Ailbe of Emly

Ailbe is a saint with an early and secure cultus but a late and legendary biography. The oldest witnesses — the annals and the martyrologies — give only his name, his church and his day; everything narrative comes from a Latin Vita Sancti Albei preserved in the fourteenth-century collections of Irish saints' Lives (the Codex Salmanticensis text, edited by Heist, is thought closest to an original of perhaps the eighth or ninth century), and that Life was shaped by a later church-political argument, as noted below. What follows keeps the strata distinct.

Origins and early life

The Vita makes Ailbe the son of Olcán (Olchu), a servant of Crónán, a chieftain of Éile in what is now Tipperary, and of a maidservant of the household. The father fled before the child's birth; the chieftain ordered the infant exposed, and he was left at a rock, where — so the legend — a she-wolf found and suckled him, until a man named Lochán took him in. The tale is transparently etymological: ail is "rock" and beo "living," and Baring-Gould already judged the derivation doubtful and the story a fable started from it. The Life adds a sequel: many years later, when Ailbe was a bishop present at a wolf-hunt, an old she-wolf fled for refuge under his cloak, and he protected and fed her and her cubs thereafter. The Vita then has the boy fostered among Britons settled in Munster, where a Christian priest overheard him wondering aloud who had made the stars, instructed him and baptized him.

Ministry

The Life sends Ailbe abroad — to Britain with his foster-family, and then to Rome, where he is said to have studied Scripture under a bishop Hilary and to have been consecrated bishop; in the most extravagant form of the story the Pope declines to lay hands on so holy a man and Ailbe is consecrated by angels. On the continent the Life also brings him to Samson at Dol — an anachronism, since Samson did not reach Dol until about 546. Returning to Ireland, the Life takes him through the north and to Brigid at Kildare (Brigid of Kildare), then south to Cashel and King Óengus mac Nad Froích of Munster (†489). There, the tradition runs, he met Patrick, and it was settled that Ailbe should be bishop over Munster with his seat at Emly — Imlech Ibair, "the lakeside border of the yew," beside a lake in Tipperary that has since been drained. The Life of Declan tells the same story at greater length: four holy bishops — Ailbe, Bishop Ibar, Declan and Ciarán — evangelized in Ireland before Patrick came; the others chose Ailbe as their superior; and Ailbe, seeing the kings of Ireland submit to Patrick, came first of them to Cashel and submitted, so that the rest might follow. In the presence of the assembly the archbishopric of Munster was ordained to Ailbe, and Patrick made the verse: "Humble Ailbe, the Patrick of Munster, greater than any saying."

Around the see of Emly the sources gather a wide circle. When Enda sought a monastic home, it was Ailbe — whose sister, in this tradition, had been Óengus's first wife — who interceded with the king to grant him the Aran Islands, which Óengus conceded once he had seen what a bare rock he was giving away. The Lives name disciples and correspondents across Munster and beyond: Colmán placed at Cell Ruaid among the Dál Riada, Ciannán of Duleek, Colmán of Dromore, Nessán of Mungret; the Life of Declan has Colmán, half-brother of Declan, baptized and professed at Ailbe's hands, and the Life of Findchua has Ailbe baptize that saint. The Vita says he sent disciples to Rome for a better text of the liturgy, and — in one of its most curious notices — that, weary of office, he wished to sail away to the isle of Thule, and King Óengus set watches on the harbours to prevent his bishop's escape.

Repose

The Annals of Ulster enter his death three times — "Repose of St Ailbe" under 527, "Repose of Ailbe of Imlech Ibuir" under 534, and "Ailbe rests" under 542 — a duplication that is itself evidence of how the early annal record was assembled; the Annals of Inisfallen (compiled at Emly) give 528, the Chronicon Scotorum 531, and Baring-Gould held the 541/542 obit to belong to another Ailbe, of Senchua. The traditional date of his repose is accordingly given as about 527–528, and no source transmits his age or the manner of his death. The Life of Declan gives the old man a farewell: knowing his last days had come, "Ailbe of Emly Iubar, chief bishop of Munster" journeyed to visit his beloved friend Declan, and the two parted at Druim Luchtradh weeping, knowing they would not meet again in this world.

Veneration and later cultus

The cultus is early, constant and Munster-wide. The Félire Óengusso (c. 800) sings on September 12, in Stokes's translation, "Celebrate Ailbe's feast", and its glosses identify him — "Ailbi, i.e. of Imliuch Ibair" — and give him a pedigree; the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Martyrology of Donegal keep the same day, and the metrical martyrology of Ó Gormáin salutes "Ailbe of Imlech Ibair." He is invoked in the litanies of the Stowe Missal, the oldest Irish mass-book. Emly remained the chief church of Munster until the primacy passed to Cashel at the twelfth-century reorganisation, and Ailbe remains patron of the (Roman Catholic) archdiocese of Cashel and Emly. In England, Whytford's Martiloge of 1526 enters on September 12 "in yrelond ye feest of saynt Albey bysshop and confessor of synguler perfectyon and many myracles" (quoted by Baring-Gould), and Nicholas Roscarrock's calendar keeps the same day.

In Wales Ailbe is held to be the saint called Eilfyw or Elfyw — Latinized Elvis, whence the ruined church and parish of St Elvis (Llanailfyw) near St Davids in Pembrokeshire. Rhygyfarch's late eleventh-century Life of St David makes him the baptizer of David of Wales — the Vita Albei tells the same story from the Irish side, with Ailbe in Menevia discerning that a woman in the congregation carried a future bishop in her womb — and the Welsh genealogies make him David's kinsman, a son of Dirdan. Whether the Pembrokeshire Eilfyw was originally the Irish Ailbe or a distinct local saint drawn into his legend, the sources do not allow one to say; see below.

Hymnographic and literary legacy

An Old Irish metrical Rule of Ailbe — monastic counsels addressed to one Éogan son of Sárán — is transmitted under his name (Royal Irish Academy MS 23 N 10; edited by J. O'Neill in Ériu 3, 1907). It is a work of perhaps the ninth century and evidence of Emly's standing as a monastic school rather than of Ailbe's authorship. The Vita's closing praise of his humility, meekness, charity, fasting and vigils is the nearest thing to a portrait the record offers.