XVIII. (continued)
THE SCHOOL OF GLENDALOUGH.
ST. LAURENCE O'TOOLE.
"And, Thou, O mighty Lord, whose ways Are far above our feeble minds to understand, Sustain us in these doleful days, And render light the chain that binds our fallen land. Look down upon our dreary state; And through the ages that may still roll sadly on, Watch Thou o'er hapless Erin's fate, And shield, at least from darker ill, the blood of Conn." --Clarence Mangan.
Something like this was the prayer of St. Laurence O'Toole when he was dying in a foreign land. He was the last of our saints; and he was also the associate and intimate friend of the last of our kings. At one time both had high hopes that the demon of civil strife might be banished from the land; and that Celtic learning and Celtic art would find their highest development under the protection of a strong government and a united people.
Together they drew a sword, that could not save, in defence of hapless Ireland. Together they were forced to bow the knee in homage to the Norman king. But St. Laurence did not forget his old master in his new loyalty. He was faithful through all his misfortunes to the unhappy Roderick O'Connor; and it may be truly said that he met his noble death striving to obtain Henry's pardon for the discrowned king, and "to render light the chains that bound his fallen land." The saint's career, from every point of view, is full of interest; and therefore we make no apology for tracing his history at some length.
It is fortunate that in the case of St. Laurence, or Lorcan O'Toole, we are not left to tradition or imagination to enable us to ascertain what manner of man he was. We have an accurate and authentic Life of the saint, rich in all details, and written by one who was in every way qualified for the task. The writer was a member of that community at Eu, in whose bosom St. Laurence found a home and a grave; and he must have had ample and authentic information at his disposal. For the Life was written shortly after the saint's death; its author must have seen and probably conversed with Laurence himself; and, doubtless, he made the acquaintance of the clergy who accompanied him from Ireland to Normandy. Above all, he had at his command the official documents, which were transmitted from Dublin to Rouen, at the request of the Bishop and Chapter of that Cathedral, and which were drawn up by the Bishop of Kildare and the Prior of Christ's Church by command of Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin, for the process of the saint's canonization.
Laurence O'Toole, both by father and mother, came of the noblest stock of Leinster. His father, Murtough, was hereditary prince of the Hy-Murray, a race that inhabited the fertile lands of south-eastern Kildare (which still belongs to the diocese of Dublin), until they were driven into the mountains of Wicklow by the Normans. His mother was the daughter of O'Byrne, the ruler of north-eastern Kildare, who shared the same fate; for both were driven from the plains into the mountains, where they maintained a sturdy but turbulent independence, down to a period within the memory of men still living.
The young Lorcan was baptized at St. Brigid's famous shrine in Kildare, by the hands of the bishop of that ancient see, who seems to have been in some way connected with the family of the saint. We need not dwell on the alleged prophecies of the saint's future greatness--too often these prophecies were composed after the event. A few years at most after the birth of the child, Dermott M'Murrough, of infamous memory, became king of Leinster, and, as Gerald Barry testifies, he was a tyrant from the beginning, a cruel oppressor of the nobles, a man whose hand was against every man, and who had every man's hand against him. The father of the young Lorcan being suspected or defeated by the tyrant, was forced to give his youngest child as a hostage to M'Murrough. Sometimes these hostages were treated with great cruelty; and if any violation of faith, real or imaginary, took place, were not unfrequently put to death with circumstances of the greatest atrocity. M'Murrough was a savage, and treated the child savagely. He had him at the tender age of ten led away in bonds; he caused him to be sent into a desert, stony land, somewhere probably to the north of Ferns, and there the child was left almost without food, until he was nearly starved to death, and his clothes were reduced to rags; so that, as the author of his Life tells us, he had nothing to shelter him from the biting north winds of winter. It was the discipline of the Cross which sometime or other God prepares for those whom he destines for a high degree of sanctity, that they may thus learn the best of all lessons--the lesson of patient endurance at the foot of the Cross.
When his father heard of the sad plight to which his poor son was reduced--knowing that prayers would be fruitless with such a man--he fortunately made prisoners of twelve of M'Murrough's followers, and then gave the tyrant to understand that if his son were not released, he would take summary vengeance on the captives. The threat was effective; M'Murrough could not afford to lose his followers. So he agreed to give up the boy to the Bishop of Glendalough on condition that his own followers were at once released.
It was fortunate for young Lorcan that the chances of war brought him to Glendalough, for it was the crisis of his life. His captivity was, after all, a blessing in disguise, since it ended in thus bringing him to the holy city of St. Kevin. In spite of the ravages of the Danes, and of other spoilers like Dermott M'Murrough, the lamp of learning still burned brightly in the mountain valley, and the virtues of St. Kevin were still cultivated, at least to some extent by his monastic children. There were, it is true, from time to time burnings at Glendalough, and deeds of violence were perpetrated even under the shadow of its holy mountains. But the learning and holiness acquired by St. Laurence in its cloisters--for it was his only school--is the clearest proof that both sacred and profane studies were there cultivated in comparative peace, and that the churches of Glendalough were crowded with holy and learned monks until the Norman spoilers came, when it was made a desert, which afforded refuge only to the robber and the outlaw.
Young Lorcan was at once placed under the protection of the bishop; and when his father came to bring him home, the noble boy asked permission to remain for ever in the family of St. Kevin, and forego his hopes of an earthly and, in those days, a very brilliant inheritance. The father gladly consented; and thus, at the early age of twelve, young Lorcan was given over to God, and like Samuel, was brought up in the temple of the Lord, serving day and night before His altar. His whole time, like that of his young companions, was given to prayer and study. It was his highest privilege to be allowed to attend at the altar, to train his young voice to sing the praises of God with the monks in the choir, and prepare the requisites for the Holy Sacrifice, especially the spotless host, and the wine, and the limpid water from St. Kevin's well. He was assiduous in attendance at all the lessons of the lectors, that is the readers in Divinity and Sacred Scriptures, who were attached to the monastic school, and delivered their lectures in a somewhat free and easy, but very effective, sort of way. In rainy weather they assembled in the church, or the abbot's house, or the reading room; but when the sun shone the professor and monks strolled about, or sat down under the shade of St. Kevin's yew, while the teacher expounded the sacred page, or read the lives of ancient saints, or went through the canons of the Church, explaining how the law was violated, how transgressors were punished, and how the truly repentant after condign penance were reconciled. It was not so elaborate a system as we have at present; but it was admirably suited to the wants of the time. It certainly produced great prelates and great saints; and beyond all doubt it was more healthy for soul and body to hear the Word of God explained in the bracing air of Glendalough, under the shadow of its majestic mountains, than to be cooped up in a dusty hall, where one could hardly ever catch a ray of the glorious sun struggling through the murky atmosphere.
Lorcan was a diligent and keen-witted scholar. He was, says the writer of his Life, "Fervens in audiendo, sagax in repetendo, prudens in discernendo, sollicitus audita tenaci memoriæ commendare." No good quality of a perfect student was wanting. He was not merely an attentive but an eager listener--fervens in audiendo. He went carefully and wisely over what he had heard or read--sagax in repetendo. This improved his natural talents, and made him a youth of keen and penetrating judgment--prudens in discernendo--and the knowledge which he acquired he stored up, not in a confused heap, but with system and order, which helped to strengthen his retentive memory, and enable him to have his knowledge ready for use--sollicitus audita tenaci memoriæ commendare.
For thirteen years he spent his life in the service of God, in the improvement of his mind, and the acquisition of sacred knowledge. They were probably the happiest years of his life; his young heart, pure and free from care, was given to the only love that begets perfect happiness, the love and service of God. Then it came to pass that the abbot of Glendalough, the comarb of St. Kevin, died; and, young as he was, the unanimous voice of the clergy, and of the people, called for Lorcan as his successor. He was only twenty-five--too young, indeed, in ordinary circumstances to be placed at the head of a great community; but his virtues, his learning, and his prudence far exceeded the measure of his years, and so they placed him, reluctant as he was, at the head of the great establishment of St. Kevin, probably about the year A.D. 1153, when we read that the abbot Dunlaing Ua Cathail died.
We cannot stay to recount his wisdom, his zeal, and, above all, his great charity in his new post. The abbey lands were wide; the family of St. Kevin was very large; the duties of the abbot very onerous; but we find young Lorcan discharged all these duties with complete success. Above all, his charity to the poor was remarkable. A time of great scarcity had come upon the people in all that mountain region, and great numbers would, undoubtedly, have perished of cold and hunger, but the abbot found means to be generous to all--no appeal was made to him in vain; no one left the gates of the monastery hungry. When necessary he gave the scanty meal from his own table to feed the starving people. Perhaps it was that he was too profuse of the property of the monastery, or because in the common need he made all give a share to the poor, but it is certain that at this period in his own religious family there were false brethren who calumniated their abbot, whispering evil things against him. Yet he bore all with perfect patience, and took no measures to vindicate his own character, until his enemies, from very shame, were forced to confess that they did injustice to their blameless abbot.
Shortly after the see of Glendalough became vacant and the eyes of all were turned on Laurence as the most suitable person to assume the mitre. But the pious abbot this time absolutely refused; they made him a religious superior against his will; but he would not become bishop at any rate; and that for two very good reasons--first, because he had not yet attained the canonical age; and secondly, because in his humility he thought himself unable to bear so heavy a burden.
But Providence reserved him for greater things.
Shortly after the archiepiscopal See of Dublin became vacant by the death of Gregory in October, A.D. 1161. Next year the abbot of Glendalough was chosen to succeed to the vacant See, and was consecrated in Christ Church Cathedral by the Primate Gelasius, attended by several other prelates and abbots from various parts of the kingdom. The choice of Lorcan to fill the See of Dublin is a singular proof of the great esteem is which he was held by all classes of his countrymen, both clergy and laity. For the citizens of Dublin were mostly of Danish origin, and had small sympathy with the natives. Hitherto their prelates were either of foreign extraction, or Irishmen, who had been trained and educated in England. They were consecrated too by the Archbishops of Canterbury; and they invariably took an oath of obedience and subjection to the see of Canterbury.
But the election of Lorcan inaugurated a new era. He was Irish of the Irish; trained and educated at home, as far as we know, exclusively within the shadow of the Wicklow Mountains. He was consecrated by the Primate of Armagh, and of course he was neither asked, nor if asked, was he a man to promise obedience to the see of Canterbury, which certainly had no claim de jure to the obedience of any Irish prelate. Nor did any prelate after him consecrated for any Irish see promise or pay any such canonical obedience to any prelate except the Pope. So that in the person of Lorcan the Irish Church was finally emancipated from this dependence on the Primate of all England, which in after days, had it continued, might have been the means of causing the shipwreck of our country's faith.
Laurence was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin--Glendalough was not yet united to the Archdiocese--in the year A.D. 1162. In the same year we find that there was a Synod of the Irish prelates held at Clane in the co. Kildare, at which twenty-six bishops and several abbots are said to have assembled for the reformation of abuses, and the enactment of salutary discipline. The Primate Gelasius presided; and it is highly probable that many of the same prelates assisted at the consecration of St. Laurence in Dublin.
At that time the city seems to have been greatly in need of some moral reformation; and the holy prelate at once girt up his loins for the difficult task.
He began with the clergy; for he knew that the people would readily follow their good example. He persuaded the secular clergy of the Cathedral Church to form themselves into a kind of religious community. With the sanction of the Pope they adopted the rule of life followed by the Regular Canons of Aroasia--a reform that had been introduced into the diocese of Arras in France some eighty years before. The Archbishop himself adopted the same rule of life, and became a living model of its perfect observance for all his clergy. We fortunately have accurate details regarding his manner of life at this period; and beyond all doubt it was, as the lessons read on his festival declare, a life of marvellous austerity.
Beneath his episcopal dress he wore the habit of a Canon Regular, but, unlike the others, next his skin he wore a coarse hair shirt night and day; and as if that was not enough to mortify his flesh, he had himself frequently scourged, often no less than three times in the day, by an attendant who knew how to keep the scourging secret. He dined in the same refectory with the other canons, and, as with St. Augustine and his clergy, whilst the body was refreshed with food, the spirit was nourished by spiritual reading. He was most abstemious too at all his meals, and never tasted meat. On Friday his only food was bread and water; and sometimes on that day he absolutely abstained from all food--feeding his soul, however, with meditation on the passion of Christ. Yet he was hospitable as became a great prelate, and had banquets rich and abundant prepared for his guests. He even pretended on these occasions to take a share of the good things provided for the strangers, and coloured his water with a little wine, lest his own abstinence might prevent them from fully enjoying the bountiful hospitality prepared for them.
He was assiduous in prayer, and before all things anxious to promote the beauty of God's house, as well as the splendour and regularity of Divine worship. Here, too, the example of the holy prelate must have exercised a very powerful influence both on the clergy and on the people. We are told by the writer of his Life that he was a constant attendant at all the offices of the Church, when not visiting his diocese; and not content at presiding at the daily offices, he regularly got up at midnight to recite matins and lauds with his canons; and when they retired to rest after the office was completed, he generally remained behind in the choir, before the miraculous crucifix of Christ Church, sometimes standing, or sitting, or kneeling, but always praying; so that he often continued reciting the psaltery until the morning dawned, and then he would go out to the cemetery to say a prayer for the dead before retiring for a few hours' brief repose. Yet in all things which might win popular favour or applause, he loved to hide even his good works, lest they might beget self-esteem or hypocrisy.
Such a life was sufficiently rigorous, but it was not enough for this man of God. His nephew Thomas, whom he greatly loved, became Abbot of Glendalough; and then the holy prelate having one in whom he could confide, used to retire to his beloved mountain valley at the approach of Lent, in order to give himself up to a forty days' retreat in the desert. All the saints of God loved solitude, and longed to fly from the haunts of men. They seem to have been especially anxious to select for their place of retreat those secluded spots where the sights and sounds of nature might be most apt to raise their minds to God. Hence we find them in the islands of the great sea, or of some lonely lake; or they retired to the majestic solitude of some mountain valley, where no mean or sordid thoughts could cross their minds; nay, rather everything around them helped to raise their souls to heaven. It was in this spirit--the spirit of a noble generous soul that Laurence used to leave the city and go out to meet and commune with God in the solitude of the mountains of Wicklow. It was the same Spirit of God that brought Moses to Nebo, and Eliseus to Horeb. Therefore it was that St. Gall sought the inmost recesses of the Alps, and St. Kevin the deepest valleys of the Wicklow mountains. So Laurence, like another Kevin, took up his abode not with his nephew in the monastery at the bottom of the valley, but in the bosom of the hills--in the very cave where St. Kevin himself spent his earliest penitential years. There St. Laurence dwelt in the grotto in the face of Lugduff, under the mountain's brow, overlooking the gloomy lake, to which access could be gained only by a boat, or by a ladder planted in the lake itself. Twice a week his nephew brought him a little bread and water to support life, and ascertained his wishes or commands in all things concerning the government of the diocese. If urgent business called him, he went at once from his retreat; but this rarely happened. Whilst there he saw no one but his nephew. His bed was the rock; his canopy the sky; his lamps the midnight stars that shone above the summit of Comaderry mountain. He was there in cold and hunger, in storm and sunshine, alone all the day and all the dreary night. Yet he was perfectly happy, for he lived with God. The saints are not alone in these solitudes, they are watched by angels; the light of heaven is around them; the glow of perfect love is in their hearts; God speaks to them in all the voices of the mountains, and they see Him in all the majestic sights before their eyes. He spoke by day and night to Laurence, as He spoke to holy Job of old.
But what useful purpose does this extreme austerity serve? We can only answer very briefly that it serves two things--first, it serves to emancipate and ennoble the soul in its conflict with the flesh; second, it serves to assimilate us with Christ crucified. We with our selfish hearts, our sordid ungenerous souls, cannot understand the saints of God; we cannot realize how God speaks to them, and comforts them, and feeds them like the ravens in the wilderness. Yet this bishop was a man like ourselves, a man whose life was cast on evil days, and who lived in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation.
Yes, the prelate was a Saint and an Apostle; but the people were sensual and wicked; they would not hearken to his word, nor turn away from their evil courses. Danish Dublin at this time was not a model city, nor a truly Christian city. It was still, in many ways, half pagan; or if they had faith, they certainly had not works. The Archbishop was sorely grieved; he forewarned them, like another Jeremias, of the wrath to come. He told them, what even human sagacity might perceive, that every kingdom divided against itself must fall; that an evil day was in store for them, as well as for the wicked and perverse generation that was over all the land. God had sent them prophets, and they would not hearken; apostles, but they would not be converted. "So the day is at hand, and thy house will be laid desolate." It was even at their doors--a day of wrath and vengeance--and yet a day of justice and mercy, because their bitter chastisement was yet their salvation.
Shortly after the arrival of the Norman freebooters in the year A.D. 1169, Dermott M'Murrough and Maurice Fitzgerald made their first attack on Dublin. On this occasion the citizens kept within their gates, and the enemy was not strong enough to take the city. But the midnight sky was red with the glare of burning homesteads through all the valley of the Liffey; and when the plunderers departed, scarcely a living thing survived in all that fertile region.
Next year the attack was renewed in force, and this time it was directed against the city itself. The citizens had great reason to fear the vengeance of M'Murrough, for they had put his father to a cruel death in the midst of their city, and had shamefully buried him with a dog. Now M'Murrough, with the Normans led on by Strongbow in person, was thundering at their gates. The city, too, was badly prepared for a siege, and there were traitors within the walls; so the citizens resolved to make the best terms they could, and surrender the city. The Archbishop was asked to negotiate the terms of surrender; but even whilst he and the Earl were in conference outside the walls of the city, Milo de Cogan, and some of the more lawless spirits, burst over the walls, and attacked the town. They burned, robbed, and slaughtered as usual, so that the streets were filled with the dead and dying. Then it was that St. Laurence proved himself a true pastor. Rushing from the false parley, he entered the city, and snatched from the brutal soldiers the palpitating bodies of their victims. A hundred times he interposed his own body to ward off the fatal stroke from others. He went about through the slippery streets in his episcopal robes, with the cross in his hands, imploring the merciless foe for Christ's sake to stop the horrid carnage; and when he could do no more, he gave absolution to the dying, and helped to bury the heaps of dead. It was a fearful foretaste of what his native land was destined to endure in the future.
But the Archbishop was not only a true pastor, but a true patriot. He knew that the first adventurers were simply robbers, some of whom were afterwards imprisoned for daring to effect a hostile landing in Ireland, without the licence of the king, at the invitation of a traitor. So he stimulated the slothful king, Rory O'Connor, to action; he implored the native princes to give up for a while their insane divisions, to unite against the common foe, and come to the aid of the Capital. These efforts were partially successful. Some thirty thousand Irish soldiers under the supreme command of Roderick himself beleagured the city from Dalkey to Clontarf, whilst the ships of Hasculf the Dane crowded the river, and watched the river-gate. It was the supreme moment of Ireland's destiny. Had the Irish been soldiers, or even men, they might have annihilated their foes. But they were neither. After a two months' siege, in which the garrison was reduced to the verge of starvation, Milo de Cogan made a desperate sally with a few hundred soldiers, and routed the hosts of the Irish, almost with a shout, as boys frighten away the flocks of birds from the fields in spring.
The Archbishop doubtless saw clearly enough from what he witnessed on that occasion, that the Irish soldiers had no discipline, that their leaders had no union amongst themselves, and that such a heap of uncementing sand, as the event proved, would have no chance of withstanding the mail-clad warriors, who were victorious on every battlefield in Europe. So when the king himself came over towards the close of A.D. 1171, Laurence O'Toole, with the rest of the Irish prelates, followed the example of the kings of the West, and South, and East, who had all submitted to Henry without striking a blow. Herein, too, he proved himself a true patriot, although submission must have cost him a bitter pang. He had seen enough to prove that resistance was utterly hopeless, and that his duty to God and to the people was to yield to a power which he could not oppose. So we find his name amongst the prelates who assembled at Cashel in A.D. 1171, or the beginning of A.D. 1172, to enact such disciplinary laws as the deplorable state of the times had rendered imperatively necessary for the reformation of morality and the reform of discipline. From the Pope's reply to the Synodical letter of this Council we can readily infer, what indeed we might naturally expect from the disturbed state of the times, that very grave abuses prevailed at this period in various parts of the country--abuses which it was a blessing to have reformed almost at any cost.
Yet the great Archbishop was devotedly loyal to his own sovereign, Rory O'Connor, and continued to be faithful to him to the end, even when he became a crownless king, forsaken by his own subjects, and despised and imprisoned by his own sons. Indeed it is not too much to say that Laurence lost his life in the service of that worthless king, whose misfortunes he had done so much to alleviate.
In A.D. 1175 Rory O'Connor finally and formally gave up all claims to the kingdom of Ireland, and was content to accept his own hereditary kingdom of Connaught as a fief from the English monarch. The treaty is still extant; and we find the name of Laurencius Dublinensis as Chancellor for the unfortunate King of Connaught. He even went over to London in person in company with the Archbishop of Tuam, and the Abbot of St. Brendan's, Clonfert, to negotiate the treaty for his old and beloved monarch. Such fidelity to fallen princes is rare, and is highly honourable to the great prelate of Dublin.
Towards the end of the year A.D. 1178 Alexander III. convoked for the first Sunday of the following Lent a General Council to meet in Rome, in order to heal the deplorable wounds which the Church had received from a schism of some twenty years' standing. The Letters of Convocation did not arrive in Ireland until near Christmas; the journey to Rome was toilsome and perilous, especially in the winter season; yet the good Archbishop at once prepared to obey the voice of the Pope as the voice of God. He started immediately after Christmas, and crossing over to England was, with the Irish prelates, his companions, very rudely treated by the king. Before they were allowed to cross to France the jealous tyrant compelled them to swear that during their stay in Rome they would do nothing derogatory to the dignity of the English crown. But in spite of every obstacle they succeeded in making their way to Rome, and were present at all the sessions of the Council. It is a proud thing to find the names of six Irish prelates amongst the signatories of that great Council--a larger number than came from England and Scotland together--and at their head stands the name of Laurence, Archbishop of Dublin.
But Laurence did more than attend the sessions of the Council. He opened the eyes of the Pope to the true state of affairs in Ireland, and not only secured many privileges for his own Church in Dublin, but also insisted on the Pope recognising and safeguarding the liberty and independence of the Church in Ireland. Unfortunately our information on this question is very scanty. However we are inclined to think that, when it is said St. Laurence secured the liberty of the Church in Ireland, it means not only that, like Thomas à Becket, he took measures to protect it against the encroachments of the civil power, but what was at least of equal importance, he preserved it from all dependence on the See of Canterbury. It was only two years before in A.D. 1177 that the Scottish prelates and abbots were forced to swear obedience to the Archbishop of York as their metropolitan. The same crafty policy would no doubt be also attempted in Ireland; and although we cannot prove it, we are convinced in our own mind that it is to St. Laurence O'Toole we owe the spiritual independence of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
The Pope conceived a very strong regard for St. Laurence; he conferred on him the high and special honour of Apostolic Legate in Ireland; and the independence of the Irish Church, having thus been once formally recognised in Rome, could not afterwards be easily undermined. But we must hasten to the end. Laurence came home to Ireland; his stay, however, was very brief, when he was again compelled to travel to England in the interest of Rory O'Connor, the discrowned king. Several abortive attempts were made to get rid of the English influence in the West of Ireland; Rory, or at least his sons, were implicated in these designs, and Henry, who only wanted an excuse, threatened to depose the old king, and confiscate all his territories to the Crown. Rory was alarmed, and what was worse, he was helpless. His own sons had turned against him; so in his misery he implored the Archbishop to be his mediator with the king. He had no one else to rely on, and the Archbishop did not disappoint him. Again he left the shores of Ireland on a mission of charity; and doubtless his eyes were not dry as he gazed on the lessening summits of the far-off Wicklow mountains, and thought of the many happy days he had spent in the wild solitude of his beloved Glendalough. When he arrived in England Henry could not, or would not, see him; moreover, he forbade the prelate to return again to Ireland, and he himself sailed away to Normandy. For three weeks the Archbishop was kept as a sort of prisoner in the monastery of Abingdon, when, revolving to dare all in order to accomplish his purpose, he made up his mind to find out the king beyond the Channel. He embarked at Dover; but a fever had already laid hold of him, so that when he landed, he was unable to travel. He struggled onward, however, for a little until he came to the brow of the hill which overlooks the church and monastery at the little town of Augum or Eu, on the borders of Normandy. Enquiring the name of the place, he learned that it was the Church of the Canons Regular of St. Victor, a branch closely allied to his own. Thereupon he cried out--"Haec requies mea in aeternum, hic habitabo quoniam elegi cam."
Arriving at the monastery, he first paid a visit to the church, and after spending some time in fervent prayer before the altar, he was carried to the hospice. The scene that followed is touching in the extreme, and is taken exactly from the Latin Life written by a brother of the Order. After reposing a little he sent for the Abbot Osbert, and made his confession with great sorrow and humility. But still his mind was not easy; for the task for which he crossed the sea was unaccomplished, and he was no longer able to plead in person before the king. Then he called one of his attendant clerics, David by name, the tutor of Rory's son, who was to be given as a hostage to Henry for his father's loyalty. "Go," said he to David, "find out King Henry, tell him I am dying, and ask him in God's name to forgive the King of Connaught, and receive him again into favour." David bowed his head, and set out to find the king. He was favourably received, for his story made a deep impression on the king, whose hard heart was softened by the sufferings of the Archbishop in the cause of his sovereign. He granted the boon, and pledged his royal word that he would receive Rory again into favour. So David, after four days, returned to the dying prelate, who anxiously awaited his arrival, and told of his success. Then St. Laurence called David to him, made him sit close by his side, for he was almost unable to speak, and laid his head upon the bosom of the priest to imply that he was now satisfied, and that he would die in peace.
Shortly after, his mind being now at ease, he received the Viaticum with the greatest devotion, and then begged to be anointed. Some one of the bystanders suggested that now, as he had received all the sacraments, it were well if the Archbishop made his will. Raising his eyes to heaven he made use of these solemn and memorable words:--"I declare before God that I have not one penny under the sun to dispose of--not one penny"--he was a religious, a Canon Regular; he professed poverty and he kept his vow. Whatever he possessed he gave to the poor; indeed he never possessed anything at all. No sooner was it got than it was gone again. Happy the priest who at his dying hour can make the same declaration with the same truth. Then his thoughts wandered back to his native land--that native land which he loved so wisely and so well, which he tried in vain to save, and which he now saw torn with internal dissensions and trampled under foot by foreign foes--and he dying far away, and leaving no one behind him to guide his people or heal his country's wounds. These bitter thoughts sank deep into his heart; and in anguish of mind he exclaimed--alas! we know how prophetically--"Heu popule stulte et insipiens, quid jam facturus es--quis sanabit aversiones tuas? Quis medebitur tui?" Ah, foolish and misguided people, what will now become of thee? Who will cure thy dissensions? Who will heal thy wounds? He longed to be dissolved and to be with Christ; yet for the sake of his perishing flock he would still remain. But the end was now at hand. With dim eyes he kept reading a MS. copy of the Seven Penitential Psalms which he had brought to him; and when he could read no more, orally or mentally, about twelve o'clock on Friday, the 14th of November, the glorious Confessor closed his eyes in a peaceful, happy death.
The body of the holy Confessor was buried in presence of Cardinal Alexis, the Papal Legate of Scotland. But it remained in its place of burial only four years and six months, when the many wondrous miracles wrought at his tomb caused the remains of St. Laurence to be transferred, and with great solemnity enclosed in a crystal case before the high altar of the church.
Shortly after, at the urgent request of the Canons Regular and the faithful of Eu, a petition for the canonization of the holy servant of God was sent to Rome by the Archbishop and Chapter of Rouen, to which diocese the church of Eu belongs. The Pope, Honorius III., ordered the usual investigation to be made by the ecclesiastical authorities. As St. Laurence came from Ireland shortly before his death, it became necessary to have an official report concerning the life of St. Laurence from that country. The task was committed by the Pope to Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin; but he being absent in England on affairs of State, commissioned the Bishop of Kildare and the Prior of Christ's Church to collect the necessary depositions and transmit them to Rome. After the usual process with legal proof of the practice of heroic virtues during life and miracles after death, Honorius III., in the tenth year of his pontificate, in a Bull issued from Reate, solemnly enrolled St. Laurence O'Toole amongst the canonized saints of the Church. It was the year of our Lord A.D. 1225 that the latest of our saints was thus formally canonized.
It is the greatest glory of the School of Glendalough to have produced such a man--so learned, so holy, so faithful to his king and to his country in the hour of trial. When shall we see his like again? And who will deny that the Church which produced such men as St. Laurence and St. Malachy was sound at the core in spite of many faults and abuses?
After his death the School and Monastery of Glendalough gradually fell into decay, until at length the holy valley of St. Kevin became little better than a nest of robbers and murderers.
XIX. SCHOOLS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY
"I found in each great church, moreo'er, Whether in island or on shore, Pity, learning, fond affection, Holy welcome and kind protection." --King Aldfrid's Poem on Ireland.
I.--THE SCHOOL OF LISMORE, ST. CARTHACH.
The Munster Schools were of somewhat later origin than the monastic schools of the North; but during the seventh century some of them became very celebrated, especially the great School of Lismore, which was second only to that of Clonmacnoise. It was founded by St. Carthach about the year A.D. 636, and soon became the chief seminary in the South of Ireland.
St. Carthach, its founder, was born about the middle of the sixth century in that remote district of West Kerry, which also gave birth to St. Brendan of Clonfert. He was sprung, too, from the same race as Brendan, for his father Firaull, son of Fingin, derived his descent from the renowned Fergus Mac Roy, the northern hero, so celebrated in romantic legend and bardic song. His mother, Findmaith--the noble-fair one--is said to have been the daughter of another Fingin, who was chieftain of Corcoduibhne, in the same County Kerry. This lady was twice married, and by the second marriage became the mother of St. Cuanna of Kilcoony, and probably of other saints also.
The infant was baptized by a priest called Aidan,[329] who gave him Carthach as his baptismal name; but the future saint was more commonly called Mochuda, which seems to have been a pet name given to the boy by his teacher St. Carthach the Elder.[330] The Elder Carthach at this time, about A.D. 570, lived at his monastery at the foot of Slemish (Slieve Mis) on the right bank of the river Mang, not far from Castlemaine. His younger namesake had just attained the age of twelve, and was according to the writer of his Life, a handsome youth, whose bright face and winning ways made him a great favourite with all who knew him. As yet, however, he had received little or no training either in virtue or learning. Like St. Patrick at the same age, he was employed in herding his father's swine on the banks of the river, when it chanced that he came near the monastery of St. Carthach. Just then he happened to hear the monks pouring forth the solemn strains of sacred psalmody, and was filled with such rapture that he remained all night near the holy place without food or shelter. When asked by his parents where he had spent the night, he told them; and added that he was ready to leave all and join that sacred choir of white-robed monks. His parents gladly consented, and sending for the Bishop Carthach, they handed over the boy for the service of the Lord.
The bishop trained the youth in sacred learning, and saw him daily, to his great joy, make even greater progress in virtue, so that after some years he ordained him priest. The holy prelate then after a short term of trial gave him permission to found a monastery of his own at a place called Killtulach, which is described as between Slemish mountain and the river Mang--not far it would seem from Castlemaine, on the right bank of the river. This was about the year A.D. 590; so that we may assign the date of his birth to about the year A.D. 560.
It was very usual at this period for young monks to travel to different monasteries, and spend a period in each in order to perfect themselves in sanctity and learning. Bangor had acquired great fame under the rule of St. Comgall, and so Carthach went to visit his kinsmen in the far north, and make himself still further acquainted with monastic discipline under so great a master. After staying some time at Bangor he returned home to Kerry; but once more went northward to the extreme limit of Munster to pay a visit to St. Molua of Clonfert Molua, whose monastery was situated at the roots of Slieve Bloom at the place now called Kyle. It still forms a part of the diocese of Killaloe, though quite close to the frontier of the ancient Meath.
Shortly afterwards we find him at the great monastery founded by Colman-elo, and called from him Land-elo, now Lynally, quite near to Tullamore, and only three miles from Rahan, where the saint was soon to found an establishment of his own.
It is evident that it was St. Colman-Elo who advised St. Carthach to found a monastery near his own in the territory, not of Munster, but of Meath--in fact it was near the site of some of our most famous battles, which the sons of Heber and Heremon fought for supremacy on this border land. The name Raithain signifies filicetum, or the Ferney Land; and it was not more than three miles from Lynally, the ancient Land-elo, which is derived by some from ealla, meaning an ancient grove or wood.
St. Carthach lived at Rahan for nearly forty years,[331] and at Lismore, certainly not more than two years; yet his name is generally connected with the latter, and hardly ever with the former monastery. Perhaps it was because the men of Meath treated the saint so badly after his long and laborious career at Rahan. Indeed, it is quite evident, that it was jealousy--jealousy which the Hy-Niall monks, probably of Durrow, near Rahan, felt at the success of St. Carthach--that prompted them to expel the saint and his scholars from the dear old convent, where he had lived so long. There are few things less creditable to the Southern Hy-Niall, both princes and priests, than their conduct on this occasion. It is manifest that Carthach by his piety and learning had gathered around him a great monastic school at Rahan. For not to speak of boys and servants, the Life in the Salamanca MS., tells us that he had gathered round him some 847 monks, who supported themselves and succoured the poor by the labour of their own hands, and with their holy founder served God together--unanimiter--with one mind and in one spirit. "Their toil," says the Life, "was severe, but the fire of charity lightened the burden of this labour, so that to none of them did it seem heavy" (Vita I., sect. 15). It is said, too, that Carthach himself was raised to the episcopal dignity in Rahan.
Now, the 'native clerics,' says the Life, of the Hy-Niall race, were jealous of this success, and instigated by Satan, they resolved to drive the southern monk from their territories. The Kerryman, of course, though a saint, was, no doubt, annoyed by these proceedings of the men of Meath. It was indeed hard to be borne, for his was a holy, a useful, and an inoffensive life. He had spent forty years amongst them. His soul clung to the place, because he fondly believed, as it was the scene of his labours, so also it would be the place of his resurrection. He had built for himself and his monks a very beautiful church, the ruins of which are still to be seen. He had established a famous school, and crowds of young men had placed themselves under his direction, and were, doubtless, tenderly attached to their master. He was near the monasteries, too, of some of his dearest friends, who dwelt around Slieve Bloom. And now they were going to drive him from his home, and his monks, and his friends, at an age too when the strength of his arm was weakened, and the vigour of his mind diminished.
It was a wanton and a cruel eviction, for which Prince Blathmac, son of Aedh Slaine, seems to have been primarily responsible. The Annalists denounce this expulsion; but they seem afraid to mention openly the authors of the crime. The Ulster Annals (A.D. 635), call it the 'effugatio' of Carthach from Rahan, which is not merely a flight but an expulsion. The Four Masters say that he was 'banished' from Rahan, and date it as taking place in A.D. 631; but both the Chronicon Scotorum and the Annals of Ulster give A.D. 635, at Easter, which is in all probability the true date.
The Life of St. Carthach, however, assigns the real motive for thus evicting the saint. The clergy of the district moved by jealousy at the success of Carthach, resolved to expel the 'stranger' from their province; and Blathmac, then ruler of that territory, was persuaded to carry out this wicked purpose. Can it be that the Columbian monks of Durrow were envious at seeing the fame of their own establishment eclipsed by the greater renown of Rahan? It is not at all unlikely, although it is not expressly stated; for the Life attributes it simply "to some of the native clergy of that province." Elsewhere it is said that the expulsion of Carthach is one of the three evil things for which certain 'saints' of Erin were responsible--the other two being the shortening of St. Ciaran's life, and the banishment of Columcille to Iona. We entirely sympathise with this traditional sentiment. If any of the 'saints' were responsible for driving away the venerable old man from his monastery at Rahan, they must have done penance for the deed before they could deserve the name. It was a cruel and an evil deed; and although Providence brought much good from the evil by the foundation of Lismore, there is some reason to fear that it broke the old man's heart, and brought down his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.
When the edict went forth that Carthach and his monks were to be driven from Rahan, we are told that he departed reluctantly. "Leave this city with your monks," said the chiefs of Meath, "and seek a settlement in some other country."[332] "I wish to end my days here," said Carthach, "for I have served God many years in this place, and now my end is nigh. Therefore, I will not depart, except I am compelled, lest men think me inconstant of purpose. I am ashamed to become a wanderer in my old age." After some hesitation the men of Meath plucked up an ignoble courage; and it is said that Blathmac himself took the hand of the saint, and led him forth from his monastery.
The poor old man was not equal to long journeys; and so slowly and regretfully he travelled southward, having turned his back for ever on the jealous and ungrateful men of Meath.
The first night he stopped with St. Barrind (or Barrindeus) of Drumcullen, in the barony of Eglish. The name is still retained as that of an old parish church, about four miles north-east of Parsonstown. Drumcullen is about three miles east of Eglish old church at the foot of the mountain. It cannot be more than ten miles from Rahan, and thus marks the extent of the first day's journey.
But the saint was now in his native Munster, and could proceed with greater leisure and more security. The second night he rested in the famous old monastery of St. Ciaran of Saigher. This was one of the cradles of Christianity in Ireland. If we may accept the statement in the Life of St. Ciaran, he was directed by God's Angel to go to a well in the middle of Ireland, and found his church at the place where his bell would ring of itself. The saint obeyed, and travelled onward until he came to the place now called Bell Hill, near the fountain Huaran. There his bell tolled, and close at hand he founded his church, at Saigher, now called Seir Ciaran, which is not more than two miles south of Drumcullen, under the western shadow of the mountain. There was every reason why St. Carthach the Younger should rest at Seir Ciaran. His old master, St. Carthach the Elder, to whom he owed so much, had been once bishop of that ancient See, in succession to Ciaran himself. It was about the year A.D. 540, before Carthach the Younger was born, for it appears that it was after leaving Seir Ciaran, about A.D. 560, that Carthach the Elder came to his native Kerry, and there met with his younger disciple of the same name.
There was reason why Carthach should love that old monastery, under the shadow of the morning sun when rising over Slieve Bloom, where his beloved master had spent so many years, and where the first-born of the Celtic Saints of Erin had gone to his rest.
It was a short stage from Seir Ciaran to Roscrea--some seven or eight miles; but Roscrea had become even then, in A.D. 635, so famous a retreat for saintly men, that it could not be passed by without a visit. There was no town of Roscrea there at the time; all the low-lying lands were constantly flooded, and formed the Stagnum Cre frequently mentioned in the Lives of the Saints of that district. The Ros, or wooded promontory, on which St. Cronan founded his monastery, rose up from these flooded lowlands. At first he established himself at Seanros, a wooded hill in Corville Demesne, where his church is still to be seen; but afterwards, about the year A.D. 606, he founded a second monastery on the Ros of Lough Cre, the site of which is now occupied by the Catholic Church of the town of Roscrea. It is probable that he was dead before the visit of St. Carthach; but all the same, his monastery and his spirit were there on the great Munster highway.
Leaving Roscrea the saint seems to have made his way to the royal rath of Failbhe Flann, King of Magh Femhin, as he is called in the Annals of Ulster. Magh Femhin was the fertile and picturesque plain stretching from Cashel to Slievenamon on the east, and on the south to the Knockmealdown Mountains, which separated it from the territory of the Desii. It was a rich and fertile land, watered by swelling rivers, and bounded towards the south and east by bold and savage mountains.
Failbhe Flann, the ancestor of the MacCarthys, was then king at Cashel, and kindly received Carthach, who showed his gratitude by curing the king's son of a sore eye. The king offered Carthach a site for a monastery in his own territory of Magh Femhin; but Carthach knowing that this was not God's will in his regard, declined the prince's generous offer, and resolved to go further southward. It is likely that the saint met at the court of Failbhe that prince's son-in-law, Maeloctraigh, Chief of the Desii of Waterford, who offered to Carthach a large territory beyond the mountain (of Knockmealdown), where he might establish himself and his brother monks in peace beside the Great River, and without any fear of further disturbance during the brief span of his remaining life.
The saint gladly accepted this offer, and stopping for a brief rest at Ardfinnan, which was destined for another saint later on, he crossed the rugged hills that rose up before him, probably by the pass leading southward from Clogheen, and coming down the southern slopes of the hill he saw stretched before him that beautiful valley through which the Blackwater forces its way from Lismore to Cappoquin. "Here shall be my rest, for I have chosen it," exclaimed the saint, and crossing, not without miraculous aid, it is said, the swelling waves of the Avonmore, he crept up the wooded heights that overhung the southern bank of the stream, and sat down on Magh Sciath--the Plain of the Shields--close to what Keating calls Dunsginne--the great rath surmounting the height to the east of the present town of Lismore.
Many writers have asserted that there was a monastery at Lismore before St. Carthach's arrival there. Mention is certainly made of the death of Lugaid of Lismore in the Ulster Annals, A.D. 591; and the Four Masters record the death of Neman, Abbot of Lismore, in A.D. 610. In A.D. 634 the Annals of Ulster tell us that Eochaidh of Lismore died. O'Donovan thinks these entries refer to Lismore on the Blackwater; it is more probable, however, that the reference is to Lismore--an island near Oban in Scotland--where an Irish saint called Molua or Moluag had founded a famous monastery much celebrated in later times.
Assuming with the Ulster Annals that Carthach came to Lismore after Easter of the year A.D. 635, he cannot have lived there more than two years--and probably died on the 14th of May, A.D. 637. The Ulster Annals fix his death in A.D. 636; but from the statements in his Life we gather that he must have spent at least two years at Lismore. We are told that on his arrival there he at once proceeded to mark out the site of his monastery, surrounding it as usual with a strong fence and ditch. Thereupon the holy virgin Coemell, whose cell was not far off, came to see the saint, and finding him at work she inquired what the saint and his monks were doing. They replied that they were building for themselves a small habitation--Lios-beg, it would be in Irish. "Not so," replied the virgin saint; "this place will be called Lios-mor," "which," says the writer of the Life, "means in Latin atrium magnum," or Great Hall; "and her prophecy," adds the author, "was verified by the event. For Lismore is now a large city, half of which is an asylum where no female is allowed to enter, for it is full of cells and other monastic buildings, and a great number of holy men always dwell there. For they come there in great numbers, these saintly persons, not only from every part of Ireland, but also from England (Anglia), and from (Britannia) Britain." This distinction between Anglia, or Saxon land, and Britannia, or the country from the Clyde to the Severn inhabitated by the native Britons, shows that this Life was written at a very early date--probably in the seventh or eighth century.
Having founded his monastery, the saint wished to retire from community life for some time to prepare himself for death by undivided communion with God. The great fame of Carthach was attracting numbers of monks and students to this new foundation, so that he was frequently disturbed by this great influx of pious visitors. Labour and old age too were telling on his emaciated frame, and he knew that the end was not far off. Then he retired to a lonely cave, which was under the monastery, and there for one year and six months gave himself up to the service of God in solitude. The monks, however, especially the older ones, were still allowed to visit their beloved father; and he seeing the difficulty they had in reaching the high ground on which the monastery was built, resolved to return to the community once more. So the brethren came to carry him up the steep ascent, and now they had reached the middle of the ravine, when the old man seeing a ladder reaching up to the open heavens told the brethren to lay him on the ground and administer to him the last sacraments. Tenderly and piously they did so, "and having partaken of the sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood and given his last injunctions to the brethren, he bade them all a tender farewell, and giving to each of them the kiss of peace he died in their arms on the day before the Ides of May," in the year A.D. 637, which seems to be the true date.
Like St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, Carthach spent only a very short time with his monks in this monastery that was afterwards to become so famous. He laid, however, the foundations of the spiritual edifice as well as of the material building. During his long residence at Rahan, he wrote a Rule for the guidance of his monks, which no doubt was the same that was adopted at Lismore. Many of the monks of Rahan, too, when expelled by the Hy-Niall, accompanied their beloved father to Lismore. These were no doubt the holy 'Seniors,' who used to visit him in his cell in the lonely valley; and who ruled the community after his death in the same spirit and in obedience to the same Rule.
Many striking miracles are recorded in the First Life of St. Carthach, to only one of which we shall make reference here.
When Carthach and his companions were coming to Lismore--the place given by the prince of the Desii, "where they might live on the fruits of their own labour, and serve God in peace, without becoming a burden to anyone"--they saw from the high lands a great impetuous river, swollen by the tide of the neighbouring estuary, barring the way, so that there was no means of crossing to the southern bank. Then, whilst the others were in doubt what to do, Carthach, with his friends, Colman-elo and Molua (of Kyle), bent their knees in earnest prayer to God, and lo! the waves were divided on the right hand and on the left, opening a passage for the saints to cross over on dry ground. And so these true Israelites, with hymns of praise to God, crossed the bed of the Avonmore, and came to Lismore, as it was afterwards called--the place which God himself had prepared for them. The word lis, anciently les, properly signifies the mound surrounding the buildings, and also by a secondary signification, the space enclosed within. Here it includes both--the defending mound and the enclosed space which contained all the ecclesiastical buildings--the church, the cells, the refectory, the stores and other necessary adjuncts to a great monastery. In those early days these buildings were of rude materials and simplest structure; but all the same they were the choice abodes of learning and holiness.
The most interesting literary monument connected with Lismore is the Rule of St. Carthach. It is one of the eight Monastic Rules of our early Church still extant in Dublin manuscripts, and, in the opinion of O'Curry, is certainly authentic. The language, the style, the matter, are all such as might be expected from the person to whom they are attributed at the time it is supposed to have been composed. We know, too, from other sources that these saints really did compose what are called Monastic Rules, and hence, when we find these Rules in ancient MSS. bearing their names, we are not justified in rejecting their authenticity without some tangible reason.
It is to be regretted, although it is an additional proof of their authenticity, that almost all these ancient rules have been written in verse. The construction of these verses is very intricate and artificial, and as a consequence, the matter was, to some extent, sacrificed to the form--we lose in precision what we gain in harmony.
The Rule of Carthach, or Mochuda, is much more than a Monastic Rule in the ordinary sense. It gives precepts for the spiritual guidance of almost all classes of persons. The entire poem, as translated by O'Curry, consists of 135 four-lined stanzas. The first eight of these stanzas contain a general exhortation addressed to all Christians, urging on them the observance of the great law of charity, as well as of all the other commandments of God.
The next nine stanzas are addressed to 'Bishops,' and contain some judicious and wholesome admonitions. The Bishop is responsible to Christ, and must be a vigilant shepherd and an orthodox teacher, checking the pride of kings, resisting evil-doers, and conciliating the lay multitude. He is to be skilled in Holy Scripture, for if he is not a learned man he is only a step-son of the Church. He is bound to condemn all heresy and crime, for it is certain that on the Day of Judgment he will have to answer not only for his own faults, but for the sins of those under his government.
Then the Rule for an abbot is prescribed. It is a noble office to be 'Chief of a Church,' but the holder must be worthy of it, and set his subjects a good example by his own deeds. He is to exhort the aged, and to instruct the young; to reprove the silly, and censure the disorderly--but in all patience, modesty, and charity. He must be constant in preaching the Gospel, and "in offering the Sacrifice of the Body of the great Lord upon the altar." Otherwise he will be the enemy of God, and cannot become the Heir of the Church of God.
The "priest," as distinct from the abbot, is enjoined to lead a truthful, laborious life, and to offer up worthily the BODY OF THE KING. His learning should be correct, and he should be accurate in the observance of the rule and of the law. When he goes to give Communion, at the awful point of death, he must receive the confession without shame and without reserve.
The 'soul's-friend' is admonished not to be a blind leader of the blind, but to teach the ignorant, to receive their confessions, not their alms, candidly and devoutly; and not lead them into sin in imitation of himself. If he has not Mass on every day, he will, at least, on Sunday and Thursday, to banish every wickedness far from him.
Still more minute prescriptions are given to regulate the conduct of a "monk." All the faults he is to avoid, and all the virtues he is to practise are described in great detail; but as they really contain nothing new, we need not further refer to them here.
The special duties of the Cele De, or Culdee, are also defined, and, if we may judge from this Rule, they were not 'recluses' living alone, nor yet monks, supporting themselves by the labour of their hands in the fields; but regular clergy, living in community, engaged in the celebration of Mass, the recitation of the Divine Office, the instruction of the ignorant in the church, and the teaching of the novices and students in their schools. The statements, however, are so vague that, to some extent at least, they would apply to all the clergy, whether secular, regular, or monastic.
"The order of the Refectory" is prescribed with great minuteness, but as we have already referred to this subject, we shall not deal further with it here. Taken in all its parts this Rule of St. Carthach is a highly interesting, and most important monument of the early Irish Church.
II.--ST. CATHALDUS OF TARENTUM.
The great glory of the School of Lismore was St. Cathaldus. Like many other Irishmen, who left home and died abroad, he has been almost forgotten by our native writers. But the country of his love and of his adoption has not been ungrateful to Ireland. With one accord all foreign writers, following the testimony of Tarentum itself, proclaim that Cathaldus, its second apostle and patron saint, was an Irishman and a scholar of the great School of Lismore.
Lismore is far away from Taranto, as it is now called. It was a city of ancient Magna Graecia, frequently hostile to Rome, and at the best of times yielding only a reluctant obedience to the Queen of the Seven Hills. She preferred Pyrrhus and Hannibal to the Curii and Scipios. Seated on the southern sea that looks towards Greece, its cultured and pleasure-loving inhabitants had more affection for their ancient motherland than for their stern mistress by the Tiber. Even in the days of the Empire they were more loyal to Byzantium than to Rome. Strange that this Greek-Italian city, situated in the very heel of Italy, should get its apostle from a Munster monastery. Yet such is the fact, to which its own writers bear unanimous and grateful testimony.
The Life of St. Cathaldus has been written by two Tarentines--the brothers Bartholomew and Bonaventure Morini--of whom the former wrote his account of the saint in prose, and the latter in poetry. Both being citizens of Taranto, were acquainted with all the traditions of the place in reference to their patron saint, and, moreover, formally appeal to the testimony of the ancient public records of the Church and of the city in all those things to which these ancient records could bear witness, and also to the Office for the Feast of St. Cathaldus, which was published at Rome in the year A.D. 1607, by the Cardinal Archbishop of Taranto, with the sanction of the Holy See. The brothers Morini shortly afterwards wrote the Life of the Saint. The poetic Life by Bonaventure Morini was first written in eight books; and is greatly and justly praised for the elegance of its Latin style. Bartholomew Morini gives a briefer, but more authentic narrative in prose, which he hoped would help to make known beyond the bounds of their own city the labours, and virtues, and miracles of the saint, whom his brother had already celebrated in verse, and whom Providence had sent from the remotest shores of Ireland (Hibernia) to be the patron and protector of their native city. Unfortunately we have, as I observed before, no account of St. Cathaldus in our domestic Annals; and we must, therefore, follow the guidance of those foreign writers, who, whilst unanimous as to the place of birth and education of our saint, so render the uncouth Irish names in the Latin tongue, that it is very difficult to identify the persons and places to whom they refer. The substance of their account is as follows:--
Cataldus, or Cathaldus, which is the Latin form of Cathal, a very common Irish name, "came from Hibernia, which is an island beyond Britain, in the western sea, smaller in area, but fully equal to it in fertility of soil and productiveness of cattle; whilst in the warmth of the land, in the temperature of the climate, and the salubrity of the air, it is even superior to Britain."
Some say, continues Morini, that Rachau was the Irish city in which he was born, because in many books he is called Cathaldus of Rachau; but the writer rather thinks his native town was Cathandum, which by a change of letter would be Cathaldum, the town of Cathal. He was, he thinks, called Cathaldus of Rachau, because he was bishop of that place in Ireland; but the name Cathaldus he got from his native town, so that the saint's name would be a patronymic.
It is very difficult to ascertain where these two places were. Colgan, a very high authority, seems to think that Cathaldum or Cathandum was Baile-Cathail (i.e., Ballycahill) in Ormond, which was the birthplace of the saint, and that Rachau was the foreign way of expressing Rahan, the original monastery and See of St. Carthagh, and of which Cathaldus might have become bishop on the expulsion of its holy founder by the Hy-Niall. On the whole, we think this is a probable explanation, and not inconsistent with the facts narrated in the Lives both of St. Carthagh and of St. Cathaldus.
For all the accounts agree that the native place of Cathaldus was in Momonia, or as some call it, Mumenia, which in the Office of the saint is changed by mistake of a letter into Numenia. But the reference is clearly to Munster, in Irish Mumhan, which is usually latinized Momonia, or more accurately, perhaps, Mumonia. There are three townlands in North Tipperary called Ballycahill, one of which gives its name to the parish of Ballycahill, west of Thurles, in the barony of Eliogarty. Seeing that this church took its name from Bally-Cahill, it is highly probable that the village itself got its name from a saint who was a native of the place, and under whose protection, too, the church of his native village would naturally be placed. There is every reason to assume that Cathaldus was of the royal blood of the Munster kings, and that he lived not very far from Lismore; both of which circumstances would very well apply to Ballycahill. Cashel, the royal residence of the Munster kings, is about twelve miles further south; and Ballycahill itself was on the highway from north to south Munster, the very road that Carthagh and his monks would follow in their flight from the North to the court of Failbe Flann at Cashel, on their way to Lismore.
His father's name was Euchus, and his mother's name is rendered Achlena or Athnea. Euchus is an attempt at latinizing the Irish Eochaidh. Achlena was a not unfrequent Irish female name, which was borne by the mothers of St. Fintan and St. Columbanus. More likely, however, the original name was the Irish form Ethnea--a very common name--which the Tarentines, with their Greek tastes, would very naturally render Athnea in Latin.
As to the date of the saint's birth there is more difference of opinion. The Morini, who speak, however, doubtingly, seem to think the saint was born in the reign of the Emperor Adrian, and came to Tarentum during the reign of Aurelius, or Antoninus Pius. In this, however, they appear to have merely made a conjecture, having no ancient authority to follow. They were anxious to make this second foundation of the Tarentine Church after St. Peter and St. Mark, who were said to have first preached the Gospel there, as ancient as possible. It is evident, however, even from their own narrative that a much later date must be assigned to the advent of Cathaldus to Tarentum. For he came there on his return from Jerusalem, where with his companions he had been to visit the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord. But the Holy Sepulchre was not discovered until the time of St. Helen, in A.D. 336, after which this pilgrimage became common in Christendom, so that we cannot assign by any possibility this early date to the mission of Cathaldus at Tarentum.
Of course, too, the history of the Irish Church is entirely inconsistent with so early a date for the apostolate of this Irish saint. For we are told that he studied and taught at Lismore; that he was Bishop of Rachau; that he preached the Gospel successfully in Ireland before he left for the Holy Land--facts which more clearly mark the seventh than the second century as the period during which he lived and flourished.
The young Cathal, who seems to have been born about the year A.D. 615, grew up in holiness and grace before God and men; and, according to the author, was whilst yet a youth sent to study in the great monastic school of Lismore (Lesmoria). It was, as we have seen, founded by St. Carthach in the year A.D. 635. Indeed, Morini's account of our saint at Lismore would seem to imply that he was a professor there as well as student, for he tells us that the fame of his learning and virtues attracted many disciples to the new college,[333] and what is more, raised up against himself some powerful enemies. He not only taught in the schools, but he preached the Gospel most successfully in all the country of the Desii, working many miracles too, and building churches--one of which dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is specially mentioned in his Life as the glory of Lismore. The author even exaggerates his labours, for he adds, that no one was left throughout all Ireland whom Cathaldus did not instruct in the saving truths of the Gospel.
Now the king (of Munster no doubt), was jealous of the great popularity of the saint, and fearing that Cathal, relying on the good will of the people, might aspire to the throne, he sailed to Lismore, intending to seize and imprison the saint. But God protects His own. This evil-minded prince was warned by two Angels in a vision not to touch Cathaldus at his peril; but rather to make him successor to Meltrides, the regulus of the Desii, who had inflamed by evil counsel the king's mind against Cathaldus; and lo! whilst the king was narrating this vision in the morning to his counsellors a messenger came to announce the sudden death of this Meltrides, the king's evil counsellor. The king, now filled with terror, asked pardon of Cathaldus, who was then a deacon, and was going to make him ruler over the Desii; but Cathaldus modestly refused the honour, preferring to serve God in religion. Thereupon he was made bishop, and the king assigned him mensal lands around Lismore, in the territory of Meltrides, and he became not only bishop, but even an archbishop, with twelve suffragan sees subject to him as metropolitan! The facts here seem much exaggerated, but were probably quite true in substance.
Meltrides seems to have been that prince of the Desii, who gave Lismore to St. Carthach in A.D. 635. His death is recorded under date A.D. 670. If Cathaldus were a deacon, in A.D. 670, he can hardly have been a disciple of St. Carthach, who died thirty-three years before. Colga, son of Failbe Flann, was King of Munster at this period, for his death is noticed, in A.D. 674 by the accurate Chronicon Scotorum. It is not unlikely then that Cathaldus, the professor of Lismore, who was supposed to be aiming at the crown of Munster, was a member of the rival line sprung from Fingin, the elder brother of Failbe Flann. Fingin died in A.D. 619, leaving the crown to Failbe; but of course his sons would have a better claim than Failbe's, when they grew up to man's estate. These two princes, Fingin and Failbe Flann, were respectively the heads of the great rival families of Munster, the O'Sullivans and M'Carthys; and although the latter rose to greater power, the former was, it is said, the senior branch of that royal stock, and retained their lands in the Golden Vale down to the advent of the Anglo-Normans, when they were driven to the mountains of Kerry. It was Colga, therefore, King of Munster, in A.D. 670, who caused Cathaldus the deacon to be elected Bishop, and not only endowed his See of Rachau with the lands of the Desii, but also subjected to his authority all the Bishops of the South, whose sees were within the kingdom of Cashel. In this way we can explain the statement in the Life that Cathaldus was made an archbishop with twelve suffragan prelates subject to his authority. Colga would lend himself all the more readily to this project, because there would be now less danger of Cathaldus, after he became a bishop, aiming at the crown of Munster.
But where was the See of Rachau? We cannot agree with Colgan that it was Rahan. Rahan was in Meath in the territory of the Southern Hy-Niall, and we may assume it as certain that the spirit of jealousy, which in A.D. 635, drove St. Carthach from Rahan would never tolerate the appointment of this Munster prince as bishop in any part of Meath. It is, of course, still more improbable that the same jealous rivals would consent to give him metropolitan jurisdiction over the princes and prelates of their own race.
From the narrative in the saint's Life, if it can be relied upon, it is quite evident that Rachau was not far from Lismore, that it was in the territory of the Desii, and like the see of Sletty, it may, for a while, have attained to a certain pre-eminence in Munster in consequence of the learning and virtue of Cathaldus. Still it is very difficult to ascertain the exact locality of this 'city of Rachau.' There was, as we know from the Four Masters, a mountain in this district, about six miles north of Dungarvan, which was called Slieve Cua, now Slieve Gua. There must have been an old church in the district also, for there is a parish called Slievegue; and if there was a rath named from the territory, it would be Rath-cua, or Rachau, as any Irish scholar will readily admit. There was a pass through the valley beneath Slieve Cua, which, as it led from Magh Femhin into Decies without the Drum, was in ancient times the scene of many a bloody battle. We are inclined to think that Rachau of the saint's Life is simply another form of Rath-cua, which was doubtless the ancient name of the residence of the family of Cathaldus, who were probably the rulers of the district. The old church might have once had the same appellation, although so far as we know it is now lost. After the departure of Cathaldus, this church would lose its pre-eminence like many another church in Ireland which was once the seat of a bishop, and at present does not rank even as a parochial church. Clonenagh is an example, as we have seen when treating of its history. However, we merely offer this as a conjecture, for we can find no reference to the church or district of Rachau in our domestic Annals.
After Cathaldus had ruled the See of Rachau for some years, with his brother Donatus and several companions, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem--a journey that it was by no means unusual for the fervent saints of Erin to accomplish even at that early period. On their return from Palestine, their vessel was wrecked in the Gulf of Taranto, not far from the city of the same name.
Taranto, the classical Tarentum, was an ancient and famous city, beautifully situated on the northern shore of the bay. It was founded by a Spartan colony of young men, who left their native country because they were branded with the stigma of illegitimacy. But they selected a beautiful site for their city, under the shadow of the Iapygian hills, and surrounded by the sun-lit waters of that spacious bay. The climate was delightful, the air bracing and salubrious; for the summer's heats were tempered by the sea breezes, and the mountains sheltered them from the biting winds of winter. The hills were clothed with olive trees and vineyards, which were specially prized; the wool of their sheep was of the finest quality; the inner harbour was filled with shell-fish; and their honey was equal to that produced by the bees of Hymettus. Horace, in a well-known Ode, extols its mild winter and lingering spring; and declares that its rare products and smiling bowers woo him to make his sojourn in that happy land.[334]
But its inhabitants, even in the days of Pyrrhus, were said to be an effeminate and licentious people, more devoted to the pleasures of peace than to the arts of war. They had heard the Gospel from the lips of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Mark; but during the disturbances succeeding the fall of the Western Empire, they became once more practically pagans. Such was the state of things when Cathaldus and his companions were wrecked on the shore of the Tarentine Gulf.
When the Irish bishop saw this beautiful city thus given over to pleasure and to vice, like St. Paul at Athens, his spirit was moved within him, and in burning language he implored the inhabitants to return to the service of the God whom they had forgotten. He performed also many striking miracles in the sight of all the people, healing the sick, and even it is said, raising the dead to life. It happened at this time that there was no bishop in the city; so the Tarentines besought the Irish saint to become their bishop, and promised to obey his commands, and follow all his counsels. Reluctantly he consented, in the hope that he might thus be able to win them back to the service of God. His efforts were crowned with complete success. Once more Tarentum became a christian city in reality as well as in name; and Cathaldus was venerated as the second apostle and patron saint of the city.
Cathaldus spent some years in his new see; then feeling his end approaching, the saint once more exhorted the people and the clergy, in language of the most tender affection, to be true to the profession and practice of the Christian faith. He died, shortly after, in his city of Tarentum, towards the close of the seventh century, on the eighth day of March, which is his festival day. The holy remains, by which many miracles were wrought, were buried in a marble tomb, which up to this day is preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Tarentum. For a long period the identity and position of the tomb were unknown, until the time of the Archbishop Drogonus, by whose orders the old cathedral was restored. The workmen in excavating the old walls came upon the marble tomb; and the Archbishop having been sent for, caused the tomb to be opened, when the sacred relics were discovered, with a golden cross on which the name of Cathaldus was inscribed. So Archbishop Drogonus, full of joy, caused the holy relics to be translated, and the tomb itself to be rebuilt close to the high altar of the new Cathedral Church, where they are preserved with great honour down to the present day. In the year A.D. 1150, Archbishop Giraldus caused the holy relics to be enclosed in a silver shrine, richly adorned with gold and jewels. A large silver statue of the saint was also erected in the church, and a portion of the skull was placed within the figure. The feast of the Invention of the saint's Relics is celebrated on the eighth day of May, and the Translation is kept on the tenth of the same month. Both these festivals, as well as the Natalis of the saint on the eighth of March, are celebrated with much pomp by the Tarentines even to the present day. The silver-gilt cross found within the tomb is hung around the neck of the silver statue of the saint, and on the cross may still be seen, engraved in characters quite legible and distinct--CATHALDUS RACHAU, which identify so conclusively the prelate of Lismore and Tarentum with the sacred relics that were discovered by Archbishop Drogonus.
Certain writings have been attributed to Cathaldus by Colgan, and others; but it is difficult to regard them as genuine.
There is a short treatise, given by Colgan, containing an account alleged to be taken from the Records of the Church and City of Tarentum, of the principal miracles of the saint. It is a very striking enumeration of most wonderful cures effected through the intercession of the saint, and bears intrinsic evidence of authenticity--at least such is Colgan's opinion.
There is also extant a prophecy attributed to the saint, which he uttered shortly before his death, and which was by his order, if not by his own hand, inscribed in certain leaden tablets, and hidden within a column in the Church of St. Peter without the eastern walls of the city. It is said that in the year A.D. 1492, the saint appeared to a certain deacon of Tarentum, by name Raphael Crurera, and commanded him to tell the Archbishop that he would find in the said church the figure of a boy painted on the column with the hand pointing out the spot where the leaves of the leaden record containing the prophecy would be found. The Archbishop sought the place indicated, and found the two sheets of lead inscribed with the prophecy. But the whole thing looks very like a forgery concocted for political purposes.
III.--OTHER SCHOLARS OF LISMORE--ST. CUANNA.
It does not appear that St. Cathaldus was ever Abbot or Bishop of Lismore, although he was certainly a student of that great seminary. St. Carthach appears to have been succeeded in the government of Lismore by St. Cuanna, who is said to have been his uterine brother. As Cuanna, or at least one who bore that name, was also the author of an ancient book of Annals, he is worthy of special mention in this place. Colgan is of opinion that St. Cuanna, the Abbot of Lismore, is the same as that Cuanna, who has given his name to Kilcooney, near Headfort, on the shores of Lough Corrib; and he thinks it highly probable that he was also the original author of the Book of Cuanach, cited in the Annals of Ulster. It is not quoted after A.D. 628; and we know that St. Cuanna of Lismore died about A.D. 650, so that this fact of itself lends some probability to Colgan's view. The facts of his history, however, will clearly show that Cuanna of Lismore was the founder of Kilcooney, near Lough Corrib.
St. Cuanna of Kilcooney was born near the eastern shore of that lake, for he is described as founding a church in his native district.[335] His mother, Findmaith, was a near relation of St. Brendan, and appears to have been also the mother of St. Fursey, and of St. Eany, who also founded churches on the Corrib shore. In that case Findmaith was the second wife of Fintan of Ard-fintan, near Headfort, who is said to have been a nephew of St. Brendan. We know that both St. Brendan and St. Carthach belonged originally to the same district in the west of Kerry, and that both were sprung from Fergus Mac Roy. We know also that many of the tribesmen both of Carthach and Brendan migrated to West Connaught about this period, and that the father of Fursey was amongst them. It may be that his wife afterwards got married to another Kerry chieftain, and this would explain how Carthach and Cuanna were uterine brothers, although one was born at Tralee and the other near Lough Corrib.
About A.D. 590 Cuanna went to the school of St. Carthach, at Rahan, where he remained many years. Then he was sent about A.D. 620 to found a monastery "in the delightful land of the Ui-Eachach, in the south of the woody Inisfail." Afterwards, however, he returned home to Lough Corrib and founded Kilcooney. The "Fragment of his Life," in the Salamanca MS. then tells how he was carried off into Connemara, but God's angels took charge of him, and brought him over the lake in safety, floating on a flat stone, to his own side of the lake. Then it was he resolved to found his Church of Kilcooney, or Kilcoonagh, of which the remains are still to be seen in the old churchyard not far from Headfort. There is also the stump of a round tower close at hand, which shows the ancient importance of the place.
Great numbers of saints and monks from all parts of Ireland were soon attracted to Kilcooney by the fame of its learned and holy founder. In fact we are told that on one occasion no less than 1,746 of these holy men assembled in conference in a beautiful meadow near the church, and there entered into a league of holy friendship with each other--surely a beautiful spectacle before angels and men in that rude and barbarous age.
It seems that it was after the death of his brother, St. Carthach, in A.D. 636 or 637, that Cuanna was called to preside at Lismore. The kin of the founders always got a preference when rulers were elected for these ancient monasteries, and his near kinship with Carthach was, together with his virtues and merits, the main reason of this election. It is certain, however, that he was Abbot of Lismore, for two of our ancient calendars describe him as such, and in the notes to the Felire of Ængus he is similarly described. He died about the year A.D. 650.
The School of Lismore continued to flourish under him and his successors, attaining, it seems, the zenith of its celebrity towards the opening years of the eighth century under St. Colman O'Leathain.
St. Colman O'Leathain flourished as Abbot and Bishop of Lismore from A.D. 698, or A.D. 699 to 702; and during this brief period he became very celebrated. He was the son of Finbarr, of the race of Hy-Beogna, the hereditary princes of Ibh Liathain--a district extending from Cork to Youghal, and nearly corresponding with the modern barony of Imokelly. He was a pupil of Lismore during the incumbency of St. Hierlog, or Jarnlach, as we find it in the Ulster Annals, the same as the Hierologus of Colgan.[336] Lismore had now become so celebrated that the Irish princes, tired of the world, began to seek peace and penance in its sacred shades. The first of these princes, of whom we read, was Theodoric, or Turlogh, King of Thomond, of the celebrated Dalcassian line. His father Cathal died in A.D. 624, so that this prince must have ruled over his native territory for many years. He is celebrated, too, as the father of St. Flannan, the founder of the See of Killaloe. Theodoric came secretly to St. Colman, and flinging off his royal robes, and renouncing his crown, placed himself amongst the humblest disciples of that saint. Though now an old man, he would not consent to be idle, but insisted on earning his bread with the labour of his hands, like the monks around him. The road to the monastery from the low ground was steep and uneven, so Theodoric, whose strong arms so often wielded the sword of Thomond in battle, got his sledge and hammer, and spent his time breaking stones to repair the road. With such zeal did he work that the streams of perspiration poured down from his body to the ground, and it is said a sick man was healed by washing in these waters of holy and penitential toil. With Colman's permission he returned to his kingdom to protect it from its enemies, whom he seems to have crushed as easily as he did the stones, and he then returned again to die in Lismore.
St. Colman O'Leathain is sometimes called Mocholmoc, but as Colgan points out, it is really the same name--Colman and Colmoc being both diminutives of Colum, with the term of endearment prefixed in one case--mo-Cholmoc, which is the same as 'my dear little Colman.' This great saint died on the 22nd of January, A.D. 702, and was interred at Lismore.
It has been said that Aldfrid, King of Northumbria, was a student at Lismore before he was called to the throne after the death of his brother, Ecgfrid, in A.D. 685. This statement is, however, merely a conjecture. We know, indeed, from the express statement of William of Malmesbury that Aldfrid spent his youth in Ireland, that he was trained in all the learning of our Irish schools, and that when he was called to the throne of Northumbria, he gave both sympathy and effective assistance to the Irish prelates and monks of the North in opposition to Wilfrid and his associates. It is unlikely, however, that he remained at any one monastic school during all the years of his enforced sojourn in Ireland. Armagh would be one of the nearest to a Northumbrian exile; and being the seat of the primacy, as well as a celebrated school, it would naturally attract him first. If he then came south he certainty would visit Clonmacnoise, and remain some time in its halls. The great fame of Lismore in the middle of the seventh century would doubtless attract him also; and he certainly would not leave unvisited the new monastery founded about this very time by his own countrymen in the plains of Mayo. And if we are to accept the authenticity of the old Irish poem attributed to Aldfrid, this is precisely what did happen. He went throughout the entire country from school to school, spending some time in each of them; and he testifies that he was treated everywhere with generous hospitality, and experienced at the hands of all his teachers and entertainers a kindly Irish welcome. This poem has been translated by Clarence Mangan, and the spirit of the original has been admirably preserved in the translation.
"I found in Innisfail the fair, In Ireland while in exile there, Women of worth, both grave and gay men, Many clerics and many laymen.
I travelled its fruitful provinces round, And in every one of the five I found, Alike in church and in palace hall, Abundant apparel and food for all."
Then he tells how he found 'in Armagh the splendid meekness, wisdom, and prudence blended'; how he found kings and queens and poets in Munster; in Connaught he found riches, hospitality, vigour and fame; in Ulster, 'from hill to glen, he met hardy warriors and resolute men'; and so on throughout all the land.
During his residence in Ireland Aldfrid acquired much knowledge, and a great love of learning and learned men. He was an intimate friend of Adamnan, the celebrated Abbot of Iona, and probably spent some time in that monastery also. Another distinguished scholar, Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, dedicated to Aldfrid a poetical epistle in Latin on Metres and the Rules of Prosody, which shows that the king must have been competent to appreciate such a work. Aldhelm, in this Epistle, congratulates the king on his good fortune in having been educated in Ireland; and he knew well what the Irish scholars were, for his own master, Maildulf, was an Irishman. Aldhelm afterwards studied in Canterbury under Theodore and Adrian; and though trained by an Irishman, in one of his letters he shows himself a little jealous[337] of the greater fame and popularity which the Irish schools at this period enjoyed both at home and abroad. Maildulf[338] taught a school at Malmesbury, and from him it takes its name; but after his death it was placed in the hands of Englishmen.
IV.--SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF LISMORE.
We cannot narrate at length the subsequent history of the monastery and School of Lismore. We find a regular succession of Bishop-abbots down to the advent of the Danes. But the position of Lismore on a great river not far from the sea rendered it especially exposed to their ravages; and hence, like our other great monastic schools, we find that it was repeatedly pillaged and burned during the ninth and tenth centuries. Nor was the plundering and burning altogether the work of the Danes.
As usual the native princes followed their example; and so we are told that in A.D. 978 the Ossorians plundered and burned both the town and abbey. Yet the school and monastery survived the ravages both of the Danes and natives, and were held in great veneration by the wisest and best men in Erin. Cormac Mac Cullinan, the King-bishop, loved Lismore, although he was not educated there, and in his will left a bequest of a gold and silver chalice, and a suit of silk vestments to the monastery.
We read in Archdall that there was at Lismore, as at Armagh and many other principal churches, a hermitage, where one or more anchorites dwelt enclosed in their cells, after the fashion of the primitive Egyptian saints in the Desert. St. Carthach himself had set the example at Lismore; and it seems it was regularly followed, for a small endowment in land was provided for the maintenance of these anchorites at Lismore. The death of one of the most celebrated is noticed A.D. 1040:--"Corcran Cleireach, anchorite, the head of the West of Europe for piety and wisdom, died at Lis-mor." (F.M.). Another authority tells us that such was his learning and integrity that every dispute throughout the kingdom was confidently referred to his arbitration. It was for this reason also that during the interregnum that succeeded the death of Maelsechlainn II. in A.D. 1022, he, with Cuan O'Lochain, were chosen to guide the provisional government then established, as it would seem, with the consent of both the North and the South.
During the subsequent century--a period of much turmoil and bloodshed, when there was no recognised High King of Tara, who was able to keep the provincial kings in check, many of the southern princes retired to Lismore to end their days in peace and penance. Amongst these was the brave and generous Murtogh (Muircheartach) O'Brien, the grandson of Brian Boru, whom the Four Masters themselves describe "as King of Ireland, and the prop of the glory and magnificence of the West of the world." He died after the victory of penance at Lismore, but was buried at Killaloe. In A.D. 1127 Turlough O'Conor, the bravest and most capable of his name, forced Cormac Mac Carthy, King of Desmond, to go on pilgrimage to Lismore, and put on the habit of a monk. But Cormac soon flung it off again, and once more met Turlough in the field, but unsuccessfully; for we are told that there was a great fight at 'sea' (on Lough Derg) between the fleets of the Connaughtmen and of the men of Munster, and that the former gained the victory and harried the territory of Munster.
Another noteworthy event in connection with Lismore is recorded in A.D. 1129. It is the death and burial at Lismore in this year of the good St. Celsus, after St. Malachy, the greatest man of his age. He laboured with the most constant and self-denying zeal to reform the gross abuses prevalent in the Irish Church, and to stay the fratricidal hands of the native princes, whose whole career was at this time one sad record of violence and slaughter. His life, say the Annals, was "a life of fasting, prayer, and mass-celebration; and after unction and good penance he resigned his spirit to heaven at Ard Patrick," in the co. Limerick. He was buried at Lismore, by his own desire, and was waked, as was fitting, with psalms, hymns, and canticles, and buried with all honour in the tomb of the bishops, on Thursday, the 4th of April, having died on the previous Monday.
So Lismore was still held in great honour, and owned large possessions for the education of the clergy and the maintenance of the poor down to the advent of the Anglo-Normans. Then in A.D. 1173 we have the significant entry that Strongbow, after wasting the territory of the Desii, "extorted a large sum from the bishop to prevent the church from being burnt," but in the following year his son completed his father's work, "and plundered Lismore;" and four years later, in A.D. 1178, we are told that the town was again plundered, and set on fire by the English forces. Whatever still remained was wholly destroyed a few years after, in A.D. 1207, when the town and all its churches were entirely consumed. Shortly afterwards, this ancient See was united to the Danish bishopric of Waterford, and the lamp of learning in its schools was extinguished for ever.
Lismore is beautifully situated on the steep southern bank of the Blackwater, overlooking the picturesque valley of this noble river, which here teems with natural beauties. In this respect Innes declares that Lismore cannot be surpassed. "The Blackwater, both above and below the bridge, which leads into the town, flows through one of the most verdant of valleys. The banks bounding this valley are in some places thickly, in other places lightly, shaded with wood. Nothing can surpass in richness and beauty the view from the bridge, when at evening the deep woods, and the grey castle, and the still river are left in the shade, while the sun streaming up the valley gilds all the softer slopes and swells that lie opposite." (Journey, 1834.)
Nothing, in truth, is wanting that can lend beauty and interest to this scene, which nature has so richly dowered with all her charms. And then the grand old castle, towering over the river, recalls to the mind of the beholder all those associations that cling like the ivy to its grey historic walls.
Of the twenty churches once in Lismore not a vestige remains. The existing Protestant cathedral was rebuilt by the Earl of Cork in A.D. 1663; but his workmen destroyed every trace of the ancient church, which is alluded to as the cathedral, or great stone church of Lismore, so early as A.D. 1052. Five inscribed stones are preserved in the present cathedral. They are fragments of ancient tombstones, with the peculiar Celtic crosses, and lettered in very ancient types of the Celtic alphabet.[339] One asks a blessing for the soul of Colgen, who, according to the Annals of Inisfallen, was an eminent ecclesiastic, who died in Lismore in A.D. 850. The words are--BENDACHT FOR ANMAIN COLGEN. Another is simply inscribed--SUIBNE M CONHUIDIR--Suibne, son of Conhuidir, an anchorite and abbot of Lismore, who went to his rest in A.D. 854. Another still more interesting inscription asks a prayer for Cormac, a priest--OR DO CORMAC P. The letter P stands apparently for the Latin word presbyter, i.e., priest. He seems to have been "Cormac, son of Cuilcanan, Bishop of Lismore, and Lord of the Desii of Mumhan, who was killed by his own family, A.D. 918"--a different person from the King-bishop of Cashel, who was slain in A.D. 907. The other two merely ask a blessing for the soul of MARTAN, and a prayer for DONNCHAD, who seems to have been the person bearing that name who was assassinated within the very walls of the old cathedral in A.D. 1034.
THE CROZIER OF LISMORE was discovered in 1814 in a tower of Lismore Castle, belonging now to the Duke of Devonshire--hence it is sometimes improperly called the Devonshire Crozier. It was made, as the inscription on it records, for Niall Mac Mic Aeducan, who was Bishop of Lismore from A.D. 1090 to 1113. The artist was Nectan--also a Celtic name--and the Crozier itself is one of the most beautiful specimens of Celtic art of this character that have been yet discovered. "It measures three feet four inches in length, and consists of a case of bronze of a pale colour, which enshrines an old oak stick--perhaps the original staff of the founder of Lismore. Most of the ornaments are richly gilt, interspersed with others of silver and niello, and bosses of coloured enamels. The crook of the staff is bordered with a row of grotesque animals like lizards or dragons, one of which has eyes of lapis lazuli."[340] The staff seems to have been divided into compartments, which were filled in with filigree work. It is most likely this beautiful work of art was made at the monastery, and that Nectan, the artificer, was a member of the brotherhood of Lismore. The inscription is as usual in Irish, and runs thus:--OR DO NIAL MAC MEICC AEDUCAN LASAN DERNAD IN GRESSA + OR DO NECTAIN CERD DORIGNE IN GRESSA--Pray for Niall, son of MacAeducan, for whom this work was made; pray for Nectan, who made this work of art.
THE BOOK OF LISMORE was found in 1814, together with the Crozier of Lismore, in a wooden box, which was enclosed within the wall of a built-up doorway in the Castle of Lismore. Both evidently belonged to the bishops of Lismore, for the castle was the ancient episcopal palace, and the box was built into the doorway for security on some occasion when the castle was being besieged by enemies, who might be disposed to appropriate these venerable relics. This castle was originally built by Prince John, in A.D. 1185; and at first was garrisoned for the Crown. It was, however, soon destroyed by the natives; but was rebuilt by the king, and became the residence of the bishops of Lismore down to the time of Miler MacGrath, who added the see of Lismore to his other ecclesiastical preferments. Afterwards, the castle sustained several sieges during the troubles that followed A.D. 1641, when it was held at different times for the Crown or for the Parliament: and it was, doubtless, during one of these sieges that both the Crozier and Book of Lismore were concealed. When discovered it had suffered much from damp, and the edges, O'Curry tells us, seem to have been partially gnawed by rats or mice. It was, however, still tolerably legible, but was, unfortunately, lent by the Duke of Devonshire's agent to a Cork sheanachie, named O'Flynn, that it might be transcribed; and O'Curry alleges that several folios, and in some places entire sections of the MS., were deliberately cut out by those who had the temporary custody of the book. In 1839 O'Curry made a copy on paper of all that remained for the Royal Irish Academy; but that institution vainly sought to obtain the missing portions.
It is said that these excised parts were purchased, no doubt, in good faith, by a Mr. Hewitt, who lived near Cork, and they may, perhaps, be still secured and re-bound with the original MS.
This original was a vellum MS. said to be 900 years old. It consists principally of copies of the lives of certain Irish saints--of Patrick, Brigid, Columcille, Senan, Finnian of Clonard, and Finnchu of Brigobhan, near Cork--"all," says O'Curry, "written in Gaelic of great purity and antiquity."[341] There are also several historical and romantic tracts, and bardic accounts of several ancient battles. One treatise--a dialogue between St. Patrick and the Fenian warriors, Caoilte MacRonan and Oisin--is, says the same learned authority, especially valuable for the topographical information it contains.[342]
XX. THE SCHOOLS OF DESMOND
"I found in Munster, unfettered of any, Kings and queens, and poets a-many; Poets well skilled in music and measure, Prosperous doings, mirth and pleasure." --King Aldfrid's Poem.
I.--THE SCHOOL OF CORK--ST. FINBARR.
Munster was always celebrated for classical studies. Even within the memory of living men it attracted 'poor scholars' from every part of Ireland; and they were received, as they were in the days of Bede and King Aldfrid, with kindly welcome and generous hospitality. In spite of the confiscations and penal laws of three hundred years, the old Celtic love of learning was still cherished in Munster, and the doors were never closed against the homeless scholar, or bard, or sheanachie. As in the days of Bede, "they willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, and also to furnish them with books to read, and their teaching gratis."[343] Of the Desmond schools the most celebrated, though not, perhaps, the earliest, was the School of Cork founded by St. Finbarr.
The name of the city itself is derived from Corcagh, which signifies a marshy place; and at the time St. Finbarr founded his church there, and for centuries afterwards, it certainly well deserved the name. Especially when the mountain floods came down the valley of the river Lee the whole right bank of the stream was converted into a vast lake called Loch Eirce or Loch Irce.[344] This valley extends from west to east, and is enclosed on either side by bold and fertile hills, now crowned with groves and villas which render Cork one of the most picturesque cities of the empire. The river Lee itself rises in the wild and barren mountain range which separates Cork from Kerry, and after a course of more than fifty miles, flows into the sea below the city. The river before reaching the city, divides itself into two main branches, which afterwards re-unite, thus forming an island of considerable extent, on which the city proper was originally built, and strongly fortified by walls and towers.
The Lee may be said to take its rise in the mountain lake of Gougane Barra, which is merely a natural reservoir that collects the streams flowing down the sides of these wild mountains. The name simply means 'Barra's Lone Retreat,'[345] because, as we shall presently see, the saint dwelt for some time on an island in the lake.
The facts of St. Finbarr's history are narrated in two Latin Lives which have been published by Mr. Caulfield of Cork College.[346] His baptismal name was Lochan; but as the boy grew up with beautiful fair hair he was called Find-barr; and sometimes Barra, Barre, Bairre, or Barry. He was sprung from the Hy-Briuin Ratha, who dwelt about Lough Corrib in the County Galway. His father, Amergin, being the fruit of unlawful love, left his native territory and came to the territory of Hy-Liathain in the County Cork, where his skill as an artificer secured him the patronage of the local dynast, who appears to have dwelt at Achad Duirbchon in Muskerry. This dynast is described also as righ of Rathend.
A beautiful young maiden was staying at the house of this kinglet, who would not allow her marry; and all unbecoming intimacy was also strictly forbidden between her and any member of the king's household. But the smith, not knowing or ignoring this prohibition, won the affections of the lady, and married her in secret. The result was the conception of Barry. When this became visible, the king was so wrathful at this contempt of his authority, that he ordered the parents to be burned to death. But the great lime-kiln, lighted to carry out this sentence, was extinguished by a violent storm of rain, accompanied with fiery flashes of lightning.
This was, of course, attributed to the fact that the child, which the lady bore in her womb, was destined by God for great things, as in truth, subsequent events proved to be the fact. Indeed, the Martyrology of Donegal makes a still more incredible statement, that "Barre spoke in his mother's womb, and also immediately after his birth, in order to justify his father and mother, as his Life states in the first chapter."[347] This speaking in the womb may, perhaps, be understood in the metaphorical sense already explained.
St. Barry had for his teacher a holy man called in the Irish Life Mac Cuirp, or Curporius in the Latin Lives. Mac Cuirp is stated to have spent some time in Rome, and to have been whilst there a disciple of St. Gregory the Great. St. Gregory was Pope from A.D. 590 to 604, but for some years previous to A.D. 590 he had held various offices in the church; and it was probably between A.D. 575 and 590 that the Irish monk had an opportunity of becoming his disciple in the great monastery of St. Andrew, which was once the private mansion of St. Gregory.
From a master so trained for some time in Rome itself, young Barry had an opportunity of acquiring a fuller knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline, as well as sounder and wider theological views than the ordinary Irish schools could at the time afford. How long he remained under the care of this holy man is unknown; but from the active life which St. Barry led, we must infer that he began to preach and found churches whilst he was still a young man. We are told that even before he came to Cork he had founded twelve churches in various parts of the country. Amongst these we find special reference to the Church of Achadh Duirbchon near Cuas Barra, which was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the river Blackwater, and probably not far from Fermoy. For it is said that after he founded this church, he crossed the river and came to Cill Cluana, and built a church there also. Cill Cluana is supposed to be the place since known as Cloyne; this, however, we venture to think is improbable, for St. Colman, the founder of Cloyne, was a contemporary of St. Brendan, and must have flourished and founded the Church of Cloyne many years before Barry could have arrived at man's estate. There is a Kilclooney in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon, County Cork, which is much more likely to have been the Church of Cill Cluana erected at this period by St. Barry.
We are told that two disciples of St. Ruadhan of Lorrha, Cormac and Baoithen by name, travelled thither. They were directed by their own master, St. Ruadhan, to remain where the tongues of their bells would sound. To their surprise the silent bells rang out, when they had come to Barry's Church at Cill-Cluana, and they were much grieved when they found it occupied, without, as they thought, any chance of their being allowed to remain in the place. But Barry, knowing the divine will, at once gave them his own church, and they remained there, whilst he himself went elsewhere to found new churches for the honour of God and the advantage of the people.
It is probable that Gougane Barra, so celebrated for its wild romantic beauty, was the earliest foundation of St. Barry, and that it was there during the years of his retirement that he prepared himself for that great spiritual work, which he afterwards accomplished.
This lovely lake is situated amongst the mountains on the western border of Cork, and in that very territory of Muskerry where St. Barry is said to have been born, so that he was probably familiar with it from his childhood. The savage grandeur of this mountain valley has been celebrated both in poetry and in prose by many writers; and, no doubt, Callanan's stanzas are familiar to all our readers. The lake is surrounded on all sides by an amphitheatre of lofty and rugged mountains, rising up in naked grandeur from its lonely shores. Only at one place towards the south-east is there an opening, where the infant Lee bursts through the rocky barrier of loose stones and dashes down in foaming leaps to the lower lake of Inchigheela. The lake itself covers about 90 acres. Its waters flowing down from the heathery slopes of the hills are rather dark in colour, and abound in fish; although, it is said, that trout were more numerous heretofore in these waters. Towards the south-east of the lake, which is oval in form, is the island that formed the retreat of St. Finbarr. It is deeply and beautifully green, where the broken walls do not cover the turf, and contrasts strikingly with the dark waters of the lake, and the bluish gray of the rugged precipices that frown down on the gloomy landscape. Its shores too are beautifully fringed with hoary ash trees, and a few willows that stoop to kiss the wavelets:--
"There grows the wild ash, and a time stricken willow Looks chidingly down on the mirth of the billow; As like some gay child that sad monitor scorning, It lightly laughs back to the laugh of the morning."
The works of man are in ruins, but the face of nature is changeless and grand as it ever was. There is still the "zone of dark hills" that brighten in the lightning's flash, when the rocks give back the thunder's voice in a thousand echoes. There are still the "thousand wild fountains"--in summer tiny rivulets, but in rainy weather angry cataracts leaping from rock to rock. It is true the glory of the woods that once belted these mountains is gone, and nothing now remains but the island grove, which is all the more attractive because no foliage elsewhere relieves the eye, weary with the hungry grey of the rocks and the dark brown of the heather.
But the ancient church with its solitary cells and courtyard are all in ruins--ruins, too, even in this wild retreat, that have apparently been wrought by the hand of man. The little island on which these ruins stand is near the southern shore of the lake. It is approached by a low narrow causeway, which connects it with the shore. From the causeway the pilgrim walks through an avenue of ash trees towards a terrace, which is elevated four or five steps before him. On this terrace there is an ancient quadrangular caiseal, which had two monastic cells built into each side of the quadrangle. These cells arched overhead were about four feet wide, ten feet deep, and eight feet high. The masonry is of a primitive character, and may be of the age of Barry himself, for we find the circular arch as early as the first quarter of the seventh century. In the centre of this courtyard there is a mound having stone steps around, and surmounted by an ancient wooden cross. This cross marks the principal penitential station, and closely resembles some of the mission crosses seen in the churchyards of our country churches. The church and monastery proper were outside this enclosure, and are now quite ruinous. They were probably coeval with the cells in the enclosure; but it is quite unusual to find them outside the enclosing wall. The quadrangular cashel, too, is quite a peculiar feature, and shows that it is of a later and undoubtedly Christian origin.
About the year A.D. 1700, a priest named Father Denis O'Mahony took up his residence in this lonely retreat, and, it is said, caused its "seven chapels" to be restored. These so called chapels were the cells already referred to, which surround the cloister. He was buried in the little graveyard on the mainland close to the causeway, where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. And Smith tells us that the following inscription was placed over his tomb--"Hoc sibi et successoribus in eadem vocatione monumentum imposuit Dominus Doctor Dionysius O'Mahony, presbyter licet indignus, A.D. 1700." There is, we believe, no trace of a stone bearing this inscription to be seen at present on this spot. The tendency of the Church in our days seems to be altogether in favour of the cenobitic life; this was one of the few cases in which the ancient love for the eremitic life has again appeared in our Irish Church. At present we have neither hermits, nor recluses, as of old. Is it that the spirit of ancient asceticism has departed? Or is it that charity has grown cold? To be quite alone with God is a dangerous and difficult state of life; but it is after all the state of the very highest perfection known to theology.
It was probably after spending some time in his hermitage at Gougane Barra that St. Finbarr came, as is stated in his Life, to the lake, which in Irish is called Loch Eirce. Close to the shore of this lake he built a monastery, to which as to the home of wisdom, and the nursery of all Christian virtues, crowds of zealous disciples flocked together from all quarters in such numbers and inspired with such zeal for holiness, that the solitude around became filled with cells of monks, and thus grew into a great city. From the school which Finbarr established there, a vast number of men, conspicuous for sanctity and learning, went forth, amongst whom especially worthy of note were St. Eulangius or Eulogius--who it seems had some share in training Finbarr himself--St. Colman of Doire Dhunchon, St. Baithin, St. Nessan, St. Garbhan, St. Talmach, St. Finchad of Ross Ailithir, St. Lucerus, St. Cumanus, St. Lochin of Achadh Airaird, St. Carinus, St. Fintan of Ros-Coerach, and several other saints, whose names and churches are mentioned in the Irish Life of Finbarr.
The site of Finbarr's primitive church and monastery was that now occupied by the Protestant Cathedral of St. Finbarr on the south-west of the city, but all traces of the primitive buildings have entirely disappeared. An ancient round tower stood in the south-west corner of the churchyard, which has also completely disappeared. But as the round towers were generally built some ten or twelve paces from the great western entrance of the church, which they protected, the site of the ancient cathedral can be ascertained with sufficient accuracy.
In the Pacata Hibernia there is a very interesting map of Cork, which shows the city and its environs, as they were about the year A.D. 1600. It has been reproduced by Mr. John George M'Carthy, in a pamphlet of great value, which he published in 1869, and which gives a lively sketch of the history of Cork, both ancient and modern. The city proper is shown on the island with its walls and towers, and its two principal streets--the Main Street and Castle Street--intersecting each other at right angles. Outside the city walls, it is all a marsh, and in the south-west corner, close to the southern bank of the stream, is shown "ye Cathedrale Church of Old Corcke," which marks the site of St. Finbarr's primitive abbey.
It is stated in the ancient Life of Finbarr that, like many others of the Irish saints of his time, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome--to the threshold of the Apostles. On his way back from Rome he paid a visit to St. David, the celebrated Bishop of Menevia, and thence we are told he returned to Cork. This would seem to imply that the monastery of Cork was founded before St. Barry's departure from Rome. Gerald Barry in his Life of St. David refers to this visit paid to that saint by his namesake of Cork, whom, however, he calls 'Barrocus,' and as usual he indulges largely in the supernatural, in his account of the visit.
It was, he says, the custom in those times for the Irish to go on pilgrimage to Rome in order to venerate the shrines of the Apostles. Amongst others a certain Barry (Barrocus) from the territory of Cork went to Rome; and returning from his pilgrimage he called to see St. David, which was also customary with those good men from Ireland, when going to or returning from Rome. Barry having paid his respects to the Welsh saint, was anxious to return home to his own country and flock; but the winds were contrary, and he could not cross the Channel. Now the Bishop, St. David, had a horse for his own use, and Barry, full of faith, asked and obtained the use of this horse to carry him home to Cork; and he rode the animal straight over the sea to the west. On his way St. Barry met Brendan mounted on a whale, and going to see St. David also. They saluted each other, and with mutual good wishes went each his own way, and arrived safe--one in Cork and the other at St. David's. Barry then told his monks all that had happened; so they praised God, and made a small metal statue of horse and man, adorned with gold and silver, "which is preserved to this day," says Giraldus, "in the Church of St. Finbarr at Cork, and is held in great reverence on account of the signs and miracles which have been wrought through its instrumentality."[348]
The Bollandists reject this story as an interpolation in the Life of St. David; but Gerald Barry dearly loved a story of this kind, no matter how extravagant. We may add that St. Brendan of Clonfert, to whom the reference is made, was dead before Finbarr could have been more than twelve years of age.
St. Finbarr ruled the monastery and church of Cork for a period of seventeen years before he died. Hence the monastic school had time to grow up under his own holy and prudent management; and thus, as his Life says, Cork from a solitude became a city. We are not to understand a city in the modern sense, with stone houses, bridges, and regular streets. There was no city of this kind in those days in Ireland. The 'city' consisted of the cathedral church, probably of stone, and afterwards protected by its round tower, the monastery with its group of buildings, the scattered cells or bothies of such students as crowded to hear the lectures in the schools, or in the green meadows by the river's side, and doubtless also the dwellings of the tradesmen and other work-people connected with the monastery. The Danes afterwards seem to have established a permanent colony at Cork, as they did in Dublin, and raised buildings of a more enduring and imposing character, but the monastic city was there before them, and was the real nucleus of the present beautiful city by the pleasant waters of the River Lee.
St. Finbarr died, not in his own monastery of Lough Eirce, but at Cloyne, some fifteen miles distant on the other side of the bay. It seems he went there on a pilgrimage, doubtless preparing for the end, which he felt was close at hand, for we are told that he died at the Cross of Cloyne, which was in the church of that monastery. But his loving disciples would not let his remains repose there--holy ground though it was always believed to be. They were enclosed in a silver shrine, and carried to his own monastery, on the banks of the beautiful river, where he dwelt so long. According to another account the holy remains were at once carried to Cork, and buried in his own cathedral church, beneath a monumental cross, which marked the spot. Afterwards the tomb was opened, and the sacred relics enclosed in a silver shrine, which was preserved with great veneration near the high altar; and this is the more probable account. But in later days nothing in Ireland was safe from sacrilegious hands, and we are informed in the Annals of Innisfallen that A.D. 1089, a fleet, with Dermot O'Brien, devastated Cork, and carried away the relics of Barre from the church of Cill-na-Clerich.
The character of this great saint is thus given in one of the Irish Lives, published by Mr. Caulfield in 1864: "His humility, his piety, his charity, his abstinence, his prayers by day and night, won for him many great privileges; for he was god-like, and pure of heart and mind like Abraham, mild and well-doing like Moses; a psalmist like David; wise like Solomon; firm in the faith like Peter; devoted to the truth like Paul the Apostle; full of the Holy Spirit like John the Baptist. He was a lion in (spiritual) strength, and an orchard full of apples of sweetness. When the time of his death arrived, after erecting churches and monasteries to God, and appointing over them bishops, priests, and other grades, and baptizing and blessing districts and people, Barre went to Cill-na-Cluana (Cloyne), and with him went Fiana, at the desire of Cormac and Baoithen, where they consecrated two churches. Then he said, 'It is time for me to quit this prison of my body, and go to the Heavenly King, who is now calling me to Himself.' And then Barre was confessed, and received the Holy Sacrament from the hand of Fiana, and his soul went to heaven at the Cross which is in the middle of the church of Cloyne; and there came bishops, priests, monks, and other disciples, when his death was announced, to honour him. And they took his body to Cork, the place of his resurrection, honouring him with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; and the Angels bore his soul with great joy to heaven to the company of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and disciples of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
This seems to be an accurate and truthful narrative of what really happened, and shows that the enshrining took place afterwards in his own church of Cork. It appears to show, too, that the church already referred to as Cill-Cluana was really the famous church of Cloyne; but St. Colman, its founder, had been dead for some time, and St. Barry, who, according to other accounts, was educated there by Mac Cuirp, or Curporius, as he is called in Latin, always retained a great predilection for that holy ground. St. Barry's death is generally recorded as having taken place about the year A.D. 630; but the exact date cannot be ascertained.
Both during the life of St. Finbarr, and after his death, great crowds of holy and learned men continued to come to his monastery of Cork; and many of them, it seems, elected to make it the place of their resurrection. Ængus invokes "seventeen holy bishops, and seven hundred favoured servants of God, who rest in Cork with Barre and Nessan, whose names are written in heaven." Elsewhere he invokes three hundred and fifty holy bishops, three hundred and fifty priests, three hundred and fifty deacons, and as many lectors, and ostiarii, with other saints, who, with God's blessing, rest in Lough Eirce,[349] in the territory of Muskerry. Numerous, says the annexed quatrain, as the leaves on the trees are the saints who dwell around it. "Them all I invoke to my aid through our Lord Jesus Christ."
There is no reference made to any writings left by St. Finbarr, except a copy of the Gospels, written by his own hand, which was afterwards encased, like other precious relics of our great saints, in a shrine richly adorned with gems and gold. One of the most tragic events recorded in our annals took place in connection with this shrine. It is told with many graphic details in the Wars of the Gaedhill with the Gaill, p. 89.
Mahoun, the elder brother of Brian Boru, by combined skill and valour had raised himself to supremacy over all Munster about the year A.D. 970. He defeated the Danes in seven successive battles, and succeeded in driving Imar, their leader, for a time from Limerick. He also took hostages from all the chiefs of Desmond, and became undisputed sovereign of Munster. Then the heads of the rival Eoghanacht clans grew jealous; and Donovan, son of Cathal, chief of the Hy-Fidhgente in the South and West of Limerick, together with Molloy, the chief of Desmond, and Imar the Dane, entered into a conspiracy to destroy the gallant leader of the Dalcassians of Thomond. Pretending friendship, Donovan invited Mahoun to his house at Bruree, and Mahoun foolishly accepted the invitation; but he safeguarded himself, as he thought, by putting himself under the protection of the clergy, and the Gospel of Barry, which was brought from Cork for the purpose by Columb, son of Ciaragan, comarb of Barry. However, when Donovan got the king in his power, he made him a prisoner; and then sent him on to Molloy, who had undertaken to have him assassinated. Molloy was waiting with the Bishop of Cork, who had no suspicion of his purpose, at Sliabh Caein, near Fermoy. It is supposed that they were standing on the eastern ridge overlooking the gap through which the road now passes from Kilmallock to Cork, a little south of the church of Kilflin. When Mahoun's escort reached the spot agreed upon, the assassin drew his sword to slay the king at the place called Redchair, on the side of the pass opposite to where Molloy was waiting. Mahoun had on his person, for his own protection, the Gospel of Barry; but when he saw the fatal blow descending, he flung the holy shrine from him to a priest standing at some distance, that it might not be stained with his blood. At the same moment Molloy saw the gleam of the sword from the place where he was with the Bishop of Cork on the opposite side of the hill, and called for his horse, which stood ready saddled to carry him off. "What am I to do?" said the Bishop, not understanding Molloy's movements. "Cure yonder man," said Molloy, ironically, "if he is able to come to you." The horrified priest, who accompanied Mahoun, caught up the Gospel shrine, which Mahoun had flung towards him, and found it stained with the blood of the murdered man. Then in sorrow they buried the noble-souled Mahoun on the southern slope of the hill where he had fallen, and sent word to Brian Boru of the assassination of his brother. Then Brian Boru resolved on stern vengeance, and soon accomplished his purpose. The murderous conspirators were banned by the Church, and deserted by their allies. Imar and his son were slain by Brian; Donovan fell in battle; and Molloy, the actual assassin, was tracked for two years, and at length taken prisoner and slain close to that very pass where he had planned and witnessed the murder of the chivalrous Mahoun. He was buried like a dog on the northern side of that same hill where Mahoun was buried; but "the sun," says the Annalist, "never shines on his grave," and the infamy of his dark deed will hover round his resting-place for ever. There is nothing known at present of this Gospel of St. Barry, nor for some hundred years has anything been heard of it.
Nessan, a disciple of St. Barry, succeeded him in the See of Cork, and in the government of the monastery and monastic school. He, too, was remarkable for his learning and holiness, but of his personal history nothing is known. His festival day is the seventeenth of March--the feast day of our national apostle, and his death is supposed to have taken place about A.D. 651.
It is manifest that Cork continued to be a flourishing monastic school, at least down to the time of St. Ængus (A.D. 800), who speaks of it as if it were still a flourishing institution, filled with monks and scholars. In spite of the repeated devastations of the Danes, who plundered it four times between A.D. 822 and 840, we find the death of Domhnall, a scribe of Cork recorded in A.D. 874, and of Soirbreathach, son of Connadh, "scribe, wise man, bishop, and abbot of Cork," in A.D. 891. It is evident, therefore, that even during the stormy period of the ninth century the succession of prelates was maintained in Cork, and the monastic school still continued to flourish. The proper business of the scribe was, as we have seen, to transcribe books in the scriptorium of the monastery for the use of the monks and students. The term egnaidh, or wise man, shows that this prelate was especially skilled as a moral teacher and adviser.
During the subsequent centuries, down to the Anglo-Norman invasion, a regular succession of bishop-abbots was preserved, and recorded in the church of Cork. But beyond the list of their names we know nothing of interest concerning them. We do not find that any amongst these later comarbs of Barry were specially distinguished either as scholars or as writers; and hence it is unnecessary to make any special reference to them here.
In the twelfth century the ancient monastery, which had fallen into decay, was refounded about the year A.D. 1134 by Cormac Mac Carthy, the celebrated King of Munster, from whom Cormac's Chapel at Cashel takes its name. Imhar O'Hagan, who died at Armagh in that very year, a most holy and learned man, had some years previously introduced a much needed reform in the monastery of Armagh by placing the monks and clergy under the rule of St. Augustine. This reform was very generally adopted throughout Ireland by such of the ancient monasteries as had survived the ravages of the Danes. It was thus introduced at Cork by King Cormac, who also in refounding the monastery required that it should always afford hospitality and refuge to strangers from Connaught, because its original founder, St. Barry, came himself from that province. In A.D. 1172, according to the Four Masters, died Giolla Aedha O'Muidhin, of the family (or community) of Errew of Lough Conn, in Connaught. He was, according to Ware, Bishop and Abbot of Cork, from A.D. 1152, when he was present at the Synod of Kells, to A.D. 1172. It was from this prelate's name Giolla or Gille, that Gill Abbey came to be so called. It was previously known as the Abbey of the Cave, or the Abbey of St. Finbarr's Cave, which was the saint's place of retirement on the south side of the river, near to which St. Finbarr's Abbey was built. This prelate was regarded as a man of great piety, and more than any of his predecessors sought to renew the ancient spirit as well as the ancient walls of his monastery. The fact that he came all the way from Lough Conn, near Ballina, in the County Mayo, and though a stranger, was chosen to rule over this great diocese and monastery, shows that he was a man of great fame for holiness and learning. It is most likely that this Giolla Aedha O'Muidhin was that prelate of whom St. Bernard speaks in his Life of St. Malachy. Cork was, he says, then without a bishop, and there was much discord amongst the supporters of the rival candidates. St. Malachy begged them all to leave the choice to him; and they agreed to do so. Then St. Malachy chose for bishop not anyone of the nobly born of the land, but a poor man and a stranger, who happened to be on his sick bed in the city, and was a man remarkable for sanctity and learning. Malachy bade him arise in the Lord's name, and said that obedience would make him strong again. He did so, and ruled the see with much vigour until his death in A.D. 1172. The Four Masters described him as "Gilla Aedh O'Muidhin (of the family of Errew of Lough Conn) Bishop of Cork. He was a man full of the grace of God, the tower of the virginity and wisdom of his time."
II.--SCHOOL OF CORK--ST. COLMAN MAC UA CLUASAIGH.
It was during the abbotship of St. Nessan in Cork, or shortly afterwards, that St. Colman Mac Ui Clusaigh, as he is called in the Liber Hymnorum, flourished in the school of that monastery. He is the only scholar of that ancient school, whose writings have in any shape come down to us. What we have written by St. Colman is not indeed much, but it is highly interesting, and was published for the first time by Dr. Todd in the second volume of the Liber Hymnorum, page 121.
Of his personal history we know nothing. His name implies that he was the grandson, or great grandson, of Cluasach; but of his history nothing else can be ascertained. It is clear, however, both from the Scholiast's preface, and from intrinsic evidence that this St. Colman was a Ferlegind, or Professor, in the School of Cork in the year A.D. 664. At that period, as is well known, a terrible pestilence devastated Ireland; it likewise extended to England, and probably to many parts of the Continent also. It carried off nearly half the population of Ireland--kings, saints, and people--without distinction. A panic spread through all the land, and all classes, who could do so, sought to fly from the plague: but their flight was vain for go where they would the plague overtook them, and claimed its victims. An idea, however, had gone abroad that the pestilence could not extend nine waves beyond the shore of Erin, and hence we find that there was a rush to such of the islands on the coast as were supposed to be outside the infected area.
Colman and his scholars took the very prudent resolution of leaving their monastery by the marshes of Cork, and making their way to one of the islands on the coast, the name of which unfortunately is not given. But like a good and holy man, he put more faith in God's protection and blessing than in mere sanitary precautions. So he invited the school to help him in composing this hymn as a lorica or coat of mail against the pestilence, and all other dangers temporal and spiritual. It seems, too, that it was recited during the voyage, and no doubt filled the fugitives with hope and confidence in God's fatherly love.
The Scholiast in his preface tells us that Colman composed the hymn to protect himself against the yellow plague (buidhechair) that was prevalent in the reign of the sons of Aedh Slaine (A.D. 656-664[350]), and of which they themselves died in A.D. 664. The cause of the plague was, he alleges, the over-population of the country at the time, for so great was the number of the people, that the land could afford but thrice nine ridges to each man in Erin--nine of bog, nine of arable, and nine of wood--"and, therefore, the noblemen of Erin fasted along with the sons of Aedh Slaine, and with Fechin of Fore, and with Aileran (the Wise), and with Manchan of Liath, and with very many besides, for the reduction of the population, because of the scarcity of food in consequence of the great population." In fact, there seemed to be no alternative but famine or pestilence; and these holy men appear to have preferred the latter alternative; which was granted to their prayers, and by which they themselves also were sent to heaven.
Some say, adds the Scholiast, that St. Colman composed the whole of it; but others say he composed only the first two stanzas, and that his scholars composed the rest--that is, each man of them made a half stanza. As the original poem consisted of forty-six lines, this would give the number of scholars belonging to the school at something more than eighty; or, if the stanza be taken to mean a distich of two rhyming lines, which seems more probable, they would number about forty-four.
"It was composed," adds the Scholiast, "in Cork in the time of Blathmac and Diarmaid, on the occasion of this great plague, which left only one out of every three persons alive in Erin. And the place where they happened to compose it was in the course of their voyage to a certain island in the sea of Erin, flying from this pestilence; because the plague did not extend further than nine waves from the land, as the learned relate."
In its present form the hymn consists of fifty-two lines, with an added prayer; but it is quite evident that it originally consisted of forty-six stanzas, and the remaining six, asking the blessing and protection of the patron saints of Erin--Patrick, Brigid, Columcille, and Adamnan, were subsequently added. The language is the very oldest form of the Gaedhlic, which has come down to us, and, as Dr. Todd remarks, "it fully confirms the early date assigned to it by the Scholiast." The metre is in rhyming distichs with fourteen syllables in each line--when we say rhyming, we mean that there is a rhyme, or at least an assonance, between the final syllables of each two lines. Here and there Latin phrases, taken from the Scripture, are introduced in the Gaedhlic lines, and made to rhyme, as the Gaedhlic lines themselves do. The author was evidently familiar as well with the Latin as with his native Gaedhlic, both of which he manipulates with considerable dexterity. The subject matter mainly consists of an invocation addressed in appropriate language to God, and to the Son of Mary, as well as to the Saints of the Old and New Testament, to protect the writer and his school from the pestilence, and from all assaults of their foes, both spiritual and temporal. The following stanza may be taken as a specimen:--
Maire, Joseph don ringnat et spiritus Stephani, As cach ing don forslaice taithmet anma Ignati.
"Mary, Joseph, guard us with the spirit of Stephen; May it deliver us from every difficulty to invoke the name of Ingatius."
This poem is an exceedingly interesting monument of the time in which it was written; and moreover, shows what a deep spirit of piety and filial confidence in God and His saints inspired the mind of the writer. We have finer poetry in our own days; but we have nothing that breathes a deeper and more fervent spirit of earnest devotion.
III.--THE SCHOOL OF ROSS.
The monastic School of Ross, more commonly called Ross Ailithir, was one of the most celebrated in the South of Ireland. Its founder was St. Fachtna, the patron of the diocese of Ross, who is commonly identified with St. Fachtna, the founder and patron of the diocese of Kilmore. This is, indeed, highly probable, seeing that both dioceses celebrate the feasts of their respective patrons on the same day, the 14th of August, and besides, both saints belonged to the same princely race of the Corca Laighde.
The territory of Corca Laighde, which takes its name from the ruling tribe, was conterminous with the diocese of Ross, of which, as we said, St. Fachtna, was founder and first bishop. It extended in ancient times along the south-western coast of Cork from Courtmacsherry Bay to Dursey Head, and included besides East and West Carberry, the modern baronies of Beare and Bantry towards the western margin, as well as the baronies of Ibane and Barryroe on its eastern borders. Afterwards, however, this territory was greatly contracted by hostile incursions, especially by the inroads of the O'Sullivans on the west, of the O'Mahonys on the east, and thus the territory of Corca Laighde was reduced so as to include only West and a small portion of East Carberry. The race called the Corca Laighde derived their name from Lugaidh Laighe of the line of Ith, uncle of Milesius, who flourished in the second century of the Christian era. The mother of the celebrated St. Ciaran of Saigher belonged to this family. Her name was Liaghain, latinized Liadania, and she was married to an Ossorian prince called Luighneadh, of which marriage St. Ciaran was born at the residence of his mother's family, called Fintraigh, in Cape Clear Island, but the date is very uncertain. St. Fachtna was born also in the same territory at a place called Tulachteann,[351] in sight of the southern sea, but as he died young--about forty-six years of age--late in the sixth century, he cannot have been born for many years after St. Ciaran. He is sometimes called Mac Mongach, either from the name of his father, or because he was born with much hair on his head--mongach, i.e., hairy.
Like Brendan and Cummian of Clonfert, he was nurtured under the care of St. Ita, the Brigid of Munster, and received from that wise and gentle virgin those lessons of piety that afterwards produced such abundant fruit. The whole of his family, however, must have been trained in virtue at home, for we are told that no less than seven of his brothers were enrolled in the catalogue of the Irish saints. After leaving Ita's care he went to the famous seminary at Lough Eirce, near Cork, where so many of the holy men of the sixth century received their early training.[352] The name of Fachtna (i.e. facundus, the eloquent), is expressly mentioned in the Life of St. Garvan (26th March) amongst those who crowded that domicile of all virtue and of all wisdom.
Leaving St. Barry's academy, Fachtna founded for himself the monastery of Molana, in the little island of Dririnis, near Youghal, at the mouth of the Blackwater. Shortly afterwards, however, he returned to his native territory, and founded on a promontory between two pleasant bays of the southern sea the celebrated establishment now called Ross Carberry, but anciently known as Ross-ailithir, from the number of pilgrim students who crowded its halls, not only from all parts of Ireland but from all parts of Europe. It was admirably situated as a retreat for the holy and the wise, on a gentle eminence rising from the sea, in the midst of green fields, looking down on the glancing waters of the rushing tides, and smiling under the light of ever-genial skies. Here Fachtna "the good and wise," though still young in years, founded what is called in the Life of St. Mochoemoc, "magnum studium scholarium," a great college not only for the study of Sacred Scripture, but also for the cultivation of all the liberal arts.
Amongst other distinguished teachers who helped to make the School of Ross famous was St. Brendan, the Navigator, who later on founded the sees both of Ardfert and Clonfert. Usher tells us, quoting from an old document, that about the year A.D. 540, Brendan was engaged for some time in teaching the liberal arts at Ross-ailithir during the lifetime too of its holy founder. Fachtna and Brendan were intimate friends, for both were nurtured by the holy virgin Ita of Killeedy, and no doubt loved each other with the deep and abiding affection of foster brothers. It is only natural, therefore, that Brendan should go to visit St. Fachtna at Ross, and aid him with the influence of his name and character in starting and organising the new school.
It was at this period that an unforeseen misfortune happened to Fachtna, which to one engaged, as he was, would become a double misfortune. By some accident he became entirely blind, so that he could neither read nor see anything. In this affliction the saint had recourse to God, and was directed by an angel to apply to Nessa, the sister of St. Ita, and then about to become the mother of that child of promise, St. Mochoemoc, through whom he would obtain his eyesight. Fachtna did so, and miraculously recovered his eyesight.
It seems St. Fachtna must have acquired great fame as a preacher, and no doubt too as a teacher of eloquence, for the surname of "Facundus," which is sometimes used instead of his own name, was given to him. He was, it appears, clothed with the episcopal dignity, and thus became founder of the diocese of Ross, which, not however without mutations, has continued down to our own times, and still ranks amongst the independent Sees of Ireland. The saint died at the early age of forty-six, and was buried in his own Cathedral Church of Ross. The holy work, however, in which he was engaged, was continued by his successors, and for many centuries Ross continued to be a great school whose halls were crowded by students from every land. St. Cuimin of Connor, describes Fachtna as the "generous and steadfast, who loved to address assembled crowds, and never spoke aught that was base and displeasing to God," in allusion to his sanctity and eloquence.
His immediate successor was Conall, whose succession to Fachtna in the monastery and See of Ross was foretold by St. Ciaran of Saigher.[353] Mention is also made of St. Finchad of Ross-ailithir, who seems to have been a fellow pupil[354] of the founder at the great School of Finnbarr at Cork. These two saints were probably tribesmen of St. Fachtna, for we are told that he was succeeded in his see by twenty-seven bishops of his own tribe, whose jurisdiction was conterminous with the chief of the clan over the territory of Corca Laighde.
"Seven and twenty bishops nobly Occupied Ross of the fertile fields, From Fachtna the eloquent, the renowned, To the well-ordered Episcopate of Dongalach."
The names are unfortunately not given in our annals in this as well as in many other instances, where a succession of bishops with well-defined jurisdiction was undoubtedly preserved. O'Flaherty puts the same statement in hexameters--
"Dongalus a Fachtna ter nonus episcopus extat Lugadia de gente, dedit cui Rossia mitram."
Which another poet translates in this fashion:--
"Hail happy Ross, who could produce thrice nine All mitred sages of Lugadia's line, From Fachtna crowned with everlasting praise Down to the date of Dongal's pious days."
During the ninth century we find frequent mention of the "abbots" of Ross-ailithir in the Four Masters, and we are told that it was ravaged by the Danes in A.D. 840, along with the greater part of Munster. In the tenth and eleventh centuries we find reference is made, not to the "bishops" or "abbots," but to the "airchinnech" of Ross-ailithir; and it is quite possible that during this disturbed period laymen took possession of the abbacy with this title, having ecclesiastics under them to perform the spiritual functions. Once only we find reference to a "bishop," in A.D. 1085, when the death of Neachtain Mac Neachtain, the distinguished Bishop of Ross-ailithir is recorded.
But whether it was bishop, abbot, or airchinnech, who held the spiritual sway of the monastery, and its adjacent territory, the school continued to flourish even during those centuries most unpropitious to the cultivation of learning. In A.D. 866, or according to the Chronicon Scotorum, in A.D. 868, we are told of the death of Feargus, scribe and anchorite of Ross-ailithir, showing that the work of copying manuscripts was still continued in its schools. But we have still more striking evidence during the tenth century of the literary work done at Ross-ailithir, for a manual of Ancient Geography, written by one of these lectors in the Irish language, is happily still preserved in the Book of Leinster.
The author of this most interesting treatise, as we know from the same authority, was Mac Cosse, who was Ferlegind, that is a reader or lecturer of Ross-ailithir. A passage in the Annals of Innisfallen enables us to identify him, and his history furnishes a striking example of the vicissitudes of those disturbed times:--
"The son of Imar left Waterford and [there followed] the destruction of Ross of the Pilgrims by the foreigners, and the taking prisoner of the Ferlegind, i.e. Mac Cossa-de-brain, and his ransoming by Brian at Scattery Island."[355]
This entry enables us to fix the probable date of this geographical poem of Mac Cosse, which seems to have been the manual of Classical Geography made use of in Ross-ailithir, and hence so full of interest for the student of the history of our ancient schools. The Imar, referred to in the above entry, was king of the Danes of Limerick, but in A.D. 968 the Danes of Limerick were completely defeated by Mahoun and his younger brother Brian Boru. Imar made his escape to Wales, but after a year or two returned again, first, it would seem, to Waterford; issuing thence he harried all the coasts and islands of the South, and finally returned to Limerick with a large fleet and army. But he deemed Scattery Island a more secure stronghold, and having fortified it he made that island his head-quarters, and no doubt kept his prisoners there also. Scattery itself was captured from the Danes by Brian, a little later on in A.D. 976, and there Imar was slain; so that it was the interval between A.D. 970-976 that Mac Cosse was kept a prisoner at Scattery Island, and ransomed by the generosity of Brian, who always loved learning and learned men.
This poem consists of one hundred and thirty-six lines, giving a general account of the geography of the ancient world, and was, no doubt, first got by rote by the students, and then more fully explained by the lecturer to his pupils. This tenth century is generally regarded as the darkest of the dark ages; yet, we have no doubt, whoever reads over this poem will be surprised at the extent and variety of the geographical knowledge communicated to the pupils of Ross-ailithir in that darkened age, when the Danish ships, too, were roaming round the coasts of Ireland. It is not merely that the position of the various countries is stated with much accuracy, but we have, as we should now say, an account of their fauna and flora--their natural productions, as well as their physical features. The writer, too, seems to be acquainted not merely with the principal Latin authors, but also with the writings of at least some of the Grecian authorities.
In the opening stanza he describes the five zones: "two frigid of bright aspect,"--alluding, no doubt, to their snowy wastes and wintry skies, lit up by the aurora borealis--and then two temperate around the fiery zone, which stretches about the middle of the world. There are three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia; the latter founded by the Asian Queen, and much the larger, because she unduly trespassed on the territories of her neighbours. Adam's paradise is in the far East, beyond the Indus, surrounded by a wall of fire. India "great and proud," is bounded on the west by the Indus, on the north by the hills of Hindoo Coosh. That country is famous "for its magnets, and its diamonds, its pearls, its gold dust, and its carbuncles." There are to be found the fierce one-horned beast, and the mighty elephant--it is a land where "soft and balmy breezes blow," and two harvests ripen within the year. In like manner he describes the other countries of Asia; the mare rubrum "swift and strong," and Egypt, by the banks of the Nile, the most fertile of all lands. He even tells us of the burning fires of the Alaunian land, alluding to the petroleum springs around the Caspian. He names all the provinces of Asia Minor--"little Asia," he calls it--and says most accurately, that it was bounded on the west by the Propontus and the Ægean sea. In like manner he describes Africa, and derives its name from Apher, a son of Abraham and Keturah, showing that he was familiar with the Greek of the Antiquities of Josephus.[356] He then goes through the various countries of Europe, giving their names, and chief cities. The principal rivers, too, are named, and their courses fixed, as when he says that--
"Three streams issue from the Alps westward, and across Europe they appear The Rhine in the north-west, the Loire, and the River Rhone."
Finally, he comes to Ireland, which, in loving language, he proclaims to be
"A pleasant and joyous land, wealth-abounding; the land of the sons of Milesius; a land of branching stems; the most fertile land that is under the sun."
So ends this most interesting manual of geography written by an Irish scholar, in the Irish tongue, and taught to the students of Ross-ailithir, whilst the Danish pirates were roaming round our seas, and ruling with strong hand in Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick.
Of the subsequent fortune of Ross-ailithir we know little. In A.D. 1127 the fleet of Toirdhealbach O'Conor sailed to Ross-ailithir, and despoiled Desmond, as the Chronicon Scotorum informs us--for it was not the Dane alone that our schools and churches had to fear--often, far too often, the spoiler was some rival chieftain, whose churches and monasteries were sure to be spoiled very soon in their turn. Then came the greatest of all the devastators--the Anglo-Normans, who laid waste Corca Laighde under FitzStephen, a few years after Bishop O'Cearbhail went to his rest in A.D. 1168. Since that period the school has disappeared, but the See of Ross still holds its ground, after having gone through some strange vicissitudes of union with and separation from the neighbouring dioceses of Cloyne and Cork.
IV.--THE SCHOOL OF INNISFALLEN--ST. FINAN.
The island of Innisfallen in the Lower Lake of Killarney has been long celebrated both in song and story for its wonderful scenic beauty. It is commonly regarded as the Queen of Irish Islands, and one enthusiastic admirer has declared that it is the most beautiful spot in Europe. The monks of old were great lovers of nature, and hence, as might be expected, we find that at a very early period a monastery was founded on the island of Innisfallen. It offered many advantages to saintly men, who wished to give themselves up entirely to a life of holiness and learning. It was not merely its own sweet beauty and the glory of the lake and mountains round about, that made it a desirable place of seclusion; it had more prosaic advantages to commend it. It was near enough for convenience to the promontory of Ross, yet far enough for security; for it was surrounded by deep water and was within sight of that noble keep whose friendly owners were always the protectors and benefactors of the monks of Innisfallen. It is true, indeed, the monks had been there long before the present picturesque ruin was built, but then there was always some dun or fort on Ross Island, as it is now called, for it is a spot not only of singular beauty but also admirably situated for defensive purposes.
All our authorities agree that the monastery of Innisfallen was founded by St. Finan; but to which St. Finan it owes its origin is another question. There were many saints who bore that name, of whom two were particularly distinguished, St. Finan the Leper, and St. Finan Cam, or the Crooked. It is commonly said that St. Finan the Leper was the founder of Innisfallen. After a careful examination of his Acts as given by the Bollandists on his feast day, which is believed to be the 16th of March, we can find no evidence to support this statement, which in itself also is sufficiently improbable. It is true, indeed, that St. Finan the Leper came of the old Desmond race, for his father, Conal was fourth in descent from Ollioll Olum, the common ancestor of all the great Munster families. But Finan belonged to that branch of the race of Cian, son of Ollioll Olum, which was settled in the portion of Bregia, called from him Keenaght, extending from Dromiskin to Dublin; and it is highly probable that Finan himself was a native, not of Ely O'Carroll, as Colgan says, but of Sord, now called Swords, where his family seems to have resided. He was called the Leper, because on one occasion when a poor woman brought to the saint her son, who was blind, deaf, and leprous from his birth, the saint prayed to God to cure the child and offered himself to bear its leprosy. His prayer was heard--the child was made whole, but the saint was stricken with the dread disease, which he endured for thirty years. St. Finan the Leper is said to have been a disciple of St. Columba, and to have been placed by that saint over his own foundation at Swords; but at what time it is difficult to determine. The saint is also said to have founded Ardfinnan on the Suir in Tipperary, which took its name from him. He is also mentioned in connection with Clonmore in the co. Carlow, founded by St. Maedhog,[357] and according to the writer of his Life, he was buried there. His connection, however, with Innisfallen in Lough Lein is very doubtful, and unsupported by any satisfactory evidence that we have seen. It is much more likely that the Inisfaithlen referred to by his biographers was the island off the Coast of Dublin, now called by its Danish name of Ireland's Eye, but which in ancient times was known as Inisfaithlen--a fact of which Colgan does not seem to have been aware. The same name was also given to the island of Beg Erin, or Begery, in the Bay of Wexford.
On the other hand, St. Finan Cam was a Kerry man by race and birth, and moreover spent most of his life in the West of Kerry, which has many places connected with his name and memory. He was born in that wild promontory of Corkaguiny (Corca-Duibhne) which is swept bare by the wild Atlantic blasts. His father Mac Airde[358] is mentioned in the Life of St. Brendan--for it seems to be the same person--as a man of considerable wealth, who made a present of thirty cows with their calves to that saint shortly after he was born. Indeed it seems highly probable from the narrative that the family of St. Brendan and St. Finan were connected by ties of consanguinity. We are told too in the Life of Finan in the Salamanca MS. that St. Brendan was the first tutor of the boy, and that the latter spent seven years in Brendan's corner--contra fornacem--whilst he was learning to read and study monastic discipline under the guidance of that great master. This was probably in the early part of the sixth century, whilst Brendan was still living in his native Kerry, before he went on his Atlantic voyages, or founded any of his monasteries in the province of Connaught.
It was by the direction of the same saint that young Finan, who was already far advanced in holiness, left his father's territory, and went to Slieve Bloom, the utmost boundary of his native Munster towards the north, and there, about A.D. 560, founded the monastery of Kinnity, near Birr, at the roots of Slieve Bloom, with which his name has been ever since associated. It is a singular fact that so late as the year A.D. 907, we find that Colman, Abbot of Kinnity, and King of Corca-Duibhne, was slain in the fatal field of Ballaghmoon, where Cormac Mac Cullinan, and so many of his Munster nobles lost their lives.
Finan, however, returned after a brief sojourn at Kinnity to his native territory; and thenceforward we find that almost all the events recorded in his life took place in Kerry.
There is one incident mentioned, which goes far to show that this St. Finan Cam was the founder of the monastery on Innisfallen. For we are told that a boat was built on 'St. Finan's Island,'[359] and that a message was sent to Fedelmith, the King of Lough Lein, to carry away the boat. The king came with thirty men to bring the boat to the water, but they could not carry it. Then the angels of God, with Finan, carried the boat down to the Lake Lugdech. It is true this seems to refer to Finan's Island on Lough Currane, but the incident certainly shows that Finan had friendly relations with the King of Lough Lein, who in return would very naturally grant the holy man one of the islands on his own lake for a religious house.
On another occasion we find that when Finan's horse died, another steed came out of Lough Lein, and for three years drew the saint's waggon; and then at the bidding of Finan once more returned to his stable beneath the waves of Lough Lein. So the saint then probably had his own 'home' on the shore, or in an island of the lake. Once again, on a particular occasion, when Finan was living on a certain island, and his horses were on the mainland grazing, having, it seems, their feet tied, they swam to the saint's house, without loosening the bonds, and at his bidding swam back again to the shore. We find him also protecting his tribesmen of Corkaguiny against the attacks of Nechtan, King of the Hy-Fidhgente, who dwelt beyond Slieve Lougher, in the west of the County Limerick. This prince, refusing to listen to the prayers of Finan, was conquered in battle, and forced to fly from his kingdom. We are then told that he betook himself to Diarmaid, King of the Hy-Niall, which fixes the date of these events at some time between A.D. 544 and 565, the limits of the duration of King Diarmaid's reign. He returned, however, more than once to his monastery of Kinnity, where many monks lived under his rule and guidance. We find him also, towards the close of the sixth century, at an assembly of the Munster chiefs, probably at Cashel, in the time of Failbhe Flann. Failbhe succeeded his brother as King of Munster in A.D. 619; but he was, no doubt, for many years previously a prince of much influence and power. On this occasion Finan wrought some wondrous miracles before the king, and Failbhe did penance, and granted all the requests of Finan--one being to allow him 'to take a census of the population,'--it means rather to remit a tax that pressed on the people. We also find the saint nigh to Lough Lugdech, which seems to be the lake now called 'Lough Currane,' in the south-eastern extremity of Iveragh, near the Bay of Ballinskelligs. It seems to have been a favourite haunt of the saint; and the remains of his oratory are still to be seen on an island in the lake. On this occasion Finan wanted to get his horse shod; but the smith had broken his tongs, and could not hold the glowing iron. "Take it in your hands," said the saint. The smith did so, and held it without inconvenience, whilst he fashioned the shoe with his hammer! This is a fair specimen of some of the extravagant miracles attributed to Finan by the writer of his Life.
"Lough Lugdech, now," says O'Donovan, "called Lough Luigeach (Lee), or Currane Lough," is of oval form, about three miles long by two broad. It abounds with salmon and white trout, which, no doubt, often furnished a luxurious meal to the abstemious saint. On the south it is surrounded by a range of bold mountains, partly covered with woods in Smith's time,[360] but now quite bare of timber. The remains of Finan's Church and cell were to be seen on the largest of three small islands in the lake,[361] when Smith wrote about 140 years ago; and he says that they keep his (Finan's) festival on the 16th of March. This is the day generally assigned to Finan the Leper in our Martyrologies--the 7th of April being the festival of Finan Cam, according to the Martyrology of Tallaght--the change may have taken place from the confusion of names, for no one says that the Leper saint ever penetrated as far to the south-west as Lough Currane. The obliquity which gave Finan the surname of 'Cam,' was in his eyes, not in his body, adds the same eminent authority.
Derrynane also takes its name from our saint; it means the oak-grove of Finan--Daire Fionain--the letter 'f' being aspirated, and not sounded in the compound. The old abbey, however, situated on the shore, is of mediæval origin, as its ruins tell. St. Finan's Bay, north of Bolus Head, also speaks of the saint. It is quite open and exposed to all the fury of the Atlantic billows.
St. Finan was in all probability the first founder of the oratory on the Greater Skelligs, which is directly opposite the bay to the south-west. When the Danes swarmed round our coasts, the monastery was removed from the island to the mainland, and its dilapidated walls may still be seen in the only sheltered corner at the head of St. Finan's Bay. Several holy wells also bear the saint's name, and his memory is still vivid in various parts of Kerry. In our opinion this St. Finan Cam, not St. Finan the Leper, was the founder of the monastery of Innisfallen.
V.--THE ANNALS OF INNISFALLEN.
There are only two entries referring to Innisfallen in the Four Masters; one A.D. 1144, merely records the death of Flanagan of Innisfallen, a distinguished anmchara, or soul's friend--that is counsellor and confessor--or as we now say, spiritual director. The other entry, however, is an earlier and far more important one. It records the death in A.D. 1009 (recte 1010) of Maelsuthain O'Cearbhail (Carroll) of the community or family of Innisfallen, "chief doctor of the western world in his time, and lord of the Eoghanacht of Lough Lein," who died 'after a good life.' This Maelsuthain was a very celebrated man, and in all probability the original compiler from older authorities of the Annals of Innisfallen. Hence he deserves special notice at our hands. The Eoghanacht of Lough Lein, of whom he was chief, was that branch of the great Eugenian race of Desmond, whose territory surrounded the beautiful Lakes of Killarney, and included the greater part of the Barony of Magunihy. O'Donoghue of Lough Lein, whose principal stronghold was on Ross Island, was the chief of this wide territory. He derived his descent from Cas, son of Corc, King of Munster, whose elder brother, Nadfraich, was the ancestor of the great MacCarthy family. In A.D. 1015 was slain Domhnall, who commanded the forces of Desmond at Clontarf, and he was father of Donchadh, from whom the family name has been derived. The O'Carrolls of Lough Lein were sub-chieftains under the O'Donoghues, and derived their descent from a younger brother of that Nadfraich above referred to as ancestor of the MacCarthy Mor.
Maelsuthain O'Carroll was in the beginning of the eleventh century head of this sub-tribe, and hence is called lord of Lough Lein. The School of Innisfallen was one of those which appear to have suffered least from the ravages of the Danes. This, no doubt, was mainly due to its remote insular situation amongst the mountains of Kerry. It is highly probable that Brian Boru, the hero of Clontarf, was educated at Innisfallen; at least we find that Maelsuthain, the head of the island school, was his intimate friend and counsellor during many years of his victorious career. When Brian marched in triumph to Armagh, he laid an offering of twenty ounces of gold on the High Altar of the cathedral; and our Maelsuthain O'Carroll, of Lough Lein, who accompanied him, made the following entry in the name of the king, in the Book of Armagh:--"St. Patrick, when going to heaven, ordained that all the fruit of his labour, as well of baptisms, as of causes and other alms, should be carried to the apostolic city, which in Irish is called Ardd-Macha. So I have found it in the libraries of the Scots. This I have written, that is, Calvus Perennis, 'the ever bald,' (which is equivalent to the Irish Mael-suthain), in the sight of Brian, Emperor of the Scots, and what I have written he determined for all the kings of Maceria,"[362] that being the Latin equivalent of Cashel.
Maelsuthain is sometimes called the Anmchara[363] of Brian; but as it seems that he was a layman, the word must mean rather counsellor than ghostly adviser. That Maelsuthain was a renowned professor of the Innisfallen school is apparent not only from the eulogy of the Four Masters and the Ulster Annals, which call him 'chief sage of Ireland,' but also from the curious tale about Maelsuthain that has been translated by O'Curry. It is in substance as follows. Maelsuthain was so renowned a professor that three students came all the way from Connor, in the County Antrim, to his school at Innisfallen, in which they spent three years. Then they resolved to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but their professor told them that it was now high time to pay him something for their education. They had no money, however, which is always a scarce commodity with students, but offered to spend three years in service with their teacher as a recompense for their education. "No," said he, "go to Palestine, and all I ask is that when you die, as you will in the Holy Land, you shall come to me, and let me know whether I also shall die in the peace of the Lord." They agreed to this, and went to Palestine, where they died in grace; but they asked permission from St. Michael to return to their old professor, and tell him his fate before going to heaven themselves. St. Michael granted this request, and bade them tell Maelsuthain that he had only three years and a-half to live, and then he was to be condemned to hell for all eternity. So they came to Maelsuthain, in the shape of three white doves. He bade them welcome, and asked what was to be his future lot. They told him. "And why am I to be sent to hell?" said he. They told him the reasons also, as St. Michael had directed them: first, because he interpolated the canons; secondly, because of unchastity; and, thirdly, because he had given up the Altus. "I shall not go to hell all the same," replied the professor, "for God has promised that 'the impiety of the wicked shall not hurt him in whatsoever hour he shall turn himself away from it.' I will turn away from my sins; I will put no sense of my own in the canons; I will perform a hundred genuflections every day; I will recite the Altus seven times every night to make up for my past neglect; and I will keep a three days' fast every week." On the day of his death the three white doves returned, and told him that his penance was accepted by God, and that they saw his place in heaven, and would now accompany him into eternal glory. So he was anointed by the clergy around his bed; and his three pupils parted not with him until they all went to heaven together. "And," adds the tale, "it is this good man's writings (or manuscripts--screptra), that are in Innisfallen in the church there still."
This reference seems to designate some well-known writings connected with Innisfallen, of which Maelsuthain was the author or compiler, and which can hardly be any other than the well known Annals of Innisfallen. Eugene O'Curry tells us that it has been a constant tradition in the South of Ireland that the Annals of Innisfallen were compiled by Maelsuthain, and he adds that he himself had no doubt the O'Carroll was either 'the original projector of the compilation,' or that he enlarged the previous meagre outlines kept in the monastery of Innisfallen into this more regular and extensive historical work.
The principal copy of these Annals is at present preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. "It contains," says Dr. O'Conor, "fifty-seven leaves (of parchment), of which the first three are considerably damaged, and the fourth partly obliterated. Some leaves at the beginning are also missing." The missing leaves seem to have begun with a short account of the creation and the history of the early patriarchs extracted from the Book of Genesis. At the sixth begins the history of the Kingdom of the Greeks; then it treats of the general history of the great empires of the world down to the year A.D. 430 (at folio 9), where their real interest begins. Thenceforward there is a brief chronicle of Ireland in different hands, down to the year A.D. 1319. The first scribe has written down to the year A.D. 1130 (at folio 30). The writing of this portion is free and elegant; the initial letters are coloured and adorned; and everything seems to point to the fact that the original scribe of this manuscript wrote no further. But afterwards the work becomes more rude and careless; there is no attempt at ornamentation; in fact, the appearance of the manuscript is a faithful picture of the state of the country--daily going from bad to worse. It is fruitless now to speculate how this venerable monument of Irish learning came into the Bodleian Library of Oxford.
The work known as the Dublin Annals of Innisfallen is a translation in Trinity College Library, which Theophilus O'Flanagan testifies[364] that he made into English "about nineteen years ago, from a copy perfected under the direction of Dr. O'Brien, Bishop of Cloyne and Ross, from the original in the Bodleian Library." Dr. O'Brien's scribe was, according to O'Flanagan, a priest of the name of Conroy, who was well versed in the Irish language.
There is another copy in the Royal Irish Academy in Irish and English, beginning with A.D. 250, and coming down to A.D. 1320. It is on paper, and contains 320 folios. During the later years it deals chiefly with the affairs of Munster. At A.D. 1010 we find the following entry:--"Maelsuthain, son of O'Carroll, King of the Eoghanacht of Locha Lein, and the Primate of Ireland, died in Aghadoe." In the Irish it is 'Priomfaidh Eirion,' which appears to mean, 'chief sage of Ireland.' More than half this volume deals with the period from A.D. 1170 to 1320, and it contains many interesting entries during that time. The chronology is, however, very defective.
Poetry, it seems, was cultivated in Innisfallen as well as history--for we are told that in A.D. 1197 Gilla Patrick O'Huihair went to his rest. He was archdeacon of the island--which shows that there was a considerable community there at the time--and superior of the convent. He also founded many religious houses, to which he gave books, vestments, and other necessaries. He was, moreover, the Annalist tells us, 'a celebrated poet;' and was held in the highest estimation for his chastity, piety, wisdom, and universal charity. We have also another entry, A.D. 1208, which gives us a beautiful picture of a reverend priest of 'Cloonuama,'[365] who died in this abbey, where he passed the evening of a life chequered by misfortune in penitence and prayer, and was buried in the cemetery of the Abbey of Innisfallen.
There is one significant entry a few years earlier--"anno 1180, this abbey of Inisfallen being ever esteemed a paradise and a secure sanctuary, the treasure and the most valuable effects of the whole country were deposited in the hands of its clergy; notwithstanding which we find the abbey was plundered in this year by Maolduin, son of Daniel O'Donoghue. Many of the clergy were slain--even in their cemetery--by the MacCarthys. But God soon punished this act of impiety and sacrilege, by bringing many of its authors to an untimely end."
During the eleventh century the O'Donoghoes of Lough Lein rose to great power and influence--one of them became king of Cashel, and several of them are described as royal heirs of Cashel. It was an O'Donoghue who restored the cathedral church of Aghadoe in the twelfth century--he was slain in A.D. 1166. In all probability this Maolduin, son of Daniel, was in feud with his own family, who were always the protectors of the monks of Innisfallen, and he called in the MacCarthys to help him in plundering this venerable shrine. It is satisfactory to know that vengeance soon overtook the despoilers of this paradise, as the chronicler aptly describes it.
Yes, Innisfallen is, in truth, an earthly paradise. The island contains about twelve acres; but this small area is dowered with every charm that can gratify the senses. The surface, fringed with evergreen bowers, is gently undulating, and covered with a carpet of green, so pure and so soft, that the eye loves to linger on its hues. There are miniature creeks, where the wavelets die in gentle ripples; there are giant elms and hoary ash trees, that have lived for centuries; the holly and the arbutus are not shrubs, but forest trees, and their bright green leaves, with blossoms of purest white, or berries of deepest red, gleam through the heavy-laden boughs. Then there are the manifold associations of religion, and history, and poetry, and romance, called up before the mental vision by the aspect of the ruined churches on this queen of islands. You have, besides, the mingled melodies of whispering leaves, and singing birds, and murmuring waters, filling the ear, and inviting the listener to contemplation and repose. Of old, the tinkling of bells was heard from these ruined cloisters, and the gray Franciscan habit was seen stealing along the shores of Muckross, and the cathedral chimes of Aghadoe were borne over the waters to the students' ears. Now they are all gone--no lectures within these silent roofless walls; no midnight vigils of the gray friars in Muckross; no bishop's throne in Aghadoe. Yet young Killarney rivals these ivy-grown haunts of ancient learning and holiness in all things save one--the unapproachable beauty of the sites chosen by the monks of old. Their successors live nigh to scenes of beauty; but they have so placed themselves that they can never see them. They seem to prefer naked walls and flat fields to the glorious vision of nature's unapproachable beauties, which she has poured out with lavish hand, by mountain, stream, and woodland all around this peerless Lake of Learning.[366]
XXI. THE SCHOOLS OF THOMOND
"Though Garryowen has gone to wreck, We'll win her olden glories back; The night long, starless, cold and black, We'll light with song and story."
I.--THE SCHOOL OF MUNGRET.
The first reference[367] we find made to Mungret is in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick. When the saint had come into the territory of Hy-Fidhgente, which included that portion of the modern County Limerick west of the river Maigue, with a small portion of the barony of Coshma east of that river, Lomman, the king of the district, made a feast for Patrick on the summit of Mullagh Cae, to the south of Carn Feradaig. This hill still bears its ancient name, and the gifted poet[368] from whom we have already so often borrowed beautiful thoughts, describes its situation:--
"That pleasant hill ascends Westward of Ara girt by rivers twain, Maigue, lily-lighted, and the 'Morning Star' Once Samhair named, that eastward through the woods Winding, upon its rapids earliest meets The morn, and flings it far o'er mead and plain."[369]
Now Lomman, son of Mac Eire, and Mantan, a deacon of Patrick's household, had prepared a feast for the saint and his people on the summit of this green hill, when it chanced that a band of itinerant jugglers came upon the scene, and meeting Patrick first, asked him for some food. The laws of hospitality were always imperative in Celtic Ireland, and accordingly Patrick told them to go to Lomman and Mantan, and that they would supply their wants. No one had yet tasted of the banquet, not even Patrick himself; and hence, when the jugglers applied for food, they were rather rudely repulsed by Lomman and the deacon, who told them in effect that strollers like them were not the persons to bless the meat and partake of it first.
They meant no harm, but still Patrick's request was not complied with, and his honour was compromised, when hospitality was refused even to the jugglers. So Patrick said:--
"To the boy who cometh from the north (Limerick) To him the victory has been given."
And forthwith a youth named Nessan appeared coming up the hill-side with his mother, and she being the stronger was carrying a cooked ram on her shoulders for the king's feast. Then the saint asked the boy to give him the wether, that he might give it to the jugglers, and thus save his honour by complying with the laws of hospitality. The boy at once gladly gave the ram to Patrick; but his mother grumbled a little when she saw its destination.
Patrick, however, resolved to teach them all, that obedience and charity are the first of Christian virtues. Therefore, he said to Lomman, his host, that none of his race should ever be king, or crown-prince, or bishop; and to Deacon Mantan, he said that his cloister would not be lofty, and that it would be the dwelling of a rabble, and that sheep and swine would tread on his remains--but to Nessan he said: "Thou wilt be mighty of race":--
"Thou that didst the hungry feed, The poor of Christ that know not yet His name, And helping them that cried to me for help, Mine honour cherish, like a palm one day, Shall rise thy greatness."
Nessan's mother, too, was punished for her grumbling. She was not to be buried in her son's church of Mungret, but beyond the cloister wall to the west, where its sweet-toned bell could not be heard. Then Patrick ordained Nessan a deacon, and founded a church for him, that is, Mungret, near Limerick.
On one occasion Nessan went to visit St. Ailbe of Emly, that he might inquire from that saint if it were right for a monk to receive or to refuse the offerings of the faithful. When Nessan arrived it was the hour of None, and the community were chanting the office in the church. Nessan, however, declined to go into the guest-house until he should see Ailbe and put his question. Now Ailbe continued in prayer from the hour of None until Tierce on the following day; and no one went into him except the guest-master.
At length he gave his answer to the patient deacon--"Go," said he, "and tell Nessan this verse in the Scottish tongue:
"Danae Dee nis frithcoirthi, Selba forri [forru] niscorthi; Acht toberthar, ragabae, Sech ni muide, ni chele."
That is:--
Gifts of God are not to be refused, [But] possession is not to be retained of them [Literally: possession is not to be put upon them] If they are offered, you shall accept them, But you shall not boast [of], you shall not conceal [them].[370]
The festival of Nessan is given in the Calendar of Ængus as the 25th of July. "It is of him," says the Martyrology of Donegal, "Cuimin of Condeire gave his testimony in showing that he never told a lie out of his mouth." Thus he says:--
"Nessan, the holy deacon, loves Angelic pure devotion; Never came outside his teeth What was untrue or guileful."
And the same authority likens him to Laurentius the Deacon in his habits and life.[371] Colgan says that Nessan died in A.D. 551; but even granting that he was a mere boy when St. Patrick was in Munster it is difficult to suppose he could have lived so long.
The fame of Mungret School is, however, due much more to St. Munchin, or Manchin, surnamed the Wise, than to Deacon Nessan, although unfortunately little can be ascertained with certainty about his history. He was of the Dalcassian race, being son of Sedna, and grandson of Cas, who was seventh in descent from Cormac Cas, son of Ollioll Olum, the great father of the race. His uncle Blod was king of the Dalgais of Thomond, during the early years of St. Patrick's mission in Ireland. According to some writers, St. Manchan or Munchin, of Limerick, was identical with Manchan the Master, who is mentioned in the Life of St. Patrick. There were, however, several saints who bore that name; and it seems highly improbable that 'Master' Manchan of the Tripartite was the founder of St. Munchin's. O'Curry says that this latter saint was daltha, or foster-son, and pupil of St. Mac Creiche of Ennistymon in Clare, who flourished towards the end of the fifth century; for he was the friend and contemporary of St. Ailbe of Emly. We assume, therefore, that Manchin, the founder of Cill-Munchin, now known as St. Munchin's, flourished in the first half of the sixth century. It is said that he succeeded Nessan as Abbot of Mungret, and that under him and his successors, this monastic school attained great fame during the sixth and seventh centuries.
The fame of Mungret, however, seems to be principally founded on local tradition, for we can find no satisfactory evidence to prove its celebrity in any of our ancient documents. It is said that there were no less than six churches in Mungret, and no less than 1,500 monks (not to speak of the boys at school) within its cloisters. Of these one-third were preachers, or as we should now say, went about giving missions; one-third were constantly engaged in celebrating the divine office; and the remaining third were employed in teaching in the schools, or labouring for the community.[372] It is strange that no trace of these ancient buildings now remains, with the exception of the walls of one not very ancient church, which is 41 feet long, by 23 feet in breadth. The door-way in the west gable has a flat lintel with sloping jambs--its most characteristic feature. The round arches of the remaining opes rather show that this church belongs to the ninth or tenth century, than to the time of St. Munchin.[373] It is probable that St. Munchin presided for many years at Mungret; and then in his old age retired from community life, and built himself a cell and oratory in the neighbourhood, which was afterwards known as Cill-Munchin, and became the nucleus of the present city of Limerick. Thus it was that he came to be recognised as the patron of the city and diocese of Limerick; and, as such, his church is said to have been the cathedral church of the city down to the building of St. Mary's by Donald O'Brien, who died in A.D. 1194.
It is very doubtful if there was any See in Limerick before the Danish colony became Christian, and got a bishop of their own. The only scrap of evidence in favour of a line of earlier prelates in St. Munchin's that we could find, is the statement in the prose Life of St. Senan, that "Deron, Bishop of Limerick," was present at the obsequies of St. Senan in Scattery Island. But, as Lanigan remarks, this Life is of the post-Norman period, and cannot be accepted as an unquestionable authority.
The subsequent history of Mungret may be briefly summed up. The death of Ailill, Abbot of Mungret, is noticed by the Four Masters in A.D. 760, which shows that there was a succession of abbots in that great school. But evil days were now in store for Mungret. Situated close to the great highway of the Shannon, it was one of the first places that felt the fury of the Danes, and suffered most from their constant presence in the great estuary of Luimnech. We are told that it was burned and plundered by these 'gentiles' in A.D. 834, like most of the great monasteries on the southern coasts and estuaries. Shortly afterwards the Danes took permanent possession of the estuary of the Shannon; and although defeated by the native tribes at Shanid and elsewhere, still, owing to their possession of the sea, and the constant arrival of fresh hordes, they were able to maintain themselves at Limerick, where they established strong forts on the King's Island, which they held against all comers down to the time of Brian Boru. They were, indeed, the real founders of the city of Limerick, and their choice of that site, so suitable at once for commerce and defence, shows how keenly alive their chiefs were to the advantages to be derived from a good natural position. Of course whilst the Danes held the lower Shannon and all its islands, Mungret could not flourish. At best they could only live there on sufferance, and were constantly exposed to pillage and murder.
Still Mungret was not obliterated. Cormac Mac Cullinan by his will, which he made before he set out for the fatal field of Ballaghmoon, bequeathed, amongst other charitable bequests to other churches, three ounces of gold, an embroidered vest, and his blessing to Mungret; so that it is not improbable the great king-bishop, so learned in the Scotic tongue, as the Four Masters tell us, had himself been a student of Mungret.[374] In A.D. 909, Maelcaisil, Abbot of Mungret, died; and although the school was burned in A.D. 934, we read of Abbot Muirgheas, whose death is noticed in A.D. 993, by the Four Masters. They also record the death of "Rebachan, son of Dunchadh, Archdeacon of Mungret," or as they write it Mungarid, in the next year; so that it was still a place of importance, having an abbot, an archdeacon, and an airchinneach also, for Constans, who held that office, died in A.D. 1033. It was burned in A.D. 1080; and was no sooner rebuilt than it was once more destroyed by a native prince, Domhnall Mac Lochlann, 'King of Ireland,' in A.D. 1088. On this occasion the King of Ireland harried the coasts and the churches of Thomond quite as cruelly as ever the foreigners had done.
Yet, phœnix-like, it rose once more from its ruins, for we are told that in A.D. 1102, "Moran O'Moore (Mughron O'Morgair), chief lector of Armagh, and of all the west of Europe, died on the third of the nones of October at Mungret in Munster." Though the Irish princes of the North and South were as usual at deadly feud, Mungret gave a hospitable home and an honourable grave to the great professor from Armagh, who was the father of St. Malachy--one of the greatest of our Celtic saints. The last entry in the Four Masters is the shameful record that Mungret was plundered in A.D. 1107 by Mortogh O'Brian. Can it be that this Mortogh, who thus impiously plundered the shrine of his kindred at Mungret, is the same Mortogh who gave Cashel to the Church, and carried the arms of Thomond in triumph from Luimnech to Lough Foyle? Thenceforward Mungret, as a school, disappears from our Annals--almost, but not quite, up to the present hour.
'The learning of the Mungret women' is proverbial about Limerick; and the proverb had its origin in this way.[375] A controversy arose between Mungret and some other monastic school of the South, as to which was the more learned community; and it was agreed by both parties that their best scholars should meet at Mungret on a certain day, and exhibit their learning in a public disputation. Now as the time drew nigh the Mungret scholars feared they would be worsted in the disputation, and so they had recourse to stratagem. A number of them dressed themselves as women, and going to the place, where a stream crossed the highway near Mungret by which the visitors were to approach, they began to wash clothes. The strangers coming up put some questions to the ladies in the vernacular, but the ladies replied in excellent Latin, and even some, it is said, in Greek. The visitors were filled with astonishment, and asked them how they learned the ancient languages. "Oh," they said, "every one about Mungret speaks Latin and Greek; that is nothing at all--'mere crumbs from the monks' table'--would you like to talk philosophy and theology with us?" When the strangers saw that even the women were so learned they knew they would have no chance at all if they met the monks; so they decamped right off, leaving the victory to the 'wise women of Mungret.'
Mungret is finely situated on a gently rising sweep of fertile land, close to Lord Emly's beautiful demesne at Tervoe, about three miles to the south-west of Limerick. It commands a grand view of several reaches of the Shannon, with the pine clad hills of Clare rising in the distance beyond the river. Once more, too, bands of students roam through its meadows; and in statelier halls than St. Nessan built the languages and philosophy of Greece and Rome are taught to eager disciples. There is once more a great college at Mungret; once more its students come from afar to seek sanctity and learning under the shadow of the ancient Church of St. Nessan. The Jesuits have there established, since 1884, a College and an Apostolic School, both of which have achieved wonderful success during the brief period of their existence. May St. Nessan, and all the saints of Mungret, help them to revive the ancient glories of their own monastic school, and to send to foreign lands missionaries of the Celtic race, as zealous and as learned as the men who in olden days carried the faith and fame of Erin from the Shannon's banks through so many distant lands, even to the utmost shores of Calabria.
II.--THE SCHOOL OF INISCALTRA.
Another celebrated nursery of ancient sanctity and learning flourished in the island of Iniscaltra, especially during the seventh and eighth centuries. This beautiful island is situated in the south-western angle of Lough Derg, where that great expansion of the Shannon runs in towards the village of Scariff, between the Counties of Galway and Clare. It is elliptical in shape, and contains 45 statute acres of exceedingly fertile land, so that £100 per annum has been frequently paid for the grazing of the island. It belongs to the county Galway, but ecclesiastically the island is a portion of the parish of the same name, in the diocese of Killaloe. The gaze of every stranger is at once arrested by the stately round tower, which rises up in lonely grandeur from this green speck in the placid bosom of the lake, marking the spot where the saints of old sought communion with God, and spent their lives in prayer, and fasting, and sacred study. No one now dwells on this lonely and beautiful island; and indeed it would be a profanation to erect a building for the common-place purposes of every-day life on its sacred soil. Better--far better--to leave its tower, its graveyards, and its ruined churches to be the lone and silent memorials of the vanished past, than to mar their holy memories by association with anything that would be commonplace or trivial.
Mention is first made of this island in A.D. 548, when, as the Four Masters and the Annals of Ulster record, "Colum of Inis-cealtra died" of the Crom Chonaill, or Yellow Plague, which then for the first time, but not for the last, depopulated these countries, and carried off amongst others many of the most distinguished saints and scholars of ancient Erin. The Four Masters record in this same year, and probably from the same cause, the death of St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, St. Tighernach of Clones, St. Finnian of Clonard, the tutor of the saints of Ireland, St. Colum of Inis-cealtra, and also of St. MacTail of Old Kilcullen, of Sincheall of Druimfada, now Killeigh, in King's County, of St. Odhran of Latteragh, on the eastern slopes of Keeper Hill, and of St. Colum, son of Ninnidh, called also Colum Mac Hy-Crimthainn, the celebrated founder of Terryglass. It is highly probable that the two Colums here mentioned, Colum of Inis-cealtra, and Colum Mac Hy-Crimthainn, were really one and the same person; but the transcriber finding Colum in one place, called 'Colum of Iniscaltra,' and in another place 'Colum of Terryglass'--Tir-da-glas--thought they were different persons, and recorded them as such.
The Life of St. Columba of Terryglass, recently published in the Salamanca MS., shows how this error may have arisen. This St. Columba was of Lagenian origin, for his patronymic, Mac Hy-Crimthainn, is derived from an ancestor, who was King of Leinster five generations before. His father, Ninnidh, seems to have been born not far from Clonenagh, in Queen's County, for in his youth we are told that the saint learned his psalms and hymns from a holy old man named Colman Cule, who lived in that neighbourhood, and founded the Church of Cluain Cain. This has been identified with great probability as Clonkeen, near Clonenagh, in the Queen's County. Columba afterwards studied under the celebrated Finnian of Clonard, and he, with his greater namesake, Columba of Iona, is reckoned amongst the Twelve Apostles of Erin, who studied together at that great school. When he was sufficiently trained in all spiritual knowledge at Clonard, we are told that he resolved to go to Rome, and bring home with him some of the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. On his return he came to St. Martin's monastery at Tours, where he was privileged to obtain the staff and chrismal of that saint, which he carried home with him to Erin. He also visited England during this return journey, and preached with some success to the still unconverted Saxons. Returning home to Leinster his brother Cairbre offered him a place called Echargabul, on which to build a church and monastery; but he preferred to leave in that place one of his disciples called Cronan, who was a foreigner. Afterwards, with his disciples, he remained a year at Clonenagh,[376] and then crossing Slieve Bloom he came to Hy-Many of the Connaughtmen, and founded a church, where he had a flock of 700 souls, at a place called Tir Snama, which seems to have been not far from Lough Derg; for we are told that shortly afterwards he founded other churches near the lake, called Aurraith Tophiloc and Tuam Bonden, where he dwelt for some time.
Then an angel appearing to him bade him go to the island Keltra--since called Iniscaltra. At that time a certain old man dwelt on the island, called Maccrihe; but the angel told him to leave the island to St. Columba, which he willingly did.
Thus we find St. Columba of Terryglass established at Iniscaltra, where he remained a 'long time,' and where he was miraculously supported for a while by the liquor that distilled from a lime tree growing on the island. The birds that lived on the island, too, became quite familiar with the saint; and when Nadcumius, one of his disciples, asked him the reason, he gave a very beautiful reply. "Am I not a bird myself," he said--"why should they fear me, for my soul always flies to heaven, as they fly through the sky?" It is said that on one occasion, when one of his 'family' died suddenly on the shore opposite the northern part of the island at Mount Shannon, he ordered his monks to go and say to the dead man--"Columba bids thee arise"--and the dead man arose and returned with them to the island.
Whilst at Iniscaltra the saint seems to have made frequent voyages over the lake. On one of these occasions seeing the place, 'where Terryglass now is,' rising over the broad waters of the lake, towards the east, he said, "Oh! that my resurrection would take place from that sweet spot"--a wish that was destined afterwards to be fulfilled.
Crowds of people came to visit the saint and his companions at Iniscaltra, so that he pined for some more lonely spot, where he might hide himself far away from men. Accordingly he embarked in his curragh, as we may suppose, then shooting the rapids, and sailing out into the estuary of the Shannon, called Luimnech, he established himself with a few companions in a lonely island, called 'Insula Erci' in the Latin Life, which may, perhaps, have been corrupted into Iniscorcy, the name of an island in the bay formed by the Fergus River, close to Kilydysart. The place, at any rate, was west-north-west (a circio) of Mungret, not very far away; and had, close at hand, another small island, to which the saint was sometimes in the habit of retiring, in order, it would seem, to be still more alone with God.
From this island he was called away to visit his master, St. Finnian of Clonard, who had been stricken with the yellow plague, and anxiously longed to receive the Holy Communion from his hands. The saint at once set out for far-distant Meath, a ten days' journey, and arrived in time to give the 'sacrifice' to his beloved master before he died of that dreadful pestilence. It was in the year, it seems, A.D. 551 or 552 (548 with the Four Masters).
The blessed Columba himself seems to have caught the contagion whilst attending his dear old master; for retiring to a neighbouring place called Cluain Hii, where one of his old fellow-students had founded a church, he sickened and died of the same disorder towards the close of the same year--his festival day being December 13th, as marked in all our Calendars.
The men of Meath learning that so great a saint had died amongst them, were unwilling to let the blessed body be carried off, so that his companions had recourse to stratagem to convey the body secretly away. But even this they could not effect until a year after the saint's death, so closely were they watched by the men of Meath. At last they hid the remains of their beloved father in a waggon, covered over with oats, and taking several other waggons also, as if for the purpose of bringing a supply of provisions with them, they set out for the Shannon, choosing the road towards Clonmacnoise. There they were hospitably received; and they told the abbot, in confidence, of the blessed burden which they bore along with them. The abbot then greatly rejoiced, and wished to have the holy relics kept at Clonmacnoise; but the brethren would not consent. Terryglass, blessed by St. Patrick, on the swelling shore of the beautiful Lough Derg, was chosen by himself to be 'the place of his resurrection;' so the Abbot-Ængus, next successor to St. Ciaran, let them go in peace with his blessing. But the men of Meath now began to suspect that their treasure was taken away, and followed quickly after, headed by the prince of the southern Hy-Niall, Colman Beg. The brethren, however, had already embarked; and when Colman took the helm to pursue them, Nadcumius threatened him with God's anger if he followed them further. So for the time he turned back, and the monks with swelling sail and sturdy oar quickly traversed the lake, and came to Iniscaltra, where they buried the saint in secret for seven years, giving out, it seems, that his remains reposed at Terryglass.[377] We are told that the lake was lit up with a heavenly light of marvellous beauty during all the time that the body of the saint was borne over its heaving bosom.
Meantime the men of Meath, for seven years, kept watch around Terryglass, to see if they could get a chance of recovering their lost treasure; but finding no opportunity, they returned at last to their homes. Only then did the faithful Nadcumius transfer the holy relics from Iniscaltra to Terryglass, and thus carry out at length the dying wish of his beloved master. The men of Meath saw the bright beams that shone from heaven over all the lake on the night the holy relics were transferred; and at last reluctantly said--"Let us cease this toil. The saint chose this place for himself; let him rest in peace there for ever."
Such is the account given in the Life; but in the Leabhar Breac, it is stated that the relics of Colum, son of Crimthann, were taken by Mochoemhe of Terryglass, and by Odhran the Master, on a wain southwards over Esge, to Caimin of Iniscaltra. Esge is a corruption of Echtge, the ancient and correct name of the Slieve Aughty mountains, that separate Galway from Clare. As St. Caimin was certainly not then in Iniscaltra, this would seem to point to a subsequent translation of the holy relics once more to the beautiful island where Columba had spent so many years. His successor, Caimin, had, it would seem, rendered the island once more a celebrated home of learning and piety, and wished to possess at least a portion of the blessed body of his illustrious predecessor.
Columba died A.D. 552; St. Caimin, the still more famous saint of Iniscaltra, and who has always been regarded as its patron, died, according to the Annals of Innisfallen, just one hundred years later, in A.D. 653; so that Caimin cannot have been a disciple of Columba. He came, however, of the same royal Lagenian race of Cathair Mor, for his father Dima, or Dimma, belonged to Hy-Kinsellagh, but his mother Cumaine, who was also, it is said, the mother of Guaire, King of Connaught, and of Cummian Fada, Bishop of Clonfert, belonged originally to the west of the County Kerry. We know little of the life of this great saint. He appears to have been present at the Synod of Easdara, now Ballysadare, which was held by St. Columba, and attended by the principal saints of Erin about the year A.D. 580 or 585. In that case the saint must have been born about the middle of the sixth century, and reached the age of one hundred years before he died. It is still more difficult to explain how he could have been a friend and contemporary of St. Senan of Scattery Island, who died about the year A.D. 544.
It is certain, however, that Caimin has always enjoyed the reputation of being himself a distinguished scholar, and the master of a very famous school. Lanigan tells us that he wrote "a Commentary on the Psalms collated with the Hebrew text," a portion of which Usher says that he himself saw, and that both the text and notes were generally regarded as in the handwriting of St. Caimin.
If this be the fragment of the Commentary on the 119th Psalm, now in Merchants' Quay, Dublin, that handwriting is certainly marvellously beautiful, but there is, we believe, no appearance of any collation with the Hebrew text. This fragment was once in the Franciscan Convent of Donegal; afterwards, it was in Colgan's possession, and has now fitly returned to the representatives of the original owners.
Caimin's school at Iniscaltra attracted, we are told, great numbers of pupils, even from foreign countries. In the Life of St. Senan reference is made to seven ships that arrived in the Shannon crowded with students seeking this island college of St. Caimin. Some poems have been attributed also to the saint, but without good authority. At present the remnant of the 119th Psalm is all that can fairly be regarded as his; but when complete, it must have been a very beautiful and most interesting specimen of our ancient Latin MSS.
Belonging, as he did, to the ruling classes, and connected by blood with several of the provincial kings, being, moreover, a man of great wisdom and virtue, Caimin seems to have exercised very considerable influence over the course of public events in his own time. Guaire, his half-brother, much against the wish and counsel of Caimin, provoked the King of Tara at the time, Diarmaid, son of Aedh Slaine, to a pitched battle at a place called Carn Conall, near Gort. Guaire was defeated, and his allies, the kings of Munster and Hy-Fidhgeinte, were slain on the field, thus verifying Caimin's predictions of the disastrous consequences that would certainly result to the authors of this unjust war. The Four Masters say this great battle was fought in A.D. 645, but A.D. 648 or 649 seems to be the true date.
It would seem, from the curious story told by the Scholiast on the Felire of Ængus, that Caimin was afflicted during the latter years of his life with many painful diseases, which he bore in a spirit of perfect resignation. On a certain occasion when Guaire, Caimin, and Cummian were together in the great church of Iniscaltra, which Caimin had built, and the two saints were giving spiritual counsel to Guaire, Caimin said to his brother, "Well, Guaire, what would you wish to have this church filled with?" "With gold and silver," replied Guaire, "that I might give it in charity to the saints and to the poor for the good of my soul." Cummian, in answer to the same question, said he would wish to have it filled with books, for learned men to instruct others in the Word of God; but Caimin himself when asked the same question, said he wished it full of all diseases and sicknesses to afflict his body. And we are told that each of the brothers got his wish from heaven, "so that sickness and disease came on Caimin, and not one bone of him remained united to the other on earth, but his flesh was dissolved, and his nerves with the excess of every disease that fell upon him." On account, doubtless, of this penitential spirit, Caimin has been likened, by an old author, to Pachomius the monk, one of the great fathers of Eastern monasticism. The monastic school of Caimin continued to flourish for many centuries after his death, and produced several distinguished scholars, whose names are still held in great veneration by the learned.
The ruined monuments still remaining at Iniscaltra, and now happily in charge of the Board of Works, sufficiently attest the ancient importance of the religious establishment on "Holy Island." The peasantry still speak of it as the "Seven Churches," and the island is almost invariably called 'Holy Island,' which shows the reverence that still clings to its ruined walls. The round tower which, in the distance, seems to rise from the waters of the lake, is a strikingly beautiful and picturesque object in the landscape. It is still 80 feet high, 46 feet in circumference, with an internal diameter of nearly 8 feet. The stones in the lower courses are very large, and the masonry of a massive character for the first seven or eight feet; after that the work becomes coarser and more irregular, and the stones are much smaller. The door-way is 10 feet 7 inches above the present level--anciently it was much more. There is a single window for each of the different lofts, looking towards the cardinal points, and lighting the different storeys. The northern window is formed of finely cut stone, and is triangular outside, but square-beaded within.
There is probably no foundation for the local tradition which ascribes the building of this tower, as well as those of Inis Clorann and Scattery Island, to St. Senanus. It is much more likely that it was built at the close of the tenth, or the beginning of the eleventh century, by Brian Boru, who also erected or repaired the great church, which had been more than once partially destroyed by the Danes. The door-way of the tower is circular-headed, and formed of very finely-chiselled blocks of stone. It was anciently secured by an iron door--the bolt hole and traces of its fastenings were visible in 1838, when O'Donovan visited the island, and one of the floors existed, in the memory of an old man then living; no traces, however, of the flooring now remain.
What is now called St. Caimin's Church, a little to the east-north-east of the belfry or round tower, was probably a restoration by Brian Boru of the great church built by St. Caimin himself. It consists of a nave and chancel, the former 31 feet by 20; and the latter 15 by 12-1/2 feet. The east wall of the chancel was quite gone, but has been partially restored. The masonry of the chancel is finely jointed ashlar, much superior to the coarser work of the nave. The chancel arch is the most striking and characteristic feature in this old church. It is semi-circular, formed of fine cut stone in three plain orders, rising from engaged jamb-shafts with very peculiar capitals. The arch is 10 feet 2 inches wide at the bottom, narrowing to 9 feet 11 inches at the top of the jambs. It is regarded by the best judges as a work of the time of King Brian. The west door-way has been lately restored. Its character is similar to that of the chancel--a plain impost moulding, two orders rising from engaged pilasters, with sculptured heads carved on the round at the top. There was a chevron moulding round the face of the arch. The sill is of limestone, and the entire door seems to have been an insertion in an older building. There are two windows in the south wall of the nave--one square, the other round-headed, but not specially striking; the round-headed window has a deep and finely executed splay.
A stone font, one foot and a half deep, probably for holy water, was close to the west door at Lord Dunraven's visit, and is there still. Traces of the ancient cashel which surrounded the monastic church were also visible. There are many interesting inscribed stones and crosses lying about. The base of a cross lies sunk in the ground north-east of a piece of a wall said to have been portion of a small chapel called 'Teampul na bh-fear ngonta,' or the Church of the Slain Men. Here, it is said, the bodies of those slain in battle were usually buried.
The fine Church of St. Mary--Tempull Maire--is about fifty paces from St. Caimin's Church, and is much larger; but we cannot now describe it at length. The view through the arch of the church over the lake towards the wooded hills of Tipperary is of surpassing beauty, and once seen can never be forgotten.
Several sculptured stones also have been found, and six of them still bear the names of the deceased persons over whose graves they were placed. One oblong slab with the words OR DO ARSSEI ... was partially broken, so that the full name cannot be deciphered. Another flag has a beautiful cross within a circle with the words, MOENGAL MAC LODGIN, over the arms of the cross. Another is inscribed, HILAD I DECHENBOIR--the stone tomb of ten persons. Another stone with Celtic cross of interlaced bands, asks a prayer for "Conn;" whilst three simpler flag stones, with rather plain crosses of similar formation, ask a prayer for Diarmait Macc Delbaid, for Maelpatraic, and for Laithbertach.
We can identify with much probability Diarmaid, as "Diarmaid, son of Caicher, Bishop of Inis-cealtra," who died A.D. 951 (F.M.) The last may refer to "Laithbeartach son of Ængus, Bishop of Cluain-fearta Brenainn (Clonfert)," who died A.D. 820, probably during a pilgrimage at the Holy Island. Diarmait is the only bishop whose name is mentioned by the Four Masters in connection with Iniscaltra. They also give the names of five abbots, and one anchorite[378] of Iniscaltra. St. Caimin himself was probably only a priest. He died in A.D. 652; but we could find no trace of his tomb-stone, although he was certainly buried there. It may be that he was the saint interred in the square building outside the present wall of the churchyard and which is sometimes called the 'Confessional.' The churchyard is still much used for interments, and is greatly overcrowded, the coffins in some cases not being covered with more than six inches of earth.
This holy and beautiful island suffered fearfully during the ravages of the Danes. The Shannon was a highway for their 'ships' from Limerick to Lanesborough, and hence we find that all the churches on its shores and islands were frequently pillaged and burned by these marauders during the two centuries of their domination. It was first plundered by Turgesius about the year A.D. 836, who on the same occasion plundered all the churches of Lough Derg and set up his wife Ota, as a kind of priestess to deliver oracles on the high altar of Clonmacnoise. It was again plundered in A.D. 922 by the Danes of Limerick, who brought a fleet on Lough Derg "and plundered Inis-cealtra, and they drowned its shrines, and its relics, and its books," and having harried both shores of the river as far as Lough Ree, they returned safely to Limerick. Yet we find it had a bishop in A.D. 951; and the comarb of Colum Mac Hy-Crimthainn in Terryglass, Killaloe, and Inis-cealtra, died A.D. 1009 (recte 1010). This is the last abbot of whom we have any record. It is evident, however, that the school and monastery still continued to flourish. Brian Boru repaired the great church about that very time, A.D. 1005-1010, and no doubt also restored the efficiency of the schools, for his biographer tells that "he sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, and to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because their own writings and books, in every church and in every sanctuary where they were, were burned and thrown into the water by the plunderers from first to last, and Brian himself gave the price of learning and the price of books to every one separately who went on this service."[379]
We may be sure that Brian did not neglect Iniscaltra; for it was the great school of his own hereditary kingdom, and was within a few miles distance of his own palace of Kincora.
III.--OTHER MONASTIC SCHOOLS OF THOMOND.
There were, at least, four other great monasteries in Thomond, and two of them are mentioned as having monastic schools connected with them, that is, Birr and Roscrea. But we do not find the names of any distinguished scholars educated in these schools, and hence our account of these monasteries must be very brief.
St. Brendan of Birr, is to be carefully distinguished from his more celebrated namesake of Clonfert. He is sometimes called Brendan the Elder--Brendanus Senior--and like Brendan of Clonfert, came of the race of Fergus MacRoy, which produced more saints and heroes than, perhaps, any of the other Celtic tribes. The two Brendans were together at Clonard under St. Finnian, and both are ranked amongst the Twelve Apostles of Erin. St. Brendan of Birr was especially remarkable for the fulness of the prophetic spirit[380] which he possessed; and, according to one account, it was in obedience to his counsel that St. Columba, after the battle of Cuil-Dreimhne, resolved to leave Ireland, and preach the Gospel in Alba. It is said that on the same occasion he befriended Columcille at a Synod held near Teltown in Meath, where an attempt was made by some of the 'saints' to excommunicate Columba for his alleged share in bringing about that bloody conflict.
It is certain that Brendan was highly esteemed by all his contemporaries, and when he founded his monastery at Biorra, or Riverstown, as it would be called in English, it soon grew to be a very celebrated institution. The Four Masters, at A.D. 553, tell us that "Brendan of Birr was seen ascending a chariot into the sky this year." This entry is not intended to signify that he died, but rather that, like St. Paul, he was taken up to heaven for a little, for his death is noticed by the same Four Masters under date of the year A.D. 571, when they tell us that he died on the 29th of September. The real date appears to have been A.D. 573. From a scholastic point of view, the subsequent history of this monastery contains nothing especially interesting.
St. Cronan of Roscrea belonged to the territory and sept of Ely O'Carroll, in which his monastery was situated. He spent much of his youth in Connaught;[381] but afterwards returning home, he founded his first monastic cell at a place called Seanross. This old church, though, perhaps, subsequently modified and restored, is situated within a few paces of Corville House, near Roscrea, the beautiful residence of Count O'Byrne, who carefully preserves the building from injury or profanation. At this period, however, all the low ground around Corville, towards the railway, was the Locha Cre, or Stagnum Cre, so frequently mentioned in the Lives of the Saints of this district. Seanross was a wooded promonotory running into the lake, and it was then so inaccessible and secluded (desertus et avius) that even Cronan resolved to leave it, and establish his monastery for the convenience of his disciples at the Ross of Cre, which was on the highway from Meath to Munster then, as it is now.
Here St. Cronan, who was himself an accomplished scholar, established what was certainly a very famous school, although, unfortunately, we know very little of its history. There is a Life of the saint in the Salamanca MS., but although abounding in miracles, it is very scanty in facts. Here is a specimen of the miracles. On one occasion Cronan requested a certain skilful scribe, named Dimma, to write a copy of the Four Gospels for him. Dimma said he could only afford to give one day's writing--doubtless he was otherwise engaged. "Very well," said Cronan, "it will suffice; but begin at once, and continue to write without stopping until sunset." So Dimma set to work; but, wondrous to relate, the sun's light shone round him for forty days and forty nights, until the entire manuscript of the Gospels was completed.
We have, there is every reason to believe, still in existence, this wonderful manuscript written by Dimma for St. Cronan; and it was so highly prized in Roscrea that Tatheus O'Carroll, chieftain of Ely, had a beautiful cover or shrine made to enclose the precious volume, about the middle of the twelfth century. The manuscript itself contains an entry, which tells who the writer was, not for the sake of vain glory, but to beg a prayer from every reader for his soul's welfare, according to the good old Celtic custom.
Finit. Oroit do Dimmu rod scrib pro Deo et benedictione--
That is--"A prayer for Dimma, who wrote it for God, and a blessing."
And at the end of the Gospel of St. John we read thus:
Finit. Amen ✠ Dimma Macc. Nathi ✠ This Book of Dimma contains "the Four Gospels, with the Latin ritual and prayers for the visitation of the sick. A coloured figure of each of the first three Evangelists precedes his Gospel, and there is a special symbol prefixed to the opening of the Gospel according to St. John. On the fractured final page of the volume, at the termination of St. John's Gospel, after the words quoted above--'Dimma Macc Nathi'--there are two imperfect and archaic Irish lines, in which the writer prays that 'he may not be venomously criticised,' and that he may attain 'a mansion in heaven,' as the reward of his labours."[382]
This Book of Dimma is at present in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; but only a small portion of the ornamentation of the beautiful cumdach, or shrine, is now to be had. The shrine and its contents were taken away from Roscrea monastery at the suppression; but were, it is said, found in the year A.D. 1789 by some boys who were hunting for rabbits in the Devil's Bit Mountain, which is not far from Roscrea. The silver plate of the shrine was, it is supposed, then torn off, and the precious stones that adorned it were also abstracted; but the portion representing the Passion of Christ was left untouched. It afterwards passed from Dr. Harrison of Nenagh, through Dr. Todd, into the Library of Trinity College.
Of Dimma, the scribe, nothing else is known for certain. There were many saints and scholars of the name; but it is supposed that this scribe is identical with Dimanus, whose name is mentioned in connection with that of St. Cronan in the letter addressed to the Irish Prelates in A.D. 634, by Pope John IV., concerning the alleged appearance of Pelagianism in Ireland.
We know from various entries in our Annals that St. Cronan's School of Roscrea continued to flourish for many centuries even during the worst period of the Danish ravages. We find frequent reference to its abbots, scribes, and professors down to the period of the Anglo-Norman invasion. A portion of the old abbey still remains, and shows that it was one of the most beautiful specimens of Romanesque architecture in Ireland.
St. Senan's monastery on Scattery Island was also a very famous institution; but we do not find that it was celebrated as a school. Neither was St. Flannan's monastery at Killaloe frequented by scholars, who seem to have preferred the quiet beauty of Iniscaltra to the passes of the Shannon, especially after the arrival of our unwelcome visitors from Scandinavia.