January 3 is the commemoration of a seventh/eighth-century Abbot of Fahan in County Donegal, Cillene Ua Colla. The monastery of Fahan was founded by Saint Mura and various of his successors, including our saint, had the dates of their deaths noted in the Irish Annals. Canon O’Hanlon has this account of Abbot Cillene:
St. Cillin, or Cillene Ua Colla, Abbot of Fathan-Mura, now Fahan, County of Donegal.
[Seventh and Eighth Centuries.]—We find a festival, Cillini Mac h Colla, at the 3rd of January, in the “Martyrology of Tallagh.” In addition to this notice the “Martyrology of Donegal” mentions Cillin Ua Colla, abbot of Fathan-Mura, as having been venerated on this day. The name of this place is sometimes found written Athain and Othain in ancient records. A church was founded here so early as the sixth century by the great St. Columkille. St. Cilline, the descendant of Colla, was born most probably about the middle of the seventh century. The modern designation of his locality is Fahan, within the peninsula of Inishowen, in the county of Donegal. At present, it is said, the old church of Fahan Mura lies close to the eastern shore of Lough Swilly, in the barony of Inishowen, county of Donegal, and in an exceedingly picturesque situation within the ornamental glebe grounds. In the Annals of Ireland we have on record the death of Ceallach, son of Saran, abbot of Othan-mor or Fahan, A.D. 657. It seems likely the present saint did not succeed him as abbot for many years afterwards, as the death of St. Cillene Ua Colla is set down in the “Annals of the Four Masters,” at A.D. 720, on the 3rd of January. The “Annals of Ulster” place his death at A.D. 724, and the Martyrologists of Donegal seem to adopt this latter computation.
November 30 is the feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle and last week I attended a lecture by Scottish historian Michael Turnbull on Saint Andrew and the Emperor Constantine. It was a fascinating account of the links between Constantine’s vision of a cross in the sky and the adoption of the saltire as the symbol of Scotland due to the celestial visions of a ninth-century King of the Picts. There is also an Irish connection in the legends surrounding the coming of the relics of Saint Andrew to Scotland, which involve the Irish saint Riaghail of Mucinis (feast day October 16). He was caught up in the later medieval legend of a Saint Regulus or Rule, said to have brought the the relics of Saint Andrew the Apostle to Scotland. Nineteenth-century Bishop of Brechin, Alexander Forbes, recorded the legend in his 1872 work on the Scottish Kalendars:
The Regulus legend, as believed in Scotland, first occurs in the Colbertine MS. in the Bibliotheque Imperiale. There is also a legend, apparently of the early part of the fourteenth century, in the Harleian Collection in the British Museum, and the last form is that given in the Breviary of Aberdeen. With reference to these various forms of the legend, Mr. W. F. Skene has the following remarks :
“In comparing these three editions, it will be convenient to divide the narrative into three distinct statements.
“The first is the removal of the relics of S. Andrew from Patras to Constantinople. The Colbertine account states that St. Andrew, after preaching to the northern nations, the Scythians and Pictones, received in charge the district of Achaia, with the city of Patras, and was there crucified; that his bones remained there till the time of Constantine the Great, and his sons Constantius and Constans, for 270 years, when they were removed to Constantinople, where they remained till the reign of the Emperor Theodosius.
“The account in the MS. of the Priory of S. Andrews states, that in the year 345, Constantius collected a great army to invade Patras, in order to avenge the martyrdom of S. Andrew, and remove his relics; that an angel appeared to the custodiers of the relics, and ordered Regulus, the bishop, with his clergy, to proceed to the sarcophagus which contained his bones, and to take a part of them, consisting of three fingers of the right hand, a part of one of the arms, the part of one of the knees, and one of his teeth, and conceal them, and that the following day Constantius entered the city, and carried off to Rome the shrine containing the rest of his bones; that he then laid waste the Insula Tyberis and Colossia, and took thence the bones of S. Luke and S. Timothy, and carried them along with the relics of S. Andrew to Constantinople.
“The Aberdeen Breviary says that, in the year 360, Regulus flourished at Patras in Achaia, and was custodier of the bones and relics of S. Andrew; that Constantius invaded Patras in order to avenge the martyrdom of S. Andrew; that an angel appeared to him, and desired him to conceal a part of the relics, and that after Constantius had removed the rest of the relics to Constantinople, this angel again appeared to him, and desired him to take the part of the relics he had concealed, and to transport them to the western region of the world, where he should lay the foundation of a church in honour of the apostle. Here the growth of the legend is very apparent. In the oldest edition, we are told of the removal of the relics to Constantinople, without a word of Regulus. In the second, we have the addition of Regulus concealing a part of the relics in obedience to a vision; and in the third, we have a second vision directing him to found a church in the west. This part of the legend, as we find it in the oldest edition, belongs, in fact, to the legend of S. Andrew, where it is stated that, after preaching to the Scythians, he went to Argos, where he also preached, and finally suffered martyrdom at Patras; and that, in the year 337, his body was transferred from Patras to Constantinople with those of S. Luke and S. Timothy, and deposited in the church of the apostles, which had been built some time before by Constantine the Great.
“When I visited Greece in the year 1844, I was desirous of ascertaining whether any traces of this legend still remained at Patras. In the town of Patras I could find no church dedicated to S. Andrew, but I observed a small and very old-looking Greek monastery, about a mile to the west of it, on the shore of the Gulf of Patras, and proceeding there, I found one of the caloyeres or Greek monks, who spoke Italian, and who informed me that the monastery was attached to the adjacent church of S. Andrew built over the place where he had suffered martyrdom. He took me into the church, which was one of the small Byzantine buildings so common in Greece, and showed me the sarcophagus from which, he said, the relics had been removed, and also, at the door of the church, the spot where his cross had been raised, and a well called S. Andrew’s Well. I could find, however, no trace of S. Regulus.
“The second part of the legend in the oldest edition represents a Pictish king termed Ungus, son of Urguist, waging war in the Merse, and being surrounded by his enemies. As the king was walking with his seven comites, a bright light shines upon them ; they fall to the earth, and a voice from heaven says, ‘Ungus, Ungus, hear me, an apostle of Christ called Andrew, who am sent to defend and guard thee.’ He directs him to attack his enemies, and desires him to offer the tenth part of his inheritance in honour of S. Andrew. Ungus obeys, and is victorious.
“In the S. Andrews edition, Ungus’s enemy is said to have been Athelstane, king of the Saxons, and his camp at the mouth of the river Tyne. S. Andrew appears to Ungus in a dream, and promises him victory, and tells him that the relics will be brought to his kingdom, and the place to which they are brought is to become honoured and celebrated. The people of the Picts swear to venerate S. Andrew ever after, if they prove victorious. Athelstane is defeated, his head taken off, and carried to a place called Ardchinnichan, or Portus Reginae.
” The Breviary of Aberdeen does not contain this part of the legend.
” The third part of the legend in the oldest narrative represents one of the custodiers of the body of S. Andrew at Constantinople, directed by an angel in a vision to leave his house, and to go to a place whither the angel will direct him. He proceeds prosperously to ‘verticem montis regis id est rigmond.’ Then the king of the Picts comes with his army, and Regulus, a monk, a stranger from the city of Constantinople, meets him with the relics of S. Andrew at a harbour which is called ‘Matha,id est mordurus,’ and King Ungus dedicates that place and city to God and S. Andrew ‘ut sit caput et mater omnium ecclesiaram quae sunt in regno Pictorum.’ It must be remembered here that this is the first appearance of the name of Regulus in the old legend, and that it is evidently the same King Ungus who is referred to in both parts of the story. The S. Andrews edition of the legend relates this part of the story much more circumstantially. According to it, Regulus was warned by the angel to sail with the relics towards the north, and wherever his vessel was wrecked, there to erect a church in honour of S. Andrew. He voyages among the islands of the Greek sea for a year and a half, and wherever he lands he erects an oratory in honour of S. Andrew. At length he lands in ‘terra Pictorum ad locum qui Muckros fuerat nuncupatus, nunc autem Kilrymont dictus; and his vessel having been wrecked he erects a cross he had brought from Patras. After remaining there seventeen days or nights, Regulus goes with the relics to Forteviot, and finds there the three sons of King Hungus, viz. Owen, Nectan, and Finguine, who, being anxious as to the life of their father, then on an expedition ‘ in partibus Argatheliae,’ give the tenth part of Forteviot to God and S. Andrew. They then go to a place called ‘Moneclatu, qui nunc dicitur Monichi,’ and there Finchem, the queen of King Hungus, is delivered of a daughter called Mowren, who was afterwards buried at Kilrymont; and the queen gives the place to God and S. Andrew. They then cross the mountain called Moneth, and reach a place called ‘Doldancha, nunc autem dictus Chondrochedalvan,’ where they meet King Hungus returning from his expedition, who prostrates himself before the relics, and this place is also given to God and S. Andrew. They return across the Moneth to Monichi, where a church was built in honour of God and the apostle, and thence to Forteviot, where a church is also built. King Hungus then goes with the clergy to Kilrymont, when a great part of that place is given to build churches and oratories, and a large territory is given as parochia. The boundaries of this parochia can still be traced, and consisted of that part of Fife lying to the east of a line drawn from Largs to Nauchton. Within this line was the district called the Boar’s Chase, containing the modern parishes of S. Andrews, Cameron, Dairsie, Kemback, Ceres, Denino, and Kingsmuir; and besides this district, the following parishes were included in the parochia,—viz. Crail, Kiagsbams, Anstruther, Abercromby, S. Monance, Kelly, Elie, Newburgh, Largo, Leuchars, Forgan, and Logie-Murdoch.
” It is impossible to doubt that there is a historic basis of some kind for this part of the legend. The circumstantial character of the narrative is of a kind not likely to be invented. The place beyond the Moneth or Grampians, called Chondrochedalvan, is plainly the church of Kindrochet in Braemar, which was dedicated to St. Andrew. Monichi is probably not Monikie in Forfarshire, as that church was in the diocese of Brechin, but a church called Eglis Monichti, now in the parish of Monifieth, which was in the diocese of S. Andrews, and Forteviot was also in the diocese of S. Andrews.
“According to the account in the Breviary, Regulus, after the relics had been removed to Constantinople, takes the portion he had concealed, and sails with them for two years till he arrives ‘ad terram Scottorum,’ where he lands and enters the ‘nemus porcorum,’ and there builds a church, and preaches to the neighbouring people far and wide. Hungus, king of the Picts, sees a company of angels hover over the relics of the apostle, and comes with his army to Regulus, who baptizes him with all his servants, and receives a grant of the land, which is set apart to be the chief seat and mother church of Scotland.”—(Skene’s Notice of the Early Ecclesiastical Settlements at S. Andrews, in Proceedings Soc. Antiq. Scot. vol. iv. pp. 301-307.)
On November 12 we commemorate Saint Sinell of Cleenish island in County Fermanagh. The Martyrology of Gorman lists ‘Sinell, Mianach’s mighty son’ among the saints commemorated on this day, as does The Martyrology of Donegal. Yet Saint Sinell seems to have been a more important saint than these unremarkable calendar entries might suggest. Indeed, Father John Colgan recorded the name of ‘S. Senellus, Abbas Monasterii Cluain-inis in lacu Ernensi‘ on a list of The Twelve Apostles of Ireland in his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae [1]. This would place our saint among the elite group of students of Saint Finnian of Clonard, ‘tutor of the saints of Ireland’.
It seems too that Saint Sinell had a reputation as a teacher of monasticism in his own right. Whilst there is no Lifeof Saint Sinell extant, It is common for hagiographers to identify the monastic teachers who shaped the careers of the Irish saints. And just as Sinell is claimed to have been a pupil of Saint Finnian, so Saint Columbanus, according to his biographer Jonas, was initially taught by a monk called Sinilis or Senilis. Previous writers were confident that Sinell of Cleenish was the monk Sinilis, but the current generation of scholars are less certain. Unfortunately, Jonas does not name the place where Sinilis taught, recording only that after Columbanus left his home in Leinster he went to ‘a holy man named Senilis, who at this time was distinguished among his countrymen for his unusual piety and knowledge of Scripture’. Recent scholarly consensus has instead centred around the learned Sillán or Silnán, also known as Mo Sinu maccu Min, master of the computus and abbot of Bangor, the monastery which prepared Columbanus for his great European mission. He would appear to be a credible alternative given that the Hymn in Praise of the Abbots of Bangor describes Sillán as a ‘famous teacher of the world’. A third candidate though has been suggested by Dr Alex Woolf who writes:
….Jonas had introduced his readers to a venerable man and teacher, Sinilis, with whom Columbanus studied before entering into monastic profession at Bangor. Sinilis has been identified in the modern scholarship with a future Bangor abbot, Mo Sinu moccu Min (d. 610). An alternative identification, however, may be the Sinell (d. 603) who became bishop of Moville in succession to Uinnianus in 579.
In support of his suggestion Wolff notes that Saint Columbanus cited the correspondence of Bishop Uinnianus in his own works. He felt this might indicate a link between Columbanus and Moville, which in any case is not very far from Bangor. [2]
But the reputation of Saint Sinell of Cleenish as a monastic teacher is not solely dependent on a disputed link to Saint Columbanus. The Life of Saint Fintán Munnu records that:
6.
Thereafter Fintán departed to read with the wisest man in the whole of Ireland and Britain who was a strict abbot of a church by the lakes of Erne, and he stayed with him for 19 years, reading the Scripture, and there were nine other young men with him. And they were under a very strict [monastic] rule, such that they were not permitted to sieve the flour, but the flour with its chaff used to be mixed with water in a bowl and cooked over stones heated by fire, and this was their daily meal. [3]
This places Saint Sinell squarely in the mould of those sixth-century Irish monastic leaders who were distinguished not only for their learning but also for their ascetiscism.
Further testimony to the stature of Saint Sinell among the saints of Erne is provided by the Life of Saint Naile .
XIII. (29) So then there was convened a conference of meeting and consultation of the clerks of the district assuredly, and of the high saints of Lough Erne without doubt. And there came to attend it Tigernach the long-fair-sided, prompt to recite his hours; Ronan of the appropriate speech, graciously acute; Sinell of the mild appearance, prompt in genuflexion; ….
(33) …And the clerks asked Sinell the virtuous who without contradiction should perform the baptism, for he was bishop over the noble saints, and was the oldest of the freeborn clerks…. [4]
Writing in 1967 Mary Rogers said of Cleenish:
The island is large , containing 438 acres. … There is little on the island now to suggest the thriving monastic school of the sixth century. Here, Archdall tells us “Sinell, son of Manacus, or Maynacur, was abbot about the middle of the sixth century.” St. Sinell was a disciple of Finian of Clonard, and in his turn became the teacher of the great Columbanus, who studied Latin, the scriptures, perhaps Greek and Hebrew. Sinell was called “the wisest man in Ireland,” so it was not surprising that the apostle of Gaul and north Italy came here for the his early studies before starting on his great missionary career. The curriculum was wide, including grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, geometry and astronomy, and the rule was harsh. “The monks of Sinell, Abbot of Cleenish, were not allowed to sift their corn, but were compelled to mix the chaff with the corn and water in a basin, this mixture being cooked with stones, heated in the fire.” The strict fast of the monks was sometimes relaxed for guests, and it is possible that the students did not suffer the full rigours of the religious. Perhaps the very harshness of the rule attracted the ascetic Irish: St. Fintan (or Munnu, as he was sometimes called) lived on Cleenish with Sinell upwards of 18 years. When Columbanus began his European mission in 589, he cannot have had too many forebodings about future hardships, having the experience of the rule of Cleenish behind him!
One story of St. Sinnell, unconnected with the island, shows him in a more gracious light than has been shed by the account of his austere rule for his monks. The holy well dedicated to St. Patrick near Belcoo that flows out in two different directions, and was known for its cures of nervous and paralytic disorders, is said to have sprung up in answer to Sinell’s prayers. The “pattern” was revived here in 1955, visits to three bullaun stones, the old church and the holy well are paid in the course of the ritual, performed between the last Saturday in July and August 15th, the time associated with Lughnasa. [5]
There is another interesting reference to Saint Sinell and a holy well in the sources. In his contribution to a 2005 volume of studies on the diocese of Clogher archaeologist Cormac Bourke highlighted:
A shrine, now lost, which was by implication portable, is referred to in one of the surviving excerpts from a Clogher diocesan register complied in the 1520s. Called the Deargan, ‘red one’, it was said to have been used by St Sinell mac Manaig of Cleenish, County Fermanagh to prime a well. [6]
The entry from the Register of Clogher cited by Bourke makes clear that Saint Sinell ‘primed’ or prepared the well for its holy function by use of his shrine. Indeed the Register records not only the story of the well and the shrine, but also the tale of how Saint Sinell acquired his land:
There succeeded to him Bishop Sinell, in whose time here emerged the well of living water which is called Glais Deargan, called from glais and from deargan Sinyll, or called from clays (that is, a ditch) and deargann, because the Blessed Sinell having made a ditch for water placed his shrine, called deargann, in it and then at the saint’s prayer the living water issued which is called glais deargann and now issues and will issue until the Day of Judgment. The same Sinell also revived from the dead the daughter of the king of Airghialla and restored her alive to her father, for which reason her father gave to him and to the church the land which is commonly called Cairttha-Sinyll. To him, Sinell, is consecrated the church called Clainynis-Locha fa-Erne [Cleenish]….
Bourke wonders too if another artefact found in the vicinity of Cleenish might be associated, if not with our saint, at least with his island. In 1956 a wooden horn ‘shaped from a solid piece of yew, to which a mouthpiece and mounts of bronze are attached by rivets’ [8] was discovered during dredging of the Erne near to the church of Saint Senach at Derrybrusk, opposite Cleenish island. He offers an intriguing speculation about the horn’s possible purpose:
On Cleenish, on the side furthest from Coolnashantan/Derrybrusk, lay the church of Sinell mac Manaig, and it is not impossible that the horn was used at the river crossing to sound signals to a ferryman.
As support for this conjecture, Bourke cites a letter of 1517 written by the Papal Nuncio to the court of Henry VIII who noted ‘we sounded a horn and gave a signal with a white cloth tied to a pole’ as his method of alerting the ferryman whilst waiting to cross to Station Island at Lough Derg, County Donegal. [9]
It is a pleasing image to think of the peace of Lough Erne being broken by the sounding of this wooden horn when the monks of Cleenish needed to leave their island home.
Thus the evidence suggests that Saint Sinell of Cleenish, whether or not he was the teacher of Columbanus, had a reputation for the sanctity, learning and asceticism typical of monastic saints of the mid sixth-century. The Annals do not appear to record the date of death of Saint Sinell but do note that at the year 1100 ‘This year the church of Saint Sinell of Clain-iais was founded.’ This is interpreted by most commentators as referring to either a rebuilding or to a re-dedication of the original church of Saint Sinell.
Note: This post, first published in May 2026 replaces the original post on Saint Sinell from 2015.
Notes and References
[1] (The Acta Sanctorum Hiberniaeof John Colgan, facsimile edition, Dublin, 1948, p. 405).
[2] Alex Woolf, ‘Columbanus’s Ulster Education’ in Alexander O’Hara, ed., Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe (OUP, 2018), p.91.
[3] Roy Flechner, trans., Life of Saint Fintán, alias Munnu, abbot of Tech Munnu (Taghmon, Co. Wexford esearch.ucc.ie/celt/document/T201046.
[4] C. Plummer, Miscellanea Hagiographica Hibernica (Brussels, 1925), 110-114.
[5] Mary Rogers, Prospect of Erne – A study of the Islands and Shores of Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh (Belfast, 1967), 102-104.
[6] C. Bourke, ‘Medieval Ecclesiastical Metalwork from the Diocese of Clogher’ in H. Jefferies, ed., The Diocese of Clogher, (Dublin, 2005), p.27.
[7] K. W. Nicholls, The Register of Clogher, in Clogher Record, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1971/1972), pp. 361-431.
[8] John Purser, ‘Reconstructing the River Erne Horn’ in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Third Series, Vol. 61 (2002), pp. 17-25. The paper includes an interesting illustration from The Vespasian Psalter showing King David amongst a group of musicians, some of whom are playing exactly the same sort of horn as found in the Erne.
[9] Bourke, op.cit., p.33 ; Mary Purcell, ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory: Francesco Chiericati’s Letter to Isabella d’Este’, Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1987), pp. 1-10 at p.7.
OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE 