St Ailbe
| Saint Ailbe or Elvis |
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|---|---|
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| Born | 5th Century |
| Died | 528 |
| Venerated in |
Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Canonized | Pre-Congregation |
| Feast | 12 September |
| Patronage | Munster, the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, wolves |
Saint Ailbe (Irish pronunciation: [ˈalʲvʲə]; Latin: Albeus), usually known in English as St Elvis, (British/Welsh) Eilfyw or Eilfw, was regarded as the chief 'pre-Patrician' saint of Ireland (although his death was recorded in the early 6th-century). He was a bishop, confessor and later saint. Little that can be regarded as reliable is known about Ailbe: in Irish sources from the 8th century he is regarded as the first bishop, and later patron saint of Emly in Munster. Later Welsh sources (from the 11th c.) associate him with Saint David whom he was credited with baptizing and very late sources (16th c.) even give him a local Welsh genealogy making him an Ancient Briton.
Saint Ailbe is venerated as one of the four great patrons of Ireland. His feast day is 12 September. He is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly.
The life of Ailbe is included in the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (VSH), a Latin collection of medieval Irish saints’ lives compiled in the 14th century. There are three major manuscript versions of the VSH: the Dublin, Oxford, and Salamanca. Charles Plummer compiled an edition of the VSH based on the two surviving Dublin manuscripts in 1910. William Heist compiled an edition of the single Salamanca manuscript in 1965 Oxford professor Richard Sharpe suggests that the Salamanca manuscript is the closest to the original text from which all three versions derive. Sharpe's analysis of the Irish name-forms in the Codex Salamanticensis showed similarities between it and the Life of Saint Brigid, a verifiably 7th-century text, leading him to posit that nine (and possibly ten) of the lives were written much earlier, c. 750–850. He further proposed that this earlier Life of Ailbe in the Codex Salmanticensis was originally composed to further the cause of the Éoganacht Church of Emly. In the same century, the Law of Ailbe (784) was issued, possibly in response to the Law of Patrick
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