AILERANO (Aileranus, Aieranus, Eerianus), called the Wise, Saint. - Little is known of his life. He was a monk at Clonard (v.) and, it seems, from 650 he headed that school. Bellesheim judges him one of the "most representative doctors" of Ireland in the 7th century. He died in 664 or 665. The Martyrology of Oengus (v.) commemorated him on December 29.

There survives from him an Interpretatio mystica Progenitorum Christi, interesting also for knowledge of the books that made up the monastic libraries of Ireland (St. Jerome, Origen, Arnobius, Philo, Flavius Josephus, etc.). A. sets out the traditional interpretation; from his manner of expression, he shows that he did not know Hebrew.

The little work, supplemented by the Moralis explanatio eorumdem nominum, was published, from a codex of St. Gall, by the Minorite Patrick Fleming, at Louvain (1667), together with the works of St. Columbanus. Later inserted in the Biblioteca maxima Patrum of Lyon in 1677 (XII, pp. 37-41), it was reproduced in PL 80, 327-42. But that edition is incomplete. Charles Mac-Donnel, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (7 [1857-61], pp. 369-71), published the missing part, from a manuscript of the Imperial Library of Vienna (Cod. theol., 119) which contains an unpublished work of Sedulius Scotus (v.), the Collectaneum in Matthaeum.

The poem called Kanon Evangeliorum (that is, In X canones Eusebi, seu concordantiam quatuor Evangelistarum), previously included among the poetic compositions of Alcuin (PL 101, 729), must be considered A.'s, as De Bruyne demonstrated, basing himself principally on cod. Barberin. 587.

Colgan (Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae, Louvain 1645, p. 140) attributes to A. three lives of saints (lost): of Brigid of Kildare, of Patrick and of Fechin of Fore.

Eugene O'Curry then (in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1 [1864], pp. 63-64) published, with an English translation, a prayer in Gaelic attributed to A. by the Yellow Book of Lecan, which has preserved its text.

A work entitled Rethorica Aierani (sic), which must have been a grammatical work of his, was to be found, in the 11th century, in the monastic library of St. Florian, near Linz.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: A. Bellesheim, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Irland, I, Mainz 1890, pp. 205-206; J. Healy, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars, Dublin 1902, pp. 206-207; L. Gougaud, Les Chrétientés Celtiques, Paris 1911, p. 259; D. De Bruyne, Une Poésie inconnue d'Aileran le Sage, in Revue Bénéd., 29 (1912), pp. 339-40 (for the meter cf. M. Manitius, Geschichte der chr. latein. Poesie, Stuttgart 1891, p. 481); J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, New York 1929, pp. 279-81 (with list of manuscripts); J. Ryan, Irish Monasticism, Dublin 1931, p. 381.

Igino Cecchetti

@incollection{ec1_ailerano_aileranus_aieranus_ai, author = {Cecchetti, Igino}, title = {Ailerano (Aileranus, aieranus, aieranus, eerianus), detto il sapiente, santo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {598}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ailerano-aileranus-aieranus-aieranus-eerianus-detto-il-sapiente-santo} }

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Ailerano, called the Wise, Saint

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