ON ST. ODRAN, CONFESSOR, ON THE ISLAND OF IONA,
ABOUT THE YEAR DLXIII.
HISTORICAL SYLLOGE
Odran, confessor not bishop, on the island of Iona. (S.)
BY V. D. B.
§ Sole section. Several Saints Odran to be distinguished from one another. The death, burial and cult of St. Odran of Iona.
Greven, a member of the Cologne Charterhouse, who had I know not what Irish Martyrology, [St. Odran, disciple of St. Patrick and martyr, is wrongly announced on this day by some martyrologists;] added to Usuard at this day the memory of St. Odran, bishop in Ireland; similarly Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the saints: In Ireland, of St. Odran, priest and martyr: which he testifies he drew from the Scottish Menology of Dempster; where it is added that he set out from Scotland to Ireland to follow St. Patrick, and was killed there by idolaters; and that his liturgical office is contained in the Breviary and Martyrology of the canons. The Martyrology of Suben in Bavaria, which led the way for Colgan Acta SS. Hiberniæ, page 372, number 15., also mentions him in these words: On the sixth of the Kalends of November. In Ireland, of St. Odran, martyr, disciple of the great preacher Patrick; and Fitz-Simon in the Catalogue of the saints of Ireland: St. Odran of Disert-Odrain in Hi-Falgia, charioteer of Patrick, on the day, according to some, of 27 October. But these things are handed down by a manifest error. For St. Odran, disciple of St. Patrick and martyr, is venerated on the 19th day of February and the 8th day of May, and our predecessors have already spoken of him at the former day. Wherefore he is not to be pursued further here.
[2] [likewise St. Odran of Iona is wrongly confused with St. Odran of Letrach, and the name of the monastery of Tigh Airerain is wrongly mingled in.] In the Irish Martyrologies, however, there is praised a quite different St. Odran, or rather two, confused into one. In the Martyrology of Tallaght, namely, at this day the following is read: Of Odran, priest of Lethrech or of Iona; in Marianus Gorman: St. Odran, abbot of Iona and of Tech Ererain in Meath; in the Martyrology of Donegal: St. Odran, abbot of Iona and of Tegh Ererain in Meath; similar things in that of Cashel [Acta SS. Hiberniæ, page 372, number 16; compare Trias thaumaturga, page 50, number 51; Todd and Reeves, Martyrology of Donegal, page 287.]; while in the metrical Festilogium of St. Aengus: Odran, noble, swimming abbot; where in the annotations it is added: That is, by swimming he reached Gair mic mogha (Gar inis), which is an island in Corca Duibline (in the western part of the county of Kerry, in the estuaries of the Kenmare-river and at the mouth of the Owreagh-river). Odran, priest of Tigh-Airerain (Tyfernan or Tyfarnham) in Meath (western, in the barony of Corkery, in Munster), and of Letracha-Odran (Lateragh, in the barony of Upper Ormond, in the county of Tipperary, in Munster), in Muscrigia-Thire, and of Ia Colaimcille, that is, Relic-Odrain in I; or he is in Gair mic mogha, which is an island of Corca Duibline, to which he came by swimming. First of all, there must be struck out from this what is said of Tegh Ererain or Tigh-Airerain; for they seem to have crept in here for no other reason than that on this same day Arennanus, who gave his name to this place, is commemorated in the Irish Martyrologies. Odran, who is also called the swimming abbot, wondrously reached Gair mic mogha and illumined Letracha-Odrain with his virtues and his name, has likewise been wrongly thrust in here. For he died on the 2nd day of October, on which he is read inscribed in the Irish fasti; in the year 549 [Lanigan, Eccles. hist. of Ireland, volume II, pages 70 and 73; compare the Four Masters, at the year 848, and in Colgan, Acta SS., page 465, number 32.], carried off by plague with several other saints Compare Colgan, Acta SS., page 150, number 31.. To him are wrongly attributed three thousand disciples, whom Lanigan has demonstrated are to be referred to St. Finnian Volume II, page 73, number 227.. In the Sanctilogium genealogicum, chapter XVII, which was in Colgan's possession Acta SS. Hiberniæ, page 465., St. Odran of Letrach is related to have been the son of Mac Craithi, son of Trochall, son of Esomon, son of Dagraeus, son of Nuadhat, and so on, until one comes to Conarius the Great, king of Ireland. Further things do not seem to need reporting, since our predecessors
have given the rest at the 7th day of July, on which St. Medran, brother of that St. Odran, is venerated, and those things are enough to distinguish St. Odran of Iona from St. Odran of Letrach. For St. Odran or Oran of Iona is related in the cited Sanctilogium In Colgan, Trias thaumaturga, page 482, number 36. to have been the son of Anginus, son of Ennus Bogunius, son of Conall Gulban; so that he and St. Columba, abbot of Iona, son of Fedhlim, son of Fergus Cennfada, son of Conall Gulban, were cousins [In Reeves, Life of St. Columba, Genealogical table of the early abbots of Hy, at page 342.]. Further, he could not have died before the year 563, since St. Columba, of whom he was a disciple there, did not land on the island of Iona before that. Finally, the other things reported about him cannot at all suit St. Odran of Letrach; so that nothing is more certain than that these were different men.
[3] [St. Odran of Iona is said to be the disciple who is read in the Life of St. Columba to have been the first to die on the island of Iona;] Further, St. Odran of Iona is considered to be that same man of whom Adamnan wrote the following in the Life of St. Columba Ibid. page 202.: At another time, when the holy man was staying on the island of Joua, a certain one of his monks, a Briton, intent on good deeds, seized with a bodily affliction, was brought to the last extremity. When the venerable man visited him in the hour of his departure, standing for a little by his bed and blessing him, he went out of the house rather quickly, not wishing to see him die. He at the same moment, after the holy man's withdrawal from the house, finished the present life. Then the praiseworthy man, walking in the little court of his monastery, with eyes raised to heaven, for a very long time wondered, greatly astonished. But a certain brother, by name Aidan, son of Libir, of good disposition and a religious man, who alone of the brothers was present at that hour, on bended knees began to ask that the saint should make known to him the cause of such great wonder. To him the saint said: “I have now seen the holy angels warring in the air against the adverse powers; and I give thanks to Christ the agonothete, that the victorious angels have borne up the soul of this stranger, who was the first to die among us on this island, to the joys of the heavenly homeland.” But this mystery, I beg you, reveal to no one in my lifetime. Where it is to be noted that that British stranger was the first of the disciples of St. Columba to die on the island of Iona.
[4] which matter was afterwards mixed with fables. But although St. Odran was of the family of St. Columba, and therefore seems to have been an Irishman rather than a Briton, it is a most constant tradition that this lot fell to him. Namely in the fifth Life of St. Columba, published by Colgan Trias thaumaturga, page 411, chapter 12., the following is read: St. Columba, having driven the superstitious company of the Druids from the island, brought in himself and his far holier settlers to cultivate that new vineyard; but he had not yet established his seat in it when one of his companions, by name Odran, who, both weary of the present life and very eager for the future one, longed with highest desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ; carried off by a short illness, the first of that holy company to be freed from the prison of the flesh, found the true homeland in exile, as the holy man foretold to him a little before while he was still in good health. For he is reported to have addressed his companions, when they first landed, in this way: “Whoever of us on this island, in which it is expedient that we fix our roots deep, shall wish to be first buried, shall be bound to his vow to his own and his companions' profit; to his own, I say, because he will thus pass the sooner to Christ; to his companions', because he will render the foreign soil, as if in some way bound by the pledge of his body, more gentle to them and easier to cultivate.” When on hearing this Odran at once answered that on that condition he chose forthwith to be finished with the present life, the saint added: “May the abiding rewards that you seek be safe for you, son; but you shall also obtain this prerogative, as the reward of your ready piety, with me as guarantor, that whoever shall in time to come visit my sepulchre shall not obtain by prayer what he wishes until he has also venerated yours.” However that may be, Odran was the first of the holy man's companions on that island, as has been said, to pass to Christ; and his sacred body was entrusted to that place which thereafter has been called the burial-ground of Odran. So Manus O'Donnell, prince of Tirconnell, in the Life of St. Columba which he caused to be written in Irish in the year 1000 Compare Reeves, Life of St. Columba, page XXXV.: William Reeves will give the Irish words Ibid. page 203..
[5] [The tomb, cemetery, chapel, hill and spring of St. Odran on the island of Iona. A few words on St. Otteran of Waterford.] That many fables are woven into these things I hardly need to point out. First of all St. Odran is here presented as if he had been one of the companions whom St. Columba brought from Ireland to the island of Iona; but it is not so: for his name is not found among the twelve men who accompanied him there and whom Ussher long ago reviewed from a Cottonian book Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates, page 363, 1687 edition.; nor could it be otherwise, if St. Odran was a Briton and was called a stranger by Adamnan. Indeed this one thing is to be accepted from it as true, that St. Odran was the first to be buried there; upon which matter the people's exceptional regard for St. Odran built up the rest, as usually happens. After the Catholic rites ceased there, however, quite other fables were devised, perhaps to create ill will against the Catholic religion and to abolish the pious memory and popular veneration of St. Odran: namely that St. Columba tried in vain to build a church; that by the malevolence of demons the walls collapsed, until it was understood that nothing could stand unless one man was buried alive; that St. Odran offered himself; but that three days later by order of St. Columba the tomb was opened; that St. Odran came out and said that what is handed down about the pains of hell is fiction; on hearing which impious words St. Columba commanded that St. Odran be stored in the tomb again [Pennant's second tour in Scotland, in Pinkerton's Voyages, volume III, page 298, and in Todd and Herbert, The irish version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius, page XXV. Compare Camden, Britannia, Gough's edition, volume III, page 715.]. But whatever this is, it has some force in persuading us that St. Odran was really the first buried there, that the place of his burial has always been the principal and now indeed the only cemetery of the island, in every age called by his name. Thus in the annotations to the Festilogium of St. Aengus it is called Relic-Odhrain, or the burial-ground of St. Odran; which name still persists. There stands there even now a chapel, sacred to the veneration of the blessed man, which was built at the end of the XI century or the beginning of the XII [Reeves, Life of St. Columba, page 415; Carlisle, Topograph. Dict. of Scotland, under I-Colm-Kill.], and where near the door there is seen a red stone, witness of the tomb of St. Odran Pennant etc., in Todd and Herbert, page XXV.: which place was piously visited by reverent pilgrims before they approached the reliquary of St. Columba, as is clear from the words of Manus O'Donnell. Painted images of this building were twelve years ago caused to be reproduced by Graham in the Antiquities of Iona Compare Reeves, Life of St. Columba, page 204.. This place was formerly held so holy that the Scots will have it that it was once the custom for their kings to be buried there; and it is a certain fact that several really have found rest there. There is also a hill on the island, which received its name from St. Odran and is still called Cnoc Odhrain Ibid. page 431.; likewise a spring, called Tobar Odhrain. Some will have it Compare Camden, Britannia, volume III, page 714. that St. Odran was the titular patron of the convent of canonesses of St. Augustine that was once there; which John Spottiswoode In Keith, Scottish bishops, page 458., who wrote fairly diligently on the monasteries of Scotland, confirms by his authority. What we have reported is sufficient for it to be understood that after St. Columba no one was held in greater honour there than St. Odran. It is somewhat likely that St. Otteran, patron of Waterford in Ireland, who was formerly most solemnly venerated on this day, is the same as St. Odran of Iona: for both the similarity of the names and the concurrence of the natal days or feasts urge it Compare Matt. Kelly, Calendar of irish saints, pages 133 and 134.: which however, since it is by no means certain (for St. Otteran is called a bishop), we have placed his name among those passed over: where we have hinted that it is more probable that St. Otteran was a disciple of St. Senan and his successor in the government of the church of Inis-Cathaig (Scattery Island) at the mouth of the river Sinennus (Shannon). Wherefore it seems that no more need be added here about the patron of Waterford.