Saint Conaire (feast day January 28) was an Irish holy woman who died in 530 AD. Originally from Bantry Bay in the south of Ireland, modern County Cork, she was an anchorite ; living in solitude in a self-imposed spiritual exhile from society. Nearing the end of her life, she had a vision of all the monasteries in Ireland, and, extending from each upwards to the Heavens, was a pillar of fire.
The fire-pillar from Saint Senan’s monastery at Inis Cathaig, in the mouth of the Shannon River, was the highest, and the straightest towards Heaven ; and Conaire set off in its direction, judging it to be the most holy.
“Let me be buried on this most holiest of islands,” related Conaire, to God, “for it is there that I wish my re-incarnation to be.”
She set off on her journey, weakened by the effects of advanced age, but driven by determination and faith, walking the whole way to County Clare, and across to the island called Inis Cathaig in Irish. When she arrived at Saint Senan’s monastery, he and his brother monks refused her admittance. Senan offered that she should go stay with a kinswoman of his.
Although there were many monasteries throughout Ireland at that time which allowed both men and women, Senan and his brother monks believed that their chastity vows prohibited all contact with women.
“Christ came to redeem women no less than to redeem men. No less did he suffer for the sake of women than for the sake of men. No less than men, women enter into the heavenly kingdom. Why, then, should you not allow women to live on this place?” [2] reasoned Conaire to Senan ; but he would not forsake his extremist chastity vows, even for the holy Conaire.
“Well then here I will stay on this shore of Inis Cathaig until my demise,” proclaimed Conaire.
“But, the waves will wash away your grave !” exclaimed an exasperated Senan.
“Leave that to God.” said Conaire, and, after a victory over the world and the devil, she died.
Her grave is today marked by a simple flag off the coast of Scattery Island, though her true home is in Heaven.
Saint Conaire is an early feminist icon of the Irish church, and the patron saint of sailors and fisherman, particularly on the West Coast of Ireland, where seagoing ships still make a stop at Inis Cathaig to collect a stone in honour of Conaire to protect them on their voyage. The monastery at Scattery Island is still for men only.
She is the namesake of the ancient Irish bardic family O’Maoilchonaire of Roscommon (Descendant of the Servant of Saint Conaire) who were Priomhseanachie na hEireann, or the Antiquaries to the Kings, in Gaelic Ireland, and ran numerous schools of traditional poetry, history, and law throughout Ireland, and also of Saint Canera Catholic Church, in Neosho, Missouri.
******************************************
The exact date of the building is not known. What was going on in Ireland when church was built? 15 century in Ireland is considered Post Norman and Gaelic resurgence (1300-1500).
Additional causes of the Gaelic revival were political and personal grievances against the Hiberno-Normans, but especially impatience with procrastination and the very real horrors that successive famines had brought. Pushed away from the fertile areas, the Irish were forced to eke out a subsistence living on marginal lands, which left them with no safety net during bad harvest years (such as 1271 and 1277) or in a year of famine (virtually the entire period of 1311–1319).
Outside the Pale, the Hiberno-Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a phrase coined in later historiography, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the Gaelicisation of Ireland that, in 1367 at a parliament in Kilkenny, they passed special legislation (known as the Statutes of Kilkenny) banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or inter-marrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect.
Throughout the 15th century, these trends proceeded apace and central government authority steadily diminished. The monarchy of England was itself thrown into turmoil during the last phase of the Hundred Years' War to 1453, and the Wars of the Roses (1460–85), and as a result, direct English involvement in Ireland was greatly reduced. Successive kings of England delegated their constitutional authority over the lordship to the powerful Fitzgerald earls of Kildare, who held the balance of power by means of military force and widespread alliances with lords and clans. This, in effect, made the English Crown even more remote to the realities of Irish politics. At the same time, local Gaelic and Gaelicised lords expanded their powers at the expense of the central government in Dublin, creating a polity quite alien to English ways and which was not fully overthrown until the successful conclusion of the Tudor conquest.