medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Happy Holidays (including Samthann's feast day), everybody,
>Samthann (d. 739) Samthann was the abbess and perhaps founder of the
>monastery of Cluain Brónaig (Clonbroney) (Co. Longford) and a leader of the
>céli dé monastic movement. A brief mention of Samthann in a later source
>relates that she was married before becoming a nun, but that the marriage
>was unconsummated. Like other céli dé, she advocated introspection and
>close spiritual bonds between professional religious. She is also said to
>have spoken against the early Irish ascetic practice of peregrinatio,
>arguing that God is near to all, and one can reach the kingdom of heaven
>without crossing the sea. A late tradition reports that Samthann once
>prayed a soul out of hell, an accomplishment attributed only to a very few
>of the great Christian saints. Despite this evidence of her importance, no
>trace of Samthann's nunnery remains, and there does not appear to have been
>a local cult.
>
Not to take issue with pretty much everything you said, Phyllis, but . . .
Samthann was not the founder of Cluain Brónaig (her own Life credits
a woman named Fuinech as founder, Patrick's Tripartite Life claims
himself), making her the only Irish female non-founder saint with a
Life. This unusual attribute is undoubtedly connected to
another--the three other female saints with extant medieval Lives
(Darerca, Brigid and Ite) lived in the fifth and sixth centuries, as
did most Irish saints of both sexes, and no female monasteries are
known to have been founded in the seventh or eighth century. The
"brief mention in a later source" is in fact her own Life, which
Dorothy Africa has persuasively dated to the late eighth century,
although the earliest extant copy dates from the early 14th century;
this incident makes her unique in another respect, as she is the only
Irish saint with a Life to have been a wife before becoming a nun.
Although Samthann was the highest ranking female saint associated
with the céli dé, the association almost entirely derives from a
single later text and is unsupported by other texts relating to the
movement or to the saint; thus the link, at least in her lifetime, is
fairly tenuous and it seems quite an overstatement to call her one of
its leaders. Praying a soul out of hell was not an uncommon
accomplishment for Irish saints; one scholar has claimed it to be an
"almost exclusively Celtic motif." A local cult seems to have
continued at least until the mid-12th century, and in fact a trace of
her nunnery does remain--I have walked among its overgrown ruins.
By the way, according to her own Life as well as the Martyrologies of
Oengus, Tallaght, Gorman, etc, her feast day is tomorrow. Who gives
it as today?
Maeve
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