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Tag: Twelve Apostles of Ireland

  • The Feast of the Dispersion of the Apostles, July 15

    On July 15 Canon O’Hanlon notes the recording, in the Martyrology of Aengus, of The Feast of the Dispersion of the Apostles. This feast marks the dispersal of the Holy Apostles to their various missionary destinations, but in some of the copies of Saint Aengus’s calendar a list of not only the biblical Twelve Apostles is appended, but also a list of the ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland‘. This was a name given to a group of early saints, presented as students of Saint Finnian of Clonard, who themselves dispersed to various parts of Ireland to evangelise this country. Some of them are also credited with founding missions outside of Ireland. In the account below I have transferred the actual quotations from the Martyrology out of the footnotes and into the main body of Canon O’Hanlon’s text. I have also added some notes on the identities of the Irish Twelve:

    Festival of the Twelve Apostles.

    In the ancient Irish Church, on the 15th day of July, was celebrated the Festival of the Twelve Apostles, as we read in the “Feilire” of St. Aengus. In the “Leabhar Breac” copy is the following Irish rann, translated into English, by Whitley Stokes, LL.D.

    “The twelve Apostles who excel every number,
    before a countless host
    Jesus distributed them among Adam’s seed.”—

    There is an Irish stanza annexed, in which those Twelve Apostles are severally named. Thus translated into English :—

    “Simon, Matthaeus and Matthew,
    Bartholomew, Thomas, Thaddaeus,
    Peter, Andrew, Philip, Paul,
    John and the two Jameses.

    and succeeding it, there is another, enumerating the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. This is headed “XII. Apostoli Hiberniae,” and then follow these lines, thus translated into English:

    “The Twelve Apostles of Ireland :—
    “Two Finnens, two chaste Colombs,
    Ciaran, Caindech, fair Comgall,
    Two Brenainns, Ruadan with splendour,
    Nindid, Mobii, son of Natfraech.”

    This ancient Festival, styled the Separation of the Apostles of Christ for their Missions in various parts of the old world, has been often alluded to by the early Greek and Latin Fathers. The Bollandists, who place it at the 15th of July, have a learned disquisition on its origin and history, to which the reader is referred.

    _______________________________________________________________________________

    Notes on the Twelve Apostles of Ireland:

    Two Finnens – the two great Saint Finnians – Finnian of Clonard, ‘tutor of the saints of Ireland’ and Finnian of Moville.

    Two Chaste Colombs – Saint Columba of Iona and Saint Columba of Terryglass.

    Ciaran – Some lists include two Ciarans, both Saint Ciaran the Elder (of Saighir) and Ciaran the Younger (of Clonmacnoise).

    Caindech – Saint Canice or Kenneth of Kilkenny.

    Fair Comgall – Saint Comgall of Bangor.

    Two Brenainns – Saints Brendan the Elder (of Birr) and Brendan the Younger (the Navigator) of Clonfert.

    Ruadan with splendour – Saint Ruadhan of Lorrha.

    Nindid – Saint Ninnidh of Inismacsaint.

    Mobii – Saint Mobhí of Glasnevin.

    Son of Natfraech – Molaise of Devenish.

    Finally, it may be noted that the list of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland is preserved in various manuscripts which do not always tally. Some of the saints, not present on this list, can include Saints Senan and Sinell.

  • The Twelve Apostles of Ireland


    St Finnian imparts his blessing to the twelve apostles of Ireland. Photo credit: Andreas F. Borchert, Wikipedia.




    The ‘Twelve Apostles of Ireland’ is a collective title given in Irish hagiography to a group of Irish saints who were all said to have been students at the monastic school of Clonard, under the tutelage of Saint Finnian. A list of the Twelve is preserved in various sources, for the reputation of Saint Finnian as ‘tutor of the saints of Ireland ‘ was firmly established and hagiographers sought to portray their subjects as having been numbered among his pupils.  The individuals listed among the Twelve can vary from one place to another, this, for example is the list given in the scholiast notes to the Martyrology of Oengus:


    Ireland’s Twelve Apostles: Two Finnians, two chaste Columbs, Ciaran, Cainnech, fair Comgall, two Brennains, Ruadan with beauty, Ninnid, Mo-bi, son of Natfrech, i.e. Molaise.

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    One immediate objection that can be raised is that
    the list actually adds up to a baker’s dozen, but presumably this is because
    the master, Finnian of Clonard,     is numbered here along with his disciples.  A
    striking feature of the list is that there are three homonymous groups. Finnian of Moville     joins his namesake of Clonard, the two chaste Columbs comprise one of the most famous holders of the
    name, Colum Cille (Columba) of Iona and the perhaps less well-known Colum of Terryglass, whilst the two Brennains are Brendan of Birr and his more famous namesake, Brendan, the Navigator, of Clonfert.     Although the Martyrology of Oengus does not record
    it here, other versions also name two Ciarans, with the elder Ciaran of Saighir joining the younger Ciaran of Clonmacnoise.     Those named singly also present a mix of the
    relatively well-known with the relatively obscure, among the former would
    certainly be Cainnech (Kenneth) of Kilkenny and Comgall of Bangor, with Ruadan of Lorrha and Mobi of Glasnevin possibly a little less well-known, and the two Fermanagh lakeland saints Ninnid of Inismacsaint and Molaise of Devenish, perhaps the most obscure of the twelve, at least as far as the modern reader is concerned. 


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    The noting of this list occurs at the Feast of the Dispersion of the Apostles on July 15, a context which suggests that the writers were quite deliberately echoing the sacred
    number of Our Lord’s disciples. In the early 1860s one Irish writer, Father
    Anthony Cogan, quoted the seventeenth-century clerical writer John Lynch who presented
    this motif as something distinctive to Irish missions:

    Those holy
    emigrations of the Irish were distinguished by a peculiarity never, or but very
    seldom, found among other nations. As soon as it became known that any eminent
    monk had resolved to undertake one of those sacred expeditions, twelve men of
    the same order placed themselves under his command, and were selected to
    accompany him; a custom probably introduced by St. Patrick, who had been ably
    supported by twelve chosen associates in converting the Irish from the darkness
    of paganism to the light of the true faith. St. Rioch, nephew to St. Patrick,
    and walking in his footsteps, was attended in his sacred missions to foreign
    tribes and regions by twelve colleagues of his own order; and when St. Rupert,
    who had been baptized by a nephew of St. Patrick, apostle of Ireland, departed
    to draw down the fertilising dews of true religion on pagan Bavaria,
    twelve faithful companions shared the perils and labours of his journey and
    mission. St. Finnian, bishop of Clonard, selected twelve from the thronged
    college of his disciples, to devote them in a special manner to establish and
    animate the principles of the Christian religion among the Irish, and hence
    they were styled by posterity the twelve apostles of Ireland. St. Columba was
    accompanied in his apostolic mission to Albany by twelve monks. Twelve followed
    St. Finbar in his pilgrimage beyond the seas, and twelve St. Maidoc, bishop of
    Ferns, in one of his foreign missions. St. Colman Fin was never seen without
    his college of twelve disciples. When the ceaseless irruptions of foreign
    enemies, or the negligence of the bishops, had well nigh extinguished the
    virtue of religion in Gaul, and left nothing but the Christian Faith when the
    medicine of penance and the love of mortification were found nowhere, or but with
    a few, ‘then’, says Jonas, ‘St. Columbanus descended on Gaul, supported by
    twelve associates, to arouse her from her torpor, and enlighten her sons with
    the beams of the most exalted piety. Twelve disciples followed St. Eloquius
    from Ireland to illumine the Belgians with the rays of faith; twelve
    accompanied St. Willibrod from Ireland to Germany; the pilgrimage and labours
    of St. Farrannan in Belgium were shared by twelve faithful brothers of the
    cowl; and the same number were fellow-exiles with St. Macallan. Perhaps the
    reason why the Irish clung with such invincible attachment to this custom, was
    the number of the apostles chosen by our Saviour, and the same number of
    disciples appointed by the Apostolic See to accompany Palladius to Ireland.

     Rev. A. Cogan,
    The Diocese of Meath: ancient and modern, Volume 1 (Dublin, 1862), xlv.


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     Writers of Dean
    Cogan’s generation were inclined to treat hagiography uncritically and in his
    treatment of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, another nineteenth-century writer,
    Archbishop John Healy, presented a  similarly romantic picture of Saint
    Finnian’s famous pupils. His list omits Saint Comgall in favour of Saint Senan of Iniscathy and Finnian of Moville gives way to the elder
    Ciaran, known as the ‘firstborn of the saints of Ireland’, whose own hagiography claimed him as one of the pre-Patrician saints, thus making him a very
    mature student indeed:

    To Clonard came
    all the men who were afterwards famous as “The Twelve Apostles of
    Erin.” Thither came the venerable Ciaran of Saigher, a companion of St.
    Patrick, to bow his hoary head in reverence to the wisdom of the younger sage;
    and that other Ciaran, the Son of the Carpenter, who in after years founded the
    famous monastic school of Clonmacnoise in the fair meadows by the Shannon’s
    shore. Thither, too, came Brendan of Birr, “the prophet,” as he was
    called, and his still more famous namesake, Brendan of Clonfert, St. Ita’s
    foster son, the daring navigator, who first tried to cross the Atlantic to preach
    the Gospel, and revealed to Europe the mysteries of the far off Western Isles.
    There, too, was young Columba, who learned at the feet of Finnian those lessons
    of wisdom and discipline that he carried with him to Iona, which in its turn
    became for many centuries a torch to irradiate the spiritual gloom of Picts,
    and Scots, and Saxons. And there was that other Columba of Tir-da- glass, and
    Mobhi-Clairenach of Glasnevin, and Rodan, the founder of Lorrha near Lough
    Derg, and Lasserian, the son of Nadfraech, and Canice of Aghaboe, and Senanus
    from Inniscathy, and Ninnidh the Pious from the far off shores of Lough Erne.
    It is said, too, that St. Enda of the Aran Islands and Sinellus of Cleenish,
    and many other distinguished saints spent some time at Clonard, but they are
    not, like those mentioned above, reckoned amongst “the Twelve Apostles of
    Erin.”          

    Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum or
    Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars     by the Most Rev. John Healy (6th edition, Dublin, 1912),
    201.


    I hope to be able to return to Ireland’s Twelve Apostles in future posts as I have done some research into the hagiographical accounts of the schooldays of Clonard’s saintly past pupils in order to better understand this theme. 



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