Saint Colmán the Pilgrim, November 7

On November 7 we commemorate a Saint Colmán who is called 'the Pilgrim' on the later Irish calendars. The 12th-century Martyrology of Gorman records at this day:

Colman lergrinn loigt[h]ech, Colmán, delightful, indulgent

to which the note is added:

ailithir Innsi mo Cholmóc, a pilgrim, of Inis mo Cholmóic.

The later Martyrology of Donegal has this entry:

7. C. SEPTIMO IDUS NOVEMBRIS. 7.

COLMAN, Pilgrim, of Inis-Mocholmóg.

Interestingly, there is an inscribed stone at Kilcolman, Maumanorig, County Kerry whose Ogham inscription mentions 'Colman the pilgrim'. Archaeologist Peter Harbison links this site with the pilgrimage route to Mount Brandon, in honour of Saint Brendan the Navigator, saying:

It was from the earthen-banked round enclosure of Kilcolman in the townland of Maumanorig, overlooking Ventry harbour, that the Saint's Road to Mount Brandon appears to have had its visually detectable starting point. Within it is a bullaun, and beside that a large, low boulder with two crosses carved on it (Fig. 23). One of these crosses, unusually deeply sunk into the surface of the stone, is a large cross of arcs - a series of compass-drawn arcs arranged so as to form a cross. It is surrounded by a circle and stands on a stem with a three-pointed foot. The other, smaller, equal-armed cross is more shallowly carved, has bifurcating terminals and is placed close to the end of an Ogham inscription, which forms two sides of a frame around the large cross. This inscription Macalister read as 'ANM COLMAN AILITHIR' and translated as 'Name of Colman the pilgrim'. But given the pilgrimage context, it might be better to think of it in terms of asking for a prayer for the soul of Colman the pilgrim. The use of the formula ANM is generally regarded as being late in the series of irish Ogham inscriptions and another instance on a stone at Ratass near Tralee was dated to the 8th or early 9th century by Donncha Ó Corráin, on the basis of the genealogy of the person named in the inscription. The Kilcolman stone, may, therefore, not be too far removed in date from the Ratass stone.

Peter Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland: the Monuments and the People (London, 1991), 191.

Even more interesting is the fact that this is not the only reference to a pilgrim Colman preserved in stone, for there is a stone at Clonmacnoise which bears the name Colman written in ordinary script but with the word bocht, poor, inscribed in Ogham underneath it. There is nothing to suggest that this poor Colman is the same individual as the pilgrim of Maumanorig and nothing to suggest that either is the Colman the pilgrim commemorated in the calendar of the saints today, but it is interesting none the less.

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Saint James the Apostle, Spain and Ireland: A 17th-century View

July 25 is the feast of Saint James the Apostle and I came across some interesting claims that he may have visited Ireland in the work of a seventeenth-century Irish priest, John Lynch (c.1599-1677). Father Lynch was one of a number of post-Reformation Irish writers who sought to uphold the reputation of the native medieval Church. The target of his most famous work, Cambrensis eversus (Cambrensis Overturned), published at St. Malo in 1662, was not any of the classical reformers, but rather the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman chronicler, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales. Gerald's accounts of Ireland betrayed a colonialist-type approach to the natives whom he saw as unsophisticated barbarians who were not even properly Christian at all. He recorded all manner of weird and wonderful tales in association with Irish saints and holy places, including, I might add, the story of the perpetual fire at Kildare and its all-female attendants. For Gerald, Ireland was less a 'land of saints and scholars' and more a land of the bizarre and barbarous. Father Lynch's work set out to put the record straight and in doing so he amassed a huge body of historical evidence. A central plank of his thesis was that Ireland had always been faithful to the centre of Western Christianity at Rome, something for which its people were now suffering. Some of the sources produced were rather curious, as Professor Salvador Ryan explains:

Most surprising of all, perhaps, Lynch underscored Ireland's ancient loyalty to the Roman Church by claiming that the Gospel had first been preached in Ireland by no less than one of the twelve Apostles. Cambrensis eversus cites Joseph Pellicer (1602-79), chronicler to King Philip IV of Spain, who in the course of expounding on the legend that St James the Apostle had preached the Gospel in Spain, had also claimed that there were 'many authorities and facts proving that James had also preached in Ireland'. Here Lynch also quotes the work of his fellow countryman, the historian Philip O'Sullivan Beare (c.1590-1660), whose Tenebriomastix ('A Scourge for the Trickster'), written in the early 1630s, details how St James, on his return from Spain, had preached in Ireland, accompanied by his father Aristobulus or Zebedee, who stayed on after him as Ireland's first bishop. Only then had James passed over to Britain. Lynch thus established an impeccable Roman and even apostolic pedigree for the Irish Church.

S. Ryan, 'Reconstructing Irish Catholic History after the Reformation' in K. van Liere, S. Ditchfield and H. Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012), 197.


Fortunately a translation of Cambrensis eversus is available online, so I thought it might be interesting to see exactly what the Spanish chronicler had to say about Saint James and Ireland. The claims are cited in connection with a discussion of the antiquity of Irish Christianity which in Lynch's view predates not only Saint Patrick but also the mission of Palladius:

However, that there was no absurdity in Prosper’s statement of the existence of Christians in Ireland before the arrival of Palladius is evident from the undoubted fact that many illustrious heralds of the faith had preached Christ in Ireland before the mission of Paladius; and that their labour was not without fruit is equally certain from the scattered ears, if not the abundant harvest which sprang up in the field of their religious labours. Thus, according to Joseph Pellicer historian to the king of Spain, there are many authorities and facts to prove that St. James the apostle preached the Gospel in Ireland. He quotes many passages to that effect from the Works of Julian archpriest, of St. Justa, which I transcribe here from the “Tenebriomastix" of Philip O'Sullivan against Camerarius.

"No. 136, I have read in the book of Dexter of Barcelona, that St. James, on his return from Spain, preached the faith in Ireland. He embarked at the port of Braganta, in Gallicia, and was accompanied by Aristobulus, or Zebedee, his father, who, it is said, remained there after him, and was the first bishop. The apostle then passed over to Britain, having provided Ireland with bishops, priests, and deacons. No. 167, St. James, returning from Spain, visited Britain and Gaul, and preached in Ireland. He landed in the harbour of Dublin and erected a church to St. Mary, and converted those districts to Christianity. His seven companions, his own disciples and, as it were, his fellow apostles, Torquatus and Ctesiphon, were established by him in Ireland. No. 208, It appears from a constant tradition and the old monuments of Spain, that St. James, the son of Zebedee, passed over to Ireland (which had been peopled from Spain) with seven disciples and others, and laid there the foundation of the Christian faith. No. 434, This apostle wrote the first Epistle and Scripture of the New Testament to the Spaniards. No. 482, Idelsetus, chosen among the 12 disciples of St. James, was consecrated in Ireland and sent with others by St. Peter into Spain. No. 483, Seven holy bishops, disciples of St. James, returning from Rome, landed in Gaul, and passing thence preached the faith in Ireland."

To these we may add a passage from Vincent of Beauvais. “When the apostles visited all parts of the globe, St. James, by the inspìration of heaven, landed on the shores of Ireland, where he strenuously announced the word of God, and is said to have chosen seven disciples — namely, Torquatus, Secundus, Indalecius, Tisephont, Eufrasius, Cecilius, and Ischius." Joseph Pellicer asserts that these facts are confirmed by Braulio in his additions to the Chronicle of Maximus. The words of Dexter appear to add some authority to these statements, where he writes under the year 41, “that St. James visited Gaul and the Britains" for Ussher proves, by a host of authorities, that Ireland was anciently included among the British isles.

Rev. M. Kelly, ed and trans, John Lynch ‘Gratianus Lucius, Hibernus’, Cambrensis Eversus, Vol. II (Dublin, 1850), 663-665.


Professor Ryan's work puts these 17th-century Spanish quotations firmly into their historical context and makes some further interesting observations on other attempts to link Ireland and Spain:

O'Sullivan Beare also makes every effort to identify Ireland's early history with that of Catholic Spain. He emphasizes the 'Milesian Myth' which details how the Irish race is descended from four sons of King Milesius of Spain, who came to Ireland in 1342 BC, and how since that date Ireland has been ruled by no less than 181 kings of Milesian lineage. In one notable episode from the distant past, a mythical king of Munster is restored to his kingship by 3,000 Spaniards after he flees to Spain and marries the king's daughter. Like Lynch, O'Sullivan Beare also makes reference to Ireland's supposed link with St. James the Apostle. Modern scholars have noted that throughout this period Ireland is spelt as Ibernia rather than Hibernia in an effort to create the optical illusion that the name is somehow cognate with Iberia.

S. Ryan, 'Reconstructing Irish Catholic History after the Reformation' in K. van Liere, S. Ditchfield and H. Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012), 198-199.


Today there is an Irish Society of the Friends of Saint James which was founded to promote the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. A paper by scholar Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel on The Irish Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela is available to read at the archives of the periodical History Ireland here. Blogger Edel Mulcahy also has a piece on The Camino Connection here.

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The Twelve Pilgrims of Inis Uachtair, December 23

Among the saints commemorated on December 23 is a group of twelve pilgrims from an island in Lough Sheelin, County Westmeath. The Martyrology of Gorman describes them as:

Pilgrims whom thou shouldst know, two hexads, with a vigorous career.

whilst the Martyrology of Donegal records them quite simply as:

THE TWELVE PILGRIMS, of Inis Uachtair.

The Irish name Inis Uachtair translates as 'Upper Island' and as Father Anthony Cogan's diocesan history of Meath explains, a monastery had existed on the Lough Sheelin site since the sixth century:

Inisvachtuir.

This is an island in Lough Sheelin (upper island), bordering on the half barony of Fore. St. Carthagh the elder, grandson of Aengus, King of Cashel, erected an abbey here in the sixth century. In the Martyrology of Donegal the festival of St. Carthach, bishop, is marked at the 5th of March, and it is stated there that "Inis-Uachtair, in Loch-Sileann, belongs to him." The festival of the "Seven Sons of Dreitell, of Inis-Uachtair", is set down in the Martyrology of Tallaght at December the 21st, and in the Martyrology of Donegal at December the 22nd. The festival of "The Twelve Pilgrims of Inis-Uachtair" is commemorated in the Martyrology of Donegal at December the 23rd.

Rev. A. Cogan, The Diocese of Meath Ancient and Modern, Vol. III, (Dublin and London, 1870), 572-573.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out any more about our saintly pilgrims. It would have been interesting to know of the purpose of their pilgrimage and especially of their destination. Although we hear of Irish saints going on pilgrimage to places like Rome or Tours, many Irish pilgrimages were undertaken to less exotic destinations here at home. Peter Harbinson's book 'Pilgrimage in Ireland - The Monuments and the People' is packed with fascinating details about this subject, one which I hope to post about in the future.

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Irish 'Beehive' Huts

A blog reader contacted me at my previous site to ask about the ‘beehive' huts associated with Irish monastic sites.  In Irish the name clochán, (pl. clocháin) is given to these structures, derived from the word cloch, a stone, it reflects the fact that they are constructed exclusively from stone without the use of mortar. The building technique behind the clochán is an ancient one, which employs the principle of corbelling. Circles of flat stones of ever-decreasing size are successively laid down until a single stone can be used to seal the rooftop. It is a simple but effective method of construction and has been used for centuries, not only in Ireland but in other European countries too. In countries like Italy such huts were built as temporary shelter for nomadic shepherds as they moved around with their flocks. In Ireland they are a particular feature of County Kerry and archaeologist Peter Harbinson [1] relates a story of the scholar Myles Dillon who was an annual visitor to Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula. On one return visit he remarked to his host that he did not remember seeing a particular clochán in the backyard, only to be told that the farmer had built it as a henhouse the previous winter. So this simple structure has a long history in Ireland, one which continues to the present day.

The most famous of the Kerry clocháin associated with monastic sites have to be those of the island monastery of Skellig Michael, off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula. An Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats [2] gives this useful summary of the site:

Skellig Michael, only 44 acres (17 hectares) in area, is dominated by two crags, one of 712 feet (218 metres) and another of 597 feet (183 metres). On top of the latter, reached via steep, winding stairways cut from the rock, there is an artificial platform with a cluster of six circular drystone huts (clochans), two boat- shaped oratories, some stone crosses, and a cemetery – all that remains of a monastery established, possibly by St. Fionán, sometime in the sixth century A.D. and called “the most westerly of Christ’s fortresses in the Western world.” …

The platform was reached by any of three zigzagging stairways – one with 670 steps – from different points at the base of the island. The monks built them by carving the rock and by carrying and placing thousands of flat stones. The terracing at the top was achieved, probably over decades, by constructing, massive drystone retaining walls and filling behind them. On these level places the reclusive churchmen built their huts, using a flat-stone, corbelled technique already thousands of years old. The successive courses of the circular buildings, laid without mortar and with outward-sloping joints to drain the rainwater, gradually diminished in diameter, closing the building to form a pointed dome – a “beehive” dome. The 6-foot thick (almost 2 metre) walls and roof were thus integrated into a single entity, providing living quarters and storage.

Archaeologist Nancy Edwards [3] notes that the six Skellig Michael beehive huts, labelled A, B, C, D, E and F were built in two phases. B, C, D and F were built first and although they are circular on the outside, the inner living space is quadrangular. A and E are larger quadrangular cells which were built later. They are also different in that they have stone projections which may have functioned as support for layers of turf insulation.

The early Irish monastery did not resemble the later medieval monastery with its regular layout, organized around communal buildings, as a classic archaeological text [4] points out:

At a medieval monastery the visitor quickly becomes familiar with the orderly, almost stereotyped, arrangement of buildings round the cloister – the chapter-house, dormitory, refectory and so on. In early Irish monasteries we are in a different world … A second area of contrast is in the different provision of private and communal accommodation. Benedictine monasticism emphasized the discipline of communal life, in the shared dormitory, dining-room, warming-house and working-room. Early Irish monasteries had certain communal rooms but there was much more emphasis on individual practice and observance, and so we can look for a contrast between individually and communally used buildings.

Most important among the former were the living-cells, occupied by clerics singly or in twos and threes.. It is only in the stony west that cells survive at all commonly, and they are best seen on Skellig Michael, and on other island and coastal sites like Illauntannig, Inishkea, Inishmurray and Killabuonia. . When they survive intact they are dark but still dry and surprisingly spacious: at Skellig Michael cell A is about 16 feet across and 16 feet high, and cell C is 9 and half feet across and 12 feet high. Wall cupboards are provided…

A recent scholarly examination of the Life of Saint Darerca [Moninna] of Killeavy [5] seeks to provide a context for the idiosyncratic layout of early Irish monasteries:

The physical layout of Irish monasteries was also unorthodox and may give us a clue as to the way in which the Irish resolved the ideological contradiction between the devotion to both eremitism and coenobitism. Each foundation would have had a tiny wooden church, a scattering of beehive huts made of stone or wattle just big enough for one or two nuns, and a somewhat larger building for communal gatherings. This complex would then have been enclosed by a series of walls. The juxtaposition of individual cells and communal meeting-place within the womb of the monastic walls indicates that the Irish envisioned their monastic ideal as embracing the dichotomy of the solitary life of a hermit in her cell and the communal life of the monastery, a hybrid of the eremitic and coenobitic symbolized in the architecture…

It is worth remembering though that the beehive hut may have had uses other than as a monastic cell. Peter Harbinson [6] makes this interesting suggestion in a discussion of pilgrimage sites associated with Saint Brendan:

By far the greatest concentration of these clocháin in Ireland is on the Dingle Peninsula, and almost all are found west of Mount Brandon.. the fact that these huts are found in such great numbers to the west of Brandon, yet are very much rarer in other parts of Kerry and elsewhere throughout the country, strongly suggests that these clocháin were the temporary habitations of pilgrims waiting for sufficiently clement weather to climb Mount Brandon. In a similar vein, one can explain those in the Glenfahan area, between Ventry and Slea Head, as temporary shelters for those awaiting the right wind to waft them to the Skelligs. If this explanation is correct, then the clocháin could truly be described as Ireland’s first and oldest surviving bed and breakfast establishments.

So, that’s a selection of views of the Irish beehive hut, an iconic image of Irish monasticism but one which is neither unique to Ireland nor exclusively monastic.

Note

For further reading on Skellig Michael there is an official site which contains a good variety of photographs, reports and articles here. There is also an e-book from the University of California entitled The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael available to read here.

References

[1] P. Harbinson, Pilgrimage in Ireland – The Monuments and the People (London, 1991), 181.

[2] D. Langmead and C. Garnaut, Encyclopedia of Architectural and Engineering Feats (ABC- Clio 2001), 309-310.

[3] N. Edwards, The Archaeology of Early Medieval Ireland (London, 1990), 118.

[4] K. Hughes and A. Hamlin, The Modern Traveller to the Early Irish Church (London, 1977), 73-75.

[5] D. Peters Ausland, ‘Living With a Saint: Monastic Identity, Community and the Ideal of Asceticism in the Life of an Irish Saint’ in K.A. Smith and S. Wells (eds.), Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: gender, power, patronage and the authority of religion in Latin Christendom (Brill, 2009), 22.

[6] Harbinson, op.cit., 182.

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