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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