#irish monastic

[wellthatsclever]

Saint Brendan and the Paradise of Birds

Artist's Instagram

Artist's Facebook

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 29 January:

1768 – Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The Good-Natured Boy’ is first performed at London’s Covent Garden. 1794 – Archibald Hamilton Rowan, United Irishman, is tried on charges of distributing seditious paper. 1817 – Birth of geographer and explorer, John Palliser, in Dublin. Following his service in the Waterford Militia and hunting excursions to the North American prairies, he led the British North…

[brendanelliswilliams]

Sailing toward the Wild Dark: A Short Reflection on My Patronal Feast and Nameday

There wasn’t a lot of institutional bureaucracy yet in the Irish Church in St. Brendan’s time—certainly very little that would affect a monastic founder in the west of the westernmost portion of Europe. The Saint was still very close—temporally, and probably in other ways as well—to the pre-Christian legacy and indigenous sacred traditions of Éire. In a sense, his famous voyage was from the still wild to the deeper wild. 

The context of my own life and ministry as a monastic founder in twenty-first century North America is of course radically different. In fact, I suspect there is very little that St. Brendan would recognize about the Church today—or the world of human affairs generally. When his Feast comes up each year in the sacral calendar, I take it as an opportunity to reflect deeply on the ever evolving shape of my own vocation. And this year I find myself reflecting specifically on questions about the monastic relationship to institution: a fraught and tenuous thing from the advent of Christian monasticism as a movement, during the reign of Constantine.

From the deserts of Egypt to the untamed wilds of ancient Ireland, Christian monasticism was originally an endeavor that by necessity extended itself outside the accepted boundaries of ordinary Church convention and bureaucracy. At its heart, authentic monasticism still moves in this way, and must always do so, even if outwardly its radical witness has been hobbled, diminished, or diluted. In all the religious traditions that contain monastic expressions, it has always had this basic shape, being in essence the courageous journey of bold individuals who are willing to sacrifice everything in order to discover directly for themselves what is ultimate, what is true—and who are willing to walk beyond the safety of the communal firelight to make that discovery.

As with everything wild and prophetic, the Western dominator agenda sought from the start to tame and institutionalize the monasticism that rose up organically from the core archetypal impulse of asceticism, and from the social role and spirit of the rebel truth seeker, a pregnant void of which is left when agendas of control are allowed to reign. To a large extent the dominator force succeeded in its evil works, particularly with contexts like the Benedictine order, which became so institutionalized as to be almost unrecognizable in reference to its own monastic roots. Resultantly, there had to be reform after reform to try to recapture some of the original essence of the ascetical life and witness. Always in the West there has been this tension and pull from the institutional center of gravity, which is ever attempting to tame, to make ‘safe’ and manageable, controllable, and quantifiable the real Mystery which moves in the dark beyond its line of sight.

Of course, this agenda of control is a fool’s errand, ultimately. Yet, sadly, the will and attempt to continually whitewash the Mystery has had a vastly deleterious effect on Western cultures and societies, and, perhaps most markedly, on Western Christianity.

I am convinced that the monastic impulse to go courageously and directly into that which is fearful and unknown carries a special prophetic signature in today’s Church, at this historical moment in the twilight hours of the Church’s structural stability. In short, we monastics have the medicine, even if no one is willing to take it. For my part, I continue to be committed to faithfully calling out invitations for those on the sinking ship to leap toward the life-raft.

True to archetypal monastic form, my own place in the Church is and always has been marginal—and that’s as it must be. I’m somewhat of a relic, it seems: an instantiation of the old untamable ascetic who won’t play institutional games and won’t stop speaking from the shadowy wilderness just beyond its boundaries into the institutional morass, pointing out the failings of the assumed construct, and suggesting radical ways to transcend those failings—much to the chagrin of all those who are committed to institutional hegemony and the comfortable, easy path. By this point I know perfectly well my actual role and vocation, and am totally comfortable and at peace with it. I have even come to find genuine amusement in the troubled, suspicious responses of Church folk who resist or can’t grasp what I’m here to do. 

But what brings me deeply into careful discernment these days, as someone who has spiritual children to guide and feels an immense responsibility to each and every one of them, is the direction in which to point my students with relation to institutional structures. Perhaps it’s less about broad direction, and more about degree.

As a Spiritual Father to monastics (and non-monastics as well), my core aim is always to shepherd and equip those who are ready for the real quest of existential excavation and illumination—and to help guide and point the way in such a manner that all non-essential material, detours, and distractions are completely forgone.

I recently shared with members of our religious order that, when it comes to decisions related to institutional collaboration or development, which would involve us in having to wade further into the swamp of Church bureaucracy, stagnation, and ignorance of the importance of who we are and what we do as vowed religious, I am constantly asking myself: ‘Is this really going to help us as a community? Is it going to further our spiritual aims and our core mission, or is it only going to waste time, cause aggravation, and distract us from what is really essential by sailing us straight into the mire of institutionalized absurdity?’ 

Sometimes the answers to these questions do not come easily. And the questions haunt, because I know full well that our time in this life is too short and unpredictable to fritter away on anything other than what is absolutely essential.

St. Brendan set sail in a wood and leather coracle with fourteen of his monastic disciples—not toward any institutional iteration, but toward the totalizing darkness of the utterly unknown: into the oceanic desert of the Mystery, the shattering, transformative wild, in order to more fully actualize the goal of all ascetical life, which was articulated so beautifully and concisely by St. Macarius the Great: to die to ourselves and to the world, that we may live as one with God.

May our holy Father among the Saints, Brendan of Clonfert, the namesake in whose radiant witness I always feel unworthy, bless me and all monastic shepherds with the wisdom to navigate unflinchingly by the singular star of Truth, to sail clearly and directly toward the only destination that is ultimately worth pursuing: non-dual awakening in and as the Uncreated Light.

Fr. Brendan+

Feast of St. Brendan of Clonfert, 2023

[culmaer]

it's technically not the numeral 7, it's this glyph :

⁊

it's called the "tironian et" (tironian referring to a kind of mediæval shorthand, and et being Latin for "and"). notice how, unlike 7, the ⁊ is at x-height with a descender

and fun fact ! it's actually still used in Irish language/Gaelic script typography. notice in the bilingual road-sign below, that ⁊ is used in the Irish, while & is used in the English translation

fun fact about old english! 

the reason the ‘&’ symbol & the number 7 are attached to the same key MIGHT JUST be because back in the 1300s, scribes would often use ‘7′ as a shorthand way of writing ‘and’. see here:

[wrishwrosh]

it’s time for DAMP BOOKS DECEMBER

here’s a rec list of cold wet seasonal reads: atmospheric books about offputting people, featuring mud, bog, spit, blood, wine, fog, ash, etc.

let’s get clammy with it. additional damp recs appreciated.

o caledonia by elspeth barker

a weird little girl in midcentury scotland. bonus wets: mushroom spores, slush, jam

the western wind by samantha harvey

a medieval murder mystery. bonus wets: goose grease, floodwater, the blood of christ

eileen by ottessa mosfegh

a juvenile prison administrator’s quarter life crisis. bonus wets: vomit, stale wine, dirty snow

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue

a couple days in a spanish flu clinic/maternity ward in dublin. bonus wets: amniotic fluid, mucus, soggy newspaper

a mercy by toni morrison

a household dissolving in seventeenth century new york. bonus wets: pox, mist, molasses

wolf hall by hilary mantel

a bureaucrat in the court of henry viii. bonus wets: ink, fever sweat, the thames

ghost wall by sarah moss

a camping trip with stone age reenactors. bonus wets: damson juice, bog bodies, bramble

the man who shot out my eye is dead by chanelle benz

a short story collection. bonus wets: brain matter, milk, the blood of christ again

never let me go by kazuo ishiguro

a dystopian art school for mysterious children. bonus wets: rain, marshland, tears

the name of the rose by umberto eco

a monastic murder mystery and also a primer on every theological debate that ever happened in 14th century europe. bonus wets: pig’s blood, bathwater, ink

wuthering heights by emily brontë

a case study in isolation, incest, and insanity, and the novel that inspired the whole list. bonus wets: dog saliva, mist, assorted consanguineous fluids

close range by annie proulx

a collection of wyoming stories. bonus wets: spit, semen, cold coffee

the giant, o’brien by hilary mantel

a giant irish storyteller visits london and loses his body to science. bonus wets: gin, pus, graveyard mud

study for obedience by sarah bernstein

a stifled woman in her family’s homeland. bonus wets: potato mold, creekwater, milk

giovanni’s room by james baldwin

an american in paris makes a mess. bonus wets: cognac, condensation, the seine

moby dick by herman melville

a man, another man, a third man, and a whale. bonus wets: sperm, fish chowder, sperm (other one)

the lottery and other stories by shirley jackson

a collection of unsettling stories about polite people. bonus wets: hose water, flop sweat, furniture polish

[scotianostra]

St. Columba was born in Donegal, Ireland on this day in 521AD.

Of all the Dark Age Scottish saints, Columba is the most spectacular star. In 563 AD he left Ireland and settled with the Gaels of Dál Riata, where he was granted the Island of Iona to found his monastery.

For the Gaelic warrior kings, Columba was a useful asset. His monastery provided education for their sons, he was a close advisor to the king, and he served as a diplomat to the king’s neighbours in Pictland and Ireland. Columba’s blessing was treasured by kings - a powerful symbol of their authority, and, in return for Columba’s support, the Gaels gave the monastery land and protection.

Columba died in 597, but his monastery’s influence continued to grow, leading to the foundation of new monasteries in Ireland and as far away as Lindisfarne in Northumbria. In Pictland, Columban monks began to spread the word of Christianity in the seventh century.

Iona faced competition from other Irish monastic missions, however, and their religious power was not absolute. St Mael Rhuba at Applecross or St Donnan, who was martyred on the Isle of Eigg, were also contenders as early spiritual leaders of the Church.

Columba himself would have remained an enigmatic and little-known figure were it not for Adomnán, the ninth Abbot of Iona, and his book, the Vita Colum Cille (Life of Columba), which ensured that the saint's reputation eclipsed that of the other Scottish saints and spread Iona’s fame across Christendom.

Pilgrimage to Iona increased: kings wished to be buried near to Columba, and a network of Celtic high crosses and processional routes developed around his shrine. At its zenith Iona produced The Book of Kells, a masterpiece of Dark Age European art. Shortly after however, in 794 AD, the Vikings descended on Iona, and, within 50 years, they had extinguished the light which had been Iona. Columba’s relics were finally removed in 849 AD and divided between Alba and Ireland.

The Monymusk Reliquary, seen in the second pic, from around 750 AD, probably contained a relic of St Columba. It became a powerful symbol of nationhood, and was carried before the Scots army as it marched into war.

This reliquary is thought to be the Brechbennoch which was carried by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. If you are ever in the National Museum of Scotland, go see it.

The first pic shows Columba in a stained glass window at St Margarets Chapel at Edinburgh Castle.

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

This morning we received a request from Ireland for information about our copy of The Voyage of Saint Brendan printed by the Dolmen Press in Ireland for the Humanities Press Inc. in the U. S. in a limited edition of 150 copies in 1976. The book contains a translation by the Irish classical scholar John J. O'Meara of the earliest Latin version of Brendan's legendary voyage, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis from the 9th century CE. The images used here are reproductions of woodcuts from Sankt Brandans Seefahrt, the first printed version of the legend produced in 1476 by Anton Sorg in Augsburg.

Brendan's journeys are among the most enduring of European legends, about the Atlantic wanderings of the 6th-century Irish monastic saint Brendan of Clonfert and his 16 companions in search of the Promised Land of the Saints. I am an admirer of the Dolmen letterpress-printed editions, and this printing bears all the hallmarks of my interest: handset in Pilgrim type with Victor Hammer's initials printed on Van Gelder mouldmade "Unicorn" paper and designed by Dolmen co-founder Liam Miller. Our copy, signed by the translator, is number 127, but the first 50 numbered copies are specially bound with hand-colored woodcuts. As lovely as the our copy is, I admit to coveting a copy from the first 50.

View other Staff Picks.

-- MAX, Head of Special Collections

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne

590 - 651

Feast day: August 31

Patronage: Northumbria, firefighters 

Aidan of Lindisfarne was an Irish monk and missionary credited with restoring Christianity to Northumbria. He founded a monastic cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, served as its first bishop, and traveled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and to the socially disenfranchised (including children and slaves).

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[eagna-eilis]

Ach-To and Irish Archaeology

The sequels were my entry into Star Wars and I never would have gone to see The Force Awakens if I wasn't an archaeology nerd.

During the production of Episode VII, a decent number of people with an interest in our archaeological heritage here in Ireland were quite worried about the impact of filming on one of our only two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the island known as Skellig Michael down off the coast of Kerry.

I went to the film to see if any potential damage was worth it, or if they'd do something unspeakably stupid with it in-universe. I wanted to see if it was respected.

And holy hell I was NOT disappointed. I think I walked out of TFA sniffling to myself about how beautiful the Skellig looked and how it seemed like its use as a location was not just respectful but heavily inspired by its real history.

See, Skellig Michael was a monastic hermitage established at a point when Christianity was so new that the man who ordered its founding sometime in the first century CE was himself ordained by the Apostle Paul. The fellah from the Bible who harassed all and sundry with his letters, THAT Apostle Paul. This is how old a Christian site the Skellig is. It predates St. Patrick by at the very least two hundred years.

The steps we watch Rey climb were originally cut NEARLY TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. They have been reworked and repaired many many times since, of course. Still, the path the camera follows Daisy Ridley up is as much an ancient path built by the founders of a faith in real life as it is in the movies.

A hermitage was a place where monks went to live lives of solitude and asceticism so as better to achieve wisdom. The practice is common to many of the major world religions, including the myriad East Asian faiths which inspired the fictional Jedi.

It is said that the hermitage and monastery were originally built with the purpose of housing mystical texts belonging to the Essanes, one of the sects of Second Temple Judaism which influenced some of the doctrines of Christianity. They also, according to what I have read, characterised good and evil as 'light' and 'darkness' and were celibate.

As such, the use of the island in TFA and TLJ does not merely respect Skellig Michael's history, it honours it. It is framed as somewhere ancient and sacred, which it is. It is framed as a place where a mystic goes to live on his own surrounded by nature that is at once punishing and sublime, which of course it was. It shown to be a place established to protect texts written at the establishment of a faith, which it may well have been.

This level of genuine respect for my cultural heritage by Rian Johnson in particular is astonishing. I don't think anyone from outside the US ever really trusts Americans not to treat our built history like it's Disneyland. Much of the incorporation of the Skellig's real past into a fictional galactic history occurs in TLJ, which is why I'm giving Rian so much credit.

It's Luke's death scene which makes the honouring of Irish archaeological history most apparent though.

Johnson takes the archaeological iconography back a further three thousand years for his final tribute to my culture's beautiful historical temples. This time, he incorporates neolithic passage tomb imagery, specifically that of Newgrange, which is up the country from the Skellig.

I think if you understand what the image represents then it makes a deeply emotional scene even more resonant.

The scene I'm referring to is Luke's death.

As he looks to the horizon, to the suns, we view him from the interior of the First Jedi Temple. The sunset aligns with the passageway into the ancient sanctuary, illuminating it as he becomes one with the Force.

As for Newgrange, every year during the Winter Solstice it aligns with the sunrise. The coldest, darkest, wettest, most miserable time of the year on a North Atlantic island where it is often cold, wet, and miserable even in the summer. And the sun comes up even then, and on a cloudless morning a beam of sunlight travels down the corridor and illuminates the chamber inside the mound.

You guys can see this, right? The similarity of the images? The line of light on the floor?

Luke's death scene is beautiful but I think it's a thousand times more moving with this visual context. Luke's sequel arc isn't merely populated by a lore and iconography that honour the place where the end of his story was filmed, I think that incorporation of that history and mythology honours Luke.

We don't know for sure what the Neolithic people believed, religion-wise. We know next to nothing about their rituals. We know that there were ashes laid to rest at Newgrange. There is some speculation that the idea was that the sun coming into the place that kept those ashes brought the spirits of those deceased people over to the other side.

It's also almost impossible not to interpret the sunlight coming into Newgrange as an extraordinary expression of hope. If you know this climate, at this latitude, you know how horrible the winter is. We don't even have the benefit of crispy-snowwy sunlit days. It's grey and it's dark and it's often wet. And every single year the earth tilts back and the days get long again.

The cycle ends and begins again. Death and rebirth. And hope, like the sun, which though unseen will always return. And so we make it through the winter, and through the night.

As it transpired the worries about the impact of the Star Wars Sequels upon Skellig Michael were unfounded. There was no damage caused that visitors wouldn't have also caused. There also wasn't a large uptick in people wanting to visit because of its status as a SW location, in part I think because the sequels just aren't that beloved.

But they're beloved to me, in no small part because of the way they treated a built heritage very dear to my heart. I think they deserve respect for that at the least.

[paganimagevault]

The Magyar invasion of Saint Gall from the Codex Sangallensis 602, manuscript dated 15th C. CE

"According to tradition, Saint Gall, a learned, probably Irish monk and faithful disciple to Saint Columbanus, founded a hermitage on the site that would come to encompass the abbey St. Gall around 610.

The abbey of St. Gall flourished during the Carolingian Era (750-887), emerging as a regional center of learning and trade. Housing one of the first monastery schools north of the Alps, the abbey had grown into a massive monastic center, replete with large guest houses, a working hospital, farms and stables, and a renowned library. The abbey quickly became a magnet for Anglo-Saxon and Irish scholars and monks who copied and illuminated manuscripts. Wealthy nobles, in turn, enriched the abbey through patronization and donations of land. By the turn of the ninth century, the abbey was among the most prestigious and wealthiest in Europe.

Three chroniclers substantiate, in different versions written between 970 and 1074, of a Magyar attack on St. Gall and its environs. The Alemannian Annals, written in the ninth and tenth centuries, mention the Magyars nine times, while the St. Gallen Annals of the tenth century do so fifteen times. The most interesting information about the Magyar sack comes from the chronicle of the monk Ekkerhart IV who lived more than a century after the invasion. According to him, as the Magyars swept through Swabia and entered the vicinity of Lake Constance, Abbot Engilbert took protective measures to ensure the survival of the monastery. He ordered the abbey’s old monks and young students to move to Wasserburg, which lies along Lake Constance and near Lindau, to await the siege. The younger, stronger monks were to seek refuge in the woods and hills near the village of Bernhardzell, to the northwest of St. Gall.

On May 1, 926, the Magyars stormed St. Gall. The attackers advanced to the church of St. Mangen and set it on fire. They also tried to set fire to Wiborada’s hermitage, as they could not locate its entrance. Meanwhile, other Magyar warriors ransacked the monastery, taking what booty they could find.

Despite observing their lust for loot, the chronicles praise the Magyars in their ability to assume battle formation in a matter of only a few seconds, in their use of a sophisticated network of couriers to communicate with troops from afar, and in their mastery of various weapons. Noted further were the Magyars’ love of wine, music, dance, and fresh, tasty, meats.

After a few days of rest, the Magyars moved on to target other Swabian cities, leaving the imbecilic Heribald behind. When the monks and friars returned to St. Gall to assess the damage, they questioned Heribald about what he had seen. He reportedly said, “They were wonderful! I have never seen such cheerful people in our monastery. They distributed plenty of food and drink.”"

-James Blake Wiener, When the Magyars invaded St. Gall. From the Swiss National Museum blog.

[lawicstudies]

Something interesting came up in my Irish class today when we were learning about family terms - the word for 'brother' in Irish has an interesting origin and had changed over time. I got curious and just had to look it up. Here's what I found (I love making these little etymology charts):

So I found this interesting explanation online about how this split happened because of Ireland's strong monastic tradition - apparently there were so many monks that people needed to distinguish between "brother" meaning a monk and an actual sibling.

But I have another theory too. In Old Irish, bráthair could mean not just "brother" but also "kinsman" or "cousin", kind of like how you might call fellow clan members "brother" (or like how nowadays we sometimes say "brother/bro" for close friends?). Maybe people started needing a way to specify "actual brother" versus "brother-in-arms" or "distant cousin"?

The etymology is fascinating either way - the 'derb-' prefix comes from the same root as English 'true' (both from PIE *drewh₂- meaning "firm/steady") and in Modern Irish it actually evolved into prefix dearbh- — real, blood-.

So nowadays these two words have distinct meanings in Modern Irish: bráthair has an ecclesiastical meaning, while deartháir specifically means a blood brother.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (March 17)

On March 17, Catholics celebrate St. Patrick, the fifth-century bishop and patron of Ireland, whose life of holiness set the example for many of the Church's future saints.

St. Patrick is said to have been born around 389 AD in Britain.

Captured by Irish raiders when he was about 16, St. Patrick was taken as a slave to Ireland where he lived for six years as a shepherd before escaping and returning to his home.

At home, he studied the Christian faith at monastic settlements in Italy and in what is now modern-day France.

He was ordained a deacon around the year 418 AD by the Bishop of Auxerre, France. He was ordained a bishop in 432 AD.

It was around this time that he was assigned to minister to the small, Christian communities in Ireland, who lacked a central authority and were isolated from one another.

When St. Patrick returned to Ireland, he was able to use his knowledge of Irish culture that he gained during his years of captivity.

Using the traditions and symbols of the Celtic people, he explained Christianity in a way that made sense to the Irish and was thus very successful in converting the natives.

The shamrock, which St. Patrick used to explain the Holy Trinity, is a symbol that has become synonymous with Irish Catholic culture.

Although St. Patrick's Day is widely known and celebrated every March the world over, various folklore and legend that surround the saint can make it difficult to determine fact from fiction.

Legends falsely cite him as the man who drove away snakes during his ministry despite the climate and location of Ireland, which have never allowed snakes to inhabit the area.

St. Patrick is most revered not for what he drove away from Ireland, but for what he brought and the foundation he built for the generations of Christians who followed him.

Although not the first missionary to the country, he is widely regarded as the most successful.

The life of sacrifice, prayer and fasting has laid the foundation for the many saints that the small island was home to following his missionary work.

To this day, he continues to be revered as one of the most beloved Saints of Ireland.

In March of 2011, the Irish bishops' conference marked their patron's feast by remembering him as “pioneer in an inhospitable climate.”

As the Church in Ireland faces her own recent difficulties following clerical sex abuse scandals, comfort can be found in the plight of St. Patrick, the bishops said.

They quoted The Confession of St. Patrick, which reads:

“May it never befall me to be separated by my God from his people whom he has won in this most remote land.

I pray God that he gives me perseverance, and that he will deign that I should be a faithful witness for his sake right up to the time of my passing.”

[stairnaheireann]

High Crosses of Ireland

High Crosses or Celtic Crosses as they are also known, are found throughout Ireland on old monastic sites. Along with the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, these High Crosses are Irelands biggest contribution to Western European Art of the Middle Ages. Some were probably used as meeting points for religious ceremonies and others were used to mark boundaries. The earliest crosses in Ireland…

[silvestromedia]

Saints of the day August 01

Bl. Thomas Welbourne, 1605 A.D. English martyr. Born in Hutton Bushel, Yorkshire, he worked as a schoolmaster until his arrest for preaching the Catholic faith. He was arrested and condemned with Blesseds John Fuithering and William Brown. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at York. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Welbourne

The Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek, also known as the Eleven Nuns of Nowogródek or Sister Stella and Companions were a group of Roman Catholic nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth killed by the Gestapo in August 1943 in present-day Belarus.Aug 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Nowogr%C3%B3dek#:~:text=The%20Martyrs%20of%20Nowogr%C3%B3dek%2C%20also,Gestapo%20in%20August%201943%20in

St. Almedha, sixth century. Virgin and martyr also called Aled or Filuned. The Welsh tradition reports that Almedha was the daughter of King Brychan. Having taken a vow of virginity and dedicated to Christ, Almedha fled from her father's royal residence to escape marriage to the prince of a neighboring kingdom. She went to three Welsh villages - Llandrew, Llanfillo, and Llechfaen - but the people turned her away, despite her promise warning that dreadful thing calamities would befall anyone who denied her sanctuary. Almedha reached Brecon, where she took up residence in a small hut, but the king arrived and demanded her return. When she refused him, he beheaded her. Tradition states that a spring of water appeared on the site of her murder. The three villages that refused her were visited by disasters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Eluned#:~:text=Saint%20Eluned%20(Welsh%3A%20Eiliwedd%3B,Tennyson's%20Gareth%20and%20Lynette.%22.

St. Dominic Van Honh Dieu, Roman Catholic Dominican Priest and Martyr. A native of Vietnam. He was martyred at the age of sixty-seven. Feastday Aug. 1

St. Sofia, Eastern allegory explaining the cult of Divine Wisdom, Faith, Hope, and Charity were the daughters of Wisdom (known as Sofia in the Roman Martyrology on September 30th), a widow in Rome. The daughters suffered martyrdom during Hadrian's persecution of Christians: Faith, twelve, was scourged and went unharmed when boiling pitch was poured on her, was beheaded; Hope, ten, and Charity, nine, were also beheaded after emerging unscathed, from a furnace; and Wisdom died three days later while praying at their graves. Feast day - August 1st. https://www.st-sophia.com/about/saint

St. Ethelwold. Bishop of Winchester, England, called “the Father of Monks.” Born in that city, he was ordained by St. Alphege the Bald. In 943, he joined the Benedictines at Glastonbury under St. Dunstan. He became the abbot of Abingdon in 955 and bishop in 963. Ethelwold worked with Sts. Dunstan and Oswald of York in bringing about a monastic revival after the Danish invasions. He also expelled the canons of Winchester, replacing them with monks. Ethelwold founded or restored the abbeys of Ely, Chertsey, Milton Abbas, Newminster, Peterborough, and Thorney. He authored Regularis Concordia, a monastic decree based on the Benedictine Rule, and his school of illumination at Winchester was famed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelwold_of_Winchester

St. Peregrinus, 643 A.D. Irish or Scottish hermit. Peregrinus was originally a pilgrim who, on his way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the holy places, chose to become a hermit in the area around Modena, Italy. He remained there for the rest of his life. https://www.bartleby.com/210/8/015.html

St. Rioch, 480 A.D. Bishop Abbot of lnisboffin, Ireland. He was a nephew of St. Patrick and the brother of Sts. Mel and two others, Melchu and Muinis. They were the sons of Conis and St. Darerca. Rioch was a missionary bishop.

ST PETER FABER, JESUIT,A roommate of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier from their university days, this gentle guide of souls was a master at giving the Spiritual Exercises. He allowed himself to be spent for the Lord and his Church, helping the Jesuits to become established all over Europe. His feast day is August 1. St Peter Faber, Jesuit - Information on the Saint of the Day - Vatican News https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/08/01/st-peter-faber--jesuit.html

ST. ALPHONSUS MARIA DE’ LIGUORI, ST. ALPHONSUS MARIA DE’ LIGUORI, BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH, FOUNDER OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonsus_Liguori

STS. SEVEN BROTHERS MACCABEI

[azvolrien]

Ireland - Day 4

Today took me out of the city for the first time, as I’d booked a coach trip, so I got up a little earlier to give me plenty of time to reach the pickup point. The day dawned cloudy and cool again, and unlike yesterday it generally stayed that way.

I met up with the rest of the tour group outside the euphemistically-named Ned Kelly Sports Club (actually a casino, as far as I could tell) to wait for the coach, which arrived to pick us up right on time. On board we were greeted by the tour guide, who clearly runs her tour business herself rather than via an agent as she was who I booked with directly over email. She is, usefully for a tour guide, significantly better at talking than she is at typing, as she spent the entire drive from central Dublin to the Hill of Tara filling us in on all the relevant background of Irish history and prehistory, from the very first Stone Age settlers all the way forwards through the Bronze and Iron Age Celts, the golden age of monastic settlement after the fall of Rome, the arrival and settlement of the Vikings, the Anglo-Norman invasion, the Great Famine and the mass emigration that followed, the struggle for independence and the economic boom of more recent decades, and all the stuff in between. Most of this probably wasn’t strictly necessary for understanding the context of the day’s largely Neolithic sites, but it was still interesting. The Battle of the Boyne also came up in passing – as our guide put it, ‘a Scot and a Dutchman fighting in Ireland over the throne of England’ – but mainly because the drive took us past the battlefield site.

As mentioned, the first stop on the tour was the Hill of Tara, capital of the ancient kings of Ireland. The site covers a pretty huge area and we only had about an hour there so I didn’t have time to explore it in detail, but I was still able to look around the old burial cairn called the Mound of the Hostages and see the ancient henge-like earthworks around the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny (not our one, a different one) at the highest point of the site. It was a breezy day and I almost lost my hat before I tightened the chin-strap, but I got a great view out over the surrounding countryside including an old tower on a distant hilltop that our guide said was the remnant of St Columba’s pre-Iona monastery.

We got back in the coach and drove a little further to the Brú na Bóinne (‘Palace of the Boyne’) visitor centre, the access point for the famous passage graves of the area. The visitor centre houses a good exhibition about the Neolithic history of the sites as well as the later excavations, and also has a gift shop and cafe where we stopped for lunch before walking over the bridge across the Boyne and boarding the little shuttle bus to Knowth. This site isn’t quite as famous as Newgrange, but I thought it was even more impressive. It consists of one huge central burial mound, completely surrounded by richly-carved boulders and with two passages in from opposite sides of the hill, both ending in burial chambers without actually meeting in the middle. The Great Mound only makes up part of what must have been a high-status cemetery, as it sits among many similar but smaller burial mounds, some complete and others with their burial chambers open to the sky. The site reminded me a lot of Maeshowe and the other Neolithic cairns of Orkney, and when I brought this up to the guide (a different guide to the tour operator, in the employ of the visitor centre) she agreed that it was probably much the same culture, with a lot of similarities both in the structure of the cairns and the abstract, geometric style of the carvings.

We also got caught in a brief but heavy and almost horizontal shower of rain, but were able to dry off a little watching a short film about the excavations at Knowth before we moved on to Newgrange.

Unlike Knowth, the mound at Newgrange stands alone, surrounded by similar but mostly uncarved kerbstones and, a little further out, a ring of standing stones. Also unlike Knowth, which was reused as the base of a hillfort in the mediaeval period, Newgrange survived largely intact since the Stone Age, possibly due to its local rep as a fairy mound scaring people away from raiding it for building materials. The Fair Folk did not, however, scare off the archaeologists, and later excavations uncovered the entrance stone – a huge boulder carved as elaborately as any at Knowth with its famous triskele designs – and the entrance itself. The white stones that face the tomb today are a modern reconstruction – the stones were found at the site, but whether they made up a facade back in the Neolithic is anyone’s guess – but the long, low and narrow passage and the cruciform chamber at the heart of the mound are almost untouched from their original status, and that ‘almost’ is only there to cover a few extra braces and the addition of electric lights.

The ancient burial chamber is tall enough to stand up in, but pretty cramped area-wise, so we split into two smaller groups to file down the entrance passage. I know people were a bit shorter back in the Neolithic, but I think even they would have found it a tight squeeze; there were a couple of points where I had to stoop and twist sideways to get through before reaching the chamber. Once inside, three alcoves opposite the entrance and to either side hold more carvings and basin-line stones whose purpose we can only guess at. The chamber is cool, utterly silent save for the visitors’ breathing, and pitch-dark with the lights off except for once a year at sunrise on the winter solstice, when the passage admits one narrow shaft of light to illuminate the chamber floor. The actual solar alignment is only accessible via an annual lottery, but a lamp in the passage provides a reasonable simulation.

I’m not one to believe in the Otherworld, but after the chamber at Newgrange, I can see how people could feel close to the gods down there.

We headed back to the visitor centre, where I bought some postcards and my usual pin badge, t-shirt and fridge magnet in the gift shop (the dark powers of the Sidhe are no match for the lure of the gift shop) and got back on the coach to Dublin. I bought some stamps in the General Post Office on O’Connell Street – I actually hadn’t realised it was still a working post office, having assumed it had been converted into a museum to the Easter Rising – and returned to the hotel to write up my postcards before venturing back out for something to eat. Tonight’s choice was a little pizzeria I’d spotted called Wallace’s Taverna, which served a good margherita a lot like the recipe they use at Matto in Edinburgh with a hazelnut mousse in a crisp chocolate shell for afterwards.

[monasteryicons]

For Saint Patrick's Day, celebrate with this icons of the Saints of Ireland.