Saint Who?
Saints Who Worked in Agriculture
Saint Ciaran of Clonmacnoise
Founder († c. 550)Feast: September 9
Ciaran (also Kieran), one of the so-called twelve apostles of Ireland, lived in the 6th century. His history is largely drawn from hagiographical sources. According to these, Ciaran worked as cowherd while he was young. A good patron for distance learning, he was tutored in the psalms by Saint Diarmatus. Ciaran worked in one end of a giant plain; Diarmatus was in his cell at the other end. Yet they heard each other without difficulty.
Ciaran was generous with his family’s cattle, often donating them to the poor. However, the herds were usually replenished in short order. Eventually Ciaran left the pastures to study under Saint Finnian of Clonard, a father of Irish monasticism. One of his cows and her calf followed him there. Grayish-brown, she became known as “Saint Ciaran’s Dun Cow,” and her milk supplied the entire monastery.
Ciaran founded the famous monastery of Clonmacnoise, of which he said: “Here will I live: for many souls shall go forth in this place to the kingdom of God, and in this place shall be my resurrection.” He died not long after, about the age of forty. “He was young in age,” wrote a biographer, “yet a most holy senior in mind and in manners, in humility, in gentleness, in charity, in daily labors, in nightly vigils, and in other divine works.”
Eternal Father, through the prayers of
Saint Ciaran, help us to see the wonders
you work every day.
