SAINTS IN THE CELTIC TRADITION

CELTIC TRADITION

ST MARIANUS SCOTUS DECEMBER 22

The name Marianus is a smooth Latinised form of the Irish surname Maelbrigte, meaning ‘Devotee of Brigid,’ and ‘Marianus Scotus’ simply means ‘Marianus the Irishman.’ To distinguish him from other Irish monks and scholars such as John Scotus, Sedulius Scotus, and Marianus Scotus the abbot, the subject of this notice is ‘Marianus the Chronicler.’ Born in 1028, he entered the monastery of Moville, Co Down, in 1052. Four years later, abbot Tigernach punished him with permanent exile for some minor offence. In his Chronicle under the year 1056, Marianus wrote, ‘I, Marianus, left my native country this year, having become a pilgrim for the Kingdom of God.’

On arrival on the Continent, Marianus first settled in the Irish monastery of St Martin in Cologne, and it was here that the young man found his feet, as it were. Two years later, he moved east to the Benedictine monastery in Fulda, which Marianus maintained was an Irish foundation, and of which the Italian historian Vincenzo Berardis wrote, ‘In the complicated network of monastic foundations the Irish always occupied the most advanced outposts of that volunteer militia owing to their outstanding capacity to deepen the faith and intensify the culture of a converted people.’

In the 11th century, Irish monks were still on the age-old quest for a ‘desert,’ a remote spot on mainland or island where they could devote themselves wholly to the Lord. In the absence of such ideal conditions, a considerable number of desert-seeking Irish attached themselves to existing German monasteries as ‘inclusi,’ which meant having themselves solemnly interned in isolation cells. It was as such an inclusus that Marianus lived.

It was here in Fulda, albeit two centuries earlier, that the 18-year-old Walafrid Strabo, who later wrote a life of our own St Gall, complained of the bitter winter cold. Marianus endured it without complaint in his 12-foot-square cell, where he devoted himself to a life of prayer, penance, study, and writing. He went to Wurzburg to be ordained near the tomb of St Killian in 1059. For the following ten years in Fulda, he lived as a recluse, continuing his penitential regime and celebrating Mass over the tomb of a holy man named Anmchadh, who had been exiled by the abbot of Iniscaltra on the Lower Shannon, for having given a little food to the brethren without permission.

When Siegfried, abbot of Fulda, was appointed archbishop of Mainz in 1069, he arranged for the transfer of Marianus to his episcopal see. It was here in the Franco-German border city that the saint wrote his most famous work, the Chronology of the World, which purported to cover world history from creation to 1082 – the year of his own death. The work was highly acclaimed throughout the Middle Ages and ran into several editions. One of the two 11th-century manuscript editions of the Chronicle is in the Vatican. His feast day on December 22nd celebrates the holiness and intercessory power of St Marianus the Chronicler.

John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR

REALITY

Volume 88. No. 10 December 2022

A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960

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