OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Female Saints

  • Saint Ercnat, January 8

    On January 8 the Irish calendars record the name of a female saint, Ercnat ( Ercnat, Eargnat, Earcnad, Ergnata) known primarily from the hagiography of Saint Patrick. There she is depicted as one of the high-born female converts who receives
    the veil from the national apostle himself. Her father, Daire (Darius), is the local chieftain who grants the site of what later becomes the ecclesiastical capital of Armagh to Saint Patrick. Furthermore, Ercnat fulfills a
    designated role within the ‘household of Saint Patrick’, as one of his three embroideresses, according to the list found in the Tripartite Life.  The calendar entry in the Martyrology of Oengus records her as ‘Ercnat, chosen to the inheritance’ while the Martyrology of Donegal reads:

               8. A. SEXTO IDUS JANUARII. 8.
    EARGNAT, Virgin, of Dun-da-en in Dal-Araidhe.
    In the entry for Saint Ergnat in Volume I of his Lives of the Irish Saints Canon O’Hanlon depicts Ercnat as a pious nun whose admiration for the beautiful voice of another member of the
    Patrician household, Benen, the psalmist, leads to a case of unrequited love with potentially disastrous spiritual consequences. Fortunately, both the psalm-singer and his master are able to save Ercnat from herself:
    Article III. ST. ERGNAT, VIRGIN, OF TAMLACHT, COUNTY OF ARMAGH, AND OF DUNEANE, COUNTY OF ANTRIM [Fifth Century.]
     
    …This noble lady flourished in the very dawn of Christianity in our island, and about the year of Christ, 460. The places of her veneration are called Clauin-da-en or Dun-da-en, in the Feevah or wood of Dalaradia, and also in the Church of Tamlacht-bo. The parish of Duneane is situated in the diocese of Connor. Its church was an ancient one, standing within Lisnaclosky townland. We, find in the Martyrology of Donegal, as having a feast on this day, Eargnat, Virgin, of Dun-da-en, in Dal-Araidhe. This holy penitent’s acts have been written by Colgan. Her place is now called Duneane, in the county of Antrim. There is a St. Herenat, Virgin, of this same locality, entered at the 30th of October. It appears most probable, they are identical; in which case, this virgin had a double festival in the year. One of the Irish saints introduced to us this day, in the Felire of St. Aengus, is the present St. Ercnait. The etymology of Dun-da-en, contracted to Duneane, has been interpreted to signify “the fort of the two birds.” The four towns  of Duneane on one of which the Protestant church stands are surrounded by that part of Lord O’Neill’s property, known as ” the estate of Feevah.” From the Irish Apostle’s Lives, it would seem, that Ercnata was the daughter of Darius, and that she flourished as a contemporary of St. Patrick. Darius, surnamed Derga, was the son of Finchod, son to Eugene, son to Niell. This latter seems to have been the distinguished founder, from whom the family and territory of Hy-Niellain, near Armagh, derived origin. Colgan thinks the charming and celebrated locality, known as Drumsailech belonged to him, and that afterwards it was made over to the great Irish Apostle, St. Patrick, to found the noble city of Armagh, the Ecclesiastical Metropolis of Ireland. Among the noble ladies, who received the veil from St. Patrick, St. Ercnata or Ergnata is enumerated. Her love of God was earnest and sedulous. Her pure-mindedness and observance of charitable and pious works served to single her out from among other pious women, to make and keep in repair, as also to wash, the sacred vestments. These offices accorded with the tastes and zeal of St. Ergnat, while nothing on her part was left undone to promote that splendour and decency becoming the Divine Mysteries. At these she attended with rapt devotion. But her love for sacred music furnished an opportunity to the enemy of her soul to excite a momentary feeling, which soon developed into a strong temptation. Her admiration for the exquisite voice of St. Benignus, who sang sacred music with great pathos, presented a dangerous occasion of sin. Thus, even the holiest mortals may have reason to fear the unguardedness of a spiritual friendship, contracted through the purest motives. But, the Almighty saves from the blast of temptation those who fondly love Him, and so was the holy virgin Ergnat rescued from a temporal and spiritual death, through the instrumentality of St. Patrick  and St. Benignus. Rendered more cautious by her escape from a great danger,and increasing her labours with sole trust in the sustaining grace of God, she bewailed with abundance of tears in after-life the frailty of a short time. As a penitent, she afterwards obtained that Divine aid, which caused her perfectly to regard only the love of God and to despise that towards created beings. Her closing years were rendered illustrious by signs and miracles. About the middle of the fifth century she is thought to have flourished; but the exact year when or place where she died does not appear to have been discovered. She was buried at Tamlachta-Bo.  Probably her death took place about the close of the fifth century. Our hagiographers assign two different festivals to honour her. One of these occurred on the 8th of January, and the other on the 30th of October. The first denotes the day of her natalis; the other feast probably marks some particular event during her life, or a translation of her relics after death. In the Lives of the Saints, nothing engages more our human sympathies than a fall from grace and a subsequent return to its Divine Author; while our own trembling hopes of salvation are encouraged, when so many feeble mortals have bravely resisted the assaults of Satan and escaped from his wiles. The remote occasions of guilt are to be dreaded, since the fires of deceitful passion are seldom wholly extinguished. Sometimes transforming himself into an angel of light, the devil designs our destruction the more dangerously, because his approaches are insidious. He does not desire to sound the note of alarm, when his unseen snares are drawn closely around us.

    The Martyrology of Donegal gives some further detail on how Ercnat was saved from her inappropriate doomed love, in its entry for the feast of Saint Benen on November 9:

    The holy Benen was benign, was devout; he was a virgin without ever defiling his virginity; for when he was psalm-singer at Ard-Macha along with his master, St. Patrick, Earcnat, daughter of Daire, loved him, and she was seized with a disease, so that she died suddenly; and Benen brought consecrated water to her from Patrick, and he shook it upon her, and she arose alive and well, and she loved him spiritually afterwards, and she subsequently went to Patrick and confessed all her sins to him, and she offered her virginity afterwards to God, so that she went to heaven; and the name of God, of Patrick, and of Benen, was magnified through it.

    Archbishop John Healy, shares Canon O’Hanlon’s relief that Ercnat’s love for Benen was transformed from the earthly into the spiritual, commenting:

    It is a very touching and romantic story, which has caught the fancy of our poets and chroniclers, and, as the scribe in the Martyrology declares, gave glory to Patrick and to Benen after God: but none the less is the holy maiden’s name glorified also, whose young heart was touched by human love, which, in the spirit of God, was purified and elevated to the highest sphere of sinless spiritual love in Christ. It has often happened since.

    Most Rev. J. Healy, The Life and Writings of St. Patrick, (Dublin, 1905),  p. 578.
    Modern scholar, Pádraig Ó Riain in his 2011 Dictionary of Irish Saints notes ‘Earcnad (Latin Archanta/ Ergnata) of Dál nAraidhe, who was associated with the Antrim parishes of Doagh Grange  (29 October) and Duneane (8 January)’ but does so within the entry for yet another member of Saint Patrick’s household, ‘Bishop Earc, his judge’. Earc of Slane , feast day November 2 was an important early saint who may have been commemorated in the form of various namesakes, for example at 27 October as Earc of Donaghmore. Ó Riain therefore suggests that our saint Ercnat could be this same Saint Earc ‘in female guise’. 
    Note: This post on Saint Ercnat, first published on January 8 2105 has been revised and republished on January 8, 2022.
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  • The Life of the Holy Virgin Samthann

    December 19 is the feast of Saint Samthann of Clonbroney and last year’s post on her life can be found here. The Life of Samthann is known mainly from an early 14th-century manuscript, Rawlinson B.485. Richard Sharpe, who has studied the various collections of Irish saints’ Lives argues that the ‘Oxford group’ in which the Life of Samthann is included may have originated in the Longford/Westmeath region. Saint Samthann’s monastery of Clonbroney was in County Longford, so this may explain why her Life forms part of that collection. Unusually among the monastic saints, Samthann was not the founder of her community and I looked at the circumstances in which the leadership of Clonbroney was passed to her in last year’s post. Furthermore, the Life does not include an account of her birth and early years, as one usually finds in other saints’ Lives. Dorothy Africa, who has published a translation of the Life of Saint Samthann, comments on some of the text’s other unusual features, the first of which we will now turn to:

    Except for the omission of an account of her early life, the Life of St. Samthann follows the general pattern of Irish saint’s Lives. It has, however several distinctive features worthy of comment. Few saints Lives display such an opening sequence as this one, with the protagonist entering her own life sound asleep and hurtling within a few sentences into full dramatic action. It is common, however, in the Lives of women saints for the saint to struggle heroically to avoid a marriage forced upon her by parents and kin. Fosterage was a common practice in Ireland for children of both sexes. Usually a woman’s own family, not her foster father, would make arrangements for her marriage, but if they were distant, as appears to be the case here, responsibility might pass to a fosterer.

    Dorothy Africa, trans., Life of the Holy Virgin Samthann, in T. Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography – An Anthology (Routledge, 2001), 99.

    So, here is that dramatic beginning to the Life of Saint Samthann, taken from a translation made by two Irish priests, Fathers Diamuid O’Laoghaire and Peter O’Dwyer:

    Samthann’s father’s name was Diamramus, and her mother’s Columba. As she matured her foster-father, Cridan, king of the Ui Coirpri, gave her in marriage to a nobleman. Before the marriage solemnities were celebrated, the nobleman saw at midnight something like a ray of the sun extended through the roof of the house onto the bed in which Samthann was sleeping with the king’s two daughters. Amazed by the unusual vision of light at such an hour, he rose immediately and, advancing toward his spouse’s bed, found that her face was illumined by that ray. He was very happy that he was gifted with a spouse who was surrounded by heavenly light.

    The following night, when the solemnities had been celebrated, both were entering the marriage bed, as is customary, when her husband said to her, “Undress yourself so that we may become one”. But she replies, “I ask you to wait until all who are in this house are asleep.” Her husband agreed. After a short time tiredness overcame him. Then Samthann gave herself to prayer, knocking at the doors of divine mercy so that God might keep her virginity unblemished. And God heard her prayer, for about midnight that town in which they lived seemed to outsiders to be on fire. A flame of extraordinary magnitude was seen ascending from the mouth of the holy virgin to the roof of the house. A mighty cry was raised outside in the town and those who were asleep within were awakened. Together, they hastened to extinguish the fire.

    In the meantime the holy virgin Samthann hid herself in a cluster of ferns nearby. The fire vanished immediately without doing any damage to the town. When morning came, her foster-father, the king, set out to look for her. When he found her, she said to the king, “Was your town burned last night?” The king replied, “No.” She said, “I thank God that it was not burned.” Then she spoke to the king again, “Why did you wish to give this poor servant of the Almighty God to any spouse without her consent?” The king replied, “All right, I will not give you to a man, but let you be the judge.” Samthann said, “This is not my decision: as of now you give me as a spouse to God and not to man.” Then the king said, “We offer you to God, the spouse whom you choose.” Then she, with her husband’s permission, entered the monastery of the virgin Cognat where she remained for a time.

    ‘Samthann of Clonbroney” in E.C.Sellner, Wisdom of the Celtic Saints (Indiana, 1993), 194-5.

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  • Saint Mughain of Cluain-Boirenn, December 15

     

    On December 9 we commemorated two of the daughters of Oilill, Feidhealm and Mughain. I mentioned then that Mughain has a second commemoration on December 15, at least in the locality of Cluain-Boirenn, which Pádraig Ó Riain identifies as possibly being modern Cloonburren, County Roscommon. It is only one of a number of localities associated with this holy lady, Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints lists various others, including Kilmoon in County Clare where traditional devotion continued at the holy well up until the early nineteenth century, even though a feast day was no longer remembered for the saint. The Martyrology of Donegal records:

    15. F. DECIMO OCTAVO KAL. JANUARII. 15. 

    MUGHAIN, Virgin, of Cluain-Boirenn.

    whilst the earlier Martyrology of Gorman notes:

    15. F. 

    Mogain [1] against every great battle. 

    [1] a virgin, from Cluain Bairenn.

    Reading Professor Ó Riain’s research leaves the impression that this holy woman was once an important saintly figure, even if today her reputation is much more obscure.

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