Life
[also St. Finbar, from Fionnbar (‘white head’); otherwise Finnian],
patron saint of Cork though historically connected with Moville Church
on the Ards peninsula [i.e., former Movilla, now Newtownards], and the
nearby monastery of Bangor, Co. Down; appears under the name Vennianus
in letter from Columbanus to Pope Gregory (AD600), accrediting him with
establishing the Irish penitential; unlikely to have visited Cork where
his cult developed; a life written there 1196 and 1200 assigns his birthplace
to Ráth Raithlenn (now Garranes); Gougane Barra and other prominent
religious sites in Co. Cork associated with him; twelfth-century life,
now lost, gave rise to Latin and Irish redactions; twenty manuscript copies
of modern version made in Co. Cork, 1765-1833; one Patrick Stanton produced
twenty-one further copies in 1893; See Pádraig Ó Riain,
ed., The Life of Saint Finbarr (1994).
Works
Pádraig Ó Riain, Saint Finbarr of Cork, the Complete
Life [Irish Texts Society No. 57] (London, 1993); idem., ‘St
Finnbarr, a Study in a Cult’, JCHAS, 82 (1977) 63-82; idem.,
‘Another Cork Charter: the Life of Saint Finbarr’, JCHAS,
90 (1985) 1-13; Kenney, The Sources, 401-2; Plummer, Vitae I,
65-74; idem., Bethada I 11-22. [bibl. provided by Ó Riain.]
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Commentary
Pádraig Ó Riain, Saint Finbarr of Cork, the Complete
Life (Irish Texts Society 1994), reviewed by Tómas Ó
Canann [Harvard Prof. of Irish], in ILS (Fall 1995), p.34; includes
the edited biographies, an early vernacular Life c.1215-1230, suriving
in 15th c. MSS and later; a Latin Life written prior to 1350, known only
from later recensions; an office Life extant in late Latin and English
redactions that are derived in turn from from an original compiled c.1300-30;
a late vernacular Life of the 17th c. based on the earlier vernacular
Life; textual witnesses preserved in 58 MSS; reviewer refers to earlier
series of articles by Ó Riain making case for the Cork saint as
‘a local version of an othewise widely diffused cult which originated
with Finbarr, alias Finnian, patron and probable founder of the church
of Moville, nr. Bangor, Co. Down’; the historical Finbarr not known
to have left Ulster; Ó Riain traces his translation to Cork to
developments in Church organisation from 1137 when a Connacht monk, Gilla
Aeda Ua Muigin, was elected bishop of Cork. Note also Ó Riain,
ed., Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae.
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