OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Irish Saints

  • Saint Senan, May 5

    On May 5 the earliest of the Irish calendars, the Martyrology of Tallaght, records the name of a Saint Senan but without any further details. The seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, believed him to have been an abbot, as Canon O’Hanlon explains:

    St. Senan.

    The simple entry of Senan’s name is in the published Martyrology of Tallagh at this date; and, a similar record is found in the Franciscan copy. The Bollandists, who enter his feast, on the same authority, and at the 5th of May, have remarked, that Colgan sets him down as an Abbot; although, when or where he exercised such an office, and his acts, are not recorded. The Festilogy of St. Aengus, Marianus and Maguire are also quoted.  On this day was celebrated a festival in honour of Senan, as we find entered in the Martyrology of Donegal.
    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Siollan, the Deacon, May 4

    On May 4 the earliest Irish calendars commemorate a Saint Siollan, at whose name the scholiast in the Martyrology of Oengus has added, ‘this is Sylvanus the deacon’. In his account, Canon O’Hanlon claims that the 17th-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, sought to identify today’s saint with a monk of this name found in the Life of Saint Berach of Kilbarry. Although he does not mention it here, the same claim was made in relation to another saint of this name, commemorated on March 28. On that occasion I reproduced the relevant chapter from the Life and will do so again here, following O’Hanlon’s account of Saint Siollan, the Deacon, from Volume V of his Lives of the Irish Saints.

    St. Siollan, the Deacon.

    A festival was celebrated on this day, as we read in the Martyrologies of Tallagh and of Donegal, in honour of Siollan the deacon. This account is taken from the Felire Aenghuis. It has been thought by Colgan, that the present St. Sillan may be identical with one, mentioned in the Life of St. Berach, of Kilbarry, who is venerated, at the 15th of February. The Bollandists have the feast of St. Sillan entered, at this date; and they give a similar reference, as if her were identical with that monk of St. Berach, who had been killed by robbers, and who had afterwards resuscitated, through the miraculous agency of his venerable superior. This miracle was wrought, at a place called Rath-ond, which has not been identified. In the sixth or seventh century, St Sillan flourished, if the identification in question be admitted. This Natalis occurs, also, in the Kalendar of Drummond, as Sillan, Deacon, a holy confessor, at the 4th of the May Nones.

    From the Life of Saint Berach

    xxix. (85) On one occasion when Berach was in Cluain Coirpthe, he sent a monk on an errand to Rathonn, Sillen by name. Nine robbers fell in with him, who had come from the East of Tethba to ravage in Connaught, and they killed the monk, and went between his head and his body. This was revealed to Berach, and he proceeded quickly to seek them, and found them (standing) over the corpse. When the robbers saw Berach, they resolved forthwith to kill him, and seized their spears with that intent. Their hands stuck to their spears, and their spears stuck to the rock near them, and the marks of their butt-ends will remain on it till doom. (86) They did penance, and said to Berach: ‘Do not deprive us of heaven, and we will do all thy will, O Clerk,’ Berach then spared them, and said to them: ‘Fit the head to the trunk’; and they did so, And Berach took a rush from a rushy pool on the bank hard by, and made a prayer over it, and fitted it round the throat of the corpse, and he arose forthwith; and hence (these rushes) are (called) ‘Berach’s rushes’ till doom, And Berach left great grace upon them, and (as a doom) to the robbers that their seed should never exceed nine, and that there should always be a servitor of them in Cluain Coirpthe, and that as long as there should be one, there should only be one man of them in succession to another. And this is what is still fulfilled, and will be fulfilled till doom. And a servitor went with Berach, and thus they parted.

  • Saint Sairnait of Aidhne, May 3

     

    On May 3 we commemorate an Irish holy woman, Sairnait, anglicized as Sourney, who flourished in the County Galway area. Saint Sairnait was related to the family of Saint Colman mac Duagh, and so the account of her below comes from the diocesan history of Killmacduagh by Father Jerome Fahey:

    St. Sairnait.

    We are expressly told that St. Sairnait (St. Sourney) is of the race of Eoghan Aidhne. She was fourth in descent from Eochaid Breac, father of Eoghan Aidhne. She was

    “Daughter of Aedh,
    Son of Seanach,
    Son of Eoghan Aidhne,
    Son of Eochaid Breac,
    Son of Dathy.”

    The date of her birth is not given; but by comparing her genealogy with that of St Colman Mac Duagh, which shall be hereafter given, it will be seen that she stands the same number of degrees from their common ancestor, Eochaid Breac, as does Cobhtach, whose son Conal was great-grand-father of St. Colman Mac Duagh. Hence it may be fairly assumed that Cobhtach and St. Sourney were contemporaries. And as Cobhtach’s father fought in the battle of Claonloch, A.D. 531, we can justly assume that St. Sourney belonged to the middle of the sixth century. She was born of the same princely tribe of which St. Colman was born later in the same century. She is identified by O’Donovan as the same female Saint who is now “corruptly called St. Sourney, to whom there are wells dedicated in the districts of Aidhne, and whose church still stands in ruins in the great island of Aran, in the Bay of Galway.” And we are told by O’Flaherty’s learned editor that “this church is held in the greatest veneration by the islanders.”

    But there is more to commemorate and honour the name of St. Sourney in Aidhne than the holy wells to which O’Donovan refers. St. Sourney’s Church may still be seen in a fair state of preservation at Dromacoo, in the present parish of Ballindereen, at a distance of about three miles and a half from Kinvara.

    Rev. J. Fahey, The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh (Dublin, 1893), 32-34.Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.