten discipline of early Irish saint Ultan Tua the ‘quiet man’ of Clane. The Martyrology of Donegal recorded on his December 22nd feast day: “This is the Ultan-Tua who used to put a stone in his mouth at the time of Lent, so that he might not speak at all.”
I will close with another aspect of Matt Talbot’s spirituality, perhaps one less familiar to people in Ireland. In his 1980 study of the tradition of ‘holy folly’ Father John Saward cited Matt as an exemplar of a ‘Fool for Christ’s sake’, saying:
Perhaps the most striking modern Irish holy man is Matt Talbot, ‘the Irish Worker’s Glory’, who was a fool for Christ’s sake in the classical sense.
He too noted that Matt:
embarked on a life of such heroism that it is difficult to believe we are describing a twentieth-century working man and not a fourth-century monk.
and he concluded:
Finally, there is his teaching on folly for Christ’s sake. Among the collection of tiny scraps of paper on which he wrote his thoughts and memorabilia, are the following:
Oh King of Penitents who pass for fools in the opinion of the world but very dear to you oh Jesus Christ.
O Blessed Mother obtain from Jesus a share of His Folly.
The Kingdom of Heaven was promised not to the sensible and the educated but to such as have the spirit of little children.
John Saward, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality, (Oxford University Press, 1980), 208-210.
Matt’s famous chains were discovered only when his body was being prepared at the Jervis Street Hospital morgue. The sister on duty that day, Sister Ignatius, gave this testimony:
I was called and went, along with a nurse and a hospital porter, to prepare the body for burial. As I was cutting away the clothes from his arms, my scissors struck something hard. It was his chains. I didn’t know what to make of it – whether he was a saint or what he was. In a few minutes the porter also discovered chains binding his body around the waist. I remember the porter said, “He’s either a madman or a saint.” (italics mine)
Rev. Albert H Dolan, O.Carm., We Knew Matt Talbot (Carmelite Press, 1948), 93-4.
The anonymous porter may not have been consciously aware of the tradition of holy folly but his ‘madman or saint’ comment summarized it in a nutshell.
On the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, November 6, 1931, just six years after Matt’s death, the Most Rev. Edward Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin announced the opening of the Informative Process for his Beatification. A prayer was also authorized, one rather different in tone from the prayer in current use which concentrates on Matt’s patronage of those struggling with addictions. It reads:
O Jesus, true friend of the humble worker, Thou hast given us in Thy servant Matthew a wonderful example of victory over vice, a model of penance and of love for Thy Holy Eucharist; grant, we beseech Thee, that we Thy servants may overcome all our wicked passions and sanctify our lives with penance and love like this.
And if it be in accordance with Thy adorable designs that Thy pious servant should be glorified by the Church, deign to manifest, by Thy heavenly favours the power he enjoys in Thy sight, Who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.
OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE 