Image Source from Roaringwater Journal
Material taken from Saint of the Day and also from St. Eunan’s writing on St. Columba.
According to tradition, Otteran lived more than forty years at Silvermines, in Tipperary, erecting a church there in 520. He also served as abbot of Meath, and founded Lattreagh. He was one of the twelve who travelled with St Columba to Iona.
Otteran was of royal Irish lineage and was a kinsman of St. Columba of Tír Conaill (Donegal) in the 5th century. He may have visited Iona before Columba and before the mission there had properly begun. The island of Iona would have been part of the Irish Dál Riada kingdom. The Dalriada colony stretched from western Scotland known as Argyll today, and extended over the Irish sea into Antrim and Down Patrick. Iona would have been reasonably central in this colony, via the sea to its borders which included north eastern Ireland & parts of western Scotland.
The oldest remaining church on Iona is named after St. Otteran located by his tomb, called Reilig Odhráin. He worked in Iona evangelising the people of Scotland. An Irish Calendar from 800 A.D. written by Oengus the Culdee testifies his death. Otteran or Oran (Odhran, = `the pale faced one’) is mentioned to be the first monk who died on the missionary island.
Columba is said to have seen devils and angels fight over Odran’s soul before it ascended into heaven. A popular legend says that Otteran consented to being buried alive beneath a chapel that Columba wanted to build. It was part of an omen that the walls of the chapel would collapse unless a living man was buried below the foundations. So Otteran was consigned to the earth, and the chapel was erected above him.
Otterran is ‘’Titular Guardian’’ of Viking ancestors’ ashes
Otteran was the first Christian to be buried in the old pagan cemetery on Iona. The vikings had long carried their deceased leaders to be buried there. Iona is the place of repose for over fifty kings and a handful of princes. The norsemen chose Otteran (the viking pronunciation), with the titular guardian of their ancestors’ ashes, and patron of Waterford city in 1096. Also in Iona, began the beginning of that wonderful manuscript the Book of Kells. With the invasion of the vikings, as described in “An Leabhar Breac” this book project had to be moved to Kells in Ireland for completion.
The Irish Martyrologies tell us that saint Otteran is honoured on October 27th as a monk of Hy, a kinsman of St. Columba. Otteran’s died in 548 AD and his tomb is greatly revered in Iona. He is recognised as a saint through the process of Cultus confirmation (equipollent canonization) since 1902 by Pope Leo XIII
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