BRENDAN (Brandan), Saint. - He belongs to the group of the great Irish monks of the 6th century. Patron saint of the Ciarraige, an ancient people scattered over the western part of Ireland, he founded his principal monastery, which is said to have housed as many as 3000 disciples, at Clonfert in County Galway in 558 or 564, and he died, according to the Annals of Ulster, in 577 or 583. Other foundations of his are placed on islands of the river Shannon and of Loch Corrib. The fame and the 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 islands of Scotland to visit St. Columba and to Wales to visit St. David: it is possible that he also made long Atlantic voyages. The fact is that when the folklore of the Irish maritime peoples fused with Christian visionary literature, there formed around his name a very famous legend, he becoming the hero of a marvellous voyage toward fantastic islands lost in the mystery of the ocean and inhabited by the spirits of the dead. The texts that give us the legend of B. derive from two documents: the Vita Brendani and the Navigatio Brendani, the second of which has come down to us almost intact, while the Vita has suffered mutilations and interpolations. The full flowering of the legend of B. can 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 all Europe and had immemorial translations and adaptations in all the vernacular languages and even in dialects (for Italy, for example, texts survive in the ancient Lucchese, Venetian and Loanese dialects). These pilgrimages of B. in the vast ocean, full of spirituality and of poetry, besides deserving, after the fine researches of Ozanam, Villari and D'Ancona, to be numbered among the Dantean sources, have exercised 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.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: The only uncontaminated text of the Navigatio, however abbreviated, is given in Acta SS. Hibernica ex codice Salmanicensi, ed. C. De Smedt and J. De Backer, Edinburgh-Bruges 1888, pp. 759-72. - Of the Latin text of the Navigatio a good edition 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 redaction 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 ancient Venetian dialect was given by F. Novati, La «Navigatio» s. Brendani» in antico veneziano, Bergamo 1892; one in the ancient Loanese dialect by G. Vitaletti, in Giornale Dantesco, 2 (1922), and one in the ancient Lucchese 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, ibid. 1937.

Anselmo M. Tommasini

@incollection{ec3_brendano_brandano_santo, author = {Tommasini, Anselmo Maria}, title = {Brendano (Brandano), santo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {57--58}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/brendano-brandano-santo} }

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Brendan (Brandan), Saint

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