Ireland and the Celtic church; a history of Ireland from St. Patrick to the English conquest in 1172

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Preface To The Third Edition

T HAVE corrected in this Edition some few errors - in , dates and references to which my attention has been called. Otherwise this Edition is an exact reprint of those previously published, as I have seen no sufficient cause to change any of the views therein expressed. Partisans have not been pleased, but partisans are not competent judges of historic fairness.

GEORGE T. STOKES.

All Saints' Vicarage, Blackrock, December iSgli

Preface

I HAVE often been asked- to recommend a history of Ireland, embodying the result of the latest investigations, and teUing a very chequered story in an interesting way. I have been unable to name any •work fulfilling these conditions. Mr. Skene's learned volumes emoody tne result oi modern investigations, put they deal as much with Scotland as with Ireland ; while the older historians, such as Lanigan, King, and Todd, though very learned and acciirate, are largely controversial and most certainly not light t-eading. I hkve endeavoured in the following pages to avoid controversy as far as possible, and have necessarily been obliged to make the story as interesting as I could. The form of the book explains the reason why. The lectures contained therein were originally delivered as pubhc prelections in the Divinity-school of Trinity College. As Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Dubhn I am bound to lecture twice a week -during two terms of the academic year, but iio one is. obliged to attend my classes. If I wish, therefore, to haye an audience, I must attract one. I have vi PREFACE.

had no cause for complaint on this head so far as the following lectures were concerned, and, therefore, I presume they were found interesting by those who attended. I can only hope they may not be found dull and uninteresting by the wider audience to which they are now submitted. I have done my best to improve them by the addition of notes, which, will direct the student to the sources whence !• have drawn my material, much of which has hitherto lain buried in Proceedings and Transactions, specially those of the Royal Irish Academy. I am conscious of many omissions in this work. Chapters on St. Brigid of Kildare, and the Ministry of Women in the Early Irish Church, on the Celtic Liturgies and Ritual, and on Celtic Art, should have found a place in a history of the " Making of Ireland." But, then, I have several , excuses for these defects.

PubHshers do not want ideal histories, complete in form, exhaustive in matter, but histories which will interest the puMic. Exhaustive histories are sometimes very exhausting to their readers. Again, I wished to give a picture of ascertained facts, and therefore m'ade it a rule to deal with subjects which have been thoroughly discussed by specialists or illuminated by the publication of great works hke Bishop Reeves' Adamnan's Columba, and Dr. Todd's Wars of the Gaedhil.

The question of Celtic liturgies is still in debate. Mr. Warren, in his learned work, has done much towards its solution. The Rev. Dr. MacCarthy read, last year, a very learned paper on the Stowe Missal, which

PREFACE. vii will see the light in the next part of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. The whole question, however, forms a part of a much larger subject, viz., the local liturgical uses which prevailed throughout Europe and the East in mediaeval times. We are, as yet, only beginning this study, and must await the publication of documents which now lie hidden in many a dusty receptacle before it can b^ completely and finally settled. I am myself convinced that the Irish and Gallicaii uses of the fifth century were identical, and have pointed out below, in a note on page 318, a proof of this in the matter of chrism in baptism. The Irish Church of the seventh century had, however, its own liturgical peculiarities,' as is evident from the Antiphonary of Bangor^ a seventh-century Irish prayer-book, now existing at Milan. In that work we find a creed used at Bangor differing in form from, every other creed hitherto known.

In conclusion I have only to acknowledge in general what I have acknowledged in detail in the notes, — the great help I have received from the works of those who have, in days gone by, and especially during the last half century, devoted themselves to the study of Irish history, literature, and antiquities. I have omitted none, so far as I knew of them, from

' The Antifhonarium. Benchorense was first published by Muratori in his Anecdota Bibliothecm Ambrosianis, t. iv., pp. i 19-59. See also Warren's Celtic Liturgy ; Migne's Pat. Lai:, t. Ixxii., 582; Ulster Jour, of ArchcEology, 1853, pp. 168 79; and O'Lavert/s Diocese of Down and Connor, Appendix.

PREFA CE.

Ussher, the glory and pride of my own University, to the present Bishop of Down (Dr. Reeves), the Bollandist Mr. Hogan, S.J., and Archbishop Moran, among English writers ; and to Zeuss, Zimmer, and Wasserschleben, among the Germans. I have, however, especially to acknowledge the generous assistance afforded by Mr. W. M. Hennessy, M.R.I.A., of Her Majesty's Irish Record Office, who has. always most generously placed at my disposal his boundless knowledge of the Celtic language, literature, and antiquities, on which subjects he is now the highest living authority.

I must, in the last place, express the hope that no words of mine ma,y help to deepen the wounds of Ireland, or cause pain to any generous heart, no matter what his religion or politics.

GEORGE T. STOKES.

28, Trinity College, Dublin, October. 2,nd, 1886.

Contents

LECTURE I.

THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH.

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