OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND

  • Hagiography

    I begin a series of postings of useful essays on various aspects of the history of the early Irish Church with this introduction to the writing of saints’ lives by Dorothy Ann Bray. I had posted most of these essays on my previous blog back in 2009, so it is probable that the original links may now only be recoverable through the Wayback Machine. I originally sourced this piece here.


    Hagiography



    The composition of hagiography (saints’ lives) in
    Ireland begins with three major works that date from the mid- to the late
    seventh century, when the three major monastic foundations of Kildare, Armagh,
    and Iona had firmly established themselves and were expanding their territories
    and influence. The first is the Vita Sanctae Brigidae (Life of Saint
    Brigit of Kildare) by a monk whose name is given as Cogitosus. Cogitosus’s life
    of Brigit dates from about 650     C.E. and has
    long been considered the earliest hagiographical work in Hiberno-Latin. Another
    life of Brigit, the anonymous Vita Prima Sanctae Brigidae (First life of
    Saint Brigit, so called because it is the first of Brigit’s biographies
    recorded in the Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana—the major collection of saints’
    lives first compiled by the Société des Bollandistes in Belgium in the
    seventeenth century), also has a claim for early composition, and there is a
    continuing debate over which of these two is the earlier. The relationship
    between these two lives has yet to be resolved, and while both seem to draw
    upon similar sources, their composition is different. Cogitosus’s biography
    offers only a very brief summary of Brigit’s birth, parentage, and early career
    in a conventional hagiographical manner and concentrates instead on a series of
    miracle stories (including the well-known story of how the saint hung her wet
    cloak on a sunbeam), leading to a lengthy description of Brigit’s church and
    monastery. Cogitosus’s aim seems to be the promotion of the monastic community
    as much as that of its founder and patron; the miracle stories underline
    Brigit’s sanctity and divine power while the great size, wealth, and political
    and religious importance of her community are emphasized. The Vita Prima,
    on the other hand, offers a more lengthy series of miracle stories and
    anecdotes, including the famous birth tale in which Brigit is the daughter of a
    nobleman and a slavewoman, whom he sells at his wife’s insistence. The woman is
    bought first by a poet, then by a druid; the child is born on the threshold of
    the dairy at dawn and washed in new milk. Both versions mix biblical references
    and scripturally based miracles with folkloric material.


    The work of Cogitosus was followed shortly by
    that of Muirchú, a monk of Armagh, who composed a life of Saint Patrick around
    680     C.E. In his preface he refers to the
    hagiographical work of his “father” Cogitosus (no doubt meaning his
    spiritual father) and aims in his composition to do as Cogitosus did for his
    patron and founder. Muirchú’s work contains more biographical material than
    does Cogitosus’s and details Patrick’s early life and mission to Ireland;
    however, much of it is based on legend rather than history, although he clearly
    used some historical sources, including Patrick’s own Confessio
    (Confession). Nevertheless, Muirchú’s life of Patrick became the basis for
    subsequent lives of Patrick. A contemporary document by a bishop, Tiréchan,
    provides further hagiographical material but is a collection of memoranda
    concerning Patrick and a list of his foundations rather than any kind of
    biography.


    The third great hagiographical work of the
    seventh century is the life of Columba (Colum Cille) by Adomnán, ninth abbot of
    Iona, written between 685 and 689     C.E.
    Adomnán’s life of Columba represents Irish hagiographical writing at its
    finest; his work shows not only biblical influence but the influence of major
    continental writers, such as Sulpicius Severus and Gregory the Great, in both
    his hagiographical form and Latin style. While Adomnán incorporated both
    written sources and the oral tradition of Saint Columba in his life, much of
    the work also documents the history and constitution of the Irish church in its
    early days. The life is divided into three parts: The first part tells of
    Columba’s life and career, the second of his miracles and prophecies, and the
    third of angelic visions. Despite the legendary and folkloric material, Columba
    emerges in this life less as a magical figure and more as an historical
    personage. Like Muirchú’s life of Saint Patrick, Adomnán’s life of Columba
    became the basis for subsequent biographies of the saint in both Latin and
    Irish, culminating in the massive Betha Colaim Chille (Life of Colum
    Cille) compiled under the direction of the Donegal chieftain Manus O’Donnell in
    1532. The works of Cogitosus, Muirchú, and Adomnán also reflect their
    respective communities’ concerns with promoting the cults of their founders and
    establishing their territorial rights, thereby increasing their influence and
    income. Armagh and Kildare, both episcopal sees, rivaled one other for
    preeminence in the Irish church; Armagh and its founder saint, Patrick,
    eventually gained ascendance.

    The Irish church witnessed an expansion of monastic
    communities in the seventh and eighth centuries that led to an increase in
    hagiographical composition. This was aided in part by a renewal of asceticism
    and a spiritual reform led by a new order who called themselves céli Dé
    (culdees) or “companions of God,” centered at the monastery of
    Tallaght. The lives of saints from this period emphasize the saints’ ascetic
    practices and virtues of self-denial, individual prayer, and meditation; the
    life of the anchorite, alone in his cell with only God’s creation for company,
    is valorized, as is the saint’s spiritual guidance. Irish hagiographers often
    ascribed to their subjects a strong empathy with the natural world and its
    creatures; the saints of the sixth and seventh centuries had shown this
    affinity with nature and wild animals, and this characteristic continued in the
    hagiography of the reform period, finding also new expression in the religious
    poetry of the time. Devotion to the saints was also an important ideal in this
    movement, and two major martyrologies, the Martyrology of Tallaght and
    the Martyrology of Oengus, are associated with the céli Dé.

    During the eighth and ninth centuries more
    hagiographical texts began to appear in the vernacular, including the Old Irish
    life of Brigit (Bethu Brigte), which dates from the late eighth to early
    ninth centuries, and the Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick (Vita Tripartita)
    of the late ninth century, which represents the last major Patrician text of
    the Irish church. The Tripartite Life marks another change in the
    characteristics of Irish hagiography—it exhibits a strong concern with the
    rights and property of Patrick’s church rather than with spiritual teaching.
    The lives of the saints from this period onward follow suit in showing such
    interest in their saints’ churches, and the miracle stories become more
    fantastic and flamboyant to demonstrate the power of the saint, who appears
    much the same as a saga hero.

    The majority of the lives written in the
    vernacular are in Middle Irish; many are direct translations from Latin
    originals and date from around and after the twelfth century. But dating is
    notoriously difficult, since the manuscript versions of the lives of the
    saints, in both Latin and Irish, cannot be dated with confidence before the
    late twelfth century. This is partly owing to the incursions of the Vikings in
    the late eighth to the tenth centuries, but also to the ravages of later eras.
    From the sixth century Irish monks had traveled to Europe as pilgrims and
    missionaries, and a few, such as Saint Columbanus in the late sixth to early
    seventh centuries, founded several monasteries in France, Germany, and
    Switzerland. Many Irish monks fled to these continental Irish monasteries in
    the wake of the Vikings, taking their manuscripts with them. Irish
    hagiographical writing continued, however, both in Ireland and in Europe—the Navigatio
    Sancti Brendani     (Voyage of Saint Brendan), one of the most widely read
    works of the Middle Ages, was composed on the continent around the tenth
    century, probably by an Irish monk in exile, and was later translated into
    several vernacular languages.

    In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
    Irish church moved closer to conformity with the continental church and
    participated in the reform movement that was associated with the Benedictine
    abbey at Cluny. This paved the way for new orders, such as the Cistercians, to
    enter Ireland. One of the main leaders of this movement in Ireland was
    Máel-Máedóc Úa Morgair, or Saint Malachy; an account of his life was composed
    after his death in 1148 by his friend, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Although the
    great heyday of Irish saints and Irish hagiography had passed, the lives of the
    saints remained an important part of Irish history and identity. As the Normans
    became increasingly absorbed into Irish society and culture, Irish literature
    and learning rebounded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the major
    collections of saints’ lives—the Codex Insulensis, the Codex
    Salmanticensis,     and the Codex Kilkenniensis—were compiled. The Book
    of Lismore,     a private collection made for Finghín MacCarthaigh Riabhach
    (MacCarthy Reagh) and his wife Catherine, containing lives in Irish, was
    compiled in the late fifteenth century.

    The English conquest in the sixteenth
    century, however, halted further hagiographical production. The traditional
    historians of Ireland tried to continue the task of preserving and copying
    existing manuscripts, while Irishmen hoping to join the priesthood had to
    journey to Europe for their training. In the early seventeenth century the
    Irish ecclesiastics on the continent, alarmed that their national history was
    threatened with extinction, began to collect and publish Irish manuscripts; the
    main proponents were Henry FitzSimon (c. 1566–c. 1645), Luke Wadding
    (1588–1657), Peter Lombard (c. 1555–1625), and Stephen White (1574–1646). At
    the College of Saint Anthony in Louvain, a group under the leadership of Hugh
    Ward (1590–1635), encouraged by Luke Wadding and assisted by Stephen White,
    undertook a major plan for a Thesaurus Antiquitatem Hibernicarum
    (Thesaurus of Irish antiquities). The first object was to collect at Louvain as
    many Irish historical sources as possible, including hagiographical sources,
    both from Europe and from Ireland. This task was discharged by John Colgan
    (1592–1658), Patrick Fleming (1599–1631), and Michael O’Clery (d. 1645). The
    mission of collecting and copying in Ireland all the manuscripts in Irish
    pertaining to religious history fell to O’Clery, who between 1626 and 1642
    assembled and transcribed a prodigious number of manuscripts, many of which
    contained hagiographical material. The third volume of the whole design,
    published at Louvain in 1645, contains the lives of Irish saints whose
    festivals fall within January, February, and March; the second volume,
    published in 1647, contains documents pertaining to Saints Patrick, Brigit, and
    Columba. Both were edited by Colgan. Another collection of lives in Irish was
    copied by Domnall Ó Dineen in 1627, possibly for the Irish scholars at Louvain,
    though it remained in Ireland.

    From the collections of Irish material made
    by these scholars and from the great Latin collections, most of the modern
    editions of Irish hagiography were made. The O’Clery collections now reside in
    the Bibliothèque royale in Brussels. Several manuscripts that remained in
    Ireland found their way into the collections of antiquarians, such as Sir James
    Ware (1594–1666) and Sir Robert Cotton (1570–1631), and from thence went
    eventually to the British Library and the Bodleian Library at the University of
    Oxford (including the great codices under the Rawlinson collection). Other
    manuscript sources reside in the libraries of Trinity College, Dublin and the
    Royal Irish Academy. The study of Irish hagiography has gained added impetus
    not only from modern editions but from advances in the study of the language
    and history of early Ireland; a large body of scholarship has appeared in
    recent years, making these texts accessible to the modern reader and returning
    them to their rightful place in Irish literary and religious history.



    Bibliography
    Anderson, A. O., and M. O. Anderson, eds. and
    trans. Adomnán’s Life of Columba. 1961. Reprint, 1991.
    Bray, Dorothy Ann. A List of Motifs in the
    Lives of the Early Irish Saints.     1992.
    Connolly, Seán. “Vita Prima Sanctae
    Brigidae.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
    119 (1989): 5–49.
    Connolly, Seán, and Jean-Michel Picard.
    “Cogitosus: Life of St. Brigit.” Journal of the Royal Society of
    Antiquaries of Ireland     117 (1987): 5–27.
    Heist, W. W. Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.
    1965.
    Herbert, Máire. Iona, Kells, and Derry:
    The History and Hagiography of the Monastic Familia of Columba.     1988.
    Howlett, D. R., ed. and trans. The Book of
    Letters of Saint Patrick the Bishop.     1994.
    Hughes, Kathleen. The Church in Early
    Irish Society.     1966.
    Hughes, Kathleen. Early Christian Ireland:
    An Introduction to the Sources.     1972.
    Kenney, J. F. The Sources for the Early
    History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical.     1929. Reprint, 1979.
    Ó hAodha, Donncha, ed. and trans. Bethu
    Brigte.     1978.
    Plummer, Charles, ed. and trans. Bethada
    Náem nÉrenn: Lives of Irish Saints.     2 vols. 1922. Reprint, 1968.
    Plummer, Charles, ed. Vitae Sanctorum
    Hiberniae.     2 vols. 1910. Reprint, 1968.
    Sharpe, Richard. Medieval Irish Saints’
    Lives.     1991.
    Sharpe, Richard, trans. Adomnán of Iona:
    Life of St. Columba.     1995.
    Dorothy Ann Bray

  • Irish 'Beehive' Huts

    A blog reader contacted me at my previous site to ask about the ‘beehive’ huts associated with Irish monastic sites.  In Irish the name clochán, (pl. clocháin) is given to these structures, derived from the word cloch, a stone, it reflects the fact that they are constructed exclusively from stone without the use of mortar. The building technique behind the clochán is an ancient one, which employs the principle of corbelling. Circles of flat stones of ever-decreasing size are successively laid down until a single stone can be used to seal the rooftop. It is a simple but effective method of construction and has been used for centuries, not only in Ireland but in other European countries too. In countries like Italy such huts were built as temporary shelter for nomadic shepherds as they moved around with their flocks. In Ireland they are a particular feature of County Kerry and archaeologist Peter Harbinson [1] relates a story of the scholar Myles Dillon who was an annual visitor to Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula. On one return visit he remarked to his host that he did not remember seeing a particular clochán in the backyard, only to be told that the farmer had built it as a henhouse the previous winter. So this simple structure has a long history in Ireland, one which continues to the present day.
    The most famous of the Kerry clocháin associated with monastic sites have to be those of the island monastery of Skellig Michael, off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula. An Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats [2] gives this useful summary of the site:
    Skellig Michael, only 44 acres (17 hectares) in area, is dominated by two crags, one of 712 feet (218 metres) and another of 597 feet (183 metres). On top of the latter, reached via steep, winding stairways cut from the rock, there is an artificial platform with a cluster of six circular drystone huts (clochans), two boat- shaped oratories, some stone crosses, and a cemetery – all that remains of a monastery established, possibly by St. Fionán, sometime in the sixth century A.D. and called “the most westerly of Christ’s fortresses in the Western world.” …
    The platform was reached by any of three zigzagging stairways – one with 670 steps – from different points at the base of the island. The monks built them by carving the rock and by carrying and placing thousands of flat stones. The terracing at the top was achieved, probably over decades, by constructing, massive drystone retaining walls and filling behind them. On these level places the reclusive churchmen built their huts, using a flat-stone, corbelled technique already thousands of years old. The successive courses of the circular buildings, laid without mortar and with outward-sloping joints to drain the rainwater, gradually diminished in diameter, closing the building to form a pointed dome – a “beehive” dome. The 6-foot thick (almost 2 metre) walls and roof were thus integrated into a single entity, providing living quarters and storage.
    Archaeologist Nancy Edwards [3] notes that the six Skellig Michael beehive huts, labelled A, B, C, D, E and F were built in two phases. B, C, D and F were built first and although they are circular on the outside, the inner living space is quadrangular. A and E are larger quadrangular cells which were built later. They are also different in that they have stone projections which may have functioned as support for layers of turf insulation.

    The early Irish monastery did not resemble the later medieval monastery with its regular layout, organized around communal buildings, as a classic archaeological text [4] points out:
    At a medieval monastery the visitor quickly becomes familiar with the orderly, almost stereotyped, arrangement of buildings round the cloister – the chapter-house, dormitory, refectory and so on. In early Irish monasteries we are in a different world … A second area of contrast is in the different provision of private and communal accommodation. Benedictine monasticism emphasized the discipline of communal life, in the shared dormitory, dining-room, warming-house and working-room. Early Irish monasteries had certain communal rooms but there was much more emphasis on individual practice and observance, and so we can look for a contrast between individually and communally used buildings.
    Most important among the former were the living-cells, occupied by clerics singly or in twos and threes.. It is only in the stony west that cells survive at all commonly, and they are best seen on Skellig Michael, and on other island and coastal sites like Illauntannig, Inishkea, Inishmurray and Killabuonia. . When they survive intact they are dark but still dry and surprisingly spacious: at Skellig Michael cell A is about 16 feet across and 16 feet high, and cell C is 9 and half feet across and 12 feet high. Wall cupboards are provided…

    A recent scholarly examination of the Life of Saint Darerca [Moninna] of Killeavy [5] seeks to provide a context for the idiosyncratic layout of early Irish monasteries:

    The physical layout of Irish monasteries was also unorthodox and may give us a clue as to the way in which the Irish resolved the ideological contradiction between the devotion to both eremitism and coenobitism. Each foundation would have had a tiny wooden church, a scattering of beehive huts made of stone or wattle just big enough for one or two nuns, and a somewhat larger building for communal gatherings. This complex would then have been enclosed by a series of walls. The juxtaposition of individual cells and communal meeting-place within the womb of the monastic walls indicates that the Irish envisioned their monastic ideal as embracing the dichotomy of the solitary life of a hermit in her cell and the communal life of the monastery, a hybrid of the eremitic and coenobitic symbolized in the architecture…
    It is worth remembering though that the beehive hut may have had uses other than as a monastic cell. Peter Harbinson [6] makes this interesting suggestion in a discussion of pilgrimage sites associated with Saint Brendan:
    By far the greatest concentration of these clocháin in Ireland is on the Dingle Peninsula, and almost all are found west of Mount Brandon.. the fact that these huts are found in such great numbers to the west of Brandon, yet are very much rarer in other parts of Kerry and elsewhere throughout the country, strongly suggests that these clocháin were the temporary habitations of pilgrims waiting for sufficiently clement weather to climb Mount Brandon. In a similar vein, one can explain those in the Glenfahan area, between Ventry and Slea Head, as temporary shelters for those awaiting the right wind to waft them to the Skelligs. If this explanation is correct, then the clocháin could truly be described as Ireland’s first and oldest surviving bed and breakfast establishments.
    So, that’s a selection of views of the Irish beehive hut, an iconic image of Irish monasticism but one which is neither unique to Ireland nor exclusively monastic.
    Note
    For further reading on Skellig Michael there is an official site which contains a good variety of photographs, reports and articles here. There is also an e-book from the University of California entitled The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael available to read here.
    References
    [1] P. Harbinson, Pilgrimage in Ireland – The Monuments and the People (London, 1991), 181.
    [2] D. Langmead and C. Garnaut, Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats (ABC- Clio 2001), 309-310.
    [3] N. Edwards, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland (London, 1990), 118.
    [4] K. Hughes and A. Hamlin, The Modern Traveller to the Early Irish Church (London, 1977), 73-75.
    [5] D. Peters Ausland, ‘Living With a Saint: Monastic Identity, Community and the Ideal of Asceticism in the Life of an Irish Saint’ in K.A. Smith and S. Wells (eds.), Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: gender, power, patronage and the authority of religion in Latin Christendom (Brill, 2009), 22.
    [6] Harbinson, op.cit., 182.

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  • An Eighteenth-Century List of Irish Saints, M-V

    Concluding the eighteenth-century list of Irish saints with extant written Lives. Inevitably, the largest entry is for Saint Patrick complete with the traditional chronology of 432-492 for his mission. We are also confidently informed that our national apostle ‘retired in 465’! The writer, a former Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, starts off with Saint Manchan of Mohill. He indulges in some antiquarian speculation that this saint shares the root of his name with the Manichees of the Old Testament, however, modern scholarship thinks it more likely that the name derives from a purely native root. Nicolson’s claim that the saint founded an order of regular canons is also inaccurate, as the Augustinian canons were first documented in Ireland in the twelfth century.


    Manchanus, founder of the monastery of regular canons at Mohil in the county of Leitrim, died in the year 652. His life is supposed to have been written by Richard, Archbishop of Ardmagh. The Ulster annals call him Manchenus; and others Manichaeus: Whereupon it is observed that the heretic Manichees and Menahem, (2 Kings xv. 14.) King of Israel have their names from the same original word, signifying The Comforter. Nazarenus begs of his Megaletor, to enquire among his learned acquaintance of the Irish college at Louvain, who is Manchanus, a writer who shines much in the margin of his famous four gospels; concerning whom, says he, though there be many of this name, I have my own conjectures. Having just learned what this fanciful writer thought of Marianus, Columbanus &c. I imagined that he was of opinion that Manchanus must have been a fervent or lover of the isle of Man: But his learned friend, and mine, Mr. Wanley, lately informed me, that he only guessed that Manchanus was a corruption of Monanchanus, and that the man whose praises are in his four gospels, was a canon regular of Monaghan. The reader will judge, whether Archbishop Usher’s conjectures, or Mr. Toland’s are the more probable.

    Mocoemog, Abbot of Liath, died the thirteenth day of March, 656. His life begins, Beatissimus Abbos Mocoemog. This mentions, as one of the several of that name who were his contemporaries, one Bishop Colman, who resided in the monastery called Diar-mor, or the Great Wood, in the province of Munster.

    Mochua of noble descent in Conaught, died the twenty-fourth of December, in the year 638. His life begins, Clarus genere vir erat, nomine Mochua.

    Modwen or Moninna, two saints were of this name. One died the sixth of July, 518. The other lived about the year 640. The lives of both are jumbled into one by Conchubran, who lived before the end of the twelfth century. Sir James Ware had this transcribed out of the Cotton library; which, with another of the same, is still extant in that of the D. of Chandois: Where we have also an old hymn to St. Modwen. Conchubran, in her life says, she built her monastery of boards, Tabulis dedolatis, because the Scots or Irish had not then any (maceria’s) stone buildings. He likewise acquaints us, that she lived at the same time with St. Patrick; and founded one nunnery of 150 virgins, whereof she was Abbess, at Fochard, and another at Chellsleve. We have another Manuscript copy of the life of St. Modwen in the Bodleyan library; which is written in the old French language.

    Moling, the second Bishop or Archbishop of Fernes, died the seventeenth day of June, in the year 697. The writer of his life says he wrote prophecies, in Irish verse, of the battles and deaths of the Kings of Ireland down to the end of time. His life begins, De Australi Lageniensium Plagaa, quae dicitur Kenfelach.

    Munnu: In his life, mentioned already in Fintan, junior, we have an account of a remarkable judgment on the king’s son, who reviled him in the synod of Leighlin; wherein he seems to have presided.

    St. Patrick, first Bishop of Armagh, and the great apostle of Ireland, came hither in the year 432, retired in 465, and died the seventeenth of March, in the year 492. Innumerable are the authors who have been ambitious of the honour of writing the life of this mighty saint; of which Colganus, from his large collection of all that he met with in his Trias Thaumaturga already mentioned, may justly be reckoned the chief. Multitudes of anonymous writers of this life remain still in the libraries of England and Ireland; few whereof were, in all likelihood, known to Colganus. Of these Archbishop Usher had, besides an ancient one in Irish, two more in Latin:whereof the one begins Patricius qui vocatur et Succet. The other Gloriosus Confessor Patricius. To these may be added 1. Vita, Miracula, et Purgatorium, S. Patricii. 2. Liber de poenis Purgatorij, S. Patricij, ubi de ejus vita et Miraculis. 3. Vita S. Patricij anonyma, in Bibliotheca Bodleyana. 4. Vita septima S. Patricij, a long one in three parts, in Colganus, &c. This is cited as anonymous, and of our own growth, by Archbishop Usher. 5. S. Patricij Nativitas, Parentes, et Patria. The like abstract of the life and miracles of this saint as long since given in eight short chapters, by Nennius, whose faith, in these matters, seems to have been of a larger size than Mr. O’Flaherty’s. The last mentioned gentleman quotes his last will published in Irish verse; wherein he foretells of his own resurrection at Rath Keltair, or Down-Patrick; and likewise propheices that St. Bridget should outlive him thirty years.  The office used at the celebration of his obit is published amongst others of the like kind. There is also an old confession ascribed to St. Patrick, which discourses of Ireland by the name of Scotia; and allows him to have had a deacon for his father; that his grandfather was a priest; and that he was brought captive into Ireland before he was full sixteen years old. His pretended letter, charter or indulgence to the monks at Glastonbury; wherein he is made to give an account of his having finished his work in Ireland in the year 425, &c. is abundantly exposed, as a forgery, by Dr. Stillingfleet. 5. Vita S. Patricij, Archiepiscopi et Confessoris, Primatis totius Hiberniae et Doctoris ejusdem Gentis, in the Cottonian library. 7. Archbishop Usher quotes another Manuscript life, written by an Irishman, which says that the forementioned resurrection, would be at Dunlege-Glaisse: Upon which a later English hand gives this note, Quod nos dicimus in nostra lingua Glastingabyri. Others have subscribed their names to their respective lives of this saint: As 1. St. Benignus, who was St. Patrick’s own scholar, and immediate successor; whose book is part Latin and part Irish. 2. Kinnan, Bishop of Damleag or Duleg. What or where this prelate’s performance is, I know not. 3. St. Evin or Eyvin, Abbot of Ross-Mac-Greom about the beginning of the seventh century; to whom Joceline owns himself to be obliged. 4. Tirechan, whose two books, still extant in manuscript, bear in their title, that Bishop Tirechan wrote them from the mouth or book of his master, Bishop Ultan.  This is an elder writer than Luman. 5. Colman Vaniach, scribe of Armagh, who died in the year 725.  6. Kiaran of Belaigduin who died in the year 770. 7. Two of the oldest books of St. Patrick’s life were written by Probus an Irishman, about the year 920, as Colganus guesses. They are falsely ascribed to Bede; and printed in the third tome of his works. 8. St Mael, or Mel the Briton, nephew to St. Patrick, by his sister Darerca, first bishop of Ardagh, wrote a book of the virtues and miracles of St. Patrick, then living. Mael died the sixth of February, in the year 487. 9. Luman, a Briton also, and nephew to St. Patrick, by his siater Tigridia, first Bishop of Trim, wrote the acts of his uncle. 10. A third nephew, called Patrick, composed also his life; and, after, his uncle’s death, died at Glastonbury. All that is said of these three last is on the authority of Joceline. 11. Mr. O’Flaherty gives this note on another ancient writer of this life Scholiostes ille in vitam S. Patricij, a Fiedo, S. Patricij discipulo, et primo Lageniae Archiespiscopo, Metro Hibernico conscriptam super his verbis, &c. For which Colganus is cited.  Bishop Usher quotes several passages out of the life written by this Fiecus Slebhtiensis. In the life written by Probus, he is called Pheg; and said to be a boy instructed in poetry by his master, Dubtac, an eminent bard; who was one of St. Patrick’s first converts. 12. Joceline of Funress wrote it at large. This has been printed by several of the collectors. Whether the author was monk of Fourness in Lancashire, or of Fourness in Meath, is uncertain; but very sure we are, from his own testimony, that he wrote this life at the request of Thomas, Archbishop of Armagh, Malachy the third, Bishop of Down, and John Courcy, Prince of Ulster. Bede wrote also this saint’s life, and called his book Beati Patricij primi Praedicatoris et Episcopi totius Britanniae Vita et Actus. This by way of reprisal on the Irish, who challenge St Cuthbert; though Bede allows St. Patrick, which is more than they say of him, to be an Irishman born. He says that this apostle’s christian name was Magonius or Mannus; and that he took the name of Patrick, as all other writers of his life agree, on his being consecrated bishop. This was not written by Bede; who never mentions St. Patrick in his ecclesiastical history. 14. Archbishop Usher himself had once thoughts of collecting all treatises, truly or falsely, fathered on St. Patrick, and publishing them under the title of Magno Patricio adscripta Opuscula. Mr Camden had told him that he somewhere met with his epistles to the monks of Glastonbury. 15. Of St. Patrick, as well as Joseph of Arimathea &c. much may be seen in that large volume, De Antiquitate vetustae Ecclesiae B. Mariae Glastoniae, written by John, a monk of that church; who continues William of Malmsbury’s account down to the year 1400. 16. Guil. Thyraeus, or Dr. Terry, wrote a panegyric on St. Patrick; which is sited and despised by Archbishop Usher.

    Ruadan, died April the fifteenth, 584. His life begins Sanctus Ruadanus de Nobilis Parentibus. This life tells us that he was one of St. Finian’s scholars, at Cluainiharaid.

    Samthan, Abbess of Clonbrone, died the nineteenth day of December, 739. Her life begins Sancta et venerabilis virgo. 

    Senan, Bishop of Iniscatty, died the first of March, 544, the same day with St. David, patron of Wales. His life was written by St. Colman, Bishop of Cloyne. Another anonymous begins Senanus de Nobilibus, Paentibus, &c. Instead of this, Colganus has only given is an old monkish rhyme, or Latin hymn; which has little or nothing of his history in it.

    Tathey, Martyr. His life is in John of Tinmouth.

    Tigernach, Bishop of Cluanacois, now Clones, in the county of Monaghan, died April the fifth, 550.  His life begins, Venerabilis Praesul Tigernacus, Regali ex progenie Natus, Nepos Echahci Regis.

    Virgilius, the apostle and first Bishop of Carinthia, had his life written by a scholar of Everhard, Bishop of Salsburg; which is published by Canisius. It begins, Beatissimus Virgilius in Hibernia insula de Nobili ortus Prosapia….About the year 748, he fell under the censure of Pope Zachary, for asserting the doctrine of Antipodes.

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