Brendan (Brandan), Saint (BRENDANO (BRANDANO), SANTO) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 57

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BRENDANO (BRANDANO), saint. – He belongs to the group of the great Irish monks of the 6th century. Patron saint of the Ciarraige, an ancient people scattered throughout the western part of Ireland, he founded his principal monastery, which is said to have housed as many as 3,000 disciples, at Clonfert in the county of Galvay in 558 or 564, and died, according to the Annales of Ulster, in 577 or 583. Other foundations of his are situated on islands in the River Shannon and in Loch Corrib. The fame and cult of the Saint were soon spread by seafaring peoples along all the Irish coasts, and from there into Scotland, England, and Wales. It is almost certain that B. went to the Scottish islands to visit s. Columba and to Wales to visit s. David; it is possible that he also undertook long Atlantic voyages. The fact is that when the folklore of the Irish maritime peoples fused with Christian visionary literature,

a most famous legend formed around his name, and he became the hero of a marvelous voyage toward fantastic islands lost in the mystery of the ocean and inhabited by the spirits of the departed. The texts that transmit the legend of B. derive from two documents: the Vita Brendani and the Navigatio Brendani, the latter of which has come down to us almost intact, whereas the Vita has suffered mutilations and interpolations. The full flowering of the legend of B. may be placed in the 9th century. The Latin text of the Navigatio is a literary work of value, written by an Irishman, almost certainly in Ireland, no later than the 10th century: it was spread by Irish pilgrims throughout Europe and gave rise to countless translations and adaptations in all the vernacular languages and even in dialects (in Italy, for example, texts survive in the old dialects of Lucca, Venice, and Loano). These pilgrimages of B. across the vast ocean, filled with spirituality and poetry, besides deserving, after the fine researches of Ozanam, Villari, and D'Ancona, to be counted among the sources of Dante, exerted a great influence on the imagination of seafaring peoples, down to the days of Christopher Columbus and beyond. The feast of B. falls on 16 May.

BIBL.: The only uncontaminated text of the Navigatio, although abridged, is given in Acta SS. Hibernica ex codice Salmanicensi, ed. C. De Smedt and J. De Backer, Edinburgh–Bruges 1888, pp. 759–72. – A good edition of the Latin text of the Navigatio was given by A. Jubinal, La légende latine de s. Brendaines, Paris 1836; P. F. Moran, Acta s. B., Dublin 1872, republished Jubinal’s text, collating it with other manuscripts. An ancient Italian version of the Navigatio was published by P. Villari, Antiche leggende e tradizioni che illustrano la Divina Commedia (appendix), Pisa 1865, and reprinted by G. Battelli, Le più belle leggende cristiane, Milan 1928, p. 436 ff., with interesting notes. – A text in the old Venetian dialect was published by F. Novati, La «Navigatio» s. Brendani» in antico veneziano, Bergamo 1892; one in the old Loano dialect by G. Vitaletti, in Giornale Dantesco, 2 (1922), and one in the old Lucca dialect by E. G. R. Waters, An Old Italian Version of the «Navigatio» s. Brendani», Oxford 1931. – BHL, 1436–48; supplement, Brussels 1911, pp. 59–60; J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I: Ecclesiastical, New York 1929; L. Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic Lands, London 1932; A. Tommasini, Irish Saints in Italy, there 1937. Anselmo M. Tommasini