OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • Saint Clairnech of Druim Bidhg, January 17

    January 17 is the commemoration of an obscure saint, Clairnech of Druim Bidhg. His festival is first noted in the earliest of the surviving Irish calendars, the Martyrology of Tallaght, as Canon O’Hanlon explains:

    A St. Clairnech of Druimbide is mentioned, on the 17th of January, in the Martyrology of Tallagh. There was a Druim-Beathaigh, extending across the plain of Maenmagh, near the town of Loughrea, in Galway county. Some similarity of sound can be traced in both denominations, yet the locality cannot be clearly ascertained. Clairenech, of Druim Bidhg, appears in the Martyrology of Donegal, on to-day. It is likely to have been that of this saint’s demise and first birth in real bliss.

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  • Saint Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin, January 16

    This saint is both a poet and a scholar, who died in 1086. I knew the name of Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin in connection with a hymn in Latin and Irish Deus meus, adiuva me which I am pleased to say still features in Irish hymnals today. I have posted a translation of it here. I did not know, however, that its author also featured on the Irish calendars of the saints, so I am delighted to bring a short essay on Saint Máel Ísu’s life and works from a latter-day daughter of the Ua Brolcháin clan, Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin:

    Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin (d.1086)

    Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin was a religious poet from Donegal who was a member of the Armagh community. His death in Lismore is mentioned in the Annals of Innisfallen in 1086. He is recognized as one of the primary poets of his age, and there is a full-page account of his life and family in the 16th-century Acta Sanctorum by Colgan. He was educated in the monastery of Both Chonais, Gleenely, beside the present-day Culdaff, Co. Donegal. His death is mentioned in all major annals, but the Annals of the Four Masters give a longer notice than others:

    The senior scholar of Ireland, learned in wisdom, in piety and in poetry of both languages. So great was his erudition and scholarship that he himself wrote books and compositions of wisdom and intellect. His spirit ascended into heaven on the 16th of January, as is said: On the sixteenth of January/on the night of fair Fursa’s feast,/Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin perished/Oh! Who lives to whom this was not a great distress.

    His Work

    The manuscript sources attribute eight poems to Máel Ísu. Scholars mention him as the possible author of four further compositions. Fr. F. Mac Donncha suggested that he may also be the author of the Passions and Homilies because he was well educated with a deep knowledge of the scriptures and of Latin and had access to an extensive library. The content of his poems reflect the concerns of his age, the secularization of the church and the budding reform. He composed devotional, personal prayers as well as didactic poems that reflect the beliefs and teaching of the Céilí Dé (Culdees) in preaching restraint, fasting, continence and study as a way of life. He prays directly to the Trinity, to St Michael, and to God himself, using his poetry as a vehicle for religious teaching and for personal prayer. Some of the poetry may be directed at his students. Dia hAine ní longu says: ‘You eat/as for me, I shall fast,/on account of fire which water does not extinguish/and cold which heat does not quench.’ He may have moved to Lismore in search of the reforming spirit that was absent in the secular world of Armagh.

    The lorica, A choim diu, nom chomet, seeks protection from the eight deadly sins for eight parts of the body: eyes, ears, tongue, heart, stomach, male organ, hands and feet. The sins associated with each are outlined, for example: ‘Protect my ears so that I do not listen to scandal, so that I do not listen to the foolishness of the evil world’ and he continues: ‘Do not allow me to fall into the principal sins of the eminent, reputed eight, Christ come to me, to hunt them, to defeat them.’ In this he follows the teachings of the Penitentials as he does in his longest poem Ocht n-eric na nDualach that treats the eight vices. Some five or six stanzas are given over to each vice and to its cure, for example: ‘Greed- what it does is/to force miserliness upon you:/ a craving for all things,/pillage, plunder and robbery,/The sole cure is contempt for the dark world,/being in continual poverty/without acquiring wealth.

    Muireann Ní Brolcháin, Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin (d.1086), in S.Duffy, ed., Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia (CRC Press, 2005), 307-308.
    Canon O’Hanlon also has an entry for this great poet-saint. He tells us of a County Donegal parish which claimed Ua Brolcháin as its patron:

    ‘The patron saint of the parish of Cloncha, in Inishowen, was always regarded as being the present Maelisa Ua Brolchain. In this parish, there stood an ancient monastery, known as Temple Moyle, or Tapal Moule. An old graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, with an iron gate entrance, is found at this place. We find recorded in the Martyrologies of Marianus O’Gorman and of Donegal, at the 16th day of January, Maelisa Ua Brolchain. On the seventeenth of the calends of February, he resigned his spirit to heaven, as stated in this quatrain: 

    ” On the Seventeenth of the calends of February,
    The night of fair Fursa’s festival,
    Died Maelisa Ua Brolchain,
    But, however, not of a heavy severe fit.”

    This account seems to convey, that he ended life by a process of natural decline, and that he expired without much suffering. It is likely he attained an advanced age. The Annals of Clonmacnoise, at A.D. 1084, have recorded his death. The year 1086 was that of his decease, according to the Annals of Ulster and of the Four Masters. ‘

    I am left with a picture of a saint who was very much a representative of the old penitential traditions of the Irish church and of its love of learning and scholarship. Yet he lived at a time of change, the Great Schism between east and west occurred in his lifetime and the church reforms he sought would come a century after his death. But Saint Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin has not been forgotten. Apart from the survival of his hymn Deus Meus, adiuva me, now sung in modern Irish and Latin, a number of his poems have been translated by twentieth-century scholars and I will post a selection of these in the future.

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  • Saint Báetán of Inisbofin, January 14


     

    January 14 sees the commemoration on the Irish calendars of a
    seventh/eighth-century monastic saint, Báetán, abbot of Inis-mór. There a
    number of locations in different parts of Ireland which share this
    place name, but Canon O’Hanlon associates our abbot with the the seventh-century monastic foundation of St Colman at Inisbofin island, off the coast of County Mayo and suggests that Saint Baetan may have been one of the founder’s early successors:

    ARTICLE I.—ST. BAETAN OR BAODAN MOR, SON OF LUGHAIDH, ABBOT OF INISMORE, OR INIS-BO-FINNE, NOW BOFFIN OR BOPHIN ISLAND, COUNTY OF MAYO.

    [SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.]

    AMONG the commemorations this day, we read in the Martyrology of Donegal, concerning Baodan Mor, son to Lughaidh, and Abbot of Inis-mor. He is entered in the Martyrology of Tallagh, as Baetan, son of Lugeus, on the 14th of January. In the latter record, he is likewise said to have been a bishop. At the year 711, the death of Baetan, Bishop of Inis-Bo-Finne, is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters. Those of Ulster place it at A.D. 712. Under the head of Inis Mor, Duald Mac Firbis enters Baeden, bishop, for January 14th. Colgan —offers a conjecture but without much confidence — that this St. Baedan may be identical with a St. Buadmael, a disciple of St. Benignus and of St. Patrick, who died at Kill Buadmael, near the River Shannon. Yet, it is plainly seen, the place of this saint and the date assigned for his death exclude such a supposition. The island of Inishbofin gives name to a parish in the barony of Murrisk, and county of Mayo. Some ancient monastic remains are to be seen here, adjoining St. Colman’s Well and Church Lough. The monastic institution is said to have been founded there by St. Colman, A.D. 667, and he died A.D. 674. St. Coenchomra is said to have succeeded him in the government of this monastery; and, in such case, it would be probable, the present saint Baetan was his immediate successor. St. Coenchomra was connected with another Inis-bo-finn. How long St. Baetan’s term of incumbency lasted, we have no dates preserved to aid in determining. There are two other islands, named Inis-bo-finne in Ireland; one of these is in the county of Donegal, near Tory Island, while the other is situated in Lough Ree, on the River Shannon. Neither of these islands, however, is of such celebrity as this Western Inis-bo-finne, which Dempster has sought even to connect with Scotland. Remote as its situation was, for centuries the voice of prayer and the song of praise to God rose above the murmurings of the wild Atlantic waves that surged around its shores.  

    The old oratory of St. Colman, on the Island of Innisbofifin, yet remains. The ruined quadrangle measures externally 61 feet in length by 23 feet in width. The walls are about three feet in thickness. The oriel window measures, on the outside, 2 feet, and on the inside, it is splayed to a breadth of 5 feet; while it is 6 feet 6 inches in height. On the eastern gable are two buttresses ; the buttress towards the south is 6 feet thick, and that towards the north is only 5 feet 6 inches. Small side-windows are broken away. In the south side wall and west gable are two doors of similar dimensions, viz., 5 feet in height by 4 feet in width. No mullions are to be found in the windows; while the arches of oriels and doors are very flat. The stones are placed edgewise, and the mortar in the walls is very adhesive. St. Flannan’s

    well is enclosed, about 100 paces from the ruin, with a stream running between both. The ruin is in a deep valley. The water of the more immediate north hill is carried clear of the church-site through a drain sunk by the monks, and it is effective to this day. No stones of the building are dressed; while the church stands on a natural rock-terrace 8 or 10 feet high. Around the ruins grow some few briars, the only shrub. It is a hoary, grey stone church, still in good preservation, so that one doubts if it be the original foundation of St. Colman. On one side of the ruin is an eminence called Knock. On the right, as represented in the engraving, is a sheet of water, called Lough Teampul, on the left is the Atlantic Ocean.

     
    There is a website for the island of Inisbofin with some illustrated pages on its Christian heritage here. 
    May the intercession of all the saints associated with this western isle be with us!
     
    Note: This post was first published in 2013 and revised in 2023 to include Canon O’Hanlon’s entry for the saint from Volume I of his Lives of the Irish Saints in full.

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