Saints and Scholars gathering this weekend

The Year of the Gathering is all about reconnecting, and that’s exactly what a Saints and Scholars Reconnections event in Clonmacnoise and Shannonbridge this weekend is all about.

Events kick off at 6pm today (Friday) and between then and the event’s close at 4pm tomorrow there’s lots to see and do including music and a variety of workshops.

Registration for Saints and Scholars takes place at St Ciaran’s NS in Clonmacnoise this evening from 6pm. After refreshments Fred Carney will deliver a talk entitled 'Legacy of the Monks’.

The founding guardian of the international community of St Aiden and Hilda in Lindisfarne Ray Simpson will follow that talk with one at 7.15pm called 'The Great Emergence into Europe’. Sandy Dunlop will explore a Clonmacnoise Summer School in 2014 reconnecting with European monastic sites at 8pm, before the day finished with music in Killeen’s of Shannonbridge.

An early start on Saturday will see speaker Gavin Duffy talk about monastic life in the Dark Ages from 10.30am, complete with an audiovisual presentation of life in Clonmacnoise 1,500 years ago. John O’Regan will lead a visit to Clonmacnoise at 11.30am, while at 2.30pm a visit to St Brendan’s Cathedral in Clonfert will depart.