Máel Ruain

Máel Ruain
Part of the copy of the Martyrology of Tallaght separated from the Book of Leinster and now at University College, Dublin
abbot-bishop of Tallaght
Died	792
Feast	July 7
Patronage	Tallaght (Co. Dublin)

Saint Máel Ruain (died 792) was founder and abbot-bishop of the monastery of Tallaght (Co. Dublin, Ireland). He is often considered to be a leading figure of the monastic 'movement' that has become known to scholarship as the Céli Dé. He is not to be confused with the later namesake Máel Ruain, bishop of Lusca (Co. Dublin).

Little is known of his life. Máel Ruain is not his personal name bestowed at birth or baptism, but his monastic name, composed of Old Irish máel ("one who is tonsured") and Ruain ("of Rúadán"), which may mean that he was a monk of St. Rúadán's monastery in Lothra (north Co. Tipperary). Though his background and early career remain obscure, he is commonly credited with the foundation of the monastery of Tallaght, sometimes called "Máel Ruain's Tallaght", in the latter half of the 8th century. This may be supported by an entry for 10 August in the Martyrology of Tallaght, which notes that Máel Ruain came to Tallaght carrying with him "relics of the holy martyrs and virgins" (cum suis reliquiis sanctorum martirum et uirginum), apparently with an eye to founding his house. There is at any rate no evidence for a religious establishment at Tallaght prior to Máel Ruain's arrival and although Tamlachtae, the Old Irish name for Tallaght, refers to a burial ground, it was not yet the rule for cemeteries to be located adjacent to a church. Precise details of the circumstances are unknown. A line in the Book of Leinster has been read as saying that in 774 the monk obtained the land at Tallaght from the Leinster king Cellach mac Dúnchada (d. 776), who came from the Uí Dúnchada sept of the Uí Dúnlainge branch of the Laigin, but there is no contemporary authority from the annals to support the statement. In the Martyrology of Tallaght and the entries for his death in the Irish annals (see below), he is styled a bishop.

The best known disciple of Máel Ruain's community was Óengus the Culdee, the author of the Félire Óengusso, a versified martyrology or calendar commemorating the feasts of Irish and non-Irish saints, and possibly also of the earlier prose version, the Martyrology of Tallaght. In his epilogue to the Félire Óengusso, written sometime after Máel Ruain's death, Óengus shows himself much indebted to his "tutor" (aite), whom he remembers elsewhere as "the great sun on Meath's south plain" (grían már desmaig Midi). In the early ninth century, Tallaght also seems to have produced the so-called Old Irish Penitential.