OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Saints of Wicklow

  • The Hymn of Saint Sanctain

    May 9 is one of the feast days of Saint Sanctán (Santán, Sanctáin) who, despite being hailed as ‘Bishop Sanctáin the famous’ in The Martyrology of Oengus, remains something of an enigma. Tradition claims that he was a Briton (Welsh) by birth who came to Ireland with his brother Madog (Madoc, Matoc) and credits him with the authorship of a Hymn beginning ‘I beseech the wonderful King’. This hymn was one of the early medieval sources rediscovered during the nineteenth century cultural revival. The version found in the Irish Liber Hymnorum was published at the end of the century and has been posted at the blog here, but below is an 1868 paper from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which had been founded three years earlier by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen. The article is unattributed but discusses the saint and his hymn using the text published by the editor and translator Whitley Stokes, who brought so many early medieval manuscripts to the attention of the wider Irish public. The author starts off somewhat confusingly by trying to claim a Cornish origin for a Saint Sennan, who is not actually our Saint Sanctain at all, neither is he the reputed brother of Saint Patrick. However, we soon move on to the work of the seventeenth-century hagiologist Father John Colgan who lays out the Irish cult of Saint Sanctán and places it in Leinster. Pádraig Ó Riain agrees, locating our saint at two main sites – Ceall Easpaig Shantáin (the church of Bishop Santán) in the parish of Tallaght, County Dublin and at Killalish (Ceall Dá Lis) in the parish of Kilranelagh, County Wicklow. Interestingly, the Dublin site is now known as Saint Anne’s Chapel, our saint having given way to Saint Anne, the grandmother of Christ. Ó Riain also argues that a northern church of Ceall Santáin in County Derry also represents the cult of our saint as does the parish of Santon in the Isle of Man.  There too Santán became confused with Saint Anne. So, overall, this ‘illustrious father, angel-soldier of bright, pure fame’ remains a rather intriguing saint:

    HYMN OF ST. SANCTAIN.

    ST. SANCTAIN was a native of Britain, and is supposed by some to be the same as St. Sannan, who was brother of our apostle, St. Patrick. The martyrologies, however, when commemorating St. Sanctain, are silent as to this fact; they are careful to mention that he was brother of the pilgrim, St. Matoc; and did any such exist, they would assuredly not have failed to refer to his relationship with our apostle. Their statements moreover as to his family and parentage are quite at variance with the ancient documents connected with St. Patrick’s life. There is in Cornwall a small port town and parish named from St. Sennan, and tradition says that this saint went thither from Ireland, and having died there in his hermitage, a church was erected over his remains. Capgrave too, in his Life of St. Wenefreda, states that this holy virgin was interred there prope Sanctum Sennanum. It is not improbable that this was the Sanctain who composed the hymn which we now publish.

    There can be no doubt that in the first ages of our faith the southern districts of England were a favourite resort of Irish saints, and Mr. Blight, in his description of the Cornish churches, writes, that “in the latter part of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century, a numerous company of Irish saints, bishops, abbots, and sons and daughters of kings and noblemen, came into Cornwall, and landed at Pendinas, a peninsula and stony rock where now the town of St. Ives stands.

    Hence they diffused themselves over the western part of the county, and at their several stations erected chapels and hermitages. Their object was to advance the Christian faith. In this they were successful, and so greatly were they reverenced, that whilst the memory of their holy lives still lingered in the minds of the people, churches were built on or near the sites of their chapels and oratories and dedicated to Almighty God in their honour. Thus have their names been handed down to us. Few of them are mentioned in the calendars or in the collections of the lives of saints, and what little is known of them has been chiefly derived from tradition”. He then mentions amongst the Irish saints whose memory is thus venerated there, St. Buriana, “a king’s daughter, a holy woman of Ireland”, St. Livinus, and our St. Sennen, “an Irish abbot, who accompanied St. Buriana into Cornwall”, St. Paul, St. Cheverne (i.e. Kieran), St. Breaca, St. Germoe, and others.

    Colgan, speaking of St. Sanctain, says: “Sanctain, a bishop, by birth a Briton, is honoured on the 9th of May, in the church of Killdaleas, in Leinster, according to the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Festologies of Aengus and Marianus: Samuel, a king of Britain, was his father, and Drechura, daughter of Muiredhac Muinderg, king of Ulster, was his mother”. The Martyrology of Aengus, preserved in the Leabhar Breacc, thus commemorates our saint at the 9th of May, “Bishop Sanctain of good repute”; and the gloss adds:

    “i.e., he was of Kill-da-leis, as Aengus says: and I know not where Kill-da-leis is: and to him belongs Druimlaighille in Tradraighe”.

    Another gloss adds : —

    “i.e., Bishop Sanctain was the son of Samuel Chendisel (low headed): Dectir, daughter of Muiredach Muinderg (red-necked), was his mother: as was prophesied:

    Bishop Sanctain is my beloved,
    The son of Samuel Chendisel,
    Dectir was his mother without stain,
    The daughter of Muiredach Muinderg”.

    It is not easy to fix with certainty the site of the church of Kill da-leis. Colgan tells us that it was in Leinster; and probably it was the present parish of Kildellig, in the barony of Upper Ossory, in the Queen’s County. In the MS. Visitation Book of Dr. James Phelan, appointed Bishop of Ossory in 1669, is preserved a list of the Patrons of the Churches of the Diocese, and in the deanery of Aghavoe we meet with this parish church of Kildelyg, and its patron is marked “Sanctus Ernanus sen Senanus, Abbas”. This can be no other than our St. Sannan, or Sanctain. The memory of St. Sanctain is also cherished in the very ancient church, now commonly called “St. Anne’s”, in the present parish of Rathfarriham: in the Register ” Crede mihi” written in the thirteenth century, it is called Killmesantan: and we learn from the Repertorium Viride that it retained the same name in 1532. In a valuation of 1547, it is called Templesaunton.

    The introduction to the hymn in the Liber Hymnorum is as follows:

    “Bishop Sanctain composed this hymn, and on his way from Cluain-Irard (Clonard) to Inis-Madoc he composed it. He was moreover a brother of Madoc, and both were Welshmen. Madoc came into Erin prior to bishop Sanctain. The cause of the composition of this poem was that he might be preserved from his enemies, and that his brother might admit him amongst his religious in the island. At that time he was ignorant of the Irish language (Scoticam linguam usque ad hanc horam non habuit), but God miraculously granted it to him. The time of its composition is uncertain”. (MS. St. Isidore’s, pag. 41).

    In the Martyrology of Donegal, the feast of St. Sanctain is thus registered on the 9th of May: “Sanctan son of Samuel Ceinnisel, bishop of Cill-da-les: Deichter, daughter of Muireadhach Muinderg, king of Uladh, was his mother, and the mother of Matoc the pilgrim”. On the feast of St. Matog (25th of April) the same is repeated: “Matog, the pilgrim. Deichter …… was his mother, and the mother of bishop Sanctan”.

    The only other document connected with bishop Sanctain which we have been able to discover, is the following short poem in his honour, which is added in the Roman MS. of the “Liber Hymnorum” immediately after his hymn:

    Bishop Sanctan, illustrious among the ancients,
    Angel-Soldier of pure, bright fame;
    My body is enslaved on Earth,
    May he receive my soul in Heaven.
    Offer a prayer for me, O Mary!
    May the mercy of the mystery be unto us;
    Against wounding, against danger, against suffering,
    O Christ! afford us thy protection,
    I implore the noble, everlasting King;
    May the Only-Begotten of God plead for us;
    Against sharp torments may
    The Son who was born in Bethlehem defend me.

    …..As regards the date of St. Sanctain’s hymn, it cannot be fixed with accuracy, as we are ignorant of the year of the saint’s demise. It seems however certain, that he flourished in the beginning of the sixth century. The title of illustrious among the ancients, given to him in the poem just cited, brings him back to the first fathers of our Church: the special archaic forms of his ‘difficult hymn’, as Mr. Stokes justly calls it, point to the same period, whilst his connection with St. Madog cannot be verified in any other age. There are many saints indeed who bear a similar name in our calendar; but there is only one in whom the epithet of Madog the pilgrim is verified, viz., the St. Cadoc, who holds so distinguished a place among the saints of Wales. He, too, was the son of a British prince, whilst, as Colgan writes, “he is justly reckoned among the Irish saints, as his mother, his instructors, and many of his relatives, were Irish, and he himself lived for some time in our island” (Acta SS. page 159). This distinguished antiquarian further tells us that he “is the same as St. Mo-chatoc”, a disciple of SS. Patrick and Fiecc, as we have seen in the March number of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. Thus we have a clue to the Inis-Matog, in which St. Sanctain wished to take up his abode with his holy brother: for, St. Mochatoc, as we learn from his life, chose Inis-fail for his monastery, which no doubt was in after times from the name of this great founder styled by the religious Inis-Madoc.

    Hymn of St. Sanctain.

    I beseech the wonderful King of Angels,
    For his is the name that is mightiest;
    God be with me on my track, God on my left,
    God before me, God on my right.

    God to help me, O holy invocation!
    Against every danger that I encounter;
    Let there be a bridge of life under me,
    The blessing of God the Father over me.

    May the Noble Trinity awaken him,
    For whom a good death is not in store.
    The Holy Spirit, the Strength of Heaven
    God the Father, the great Son of Mary.

    May the great King, who knows our crimes,
    God of the noble sinless world,
    Be with my soul against every sin of falsity,
    That the torment of demons may not touch me.

    May God repel every sadness from me;
    May Christ relieve my sufferings;
    May the Apostles be around me,
    May the Trinity of witness come to me.

    May a flood of mercy come from Christ,
    Whose wounds are not hidden (from us):
    Let not death touch me,
    Nor bitterness, nor plague, nor disease.

    Let not a sharp cast touch me
    Apart from God’s Son, who gladdens and who mortifies:
    Let Christ protect me against every iron-death,
    Against fire, against the raging sea.

    Against every death-pool that is dangerous
    To my body, with awful storms,
    May God at every hour be with me,
    Against the wind, against the swift waters.

    I will utter the praises of Mary’s Son,
    Who battles our white battles,
    May God of the elements answer;
    A corslet in battle shall be my prayer.

    Whilst praying to God of the Heavens,
    Let my body be enduring penitent,
    That I may not go to awful Hell
    I beseech the King whom I have besought.
    I beseech, etc.

    P.S. Since this article was printed we happily learned that the three strophes given at pag. 320, though not printed by Mr. Stokes, were in reality preserved in the Liber Hymnorum, T.C.D. As this MS. presents some very important readings, we here insert its text:

    Bishop Sanctain, illustrious father,
    Angel-soldier of bright, pure fame;
    My body being freed on earth,
    May he receive my soul in Heaven.
    Offer a prayer for me, O Mary!
    That the heavenly mercy may be shown to us:
    Against wounding, against danger, against suffering,
    O Christ, afford us thy protection.
    I implore the noble, everlasting king;
    May the Only-begotten of God plead for us;
    Against sharp torments, may
    The Son who was born in Bethlehem defend me.

    THE IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD, APRIL, 1868, 317-324.

     

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  • Saint Kevin of Glendalough, June 3

    Míl Críst i crích nÉrenn,
    ard na-ainm tar tuind tretan,
    Cóemgen cáid cáin cathair,
    i nGlinn dá lind lethan.

    A soldier of Christ into the border of Erin,
    a high name over the sea’s wave:
    Coemgen the chaste, fair warrior,
    in the Glen of two broad loughs.
    Thus does the Martyrology of Oengus record the feast of Saint Coemgen (Coemghen, Caoimhghin, Kevin) of Glendalough on June 3rd. Whilst Saint Oengus has devoted his entire quatrain for the day to Saint Kevin, the prose Martyrology of Tallaght simply records Caemgin ab Glinne da Locha, Kevin, abbot of Glendalough. Saint Marianus O’Gorman starts his entries for the day with just the saint’s name Caemgen, but the entry in the seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal incorporates many of the traditions which had grown up around Saint Kevin in the intervening centuries. It also references the saint’s genealogy which places Saint Kevin among the people of the Dál Messin Corb, who controlled the Leinster kingship in the fifth century.
    Despite being one of the most well-known and well-loved of Irish saints, remarkably little historical information has survived about Saint Kevin. In his classic study of the sources for early Irish Christianity, J.F. Kenny wrote:
    GLENN-DÁ-LOCHO (GLENDALOUGH) AND ST. COEMGEN

    Glenn-dá-locho,”Valley of two lakes” (Glendalough), a lonely and picturesque valley in the midst of the mountains of Wicklow, contains some of the most noteworthy monuments of pre-Norman ecclesiastical architecture in Ireland. These, and the many references in the annals and elsewhere indicate that Glendalough was an important centre of Irish religious life from the sixth to the twelfth century. The reputed founder of the monastery of Glendalough was Coemgen, or Coemghen (anglice Kevin), who was, we are told, of the royal race of Leinster. He retired to the glen to lead a hermit’s life, and the disciples who gathered around him formed the monastery. The death of Coemgen is entered in the Annals of Ulster under 618 and 622, but the record is doubtful. He is given an age of one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty years, which may be a misunderstood chronological datum.
    There are five versions of the Life of Coemgen. The first, in Latin, is quite extensive. The second is much shorter, being an abbreviated text prepared at a late date for lectionary or homiletic use in some monastery. The Irish texts are late, and are not closely related to the Latin. Plummer’s conclusions regarding these documents may be summarised as follows: Version iii is an incomplete and somewhat careless summary of an earlier Life; Version iv is a composite production, based in part on material similar to that used by iii; Version v is derived mainly, but not entirely, from iv. The date of the first version seems to be the tenth or eleventh century.
    J F Kenny, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (1929), 403-4.
    The three Irish Lives of Coemgen translated by the Rev. Charles Plummer in his Bethada Náem Nérenn collection are available to read through the Internet Archive here. His edition of the Latin text of the Vita Sancti Coemgeni can also be found there. All of the surviving Lives portray Saint Kevin as a strict ascetic in the tradition of the Desert Fathers who relishes solitude, subsists on herbs and follows a strict programme of ascetical practices, praying whilst up to his waist in the waters of the lough, praying crois-fhigill, ‘cross-vigil’, where the arms are outspread in imitation of Christ’s position on the cross and sleeping in a cave. Scholar A.P. Smyth also notes:
    The hagiographical lore relating to Kevin living in the tree-tops and praying in the trees owes something to the motif of the wild man in early Irish literature, as well as to the stylite movement among ascetics in Syria  and elsewhere in the Near East.
    A.P. Smyth, ‘Kings, Saints and Sagas’ in K. Hannigan and W. Nolan eds., Wicklow – History and Society – Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1994), 52.
    Given these connections to the traditions of the Desert Fathers, it is perhaps no surprise to see that on the twelfth-century List of Parallel Saints, which equates Irish saints with those of the Universal Church, Saint Kevin is given as the equivalent of Saint Paul the Hermit. This third-century Egyptian saint, hailed as the first hermit, actually made his way onto the Irish calendars at January 25 as well as having a cameo role in the Navigatio of Saint Brendan. I have previously written about this here.  Saint Kevin’s ascetical reputation is also reflected in the hymn of Saint Cuimin of Connor on the characteristic virtues of the Irish saints. In telling us what Saint Kevin loved he wrote:
    Caoimhghin loved a narrow cell,
    It was a work of mortification and religion,
    In which perpetually to stand,
    It was a great shelter against demons.
    The temptation of a hermit by a demon in female form is also a topos found in the traditions of the Desert Fathers. The Latin Life depicts Saint Kevin as repelling the unwanted advances of his temptress by arming himself with the sign of the cross and then striking her with bundles of nettles, after which, in true hagiographical fashion, she sees the error of her ways and commits to a life of sanctity.
    In time however, the solitary ascetic of the Upper Lake attracted a community around him and moved to the Lower Valley to found his monastic civitas. As is usual in hagiography, the establishment of any new monastic site requires some supernatural intervention. Canon O’Hanlon, in Volume V of his Lives of the Irish Saints, narrates the story of how Saint Kevin was persuaded to make this move, according to the Latin Life:

    An Angel of the Lord came to St. Kevin and said: “O saint of God, the Lord hath sent me with a message, that you may be induced to go to a place he hath appointed for you, eastwards from the lesser Lake. There you shall be among your brethren, and it shall be the place of your resurrection.”

    Saint Kevin, however, is initially reluctant to move saying:

    “If it would not displease the Lord,  I should wish to remain to the day of my death in this place, where I have toiled for Christ.”

    So the angel adds a further inducement:
    The Angel answered: “If  you, with your  monks, go to that place  indicated,  many sons of light shall  be always in it and after your time, the monks shall have a sufficiency of earthly possessions, and many thousands of happy souls shall arise with you, from that place, to the kingdom of Heaven.”

    After further reassurance about the future fame and prosperity that Glendalough will enjoy and with his objections to the stoniness of the new proposed site dealt with by the angel, Saint Kevin and his heavenly advisor ‘walked upon the waters of the Lake, towards a locality indicated’. Then:

    Not long afterwards, the same Angel appeared to St. Kevin. He said: “In the name of our Lord Jesus  Christ, arise with thy monks, and go to that place, which the Lord  hath ordained for thy resurrection.” After pronouncing these words, the Angel departed.

    The move to the Lower Lough does not signify any lessening of Saint Kevin’s commitment to the ascetical life, as this verse from the Metrical Irish Life, the second in Plummer’s list, confirms:

    Coemgen was among stones
    On the border of the lake on a bare bed,
    With his slender side on a stone,
    In his glen without a booth over him.

    He may no longer have been sleeping in the original ‘Kevin’s Bed’ cave site on the Upper Lough, but the new site still saw the saint committed to a hard and stony resting place and still at the mercy of the elements. None of the Lives date to the lifetime of the saint but instead reflect the realities of succeeding centuries when Glendalough had expanded to become an important site of both pilgrimage and burial. The moving away from the original sites on the Upper Lough associated with Saint Kevin is dealt with in this later hagiography by having the saint persuaded by an angel that this relocation is God’s will. It may well be though that in the discussions between Saint Kevin and the angel we can discern an echo of the actual discussions that would have taken place within the community at Glendalough about the expansion of their monastic ‘city’. When exactly the move from the Upper Lough to the Lower took place is not known, but Smyth suggests that it may have been in the eighth century.

    Saint Kevin died in 622 and his ultimate resting place is still debated. In between the original site at the Upper Lough and that of the monastic city on the Lower lies the church of Reefert, Ríg Ferta, ‘the Cemetery of the Kings’. Saint Oengus the Martyrologist in the Prologue to his calendar of the saints declares ‘the cemetery of the west of the world is multitudinous Glendalough’. Reefert is one possible location for Saint Kevin’s tomb, although his remains may well have been translated from their original burial place and enshrined with great ceremony in the monastic church at a later period. The Annals of Ulster record at the year 790 the comotatio of the relics of Saint Kevin. This term refers to the taking of relics on circuit, most likely to other churches associated with Glendalough and would support the likelihood that the founder’s relics were housed in a richly-decorated shrine for public veneration.

    In the centuries following Saint Kevin’s death Glendalough became an important centre of pilgrimage, his Latin Life claiming that it was one of the four main pilgrimage sites in Ireland. His monastery found a place in a Litany of Irish saints preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster and published in the 1925 collection Irish Litanies also translated by the Rev. Charles Plummer. Litany I invokes ‘Forty saints in Glen da Loch with Coemgen, noble priest’. In our own times Saint Kevin has become something of a poster boy for the ‘Celtic Christianity’ movement which attributes to our native holy men and women a special relationship with nature and the animal creation. Whilst I do not share this movement’s interpretation of our native saints, nevertheless the animal stories associated with Saint Kevin are perhaps specially appropriate, since they too owe their origins to the Desert Fathers. I have looked at a couple of the legends involving birds and the founder of Glendalough here.  Finally, since there is no translation of the Vita Sancti Coemgeni available, I have posted some selections from Canon O’Hanlon’s reading of it here.  This is how he describes the ending of Saint Kevin’s Life:

    When St. Kevin had consoled his monks and imparted his benediction, his thoughts were solely devoted to preparation for his departure from that place, so endeared to him by religious associations; and, he now turned his mind, on the abiding home he sought for in Heaven. He then received Christ’s most Sacred Body and Blood, from the hands of St. Mocherog. His monks stood around, in tears and lamentations, when their venerable superior breathed his last. Having lived, in this world, according to common report, for the extraordinary and lengthened period of one hundred and twenty years, he departed to join choirs of Angels and Archangels, in the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Third of June Nones is the date assigned for his death; and on the 3rd of June, accordingly, his festival is celebrated.
    Rev J. O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, Vol. VI (Dublin, 1875),  p.71.

    Note: This post, first published in 2024, replaces the former blog entry on Saint Kevin from 2014.

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  • Saint Solon, August 19

    Canon O’Hanlon has an entry at August 19 for a reputed feast of a saint Solon, said to have been associated with the mission of Saint Palladius to Ireland. The source for this feast is the Scottish hagiologist, Thomas Dempster (c.1579-1625), a man for whose work Canon O’Hanlon rarely has a good word to say. Irish writers were upset that Dempster deliberately ignored the fact that in the earlier medieval period the Latin word Scotia referred to Ireland and that the Scoti, missionaries and founders of monasteries in continental Europe, were Irishmen. Dempster appropriated the term exclusively for his own country, the land we now know as Scotland, and thus claimed an important part of the religious heritage of Ireland. Another writer who shared the poor opinion of Dempster and his work was the 20th-century Italian author of the classic work Irish Saints in Italy, Fra Anselmo Tommasini, who charged that Dempster ‘perverted facts, invented quotations from non-existing books and documents, and attributed to existing authors passages they had never written’. In this case however, whilst Dempster may be the source for the feast day, he did not invent the character of Solon. The Irish sources themselves testify to two companions of Palladius named Solon and Sylvester who were left in charge of a County Wicklow church. What Dempster records in his calendar is: XIX. In Marria Solonii presbyteri, qui S. Palladium Apostolum sepelivit, ‘In Mar, [the feast] of Solonius the priest, who buried Saint Palladius the Apostle.’ So, let us begin first with Canon O’Hanlon’s account of this reputed feast day and then move on to what the hagiography of Saint Patrick records of Saint Solon:

    Reputed Feast of St. Solonius or Solon, an Early Companion of St. Palladius, in Wicklow. [Fifth Century.]

    In Dempster’s Menologium Scotorum, there is a festival at the 19th of August, at Mar, in Scotland. Ferrarius follows this account. The Bollandists have allusion to this Solonius, at the same date, with a remark, that they desired to have more certain and definite information regarding his cultus and acts. He must have flourished in the fifth century, if we are to accept the statement, that he buried St. Palladius, whose death has been assigned to a date somewhat later than A.D. 432. We are informed, however, that in one of the churches, founded by Palladius, and named Domnach-arda, in Hy Garrchon, on the eastern coast of Ireland, he left his disciples Sylvester and Salonius, who were there buried. Their remains were preserved in that church, until they were removed, at the close of the sixth century, to the Inch or Holm of Baethin,in the parish of Dunganstown, and County of Wicklow. In that locality, those saints were venerated until the year 770 or 774, when the church there experienced the fate of the Churches of Glendalough and of some other sanctuaries in that district of country.

    In the 17th century, the Irish hagiologist, Father John Colgan, compiled his work on the lives of the three wonderworking patron saints of Ireland, the Trias Thaumaturga. He drew on a number of existing Lives and in the second life of Saint Patrick there is an interesting summary of the Palladian mission. It includes a mention of Solon or Salonius as his name is Latinized here:

    “The most blessed Pope Celestine ordained bishop the archdeacon of the Roman Church, named Palladius, and sent him into the island of Hibernia, giving to him relics of the blessed Peter and Paul, and other saints; and, moreover, the volumes of the Old and New Testaments. Palladius entering the land of the Scots, arrived at the territory of the men of Leinster, where Nathi Mac Garrchon was chief, who was opposed to him. Others, however, whom the divine mercy had disposed towards the worship of God, having been baptized in the name of the sacred Trinity, the blessed Palladius built three churches in the same district — one which is called Kill-fine (i.e., church of Finte: perhaps the present Dunlavin), in which, even to the present day, he left his books received from St. Celestine, and the box of the relics of SS. Peter and Paul, and other saints, and the tablets on which he used to write, which, in Irish, are called from his name, Pallere — that is, the burden of Palladius, and are held in veneration; another was called Teach-na- Roman, the house of the Romans; and the third, Domnach-ardech (Donard, near Dunlavin), in which repose the holy companions of Palladius, viz., Sylvester and Salonius, who are still honoured there. After a short time Palladius died at Fordun, but others say that he was crowned with martyrdom there.”

    This information is supported by the fourth life which adds the detail that the relics of our saint and his companion Sylvester, were later translated to an island not far from Arklow, County Wicklow, which owed its name to Saint Boethin:

    …The third is the church which is called Domnach-arda, in which are the holy companions of Palladius, viz., Silvester and Solinus, whose relics, after some time, were carried to the island of Boethin, and are there held in due honour.

    So, we appear to have an Irish tradition which records that:

    1. The mission of Palladius included two saints, Solonius and Sylvester

    2. They were placed in charge of one of the churches founded by Palladius in the area of Dunlavin, County Wicklow

    3. Their relics remained at the church until they were subsequently translated to the island of Boethin, also in County Wicklow.

    That being so, I seem to be left with the question, how did Solon also come to be linked with Mar in Scotland? I would thus be interested to see if I can discover the basis on which Dempster made his calendar entry but the answer will require some further research.

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