OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish Saints

  • Saint Colum of Culbrim, November 8

    On November 8 the Irish calendars record the feast of Saint Colum, associated with the locality of Cúil Bríuin. The Martyrology of Gorman records ‘Colomb son of Aed the Bent’ and the notes add ‘of Cúil Damáin, i.e. of Cúil Bríuin’. In the absence of a November volume by Canon O’Hanlon I turned to Pádraig Ó Riain’s Dictionary of Irish Saints to see if there was any further information available on this saint. There his locality is identified as modern Culbrim, within the parish of Ballymoney, County Antrim. He is mentioned in the twelfth-century List of Homonymous Saints and assigned two distinct feast days – November 8 and December 11.  Saint Colum was remembered at Cúil Bhrióin, which seems to be also known as Cúil Damháin, on both of these days.

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  • Saint Cronan of Bangor, November 6

    November 6 is the feastday of Saint Cronan, a seventh-century abbot of Bangor, County Down. The entry in the Martyrology of Donegal reads:

    6. B. OCTAVO IDUS NOVEMBRIS. 6.

    CRONAN, Abbot, of Bennchor.

    to which the translator has added a note:

    Bennchor. 

    There is subjoined, in the later hand, Floruit anno 639, nominatus tum in epistola Joannis 4 Papae, etcetera, referring to the superscription of the epistle preserved in Bede, Hist. Eccl. ii. 19. (R.)

     This is not the only reference to our saintly abbot which has survived. Saint Cronan is the last of the fifteen successors to Saint Comgall to be mentioned in the hymn “Commemoration of our Abbots”, preserved in the Bangor Antiphonary. Bishop William Reeves, who translated the text of this hymn, summarizes the early history of the monastery of Bangor and its abbots:


    Beannchair.—The abbey of Bangor was founded in the year 559, by Comgall, a native of Magheramorne, in the county of Antrim. He was a contemporary of St. Columbkill, and their respective monasteries bore a great resemblance to each other, both in their discipline, being seminaries of learning as well as receptacles of piety; and in their economy, being governed by a presbyter abbot, and attended by a resident bishop. The titles borne by the superior of this house were Abb Bennchair, ‘Abbot of Bangor ‘, and Comharba Comhghaill, ‘ Successor of Comgall ‘. The succession of the abbots is very accurately registered in the Annals, and the names of fifteen are recorded previously to the year 691. At the close of the ancient service-book of this abbey, called the Antiphionarium Benchorense, is a hymn entitled “Memoria Abbatum nostrorum”, in which the names of these fifteen abbots are recited in the same order as in the Annals; and this undesigned coincidence is the more interesting, because the testimonies are perfectly independent, the one being afforded by Irish records which never left the kingdom, and the other by a Latin composition, which has been a thousand years absent from the country where it was written. [1]

    The Bishop’s translation is reproduced by Father O’Laverty in his diocesan history of Down and Connor. It begins:

    The holy valiant deeds
    Of sacred fathers.
    Based on the matchless
    Church of Bangor;
    The noble deeds of abbots,
    Their number, times, and names,
    Of never-ending lustre—
    Hear, brothers, great their desert,
    Whom the Lord hath gathered
    To the mansions of His heavenly kingdom.

    and ends with:

    That Cronan
    The fifteenth may lay hold on life,
    The Lord preserve him.
    Whom the Lord will gather
    To the mansions of His heavenly kingdom. [2]

    Father O’Laverty notes that the death of Saint Cronan is also recorded in the Irish Annals:

    A.D. 688. ” Cronan Macu Caulne, Abbot of Beannchair, died on the 6th of November.” Cronan was living when the hymn was written, from which it follows that its date is some year between 678 and 688. [3]

    [1] Rt Rev. William Reeves, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore (Dublin, 1857), 153.
    [2] Rev. J. O’Laverty, An Historical Account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, Vol. II (Dublin, 1880), 45-6.
    [3] Ibid., 50.

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  • Saint Colmán of Glenn Delmaicc, November 5

    November 5 is the commemoration of another Irish Saint Colmán, this one associated with a parish now called Dysart, but originally known as Glen Delmaic, as the Martyrology of Oengus records:

    A. Nonis Novembris.

    do rath Dé ba forlán Colmán Glinne Delmaicc.

    very full of God’s grace was Colman of Glenn Delmaicc.

    5. Colmán from Glenn Delmaic in Mag Raigni in Ossory


    In his diocesan history of Ossory, Father William Carrigan locates our saint at the parish of Dysart:

    The church of Dysart, otherwise Dysartbeg, is situated on the grassy, low, sharp angle formed by the River Nore where it washes the rocky base of the Dysart ridge of hills. The Irish word Diseart pronounced (Deesharth) signifies a secluded place; and the site of Dysart church, hemmed in on three sides between the hill and the river, and approached by a gradual slope on the remaining side, is preeminently such…

    In Fitzrobert’s charter it is called Dysartmocholmoc, i.e., “Diseart Mocholmog”, the Dysart of St. Mo-Colm-óg or Colman. From this it is evident that St. Colman was the patron of the place. The saint is thus commemorated in the Feilire of Aengus, at Nov. 5th.:

    “Colman glined delmaic .”

    that is: Colman of Glenn Delmaic. The commentator on this passage in the Lebor Breac clearly identifies Glenn Delmaic with Dysart, of which we treat—the only “Disert in Mag Raigne “—thus : ” Colman of Glenn Delmaic, i.e. in Disert in Mag Raigne in Ossory, i.e.,” [here the commentator tries to explain’ the meaning of Glenn Delmaic—] “a sucking pig was found there. Or deil mnice i.e. a two year old pig. Or forms of wild pigs arose before him, and in Cell Matia Doncrder in Mag Itha he is.”

    Rev. William Carrigan, The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, Volume IV (Dublin, 1905), 276-277.

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