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Medieval Irish saints’ Lives contain both themes and motifs with their
precedents in native Irish secular tradition, and those that follow patterns observed in
Biblical texts and continental European vitae. The contents of a society’s vitae reflect
the values that it holds to be of foremost importance. When imported Christian values
and traditions became pervasive enough in Irish society that they were important to the
writers and audiences of saints’ Lives, reflections of those values appeared in the
literature. Shared values that had been held independently in each culture were of
course evident in the literature of both, while the native traditional values appear in the
hagiography are those which remained central tenets of Irish culture and life even after
the introduction of Christianity. Thus, the appearance of a specific motif in a vita is not
necessarily directly reflective of the literature that may have influenced it, but of the
values system and of the society in which it was produced.
I will analyze the relative influence of various Continental and Insular patterns
on the hagiographic literature of medieval Ireland through the media of two vitae, “The
Life of Senán, son of Gerrgenn,” and “The Life of Ciarán of Clonmacnois,” both from
the Book of Lismore, a fifteenth-century Irish language manuscript.1 Though the Lives
have not been dated precisely, they were composed in Irish, which indicates,
approximately, composition between 850 and 1050 A.D., the period during which the
use of Latin in saints’ Lives decreased in favor of writing in Irish.2 Each Life tells the
story of its saint’s birth, childhood, education, miracles, monastic foundation, and death,
and in each is evident both Christian and pre-Christian values. The Bibliotheca
Sanctorum considers “The Life of Senán,” in particular, to be a mix of pagan and 1 Whitely Stokes, “Preface to Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore,” Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890. 2 Raymond A. Patterson, Irish Hagiography and Reform Movements: A Comparison of the Portrait of the Saint in the Lives of Sts. Ita, Samthann, Declán, and Malachy, Washington, D.C., 2002.
Christian legend, with the original Irish version appearing to be heavily based on the
combination of a local legend and a tenth century vita written at Inis Cathaig, the site of
St. Senán’s ultimate monastic foundation. Further, Senán’s Life is possibly a conflation
of his own experiences with the Lives of other, lesser-known saints of the same name.3
A distinctive feature of medieval Irish vitae are the genealogies of the saints.
These generally go back many generations, and cover both maternal and paternal
histories, though far fewer generations are listed on the maternal side. St. Senán’s
genealogy extends twenty-two generations paternally and four maternally,4 while St.
Ciarán’s extends two generations maternally and twenty-nine paternally, all the way to
Míl of Spain,5 legendary ancestor of the Irish people.6 As saints, especially important
ones, were often given invented but impressive lineages,7 this says little about Ciarán’s
actual ancestry, but speaks instead to the significance of heritage and family relations in
the society. Rather than being mere formulaic imitations of the secular tradition, these
features are emblematic of one of the defining characteristics of early Irish society, its
familiarity. The family group was the foremost social and legal unit in Ireland, and “the
network of relationships that linked one family to another formed the building blocks of
Irish society….A person’s identity derived entirely from his or her kin.”8 The
importance of the family was thus reflected in religious as well as secular literature.9
Coming from a prestigious family, St. Ciarán would have been held in high esteem
3 Fergal Grannell “Senán,” Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 1987.4 “The Life of Senán, son of Gerrgenn,” Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, Whitley Stokes, D.C.L., Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890.5 “The Life of Ciarán of Clonmacnois,” Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, Whitley Stokes, D.C.L., Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890.6 Jennifer Paxton, History 243, “Medieval Ireland,” Georgetown University, Fall 2005. 7 Charles Doherty, “The Irish Hagiographer,” Historical Studies XVI, May 1985, The Writer as Witness: literature as historical evidence, Tom Dunne, Cork: Cork University Press, 1987. 8 Lisa M. Bitel, Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. 9 Paxton, History 243.
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regardless of his own merits, deriving a prominent identity from that of his relatives.
By creating such impressive credentials for St. Ciarán’s forebears, the hagiographer
evidenced the saint’s greatness in terms of one of the most important features of a
medieval Irishman: his family. At the same time, the manner in which he did so
implicitly affirms and encompasses Ireland’s native, pagan past. The saga of Míl and
his sons appears in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of Invasions, which tells the
mythological stories of the arrival of Ireland’s first inhabitants.10 That having such a
past functions to enhance Ciarán’s pedigree alludes to a continued respect for the native,
secular tradition. Had Christian Ireland completely broken away from pagan Ireland,
such a lineage would have been unimpressive at best and shameful at worst.
Other common features of the medieval Irish saint’s Life are the supernatural
circumstances surrounding his birth. St. Ciarán’s birth was prophesied by figures as
influential as Patrick, Brigit, and Columbcille, as well as by “Lugbrann, the wizard of
the [king of Ireland].”11 St. Senán’s birth, too, was foretold by both St. Patrick and the
local pagan druid. Furthermore, Senán’s mother was accompanied by an angel during
her labor and, miraculously, “the stake of rowan that was in her hand…took the earth,
and burst at once into flower and leaf.”12 According to Doherty, these events were
borrowed directly from similar happenings in the secular, pagan hero sagas.13 However,
precedent for a related phenomenon, the saint’s own powers of prophesy, is found
among both native and Christian traditions.14 Thus, the gift of prophecy served as a
10 Paxton, History 243.11 “The Life of Ciarán,” 264-5. 12 “The Life of Senán,” 202-4. 13 Charles Doherty, 12. 14 Dorothy Ann Bray, "The Study of Folk-Motifs in Early Irish Hagiography," Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars, April 1997, John Carey, Máire Herbert, Pádraig Ó Riain, Portland: Four Courts Press, 2001.
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connection between the two cultures; the veneration of a saint in one tradition was
comprehensible to participants in the other tradition if it was in part based on some of
the same qualities which they already considered evidence of sanctity.
Yet another relatively uniquely Irish element in the vitae is the discussion of the
saint’s youthful display of his ability to work miracles.15 The young Irish saints
displayed their growing mastery of the miraculous in a sometimes mischievous manner,
often using miracles to get themselves out of trouble or to cause it for their households.
Senán, in trouble with his mother for not having brought her the things for which she
had asked, said, “Be at rest, and thou shalt have what is needful.” Moments later, “they
beheld coming towards them in the air…all the needments which they required.”16 The
young Ciarán, even more impishly, repeatedly ruined his mother’s blue dye because she
had asked him to leave the house, until his mother finally relented and asked “let [the
dye-stuff] be blessed by thee,” at which point Ciarán blessed it and it became the best
dye-stuff ever created.17 At the same time as the behavior exhibited therein appears to
arise from native tradition, this episode implicitly condemns pre-Christian practices;
Ciarán’s anger appears to arise from being asked to comply with the superstition that it
was not “right or lucky to have men in the same house in which cloth was getting
dyed.”18 Similar themes of mischievous boy-saints are less prevalent among the
Continental hagiography, but appear throughout the Irish corpus.
The “Life of Ciarán” from the Book of Lismore includes the tale of the Odar
Ciaráin, Ciarán’s Dun, whose milk was sufficient for the Twelve Bishops of Ireland
15 Doherty, 12. 16 “The Life of Senán,” 204. 17 “The Life of Ciarán,” 266-7. 18 “The Life of Ciarán,” 266.
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and their households.19 The appearance of the cow to provide the saints with nutrition
is, according to Dorothy Ann Bray’s “Study of Folk Motifs in Early Irish
Hagiography,” a distinctively native motif; the pre-eminence of the cow in early Irish
literature arises not from any Continental import but from the native Irish oral
tradition,20 which itself reflected the supreme importance of the cow in the early Irish
economy, society, and culture; the entire Táin Bó Cuailange, the most famous pre-
Christian tale, centers around a giant cattle raid! Irish society was primarily rural
throughout its history, the first cities arising only with the arrival of Viking invaders in
the ninth century and even then little affecting the population. The significance of the
cow thus did not wane until the later Middle Ages, and the conditions evident in these
vitae existed not only during the time of which the Lives speak but also during the time
in which they were written.21 That these bovine manifestations are in fact representative
of the typical medieval Irish way of life is further reinforced by the casual appearances
of cattle throughout Irish vitae, as when St. Senán dedicated his life to God while
driving his father’s oxen,22 and St. Ciarán heard the lessons of his teacher, despite being
far away with the cattle.23 Furthermore, both St. Senán and St. Ciarán performed
miracles on the animals in their herds, Ciarán raising a calf from the dead and Senán
miraculously keeping a cow and a calf apart to assist in his herding.24 Only in a society
as dependant on cattle as was that of medieval Ireland would these bovine miracles be
so important and so pervasive.
19 “The Life of Ciarán,” 264. 20 Bray, 273. 21 Paxton, History 243. 22 “The Life of Senán,” 201. 23 “The Life of Ciarán,” 266. 24 “The Life of Ciarán,” 267; “The Life of Senán,” 206.
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However, while the substance of cow-related miracles in the Lives of Irish saints
may be strongly dependant on native, secular Irish culture and tradition, the character of
these phenomena are not entirely disconnected from the miracles in Continental vitae
and Biblical tradition. Although Bray specifically mentions as “distinctively Irish” the
miraculous ability of Ciarán’s Dun to provide milk for “Full fifty and a hundred…Both
guests, and weaklings/And folk of the refectory and upper room,”25 the idea of using
limited resources to feed a large number of people is not specific to Ireland, but rather
has its precedent in the Biblical “Loaves and Fishes.”26 Similar miracles can also be
seen in Continental vitae, as exemplified in the vita of St. Benedict, through whose
intervention miraculously appearing sacks of flour saved his monastery from
starvation.27 This does not necessarily reflect Irish hagiographical reliance on older
Continental vitae, but rather a shared value between the two societies. For both
medieval Ireland, medieval Europe, and, in fact, the entire medieval world, hunger was
omnipresent and the scarcity of food a problem. The ability to provide food for so many
people was evidence of a saint’s very real holiness in the eyes of the population thus
assisted, and so the ubiquity of such miracles reflects the universality of a preoccupation
with survival-level nutrition more than it does the strict adherence to a particular model
for the Life of a saint.28
Other incidents involving animals in the saints’ vitae are less specifically Irish,
and, while they may have precedents in native oral tradition, they also have precedents
in other European Lives. While the presence of the cow, and particularly its tendency to
25 “The Life of Ciarán,” 268. 26 New American Bible, Matthew 14.17-21; Bray, 273. 27 “The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict,” Medieval Saints, Mary-Ann Stouck, Ontario: Broadview Press: 1999. 28 Bray, 273.
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feed the holy people of Ireland, speaks emphatically to Irish reliance on cattle for
livelihood and sustenance, the relationship between the Irish saint and other animals is
similar to that between other medieval saints and the various animals in their
environment. Various Continental monks and desert ascetics had lions or birds who
worshipped or assisted them, and St. Jerome’s association with the lion parallels St.
Ciarán’s with the fox. Each had his respective wild beast performing some chore on
behalf of the saint, be it guarding an ass for the monastery of St. Jerome or carrying a
Psalter between St. Ciarán and his teacher. Each of the animals eventually failed at its
task and allowed or caused harm to come to its charge, before the situation was
remedied and the saint forgave the creature.29 This displays the striking similarities that
are sometimes evident between the motifs of Continental and Irish vitae. It could
evidence a conscious imitation of the European pattern on behalf of the Insular
hagiographers, or it could display a situation in which these animal-related
hagiographical motifs arose independently due to the comparable human-environment
interactions in the two societies.
The hagiographical evidence suggests that acceptance of native Irish tradition
varied according to the degree to which a specific practice was considered suitable for a
Christian society. The system of fosterage was neither condemned nor specifically
endorsed, and was included as a part of the youth narratives of many saints. Ciarán’s
tutor and baptizer, the deacon Justus, was also as his foster-father, and it was his foster-
mother whose dye-stuff he ruined.30 Referring to the same woman alternately as his
mother and his foster-mother, the author corroborates a general acceptance, in the early
29 Jacobus de Voragine, “Saint Jerome,” The Golden Legend, William Granger Ryan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993; “The Life of Ciarán,” 266. 30 “The Life of Ciarán,” 266-7.
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years even of Christian Ireland, of this distinctively Irish, pre-Christian practice. The
Life of Senán, however, displays a different attitude toward certain native customs.
When the people of his region went on a hosting into a neighboring area, Senán went
along only because he was forced to. “Now the violent force of the prince takes Senán
into that territory.” Despite accompanying his countrymen on their violent rampage, he
did not take part in the pillaging of the area, but rather slept in a barn until it was over,
and then proceeded to initiate a friendly rapport with the men of the enemy territory.31
The violent and unnecessary force of a medieval hosting was portrayed as being an
activity unbecoming of a saint or a Christian, and so was a part of the pre-Christian
tradition condemned by the Christian writers. The custom of fosterage, however,
designed to forge bonds between members of different clans and prevent violence from
erupting in the future, was instead accepted as a legitimate practice suitable for
Christians, whether its origins were in pre-Patrician times or not.
Undeniably one of the most substantial portions of the vita of an Irish saint is the
period of monastic foundation and association; a saint generally traveled through
Ireland (or perhaps to Europe) founding or joining monasteries and interacting with
other saints. For example, Senán set up the monastery of Inniscorthy, aligned himself
with Maedhóc of Ferns, and succeeded Maedhóc as abbot. He then proceeded to
journey to Rome and return, after which he founded a number of churches, and
associated with a number of powerful saints, including Ciarán, Brenainn, and Brigit. His
life culminated with the founding of the monastery at Inis Cathaigh.32 In a similar
fashion, Ciarán, who started his education under the tutelage of St. Findian of Clonard,
31 “The Life of Senán,” 205. 32 “The Life of Senán,” 208-19.
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was promised the abbacy of Clonard after Finian. In his travels, he met Senán and his
brother Donnán, Ciarán of Saigir, and encountered Enna Mac-Húi-Laigsi, who would
be his successor as abbot at Inis Angin, where he had founded a monastery. Ultimately,
Ciarán founded the monastery at Clonmacnois.33
The prominent role played by monastic life, foundation, and federation in the
medieval Irish vitae attests to the equally prominent role filled by monasticism in Irish
society at the time, but also to the fact that the authors themselves were monks,
generally writing for monks and about monks.34 The sources may thus give an overly-
monastic view of early Christian society, but it is nonetheless important to realize that
monasteries were pervasive and influential elements of medieval Irish society. Lisa
Bitel says, “Nowhere in barbarian Europe did monks and their saints so thoroughly
dominate the social and spiritual life of the population as in Ireland.”35 While the
monastic theme may have been necessarily more relevant for the monks, it also played a
crucial role in the daily lives of ordinary people throughout Ireland. Most monastic
enclosures had lay settlements immediately outside, and these neighbors were among
the many people who ran and maintained monastic lands. They generally entered into
relationships of either “free” or “base” clientage with the monks and as such, were
required to perform various amounts of service for the monastery. In return, they
received the physical and spiritual protection of the foundation. Other Irishmen, often
the much wealthier ones, were the beneficiaries of spiritual security offered by the
monks in exchange for the donation of lands to the monastery. Monks were in a position
to provide these spiritual benefits because they were intermediaries between the people
33 “The Life of Ciarán,” 267-77. 34 Bitel, 9. 35 Bitel, 1.
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and the saints. The sacred spaces within a monastic enclosure which held the relics of a
saint, generally that of the association’s founder or patron, were accessible only to the
religious who lived inside the community, and thus laity had to go through monks and
nuns as mediators between the profane living and the sacred dead. As such, the monks
became the earthly keepers of the saints’ powers, and so were crucial in any layman’s
search for divine intervention, although it was always the saint who was “the mother or
father of the monastic family, the landlord of the monks’ clients, the ultimate political
ally, the true healer of pilgrims.”36
While lay people did not partake of the strict asceticism that was described in
the Irish saints’ Lives, the monastic system was a significant characteristic of the geo-
political landscape of medieval Ireland. (See Figure 1.) It was in reflection of this
importance in Irish society that monasticism was so pre-eminent a theme in the
hagiography. However, it was not merely a literary device used to emphasize the
importance of the monastic lifestyle in Ireland. Rather, the omnipresence of
monasticism in Irish spiritual life meant that the large majority of Irish saints were
monks or nuns. Because these saints were in fact monastic, the themes in their vitae
may simply have represented the focus of their lives, ascetic monasticism. Many Irish
monks devoted their lives to “green” or “white” martyrdoms, which were practiced, in
the absence of the conditions necessary for a traditional “red” martyrdom, by
“renunciation of the secular world, penance, and self-mortification, and death.”37 Thus,
36 Bitel, 40; 70, 80-1; 85. 37 Bitel, 11.
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Figure 1: Locations of medieval Irish monasteries38
the extreme asceticism of medieval hagiography is not necessarily unique, but rather
was motivated by desires similar to those of the early hermits and desert fathers in the
centuries immediately following the systematic persecution of Christians. Like their
equally-ascetic forebears, Irish monks were motivated by a desire to give up their lives
for Christ at a time when physically relinquishing one’s corporeal existence was not
necessitated by deadly anti-Christian sentiment. Instead, in the relatively tolerant
society of medieval Ireland, they chose to give up a secular life and worldly pleasure to 38 Bitel, xvi.
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dedicate their lives to Christ. That this practice arose and continued in Ireland at a time
when the most ascetic practices had fallen away in Continental monasteries can perhaps
be attributed to the fact that, despite widespread travels in Europe, Irish monks never
adopted the widespread Benedictine Rule, but rather remained loyal to their own, more
severe Rules.39
The monastic character of medieval Ireland, and the corresponding emphasis on
monastic foundation and confederation in the Irish hagiographical canon may be rather
uniquely Irish, but they do not necessarily speak to native Irish, pre-Christian values as
opposed to Continental Christian standards. Instead, they reflect the unique society in
which they developed, a society which had assumed many of the imported principles of
Christianity while at the same time maintaining, at least to a degree, some of its
traditional ideals. The motifs, episodes, and practices which one discovers in Irish
saints’ Lives may evidence Insular tradition, Continental import, or a combination
therein. Which of these categories one deems to exist the most pervasively does not
necessarily depend on the source upon whom the hagiographer consciously or
unconsciously modeled his text, but rather on the values of the writer and his audience,
and the society which gave rise to them both. These values, of course, would have
influenced the choice of texts that were considered appropriate models, but the defining
test of whether an event or symbol was worth including was less the preexisting
paradigm than the contemporary judgment of merit based on societal values.
39 Bitel, 7.
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