OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • 'Pure was her heart amid the wicked': In Praise of Saint Samthann

    December 19 is the feast of Saint Samthann of Clonbroney, County Longford. She is one of only a handful of women saints to have left a written Life and I have posted some selections from the Life of Saint Samthann here. Although the Life is the most important source of information regarding this saint it is not the only one. She features in a number of other sources including the poem below, attributed to an eighth-century high king, Aodh Allán, son of Fearghal. In it the poet pays tribute to Saint Samthann’s reputation for asceticism and her courage in the struggles of the monastic life:

    “734: Fifth year of Aed Allan.

    Saint Samtain, virgin, of Cluain Bronaig (Longford), died on December 19. It was of her that Aed Allan gave this testimony:

    “Samtain for enlightening various sinners,
    A servant who observed stern chastity,
    In the wide plain of fertile Meath
    Great suffering did Samtain endure;

    She undertook a thing not easy,
    Fasting for the kingdom above.
    She lived on scanty food;
    Hard were her girdles;

    She struggled in venomous conflicts;
    Pure was her heart amid the wicked.
    To the bosom of the Lord, with a pure death,
    Samtain passed from her trials.”

    Charles Johnston, Ireland, Historic and Picturesque, (Philadelphia, 1901), 226.
     

     

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  • Saint Crónán, December 15

    Yesterday we looked a trio of saints called Colmán, one of the most widely-shared names among Irish saints. Another common name borne by Irish saints is that of Crónán with nearly twenty holy men of this name recorded on the calendars. This number grows even wider when we take into consideration the hypocoristic or ‘pet’ form of this name, Mochua, with fifty-nine recorded on the twelfth-century List of Homonymous Saints alone. Today the Martyrology of Donegal simply records the name Crónán with no further information to allow us to distinguish him from the others who share his name.

     

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  • 'Three Colmáns to Help Us', December 14

     

    As regular readers of the blog will know the problem of trying to disentangle Irish saints who all share the same name is never more acute than when we are dealing with saints called Colmán. There is a source called the List of Homonymous Saints, preserved in the twelfth-century manuscript known as the Book of Leinster, which lists over two hundred saints called Colm or Colmán. On December 14 we find three saints of this name listed on some of the Irish calendars. The twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman notes: 

    Three Colmáns to help us

    while the seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal records:

    COLMAN, of Rath Maoilsidhe.
    COLMAN, son of Fionntan.
    COLMAN ALAINN. 

     The first of the trio is associated with the monastery of Rath Melsigi, modern Clonmelsh, County Carlow, a spiritual and intellectual powerhouse which prepared a number of Anglo-Saxon saints, most notably Saint Willibrord and his companions, for their European mission. In the absence of other information we cannot clarify what Saint Colmán’s role was at this foundation or when he may have exercised it.
    The second of the three, described as the son of Fintan offers a patronymic to distinguish himself but alas, this too does not help us locate him in time or place. 
    The final Colmán sounds like a pleasant chap, álainn in modern Irish is an adjective usually translated as ‘beautiful’ but in its older form álaind, Whitley Stokes, the translator of the Martyrology of Gorman, has rendered it as ‘delightful’.

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