CHAPTER II.

THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IRELAND.

[Sidenote: The second order of Catholic Presbyters.]

Assuming that the three orders of the saints pictured the leading

characteristics of three periods of the Irish Church, there can be no

question that the great feature of the second period was its monastic

character. The principal points of difference in the constitution of the

Church represented by the first two orders were these:—The first order

‘was of Catholic saints,’ the second ‘of Catholic presbyters.’ In the

first they are said to have been ‘all bishops, founders of Churches’; in

the second there were ‘few bishops and many presbyters, in number 300.’

In the first ‘they had one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius’; in

the second ‘they had one head, our Lord,’ but no chief. In the first

‘they observed one mass, one celebration’; in the second ‘they

celebrated different masses, and had different rules.’ In the first

‘they excluded from the churches neither laymen nor women’; in the

second ‘they refused the services of women, separating them from the

monasteries.’[80] The first, as we have said, exhibits a secular clergy

founding churches; the second a clergy observing rules and founding

monasteries. There were no doubt monasteries in the earlier church, and,

as St. Patrick tells us in his Confession, ‘sons of the Scots and

daughters of the princes are seen to be monks and virgins;’ but these

were accidental features in a church essentially secular, and the

monasteries were probably of the earliest type, when the monks were

laymen, while the clergy, in common with the church at that period,

consisted of bishops with their presbyters and deacons; but in the

second period the entire church appears to have been monastic, and her

whole clergy embraced within the fold of the monastic rule.

[Sidenote: The entire Church monastic. Relative position of Bishops and

Presbyters.]

Bede well expresses this when, in describing one of her offshoots at

Lindisfarne, he says, ‘All the presbyters, with the deacons, cantors,

lectors, and the other ecclesiastical orders, along with the bishop

himself, were subject in all things to the monastic rule.’[81] The Irish

Church was therefore at this period a monastic church in the fullest

sense of the term, and the inevitable effect of this was materially to

influence the relation between the two grades of bishops and presbyters,

both as to position and as to numbers. In order to estimate rightly the

nature of this change, it is necessary to keep in view the distinction

between the power of mission and that of orders. The former is the

source of jurisdiction, and the latter of the functions of the

episcopate. When the two are united, we are presented with a diocesan

episcopacy; but the union is not essential. A monastic church requires

the exercise of episcopal functions within her as much as any other

church, and for that purpose possesses within her the superior grade of

the bishop according to canonical rule;[82] but when it became customary

for the abbot of the monastery as well as several of the brethren to

receive the ordination of the priesthood, for the purpose of performing

the religious rites within the monastery, the tendency of all

monasteries within a church was to encroach upon the functions of the

secular clergy, and not only to claim exemption from the episcopal

jurisdiction, but even to have within themselves a resident bishop for

the exercise of episcopal functions within the monastery, to whose abbot

he was subject as being under the monastic rule.[83] The idea of

transferring monachism entirely to the clergy of a particular district

was not absolutely unknown in the Western Church.[84] But at this period

it was adopted by the Irish Church in its entirety; and when the entire

church became monastic, the whole episcopate was necessarily in this

position. There was nothing derogatory to the power of episcopal orders,

nothing to reduce the bishops, as a superior grade, below or even to the

level of the presbyters; but the mission, and the jurisdiction of which

it is the source, were not in the bishop, but in the monastery, and that

jurisdiction was necessarily exercised through the abbot as its monastic

head. There was episcopacy in the church, but it was not diocesan

episcopacy. Where the abbot, as was occasionally the case, was in

episcopal orders, the anomaly did not exist. But the presbyters greatly

outnumbered the bishops, and the abbot in general retained his

presbyterian orders only.

[Sidenote: The presbyter-abbot.]

When this was the case, the bishop appears as a separate member of the

community, but ‘the presbyter-abbot was the more important functionary.’

Bede, the most observant as he is the most candid of historians,

remarked this when he says that Iona ‘was wont to have always as ruler a

presbyter-abbot, to whose jurisdiction the whole province and even the

bishops themselves were, by an unusual arrangement, bound to

submit;’[85] and again, that ‘the monastery in Iona (not the abbot but

the monastery) for a long time held the pre-eminence over almost all

those of the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts, and had the

direction of their people.’[86] It was this inversion of the

jurisdiction, placing the bishop under that of the monastery, which Bede

pronounced to be an unusual order of things. The episcopate was in fact

in the Monastic Church of Ireland a personal and not an official

dignity; and we find at a later period that inferior functionaries of

the monastery, as the scribe and even the anchorite, appear to have

united the functions of a bishop with their proper duties.[87]

[Sidenote: Monastic character of the Church derived from Gaul.]

Whence then did the Irish Church at this period derive its monastic

character? Monasticism, as we know, took its rise in the East; but when

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, took refuge in Rome from the

persecution of the Arians in the year 341, told of the life of the monks

in the east, and wrote a Life of St. Anthony, the monastic life became

at once popular in the west, and all Rome became filled with

monasteries. The term _religio_, or ‘religion,’ was given to the

monastic institutions, and that of ‘religious’ to all who followed a

monastic rule, in contradistinction to that of ‘secular,’ which was

applied to the clergy whose lives were regulated merely by the general

law of the Church. From Italy it was introduced into Gaul, and it was

finally established as an institution in that Church by Martin, monk and

afterwards bishop, who founded the monastery of Ligugé, the most ancient

monastery in Gaul, at the gates of Poitiers, in 361; and afterwards,

when he became bishop of Tours in 372, a monastery near that city, which

bore the name of ‘Majus Monasterium,’ or Marmoutier; and this monastery

became the centre of monastic life in Gaul.[88]

[Sidenote: Monachism reached the Irish Church through two different

channels.]

From Martin of Tours the monastic influence reached the Irish Church

through two different channels, and became the means of infusing a new

life into that Church, imparting to it a character which harmonised

better with the tribal organisation of the social system and exhibited

itself in that marvellous burst of energy which not only filled Ireland

with monasteries, but was carried by its monkish missionaries across the

sea to Britain and the Continent. The legend which connects Patrick with

Martin, narrating that Conchessa, Patrick’s mother, was his niece, and

that Patrick went to Martin at the age of twenty-five, and after four

years’ instruction received from him the monastic habit, must be

abandoned as irreconcilable with the chronology of St. Patrick’s life,

and as introduced at a later period into his acts, as we shall

afterwards see. That, however, which connects Ninian of Whithern with

Martin is more trustworthy. He undoubtedly went to Rome during the

lifetime of Martin, where, according to Bede, he was trained in the

faith and mysteries of religion. He is said, on his return, to have

visited that saint at Tours, and obtained from him masons for the

purpose of building a church after the Roman manner, which, says Bede,

was called Candida Casa, and dedicated to St. Martin.

[Sidenote: First channel through the monastery of Candida Casa, or

Whithern, in Galloway.]

This monastery, under the name of the ‘Magnum Monasterium,’ or monastery

of Rosnat, became known as a great seminary of secular and religious

instruction. In the legend of St. Cairnech we find it mentioned as ‘the

house of Martain,’ and as ‘the monastery of Cairnech.’ He was the son of

Sarran, king of the Britons, by Bobona, daughter of Loarn son of Erc,

who had another daughter, Erca, mother of Murcertach, afterwards king of

Ireland. As Murcertach is said in the legend to have been at that time

with the king of Britain learning military science, the events there

narrated must be placed before the date of the great battle of Ocha in

478, which was fought by Lughaidh, who then became king of Ireland, and

by Murcertach mac Erca, and established the throne of Ireland in the

line of the northern Hy Niall. The legend adds that ‘Cairnech went to

Erin before him, and became the first bishop of the clan Niall and of

Teamhar, or Tara, and he was the first martyr and the first monk of

Erin, and the first Brehon of the men of Erin also.’[89] In this legend

the introduction of monachism into Ireland is attributed to Cairnech,

who had been bishop and abbot of the monastery or house of Martin, or in

other words, of Candida Casa; and we find soon after several of the

saints, mentioned as belonging to this second order, resorting thither

for the purpose of being instructed and trained in the monastic life. We

learn from the acts of Tighernac of Clones and of Eugenius of Ardstraw,

who were both natives of Leinster, but connected with Ulster families on

the mother’s side, that, with a number of others of both sexes, they had

been carried off when boys by pirates and brought to Britain, where they

were sent by the king, at the queen’s intercession, to a holy man,

called in the Life of Tighernac, ‘Monennus,’ and in that of Eugenius,

‘Nennio, called also Mancennus’ and ‘Manchenius,’ and trained by him in

his monastery of Rosnat, which is also called _alba_, or ‘white.’[90]

When set at liberty and enabled to return to their own country, they

both received episcopal orders; and Tighernac founded the monastery of

Galloon in Lough Erne, and afterwards that of Cluain-eois or Clones in

Monaghan; while Eugenius founded Ardstrath, now Ardstraw, near Derry. In

the Acts of S. Enda of Aran, too, we are told that, when a youth, he was

sent by his sister to Britain, to the monastery of Rosnat, where he

became the humble disciple of Mancenus, the ‘magister’ of that

monastery.[91] He afterwards founded in one of the Aran islands, on the

west coast of Ireland, a monastery containing one hundred and fifty

monks, of which he was the presbyter-abbot. Saint Monenna too sends one

of her family, named Brignat, to the British island, to the monastery of

Rosnat, in order that she might be trained in the rules of monastic

life, after which she returns to Ireland.[92] Again we are told in the

Acts of St. Finnian or Finbarr, of ‘Maghbile,’ or Moyville, that he went

as a boy to St. Caelan, abbot of Noendrum, who placed him under the care

of a most holy bishop called Nennio, who had come in a ship with some of

his people to the harbour of the monastery; and by him he was taken to

his own monastery, termed the ‘Magnum Monasterium,’ and there trained

for several years in the rules and institutions of monastic life.[93] In

another Life, in which he is identified with St. Fridean of Lucca, his

master’s name is called Mugentius, and his monastery ‘Candida.’[94]

Finally, in the preface to the Hymn or Prayer of Mugint, we are told

that ‘Mugint made this hymn in Futerna. The cause was this:—Finnen of

Maghbile went to Mugint for instruction, and Rioc, and Talmach, and

several others with him.’[95] Finnian, having received episcopal orders,

afterwards founded the monastery of Magh Bile or Moyville, in the county

of Down.

There can be little question that the monastery of Rosnat, called also

‘Alba’ and ‘Candida’ and ‘Futerna,’ and known as the ‘Magnum

Monasterium,’ could have been no other than the monastery of Candida

Casa, known to the Angles as Whithern, of which ‘Futerna’ is the Irish

equivalent. The future bishops and abbots who were trained there were

all more or less connected with Ulster; the monasteries founded by them

were in the north of Ireland; and Finnian, the latest of them, was of

the race of Dal Fiatach, occupying the districts of Down and part of

Antrim, separated by the Irish Channel from Galloway. They would

naturally resort to the great school of monastic life established there

by Ninian in honour of St. Martin of Tours, to be trained in the rules.

Whether Mancenus, or Manchenius, and Mugint were the same person, or the

latter the successor of the former, it is difficult to say. Both appear

to have borne the name of Nennio; but this appellation may have been

applied to the abbots of Candida Casa as the successors of the founder

Ninian. The former name of Manchenius is obviously the Irish name

Manchan; and he is probably celebrated in the Litany of Angus the

Culdee, when he invokes ‘thrice fifty disciples, with Manchan the

master.’[96]

[Sidenote: Second channel through Bretagne and Wales.]

While this monastic life, which Ireland thus received from Saint

Ninian’s monastery in Galloway, affected mainly the north of Ireland,

the second great channel through which monachism reached Ireland

exercised a powerful and all-pervading influence on her central and

southern districts. In the year 394 Tours was made the capital or civil

metropolis of the province of Lugdunensis Tertia, and became a

metropolitan city. Her ecclesiastical jurisdiction extended over the

provinces now called Bretagne, Maine, and Anjou, with a part of

Touraine; and Saint Martin became the metropolitan bishop. The monachism

introduced into Gaul and fostered by him spread at once into Bretagne,

where the monasteries of Landouart and Landevenech were founded;[97] and

from thence it passed into Wales. In the Catalogue of the Saints we are

told that those of the second or monastic order ‘received a mass from

bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.’ Bishop David is of

course the celebrated Saint David who founded the church of

_Cillemuine_, or Menevia, now St. David’s. Gillas is no other than the

historian Gildas;[98] and by Docus is meant Saint Cadoc, who founded the

great monastery of Nantgarvan, or Llancarvan, in South Wales, where

Gildas was also associated with him. From these three eminent fathers of

the monastic church of Wales the monastic institution also passed into

Ireland through Finnian of Clonard. Finnian was of the race in Ireland

termed _Cruithnigh_, or Picts; and we are told in his Acts, that after

having been instructed in his youth by Fortchern of Trim and Caiman of

Dairinis, an island in the bay of Wexford, he, in his thirtieth year,

crossed the Irish Channel to the city of Kilmuine, where he found the

three holy men, David and Cathmael[99] and Gildas, and became their

disciple. After remaining thirty years in Britain, partly in the

monastery of St. David and partly in other monasteries in Wales, he

returned to Ireland followed by several of the ‘religious’ Britons, ‘to

gather together a people acceptable to the Lord.’

[Sidenote: The school of Clonard.]

He eventually founded the great monastery of _Cluain-Erard_, or Clonard,

in Meath, which is said to have contained no fewer than three thousand

monks, and which became a great training school in the monastic life,

whence proceeded the most eminent founders of the Irish

monasteries.[100] In an Irish Life of Finnian quoted by Dr. Todd in his

_Life of Saint Patrick_, we are told, that ‘after this a desire seized

Finnian to go to Rome when he had completed his education. But an angel

of God came to him, and said unto him, “What would be given to thee at

Rome shall be given to thee here. Arise and renew sound doctrine and

faith in Ireland after Patrick.”’[101] And in the Office of Finnian it

is said that, ‘when he was meditating a pilgrimage to Rome, he was

persuaded by an angel to return to Ireland, to restore the faith, which

had fallen into neglect after the death of Saint Patrick.’[102] These

expressions all point to an effete and decaying church restored through

the medium of Finnian and his monastic school of Clonard, and to a great

revival and spread of Christianity through a new and living organisation

based upon the monastic institution.

[Sidenote: Twelve apostles of Ireland.]

This great work was carried out by twelve of his principal disciples,

who filled the land with monasteries, and, as leaders of the new

monastic church, became known as the twelve apostles of Ireland. In the

Martyrology of Donegal Finnian is well described as ‘a doctor of wisdom

and a tutor of the saints of Ireland in his time; for he it was that had

three thousand saints at one school at _Cluain Eraird_, as is evident in

his life; and it was out of them the twelve apostles of Erin were

chosen;’ and it is added, ‘A very ancient vellum-book, in which are

contained the Martyrology of Maelruain of Tamhlacht, and the list of the

saints of the same name, states that Finnian was in his habits and life

like unto Paul the apostle.’[103] Of these twelve apostles the earliest

were the two Ciarans—Ciaran who founded the monastery of Saighir in

Munster, and Ciaran, called _Mac-an-tsaor_, or ‘the son of the

artificer,’ who founded, in 548, the more celebrated monastery of

Clonmacnois in King’s County; Columba, son of Crimthan, a native of

Leinster, who founded that of Tirrdaglas in the same year; Mobhi

Clairenach, who founded the monastery of Glais-Naoidhen in Fingall; and

Ninnidh, whose monastery was in an island in Lough Erne called

Inismacsaint. Somewhat later were Brendan of Birr; the other Brendan,

who became celebrated for his seven years’ voyage in search of the land

of promise, and founded the monastery of Clonfert, where, like his

master Finnian, he ruled as presbyter-abbot over three thousand monks;

and Laisren or Molaisse of Devenish. Still later were Ruadhan of Lothra,

Senell of Cluaininnis and Cainnech of Achabo, who lived till the end of

the century. Of these, Brendan of Birr and Cainnech of Achabo were, like

their master, of Pictish descent.

[Sidenote: Saint Columba, one of the twelve.]

The number of the twelve apostles was made up by one who was destined to

become more celebrated, and to leave a more extended and permanent

impression on the church than any of the others. This was a disciple

termed _Colum_ or in Latin, Columba. By paternal descent he was a scion

of the royal house of the northern Hy Neill. His father, Fedhlimidh,

belonged to that tribe of them termed the Cinel Conaill from Conall

Gulban, one of the eight sons of Niall, from whom they were descended,

and was connected in the female line with the kings of Dalriada. Columba

was born on the 7th December 521,[104] and was baptized under that name

by the presbyter Cruithnechan, but became soon known as _Columcille_ or

‘Columba of the church,’ in consequence of the frequency of his

attendance, when a child, at the church of _Tulach-Dubhglaise_, now

Temple Douglas, near the place of his birth.[105] When he had attained a

proper age he became a pupil of Finnian, or Finbarr, of Maghbile, where

he was ordained a deacon.[106] He then, while yet a deacon, placed

himself under the instruction of an aged bard called Gemman, by whom no

doubt was fostered his taste for poetry, and that regard for the bardic

order instilled, which led to their subsequently obtaining his warm

support.[107] Thus far the account of his youth is supported by Adamnan;

but we must now trust to the ancient Irish Life alone for the further

particulars of his early training. Leaving Gemman, he became a disciple

of Finnian of Clonard, under whom he completed his training, and formed

one of that band known as the twelve apostles of Ireland. He then joined

Mobhi Clairenach, one of the number, at his monastery of Glaisnaoidhen,

where he found Ciaran and Cainnech, who had been his fellow-disciples,

and a third, Comgall, who belonged, like Ciaran and Cainnech, to the

race of the Irish Picts, and was destined to become equally celebrated

as a founder of monastic institutions. Columba thus united in himself

the training of both monastic schools—that of Finnian of Maghbile,

derived from the great monastery of Candida Casa, and that of his

namesake of Clonard, derived from David, Gildas, and Cadoc of Wales. On

leaving Mobhi, he probably obtained priest’s orders, having attained the

age of twenty-five years; but the fact is not recorded in the Irish

Life.[108] [Sidenote: A.D. 545. Founds the monastery of Derry.]We are

told, however, that immediately after the death of Mobhi, who died in

545, Columba founded the church of Derry. The account of it given in the

old Irish Life will furnish a good illustration of how these monasteries

were founded. ‘Columcille then went to Daire, that is, to the royal fort

of Aedh, son of Ainmire, who was king of Erin at that time. The king

offered the fort to Columcille; but he refused it, because of Mobhi’s

command. On his coming out of the fort, however, he met two of Mobhi’s

people bringing him Mobhi’s girdle, with his consent that Columcille

should accept a grant of territory, Mobhi having died. Columcille then

settled in the fort of Aedh, and founded a church there.’ Ainmire, the

father of Aedh, and Columba were cousins-german, the sons of brothers.

The grant of the royal fort to him as a commencement to his

ecclesiastical career was therefore not unnatural. After this he is said

to have founded the church of Raphoe in Donegal, and ten years after the

foundation of Daire he founded at _Dair-Mag_, now Durrow, in the diocese

of Meath, another church, which is called in the Irish Life a ‘Recles’

or monastery. It is termed by Bede a noble monastery in Ireland, which,

from the profusion of oak-trees, is called in the Scottish language

Dearmach, that is, the plain of oaks.[109] Besides these, the first and

last of which were his principal monasteries in Ireland, he is said in

the Irish Life to have founded many others, as _Cennanus_, or Kells, in

the north-west of the county of Meath, which the Irish Life tells us was

a fort of Diarmada, son of Cerbaill, and ‘Columcille marked out the city

in extent as it now is, and blessed it all, and said that it would

become the most illustrious possession he should have in the land’—a

prophecy fulfilled after two centuries had elapsed from his death; also

Clonmore in the county of Louth; _Rechra_, now Lambay, an island off the

coast of the county of Dublin; Swords, known as _Sord-Choluimchille_, in

the county of Dublin; Drumcliffe, a little to the north of Sligo;

Drumcolumb in the county of Sligo; Moone in the county of Kildare; _Eas

mic n Eirc_, or Assylyn, near the town of Boyle; Easruadh, on the river

Erne in Tyrconell; _Torach_, or Tory island, off the coast of Donegal;

and others not mentioned in the Life.[110]

[Sidenote: A.D. 558.

Foundation of Bangor.]

In the year 558 the great monastery of _Bennchar_, or Bangor, was

founded in the county of Down, the ancient territory of the Irish Picts,

by Comgall, who was of that race and had been a companion of Columba at

Glaisnaoidhen. It was situated on the south side of Belfast Lough; and

the following account of it is given in his Life:—‘So great a multitude

of monks then came to Comgall that they could not be maintained in one

place, and hence they possessed several cells and many monasteries not

only in the region of the Ultonians, but throughout the other provinces

of Ireland; and in these different cells and monasteries three thousand

monks were under the care of the holy father Comgall; but the greater

and more memorable of them was the monastery of Bennchar.’[111] St.

Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, in his Life of St. Malachy, written in the

twelfth century, tells us that Bennchar was given to him by the lord of

the land, that he might build, or rather rebuild, a monastery there;

‘for,’ he says, ‘a most noble monastery had existed there under its

first father Comgall, which, as the head of many monasteries, produced

many thousand monks. This sacred place was so fertile of saints and so

abundantly bore fruit to God, that one of the sons of that holy

fraternity, called Luanus, is said to have been alone the founder of no

fewer than a hundred monasteries, filling Ireland and Scotland with its

offspring, and not only in these, but even in foreign countries these

swarms of saints poured forth like an inundation, among whom Saint

Columbanus, penetrating thence to these our Gallican regions, erected

the monastery of Luxeuil.’[112] Angus the Culdee in his Litany invokes

‘forty thousand monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of

Comgall of Bangor,’ but this number has probably been written for four

thousand in the text.[113] The Luanus mentioned by St. Bernard was

Lugidus, or Molua, of Clonfert-Molua, now Clonfertmulloe, on the

boundary between Leinster and Munster, and his monasteries were mainly

founded in the southern half of Ireland. It was, as we have seen, by the

mission of Columbanus to Gaul that this Monastic Church of Ireland was

brought into contact with the Continental Church. We have already

adverted to some of the external peculiarities which distinguished it

from the Roman Church at this period; and we must now consider more in

detail the features which characterised it in the aspect in which it

presents itself to us in its home in Ireland.

[Sidenote: The primitive Irish monastery.]

When we read of such a number of monasteries constructed within a short

period, so many of them, too, the work of one saint, we must not suppose

that they at all resembled the elaborate stone structures which

constituted the monastery of the Middle Ages. The primitive Celtic

monastery was a very simple affair, and more resembled a rude village of

wooden huts. We find from the Irish Life of Columba that, when he went

to the monastery of Mobhi Clairenach, on the banks of the river

Finglass, where no fewer than fifty scholars were assembled, their huts

or bothies (_botha_) were by the water, or river, on the west, and that

there was an _ecclais_, or church, on the east side of the river, which

was no doubt, as was usual at the time, made of no better material. Thus

it is told of Mochaoi, abbot of Nendrum, that on one occasion he went

with seven score young men to cut wattles to make the _ecclais_, or

church.[114] When Ciaran of Saighir, who was one of the twelve apostles

of Ireland, proceeded to erect his huts and church, he is said to have

constructed them of the rudest materials, and when he went into the wood

for these a wild boar assisted him by biting off with his sharp teeth

the rods and branches for the purpose.[115] Coemgen of Glendalough, too,

built his oratory of rods of wood, planks, and moss;[116] and in

Conchubran’s Life of Monenna we are told that ‘she founded a monastery,

which was made of smooth planks, according to the fashion of the

Scottish nations, who were not accustomed to erect stone walls or get

them erected.’[117] The church in these early monasteries was thus, as

well as the huts or bothies for the accommodation of the monks,

frequently built of wood; and the usual name given to this early wooden

church was _Duirthech_, or _Deirthech_, of which the Latin equivalent

was ‘oratorium.’ Of this word various etymologies are given; but the

most probable is that contained in an old glossary which tells us that

_Duirtheach_ comes from _Dairthech_, a house of oak, and _Deirthech_

from _Dear_, a tear, that is, a house in which tears are shed.[118]

It was not till the end of the eighth century, when the ravages of the

Danes and their repeated destruction of the churches by fire showed the

great insecurity of these wooden buildings, that they began, when

reconstructed, to be built of stone, and the _cloicteach_, or stone

belfry, was then added to the ecclesiastical buildings. Of the repeated

destruction of the wooden buildings by fire the Irish Annals afford

sufficient evidence, and that the _cloicteachs_ were added through fear

of the Danes, is probable from the evidence that they were not only used

as belfries, but also as places of safety both for the monks and for the

valuables in possession of the monasteries.[119] The stone churches were

termed _Damhliag_, and are usually rendered in Latin by ‘templum,’

‘ecclesia,’ and ‘basilica.’[120] In an ancient tract of Brehon laws,

which treats of the different stipends given to artificers for their

labours, there is a statement of the payments to be made to the _Ollamh

Saer_, or master builder, who was required to be equally skilled in the

art of building in stone and in wood, which well brings out the

distinction between the modes of constructing these buildings. In this

document we are told that he was to be paid ‘for the two principal

branches of the art as from the beginning, that is, stone building and

wood building, the most distinguished of these branches to remain as

formerly—viz., the _Daimhliag_ and the _Duirthech_. Twelve cows to him

for these, that is, six cows for each.’[121]

Attached to the _Duirthech_ was usually a small side building termed

_Erdam_, or in Latin ‘exedra,’ which was used as a sacristy.[122] There

was also a somewhat larger house which was the refectory, or common

eating-hall, termed the _Proinntigh_, and in connection with it a

_Coitchenn_, or kitchen, and when there was a stream of water fit for

the purpose there was a _Muilinn_, or mill, and in connection with it a

stone kiln for drying the corn. The _Ollamh Saer_ was also to receive

‘six cows for _coicthigis_, or kitchen-building, and six cows for

_muilleoracht_, or mill-building.’ Somewhat apart from the cells of the

monks were the abbot’s house and the house set apart for the reception

of guests, called the _Tighaoid-headh_, or ‘hospitium,’ and these two

were of wood, as appears from the numerous notices in the Annals of

those buildings being burnt by the Danes;[123] while the _Ollamh Saer_

is to receive ‘two cows for houses of rods.’ The whole of these

buildings were protected by a circumvallation, sometimes of earth, or of

earth and stone, termed the _Rath_, or _Lios_, and in Latin ‘vallum,’ at

others of stone, or of earth faced with stone, and termed _Caiseal_, the

remains of which still exist in connection with several of these

foundations.[124]

The size of these monasteries, as well as the number of monks which they

contained, varied very much, but this did not affect their relative

importance, which depended more upon the position of their founder and

the jurisdiction they possessed from their foundation over other

monasteries which had emanated from the same founder, or his disciples.

The smallest in size appear to have usually contained one hundred and

fifty monks. This was the number in the monastery founded in the Aran

isles by Enda, who was one of those founders of monasteries who were

trained at the ‘Magnum Monasterium’ of Candida Casa, or Whithern. We

find the same number in the monastery of Lothra, founded by Ruadhan, one

of the twelve apostles of Ireland;[125] and Angus the Culdee in his

Litany invokes ‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Bishop Ibar,’

‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Munnu, son of Tulchan,’ and

‘thrice fifty true monks with the favour of God in Dairiu Chonaid.’ We

have then a monastery three times as large, when he invokes ‘nine times

fifty monks under the rule of Mochoe of Nendrum.’ The numbers of seven

hundred and eight hundred occur in connection with Mochuda, when he

invokes the ‘seven hundred true monks who were buried at Rathinn before

the coming of Mochuda, upon being expelled thence to Lismore,’ and the

‘eight hundred who settled in Lismore with Mochuda, every third of them

a favoured servant of God.’ Then we have a monastery at Lethglin

containing fifteen hundred monks, when he invokes ‘the three hundred and

twelve hundred true monks settled in Lethglin, who sang the praises of

God under Molaisse, the two Ernas, and the holy martyr bishops of

Lethglin.’ Finally, the great monastery and seminary of Clonard, from

whence emanated the twelve apostles of Ireland, contained, as we have

seen, three thousand monks.

[Sidenote: The monastic family.]

When Brendan, one of the twelve, is said to have been the father of

three thousand monks, and four thousand are said to have been under the

rule of Comgall of _Bennchar_, or Bangor, it is probable that these

numbers included the inmates of other monasteries, either founded by

them or under their jurisdiction. The aggregate of monks in each

monastery was termed its _Muintir_, or ‘familia;’ but this word seems to

have been used both in a narrow sense for the community in each

monastery and also in a broader signification, for the entire body of

monks, wherever situated, who were under its jurisdiction.[126] The

monks were termed brethren. The elders, termed seniors, gave themselves

up entirely to devotion and the service of the church, while their chief

occupation in their cells consisted in transcribing the Scriptures. In

the monastery of Lughmagh there were under Bishop Mochta sixty seniors;

and of them it is said—

Three-score psalm-singing seniors

Were his household, royal the number;

Without tillage, reaping, or kiln-drying,

Without work, except reading.[127]

There was then a class of working brethren who were occupied in the

labours of the field, and from these were chosen too those required for

mechanical work in the monastery. When Columba visited the monastery of

Clonmacnois, some of the monks, we are told, were at their little grange

farms near the monastery, and others within it.[128] An important

occupation, too, was the training of the young, and those under

instruction were termed ‘juniores’ or ‘alumni,’ and were said to be

‘learning wisdom.’[129] These formed the congregation of the monastery.

[Sidenote: Island monasteries.]

The larger monasteries were usually situated on the mainland; but the

small islands round the coast, or in the inland lochs, appear to have

possessed an irresistible attraction for the founders of these

monasteries, probably from the security against danger and the

protection from intrusion which they afforded, and on them the smaller

communities probably were settled. Of the islands round the coast of

Ireland, the three Aran isles, which lie off the coast of Galway, seem

to have at once attracted these settlements. Among the class of saints

who were trained to the monastic life in the monastery of Whithern,

while Finnian founded the great monastery and seminary of _Maghbile_ or

Moville in Ulster, Enda at once directed his steps to these islands, and

we are told in his Acts that, having received a grant of the island of

Aran from King Angus of Munster, he collected a company of disciples,

and divided the island into ten parts, in which he constructed ten

monasteries, placing in each one superior, as father, and another as

second in power who should succeed the first on his death. He directed

that the seniors should be buried with the rest, but that the bishops

who succeeded them should be interred in their own proper cemeteries,

and he founded his own monastery at the east end of the island, which is

still called the Cell of St. Enda.[130] This island is now known as _Ara

na Navach_, or Aran of the Saints. Tory Island, off the north-west

coast; Rachra, off the north-east; Rechra, or Lambay, in the Irish

Channel, and other small islands, became likewise the seats of similar

foundations. Of the twelve apostles of Ireland, we find that

three—Molaisse of Devenish, Senell of Cluaininnis, and Ninnidh of

Inismacsaint, founded their chief monasteries on three small islands in

Lough Erne; and on two other islands in the same lake there were also

monasteries. In Lough Ree, a lake formed by the Shannon, there were

five; and in Lough Corrib and Lough Derg, both also formed by the

Shannon, there were, in the former, three, and in the latter two

monasteries. Wherever the river Shannon in its course formed a small

island there was also a monastery; and the number of these island

monasteries throughout Ireland generally was very great.

[Sidenote: Monasteries were Christian colonies.]

The monastic system which thus characterised the Irish Church in its

second period and pervaded its organisation in every part, forming its

very life, presented features which peculiarly adapted it to the tribal

constitution of the social system of the Irish, and led to their being

leavened with Christianity to an extent which no other form of the

church could have effected. These large monasteries, as in their

external aspect they appeared to be, were in reality Christian colonies,

into which converts, after being tonsured, were brought under the name

of monks. Thus we are told in the Life of Brendan that, as soon as he

had been ordained priest by Bishop Erc ‘he also received from him the

monastic garb; and many leaving the world came to him, whom he made

monks, and he then founded, in his own proper region, cells and

monasteries,’ till they reached the number of three thousand.[131] There

was thus in each tribe a Christian community to which the people were

readily drawn, and in which they found themselves possessed of

advantages and privileges without their actual social position with

reference to the tribe and the land being essentially altered. They

formed as it were a great ecclesiastical family within the tribe, to

which its members were drawn by the attractions it presented to them.

These were, first, greater security of life and property. Before the

tribes were to any extent brought under the civilising influences of

Christianity, life must have been, in a great measure, a reign of

violence, in which every man had to protect his life and property as he

best might; and the struggle among these small communities, either to

maintain their own rights, or to encroach on those of others, and the

constant mutual warfare to which it gave rise, must have exposed the

lives of their members to incessant danger. To them the Christian

community offered an asylum in which there was comparative rest and

relief from danger at the cost of observing the monastic rule. An

anecdote in Columba’s early life, told us by Adamnan, will show clearly

enough what must have been the state of early society in Ireland in this

respect. ‘When the holy man,’ he says, ‘while yet a youth in deacon’s

orders, was living in the region of Leinster, learning divine wisdom, it

happened one day that an unfeeling and pitiless oppressor of the

innocent was pursuing a young girl, who fled before him on a level

plain. As she chanced to observe the aged Gemman, master of the foresaid

young deacon, reading on the plain, she ran straight to him as fast as

she could. Being alarmed at such an unexpected occurrence, he called on

Columba, who was reading at some distance, that both together, to the

best of their ability, might defend the girl from her pursuer; but he

immediately came up, and without any regard to their presence, stabbed

the girl with his lance under their very cloaks, and leaving her lying

dead at their feet, turned to go away back. Then the old man, in great

affliction, turning to Columba, said, “How long, holy youth Columba,

shall God, the just judge, allow this horrid crime and this insult to us

to go unpunished?” Then the saint at once pronounced this sentence on

the perpetrator of the deed; “At the very instant the soul of this girl

whom he hath murdered ascendeth into heaven, shall the soul of the

murderer go down into hell;” and scarcely had he spoken the words when

the murderer of the innocent, like Ananias before Peter, fell down dead

on the spot before the eyes of the holy youth. The news of this sudden

and terrible vengeance was soon spread abroad throughout many districts

of Ireland, and with it the wonderful fame of the holy deacon.’[132]

Thus there soon sprang up a belief that any violation of the protection

to life afforded by these Christian communities would draw down on the

perpetrator the vengeance of the Christian’s God. Adamnan’s Life is

pervaded by similar instances of the insecurity of life and property

through crime and oppression.

[Sidenote: Privilege of sanctuary.]

But these monasteries, or Christian communities, likewise claimed the

privilege of sanctuary within their bounds, which was fenced by similar

religious sanctions. The loss of a battle, or any similar misfortune

which befell any one who had violated this right of sanctuary, was

directly attributed to such violation, till it became a confirmed belief

that it could not be infringed with impunity. Thus, when the battle of

Culdremhne was fought between Diarmaid, king of Ireland, and the

northern Hy Neill, in 561, in which the former was defeated, it was said

to have been ‘in revenge of the killing of Curnan, son of Aedh, son of

Eochaidh Tirmcharna, while under the protection of Colum-cille.’[133]

The same King Diarmaid, too, drew upon himself the curse of Ruadhan of

Lothra, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, by violating his

sanctuary and carrying off by force to his palace at Tara a person who

had taken refuge with Ruadhan. On his refusal to deliver him up,

‘Roadanus and a bishop that was with him took their bells that they had,

which they rang hardly, and cursed the king and place, and prayed God

that no king or queen ever after should or could dwell in Tarach, and

that it should be waste for ever, without court or palace, as it fell

out accordingly,’ and as stated in an old Irish poem,—

From the judgment of Ruadhan on his house

There was no king at _Teamraigh_ or Tara.[134]

The belief that the violation of the sanctuary of a Christian community

would infallibly be avenged led to the fulfilment of the prophecy.

[Sidenote: Law of succession to the Abbacy.]

But a still more powerful influence arose from the intimate relation

which the Christian community bore to the organisation of the tribe, and

the extent to which the one was a reflection of the other. The

publication of the Brehon Laws of Ireland, and the details with which

they supply us, enable us now to understand better the precise nature of

this relation. In estimating this, two facts must be kept in

mind:—First, that the Irish Church of this second period cannot be

regarded as forming one united church under a common hierarchy,

recognising the authority of one central head, as may have been true of

the church of the earlier period. While the first order of Catholic

saints is said to have had ‘one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius,’

the second order of Catholic presbyters is only said to have had ‘one

head, our Lord,’ The church of this period must be viewed as consisting

rather of different groups of monasteries, founded by the respective

saints, either bishops or presbyters, of the second order, each group

recognising the monastery over which the founder of the group personally

presided, or which possessed his relics, as having jurisdiction over

those which emanated from him and followed his rule.[135] It was thus

not one great ecclesiastical corporation, but an aggregate of separate

communities in federal union. Secondly, that the abbots of each

monastery, whether bishops or presbyters, were not elected by the

brethren forming the community, but succeeded one another by a kind of

inheritance assimilated to that of the tribe. As we have already seen,

the foundation of a monastery usually commenced by a grant of a royal

_Rath_ or fort, or of a portion of land made by the head of the tribe to

which it belonged to the saint, and in most instances the founder

obtained this grant from the head of the tribe to which he himself

belonged. These two tribes are in the Brehon Laws termed respectively

the _Fine Grin_, or Tribe of the Land, that is, the tribe to whom the

land belonged; and the _Fine Erluma_, or Tribe of the Saint, that is,

the tribe to whom the patron saint, or founder, belonged. By the law of

Tanistic succession in Ireland, the right of hereditary succession was

not in the individual, but in the family to which he belonged. That is,

it was hereditary in the family, elective in the individual. When the

founder of the monastery belonged to the same tribe, or family, as the

owner of the land which had been granted to him, the abbacy remained

with this family, who provided from among the members of it a person

duly qualified to fulfil the functions of abbot. There was thus

connected with each monastery, to use the words of Dr. Reeves, a

‘_Plebilis progenies_,’ or lay family, ‘in whom the tenancy of the lands

was vested, possessing a regular succession, and furnishing from its

members certain _Coärbs_, or successors, to the first abbot, who formed

the _Ecclesiastica progenies_ and who, being unmarried, exhibit no

lineal succession. In fact, the rule was, on each avoidance of the

abbacy, to fill up the situation from founders’ kin, and, failing a

qualified person in the direct line, to choose a successor from a

collateral branch.’[136] The monastery of Derry is an instance of this.

Aedh, son of Ainmire, the king of Ireland who granted the land, and

Columba, the saint who founded the monastery, both belonged to the same

tribe—that of the Cinel Conaill. The rule is thus stated in the Brehon

Laws: ‘When it is a Church of the Tribe of the Land and the Church of

the Tribe of the Saint and of the Land at the same time. That is, the

tribe of the land succeeds to the church—that is, the tribe of the saint

and the tribe of the land are one tribe in this case, and the saint is

on his own land,—

The saint, the land, the mild monk,

The Dalta Church of fine vigour,

The Compairche, and the Deoruid De,

By them is the abbacy taken (in their order).’[137]

When, however, the saint who founded the monastery belonged to a

different tribe from that of the chief from whom the grant was obtained

and in whose tribe it was founded, the succession to the abbacy was

often retained by the family to whom the saint belonged, from the

members of which the abbot was in the same manner supplied. The

monastery of Drumcliffe is an instance of this. It was founded by

Columba in a district which belonged to a stranger tribe, and in the old

Irish Life it is said that ‘he gave the authority, and the clergy and

the succession to the Cinel Conaill for ever’—that is, to his own tribe.

When this was the case, instead of the same tribe forming a lay and

ecclesiastical ‘progenies,’ or family, the two families connected with

the succession—the tribe of the land and the tribe of the saint—were

different, and the following is the rule in the Brehon Laws:—

‘The Church of the Tribe of the Saint. That is, the tribe of the

Saint shall succeed in the Church as long as there shall be a

person fit to be an abbot (_Damna Apaidh_, or _materies_ of an

abbot), of the tribe of the saint, even though there should be but

a psalm-singer of these, it is he that will obtain the abbacy.

Where this is not the case, it is to be given to the tribe of the

land until a person fit to be an abbot, of the tribe of the saint,

shall be found; and when he is, it is to be given to him if he be

better than the abbot of the tribe of the land who has taken it.

If he be not better, he shall take it only in his turn. If a

person fit to be an abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint

or of the tribe of the land, the abbacy is to be given to the

tribe of the monks (_Fine Manach_), until a person fit to be an

abbot, of the tribe of the saint or of the tribe of the land,

shall be found; and where there is such, he is preferable. If a

person fit to be abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint, or

of the tribe of the land, or of the tribe of the monks, the

_Annoit_ shall take it in the fourth place; the _Dalta_ shall take

it in the fifth place; the _Compairche_ shall take it in the sixth

place; the nearest _Cill_ shall take it in the seventh place. If a

person fit to be an abbot has not come in any of these seven

places, the _Deoruid De_ shall take it in the eighth place. If a

person fit to be an abbot has not arisen of the tribe of the

saint, or of the land, or of the monks together, and the _Annoit_,

or the _Dalta_, or the _Compairche_, or the nearest _Cill_, or the

_Deoruid De_, has the wealth, it must be given to the tribe of the

saint, for one of them fit to be an abbot goes for nothing. The

abbacy goes from them.’[138] The untranslated terms in these

passages are used to designate the different churches which

belonged to the same monastic group. The _Annoit_ is the parent

church or monastery which is presided over by the patron saint, or

which contains his relics.[139] The _Dalta_ was a church

affiliated to it.[140] The _Compairche_ was a church in the same

‘parochia.’[141] The _Cill_ was the ‘Cella,’ as distinguished from

the ‘Monasterium.’[142] The _Deoruid De_, literally ‘God’s

stranger or pilgrim,’ was, as we shall afterwards see, the

anchorite or solitary who lived secluded from his brethren in a

stone cell.[143] The _Cell Manach_, or ‘Cella Monachorum,’ is thus

explained. ‘That is, a cell of monks is held by the tribe of

monks; and the abbacy shall always belong to the monks as long as

shall be a person of them fit to be an abbot; and whenever this is

not the case, it is similar to that before mentioned of the tribe

of the land, binding the tribe of the saint by a guarantee to the

tribe of the land, upon the _Annoit_.’[144]

[Sidenote: The right of the church from the tribe.]

These notices as to the succession in which the abbacy is held, obscure

and fragmentary as are some of them, are sufficient to show the close

connection in this respect between the church and the tribe; but that

connection was rendered still more intimate by the claims which the

church had now established upon the people of the tribe. They are thus

defined:—‘The right of the Church from the _Tuath_ or tribe is tithes

and first fruits and firstlings; these are due to a church from her

members,’ Tithes probably belong to a late period of the church; but the

two others seem to be more archaic, and are thus defined:—‘What are

lawful firstlings? Every first-born, that is, every first birth of every

human couple, and every male child that opens the womb of his mother,

being the first lawful wife, with confession according to their

soul-friend, by which a church and souls are more improved; and also

every male animal that opens the womb of its mother, of small or

lactiferous animals in general. First fruits are the fruit of the

gathering of every new produce, whether small or great, and every first

calf and every first lamb which is brought forth in the year,’ ‘Every

tenth birth afterwards, with a lot between every two sevens,[145] with

his lawful share of his family inheritance to the claim of the church,

and every tenth plant of the plants of the earth and of cattle every

year and every seventh day of the year to the service of God, with every

choice taken more than another after the desired order.’[146] It is very

characteristic of the spirit of these laws that the day of rest—the

seventh day—should form one of the demands of the church upon the lay

tribe, which its members were bound to render for the service of God

with their other dues. The position of the son so given to the church is

thus described: ‘The son who is selected has become the tenth, or as the

firstling to the church; he obtains as much of the legacy of his father,

after the death of his father, as every lawful son which the mother has,

and he is to be on his own land outside, and he shall render the service

of a free monk (_saermanuig_) to the church, and the church shall teach

him learning; for he shall obtain more of a divine legacy than of a

legacy not divine.’ The term _Manach_, or Monk, embraced all who were

connected with, or subject to, the _ecclais_ or monastery, and formed

her _muintir_, or ‘familia,’ down to the lowest grade of those who

occupied the church lands; and when they had any of the church orders

conferred upon them, there was attached to it a very valuable privilege

which must have powerfully attracted them to the service of the church.

It is thus stated:—‘The enslaved shall be freed, the plebeians exalted,

through the orders of the church and by performing penitential service

to God. For the Lord is accessible; he will not refuse any kind of man

after belief, among either the free or the plebeian tribes; so likewise

is the church open for every person who goes under her rule.’[147]

[Sidenote: Right of the tribe from the church.]

On the other hand, ‘the right of the _Tuath_ or tribe against the

church’ is thus stated:—‘They demand their right from the church, that

is, baptism and communion and requiem of soul, and the offering

(_oifrend_) from every church to every person after his proper belief,

with the recital of the Word of God to all who listen to it and keep

it.’[148] However difficult it may be for us now to comprehend the full

import of these arrangements, they still indicate clearly enough how

much the monastic church was a tribal institution, and how completely

her rights were interwoven with those of the members of the tribe. This

is implied, in a tract on the legal constitution and rights of

privileged classes, when it is said, ‘It is no _Tuath_ or tribe without

three free _neimhedh_, or dignitaries—the _Eclais_, or church; the

_Flaith_, or lord; and the _File_, or poet.’[149]

[Sidenote: Influence of the church.]

The influence of the church, however, in her spiritual and moral aspect

was as great as that which arose from her adaptation to the customs and

laws of the tribe; and if we would understand how she so rapidly

attained so powerful a position in the social organisation of the

aggregate of tribes forming the population of Ireland, we must advert to

her character and mode of operation as a missionary church. We can

readily understand that these large monastic churches founded upon the

mainland might at once exercise a great influence among the surrounding

population; but when we consider the almost universal preference shown,

in founding these churches, towards placing them in small islands,

either near the coast or in the large inland lakes, and how numerous

these island monasteries were, it seems difficult now to understand how

there should have proceeded so great an influence from a small body of

monastic clergy living on these isolated and unfrequented spots, as so

rapidly to overthrow the heathenism of a great people, and to bring them

so generally and speedily into subjection to the Christian Church. The

monastic character of the church gave, however, a peculiar stamp to her

missionary work which caused her to set about it in a mode well

calculated to impress a people still to a great extent under the

influence of heathenism. It is difficult for us now to realise to

ourselves what such pagan life really was—its hopeless corruption, its

utter disregard of the sanctity of domestic ties, its injustice and

selfishness, its violent and bloody character; and these characteristics

would not be diminished in a people who had been partially Christianised

and had fallen back from it into heathenism. The monastic missionaries

did not commence their work, as the earlier secular church would have

done, by arguing against their idolatry, superstition, and immorality,

and preaching a purer faith; but they opposed to it the antagonistic

characteristics and purer life of Christianity. They asked and obtained

a settlement in some small and valueless island. There they settled down

as a little Christian colony, living under a monastic rule requiring the

abandonment of all that was attractive in life. They exhibited a life of

purity, holiness, and self-denial. They exercised charity and

benevolence, and they forced the respect of the surrounding pagans to a

life the motives of which they could not comprehend, unless they

resulted from principles higher than those their pagan religion afforded

them; and, having won their respect for their lives and their gratitude

for their benevolence, these monastic missionaries went among them with

the Word of God in their hands, and preached to them the doctrines and

pure morality of the Word of Life. No wonder if kings and nations became

converted to Christianity and incorporated the church into their tribal

institutions in a manner which now excites our wonder, if not our

suspicion. The lives of the saints show us these missionaries, owing to

their devoted and self-denying lives, first received with respect by

some chief, then obtaining a grant of land to found their monastery, and

the people soon after converted by the preaching of the Word of God.

Their influence, however, was soon enhanced by a less legitimate

feature. We know how readily a rude and primitive people invest with

superstitious and supernatural power those claiming superior sanctity,

and the newly converted people soon surrounded these saints, as they

termed them, with the same old halo of reverence and awe which had

belonged to their pagan priests, such as they were. The power with which

the latter were supposed to be endowed, of influencing the action of

their native gods, was transferred to the Christian missionary, who was

believed to exercise a similar power with regard to the Christian Deity.

Their intercession was sought for, their malediction dreaded, and the

claims and rites of the Christian Church invested with superstitious

sanctions which brought the people more readily and universally into

subjection to her. We can trace this feeling in the Brehon Laws. We are

there told that ‘there are three periods at which the world is

worthless: the time of a plague, the time of a general war, the

dissolution of express contracts. There are three things which remedy

them: tithes and first fruits and alms; they prevent the occurrence of

plague; they confirm peace between the king and the people; they prevent

the prevalence of war; they confirm all in their good contracts and in

their bad contracts; they prevent the worthlessness of the world.’[150]

And again, in explaining the rights of the _Graid Feine_, or country

people, as to marriage, the commentary adds, ‘That is, the daughter of

each of them to the other, such a person as is not under the word, or

curse, of a patron saint.’[151]

[Sidenote: Monasteries were seminaries of instruction.]

But these monastic establishments probably acquired a still greater

influence from the extent to which they had obtained possession of the

instruction of the young. They soon became, in fact, great educational

seminaries to which the youth of the tribe were sent, not only to be

trained to monastic life, but also for the purpose of receiving secular

education. Each monastic church had, besides her community of monks, a

body of young people who received instruction; thus in one of the laws

it is said, ‘purity benefits the church in receiving every son for

instruction, every monk to his proper penance, with the proper payments

of all to their proper church.’[152] Even in the smaller monasteries,

the number of scholars was usually fifty.[153] In the larger, of course,

a much greater number were taught. Hence a single generation was

sufficient to convert the mass of the people to be devoted adherents of

the Church.

[Sidenote: Early Churches founded in the Western Isles.]

The great evidence, however, of life and energy in a church is her

missionary spirit towards foreign countries, and the irrepressible

desire of her members to carry her teaching and her institutions into

the neighbouring countries; and this evidence of her vitality the Irish

Church at this period manifested in a very remarkable degree. It was

natural that the opposite coast of North Britain and the islands which

lay between it and Ireland should attract these missionaries at once to

their shores. The first impulse seems to have been given by Brendan of

Clonfert, who, it is said, soon after he had been ordained priest by

Bishop Erc and assumed the monastic habit, sailed with fourteen of his

monks in search of the land of promise of the saints, and spent seven

years in the search before he returned home. The narrative of his seven

years’ voyage became one of the most popular tales of the Middle Ages,

and numerous editions exist of it. In its present shape it is, no doubt,

a mere romance or monkish dream, in which the narrator, under the

fiction of an imaginary voyage to different unknown islands, endeavours

to realise his ideal of monastic and eremitical life, and it possesses

some truly picturesque features. But there must have been some historic

foundation for it; and such a romance could hardly have been interwoven

into the acts of a real Brendan, if there had not been in the events of

his life a missionary adventure in which he sought to extend the

Christian Church to some distant island. There are not wanting some

indications that this was so; but be this as it may, there seems no

reason to refuse credit to the statement that, after his return from

this voyage, he went to Britain to visit St. Gildas,[154] who, as we

have seen, was one of those from whom the monastic life passed to

Ireland through the medium of Finnian of Clonard and his twelve

disciples, of whom Brendan was one. After leaving Gildas, Brendan

appears to have gone to the Western Islands, and to have founded in one

of the islands a monastery called Ailech, and a church and its

surrounding village in the land of Heth, and then returned to

Ireland.[155] This land of Heth we now know to have been the island of

Tyree,[156] but the precise situation of the other it is more difficult

to fix. It must, however, certainly be looked for in one of the islands

belonging to Britain.[157] The name of Brendan is connected with more

than one of the Western Isles. Fordun tells us that the island of Bute

bore the name of Rothesay ‘until, when the faith of our Saviour had been

diffused through all the ends of the earth, and the islands which are

afar off, Saint Brandan constructed thereon a booth—in our idiom,

_bothe_, that is, a shrine.’[158] But though the old chronicler’s

etymology of the name of Bute is bad, the name of Brendan is preserved

in the designation given to the people of Bute of ‘the Brandanes,’ and

in the Kilbrandan Sound, which separates the island of Arran from

Kintyre. The principal church in the island of Seil, which lies off the

coast of Lorn, is also dedicated to Brendan, and one of the small

islands forming the group called the Garveloch Isles, bears the name of

Culbrandan, or the retreat of Brendan. This island is next to that

called _Eilean na Naoimh_, or the Island of the Saints, and as the

latter appears to have borne the name of Elachnave,[159] it is not

impossible that here may have been the monastery of Aileach. This visit

to the Western Isles took place some time before the foundation of his

principal monastery in Ireland, that of Clonfert, the date of which is

known to have been 559; and we shall probably not be far wrong if we fix

the the year 545 as the probable date.

[Sidenote: Mission of Saint Columba to Britain.]

The mainland of Argyll, off the coast of which these islands lay, was at

this time in the occupation of the Scots of Dalriada, who had now

possessed these districts for upwards of forty years. Their king was

Gabhran, grandson of that Feargus Mor mac Erc who had led the colony

from Ireland to Scotland in the beginning of the same century. Ireland

had become nominally Christian before they left its shores, and they

were, in name at least, a Christian people, and, during the first sixty

years of the colony, had extended themselves so far over the western

districts and islands, as to bear the name of kings of Alban. Whether

Tyree was at this time included in their possessions may be doubted, but

Seil certainly would be. They sustained, however, a great reverse in the

year 560. Brude, the son of Mailchu, whom Bede terms a most powerful

monarch, became king of the northern Picts, and had his royal seat at

Inverness. By him the Dalriads were attacked, driven back, and their

king Gabhran slain. For the time their limits were restricted to the

peninsula of Kintyre and Knapdale and probably Cowal; but the islands

were lost to them.[160] This great reverse called forth the mission of

Columba, commonly called _Columcille_, and led to the foundation of the

monastic church in Scotland.

In investigating the lives of these great fathers of the Church, and

endeavouring to estimate the true character of their mission, we have to

encounter a very considerable difficulty. They filled so large a space

in the mind of the people, and became in consequence the subject of so

much popular tradition, that the few authentic facts of their history

preserved to us became overlaid with spurious matter stamped with the

feelings and the prejudices of later periods; and these popular

conceptions of the character and history of the saint and his work were

interwoven by each of his successive biographers into their narrative of

his life, till we are left with a statement of their career partly true

and partly fictitious, and a false conception is thus formed of their

character and mission. So it was with Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland;

and Columba, the Apostle of Scotland, shared the same fate. In both

cases it is necessary to separate the older and more authentic tradition

from the later stratum of fable. For this purpose we possess, in the

case of Patrick, his own account of himself as contained in his

Confession and his epistle to Coroticus, and can test the statements of

his later biographers by their consistency with these documents. In the

case of Columba we have no such record to appeal to, and can only bring

the narratives of the later biographers to the test of a comparison with

the statements of those who wrote more near to his own time. Fortunately

for us, his two earliest biographers, Cummene and Adamnan, were both his

successors in the abbacy of the monastery founded by himself, and

collected its traditions regarding its founder within so short a period

after his death that we may appeal to their statements of fact,

irrespective of the colouring given to them by the circumstances of the

time in which these biographers lived, with some confidence as affording

us the means of testing the later narratives. Cummene became abbot just

sixty years, and Adamnan eighty-two, after Columba’s death. We are

warranted therefore in concluding that supposed facts in his life, which

either are ignored by them or are inconsistent with their narrative, are

the fruit of later and spurious tradition.

In the old Irish Life, which Dr. Reeves considers to be a composition

probably as old as the tenth century, and which was originally compiled

to be read as a discourse upon his festival, a few statements are found

which bear this character; but the grand repertory of all these later

and questionable additions to his biography is the elaborate Life by

Manus O’Donnell, chief of Tyrconnell, compiled in the year 1532, which

professes to be a chronological digest of all the existing records

concerning the patron of his family.[161] The tale which it tells of the

cause of Columba’s mission to Scotland, and which is popularly accepted

as true, is shortly this:—In the year 561 a great battle was fought at a

place called Cuil-dremhne in Connaught, not far from the boundary

between that province and Ulster. The contending parties were Diarmaid

son of Cerbaill, head of the southern Hy Neill and king of Ireland, on

the one side, and, on the other, the northern Hy Neill under the sons of

Murcertach mac Erca, chiefs of the Cinel Eoghain, Ainmere, son of Sedna

chief of the Cinel Conaill, and the people of Connaught under their king

Aedh. The king of Ireland was defeated with great slaughter, and the

cause of the battle was twofold: First, that King Diarmaid had taken

Curnan, the son of the king of Connaught, by force from under the

protection of Columba; and secondly, that he had given judgment against

Columba in a dispute between him and Finnian of Moyville regarding the

possession of a transcript of a copy of the Book of Psalms belonging to

the latter, which Columba had made without his permission, and which the

king had adjudged to belong to Finnian on the ground of the adage, To

every cow belongs its calf. Columba, who himself belonged to the race of

the northern Hy Neill, was said to have incited his tribe to avenge him

upon the king of Ireland, and to have by his prayers contributed to

their success. A synod of the saints of Ireland was held, before whom

Columba was arraigned as responsible for the great slaughter caused by

this battle; and they decided that he must win from paganism as many

souls as had been slain in this battle. The mode in which it was to be

fulfilled was referred to Laisren, or Molaisse, of Inishmurry, who

imposed as a penance upon Columba perpetual exile from Ireland, whose

shores his eyes were not again to see and whose soil his feet were not

again to tread. Columba accordingly left Ireland for the Western Isles.

He first landed on the island of Colonsay and ascended the highest

ground, when, finding he could see the coast of Ireland from it, he

dared not remain there; and a cairn called _Cairn Cul ri Erin_ marks the

spot. Proceeding farther east, he landed on the south end of the island

of Iona; and, ascending the nearest elevation, where a cairn, also

called _Cairn Cul ri Erin_ marks the spot, he found that Ireland was no

longer in sight; upon which he remained there, and founded his church on

the island. Such is the popular account of Columba’s mission.

That he may have in some degree, either directly or indirectly, been the

cause of the battle of Culdremhne is not inconsistent with the narrative

of Adamnan. He not only twice mentions the battle of Culdremhne, and on

both occasions in connection with the date of Columba’s departure for

Scotland,[162] but he gives some countenance to the tale when he tells

us that Columba had been on one occasion excommunicated by a synod held

at Taillte in Meath; but that when he came to this meeting, convened

against him, St. Brendan of Birr, when he saw him approaching in the

distance, quickly rose, and with head bowed down reverently kissed him;

and when reproached by some of the seniors in the assembly for saluting

an excommunicated person, he narrated that he had seen certain

manifestations connected with his appearance, which convinced him that

he was ‘foreordained by God to be the leader of his people to life. When

he said this, they desisted, and so far from daring to hold the saint

any longer excommunicated, they even treated him with the greatest

respect and reverence.’[163] Adamnan does not connect this synod with

the battle of Culdremhne, and only states that he had been

excommunicated ‘for some pardonable and very trifling reasons, and

indeed unjustly, as it afterwards appeared at the end’; but it is quite

possible that these reasons may have been an imputation of

responsibility for the blood shed at this battle. One of the causes

given for the battle—that of the judgment given against Columba with

regard to the transcript of the Book of Psalms—is, however, inconsistent

with the terms of affection and respect which appear from Adamnan to

have subsisted between Bishop Finnian and Columba, and bears the stamp

of spurious tradition;[164] but the other cause, the violation of the

protection of Columba, touched one of the most cherished privileges of

the Irish monastic church at the time—the right of sanctuary; and it was

not unnatural that Columba should have deeply felt the necessity of

vindicating it, and his tribe, the Cinel Conaill, as well as the whole

race of the northern Hy Neill, should have considered their honour

involved in resenting its violation.

The remainder of the tale is clearly at utter variance with the

narrative of Adamnan. So far from the excommunication by the Synod of

Taillte being followed by a sentence of exile from Ireland, he expressly

tells us that it was not persisted in. He repeatedly alludes to

Columba’s great affection for Ireland, and the yearning of his heart

towards his early home; but not a word as to any prohibition against

returning thither, or that his exile was otherwise than voluntary. He

presents him to us as exercising a constant and vigilant superintendence

over his Irish monasteries, and as repeatedly visiting Ireland, without

a hint as to there being any reason for his refraining from doing

so.[165] We must therefore entirely reject this part of the story.

Adamnan had no idea that Columba was actuated by any other motive than

that of a desire to carry the gospel to a pagan nation, when he

attributes his pilgrimage to a love of Christ.[166] The old Irish Life

knows no other reason than that ‘his native country was left by the

illustrious saint and illustrious sage and son, chosen of God, for the

love and favour of Christ.’ The author of the prophecy of Saint Berchan

admits that he was responsible for the battle of Culdremhne:—

With the youth himself was the cause of

The great slaughter of the battle of Culdremhne;

but assigns as one reason of his going, the subjection of the Dalriads

to the Picts:—

Woe to the Cruithnigh to whom he will go eastward;

He knew the thing that is,

Nor was it happy with him that an Erinach

Should be king in the east under the Cruithnigh.[167]

His real motives for undertaking this mission seem therefore to have

been partly religious and partly political. He was one of the twelve

apostles of Ireland who had emerged from the school of Finnian of

Clonard; and he no doubt shared the missionary spirit which so deeply

characterised the Monastic Church of Ireland at this period. He was also

closely connected, through his grandmother, with the line of the

Dalriadic kings, and, as an Irishman, must have been interested in the

maintenance of the Irish colony in the west of Scotland. Separated from

him by the Irish Channel was the great pagan nation of the northern

Picts, who, under a powerful king, had just inflicted a crushing defeat

upon the Scots of Dalriada, and threatened their expulsion from the

country; and, while his missionary zeal impelled him to attempt the

conversion of the Picts, he must have felt that, if he succeeded in

winning a pagan people to the religion of Christ, he would at the same

time rescue the Irish colony of Dalriada from a great danger, and render

them an important service, by establishing peaceable relations between

them and their greatly more numerous and powerful neighbours, and

replacing them in the more secure possession of the western districts

they had colonised.

-----

Footnote 80:

They appear to have excluded not only women but laymen generally from

the monasteries. Jonas tells us, in his Life of Columbanus, who

belongs to this order of saints, that Theodoric, king of Burgundy,

came to Luxeuil and demanded of Columbanus why he did not allow all

Christians to have access to the more secret enclosures of the

monastery; to which he replied that it was not the custom to open the

habitations of God’s servants to secular men and strangers to

religion, and that he had fit and proper places for the purpose of

receiving guests.—_Vit. S. Col._ cxviii.

Footnote 81:

Omnes presbyteri, diaconi, cantores, lectores, ceterique gradus

ecclesiastici monachicam per omnia cum ipso episcopo regulam

servent.—_Vit. S. Cuthberti_, c. xvi.

Footnote 82:

By the episcopal functions, as distinguished from diocesan

jurisdiction, are meant those ecclesiastical functions appropriated to

bishops in virtue of their orders, irrespective of any territorial

supervision, such as ordination, confirmation, and celebration of the

mass _pontificali ritu_.

Footnote 83:

The Bollandists take the same view, and quote the case of the

monastery of Fulda as an example. They say, ‘Presbyteriani obliti

distinctionis inter potestatem ordinis et jurisdictionis, dum abbatem

presbyterum vident primatem totius provinciæ cui et ipsi episcopi

subduntur, continuo eliminatam potestatem ordinis episcopalis

effinxere. Quasi vero, ut ratiocinationem exemplo illustremus,

Fuldenses monachi ad medium usque sæculum præterlapsum,

presbyterianismum sectati fuissent, habentes abbatem presbyterum,

jurisdictionem quasi episcopalem in vastum territorium exercentem, qui

unum ex subditis monachis habebat, episcopali charactere insignitum,

ad ea, quæ sunt pontificalis ordinis peragenda; qui rerum status

continuavit usque ad annum 1752, quo Benedictus XIV. Fuldense

territorium in episcopatum erexit bulla sua, data iii. Nonas Octobris

1752. Erat igitur et Fuldæ ordo, ut Bedæ verbis utamur, inusitatus; de

quo tamen dicere licet, exceptionem firmare regulam, nec quidquam

decrescere dignitati et necessitati ordinis episcopalis, si, propter

speciales rerum et temporum circumstantias, extraordinaria via, alicui

presbytero amplior quædam jurisdictionis potestas obtingat.’—_Boll.

A.SS._, October, vol. viii. p. 165.

Footnote 84:

Eusebius bishop of Vercelli, and Augustine bishop of Hippo, united

with their clergy in adopting a strictly monastic life.

Footnote 85:

Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatem presbyterum,

cujus juri et omnis provincia et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine

inusitato, debeant esse subjecti.—_Η. E._, B. iii. c. iv.

Footnote 86:

Cujus monasterium in cunctis pene Septentrionalium Scottorum et omnium

Pictorum monasteriis non parvo tempore arcem tenebat, regendisque

eorum populis præerat.—_Η. E._, B. iii. c. iii.

Footnote 87:

The following extracts from the Irish Annals will illustrate this:—

624 S. Maodocc _Epscop_ Ferna dec.

652 S. Dachua Luachra _Abb._ Ferna dec.

713 Cillene _Epscop Abb._ Ferna dec.

766 Aedgen _Epscop agus Abb._ Fobhair dec.

769 Forandan, _Scribneoir agus Epscop_ Treoit dec.

791 Clothchu _Epscop agus Angcoire_ Cluana Ioraird, Suibhne _Epscop_

Atha Truim decc.

Footnote 88:

_The Monks of the West_, by Montalembert, vol. i. pp. 452-460. Dupuy,

_Histoire de Saint Martin_, p. 50. His biographer, Sulpicius Severus,

says that he filled the high function of bishop without abandoning the

spirit and virtue of the monk.—C. 10.

Footnote 89:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 55.

Footnote 90:

Deinde beatus puer libertati restitutus S. Monenni disciplinis et

monitis in Rosnatensi monasterio quod alio nomine Alba vocatur.—_In

Vit. S. Tighernac_, Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 438.

Quos duos viros sanctus ac sapiens Nennio, qui Mancennus dicitur, de

Rosnacensi monasterio ... Post aliquot vero annos Eugenius atque

Tyghernachus cum præfati Manchenii ac fratrum jussione et oratione ad

Hiberniam navigauerunt.—_In Vit. S. Eugenii_, ib.

Footnote 91:

Vade ad Britanniam at Rosnatum monasterium et esto humilis discipulus

Manceni magistri illius monasterii.—_In Vit. S. Endei_, ib.

Footnote 92:

Inter alias Dei famulas quædam Dei virgo, nomine Brignat cum sancta

virgine cohabitasse traditur: hujus enim futuræ sanctitatis indicia

considerans, eam in Britanniam insulam de Rostnatensi monasterio,

conversationis monasticæ regulas accepturam misisse perhibetur.—_Boll.

A.SS._ Julii, tom. ii. p. 294.

Footnote 93:

Cum eodem repatriante navigavit et in ejus sede quæ Magnum vocatur

Monasterium regulas et institutiones monasticæ vitæ aliquot annis

probus monachus didicit.—Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 438.

Footnote 94:

Modo factum est quod magister suus Mugentius nomine, que in civitate

quæ dicitur Candida liberales disciplinas eum docuerat.—Colg. _A.SS._,

p. 634.

Footnote 95:

_Liber Hymnorum_, Part i. p. 97, with notes by the Rev. J. H. Todd.

Footnote 96:

_Tri cocait descipul la Manchan_ magister, hos omnes invoco.

Footnote 97:

Dupuy, _Histoire de Saint Martin_, pp. 215, 217. Haddan and Stubbs’

_Councils_, vol. ii. pp. 86, 87, 91.

Footnote 98:

Gildas the historian is said in his Life to have gone to Ireland in

the reign of King Anmericus or Ainmire, ‘qui et ipse misit ad beatum

Gildam, rogans ut ad se veniret; promittens se ipsius doctrinis in

omnibus obediturum, si veniens ecclesiasticum ordinem in suo regno

restauraret; quia pœne Catholicam fidem in ipsa insula omnes

reliquerant.’—Colg. _A.SS._ p. 183.

Columbanus, who was alive and in Ireland at the time, refers to him in

his epistle to Pope Gregory, in these terms,—‘Cæterum de episcopis

illis quid judicas, interrogo, qui contra canones ordinantur, id est,

quæstu: simoniacos et Giltas auctor pestes scripsistis.’—_Ep. ad S.

Greg. Pap._ Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 37, col. 262.

Footnote 99:

Cathmael was the baptismal name of Cadoc of Nantgarvan. See _Vita S.

Cadoci_ in _Lives of Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 25-27.

Footnote 100:

_Vita S. Finniani_, apud Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 393.

Footnote 101:

Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 101.

Footnote 102:

Tandem Romam meditans, in Hiberniam reditum angelus Domini suasit, ad

fidem post B. Patrici obitum neglectam restaurandam, etc.—Colgan,

_A.SS._, p. 401. See also Dr. Todd’s remarks upon this subject in his

_Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 101.

Footnote 103:

Martyrology of Donegal, p. 335. A list of these twelve apostles is

given in the Life of St. Finnian.

Footnote 104:

The year is fixed by calculation from Adamnan’s data; see Reeves’s

_Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 225. The summary of Saint Columba’s life in

the introduction to this edition, and the notes, may be consulted for

all the events of Saint Columba’s life. The subject is most

exhaustively treated in Dr. Reeves’s great work.

Footnote 105:

See Dr. Reeves’s Note, p. 225. Adamnan alludes to his having been

under the care of Cruithnechan, a priest, in B. iii. c. 3.

Footnote 106:

Adamnan alludes to this, B. ii. c. 1.

Footnote 107:

Adamnan alludes to his being under Gemman, B. ii. c. 26; see also

Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 274.

Footnote 108:

The story of how S. Columba obtained his priest’s orders appears only

in the Scholia or Annotations on the Feliré of Angus the Culdee. It is

thus translated by Dr. Todd:—‘Bishop Etchen is venerated in

Cluainfota-Boetain in Fera-Bile in the south of Meath, and it was to

him Columcille went to have the order of a bishop conferred upon him.

Columcille sat under the tree which is on the west side of the church,

and asked where the cleric was; “There he is,” said a certain man, “in

the field where they are ploughing below.” “I think,” said Columcille,

“that it is not meet for us that a ploughman should confer orders on

us; but let us test him.”... Then Columcille went up to the cleric,

after having thus tested him, and told him what he came for. “It shall

be done,” said the cleric. The order of a priest was then conferred

upon Columcille, although it was the order of a bishop he wished to

have conferred upon him,’ etc. Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p.

71. This tale does not appear in the old Irish Life, and is probably a

mere attempt to explain why so great a saint was merely a presbyter;

but his master, Finnian of Clonard, was a presbyter-abbot, and his

disciples would naturally follow his example in what indeed was the

main characteristic of this second order of the saints.

Footnote 109:

Monasterium nobile in Hibernia, quod a copia roborum Dearmach lingua

Scottorum, hoc est, campus roborum cognominatur.—B. iii. c. 10. It is

termed by Adamnan ‘Roboreti Campus. Roboris Campus. Roboreus Campus.’

Footnote 110:

See Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. xlix., for a complete list of

his Irish foundations.

Footnote 111:

Constituitque magnum monasterium, quod vocatur Bennchor, in regione,

quæ dicitur Altitudo Ultorum (Ards) juxta mare orientale; et maxima

multitudo monachorum illuc venit ad S. Comgallum ut non potuissent

esse in uno loco, et inde plurimas cellas et multa monasteria non

solum in regione Ultorum sed per alias Hiberniæ provincias; et in

diversis cellis et monasteriis tria millia monachorum sub cura sancti

patris Comgelli erant; sed maior et nominatior cæteris locis prædictum

monasterium Benchor est.—Boll. _A.SS. in Vit. S. Comgalli_, cap. 13.

Footnote 112:

Ipsum quoque locum Benchor tradidit ei princeps, ut ædificaret ibi

monasterium, vel potius reædificaret. Nempe nobilissimum extiterat

ante sub primo patre Congello, multa millia monachorum generans,

multorum monasteriorum caput. Locus vere sanctus fœcundusque

sanctorum, copiosissime fructificans Deo, ita ut unus ex filiis sanctæ

illius congregationis, nomine Luanus, centum solus monasteriorum

fundator extitisse feratur. Hiberniam Scotiamque repleverunt genimina

ejus. Nec modo in præfatas, sed in exteras etiam regiones, quasi

inundatione facta, illa se sanctorum examina effuderunt; e quibus ad

has nostras Gallicanas partes sanctus Columbanus ascendens Lexoviense

construxit monasterium, factus ibi in gentem magnam. Hæc de antiqua

dicta sint Benchorensis monasterii gloria.—_Vit. S. Malachiæ_, cap. 5.

Footnote 113:

_xl. mili manach co rath De fo mam Chomgaill Benchuir_, hos omnes

invoco.

Footnote 114:

Martyr. Donegal, p. 177.

Footnote 115:

Aper statim in conspectu viri Dei virgas et fenum ad materiem cellæ

construendæ dentibus suis fortiter abscidit.—Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 458.

Footnote 116:

_Boll. A.SS._, Jun. 1, 316.

Footnote 117:

Ecclesia in monasterio sanctæ Monennæ cum supradicta abbatissa

construitur tabulis dedolatis, juxta morem Scotticarum gentium, eo

quod macerias Scotti non solent facere, nec factas habere.—_Vit. S.

Mon._

Footnote 118:

_Durthech .i. dairtech .i. tech darach no deirthech .i. tech .i.

telgter dera._ ‘_Durthech_, _i.e._ dairtech, _i.e._ a house of oak, or

_deirtech_, _i.e._ a house in which tears are shed.’—Petrie’s _Round

Towers_, p. 342.

Footnote 119:

Dr. Petrie has made the history and use of these buildings perfectly

plain in his great work on the _Round Towers of Ireland_.

Footnote 120:

It is thus explained in the old glossaries:—_Daimliag .i. tegais

cloch._ ‘_Daimliag_, _i.e._ an edifice of stone.’—Petrie’s _Round

Towers_, pp. 141, 142.

Footnote 121:

Petrie’s _Round Towers_, pp. 343, 344.

Footnote 122:

In Cormac’s Glossary it is thus explained:—_Aurdom_, _i.e._ _urdom_,

_i.e._ side house, or against a house externally.

Footnote 123:

See Petrie’s _Round Towers_, pp. 425, 426.

Footnote 124:

_Ib._, p. 442. See description of _Inis macsaint_, an island in Lough

Erne, where Saint Ninnidh, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland,

founded a monastery. ‘To the west and north of the church extend

mounds of earth, which indicate the forms and positions of the ancient

community dwellings. There was a rampart of mixed earth and stones,

and this probably formed a _rath_, or _cashel_.’—O’Hanlon’s _Lives of

the Saints_, vol. i. p. 322. The following is a good description of a

small monastery:—Erat enim habitatio eorum sparsa. Tamen unanimiter

illorum conversatio in spe, fide et charitate fundata erat. Una

refectio, ad opus Dei perficiendum una ecclesia est. Nihil aliud cibi

ministrabatur illis, nisi poma et nuces atque radices et cetera genera

herbarum. Fratres, post completorium, in singulis cellulis usque ad

gallorum cantus seu campanæ pulsum pernoctabant.—_Acta S. Brendani_,

p. 86.

Footnote 125:

This is stated in their acts. The Martyrology of Donegal has under

Enda, abbot of Ara, ‘Thrice fifty was his congregation;’ and under

Ruadhan, son of Ferghus, abbot of Lothra, ‘There were one hundred and

fifty in his congregation, and they used to obtain sufficiency always

without human labour to sustain them, by continually praying to, and

praising, the Lord of the elements.’—_Mart. Don._, pp. 83, 103.

Footnote 126:

It is used by Tighernac in this sense. He has at 718, ‘Tonsura corona

super _familiam Iae_ datur’ (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 74); while

Bede in his account of the same event says, ‘Nec multo post illi

quoque qui insulam Hii incolebant monachi Scotticæ nationis, _cum his

quæ sibi erant subdita monasteriis_, ad ritum paschæ ac tonsuræ

canonicum Domino procurante perducti sunt.’—B. v. c. 22.

Footnote 127:

Mart. Donegal, p. 216. See also Adam. _Vit. S. Col._, B. iii. c. 4.

Footnote 128:

Auditoque ejus accessu, universi undique ab agellulis monasterio

vicinis cum his qui ibidem inventi sunt congregati, etc.—Adam. _Vit.

S. Col._, B. i. c. 3.

Footnote 129:

_Ib._ B. iii. c. 22.

Footnote 130:

Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 707.

Footnote 131:

Accepitque Sanctus Brendanus cum esset sacerdos habitum monasticum

sanctum. Et multi relinquentes sæculum hinc inde venerunt ad eum et

fecit eos Sanctus Brendanus monachos. Deinde cellas et monasteria

fundavit in sua propria regione et multa monasteria et cellas per

diversas regiones Hyberniæ fundavit in quibus tria millia monachorum

ut perhibetur a senioribus sub eo erant.—_Acta S. Brendani_, p. 10.

Footnote 132:

Adam. _Vit. Col._, B. ii. c. 26.

Footnote 133:

_Annals of the Four Masters_, p. 193.

Footnote 134:

Petrie’s _Antiquities of Tara Hill_, pp. 125, 127.

Footnote 135:

Thus Bede, after narrating the foundation of Iona and Dearmagh by

Columba, adds—‘Ex quo utroque monasterio plurima exinde monasteria per

discipulos ejus et in Britannia et in Hibernia propagata sunt: in

quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum, in quo ipse requiescit

corpore, principatum teneret.’—B. iii. c. 4.

Footnote 136:

See the very able paper by Dr. Reeves on this subject in the

_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. vi. p. 447.

Footnote 137:

_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 75.

Footnote 138:

_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 75. The translation of these

passages has been made a little more literal, but the meaning of the

last sentence is not very apparent.

Footnote 139:

_Annoit—andoit .i. eclais do et in aile as cenn agas is tuiside_; that

is, a church which precedes another is a head and is earlier—a parent

church.—_O’Don. sup._

Footnote 140:

From _Dalta_, a pupil, a disciple.

Footnote 141:

_Pairche_, a parochia.—Cormac’s _Glossary_. _Compairche_ is

conparochia.

Footnote 142:

Conchad went to Armagh, and Fland Feblae gave his Cell (_Cheill_) to

him, and he himself took the abbacy (_Abbaith_).—_Book of Armagh._

Deinde cellas et monasteria fundavit in sua propria regione.—_Act. S.

Brendani_, c. ii.

Footnote 143:

This expression is translated in the Ancient Laws ‘a pilgrim,’ but the

pilgrim in the true sense of the term is expressed in Irish by the

word ‘ailithir.’ _Deoraid_, advena.—_O’Don. sup._

Footnote 144:

_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 79.

Footnote 145:

The explanation given in the commentary of this obscure expression is,

if ten sons are born after the first, then ‘to set aside the three

worst sons, and to cast lots between the seven best sons to see which

of them should be due to the church.’

Footnote 146:

_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. pp. 39, 40, 41.

Footnote 147:

_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. p. 31.

Footnote 148:

_Ib._ p. 33.

Footnote 149:

MS., Brit. Mus., Nero, A. vii.

Footnote 150:

_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. p. 13.

Footnote 151:

_Ib._ p. 17.

Footnote 152:

_Ib._ p. 35.

Footnote 153:

This is the number we have seen in the small establishment of Mobhi

Clarenach. Saint Brendan went to Bishop Ere when five years old, ‘ad

legendum ... et quinquaginta ex illis manserunt sub lege Sancti

Episcopi Erci usque ad mortem suam.’—_Act. S. Brendani_, c. vi.

Footnote 154:

Postea navigavit Sanctus Brendanus in peregrinatione ad Britanniam,

adivitque sanctissimum senem Gilldam, virum sapientissimum in

Britannia habitantem, cujus fama sanctitatis magna erat.—_Act.

Brendani_, c. xv. It is usually stated that he went to Armorica, or

Bretagne, but by Britannia, when used without qualification, Britain

can only be meant.

Footnote 155:

Et benedicentibus se invicem Sanctus Brendanus et Sanctus Gilldas cum

suis fratribus civitatisque illius habitatoribus, recessit inde. Et in

alia regione in Britannia monasterium nomine Ailech sanctissimus

Brendanus fundavit. Atque in loco alio in Britannia in regione Heth,

ecclesiam et villam circa eam assignavit et ibi magnas virtutes beatus

Pater Brendanus fecit: et postea navigavit ad Hyberniam.—_Vit.

Brendani_, c. xvi. The passage is thus given in the Brussels

edition:—Postea flentibus omnibus profectus est ac in Britanniam

remeavit ac duo monasteria, unum in insula Ailech, alterum in terra

Ethica in loco nomine Bledua fundavit.

Footnote 156:

See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 303.

Footnote 157:

In the Life quoted, the term ‘regio’ is applied equally to both; but

Dr. Reeves has shown that this term is used for an island, and in the

Brussels edition of the Life, it is expressly called ‘insula.’ It is

supposed by Dr. Lanigan to be Alectum in Armorica, but the name of

Britannia usually designates Britain.

Footnote 158:

Fordun’s _Chronicle_, ed. 1872, vol. ii. p. 24.

Footnote 159:

The parsonage and vicarage teinds of the islands of Ilachinive and

Kilbrandon belonged to the priory of Oronsay, and were in 1630

granted, with the lands of Andrew, bishop of Raphoe and prior of

Oronsay, to John Campbell, rector of Craignish.—_Origines

Parochiales_, vol. ii. part i. p. 276.

Footnote 160:

This appears from the notice in the Annals of Ulster, in 568, of an

expedition to the Western Region or Western Isles, by Colman Beg. son

of Diarmait, and Conall, son of Comgall (of Dalriada). The Four

Masters in the parallel passage have ‘Sol and Ile’—Sheil and Isla.

Footnote 161:

See Preface to Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_ for an account of these Lives.

Footnote 162:

Adamnan, Pref. 2, and B. i. c. 7.

Footnote 163:

Adamnan, B. iii. c. 4.

Footnote 164:

See Adamnan, Book iii. c. 5. This transcript appears to have been the

book termed the Cathach, which remained among the relics of St.

Columba, and the tradition seems to have been connected with it.

Footnote 165:

See Adamnan, B. i. cc. 7, 30, 32, 35; B. ii. cc. 29, 37, 42, 44; in

which ten different visits to Ireland are recorded.

Footnote 166:

Pro Christo peregrinare volens.

Footnote 167:

_Chron. of the Picts and Scots_, pp. 80, 82.