Ailbe of Emly

Saint Ailbe^[1] (pronounced "Alva" or "Elva") was a fifth-century Irish bishop^[2].

He is sometimes claimed as one of the pre-Patrician Saints (saints from before the time of Saint Patrick), with Ciaran, Declan, and Ibar, but the annals note his death in 528 (i.e., after the death of Saint Patrick in 460). A tradition held that he went to Rome and was ordained bishop by the Pope. He founded the monastery and Diocese of Emly (in Irish: Imlech), which became very important in Munster. A ninth-century Rule bears his name.

Ailbe baptised St David^[3][4], patron saint of Wales. There was a church dedicated to Saint Ailbe in the hamlet of Saint Elvis near Solva ^[5], Pembroke, Wales, UK,^[6] near St David's; it is long in ruins^[7]. There is still a shrine to St. Elvis^[8] which bears an inscription making the connection between the two variants of the name, and confirming that St. Elvis baptised St. David.^[9]

Legend

Ailbe was born to the king of Munster and a slave-woman. The king refused to acknowledge him and ordered him killed, but the man who was supposed to murder him instead gave him to a she-wolf to be raised. Not long after, Britons living in Ireland fostered him. When they wished to return to Britain, they refused to let Ailbe come with them. However, they were unable to make the crossing without him and he sailed with them the next day. He then crossed to Gaul, with difficulty, because he wished to go to Rome. He was educated and ordained in Rome by a Saint Hilary [male], then sent to the pope to be made a bishop. The hagiographer claims that he fed the populace of Rome for three days after his consecration and then went home to Ireland. There he became involved with local royal politics and founded the See of Emly. At the end of his life, a supernatural ship came and he boarded to learn the secret of his death. After returning from the other world, he went back to Emly (Imlech) to die and be buried.^[10]

Manuscripts and dating

The vita, or "life," of Ailbe is included in the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (VSH), a collection of medieval Irish saints’ lives in Latin compiled in the fourteenth century. There are three major manuscript versions of the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (VSH): Dublin, Oxford, and Salamanca (Codex Salmanticensis), all compiled in the 14th century. 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 (Codex Salamanticensis) 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 analyzes the Irish-name forms in the Codex Salamanticensis and, based on the similarities between it and the Life of Saint Brigid (a verifiably seventh-century text), posits that nine, possibly ten, of the lives in the Salamanca Codex were written much earlier, circa 750 - 850.^[11]

Notes

References

• de Paor, Liam (trans.) (1993). Saint Patrick’s World: The Christian Culture of Ireland’s Apostolic Age. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 
• Gougaud, Louis (1932). Christianity in Celtic Lands. 
• Heist, W.W. (ed.) (1965). Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, ex codice olim Salmanticensi nunc Bruxellensi. Lives of the Saints of Ireland, from the Salamanca manuscript now of Brussels. Subsidia Hagiographica 28. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 
• O'Neill, J. (1907). "The Rule in Ailbe of Emly". Ériu 3: 92-115. http://www.ria.ie/publications/journals/Eriu. 
• Plummer, Charles (1968, 1910). Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. Lives of the Saints of Ireland.. II (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon. http://www.archive.org/details/vitaesanctorumh00plumgoog. 
• Sharpe, Richard (1991). Medieval Irish saints' lives: an introduction to Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=mg7fITFJO1EC&dq=vitae+sanctorum+hiberniae++heist&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0. 

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