SAINT AILERAN - "SAPIENS THE WISE"

SAINT AILERAN

aka "Aireran", "Ercran" and 

"Sapiens the Wise" or "Aireran an teagnaidh"

{Aireran the Wise}

During the time between Christmas and New Years, my personal tradition is to try to get a jump on my New Years' resolutions, which usually include greater simplicity in the household and in my clothing. This typically will involve giving a lot to the poor - but I have already done that, and the only things left are clothings that, though WAY too big for me, I must keep because I have nothing else until I can make myself a wardrobe.

In the interest of our poor ecology, and with deference to my multiple allergies to chemicals, I try only to use natural fabrics when I make clothes. This means cotton, wool, linen and silk. It is ironic that these natural things are customarily more expensive than artificial fabrics that ruin the environment, but even though linen is more expensive than polyester, making my own clothing from linen is STILL less expensive than buying ready-made clothing. The robes and dresses I make will accommodate future weight loss so I don't have to do this again, and the type of clothing best suited to my needs can't be found among the ready-made options anyway. This year will be a year of tying up loose ends, simplifying, sewing, and preparing for a period of greater attention to my monastic routine

Resolutions for 2021 include pulling myself away from too much attention to political matters. Lord willing, I will finish the first draft of my novel. I will make myself a simple "capsule" wardrobe, including home-knit socks that I have to learn how to make. I would like to lose another 40 pounds. I hope to survive the Covid era. Those are my only real resolutions, though I have many projects in the queue. During social isolation, I will not be bored.

One of my perennial projects is the study of and meditation on some of the saints I find inspiring.  Being a Celtic gal, I am rather partial to the saints with Irish and Scottish links. In today's case, the saint was also a monastic as well as a highly intellectual type and a writer who penned a biography of Saint Patrick, as well as one (each) for Saints Brigid and Finian.

Saint Patrick

(Aileran wrote the 4th life of St. Patrick)

Apparently, Aileron was a highly esteemed scholar at the Abbey of Clonard, having been welcomed to it by Saint Finian himself. The modern "Clonard Monastery" is not the same facility. It is a more modern place, in the center of busy West Belfast in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

Saint Finian of Clonard

Clonard Abbey, where Saints Aileran and Finian resided, used to sit on the River Boyne which is now in the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent country that is not part of the U.K. It is in the County of Meath, and the village of Clonard is very near.

This is a photo of the approximate monastic site of Clonard, courtesy of Andreas F. Borchert. [See: LINK]

Site of former Clonard Abbey

In the year 650, Saint Aileran was made Rector of the Abbey, though it is hard to imagine him taking on the extra duties, considering the scholarly works he produced, as well as the fact that he became proficient in Latin and Greek during his time there, and proceeded to translate ancient works in those languages.

A fragment of his Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred Names is extant and is read aloud each year in various European scholarly institutions.

His last work was a treatise on the Genealogy of Christ, According to St. Matthew [An Allegorical Exposition of the Genealogy of Christ.] This was first published by Thomas Sirin, in 1667 under the title Ailerani Scoto-Hibernia, Cognomento Sapientis, Interpretatio Mystica Progenitorum. The explanation of the sacred names, mentioned above, was attached to it. Apparently, these are the only representatives of all his works, the previous mentioned biographies of Saints Finian and Brigid, as well as the other works, having been lost somewhere in time.

The work is detailed in the Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, edited by James Wills. A (free) copy of that work may be found, online, at THIS LINK.

Aileran died of the yellow fever on today's date in the year 665, which is detailed in the Annals of Ulster, under the name of Aileran the Wise.

When I read about the wonderful works that celebrated monastics are able to produce while attending to the daily office and becoming scholars and translators of multiple languages to boot, I sometimes wistfully long for a simpler life, and perhaps a life lived in common, that would allow me to concentrate my energies on intellectual pursuits. Modern life provides so many avenues of distraction that I often wonder if civilization is such a boon to humans, after all.

On the other hand, I feel tremendous gratitude for the inspirational gift of these manifold channels of education that come to me so easily through the internet here at home, and, truth to tell, I am not constitutionally suited to the rigors of the typical monastic life, considering my multifarious infirmities and a creative spirit with which I was born and which forms the basis of whatever "work" I can claim to do. 

When I examine my life with an eye toward making my New Year's Resolutions, it makes me a bit melancholy that I am not able to follow anything but the most modest standards of sanctity, but I am determined to work at remaining humble and satisfied with my limited gifts, and the whole of my life, with its domestic demands and frustrations. I tamp down the unrealized dreams when they arise, and I am indebted to the saints, whose lives I study are a wonderful illustration of holiness to which I aspire.

May we all be inspired by saints like Aileran, the Wise.

.

Silver Rose

Sannyasini Kaliprana