Saint Mochaemhoc (Pulcherius)

Family and Formation

His father, Beoanus, was a skilled craftsman originally from Connemara in Connaught who settled in Hy-Conall-Gaura, County Limerick; his mother, Nesse, was a sister of Saint Íte of Killeedy. Through her, Mochaemhoc was both nephew and foster-son of Íte, who raised him until the age of twenty.

At twenty he was sent to Bangor Abbey in County Down to study under its abbot, Saint Comgall. Following Comgall's guidance he first built monastic cells at Anatrim before undertaking his own foundation.

Foundation of Liathmore

A local chieftain granted Mochaemhoc a site in the forest near Lake Lurgan, where he founded the monastery of Liath-Mochoemoc, later known as Liathmore, in County Tipperary. The monastery took his name.

The site lies in the townland of Leigh, about 1.7 miles east of Two-Mile Borris. It preserves two churches and the foundations of a round tower whose circular base measured about 15 feet 6 inches in diameter; the tower is thought to have collapsed and been dismantled before 1500. The smaller church is the earlier, dating to the early medieval period, while the larger church was begun in the 12th century and includes a Romanesque doorway with a sheela-na-gig carving. The site is a National Monument of Ireland, administered under the Diocese of Cashel and Emly.

Associations and Traditional Accounts

Mochaemhoc is remembered as a friend of Saints Colmán of Dromore and Fursey. Tradition names Saint Dagán among his pupils; accounts relate that, together with Saint Cainnech of Aghaboe, he restored Dagán to life after a decapitation.

Tradition also records a dispute with King Faílbe Flann mac Áedo Duib (reigned 619–634). It is said that afterward all the saints of Ireland appeared to the king in visions in support of Mochaemhoc, and that another opposing king was struck with pain and the loss of sight in one eye. These episodes are preserved in the hagiographical tradition rather than in contemporary record.

Sources and Legacy

The life of Mochaemhoc is documented in John Colgan's Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (1645), Alban Butler's Lives of the Irish Saints (1823), the Monks of Ramsgate's Book of Saints (1921), and Walsh and Conyngham's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (1885). A church bearing his name stands in the Barony of Ida, County Kilkenny.