OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Saxon Saints

  • Saint Gerald: Legends of a Great Saint of County Mayo

    March 13 is the feast of Saint Gerald of Mayo, an English saint who came to Ireland as a result of the controversy surrounding the dating of Easter. I have previously posted about the circumstances in which he came to be at Mayo of the Saxons here. Below is a 1928 newspaper account of Saint Gerald which looks at his career in Ireland drawing on the fourteenth-century Life of the saint produced by the Augustinian canons who were his later successors at Mayo Abbey. It begins in a rather disjointed way with an account of a powerful local druid being vanquished. Perhaps this is just a legend added for a bit of extra local colour as one assumes the champions of paganism had been seen off long before the time of Saint Gerald, who is not mentioned directly in the tale. Author P. L. O’Madden is correct to point out in his postscript that some of the events contained within the Life of Saint Gerald cannot be reconciled with other historical sources. Today, almost a century after he was writing, the difference between hagiography and history has been clearly established. That said, however, there are some enjoyable hagiographical tropes here as Saint Gerald parts the sea, performs healings, participates in a royal synod with Saint Fechin of Fore and tackles the spectre of the dreaded buidhe Conaill plague which took the lives of so many of the Irish saints, including that of Saint Fechin himself. I particularly enjoyed the description of how Saint Gerald’s monastic cowl grew large enough to encompass all of the people who sought his help, cowls were often listed among the most powerful relics of monastic saints as they were something the saint had actually worn next to his own body: 

    SAINT GERALD

    Legends of a Great Saint of County Mayo

    By P. L. O’Madden

     In that district there dwelt at that time a famous druid who had many disciples. He had his abode nigh to the monastery of the saints, claiming a hereditary right in the place, known to this day as Druid Hill.

    The disciples of the man of God, with great fervour of spirit, impelled therein, made a large fire. The druid on seeing the smoke, said to his disciples “I know by my magical powers that that fire now burning will never be extinguished if it be not put out at once”; and going forth he donned his armour and mounted his charger to extinguish the fire forthwith.

    But it was the will of God that his horse’s feet remained immoveably fixed in the ground, and the druid himself became glued to his horse so that he was unable to move. The amazed magician seeing the Divine Goodnews prevail over his magical arts, thus addressed his followers:

    “Hearken to me, my friends, and know that the prayers of these men of God have conquered my druidic arts, therefore I implore ye to petition those Christians to release me from this dreadful torment, and I promise that myself and my posterity shall be their servants henceforth forever. Having thus avowed, both himself and his horse are miraculously released, but there remain to this day the indelible traces in the rock.

     St. Gerald divided his disciples into three groups: one party to be deputed to England to collect the necessary requirements for the labouring brotherhood; a second group to be employed in building a wall to enclose the monastery establishment, and after that to build a church and monastery; a third division he assigned to sing the Divine Office, and to pray for the Christian people.

    With such regulations inspired by Heaven, under the zealous pastor the flock of Christ advanced daily in fervour and virtue. 

    When all had been accomplished there came a party of robbers, numbering nine, and seized some oxen from the monastery lands. When St Gerald heard this he had them pursued, and discovered them in a certain island wherein they were accustomed to hide their booty, God, who dried up the Red Sea for his servant Moses, caused the water to disappear so as to open a passage for his servant.

    The robbers, on witnessing this miracle, prostrated themselves before the servant of God, repented of their crime, and avowed themselves to him and his successors forever.

    At that time two kings reigned jointly in Ireland, namely Diarmaid and Blathmac, and they issued an edict that the people – clergy and laity- should assemble at Tara,  for there was then a great famine in the land. The population had become so great that there was not sufficient to feed them all. It was ordered that all, clergy and laity should fast and pray that God might remove by a pestilence some of the people so that the rest might be able to live. And when they assembled, and a difference of opinion manifested itself them, they elected the two illustrious abbots, St. Gerald and St. Fechin, to arbitrate on the matter at issue. But even the saints could not agree. St. Gerald maintained that it was not just to ask God to remove some of the people by a plague, for he is all powerful and able to feed the many out of a small supply, as he did the Israelites in the desert with manna, and the  five thousand with five loaves and a few fishes. St. Fechin, however, maintained the justice of the petition, for the famine was occasioned by  the surplus population; and when the popular party prevailed in seeking pestilence, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to a certain holy man saying: “Why do you not seek food from the source of all bounty. He will not refuse you, for it is not more difficult for God to multiply food than men. But, because, contrary to his will, you seek the death of the lower order of people, by a just dispensation of Heaven the elder will die.” And so it befell. For the anger of God was made manifest, in that the two reigning kings and also the kings of Ulster and Munster with many others died of the plague  called in Irish “Buidh Conaill” so many died of this pestilence that there scarcely remained a third of the population.

    Afterwards St. Gerald came in a district called Corran, where he found a vast number of inhabitants stricken with the plague. The famous chief Etran was stricken also. Seeing the holy man St. Gerald in their midst, the people hastened to him, firmly believing he had power to free them from the dread visitation. They cried out to the man of God, saying: “Have pity on us and heal us of our infirmities, which press so heavily on us; we shall surely perish unless you come to our assistance.” And the holy man bade the chief Etran hasten with his son and came under his cowl. At the same time the people also hastened to do likewise. But the modest dimensions of the garment were not sufficient to cover them all, but so great was the efficacy of the saint’s prayers that the cowl (or cloak) grew large enough to cover the multitude, and all were cured of their infirmities.

    Afterwards St. Gerald went forth in the monastery of Eltheria. He learned there of the death of his beloved sister Sigretia, who, together with a hundred nuns of the convent and fifty of his disciples, had perished in the plague. He went forth to Mayo, accompanied by his disciple, and there the saint remained to the end in the love of God and his neighbour. The holy abbot, Adamnan, having made the visitation of all Ireland, came at length to St. Gerald at Mayo to enjoy the sweet society of his friend.

    Not long afterwards St Gerald, having performed countless miracles, and founded many monasteries, rested at peace at Mayo Abbey, on the 13th day of March (tertio idea Martii) A.D. 732.

    P.S. – The Chronology of these legends of St. Gerald is very confused. It is to be remembered that these records were not written down for many centuries – some five or six at all events – afterwards. And while many of the traditions herein related are corroborated by the ‘Irish Annals’ it is impossible to reconcile others with  the known facts of Irish history.

    Catholic Advocate, Thursday 23 February 1928, page 42.


     

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2024. All rights reserved.

  • An Irish School

     

    According to the Martyrology of Gorman, November 13 is one of the days on which the memory of Colman i Maigh Éo is commemorated, his main feast falling on August 8. Saint Colman is also known as Colman of Lindisfarne and Colman of Inisboffin for he was the leader of those Irish-trained northern English saints who, finding themselves unable to accept the settling of the Paschal Dating Controversy in favour of the Roman date, relocated to the west coast of Ireland. This episode fitted very well with the nineteenth-century view of the ‘Celtic church’ as being intrinsically anti-Roman, but is read in a different context by modern scholars. In the report from an 1888 Australian newspaper below, the Archbishop of
    Melbourne takes the opportunity to bring Saint Colman’s foundation of ‘Mayo of the Saxons’ to the attention of his
    Irish diaspora audience. I was interested to see how the contemporary efforts of religious orders to provide education for the masses are linked to this ancient monastic heritage in the final paragraph. One small point: it is claimed that Mayo translates as ‘plain of the oaks’ but this should read plain of the yews.

    AN IRISH SCHOOL.
    (Melbourne Advocate, June 30.)
     

    The Hibernian Hall was well filled on Saturday night when a concert was given in aid of the building fund of St. Joseph’s Hall and School, Port Melbourne, which is under the charge of the Carmellite Fathers. The Archbishop of Melbourne, the Very Rev. Prior Butler and the Rev. Father Shaffrey were present. During the interval the Archbishop delivered the following address : — 

    His Grace said that as he was set down in the programme to deliver an address, and not allowed, as he desired, to remain a silent listener to the beautiful vocal and instrumental music, and to the admirable recitation, which filled the first part of the programme, he thought it would not be inappropriate— as this concert was given in aid of a Catholic school under the care of the Carmellite Fathers— to give a short chapter of history connected with a famous school, the very name and existence of which seemed to be unknown to general readers. He referred to the school of “Mayo of the Saxons.” The history of this school carries us back over twelve centuries. The scenes are laid in far famed Iona, in Northumbria, in the lone island of Innisboffin, but, above all, in “Mayo of the Saxons,” where this school flourished from the latter part of the seventh to the close of the sixteenth century, when its light was finally put out in the bitter strife which accompanied the attempted introduction of the Reformation into Ireland. Ethelfrid, grandson of Eda, who may be said to be the founder of the Anglo-Saxon race, being defeated in battle and slain, his sons, Oswald and Oswy, fled to the court of the King of Dalradia. By him they were sent for instruction to Iona, where during seventeen years they were taught by St. Columba’a monks secular science in addition to Christian virtue. After this long exile Oswald, having recovered the throne of his fathers, determined to rule over a Christian people. When he looked around for an apostle he naturally turned his eyes to Iona where he himself had received the faith from Irish monks. Sts. Aidan, Finan, and Coleman became in succession Bishops of Lindisfarne and succeeded in winning Northumbria permanently to the true Faith. The rule of St. Coleman was embittered by the disputes which arose between his Celtic and Saxon subjects regarding the proper time for celebrating the Easter festival. When the King sided with his Saxon subjects, St. Coleman, rather than abandon the traditions of the Irish Church, resigned his See, and taking with him the remains of his two immediate predecessors, all the Irish monks, and thirty of the Saxon monks, who had made their religious profession at Lindisfarne, sailed back to Iona. To provide a new home for his Irish and Saxon monks was his next effort. Sailing again from Iona he landed on the island of Innisboffin, off the western coast of Ireland. As the new monastery and the chapel and schools sprang up, the saint, no doubt, flattered himself that here would he end his days, and in death lie by the side of his two saintly predecessors in the See of Lindisfarne. But Saxon and Celt even then found it difficult to agree. So taking with him the Saxon monks, St. Coleman once more set sail and landed on the coast of Mayo. Here, in a large plain, covered with great oaks from which the place derived its name — Mayo means the plain of the oaks — he selected the site of the future monastery and school, which thus gets its name of “Mayo of the Saxons.” That the school soon attained a European reputation we know from authentic history. We may not believe that Alfred the Great ever visited Mayo, or that he sent his son to be educated by Irish monks, or that Alfred’s son, who is said to have died during his scholastic course, lies side, by side with the two sons of a French king beneath a mound which is still pointed out to the inquiring traveller. But the tradition of itself is a strong testimony to the fame which the school long enjoyed. We know enough from Venerable Bede, and from Adamnan, to convince us that few of the great Irish schools attained greater renown or success. Twice it was plundered, and twice burned down, but each time a new monastery and school arose from the ashes of the old. It was only in the reign of Elizabeth that it fell to rise no more. The moral which the Archbishop derived from the chapter of school history was that when an Irish monk or an Irish friar undertakes to build a school he receives great encouragement from the memory of the success of the great Irish schools of old, end when he makes on appeal for this purpose he has strong claims, not only on Irishmen, but also on the descendants of all those who in Irish schools, like that of “Mayo of the Saxons,” received hospitality, gratuitous education, and the highest culture then attainable. 

    AN IRISH SCHOOL.,New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 13, 20 July 1888

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2016. All rights reserved.

  • Saint Oswald of Northumbria, August 5

    August 5 is the feast of the seventh-century Saint Oswald of Northumbria. Although not an Irish saint, King Oswald was the royal protégé of the Iona-trained Saint Aidan and was himself the recipient of an Irish religious education. Saint Oswald met his end at the hands of a pagan rival king and in his tribute to the royal martyr below, Irish Bishop, later Cardinal, P.F. Moran provides some very good reasons why the memory of this holy king should be cherished by the Irish. He also provides an account of the wonderworking relics of Saint Oswald, whose cult later extended beyond these islands into continental Europe:

    …From the outset of his episcopate, St. Aidan was not without anxieties and sorrows. Above all he was overwhelmed with affliction by the death of Oswald, on the field of battle, in 642. This dire calamity fell upon the Northumbrian church and kingdom at the hands of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia. For two years war had raged between Northumbria and Mercia, and Oswald had been so far successful that he added the district of Lindsey, with its chief town of Lincoln, to his dominions. It was on the 5th of August, 642, that the decisive battle was fought, at a place called Maserfield, near the Shropshire town, which still commemorates Oswald in the name of Oswestry. The brave prince fell fighting for his religion and his country, as Bede takes occasion to mention, and “seeing himself hemmed in by armed assailants, he ended his life with words of prayer for his own soldiers: whence arose the proverb, God, have mercy on their souls, as Oswald said when falling to the ground.” Another proverbial saying is recorded by Henry of Huntingdon: “The plain of Mesafeld was whitened with the bones of the saints.” Thus perished, at the age of thirty-eight, Oswald, marked by the Church among her martyrs, and by the Anglo-Saxon people among its saints and heroes of most enduring fame. Ireland may well be proud of having trained to piety this first royal saint and martyr whom the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms added to the Calendar of Holy Church. The ferocious Penda caused the head and hands of Oswald to be cut off, and exposed on wooden stakes, but after some months they were rescued, and the hands were placed in a silver box, at St. Peter’s Church, on the summit of the rock of Barnborough, whilst the head was consigned to St. Aidan, and interred with due solemnity in the monastic chapel at Lindisfarne. Of his other relics, we learn from Bede, that thirty years after the battle of Maserfeld the niece of Oswald brought them with great state to the Lincolnshire monastery of Bardney, which was in the Mercian kingdom, but the monks received them with coldness, saying that he was an enemy of Mercia, and left the wain, which had arrived with them in the evening, to stand outside their doors with a pall thrown over them. All that night a pillar of light, reaching from earth to heaven, shone over the remains, and was seen throughout the whole surrounding district of Lindsey. At the dawn of morning eagerly were the doors thrown open, the remains were reverently encased, and over them was suspended the gold and purple royal banner which had been borne before Oswald on the field of battle.

    The spot on which King Oswald fell long continued greener and fairer than the ground around, and pilgrims, even from remote parts, flocked thither to pay the tributes of their devotion to God. Both places were indeed honoured, where he first planted the standard of the Cross entering on his career of victory, and where he ended his course, pouring out his life-blood for the cause of God. The latter, howrever, seems to have borne away the palm: “The monks of the great and magnificent Church of Hexham (writes Montalembert), went in procession every year to celebrate the day consecrated to Oswald at the site of the cross, which he had planted on the eve of his first victory. But the love and gratitude of the Christian people gave a still greater glory to the place of his defeat and death. Pilgrims came thither in crowds to seek relief from their sufferings, and had each a miraculous cure to relate on their return. The dust which his noble blood had watered was collected with care and conveyed to great distances as a remedy for disease, or a preservative from the evils of life. By dint of carrying away this dust a hollow was scooped out, of a man’s size, which seemed the ever-open tomb of this martyr of his country. On seeing the turf around this hollow clothed with an unwonted verdure, more delicate and beautiful than elsewhere, travellers said that the man who had perished there must needs have been more holy and more pleasing in God’s sight than all the other warriors who rested beneath that sward. The veneration of which his remains were the object spread not only among all the Saxons and Britons of Great Britain, but even beyond the seas in Ireland and among the Greeks and the Germans. The very stake on which the head of the royal martyr had been fixed was cut up into relics, the fragments of which were regarded as of sovereign efficacy in the healing both of body and of mind.”

    One of the miracles narrated by Bede is given on the authority of St. Willibrord, Archbishop of the Frisians, and happened when that apostolic man, “being as yet only a Priest, led a pilgrim’s life in Ireland, for love of the eternal country.” A certain Irish scholar, “a man indeed learned in worldly literature, but in no way solicitous or studious of his own eternal salvation,” was reduced to the last extremities, having caught the contagion which then prevailed. Willibrord coming to him, and finding that he cherished a great devotion to the holy Oswald, said to him that he had “a portion of the stake on which Oswald’s head was set up by the pagans when he was killed: and if you believe, with a sincere heart, the Divine goodness may, through the merit of so great a man, both grant you a longer term of life here, and render you worthy of admittance into eternal life. He answered immediately that he had entire faith therein. Then I blessed some water (adds St. Willibrord) and put into it a chip of the aforesaid oak, and gave it to the sick man to drink. He presently found ease, and recovering of his sickness, lived a long time after, and being entirely converted to God in heart and actions, wherever he came he spoke of the goodness of his merciful Creator, and the honour of his faithful servant.” St. Willibrord added, that even in his distant mission among the Frisians miracles were wrought through the relics of Oswald.

    I have dwelt thus on the memory of this holy prince on account of his being trained to piety in the Irish schools, his zealous co-operation with St. Aidan in sanctifying his people, and the devoted affection which he ever displayed towards his Irish masters. He bequeathed a bright example of Christian heroism to the royal families of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and many were those who sought to emulate his perfect life. His festival was kept throughout England “with joyous and blessed gladness” on the 5th of August, and his name is entered in the Irish, Scottish, and Roman martyrologies on the same day. A foreign historian of England has well appreciated his true chararcter when he writes that “as his life was distinguished at once by activity and by a spirit of fervid Christian beneficence, so his Christian merits and his martyrdom rendered him a hero of the Christian world” and we may add with Montalembert, that, “crowned by the love and devotion of the people on whom he bestowed the blessings of peace and of divine truth, spending his life for its sake; gentle and strong, serious and sincere, pious and intelligent, humble and bold, active and gracious, a soldier and a missionary, a king and a martyr, slain in the flower of his age on the field of battle, fighting for his country and praying for his subjects. Where shall we find in all history a hero more nearly approaching the ideal, more richly gifted, more worthy of eternal remembrance, and, it must be added, more completely forgotten?”

    Right Rev. P.F. Moran, Irish saints in Great Britain (Dublin, 1879), 236-240.

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2017. All rights reserved.