Saint Laurence O'Toole, November 14
November 14 is the feast of Saint Laurence (Lorcan) O'Toole, a twelfth-century saint associated with both Glendalough and the Archdiocese of Dublin. Below is a stirring account of Saint Laurence,...
View ArticleSaint Columbanus, November 21
The School of Bangor - St. Columbanus.ST. COLUMBANUS was the great glory of the school of Bangor. He is one of the most striking figures of his age; his influence has been even felt down to our own...
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Saint Colman of Cloyne, November 24
November 24 is the feastday of a Cork poet-saint, Colman of Cloyne. I have previously posted Archdall's account of the saint and his locality here. Below is another account of the life of Saint Colman...
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The Legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria
November 25 is the feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, one of the great eastern female martyrs. The story of Saint Catherine's martyrdom was immensely popular in the medieval west and includes a...
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Saint Virgil of Salzburg, November 27
November 27 is the feastday of a saint into whose interesting life and career I hope to do much more research - Virgil of Salzburg. Behind this classical name lies an eighth-century Irishman, Fearghal,...
View ArticleThe Saints of Catholic Scotland
November 30 is the feast of Scotland's patron, Saint Andrew, and thus a fitting occasion on which to bring a 1918 article by Dom Michael Barrett (1848-1924) on Scottish saints. We will not of course be...
View ArticleSaint Brecan of Ardbraccan, December 6
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...
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Saint Finnian of Clonard - Tutor of the Saints of Ireland?
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...
View ArticleSaint Evin of Monasterevin, December 22
December 22 is the feast of Saint Evin, founder of Monasterevin, County Louth. Below is an excerpt from an early twentieth-century paper submitted to the Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological...
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The Christmas Eve Massacre of 986
The good people at Medievalists.Net have made a summary of a paper by Scottish academic Thomas Owen Clancy on the Christmas Eve Massacre by the Vikings at Iona in 986 available at their site. In it the...
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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...
View ArticlePrayer of Saint Aireran the Wise
December 29 is the feast of Saint Aireran the Wise, a scholarly saint associated with the monastery of Clonard. Below is a paper from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record taken from a series on the legacy...
View ArticleSaint Fechin at Poulaphouca Waterfall
It was the afternoon of Sunday when Fechin and his monks arrived at Poulaphouca Falls, and the glorious Twenty-Eighth Psalm was part of the Lauds for Monday, which they were reciting that evening, and...
View ArticleCompanions of Saint Ursula, January 23
At January 23 Canon O'Hanlon has the first of a number of entries in his Lives of the Irish Saints relating to Saint Ursula and her companions. The story of the martyrdom of Saint Ursula was enormously...
View ArticleA Festival of Holy Martyrs in the Félire Oengusso, February 15
I was interested to see this entry in Canon O'Hanlon's Lives of the Irish Saints for February 15:Festival of Holy Martyrs. At the 15th of February, the following stanza, transcribed from the " Feilire"...
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Saint David in Irish Sources
March 1 is the feastday of the patron of Wales, Saint David, a saint much honoured and loved in Ireland. A modern scholar summarizes below some of the links to the Welsh patron in the Irish sources:In...
View ArticleSaint Caritan of Druim-Lara, March 7
Another name to add to the list of obscure Irish saints - Caritan of Druim-Lara. Neither the man nor the place can be definitively identified. There have, however, been some suggestions made. Canon...
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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...
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Vignettes from the Lives of the Irish Saints: Saint Comgall and the Mice
...There came a time of famine in Ireland, and there was not food enough to go around, as has often happened there from the earliest days until even now. Comgall and his household at Bangor were very...
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Saint Dymphna of Gheel, May 15
May 15 is the feast of Saint Dymphna of Gheel, a saint whose cult continues to flourish. According to the traditional account she was an Irish princess who fled to continental Europe to escape the...
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