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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...
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Saint Patrick's Day
Research for this blog has led me to read a great deal of amateur poetry published in the popular religious press of the Victorian era. Whilst much of it is of no great literary merit, I am...
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A Week on the Isles of Arran
March 21 is the feast of Saint Enda of Aran, one of the founding fathers of Irish monasticism. His island home became more accessible during the Victorian era with the provision of a bi-weekly...
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Irish Monasteries in Germany: Honau
Below is a paper by Father J.F. Hogan on the Irish monastery at Honau, one of a series on Irish Monasteries in Germany published by the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in the late nineteenth century. The...
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Saint Comgall of Bangor, May 10
May 10 is the feast of Saint Comgall of Bangor, founder of the great monastic school at Bangor, County Down. An account of Saint Comgall and his monastic school by Archbishop John Healy is also...
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Feast of the Translation of the Relics of Saint Laurence O'Toole, May 10
On May 10 Canon O'Hanlon concludes his entries for the day with this short notice: Article XIV. Translation of the Relics of St. Laurence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin. The anniversary for the...
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Saint Colman of Oughaval, May 15
May 15 is the feast of Saint Colmán of Oughaval in County Laois. I have previously published a short account of this holy man by diocesan historian Bishop Michal Comerford here, but below is the entry...
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Saint Kevin of Glendalough, June 3
Míl Críst i crích nÉrenn,ard na-ainm tar tuind tretan,Cóemgen cáid cáin cathair,i nGlinn dá lind lethan. A soldier of Christ into the border of Erin,a high name over the sea’s wave: Coemgen the chaste,...
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Saint Bláán of Bute, August 10
August 10 is the feast of Saint Bláán of Bute, also known as Blane of Dunblane. The earliest written record of this saint is found in our own early ninth-century Martyrology of Oengus, where on August...
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Saint Muiredach of Killala, August 12
August 12 is the feast of Saint Muiredach (Muireadhach, Muredach) of Killala. Genealogical sources describe him as son of Eachaidh of the Cenél Lóegaire of Meath, a great-grandson of Lóegaire, King...
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Saint Mirren of Paisley, September 15
September 15 is the commemoration of Saint Mirren (Mirin, Mirinus, Meadhran), to whom Paisley Abbey in Scotland is dedicated. I have previously posted the account from Bishop Alexander Forbes's 1872...
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The Blessed Mughron O'Morgair, October 5
October 5 is the commemoration of a man dubbed The Blessed Mughron O'Morgair (Mugh Róin, Mungron) by Canon O'Hanlon in the incomplete Volume X of his Lives of the Irish Saints. O'Morgair is a name I...
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Saint Lapán of Little Island
My research into the Irish saints for this blog normally involves referencing the historic Irish martyrologies which record their feast days. Yet I am becoming increasingly aware of those saints whose...
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An Old Irish Prayer
When I saw a 1912 article entitled 'An Old Irish prayer' in the The Sacred Heart Review I was expecting to find an early medieval text, but instead found the familiar bedtime prayer, 'Now I lay me...
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Saint Maol Eóin, October 20
A blog reader asked me recently about a saint Maol Eóin (Maeleoin, Mael Eoin) with a feast day on October 20. The martyrologies are the only source of information I could find about him and they...
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Ivrea and 'A Bishop of McCarthy's Royal Name'
To mark the feast day of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, below is an 1897 article on Ivrea, the Italian town whose people took this fifteenth-century Irish bishop to their hearts and reintroduced him to his...
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The Rosary of Ireland
I have come across many items in the Victorian religious press written on the theme of Ireland and the Rosary, but the piece below, published in Australia's Catholic Freeman's Journal, struck me as...
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The "Island of Saints and Scholars" and the Universal Calendar of the Church
November is the month which opens with the feast of All Saints but which also includes the feast of All the Saints of Ireland on the sixth. In the article below, published in Australia in 1950, the...
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'That Large Army, Known and Unknown': The Feast of All the Saints of Ireland
November 6 is the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland and, since it is the date on which I started Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae in 2012, is also this blog's patronal feast. To mark the occasion this year...
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Saint Feber of Boho, November 6
November 6 is the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland but is also the day on which we commemorate a little-known female saint of County Fermanagh, Saint Feber (Feadhbhair, Feadhbar, Fedbair, Febor,...
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