Colmán of Cloyne

Colmán of Cloyne
Stained glass window of Colmán in Buttevant, created by Franz Mayer & Co. in 1886
Born	(522-10-15)15 October 522 Munster
Died	24 November 600(600-11-24) (aged 78)
Venerated in	Roman Catholicism
Major shrine	cathedral
Feast	24 November
Patronage	Patron Saint of the Diocese of Cloyne and of its cathedral in Cóbh.

Saint Colmán of Cloyne (530 – 606), also Colmán mac Léníne, was a monk, founder and patron of Cluain Uama, now Cloyne, County Cork, Ireland, and one of the earliest known Irish poets to write in the vernacular.

No hagiographical Life is known to have been written for Colmán, but various aspects of his life are presented in different types of sources, such as Irish annals, genealogies and martyrologies. An early origin tale known as Conall Corc and the Corco Loígde, which survives only as part of the Irish genealogical tract in MS Laud 610, includes a few brief notes on the saint. This text was probably written at St Colmán's foundation of Cloyne and though it cannot be precisely dated, a rough approximate of c. 700 or earlier has been suggested.

Irish genealogies generally agree that Colmán had a father called Lénín. Through his father, Colmán appears to have been descended from the Rothrige, an obscure people who are known elsewhere as a subject people of the Déisi of Munster. Irish genealogies, however, go some way to associating Colmán's lineage with the Éoganachta, the leading ruling dynasty in Munster. One early item of genealogical information, which specifically identifies the Mac Léníni and Mac Duinich as sub-branches of the Rothrige (though it does not name Colmán), achieves this by making their eponymous progenitor Eochaid Rothán a son of the Éoganacht ancestor Mug Nuadat. The saint's genealogies later come to trace Colmán's ancestry to Mug Nuadat through seven generations. This prominence accorded to the Éoganachta in the genealogies is to be seen in the light of Colmán's monastic career and the position of Cloyne after his death (see below).

The text Conall Corc and the Corco Loígde includes a brief triad in which Colmán is named as one of the three "ex-laymen" (athláich) of Ireland, along with Énna of Aran and Móchammac of Inis Celtra (though it also adds a fourth, Bishop Erc in Sláne of Mag Breg). The use of the word athláech here has been taken to suggest that Colmán became a cleric at a somewhat later age than was usual at the time. Later tradition claims that it was the Connacht saint Brendan of Clonfert who finally persuaded him to do so.