By Sister Theovouli
Key takeaways:
In this blog:
Saint Finnian, was, on his father’s side, a member of Clanna Rudhraighe, rulers of the ancient province of Ulaid on the north-east coast of Ireland. This province covered about half the territory of modern Ulster, to which it gives its name. His mother Tailech, according to the genealogies, was from much further south. St. Finnian was born and brought up near New Ross, in the south-east corner of Leinster.
When St. Finnian’s mother was pregnant, she had prophetic dream of her sons ministry. She dreamt that a flame entered her mouth and flew out in the form of a shining bird. The bird sat on the branch of a tree in Leth Mogha, and all the birds and bird-flocks of Leth Mogha came to join it. The shining bird then flew to Leth Cuinn, and ‘the birds and birdflocks of Ireland came to it and it kept them with it’.
St. Finnian was baptised by St. Abban, a contemporary of St. Patrick¹. St. Abban founded the men’s monastery at Kill-Abban in Leinster, and the women’s monastery St. Gobnait, at Ballyvourney, County Cork.
As St. Finnian was so obviously destined for the church, as soon as he was old enough, his parents gave him into the care of Bishop Fortchern of Trim. Based in the present County Meath, on the Boyne, he lived halfway between his father’s and mother’s homes! It was one of the foundations established by St. Patrick and is named after a ford covered with elder blossoms, known as Baile Átha Troim.
He then went to St. Martin of Tours’ monastery in Gaul, now led by one of his disciples. Marmoutier was at that time a wild cliff face, about two miles from Tours. The monks lived in cells which they dug out of the cliff face and lived an austere life; working in the garden, writing and copying books. It is probably here that he copied out the Roman classics and St. Jerome’s Vulgate.
St. Finnian was determined to learn all he could and take his knowledge back to Ireland. He therefore moved on to Wales, where he continued his studies at Llancarfen², with St. Cadoc. He did not return to Ireland until he had turned thirty³.
When he returned to Ireland, he went straight to Leinster, where he was welcomed by Muiredach, the son of the king of Leinster⁴. The kings of the Laginian septs⁵ in the south supported St. Finnian, and a number of the men joined him, helping him to establish his paruchia (the foundations subject to him).
Muiredach granted him land at Achadh Abhall (‘field of the apple trees,’ now Aghowle in county Wicklow). The monks lived in Clocháin (beehive huts) around a large wooden church⁶. Water from the ancient granite font here is known for clearing headaches. According to local tradition, St. Finnian placed a bell in Aghowle to summon the monks to prayer. However, when he attempted to relocate the bell to Clonard, it miraculously returned to Aghowle, as if refusing to leave its original home.
The remains of an ancient Celtic cross and a later church are still standing. Some of the monks established solitary cells on the hill overlooking Aghowle, Sliabh Condal. It is known as Finnian’s Cómdal – where he will meet with his monks on the day of judgement⁷. The compiler of the Irish lives tells us that it is the fasting of St. Finnian’s monks at Aghowle and Condal which will save the people of Ireland from plague and disease.
After fifteen years at Aghowle, St. Finnian was given land by a sept king at Mugna⁸, where he founded a second monastery. Old sources say he also founded Skellig Michael, a stone beehive community on a rocky island jutting out into the Atlantic, where the only food is fish and seaweed.
When his second monastery was established, he worked his way north. Travelling first to St. Brigid’s monastery in Kildare, where he remained for while, studying and preaching. St. Brigid’s monastery was in Fothairt territory⁹ (the Fothairt sept had received a special blessing from St. Patrick and many of them became monks and leading clerics throughout the 10th century). There, he was introduced to the king and took the ancient road¹⁰ through their territory to Meath, then carried on into eastern Ulster, where his father’s family lived.
In about AD 520, directed by his guardian angel, he arrived at the crossing of the Boyne, a few miles upriver from present day Dublin. Here the Branains (Brennans) of the Ui Echach, another Ulaid family, gave him a patch of land to build a cell and church. These were simple constructions made out of clay and wattle. St. Finnian dedicated himself to deepening his austere lifestyle, as he had learnt at Marmoutier and Llancarfan. Word spread that the noted scholar and holy man had settled in the Ulaid lands and before long, earnest students showed up, many from the Langinian septs in the south¹¹.
Soon, the original water supply was not enough, so St. Finnian started to build a well. However, his guardian angel appeared and told him he was digging in the wrong place and sent him to dig east of the church. St. Finnian complained that they¹² had been digging for a long time, with nothing to show for it. The angel replied that the ‘mould’ – the dug earth – would be blessed, so they used it as a graveyard. The place later became known as Ard-Relec – Irish for graveyard¹³. The holy graveyard remained in use until the 17th century. Today it is a green hill called Ard na reilige. A quarter of a mile to the east at Aghnascortain is St. Finnian’s well.
As students continued to flow in, the land at Ard-Relec was not big enough. To the original site, was added a large field – Chluain Ioraird, Erard’s Meadow. This would become more simply known as Clonard.
St. Finnian modelled his monastery on the practices of Welsh monasteries, informed by the traditions of the Desert Fathers and the study of Scripture. Clonard was known for its strictness and asceticism. The Penitential of St. Finnian is short and practical: it prescribes penances with a view to correcting sinful tendencies and cultivating the contrary virtue, drawing on the teaching of John Cassian¹⁴.
On the opposite side of the Boyne, within walking distance of Clonard, a house for women was established. In charge of this facility was St. Finnian’s sister Rignach, and from her derives its name Kilrainy.
To provide context, St. Finnian belongs to the third generation after St. Patrick, having been born nine years after St. Patrick’s death. Clonard was geographically able to command students from all parts of Ireland and from overseas, it was also built in a sufficiently fertile place to support considerable numbers.
St. Finnian, along with his contemporary Enda of Aran, were the first of the Irish saint to recognise the potential of monasticism to unite the discipline of religious life with the pursuit of learning. St. Finnian himself was an outstanding teacher of Scripture, and his lectures were very popular. His gift for teaching and his absolute dedication to the ascetic ideal inspired a whole generation.
However, it was not all plain sailing. A story is told of a fanatically pagan family from Connaught¹⁴, whose three boys became leaders of a notorious gang, targeting churches. They set out to destroy the homestead of their grandfather, a Christian priest¹⁵, but the eldest child had a vision of Christ, St. Michael and the judgement. In response, they made ‘stacks of their spearshafts’ and went to see St. Finnian ‘the foster father of Ireland’. St. Finnian took them in, instructed them for a year and then sent them off to rebuild the churches and congregations they had destroyed¹⁶.
St. Finnian soon established a scriptorium and workshops. The Irish monasteries would become inveterate collectors and producers of; psalters, biblical commentaries, hymns and service books, poems, rules, penitentials, martyrologies, patristic texts, annals, hagiography, and treatises on computation and grammar, and commentaries on classical authors. There was however, little knowledge of Greek – most studies were done in Latin, but a native school of poetry and prose flourished with the encouragement of the church.
It is told that as many as 3,000 students passed through Clonard¹⁷, from various parts of Europe. The 12 apostles of Ireland trained there were¹⁸:
Students who had been picked out for positions of responsibility left with a ‘graduation gift’. This consisted of relics, a gospel book, or pastoral staff – to assist them in their new ministry.
In AD 544 the Justinianic plague hit Ireland¹⁹. Around four years later, circa. AD 549²⁰, St. Finnian, now a very old man, contracted it. His guardian angel turned up again and told him that Clonard was not to be ‘the place of his resurrection’, he must put ‘a good man of his household’ and go to one of Clonard’s outlying chapels²¹.
The angel gathered Colomb, the son of Crimthan, along with his servant and 38 book satchels, into a cloud and transported them to the saint to care for him during his final illness. St. Finnian obtained a promise from the angel that all his monasteries should be saved from the pestilence, and that through their prayer and fasting, they would safeguard Ireland from common illnesses and epidemics. St. Finnian then sang the prophetic verse ‘Haec requies mea,’ (this is my resting place forever: Ps.131 v. 14), and composed himself for death.
He reposed on the 12th. December AD 549. His relics were enshrined at Clonard, and many miracles are attributed to them. He was included in various early martyrologies²², the shrine was later destroyed in the Viking raids of AD 887.
In the wake of the monastic school established at Clonard and Aran, by the late seventh century, Irish schools were famous abroad. Bede speaks of the generosity with which Anglo-Saxon students were received, granted free access to both education and accommodation.
The Laginian kings supported Clonard and Kildare, both influential centers of studies. In the first half of the 8th century the abbacies were united, fuelling the explosion of scholarly Irish monks with their British and European graduates. By the mid-ninth century, it was the leading church of the Irish midlands. The abbot of Clonard led the clergy of the midlands in the same fashion that the abbot of Armagh led those in the north.
For centuries after St. Finnian’s death, Clonard was renowned for its Scripture studies. It was pillaged by the Danes in the 9-11c²³. but it remained an important abbey until the end of the 12th century.
¹ To put this into context, St. Patrick’s life was AD 387-461, and St. Finnian was born in AD 470, reposed AD 549.
² The Llan of the stags
³ Codex Salmanticensis: I am taking this as staying abroad till he was 30, rather than spending 30 years in Wales.
⁴ Aengus ‘ri Laigen.’ The Kingdom of Leinster (Irish: Ríocht Laighean) was a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland which existed in the east of the island from the Irish Iron Age until the 17th century. The Annals of the Four Masters record that it was the territory of the Laighin, a Heremonian tribe of Irish Gaels.
⁵ Subdivision of a clan. The Ui Bairrche and the Ui Dúnlainge supplied many of the abbots of Laginian churches; the Fotharta were a tributary people, likely allies of the Uí Bairrche who were the mercenary tribes of the Laigin and possibly of Cruithin (Pict) origin
⁶ A Teampall Mór
⁷ An archaeological survey of Aghowle church, Co. Wicklow, Christiaan Corlett, for national Monuments Service.
⁸ Both were Leinster septs. According to the Latin Lives he went to to Mugna Ui Bairrche, but in the the Irish Life, to Mugna Sulcain in Uí Dúnlainge i.e. Lismore. Lismore, Ciunty Waterford, is not recorded as having been founded before the 7c.
⁹ The Uí Ercáin were a branch of the Uí Meic Cruaich (a sub-sept of the Fothairt) and “are remembered in the ‘Vita Tripartia’ as having been specially favoured by Patrick, who blessed them (Dobert Pátraic bendachtain … for Uu hErcá huili) and their king, Fergnae mac Cobthaig. Saint Patrick, who promised them that not only would they never be subjects of an “outside” king, but that “they [would] have their own brithemnas (capacity of judging and being judged) in their own territory. A branch of the Forthairt, the Uí Brigti, explicitly claimed a connection with Bridgit. A number of leading Irish monks and clerics came from the Fothairt even when they underwent a political eclipse in the 8-10c. From the Annals of 4 Masters after the leading Irish historian, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín.
¹⁰ The Esker Riada
¹¹ There is some evidence in the annals prior to the 9c. to support the case for a dominant Lagin interest. Southern names predominate among the abbots and their families, such as Dubhdúin Ua Faeláin (died 718) and Gertidhe, father of abbot Fianamail (died 736). By 748, when Dodimoc, the abbot of Clonard and Kildare died, the entries appear to be reliable records, and the abbots of Kildare were at this time recruited from the royal kin of Lagin. This implies a close link between Lagin and Finnian’s paruchia. Before 775 there is no hint of northern interest. After this date the evidence proves that Clonard is orientated towards the north.
¹² The text speaks of his familia, so presumably these journeys were not made alone.
¹³ It turns up later as Ardrely (14c) and Ardrelick (17c.)
¹⁴ Connaught is on the west coast of Ireland, jutting out into the Atlantic, about half way up, whereas Leinster and the Ulaid were south and north of it, bordering the Irish Sea, on the east coast.
¹⁵ Presumably a convert of Patrick or one of his missionaries
¹⁶ The description of the subsequent voyage of the Uí Chorra has the same blend of reality and mysticism we find in the voyage of St. Brendan. The Immram curaig húa Corra, literally, “the voyage of the coracle of the sons of O’Corra,” is one of the three surviving Immrama, or ancient Irish voyage tales. It is found in three manuscripts, all in the library of the RIA.
¹⁷ I am taking the view that this headcount goes over a number of years, rather than representing an encampment in a single year
¹⁸ This list is from the Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1907, entry by Gratton-Flood.
¹⁹ ‘The arrival of a plague in Ireland in 544 would seem to concur with the westward trajectory of the outbreak of Justinianic Plague at this time; it had arrived in central Gaul by 543. The exact mode of ingress is not clear, but one possible way was the one that ran through the western route from Narbonne to the Garonne and thence past Brittany to western Britain. Such a route extends to southern Ireland also and does not necessarily make landfall in Britain.’ The Plague and the end of Antiquity, the pandemic of 541-750; Ann Dooley, Cambridge 2012.
²⁰ This makes him 79, rather than the 140 attributed to him in some sources. It seems unlikely he would have 37 lived that long, if his life was cut short in a plague which hit Ireland in 544.
²¹ Inis Mac n’Eirc on Luimneach, later known as Ross Findchuill or the less in Memra. In the 17c. records of 38 Bishop Dopping’s Visitation of Meath, it is called Lyemember/ Lismember.Tentatively, Kathleen Hughes has placed this at Rossan, the most westerly township of the old parish of Clonard. There isa gravel mound and signs of a man-made bank and ditch, between Rossan bog and the Kinnegad river.
²² Of extant martyrologies including Finnian, the first is a Spanish Martyrology of the 9th century. He heads 39 the list of priests in the Stowe Missal litany and has a verse in the martyrology of Oengus.
²³ Ironically, two Irish raiders, O’Rorke of Breifney and Dermod McMurrough, completed its destruction. Ironically, two Irish raiders, O’Rorke of Breifney and Dermod McMurrough, completed its destruction.
Primary Sources: The British Synaxarion – a project of TMES, Annals of Ulster, 6-8c, Irish Life of St. Finnian of Clonard 9c.
Secondary Sources: The Irish Life of Saint Finnian of Clonard: Master of the Saints of Ireland with a Commentary for the general reader, Hickey, Elizabeth (1996), Meath Archaeological and Historical Society. ISBN 9780950033273; Penitential of Finnian, In Medieval Handbooks of Penance by John T. McNeiland Helen Gamer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.
Papers: Irish Historical Studies vol. 9, 33, 1954, Kathleen Hughes, Cambridge University Press