OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Female Saints

  • The Women Saints of Ireland: A Schoolgirl's View

    As November is the month to remember all the saints I cannot allow it to close without an acknowledgment of our Irish women saints. Below is a charming view of them as seen through the eyes of a 1920s Australian schoolgirl winner of an essay competition. The victorious Miss Ena Dalton provided short accounts of six of our best-known holy women – Saints Brigid, Ita, Attracta, Fanchea, Dympna and Lelia – and I note that her presentation of Saint Brigid is entirely a Christian one, without a single mention of a goddess. She concludes with a clarion call for “Irish and Australian maidens” to “revive the ancient glory” and carry the “faith and fame” of both countries to distant lands. I can think of no better illustration to accompany this essay than a post by another Irish woman blogger on the saints, Finola at Roaringwater Journal, whose Rejecting those Earthly Dignities: Irish Women Saints by Harry Clarke provides a visual feast. Read it here.

    PRIZE WINNER

    THE WOMEN SAINTS OF IRELAND

    By Ena Dalton, Baddaginnie.

    (Certified by F. Carroll, teacher.)

    As the people of Ireland are noted throughout the world for their great faith and piety, Ireland can boast of a great number of women saints. Among these the best known are St. Brigid, St. Ita, St. Attracta, St. Fanchea, St. Lelia, and St. Dympna.

    St. Brigid was born in Fochard, Ulster, about the year 453. She shares with St. Patrick the glory and sanctity of being first to form a community of nuns. Her success was miraculous, for many religious establishments were soon extended over the land.

    She received her religious veil very early in life from the hands of St. Mel, nephew and disciple of St. Patrick. She built herself a cell under a large oak, thence called Killdara. Being joined soon after by several pious young virgins, she was at once acknowledged as their mother and founder. Like St. Patrick, Brigid spent much of her time travelling through Ireland, converting and instructing the people.

    The fame of her miracles, her virtues. and her piety soon spread over the land, and many voung girls, inspired with similar religious zeal, hastened to join her in her great mission. Thus, there sprang up numerous religions communities, which were primitive in their manner of living, as also in the severity of their rules and discipline. Their time was spent in prayer, acts of charity, and acts of mortification.

    Innumerable traditions of St. Brigid’s charity and generosity have been handed down to us. The holy attainment she sought on earth was to do the will of God. His grace was her staff through life. All her labours and her sacrifices were rewarded, as the love of her Saviour alone filled her heart. She died in 525, after a very holy life. St. Brigid had the privilege of outward resemblance to Our Blessed Lady, and her great purity merits for her the title of “The Mary of Erin.”

    St. Ita, called the Brigid of Munster, is the Patroness of Limerick, where her memory is fondly cherished to this day. Immense crowds of people still assemble on her feast day at  Kileedy, where the ruins of her ancient church are still to be seen.

    Ita was a direct descendant of Con of the Hundred Battles. She was born in A.D. 480 in County Waterford. The name conferred on her at baptism was Deirdre, or Dorothea; but owing to her longing desire for the gift of Divine love, she came to be called Ita, which signifies thirst, or longing. Even in her infancy, many miracles attested her sanctity. Once, we are told, the room in which she slept was filled with a flood of supernatural radiance. For some time after this the child’s features were lighted up by a marked angelic beauty.

    When Ita founded her convent at Hy-Connail, she was soon joined by many holy maidens eager to imitate her. Her whole life presents an example of affection and charity, which, we may say, are the most beautiful traits of our Irish saints. She died on the 15th January, A.D. 569, and was laid to rest within the little church of the monastery which she had chosen as her earthly habitation.

    St Fanchea was the sister of St. Enda, and the daughter of Conall of Orriell. She lived about the fifth or sixth century, and was the abbess of her monastery. Being warmly attached to her brother, Fanchea had him to visit her constantly. Once, it is related, when Enda passed her convent with his clansmen she refused to see him till he assured her that he would never shed the blood of any man. Finally, she was the means of converting him, and he then entered religion.

    When once he was visiting Fanchea’s convent, he saw a beautiful young lady, who was under his sister’s care. He immediately wished to marry her. Fanchea spoke to the young girl, and advised her to enter religion, and take a heavenly path in life. This she did, and this was the first step to Enda’s conversion.

     St. Attracta, whose feast is on the 11th of August, was one of the numerous band of holy virgins who consecrated their lives to God while St. Patrick still lived. She devoted her time to the poor and the infirm. Even during her life, she worked many wonders. Among others, by her prayers she freed Connaught, her native province, from a wild beast, which was the terror of the inhabitants. Once, as the monster was rushing towards the sanctuary. Attracta went on her knees, prayed earnestly to God, and the wild beast was suddenly struck dead,

    St. Dympna—The virgin, Dympna, born in Ireland of royal heathen parents, grew “as a rose amongst thorns.” Despising the allurements of a pagan court, she secretly received baptism, and devoted herself to Christ.

    Fleeing from a wicked man, who desired to be her lover, Dympna, in company with the blessed Gerebernus and others, took ship to Antwerp. From there they proceeded to Ghela, where, establishing a home, she gave herself up to Divine contemplation, and lived an angelic life.

    After three months, the King, her father, followed her, and, after giving orders for the execution of Gerebernus. himself beheaded Dympna.

    St. Lelia, so well known in the Diocese of Limerick, her native place, was a young virgin, whose feast is celebrated in her native county on the 12th of August.

    Echoes of the lives of the women saints of Ireland still resound, not only through Ireland, but in our own Australia. Bride and Brigid, Ita, Fanchea, Lelia and Dympna are favourite names in many Catholic families. Colleges and schools are dedicated to St. Brigid and St. Ita, for these virgin saints excelled in learning as well as in sanctity. May Irish and Australian maidens revive the ancient glory, and carry the faith and fame of Erin and Australia to distant lands!

    PRIZE-WINNER. (1923, April 12). Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 – 1954), p. 37. Retrieved April 25, 2020, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171248198

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  • Belgium Honours Saint Dymphna

    Today is the feast of Saint Dymphna, a saint who embodies all of the difficulties in trying to untangle the facts about the lives and identities of the Irish saints. The story that has come down to us is of a seventh-century Irish princess who fled the incestuous attentions of her deranged father and ended up dying a martyr’s death in Belgium. However, her name is not recorded in any of our early native calendars of the saints and the first mention we have of her story is in a thirteenth century Life written by a Flemish monk. Belgium has continued to cherish her memory and in the article below, taken from a syndicated piece published in the New Zealand press in 1925, we get a flavour of the celebrations held to honour the reputed 1325th anniversary of her arrival in that country. The writer also seeks to explain her patronage of those suffering from mental illness:

    BELGIANS HONOR SAINT DYMPHNA.

    A succession of feasts to commemorate the 1325th anniversary of the arrival on Belgian soil of the Irish Princess, Saint Dymphna are now taking place in the unique town of Gheel (says a Louvain message under date June 18). The celebrations are of truly royal splendor. In the jubilee procession held recently, bishops and prelates escorted the relics of the Saint. Her history was represented in floats and groups of which the Irish flag and harp, and oldtime Irish costumes were prominent features.

    Dymphna was a young and beautiful princess leading a Christian life at her pagan father’s court in Ireland. Solicited by him to contract a union against which nature rebelled, she fled from home with a retinue of attendants and the saintly old priest Gerebernus.

    They put to sea in a frail skiff and landed, after passing through a series of adventures, upon the Belgian coast, near Antwerp. Penetrating into the interior, they travelled until they reached a point in what is now the township of Gheel, where they pitched their tents and thought themselves safe.

    But the King, thwarted in his designs, set out in pursuit of his fugitive daughter reached Belgium also, and there traced her whereabouts by the coins with which her party had paid their way through the land.

    Having come upon her retreat, he again urged her marriage. Dymphna resisted as before. Exasperated into fury, the unnatural father imbrued his hands in his child’s blood, severing her head at one blow of his sword, whilst his companions put to death the holy priest who, by his counsel and example, had assisted the young Irish maiden  to keep unsullied her faith and her purity.

     It was not many years after the unfolding of this double tragedy that the people of the country witness to it began to pay a religious homage to the victims, but particularly to Dymphna. To her they had recourse to obtain the cure for themselves or a for others of various diseases, but especially of diseases of the mind. 

    Regarding the father’s passion as a manifestation of insanity and considering that the daughter triumphed over it in a manner most heroic and most pleasing to God, they reasoned that Dymphna in Heaven most assuredly would listen to prayers in favor of the unfortunate wretches whom insanity makes strangers to the calls of reason and humanity.

     Grateful for the blessings secured through her intercession, her humble devotees, poor peasants of the unfertile Campine, built a chapel upon the very spot where she had spent three months of her sojourn among them.

    Her relics and those of her companions were kept in this chapel until the completion in the XIV century of the magnificent temple erected at Gheel through the generosity of the ever-increasing number of pilgrims to St. Dymphna’s Shrine and the princely munificence of the still extant de Merode family.

    Catholic World,New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 33, 2 September 1925

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  • Saint Beoin, February 1

    February 1 is of course the Feast of Saint Brigid, but one our patroness shares with a number of other holy women, something to which Canon O’Hanlon alludes in his entry for Saint Beoin:

    St. Beoin or Beon, Virgin. 

    It seems somewhat remarkable, that so many virgins are venerated in our calendars, on the festival of the greatest among Irish female saints. The feast of Beoin, or Beon, virgin, is entered in the Martyrologies of Tallagh, and of Donegal, as having been celebrated on this day, to which her name is referred. This special form of name is unique in our calendars.

    I attempted to find out more about this saint without success. Her name is also recorded in the 12th-century Martyrology of Gorman, with a note ‘virgin’. She does not appear in the modern authoritative reference, Ó Riain’s 2011 A Dictionary of Irish Saints, where a number of saints sharing the name Beoán are listed but all of these are male. So it would seem that the name of a holy woman Beoin is preserved in the Irish calendars, but she is yet another obscure Irish saint about whom nothing else is recorded.

    Note: If you would like to have a reminder of the life and career of Saint Brigid, there is a new post for the feast on my other blog, Trias Thaumaturga, here.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2020. All rights reserved.