OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • Saint Evin of Monasterevin, December 22

    December 22 is the feast of Saint Evin, founder of Monasterevin, County Louth. Below is an excerpt from an early twentieth-century paper submitted to the Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society. The author was a member of the landed aristocratic class, for at this time it was commonplace for local antiquarian societies to enjoy the active patronage of the great and the good. In her article the Countess of Drogheda takes the story of Monasterevin up to the seventeenth century, but I have omitted the later history in order to focus on Saint Evin.  There is a link to the online source for the journal at the end of the post so if you wish to keep reading you can continue at the Internet Archive:

    MONASTEREVIN.

    By the COUNTESS OF DROGHEDA

    THE town of Monasterevin derives its name from the monastery founded there by St. Evin or Emhin in the sixth century. It is said that St. Abban had preceded St. Evin in remote times, and had founded a monastic house; but it was St. Evin who brought a number of monks from his native province of Munster, and the place which had previously been called Bos-Glas, which means the Green Wood, now came to be called Bos-Glas-na-Muimneachy or Bos-Glas of the Munster men.

    Colgan thus writes of St. Evin —

    “Saint Evin betook himself to Leinster, and at the bank of the River Barrow he raised a noble monastery, called in that age Ros-Glas, and which, from the number of monks who followed the man of God from his own country of Munster, was called Ros-Glas of the Munster men.

    This holy man was famous for many and great miracles, and the monastery on account of the reverence paid to its first founder, stood in so great honour with posterity, that it was held a most safe sanctuary, and no one presumed to offer violence or injury to the holy place, who did not soon afterwards suffer the severity of the Divine vengeance.”

    It was also said that after his death there was a bell belonging to St. Evin ” which was held in so great veneration that posterity were accustomed to swear on it as a kind of inviolable oath, and to conclude controversies by the virtue of this oath.”

    St. Molua of Clonfert (4th Aug.) speaks of ” having visited the Abbot of St. Evin in his monastery not far from the Barrow, which that most holy man, St. Abban, had originally founded.”

    The year of St. Evin’s death is not recorded anywhere; but his festival was held on the 22nd of December, and his death probably occurred in the sixth century. St. Evin wrote a Life of  St Patrick, partly in Latin and partly in Irish ; and it is said to contain many more details of St. Patrick’s life and mission than there are in any other Life of the Saint. In the Calendar of Angus he is called ” Pure Emhin from the brink of the dumb Barrow.” The well that springs at a little distance from the present mansion was in all probability originally St. Evin’s well.

    The precise period at which the original Monastery of St. Evin fell into decay is not known; probably it was amongst the many religious houses that suffered from the depredations of the Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries. The “Annals of Clonmacnoise,” at the paragraph chronicling the year 1002,
    well describes the work of destrnction perpetrated by these infidel hordes in these words —

    “The whole realme was overrunn by the Danes. The Churches, Abbeys, and other religious places were by them quite razed and destroyed, or otherwise turned to base and servile purposes.

    “Almost all the gentlemen of any account were turned out of their Lands. Yea, some of the best sort were compelled to servitude and bounden slavery. Indeed it was strange how men of any fashion could use other men as the Danes did use the Irish men at that time. But King Bryan Borua was a Salve to cure such sores: all the physick in the world could not help it elsewhere: in a short time he banished the Danes; made up the Churches and Religious houses; restored the people to their antient possessions, and, in fine, brought all to a notable reformation.”

    Some years later the monastery having again become ruined, it was refounded towards the close of the twelfth century by Dermod O’Dempsey, Lord of Offaly, as a Cistercian Monastery, and called Ros-Glas or de Rosea alle.

    The Charter of Foundation of the monastery was as follows : —

    “Dermot O’Dempsey, King of Offaly, to all his nobles, clergy, and laity, both present and to come. Greeting, I make known to you all, that I, Dermot O’Dempsey, King of Offaly, by the consent of Murdoch O’Conor have given and confirmed to God and the Monks of the B.V.M. of Rosglas, land on which to build a Monastery in honour of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, and of St. Benedict the Abbot, as a perpetual eleemosynary. These are the lands which I Dermot O’Dempsey have given and confirmed to the aforesaid Monks of Rosglas in remission of my Sins and of the Sins of my Parents, the site of the Monastery of Rosglas, and all the lands with their appurtenances, and with the men belonging to the same lands. All these I give and confirm to the aforesaid Monks, to be held as a free, pure, and perpetual eleemosynary for the health of my soul, and the souls of my predecessors. Wherefore I will and command that the aforesaid Church of Rosglas and the Monks and brethren serving God therein, may have and hold the aforesaid lands, with all their liberties, viz., in woods and plains, meadows and pastures, and morasses in waters and fisheries, in roads and paths, in ponds and mills, in turbaries, and all mountains and valleys, and in all other places and things appertaining to the same lands, free quit and solutias from any customs and exactions, and from all secular duty.

    Witnesses.

    “Nehemiah, Bishop of Kildare.
    Donatus, Bishop of Leighlin.
    Filan, the son of Filan.
    Flan O’Demesi.
    Hekinech O’Demesi.
    Donchad O’Demesi.
    Fin O’Demesi.
    Aed O’Demesi.
    Culballinuss O’Duin [O’Dunne].
    Congal O’Kelly
    Rocner Denoulla.
    Kelach mac Aulaf.”

    et alliis multis.

    “The Annals of the Four Masters” record the death of this Dernot O’Dempsey in the year 1193, and in 1199 it was mentioned that the Abbott of Ros-Glae “was at his request allowed by the General Chapter of the order to celebrate in his own house the Feast of St. Evin,” which shows that the original founder was still held in high veneration….

    The Countess of Drogheda, ‘Monasterevin’ in Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. IV (1903-1905), 231-244.

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  • Saint Finnian of Clonard – Tutor of the Saints of Ireland?

    2640. Thereafter the saints of Ireland came to Findian from every point to learn wisdom by him, so that there were three thousand saints along with him; and of them, as the learned know, he chose the twelve high bishops of Ireland. And the learned and the writings declare that no one of those three thousands went from him without a crozier, or a gospel, or some well-known sign; and round those reliquaries they built their churches and their monasteries afterwards. [1]

    Thus does the Irish Life of Saint Finnian, as preserved in the Book of Lismore, record the tradition of the master of Clonard as the ‘tutor of the saints of Ireland’ and commissioner of its ‘twelve apostles’. J. F. Kenney, in his classic study of the sources for early Irish history, commented:

    This became a fundamental idea of Irish hagiography and almost every saint living within a century of his time is represented to have been a pupil of the founder of Clonard. [2]

    But, bearing in mind that one of the first rules of hagiography is that it reflects the times of its writer rather than the times of its subject, how far back can this tradition actually be traced? The Life of Saint Finnian survives in both Irish and Latin versions, but within manuscript collections of a much later period than their sixth-century subject. The Latin Life is found in the fourteenth-century Codex Salamanticensis, the Irish Life in the fifteenth-century Book of Lismore. Other manuscript copies and variants of both are also extant. In the 1950s Kathleen Hughes undertook a series of studies of Saint Finnian [3] and argued that the Irish Life was earlier than the Latin, going back to an original of the ninth or tenth century. She believed it was compiled at Clonard by a monastic writer steeped in the history and traditions of his house and its founder. The Latin Life, whilst it may have originally been in circulation before the Anglo-Normans came to Ireland in the twelfth century, was reworked under their influence and in her view lacked the ‘primitive’ elements of the Irish. Contemporary scholar, Padráig Ó Riain, however, is unconvinced by this thesis and favours the view that the Irish Life could represent an adaptation of a Latin Life which is not itself early. Indeed, the composition of the Lives may owe less to a ninth or tenth-century monk of Clonard drawing on a body of proudly-remembered local tradition about his founder, and more to the orders of Augustinian canons founded in the twelfth century in Clonard and other locations associated with Saint Finnian. In this context, what Ó Riain describes as the

    ‘almost unholy haste with which Finnian is transported to south Wales, and shown to be on the best of terms with three of the principal saints of that area, David, Cadog and Gildas’ 

    would have played well with the Anglo-Normans, most of whom had family connections in that area. [4] The various Lives of Saint Finnian would require more systematic and extensive study before more definitive conclusions can be reached. It is interesting though to see that the Normans and the continental religious orders who followed in their wake, both of whom are presented as the destroyers of the spirit and legacy of the ‘Celtic church’ in popular myth, in this case may actually have been the people behind the preservation of some of those charming stories of our early native saints.

    Blog Links for Further Reading:

    On the blog I have posted a paper on the life of Saint Finnian here and an account of his monastic school here. There is also an introductory post on the Twelve Apostles of Ireland here. The illustration of the Clonard baptismal font has been taken from P.W. Joyce, A Smaller Social History of Ireland (1906), p.138.

    References:

    [1] W. Stokes, ed. and trans., Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford, 1890), 226.

    [2] J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical – An Introduction and Guide (reprinted edition, Dublin, 1979), 375-6.

    [3] The studies comprise the following:

    ‘Saint Finnian of Clonard’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 25 (1952), 76-78.

    ‘The Historical Value of the Lives of Saint Finnian of Clonard’, English Historical Review, 66 (1954), 13-27.

    ‘The Cult of Saint Finnian of Clonard from the Eighth to the Eleventh Century’, Irish Historical Studies, 9 (1954), 353-372.

    ‘The Offices of S. Finnian of Clonard and S. Cianán of Duleek’, Analecta Bollandiana, 73 (1955), 342-372.

    ‘Additional Note on the Office of S. Finnian of Clonard, Analecta Bollandiana’, 75 (1957), 337-339.

    These have been conveniently collected in a single volume issued by Variorum Reprints as Kathleen Hughes, Church and Society in Ireland A.D. 400-1200 (London 1987), edited by David Dumville.

    [4] Padráig Ó Riain, A Dictionary of Irish Saints, (Dublin, 2011), 319.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2016. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Brecan of Ardbraccan, December 6

    December 6 is the commemoration of a County Meath holy man, Saint Brecan of Ardbraccan. He seems to have been equated in some of the sources with a Saint Brecan of the Aran Islands and indeed there are at least ten saints who share the name.  Whether the Meath saint is the same individual as the Galway saint remains non-proven to me. The Aran saint’s feast day is on May 1, but Brecan, ‘Bishop of Ardbraccan’ is commemorated in the Martyrology of Donegal at December 6, as Meath diocesan historian, Father Anthony Cogan explains:

    THE Abbey of Ardbraccan, “Breacan, or Brecan’s height or hill”, was founded by St. Brecan, in the sixth or very early in the seventh century. St. Brecan was the son of Eochaidh Balldearg, prince of Thomond, and grandson of Carthen Finn, first Christian ruler of that territory. After having governed Ardbraccan for some time, he proceeded to the west of Ireland, and founded, on the great island of Arran, in the bay of Galway, the Church of Templebraccan, where he fixed his residence. He is said to have written some prophecies regarding the future wars of Ireland and the coming of the English. The exact year of his death is unknown, but it was probably in the sixth century. He was interred in his own church of Templebraccan, where his festival was celebrated on the 1st of May. In the Martyrology of Donegal he is called Bishop of Ardbraccan, and his festival is marked at December the 6th. The Martyrology of Tallaght commemorates him at May 1st. His tomb on which was an Irish inscription was discovered some years ago:

    “This monumental stone”, says Dr. Petrie, ” was discovered about forty years ago within a circular enclosure known as St. Brecan’s tomb, at a depth of about six feet from the surface, on the occasion of its being first opened to receive the body of a distinguished and popular Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, of the County of Galway, who made a dying request to be buried in this grave. Under the stone within the sepulchre there was also found, on this occasion, a small water-worn stone of black calp or limestone. . . . On the upper side is carved a plain cross, and around this, in a circle, the following simple inscription (Anglicised): ‘A Prayer for Brecan the pilgrim’”.

    This venerable relic is at present in Dr. Petrie’s possession. Ware makes St. Brecan flourish about 650. Dr. Petrie says he died early in the sixth century.

    Rev. A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath Ancient and Modern. Vol. I. (Dublin and London, 1862), 50-51.