Saint Brendan the Navigator

Brendan the Navigator, also called Brendan the Voyager, was an Irish abbot and a founding figure of early Irish monasticism, commemorated on May 16. By tradition he was born about 484 near Tralee in County Kerry and reposed about 577 at Annaghdown in County Galway. He is best known both as the founder of the monastery of Clonfert and as the hero of the medieval sea-voyage legend that bears his name, in which he and his monks set out across the ocean in search of the Promised Land of the Saints.

Accounts relate that Brendan was baptized by Erc of Slane and was fostered for five years by St. Ita of Killeedy, the celebrated 'foster-mother of the Irish saints'; he is also said to have studied at the monastic school at Tuam associated with Jarlath. He is numbered among the saints linked to the wider current of Irish monastic learning of the sixth century, a generation sometimes called the 'Twelve Apostles of Ireland.' He founded several monasteries in Ireland, of which the greatest was Clonfert (Cluain Ferta Brenaind) in County Galway, where he served as abbot; foundations at Ardfert and Shanakeel and the community at Annaghdown are also associated with him.

Brendan's missionary and pastoral travels are said to have taken him by sea to the islands of Scotland and possibly to Wales. Out of these journeys grew the celebrated Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis ('The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot'), a Latin narrative of a seven-year sea pilgrimage in a hide-covered boat in search of the Promised Land of the Saints. The wording of the legend, its dating, and its many marvels are traditional rather than securely historical: scholars place the Navigatio within the Irish immram genre of seafaring tales, which weaves Christian allegory together with fantastic episodes, and note that little secure biographical information about Brendan survives.