ON THE HOLY BISHOPS LOMANUS AND FORTCHERNUS AT TRIM IN IRELAND
Fifth century of Christ
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Lomanus, Bishop of Trim in Ireland (St.) Fortchernus, Bishop of Trim in Ireland (St.)
By the author G. H.
Section 1: The origin of the Church of Trim, the Acts and Episcopate of St. Lomanus. The conversion of St. Fortchernus and his parents.
[1] Trim, called by others Athruma, Athrumia, Athrimma, and Trimma, is a town in Meath in Ireland, near the ford and bridge of the river Boyne, which flows from there to the city of Drogheda Trim, in the province of Meath in Ireland and empties into the Ocean. Concerning the Church first founded at Trim, Ussher in his Chronological Index to the Antiquities of the British Churches notes the following for the year of Christ 433: St. Lomanus, son of Tigridia, the sister of St. Patrick, having waited in vain for his uncle for two periods of forty days in the port of Colbdi near the present-day Drogheda, was carried up the river Boyne by boat to the town of Trim, and is said to have baptized Fortchernus, with his mother, a British woman, and his father Fedelmidius, The Church founded by SS. Patrick and Lomanus: lord of the place, and his entire household. And from there, by Patrick and Lomanus, who received that region as a gift from Fedelmidius, the Church of Trim was first founded. The same Ussher in chapter 14, page 966, asserts that from this St. Lomanus, or Lumanus, the first Bishop of the Church of Trim in eastern Meath and nephew of the great Patrick, the place called Port-Loman, a town of the Nugents in western Meath, received its name, and that the memory of that Saint is still venerated there: but in what month and on what day he does not report. Colgan assigns SS. Lomanus and Fortchernus to February 17, venerated here with St. Fortchernus on February 17 and October 11 and adds that another feast of the same is noted in the Irish Menologies on October 11. On neither day have we yet found anything about them in our Martyrologies: wherefore, following Colgan, we treat of them on this February 17, and shall give below the words of the Martyrology of Tallaght.
[2] Jocelin in his Life of St. Patrick, chapter 5, records this origin of St. Lomanus: There were, he says, three sisters memorable to St. Patrick, pleasing the Lord in holiness and righteousness: his mother Tigridia, sister of St. Patrick their names were Lupita, Tigridia, and Darerca. Tigridia, enriched with happy fecundity, brought forth excellent fruit: for she bore seventeen sons and five daughters. All the males were of great merit: most holy Bishops, excellent Priests, and monks; the women, having become nuns, ended their days in great sanctity. The names of the Bishops were Brochadius, Brochanus, Mogenochus, and Lomanus: who, coming with their uncle St. Patrick from Britain to Ireland, brother Bishops and strenuously laboring together in the Lord's field, gathered a great harvest to be sent to the heavenly barns. But Darerca, the youngest of the sisters, was the mother of the holy Bishops Mel, Rioch, and Munis... Truly the lineage of these women appears blessed, according to the sequence of sacred Scripture, and a holy inheritance are the descendants of St. Patrick. Ecclus. 44:12 So Jocelin. The father's name is expressed in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, whose book 2, beginning with the arrival of St. Lomanus at the mouth of the river Boyne near the city of Drogheda, opens thus:
[3] After St. Patrick, intending to preach the faith of Christ to the Irish, landed with his fleet in Ireland, turning aside from Tara, he left St. Lomanus at Inbhear-boinne to guard the ships during the time of Lent: and gave him orders St. Lomanus comes to Trim: to move the ship against the current of the river as far as Trim, where at that time stood the fortress of Fedelmidius, son of Laeghaire, son of Niall. When St. Lomanus had landed near Trim, on the following morning Fortchernus, son of Fedelmidius, came to him as he was performing the divine praises, greatly wondering at the psalmody and chanting he had heard: he converts St. Fortchernus at whose preaching he immediately believed and was baptized. And since, greatly delighted by the man of God's psalmody and teachings, he remained with him, his mother came seeking her son and courteously greeted the Clerics. For she herself was from Britain, named Scotha, daughter of the King of Britain. Fedelmidius himself also came, and his parents: and believed, and offered Trim in perpetuity to God, to St. Patrick, to St. Lomanus, and to his son Fortchernus, who soon embraced the monastic or clerical way of life under St. Lomanus.
When these things were accomplished, St. Patrick himself also arrived, and founded a Church at Trim twenty-five years before the church of Armagh was built, and there he left his disciple St. Lomanus. For the origin of St. Lomanus was from Britain, and the sister of St. Patrick was his mother: for he was the son of Gollit, born of his father Gollit: and his brothers were St. Munis, Bishop of Forgnuidhe, in the region of Cuirene in the northern part of Meath, on the southern bank of the river Ethne; Brocadius of Imleach-each in the region of Ciarraige, a region of Connacht; Brocanus of Bregmagia, a region of Ui-Tortan; and Mogenochus of Kill-dumhagloinn in the region of the Breg. And these were true sons of St. Patrick by likeness, religion, baptism, and preaching: and whatever they acquired, whether in fields or in churches, they offered all to their Father and Master Patrick in perpetuity.
[4] The same things are related somewhat more accurately by the previously mentioned Jocelin in his Life of the same St. Patrick, in these words: St. Patrick, having crossed by ship from the parts of Ulidia, landed at the borders of Meath at the mouth of the Boyne among barbarians and idolaters, and entrusted his ship with its equipment to his nephew St. Lomanus to be guarded: he enjoined upon him among barbarians he aspires to martyrdom that by remaining in those parts for at least forty days he should sustain this obedience, while Patrick himself went on to more remote places of the region to preach.
Lomanus, remaining as a messenger of light, having been made obedient in the hope of obtaining martyrdom, doubled the appointed period of days by staying there, which none of his companions dared to do, fearing for their lives. He himself, a son of obedience, was not defrauded of the fruit of his reward in this matter. For while receiving the fruit of patience through obedience, he merited to make fertile with the seed of the divine word foreign lands, to bring forth the flowers of faith and produce the fruits of justice: and the more devoutly he obeyed his spiritual Father, he sails against wind and current: the more wonderfully the elements obeyed him. For when the two periods of forty days were completed, since he was wearied by his long waiting for the return of St. Patrick, on a certain day when the blasts of the winds were blowing more violently from the opposite direction, he unfurled the ship's rigging, and burning with faith and trusting in the merits of St. Patrick, by his authority he commanded the ship to carry him across to a place suitable for him. O sign hitherto unheard of and unknown! The ship, with no one steering, sailed against the current and the wind at the man of God's wish, and carried him in a prosperous course from the mouth of the river Boyne all the way to Trim. He indeed bore the ship against the blast of the breeze without oars on the opposing river, He who once turning the streams of the Jordan backward, drove its course in a retrograde manner back to the source of its own channel.
[5] St. Lomanus, having landed near the above-named town of Trim, first converted the son of a certain nobleman who ruled there, named Fortchernus, who came to him while he was reciting the Gospel, then his mother, a British woman by birth, he brings forth a font for baptizing: and finally his father, named Fedelmidius, to Christ, and in a font which he produced from the earth by his prayers before their eyes, he baptized them and many others. When these things had been accomplished, the holy Priest, in the twenty-fifth year before the foundation of Armagh, built a Church there, for the endowing and enriching of which Fedelmidius, having become a faithful servant of Christ, conferred Trim and Meath with many estates and their appurtenances by solemn donation. He himself then withdrew across the river and made a dwelling for himself and his people, and ended his days in goodness. Lomanus, having been made Bishop in the aforesaid Church, handed over his neophyte Fortchernus to be instructed in letters, and having shortly made him sufficiently learned, promoted him to the priesthood.
[6] These foundations of the Church of Trim, explained from an older author Tirechan, though less elegantly, are repeated by Ussher on page 853. When (he says) Patrick with his holy voyage arrived in Ireland, he left St. Lomanus at the mouth of the Boyne to guard the ship for forty days and forty nights: he carefully obeys St. Patrick: and then he remained another forty days out of obedience to Patrick. Then, according to the command of his Master, in his ship, against the current, as far as the ford of Trim, at the mouth of the fortress of Fedelmidius, son of Laeghaire, he arrived with the Lord as helmsman. When morning came, Fortchernus, son of Fedelmidius, found him reciting the Gospel: and marveling at the Gospel and his teaching, he immediately believed: and when a font was opened in that place by Lomanus, he was baptized in Christ. And he remained with him until his mother came seeking him: and she was made glad in his presence, because she was a British woman. She likewise believed: and he converses with the parents of St. Fortchernus returned again to her house, and told her husband all the things that had happened to her and to their son. But Fedelmidius rejoiced at the arrival of the Cleric, because his mother was from Britain, the daughter of the King of the Britons, that is, Scotha-noesa. Then Fedelmidius greeted Lomanus in the British tongue, asking him about his faith and lineage, and he answered him: I am Lomanus the Briton, a Christian, a disciple of Bishop Patrick, who was sent by the Lord to baptize the peoples of Ireland and convert them to the faith of Christ, and who sent me here according to the will of God. Immediately Fedelmidius believed with his entire household, and offered to him and to St. Patrick his entire region with his possessions and all his substance and all his progeny. All these things he offered to Patrick and to Lomanus, together with his son Fortchernus, until the day of judgment. from them he receives ample possessions as a gift, while they migrate elsewhere: Then Fedelmidius migrated across the river Boyne, and Lomanus remained with Fortchernus at the ford of Trim, until Patrick arrived to them, and he built a Church with them in the year 22 before the Church of Armagh was founded. So Tirechan, who places 22 years between the foundation of each Church; others say 25. he founds the Church of Trim long before that of Armagh: Ussher judges that the beginnings of the Church of Trim should be referred to 12 years before the founding of Armagh: namely, the former to the year 433, and Armagh to the year 445.
[7] That St. Lomanus wrote the acts of his Master and uncle St. Patrick is related by Jocelin in his Life of the same St. Patrick. Four codices, he says, concerning his virtues and miracles, written partly in Latin and partly in Irish, are found, he writes the Life of St. Patrick which four disciples of his are reported to have written at various times, namely Blessed Benignus his successor, and St. Mel the Bishop, and St. Lomanus the Bishop his nephew, and St. Patrick his godson, who after the departure of his father, returning to Britain, died and was honorably buried in the church of Glastonbury... Of all these things, whatever I was able to find worthy of belief, gathered into this work, I have thought it agreeable to share with the knowledge of posterity. So Jocelin. Colgan in Appendix 4 to the Acts of St. Patrick, part 3, judges that St. Lomanus wrote the deeds of his Master while he was still living in the flesh, while still living and that Lomanus himself died before the year 460, and thus long before the death of St. Patrick. died before the year 460 This is confirmed by the age of St. Fortchernus.
Section 2: The Episcopate of St. Fortchernus, and then his monastic life. Various companions resting at Trim.
[8] Concerning the death of St. Lomanus and the promotion of St. Fortchernus to the Episcopate of Trim, the author of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick writes the following at the beginning of the above-cited book 2: St. Fortchernus long refuses the Episcopate offered to him: After some time, when St. Lomanus saw that the day of his departure was approaching, he himself set out with his disciple to visit his brother St. Brocadius: and in his presence he resigned the Church over which he presided into the hands of St. Patrick and Fortchernus, commanding that Fortchernus should take it up before his own departure from the body. But the holy Fortchernus resisted, alleging that it was not fitting that he himself should undertake the administration of a Church in his own patrimony, lest he should seem to claim a right of inheritance in what he and his father had offered to God and St. Patrick. And since St. Lomanus would not bestow his blessing upon him unless he gave his consent to undertaking that burden, he finally consented. And when after the death of his Father he had presided for only three days, he transferred the governance of that Church to a certain foreigner named Cathaldus. The places which the Prince Fedelmidius, son of King Laeghaire, had offered to SS. Patrick, Lomanus, and Fortchernus were Trim in the region of Ui Laeghaire of the Breg, and Imga in the region of Ui Laeghaire of Meath. These places he offered both for himself and for all kings, greater and lesser, until the day of judgment.
[9] Jocelin narrates similar things about both, which we add here: As the day of his departure from the body drew near, he says, he set out with the aforesaid Fortchernus to his brother Brocadius, and commanded Fortchernus by the virtue of obedience to take up the governance of the Church over which he presided after his own death. But when Fortchernus refused, alleging that it was not consonant with reason or justice that he should undertake the governance of souls in the Church or allodial lands of his father, lest he should seem to possess the sanctuary of the Lord by inheritance, the Father and Pastor pressed him with a repeated command. reluctantly he accepts What more? He would not bless him until he gave his assent to undertaking this burden. So when holy Lomanus migrated from this light to the perpetual dwelling of the light-bearing fatherland, and after three days Fortchernus, undertaking the care imposed upon him of the prescribed Church, presided over it for only three days, and then to a certain foreigner, a Briton by birth, named Cathaldius, he resigns: he committed its governance. Thus indeed the man of God fulfilled the command of his father, and lest he give others an example of claiming any right in Churches or in the inheritance of parents, he took care to avoid it in every way. Nevertheless, all the estates of this Church, with the consent of the Princes, were conferred by St. Lomanus upon Blessed Patrick and his successors, and belong to the jurisdiction of the Church of Armagh to be possessed in perpetuity.
[10] Having abdicated the Episcopate, St. Fortchernus withdrew from the noise of earthly cares, and in a certain remote place built a monastery called Roscurra, whether whose church is that which after his death was called, on account of the sacred veneration of him, the Church of Kill-Fortchern, he builds the monastery of Roscurra: situated in that region of Leinster which is called Idrone, Colgan questions. In this monastery of Roscurra, as in an arena of holiness and wisdom, we gather that many persons afterward distinguished for both piety and learning were trained in the study of letters and virtues, from the Life of St. Finnian of Cluain-Eraird, to be given from the Salamanca codex on February 23. At the beginning of that Life the following is read:
[11] When Finnian was born, his parents rejoiced and sent him to be baptized by the holy Bishop Fortchernus at the Church of Roscurra. The women set out on the journey with the child, St. Finnian is brought to him for baptism: around the year 460 and unexpectedly St. Abban the Priest meets them. When the holy man asked them where they were going, the women answered, saying: We are going to the holy Bishop Fortchernus for the purpose of baptizing this child. The venerable Abban then saw Angels in the child's company: the women also who were carrying the child testified that they had seen a most beautiful youth placing his hand upon the child's head, who said: This child will be blessed. And the holy man Abban baptized the infant, calling him Finnluch, because there two rivers from different sources join into one where he was baptized. For the water there appeared to be of a white color on account of its purity. He was called by another name, which is more common, Finnian. In the place where the holy infant was blessed and purified by the bath of salvation, a Cross was set up, which is called the Cross of Finnian. instructed under him: When the time came, he learned the psalms and hymns along with other ecclesiastical offices under St. Fortchernus.
[12] From the Acts of St. Finnian, the age of St. Fortchernus is calculated. For St. Finnian remained under the teaching of St. Fortchernus until, as the author of the Life has it, he completed the thirtieth year of his age, when bidding farewell to his Master St. Fortchernus, until the year 490: he set out on his journey and planned to cross the sea. Then he stayed in Britain for thirty years, he goes to Britain: having built three Churches, and afterward returned to Ireland to restore the faith neglected after the death of Blessed Patrick, as Ussher published from his ecclesiastical office on page 912, who in the Chronological Index reports this departure of St. Finnian to Britain at the year 490, and assigns his return to Ireland, after the completion of the thirtieth year of his British sojourn, he returns to Ireland in the year 520 to the year of Christ 520. From this it is established that St. Fortchernus, after abdicating the Episcopate, flourished in repute of sanctity in the monastery of Roscurra he had built around the year of Christ 460, when St. Finnian was born and was brought to that monastery to be washed in the sacred font of baptism: with whom he then remained until about the year 490, and he departed from Ireland three years before St. Patrick is noted by Ussher to have departed from life, which is to be examined on March 17. How long St. Fortchernus lived after the year 490 is not established.
[13] Colgan says that in the Irish Menologies different feasts of both St. Lomanus and St. Fortchernus are observed, and that both are assigned to February 17 and October 11: The veneration of SS. Lomanus and Fortchernus: that from the former, the town of Port-Loman takes its name, and from the latter, the church of Kill-Fortchern, and in those places, as we said, the sacred memory of each is held: that both, together with other companions, are venerated at Trim on February 17, whom he lists from the Martyrology of Tallaght as follows: Of Lomanus of Trim, with his companions, that is, Patrick the Doorkeeper, Lurech son of Cuanach, Fortchernus, and Coel Ochtra, Aed, Aed, Aed, Cormac the Bishop, Conan, other companions joined to them Comenus the Bishop, Lactenus the Priest, Ossan, Saran, Conall, Colman, Luctanus the Bishop, and Finsecha the Virgin. All these rest at Trim. So it reads there. In our copy, communicated by Colgan, Lomanus is said to be the doorkeeper of St. Patrick, with his companions at Trim: Lurech son of Cuanach, etc. Colgan treats of these, except for Coel Ochtra, who in our copy is called Coelius Octra, on February 17, and calls them Saints, confessing however that it is not plausible that all these eighteen Saints died on the same day, nor does he think their birthday is celebrated on this day, but rather some other festive commemoration. He says that Patrick the Doorkeeper is venerated on August 26: Patrick, Lurech that Lurech is assigned by other Irish authors to February 17: that Fortchernus is the Bishop of whom we have treated in this place: that of the three Aeds, who in our copy are called Aidi, two are the sons of Fergus, 3 Aeds and the third the son of Guarius: that Cormac is a Bishop of Trim, both younger and older, Cormac and is assigned to the Irish Calendar on February 17: that the older was afterward Bishop of Armagh, and is called Comorbanus, that is, successor of St. Patrick, and died in the year 497, and his adolescence is treated in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick and in another written by Jocelin, but there without the title of Saint: that Conan and Comenus cannot be distinguished from various persons of the same name: Conan, Comenus, Lactenus, Ossan that Lactenus the Priest (in the copy, Lactentius) is perhaps the Abbot of Achadur, and is venerated on March 19. That Ossan the Priest seems to be the brother of the younger St. Cormac, Bishop of Trim, who flourished in the eighth century. That Saran, Conall, and Colman cannot be distinguished from various Saints of the same name: Saran, Conall, Colman, Luctan it seems, however, that Conall is the son of Fiachra, and Colman is the son of Lugidius: that Luctanus, in our copy Lactanus, elsewhere Lactinus, is a Bishop who is also commemorated in non-Irish Martyrologies on March 19: finally, that Finsecha the Virgin is venerated on October 13: which it suffices to have indicated in this place. Finsecha the Virgin In the Martyrology of Marianus Gorman, Abbot of Lyons, the following are also listed for February 17, whom Colgan does not mention: Dachonna son of Oran, Robneus the Bishop, others ascribed here to the Irish Calendar Midus son of Facundus, and Brelachus son of Fichellus. Of these, in the Martyrology of Tallaght there are Dachonna son of Odran, Midus or Mido, son of Facundus near Sligo, and Brelachus son of Fichellius: but in place of Robneus there is Fichellachus or Fichellius. In connection with the Life of St. Attracta the Virgin on February 9, Colgan mentions Dachonna and says he is venerated on February 17: but why he omitted both this one and the others already mentioned here, omitted by Colgan and on the other hand lists others from the same Calendar, we cannot quite understand.