# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Caimin

Caimín in the ODNB.
​CAIMIN or CAMIN, Saint (d. 653), ‘was of the race of Cathaoir Mór of Leinster’ (Martyrology of Donegal, translated by J. O'Donovan, p. 85, Dublin, 1864), his father, Dima, belonging to the princely house of ​ Hy-Kinselagh (or Ende-Kenselach). His mother's name was Cumman, daughter of Dallbronach (Annals of the Four Masters, i. 273, edited by O'Donovan, 2nd ed. 1856), who was also mother to the famous Guaire Aidhne, son of Colman, king of Connaught. Considerable doubt hangs over the relationship, inasmuch as Cumman is expressly said to have been blessed by St. Patrick, and to have given birth, in consequence of that blessing, to forty-seven, or, according to another account, seventy-seven children. Plainly these must include her more remote posterity, unless indeed the whole difficulty has arisen from a confusion of names (see Todd, Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland, i. 90, 91, Dublin, 1855). St. Caimin himself appears, in all probability, twice in the Irish hagiology, under his own name and under that of Coman (Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, iii. 11, 2nd ed., Dublin, 1829). He is ranked in the third order of Irish saints (concerning which see ib. ii. 330, 331), and was distinguished even in that remarkable company for the holiness and devotion of his character. He was, says an ancient record (quoted in a note to the Martyrology of Donegal, p. 87), ‘in his manners and life like unto Paucomius the monk.’ He withdrew for the more undisturbed exercise of his religion to the island of Inis-Cealtra (or Keltra) in Loch Deirgdheirc (Lough Derg), on the borders of what are now the counties of Galway and Clare. There he built a church and attracted a numerous band of disciples. His asceticism was extreme. It is told of him that he prayed for pain as his chief wish in life, and that his prayer was granted ‘so that not one bone of him remained united to the other on earth, but his flesh dissolved, and his nerves, with the excess of every disease that fell upon him’ (Todd, Hymns, &c., p. 87). He died in 653, and was buried in the monastery that had grown up about him. The date is given either as 24 or 25 March, the latter having the higher authority.
St. Caimin is stated to have written a commentary on the Psalms, some leaves of which, relating to the 119th Psalm, and reputed to be autograph, were long preserved in the Franciscan convent at Donegal, where they were seen by Sir James Ware (De Scriptoribus Hiberniæ, i. 3, p. 24, Dublin, 1639). Archbishop Ussher, who also examined the manuscript, describes it as ‘obelis et asteriscis diligentissime distinctum: collatione cum veritate Hebraica in superiore parte cuiusque paginæ posita, et brevibus scholiis ad exteriorem marginem adiectis’ (Britanniarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, p. 503, 2nd ed., London, 1687). The manuscript in course of time passed to the convent of St. Isidore at Rome, whence it was ultimately restored in 1871 to the archives of the Franciscans of the Irish province at Dublin (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, xlvi. 344 et seq., 1885; J. T. Gilbert, Facsimiles of the National Manuscripts of Ireland, iv. 2, Introd. p. 112, 1884). From the specimen given by Gilbert (Append. plate xxii.) it is clear that whatever the authorship of the glosses, the manuscript is decidedly later than St. Caimin's time.
R. L. P.