OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish Saints

  • Saint Colum of Terryglass at Inishcaltra

    December 13 is the feast of Saint Colum of Terryglass, County Tipperary. He is also credited in the Life preserved in the Salamancan Codex with being the founder of the monastery at Inishcaltra, an island off the western shore of Lough Derg, County Clare. Professor Pádraig Ó Riain has translated The Life of Colum of Terryglass in his 2014 collection Four Tipperary Saints and below are three short extracts which deal with Saint Colum’s time on the holy island of Inishcaltra. In the first we see a familiar trope from hagiography, where a saint is directed to a particular location by an angelic messenger. Then once there a source of sustenance is miraculously provided for him in the form of a sweet-tasting tree sap which also has ‘the inebriating quality of wine’. Finally, we have a sample of Saint Colum’s spiritual wisdom prompted by a question from one of his faithful monastics:

    …An angel of the Lord then appeared to him, to say ‘Arise and go to Inishcaltra’. There he found an old man by the name of Mac Reithe, to whom the angel said: ‘Relinquish this island to Colum and go somewhere else as a monk of his’, which he did.

    Then, on the day of Colum’s arrival on Inishcaltra, the Lord made a meal for him, for there was a certain tree on the island by the name of lime-tree whose sap, on dripping down, filled a vessel and had the taste of honey. The fluid had the inebriating quality of wine, and Colum and his followers were sated by this excellent liquid.

    Colum then lived on Inishcaltra for a long time, and the birds of the sky clung intimately to him there, flying about his face and playing. At this, his disciple Nadh Caoimhe said: ‘Why, master, do the birds not take flight from you: they truly avoid us?’ Colum replied: ‘Why should birds avoid a bird? Just as the bird flies, so does my mind never cease from flying to heaven’.

     P. Ó Riain, ed. and trans., ‘The Life of Colum of Terryglass’ in Four Tipperary Saints, (Four Courts Press, 2014), 15~ 16~ 17~, p. 13.

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  • The Character of Saint Finnian

    The Character of Saint Finnian

    Finian died at Clonard, in A.D. 552. An old writer has left us the following sketch of his character: — “He was full of wisdom, as a scribe most learned to teach the law of God’s commandments. He was most merciful and compassionate, and sincerely sympathised with the infirmities of the sick, and the sorrows of the afflicted; and in every work of mercy he was most ready with his assistance. He healed with mildness the mental and bodily ills of all who came to him. Towards himself he exercised the strictest discipline, to leave to others a good example. He loved all from a pure heart. He abhorred all carnal and mental vices. His ordinary food was bread and herbs, his drink water; but on the festivals of the Church, he ate bread made of corn, and drank a cup of ale, or whey. When obliged to take moderate repose, he slept not on a soft and easy couch, but rather on the bare ground, with a stone for his pillow. In a word, he was full of compassion toward all other men, but of strictness and severity to himself.”

    Vita St. Finian,— Colgan’s AA. SS. p. 397.

    W. G. Todd, A History of the Ancient Church in Ireland (London, 1845), 31.

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  • The Old Age of Saint Fiacc of Sletty

    October 12 is the feastday of Saint Fiacc of Sletty, a bard converted by Saint
    Patrick and later made a Bishop. A paper detailing his life can be read at the blog here. Below is a beautiful tribute to the saint in his old age when, despite
    his advancing years, there was no lessening of his ascetic discipline:

    …Fiacc in his old age lived a life of extraordinary austerity. At the
    beginning of Lent he usually left his monastery unattended, taking with
    him only five barley loaves, and these strewn with ashes. He forbade any
    of his monks to follow him, but he was seen to go to the hills to the
    north-west of Sletty, a wild and solitary district. In one of these,
    called Drum Coblai, he had a cave which sheltered him. The hill itself
    has been identified with the Doon of Clophook, which is just seven
    miles to the north-west of Sletty. Its eastern slope ‘which is steep and
    beetling’ rises abruptly to the height of 150 feet; at its base is the
    cave thirty-six feet deep by twelve in width. Close at hand there was an
    ancient church and cemetery, doubtless founded there in honour of the
    saint. Local tradition still remembers him; but as he was not seen
    coming or going to his church at Sletty, the wise people came to the
    conclusion that he had an underground passage through the mountains all
    the way to his own church. The fame of his sanctity and austerities
    still clings like the mists of morning to the mountain sides of Slieve
    Margy, where he spent his last and holiest days.

    The poet-saint
    sleeps amid many miracles with kindred dust in his own church of Sletty,
    within view of the spires of Carlow. An ancient stone cross still
    standing is said to mark the spot on the right bank of the river where
    his holy relics rest. He was one of the earliest of our native prelates,
    he led an austere and humble life, he was deeply attached to the person
    and to the memory of his beloved master St. Patrick, and his influence
    has been felt for many ages in all the churches of Leinster. His poetic
    Life of St. Patrick, to which we have already referred, is beyond doubt
    an authentic poem; and if so it is the earliest and most authentic of
    all the Lives of the Saint. In any case it is an invaluable monument of
    the history, the language, and the learning of the ancient Church of
    Ireland….

    Most Rev. Dr. J. Healy, The Life and Writings of Saint Patrick (Dublin, 1905), 399-400.

     

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