OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • From the Litany of Confession: Waging War on Our Sins

     

    Continuing the extracts from the Irish ‘Litany of Confession’, attributed in some manuscripts to Saint Ciaran, though most likely composed after the time of Clonmacnoise’s founder. Yesterday we saw how the effects of our sins on us were described, today the Litany beseeches God to take action against them:

    Propter nomen tuum Domine, propiciaberis peccato meo.
    Many and vast are my sins in their mass, through my heart and round about it like a net or breast-plate;
    O King, they cannot be numbered;
    Despoil me of them, O God;
    Break, smite and war against them;
    Ravage, bend and wither them; 
    Take away, repel, destroy them;
    Arise, scatter, defeat them; 
    See, repress, waste them;
    Destroy, summon, starve them;
    Prostrate, burn, mangle them;
    Kill, slay and ruin them;
    Torture, divide and purify them;
    Tear, expel and raze them;
    Remove, scatter and cleave them;
    Subdue, exhaust and lay them low.
    Heavy then and bitter is
    The subdual and the piercing;
    The bond and the fetter;
     The confusion and the maddening;
    The disturbance and the raging;
    which the multitude of my sins brings upon me.

    Daphne D.C. Pochin Mould, The Celtic Saints: Our Heritage (Dublin, 1956) 116-117.

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  • From the Litany of Confession: the Effects of Our Sins

    In 1925 the Oxford scholar and Anglican cleric, Rev. Charles Plummer (1851–1927), editor and translator of the 1910 two-volume Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, added to his work on Irish medieval manuscripts by publishing a volume on Irish Litanies.  He assembled a selection of thirteen litanies in all, taken from a variety of manuscript sources including some of those used by Friar Michael O’Clery (1590-1643), preserved in the Royal Library at Brussels. Plummer called the first Litany in his collection The Litany of Confession, noting that O’Clery’s manuscript called it ‘De Confesione Sancte Ciarane (sic)’ to which the Donegal hagiologist added ‘I do not know to which of the Ciarans it is to be attributed…unless it be to Ciaran of Cluain (Clonmacnois)’. Plummer himself commented ‘It is little likely that the Litany can be as old as the time of this Ciaran (ob. 549), but the connection with Clonmacnois should be noted. I have found no other indication of authorship.’ In the extract from the Litany below, Daphne Pochin-Mould felt that ‘in striking terms [it] details the effects of sins upon the penitent’:

    “Come to help me, for the multitude of my inveterate sins have made dense my too guilty heart; 
    They have bent me, perverted me, have blinded me, have twisted and withered me;
    They have clung to me, have pained me, have moved me, have filled me;
    They have humbled me, exhausted me, they have subdued me, possessed me, cast me down;
    They have befooled me, drowned me, deceived me and troubled me;
    They have torn me and chased me;
    They have bound me, have ravaged me, have crucified me, rebuked me, sold me, searched me, mocked me;
    They have maddened me, bewitched me, betrayed me, delayed me, killed me.
    Forgive.”

     Daphne Pochin-Mould, The Celtic Saints: Our Heritage (Dublin, 1956), 116.

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  • Féilire Adamnáin: The Saints of the Four Seasons

    Below is a 1904 translation of the Féilire Adamnáin, an Irish prayer to the saints who preside over the different seasons, traditionally attributed to Saint Adamnán of Iona and Raphoe. Copies of the text survive in four different manuscript sources, including one in Brussels transcribed around 1630 by the exiled Donegal hagiologist, Friar Michael O’Clery. J. F. Kenney, in his classic study The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical, feels that this prayer, like others attributed to the saint, is ‘of a date some centuries later than Adamnán’. Verse six references the Martyrology of Oengus, declaring ‘though more numerous in verses, it is not more numerous in saints’:

    Here begins the Saints Calendar of Adamnan to his mother.

    1 The saints of the four seasons,
    I long to pray to them,
    May they save me from torments,
    the saints of the whole year!

    2 The saints of the glorious spring-time,
    may they be with me by the will of God’s fosterling,
    Together with Brigid, a maiden pure,
    with Gregory and Patrick.

    3 The saints of the dry summer,
    about them is my poetic frenzy,
    That I may come from this land to Jesus,
    Son of Mary.

    4 The saints of the beauteous autumn, —
    I call upon a company not inharmonious,
    That they may come near me,
    together with Mary and Michael.

    5 The saints of the winter I pray to,
    may they be with me against the throngs of demons.
    Around Jesus of the mansions,
    the holy, heavenly spirit.

    6 This saints’ calendar [i.e. the calendar of Oengus],
    which noble sages will have,
    Though more numerous in verses,
    it is not more numerous in saints.

    7 I beseech the saints of the earth, I beseech all the angels,
    I beseech God Himself, both rising and lying down.
    Whatever I do or whatever I say,
    that I may inhabit the heavenly land.

    MARY E. BYRNE, B.A.

     

    Ériu, Vol I, part 2, (1904), 225-228

     

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