OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Female Saints

  • Saint Fuinche of Abbeylara, December 11

    December 11 is the feast day of an Irish woman saint, Fuinche of Abbeylara, County Longford. Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints identifies her as one of the four daughters of Feargna, all of whom were associated with Abbeylara and subject to Saint Brigid of Kildare. Fuinche is one of a dozen of this name to be found on the list of homonymous saints. Her geographical location brought to mind the founder of the Longford monastery of Clonbroney mentioned in The Life of Saint Samthann:

    5. At that time the foundress of Clonbroney, the blessed virgin Fuinech, dreamt that sparks of fire in the likeness of Saint Samthann came and consumed the whole monastery, and then rose up in a great flame. She told her dream to the sisters and gave this interpretation: “Burning with the fire of the Holy Spirit, Samthann will make this place shimmer by virtue of her merits and in the splendour of miracles”. For that reason, Fuinech sent for Samthann and gave her the community.

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

    I wondered, therefore, if this holy woman and our saint of December 11 may be the same individual. Certainly the notes in the Martyrology of Gorman at the name ‘Funech’ on this day read ‘of Clúain Brónaig’ (Clonbroney). The Martyrology of Donegal also makes the same identification in its entry for the day:

    11. B. TERTIO IDUS DECEMBRIS. 11.

    FUINEACH, of Cluain Bronaigh.

    Saint Fuinche’s successor, Saint Samthann, will celebrate her own feast day in eight days time, but I am pleased that we can commemorate the less well-known foundress also. The names of other abbesses of Clonbroney appear occasionally in the Irish Annals from the mid-eighth to the early ninth centuries and rarely after this period. The last obit for an abbess of this foundation is recorded in 1163. As Samthann’s death is ascribed to the year 734, this would place Saint Fuinche also in the first half of the eighth century.

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  • Saint Scannlach of Ard Scannlaighe, December 10

    December 10 is the commemoration of an obscure female saint of County Meath, Scannlach of Ard Scannlaighe. The Martyrology of Donegal records:

    SCANLACH, of Ard-Scanlaighe, in Cinel-Ardgail. She was of the race of Laeghaire, son of Niall.

    The Martyrology of Gorman notes ‘young gentle Scanlach whom I will praise’ among the saints it lists for this day. Despite this lovely tribute we have few other details about our saint, although Pádraig Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints musters some interesting evidence from genealogical sources. This associates her with a grandfather called Colum Cúile, who is also regarded as a saint and with Saint Rónán of Dromiskin.  


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  • Saints Feidhealm and Mughain, daughters of Oilill, December 9

    The Martyrology of Oengus devotes its entire entry for December 9 to the praise of two daughters of Oilill (Ailill) whom it describes rather beautifully as ‘the two suns of the east of Liffey’:

    9. Comely are the two daughters of Ailill,

    who is not to be concealed: 
    fair is the host of their day – 
    the two suns of the east of Liffey.
    The scholiast notes add:

    9. the two maidens, i.e. Mugain and Feidlimid: in Cell ingen n-Ailella (* the church of Ailill’s daughters’) in the west of Liffey they are, beside Liamain.

    of Ailill, i.e. son of Dunlang, king of Leinster, was their father, and in Cell Ailella in the east of Mag Lifi sunt simul Mugain and Liamain.
    In Cell ingen Ailella in Mag Laigen they are.

    The later Martyrology of Gorman reproduces the details of their church and patrimony, describing these saintly Leinster princesses as ‘the mild ones’. They are also listed in the Martyrology of Donegal.
    Interestingly, Pádraig Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints notes that the name of a third sister, Eithne, is present in the genealogical sources but absent from the martyrologies. That immediately called to mind the sisters Ethnea and Fidelmia, daughters of King Laoighaire, who are commemorated on January 11, (at least according to the seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan). These saintly siblings are the subject of a touching episode from Patrician hagiography which I have posted here. The overlap between the stories does not end there, for the daughters of Oilill are also received into the Church by Saint Patrick, along with their father and uncle:

    Thereafter Patrick went to Naas. The site of his tent
    is in the green of the fort, to the east of the road, and
    to the north of the fort is his well wherein he baptized
    Dunling’s two sons (namely) Ailill and Illann, and
    wherein he baptised Ailill’s two daughters, Mogain and
    Fedelm; and their father offered to God and to Patrick
    their consecrated virginity. And Patrick blessed the
    veil on their heads.

    W. Stokes, ed.and trans., The Tripartite Life of Patrick, Part 1 (London, 1887), 185.

    It seems from Ó Riain’s  research that Mughain was the more important of the pair as her name occurs in other sources and she was also remembered on December 15, the octave of this feast, at Cluain Boireann, which may now possibly be identified with Cloonburren in Roscommon.

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