Bécán

Bécán (also spelled Becan, Beccan, or Began) was an early medieval Irish saint, conventionally placed in the sixth century. Surviving sources do not record a verifiable year of birth or death. Later genealogical tradition describes him as belonging to a Munster royal kindred, often identified with the Eóganachta. He is remembered above all as the founder and patron of the early church at Kilbeggan (Cill Bheagáin) in present-day County Westmeath. The later Cistercian abbey established at Kilbeggan in the twelfth century occupied a site already associated with his name, but that house belongs to a different era of Irish monasticism.

Hagiographical tradition portrays Bécán as a hermit and monastic founder of marked austerity. A frequently repeated anecdote, attached to the circle of Saint Columba (Colum Cille), recounts that Columba once saw a man standing in the sea reciting the psalms as a penitential exercise; the man was identified as Bécán. Such episodes are characteristic of early Irish saints' lives and cannot be treated as datable biography. Bécán is credited with gathering a community around his church, in keeping with the pattern of sixth-century Irish monastic foundations.

Irish martyrologies commemorate one or more saints named Bécán. The Martyrology of Tallaght and the Martyrology of Óengus enter Bécán of Cluain Ard Mobécóc (Kilpeacan, County Tipperary) on 5 April; other calendars and some annalistic notices mention a Bécán of Cluain-aird on 26 May, with an obit sometimes placed in the late seventh century. A Bécán of Imlech Fiaich (Emlagh, County Meath) also appears in the tradition. Modern writers have often treated the patron of Kilbeggan as identical with one or other of these figures, but the medieval evidence does not demonstrate that they were a single person. No contemporary vita of Bécán survives.

Like most saints of the early Irish church, Bécán was never the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval type; his cult rests on local devotion, place-name, and martyrological commemoration. He is regarded as patron of Kilbeggan. Beyond these notices, the historical record is extremely thin, and any reconstruction of his career must remain provisional.