2640. Thereafter the saints of Ireland came to Findian from every point to learn wisdom by him, so that there were three thousand saints along with him; and of them, as the learned know, he chose the twelve high bishops of Ireland. And the learned and the writings declare that no one of those three thousands went from him without a crozier, or a gospel, or some well-known sign; and round those reliquaries they built their churches and their monasteries afterwards. [1]

Thus does the Irish Life of Saint Finnian, as preserved in the Book of Lismore, record the tradition of the master of Clonard as the ‘tutor of the saints of Ireland’ and commissioner of its ‘twelve apostles’. J. F. Kenney, in his classic study of the sources for early Irish history, commented:

This became a fundamental idea of Irish hagiography and almost every saint living within a century of his time is represented to have been a pupil of the founder of Clonard. [2]

But, bearing in mind that one of the first rules of hagiography is that it reflects the times of its writer rather than the times of its subject, how far back can this tradition actually be traced? The Life of Saint Finnian survives in both Irish and Latin versions, but within manuscript collections of a much later period than their sixth-century subject. The Latin Life is found in the fourteenth-century Codex Salamanticensis, the Irish Life in the fifteenth-century Book of Lismore. Other manuscript copies and variants of both are also extant. In the 1950s Kathleen Hughes undertook a series of studies of Saint Finnian [3] and argued that the Irish Life was earlier than the Latin, going back to an original of the ninth or tenth century. She believed it was compiled at Clonard by a monastic writer steeped in the history and traditions of his house and its founder. The Latin Life, whilst it may have originally been in circulation before the Anglo-Normans came to Ireland in the twelfth century, was reworked under their influence and in her view lacked the ‘primitive’ elements of the Irish. Contemporary scholar, Padráig Ó Riain, however, is unconvinced by this thesis and favours the view that the Irish Life could represent an adaptation of a Latin Life which is not itself early. Indeed, the composition of the Lives may owe less to a ninth or tenth-century monk of Clonard drawing on a body of proudly-remembered local tradition about his founder, and more to the orders of Augustinian canons founded in the twelfth century in Clonard and other locations associated with Saint Finnian. In this context, what Ó Riain describes as the

‘almost unholy haste with which Finnian is transported to south Wales, and shown to be on the best of terms with three of the principal saints of that area, David, Cadog and Gildas’ 

December 6 is the commemoration of a County Meath holy man, Saint Brecan of Ardbraccan. He seems to have been equated in some of the sources with a Saint Brecan of the Aran Islands and indeed there are at least ten saints who share the name.  Whether the Meath saint is the same individual as the Galway saint remains non-proven to me. The Aran saint’s feast day is on May 1, but Brecan, ‘Bishop of Ardbraccan’ is commemorated in the Martyrology of Donegal at December 6, as Meath diocesan historian, Father Anthony Cogan explains:

THE Abbey of Ardbraccan, “Breacan, or Brecan’s height or hill”, was founded by St. Brecan, in the sixth or very early in the seventh century. St. Brecan was the son of Eochaidh Balldearg, prince of Thomond, and grandson of Carthen Finn, first Christian ruler of that territory. After having governed Ardbraccan for some time, he proceeded to the west of Ireland, and founded, on the great island of Arran, in the bay of Galway, the Church of Templebraccan, where he fixed his residence. He is said to have written some prophecies regarding the future wars of Ireland and the coming of the English. The exact year of his death is unknown, but it was probably in the sixth century. He was interred in his own church of Templebraccan, where his festival was celebrated on the 1st of May. In the Martyrology of Donegal he is called Bishop of Ardbraccan, and his festival is marked at December the 6th. The Martyrology of Tallaght commemorates him at May 1st. His tomb on which was an Irish inscription was discovered some years ago:

“This monumental stone”, says Dr. Petrie, ” was discovered about forty years ago within a circular enclosure known as St. Brecan’s tomb, at a depth of about six feet from the surface, on the occasion of its being first opened to receive the body of a distinguished and popular Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, of the County of Galway, who made a dying request to be buried in this grave. Under the stone within the sepulchre there was also found, on this occasion, a small water-worn stone of black calp or limestone. . . . On the upper side is carved a plain cross, and around this, in a circle, the following simple inscription (Anglicised): ‘A Prayer for Brecan the pilgrim’”.

This venerable relic is at present in Dr. Petrie’s possession. Ware makes St. Brecan flourish about 650. Dr. Petrie says he died early in the sixth century.

Rev. A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath Ancient and Modern. Vol. I. (Dublin and London, 1862), 50-51.