OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Female Saints

  • Saint Mocholla, March 23

    March 23 sees the recording of a number of obscure female saints on the Irish calendars. Along with an elusive Saint Lasair and the Daughters of Feradach, we also find a Saint Mocholla.  I find this interesting because Mocholla is normally regarded as one of the forms of the name Colum, which is a male name. Even more curious is the fact that we have a female Saint Columba recorded two days hence on March 25. Canon O’Hanlon can only produce a single sentence on today’s holy lady:

    St. Mocholla, Virgin.

    This day, the Martyrology of Donegal, as also the Bollandists,  have on record a festival, in honour of St. Mocholla, Virgin.

    All I can add is that her name is also recorded in the lovely verse of the Martyrology of Gorman as mo Cholla chaemh chruthgel, ‘my Colla, dear, white-formed’ but is missing from the earlier martyrologies of Oengus and Tallaght.

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  • Saint Beoin, February 1

    February 1 is of course the Feast of Saint Brigid, but one our patroness shares with a number of other holy women, something to which Canon O’Hanlon alludes in his entry for Saint Beoin:

    St. Beoin or Beon, Virgin. 

    It seems somewhat remarkable, that so many virgins are venerated in our calendars, on the festival of the greatest among Irish female saints. The feast of Beoin, or Beon, virgin, is entered in the Martyrologies of Tallagh, and of Donegal, as having been celebrated on this day, to which her name is referred. This special form of name is unique in our calendars.

    I attempted to find out more about this saint without success. Her name is also recorded in the 12th-century Martyrology of Gorman, with a note ‘virgin’. She does not appear in the modern authoritative reference, Ó Riain’s 2011 A Dictionary of Irish Saints, where a number of saints sharing the name Beoán are listed but all of these are male. So it would seem that the name of a holy woman Beoin is preserved in the Irish calendars, but she is yet another obscure Irish saint about whom nothing else is recorded.

    Note: If you would like to have a reminder of the life and career of Saint Brigid, there is a new post for the feast on my other blog, Trias Thaumaturga, here.

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  • Saint Gema of Riacc Innse, September 18

    The name of an obscure Irish female saint is found in some of the Irish calendars at September 18. As Canon O’Hanlon explains below, the name of Gema of Riacc Innse is found in the Martyrology of Tallaght and in the Martyrology of Gorman. Her name is absent though from the Martyrology of Oengus and from the Martyrology of Donegal:

    St. Gema, Virgin, of Riacc Innse. 

    We find a festival registered in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 18th of September, in honour of Gema, Virgin, of Riacc Innse.  In the Martyrology of Marianus O’Gorman, at the same date, the entry of Gemma is found. Her place and period seem to be unknown.
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