OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish Saints

  • Saint Clairnech of Druim Bidhg, January 17

    January 17 is the commemoration of an obscure saint, Clairnech of Druim Bidhg. His festival is first noted in the earliest of the surviving Irish calendars, the Martyrology of Tallaght, as Canon O’Hanlon explains:

    A St. Clairnech of Druimbide is mentioned, on the 17th of January, in the Martyrology of Tallagh. There was a Druim-Beathaigh, extending across the plain of Maenmagh, near the town of Loughrea, in Galway county. Some similarity of sound can be traced in both denominations, yet the locality cannot be clearly ascertained. Clairenech, of Druim Bidhg, appears in the Martyrology of Donegal, on to-day. It is likely to have been that of this saint’s demise and first birth in real bliss.

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  • Saint Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin, January 16

    This saint is both a poet and a scholar, who died in 1086. I knew the name of Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin in connection with a hymn in Latin and Irish Deus meus, adiuva me which I am pleased to say still features in Irish hymnals today. I have posted a translation of it here. I did not know, however, that its author also featured on the Irish calendars of the saints, so I am delighted to bring a short essay on Saint Máel Ísu’s life and works from a latter-day daughter of the Ua Brolcháin clan, Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin:

    Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin (d.1086)

    Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin was a religious poet from Donegal who was a member of the Armagh community. His death in Lismore is mentioned in the Annals of Innisfallen in 1086. He is recognized as one of the primary poets of his age, and there is a full-page account of his life and family in the 16th-century Acta Sanctorum by Colgan. He was educated in the monastery of Both Chonais, Gleenely, beside the present-day Culdaff, Co. Donegal. His death is mentioned in all major annals, but the Annals of the Four Masters give a longer notice than others:

    The senior scholar of Ireland, learned in wisdom, in piety and in poetry of both languages. So great was his erudition and scholarship that he himself wrote books and compositions of wisdom and intellect. His spirit ascended into heaven on the 16th of January, as is said: On the sixteenth of January/on the night of fair Fursa’s feast,/Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin perished/Oh! Who lives to whom this was not a great distress.

    His Work

    The manuscript sources attribute eight poems to Máel Ísu. Scholars mention him as the possible author of four further compositions. Fr. F. Mac Donncha suggested that he may also be the author of the Passions and Homilies because he was well educated with a deep knowledge of the scriptures and of Latin and had access to an extensive library. The content of his poems reflect the concerns of his age, the secularization of the church and the budding reform. He composed devotional, personal prayers as well as didactic poems that reflect the beliefs and teaching of the Céilí Dé (Culdees) in preaching restraint, fasting, continence and study as a way of life. He prays directly to the Trinity, to St Michael, and to God himself, using his poetry as a vehicle for religious teaching and for personal prayer. Some of the poetry may be directed at his students. Dia hAine ní longu says: ‘You eat/as for me, I shall fast,/on account of fire which water does not extinguish/and cold which heat does not quench.’ He may have moved to Lismore in search of the reforming spirit that was absent in the secular world of Armagh.

    The lorica, A choim diu, nom chomet, seeks protection from the eight deadly sins for eight parts of the body: eyes, ears, tongue, heart, stomach, male organ, hands and feet. The sins associated with each are outlined, for example: ‘Protect my ears so that I do not listen to scandal, so that I do not listen to the foolishness of the evil world’ and he continues: ‘Do not allow me to fall into the principal sins of the eminent, reputed eight, Christ come to me, to hunt them, to defeat them.’ In this he follows the teachings of the Penitentials as he does in his longest poem Ocht n-eric na nDualach that treats the eight vices. Some five or six stanzas are given over to each vice and to its cure, for example: ‘Greed- what it does is/to force miserliness upon you:/ a craving for all things,/pillage, plunder and robbery,/The sole cure is contempt for the dark world,/being in continual poverty/without acquiring wealth.

    Muireann Ní Brolcháin, Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin (d.1086), in S.Duffy, ed., Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia (CRC Press, 2005), 307-308.
    Canon O’Hanlon also has an entry for this great poet-saint. He tells us of a County Donegal parish which claimed Ua Brolcháin as its patron:

    ‘The patron saint of the parish of Cloncha, in Inishowen, was always regarded as being the present Maelisa Ua Brolchain. In this parish, there stood an ancient monastery, known as Temple Moyle, or Tapal Moule. An old graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, with an iron gate entrance, is found at this place. We find recorded in the Martyrologies of Marianus O’Gorman and of Donegal, at the 16th day of January, Maelisa Ua Brolchain. On the seventeenth of the calends of February, he resigned his spirit to heaven, as stated in this quatrain: 

    ” On the Seventeenth of the calends of February,
    The night of fair Fursa’s festival,
    Died Maelisa Ua Brolchain,
    But, however, not of a heavy severe fit.”

    This account seems to convey, that he ended life by a process of natural decline, and that he expired without much suffering. It is likely he attained an advanced age. The Annals of Clonmacnoise, at A.D. 1084, have recorded his death. The year 1086 was that of his decease, according to the Annals of Ulster and of the Four Masters. ‘

    I am left with a picture of a saint who was very much a representative of the old penitential traditions of the Irish church and of its love of learning and scholarship. Yet he lived at a time of change, the Great Schism between east and west occurred in his lifetime and the church reforms he sought would come a century after his death. But Saint Máel Ísu Ua Brolcháin has not been forgotten. Apart from the survival of his hymn Deus Meus, adiuva me, now sung in modern Irish and Latin, a number of his poems have been translated by twentieth-century scholars and I will post a selection of these in the future.

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  • Saint Ite of Kileedy, January 15

    January 15 is the commemoration of Saint Ite of Kileedy, ‘the shining light of the women of Mumhan’, as Saint Oengus the Martyrologist calls her. She is one of a handful of Irish female saints who have surviving Lives and in his account of Saint Ite below, Father Albert Barry has drawn on this rich hagiographical tradition to present a picture of her sanctity and her miracles:

    Saint Ite was born in the year 480, and was of the Deise family. St. Patrick had preached the Gospel to the Deise a few years before her birth. ”Patrick then went into the southern Deise (Co. Limerick), and began to build a Church at Ard-Patrick”, Tripartite. The Deise afterwards went southwards towards the sea (Co. Waterford).

    Ite was fond of fasting and prayer whilst she was still a child. The room where she slept seemed one night to be on fire, but when the inmates of the house rushed into it, they beheld a wonderful light shining from the face of the sleeping girl: and she looked like an Angel. 

    An Angel gave her three precious gems, telling her that the three Persons     of the blessed Trinity would in future watch over her.

    Her father wished her to marry, but she would not, because she had consecrated her virginity to God. He was very angry with her, but she said to her mother, “Although my father now forbids me to give myself to Jesus Christ, he will one day tell me to go where I wish in order to give myself to God”. She fasted and prayed for three days that the holy will of God might be done in her. On the third day the devil came and said to her, “Alas, you will withdraw yourself and many others from me”. And an Angel at the same time said to her father, ”Why do you hinder your daughter taking the veil of virginity? Ite will be a great and holy virgin before God and His saints. You ought to let her go wherever she wishes. She will serve God in another part of this land.” Her father, therefore, at once allowed her to go away.

    Ite left her father’s house, and on her way heard the devils saying: “Woe to us, the Angels of God help her: she will snatch many souls from us.” She went to a neighbouring church and there got the veil of virginity from a Priest, and, led by an Angel, went to the west of Hy-Connail and built a house for herself and some companions at Cluain Creadhail, at the foot of Sliabh-Luachra (Killeedy, Co. Limerick.)

    Ite and her Nuns prayed daily for the people of the place, and many blessings thereby flowed upon them. They, in turn, gave many gifts to her Convent. She had the gifts of prophecy and of working miracles, and she healed many sick persons by her prayers. She once told a holy friend that she had got these gifts from God, because from her youth she had always thought on holy things, and because she had so often prayed to the Blessed Trinity.

    Ite spent many days at a time without food, prayed much, and earnestly strove to bring up young maidens in the fear and love of God. Cuinnen of Conneire says of her:

    Ite loved much the bringing up of youth
    Humility without sadness:
    Her cheek to the floor she laid not:
    Ever, ever for the love of the Lord.

    Since she bound the girdle on her body.
    And I know it since I’ve heard it,
    She ate not a full or sufficing meal,
    Such was Mide.

    Aenghus, in his lives of the Irish Saints, also thus writes of her: 

    ”Ite ever bore great sufferings,
    and was much given to fasting,
    and was the shining     light
    of the women of Mumhan.”

    She was not only a teacher of youth, but even gave wise counsel to holy and learned men. S. Breanan and S. Mochoemoc owed much to her teaching. S. Breanan one day asked her to tell him what were the three works most pleasing to God. She said: ”Trustful resignation to God of a sinless heart: a guileless religious life: generosity with charity. These three works are most pleasing to God.” He then asked her to say what were the three things most hateful to Him. She answered: “Hatred of men: wickedness in the heart: too great love of money. These three things are very hateful to God.”

    A Nun one day saw three bright balls of light over Ite’s head as she was praying to the Blessed Trinity.

    Ite prayed to God that she might, on a coming feast-day, get Holy Communion at the hands of a very holy Priest. Her prayer was heard, and she was led by an Angel to Clonmacnois, and there ate the heavenly Bread. The holy Priest who gave her Communion afterwards set out for Ite’s Convent, and when he had come to it, asked her to give sight to a blind Monk then with him. She did so, and asked the holy Priest to sing Mass for her. After Mass she gave him a present of the vestments, but he would not take them, saying that he had been forbidden by his Abbot to take any gift from her. Ite then said, “Your holy Abbot will not be angry if you take this towel as a gift from me; I will tell you why. One day he came to the Convent of the holy virgin Caireche and she asked to be allowed to wash his feet. Then this holy virgin washed the feet of your Abbot and wiped them with a towel. I give it now to you, and he will be glad to get it when reminded of this fact”. The holy Priest then took the gift, and having got her blessing, went back to Clonmacnois.

    A man, broken-hearted, through the death of his son, came to the Convent, and weeping very much, begged her to bring him back to life. He said: “I will not give over weeping, nor will I leave this house until you bring him back to life.” She answered gently: “What you ask is above my merits, and is a work fit only for the Apostles and holy men like them”. But he said: ”I am, above all, sorry because my son lost the use of his speech, so that he was not able to confess his sins; I, therefore, beseech you to get from the Holy Trinity that he may come back to life even for one day.” Ite then said: ” How long do you want him to live if the good God should have pity on you and bring back your son to life?”  The father answered: “I will be glad if he lives even for one day.” Ite said: ” He will live for more than seven years from this time.” She prayed earnestly to God, and her prayer was heard, and the child came to life again.

    Her uncle died, and his sons by her wish came to the Convent. She said to them: “My uncle, your father, is dead. Alas, he is now suffering for his sins. We ought to do something to lessen his sufferings. Let each one of you give bread and meat and butter to the poor every day for the next year for the good of his soul. Then come back to me.” They did as she bade them and then came back to see her. Ite said to them: ”Your father has been freed from much suffering through your alms and my prayers. Now go and do the same thing during the coming year and then come back again.” When they had come back at the end of the year Ite said: ”Your father is now freed from his sufferings, but give clothing to the poor and come back once more. They did so, and having come to her again, she told them that their father had at last gone to heaven: ” Your father now enjoys everlasting happiness through your alms, my prayers, but above all through the mercy of God; keep always from the sinful pleasures of this world, that you may not suffer for your sins as he did.” They thanked God and their holy cousin and went home.

    In the year 546 the clan of the Corcoiche of Hy-Figeinte (Co. Limerick), made war on the people of Hy-Connaill. Ite told the soldiers to do penance for their sins before going to battle. They did so, and she prayed whilst they fought, and the small and weak army of Hy-Connaill, through her prayers, won the battle.

    One of her nuns fell into sin and God made it known to Ite. She said: “Today one of our family has fallen into sin; I wish to know who among you has become the prey of the ravening wolf?”  Each denied it, but Ite drove the guilty one from the house. However, she took her back afterwards, and, helped by Ite, this nun, led henceforth a blameless life, and did great penance until her death.

    Ite suffered great agony from a cancer that ate away her side, but she bore it gladly from her love for Jesus Christ.

    In the year 569, Ite became very sick, and crowds flocked from all sides to the Convent on hearing of her illness, and, kneeling outside, prayed for a happy death for her whom they loved so much.

    When she was dying she prayed earnestly to the holy Trinity to bless the Priests and people of Hy-Connaill, and with a prayer to the blessed Trinity on her lips she slept in the Lord.

    Holy Mass was solemnly sung for her, and she was buried in presence of a great crowd of weeping people. Many miracles were worked by her both then and afterwards, and she was taken by the people of Hy-Connaill as their patron and protector. She has ever since been called “The Brigid of Munster.”

    Her feast-day is kept January 15th.

    Rev. Albert Barry, Lives of Irish Saints (Dublin, n.d.)


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