Saints and Scholars

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Moninne was a powerful force and was instrumental in the development of the great monastic movement, founding churches in Ireland and Scotland. These saints were similar in their determination to help and enrich the lives of others, whether through healing or sharing their faith. Would their actions and powers of healing have been interpreted in the same way in a different time or place, for example, Salem, Massachusetts or Mistley, Essex? Thankfully, none of these inspirational women were burned at the stake or thrown into water to see if they would sink or float. Instead, their miracles and deeds were recognised and they were venerated as saints. After decades of industrial peat-cutting to fuel Ireland's stoves, the bog was no longer nature's healthy blanket of saturated spongy moss it once was. But, several years since harvesting ended (due to green policies), it was encouraging to see flora gaining confidence over a largely drab landscape.

It was certainly quite common in the Celtic world,” says Fr Ó Ríordáin. “What happened to the Columban rule is that it was too strict for the continentals, with the result that they moved towards the Benedictine rule, which was more benign. As a result nearly all the Columban monasteries on the continent became Benedictine abbeys. This abbey (officially a friary but always referred to as an abbey) is in pretty Quin Village, a remote hamlet lost in a maze of country lanes. A three-arch bridge and narrow streets curve around the abbey ruin, church and a crumbling chapel, as if to keep watch on the comings and goings along the meadow path to the abbey. The trail closely follows the gushing Rine River through bumpy terrain, where an ancient town settlement has lain buried beneath the tufts of grass for centuries. The abbey started life in 1278 as a giant fortress, built by Thomas de Clare. He was an Anglo Norman peer who spectacularly failed to subdue the local chieftains – decades before, his castle was almost completely razed by the O’Brien clan. To the right of the nave is the grave of Fireball McNamara, while in another vault lie the notorious Blood clan, connected to the Tower of London crown jewel thief was a trailblazer. Leaving home at 16 on a donkey, bringing her younger sister Fíona with her, she set up a monastic school at Killeedy (Cell Íde) and later became the foster mother of the saints of Ireland. She was a mentor to St Brendan.Renowned for her generosity and care for the poor, Saint Brigid famously converted a dying man by making up a cross with rushes she found on the ground to bless him with, something children in Ireland learn to make in school on her feast day 1st February. Ancient manuscripts show that Ireland was a major centre for the study of mathematics centuries ago. We had some of the foremost practitioners of the fine art of Computus, the difficult business of calculating the date of Easter far into the future. Music and the Stars : Mathematics in Medieval Ireland is in book shops or available from fourcourtspress.ie The Celtic Peace Garden at the IOSAS Centre is the culmination of the Columba Community's work of reconciliation over the past 20 years. It is built near The White Oaks Centre and brings serenity and healing to visitors and to the residents of the centre. In the most recent research investigating Europeans’ attitudes towards science, 70 per cent of people surveyed agreed that having an interest in science leads to improvements in culture. But what role does science have to play in Irish culture? It is easy to associate music, language, dance, art or story-telling with our national heritage, but does science belong there too?

This was Ireland's Golden Era as it became a burgeoning land of art and literature, culture and Christianity, and many of Ireland's most famous saints were plying their trade during this time. In addition, he says, he typically looks into a few other collections of sources, including Fr John O’Hanlon’s nine-volume 19th-Century The Lives of the Irish Saints. “That is largely hagiographical, but if I find anything there that would make an interesting little snippet I would draw on that as well,” he says. The book explains how the monks here were well connected to earlier thinkers, for example the sixth-century philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius and his pivotal work De Institutione Arithmetica – De Institutione Musica. "There is a very lively engagement with mathematics between Ireland and Britain; it is high- level mathematics." The celebration of St Brigid’s Day on February 1 – the pagan feast of Imbolc – was probably intended as a symbolic gesture, Fr Ó Ríordáin says, noting that with this being seen as a hinge of the year, with the worst of the winter being over, it was a fitting day to celebrate somebody who represented a new beginning for Ireland. The basic tradition with that you entered a monastery, illiterate, presumably, and the first thing is you got a slate to scribble on or a bit of wax that you could write on, and you learned the alphabet,” Fr Ó Ríordáin says. “And then from the alphabet they learned the psalms in Latin, and it seems that they probably learned the whole psalm book off by heart – a number of them did, anyway.”

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Hagiography is fascinating, especially Irish hagiography, in particular the lives of early Irish saints. This ancient literary genre was an important way of recording the extraordinary lives of saints and the miracles and incredible feats attributed to them. The Irish even borrowed the Roman alphabet so they could translate Latin documents and help themselves to the latest devices. St Brendan was ordained by St Erc around 512 and went on to establish monastic settlements at the foot of Mount Brandon on the Dingle peninsula and in later years established his great monastery at Clonfert County Galway, where he is interred.