Saint Comman Lobhar, January 28

January 28 is the commemoration of one of the many obscure Irish saints, for whom our only source is the recording of his name on the Irish calendars. In the case of Saint Comman though, he has a couple of epithets attached to his by the seventeenth-century compilers of the Martyrology of Donegal. First is the word Lobhar, 'leper' and secondly is the patronymic 'Son of Laighne'. The earliest Irish calendar, the late eighth/early ninth-century Martyrology of Tallaght, simply recorded the name of Comman. All Canon O'Hanlon can do is to bring the information from the calendars in the third of his articles of the day in Volume One of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

St. Commain or Comman Lobhar, Son of Laighne.

Commain's name, without any other description, is found in the Martyrology of Tallagh, at the 28th of January. From the compound name entered in a later calendar, Lobhar or "Leper," it may be assumed he had been afflicted with leprosy. On this day, Comman Lobhar, son of Laighne, is entered in the Martyrology of Donegal.

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