Saint Samthann

Samthann /ˈsævhæn/, modernised spelling Samhthann or Samthana, is an Irish folk saint, purportedly a Christian nun and abbess in Early Christian Ireland. She is one of only four female Irish saints for whom Latin Lives exist. She died on 19 December 739. The only extant Life of St Samthann survives in three manuscripts, with the most complete form being in an early fourteenth-century manuscript, in Oxford, at the Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B. 485 ff.150-3, as part of the Codex Insulensis. Charles Plummer used all three manuscripts in his edition of the text, and notes that the other two forms of the Life are dependent on the Bodleian one. In addition to Plummer's Latin edition, the Life has also been translated into English by Dorothy Africa. There is only a small degree of variation between the three manuscripts, and no important omissions or additions, supporting the belief that this was a fairly faithful copy of the posited original that had undergone no drastic ecclesiastical editing. The author's Latin is somewhat stilted, and prone to the occasional clichéd metaphorical phrase, but falls short of the overly convoluted style favoured in Late Latin writing. With one exception, the chronology of the Life follows a straightforward pattern beginning with the saint's marriage and ending with her death. The exception is a miracle regarding the saint's staff, occurring at chapter seventeen, which, whilst not specifically stated as such, would logically appear to belong after the saint's death. The only other apparent error is in the final chapter, where Lasrianus, the founder of Devenish in Lough Erne, who died nearly two centuries earlier is represented as still being alive at the time of Samthann's death. Plummer ascribes this error to the writer's ignorance of the name of the then abbot of Devenish (he is unnamed when previously mentioned in §10), believing that he inserted the only abbot he did know, whose Life he may well have had access to.