Máedóc of Ferns
Irish bishop and saint
Saint Máedóc of Ferns (Old Irish: [ˈmaːi̯ðoːɡ]; fl. 6th & 7th century), also known as Saint Aidan (Irish: Áedan; Welsh: Aeddan; Latin: Aidanus), Saint Madoc or Saint Mogue (Irish: Mo Aodh Óg), was an Irish saint. He was the first Bishop of Ferns in County Wexford, and the founder of thirty churches.
Biography
Áed was born c. 558 at Inisbrefny (an island in Templeport Lake), in the area then known as Magh Slécht, now the parish of Templeport, County Cavan. In the Welsh genealogies of the saints, Aeddan is called the son of Gildas or Aneurin, sons of Caw, king of Strathclyde; Irish sources make him a son of Sedna, a chieftain of Connaught and his wife Eithne and a first cousin of St. Dallán Forgaill. These separate origins, his work in Wales, the extraordinary span of Aidan's activity, and the appearance of two dates of death has led some scholars—such as Sabine Baring-Gould—to propose that the existing stories of Maedoc are a conflation of two separate Aeds, one Welsh and one Irish, who served as Bishop of Ferns a generation apart. There is also confusion of these Aeds with Aed mac Bricc, who preceded them and possibly participated in the cursing of Tara with Saint Ruadhán.
Irish legend says that the "Bell of St.
The public source identifies “Máedóc of Ferns” as irish bishop and saint. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Máedóc, Ferns and Irish.
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This entry incorporates text from “Máedóc of Ferns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.