OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • East Meets West – The Irish Saint Paul

     

    Canon O’Hanlon notes that the early Irish church celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on January 25th:

    The Felire of St. Oengus contains no festival for an Irish saint at the 25th of January, as may be seen in the following Irish extract, and its English translation, furnished by Professor O’Looney; but, instead, it thus alludes to the conversion of St. Paul the Apostle:—

    D.uiii.kl.—Not insignificant the festival,
    A festival on which solemnity is made
    To Christ multitudes repaired
    Paul in the judgment of baptism.

    It also seems that because of this feastday, the great seventeenth-century hagiologist Father John Colgan decided to publish the Acts of Blessed Paul the Hermit at this date. It was claimed that this Irish Paul was one of the early disciples of Saint Patrick, converting, according to Colgan, around the year 442.

    His story, however, continues in the Voyage of Saint Brendan, when the intrepid sailors encounter a hermit straight out of the eastern tradition of the Desert Fathers. Saint Brendan has already forewarned his brethern on the approach to a small island, that they will see a ‘holy hermit, called Paul the Spiritual, who has dwelt there for sixty years without corporeal food, and who for twenty years previously received his food from a certain animal.’ Saint Brendan respectfully goes ashore first to seek permission to disembark his crew, who are in for some further surprises:

    When they came he gave each of them the kiss of peace, calling him by his proper name, at which they all marvelled much, because of the prophetic spirit thus shown. They also wondered at his dress, for he was covered all over from head to foot with the hair of his body, which was white as snow from old age, and no other garment had he save this.

    Saint Brendan protests his own unworthiness in the spiritual life when faced with this extreme ascetic witness:

    Woe is me, a poor sinner, who wear a monk’s habit, and who rule over many monks, when I here see a man of angelic condition, dwelling still in the flesh, yet unmolested by the vices of the flesh.’ On this, the man of God said: ‘Venerable father, what great and wonderful things has God shown to thee, which He has not revealed to our saintly predecessors! and yet, you say in your heart that you are not worthy to wear the habit of a monk; I say to you, that you are greater than any monk, for the monk is fed and clothed by the labour of his own hands, while God has fed and clothed you and all your brethren for seven years in His own mysterious ways; and I, wretch that I am, sit here upon this rock, without any covering, save the hair of my body.

    The hermit goes on to tell the visitors something of his earlier life and it is here that Saint Patrick makes a reappearance:

    For forty years I lived in the monastery of St Patrick, and had the care of the cemetery. One day when the prior had pointed out to me the place for the burial of a deceased brother, there appeared before me an old man, whom I knew not, who said: ‘Do not, brother, make the grave there, for that is the burial-place of another.’ I said’ ‘Who are you, father?’ ‘Do you not know me?’ said he. ‘Am I not your abbot?’ ‘St Patrick is my abbot,’ I said. ‘I am he,’ he said; ‘and yesterday I departed this life and this is my burial-place.’ He then pointed out to me another place, saying: ‘Here you will inter our deceased brother; but tell no one what I have said to you. Go down on to-morrow to the shore, and there you will find a boat that will bear you to that place where you shall await the day of your death.’ Next morning, in obedience to the directions of the abbot, I went to the place appointed, and found what he had promised. I entered the boat, and rowed along for three days and nights, and then I allowed the boat to drift whither the wind drove it. On the seventh day, this rock appeared, upon which I at once landed, and I pushed off the boat with my foot, that it may return whence it had come, when it cut through the waves in a rapid course to the land it had left.

    On the day of my arrival here, about the hour of none, a certain animal, walking on its hind legs, brought to me in its fore paws a fish for my dinner, and a bundle of dry brushwood to make a fire, and having set these before me, went away as it came. I struck fire with a flint and steel, and cooked the fish for my meal; and thus, for thirty years, the same provider brought every third day the same quantity of food, one fish at a time, so that I felt no want of food or of drink either; for, thanks to God, every Sunday there flowed from the rock water enough to slake my thirst and to wash myself.

    After those thirty years I discovered these two caves and this spring-well, on the waters of which I have lived for sixty years, without any other nourishment whatsoever. For ninety years, therefore, I have dwelt on this island, subsisting for thirty years of these on fish, and for sixty years on the water of this spring. I had already lived fifty years in my own country, so that all the years of my life are now one hundred and forty; and for what may remain, I have to await here in the flesh the day of my judgment.
    (Section 26 of the Voyage of Saint Brendan)

    Canon O’Hanlon remains politely unconvinced:

    Besides the legendary cast of this narrative, and a want of apparent connection between the Paul there named with the holy hermit who lived so long as a companion of St. Patrick; the period for extension of his life must preclude all reasonable probability, that the great apostle’s disciple could have survived and have borne the rigours of his isolated position until the time of St. Brendan’s supposed visit to him.

    An earlier writer, Father John Lanigan, who published a three-volume ecclesiastical history of Ireland in the 1820s, was rather more blunt:

    Colgan has (at 25 Jan.) what he calls the Acts of this Paul. The greater part of them is nothing else than a corrupt and ridiculous imitation of the history of St. Paul of Egypt, the first hermit; with this difference that, instead of a continental desert, the Irish Paul is made to pass his lonely days in a desert island.

    Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vol. i., chap, ix., § xiii., n. 186, 495.

    The Life of Saint Paul of Thebes was written by Saint Jerome in the fourth century, and in it the eremetic ideal that Saint Paul embodies, by withdrawing to the desert and subsisting on the fruit of a palm tree and on bread supplied by a raven, is held up as superior to the ‘worldliness’ of other forms of monasticism.

    A more recent commentator suggests that there may thus have been another agenda underlying the encounter between Saint Brendan and the hermit:

    Paul the Hermit makes a surprise cameo appearance in the anonymous Navigatio Sancti Brendani; though in that work the hermit has been a disciple of Patrick and now subsists on nothing. Although shards of Jerome’s Latin remain, the author seems consciously to reverse Jerome’s message: Brendan complains that his life is nothing like the hermit’s, but Paul contradicts him, pronouncing Brendan’s particular care of his monastic familia to be the more blessed calling. It almost seems as if the author of the Navigatio were attempting to champion a native Irish community of monks over the eremetic ideal.

    Kevin Roddy, ‘Saint Paul of Thebes’ in P.G. Jestice, ed, Holy People of the World – a Cross-cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2004), 679.

     

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  • Saint Manchan of Lemanaghan, January 24

    At January 24 the Irish calendars commemorate Saint Manchan of Lemanaghan, County Offaly. Devotion to this seventh-century saint is kept very much alive by the existence of a wonderful tent-shaped shrine, which, unusually, is not an exhibit in the National Museum but rather a living part of parish life in a church in Boher. The Shrine of Saint Manchan seems to have led a rather exciting life of its own in the nineteenth century, travelling to exhibitions at home and abroad. It has continued to live dangerously in our own times as it was stolen from the church in the summer of 2012, but was thankfully recovered the next day.  Canon O’Hanlon’s account of Saint Manchan’s life quickly lets us know that some confusion has arisen in the past about the exact identity of this saint in relation to others of the same name:

    ‘REGARDING this holy abbot, few biographical incidents have been preserved. Five noted saints bear the name of Manchan. The years of their respective deaths and other circumstances prove them to have been distinct individuals. Besides these five, there are additional Manchens found in the Irish Calendar, under various forms of spelling, and who, from certain notices connected, must be regarded as different persons. This fact, their recorded diversity of race, family, place, and festival, seems sufficiently to establish. St. Oengus, the Culdee, enumerates eight Manchans; seven of these are distinguished by the addition to their names of various places. To this number, the names of five others, distinct, so far as localities are concerned, have been added by Colgan. This account would seem to make the number distinguished by names of places greater than what has been elsewhere set down in his text. Nevertheless, irregularities have existed in confounding the transactions of some Manchans with the acts of others, who are homonymous’.
    O’Hanlon goes on to list the various saints of this name in his footnotes:
    The Five Noted Saint Manchans
    1. St.Manchain Abbot of Menadrochit (Mundrehid, in the barony of Upper Ossory, Queen’s County), who died in the year 652.
    2. St. Manchan, of Leth (Lemanaghan, King’s County), who died in the year 664.
    3. St. Manchin, of Lethglenn (Leighlin, county Carlow), who died in the year 725.
    4. St. Manchin, Abbot of Tuaim-grene (Tomgrany, County Clare), who departed in the year 735.
    5. St. Manchen, Bishop of Lethglenn (Leighlin, county Carlow), whose death occurred in the year 863.
    The Eight Manchans of Saint Oengus the Culdee
    These are — Manchan, of Leth; Manchan, of Moethail; Manchan, of Achad tairbh; Manchan, of Eascair; Manchan, of Kill-aird; Manchan, of Kilmanach; Manchan, son of Erc; and Manchan, of Ardtrichim.
    The Five Additional Manchans of Colgan
    St. Manchan, of Disert Chuilinn ; St.Munchen, of Lismore ; St. Manchen, of Tuain-Grene ; and two Manchens, of Leithglenn.
    O’Hanlon also helpfully collects entries for today’s feast of Saint Manchan from various calendars:
    The Martyrology of Donegal records for this day:
    24.C. NONO KAL. FEBRUARII. 24.
    MANCHAN, of Liath, son of Indagli. Mella was the name of his mother, and his two sisters were Grealla and Greillseach. There is a church called Liath-Manchain, or Leth-Manchain, in Dealbhna-Mhec-Cochlain. His relics are at the same place in a shrine, which is beautifully covered with boards on the inside, and with bronze outside them, and very beautifully carved. It was Manchan of Liath that composed the charming poem, i.e. :
    “Would that, O Son of the living God!
    O eternal ancient King ! &etc”
    We find Manchan of Liath-Manchain, of the race of Maelcroich, son of Rudhraighe ; and Manchan, son of Failbhe, of the race of Conall Gulban, son of Niall ; and Manchan of Liath, son of Indagh, who is this one.
    A very old vellum book, in which are found the Martyrology of Tamhlacht-Maoilruain and the saints of the same name, and an account of many of the mothers of the saints, &c., states, that Manchan of Liath, in habits and life, was like unto Hieronimus, who was very learned.
    The Martyrology of Tallagh assigns the festival of St. Manchan to the 24th of January, corresponding with ix. of the Kalends of February:
    Manchan leith mac in Dagdae
    The Kalendar of Drummond also calls him a most wise man, when setting down his festival at this same date:
    In Hibernia natale Sancti Manchani viri sapientissimi
    Under the head of Cill Mainchin, Duald Mac Firbis records Bishop Manchan, or Mainchin, in Cill Manchan.
    We have no means left for ascertaining whether St. Manchan had been the first founder of a monastery at Leth, now Lemanaghan, but it seems not improbable. We read that after Cam Conaill battle, in which Diarmaid, son of Aedh Slaine, gained a victory over Guaire, a.d. 642, —or, according to other accounts, a.d. 648 —the conqueror, on returning, granted Tuaimn Eirc,’ i.e., Liath-Manchain, with its sub-divisions of land, as “altar-sod” to God and to St. Kieran. The term ‘altar sod’ means literally ‘land on the altar’, i.e., church land. He also pronounced three maledictions on that king, whose people should take even a drink of water there, and ordered his burial-place to be at Clonmacnois. In consequence of this donation of Tuaim n Eirc to Clonmacnois Monastery, it seems probable, some monks of that house were established there, and that these formed a cell or dependent branch. Over these monks St. Manchan may have been their first abbot or prior.
    Such an opinion appears the more probable, from the circumstance, that the death of our saint occurred at no very remote period from the foundation of his monastery. The name Liath-Manchain, now Lemanaghan, signifies “Manchan’s grey land,” according to Dr. O’Donovan. There is a church, called Liath-Manchain, or Leth-Manchain, in Deaibh-na-Mhec Cochlain, and here he was venerated. The old church of Lemanaghan had been situated in the middle of a bog, about the year 1615. At that time its position rendered it nearly inaccessible, although such is not the case at present. St. Manchan’s well, bearing the name of Tobar-Manchain, existed in Liath-Manchan townland, in the year 1838. We are informed by Mr. O’Donovan that in the Book of Fenagh it is stated that St. Manchan had been an intimate friend of St. Caillin. Manchan is said to have been the executor of his will and his successor in the abbacy of Fenagh. Liath is compounded with the denomination of various places in Ireland, but it is easy to determine the locality of the present saint, which was Liath-Manchain, now known as Kilmanaghan, a parish, partly in the barony of Clonlonan, county of Westmeath, but chiefly in that of Kilcoursey, King’s County. The old church was uprooted, and a Protestant church, now deserted, was erected on its site.St. Manchan died in 661, according to the Annals of Clonmacnoise, or in the year 664, according to the Annals of the Four Masters. He was one of many who had been carried off by that great plague, known as the Buidhe Connail. He appears to have died on the 24th of January, on which day his feast was annually celebrated in Lemanaghan. A shrine, supposed to have contained the relics of this saint, was long kept on the altar at the place of his deposition…
    …It would seem, that long after the time of its founder a monastery continued at Lemanaghan. One of its abbots departed this life, after the beginning of the thirteenth century. Afterwards the monastic establishment disappeared, and it became converted into a vicarage, with a parish church. It seems to have been a dependency on the Priory of Gailinn, now Gillen, an old church giving name to a parish, in the barony of Garrycastle, and in the northern part of the King’s County. The site of St. Manchan’s former monastery looks desolate, and it is now little frequented by visitors.

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  • Saint Maimbod, January 23

     

    On January 23 we commemorate Saint Maimbod, an Irish saint martyred in France around the year 900. Canon O’Hanlon reports that in the seventeenth century the Bollandists published an account of this martyr’s Life from a manuscript belonging to a French church and that native hagiologist Father John Colgan also recorded his Acts. These form the sources for Canon O’Hanlon’s own account below, taken from the first volume of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

    …The period of this saint seems to have been about the ninth century. From various accounts we learn, that he was a native and wore the habit or dress of Scotia or Ireland. Of illustrious birth and rank, he was entirely devoted to God’s service from his youth, and distinguished by the exercise of all Christian virtues. Maimbod was remarkable, also, for personal beauty and elegance of form. These advantages of birth, rank, and figure he little valued, rather preferring that his soul should be adorned with the virtues of humility and of self-denial. He considered worldly things as mean and transitory. He knew, that a Christian’s highest ambition should be eternal rewards. At what period of life he resolved on setting out from Ireland has not transpired. Maimbod’s object in leaving his native country appears to have been the acquisition of greater perfection, and a subjection of his will to God’s designs. He likewise desired to visit certain shrines and places, where the relics of saints and martyrs were preserved. During this pilgrimage, he exercised extraordinary mortification and resolution in overcoming temptations. With joy of spirit, he endured cold, hunger, and thirst; and whilst exteriorly he was scantily clothed, interiorly his soul was inflamed with an ever-burning love of the Creator, and a great zeal to promote whatever contributed to His honour and glory. He always denied himself luxuries, and often bodily necessaries. In him, the flesh was always subject to the spirit. It would appear, that Maimbod had been elevated to the clerical state before leaving Ireland, and that he was distinguished for wisdom, holiness, and ecclesiastical learning. He cultivated the love of poverty to such a degree, that whatever he received from others he bestowed upon the poor. When he had nothing to give in the shape of alms, he enriched the souls of many by his expositions of the Divine word, and by exhortations full of consolation and fervour. 

    Having visited many places, renowned for their connection with eminent saints, he came at length to the Burgundian territory, where the relics of many servants of God were enshrined, and among them, several belonging to his own country. The author of St. Maimbod’s Acts, who appears to have been a Frenchman, takes great care to enumerate the many holy martyrs and confessors, who adorned and blessed his country by their labours, virtues, and constant patronage. Among the Irish saints in France are specially named Columbanus, Dichull, Columbin, and Anatolius.

    While in the province of Burgundy, Maimbod became the guest of a certain nobleman, who, aware of his great virtues and the efficacy of his prayers, requested this holy pilgrim to accept something whereby the donor might be remembered in his petitions before God. The saint declared, that as he had an humble trust in the Almighty’s constant favours, he had no need for the goods of this transitory world. But that he might not seem to undervalue the kind intentions of his host, Maimbod consented to accept the present of a pair of gloves. Then, bestowing his benediction on this noble, and on all the members of his family, the holy man resumed his devout pilgrimage.
    Having gone to the Church of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to offer up his prayers, Maimbod came to the village of Dominipetra, eight miles distant from Besancon. At this place some banditti were to be found, dead to every sense of Christian or human feeling, and ready at all times to commit most atrocious crimes. These men were robbers, and lived by waylaying and plundering pilgrims and travellers, who visited this place. Having seen Maimbod wearing his gloves, and supposing from such indication of worldly comfort, that he must be possessed of money, they watched his departure and pursued him beyond the village. They overtook him at a fountain, called Colebrunnia, which, in the Teutonic dialect, means “cold water.” On seeing them approach with menacing aspect, the servant of God saluted them in this manner : “Hail, beloved brethren, the grace of the Lord be with you; declare to me why you approach in such a manner. The mercy of God can assist you in your necessities. To this salutation, and to the charitable aspirations of Maimbod, the robbers replied only by inflicting on him blows and wounds, with swords and clubs, until he fell lifeless on the ground. His soul, however, winged its flight to Heaven. The perpetrators of this barbarous murder, finding nothing about his person worth seizing, were then filled with disappointment and remorse, for the cruel atrocity they had committed.
    The people of that neighbourhood, having found the remains of the holy pilgrim, removed them for sepulture to the Church of St. Peter, where he had so lately offered up prayers. His relics were afterwards rendered famous, owing to many miracles wrought at his tomb. By request of a certain count, named Adzo, after some time, Berengarius, Bishop of Besancon, had the remains of our saint removed to Monbelligard or Montbelliard.
    The ceremony of this translation was performed by the Coadjutor-Bishop of Besancon, named Stephen, and who had been formerly Deacon of St. John the Evangelist’s church, in that city. He was advanced to this dignity, in consequence of Archbishop Berengarius having lost his sight, which, it is said, was miraculously restored, on this occasion. Many miracles were afterwards wrought at the tomb of our saint. Berengarius likewise instituted a festival to his honour, on the 23rd of January, the day of this holy man’s death.
    The name of St. Maimbod was inscribed in the Dyptics of Besancon church, with notices of many other saints, who were held in especial veneration in that archdiocese. This martyrdom of our saint took place, at or before the year 900; since, according to Chifflet, Berengarius lived about this time. Maimbod was also known by the name of Maingol—a common designation, amongst the Scots or ancient Irish. By some martyrologists he is called Maimboldus, and by other writers Maibodus. A distinguished writer amongst the Scots or ancient Irish. observes, that when we read of the Christian benefits obtained by Continental countries through the agency of Scotia and of the Scots in the early ages of our national Church, these must be attributed to Ireland and to Irishmen. For the Island of Saints then many had visited to acquire learning in her schools. From these numbers migrated to diffuse knowledge and the science of the saints through more distant countries.

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