Life
[also St. Finbar, from Fionnbar (‘white head’); otherwise Finnian],
patron saint of Cork though historically connected with Moville Church
on the Ards peninsula [i.e., former Movilla, now Newtownards], and the
nearby monastery of Bangor, Co. Down; appears under the name Vennianus
in letter from Columbanus to Pope Gregory (AD600), accrediting him with
establishing the Irish penitential; unlikely to have visited Cork where
his cult developed; a life written there 1196 and 1200 assigns his birthplace
to Ráth Raithlenn (now Garranes); Gougane Barra and other prominent
religious sites in Co. Cork associated with him; twelfth-century life,
now lost, gave rise to Latin and Irish redactions; twenty manuscript copies
of modern version made in Co. Cork, 1765-1833; one Patrick Stanton produced
twenty-one further copies in 1893; See Pádraig Ó Riain,
ed., The Life of Saint Finbarr (1994).
Criticism
Pádraig Ó Riain, Saint Finbarr of Cork, the Complete
Life [Irish Texts Society No. 57], (London, 1993).
Pádraig Ó Riain., ‘St Finnbarr, a Study in a Cult’, JCHAS, 82 (1977) 63-82.
Pádraig Ó Riain., ‘Another Cork Charter: the Life of Saint Finbarr’, JCHAS, 90 (1985) 1-13.
Kenney, The Sources, 401-2; Plummer, Vitae I, 65-74; idem., Bethada I 11-22. [bibl. provided by Ó Riain.]
Tómas Ó Concheanainn, Review of Pádraig Ó Riain, Saint Finbarr of Cork, the Complete Life (Irish Texts Society 1994), in ILS (Fall 1995), p.34.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)