Saint of the Day – 29 July – Saint Kilian (8th Century) Abbot of Inish-caltra Monastery, Scholar, Poet and Writer. Also known as – Coelan, Chelian.
Inish-caltra was an Island Monastery of Lough Derg, County Clare. Its monastic school continued to produce a number of scholars over the centuries and our Saint Kilian is said to have authored a metrical life of Saint Brigid of Kildare.
Alas, the surviving manuscripts are not of good quality and the language used is not that of our Saint’s time, so scholars find some difficulties with the attribution to Saint Kilian. If nothing else though, Canon O’Hanlon’s account below gives us an insight into some of the difficulties faced by the great 17th Century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, as he sought to collate the existing sources for the lives of Ireland’s Saints:
“This highly gifted, esteemed and worthy Religious, had laboured so earnestly and so well, in his great and holy avocation to meet that God, Whose service was the sole absorbing object of his life that his future rewards were secured, even before they were fully realised.
An elegant scholar, his mind, was furthermore enlightened by the gifts of grace. It is much to be regretted, however, that his personal history has been so obscured and it has become so difficult of elucidation. T
he Natalis of St Chelian, Kilian or Coelan, a Monk of Inis-keltra, occurs on the 29th of July, according to the Martyrology of Tallagh.”
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