In August 2021, I made a trip to Downpatrick, County Down. This is a very special little town which includes the final burial place of Saint Patrick. The visitor centre unfortunately left much to be desired in regards to its scholarship! However, my knowledge of Saint Patrick and the saints who he baptised, led me to add the very nearby Saul Church to my itenary, the first church established by Saint Patrick in Ireland. The building was a barn donated to him by Saint Dichú. Saint Patrick’s misssion in Ireland started and ended in the same region.
It was someone else in my party who suggested the next nearby site connected to Saint Patrick which was the Struell Wells. They are Holy Wells, blessed by Saint Patrick. A sign mentioned that he prayed the Psalms in the water at night.
This did not mean very much to me at the time. My attention was especially caught and returned to the Struell Wells when on another trip, not long after my trip to Struell Wells, with a fellow parishioner of my local Orthodox church. He came to my hometown of Bangor to visit Bangor Abbey whose founder was Saint Comgall. On the way to Bangor Abbey, through a park, there are some signs about each of the most well-known saints of Bangor Abbey (https://irishortodoxa.wordpress.com/2022/01/05/saints-comgall-columbanus-and-gall-and-bangor-abbey/). I took the following photos on my mobile phone.
For the second time I saw a reference to entering cold water as an ascetic practice! I connected the dots and from then on was aware of this as a practice of more than one Irish saint.
My post on Saint Kevin of Glendalough is marked as December 19th, 2021. While researching him, I read about his most well-known miracle – while praying in the lake at Glendalough with his arms raised, he was so still that a blackbird landed and made a nest in his hand. At first, I did not realise but finally I looked past the attention-grabbing miracle to notice the context – Saint Kevin was praying in the water of the lake. Now I really started to notice the pattern.
Although I had written about Saint Ciarán (or Kieran) of Saigir long before, it was only at a later date that I found his entire hagiography. One of his miracles is recorded below:
One night Kieran and a pilgrim named Germanus that was with him entered into a stream of cold water, in which, when they had now been for a long time, Germanus said: “Kieran, I may no longer hold out in the water.” Kieran made the sign of the Holy Cross upon the water, whereby he turned it to be temperate and of bathing heat; and there they were praising God.
And I later read in the life of Saint Féchín of Fore:
During the Lent, Féchín was accustomed to go and pray at midnight in the stream at Esdara A monk named Pastól went along with him into the stream, and when he was on the side below Féchín he could not endure the water for heat. And when he was on the side above (Féchín) he could not endure (it) for exceeding cold. When Féchín understood this he called him beside him and moderated the water for Pastól so that it was endurable. And Féchín told him not to relate this to any one. So that it was after Féchín’s death that he related it. And God’s name and Féchín’s were magnified thereby.
Finally, I read in Book V, Chapter XII of Saint Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ the story of a man from Northumbria who died but came back to life many hours later. He had a vision of the afterlife, including the torments of the sinful. Although he had been a layman with a family, after this he began a monastic life. It is related of him that:
He had a more private place of residence assigned him in that monastery, where he might apply himself to the service of his Creator in continual prayer. And as that place lay on the bank of the river, he was wont often to go into the same to do penance in his body, and many times to dip quite under the water, and to continue saying psalms or prayers in the same as long as he could endure it, standing still sometimes up to the middle, and sometimes to the neck in water; and when he went out from thence ashore, he never took off his cold and frozen garments till they grew warm and dry on his body. And when in the winter the half-broken pieces of ice were swimming about him, which he had himself broken, to make room to stand or dip himself in the river, those who beheld it would say, “It is wonderful, brother Dritheim (for so he was called), that you are able to endure such violent cold; ” he simply answered, for he was a man of much simplicity and in different wit, “I have seen greater cold.” And when they said, “It is strange that you will endure such austerity;” he replied, “I have seen more austerity.” Thus he continued, through an indefatigable desire of heavenly bliss, to subdue his aged body with daily fasting, till the day of his being called away; and thus he forwarded the salvation of many by his words and example.
Although he was from Northumbria and not Ireland, it was Irish monks from Iona who converted the Northumbrians to Christianity. It is likely that the practice of entering water for prayer was taught by the Irish to the Northumbrians. This is something I stumbled upon over the last year or so of research of the Irish saints and I have never seen someone gather this information and present it together before. It is fair to say it was an Irish Orthodox Christian practice. I do not know if this can be seen in the lives of saints from other times and places or if it originated in Ireland.
P.S. The examples multiply! After writing this post to this point, I came across yet another case. This was from Rhygyvarch’s Life of Saint David of Wales. It is chapter 31 and it is written:
The father himself pouring forth fountains of tears daily, irradiating with censed holocausts of prayers, and blazing with a double flame of charity, consecrated with pure hands the due oblation of the Lord’s Body, and thus after matins proceeded alone to angelic discourse. After this he immediately used to seek cold water, in which by lingering a long while wet he subdued every heat of the flesh.
With all this evidence, it is irrefutable that this was a British and Irish Christian practice. Now the most pertinent question remains, was this unique to Britain and Ireland or was this also practiced by their nearest neighbours in Gaul? I consider it likely but I have not read very many lives of Gallic saints and so I have not seen an example from there but there certainly could be. British and Irish monasticism was inspired very directly by Gaul and so this is why I have reason to assume they learned the practice from there. Furthermore, I wonder if this was a practice further abroad and I wonder if it continues even up to the present day in a specifically Orthodox Christian ascetic context?
P.P.S. If you are tough enough, get your swimming shorts on and your prayer book out and try it for yourself!
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