OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: The Holy Apostles

  • 'The Lord's chaste apostle, Bartholomew to whom I pray'

    August 25 is the feast of Saint Barthlomew the Apostle, whom tradition says met a particularly gruesome death by being flayed alive. His feast appears on the Irish calendars with the Martyrology of Tallaght simply noting ‘Passio Bartholomei apostoli‘, at this date. The Martyrology of Oengus has a rather fuller entry:

    F. viii. cal. Septembris.
    Ro sreth scél a chesta cech leth co sál srúamach, iar mórchroich ro rígad in Bartholom búadach. 

    25. The story of his suffering has been declared on every side even to the streamy sea: after a great cross he has been crowned, the triumphant Bartholomew.

    The scholiast notes add:

    25. Bartolom. Bartholomeus in Indiam perrexit et in ea passus est sub Astrige rege eorum .i. gladio decollatus est, uel uiuus sepultus est, post pellem rasam suam de corpore toto ante, et sic uitam finiuit. 

    25. Bartholomew proceeded into India etc. i.e. he was beheaded with a sword, or he was buried alive, etc. 

    The twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman also notes the feast at the beginning of its entries for the preceding day:

    24. E.

    Apstol cáid in Coimdedh
    Bartholom fris mbenaimm 

    The Lord’s chaste apostle, Bartholomew to whom I pray:,..

    Canon O’Hanlon also notes the feast in Volume 8 of his Lives of the Irish Saints:
    Festival of St. Bartholomew, Martyr. 

    The festival of St. Bartholomew, Martyr, was observed in the early Irish Church, on the 25th of August, as may be found in the “Feilire” of St. Aengus. There his name takes the Irish form Parrthalon. To this, the scholiast has added an explanatory note in Latin.  Wherefore it seems we are to regard him as St. Bartholomew, the Apostle, and whose Acts are fully set forth by the Bollandists, at this date. These Acts have a previous learned commentary by the editor, Father John Stilting, SJ.; and they are followed by a narratives of the posthumous honours, translations, relics and miracles of this celebrated Apostle of the Indies.

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  • A Feast of Saint Philip the Apostle on the Irish Calendars

    W.S.Sparrow, The Apostles in Art (1906).

    Although our Irish calendars are primarily a source for the feast days of our native saints, they also commemorate saints of the universal Church. Some of the feasts recorded in the earliest Irish calendars are interesting, there was for example a commemoration of the feast of the Transfiguration, not at August 6 but at July 26 and there were even fixed dates assigned to moveable feasts, with March 27 being noted as the feast of the Resurrection. There are also commemorations of saints and apostles at dates different to those to which we are now accustomed. Saint Mary Magdalene, for example, had a feast at March 28 and Saint Symeon at October 8. On April 22 we have another of these historical curiosities with a feast of Saint Philip the Apostle being recorded in the two earliest Irish calendars, as Canon O’Hanlon explains below. In his day the feast of Saint Philip was celebrated on May 1 but has since been moved to May 3, the Orthodox commemoration is on November 14:

    Feast of Saint Philip, the Apostle.

    In the Feilire of St. Aengus at the 22nd of April, the commemoration of the Apostle, St. Philip is announced. In the Martyrology of Tallagh, a similar commemoration is found. The festival of this great Apostle is more generally assigned, however, to the 1st of May, when with the other Apostle St. James, the Less, the Church celebrates a feast, in their honour.

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  • God's Fine Disciple: An Irish View of Saint John the Apostle

    “Disciple of the Lord,
    ever-angelic John,
    a goodly, handsome-haired man,
    with bright blue eyes,
    red-cheeked and fair of face,
    with gleaming teeth and dark brows,
    red-lipped, white-throated,
    skilful and dextrous,
    with supple lithe fingers,
    fair-sided, light-footed,
    noble, slender and serene,
    distinguished,
    bright with holiness,
    friend of Christians,
    expeller of the dark devil,
    God’s fine disciple”

    ‘Episodes from the Life of John, the Beloved Disciple’ in Maire Herbert and M. McNamara, trans., Irish Biblical Apocrypha: Selected Texts in Translation (Edinburgh, 1989), 92.

    On December 27 the Irish calendars record what the Martyrology of Gorman describes as ‘The chief feast of John the Apostle’. I have already written about the Irish tradition concerning the apostle John in a post which can be found here. In it you will find some other selections from the Irish apocryphal writings on the Apostle John, writings which draw on common sources but which reflect distinctive Irish embellishments of the text. They are preserved in a 15th-century manuscript, the Liber Flavus Fergusiorum.

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