Thursday 24 October 2024

Saint Maol Eóin, October 20

 


A blog reader asked me recently about a saint Maol Eóin (Maeleoin, Mael Eoin) with a feast day on October 20. The martyrologies are the only source of information I could find about him and they provide some tantalizing clues, although the calendar entries are somewhat confusing. The Martyrology of Oengus ends its entry for the day with: 

the fair sun at that mountain, 
of those splendid Children of Eogan

but the late twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman hails:

Mael Eoin of the beauty,
with splendid Aedán
A scholiast note records that Mael Eoin was:
a bishop and an anchorite.

The seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal in its entries for October 20 leads with:

Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite,

I found these calendar entries difficult to decipher. The name of Maol Eóin does not appear on the Martyrology of Tallaght, but could he be one of the unnamed 'Children of Eogan' i.e. a descendant of Eoghan, (perhaps a reference to the founder ancestor of the Eóganachta) recorded in the Martyrology of Oengus?  Saint Marianus O'Gorman not only names Saint Maol Eóin but appears to link him with the equally obscure Aedán. It is to the later, anonymous scholiast on the Martyrology of Gorman that we owe the information that Saint Maol Eóin was a bishop and anchorite, but where and when he held these offices we don't know. A wide variety of ecclesiastical offices are described in the Irish annals and it is not uncommon for a bishop to be described as the holder of an additional title. Nuadu, for example, a ninth-century Bishop of Armagh, was also described as bishop and anchorite, something I discussed in an earlier post here.

Canon O'Hanlon references the later calendars in his brief account of Saint Maol Eóin in Volume X of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

ARTICLE V. ST. MAELEOIN, BISHOP AND ANCHORITE. 

At this date, Marianus O'Gorman has inserted in his Martyrology the feast of Mael Eoin "of the beauty," and the scholiast states he was a bishop and an anchorite. To what particular See he be longed has not transpired, neither can we find the period when he flourished. The name of Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite, occurs also in the Martyrology of Donegal, at the 20th of October. The Bollandists repeat these notices, at this day.

 Thus, sadly, it seems that Saint Maol Eóin is one of the many Irish saints shrouded in obscurity, with only the Martyrology of Gorman offering any clue as to his identity.

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