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It is often claimed that Saint Moninna was a sister of our patron saint Patrick.
It is unlikely. Perhaps the confusion rises from the common given name Darerca, since Patrick is also said to have had a sister of that name.
In his Confessio Patrick speaks of the number of converts made by him and his followers on their travels; he says that he does not know the number who ‘are born of our kind and generation’ .
In the historical context we should note that
the term sister is used to identify faithful female followers. As
such, Moninna was a sister, much as we today use this term to identify
holy nuns. He alludes to a spiritual and not a familial generation.
He would not have been ignorant of the number of children of his actual
married sisters along with him. Remember that Patrick was first taken
as a slave to Ireland. Saint Moninna’s father, Machta was prince of
the Conaille of Muirthemhne, Louth and ruler of a territory stretching
to the neighbourhood of Armagh. (Up to a millennium later this was
Magennis land and once described as the Lordship of Glanconnell). Her
mother, Coman was a daughter of a Northern king.
Moninna may in fact be a pet name, from the
Irish and incorporating the possessive pronoun with an endearing
suffix; perhaps Mo Bhlinne. This also explains why in the literature
she is sometimes referred to as Saint Bline. In the Codex
Salamanticensis (a folio of Lives of the Saints, formerly held in the
Irish college in Salamanca, Spain) we read of the ‘Life of St Darerca
or Moninna’.
One story tells how Saint Patrick when
passing through the lands of Machta called with him and blessed his
wife and little daughter and prophesied that one day her name would be
long remembered in those lands. Since her years on earth are given as
approximately 435-518 and Patrick died about 461, this is not
impossible.
Saint Moninna made her first convent at
Faughart (Bridget of Kildare and Faughart came the following (sixth)
century). We do not know why she left this in the charge of a Saint
Orbilla and retired a few miles north where she made the Convent of
Cill Sleibhe Cuilinn or Church of Slieve Gullion. There is a folk
story that there was some disagreement among her followers of what
exact location to choose, some preferring an elevated site in the
townland of Killian. While the debate raged a bell was heard ringing
at Ballintemple intimating that it should be built there.
The Convent survived her death but its
importance in later years must have been slight to judge from the rare
allusions to it in the Irish Annals. Today the remains in the townland
of Ballintemple are simply known as Killevy (church of the mountain)
the distinctive name ending being omitted. Moninna’s saint day is
celebrated on July 6.
The Convent of Saint Moninna became a
monastery in the care of the Culdees, a brotherhood of men which it
still was at its suppression under the Tudor monarch Henry VIII in the
1540s.
The church ruins now on the site comprise two
distinct churches joined lengthwise. The smaller and older measures 16
yards by 8 yards and is characterised by a most impressive, low lintel
doorway built of three massive shaped granite stones. The more recent
church measures 24 yards by 8 yards and has a very impressive arched
window with angel carvings still visible on its outside. It is unknown
whether the seized buildings were used for worship by the few adherents
of the Reformed Church of that time in this area.
Ironically the principal planter family
Seaver was descended from a converted Catholic Nicholas Seaver of Lusk,
County Dublin who moved here on his marriage to Elinor, daughter of
Marmaduke Whitchurch who was given a royal grant of confiscated land.
On his death in 1687 he was succeeded by a son Charles who married his
cousin, Mary Powell. On his death in 1722 he was succeeded by Jonathan
who became hereditary Sheriff of Co Armagh in 1748. His son Thomas,
who built the family residence known as Heath Hall succeeded him two
years later. In turn he was succeeded by the infamous Jonathan,
‘Seaver of the Bog’. He founded the Killevy Yeomanry – largely
recruited from Eshwarry and Divernagh – that, along with that brutal
Welsh regiment known as the Ancient Britons, ravaged and brutalised
Irish and Catholic homesteads the length and breadth of South Armagh.
Now buried in Meigh COI cemetery he died in 1841 at the age of eighty
one years.
(Photo above was taken from Meigh COI cemetery looking south-eastwards towards Faughart). |
History 
