Life
1858-1923; b. Dublin; monk and religious writer; ed. Belvedere College, Clonliffe, and Rome; and curate of Dundrum, Co. Dublin, and chaplain of Mountjoy Prison; entered Maredsous Benedictine Abbey, Namur, 1886; professed 1891; represent Maredsous at Maynooth College Centenary 1895; Abbot in Sept. 1909-23; Prior of César Monastery, and examiner in Theology, Louvain University, 1899. settled Edermine, Co. Wexford, having escaped Namur disguised as cattle dealer to England, seeking asylum for his community during German invasion; 1914; preached to monks of Caldey, prior to their conversion to Catholicism; returned to Maredsous after the War;
published, from notes taken by students of his lectures, Le Christ, Vie de l’Ame (1918); Le Christ dans Ses Mystères (1919); and Le Christ, Idéals du Moine (1922), enormously popular devotional works, trans. into nine languages, and read by Greek orthodox as well as Catholics; d. 30 Jan.; Vatican commences investigation into miraculous recovery from cancer of a Mrs Bitzan of St. Cloud, Minnesota, who prayed at the tomb of Dom Marmion in Aug. 1966, 1979; claims rejected as a happy coincidence by the Vatican; new impetus supplied by Fr. Mark Tierney and others of Glenstal Abbey and Marmedsous, 1990s, resulting in the beautificationi of Dom Marmion in Aug. 2000. DIB DIW
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Criticism
Mark Tierney [OSB], Dom. Columba Marmion (Dublin: Columba Press 1994), 283pp.; The Irish Times, Aug. 26 2000 [report on beatification].
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