← Back to Golden Age – Connacht
Feast day: 9 August | Principal place: Achonry, County Sligo
Nathy is the saint behind the name and ecclesiastical importance of Achonry, a small village in south County Sligo that later gave its name to an entire diocese. Medieval sources usually call him Nath Í or Cruimther Nath Í—Nathy the priest. They remember him as a pupil or companion of Finnian of Clonard, the man left in charge of a new church among the Luigne, and the teacher of Féchín of Fore.
That outline is far firmer than the dates and biographical details later attached to it. Nathy has no surviving Life of his own. He appears briefly in other saints’ Lives, calendars and genealogies, usually because a later writer needs to explain a relationship between churches. The result is a biography made from glimpses. Yet those glimpses consistently place a respected priest and teacher at Achonry in the sixth century.
Nath Í the Priest
Nath Í is an old Irish personal name, not the same as Nathi or Nathanael in the Bible. English sources render it as Nathy, Nathi and sometimes Dathy; Crumnathy derives from the title cruimther, “priest” or “presbyter,” fused to his name. That title is unusually persistent. The Martyrology of Donegal commemorates “the priest Nath Í” of Achad Cain Conairi on 9 August, and narrative sources also call him Dathi the Presbyter.
The title may preserve the role for which his own community best remembered him. Later accounts often describe him as bishop and founder because Achonry became a bishop’s seat. The earlier emphasis is on priesthood. This does not exclude episcopal status, but it warns against projecting the administration of a medieval diocese back into the sixth century.
Nor should Nathy of Achonry be confused with other saints named Nath Í. One Nath Í was associated with Cúil Foithirbe and the church of Taney near Dublin; another was connected with Shrule in County Carlow. The multiplicity of similar names has encouraged accidental mergers. The Achonry saint is distinguished by his title, his feast on 9 August and his association with Achad Cain or Achad Conaire in the territory of the Luigne.
Finnian Comes to the Luigne
The Life of Finnian of Clonard contains the clearest account of Achonry’s foundation. Finnian travels west into Corann, within the country of the Luigne. Presbyter Dathi—Nathy—comes to him and remains with him. An angel instructs Finnian to build a church at the place where one of his followers remarks, “Fair is this field.” When the words are spoken, Finnian establishes the church and leaves Nathy there.
This is a foundation story, not a contemporary charter. The angel and the predetermined phrase make the selection of the site an act of providence. The place-name reinforces the scene: Achad Cain can itself be understood as “fair field.” Hagiography turns the name into a spoken sign and gives Finnian divine authority to found there.
Behind the literary device is a plausible institutional memory. A church connected with the prestigious community of Clonard was established among the Luigne, and Nathy became its resident head. The tradition makes him neither a solitary wanderer nor a founder acting without allies. His authority comes through a relationship with Finnian, while his permanence comes from being left in the new territory.
Some later versions say that the land was granted by Cenn Fáelad, king of the Luigne. Whether that transaction can be recovered historically is uncertain, but a foundation required local consent. Finnian could supply religious prestige; Nathy could maintain the community; a ruler or landholding family had to supply the ground and protection. The story compresses those relationships into an orderly beginning.
Achonry and Its Landscape
Achonry lies between Ballymote and Tubbercurry, in a district of low hills and productive valleys close to the Sligo–Mayo border. In the early medieval period it belonged to the world of the Luigne and Corann rather than to a modern county. Its position connected routes running through south Sligo towards Mayo, Roscommon and the north-western approaches to Connacht.
The site was not destined to become a large town. Its importance was ecclesiastical. A religious community could draw income and service from surrounding lands while offering worship, burial, teaching and hospitality. The very modest size of modern Achonry helps make the historical point: Irish church centres did not need to become urban settlements in order to exercise authority over a wide territory.
Finnian’s Life says that his well and flagstone remained at the site. It promises healing to the sick who enter the well and protection from dishonour to those who approach the superior by the stone. These details attach Finnian physically to Achonry even after Nathy assumes charge. A well, a stone and a remembered founding visit allowed the local church to claim continuing access to the sanctity of Clonard.
Nathy’s own burial was placed at Achad Cain. Founder burials mattered. A saint’s grave made a church the rightful guardian of his cult and could anchor claims to land, dues and precedence. It also gave the faithful a local destination: the teacher who had governed the community remained present within its sacred enclosure.
Pupil of Clonard, Teacher of Féchín
Later tradition calls Nathy a pupil of Finnian. The foundation account itself makes them companions for a time and presents Finnian as the senior figure. “Pupil” is therefore reasonable as a description of dependence, though it should not be expanded into a modern course of study with precise dates.
Clonard’s reputation as a school of saints gave enormous value to such a connection. Communities across Ireland traced their founders to Finnian, creating a spiritual genealogy that linked distant churches through master and disciple. Achonry occupied a useful place in that network: Finnian founded or blessed it, Nathy governed it, and another important founder was trained there.
That next figure was Féchín, later patron of Fore in County Westmeath. The medieval Lives of Féchín say that he received instruction from Nathy before moving on to other centres. Féchín belonged to the Luigne of Connacht, so training at Achonry would place his early formation within his own people before his career extended into the midlands and the western islands.
The relationship gave Achonry a significance beyond its immediate district. It became a bridge between Clonard and Fore, with Nathy as the middle generation. As always, the neat succession may have been sharpened by later writers. Nonetheless, the repeated image of Nathy as both disciple and master is consistent with the work of a resident head who maintained a house of clerical formation.
The Guests Who Arrived Too Late
A short tale preserved in the Book of Lismore gives a different glimpse of “Dathi the Presbyter.” Columba, Comgall and Cainnech arrive at his house as guests after the community has eaten its meal. The surviving notice is brief, and the identification with Nathy of Achonry is probable rather than certain. Whitley Stokes, the nineteenth-century editor, connected the host with the priest commemorated at Achad Cain.
The names are those of three of the greatest monastic saints of the sixth century. Their appearance together is not proof that all three visited Achonry on a particular day. Medieval anecdotes routinely assembled famous holy men to stage tests of hospitality, humility or miraculous provision.
What matters is the setting. Nathy possesses a “house” and a community with a common meal, and distinguished travellers expect guesting there. The awkward timing—arrival after dinner—creates the problem that the story must resolve. It reflects the central obligation of a religious household to receive visitors even when its ordinary resources have already been distributed.
Even as legend, the episode preserves the kind of institution imagined under Nathy: communal, connected and responsible for hospitality. Achonry stood within a network of movement rather than at the edge of an isolated local cult.
Nathy and Attracta
Nathy shares the modern patronage of Achonry with Attracta, or Athracht, a female saint associated with Killaraght, Coolavin and the wider Lough Gara district. Their cults belonged to neighbouring landscapes, but the surviving traditions do not establish that they jointly founded one mixed community at Achonry.
Attracta’s Latin Life mentions Nathy among a sixth-century circle and connects her religious work with the same general region. Later diocesan memory naturally brought the two patrons together: Nathy represented the episcopal centre at Achonry, while Attracta represented a powerful local tradition of female religious authority, hospitality and relics.
Their pairing reveals how a medieval diocese gathered older cults rather than descending from a single founder in a straight institutional line. The territory later called Achonry contained multiple churches, saints and kindreds. Naming Nathy and Attracta as patrons allowed the diocese to honour more than one strand of its early sacred geography.
From Monastery to Diocese
Achonry became a territorial diocese during the twelfth-century reorganization of the Irish church and was recognized at the Synod of Kells-Mellifont in 1152. The new diocese included areas in what are now counties Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon. Its title came from the old church centre, even though the later seat and administrative life would not remain fixed permanently in the village.
This development should not be described as an unbroken diocesan administration beginning with Nathy. His community belonged to a different ecclesiastical order, organized through monasteries, local churches, patrons and federations. The twelfth-century diocese adapted the authority of an ancient site to a new territorial structure.
Nathy’s cult helped legitimize that change. A diocese with a sixth-century patron could present itself as an ancient church being regularized rather than a new jurisdiction being invented. The founder’s grave, feast and connection to Finnian supplied depth to an institution whose formal boundaries were much later.
The old cathedral site at Achonry continued to bear his memory. The former Church of Ireland cathedral there, built in the nineteenth century on the earlier ecclesiastical site, was dedicated to St Crumnathy. The modern Catholic cathedral stands at Ballaghaderreen and is dedicated to the Annunciation and St Nathy. The movement of buildings and bishops did not displace the patron.
Feast, Burial and Historical Outline
Nathy’s feast is 9 August. The Félire tradition and later martyrologies associate him with Achad Cain and with burial there. These liturgical and topographical anchors are more dependable than the common claim that he died around 610 at the age of ninety. No contemporary obituary supplies either figure.
The evidence supports a restrained biography. Nathy was a sixth-century priest associated with Achonry in the territory of the Luigne. His church remembered a foundational relationship with Finnian of Clonard, and the tradition of Féchín of Fore remembered Nathy as a teacher. His burial and cult remained attached to Achonry, which later became the name and original centre of a diocese.
His importance does not depend on recovering childhood stories or exact dates. Nathy represents the resident leaders who converted a founder’s visit into a lasting institution. Finnian comes west, blesses the fair field and moves on; Nathy stays. That act of staying—teaching, governing a community, receiving guests and becoming its buried patron—is what made Achonry endure.