Four Irish Martyrologies: Drummond, Turin, Cashel, York (review)

Abstract

Four Irish Martyrologies:Drummond, Turin, Cashel, York. Edited by Padraig O Riain. [Henry Bradshaw Society, volume CXY] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 2002. Pp. xiv, 260. $60.00.) A friend of mine recently celebrated his saint's day in Barcelona. To commemorate the anniversary of the death of a somewhat obscure San Luis, his mother-in-law bought him new underwear. Was this Catalan Luis, I wondered, the patron saint of undergarments? A quick search of the world wide web yielded only Paul the Hermit as a patron saint of clothing (usually depicted wearing a skimpy costume of leaves or no costume at all) as well as some irreverent suggestions about saints and underwear. For more trustworthy information about saints, their associations, and their anniversaries, I turned to the martyrologies. Martyrologies, like calendars, are actually records of Christian holy days. By the second century, Christians were also keeping lists of the days upon which local martyrs had died in order to mark them with prayers and memorial feasts. Increasingly, though, congregations began to share their martyrs, as well as confessors and virgins, and to exchange their martyrologies. St. Jerome gets credit for a compilation probably produced in Auxerre in the fifth century. Working from the Hieronymian martyrology, writers throughout Europe began to add biographical details culled from saints' lives, histories, and other sources. Bede, along with Ado (850's) and Usuard (865), composed well-known historical martyrologies, which provided sources for the Roman martyrology printed in the sixteenth century. The Irish were particularly fond of historical martyrologies, perhaps because they produced so many saints. Padraig O Riain has produced a new edition of four Irish martyrologies from the twelfth century. The first extant Irish martyrology appeared in the ninth century, when Oengus mac Oengobann versified a calendar of Irish and foreign saints based on native vitae and earlier lists, including the Hieronymian. Although Oengus wrote about 830, the earliest manuscript of his martyrology dates to 1400 or so, and contains accumulated glosses and commentary on his original lyrics. Felire Oengusso and its additions were consistently inaccurate with foreign material, mixing up Germanuses and inventing saints from placenames. But the commentators included colorful tidbits about Irish saints. The comments on the April 7 entry for St. Finan camm (the squinting) of Cenn Etig include, for instance, an explanation of why he squinted, how his mother was impregnated by a red-gold salmon, and how he first brought wheat in his shoe to Ireland. Unlike the ninth-century texts, twelfth-century Irish martyrologies exist in contemporary manuscripts, without all the dense commentary of later interpreters. Their authors aimed to update the liturgical calendar as part of a much larger reform movement then occurring in Ireland. The Martyrology of Drummond, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, was probably produced at Armagh around 1170 according to O Riain. …