Secundinus (Sechnall)

Secundinus, in Irish Sechnall, was an Irish bishop of the fifth century, founder and patron of the church of Domnach Sechnaill (today Dunshaughlin, County Meath), whom medieval tradition regards as a disciple of Saint Patrick and one of the first bishops of Armagh. He is commemorated on 27 November. His veneration does not seem to have been a flourishing one in the Middle Ages, and the sources give no act of canonization.

What is known

Little is known of the saint and his veneration. His church, Domnach Sechnaill, is near Tara and, judging by the word domnach (from Latin dominicum), is probably early. The Irish annals say that in 439 the bishops Secundinus, Auxilius and Iserninus came to Ireland to help Saint Patrick. Muirchú mentions Auxilius and Iserninus, probably from Auxerre, but does not name Secundinus. Secundinus is spoken of in the Irish annals, the Félire Óengusso, the Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick and a list of Patrick's successors. His written life survives only in a seventeenth-⁠century manuscript.

The Irish preface to his hymn says that he was the son of Restitutus and of Saint Patrick's sister Dar Ercae (in the Chronicon Scotorum, Culmana), of the Lombards of Letha. The presence of Lombards in Italy at that time would be an anachronism, but the historian Thomas O'Rahilly thinks it possible that he, and perhaps Auxilius, came from northern Italy. Some scholars, among them O'Rahilly, believe that Secundinus preceded Patrick and was one of the three bishops who came in 439 to help Palladius, recalled to Rome in 441 and leaving Secundinus at the head of the Church in Ireland. Other historians consider the connection with Patrick a tradition invented later by the historians of Armagh. The legend of Patrick makes him ever more involved in bringing the relics of Saints Peter and Paul to Armagh. He is said to have died in 447 or 448, aged seventy-⁠five.

The hymn

To him is attributed an early Latin hymn in praise of Patrick, Audite omnes amantes Deum (Hear, all lovers of God), copied earliest in the Antiphonary of Bangor of the seventh century, the first Latin hymn written in Ireland, and the hymn Sancti venite, Christi corpus sumite. The preface to the hymn tells of a quarrel and a reconciliation with Patrick before the hymn was written. His name gave rise to the personal names Máel Sechnaill and Gilla Sechnaill.