Ua Gormáin, Máel Muire

Ua Gormáin, Máel Muire (fl. c.1170), abbot and martyrologist, appears to have belonged to the same distinguished ecclesiastical family as Flann Ua Gormáin (qv), who on his return to Ireland from his studies abroad became head of the school of Armagh, and Find Ua Gormáin (qv), bishop of Kildare (Ó Riain, Feastdays of the saints). Partly in response to a decree of the synod of Clane (1162), which enjoined ‘rule and good order’ on the Irish church, and partly because of the need to emphasise the healthy state of the Irish liturgy after the arrival of the English in 1169, a series of new martyrologies was produced at the end of the twelfth century. The first of these, the metrical and vernacular Martyrology of Gorman – which survives in a unique copy made by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh (qv) in 1630, now in the Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels (MS 5100–04) – was composed in rinnard mór metre by an Augustinian canon, Maél Muire Ua Gormáin, at Knock Abbey (Cnoc na nApstal) near Louth, between 1168 and 1170. The date proposed for the martyrology depends partly on information provided by the author, who stated that he was writing in the time of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (qv) (d. 1198), king of Ireland, Gilla Meic Liac (qv) (d. 1174), archbishop of Armagh, and Áed Ua Cáellaide (qv) (d. 1182), bishop of Airgialla, and partly on an entry in an antiphonary formerly belonging to the church of Armagh, which mentions the completion of the ‘chief books of the order of the year’ at Knock Abbey during the reign of Donnchad Ua Cerbaill (qv) (d. 1168–9). The date between 1171 and 1174, advocated by Dubois on account of the inclusion of the feast of Thomas Beckett (d. 1170), is unsustainable, because there are other, even later, entries – such as the previously mentioned Gilla Meic Liac – whose names appear to have been added to the text.

Little is known of Ua Gormáin beyond his status as abbot of Knock Abbey. The text of Máel Muire's martyrology provides some evidence of his personal interests. For example, his devotion to St Augustine is made clear by the inclusion in the text of three feast-days of the saint (28 August, 4 September, 11 October). Interestingly, his reference to the ‘black monks’ of Derry at 9 June would suggest that Augustinian canons had a foundation there long before the traditional date of their arrival in the early thirteenth century (Gwynn & Hadcock, 168–9). Other than the use of truag (8 August) and truagán (6 March), a term reminiscent of Latin pauper, to describe his monkish status, Ua Gormáin does not refer directly to himself. Among the sources used by him were copies of the Martyrology of Tallaght – his almost exclusive source of Irish saints – and of the Martyrology of Usuard. His is the earliest Irish martyrology to reveal the presence in Ireland of a copy of Usuard's very popular text.