Responding to various thought-provoking posts
I checked the Martyrology to see what kind of tricks my memory was
playing, and Stokes does take issue with the notion of Oengus as a
Culdee and suggests that it may be a 17th-century invention. Kenney
also notes that it's an attribution made by modern writers. It could
be an artificial distinction, since he was at Tallaght for at least
part of the time, but did that necessarily make one a Culdee? Stokes
doesn't seem to think so, though if association with anywhere ought
to make one a Culdee, Tallaght under Máelrúain ought to do the trick.
I'm not debating his *importance*--the annals and his own
accomplishments or attributed accomplishments testify to that, but
they don't testify to his sanctity (nor, apparently, to his being a
Culdee, according to Stokes), and the rather stereotypical bit about
chanting psalms in an icy bath isn't very compelling either. Has
anyone read the poem about him? Also, since when and among whom has
his feast day been known to have been 11 March (apart from
Baring-Gould)?
Phyllis Jestice wrote
>
>I think it's pretty well-accepted that Oengus became a monk at Tallacht,
>which would make him a céle dé. Later tradition makes him an abbot and
>bishop. Perhaps more important, he was a significant enough figure to rate
>mention in three annals when he died. I don't know if there was ever much
>of a cult around him, but his feast day is known to have been 11 March.
>
At 11:52 AM -0500 3/16/00, Francine Nicholson wrote:
> If memory
>serves, a number of monastic figures in early Ireland were considered saints
>simply on the basis of their literary accomplishments. And, if one considers
>the context, then this makes sense. In the pre-Christian tradition, poetic
>skill was thought to be acquired through mystical connection with the Other
>World which was thought to fill the poet with imbas--called the "light that
>illumines" in one text. In medieval Irish Christian thought, imbas came to
>be identified with the Holy Spirit or with Christ as "the light of the
>world." Consequently, to have accomplished the task of writing a poetic
>martyrology, Oengus, by definition, would have to be on very good terms with
>at least two out of three Persons of the Trinity. Sounds like a good case
>for sainthood--on those terms, of course.
>
> Also, among the Ce/li De/, all of the early reformers were
>considered saints, by definition.
Among the Céli Dé perhaps, but apparently not enough to record their
Lives, or at least none survive (and Sharpe argues against their
existence in the first place). And while some earlier saints may
have been heralded as saintly primarily for their literary
achievements, Oengus himself is quite late, which makes a possible
cult all the more interesting. To my knowledge, the only saint
associated with the Culdee movement (with any degree of historical
feasibility) to have a vita is Samthann (whose Life makes no
reference to the Culdees), and she is one of (if not the) latest
saints with a Life (d.739), until Malachy. Accompanying these Lives
are fantastic claims about a saint's abilities, like having the earth
swallow enemies or creating an inexhaustible source of beer out of
next to nothing and all the things we know and love about the Irish
saints (even Bernard made similar claims for Malachy). Why weren't
such claims made for Máelrúain or Fer-dá-chrích (well, obviously no
beer, but I mean claims of miraculous abilities), or 'Eriugena,' for
that matter? Chanting the psalms in an icy bath might be no mean
feat, but it's not much compared with Darerca, who not only would
chant in such a bath, but also guided the water up a very steep hill
with her staff. So if Oengus was heralded as a saint, by whom, where
and when, and what kind of saint was he? More generally, why does
hagiography seem to have passed by Irish 'saints' from the 8th to the
11th century (excepting Samthann, of course)?
Happy St Patrick's Day from the land of the green river,
Maeve
|