KENNETH (CANICE) OF DERRY, ST.

Patron of Diocese of Ossory, Ireland; b. Glengiven, County Derry, 521 or 527 (Annals of Ulster); d. 599 or 600 (Annals of Ulster) or 603 (Annals of Inisfallen). Kenneth (Canice or Cainnech), one of the most famous early Irish saints, was born of poor parents. He studied at the great Irish monastic schools of Clonard and Glasnevin and later at St. Cadoc's, Llancarvan in Wales. He returned to Ireland and made his principal monastic foundation at Aghaboe, County Laois. One of his many foundations, that of Kilkenny, Ireland, later replaced Aghaboe as the principal church of Ossory. As a friend of columba of iona, Kenneth also traveled and preached extensively in Scotland. He had a Hebridean island foundation on Inchkenneth, not far from Iona. Devotion to the saint became widespread in Scotland, where he is known as Kenneth. In Ireland today "Canice" is preferred. He is invoked in some early Continental litanies of saints. St. Adamnan's biography of Columba pictures Kenneth's luminous personality.

Feast: Oct. 11.

Bibliography: Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, comp. c. plum-mer, 2 v. (Oxford 1910) 1:152–169. j. f. kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: v.1, Ecclesiastical (New York 1929) 1:394–395, 409. l. gougaud, Les Saints irlandais hors d'Irlande (Louvain 1936). d. d. c. pochin mould, Scotland of the Saints (London 1952). adamnan, Adamnan's Life of Columba, ed. and tr. a. o. and m. o. anderson (London 1961).

[d. d. c. pochin mould]