OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish Devotion to Non-Native Saints

  • Beatha Mhuire Eigiptacdha – The Irish Life of Saint Mary of Egypt

    French 15th c. illustration.
    Photo credit: Wikipedia

    March 28 is one of the commemorations of the female ascetic, Saint Mary of Egypt, c. 344-421. This was the date at which her feast day was entered in the Hironymian Martyrology, a possible source for the Irish Martyrology of Tallaght, even though the feast does not appear in the Irish calendar. Saint Mary’s feast is today celebrated by the Orthodox on April 1, according to the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia it is entered in the Roman Martyrology on April 2 and the Roman calendar on April 3.

    The story of Saint Mary is told in an early Life composed in the east in the sixth century and brought to the west in the eighth century when a Latin translation was made. Saint Mary was an archetype of the repentant fallen woman, and her Life was remarkably popular in medieval Europe, appearing in a number of European language versions. The Life of Saint Mary is also known in an Irish version, indeed it has survived in three recensions, the most well-known of which, Recension 1, is a 15th-century adaptation attributed to a prolific scribe, Uilliam Mac an Leagha, who was possibly using an English source. The basics of the story are the same in the Irish version – Mary is born into a life of privilege and devotes herself to a life of hedonism and sexual excess. She eventually comes to her senses and retreats to the desert to repent, meeting a monk called Zosimas at her life’s end. Yet our Irish scribe does not appear to have merely copied his unknown English source but to have actually translated or adapted it. Whilst in other versions the desert-dwelling penitent Saint Mary cuts an extraordinary figure as a weatherbeaten naked woman, Uilliam depicts her as actually bestial in appearance. The monk Zosimas is called Damsosmais in this Irish version, and unlike the eastern version, he does not appear at the beginning of the Life but later on in the text. Uilliam also begins his account by associating Saint Mary of Egypt with Saint Mary Magdalene, who was the exemplar of the penitent woman for the western church:

    I. Incipit uita Mariae Aegyptianae, that is Here beginneth the life of Mary of Egypt. When the Lark ceases her singing at eventide her heart mourns for the day in sadness and sorrow; for she hath no love or liking for the night but is lonely for the day all the while. Even so the man who has no pleasure [?] in praising another but regards his good deeds and disdains his virtues; that man is lonely for the great glory compact of glories, the noble house of Heaven, where is life without death, love without darkness, cheer without gloom and all other glories besides. For tongue cannot tell, nor eye attain, nor ear receive, nor heart mediate the glory of that house; and he who is not in deadly sin will have his share of that glory. No man can sleep or rest, sit or stand, fast or feast, without sin; but, O mortal, if thou sin, be not downcast and despairing of God’s mercy, but make confession quickly afterwards and God will forgive thee thy vices. For consider how Peter sinned, and Paul and Longinus and Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt and many others likewise; yet these were all saved after repentance, since God longeth more for the sinner to pray that his sins may be forgiven than doth the sinner to obtain forgiveness.

    Uilliam is also at pains to point out how beautiful Saint Mary was originally, telling us that she ‘became fairer of form than any other woman in the world at that time’. The contrast with what she later becomes during her penitential life in the desert is thus all the more striking:

    9. …. And she ranged the desert on her feet and hands; her smooth body put forth a long hideous hairy coat, so that her own fur was her covering in place of clothes. The polished rosy nails fell from her toes and fingers and she grew long, sloping, sharp, savage nails after the likeness of the hideous hooves of a goat….    

    A. M. Freeman, ‘Betha Mhuire Eigiptachdha’, Études Celtiques, Vol. I
    (1936), 78-113 in Máirín Ní Dhonnchada, ed., The Field Day Anthology of
    Irish Writing, Vol. IV, Irish Women’s Writings and Traditions (Cork
    University Press, 2002), 143-148.

    It is the sight of this extraordinary creature which forty-seven years later confronts the monk Damsosmais, he commands her in the name of Christ to stop as she flees from him and she tells him her story. The Life ends with Damsosmais discovering Mary’s body in the following year. He buries it with the assistance of a lion, no less, an episode also found in the original Life from the east. The lion helps to dig a grave and whilst the man takes the head of Mary in his hands, the big cat ‘took the feet of the holy woman in his fore-feet, and together they laid her in the grave and the lion quickly covered her up with earth’. There is also a rather touching detail added of the parting of these strange mourners: ‘Then the lion gave a kiss of peace on the monk’s feet and the monk blessed the lion and the lion went his way into the forest fastnesses….’ The monk then returns to his community and shares the salutary tale of Saint Mary with them. I am glad that the scribe Uilliam Mac an Leagha shared it with the people of Ireland too, albeit with a few embellishments to an already strange tale!

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  • An Irish Poem on the Wise Men

    J. R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Gt Britain and Ireland (1887)

    January 6 is the feast of the Epiphany, which in the western church is associated with the bringing of gifts to the infant Christ by Magi from the East. Today we take it for granted that there were three wise men, with the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, but this tradition was a long time in the making. The account of the visit in Saint Matthew’s Gospel makes no mention of the number of magi, much less their names, and the idea that there were three wise men seems to be based solely on the number of gifts recorded in the gospel. The Visit of the Magi is a popular theme in medieval European art including that of Ireland. One intriguing representation is found on the tenth-century Muiredach’s Cross at Monasterboice and if you look at the image above you will see that there are actually four figures approaching the newborn Christ.  The identity and significance of the ‘fourth man’ is still a subject of debate among scholars. The Magi also occur in Irish literary sources. In a paper delivered by the scholarly Irish Anglican Bishop, William Reeves, on the subject of an Irish manuscript held in the British Museum, he describes the contents of Folio 5 b as:

    An Irish poem on the Wise Men of the East who were led by the star to Bethlehem, consisting of eleven quatrains….The poem is as follows, and the accompanying translation is from the accurate pen of Mr. Eugene Curry.

    Auirilius, Humilis, the noble,
    Malgalad, Nuntius, of fierce strength,
    Melcho the grey-haired, without guile,
    With his grey and very long beard.

    A senior with a graceful yellow cloak.
    With a grey frock of ample size,
    Speckled and grey sandals without fault,
    He approached not the King without royal gold.

    Arenus, Fidelis, the munificent,
    Galgalad the devout and fervent;
    A red man was Caspar in his vesture
    A fair, blooming, beardless youth.

    A crimson cloak round the comely champion,
    A yellow frock without variety,
    Grey and close-fitting sandals:
    Frankincense unto God he freely presented.

    Damascus was the third man of them,
    Misericors, without dejection,
    Sincera gratia without restraint,
    Patifarsat the truly-grand.

    A grizzled man with a crimson, white-spotted cloak:
    Crimsoned stood he, above all without competition,
    With soft and yellow sandals,
    Who presented myrrh to the Great Man.

    These are the names of the Druids
    In Hebrew, in Greek to be quickly spoken,
    In Latin which runs not rapidly.
    In the noble language of Arabia.

    The colour of their clothes hear ye.
    As spoken in each of their countries:
    Selva, for the performers of heroic deeds,
    Debdae, Aesae, Escidae.

    Three were the Druids without gloom;
    Triple were their gifts in noble fashion;
    Three garments were upon each man of them;
    From three worlds they came without debility.

    Mary, Joseph, and noble Simeon,
    Of the tribe of Judah of the noble kings,
    Are in the house in which every hand is a lighted torch.
    All together with the Trinity.

    May we do thy will, O King,
    And desire it with all our heart:
    Thou art gracious to relieve us in our distress,
    Since the day thou wast adored by Aurelius.

    Rev W. Reeves, ‘On an Irish MS. of the Four Gospels in the British Museum’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. V., (1853), 47-50.

    Dr Reeves goes on to discuss the possible sources for the descriptive information relating to the Magi in his footnotes but as these are all cited in Latin I won’t reproduce them here. He also later discusses the dating evidence for the Manuscript and concludes that  it was written in the twelfth century.

  • Irish Devotion to Saint Martin of Tours

    November 11 is the feastday of one of the fathers of Gaulish monasticism, Saint Martin of Tours, whose Life by Sulpicius Severus influenced the future writing of hagiography. Martin was a saint much venerated by the early Irish Church. The Martyrology of Oengus pays him a glowing tribute in its entry for November 11:

    Saint Martin

    a noble simile
    the mount of gold

    of the western world.

    while the scholiast adds:

    Saint Martin of Tours, of Gaul was he.


    Martin a soldier, honour not slight, of Gallia Lugdunensis, a fully-gentle son of the race of the kings, son of Manualt and Abrasin.


    noble simile etc., i.e. noble for him is his resemblance to gold propter etc. Martin out of Martin’s Tours in the south of Frankland : of the Gauls was he, ut dixit quidam : Martin a soldier, honour without prohibition etc. Gold is he propter etc.

    Michael Richter has a chapter on the Irish devotion to Saint Martin in his book ‘Ireland and her Neighbours in the Seventh Century’. He takes as a starting point the early 9th-century Book of Armagh, a manuscript containing three distinct groups of material (1) A complete text of the New Testament, (2) A dossier of materials on Saint Patrick and (3) almost the complete body of writings on Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

    Contemporaneous with the Book of Armagh was the Martyrology of Tallaght which records a special tribute to Saint Martin among the saints of Europe in its entry for 20 April:

    Communis sollemnitas omnium sanctorum et virginum Hiberniae et Britanniae et totius Europae et specialiter in honorem sancti Martini episcopi.


    So, it would appear that in the early 9th century, respect for Saint Martin was well-established in Ireland, but as such devotion would not have arisen from a vacuum, Richter is keen to track its history. He finds evidence for Saint Martin in other sources before 800:

    1. Jonas of Bobbio’s Vita Columbani. Jonas relates that the saint while travelling requested to be allowed to pray at the tomb of St Martin. His companions did not intend to make this possible for him and so it took a miracle to allow Columbanus to pay his respects to Martin. Richter wonders where Columbanus may have acquired this devotion to St Martin. Was it while on his travels in Gaul or did he become acquainted with the works of Sulpicius in Ireland? If the latter, then Bangor would be the obvious place.

    2. The Irish palimpsest sacramentary from the mid-7th century contains the text of a mass for St Martin.

    3. In the Life of Columba, Adamnan mentions in passing that St Martin was commemorated during Mass at Iona. We cannot be sure, of course, whether Adamnan is reflecting the practice of his own time in the late 7th century or that of St Columba a century earlier. Furthermore, in writing his Life of Columba, Adamnan was clearly influenced by The Life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

    Richter then goes on to see just how far back in the history of Irish Christianity this devotion to Saint Martin might go. Traditionally, the earliest Gaulish connection was taken right back to Saint Patrick, who was said to have spent time training and travelling in Gaul, where he encountered the Life of Martin of Tours. Later sources, indeed, even claimed that Patrick’s mother was Martin’s sister! Richter, like other modern scholars, rejects this and suggests rather that the mission of Palladius to the Irish is a more likely conduit for the earliest transmission of the Martinian tradition. The mission of Palladius is now seen within the wider context of the mission of Germanus of Auxerre to Britain around 429. Thus, this could be the context in which the Life of St Martin was brought from Gaul to Ireland at an early date, and could explain how Columbanus was familiar with it before he ever left Ireland.

    Richter concludes:

    When taking all the fragments of information from Ireland altogether, textual, liturgical and hagiographical, it may be said that St Martin was a familiar and revered figure in Ireland in the mid-seventh century at the least. This would be easiest explained if the texts which praised him were known widely. The most plausible context for the arrival of the text of Sulpicius Severus remains the Palladian mission.

    Michael Richter, Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century (Dublin, 1999), 225-230.

    Update for 2015: At my other site I have looked at another aspect of Irish devotion to Saint Martin: the tradition that Saint Colum Cille went to Tours and returned with the Gospel Book which had been buried with the saint. Read it here.

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