OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • Saint Colmán ua hEirc, December 5

    We can add Saint Colmán ua hEirc to the long list of Irish saints of this name with a commemoration found on the Irish calendars at December 5. This Saint Colmán is associated with the great Saint Erc of Slane as the Martyrology of Gorman makes clear in its entry for the day:

    5. c.

    Colman ua hEirc oebgel

    which is translated as ‘beautiful, bright Colman, Erc’s descendant.’

    The Martyrology of Donegal simply records the name Colman Ua h-Eirc at this date. It is possible, since the abbatial succession in Irish monasteries was often kept within families, that our saint could be an actual as well as a spiritual successor to Saint Erc of Slane. In a compendium of entries relating to Slane taken from the various Irish annals the Meath diocesan historian, Father Cogan, records more than one successor to Saint Erc who bore this name including: 

    746. Colman of the Britons, Abbot of Slane, died.

    823. Colman, son of Oiliolla, Abbot of Slane, and also of other churches in France and Ireland, died.

    838. Colman, Abbot of Slane, died.

    946. Colman, airchinneach of Slane, was slain by the foreigners.

    Rev. A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath – Ancient and Modern, Volume I. (Dublin, 1862), 63.
    I cannot, of course, equate any of these individuals with the saint Colmán ua hEirc, commemorated on December 5.

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  • Saint Berchán of Clúain Sosta, December 4

    On 4 December the Martyrology of Oengus first commemorates two martyrs of the universal church and then records:

    one of our noble elders was the
    modest Fer da lethe (‘ man of two parts ‘).

    The scholiast notes:

    Fer da lethe, ‘man of two parts,’ i.e. Berchán of Clúain Sosta in Offaly. Or Fer da lethe in Laid Treoit in Scotland. A priest was he.
    Man of two parts, i.e. half of his life in the world and the other half in pilgrimage, ut ferunt periti.

    The later Martyrology of Donegal elevates the priest to the status of Bishop but retains the title ‘man of two parts’:

    4. B. PRIDIE NONIS DECEMBRIS. 4.

    BEARCHAN, Bishop and Apostle of God, of Cluain-sosta, in Ui-Failghe. He was of the race of Cairbre Righfoda, son of Conaire, who is of the seed of Heremon. Ferdaleithe was another name for him, i.e., he spent half his life in Alba, and the other half in Erin, as he himself said :

    ” At first we were in Alba,
    The next first in Meath;
    Truly it was not foolish sleep that I went bent on,
    I did not find the face of a hero by sleeping.”

    and a later hand has added this note:

    [” The four prophets of the fine Gaels,
    Better of it the country whence they came,
    Colum Cille, Moling the perfect,
    Brenainn of Biorr, and Berchan.”]

    The man of two parts, perhaps appropriately, also has two feastdays. The Martyrology of Tallaght commemorates Berchán of Clúain Sosta on August 4. The existence of two separate feastdays has not been explained, it is interesting though that in Clonsast the people gathered at the holy well of Saint Berchán on 3rd December, which would be the eve of his feast on the 4th. Below is a summary of his life which accepts the August date as his feastday:

    Berchán Scottish bishop, poet and prophet c.770

    According to the Book of Leinster, Berchán, son of Muiredach was the great-grandson of Ainbcellach, a Scots king of Cenél Loairn who seized the Dál Riata kingship in 697-8 and who died in 719. Berchán became a cleric and settled in Ireland at Clonsast (Cluain Sosta) Co. Offaly, where he founded a monastery. He was remembered in Gaelic tradition as a prophetic writer and he is best known as the apocryphal author of the Prophecy of Berchán – a 12th-century Middle Irish poem of some 204 stanzas alleging to predict the quality and length of reigns of Scottish and Irish kings, beginning with the time of Columba and Áedán mac Gabhráin, and ending with Donald Bán (1093-7) son of Duncan I. Although the prophecies in the Scottish section are attributed to a fifth-century author, it seems clear that Berchán of Clúain Sosta was the person to whom the poem was originally attributed. Berchán is supposed to have uttered the first half of the work in c.718 and to have died c.778 which is not impossible if he were the great-grandson of Ainbcellach of Dál Riata. Although the earliest manuscript of the Prophecy dates to the 18th century, fragments of the work are preserved in the Book of Leinster, c. 1170, and the poem is seen as an 11th-century compilation. Berchán’s festival was kept on 4 August. His name may be commemorated in the Scottish placename of Kilbarchan in Renfrew, while St. Braghan’s Well survived at Clonsast into modern times. Berchán’s nickname of fer-dá-leithe (Man of Two Portions) was explained in medieval tradition as referring to his two careers – one in Ireland and the other in his Scottish homeland.

    A. Williams, A.P. Smyth and D.P.Kirby, A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain: England Scotland and Wales c. 500-c. 1050 (1991), 61.

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  • Saint Mac-óige of Lismore, December 3

    December 3 sees the commemoration of a saint associated with the monastery of Lismore, County Waterford. This important monastic school was founded by Saint Carthach (also known as Mochuda) and produced a number of notable saints and scholars. A diocesan historian gives this brief description of it:

    The church and monastery of Lismore, which grew to be one of the renowned centres of ancient Irish learning and piety, owed its foundation to St. Mochuda of the 7th century. Mochuda, otherwise Carthage, was a native of Kerry, and he had been abbot of Rahan in Offaly. It is probable that there had been a Christian church at Lismore previous to the time of Mochuda, for in the Saint’s Life there is an implied reference to such a foundation. Be this as it may, Mochuda, driven out of Rahan, with his muintir, or religious household, migrated southward, and, having crossed the Blackwater at Affane, established himself at Lismore in 630. In deference to Mochuda’s place of birth the saint’s successor in Lismore was, for centuries, a Kerryman. Lismore grew in time to be a great religious city, and a school of sacred sciences, to which pilgrims from all over Ireland and scholars from beyond the seas resorted. The rulers of the great establishment were all, or most of them, bishops, though they are more generally styled abbots by the Annalists. Among the number are several who are listed as Saints by the Irish Martyrologies, scil:

    Macoige, abbot of Lismore … … … Dec. 3.

    Rev. Patrick Power, Waterford & Lismore, A Compendious History of the United Dioceses (Cork, 1937), 5-6.

     The Martyrology of Donegal for 3rd December simply commemorates ‘MACCOIGE, Abbot, of Lis-mór-Mochuda’, but there is a less prosaic entry in the metrical Martyrology of Oengus:

    A. iii. nonas. Decembris.

    Macc-óige with
    perfect goodness, pilot of
    marvellous Lismore.

    The scholiast goes on to record a rather extraordinary legend associated with this saint:

    3. Macc óige, i.e. abbot of Less mór Mochutu, and he was called ‘the Frightener or the Disturber,’ and this is the cause: when he was a little child, the plough-teams of the world, and every other kind of cattle which used to serve human beings, when they used to see him, would flee before him in panic and terror. Hence was understood the great servitude to him in which they were all to be thereafter.

    It would seem that Saint Mac-óige was a contemporary of the eighth-century Céile-Dé leader, Maelruain of Tallaght. In the collection of materials published under the title ‘The Monastery of Tallaght’, some of Mac-óige’s own teaching is preserved:

    76. This is what Mac Óige of Lismore said in reply to a certain man who inquired of him which attribute of the clerical character it would be best for him to acquire. He replied: ‘That attribute with which he has never yet heard fault found. If a man be distinguished [for charity],’ said he, ‘it is said that his charity is too great; if humble, it is said again that that man is too humble; if ascetic, that his abstinence is excessive, and so with the rest. I have never heard, however,’ said he, ‘of anyone of whom it was said that “this man is too steady”. Whatever task a man has set his hand to, it is best for him to persevere in it,’ etc.

    ‘The Monastery of Tallaght’, ed. E. J. Gwynn & W. J. Purton, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 29C (1911-12) 115-180.

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