OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • Saint David in Irish Sources

    March 1 is the feastday of the patron of Wales, Saint David, a saint much honoured and loved in Ireland. A modern scholar summarizes below some of the links to the Welsh patron in the Irish sources:

    In the first millennium A.D., prior to the promotion of St David’s cult by Rhygyfarch, St David already can be seen to have enjoyed a significant reputation not only in Wales, but across the Irish Sea. Dauid Cille Muni features amongst three Welsh saints whose feasts are recorded in the Latin Martyrology of Tallaght and the Irish Martyrology Félire Óengusso in the early ninth century – both probably the work of the same author, and certainly of the community of the Céli Dé of Tallaght. David also appears in another early list of saints, the Catalogus sanctorum Hiberniae, where he features amongst the British saints from whom the ‘second order’ of early Irish saints are held to have accepted their ritual of the mass. His obit appears in Irish annal collections, probably entered at some time in during first millennium. These references would appear to speak to the relations between the westernmost part of Wales and its closeness to Ireland – the same relationship, perhaps, as is evinced by Armes Prydain Fawr.

    The kingdom of Dyfed, the early medieval polity in which the region of the modern St Davids is located, was itself, of course, originally under an Irish dynasty – a fact that appears to have been still known in Rhygyfarch’s time – but it would be unwise to place much weight upon this early Irish connection of St Davids. The association of David’s cult with Irish saints are as likely to reflect later as earlier connections between these closely adjacent countries. Most of the dedications to the saint in Ireland can be shown with certainty to have been made under Cambro- or Anglo-Norman patronage. The appearance of David in the Irish Martyrologies, however, speaks to exchange of cults between Ireland and Wales before A.D. 800. Irish uitae add further detail to this testimony. St David features in the Vita of St Molua of Clonfert-Mullow and in the Vita of Ailbe of Emly. In both cases he appears in the versions of these uitae that are preserved in the Salamanticensis collection amongst the subset (the ‘O’Donohue group’) which Richard Sharpe has identified as preserving a putatively eighth-century form.

    The arguably early reference in the cult of St Ailbe is thus of especial interest for the fact that Ailbe (Elvis) is a saint with a cult near St Davids. In Rhygyfarch’s Vita S. David Ailbe is joined by more Irish saints: SS. Patrick, Brendan, Maedóc, Bairre, Modomnóc and Scoithín. Patrick and Ailbe are given the most significant roles in Rhygyfarch’s Vita. The role of St Patrick – who has a dedication near St Davids, at Whitesands Bay – is to be the previous denizen of Vallis Rosina, the place that will later be the site of St David’s monastery. St Ailbe’s role is to baptize David. These roles reflect the significance of these saints in Irish history: Patrick as apostle to the Irish; Ailbe as patron to Munster, whose church was second only in status to Patrick. Pádraig Ó Riain is right to argue that these ‘facilitating’ roles are intended to establish St David’s status as superior to that of other major insular churches. They are products of a time when these saint’s cults had already achieved their existing status in Ireland, not of the time of the historical David. How early or late this period of exchange of information may be placed is a point of contention by Ó Riain.

    Jonathan M. Wooding, ‘The Figure of David’ in J. W. Evans and J.M. Wooding, eds., St David of Wales: cult, church and nation (Boydell, 2007), 11-12.

  • A Festival of Holy Martyrs in the Félire Oengusso, February 15

    I was interested to see this entry in Canon O’Hanlon’s Lives of the Irish Saints for February 15:

    Festival of Holy Martyrs. At the 15th of February, the following stanza, transcribed from the ” Feilire” of St. Oengus, as found in the ” Leabhar Breac,” is thus translated by Professor O’Looney:—

    Chant the Sunday’s celebration
    On the morrow at night
    With the passion of a powerful host
    The victory of the son of God they obtain.”

    This stanza seems to have reference, to various holy martyrs, venerated in the Church, at this date, as may be seen by consulting the ” Acta Sanctorum” of the Bollandists. Regarding the “Sunday’s celebration,” and “the morrow at night,” I feel unable further to present any illustration, other than what is contained in a comment to the Irish word, can:

    “To this we find appended a note (a) Chant i.e., it is chanted because of the nobleness of the festival, even though it should fall on Sunday, or on the- Feast of Barrach the triumphant, i.e., Barrach, son of Nemnand, son of Nemangen, son of Fintan, son of Mai, son of Dublha, son of Oengus, son of Erc Uerg, son of Brian, son of Echu Muidhmeadon. And it is a fortnight [i.e., at the end of fourteen nights] in Spring his festival is, and, it is in the wilderness of Cinel Dobtha, in Connaught, he is, namely, in Cluain Cairpti, ut dixit angelus :—

    “Berrach and Mochoem
    Delightful was their custom
    Whomsoever they prayed for at the gasp of death
    Should not suffer death, i.e Hell.”

    The Berrach commemorated on this day is Saint Berrach of Kilbarry about whom a post can be found here. In the translation of the Martyrology of Oengus published by Whitley Stokes, the passage is translated:

    Sing a Sunday’s celebration on the feast of warlike Berach,
    with the passion of a vigorous host the Son of
    God’s victory over His enemy.

    and the notes add:

    Sing a Sunday’s celebration, i.e. not superfluous is the Sunday’s celebration on this feast always, for there is always a Sunday’s celebration on each chief festival in the year.

    I next checked an online version of the Roman Martyrology and sure enough the entries for February 15 begin with a litany of martyrs:

    At Brescia, in the time of Emperor Adrian, the birthday of the holy martyrs Faustinus and Jovita, who received the triumphant crown of martyrdom after many glorious combats for the faith of Christ.

    At Rome, St. Craton, martyr. A short time after being baptized with his wife and all his household by the holy bishop Valentine, he was put to death with them.

    At Teramo, the birthday of the holy martyrs Saturninus, Castulus, Magnus, and Lucius.

    In the same place, St. Agape, virgin and martyr.

    Reading this reminded me of a passage in Thomas O’Loughlin’s book ‘Journeys on the Edges’ where he discusses the annual cycles of worship which shaped the lives of Christians in Ireland:

    Then there was the annual round of saints’ days. This brought into the life of each day Christians from every period and place – strange names of people and far away places such as we find in the calendar of feasts written in verse near Dublin in the early ninth century, the Félire Oengusso. Here is a sample for 27 July:

    The day of the bed-death of Simeon the monk,
    he was a great sun to the earth;
    with the suffering of a loveable host in Antioch high and vast.

    All they knew about this Simeon was his name, and that he was a monk. They also knew that 27 July was the anniversary of the martyrdom of a group of Christians at Antioch – which Antioch they did not know. But Simeon and those martyrs were brothers and sisters in the communion of saints and so their memory was recorded and their intercession requested.

    I will close with another Irish appreciation of martyrs, this time from the eighth-century poems of Blathmac:

    254. If I am to tell the true fundamental account that I had of the death of martyrs, all the servants of Christ who suffered martyrdom on their principal feasts,

    255. it passes reckoning to count it. Since ancestral Adam held counsel there has been with perverse kings a multitude of the pure dear ones of Christ.

    256. For what those men have suffered in the torturing of their bodies they shall have keenest vengeance; they are not clients of (a lord of) bad oaths.

    257. For splendid Christ has risen; he is eternally safe in the eternal kingdom; the leader with great hosts, the triumphant one, victorious in battle, will avenge them.

    References

    Rev. John O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, Volume II (Dublin, 1875), 565.

    Whitley Stokes, ed. and trans.,The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee: Félire Óengusso Céli dé (London, 1905), 60, 75.

    Thomas O’Loughlin, Journeys on the Edges – The Celtic Tradition (DLT, 2000, 144-45.)

    James Carney, ed. and trans., The Poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan, together with the Irish Gospel of Thomas and a Poem on the Virgin Mary (London 1964), 87.

  • Companions of Saint Ursula, January 23

    At January 23 Canon O’Hanlon has the first of a number of entries in his Lives of the Irish Saints relating to Saint Ursula and her companions. The story of the martyrdom of Saint Ursula was enormously popular during the later Middle Ages and it seems that Canon O’Hanlon believes there is an Irish connection, not to the saint herself, who is said to have been a British princess, but to the maidens who accompanied her and shared her fate. This particular date of commemoration is found at the city most closely associated with the martyrs, Cologne, itself the site of an Irish monastery. That said I would be far from convinced that there is any Irish link with Saint Ursula and her martyred maidens at all.  A vague claim of ‘Scottish’ origin does not seem a firm basis on which to proceed, given that the idea of having a link to Ireland and its saints carried a certain cachet in medieval continental Europe, where many were pleased to claim that their monastery or mission was originally founded by natives of this country. In the heat of their enthusiasm for reclaiming Ireland’s glorious religious past, writers of Canon O’Hanlon’s generation were also keen to press claims of Irish origins for the holy men and women associated with other countries on the basis of such ‘tradition’ that they were Irish or ‘Scottish’. In the Middle Ages Ireland was often referred to as Scotia and its natives as Scotti, just to complicate matters even further.  O’Hanlon has noted at least eight separate commemorations associated with Saint Ursula in various volumes of his Lives of the Irish Saints so he certainly ran with this idea, but trying to disentangle what, if any, historical basis, lies behind the legend of Saint Ursula and her maidens is no easy task:

    Reputed Festival of St. Ursula and of her Companions, Martyrs. [Fifth Century]

    As many of these holy virgins are believed to have been Scottish or Irish, we should feel an interest in learning that their memory is said to have been celebrated at the Church of St. Cunibert, at Cologne, on this day. To their chief festival, however, we shall refer the reader for more detailed particulars regarding them.

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