OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • Saint Baethallach of Ath-Truim, October 5

    October 5 is the commemoration of an eighth-century County Meath bishop, Baethallach (Baithalach, Baitellach) of Ath-Truim. The name Baethellaig is found on the Martyrology of Tallaght, but the Martyrology of Oengus devotes its entire entry to a female saint whose feast also occurs today, Sínech of Crohane. The 12th-century Martyrology of Gorman in its verse mentions ‘Baithalach to whom I pray’. The 17th-century Martyrology of Donegal, however, has a much fuller entry and places Baethallach at Ath-Truim, modern Trim:

    5. E. TERTIO NONAS OCTOBRIS. 5.

    BAETHALLACH, brother of Corbmac, bishop of Ath-Truim, and successor of Patrick. Fuinnecht, daughter of Maelfithrigh, son of Dioma, son of Colman, was his mother; and he and Baeghlach, the pilgrim, are of the race of Colla Uais, monarch of Erin.

    The foundation of Trim is ascribed to Saint Patrick in the Irish annals, with this entry in the Annals of the Four Masters at the year 432: “Ath-Truim was founded by Patrick, it having been granted by Fedhlim, son of Laoghaire, son of Niall, to God and to him, Loman and Fortchern”. Loman and Fortchern are perhaps the most famous of the saints associated with Trim, but there is also a record of an eighth-century bishop called Cormac, who came from a family which contributed a great deal to the Irish church, as Father John Lanigan explains:

    To A.D. 742 is assigned the death of St. Cormac bishop of Trim. He is said to have been of the royal house of the Nialls; and his name appears in various calendars at the 17th of February as the anniversary of his death. Three brothers of his are spoken of; Rumond, a very wise man and deeply skilled in history and antiquities, who died in 743; Baitellach, abbot of Trim, whose death is marked at A.D. 752; and Ossan a priest, the year of whose death is not known.

    Rev. John Lanigan, An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Volume III, 2nd edn., Dublin, 1829, 176-177.

    Thus if the Martyrology of Donegal is correct in identifying our saint of October 5 with the Abbot Baitellach of Trim it would allow us to place him in the eighth-century as a member of an aristocratic ecclesiastical family, who contributed to the service of the Irish church in this historic locality.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.

  • Four Tipperary Saints – Forthcoming Title from Four Courts Press

    Four Tipperary Saints

    The lives of Colum of Terryglass, Cronán of Roscrea, Mochaomhóg of Leigh and Ruadhán of Lorrha

    Translated into English by Pádraig Ó Riain

    When St Patrick was leaving Munster via the Little Brosna river, close to Tipperary’s northern boundary, he is said to have given a blessing to the province’s people, its men, women and children. Much of this blessing must have lingered over north Tipperary, because no fewer than four of its saints were made the subjects of written Lives, Ruadhán and Colum from the neighbouring parishes of Lorrha and Terryglass, Crónán of Roscrea, and Mochaomhóg of Leigh in Twomileborris. The Lives written for these saints in Latin, translated here for the first time into English, contain much that is of interest, not only to Tipperary people, but to all who wish to know more about the history of early Irish Christianity. Written many centuries after the golden age of the saints, these texts tell us a great deal about the fortunes of their churches, and about the aims and associations of the communities devoted to them. Pádraig Ó Riain, in this new translation, gives access to these four Lives to a brand new audience.


    Pádraig Ó Riain is Professor Emeritus of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork, and the previous holder of Visiting Professorships at Bochum and Freiburg in Germany and at Aberystwyth in Wales. He is a former holder of the Parnell Fellowship at Magdalen College, Cambridge, and was the first Irish scholar to be awarded the Humboldt Prize. A former President of the Irish Texts Society and a former Member of Council of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor Ó Riain is the author of numerous publications on Irish hagiography, placenames, personal names, and textual transmission. He is the author of the best-selling A dictionary of Irish Saints (2011).

    Paperback
    160pp; ills. November 2014
    ISBN:
    978-1-84682-550-7
    Catalogue Price: €19.95
    Web Price: €17.95

  • The Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in Ireland

    As September 29 is the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel I republish a 2009 post from my former blog which provides a sketch of the history of the feast in Ireland:

    Canon O’Hanlon has a brief account of the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in Ireland based on the surviving calendar entries for September 29:

    In the Church from a very remote date, the Festival of this Head of the Angelic Host had been observed with special solemnity. In Ireland, St. Oengus the Culdee has pronounced a distinguished eulogy on him, at the 29th of September, in the “Feilire”, thus translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Leabhar Breacc copy:

    ” At the fight against the multitudinous
    Dragon of our Michael stout, victorious, the
    soldier whitesided, hostful, will slay
    Wrathful Antichrist.”

    Allusion is made to his fight with the Dragon and Anti-Christ. The Scholiast has comments which state, that Michael was Prince of the Angels, and that as a soldier he was the champion whose name is explained by ‘sicut Deus’ in Mount Garganus. In recording his feast at this day, Marianus O’Gorman addresses the Archangel Michael as a powerful intercessor:

    “May the great Archangel Michael be a buckler to me against devils to protect my soul!”

    I was intrigued by these references to Saint Michael and the battle with the Antichrist and went on to do some further reading on the subject. One of the papers I read posed the question:

    The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed an extraordinary increase of interest in the archangel in western Europe. What explains the rapid growth of this cult during the period, especially in the years between 950 and 1050?

    The author gives this answer:

    1. The militancy of St Michael as a symbol for this turbulent epoch. This development of sacred militancy is unquestionably one of the principal reasons for the popularity of the saint.

    2. Another is the increasing prominence given to St Michael as a personal protector of every Christian soul, the angelic cura animarum. Some of this interest stems from the western discovery of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius in the 9th century, with his attention to the hierarchy of spirits and the function of the archangels as messengers. Yet some of it also arises from the Celtic tradition in which during the Middle Ages St Michael was seen as a soulmate, one responsible for conducting each person after death to Judgment. Out of this tradition would come the image of Michael with his scales weighing the souls at Judgment, an image that would later become so prominent on the western facade of Gothic cathedrals.

    3. A third aspect of the increasing importance of the archangel in this period is his apocalyptic role. How do we account for the growing interest in the apocalyptic Michael?…

    He then looked specifically at the cult of the Archangel in Ireland:

    As in so many other aspects of the Christian life of the early Middle Ages, Ireland seems also to have been a harbinger in its early interest in the cult of the apocalyptic Michael. A good example is found in the occurence of the feast of St Michael in 767. A terrifying thunder storm created a wave of panic in which the Irish, convinced the Last Judgment was about to occur, begged the archangel to intercede for them:

    ‘The fair of the clapping of hands [so called] because terrific and horrible signs appeared at the time, which were like unto the signs of the day of judgment, namely great thunder and lightning, so that it was insufferable to all to hear the one and see the other. Fear and horror seized the men of Ireland, so that their religious seniors ordered them to make two fasts, together with fervent prayer and one meal between them, to protect and save them from a pestilence, precisely at Michaelmas. Hence came the Lamhchomart, which was called the fire from heaven’ (Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters from the Earliest Period to the year 1616, ed. J O’Donovan, Vol I (Dublin 1851), pp 370-73.) The Annals of Ulster list the event under 771.

    The presence of Michael in Ireland seems more manifest in a number of ways in the 10th and early 11th centuries. The archangel was depicted with his scales on a high cross at Monasterboice. He also appears in the concluding portion of the great Irish epic of salvation history, the Saltaird, c.988. In this work of over 8,000 lines, which seems to have served as one of the foundations for the later medieval interest in the Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday, Michael will summon all to the Last Judgment:

    ‘The archangel will call a clear call over the clay of every man, upon Adam’s strong seed: all the many will arise”. (Lines 8229-32 of the Saltair na Rann).

    The growing importance of this archangel for the Irish is additionally confirmed by the fact that sometime in the period between 950 and 1044, the most famous site dedicated to him in Ireland had his name attached to it. The jagged peak jutting 700 feet almost straight up out of the Atlantic twenty miles off the south-west Irish coast became, not simply Skellig, but Skellig Michael.

    Daniel Callahan, The Cult of St Michael the Archangel and the “Terrors of the Year 1000” in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950-1050 by Richard Allen Landes, Andrew Gow, David C. Van Meter (Oxford Univ Press US, 2003)181-204.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2015. All rights reserved.