Click stars for the Universe today

Cafe Diem! Our store

Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis

Voyage of Saint Brendan

Travel in the Middle Ages

A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore

May 16 | Feast day of St Brendan the Elder (aka, the Navigator, or Voyager)

This most widely diffused of all legendary saints, St Brendan, is found in manuscripts of all Western European languages, and the travels of St Brendan are the subject of a popular medieval romance, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of Saint Brendan). 

Some say that Brendan sailed from Ireland and found America in the 6th century. In the 1970s, Tim Severin showed that it was possible to sail a coracle (a small boat made of wood and leather) to America, so it is possible, if unlikely, that Irish monks might have preceded Christopher Columbus by several centuries.

Founder and first abbot of the monastery at Clonfert, Galway, Brendan went looking for the island that had once contained Adam and Eve's paradise. He got a ship victualled for seven years, and for 12 monks, but two more wanted to come. “Ye may sail with me”, he said, “but one of you will go to perdition ere you return”.

 After 40 days they saw land and sailed around it for three days, when they went ashore. A dog came up and made him welcome "in his manner”. The hound took them to a fine hall with a feast spread out, which they ate. There were beds ready for them, so they slept, and the next day they put to sea again and went a long time without seeing land.

After some time they found a beautiful land with green pasture and a flock of the whitest, fattest sheep they’d ever seen, every one as big as an ox. A kind old man came and said “This is the Island of Sheep, and here is never cold weather, but ever Summer; and that causes the sheep to be so big and white.” He told them to sail east, whence they would come to the Paradise of Birds, where they could keep their Easter-tide celebrations.

As they soon came to land, they made a fire to cook dinner, but their island began to move and Brendan’s intrepid travellers fled to the ship. The sainted leader of this fabulous expedition told his crew that the cause was a great fish called Jascon (Jasconius), “which laboured night and day to put its tail in its mouth, but for greatness it could not”.

They came upon the Paradise of Birds, where one bird said that the birds of this land were formerly angels who had fallen from Paradise with Lucifer. On Easter Day the bird said that it had now been one year since Brendan had left his abbey; when seven years were up he would find what he wanted, and in all these seven years he would keep his Easter-tide with the birds. The birds sang all the Christian hymns of Easter.

On Christmas Day, Brendan’s party found an island with 24 monks. Travelling ever onward, St Brendan and crew had the next Easter on the back of Jascon. Later, they came to an island of frightening fire, and one of the crew jumped overboard in fear, fulfilling the saint’s prophecy.

Brendan died in 578. The others found their island paradise, bringing back food and jewels. The legend influenced the West's search for other lands for centuries, and as late as 1721 the Spanish government sent an expedition in search of Brendan's Paradise.

His patronage includes boatmen, mariners, sailors, travellers, watermen and whales.

May 16 is also the Feast day of St John Nepomucen (or St John of Nepomuk)
(Great star of Bethlehem, Ornithogalum umbrellatum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

This 14^th century Bohemian churchman is the patron saint of Czechoslovakia. He was born at Nepomuk, Bohemia, 1340; some sources say he died in Prague, March 20, 1393, while others say it was on the vigil of the Ascension (May 16), 1383. He was canonized in 1729.

John was the confessor of Queen Sophie, consort of Wenceslaus IV, King of Germany and Emperor of Bohemia. The king tried to force St John to reveal to him the secrets of his virtuous wife’s confessions, and when John refused, Wenceslaus had the saint tortured and drowned in Prague’s Muldaw River.

The moment St John’s body touched the water, thousands of tiny stars encircled it and a fire burned on the river's surface. A stream of light issued from deep in the river, "reflecting the glory of the martyr's soul”. His body drifted slowly downstream throwing off rays of light in all directions. A "troop of light," followed the body, as if to represent a funeral procession. The whole city came alive with excitement and citizens gathered to see the spectacle, while the tyrant, terrified by the news, fled to a house in the country, forbidding any one to follow him.

St John’s tongue did not rot after his death, and his tomb has been the site of many miracles. Or, so it is said.

John Nepomucen is patron saint of confessors, Bohemia, bridge builders, bridges, Czechoslovakia, discretion, running water and silence, and is also invoked against calumnies, against indiscretions, against slander and against floods.

On May 16, 1763 one of Western history’s most celebrated friendships commenced. James Boswell first met Dr Samuel Johnson, whose famous biography he later wrote and published on this day in 1791. They met in the back parlour of Tom Davies' London bookshop.