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St. Fintan Munnu

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Saints and feasts

St. Fintan Munnu

Surnamed Munnu, Abbot, in Ireland

Fintan Munnu sought the religious life at Iona, then returned to Ireland after Columba’s death. Butler remembers him as the founder of Teach-Munnu in southern Leinster.

Sources

The life below remains the existing Butler-based reading, with its edition citation. The profile preserves the feast date and source title already listed in the library. Additional personal dates and historical details are shown only when separately documented.

Foundation remembered: Teach-Munnu in southern Leinster
Butler’s brief notice names the monastery and distinguishes the October 21 entry from the October 31 death date reported in the annals.

Butler sourceAlban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume X (October), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; October 21, “St Fintan, Surnamed Munnu, Abbot, in Ireland,” pp. 565.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1846)Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume X (October), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; October 21, “St Fintan, Surnamed Munnu, Abbot, in Ireland,” pp. 565.

The reading

ⓘ Butler source

Alban Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Volume X (October), Thomas Richardson and Son, Derby, for the Catholic Book Society, 1846; October 21, “St Fintan, Surnamed Munnu, Abbot, in Ireland,” pp. 565.

Fintan, also called Munnu, left the prospects of his family to seek the monastic life. He wished to enter the great community at Iona under St. Columba. That intention did not come to fulfilment before Columba’s death.

Returning to Ireland, he founded the monastery called Teach-Munnu in the southern part of Leinster. Butler’s short notice remembers the abbot for his virtue and the disciples gathered around him.

The notice is printed under October 21 and also records his remembrance in the old Scottish Breviary under the name Mundus. Butler separately cites the annals of Tigernach for an October 31 death in 634. The entry date and the reported date of death are distinct.

Historical note

An original Novena Regina reading adapted and summarized from the cited 1846 edition of Alban Butler. This is not a transcription of Butler’s words.

Butler prints the notice under October 21. His citation of the annals gives October 31, 634 as the death date; that is not silently substituted for the entry date. This is Fintan Munnu, distinct from other saints named Fintan.

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