OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • Saint Enan of Rosmore, January 30

    At January 30 the Irish Calendars commemorate Enan, son of Gemman, in Rosmore, County Wexford. His name appears in the earlier Martyrologies of Tallagh and of Oengus. The entry in the latter reads:

    B. iii. kl. Fifty and one hundred martyrs
    Who ennobled the door of martyrdom
    He fasted with a number of the old mercenaries
    Enan of bright Ros Rind.
    In notes appended to this entry, however, he appears as:
    Enan son of Gemman in Ross mor in Hui Dega in Hui Cennselaig.
    The same as my-Menoc of Glenn Faidli in Hui Garrchon.
    The later Martyrology of Gorman simply records the name of Enan but the Martyrology of Donegal has a fuller entry:
    30. B. TERTIO KAL. FEBRUARII. 30.
    ENAN, son of Gemman, at Ros-mor, in Ui-Deagha, in Ui-Ceinnsealaigh.
    The translator adds a note that after this entry:
    Here the more recent hand adds, “This is the Enan who wrote the lives of the saints.”
    The table appended to the Martyrology of Donegal contains a query:
    Enan, son of Gemman, of Ros-mor [in Luighne], 30 Jan
    [Is he the writer of the Life of Brigid, &etc., and of the Book of Kilkenny? and it seems likely to be so, though he is called Eminus in Jocelin, not Ennanus.]
    So, the possibility is there that Enan, son of Gemman, was something of a hagiographer himself and may even have written a Life of Saint Brigid. There is some confusion introduced as to where exactly the territory was in which he flourished. Ros-mor in Ui-Ceinnsealaigh has been identified as Rossmore, County Wexford, but the writer of the table in the Martyrology of Donegal has added Luighne. The earlier note in the Feilire Oengusa that Enan may be the same as my-Menoc of Glenn Faidli, suggests that he could be Saint Mohemog of Glenely, County Wicklow.
    The Scottish Drummond Kalendar records, that on this day, iii. of the February Kalends, St. Enan, Confessor, passed away to Heaven, in Ireland.

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  • Saint Blath of Kildare, January 29

    On January 29 the Irish calendars commemorate Saint Blath, or Blathnait. The Martyrology of Donegal records:

    29. A. QUARTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 29.
    BLATH, Virgin.
    and the table of the Martyrology gives the Latin version of her name:
    Blath, virgin (Flora V)….. 29 Jan.
    Blath is the Irish word for ‘flower’, and so the Martyrology of Gorman makes a pun by recording her as ‘blooming Blath’. Her name is thus Latinized as Flora. 
    The notes to the Martyrology of Oengus also simply record her name for this day, but in the notes for the feast of Saint Brigid on February 1st we find that Saint Blath was a member of the monastic household of Kildare, where she had the role of cook. The stories of Saint Brigid often have a domestic aspect to them and the miracle of Loch Lemnachta  is a classic example:

    Eight bishops came to Brigit out of Hui Briuin Cualann, i.e. From Telach na n-epscop to Loch Lemnachta beside Kildare on the north. Brigit asked her cook, Blathnait, whether she had food for the bishops. Dixit ilia non. Brigit was ashamed: so the angel told her to milk the cows again. The cows were milked and they filled the tubs, and they would have filled all the vessels in Leinster, so that the milk went over the vessels and made a lake thereof, unde Loch Lemnachta ‘New-milk Lough’ dicitur.

    In his survey of the monasteries of Ireland, Mervyn Archdall assigned the repose of Saint Blath to the same year that he believed her mistress also departed:
    523. Died Saint Blatha, or Flora, cook to Saint Brigid.

    but he does not expand on the reasons for doing so.

    As not a great deal has been recorded about the life of Kildare’s saintly cook, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at Saint Blath’s domain – the monastic kitchen:
    Domestic arrangements are mentioned incidentally in the texts. A monastery usually had a kitchen separate from the refectory, and this was where the food was prepared. Meat had to be dried and salted. We know very little about how the Irish obtained their salt, although it was an essential commodity, and a lump of salt was an attractive present. It could have been obtained from sea-water by a process of evaporation, but there is some evidence that seaweed was collected and burned and the salty ashes used in curing meat. The monastic kitchen seems to have had no oven, and pottery is rare from excavated Irish sites except in the north-east. Dough for the bread was kneaded in wooden troughs and then baked on a griddle or baking flag, and bullauns which are often found on sites may have been used for grinding and preparing food. A cauldron, suitable for stews, was a luxury article, whilst meat might be roasted on spits or boiled in water heated by hot stones: clay pits or wooden vats could be used for this purpose.
    K. Hughes and A. Hamlin, The Modern Traveller to the Early Irish Church (London, 1977), 44.

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  • Saint Cannera of Bantry, January 28

    Not a great deal is known of Saint Cannera of Bantry, County Cork, commemorated on January 28, apart from the details of an encounter she had with Saint Senan of Scattery Island (Inis Cathaig), recorded in that saint’s Life. The feast of Saint Cannera is recorded at January 28 in the Martyrologies of Tallaght and of Gorman. The latter describes her as ‘dear Cainer’ and notes that she was daughter of Cruithnechan in Cell Cuilinn in Cairbre. The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal reads:

    28. G. QUINTO KAL. FEBRUARII. 28.

    CAINDER, daughter of Cruithneachan, at Cill-Chuilinn, in Cairbre.

    The seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, published her Acts at this day, but it is to the Life of Saint Senan that we must turn for a glimpse into Cannera’s life:

    2416. Canair the Pious, a holy maiden of the Benntraige of the south of Ireland, set up a hermitage in her own territory. There one night, after nocturns, she was praying, when all the churches of Ireland appeared to her. And it seemed that a tower of fire rose up to heaven from each of the churches; but the greatest of the towers, and the straightest towards heaven, was that which rose from Inis Cathaig.’Fair is yon cell’, she saith. ‘Thither will I go, that my resurrection may be near it’. Straightway on she went, without guidance save the tower of fire which she beheld ablaze without ceasing day and night before her, till she came thither. Now, when she had reached the shore of Luimnech, she crossed the sea with dry feet as if she were on smooth land, till she came to Inis Cathaig. Now Senan knew that thing, and he went to the harbour to meet her, and he gave her welcome.

    2426. ‘Yea, I have come’ saith Canair.
‘Go’ saith Senan, ‘to thy sister who dwells in yon island in the east, that thou mayest have guesting therein’.
‘Not for that have we come’ saith Canair, ‘but that I may have guesting with thee in this island’.
‘Women enter not this island’, saith Senan.
‘How canst thou say that?’ saith Canair. ‘Christ is no worse than thou. Christ came to redeem women no less than to redeem men. No less did He suffer for the sake of women than for the sake of men. Women have given service and tendance unto Christ and His Apostles. No less than men do women enter the heavenly kingdom. Why, then, shouldst thou not take women to thee in thine island?’
‘Thou art stubborn’ saith Senan.
‘What then’ saith Canair, ‘shall I get what I ask for, a place for my side in this isle and the Sacrament from thee to me?’
‘A place of resurrection’ saith Senan, ‘will be given thee here on the brink of the wave, but I fear that the sea will carry off thy remains’
‘God will grant me’ saith Canair, ‘that the spot wherein I shall lie will not be the first that the sea will bear away’.
‘Thou hast leave then’ saith Senan, ‘to come on shore’. For thus had she been while they were in converse, standing up on the wave, with her staff under her bosom, as if she were on land. Then Canair came on shore, and the Sacrament was administered to her, and she straightway went to heaven.

    2447. God granted unto Canair that whoso visits her church before going on the sea shall not be drowned between going and returning.

    Whitley Stokes, ed. and trans., ‘Life of Senan’ in Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, (Oxford, 1890), 219-220.

    This encounter between the two saints has ensured the translation of Saint Cannera to our own times as a feminist and supporter of the ordination of women. I find it interesting that people today seem to be very taken with the notion that the early Irish church was influenced by the eastern tradition of monasticism, whilst at the same time completely ignoring the realities of that tradition. I doubt that any Greek monk, for example, would find anything exceptional about Saint Senan’s desire to turn Saint Cannera away, for women are banned from entering the monastic site of Mount Athos to this day.

    It is thus unfair to Saint Senan to brand him as a misogynist for wishing to pursue his monastic vocation without the presence of women, something present in the history of monasticism from the start. We are also told on page 221 of the Stokes translation of the saint’s Life that when his death was approaching, Saint Senan went out of his way to visit a community of nuns to whom he had personally given the veil:

    So he went on that side, and he visited Cell Eochaille to commence with Ner’s daughters who were dwelling there, pious, holy virgins, who had taken the veil at Senan’s hand, and who were under his spiritual direction. Then they entreat Senan that the body of (some) lowly monk of his community might be given to them, to be buried by us, so that his relics may be protecting us. ‘Verily’ saith Senan, ‘this shall be granted to you. Be in no distress as to one from whom your protection shall come’.

    In any case, the account of his encounter with Saint Cannera reads to me as if Saint Senan rather admires her stubborness, and he does grant her request. Her memory as a protectress of those at sea seems to have survived too, and I hope to be able to trace a copy of a 16th-century poem which asks for her blessing on a ship and its crew.

     

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