CONCERNING ST. CULANUS, BISHOP IN IRELAND.
CommentaryCulanus, Bishop in Ireland (St.)
G. H.
[1] Philip Ferrari inscribed St. Culanus in his Catalogue of Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, with these words: Sacred commemoration in Martyrologies. "In Ireland, of St. Culanus, Bishop," and notes that he gives him from Peter Canisius, who alone makes mention of him on this day. He means the German Martyrology, in the double edition which we have, of the years 1572 and 1599, where his commemoration stands. But
Canisius was not the only one who treated of him: others preceded, from whom we have the author of the manuscript Florarium of the Saints, and Hermann Greven, a Carthusian of Cologne, in his Supplement to Usuard, published in A.D. 1515 and again in A.D. 1521. The same person is recorded from the Irish themselves by our Henry Fitz-Simon in his Calendar of the principal Saints of Ireland, and by John Colgan in the Acts of the Saints of Ireland, who adds that on eight other days the name of St. Coelanus, Culenus, or Dachualanus is inscribed in the Irish calendars of Saints. For the rest, it is unknown of what See this St. Culanus was Bishop.
[2] On January 16 we gave the double Life of St. Fursey, a native of Ireland, who brought with him to Gaul the relics of Saints Patrick, Beanus, and Meldanus, and deposited them at Peronne in the Vermandois. Of these, we said that St. Medanus, or Meldanus, an Irish Bishop, is celebrated on February 7, nor could we by our investigation ascertain of what See he was Bishop; nor is this surprising, since in the Catalogue of the triple order of Saints, which Ussher published from an ancient codex in his work on the Origins of the British Churches, page 913, in the time of Patrick under the first order there are counted 350 holy Bishops, founders of churches; while under the second and third orders there were more Priests than Bishops, who thereafter lived down to the year 665, at which the catalogue of Saints terminates. whence perhaps veneration among the Germans. And just as St. Fursey brought the relics of the said Saints to Peronne, so perhaps other apostolic men who came from the same Ireland into Germany brought these relics of St. Culanus, or at least the sacred veneration of him.