Finnian of Movilla

Origins and early life

The oldest secure records of this saint are an annal and a martyrology line. The Annals of Ulster enter under the year 579 the "repose of bishop Finnian moccu Fiatach" — the tribal surname marking him as one of the Dál Fiatach, the royal kindred of the Ulaid of east Ulster; the Martyrology of Donegal likewise makes him "of the race of Fiatach Fionn," as Forbes reports. The Martyrology of Óengus (early ninth century) commemorates him on September 10: "A kingpost of red gold with purity, over the swelling sea he came with law, a sage for whom Ireland is sad, Findbarr of Mag Bili" (Stokes's translation), and its glossator adds "Findbarr, i.e. of Mag Bile in Ulster." Findbarr ("fair-head") and Finnian are treated by the Irish sources as one name in two forms; William Reeves (quoted in Forbes) notes that the hagiographical genealogies give his father as Cairpre and his mother as Lassar.

The narrative of his early life rests on much later legend, chiefly the Latin life of "Winninus" printed in Capgrave's Nova Legenda Anglie (15th century), and is reported here as such: his sanctity foretold by Patrick, his schooling first under Colmán and then under Caelán, abbot of Nendrum on Strangford Lough, and his removal by the British bishop Nennio to the "Magnum Monasterium" — identified with Candida Casa, the monastery of Ninian's foundation at Whithorn in Galloway; then a sojourn at Rome, where Ussher's chronology (followed by the Scottish antiquaries) places his ordination about 540, before his return to Ireland. The Orthodox England list condenses the same tradition: born near Strangford Lough, he became a monk in Scotland before founding Movilla.

The founder of Movilla

Returning to his own country, Finnian founded the monastery of Mag Bile ("the plain of the sacred tree"), Movilla, near Newtownards in Co. Down, about the middle of the sixth century; Reeves adds a second foundation at Druim Fionn (Dromin) in Co. Louth. Movilla became one of the great schools of the Irish church, and its founder was venerated as a scriptural scholar above all: the glosses on Óengus preserve the tradition that it was Finnian of Mag Bile who "brought the whole Gospel in one volume first to Ireland" — a copy of Jerome's text — though the glossator himself adds the honest caution ut ferunt, si uerum est, "as they say, if it be true."

Columba and the psalter

Irish tradition makes Finnian the master of Columba of Iona. Adomnán's Life of Columba shows the young Columba in his diaconate living in Ireland with "the holy bishop Findbarr" (the name appears as Uinniau in part of the manuscript tradition), for whom he worked the miracle of water turned to wine for the liturgy; the tradition identifies this master with Finnian of Movilla, though the same name-forms are also claimed for Finnian of Clonard. The later Irish lives of Columba tell how the pupil secretly copied his master's psalter, how Finnian claimed the copy, and how the high king Diarmait mac Cerbaill judged for Finnian in the words remembered as the first copyright ruling: "to every cow her calf, to every book its son-book" — the quarrel that tradition places among the causes of the battle of Cúl Dreimhne and of Columba's exile. The tale is told in the medieval and later lives, not in Adomnán, and modern reference works caution that it has no secure historical basis; it is recorded here as the tradition that made Finnian's psalter one of the most consequential books in Irish memory.

Repose

The Annals of Ulster place his repose in 579, and Reeves notes that Tighernach agrees; other annalistic compilations are reported to give 576 (the Annals of Inisfallen) and 589, and the received accounts vary between these years. Irish tradition holds that he was buried at his own Movilla, "amid many miracles," as Healy reports it.

Veneration and later cultus

His cult travelled with his name. In Ireland his feast is September 10 — the day kept by the Martyrology of Óengus and by the York calendar — with February 11 also recorded; in Scotland he was venerated as Winnin or Wynnin of Kilwinning in Ayrshire, where the abbey later rose at the place of his church and his feast was kept on January 21, with wells and place-names in Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire preserving the name; Capgrave's life indeed buries him "in Cunningham, at the place called Kilwinning," against the Irish claim of Movilla — the two burial traditions are simply irreconcilable and are both recorded. Reeves identified the Ayrshire saint with the founder of Movilla through the identical parents' names and the feast on the fourth of the ides of September (September 10).

A larger identification, argued by Colgan and endorsed by Reeves as having "good reason," makes Finnian of Movilla the same man as Frigidian (Frediano) of Lucca in Tuscany (feast March 18, translation November 18), the Irish-born bishop praised by Gregory the Great in the Dialogues: the continental lives of Frigidian agree with the Irish records on his extraction, his education, and even his church of Mag Bile, and Frigidian's death is placed at 578, a year from the Ulster annal. Against it stands the plain fact that Lucca venerates Frigidian's body while Irish tradition keeps Finnian's grave at Movilla. The question is recorded here without being resolved.