THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND
St. Patrick and the early Christians of the fifth century spent much of
their time and labour in the conversion of pagans and the building of
churches. Columcille and the leading churchmen of the sixth century, on
the other hand, gave themselves up more to the foundation of monastic
institutions and the conduct of schools. They belonged to what is well
known in Irish ecclesiastical history as the second Order of Saints.
The first Order was composed of Patrick and his associates, bishops
filled with piety, founders of churches, three hundred and fifty in
number, mostly Franks, Romans, and Britons, but with some Scots [_i.e._
Irish] also amongst them. These worshipped, says the ancient "Catalogue
of the Saints," one head--Christ, and followed one leader--Patrick.
They had one tonsure, one celebration of the Mass, and one Easter. They
mixed freely in the society of women, because they feared not the wind
of temptation, and this first Order of Saints, as it is called, is
reckoned by the Irish to have lasted during four reigns.
The next Order of Saints had few bishops but many priests, this was
the order to which Columcille belonged, and most of the saints who
founded the great schools of Ireland which in the following century
became so flourishing and spread their fame throughout Europe, as those
of Ciaran and Finnian and Brendan, and a score of others. This Order
shunned all association with women, and would not have them in their
monasteries.[1] These saints whilst worshipping God as their head, and
celebrating one Easter and having one tonsure, yet had different rites
for celebrating, and different rules for living. The rite with which
they celebrated Mass they are said to have secured from the British
saints, St. David, St. Gildas, and others. They also lasted for four
reigns, or, roughly speaking, during the last three quarters of the
sixth century.
After these came what is called the third Order of Saints who appear
in their time to have been pre-eminent amongst the other Christians,
and to have been mostly anchorites, who lived on herbs and supported
themselves by such alms as they were given, despising all things
earthly and all things fleshly. They observed Easter differently, they
had different tonsures, they had different rules of life, and different
rites for celebrating Mass. They are said to have numbered about a
hundred and to have lasted down to the time of the great plague in 664.
This third Order, says the writer of the "Catalogue of Saints," who
gives their names, was holy, the second holier, but the first Order
was most holy. "The first glowed like the sun in the fervour of their
charity, the second cast a pale radiance like the moon, the third shone
like the aurora. These three Orders the blessed Patrick foreknew,
enlightened by heavenly wisdom, when in prophetic vision he saw at
first all Ireland ablaze, and afterwards only the mountains on fire,
and at last saw lamps lit in the valleys."
By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honeycombed from
shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges, and foundations
of all kinds belonging to the Christian community, and books had
multiplied to a marvellous extent. At the same time the professional
bards flourished in such numbers that Keating says that "nearly a
third of the men of Ireland belonged, about that period, to the poetic
order." Omitting for the present the consideration of the bards and the
non-Christian literature of poem and saga--mostly anonymous--which they
produced, we must, take a rapid survey of some of the most important of
the Christian schools, whose pious professors, whose number, and whose
learning, secured for Ireland the title of the Island of Saints. We
have already seen how the three patron saints of Ireland established
their schools in Armagh, Kildare, and Iona, and their example was
followed by hundreds.
St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at some
school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian--who is said to
have been himself an Irishman--at his noble monastery of Candida Casa
in Galloway, built about the year 400), and after travelling through
various parts of Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in
the rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mór, and was the first of
those holy men who have won for it the appellation of Aran of the
Saints. "One hundred and twenty-seven saints sleep in the little
square yard around Killeany Church"[2] alone, and we are told that
the countless numbers of saints who have mingled their clay with the
holy soil of Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment. Here
most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or later, to
be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda; amongst them
Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under the title of _Navigatio
Brendani_, became so well known in later ages to all mediæval Europe.
To him also came St. Finnian of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in
later days as the "Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north
came Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the
carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St. Jarlath of
Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder, of Lismore, and with
St. Keevin of Glendalough. St. Columcille[3] himself was amongst Enda's
visitors, and tore himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing
himself by recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont--
"Farewell from me to Ara's Isle,
Her smile is at my heart no more,
No more to me the boon is given
With hosts of heaven to walk her shore.
How far, alas! how far, alas!
Have I to pass from Ara's view,
To mix with men from Mona's fen,
With men from Alba's mountains blue.
Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun,
Ah! softly run through Ara's sky,
To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter
Than lie where Paul and Peter lie.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
O God, cut short her foeman's breath,
Let Hell and Death his portion be.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
Herdless and childless may he go
In endless woe his doom is dree.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves thee not,
When angels wing from heaven on high
And leave the sky for this dear spot."[4]
Another early school was that founded by St. Finnian at Cluain Eraird,
better known under its corrupt form Clonard, a spot hard by the river
Boyne, to which students from both north and south resorted in great
numbers. Finnian, who was of the Clanna Rury, or Irian race, had been
baptized by Bishop Fortchern, who--so quickly did the Christian cause
progress--was a grandson of King Laeghaire, who withstood St. Patrick.
This Fortchern, too, like Brigit's favourite bishop, was a skilled
artificer in bronze and metal, a calling to which many of the early
saints evinced a strong bias. Clonard even during Finnian's lifetime
became a great school, and three thousand students are said to have
been gathered round it, amongst them the so-called Twelve Apostles of
Erin. These are Ciaran of Clonmacnois and Ciaran of Saigher, who is
patron saint of Ossory; Brendan of Birr, the "prophet," and Brendan
of Clonfert, the "navigator"; Columba of Tir-da-glass and Columcille;
Mobhí of Glasnevin and--_infaustum nomen!_--Rodan of Lothra or Lorrha;
Senanus of Iniscathy, whose name is known to the lovers of the poet
Moore; Ninnidh of Loch Erne; Lasserian, and St. Cainnech of Kilkenny,
known in Scotland as Kenneth, and second in that country only to St.
Columcille and St. Brigit in popularity. The school of Clonard was
founded about the year 520, when, to quote the rather jingling hymn
from St. Finnian's office--
"Reversus in Clonardiam
Ad cathedram lecturæ
Opponit diligentiam
Ad studium scripturæ."
The numbers who attended his teaching are given in another verse--
"Trium virorum millium
Sorte fit doctor humilis,
Verbi his fudit fluvium
Ut fons emanans rivulis."
Like all the other early Irish foundations which attained to wealth
and dignity before the ninth century, Clonard suffered in proportion
to its fame. It was after that date plundered and destroyed twelve
times, and was fourteen times burnt down either wholly or in part.
That being so, it is not much to be wondered at that there only
remains a single surviving literary work of this school, which is the
"Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ,"
by St. Aileran the Wise, one of Finnian's successors, who died of the
great plague in 664. This piece, like so many others, was found in the
Swiss monastery of St. Gall, whither it had been brought by some monks
from Ireland. The editors who printed it for the Benedictines in the
seventeenth century say that, although the writer did not belong to
their Order, they publish it because he "unfolded the meaning of sacred
scripture with so much learning and ingenuity that every student of
the sacred volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will
regard the publication as most acceptable." The learned editors could
have hardly paid the Irish writer a higher compliment. "A Short Moral
Explanation of the Sacred Names" is another still existing fragment
of Aileran's, and "whether we consider the style of the latinity, the
learning, or the ingenuity of the writer," says Dr. Healy, "it is
equally marvellous and equally honourable to the school of Clonard."
Aileran is said to have also written lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit,
and St. Fechin of Fore, and to be the original author of a litany, part
Irish, part Latin, preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.
Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon, founded about
the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who, like Finnian, came of the
Irian race, being descended from Fergus mac Roy.[5] He was born towards
the close of the fifth century, and his school, too, became very
famous, having, it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks.
The influence of the _Navigatio Brendani_, by whomsoever written, was
immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in many of the great
continental libraries good MS. copies of it, sometimes very ancient,
may be found.[6] But perhaps Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have
indirectly influenced European literature in a still more important
manner. This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were known
all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There can be no doubt
about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's life, for Bede himself,
who dedicates a good deal of space to Fursa's visions,[7] refers to it.
It must have been written within ten or fifteen years after his death,
because it refers to the plague and the great eclipse of the sun which
_happened last year_, that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's
writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account of Fursa
and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him, and furnished him
with the groundwork of part of the Divine Comedy of which it seems a
kind of prototype.[8]
Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he was shown
by the devil, may also have been known to Dante. Brendan prepared
three vessels with thirty men in each, some clerics, some laymen, and
with these, says his Irish life in the Book of Lismore, he sailed to
seek the Promised Land, which, evidently influenced by the old pagan
traditions of Moy Mell[9] and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an
island in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically--
"Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the
strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and
over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where they saw
the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with abundance of
the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful marvellous islands, yet
they tarried not therein."
Like Sindbad in the Arabian tales,[10] they land upon the back of a
great whale as if it had been solid land. There they celebrated Easter.
They endured much peril from the sea. "On a certain day, as they were
on the marvellous ocean"--this adjective is strongly indicative of the
spirit in which the Celt regards the works of nature--"they beheld the
deep bitter streams and the vast black whirlpools of the strong-maned
sea, and in them their vessels were being constrained to founder
because of the greatness of the storm." Brendan, however, cried to the
sea, "It is enough for thee, O mighty sea, to drown me alone, but let
this folk escape thee," and on hearing his cry the sea grew calm. It
was after this that Brendan got a view of hell.
"On a certain day," says the Irish Life, "that they were on the sea,
the devil came in a form old, awful, hideous, foul, hellish, and sat
on the rail of the vessel before Brendan, and none of them saw him
save Brendan alone. Brendan asked him why he had come before his
proper time, that is, before the time of the great resurrection.
'For this have I come,' said the devil, 'to seek my punishment in
the deep closes of this black, dark sea.' Brendan inquired of him,
'What is this, where is that infernal place?' 'Sad is that,' said
the devil; 'no one can see it and remain alive afterwards.' Howbeit
the devil there revealed the gate of hell to Brendan, and Brendan
beheld that rough, hot prison full of stench, full of flame, full of
filth, full of the camps of the poisonous demons, full of wailing
and screaming and hurt and sad cries and great lamentations and
moaning and handsmiting of the sinful folks, and a gloomy, mournful
life in hearts of pain, in igneous prisons, in streams of the rows
of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death, without
limit, without end; in black, dark swamps, in fonts of heavy flame,
in abundance of woe and death and torments, and fetters, and feeble
wearying combats, with the awful shouting of the poisonous demons, in
a night ever-dark, ever-cold, ever-stinking, ever-foul, ever-misty,
ever-harsh, ever-long, ever-stifling, deadly, destructive, gloomy,
fiery-haired, of the loathsome bottom of hell. On sides of mountains
of eternal fire, without rest, without stay, were hosts of demons
dragging the sinners into prisons ... black demons; stinking fires;
streams of poison; cats scratching; hounds rending; dogs baying;
demons yelling; stinking lakes; great swamps; dark pits; deep glens;
high mountains; hard crags;... winds bitter, wintry; snow frozen,
ever-dropping; flakes red, fiery; faces base, darkened; demons swift,
greedy; tortures vast, various."[11]
This is one of the earliest attempts in literature at the pourtrayal of
an Inferno.
After a seven-years' voyage Brendan returned home to his own country
without having found his Earthly Paradise, and his people and his folic
at home "brought him," says the Irish Life, "treasures and gifts as if
they were giving them to God"!
His foster-mother St. Ita now advised him not to put forth in search
of that glorious land in those dead stained skins which formed his
currachs, for it was a holy land he sought, and he should look for
it in wooden vessels. Then Brendan built himself "a great marvellous
vessel, distinguished and huge." He first sailed to Aran to consort
with St. Enda, but after a month he heaved anchor and sailed once more
into the West.
He reaches the Isle of Paradise after many adventures, and is invited
on shore by an old man "without any human raiment, but all his body
full of bright white feathers like a dove or a sea-mew, and it was
almost the speech of an angel that he had." "O ye toilsome men," he
said, "O hallowed pilgrims, O folk that entreat the heavenly rewards,
O ever-weary life expecting this land, stay a little now from your
labour." The land is described in terms that forcibly record the
delights of the pagan Elysium of Moy Mell, and prove how intimately the
Brendan legend is bound up with primitive pre-Christian mythological
beliefs. "The delightful fields of the land" are described as "radiant,
famous, lovable,"--"a land odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land
many-melodied, musical, shouting-for-joy, unmournful." "Happy," said
the old man, "shall he be with well-deservingness and with good deeds,
whom Brandan, son of Finnlug, shall call into union with him on that
side to inhabit for ever and ever the island whereon we stand."
But better known--at least in ecclesiastical history--than even St.
Brendan, is St. Cummian, surnamed "fada" or the Long, who was one
of his successors in the school of Clonfert, and who perished in or
a little before the great plague of 664. There are two hymns, one
by himself in Latin,[12] and one in Irish by his tutor, Colman Ua
Cluasaigh [Clooasy] of Cork, preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum." But his
great achievement was his celebrated letter on the Paschal question
addressed to his friend Segienus, the abbot of Iona. The question of
when to celebrate Easter day was one which long sundered the British
and Irish Churches from the rest of Europe, and has, as students of
ecclesiastical history know, given rise to all sorts of conjectures as
to the independence of these churches. The charge against the Irish
was that they celebrated Easter on any day from the fourteenth to
the twentieth day of the moon, even on the fourteenth if it should
happen to be Sunday, but the fourteenth was a Jewish festival and the
Council of Nice had, in 325, declared it to be unlawful to celebrate
the Christian Easter on a Jewish festival.[13] The Irish had obtained
their own doctrine of Easter from the East, through Gaul, which was
largely open to Eastern influence; also the Irish used the old Roman
cycle of 84 years, not the newer and more correct Alexandrian one of
19 years. The consequence was the scandal of having different Churches
of Christendom celebrating Easter on different days, and some mourning
when others were feasting, a scandal which the Epistle of Cummian was
designed to put an end to.
"I call this letter," says Professor G. Stokes,[14] "a marvellous
composition because of the vastness of its learning; it quotes
besides the Scriptures and Latin authors, Greek writers like Origen,
and Cyril, Pachomius the head and reformer of Egyptian monasticism,
and Damascius the last of the celebrated neo-Platonic philosophers
of Athens, who lived about the year 500, and wrote all his works in
Greek. Cummian discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Hebrews,
and Copts, giving us the Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian names of months
and cycles, and tells us that he had been sent as one of a deputation
of learned men a few years before to ascertain the practice of the
Church of Rome. When they came to Rome they lodged in one hospital
with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian, and a Scythian, who told them
that the whole world celebrated the Roman and not the Irish Easter."
Cummian throughout this letter displays the true spirit of a scholar,
he humbly apologises for his presumption in addressing such holy men,
and calls God to witness that he is actuated by no spirit of pride
or contempt for others. When the new cycle of 532 years was first
introduced into Ireland he did not at once accept it, but held his
peace and took no side in the matter, because he did not think himself
wiser than the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, nor did he venture to
disdain the food he had not yet tasted. So he retired for a whole year
into the study of the question, to examine for himself the facts of
history, the nature of the various cycles in use, and the testimony of
Scripture.
There is another book, "De Mensura Pœnitentiarum," ascribed to Cummian
and printed in Migne; and there is a poem on his death by his tutor,
St. Colman, who was carried off by the same plague a short time after
him.[15]
The great institution presided over by St. Cummian was flourishing in
full vigour at the time of the first incursions of the Northmen. It
is frequently mentioned in the Irish Annals as a place of note and
learning. Turgesius the Dane, attracted by so fair a booty, promptly
plundered and burnt it to the ground. Again and again it was rebuilt,
and again and again the same fate befell it. The monastery and the
school survived, however, until the coming of the Normans, and the
"Four Masters" under the year 1170 record the death of one of its
teachers, Cormac O'Lumlini, whom they pathetically designate "the
remnant of the sages of Erin," for by this time Clonfert had been six
times burnt and four times plundered.
Even a greater school, however, than Clonfert, was that founded by St.
Ciaran [Keeran], the carpenter's son, beside a curve in the Shannon, at
Clonmacnois, not far from Athlone, about the year 544. He had himself
been educated by St. Finnian of Clonard, and he died at the early age
of thirty-three, immediately after laying the foundations of what was
destined to become the greatest Christian college in Ireland.[16]
The monastery and cells of St. Ciaran rapidly grew into a city, to
which students flocked from far and near. In one sense the College
of Clonmacnois had an advantage over all its rivals, for it belonged
to no one race or clan. Its abbots and teachers were drawn from many
different tribes, and situated as it was, in almost the centre of
the island, all the great races, Erimonians, Eberians, Irians, and
Ithians, resorted to it impartially, and it became a real university.
There the O'Conors, kings of Connacht, had their own separate church;
there the Southern Ui Neill reared apart their own cathedral; there
the MacDermots, princes of Moylurg, and the O'Kellys, kings of Hy
Mainy, had each their own mortuary chapels; there the Southerns built
one round tower, the O'Rorkes another; and there too the Mac Carthys
of Munster had a burial-place. Who, even at this day, has not heard of
the glories of Clonmacnois, of its ruins, its graves, its crosses; of
its churchyard, which possesses a greater variety of sculptured and
decorated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland put together, and
of which the Irish poet beautifully sang so long ago--
"In a quiet watered land, a land of roses,
Stands St. Ciaran's city fair,
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations,
Slumber there.
There beneath the dewy hill-side sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone, with name in branching Ogham,
And the sacred knot thereon.
There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbré sleep,
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Ciaran's Plain of Crosses,
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh.
Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest,
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast."[17]
Some of the most distinguished scholars of Ireland, if not of Europe,
were educated at Clonmacnois, including Alcuin, the most learned man at
the French court, who remembered his alma mater so affectionately that
he extracted from King Charles of France a gift of fifty shekels of
silver, to which he added fifty more of his own, and sent them to the
brotherhood of Clonmacnois as a gift, with a quantity of olive oil for
the Irish bishops. His affectionate letter to "his blessed master and
pious father" Colgan, chief professor at Clonmacnois, is still extant.
This Colgu, or Colgan, himself wrote a book in Irish, called "The
Besom of Devotion," which appears to be now lost. A litany of his
still remains. The great eleventh-century annalist, Tighearnach, was
an alumnus of Clonmacnois. So, too, was the reputed author of the
"Chronicon Scotorum," O'Malone, in 1123. The Annals of Clonmacnois was
one of the books in the hands of the "Four Masters," but it is now
lost, and a different book called by the same name (the original of
which has also perished) was translated into English by Macgeoghegan
in 1627.[18] The celebrated Leabhar na h-Uidhre [Lowar na Heera] or
"Book of the Dun Cow," compiled about the year 1100, emanated from
this centre of learning. Like Clonfert, and every other home of Irish
civilisation, the city of Clonmacnois fell a prey to the barbarians.
The Northmen plundered it or burnt it, or both, on ten separate
occasions. Turgesius, their leader, set up his wife Ota as a kind of
priestess to deliver oracles from its high altar;[19] and some of
the Irish themselves, reduced to a state of barbarism by the horrors
of the period, laid their sacrilegious hands upon its holy places;
and afterwards the English of Athlone stepped in and completed its
destruction. It now remains only a ruin and a name.
Another very celebrated school was that of Bangor, on Belfast Loch,
founded by Comgall, the friend of Columcille, between 550 and 560. It
soon became crowded with scholars, and next to Armagh it was certainly
the greatest school of the northern province, and produced men of the
highest eminence at home and abroad. Its fame reached far across the
sea. St. Bernard called it "a noble institution, which was inhabited
by many thousands of monks;" and Joceline of Furness, in the twelfth
century, called it "a fruitful vine breathing the odour of salvation,
whose offshoots extended not only over all Ireland, but far beyond the
seas into foreign countries, and filled many lands with its abounding
fruitfulness."
The most distinguished of Bangor's sons of learning were Columbanus,
the evangeliser of portions of Burgundy and Lombardy; St. Gall, the
evangeliser of Switzerland; Dungal, the astronomer; and later on, in
the twelfth century, Malachy O'Morgair, who, though not known as an
author, distinguished himself in the province of Church discipline.
The lives of St. Columbanus and of St. Gall belong rather to foreign
than to Irish history, but we may glance at them again in another
place. Dungal, poet, astronomer, and theologian, was also like them,
for a time, an exile. His identity is uncertain; the "Four Masters"
mention twenty-two persons of the same name between the years 744
and 1015, but his Irish nationality is certain, and he calls himself
"Hibernicus exul" in his poem addressed to his patron Charlemagne. He
appears to have died in the Irish monastery at Bobbio, in North Italy,
to which he left his library, and amongst other books the celebrated
Antiphonary of Bangor, his possession of which seems to warrant us in
supposing that Bangor was his original college. He appears to have been
a close friend of Charlemagne's, and in 811 he wrote him his celebrated
letter, explanatory of the two solar eclipses which had taken place
the year before. The emperor could apparently find at his court no
other astronomer of sufficient learning to explain the phenomena.
Later on we find Dungal, at the request of Lothaire, Charlemagne's
grandson, opening a school at Pavia to civilise the Lombards, to which
institution great numbers of students flocked from every quarter.
Dungal may, in fact, be regarded as the founder of the University
of Pavia. His greatest effort whilst in Pavia was his work against
the Iconoclasts. Dungal's attack upon the cultured Spanish bishop,
Claudius, who championed them, as it was the first, so it appears to
have been the ablest blow struck; and Western iconoclasm seemed to
have for the time received a mortal wound from his hand.[20] Besides
his long eulogy on his friend and patron Charlemagne, several other
smaller poems of his survive, showing him to have been--like almost
all Irishmen of that date--no mere pedant and student.
Like almost all the more famous and attractive of the Irish colleges,
Bangor suffered fearfully from the attacks of the northern pirates,
who, according to St. Bernard, slew there as many as nine hundred
monks. "Not a cross, not even a stone," says Dr. Healy, "now remains to
mark the site of the famous monastery, whose crowded cloisters for a
thousand years overlooked the pleasant islets and broad waters of Inver
Becne." It has shared the fate of its compeers:
_etiam periere ruinæ._
It would prove too tedious to enumerate the other Irish colleges
which dotted the island in the sixth and seventh centuries. The most
remarkable of them besides those that I have mentioned were Moville, at
the head of Loch Cuan or Strangford Lough, in the County Down, founded
by St. Finnian, who was born before 500, and who afterwards became
known as Frigidius, Bishop of Lucca, in Switzerland. Colman, whose
hymn is preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum," and Marianus Scotus, the
Chronicler, were _alumni_ of Moville.
Cluain Eidnech, or Clonenagh, the "Ivy Meadow," was founded by St.
Fintan, near Maryborough, in the present Queen's County. Angus the
Culdee, who with its Abbot Maelruain is said to have composed the
Martyrology of Tallaght prior to 792, was its greatest ornament. Of his
Irish works we shall have more to say later on. Clonenagh suffered so
much from the Northmen, that its great foundation had already in the
twelfth century dwindled to a parochial church; in the nineteenth it is
a green mound.
Glendalough, founded by the celebrated St. Kevin,[21] became also a
college of much note. St. Moling, to whom a great number of Irish
poems[22] are ascribed, was one of his successors in the seventh
century, and his life seems to have taken peculiar hold upon the
imagination of the populace, for he has more poems--many of them
evident forgeries--attributed to him than we find ascribed to any of
the saints except to Columcille; and he has a place amongst the four
great prophets of Erin.[23] It was he who procured the remission of
the Boru tribute from King Finnachta about the year 693. Glendalough
was plundered and destroyed by the Danes five times over, within a
period of thirty years, yet it to some extent recovered itself, and the
great St. Laurence O'Toole, who was Archbishop of Dublin at the coming
of the Normans, had been there educated.
Lismore, the great college of the south-east, was founded by St.
Carthach in the beginning of the seventh century, who left behind him,
according to O'Curry, a monastic rule of 580 lines of Irish verse.[24]
Cathal, or Cathaldus, born in the beginning of the seventh century, who
afterwards became bishop and patron saint of Tarentum, in Italy, was
a student, and perhaps professor in this college. The office of St.
Cathaldus states that Gauls, Angles, Irish, and Teutons, and very many
people of neighbouring nations came to hear his lectures at Lismore,
and Morini's life of him expresses in poetic terms the tradition of
Lismore's greatness.[25] St. Cuanna, another member of Lismore, was
probably the author of the Book of Cuanach, now lost, but often quoted
in the Annals of Ulster. He died in 650, and the book is not quoted
after the year 628, which makes it more than probable that he was the
author. Lismore was burnt down by the Danes, but recovered itself in
the general revival of native institutions that took place prior to the
conquest of the Anglo-Normans. However, when these latter came upon the
Irish stage it fared ill with Lismore. Strongbow, indeed, was bought
off from burning its churches in 1173 by a great sum of money, but in
the following year his son, in spite of this, plundered the place. Four
years later the English forces again attacked it, plundered it, and
set it on fire. In 1207 the whole town and all about it was finally
consumed, so that at the present day not a vestige remains behind of
its schools, its cloisters, or its twenty churches.
Cork college was founded by St. Finnbarr towards the end of the sixth
century. One of its professors, Colman O'Cluasaigh, who died in 664,
wrote the curious Irish hymn or prayer mixed with Latin, preserved in
the Book of Hymns.[26] The place was burned four times between 822 and
840, but in the twelfth century the ancient monastery which had fallen
into decay was rebuilt by Cormac Mac Carthy, king of Munster, and
builder of the celebrated Cormac's Chapel at Cashel.
The school of Ross was founded by St. Fachtna for the Ithian tribes[27]
of Corca Laidhi [Cor-ka-lee] in South-west Munster. Ross is frequently
referred to in the Annals up to the tenth century. There is extant an
interesting geographical poem in Irish, of 136 lines, written by one
of the teachers there in the tenth century, and apparently intended as
a kind of simple text to be learned by heart by the students.[28] Ross
was plundered by the Danes in 840, but appears to have been flourishing
until North-west Munster was laid waste by the Anglo-Normans under
FitzStephen, after which no more is heard of its schools or colleges.
Innisfallen was founded upon an exquisite site on the lower lake of
Killarney by St. Finan.[29] The well-known "Annals of Innisfallen,"
preserved in the Bodleian Library, were probably written by Maelsuthain
[Calvus Perennis] O'Carroll, the "soul-friend" of Brian Boru, who
inserted the famous entry in the Book of Armagh.[30] It is probable
that Brian himself was also educated there. This monastery, owing to
its secure retreat in the Kerry mountains, appears to have remained
unplundered by the Norsemen, and to have been accounted "a paradise and
a secure sanctuary."
Iniscaltra is a beautiful island in the south-west angle of Loch Derg,
between Galway and Clare, still famous for its splendid round tower.
It was here Columba of Terryglass, who died in 552, established a
school and monastery which became so famous that in the life of St.
Senan seven ships are mentioned as arriving at the mouth of the Shannon
crowded with students for Iniscaltra. It was this Columba who, when
asked by one of his disciples why the birds that frequented the island
were not afraid of him, made the somewhat dramatic answer, "Why should
they fear me? am I not a bird myself, for my soul always flies to
heaven as they fly through the sky." Columba had a celebrated successor
called Caimin, who died in 653. Ussher, who calls him St. Caminus,
tells us that part of his Psalter was extant in his own time, and that
he had himself seen it "having a collation of the Hebrew text placed
on the upper part of each page, and with brief scholia added on the
exterior margin."[31]
A great number of lesser monastic institutions and schools seem to
have existed alongside of these more famous ones, and it is hardly too
much to say that during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and perhaps ninth
centuries Ireland had caught and held aloft the torch of learning in
the lampadia of mankind, and procured for herself the honourable title
of the island of saints and scholars.
[1] It is a common tradition that Columcille would not allow a cow on
Iona, because, said he, "where there is a cow there will be a woman"!
This tradition is entirely contradicted, however, by Adamnan's life.
[2] Dr. Healy's "Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 169.
[3] There is a story of Columcille when in Aran discovering the grave
of an "abbot of Jerusalem" who had come to see Enda, and died there,
printed by Kuno Meyer from Rawlinson B. 512 in the "Gaelic Journal,"
vol. iv. p. 162.
[4] Literally: "Farewell from me to Ara, it is it anguishes my heart
not to be in the west among her waves, amid groups of the saints of
heaven. It is far, alas! it is far, alas! I have been sent from Ara
West, out towards the population of Mona to visit the Albanachs. Ara
sun, oh Ara sun, my affection lies buried in her in the west, it is the
same to be beneath her pure soil as to be beneath the soil of Paul and
Peter. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her,
may he be given for it shortness of life and hell. Ara blessed, O Ara
blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may their cattle decay and
their children, and be he himself on the other side (of this life) in
evil plight. O Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to
her," etc.
[5] See ch. VII, note 1.
[6] It has been edited both by a Frenchman, M. Jubinal, and a German,
Karl Schroeder, from eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century MSS.
preserved in Paris, Leipsic, and Wolfenbuttel, and by Cardinal
Moran from, I believe, a ninth-century one in the Vatican. Giraldus
Cambrensis alludes to it as well known in his time, "Hæc autem si
quis audire gestierit qui de vita Brendani scriptus est libellum
legat" ("Top. Hib.," II. ch. 43). There is a copy of Brendan's acts in
the so-called Book of Kilkenny in Marsh's Library, Dublin, a MS. of
probably the fourteenth century.
[7] "Eccles. Hist.," lib. iii. c. 19. He calls him "Furseus, verbo et
actibus clarus sedet egregiis insignis virtutibus," and dedicates five
pages of Mayer and Lumby's edition to an account of him and his visions.
[8] Father O'Hanlon, in his great work on the Irish saints, has
pointed out a large number of close parallels between Fursa's vision
and Dante's poem which seem altogether too striking to be fortuitous.
(_See_ vol. i. pp. 115-120.) There are a poem and a litany attributed
to St. Fursa in the MS. H. 1. 11. in Trinity College, Dublin. The
visions of Purgatory seen by Dryhthelm, a monk of Melrose, as recorded
by Bede, which are later than St. Fursa's vision, are conceived
very much in the same style, only are much more doctrinal in their
purgatorial teaching. "Tracing the course of thought upwards," says
Sir Francis Palgrave ("History of Normandy and England"), "we have no
difficulty in deducing the poetic genealogy of Dante's 'Inferno' to the
Milesian Fursæus."
[9] _See_ above, p. 97.
[10] The same story, as Whitley Stokes points out, is told in two
ninth-century lives of St. Machut, so that a tenth-century version of
Sindbad's first voyage cannot have been the origin of it.
[11] This is evidently the passage upon which Keating's description
of hell in the "Three Shafts of Death," Leabh. III. allt. ix., x.,
xi., is modelled. He quite outdoes his predecessor in declamation and
exuberance of alliterative adjectives. Compare also the description in
the vision of Adamnan of the infernal regions as it is elaborated in
the copy in the Leabhar Breac, in contradistinction to the more sober
colouring of the older Leabhar na h-Uidhre.
[12] Beginning:--
"Celebra Juda festa Christi gaudia
Apostulorum exultans memoria.
Claviculari Petri primi pastoris
Piscium rete evangelii corporis
Alleluia."
This hymn, says Dr. Todd, "bears evident marks of the high antiquity
claimed for it, and there seem no reasonable grounds for doubting its
authenticity."
[13] "The correct system lays down three principles. First, Easter day
must be always a Sunday, never on but _next after_ the fourteenth day
of the moon; secondly, that fourteenth day of the full moon should be
that on or next after the vernal equinox; and thirdly, the equinox
itself was invariably assigned to the 21st of March" (Dr. Healy's
"Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 234). At Rome the 18th had been
regarded as the equinox; St. Patrick, however, rightly laid it down
that the equinox took place on the 21st.
[14] Late professor of Ecclesiastical History in Dublin University.
_See_ "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1892, p. 195.
[15] The first verse runs thus:--
"Ni beir Luimneach for a druim
Di sil Muimhneach i Leth Cuinn
Marbán in noi bu fiú do
Do Cuimmine mac Fiachno"--
"The lower Shannon bears not upon its surface, of Munster race in Leath
Cuinn, any corpse in boat, equal to him, to Cuimin, son of Fiachna."
His corpse was apparently brought home by water.
[16] There is a verse ascribed to Ciaran in the "Chronicon Scotorum,"
beginning "Darerca mo mháthair-si," and a poem ascribed to him in H. 1.
11. Trinity College, Dublin.
[17] Thus admirably translated by my friend Mr. Rolleston in "Poems
and Ballads of Young Ireland," Dublin, 1888, a little volume which
seems to have been the precursor of a considerable literary movement in
Ireland. Literally: "The city of Ciaran of Clonmacnois, a dewy-bright
red-rose town, of its royal seed, of lasting fame, the hosts in the
pure-streamed peaceful town. The nobles of the clan of Conn are in the
flag-laid brown-sloped churchyard, a knot or a branch above each body
and a fair correct name in Ogam. The sons of Cairbré over the seven
territories, the seven great princes from Tara, many a sheltering
standard on a field of battle is with the people of Ciaran's Plain of
Crosses. The men of Teffia, the tribes of Breagh were buried beneath
the clay of Cluain[macnois]. The valiant and hospitable are yonder
beneath the sod, the race of Creidé and the Clan Conaill. Numerous are
the sons of Conn of the Battles, with red clay and turf covering them,
many a blue eye and white limb under the earth of Clan Colman's tomb."
The first verses run in modern spelling thus:
"Cáthair Chiaráin Chluain-mic-Nóis
Baile drucht-solas, dearg-rois.
Da shíl rioghraidh is buan bládh
Sluaigh fá'n sith-bhaile sruth-ghlan.
Atáid uaisle cloinne Chuinn
Fa'n reilig leacaigh learg-dhuinn
Snaoidhm no Craobh os gach cholain
Agus ainm caomh ceart Oghaim."
The clan of Conn here mentioned are principally the Ui Neill and their
correlatives. Teffia is something equivalent to Longford, and Breagh to
Meath. Clan Creidé are the O'Conors of Connacht, and the Clan Colman
principally means the O'Melaughlins and their kin. "Colman mor, a quo
Clann Cholmáin ie Maoileachlain cona fflaithibh" (Mac Firbis MS. Book
of Genealogies, p. 161 of O'Curry's transcript). Colman was the brother
of King Diarmuid, who was slain in 552.
[18] Published a couple of years ago by the late Father Murphy, S.J.,
for the Royal Antiquarian Society of Ireland.
[19] "Airgid cealla ardnaomh Ereann uile ocus as ar altoir Cluana mac
Nois do bhereadh Otta bean Tuirghes uirigheall do gach ae[n]" (Mac
Firbis MS. of Genealogies, p. 768 in O'Curry's transcript). Also "Gael
and Gall," p. 13.
[20] Claudius was Bishop of Turin, and a man of much culture and
ability; so disgusted was he with the congregation of ignorant Italian
bishops--culture was then at the lowest ebb in Italy--before whom he
argued his case that he called them a _congregatio asinorum_, and
says Zimmer, "Ein Ire, Dungal, musste für sie die Vertheidigung des
Bilderdienstes übernehmen."
[21] Pronounced "Keevin," not "Kĕvin." The Irish form is Caoimh-[=
keev, "aoi" being in Irish always pronounced like _ee_, and "mh" like
_v_] ghinn, the "g" being aspirated is scarcely pronounced.
[22] The celebrated Evangelistarium, or Book of Moling, was, with
its case or cover, deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, in the last
century by the Kavanaghs of Borris. Giraldus Cambrensis classes Moling
as a prophet with Merlin, and as a saint with Patrick and Columba. One
of the prophecies assigned to him is given by O'Curry, MS. Mat., p.
427. The oldest copy of any of Moling's poems is in the monastery of
St. Paul in Carinthia, contained in a MS. originally brought from Augia
Dives, or Reichenau. It is in the most perfect metre, and runs:--
"Is en immo niada sás
Is nau tholl diant eslinn guas,
Is lestar fás, is crann crín
Nach digni toil ind rig tuas."
("He is a bird round which a trap closes,
He is a leaky bark in weakness of peril,
He is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree
Who doth not do the will of the King above.")
_I.e._, "Is eán um a n-iadhann sás / is nau (long) thollta darb'
éislinn guais. Is leastar fas (folamh) is crann crion, [an te] nach
ndeanann toil an righ shuas."
The poem is also given in the Book of Leinster, and contains eight
verses. One would perhaps have expected the third line to run, "is
crann crín is lestar fás." The St. Paul MS., which is of the eighth
century, contains two of Molling's poems, and they scarcely differ in
wording or orthography from copies in MSS. six hundred years later.
[23] Patrick, Columcille, and Berchan of Clonsast, are the others.
Even the English settlers had heard of their fame. Baron Finglas,
writing in Henry VIII.'s reign, says, "The four saints, St. Patrick,
St. Columb, St. Braghane [_i.e._, Berchan], and St. Moling, which
many hundred years agone made prophecy that Englishmen should have
conquered Ireland, and said that the said Englishmen should keep their
owne laws, and as soon as they should leave, and fall to Irish order,
then they should decay, the experience whereof is proved true." (From
Ryan's "History and Antiquities of the co. Carlow," p. 93.) A still
more curious allusion to the four Irish prophets is one in the Book
of Howth, a small vellum folio of the sixteenth century, written in
thirteen different hands, published in the Calendar of State Papers.
"Men say," recounts the anonymous writer, "that the Irishmen had four
prophets in their time, Patrick, Marten [_sic_], Brahen [_i.e._,
Berchan], and Collumkill. Whosoever hath books in Irish written every
of them speak of the fight of this conquest, and saith that long strife
and oft fighting shall be for this land, and the land shall be harried
and stained with great slaughter of men, but the Englishmen fully shall
have the mastery a little before doomsday, and that land shall be
from sea to sea i-castled and fully won, but the Englishmen shall be
after that well feeble in the land and disdained; so Barcan [Berchan]
saith: that through a king shall come out of the wild mountains of St.
Patrick's, that much people shall slew and afterwards break a castle
in the wooden of Affayle, with that the Englishmen of Ireland shall be
destroyed by that." The prophecy that the Englishmen fully shall have
the mastery a little before Doomsday is amusingly equivocal!
[24] Described in O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 375, but I do not know
where the original is.
[25] Quoted in O'Halloran's "History of Ireland," bk. ix. chap. 4.
"Celeres vastissima Rheni / jam vada Teutonici, jam deseruere Sicambri;
/ Mittit ab extremo gelidos Aquilone Boemos / Albis et Arvenni cöeunt,
Batavi-que frequentes, / Et quicunque colunt alta sub rupe Gehennas.
/ ... Certatim hi properunt diverso tramite ad urbem / Lesmoriam
[Lismore] juvenis primos ubi transigit annos." _See_ also corroborative
proof of the numbers of Gauls, Teutons, Swiss, and Italians visiting
Lismore about the year 700 in Ussher's "Antiquities," Works, vi., p.
303.
[26] Reprinted by Windisch in his "Irische Texte," Heft 1., p. 5. The
first verse runs--
"Sén De don fe for don te
Mac maire ron feladar!
For a fhoessam dún anocht
Cia tiasam, cain temadar,"
which is in no wise easy to translate! There are fifty-six verses not
all in the same metre. Another acknowledges St. Patrick as a patron
saint, it would run thus, in modernised orthography--
"Beannacht ar erlám [pátrún] Pádraig
Go naomhaib Eireann uime
Beannacht ar an gcáthair-se
Agus ar chách bhfuil innti!"
A three-quarter Latin verse runs thus--
"Regem regum rogamus / in nostris sermonibus
Anacht Noe a luchtlach / diluvi temporibus."
[27] _See_ p. 67.
[28] _See_ "Proceedings of R. I. Academy for 1884."
[29] Whose name is preserved in O'Connell's residence, "Derrynane,"
which is really "Derry-finan" (Doire-Fhionáin).
[30] _See_ p. 140 and Ch. XIII note 12.
[31] "Habebatur psalterium, cujus unicum tantum quaternionem mihi
videre contigit, obelis et asteriscis diligentissime distinctum;
collatione cum veritate Hebraica in superiore parte cujusque paginæ
posita, et brevibus scholiis ad exteriorem marginem adjectis." (_See_
"Works," vol. vi. p. 544. Quoted by Professor G. Stokes, "Proceedings
R. I. Academy," May, 1892.)