OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Saints of Iona

  • St.Cobthach of Iona, July 30

     

    On July 30 Canon O’Hanlon has a short account of Saint Cobthach, kinsman of Saint Colum Cille of Iona, whom he claims has a feast on this day, at least according to the two nineteenth-century scholars John O’Donovan and George Petrie. Unfortunately I have not been able to access the work referenced to see on what basis this claim was made. Bishop William Reeves, who published a scholarly edition of The Life of Saint Columba in 1857, noted that the seventeenth-century Scottish martyrologist, David Camerarius, had ascribed August 7 to the feast of Cobthach, but without any supporting authority. In the hagiography of Iona’s founder, Cobthach features as the son of Colum Cille’s father’s brother which would make them first cousins. Cobthach, along with his brother Baithene, were among the original twelve disciples of Saint Colum Cille who accompanied him on the voyage from Ireland to Iona, as Canon O’Hanlon explains:  

    Article IV.—St. Cobthach, Disciple of Columkille. 
     
    This devoted follower of the great Abbot of Iona, was the son of Brendan, and brother of St. Baithene, who immediately succeeded St. Columkille in the monastery at Iona. He was one of the twelve first disciples, who sailed from Ireland to that island with the founder. We find a commemoration for him at the 30th of July, on the authority of George Petrie, LL.D., and John O’Donovan, LL.D. The Rev. Dr. Reeves,when alluding to the early companions of St. Columkille, remarks, that Camerarius gives him a day, at the 7th of August, in the Calendar, but without any authority.

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  • Saint Connachtach of Iona, May 10

    May 10 is the feast of Saint Connachtach, an 8th/9th century abbot of Iona. This successor to Saint Colum Cille enjoyed a particular reputation as a scriba selectissimus, a scribe most choice, but the evidence from the Annals suggests that his tenure as abbot was of short duration and set against a backdrop of Viking attacks. Cowley Father, the Rev. Edward Craig Trenholme, gave a summary of the careers of the abbots of Iona in his 1909 guide to the historic monastery. He begins his listing of those in the ninth century with our saint:  

    THE NINTH CENTURY.

    18. Connachtach (801-802), “a scribe most choice and abbot of Ia”, had a short and troubled term of office. It must have been in quieter times and a lower station that he attained to fame as a “scriba selectissimus.” Some marvellous manuscripts of the Irish monastic scribes survive to show what Connachtach’s title implies. But alas! for such peaceful arts and Iona’s stores of precious writings in the calamitous ninth century. The Danish attack on the monastery in 795 proved the preliminary of a long period of terror, blood, and fire, in which Iona won the glory of “red martyrdom,” but lost well-nigh all else. In Connachtach’s first year the monastery was burned by the “Gentiles,” and the Abbot died next year. The ravagers returned again and again, as we shall see, but after each successive attack the love and veneration of the monks of Iona for their home forced them to re-establish themselves there at all perils.

    Rev. E. C. Trenholme, The Story of Iona, (Edinburgh, 1909), 67.

    Canon O’Hanlon in his account of Abbot Connachtach gives him the alternative name of Cormac and suggests that he may have met his death at the hands of the Viking raiders:

    Article III. Cormac or Connachtach, Abbot of Iona.
    [Eighth and Ninth Centuries.]  
    On the authority of the Martyrology of Tallagh, which enters Cormac at the 10th of May, Colgan assigns to this day, the festival of the present holy man. This authority is followed, likewise, by the Bollandists, who remark on the number of Irish Saints so called, as enumerated by Colgan, when treating about several bearing that name. Connachtach—a name substituted for Cormac—is said to have been a select scribe, and he became Abbot of Iona, most probably, after the demise of Bersal Mac Seghine, which is given, at the year 801, having been incumbent for thirty-one years. Connachtach followed his predecessor to the tomb, after a very short term of rule. He died according to some accounts, in 797—but recte 802—assuming the corrected chronology found, in Dr. O’Donovan’s Annals of the Four Masters. The cause assigned for Connachtach’s death, is not recorded; but as Hy-Columcille was burned by the Gentiles, A.D. 802, it is probable enough, that our Abbot met with a violent death, at their hands, having perished during the calamity inflicted on his religious community.

    Some modern writers have suggested that Abbot Connachtach’s reputation as an eminent scribe makes him a possible candidate for involvement in the creation of the Book of Kells, traditionally believed to have been produced at Iona. In a lecture of 2011 Arne Kruse argued:

    The organisation of what was tremendous artistic activity on Iona sometime in the second half of the eighth century would have been an economic and logistical challenge. The effort must have been conducted by an inspired leader with extraordinary managerial and artistic skills. The one in charge would have been the scribnidh or scribe of the community, an office which carried equal importance to that of the abbot. The scribe behind the tribute in copper, stone and vellum is anonymous. However, if it is correct that the intense artistic activity may have taken place toward the end of the eighth century, there is a chance that the mastermind could have been Connachtach, ‘an eminent scribe and abbot of Ia’, who, according to the Annals of Ulster, died in 802, possibly during the Viking raid that very year. It is rare to hear of scribes in the annals, and the mention of Connachtach could be because he was murdered, although the murder itself is not mentioned. On the other hand, it can also be that Connachtach was such an extraordinarily brilliant scholar, artist and coordinator that his death merited a note.

    Arne Kruse, ‘Columba and Jonah – a motif in the dispersed art of Iona’, Northern Studies, vol. 45, (2013), 18.

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  • 'A Vessel of Wisdom and a Man Full of the Grace of God': Saint Adamnan of Iona

    September 23 is the feast of Saint Adamnan, a seventh-century Donegal saint who was the ninth abbot of Iona and one of the most prominent churchmen of his time. I recently treated myself to a copy of a new book on the saint by Brian Lacey, Adomnán, Adhamhnán, Eunan: Life and afterlife of a Donegal Saint, published by Four Courts Press in May of this year and look forward to reading a modern scholar’s reappraisal of this fascinating man. Although he is generally best known as the hagiographer of and successor to Saint Colum Cille of Iona, there remains a more local aspect to the cult of Saint Adamnan who is the co-patron of the Donegal diocese of Raphoe, a connection which has a chapter of its own in Lacey’s book. In the seventeenth century Micheal O’Clery compiled The Martyrology of Donegal, whose entry for this day contains a summary of what had been handed down about local hero, Adamnan. It presents him as an abbot, ascetic, and mystic who is sustained by a vision of the Christ child for three days and who is further associated with an apocalyptic vision of heaven and hell. It concludes with a reference to the List of Irish Parallel Saints in which our native holy men are viewed as local equivalents of major Christian figures, with Saint Adamnan likened to Pope Sylvester:

    23. G. NONO KAL. OCTOBRIS. 23.

    ADAMNAN, son of Ronan, of the race of Conall Gulban, son of Niall, as to his stock. His mother was of the race of Enna, son of Niall. Ronat was her name. This is the Adamnan who was six and twenty years in the abbacy of I-Coluim-Cille. On a certain day that he was at Hi, he meditated in his mind to remain for three days and three nights in his church alone praying to the Lord, and he remained to the end of that time without coming to the monastery at all. They sent some mature men to the church to know how the cleric was, for they thought he was too long absent from them. They looked through the key-hole, and they saw a little boy with brilliance and bright radiance in the bosom of Adamnan. And Adamnan was thanking and caressing the infant; and they were not able to look at him any longer by reason of the divine rays which were around the boy. They were certain that it was Jesus who was in the shape of an infant, delighting Adamnan in this manner, and also that he was his satisfaction and gratification during these three days and nights.  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. These are his churches, namely, Rathbhoth, Druim-Thuama, in Cinel-Conaill; The Scrin, in Tir Fhiachrach Muaidhe and other churches besides. Seventy-seven years was his age when he sent his spirit to heaven, His body was interred with great honour and respect at Hi, and his body was removed to Erin after some time.

    It was to Adamnan were revealed the glory of the kingdom of heaven and the pains of hell, as contained in the Vision of Adamnan,which was copied from the Leabhar-na-hUidhre.  And thenceforward it was the glory of heaven and the pains of hell he used to preach. The Life of Ciaran, of Cluain, states, chap. 47, that the order of Adamnan was one of the eight orders that were in Erin.

    A very ancient old-vellum-book, of which we have spoken at 1st of February, at Brighit, and at 17th March, at Patrick, and at 9th of June, at Colum Cille, &c., states, that Adamnan was, in his habits and life, like unto Silvester the Pope.

    J.H. Todd and W. Reeves, eds, John O’Donovan, trans. The Martyrology of Donegal: A Calendar of the Saints of Ireland, (Dublin, 1864) pp. 255-257.

     Dr Lacey comments:

    The Martyrology entry doesn’t tell us anything new or even anything very interesting about Adomnán, made up as it is of extracts from earlier texts and stock hagiographical phrases. But it does tell us how the great seventh-century Donegal intellectual and scholar, Adomnán,was perceived by one of the greatest intellectual and scholarly Irishmen, also from Donegal, about a thousand years later.

    Brian Lacey, Adomnán, Adhamhnán, Eunan: Life and afterlife of a Donegal Saint (Dublin, 2021), p. 214.

     

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