OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • The Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in Ireland

    As September 29 is the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel I republish a 2009 post from my former blog which provides a sketch of the history of the feast in Ireland:

    Canon O’Hanlon has a brief account of the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in Ireland based on the surviving calendar entries for September 29:

    In the Church from a very remote date, the Festival of this Head of the Angelic Host had been observed with special solemnity. In Ireland, St. Oengus the Culdee has pronounced a distinguished eulogy on him, at the 29th of September, in the “Feilire”, thus translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Leabhar Breacc copy:

    ” At the fight against the multitudinous
    Dragon of our Michael stout, victorious, the
    soldier whitesided, hostful, will slay
    Wrathful Antichrist.”

    Allusion is made to his fight with the Dragon and Anti-Christ. The Scholiast has comments which state, that Michael was Prince of the Angels, and that as a soldier he was the champion whose name is explained by ‘sicut Deus’ in Mount Garganus. In recording his feast at this day, Marianus O’Gorman addresses the Archangel Michael as a powerful intercessor:

    “May the great Archangel Michael be a buckler to me against devils to protect my soul!”

    I was intrigued by these references to Saint Michael and the battle with the Antichrist and went on to do some further reading on the subject. One of the papers I read posed the question:

    The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed an extraordinary increase of interest in the archangel in western Europe. What explains the rapid growth of this cult during the period, especially in the years between 950 and 1050?

    The author gives this answer:

    1. The militancy of St Michael as a symbol for this turbulent epoch. This development of sacred militancy is unquestionably one of the principal reasons for the popularity of the saint.

    2. Another is the increasing prominence given to St Michael as a personal protector of every Christian soul, the angelic cura animarum. Some of this interest stems from the western discovery of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius in the 9th century, with his attention to the hierarchy of spirits and the function of the archangels as messengers. Yet some of it also arises from the Celtic tradition in which during the Middle Ages St Michael was seen as a soulmate, one responsible for conducting each person after death to Judgment. Out of this tradition would come the image of Michael with his scales weighing the souls at Judgment, an image that would later become so prominent on the western facade of Gothic cathedrals.

    3. A third aspect of the increasing importance of the archangel in this period is his apocalyptic role. How do we account for the growing interest in the apocalyptic Michael?…

    He then looked specifically at the cult of the Archangel in Ireland:

    As in so many other aspects of the Christian life of the early Middle Ages, Ireland seems also to have been a harbinger in its early interest in the cult of the apocalyptic Michael. A good example is found in the occurence of the feast of St Michael in 767. A terrifying thunder storm created a wave of panic in which the Irish, convinced the Last Judgment was about to occur, begged the archangel to intercede for them:

    ‘The fair of the clapping of hands [so called] because terrific and horrible signs appeared at the time, which were like unto the signs of the day of judgment, namely great thunder and lightning, so that it was insufferable to all to hear the one and see the other. Fear and horror seized the men of Ireland, so that their religious seniors ordered them to make two fasts, together with fervent prayer and one meal between them, to protect and save them from a pestilence, precisely at Michaelmas. Hence came the Lamhchomart, which was called the fire from heaven’ (Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters from the Earliest Period to the year 1616, ed. J O’Donovan, Vol I (Dublin 1851), pp 370-73.) The Annals of Ulster list the event under 771.

    The presence of Michael in Ireland seems more manifest in a number of ways in the 10th and early 11th centuries. The archangel was depicted with his scales on a high cross at Monasterboice. He also appears in the concluding portion of the great Irish epic of salvation history, the Saltaird, c.988. In this work of over 8,000 lines, which seems to have served as one of the foundations for the later medieval interest in the Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday, Michael will summon all to the Last Judgment:

    ‘The archangel will call a clear call over the clay of every man, upon Adam’s strong seed: all the many will arise”. (Lines 8229-32 of the Saltair na Rann).

    The growing importance of this archangel for the Irish is additionally confirmed by the fact that sometime in the period between 950 and 1044, the most famous site dedicated to him in Ireland had his name attached to it. The jagged peak jutting 700 feet almost straight up out of the Atlantic twenty miles off the south-west Irish coast became, not simply Skellig, but Skellig Michael.

    Daniel Callahan, The Cult of St Michael the Archangel and the “Terrors of the Year 1000” in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950-1050 by Richard Allen Landes, Andrew Gow, David C. Van Meter (Oxford Univ Press US, 2003)181-204.

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  • Saint Dairi the Widow, September 28

    September 28 is the feast of the interesting Saint Sinach Mac Dara, whose memory remains fresh among the people of the west coast of Ireland. He shares his feastday with a number of other Irish saints, among them a holy widow called Dairi. In the Irish language the word for a widow, baintreach, means literally ‘a woman who ploughs’, presumably because in the absence of her husband a widow is forced to undertake this arduous work for herself. Not that the Irish female saints were any strangers to hard work on the land, their Lives record that Saint Brigid herded sheep and churned butter and Saint Moninne’s community preserved her hoe as a sacred relic long after her death. What the circumstances of Saint Dairi’s life were I do not know, Canon O’Hanlon is able to bring us only a notice of her at this date in the Martyrology of Donegal:

    St. Dairi, a Holy Widow.

    We read in the Martyrology of Donegal that veneration was given to Dairi, a holy Widow, at the 28th of September. In the table, postfixed to this Martyrology, her name and distinctive state is Latinized Daria, Vidua.

     

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  • Saint Fintan, September 27

    September 27 is the commemoration of one of the many Irish saints who bear the name of Fintan (Fionntain). In his account of the saint below, Canon O’Hanlon makes the case for Saint Fintan of Howth and engages in an illustrated discourse on the remaining ruins at this County Dublin site, only to finish up by saying that he doesn’t have any evidence that this is the Saint Fintan commemorated today! I find this a charming, if occasionally irritating, feature of Canon O’Hanlon’s work and even if we cannot conclude that the Fintan named on the Irish calendars at September 27 is Saint Fintan of Howth, I welcome the opportunity to learn of him.

    St. Fionntain, or Fintan.

    Nothing particular appears to be known regarding this St. Fionntain, whose name occurs, in the Irish Calendars at this date. The entry of Fintan’s feast at the present day is noticed, in a line of Marianus O’Gorman’s Irish metrical Festilogy. [It is translated as follows by Dr. Whitley Stokes:” Fintan himself against plunderings.”] Among the many holy men having the same name, and without any other designation, it seems difficult to know when and where he lived. On the peninsula of Howth, in the vicinity of Dublin, and at a considerable elevation on the Hill, may be seen the small church or oratory of a St. Fintan. It is supposed to have been formed out of the “survivals” of at least two churches—it may be of more—one of which was of much greater dimensions than the present church, and the other was about the same size as the structure now extant. The present “St. Fintan’s” appears to stand partly on the site of that early oratory. An examination of the foundations shows, that they are laid at two levels. Evidence for such conclusions are seemingly afforded, by the peculiar stone dressings of the apertures, such as found in the door, small windows, and interior recesses. There is a gable over the western door, now covered with ivy, but having an ope for a bell in its upper part; while between it and the door-way, there is a recessed circular window. The whole of the interior had been plastered with mortar, and the exterior was dashed; but, both the mortar and the dashing have fallen off, leaving only an indication that the walls had been thus treated. At the western end are traces showing, that the ends of beams resting on the side walls supported a loft, while light was afforded only from the circular window already mentioned.

    A short distance from the church is the holy well of St. Fintan, but any tradition of the day when pilgrims resorted to it has not been preserved in the locality to give a possible clue, which might serve for the patron’s identification. An ancient cemetery surrounds the oratory, and there are still to be seen several tombs and graves. The scenery around St. Fintan’s Oratory has been described and admirably versified in a local legend, which introduces Aideen as the heroine, and records her rest under a remarkable Cromlech, in the adjoining beautiful demesne of Lord Howth. From the simple entry of his name, at this date, we do not feel warranted in connecting the present Fintan with this locality; neither is it established, on any fair grounds, that any other so called had been venerated at Howth. We find Fionntain merely set down in the Martyrology of Donegal, at the 27th of September, and the same notice is in the Irish Calendar, belonging to the Ordnance Survey Records.

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