OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • Saint Brigid of Fiesole, August 20

    Following on from yesterday’s feast of Saint Solon, we can now examine another of the feasts noted by the Scottish hagiologist Thomas Dempster. In his Menologium Scotorum at August 20 he notes:

    In montibus Faesulanis Brigidae virginis, quae ad fratrem suum Archidiaconum S. Andream e Scotia venit, & magna Christianae vitae continentia hic obiit.

    As I explained yesterday when dealing with another of Dempster’s calendar entries, the Irish were rather upset by this Scottish writer’s tendency to ignore the historical reality that in the early medieval period the Latin term Scotia was applied to Ireland and he claimed Irish saints and religious foundations on the continent for his own country. The virgin Brigid who came from Scotia with her brother the Archdeacon Andrew and was commemorated in the mountains of Fiesole on this day was an Irishwoman. I have been interested for some time now in the story of this Saint Brigid and her brother the Archdeacon Andrew who had come to Italy with fellow-Irishman Donatus, later appointed Bishop of Fiesole. As the story has come down to us, Andrew and his sister had been very close and she was heartbroken when he left Ireland to accompany Donatus on pilgrimage. Years later, as Andrew lay dying he wished for nothing more than to see his beloved sister again and she was miraculously transported from her home in Ireland to be with him. I have reproduced Margaret Stokes’ lovely version of the story here. After her brother’s death Brigid stayed on in the locality of Fiesole and lived the hermit life within a cave in the mountains.  It is a very beautiful and touching story, but I have always wondered if this Italian Brigid was not a separate individual living in the 9th century, as the hagiography portrays, but rather a manifestation of the cult of Saint Brigid of Kildare as brought to Italy and enthusiastically promoted by Bishop Donatus? One clue might be that although Dempster has recorded August 20 as the feastday of the Italian Brigid, he also records that she is commemorated on February 1, the feastday of the patroness of Ireland. Although Canon O’Hanlon seems content to accept that there were two separate Saints Brigid, he nevertheless finds their sharing of the same feastday a coincidence too far. The Italian writer on the Irish saints in Italy, Fra Anselmo Tommasini, puts forward some other reasons why he believes Brigid of Italy is really just the cultus of Brigid of Kildare and so I will return to this subject in a future post. For now, I will bring Canon O’Hanlon’s account of this feastday from the August volume of the Lives of the Irish Saints:

    Reputed Feast of St. Brigid, at Fesula, Italy.
    [Ninth Century.]

    The present St. Brigid is to be distinguished from the holy Patroness of Ireland, so named, and from another St. Brigid, venerated at the 14th of March. In Dempster’s “Menologium Scotorum,” at the 20th of August, there is a feast set down for St. Brigid, a noble Scottish virgin, who came to her brother St. Andrew, an Archdeacon, in a miraculous manner. He lived in the mountains at Fesula in Italy, with St. Donatus. We have already treated about the holy virgin St. Brigid, who lived in a hermitage near the source of the little river Sieci, where during her old age, she sought in a thick forest, among the higher Apennines, a place where she might lead a solitary life. There she desired to live, in penitence and prayer. She found a cave, at a lonely place called Opacum, near Lobaco, high among the mountains. There she passed a term of years, and died, during the latter half of the ninth century. The inhabitants of that country, venerating her as a saint, buried her remains, and built a church in her name, on the site of her hermitage. This was called S. Brigida. Her Natalis was celebrated there in after years with great solemnity. The Pieve or parochial district of Lobaco owns two filial parishes, St. Brigid at Lobaco, and St. Minatus at Pagnoli. Again, there is an ancient Church of San Martino, of Tours, beneath the shelter of the walls of Castel Lobaco; and here, also, the memory of our Irish St. Brigid was held in especial reverence. In his “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum,” Dempster asserts, that her festival was observed on the 1st of February, that she was renowned for sanctity in 802, that she was miraculously brought to Italy, that her writings have perished, and that he is unable to find when she died. It seems very probable, however, that our Irish St. Brigid’s festival abroad may have been confounded with that of the great St. Brigid, Patroness of Ireland; otherwise it is difficult to conceive how such a coincidence could have occurred, as to cause both their feasts to fall on the same day.

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  • Saint Solon, August 19

    Canon O’Hanlon has an entry at August 19 for a reputed feast of a saint Solon, said to have been associated with the mission of Saint Palladius to Ireland. The source for this feast is the Scottish hagiologist, Thomas Dempster (c.1579-1625), a man for whose work Canon O’Hanlon rarely has a good word to say. Irish writers were upset that Dempster deliberately ignored the fact that in the earlier medieval period the Latin word Scotia referred to Ireland and that the Scoti, missionaries and founders of monasteries in continental Europe, were Irishmen. Dempster appropriated the term exclusively for his own country, the land we now know as Scotland, and thus claimed an important part of the religious heritage of Ireland. Another writer who shared the poor opinion of Dempster and his work was the 20th-century Italian author of the classic work Irish Saints in Italy, Fra Anselmo Tommasini, who charged that Dempster ‘perverted facts, invented quotations from non-existing books and documents, and attributed to existing authors passages they had never written’. In this case however, whilst Dempster may be the source for the feast day, he did not invent the character of Solon. The Irish sources themselves testify to two companions of Palladius named Solon and Sylvester who were left in charge of a County Wicklow church. What Dempster records in his calendar is: XIX. In Marria Solonii presbyteri, qui S. Palladium Apostolum sepelivit, ‘In Mar, [the feast] of Solonius the priest, who buried Saint Palladius the Apostle.’ So, let us begin first with Canon O’Hanlon’s account of this reputed feast day and then move on to what the hagiography of Saint Patrick records of Saint Solon:

    Reputed Feast of St. Solonius or Solon, an Early Companion of St. Palladius, in Wicklow. [Fifth Century.]

    In Dempster’s Menologium Scotorum, there is a festival at the 19th of August, at Mar, in Scotland. Ferrarius follows this account. The Bollandists have allusion to this Solonius, at the same date, with a remark, that they desired to have more certain and definite information regarding his cultus and acts. He must have flourished in the fifth century, if we are to accept the statement, that he buried St. Palladius, whose death has been assigned to a date somewhat later than A.D. 432. We are informed, however, that in one of the churches, founded by Palladius, and named Domnach-arda, in Hy Garrchon, on the eastern coast of Ireland, he left his disciples Sylvester and Salonius, who were there buried. Their remains were preserved in that church, until they were removed, at the close of the sixth century, to the Inch or Holm of Baethin,in the parish of Dunganstown, and County of Wicklow. In that locality, those saints were venerated until the year 770 or 774, when the church there experienced the fate of the Churches of Glendalough and of some other sanctuaries in that district of country.

    In the 17th century, the Irish hagiologist, Father John Colgan, compiled his work on the lives of the three wonderworking patron saints of Ireland, the Trias Thaumaturga. He drew on a number of existing Lives and in the second life of Saint Patrick there is an interesting summary of the Palladian mission. It includes a mention of Solon or Salonius as his name is Latinized here:

    “The most blessed Pope Celestine ordained bishop the archdeacon of the Roman Church, named Palladius, and sent him into the island of Hibernia, giving to him relics of the blessed Peter and Paul, and other saints; and, moreover, the volumes of the Old and New Testaments. Palladius entering the land of the Scots, arrived at the territory of the men of Leinster, where Nathi Mac Garrchon was chief, who was opposed to him. Others, however, whom the divine mercy had disposed towards the worship of God, having been baptized in the name of the sacred Trinity, the blessed Palladius built three churches in the same district — one which is called Kill-fine (i.e., church of Finte: perhaps the present Dunlavin), in which, even to the present day, he left his books received from St. Celestine, and the box of the relics of SS. Peter and Paul, and other saints, and the tablets on which he used to write, which, in Irish, are called from his name, Pallere — that is, the burden of Palladius, and are held in veneration; another was called Teach-na- Roman, the house of the Romans; and the third, Domnach-ardech (Donard, near Dunlavin), in which repose the holy companions of Palladius, viz., Sylvester and Salonius, who are still honoured there. After a short time Palladius died at Fordun, but others say that he was crowned with martyrdom there.”

    This information is supported by the fourth life which adds the detail that the relics of our saint and his companion Sylvester, were later translated to an island not far from Arklow, County Wicklow, which owed its name to Saint Boethin:

    …The third is the church which is called Domnach-arda, in which are the holy companions of Palladius, viz., Silvester and Solinus, whose relics, after some time, were carried to the island of Boethin, and are there held in due honour.

    So, we appear to have an Irish tradition which records that:

    1. The mission of Palladius included two saints, Solonius and Sylvester

    2. They were placed in charge of one of the churches founded by Palladius in the area of Dunlavin, County Wicklow

    3. Their relics remained at the church until they were subsequently translated to the island of Boethin, also in County Wicklow.

    That being so, I seem to be left with the question, how did Solon also come to be linked with Mar in Scotland? I would thus be interested to see if I can discover the basis on which Dempster made his calendar entry but the answer will require some further research.

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  • Saint Ernin Mac Creisin of Rathnoi, August 18

    August 18 is the commemoration of a County Wicklow saint, distinguished by his patronymic, Ernin Mac Creisin. It is a blessing that he is so distinguished as there are at least two dozen other saints of the same name, most of whom it is impossible to identify individually. Our saint, however, is known to us from the Life of Saint Columba by Adomnán of Iona. The author records that he heard of a prophecy about the future greatness of Saint Ernin Mac Creisin, whom he describes as ‘famous through all the churches of Ireland and very highly regarded’ (book I:3) which was made by Saint Columba when he encountered the boy Ernin at the monastery of Clonmacnoise. Saint Adomnán further records that the account of the prophecy was given by Ernin himself to another abbot of Iona, Ségéne, whose feast we celebrated last week. Today’s saint Ernin, however, is not the only saint of this name to be associated with the monastery of Iona, as the Life of Saint Columba records that an uncle of Saint Columba bore this name and various nephews have also been proposed. The founder’s uncle and our saint, however, are two distinct individuals. Canon O’Hanlon’s account below records some of the struggles that earlier hagiologists experienced in trying to sort out the individual careers of the various saints Ernin. He perhaps muddies the waters even further by introducing the evidence from the Scottish calendars that sought to identify our saint with their Saint Marnock, but until I can do some further research I would be reluctant to accept that identification at face value. As the Irish calendar entry from the Martyrology of Aengus (which I have transferred from the footnotes into Canon O’Hanlon’s main text) makes clear, Ernin Mac Creisin is identified both with the locality of Rathnoi, modern Rathnew, County Wicklow, and with a hypocoristic or ‘pet’ form of his name which may have given rise to the idea that this Irish Ernin is also the Scottish Marnock. Finally, I could not resist reproducing the charming engraving of Rathnew from page 266 of volume 8 of The Lives of the Irish Saints, I’m sure it doesn’t look like that today!

    St. Ernin or Mernog, of Rathnoi, now Rathnew, County of Wicklow, and of Killdreenagh.

    [Sixth and Seventh Centuries.]

    The lesson of this holy man’s Acts shows us, that in all times some of the greatest saints have been born with poor surroundings and prospects in life. Still the Almighty has providentially arranged to bring them to a superior station, and to perform their work well, while serving all the great requirements of religion. At the 18th day of August, St. Aengus enters the feast of St. Ernoc in his “Feilire,” and to this a commentator adds an explanatory scholion. This is partly in Irish, and partly in Latin. The English translation is “My Ernóc, i.e., Ernin, i.e., a pious son (was) he. Or Cresin nomen patris ejus. Or Ernine son of Cresine of RathNoe in Hui Garrchon in Fotharta of Leinster and of Cell Draignech in Hui Dróna besides.” On the lower margin is another brief note, thus translated into English: “Son of Cressine, my Ernoc, etc.”

    In the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 18th of August, a festival is also entered in honour of Ernin Mac Creisin, of Raithnui, in h-Garrchon. Hence, it would seem that Creisin is to be regarded as his father. At this date, the Bollandists observe, that their predecessors had found the name of a certain Irish Erenseus at the 14th of February, according to Thomas Dempster’s arrangement; but, they deferred further notice of him, to the 26th of April, the date for his feast given by Camerarius, while waiting for some more certain evidences to establish better his veneration. Their notices were further deferred to this day, the 18th of August, as Colgan indicated his feast; and, as no better account of him could be furnished, at the latter date, they place him among those saints whose festivals are pretermitted. We find, that an Ernan, called the son of Degill and of Cumenia, was also a cousin to St. Columba, who, was brother of Cumenia. However, the patronymic of the present saint sufficiently distinguishes him from St. Columba’s relative. The present Ernan must have been born, probably after the middle of the sixth century, judging from the recorded date for the arrival of St. Columkille on a visit to Clonmacnoise, while St. Alither was Abbot there, and while Ernen, son of Cressen, was then a poor boy. He was little esteemed by the community, although his dejected look and threadbare dress caused him to be well known to the monks. However, he eagerly desired to welcome the illustrious visitor, with the rest of those who came forth to meet him; while barriers had been erected to restrain the pressure of a crowd collected, as the ecclesiastics moved in procession singing hymns and psalms. But, such was Ernan’s humility, that he sought to avoid the public gaze. Still, he desired much to steal unobserved, and to kiss the hem of St. Columkille’s garment. Having approached from behind, the great Abbot had an inspiration which caused him to stop, and to place his hand on the neck of the boy, whom he brought before his eyes. The ecclesiastics and monks who were present, wondering at the interruption, asked Columba to send away the miserable and forlorn boy. However, the holy Abbot checked them, and then, turning to the youth, desired him to extend his tongue. Having done so, the saint blessed it, and prophesied thus: “Although this boy seems ungraceful and miserable, contemn him not; for he shall please and not displease you, in a time to come; he shall make daily progress in virtue and holy conversation; so that henceforward, his wisdom and prudence are destined to improve. He shall become a worthy member in this congregation, while the Almighty shall cause his tongue to speak words of eloquence and of sound doctrine.” This authentic statement, Adamnan received from a predecessor in the monastery at Iona, namely, St. Failbe, who heard Ernan himself relate this prophecy, in the presence of St. Seghine, Abbot over Iona from 623 to 652. Notwithstanding, the foregoing circumstantial narrative, this saint is said to have been the maternal uncle of St. Columba, who is named Ernanus, and who was the companion of his migration to Scotland. Now this departure for Iona must have taken place, probably before the period of the present saint’s birth. This identification, and family relationship, however, would appear to have been a mistake of Colgan.

    We are at a loss to know the particulars of our saint’s early life, or where he had studied. It may have been at Clonmacnois, and under the direction of his senior and contemporary, the Abbot St. Alither. However, he appears to have lived afterwards at Rath Noi, and most likely he built a church there. Through all the churches of Ireland, he was celebrated. The place here mentioned, in connection with him, is the present old village of Rathnew, in the County of Wicklow, while the district of Ui Garrchon, in which it is situated, extended through the barony of Newcastle, and along the sea-shore. It is one of the few ancient places, that has escaped the chicanery and land-grabbing greed in Ireland, and which have served to confiscate commonage tenures of so many villages and lands throughout the Island, especially during the last two centuries. The villagers are free of rent, and prize their small huts and gardens to that degree, that they are disinclined to part with them for almost any money consideration. The old church ruins and burial-ground, about two miles north-west of Wicklow town, are situated in the very midst of an irregularly built group of cabins, on the high road leading towards Dublin. Only a fragment of the east gable now appears standing; but, the church formerly consisted of a nave and choir. Since their decay those walls, now level with the ground, sufficiently reveal the dimensions and plan. Interiorly, the nave measured 58 feet in length, by 20 feet in width; while the choir was 19 feet in length, by 20 feet in breadth. The cross wall was about two and a-half feet in thickness; but, all the outer walls, on an average, were nearly three feet. The graveyard is enclosed with a modern wall, and the ground-surface is considerably elevated over the adjoining lanes. The burial-ground is still much used for interments. Some pieces of dressed stones, used for former doorways or windows, lie at the head of certain graves. The people of Rathnew village and neighbourhood have no more special or interesting traditions regarding the church, than its being of extreme antiquity, and as they state, almost as old as the time of St. Patrick. The scenery around Rathnew is exquisite, as any to be found in the picturesque and romantic County of Wicklow. The fine woods and beautiful demesne of Rosana are very near this village.

    It is said, that a saint named Ethernanus, or more properly Ernan, wrote St. Columba’s Life, and, moreover, that he was nephew to the great archimandrite, on the side of his sister. This statement, however, seems to rest solely on the authority of Dempster. The spot known as Cilldraighnech, according to the O’Clerys, in Ui-Drona, is said to have been a place, having some connection with the present saint. It is now called Killdreenagh, a townland in Dunleckney parish, County of Carlow. The Ui Drona, or posterity of Drona, descended from Cathaeir Mar, and besides possessing the territory alluded to, they held part of the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin, lying near the western side of the River Barrow, and around the town of Graiguenamanagh. Ui-Drona is now represented by the baronies of Idrone in the County of Carlow. This is the identification of his place, as arrived at by the Calendarists of Cashel and by Marianus O’Gorman. However, we believe, the Cill-draighnech having more immediate reference to our saint was the Killadrina, or Killadrenan, not far from Rathnew, and in the County of Wicklow. Of this, a notice and an illustration have been already furnished, when treating about St. Coemgin or Kevin, Abbot of Glendalough, at the 3rd day of June.

    The Annals of Ulster record the death of St. Ernin, at A.D. 634. Those of Tighernach have placed it at A.D. 635. The Four Masters have no record of this saint. St. Ernan, i.e., Mernog, is recorded also in the Martyrology of Donegal at this day, as having belonged to the locality of Rath Noi, in Ui Garrchon, i.e., in Fortharta, of Leinster. The Martyrology of Marianus O’Gorman, and his scholiast, as also the Calendar of Cashel and Feilire of St. Aengus, accord his festival to the 18th of August. St. Marnan’s, or Marnock’s festival is referred by Bishop Forbes, to the 1st of March, or to the 18th August, where he is identified with St. Ernenus or Ernin, i.e., Mernog of Rathnoi in Ui Garchon, i.e., in Fotharta, Leinster, and of Cill-draighnech in Ui Drona. This saint is known in Scotland as Marnan, or with the diminutive termination as Marnoch or Marnock. However, although the Scottish saint Marnan or Marnock is praised for his episcopal virtues and his gift for preaching the word of God, and so far resembling the Irish St. Ernan, yet it is not probable they could have been one and the same person. It may be well to observe, that the word Mernoc is a contraction of Mo-Ernin-occ. Such a name is preserved in the two Kilmarnocks and also in Inchmarnoc, Scotland. The prefix mo, signifying “my,” and the suffix occ, meaning “little,” indicate the idea of affection and familiarity, as annexed to the original name. Of late years, a handsome Catholic Chapel has been built at Rathnew, by Rev. Canon William Dillon, P.P. of Wicklow, and it has been dedicated to St. Ernin.

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