New Year's Day?

 January 1 ... should it be the Circumcision or the Theotokos? I'm not going to 'explain' this again; the traditional propers for our Lady are the propers we used to call the Circumcision, so this is a question simply of labeling, not of realities.

Much more excitingly, I'm going to offer you a Third Alternative: Saint Scetha.

If you approached a significant Irish church on a Sunday morning during parts of the First Christian Millennium, the likelihood is that you would, as you grew near, hear ... singing. Singing which you would recognise as the Litany. And as it drew to its end, among the last three invocations, you would hear Sancta Scetha Ora Pro Nobis. And if, being a naturally inquisitive person, you sought further information about this lady, you might be told that her Feast Day is January 1. And you might remember that this Blog once gave you the information that in the Early Christian Irish World, inserting somebody into the Litany counts as what we would call canonisation. The Abbot might even ... during the chanting of the Litany ... send a message across to the singers instructing them to ad NN or MM to the list of those to be Invoked!

There would be likely to be members of the Congregation or the Christian Community who remembered the day when the holy religious lady Scetha was Put On The List ... i.e. canon-ised.

Scetha has another festival, you might discover, on September 6 ... G F Warner will inform you that this second Memorial commemorates the arrival of her Relics at Tallaght. Dr MacCarthy tells us that Scetha was a Virgin; and that she was enshrined at Fert Sceithe in the County Cork, circa 622. If I've got this wrong, I hope somebody will instruct me: I think Fert(a) in early Irish means something like Place of Graves. 

Back in the eighties, Charles Doherty gave information on the Cult of Relics during this period, which I plagiarise. 

It was in the seventh century in Britain and Ireland that the cult of relics really began to develop. There was a great plague in 664 and diseases and famines in the closing years of the century; at the start of the eighth an increase in stress and disorder in society. We find this reflected in the amount of archival activity that took place ... and relics assumed an added importance against this background. The circuits of many different saints became common, especially after bad weather, diseases in men and cattle. Contemporary sources attribute 'the translation of relics' as a rsult of the increase  in the evils in society.

One collector of relics was so avid that he would not remain in a church which refused to give him some of her relics (remember that a corpse could be divided); Indeed, someone with a reputation for sanctity might be in danger of losing a limb while still alive. Armagh made elaborate arrangement to collect relics; the church of Ard Patrick in Limerick was a great ccollecting point for the tribute of Munster. The insignia of a saint ... his bells, books, and crosiers ... were used th demand tribute. The virtues of each relic were extolled and the power of eaxch was described by appeal to one extravagant miracle after another.

A well-known account of the basilica (relic-endowed church) at Kildare describes the enshrined bodies of bishop Conlaeth and of huius virginis florentissimae Brigidae ... on each side of the Altar ... vario cultu et argenti et gemmarum et pretiosi lapidis atque coronis aureis et argenteis desuper pendentibus ...

I wonder how sumptuously those lads at Tallaght provided for S Scetha, once they had secured, 'translated', her relics from North Cork to Tallaght.

In hoc anno novo dignare Scetha sancta orare pro nobis.