OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish saints in Scotland

  • Saints Mannan and Tiann of Aredh-Suird, February 23

    Canon O’Hanlon brings us a notice of two saints commemorated on February 23, whose history is rather obscure, although their feast-day is well-attested on the Irish calendars. The 17th-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, attempted to associate the pair with a group of martyrs on a Scottish island who were victims of a 9th-century Viking raid, but the evidence is far from convincing. It provides Canon O’Hanlon with an opportunity to tell us the story of the Scottish martyrs, however, which is an interesting one in its own right.

    Saints Mannan and Tiaan, of Aredh-suird or Airiudh h-Uird

    Little is known, regarding these saints, except what we find stated in the Irish Martyrologies. In those of Tallagh, of Marianus O’Gorman, as also of his Scholiast, and of Donegal, their feast is referred, to the 23rd of February. It is stated, that their memory had been venerated, at a place, called Aredh-suird, according to the first-named authority. But, Mannan, and Tian, of Airiudh h-Uird, are mentioned in the Martyrology of Donegal as having had a festival, at this date. Tian is likewise designated, Theonas, in a table appended to this record of our national saints. Their Acts, or rather a few doubtful notices, concerning them, are given by Father John Colgan, at the 23rd of February; while, at this same date, the Bollandists acknowledge their obligations to him, for communicating some manuscript materials to illustrate their own briefer notices. In the Martyrology of Tallagh, the first-named saint, Mannan, is called “strenuus pugil”—a term most usually applied to a martyr; and, as both names are found united, in our Calendars, it is possible, both endured death for the faith, being thus united in suffering, as in their triumph. However, it is rather doubtful, whether we should adopt Colgan’s conjecture, that both these saints might constitute a very small number among those martyrs, who suffered death in Maia Island, off the coast of Scotland, in A.D. 874, or thereabouts, during a hostile incursion of the Danes. As one of these athletes was called Monan, Colgan supposes he might be identical with Mannan; and, as to Tiaan, the nearest formal approach to it, he can discover, is the name of Adrian. But this appellative does not appear to us, at all similar to the other. We find, Hector Boece and Thomas Dempster in their respective Histories of Scotland, as also Camerarius, in his Scottish Martyrology, relate more fully that event, to which Colgan alludes. We are informed, that St. Monan, when a young man, and impelled by a Divine impulse, left his parents. He became a disciple of St. Hadrian, Bishop of St. Andrew’s. In their time, a great number of pious inmates lived in a well-known monastery, called Maia, in the district of Fife. When the Danish eruption threatened them, in Scotia, some took refuge in caves and dens, where they escaped death, but yet were obliged to endure great hardships. However, a vast multitude are said to have perished, when the Danes set fire to the monastery, and their torments were excruciating. Some of those martyrs’ names are preserved, viz. : the Venerable Bishops Hadrian, Glodian, Gains, Monan, Archdeacon of St. Andrew’s, Stolbrand, a Bishop, with many others, whose names are not recorded. Some writers have asserted, that those martyrs were Hungarians, and that, to avoid troubles, which then prevailed in Germany, they passed over into Scotland; while other authors do not hesitate to aver, that they belonged indiscriminately to Scotia and Anglia. But, from whatever quarter they came, adds Boetius, they adopted Scottish customs, and taught the truth, persevering in piety, by word and work, until finally suffering martyrdom, for the sake of Christ, they were placed among the blessed ones, and continued to benefit with their prayers each day, those who piously invoked them. In times after their martyrdom, the faithful flocked to their shrine, which was made illustrious by frequent miracles; while, both in Scotia and in Anglia, they were held, in very great veneration. The merits of St. Modan are praised by Camerarius, in an especial manner, and, at his tomb, miracles were of constant recurrence. One miracle, in particular, is deemed deserving of record. David II., King of Scotland, had been wounded grievously with a hooked iron arrow-head, which the surgeons were not able to extract. Then placing his hopes of cure in God alone, and recollecting the many miracles, wrought through the merits of his servant, Monan, the king went to Inverness, where he had been entombed, and several of his nobles were in company. There, offering his prayers to God and to St. Monan, almost immediately afterwards the iron arrow-head came out of its own accord, without any pain, and scarcely leaving behind a single scar. As a thank-offering for so great a benefit, the monarch took care to have built a magnificent church there, which he dedicated to St. Monan. He also attached thereto a collegiate chapter of priests, for the due performance of choral services, and he furnished sufficient means, for their support. It is probable enough, that some of those called Scoti, by Boetius, were natives of Ireland; and, during the eighth and ninth centuries, numbers of our countrymen suffered for the faith of Christ, while the Danes and Northmen infested our shores. Whether or not the Scotch St. Monan was identical with the present St. Mannan, or whether or not St. Tiaan had been among the holy band of martyrs alluded to, or may be confounded with St. Adrian, Colgan could not decide. However, in a matter and manner, so very uncertain, as that to which he calls the reader’s attention, no satisfactory conjecture can even remotely be formed.

    In Ireland, it does not seem an easy matter, to connect these holy persons, with any particular time or locality. There is a parish, called Kilmannan, in Bargy, county of Wexford. There is a townland of Kilmannin, in the parish of Becan, barony of Costello, and county of Mayo. hether either has reference to this Saint Mannan cannot be ascertained with accuracy. On the road from Westport to Leenaun, there is a romantic valley, known as Erriff, or Errive; but, this is only remotely similar to Aredh-suird or Ariudh h-Uird.

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  • Saint Fillan of Strathfillan, January 9

    Two days ago we celebrated the memory of Saint Kentigerna, an Irishwoman who ended her life as a hermitess in Scotland. At January 9 we commemorate the memory of her son Fillan, with the details again supplied by Scottish Episcopalian Bishop Alexander Forbes:

    FILLAN, January 9.—A saint associated with so great a military event in the history of Scotland as the battle of Bannockburn must excite an interest beyond that occasioned by the facts of his life. And to this may be added the circumstance that the belief in his power continued to exist till the beginning of this century, many mad persons being dipped in his pool at Killin, in the firm faith that thereby they should be cured. The antiquary also, and student of art, will be anxious to know something of an ancient abbot whose pastoral staff and bell are still in existence—the latter exhibiting a symbol which connects the Scoto-Irish Church with one of the most singular manifestations of the heathen nature-worship.

    His name is variously spelt. The Martyrology of Aberdeen and the Kalendar of the Breviary of Aberdeen call him Felanus; the Sanctorale of the same, Foelanus; Aengus, Faelan; Tallaght, Faelan; Drummond, Felanus; Donegal, Faelan; Colgan, Foilanus; Camerarius, Fillanus or Filanus; Dempster, Filanus; King, Filane; The Retours of the seventeenth century, Phillane; some charters, Fulanus.

    The particulars of this saint’s life, as recorded in the Breviary of Aberdeen, are these:

    “Faelanus, sprung from a noble family of the Scoti, had for father Feriach, and for mother Kentigerna, the most devout of women. He was bom,as had been prophesied of him, with a stone in his mouth, which caused his father to have such contempt for him as to cause him to be cast into a neighbouring lake or pool. He was there for a whole year, during which time he was sustained by angels, the ministers of God. After the year elapsed, he was found, through a divine revelation, by the Bishop Ybarus, playing with angels. He lifted him safely out of the lake, and, taking him to himself, baptized him and instructed him in the knowledge of God.

    “But when his youthful years had been thus passed, he betook himself to the most devout Abbot Mundus, from whom he received the monastic rule and habit. In this monastery, that he might more easily labour in divine contemplation, he secretly constructed a cell not far from the cloister, in which, on a certain night, while the brethren of the monastery announced by a little servant that supper was ready, the servant kneeling and peeping through a chink in that cell to see what was taking place, saw the blessed Faelanus writing in the dark, with his left hand affording a clear light to his right hand. The servant, wondering at this occurrence, straightway returned to the brethren and told it.

    “But blessed Faelanus having had this made known to him supernaturally, and being angry with the servant that had revealed his secret, by divine permission a certain crane, which was domesticated in the monastery, pecked out the eye of the servant and blinded him; but the blessed Faelanus, moved with compassion, and at the instance and supplication of the brotherhood, straightway restored the eye of the servant.

    “Meanwhile the fame of Faelanus spread on all sides, and the blessed Father Mundus having died, by the unanimous consent of the brotherhood the blessed Faelanus, though reluctant, was elected abbot, when, on the government being handed to him, he, by his virtues and good example, ruled wisely, and instructed and informed his brethren in all holiness, chastity, and humility. He regarded also those who believed in Christ as his dear and special friends, and treated them in the love of God and in charity —above all things, with hospitality.

    “But, having left his holy mother Kentigerna, in obedience to the message of an angel, he betook himself to his uncle Conganus, a most saintly man, at a place which is called Siracht, in the upper parts of Glendeochquhy, in which place the situation for building a basilica was divinely pointed out to him, with his seven serving clerics. Remaining there a little while, he completely drove away, with his little dog, a most ferocious boar which had devastated the district; and he also converted to the faith of Christ many of the people of that place from the errors of Gentilism and idolatry.

    “While he was building the church in the place which God had shown him, when the oxen were unyoked from the wains, a hungry and fierce wolf slew and ate one of them; and in the moming, when he had got no ox to take the place of that which was slain, on pouring forth prayer to God the same wolf returned as a servant and submitted himself to the yoke with the oxen, and continued to do so till the completion of the church aforesaid, when he returned to bis own nature, doing hurt to no one. But the blessed Faelanus, after many and various miraculous works, full of happy days, migrated to Christ on the Fifth of the Ides of January, and is said to have been honourably buried in the said church, which is in Straphillane, and there he reposes,”—-(Brev. Aberd. pars hyem, f. xxvi. a, xxvii.)

    Colgan (Acta SS. Hib. p. 49) places the age of S. Fillan at the beginning of the eighth century—not in the middle of the seventh, as Camerarius maintains. He places Cerate, the desert of Sirach, in Glenderchy (as the Siracht of Glendeochquhy of the Aberdeen Breviary is called by that late author), at Gleandorche in Ulster, on tho confines of Tyrone and Fermanagh.

    Camerarius places Glenderchy in Fife, and associates the saint with Pittenweem.

    Colgan (Acta SS. Hib, p. 104) gives nineteen saints of this name, one of whom was a celebrated Continental martyr, the brother of S. Fursey of Peronne, and of S. Ultan, whose acts are to be found in Capgrave’s Nova Legenda, fol. cxlix., and in Colgan, Acta SS. Hib. p. 99, and who was killed at Hainault in A.D. 655. But the Scottish saint of this name must be either the saint whose commemoration is found both in the Scottish and Irish Kalendars on the 9th of January, or a saint whose day is on the 20th June, “Faolan the Stammerer, of Rath-Erran in Alba; and of Cill-Fhaelaiu in Laoighis in Leinster, of the race of Aenghus, son of Nadfraech,” i.e. King of Munster. -(Martyrology of Donegal, p, 175.) Colgan calls him “Leprosus.” The original is Amlobar. Probably it is the first of these saints. According to Colgan (Acta SS. Hib. pp. 49, 50), the oldest record of him is in the Martyrology of Aengus the Culdee. His name occurs in that of Tallaght, of Marian Gorman, in the Kalendar of Cashel, and in that of Cathal Maguire; the Martyrology of Donegal epitomises all that was recollected of him in Ireland in the seventeenth century — “Faelan of Cluain-Maosgna in Feara-tulach,” We have to apply to the Scottish authority of the Breviary of Aberdeen for any details concerning him; and the life of his mother, Kentigerna of Inch Caillach, in Lochlomond, further supplements our knowledge.

    Briefly, then, this saint (commemorated in the Irish and Scottish Kalendars, on the 9th January) was the son of Feradach or Feriath, a nobleman probably of the race of Fiatach Finn, by Kentigerna or Quentigerna, Caentigern or Coentigern, daughter of Kellach Cualann, king of Leinster, and sister of S. Congan of Turriff and Lochalsh. See Kentigerna. S. Fillan’s epoch is determined by the dates of his mother and maternal grandfather, who died respectively in A.D. 734 and a.d. 715, by the fact of his being educated by S. Ibar, and by his receiving the monastic habit from S. Munna, the saint who is known in Ireland as S. Fintan-Munna MacTulcain, who died in 635, and whose name is preserved in Kilmun, on the Holy Loch in Argyleshire. We therefore must reject Camerarius’s date of 649, and place him a little after the commencement of the eighth century.

    We cannot determine in what monastery of S. Munnu S. Fillan was trained. Dr. Lanigan throws discredit on the accounts that give him any other monastery than Taghmun, in the county of Wexford. He is called S. Munnu of Kilmund and Dissert, in the Breviary of Aberdeen. If the Dissert be the Desert of S. Serf, now Dysart, we may understand how S. Fillan’s name should be preserved in the nomenclature of his cave, a little farther eastward in Fife, at Pittenweem; but the chief scene of his labours was in the uplands of Perthshire, in the parishes of Glendochart and Killin. There we find a river and a strath called after him, and a church dedicated to him. There is a Killallan in Renfrewshire (Reeves’ Adamnan, p. Ixxiv.), and a place of worship dedicated to him at the chapel-yard, parish of Largs (Orig. Par. vol. i. p. 89).

    Again, we find traces of S. Fillan farther north. In the life of his uncle, S. Congan, in the Breviary of Aberdeen, it is said that he fled from Ireland to Lochalsh, in northern Argyle,—a description of the locality which incidentally proves the antiquity of the authority from which the narrative is taken, for it was afterwards termed Ross-shire, on the occasion of Alexander II. granting it to the Earl of Ross. There S. Fillan built a church to the honour of his uncle; and in fact, at the present day, Kilkoan and Killellan, the churches of Congan and Fillan, bear testimony to the truth of the legend.

    The proximity to Pittenweem, where the saint’s cave, already alluded to, is shown, would account for S. Phillans being the alternative name of the parish of Forgan in Fife, though the parish church had an after-dedication to S. Andrew, as we see by a confirmatio. of Pope Adrian IV. given in the Registrum Prioratus S. Andrea, p. 51…

    A relic of S. Fillan still exists—viz. the Coygerach or pastoral staff of the saint, which has been preserved to this day. The ancient bell of this saint is still preserved, and is now in the Museum of the Antiquarian Society in Edinburgh.

    “There is in Strathfillan the ruins of a building 120 feet long, and 22 broad, which is said to have been a cathedral. Part of the walls are still standing.” “At Strathfillan there is a deep pool called the Holy Pool, where in old times they were wont to dip insane people. The ceremony was performed after sunset on the 1st day of the quarter O.S., and before sunrise next morning. The dipped persons were instructed to take three stones from the bottom of the pool, and walking three times round each of the three cairns on the bank, throw a stone into each. They were next conveyed to the ruin of S. Fillan’s Chapel, and in a corner called S. Fillan’s bed, they were laid on their back, and left tied all night. If next morning they were found loose, the cure was deemed perfect. S. Fillan’s bell still exists, and at the mill of Killin, there was long kept a stone called Fillan’s chair, and seven small stones that had been consecrated by the saint, and endowed with the power of curing diseases. Five of them are still preserved.”—(N. S. A., Perth, p. 1088.) The family of Mc Nabs are the descendants of the hereditary abbot of Grlendochart, among whom Fillan was much used as a Christian name. The Old Statistical Account says that after the insane people remained all night in the chapel bound with ropes, the bell was set on their head with great solemnity. It was the common opinion that, if stolen, it would extricate itself out of the thief’s hands and return home.—(0. S. A. xviii p. 378.)

    Dempster assigns him a monastery in Knapdale, in which S. Cataldus was buried.—(Hist. Eccles. Scot. lib. iii. num. 278.) The Felire of Aengus gives us —

    Faelan deoda digrais
    (Gloss) i. do gres no ro mait.

    [Faelan the godly and stedfast,
    i.e. constant or very good.]

    Alexander Penrose Forbes, D.C.L. Bishop of Brechin, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, (1872), 341-346.


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  • Saint Adamnán of Iona, September 23

    September 23 is the feastday of the biographer, successor and kinsman to Saint Colum Cille, Adamnan of Iona.  Below is an account of Adamnan’s multi-faceted life as abbot, hagiographer, lawmaker and ascetic, excerpted from the 1879 book Irish Saints in Great Britain by the then Bishop of Ossory, P.F. Moran. The piece ends with an account of some of the localities associated with Saint Adamnan (or Eunan as he is also known in Ireland), and the account of the relics that he had collected is particularly interesting. Bishop Moran says that Saint Adamnan was best known among his countrymen for his austerities, his reputation today is as an important writer, most famously of the Life of Saint Columba, but also of a number of other works, including his treatise on the sacred places of the holy land. 
    THE SUCCESSORS OF ST. COLUMBA IN IONA
    ..St. Adamnan, whose name is perhaps the brightest that adorns the long roll of the successors of St. Columba. He was born in Ireland, in the south-west of the county of Donegal, in the year 624. A legend connected with his early years represents him as receiving favour and protection from Finnachta, a chief of the southern Hy Niall, and subsequently monarch of Ireland. When the valiant and hospitable monarch ascended the throne, in the year 675, Adamnan who had acquired great fame for learning and sanctity, was invited to his court to become his anmchara or confessor; and he remained there till summoned to the abbacy of lona, on the death of Failbhe, in the year 679. Whilst abbot he repaired the monastery, sending twelve vessels to Lorn for oak trees to furnish the necessary timber. In this work, as Boece relates, he was aided by Maelduin, king of Dalriada, whose death is recorded by Tighernac in the year 590. On two occasions Adamnan proceeded to the court of King Aldfrid of Northumbria. This Prince had lived for many years in exile in Ireland, and Adamnan had become acquainted with him at the court of the Irish monarch; some Irish records even add that he was for some time tutor of Aldfrid, and the intimacy which he thus contracted with him proved serviceable to Ireland in after times. One of the Saxon generals, during Ecgfrid’s reign, having landed a body of troops on the Irish coast, had plundered the fertile plain of Magh-Bregha as far as Bealach-duin, and carried off a large number of men and women into captivity. When, soon after, Ecgfrid set out on the fatal expedition against the Picts, in the year 685, he is said by our annalists to have met with his death and overthrow in punishment of the cruelty he had shown to the unoffending inhabitants of Erin. Now that Aldfrid was recalled to the throne of Northumbria, Adamnan, in 686, proceeded on his first mission to that court, to solicit the release of the Irish captives. He was welcomed by the Northumbrian prince, and found a ready answer to his petition. “Adamnan s demand was,” thus runs the Irish record, “that a complete restoration of the captives should be made to him, and that no Saxon should ever again go upon a predatory excursion to Erin: and Adamnan brought back all the captives.” From the details added in the same narrative we learn the road taken by Adamnan on this occasion. He proceeded in his coracle to the Solway Firth, and landed on the southern shore, “where the strand is long and the flood rapid,” and thence pursued his way on foot to the royal residence. Two years later Adamnan undertook a second journey to the court of Aldfrid. The object of this visit is not recorded, but “it probably was some matter of international policy which Adamnan was chosen to negociate.” It was during this second visit to Northumbria that Adamnan presented to Aldfrid his invaluable work on the Holy Land, entitled “De Locis Sanctis,” a work which Bede can scarcely find words to commend. Adamnan remained for some time in England, and visiting many of its religious homes, became fully acquainted with the correct computation of Easter, of which he soon proved himself a devoted champion. It was on this occasion, too, that he visited the holy abbot Ceolfrid, who, in a letter which is preserved in the Ecclesiastical History of Venerable Bede, took occasion to attest the humility and piety of St. Adamnan, and “the wonderful prudence which he displayed in his actions and words.”
    Adamnan made frequent visits to his native country, and took a prominent part in the synods and conventions of the clergy and princes which were held at this period. The annalists especially record his journey to Ireland in the year 692. At this time the monarch, Finnachta, had incurred the displeasure of the Hy-Niall race by some concessions which he made to the rival clans of Leinster. He had also incurred the displeasure of the clergy, by refusing to the lands of St. Columbkille the privileges which were granted to those of SS. Patrick and Finnian, and Kieran of Clonmacnoise. Adamnan’s mission had for its object to restore peace and to heal the dissensions which had arisen. Finnachta, however, would not yield to his counsel and entreaties, wherefore Adamnan prophesied his speedy overthrow and death, which was verified in 695. In the year 697 he again visited Ireland, and obtained the sanction of the Irish princes that men alone should be subject to military service, for hitherto, writes the annalist, the women and the men were alike subject to that law. It is generally supposed that the “Lex Innocentium,”  with which St. Adamnan’s name is linked in all our ancient records, refers to this exemption of women from military service. It seems to me, however, that it further implied that females were not to be subjected to captivity or any of the penalties of warfare. “These are the four chief laws of Erin,” writes the Scholiast on St. Aengus in the Laebhar Breac: “Patrick’s Law, that the clerics should not be killed; Bridget’s Law, that the cattle shall not be killed; Adamnan’s Law, that women shall not be killed; and the Law of the Lord’s-day, that it be not desecrated.” It was in the same year that a great Synod was convened at Tara, at which all the chief ecclesiastics of the Irish Church, with many of the Irish chieftains, took part. St. Adamnan was one of the guiding spirits of this convention, and in connection with it tradition has attached his name to many of the cherished sites which are pointed out on the royal hill of Tara; for instance, the Pavilion of Adamnan, Adamnan’s Chair, Adamnan’s Mound, and Adamnan’s Cross. At this synod, Flann Febhla, archbishop of Armagh, presided, whilst at the head of the laity was Loingsech, monarch of Ireland, and with him were forty-seven chiefs of various territories. The name of Bruide Mac Derili, king of the Picts, is also marked down among the princes present, and it is probable that his friendship for Adamnan led him to take part in this august convention. St. Adamnan’s Law was sanctioned on this occasion, and other canons, half civil, half ecclesiastical, which have come down to us bearing the name of St. Adamnan, seem also to have been enacted at this great synod. It was by the order of the clergy and princes thus assembled that the famous collection of canons was made, which is now known as the “Collectio Hibernensis Canonum.” The last seven years of St. Adamnan’s life were spent in Ireland, and it is affirmed by some that he was at this time consecrated bishop. He died on 23rd of September, 704, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.
    It was principally for his great austerities that Adamnan was famed among his countrymen, and, indeed, his penitential exercises, as set down in his Irish Life, can be compared only with those of the great fathers and hermits of the Egyptian deserts. For his literary merit he also holds high place amongst the most illustrious of our mediaeval writers. His work De Locis Sanctis, to which I have already referred, was the first after St. Jerome’s time which made known to the western world the condition of the holy places, and the sacred traditions of the East regarding them. St. Adamnan had not himself visited Palestine, but a venerable French bishop, named Arculfus, who had spent nine months visiting the holy places, was driven by a storm on the British coast, and being hospitably welcomed in the monastery of lona, Adamnan carefully noted down the facts narrated by him, and arranging them in due order, composed this most important treatise so valuable for all who desire to become acquainted with the scenes of the Gospel narrative, or who seek to explore the history of the cradle lands of our holy Faith. Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba has already been frequently referred to in the preceding pages. As regards the early history of North Britain, it is scarcely second to the great work of Venerable Bede. Dr, Forbes styles it “the solitary record of a portion of the history of the Church of Scotland” (Kalendars, pag. 265) ; and Dean Reeves does not hesitate to pronounce it “one of the most important pieces of hagiology in existence.”
    A spirit of piety and filial love for his great patron, St. Columba, may be discerned in every line, and he sketches in it, with the enthusiasm of admiration and the love of a son, an exalted model of spiritual perfection for himself and his beloved brethren , the Irish monks. There is also a very ancient tract in Irish called “The Vision of Adamnan,” which under the form of a vision contains a religious discourse on the joys and sufferings which await men in the next world. He mentions as specially condemned to torments those “Airchinnechs who, in the presence of the relics of the saints, administer the gifts and titles of God, but who turn the profits to their own private ends from the strangers and the poor of the Lord.” He very explicitly lays down the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, for he sets before us three classes of those who suffer for a time but “are destined for eternal life, and even in their torments are free from the rule of the demons, whilst those, who are condemned to eternal torments, are subjected to the demons.” Having described the joys of Heaven, he adds that “his soul desired to remain in that happy region, but heard from behind him, through the veil, the voice of his guardian angel commanding it to be replaced in the same body from which it had passed, and instructing it to relate in the assemblies and conventions of the laity and clergy the rewards of heaven and the pains of hell, such as the conducting angel had made known to it.”
    St. Adamnan is named in the Festology of St. Aengus, and in all our martyrologies, on the 23rd of September. He, moreover, receives the highest eulogies in our ancient records. The introduction to the Vision, just referred to, styles him the “high sage of the western world.” Venerable Bede says that he was “a good and a wise man, and remarkably learned in the knowledge of the Scriptures.” The Abbot Ceolfrid calls him “the abbot and renowned priest of the Columbian order.” The Martyrology of Donegal, having entered his feast on the 23rd of September, adds that “He was a vessel of wisdom, and a man full of the grace of God and of the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and of every other wisdom; a burning lamp, which illuminated and enlightened the west of Europe with the light of virtues and good morals, laws and rules, wisdom and knowledge, humility and self abasement.” Alcuin, too, in the verses with which he decorated the church of Tours, mentions St. Adamnan as one of “the renowned fathers and masters of the spiritual life,” whose protection he invokes for the faithful. Fordun, in a later age, commemorates him as “adorned with virtues and miracles,” whilst the Four Masters sum up his character thus: “Adamnan was a good man, according to the testimony of Bede; for he was tearful, penitent, given to prayer, diligent, ascetic, temperate ; he never used to eat except on Sunday and Thursday ; he made a slave of himself to these virtues; and, moreover, he was wise and learned in the clear understanding of the Holy Scriptures of God.”
    St, Adamnan is honoured in Raphoe and many other churches in Ireland. In Scotland he is patron of Furvie on the east coast of Aberdeen, where a venerable ruin still marks the site of his ancient church; it stands in the middle of a small plantation of stunted firs and alder, on a little eminence gently rising froma swampy bottom, with a rivulet half enclosing it on the south side. The church of Forglen, where the sacred banner of St. Columba, called the Breachbannach, was preserved, was also dedicated to him. At Aboyn, on the north side of the Dee, is a large old tree, called St. Eunan’s Tree, at the foot of which is St. Eunan’s Well. The islands of Inchkeith and Sanda had sanctuaries dedicated to him, and his memory was also cherished in Tannadice, Killeunan, Dalmeny, and Campsie. The ancient records particularly attest that St. Adamnan, emulating the piety of St. Germain of Paris, made it his care to enrich the monastery of lona with many precious relics of the saints: “Illustrious was this Adamnan; it was by him was gathered the great collection of the relics of the saints into one shrine, and that was the shrine which Cilline Droicthech, son of Dicolla, brought to Erin to make peace and friendship between the Cinel-Conaill and the Cinel-Eoghain.” In Lynch’s MS. History of Irish Bishops, we are told that Adamnan composed a poem in honour of these relics which he had gathered ; and it is added that he caused two rich shrines to he made for the relics, one of which, with its sacred treasure, was preserved at Ardnagelliganin O’ Kane’s country, the other at Skreen, in the diocese of Killala. This latter spot still retains many memorials of St. Adamnan. The old church is named from him, and a little to the east of it is his well, from which the townland derives its name of Toberawnaun (Toher-Adhamhnain.) Colgan, citing the Life of St. Forannan, tells us that the parish derived its name of Skreen from this famous shrine of Adamnan, “Scrinium Sancti Adamnani”; and that its church was “noble and venerable for its relics of many saints.” The list of the relics preserved in this famous shrine may be seen among the Brussels MSS., and in Lynch’s MS. History, already referred to. There were in this sacred treasure particles from the bones of St. Patrick and St. Declan; portions of the cincture of St. Paul the Hermit, of the mantle of St. Martin of Tours, and of the habit of St. Bridget: there was also the head of St. Carthage, and other precious relics of Saint Mochemogue, St. Molua, St. Columba-mac Crimthan, St. Mathan, and other saints. In the same shrine was deposited a MS. copy of the Gospels, as also a collection of Latin and Irish Hymns, the same, probably, as the two MSS. of the Liber Hymnorum, which have fortunately been preserved to our own times.
    Right Rev. P.F. Moran, Irish Saints in Great Britain (Dublin, 1879) 108-116

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