Celtic and Old English Saints 18 December =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= * St. Flannan of Killaloe * St. Mawnan of Cornwall * St. Magnenn of Kilmainham =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
St. Flannan of Killaloe, Bishop --------------------------------------------------------------- 7th century. Legend says that Prince Flannan of Thomond was the disciple and successor to Saint Molua (f.d. August 4), founder of Killaloe monastery. He had been born in the fortress castle on Craig Liath near Killaloe. His father, King Turlough, sent him to the monks of Saint Lua for his education for the Church. Eventually, he became its abbot. His late "vita" relates that Flannan made a pilgrimage to Rome against the advice of his friends and family. According to Irish hagiographical fashion, he is said to have been carried on a floating stone to Italy, where he was consecrated as the first bishop of Killaloe by Pope John IV. Like so many Irish monks before him, Flannan was a missionary who roved the countryside preaching the Good News. He founded churches at Lough Corrib and at Inishbofin, and spent time on the Isle of Man. Flannan laboured in the Hebrides and gave his name to the Flannan Isles (the Seven Hunters), west of Lewis and Harris in Scotland, where the ruins of Flannan's chapel may be found today. In spite of all his toil, he managed to recite the entire Psalter daily--often while immersed in icy water. Several great miracles are attributed to Saint Flannan. Although one source says that, inspired by his son, King Turlough became a Christian late in life, he is believed to have started the custom among Irish princes of retiring to a monastery near life's end to do penance. He was a monk under the austere rule of Saint Colman at Lismore. Three of his sons having been killed, Turlough asked Colman for a special blessing on his family. At his death Flannan buried him in the church at Killaloe, which became the principal church of Brian Boru's kingdom. Flannan was afraid that the chieftainship would fall to him (although Colman had predicted that seven kings would spring from Turlough's loins--all named Brian). Saint Flannan thereupon decided to pray for a deformity that would make him ineligible for the role, according to Irish law. His biographer relates that immediately "scars and rashes and boils began to appear on his face so that it became most dreadful and repulsive." About 1180, King Brian Boru's descendent, Donal O'Brien, built a new cathedral dedicated to Saint Flannan. The church was incorporated into a new one in the 13th century, restored in 1887, and is now a Protestant church. "Luxuriant with ivy, Gothic in style, with a massive bell tower rising from the centre of the building, its elaborate, richly carved Romanesque doorway, dated about 1180, is one of the masterpieces of pre-Norman Irish architecture. Built into the stone wall surrounding the cathedral grounds is another antiquity, a fragment of a bilingual stone cross inscribed with runes and oghams from about the year 1000" [D'Arcy, pp. 61-62]. Saint Flannan is the patron of Killaloe diocese where his relics formerly rested in the cathedral next to his stone oratory. His feast is kept throughout Ireland, and he also has a cultus in Scotland on the same day (Attwater 2, Benedictines, Coulson, D'Arcy, Farmer, Kenney, Leask, Montague, Moran, Walsh). St. Mawnan (Maunanus) of Cornwall --------------------------------------------------------------- Date unknown; another feast is shown on December 26 in Ireland. There is a town in Cornwall named Mawnan. One source also identifies him with Magnenn of Kilmainham, an Irish roving bishop who had a pet ram, was given to cursing his enemies, and favoured unusual austerities. Mawnan once asked counsel from Saint Maelruain (f.d. July 7), who roundly refused to administer absolution to a man who did not work for his daily bread, but instead lived on alms. A prophecy is attributed to Mawnan: "A time shall come when girls shall be pert and tart of tongue; when there will be grumbling and discontent among the lower classes and lack of reverence to elders; when churches will be slackly attended and women shall exercise wiles." His life has similarities with the "fools for Christ" of Greece and Russia. The exact identity of Mawnan is uncertain; he may be this saint or simply a local founder of whom nothing is known (Farmer). St. Magnenn of Kilmainham --------------------------------------------------------------- >From the Life of St Magnenn of Kilmainham Here now are some of bishop Magnenn's perfections: whensoever he came to a refectory or to drink a draught, before ever he tasted his meal or that which he should consume he would make five meditations: the first of them being how he was born originally, and in how mean estate he came from his mother's womb; the second, how in time he should escape out of his death-extremity; the third, how the soul is rapt away to look on Hell; the fourth again, how it goes to contemplate the Heavenly City that it may shun being taken back again, whereby its self-distrust [i.e. humility and solicitude] is all the greater; the fifth, how the sinners' cairn [i.e. the edifice of their ambition, how high soever piled) is in a trifling while afterwards abased. He used to tell his monks that for the Holy Spirit they ought in their inmost parts to leave a passage free: one into which they should not admit secular [i.e. material] sustenance. Thrice at a time he was wont to say that the World is a mere mass of deception. "Look to it, my beloved people," he said, "and take heed thereto: if ye spurn God's commandments, how shall ye making your petitions to Him look up to Him? or how shall God hearken to your cry and earnest prayer?" ... It was of another time that Magnenn went on a visit to the place where Maelruain of Tallaght was, whom he found thus just emerging out of a well of water after chanting of the psalter's three times fifty psalms in it. Through humility Maelruain saluted the sacred bishop, made him great welcome and gave him the kiss of peace, saying: "my friend, take heed to me". He reached his hand across him and from the hem of the hair integument that he wore next his skin plucked a strong fibula, with which he dealt himself a blow in the breast on the gospel side. Out of the pin's place issued not blood but merely a little pinkish fluid; and the motive of this ordeal was to announce to bishop Magnenn that in Maelruain's body pride existed not. Magnenn replied: "I see that; and why I [for my part] am come is to have exhortation of thee, to crave that to thee I may make confession, and to be purged of all my sins and guiltiness." Maelruain said: "in God's name I adjure thee that forthwith thou make thy confession," Magnenn began: "thrice I say to thee 'have mercy on me!' I tell thee (he went on) that from the day in which I took holy orders never have I suffered the canonical hours to run [unobserved] the one into another; and I tell thee that from the day in which I was baptised never have I violated my purity, my chastity; neither from the time when I was tailed 'priest' have I been even for one day without [saying] Mass." Maelruain asked now: "holy bishop, in performance of corporal labour doest thou any handiwork at all?" Magnenn answered: "nor work nor labour do I; neither indeed (respect to my day being had) is it incumbent on me to perform any such." Maelruain cried: "alas for that! I have never heard confession of a man but [with his own hands] laboured for his body [i.e. to supply his own corporal requirements]." Magnenn rejoined: "then, holy cleric, yield me reverence." Maelruain assented: "I will indeed." "I tell thee farther that upon any man that ever came to me [to confess] I never laid penance (how severe soever) but on mine own body I would inflict one more severe than it: thus once on a time came to me the king of Saxons' son to confess and to seek devotional tuition, of whom I enquired: 'doest thou any handiwork?' he said that he did not; but I affirmed that I would not infringe God's law, and the injunction that he gave to Adam when he enjoined him to feed himself by his hand's and by his body's labour, and with his sweat. Alas then that my peregrination and my visit [hither] must be even like to his!" But Maelruain returned: "by no means: rather shall sages and ancient books have preserved to the World's end thy journey hither and the miracles that yet shall proceed from thee, as being both very excellent." Magnenn the bishop craved: "instruct me for God's sake!" to whom Maelruain: "in His name I say to thee: weep for the sin of friends and of neighbours [as though it were thine]; on God set all thy thoughts, nor dwell at all whether on friend or comrade, on gold or silver, or on the specious World's false show, but thy confessions and thine heart place all in God; on Mary-Mother of Glory-meditate; on the great (i.e. the twelve major) prophets, together with John the Baptist, ponder; as on the lesser prophets with Habacuc. Think on the fourfold Evangel, on the twelve Apostles, and on the eleven disciples that He had for followers; on the band of youths that the King Eternal has for a household retinue: the token of said retinue being a cross of gold in their foreheads, and on their backs a cross of silver. Meditate moreover on the nine angelic orders, on bliss of the Heavenly City's glory; so shall great privileges appertain to thy succession's [i.e. successors'] see, and yonder thou shalt win the glory everlasting. This then is my counsel to thee, holy bishop. Farther yet: to thy successors' see great prerogatives shall belong, and in Ireland thy fire shall be the third on which privilege [of sanctity] shall be conferred, i.e. the fire of the elder Lianan of Kinvarra, the lively and perennial fire that is in Inishmurray [in Sligo bay] and bishop Magnenn's fire in Kilmainham. Thou too art the one that to thine own monks, and to such as from Shannon to the [eastern] sea accomplish thy prescriptions, shalt beside Patrick and Ireland's other saints be their final judge." ... A prophecy of bishop Magnenn's was: that a time should come when there should be daughters flippant and tart, devoid of obedience to their mothers; when they of low estate should make much murmuring, and seniors lack reverent cherishing; when there should be impious laymen and prelates both, perverted wicked judges, disrespect to elders; soil barren of fruits, weather deranged and intemperate seasons; women given up to witchcraft, churches unfrequented, deceitful hearts and perfidy on the increase; a time when God's commandments should be violated, and Doomsday's tokens occur every year. Of Magnenn's characteristics was the manner of his carrying himself in regard to riches, for he never accepted either gold or silver or any metal that is denominated moneta; and a Culdee that was in Kilmainham bore this great testimony of him, saying: "Magnenn the wonder-worker, that never sinned with woman; Magnenn the sage, whose use and wont it was to weep." Farther: in preaching he never uttered any one word a second time [in the same discourse]; he never left a sermon [after him anywhere] but some one or other he had 'brought to faith' [i.e. converted]; nor ever sat at king's shoulder or at chief's (purposing thus to eschew acquiring of a high mind), and honour of kings and of mighty lords he would contemn greatly, saying: "alas for him to whom, when once he hath renounced the World, honours conferred by the powerful yield any satisfaction." Of that holy bishop's perfection was this too: that he never entered into any place where war or conflict was but mercifulness and pity would [efficaciously] attend that which he said, and, before he departed, the parties would be at peace. Lovingly he would say to them: "that which is spent ye have had; that which ye have given away ye have yet; that which ye have hoarded up ye have lost; and that in respect of which ye have unbecomingly denied any is [even now] avenged on you." So soon then as the tuatha and the tribes would hear that, straightway they used to make peace, and he would go on to say that such was the third thing with which God was best pleased in the world [the three being] love to Himselfward, giving of copious alms, and maintenance of peace. Source: Silva Gadelica (I-XXXI). ed. Standish Hayes O'Grady. Reprint of the 1892 ed. New York, Lemma Pub. Corp., 1970. http://www.geocities.com/branwaedd/magnenn.html Sources: ======== Attwater, D. (1958). A Dictionary of Saints. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. [Attwater 2] Benedictine Monks of Saint Augustine Abbey, Ramsgate. (1947). The Book of Saints. NY: Macmillan. Coulson, J. (ed.). (1960). The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary. New York: Hawthorn Books. D'Arcy, M. R. (1974). The Saints of Ireland. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Irish American Cultural Institute. [This is probably the most useful book to choose to own on the Irish saints. The author provides a great deal of historical context in which to place the lives of the saints.] Farmer, D. H. (1997). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kenney, J. F. (1929). Sources for Early History of Ireland, vol.1, Ecclesiastical. New York: Columbia University Press. Leask, H. G. (1951). Irish Castles. Dundalgan Press. Montague, H. P. (1981). The Saints and Martyrs of Ireland. Guildford: Billing & Sons. Moran, P. (1879). Irish Saints in Great Britian. Walsh, M. (ed.). (1985). Butler's Lives of the Saints. San Francisco: Harper & Row. For All the Saints: http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/ss-index.htm An Alphabetical Index of the Saints of the West http://www.orthodoxengland.btinternet.co.uk/saintsa.htm These Lives are archived at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/celt-saints ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
