OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Irish Saints

  • Saint Uncan, August 21

    On August 21 Canon O’Hanlon brings yet another obscure saint to our attention – Saint Uncan:

    St. Uncan or Unchan Tughneda.

    No doubt, from his early days, the ambition of this saint received a right direction. Yet those and his subsequent years are buried in obscurity. According to the published Martyrology of Tallagh, veneration was given to Unchan Tughneda, at the 21st of August. It seems a difficult matter to identify his place, at present, or to find the time when he flourished. The simple entry, Uncan, appears in the Martyrology of Donegal, at this same date. In life, he must have been respected, and his time must have been greatly spent in prayer for himself and others.

     

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  • Saint Rónán, August 18

    August 18 is the feast of Saint Rónán, a name borne by a number of Irish holy men, most of whom are obscure. Pádraig Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints records that the name is derived from rón, a seal. Canon O’Hanlon, in his account below, covers the dearth of information about the August 18 Rónán by diverting us to the island of Iona. As he so often does, however, he builds us up to embrace a possible Scottish connection only to let us down by admitting that there is no actual evidence to connect our saint of the day with the Rónán commemorated on Iona. We do get a charming sketch as compensation though:

    St. Ronan.

    There are several saints bearing this name, included in the Irish Calendars; but of most, we have nothing left to determine their identity or period, or even the localities with which they were respectively connected. At the 18th of August, the Martyrology of Donegal registers a festival in honour of Ronan, having in like manner, no further designation. In Scotland, also, this name appears to have been known, and it is found as a compound word in local denominations. On the east side of Iona, there is an old church, Tempul Ronain, and a village at a landing place, called Port Ronan, a little to the south of the cathedral and chief group of antiquities there. Tempul Ronain was formerly a parish church, dependent on the Monastery of Iona. It had a nunnery connected, in which several prioresses are said to have been buried. Towards the close of the last century, the nunnery church was quite entire, one end of it being arched and very beautiful; then also stood the parish church entire, but tottering. This was a building about the size of St. Oran’s chapel, and north-east of the nunnery, but inside of its enclosures. It is not known, however, to which of the saints named Ronan, this place had been dedicated.

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  • Saints Marinus and Anianus, August 16

    Canon O’Hanlon mentions in Volume 8 of his Lives of the Irish Saints at August 16 that the seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, had intended to publish an account of a saintly duo, Marinus and Anianus on this date. Sadly, he died before he could do so. Canon O’Hanlon did not know of this pair, which is surprising since his Anglican contemporary, the scholarly Bishop William Reeves with whose work O’Hanlon was certainly acquainted, delivered a paper on them to the Royal Irish Academy in 1863. Their accepted feast day is November 15 so on what basis Colgan assigned them to August 16 is not clear. The pair were seventh-century missionaries to Bavaria, Marinus, a bishop and his companion Anianus of a lesser ecclesiastical rank. Both were martyred, there is some interesting speculation on the identity of their ‘Vandal’ attackers here. I will, however, hold over the Reeves paper until November 15, he too has some interesting speculations to offer on the original Irish names that might lie behind the Latinized forms in which they have come down to us. For now, Canon O’Hanlon has to admit defeat:

    Saints Marinus and Anianus.

    At the 16th of August, Colgan intended to have published the Lives of Saints Marinus and Anianus, as we learn from the posthumous list of his Manuscripts. Elsewhere, I have not been able to find any account, that might serve to explain their connection with Irish hagiology.

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