bought with the income erom the SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF - M^nvu W. Sage XS9X :.A.^f-JL-/.^ ^/l/f-^-. Cornell University Library BR794 .S87 1892 Ireland and the Celtic church: a history olln 3 1924 029 246 812 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029246812 IRELAND AND THE CELTIC CHURCH. IRELAND AND THE CELTIC CHURCH. A HISTORY OF IRELAND FROM ST. PATRICK TO THE ENGLISH CONQUEST IN 1172. GEORGE T. STOKES, D.D, M.R.I.A., Vicar of AU Sainis\ Blachrock ; Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the UniverHty of Dublin.; and Keeper of Primate Marsh's Lihrccry, ■THIRD EDITION. %atiism \ HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCXCII. Printed by Hazell, Watson, &^ Vimyt Ld,^ London and AyUshufyy PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. T HAVE corrected in this Edition some few errors - in , dates and references to which my attention has been called. Otherwise this Edition is an exact reprint of those previously published, as I have seen no sufficient cause to change any of the views therein expressed. Partisans have not been pleased, but partisans are not competent judges of historic fairness. GEORGE T. STOKES. All Saints' Vicarage, Blackrock, December iSgli PREFACE. I HAVE often been asked- to recommend a history of Ireland, embodying the result of the latest in- vestigations, and teUing a very chequered story in an interesting way. I have been unable to name any •work fulfilling these conditions. Mr. Skene's learned volumes emoody tne result oi modern investigations, put they deal as much with Scotland as with Ireland ; while the older historians, such as Lanigan, King, and Todd, though very learned and acciirate, are largely controversial and most certainly not light t-eading. I hkve endeavoured in the following pages to avoid con- troversy as far as possible, and have necessarily been obliged to make the story as interesting as I could. The form of the book explains the reason why. The lectures contained therein were originally delivered as pubhc prelections in the Divinity-school of Trinity College. As Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Dubhn I am bound to lecture twice a week -during two terms of the academic year, but iio one is. obliged to attend my classes. If I wish, there- fore, to haye an audience, I must attract one. I have vi PREFACE. had no cause for complaint on this head so far as the following lectures were concerned, and, therefore, I presume they were found interesting by those who attended. I can only hope they may not be found dull and uninteresting by the wider audience to which they are now submitted. I have done my best to improve them by the addition of notes, which, will direct the student to the sources whence !• have drawn my material, much of which has hitherto lain buried in Proceedings and Transactions, specially those of the Royal Irish Academy. I am conscious of many omissions in this work. Chapters on St. Brigid of Kildare, and the Ministry of Women in the Early Irish Church, on the Celtic Liturgies and Ritual, and on Celtic Art, should have found a place in a history of the " Making of Ireland." But, then, I have several , excuses for these defects. PubHshers do not want ideal histories, complete in form, exhaustive in matter, but histories which will interest the puMic. Exhaustive histories are sometimes very exhausting to their readers. Again, I wished to give a picture of ascertained facts, and therefore m'ade it a rule to deal with subjects which have been thoroughly discussed by specialists or illuminated by the publica- tion of great works hke Bishop Reeves' Adamnan's Columba, and Dr. Todd's Wars of the Gaedhil. The question of Celtic liturgies is still in debate. Mr. Warren, in his learned work, has done much to- wards its solution. The Rev. Dr. MacCarthy read, last year, a very learned paper on the Stowe Missal, which PREFACE. vii will see the light in the next part of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. The whole question, however, forms a part of a much larger subject, viz., the local liturgical uses which prevailed throughout Europe and the East in mediaeval times. We are, as yet, only beginning this study, and must await the publication of documents which now lie hidden in many a dusty receptacle before it can b^ completely and finally settled. I am myself convinced that the Irish and Gallicaii uses of the fifth century were identical, and have pointed out below, in a note on page 318, a proof of this in the matter of chrism in baptism. The Irish Church of the seventh century had, however, its own liturgical peculiarities,' as is evident from the Antiphonary of Bangor^ a seventh-century Irish prayer-book, now existing at Milan. In that work we find a creed used at Bangor differing in form from, every other creed hitherto known. In conclusion I have only to acknowledge in general what I have acknowledged in detail in the notes, — the great help I have received from the works of those who have, in days gone by, and especially during the last half century, devoted themselves to the study of Irish history, literature, and antiquities. I have omitted none, so far as I knew of them, from ' The Antifhonarium. Benchorense was first published by Muratori in his Anecdota Bibliothecm Ambrosianis, t. iv., pp. i 19-59. See also Warren's Celtic Liturgy ; Migne's Pat. Lai:, t. Ixxii., 582; Ulster Jour, of ArchcEology, 1853, pp. 168 79; and O'Lavert/s Diocese of Down and Connor, Appendix. PREFA CE. Ussher, the glory and pride of my own University, to the present Bishop of Down (Dr. Reeves), the Bollandist Mr. Hogan, S.J., and Archbishop Moran, among English writers ; and to Zeuss, Zimmer, and Wasserschleben, among the Germans. I have, how- ever, especially to acknowledge the generous assistance afforded by Mr. W. M. Hennessy, M.R.I.A., of Her Majesty's Irish Record Office, who has. always most generously placed at my disposal his boundless know- ledge of the Celtic language, literature, and antiquities, on which subjects he is now the highest living authority. I must, in the last place, express the hope that no words of mine ma,y help to deepen the wounds of Ireland, or cause pain to any generous heart, no matter what his religion or politics. GEORGE T. STOKES. 28, Trinity College, Dublin, October. 2,nd, 1886. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. PAGE Origin of Celtic Christianity — In Galatia — Gaul — England — St. Joseph and Glastonbury — The Holy Grail — Missionary in- fluence of the Roman military system — And of Roman com- merce — British Celtic Christianity in the fourth century — ■ Ireland and the Roman empire — Use of the terms Scotia and Scoti — 'Tacitus and Ireland — Alexandrian geographers on Hibernia — Wars between Irish Kings and the Romans^- Cormac MacArt ; Niall of the Nine Hostages — Claudian — ; 'Altus, an Irish soldier, at Calvary — Pelagius and Coelestius — A typical Irishman of the olden time — Palladius and the first attempt to cojivert Ireland ...,,, 1—24 LECTURE lU. ST. PATRICK. His works : Confession and Epistle to Coroticus — Book of Armagh, contents of — TSx&Qh&r^iAnnctations — LifebyMaccumacthenius — Test for mediaeval biographies — Hymns_ of SS. Fiacc and Sechuall — Colgam's Lives — The Tripartite Life — Birthplace of St. Patrick— Dumbarton — His father — A decurion — And a deacon — Clerical marriage and secular occupations in fifth century — Correspondence of Exuperius and Pope Innocent I. — Theodotus of Ancyra— Captivity of St. Patrick in Antrim — The hili of Slemish^His pious life and escape . . 25 — 45 CONTENTS. LECTURE III. ST. Patrick's mission. PAGE Mission of St. Patrick, a controverted question — Dr. Todd's view — Tireclian's statement— Germanus and the Pelagian heresy —The Hallelujah victory— Date and place of St. Patrick's arrival— Work at Wicklow, Strangford Lough, and Antrim— Conversion of Dichu — Description of Dalaradia — The valley of the Braid near Broughshane — Identification of Mikhu's farm, where Patrick was a slave — Value of local knowledge — Suicide of Milchu^St. Patrick's prophecy . . 46—61 LECTURE IV. TARA AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. Celtic nations and tribal organisation — Central national assemblies in Galatia-^Gaul and Ireland — Description of Tara — Connac MacArt — Convention of Tara — Brugh-na-Boinne and burial of Cormac — St. Patrick and Slane — King Laoghaire — Conflict of St. Patrick and the Draids — Easter at Tara — St. Patrick's mission to Connaught — Conversion of King Laoghaire's. daughters — St. Patrick at Croagh-Patrick — Legend concern- ing the expulsion of snakes from Ireland— Mission in Ulster — Foundation of Armagh — Visit to Munster — Death and burial of the saint 62—96 LECTURE V. ST. COLUMBA. , His history written by Adamnan — Life and works of Adamnan — Birth and baptism of St. Columba — Education at Clonard — St. Finnian — School of Clonard — Columba's ordination — Monastic bishops — Visit to Glasnevin — Literary zeal of Columba — C 'rrel with Finnian of Moville about the Cathach — Battles betwbc the Irish monasteries- — Battle of Cooldrevny — St. Molassius and Columba 97 — no CONTENTS. xi ' LECTURE VI. COLUMBA IN lONA. PAGE Causes assigned for Columba's exile, religious and politic?.! — ^Two districts called Dalriada — Scotch Dalriada an Irish colony — Brude, King of the Picts — Columba's voyage to lona Description of the island — Cashels in lona, Ireland, and Egypt — Columba's plan of evangelisation — Success among the Picts — Calls SS. Comgall and Canice to his help — Conversion of King Brude — Contest with the Druids — Synod of Drumceatt — Descent of the Royal family from Niall of the Nine Hostages — Connection with St. Columba — Columba's love of nature — His death . . ... , . . Ill — 130 LECTURE VII. COLUMBANUS. Missionary activity of Celtic Church — 'Marianus Scotus in eleventh century — Columbanus and Columba confounded — Distinction in origin — Age — Work — Authorities for life of Columbanus — Writings — Lifehy Abbat Jonas — Educationat Bangor — Studies in Celtic monasteries — Mission to Gaul — France in the sixth century-^Fredegund and Brunehault — Columbanus in Swit- zerland — St. Gall — Foundation of Bobbio — Its library and MSS.-^DeatK of Columbanus — His attitude towards the pope I3''^I48 LECTURE VIIL THE PASCHAL CONTROVEIC'SY. Origin of controversy concerning Easter — Easter cycles— Quar- todeciman view and Jewish controversy— Changes during first five centuries^Irish used old Roman cycle — Reformation of calendar by Victorius and Dionysius Exigi""vMission of St. Augustine and Easter question-^Resisti,.iice of Celts to Rome — Bishop Dagan and Columbanus— Munster accepts CONTENTS. Roman view — BS. Fintan and Laserian in controversy — Novel plan of settling a disputed question — Cummian's epistle ■ —Resistance of the Columban order in North England — Conference at Whitby— Colman and the monastery of Mayo — Antagonism of Celtic and Saxon monks^Submission of lona. 149—165 LECTURE IX. IRELAND AND THE EAST. Celtic monasticism, origin of — Monasticism in primitive Church — Nitria — Joannes Cassianus and his writings^Letters and influence of St. Jerome — Syria and France in fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries — St. Abraham^ — Simeon Stylites and enclosed anchorites — Anchorites in the East and in . Ireland — St. Doulough's Church — Use of term Dis.ert or Desert in Irish names and in Cassian — Hermit life in Ireland — Marianus Scotus — Anchorite rule — Enclosed anchorite on the Mount of Olives— Description of a Celtic monastery — Inismurray-^ InisclerauH and Mount Thabor, monasteries of . 166 — 18S LECTURE X THE 'SOCIAL LIFE OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY. Twofold division (i) The political life, (2) The ecclesiastical life^- Authorities — Reciprocal influence of Church and State- Division of Ireland into five kingdoms — Kingdom of Meath represented by present diocese of Meath— ^w,4 of Rightsf^ ,- Tribal distribution — Perpetual wars — Career of Phelim, King of Munster and bishop— Story of Bishop Corprius and the prince's spirit — Brehon law— Icelandic code— Sitting Dhama of Hindoos— Artistic efibrt among the Celts— The Book of Kells ' and the Codex Rossanensis — Professor Hartley's analysis of colours in Book of Kells — College of Slane — And Dagobert II., King of France — Correspondence between Colcu of Clonmacnois and Alcuin . ... . 189 210 CONTENTS. xiii LECTURE XI. GREEK AND HEBREW LEARNING IN IRISH MONASTERIES. PAGE Influence of IcoBodastic controversy on the West — Communication between East and West in middle ages — ^A. J. Letronne, and liber di MettsurA Orbis — Dicuil and Irish travellers in the East in the eighth century — Irish monks on the Sweetwater Canal — Chronicle of John Malalas — ^The Saltcar Na Hmm — Dis- covery of Iceland by Irish monks — Joh. Scotus Erigena — The Book of Armagh, and study of Greek in Ireland — Greek church at Trim — Celtic expositors — Commentaries of Aileran, Augus- tine, and Sedulius — ^Virgil, the geometer, and scientific studies in Ireland — Organisation of the Celtic schools . . 211 — 230 LECTURE XII. THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. Modem conception of historical science — Definition of a round tower — A'^arious theories about their origin — ^Dr. Petrie's views — ^Modified as to date by Lord Dunraven — Church towers, origin of — ^Early churches towerless like ancient Irish churches — Origin of church towers in Syria — Count de Vogue and Central Syria — Emperor Justinian and architecture — Byzantine art and its ioSnence — On France — ^And Ireland — Round towers at St Gall and Aix-la-Chapelle — ^Foreign eccledastics in Ireland — ^litany of CEngus the Culdee 231 — ^250 LECTURE XIIL THE DANISH INVASION OF IRELAND AND THE PAGAN CRUSADE. Danish invasion a great national movement — Or^in — ^Divisible into three great parts — ^Date-^Turgesius, the first great Danish conqueror of Ireland — His career and death — Foundation of Dublin — Primate Forannan — Social life and civilisation of the Danes-^Dasent's Burnt Njal — Icelandic Uterature . 251 — 266 xiv CONTENTS.. LECTURE XIV. THE DANISH KINGDOM OF DUBLIN. PAGE Brian Bora and Cormac of Cashel— Battle of Ballymoon— Cortnac's schorlaship and writings— Dr. Whitley Stokes' estimate of Cormac's Glossary— 'Vas Rock of Cashel— King Sitric, and the battle of Kilmashogue— Mercantile prosperity of Dublin under the Danes— Cloth trade with Bristol — Earl Haco's " broadcloth cruise " — ^Diocese and Danish kingdom of Dublin — Haliday's Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin — The Thing- mount and Althing of Dublin— And of Iceland^CoUege Green— The Stayne 267—282 ' LECTURE XV. BRIAN BORU AND THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY. Authorities for his history — Descent — Early struggle with the Danes — Mahon and the battle of Sulcoit — Murder of Mahon — Accession of Brian to throne of Munster — Conquest of Con- naught — Meath and Ulster — Of the Danes — Internal organisa- tions of Brian — Church-building — Crannoges — Battle of Glen- mama — Of Clontarf — Circumstances which led up to it — Queen Gormflaith — Danish allies at Clontarf-^Earl Sigurd — Brodar, the apostate — Morrogh O'Brian — Description of the battle — Death of Brian — Authorities for the battle of Clontarf — Rev. Dr. Haughton upon its date .... 283 — 306 LECTURE XVL THE SEE OF DUBLIN AND UNION WITH ENGLAND. I Conversion of Danes during the tenth and eleventh centuries led to foundation of See of Dublin — At first hostile to Armagh and the Celtic Church — Dependent on Canterbury— All its early bishops consecrated there — Ussher's Sylloge — Donatus, first bishop of Dublin — Foundation of Christ Church Cathedral — Patrick of Dublin and Laufranc of Canterbury — C orrespon- CONTENTS. iv PAGB dence of Lanfranc in the Sylloge — Attempt to reform the Celtic Chmrch — Dr. Lanigan on Patrick's submission to Lan- franc — ^A plundering bishop — Gregory, first archbishop — A valiant soldier, then a prelate^ — Primate of Armagh seizes Dublin by force — Gilbert of Limerick, and his treatise De Statu Ecdesue-^Sjnoi. of Kells — St. Laurence O'Toole— The Prioiy of All Saints and Trinity CoUege — ^Dermot MacMurrogh and the Anglo-Norman invasion-^Death of St. Laurence 307 — ^329 LECTURE XVII. ST. MALACHY AND THE SEE OF ARMAGH. Distinction between sees of Armagh and of Dublin^ Origin of Armagh — Succession of primates — Book of Armagh — Brian Boru and Armagh — Married primates — Gilbert of Limerick — Primate Celsus—^Synbds of Usnach and Rathbresail — St. Bernard and St. Malachy — Life of St Malachy — Bishop, first at Connor — ^Theri at Armagh, and lastly at Down — Malachy 's visit to York — Clairvaux and Rome — An Irish episcopal journey in the twelfth century — Synods of Holmpatrick and Kells — Cardinal Papiro — Gelasius first archbishop of Armagh who held the pall — Synod of Clane— -The primate submits to Henry II 33°— 349 LECTURE I, THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. I HAVE chosen as the subject of my present course the history of the ancient Celtic Church, from its origin down to the conquest of Ireland by the Anglo- Normans. It is an obscure and difficult, but at the same time a most interesting subject. I shall endeavour to treat it truthfully, fearlessly, and impartially. Let me now define clearly what I propose- to do in this lecture. I propose to treat of the history of the ancient Celtic Church, not merely of the history of the Irish Church. I certainly intend to devote special attentioij to the Irish branch of that Church. But Celtic Christianity was both older and more extensive than Irish Christianity, and an exhaustive discussion of our subject will demand an investigation of its sources. Again, let me warn you at the outset, that in taking up this subject I do not present myself as an original investigator. I am no profound Irish or Celtic scholar, qualified to deal with the recondite mysteries of ancient dialects or well-nigh illegible manuscripts. I am simply a diligent student of the results skilled inquirers have attained, which I, in turn, will endea- vour to weave into a connected and interesting narra- tive. Indeed, I may remark, in vindication of my own attempt, that the most diligent student of Celtic I HISTORY OF IRELAND. annals or Celtic philology would not necessarily be the. most competent historian of the Celtic Church, simply because his intellectual field of vision had been too limited. A man might be very highly skilled in the mysteries of the Cornish, Manx, or Pictish dialects, and yet be wholly wanting in that broad knowledge of ecclesiastical and general history which sheds light on many a perplexing passage. I have said that Celtic Christianity was older and wider than its Irish form, and I have said so because British and Gallic Christianity were both of them Celtic, and both of them prior in point of time to its Irish form. The subject of this day's lecture will then be Celtic Christianity prior to St. Patrick. Addressing a University audience, I need scarcely remind them that a Celtic Christianity, with its peculiar national faults and characteristics, finds place even in the New Testament. The Galatians, whose apostasy from pure Christianity has endowed the Church with St. Paul's masterly defence of Christian freedom, were Celts; and let me say at the same time that, though they may have given the apostle ,trouble, yet nowhere did the Church of Christ find a more loving and a more passionate devotion in those earlier ages than among the Celts of Asia Minor. Yet I must pass over Celtic Christianity in its-Galatian form, simply referring you to Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on the Galatian Epistle, where the subject is exhausted. Gallic Christianity again was Celtic, and was very ancient. The Gauls were undoubtedly Celts, and Celts, too, very closely aUied with the Celtic tribes of Britain and of Ireland. The language, for instance, of ancient Gaul was akin to the Irish tongue. Of that ancient Gallic language we have not many extant monuments. riUB ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 3 One of them was brought before the Royal Irish Academy some twenty years ago by the late Pro- fessor Lottner of this University. It consisted of a Druidical charm, half in Latin and half in Gallic, which had sorely puzzled French antiquarians, but revealed its secrets to our own professor, because he per- ceived at a glance that the Gallic words were iden- tical with- expressions still used in Irish.^ I need scarcely delay over Celtic Christianity as it developed itself in Gaul at this early stage. Every tiro in eccle- siastical history knows that Celtic Gaul received the Gospel from the earliest times, while the celebrated story of the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, as told by Eusebius in the fifth book of his History, proves that the Celtic Christians of the second century were just as ready in Gaul as in Galatia to lay down their lives for Christ. It is important, too, as bearing on our future investigations, to remember that Gallic was intimately connected with Oriental Christianity. The Christians of Lyons and Vienne, under Marcus Aurelius, sent an account of their sufferings to the Church of Asia as to the mother Church. Irenaeus, second Bishop of Lyons, was a Greek, and a native of Asia Minor. The whole of southern Gaul was, in fact, Greek and Oriental as much as Roman, and remained so till the Middle Ages;^ a fact, which we shall do well carefully to note for future reference. ' See "The Gaulish Inscription of Poitiers, containing a Charm against the Demon Dontaurios," by R. T. Siegfried and C. F. Lottner, a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, April 13th, 1863. See its Proceedings, t. viii., p. 308, and ?i fac- simile on plate xxiii. in the Appendix. ^ Ed. Le Blant, Chret. Inscrip. de la Gaule, t, i., pref., p. cxv.,_ •aiid Diss.Nos. 38, 211, 225, 248 ; t. ii., Diss. Nos. 52!, 557,, 613. The most interesting of all these dissertations is that on the life of St. Abraham, an Eastern monk of the fifth century, who passed HISTORY OF IRELAND. The ancient Celtic Church of Britain comes nearer home to ourselves. English -Christianity is commonly supposed to date from the time of Pope Gregory the Great, and the mission of St. Augustine. You all know the story how Pope Gregory, passing through the slave market of Rome, saw the children exposed for sale, and demanded the name of their nation. Being in- formed they were Angles, he replied, " Not Angles, but angels if Christians ; " whereupon Augustine was sent to found English Christianity. English Christianity, I say, not British. Mark the difference. Take up the last volume published by the lamented historian Mr. Green, The Making of England, and you will understand the vast importance of the distinction I have made. English Christianity, the Christianity of the Angles and of the Saxons, dates from Augustine, and was derived from Rome. British Christianity was the Christianity -of the Britons; it existed here for ages before Augustine, and must have been derived immediately from Gaul. This, if I am not mistaken, is far from being the ordinary view ; people usually think that Pagan dark- ness covered England and Ireland alike till St. Patrick came in the fifth century and converted Ireland, which enjoyed the light of the Gospel for a century and a half before England, where it did not penetrate till the beginning of the seventh century. Such, I ^ay, is the popular view, due simply to ignorance of such an from the banks of the Euphrates, where he was born, to end his days in Central Gaul. ^ He died about A.D. 476 (Till., Mim,, xvi., 258 ; Ceill., x., 393, xi., 380). Cf. Hieron., Liber Secundus, In Epistolam ad Galat., in Migne, Pat. Lat., t. xxvi., 35'4 ; Salvian. De Guber. Dei, iv., 14; Mabillon, AA. SS. Ord. Bened., i., 662. See also Lentheric's La Grice et VOrient en Provence (Paris 1878), and Les Villes Mortes du Golfe de Lyon (Paris : 1876—78) —two very interesting works which illustrate this topic. THE ANCIENT CELTIC. CHURCH. ordinary authority as Bede's History of the English Nation. Let me, then, endeavour briefly to sketch the fortunes of Christianity among the British people during the earliest ages of the Church. -The notices of Christianity in England during the first three centuries of our era are few and far between; Of Christian monuments, tombs, . inscriptions, churches, belonging to that period, there are simply none extant. During the first two centuries we have no certain records of any Christian effort in England. Mediaeval tradition speaks of Joseph of Arimathea as coming to Glastonbury. But the mere statement of the tradition is a sufficient refutation thereof. The Jews hated, we are told, Lazarus and Joseph st) much for their active sup- port of Christ's cause, that at last they arrested them, put them on board a ship without sails "or oars, which was miraculously guided first to Marseilles, where Lazarus became the first bishop,^ and then to Britain, where Joseph founded the Church at Glastonbury.^ More attention is due to the alleged conversion of some noble Britons at Rome about the time of St. Paul's first visit. Tacitus tells us, in \as, Annals (xiii., 32), that Pomponia Graecina was the wife of Aulus Plautius, the first real ' The traditions concerning Lazarus and his mission in southern Gaul are still prevalent in that locality. Cf. Notes sur les Livres Liturgiques des Dioceses d'Avtun, Ckalon, et Macon, par M. Pel- lechet (Paris : 1883), p. 2*27, and the Revue Critigue,]aimaxy 26th, 1885, p. 67. '' Ussher, :Brit. Eccles. Antiqq., cap. ii, (Works, ed. Elnngton, vol. v., p. 25-47), gives the whole of this legend, including the story of the Holy Grail, celebrated in the Acts of King Arthur, and by Lord Tennyson in his poems. The story is told at length in Baring-Gould's -(Tanowj Myths of the Middle Ages, second series, p, 339. The grail itself vvas the vessel out of which our Lord partook of the Last Supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea col- lected His blood, when Christ's side was transfixed by the spear. It.was then carried by him to Britain. According to another HISTORY OF IRELAND conqueror of Britain, about the years 43 — 47 a.d.:. She was accused, about the year 57, of holding a foreign superstition, and delivered over to the judgment of her husband, who very naturally acquitted, her. The foreign superstition has been identified with Chris- tianity, — and with good reason, as the excavations and investigations of De Rossi at Rome have proved. This simple historical fact has, however, become the basis on which a vast superstructure has been made to rest.' Pomponia Grsecina has been made a sister of Caracta- cus, the British prince. Caractacus was, as Tacitus tells us, led captive to Rome, where his daring speech and bearing so impressed the emperor that he gave him life and comparative liberty.- At Rome Caractacus and Bran, his father, a Druidical bard, and Gladys, his daughter, were all converted to Christianity. Gladys became the wife of Rufus, from his modesty called Pudens, who is identified with the Pudqns of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and with the Rufus and Pudens mentioned by the poet Martial.^ I need scarcely say, however, that all these suppositions are utterly devoid of version, the grail is preserved in heaven till a race of heroes appear on earth worthy to become its guardians. This gave occasion to the stories- about King Arthur's Court, the Knights Galahad, Launcelot, and others, celebrated by Tennyson. See also Das Evangelmm Nicodemi in der Abendldndischen Literatur, by Dr. R. P. Wiilcker (Paderborn : 1872) ; at p. 72 there is an excursus concerning the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and his mission to England. Ireland's freedom from snakes is attributed to St. Joseph as well as to St. Patrick (Ussher's Works, vi,, 552). The two articles on Joseph of Arimathea in the Diet. Christ. Biog., t. iii., p. 439, give other authorities about these traditions. ' All these stories about Pudens, Rufus, Aristobulus of Rom. xvi., said by the Greek Menaea to have been ordained by St. Paul bishop over the Britons, and also about the baptism of the British King Lucius, will be found in Ussher's Srit. Eccle.s. Antigtiit., cap. iii., in Elrington's edition of his works, t. v ■ cf. Martial's Epig-., iv., 13, xi., 53. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 7 historical evidence, and owe all their currency to medi- seval Welsh legends, which represent the Druid bard as returning to Britain and preaching the Gospel to his pagan countrymen. During the second century again we have no historical evidence for the existence of Chris- tianity in Britain. TertuUian, at the close of it, boast- ing in a rhetorical passage of the wide spread of the Gospel, declares that Christ was worshipped among the Moors, the Spaniards, the Germans, the various nations of the Gauls ; while even the parts of Britain imper- vious to the Roman legions acknowledged the sway of Christ.^ But on such rhetorical expressions we can lay no stress. It is indeed most probable that Christianity did find an entrance into Britain during those early years, but we have no evidence of this fact. There were numerous channels through which it could perco- late. We scarcely ever realise the full meaning of St. Paul's words, that it was in the fulness of time God sent forth His Son, till we grasp the vast, the magni- ficent, the far-reaching organisation of ' the Roman Empire, which carried law and order and a thorough system of communication from the borders of the Indian Ocean to the shores of the North Atlantic, so" that a traveller could leave Ctesiphon, or Babylon, in . Mesopotamia, or the city of Nicomedia in Asia Minor, as Constantine the Great once did, and never draw rein till the public conveyance set him down at Boulogne, on the shores of the English Channel. , That system of public roads ^ easily lent itself to the extension of ' Tertull., Adv. Jud., c. vii. ^ On the putilicroad system of the Romans, and the construction thereof, see Le Bas and Waddington, Voy. ArcheoL, t. iii., p. 206 ; for vast constructions under Domitian, see Rev. Arch., 1873, t. xxvi., 65 ; cf. Jour. Hell. Stud., 1883, t. iv., p. 30; and Mittheil. Inst. Ath., 1882, p. 130, about road-making under Severus. On British roads see Coote's Romans of Britain, p. 55. HISTORY OF IRELAND. the Gospel. But there were two other influences at work which must have introduced Christianity to Britain from the earliest date. One was the army, the other Was commerce. The Roman military system is well worth the careful study which modern German scholars, led by the venerable and indefatigable Momm- sen, have long devoted to it.^ That system located the legions permanently in various countries. Some legions- were stationed for even three or four centuries in the same province, where the legions settled more like military colonists than soldiers on ordinary foreign service. But while the Romans stationed the legions permanently in the same places, they always recruited ■ them in foreign lands, so that a legion in garrison at York would be recruited in Spain or Asia Minor, while a legion in Asia Minor would draw its recruits from Britain or Germany.^ I need scarcely remind you that the New Testament itself offers various examples^ notably that of Cornelius, the centurion of the Italian band^— of this method of military organisation, as also of the influence exercised by it in spreading the Gospel into foreign lands. We can observe the same phenomenon in our own time. The British army is still an active agent in disseminating the various tides of home opinion throughout our worldwide empire. ' See Geschichte der Romi'schen Kaiserlegionen, von Dr. W; Pfitzner, p. 201, and a series of articles in Hermes, t. xix., by Mommsen, on the constitution, location, and recruitment of the Roman legions. " The intercourse between Britain and the most distant East is shown by the inscription in the language of Palm3T:a, discovered a few years ago at South Shields, and published by Dr. Wright, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vi., 436 ; cf. Clermont-Ganneau, in the Revue Critique, February 2nd, 1885, p. 89. Le Bas and Waddington, Voy. Arch., iii., 332, Ins. 1364, notice the presence of British troops in Pamphylia ; cf. Ephem-. Epigraph., 1884, vol. v., p. 28, no. 41. THE ANCIENT. CELTIC CHURCH. 9 The evangelical, the tractarian, the rationalistic move- ments, have all found devoted and powerful missionaries in the British army. Perhaps the most notable ex- ample in modern Church history that occurs to me is the foundation of Methodism in the United States. Gne hundred and twenty years ago communication "between England and America was much slower and more dangerous than between Rome and London in the reign of the Antonines. Yet within thirty years of the foundation of the Methodist Society by John Wesley, a few; soldiers in a marching regiment founded a Methodist Society at New York about the year 1765, which has grown so . rapidly as to have now become the most powerful and numerous religious community in America.^ Can we imagine' that the religious zeal of the Christians of the second century glowed with a less fervent flame than that of Wesley's disciples in the eighteenth ? Commerce, again, was another influence which must have powerfully assisted the progress of the Cross in these Western Islands. The possession of Britain was not coveted by Rome simply from a lust of power. It was desired because of its commercial value. Its vast herds of cattle served to supply the needs of Gaul. The Romans showed their good taste, too, and valued highly even the delicacies of Britain. The oysters, for instance, the " natives " of Kent, were dearly loved by the epicures of Rome, who imported them from the great Roman station of Richborough, near Thanet.^ But it was the mines of England which then as now constituted its commercial importance. Lead, tin, copper, iron were extracted by the Roman Government. ' Stevens, Hist, of MetJiodism, t. i., p. 329 (London : i860). '^ Juvenal, Sat, iv., 141 ; Plin., Nat. Hist, ix., 79, xxxii., 21. 10 ^ HISTORY OP IRELAND. The various museums of England possess about fifty bloclis or pigs of lead, marked with the Imperial stamp, — proving that in England, as in Spain, Africa, and the East, the Roman Government retained the mines in their own hands. An active export trade was at the same time carried on by private individuals, who purchased the minerals from the imperial ofHcials, A vigorous trade in tin was, indeed, carried on between England and the Mediterranean long before the Romans conquered the island ; not only through the Cartha- ginian traders, but also by direct export to the opposite -coast of Gaul, whence the metal was carried on horse- back to Marseilles and Narbonne ; and, when we come to Roman times, commerce must have followed much the same track. A block of copper has been found near Conway, addressed by a Roman merchant to his partner ' in Rome, and destined for exportation probably from the port of Chester. To those interested in the social life of this period I may commend a paper on mining operations in Britain under the Romans, in the Proceedings of the Somerset Archseo- logical Society for 1858.^ This active commercial intercourse must inevitably have brought Christianity -in its train. British Christianity does not, however, appear in history till the fourth' century. The British Church is seen fully organised af the Synod of Aries, in a.d. 314, when three MetropoHtan bishops signed the acts of the Council,— Eborius, of York ; Restitutus, of London ; and Adelfius, of Cserleon-on-Usk,^ representing the ' Som. Arch. Soc. Proceedings iox 1858, paper by J. Yates, M.A. On the missionary influence of commerce, see J. RSville, Reli- gion Sous les Severes, p. 49 (Paris : 1886). ^ So called from Legio ii. Augusta, there stationed; see Hiibner's British Inscriptions in Cor^. Ins. Lot., t. vii., p. 36. THE -ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. ii three great centres of Roman life in Britain.-' The fourth century showed not merely the organisation, it also proved the life and vigour of the British Church. Its opening decade was marked by the longest, the fiercest, and the most skilfully organised persecution the Church ever encountered. Britain did not experience its fury, which fell upon Italy, Africa, and the East, on Asia Minor, Palestine,, Egypt, where thousands sealed their faith with their blood, as the pages of Eusebius and the touching stories of the genuine martyrologies so abundantly record. Britain was under the rule of. Constantius, father of .Constantine the Great. He was favourably disposed to Christianity, and mitigated, therefore, the severity of the imperial edicts. Yet the desire for martyrdom which at that time seized upon the Church like an epidemic displayed itself in Britain.^ St. Alban, the protomartyr of Britain, suffered at St. Albans, Aaron and Julius at Chester, and many of both sexes suffered elsewhere throughout the island,^ But the period of persecution passed away, and then British Christianity rapidly developed itself British bishops were probably present at Nice in 325, and at Sardica in- 347. They were certainly present at the Arian Council of Ariminum in 359, where the British and Gallic bishops displayed their independence of Imperial influence by refusing the public allowance for their maintenance. The British Churches of the ' Mansi, Concilia, ii., 463-468 ; Hefele's History of ^ Councils, i., r8o, Clark's trans. ; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils of Great Britain, \., 1-40, where references will be found for all the stories about early British Christianity. , ', '^ See, for instance, the stories of the SS. "Eulalia of Merida and Barcelona, in the Did ^ Christ. Biog., t. ii., p. 276. ^ Cf. Cellier, Hist, des Attt. Ecchsiast., xi., 526, for a notice of St.' Sixtus, an early British martyr, reverenced when St. Augustine landed. 12 HISTORY- OF IRELAND. fourth century took the keenest interest in Church con- troversies. They opposed Arianism, but hesitated, like many others,- about the use of the word o/ioovcrto?. The British Church, indeed, of this period proved its interest in theological questions by the most vigorous and satisfactory' of proofs. It produced a heretic. Pelagius, the founder of the Pelagian heresy, and the- antagonist of Augustine, is said to have been a Welshman, whose British name was Morgan.* By the close of the fourth century, Christianity must have, prevailed universally among the British Celts. This is evident from the simple fact that the Celtic population which retired in the fifth and following centuries before the conquering Saxons were all of them Christians. A quotation- proves this. Bede, who hated the Celts with a true Saxon hatred, depicts these original British Christians as guilty of most heinous crimes, disgraceful to their Christian profession. But in lib. i., cap. xxii. he singles out one for which the Divine judgment fell on them, — "They never preached the faith to the Saxons or English who dwelt among them." With a refinement and intensity of national hate, they left them to perish in their sins, determined that if the Saxons were superior to the Celts in this world, the position should be reversed in the next. So much for British Christianity in Celtic times. Let us turn to Ireland and its history. The his- ' Ussher, Eccles. Britan. Antiqq., Works, v., 252, ed. Elrington ; see also the notes in Migne's Pat. Lat, Hieron., Opp., t. w., col. 682, -wrhere references will be found to Marius Mercator, Com- monit.; Orosius, Apologe't.; Prosper, Cartn. de Ingrat.; August., Epist., 186. St. Jerome expressly asserts in his Comment, in Jerem., Prasf., lib. iii., that -Pelagius was an Irishman. His -words are, " Habet progeniem Scoticae gentis, de Britannorum yicinia." On the signification of the name Morgan, and its identity with Pelagius, see Dr. Reeves' paper on St. Marinus in Proceedings - Roy. Irish Acad., viii., 299. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 13 tory of our country is a perplexing maze. It has suffered much at the hands of partisans, on this side and on that. It has suffered still more at the hands of injudicious and uncritical friends, who not distinguishing between the rhapsodies of bards and the solid facts of history, have disgusted common-sense inquirers with the whole subject. I will not bring you back, with the Four Masters, or Keating, or Guest, to the flood and the confusion of tongues,-' but will so'berly" inquire" whejther we have any ground for believing that Christianity existed among the Irish, or, as we should rather call them, among the Scots, prior to St. Patrick's mission. ' It is very important for you to ■ remember this fact, which bears upon our whole inquiry, — whenever in 'the first eleven centuries the term Scot occurs, it always means Irishman. During the first seven centuries the Picts were the inhabitants of modern Scotland. It was not till .the eleventh or twelfth century that the term Scotland ■ or Scotia was applied in its modern sense.^ Now, the answer to the question, Was Christianity known in Ireland during the first four cen- turies ? depends upon the answer to a further question. Was Ireland known to the Romans ? This admits of a very simple reply. Ireland was known to the Romans, as is evident from twq lines of proof, — one direct, the other indirect. In the Agricola of Tacitus we have a ' Thus Keating, in his History of Ireland, O'Mahony's edition (New York: 1881), p. 106, tells us how some chroniclers relate that Cain's threS daughters were the first who dwelt in Ireland, while another account has it that Cassir, daughter of Bith, Noah's son, arrived in Ireland before the flood, landing near Bantry in the co. Cork. -^ See Ussher's Antiqq., cap. xvi., Works, vol. vi., p. 276 — 281 ; Keating, p. 375 ; Skene's Celtic Scotland, i., 137, 398 ; Dr. Reeves on Stephen White in Proceedings Roy. Irish Acad., viii., 29 ; Colgan's Trias Thaumat, p. 109. 14 HISTORY OF IRELAND. very full and minute account of the campaigns carried on by the great Roman general Agricola under Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian between the years ^8 and 86. These campaigns embraced Wales, Anglesea, and North Britain south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, or say generally a line drawn from Glasgow . to Edinburgh. This campaign must have brought him, within sight of Ireland. In fact, Ireland and Scotland are in places so close that, standing on the cliffs of the Antrim coast, I have often seen the houses in Scotland, while I have sailed from land to land in an open boat in three hours. Agricola's curiosity was aroused by the sight of Ireland, and hence in chapter twenty-four we are informed that in his fifth campaign he, garrisoned the part of Britain which looks towards Ireland, not so much from fear of Invasion as from hope of conquest. He gives us an interesting description of this country; "Hibernia," he says, "is situated between Britain and Spain, and is very accessible from the shores. of Gaul. In size it is smaller than Britain, but larger than the islands of the Mediterranean. The soil; climate, manners, and habits of the people are similar to those of Britain. Its ports are well known to merchants." The historian then gives us the first glimpse of actual contact between Rome and Ireland. " Agricola had received one of their chiefs expelled in a domestic feud, and retained him in aUiance for future use. I have often heard from him that Ireland could be conquered and held by one legion ; and that it would, be profitable for Rome as against the Britons, that their arms should be dominant everywhere, and that ■'freedom should be everywhere abolished out of their sight." ^ This is the earliest notice of Ireland in real history. ' Tacit., Agricola, c. xxiv. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 15 The earlier Greek historians and geographers mention vaguely lerne. Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, in the time of Augustus, tell of its existence on the strength of the voyages of Pytheas about the time of Alexander the Great and of the Carthaginian merchants. But Agricola was , the first historical personage who came iiito contact with Ireland, and his notice of it is instruc- tive. It is evident from it that the description left us by Csesar and Tacitus of the state of Gaul and Britain may be applied to Ireland. Just note two points of similarity. Firstly, in Agricola's time— that is, the first century — its inhabitants were divided, like the Britons, into clans or tribes. Secondly, these clans were torn, . as our annals relate, by intestine feuds. Whilst' we , see that an Irish prince, when beaten by his opponents, was just as ready in the first century to betray his country to the Romans as an Irish prince in the twelfth century to betray - it to the Normans. The geography of Ptolemy in the second century shows that a very extended intercourse with Ireland must have prevailed by the time of the Antonines, as the Alexandrian geo- grapher gives a very minute and accurate account of our country. But then we must remember that the second century was an age of great activity on the part of the Roman power in Britain. Voyages of discovery must frequently have been undertaken. Agricola, a little earlier, was not .content with conquering Britain as far as the Clyde. He sent his fleet on a voyage, round the north coast of Scotland ; and surely; if the Rordan fleet hesitated not to encounter the dangers of such northern seas, they would not have been deterred by the calmer and bluer waters which surround our coasts.-' We are not left, however, without evidehce that ' Tacit., Agricola,., capp, x., xxxviii. l6- history op IRELANt>. the naval officers stationed at ports like Chester and the Clyde did extend their voyages to the opposite island. Some thirty or forty years ago Mr. Put! and, of Bray, was digging the foundation of a gateway on the side of Bray head, when he came upon a number of bodies interred side by side, each with a copper coin of Trajan or Hadrian lying upon his breast, the obolus, doubtless, to pay Charon, the infernal ferryman. Roman coins. Coo, extending from the age of Nero to the time of Honorius in the fifth century, have been found in abundance all along the eastern coast, as, for instance, on the Three Rock Mountain, at Rathfarnham, at Downpatrick, the Giant's Causeway, Coleraine, and many other places. At the Causeway, in the year 1 83 1, there were two hundred Roman coins found, extending from Vespasian, a.d. 70, to the Antonines, A.D. 160; while in 1854 two thousand Roman coins and two hundred ounces of silver were discovered at Coleraine,-' Between the second and the fourth centuries we hear, practically nothing of any contact between Rome and Ireland. In the middle of the third century the Irish annals tell of an expedition against Britain fitted out by ' On the Roman coins found in Ireland see Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, t. ii., 184 — 190 ; t. v., 199 ; t. vi., 442, 525 ; and several other references j. v. Coins, in the general Index to vol. vii. On the Coleraine find see John Scott Porter in Ulster Journ. Arch., 1854, p. 182 — 191; and Hiibner, Brit. Ins., in Cori). Ins. Lot., t. vii., p. 221, No. 119S. The coins found in 1854 were all of the fourth and fifth centuries, ending with Honorius, under whom Britain was finally abandoned by the Romans. Porter men- tions several other similar finds in the same locality during this century. Those found in 1854 contained specimens of the name Patricius, which is rare among the British inscriptions. The coins mentioned in Proc. R. I. A., t. vi., p. 442 are specially worthy of notice, for they all belonged to the time of the Roman Republic. A coin of Valentiuian was found at New Grange about 1698. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 17 Cormac MacArt, King of Ireland and founder of Tara, and they add a long list of booty which he gained on this occasion. It was, however, only in the fourth century, when the warlike energies of the Roman Empire had become relaxed, and vigorous life was fast fading at its extremities, that the Hibefnian Scots became the implacable and perpetual foes of the empire, Among the sources of Roman history in the fourth century the works of Ammianus Marcellinus stand pre-eminent. He was the friend of the poet Claudian, whose poems shed matiy an interesting sidelight on the -narrative ' Df the historian. From a comparison of these sources ive see how deadly and how continuous were the attacks of the Irish upon Britain. In 343 they seem ;o have begun the conflict. In a.d. 360 they broke a :reaty of peace, and in combination with the Picts, 3axons, and Attacotti kept possession of Britain for :en years under an Irish king, called Crimthann,-' till rheodosius, landing in Kent in 369, thoroughly subjugated the whole country, and reorganised the )ublic service, appointing two new officials, one to lommand the Channel fleet and watch the Saxon )irates ; the other, the Comes Britanniarum, to guard he western coast against the Irish attacks.^ The ictory of Theodosius was for a time complete, and ' For Crimthann see Keating, p. 369, and -Four Masters, •D. 366. Upon these invasions of Britain lay Scots and Attacots, ae Amm. Marcell., xx., i, xxvi., 4, xxvii., 8 ; Claudian, De IV. 'ofus. Honor. Paneg., viii., 30-33 ; xxii. in i. Cons. Stilich., lib. ii., ^\; De Bella GeUco Lib., 416-418 ; Four Masters, ed. O'Dono- an, A.D. 405 ; Ussher, Works, vi., n6, where the references to ;iaudian will be found at liill length. This is one of the earliest id most interesting allusions in Irish annals that can be verified y external authorities. Niall of the Nine Hostages renewed the •ar with Rome a few years later (Ussher, vi., 115, 559 ; Keating, ■ 373)- 2 See Notitia Dignitatum, ed. Booking (Bonn: 1839-53). 2 i8 HISTORY OF IRELAND. Claudian exultingly sings of " Icy lerne " weeping for her heaps of slain, of Thule red with the blood of the Picts, of the Orkneys dripping with Saxon gore, of the general himself conquering the Hyperborean waves with audacious prow. This defeat seems to have been the means of making the Irish people more closely acquainted with Rome than ever before. Theodosius must have beeh struck with the vigour and energy displayed by these barbarians in his campaign. So instead of murdering his prisoners, he organised the Attacots into imperial cohorts, which he stationed at Treves, in Gaul,' where they were seen by St. Jerome, after the victory of Theodosius, performing the duties of a Roman garrison, but feeding themselves, according to the Saint, on human flesh. St. Jerome had evidently not quite shaken himself free from the influence of those earlier legends which represented Ireland as the abode of perpetual snow, and its inhabitants as cannibals.-' You can easily see how this extended commercial intercourse, these continuous wars, these plundering expeditions, must all have helped to convey a know-' ledge of Christianity to some at least of the Hibernian Scots. The annals of Ireland speak of one Altus, an Irish warrior in the service of Rome, who was ' The Attacots were a people scattered over the south-western parts of Scotland and the northern parts of Ireland (Petrie's Tara, p. 46, and Skene's Celt. Scott., i., loi ; O'Donovan's Notes to Four Masters, a.d. 405). They were embodied in the Roman army, and make a distinguished figure in the Notitia Dignitatum (see Bocking's note, t. i., p. 227). St. Jerome (Adv.Jovin., lib. ii., cap. 7, in Migne's Pat. Lat., t. xxiii., col. 296) says they eat human flesh, and charges the Irish of that day with ' practising community of wives. Mr. Hennessy considers that the Attacots were the same as the Scots, and that Attacotti is only a Latinised form of the Celtic word Aitechtuatha, signifying peasants. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 19 — I ■ 1 present at our Lord's crucifixion, and was so im- piessed with the miracles he beheld that he returned to preach the faith to his cOuntrymen,^a tradition embodied in verse by Sir S. Ferguson in his Lays of phe Western Gael: — "And they say, Centurion Altus, when he to Emama came, , And to Rome's subjection called us, urging Caesar's tribute claim ;, Told that half the world barbarian thrills already with the faith, Taught them by the god-like Syrian Csesar lately put to death." The story is not impossible, though very improbable, because we have of . late years learned from extant inscriptions that British troops were sent to garrison Asia Minor, and some of them may have found their way to Jerusakm in the course of military changes.* Again, the great invasions of Britain during the latter half of the fourth century must have brought . many a Christian captive' into Ireland, some of whom may, like the captive maid in Naaman's household, have used their influence for the promotion of the true faith. Indeed, we are not left without instances showing how such border raids upon the empire tended during the fourth century to the spread of the truth. The conversion of Georgia dates from the year 320. That country has ever since retained its faith, notwithstanding the. assaults of Parsee Dualism and of Mahometanism. Yet that conversion was originally due to a female captive named Nina.^ Com- ' British troops in PamphyUa, Le Bas and Wadd., Voy. Arch.,\\i., p. 332, Ins. No. 1364. Cf Efih. Epig., 1884, t. v., p. 28, no. 41. ^ See arts. " Iberian Church" and " Nina" in the Diet. Christ Biography. 20 HISTORY OF IRELAND. merce, too, constant and extended as it was between Gaul and Ireland, must have introduced Christianity during the fourth century. It was the age of an Atha- nasius and a Jerome, equally well known on the banks of the Rhine, the Nile, and the Jordan; it was the age of a Hilary of Poitiers, of a Martin of Tours; and can we imagine that none of their converts penetrated to an island so well known to them, especially when- we learn from other sources that in this same fourth century the Gospel was spread by Christian merchants far beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, — to Aden, for instance, where they founded a Church ; to Ceylon and to Abyssinia?'- The strong presumptions thus created we- shall find fully borne out by history. Christian captives must , have been carried off from Britain in those raids of the Hibernian Scots about the time of the Ernperor Julian. The best chronology fixes the date of St. Patrick's captivity in Ireland some time towards the close of the fourth century. While again we have the clearest historical proofs that Christian Irishmen existed before the close of the fourth century. I have already men- tioned Pelagius, the founder of the Pelagian heresy. He was regarded by all his contemporaries as a Briton, as I have already mentioned. Let me call your special attention to him for a moment. ' His life reveals the intellectual activity of the British Church; it reveals, too, the extended travel and intercourse which found place between the greatest extremes of the Roman Empire. He was born in Britain, spent his earlier manhood in Rome, whence about the year 410 he passed to Sicily, Africa, Syria, and Asia Minor, vigorously maintaining ' See article on Ethiopian Church in Smith's Diet. Christ. Biog., Cosinas Indicopl., iii., 179; Neander, H. E., iii., 171. THE_ ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 21 md diffusing his peculiar opinions in all these regions. . Bis bosom friend, the chosen companion of all his ourneys and labours, was Ccelestius, an Irishman. Zoelestius, during the first thirty years of the fifth :entury, was one of the most prominent figures in the -eligious and in the political world too of that day. His activity was immense. He had developed even in :hat early age a true Irish faculty for agitation, and realised fully that successful agitation can only be carried 3n by intense personal exertion. His early training eminently qualified him for his future life. He was a lawyer by education, and practised in the Roman Courts ibout the year a.d. 400. There he becarne acquainted with Pelagius and his system. Pelagius was a quiet :ontemplative soul, who loved to follow out his specula- dons on the mysteries of grace and providence in :he. retirement of the closet, but hated, like all such souls, the bustle and din of the controversial world. Mow, however, he came in contact with one qualified to io the rough work of life. Ccelestius, the lawyer, was :onverted from law to theology, and embraced the system Df Pelagius with the greatest enthusiasm. In no age, :aowever, have lawyers succeeded in theology. Their ;raining does not fit them for it. Their own peculiar subject develops a hard, sharp, legal tone of mind, ivhich tolerates no mystery, no half-lights, no halting ;ompromises; and in all true theology the mysterious element ever enters in,, to disconcert that tone and to iemand such compromises. Coelestiiis seized on the system of Pelagius, demanded and obtained clear views Dn the subject, and then set them forth in the most incompromising and offensive manner. At Carthage igainst St. Augustine, at Rome before the Pope, at Constantinople before the Patriarch, he sustained and 22 HISTORY OF IRELAND., expounded his views. His travels would be regarded as immense even amongst moderns. He penetrated the most distant East, and took counsel with the celebrated Theodore of Mopsuestia. Again and again was he ex- pelled from Rome and from Constantinople by imperial and ecclesiastical rule alike. He brought down upon himself the wrath and the abusive tongue of St. Jerome, who describes him in his usual style as " an Alpine cur reared up on Scotch porridge." ■'■ He was irrepressible too. In 416 he gained the Pope Zosimus over to his side. The wily Italian, well-skilled in affairs, was nomatch for the persuasive tongue of the Irishman dealing with the subtleties of theology. , Overawed, however, by the authority of an Augustine and of a Jerome, whose dicta were then decisive in the theological world, the pope, changed his mind and condemned Coelestius. Coeles- tius, however, was nothing daunted. If the pope agreed with him, so much the better ; but if the pope disagreed, why, Coelestius did not care, but wo^ld seek redress in other quarters. The last glimpse we get of this typical Irishman is from Constantinople. The year 431 was marked by the Council of EpTiesus and the opening of the great Nestorian controversy, which completely dwarfed the Pelagian in duration and results. Coeles- tius, true to his instinct, was there too, bearding the pope from Constantinople, supporting the Patriarch Nestorius against his Roman rival, and finally meeting at ' See Ussher's Works, ed. Elrington, v., 253, 254; Hieron. in Comment, in Jeremiam Proplietam, Primi Libri Prolog., and Prsef. in lib. iii., Migne, Pat. Lat., t. xxiv., col. 682, 758. The Commonitorium of Marius Mercator gives us a good deal of curious information about Coelestius and Pelagius. Jerome clearly describes one of his Pelagian opponents as an Irishman , in his Prsef. lib. iii. in Jer., saying that he was descended from ' the Scots, "de vicinia Britannorum." Cf. Garnier, Dissert., i., in Migne's Pat. Lat., t. xlviii., col. 266 ; Noris, Hist. Pelag., i., 3. THE ANCIENT CELTIC CHURCH. 23 the hands of the Ephesian Council that excommunication ■yvhich was the usual fate of the unsuccessful party. This brief sketch of Coelestius proves several things. It shows us that the national character and national tendencies were much the same in the fourth and fifth as in the nineteenth centuries. It also proves the point upon which I have been insisting, that Christianity was not unknown to some Irishmen prior to the time of St. Patrick and the national conversion of Ireland. The exploits, indeed, of this Irishman, and the troubles of the Pelagian controversy, seem to have turned the pope's attention to this out-of-the-way corner of the West. And so we learn from the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, a contemporary author, that in the year 431, under the consulship of Bassus and Antiochus, " Palladius was consecrated by Pope Coelestine, and sent to the Scots (or Irish) believing in Christ as their first bishop ; " ^ while in another work the same writer, referring to Coelestine's efforts against heresy, praises him for driving the Irishman Coelestius from Italy, the British heretic Agricola from Gaul and Britain, and ends by telHng us that " by ordaining a bishop for the Scots, whilst he laboured to keep the Roman island Catholic, he made also the barbarous island Christian." ^ These words are in complete conformity with the conclusions we have otherwise gained, Palladius was from Gaul, a disciple of Germanus of Auxerre, and was doubtless well acquainted with Irish needs.' 1 "Ad Scotos ill Christum credentes ordinatur a Papa Coeles- tino Palladius, et primus episcopus mittitur." — St. Prosper., Chron. in Migne, Pat. Lai., t. li., col. 595. 2 St. Prosper., Lii>. cont. Collatorem, cap. xxi., in Migrie, Pat. Lai, t.'li., col. 271. = Palladius was probably Archdeacon of Germanus. He was despatched by him on a mission to the pope in 429 ; cf. Prosper, 24 HISTORY OF IRELAND. He was ordained, therefore, as the first bishop over the scattered Christians in this island. Palladius, however, did not succeed. He sailed from Gaul, landed at Wicklow, preached in the neighbourhood, was expelled by the natives, driven northwards by a storm, and shortly afterwards died in Britain. Thus ended the first attempt to found a Church in Ireland.^ Chron., I.e., col. 594 ; Bk. of Arm., fol. 2aa, in Anal. BoUand., t. i. p. 553, makes- him Archdeacon of Rome ; Did. of Christ. Biog.-; and Herzog's Encyclop., s.v. ' The reader may consult about St. Palladius Rev. J. F. Shear- man's work Loca Patriciana for the facts and legends connected with his history. He makes an elaborate attempt to identify even ths Churches he founded in Ireland. LECTURE II. ST. PATRICK. ST. PATRICK, his mission, and his work come next in order. In dealing witli this subject I know that I shall pass over ground scorched and hot with, the fires of manifold controversies. With some con- troversial matters I must of course deal, but I shall make it my principal object to give a connected view of St. Patrick's life and work, as revealed to us by the latest and best investigators. St. Patrick is by some regarded as a myth, and I can scarcely wonder at such" an idea. Some have held that there were one, two, three Patricks, while Dr. Petrie tells us that, from the various histories, there seem to him to have been seven different Patricks. In Smith's Did. Christ. Biog. there are five hundred and .ninety-five Johns comme- morated in the first eight centuries. Surely then there may have been easily three St. Patricks at work in Ireland during the fifth and sixth centuries, when Patrick (Patricius) was rather a title of honour than a personal name in the strict sense of the word. But I do not think any sound historical instinct will doubt that the tradition of a whole nation, embodied in documents some as old as the seventh century,^ and ' The best and latest edition of St. Patrick's works, and of all the documents bearing on his history, is the Tripartite Life (Rolls Series), edited by Dr. Whitley Stokes, London, 1887. 26 HISTORY OF IRELAND. reproducing itself in the' most permanent of all records, the topography of the country, must have had a solid foundation in fact, and that tradition ascribes our national conversion to one definite person, St. Patrick. Accepting then the tradition of the country, let us first ascertain what materials we have for our historical inquiry. One great source of information about any historical personage is found in hi,s own works. Now, we have two acknowledged works of our Saint still extant : his Confession and his Epistle to a Welsh prince called Coroticus. These two works form the basis of all the histories or lives of the Saint which have ever been published."- The history of the Confession and the evidence for its authenticity is rather curious. The Book of Armagh is one of the gireat treasures of our own library ; it is a Very composite volume. It contains the only com- plete copy of the New Testament transmitted to us by the ancient Irish Church ; the manuscript of which fixes its own date, as it expressly tells us that the Gospel of St, Matthew was finished September 21st, a.d. 807.^ This book is a regular repertory. It contains a charter ' The writings' ascribed to St. Patrick will be found in a collected shape in Migne's Patrologia Latina, t. liii., col. 790. Sir J. 'Ware was the first to print his Confession and his Epistle to Coroticus, in his St. Patricio ascripta Opus^ula (Lond. : 1656). Ussher still earlier meditated the publication of St. Patricks works, but never carried out his purpose, opp. t. xv., 79. Dr. Todd, St. Patrick, pp. 31 1, 346, 425, gives the bibliography of his works. The genuine writings of St. Patrick, with notes critical and historical, have just been published in a cheap form by G. T. Stokes and C. H. H. 'Wright (Dubhn : Hodges & Figgis, i'887). ^ Cf. a paper by the Bisljop of Limerick (Dr. Graves) in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Acadeiriy (1846), t. iii., pp. 316, -356, on the date and script of the Book of Armagh ; a Memoir on the Book of Armagh by the Bishop of Down (Dr. Reeves) ; and Mr. Hogan's presface in the Analect. Bolland., t. i., 531-544. ST. PA THICK. ' 27 from Brian Boru to the Church of Armagh, written in his name by his chaplain or confessor, when Brian visited that city in the early part of the eleventh century ; it contains, too, the most ancient life of St. Patrick, written towards the close of the seventh century, and a copy of his Confession, which the scribe pro- fesses to have taken from St. Patrick's own autograph. "Thus far," says the scribe, "the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand." The MS. which the scribe copied must have been very ancient. He frequently complains of its obscurity and illegible state, at which we cannot wonder. The manuscripts written ■by Irish scribes of the Middle Ages are all noted foi" their extreme beauty and clearness, as you can at once verify by inspecting those exhibited in our library. But, then, St. Patrick was not a professional scribe, as they were. He expressly describes himself as rude and unlettered ; his training, too, had not been the best to perfect him in handwriting. If the Fellows and Professors of this University had spent their youth from sixteen to twenty-two herding swine, as St. Patrick did, their handwriting would not have been improved. And so we cannot wonder that the Armagh scribe grumbles over the difficulty of elucidating St. Patrick's writing. When we take up the Confession itself, the internal evidence is all in favour of its authenticity. " It contains," remarks Dr. Todd, " none of the ridicu- lous miracles which the later biographers of St. Patrick delight to record. It is just such an account of himself as a missionary of that age, circumstanced like St. Patrick, might be expected to compose. Its Latinity is rude and archaic.^ It quotes the ante^Hieronymian ' A splendid edition of the works of St. Gregory of Tours was lately (1883-1885) published in two volumes, in the Monumenta . 28 HISTORY OP IRELAND. Vulgate, and contains nothing inconsistent with the century in which it professes to have been written." So far concerning the Confession of St. Patrick.^ We possess also an Epistle directed to Coroticus, -a Welsh prince. It is simply a letter protesting against the unchristian conduct of Coroticus, or Caredig, a distinguished Welsh hero of the first half of the fifth century. The Irish invaded the principality and con- quered it. Coroticus organised his countrymen, defeated the invaders, and pursuing them across the Irish Sea committed great outrages in Ireland. Though nomi- nally a Christian, as all the Welsh were in the fifth century, he made no distinction between the Pagan Irish and St. Patrick's converts, slaying or carrying captive to slavery even neophytes - with the baptismal waters fresh upon them. The Epistle to Coroticus does not occur in th'e Book of Armagh? Its Latinity is apparently of the same age and from the same pen as the Confession. It quotes the old Latin version of the Bible, and is, therefore, generally accepted by critics as genuine.^ Another source whence we- may derive information Germanim Hisiorica, under the' editorship of W. Arndt and Br. Krusch. For the first time we have there presented the text as Gregory wrote it. The Latin style is very similar to St. . Patrick's, rude and semi-barbarous in grammar and spelling ; see a learned notice of this edition by M. Max-Bonnet, in the Revue Critique for March 2nd, 1885, p. i6i. ' Todd's St. Pattick, p. 347. ^ It is referred to in the MS. of the tenth century, supplementing the last part of Book of Armagh, found at Brussels. Cf. Analect. Boll., t. i., p. 577. The Epistle to Coroticus was first ' published by Sir James Ware from the Cotton MS., and then by the Bollandists from a manuscript found at Treves. See Coroticus in Diet. Christ. Biog. ' An interesting confirmation of this Epistle was brought to light some twenty years ago, when a stone pillar was discovered in Wales' with this prince's name inscribed in Latin and in ST. PATRICK. 29 about the past is found in histories or anuals written soon after the events narrated. The earliest history of St. Patrick which we now possess is contained in Tirechan's Annotations on St. Patrick's life. These you will find in the Book of Armagh} This Tirechan, was a disciple of St. Ultan, of Ardbraccan, in Meath, who also seems to have , written a life of St. Patrick. St. Ultan- died in a,d. (i'i)6. The earliest extant history of St. Patrick repre^ sents, or embodies, therefore, a history composed at the least considerably more than one hundred years after St. Patrick's time.^ The next earliest document is a life of St. Patrick, com- prised in that same Book of Armagh? It was written about the end of the seventh century, by one Muirchu Maccumactheni, son of Cogitosus, who died a.d. 670.* Ogham characters ; which were duly interpreted by Dr. Graves, then a Senior Fellow of our own College. I am bound to say that some good critics do not agree in the interpretation of Dr. Graves. ' Printed by Rev. E. Hogan in the Analeeta BoUandiana, t. ii., pp. 35-68 and 213-238. ' ^ The earliest mention of St. Patrick in any historical docu- ment is contained in Cummian's letter, concerning Ea:ster, ad- dressed to Segienus, Abbot of Zona, in 634. His peculiar cycle is there recognised, and he is described as "Sanctus Patricius, Papa noster." In presence of this notice, the silence Of Bede about St. Patrick is of no account.' He was intensely Roman, and , despised the Celtic and Patrician party in. England and Ireland alike. Cummian was a very learned man, and had evidently ample historical materials at hand. He could not have been mistaken about events vvhich may only have been separated from himself by one long life. See Ussher's Works, t. iv., pp. 432-443. St. Patrick is celebrated also in the Bangor Anti- phonary, dating from the seventh century at least, if not earlier. See O'Laverty's Down and Connor, ii., 120, App. xx. ' Printed by Rev. E. Hogan in the Analeeta BoUandiana, t. i., pp. 531-585. Dr. Reeves assigns Tirechan's Annotations to the close of the ninth century {Antiqq., p. 234). * Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1864), t. viii., p. 269, where Dr. Graves very acutely determined the date of Cogitosus. See Diet, Christ. Biog., s.v. " Cogitosus." 30 , HISTORY OF IRELAND. These are the only documents upon which we can rely as historical materials for the life of St. Patrick ; and they probably embody documents and traditions reaching back to St. Patrick's day. Time, indeed, had even then surrounded the memory of St. Patrick with a thick, almost impenetrable haze. Listen to the opening words of this life of St. Patrick, written by the son of Cogitosus. It was evidently modelled upon the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, and plainly enough confesses the difficulties of his subject. " Forasmuch as many, my lord Aldus (of Sleaty), have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration, according to what their fathers and they who from the beginning were ministers of the word have delivered unto them ; but by reason of the very great difficulty of the narrative, and the diverse opinions and numerous doubts of many persons, have never arrived at any one certain track of history. But lest I should seem to make a small matter great, I will now attempt with little skill, from , uncertain authors, with frail memory, with obliterated meaning and barbarous language, but with a most pious intention, obeying the commands of thy beloved- ness and sanctity and authority, out of the many "acts of Saint Patrick, to explain these gathered here and there with great difficulty."^ The writings of St. Patrick himself, and the collection in the Book of Armagh, are, I repeat, the only documents on which a historical critic can rely.^ There is one " Analect. Bottand., t. i., 545 ; Aidus, or Aedh, anchorite of Sleaty, in Queen's county, died in 698, according to the Fotir Masters (see O'Donovan's note) ; in 699 according to the Annals of Ulster ; cf. Anal. Boll., i., 542. ^ There are plenty of other documents professing to be lives of St. Patrick, but tliey are mere mediaeval compilations, none I of which can stand the tests of real criticism. Colgan, in his ST. PATRICK. 31 test for such documents which admits of easy applica- tion in this case. In studying acts of martyrs , and saints one universal canon of criticism is this, — the more genuine and primitive the document, the more simple and natural, and, above all, the less miraculous ; the later the document, the more of legend and miracle- is introduced. Turning our minds for an instant from Ireland to the wider field of universal Church history, we shall see how this rule works. Take upj for instance, the genuine acts of the martyrs recorded by Eusebius, the acts of the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons under Marcus Aurelius, There you will find no miracle at all. The acts of Polycarp are genuine. There again is no real miracle. The acts of Perpetua and Felicitas are genuine ; they are marked by visions, indeed, yet nothing miraculous is recorded. But take up the acts of the martyrs as set forth in the fifth and following centuries, and no miracle is too absurd or too incredible for the writers. In fact, the monks were very sincere believers, they believed thoroughly in their heroes. They had a very narrow knowledge of the world, and of God's ways and laws of action therein. They* above all things desired edification and comfort for their own spirits from the example of the saints, and so they gave loose rein to their imaginations in the panegyrics they composed, for the days of their commemorations. For, as we must ever bear in mind, , a great number of these exaggerated and falsified narra- tives are due to the sermons composed for the saints' Trias Thaumaturga, has collected the greater portion of them. The Tripartite Life is the most celebrated of them. An English ' iranslation of it will be found in Cusack's St. Patrick, made by that eminent Celtic scholar Mr. Hennessy. Another, that by foceline, abounds with well-known legends. It was translated md published by E. S\vift, Dublin, 1809. 52 HISTORY OF IRELAND. natal days, and intended, like many a modern biography, to conduce to the greater glory of their heroes/ Now let us apply this test, which is used as boldly by the Roman Catholic Bollandists as by Protestant critics, and we shall find that the writings of St, Patrick himself contain no miraculous stories ; they are simple and natural histories. Two centuries elapse, and miracles begin to cluster round the memory of the saint. Yet the historical details of the earliest life in the Book of Armagh can be easily separated from them. But now advance a step. We have two ancient hymns in honour of the Saint, purporting to have been written by contemporaries of St. Patrick. One is the hymn of St. Fiacc, of Sleaty, near Carlow. The other is the hymn of St. Secundinus, one of the companions of St. Patrick.^ Examine St. Place's hymn in conjunction with the Tripartite Life. They simply teem with miracle, some of them not very creditable to the temper or the courtesy, nay even to the common humanity of the saint.' In ' If the stories retailed in some modern sermons were printed -verbatim, the monks would be proved not to have had a mono- poly of miracles and legends. ^ The hymns of SS. Fiacc and Sechnall (Secundinus) were first published by Colgan in his Trias Thaumat., p. 210. The hymn of St. Sechnall will be found in the Book 'of Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland, published by the late Dr. Todd, part i. ; while a critical dissertation, on St. Fiacc's hymn finds a place in part ii., p. 287. The hymn of St. Sechnall was also published in the Catholic Layman, t. ii.. No. 24, December J853, and in Cusack's St. Patrick, p. 562, where also, on p. 558, is St. Fiacc's hymrL St. Fiacc's hymn has lately been thoroughly dis- cussed from a philological point of- view by Zimmer in his Keltische Studien, Hft. ii. (Berlin : 1884). For the life of St. Fiacc see Boll. AA. SS., Oct. vi., 96-106, and sup. tom. 119-121 ; Diet. Christ. Biog., t. ii., p. 508. , . ' Thus St. Patrick's sister, Lupait, was a nun. She broke her vows, however, and became the mother of a son, afterwards eminent for sanctity. Repenting of her sin, she cast herself ■prostrate before St. Patrick's chariot on the public road, beseech- Sr. PATRICK. II )t. Fiacc's hymn we hear of the permanent impression f angels' feet on a rock, of the apparition of angels ummoning St. Patrick back' to Ireland, of the voices f the children from Mayo calling him back from 'ranee to Connaught, of his healing the blind; and 2pers, of his raising the dead, of a burning bush in irhich an angel appeared to him and foretold the future reatness of the Church of Armagh. This hymn is, however, far surpassed by later bio- raphies. Colgan, in the seventeenth century, was a 'ranciscan, gifted with varied and profound knowledge 'f Irish antiquities. To him and to the Bollandists ssociated at Louvain we owe the preservation of luch valuable material for the past history of Ireland, 'his distinguished writer produced in 1645 two volumes 1 the Latin language ; two copies of which at least all be found in our own library. One volume escribes the lives of those Irish saints whose festivals ccur between the 1st of January and the 31st of March, 'he other, called Trias Thaumaturga^ is devoted exclu- ^vfely to the lives of St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. olumba. In this work Colgan embodies seven dis- nct lives of St. Patrick, the most celebrated of which 1 called the Tripartite Life, because divided into three reat divisions or books. That Life was originally imposed partly in Irish and partly in Latin.^ It was g him for pardon. The saint drove his chariot over her. She se up bruised and injured, and cast herself again before the lariot. Again he drove over her. This was repeated a third ne, and the penitent having sustained this ordeal was at length stored to favour. This story is also told of St. Patrick and St. icundinus. , St. Patrick drove over his friend when celebrating ass. See Cusack's St.JPatrick,-pp. 360, 48,7, Wh. Stokes' Tripar- e Life (Rolls Series), p. 235, and Colgan's Trias Thaumat, p. 163. 'The substance of the Tripartite Life 'is in Mr. Hennessy's linion older than a.d. 800. See O'Curry's Lectt., xvi. 3 34 HISTORY OF IRELAND. based upon the life of St. Patrick contained in the Book of Armagh, but is an enlarged if not a very, improved edition of the same. The writer of it simply revels in the region of the miraculous. Some of you may have glanced at those interesting documents of early Chris- tian antiquity, the Apocryphal Gospels, such as the Gospels of the Infancy and of Nicodemus. Our Blessed Lord is there represented as working miracles from His earliest infancy, some of them, too, very mischievous and foolish miracles indeed. His schoolmaster boxes His ear, and the offending arm is at once paralysed. A' playmate strikes Him, and dies at once; He forms birds of clay, and then breathes life into them for His own amusement. But the Apocryphal Gospels are far surpassed by the Tripartite Life, which some would gravely represent as the most ancient and most authentic biography of St. Patrick, His baptism was marked by miracles. He was brought to a blind priest, who was so ignorant that he could not even read the service. Another difficulty, too, interposed itself There was no water for the sacrament. So the sign of the cross was made over a rock with the infant's hand, water at once burst forth from it, the priest's eyes were at once opened, and, strangest of all, the priest at once gained the power of reading the service without any previous study. While yet a child, his nurse required a fire to cook his food ; the wondrous boy took five drops of water and flung them on the ground, which straightway were transformed into five flames of fire. In the middle of winter the . nurse wanted fuel for her fire. St. Patrick went out, collected a bundle of icicles, and heaped them round the fire. The saint breathed on them, when they at once burned like faggots. Some later lives still tell us how a ST. PATRICK. 35 :per desired to sail with St. Patrick from Gaul to •eland. The saint desired his company, while the crew sry naturally refused it. St. Patrick flung his stone [tar overboard, seated on which the leper safely followed le ship, and landed with him in Wicklow harbour, 'hese few specimens will, I am sure, satisfy you that, aluable as these lives may be for folk-lore, and the study f the social life of the Middle Ages, they have no claim whatsoever to the position of real historical records. ,et us, however, take the writings of St. Patrick him- slf, the Patrician documents in the Book of Armagh, jgether with the hymn of St. Sechnall or Secundinus, nd with these as our guides let us investigate the lersonal history of our national saint. Where, then, was St. Patrick, born ? To this query lere have been very many conflicting replies. Ireland self has claimed the honour. Scotland and France ave each their vigorous champions. The claim of reland we may at once dismiss. It is founded on a assage in St. Patrick's Epistle to the British prince oroticus, where he speaks of the contemptuous feeling lerished in the hearts of the Britons towards Irish- len, — a feeling which fourteen centuries have not afSced quite to destroy. Listen to this early protest gainst a sentiment whi ch has wrought untold mischief The Church," he says, 'weeps and wails over her )ns and over her daughters, whom the sword has not ;t slain, but who are exiled and ' carried away to far- 3f lands, where sin openly prevails and shamelessly Dounds. There Christian freemen are reduced to avery, and that by the most unworthy, most infamous, id apostate Picts. . . . The unrighteousness of the irighteous hath prevailed over us. We are become 5 aliens. Perchance they do not believe that we have 36 HISTORY OF IRELAND. received one baptism, that we have one God our Father. With them it is a crime that we have been born in Hib'ernia ; but it is said, have ye not one God ? Why do ye wrong one to another ? " These words — " with them it is a crime that we have been born in Hibernia "—constitute the whole founda- tion of Ireland's claim to have been the birthplace of St. Patrick. It is evident, however, that he is thereby merely identifying himself with his converts ; while in other parts of his works he asserts in the clearest and mos^ positive manner that he was not an Irishman by birth. . Some, again, have maintained the claim of Boulogne, others that of Dumbarton on the Clyde. St. Patrick himself gives us but little information on this point, save that in general he speaks of Britain as his place of birth and the residence of his parents^ The opinion of critics seems now inclined to assign the honour to Dumbarton, which in ancient times was called Alcluith, and formed the western termination of the great Roman wall, extending from the Forth to -the Clyde, constructed by Agricola about the year 8o, and renewed under Antoninus Pius, to protect Northern Britain from the attacks of the savage Highlanders.^ To this view, as I have hinted above, the greater number of modern critics seem inclined, though, like all such questions, there is much to be said on the other side, and if one be inclined to argue, it will be impossible to demonstrate the erroneous character of his views, All the circumstances, however, tend to confirm the claim 1 Concerning the construction, etc., of this wall, see Hubner's remarks in Cojpus Lat. Ins., t. vii., p. 3 ;, and the disserta;tion on "Graham's Dyke," p. 191. Dumbarton, with its great rock, so prominent a feature as one sails up the Clyde, would form a natural stronghold and post pf observation against the Dalai' radian freebooters, from the opposite Antrim coast. ST. PATRICK. 2>J ' Dumbarton. Its local position is in its favour. The- finds " of- Roman coins upon the opposite Antrim last, dating in such quantities from St. Patrick's ly, sustain it, while again another circumstance cor- ' iborates it. Mark how this was. St. Patrick tells us, the Epistle to Coroticus, that he was of noble birth ; ,at his father was a decurioh, a member of the local wn council, — an institution which prevailed as a useful )ecies of local government in all colonies and munici- ilities throughout the wide domains of Rome, from le farthest East to the shores of the North Atlantic cean. Let me dwell upon this point, which is rather )scure ; for, indeed, with all our classical studies, there no subject over which a thicker darkness prevails nong English students than the methods of govern- ent and administration used by the Roman Empire., f late years there have come to light in Spain some ;ry curious documents which illustrate these methods. I pursuing the course of some ancient Roman mines, e explorers came across tablets containing laws made regulate the imperial mining colonies during the first id second centuries of our era. These laws descend ■ the minutest particulars, proving the comprehen- veness and perfection of Roman legislation and of e Roman civil service. Among other regulations we id that town councils or local senates^ composed of :curions, were appointed as soon as a few hundred ;rsons were assembled together in a town or village, ecurions, therefore, must certainly have existed at umbarton at the close of the fourth century.^ Again, :. Patrick tells us he was carried captive with some ' About the office of decurion in the colonies, see Marquardt :d Mommsen, Handbuch der Romischen Alterthilmer, t. iv. ^oi-t)ii> ; Nouveaux Bronzes d'Osuna'mJour. des Smi,, 1877 38 HISTORY OF IRELAND. thousands of his countrymen, whom God visited for their sins. Now, at the end of the fourth century Northern Britain was ravaged by Picts and Scots, and thousands were led captives, till the most famous generals of the empire, Theodosius and Stilicho, were sent to restore tranquillity to the desolated island.^ St. Patrick, in his writings, always speaks of Britain in the plural, denominating it Britannise, which was strictly accurate.^ Theodosius, after expelling the Irish p. 132, by M. Ch. Giraud. Cf. Ephem. Epig., t. ii., p. 137, and t. iii., p. 103, where Hilbner and Mommsen discuss this topic with vast learning. The two latter references show that the insti- tution of decurions prevailed in all the towns established by the Romans wherever they found mines. They must have existed, therefore, all along the west coast of Britain about the year 370. The title decurio occurs twice among the British inscriptions, edited by Hubner, Corp. Ins. Lat., t. vii., Nos. 54 and 189. ' The following quotations from the Four Masters, under date 405, show that the Irish sovereign who reigned during St. Patrick's youth extended his ravages much farther than the western coast of Britain. "After Niall of the nine hostages had been twenty-seven years in the sovereignty of Ireland, he was slain by Eochaidh, at Muir n-Icht, i.e., the sea between France and England," — a spot which O'Donovan in his notes on the year 405 identifies with Boulogne. Keating had access in the seventeenth century to Munster documents which are now lost. He gives a long account of these Irish invasions of England and France, exactly corresponding to the statements of the Roman historian Amraianus Marcellinus and of the Four Masters. See his History of Ireland (Mahony's edition), p. 369-390. Sidonius ApoUinaris commemorates the fame of the Picts and Scots, as well as of the Saxon pirates. He calls, indeed, the invaders of the Gallic coast Saxons ; but the Scots may easily have been confounded with them ; see his Epp., viii., 6,_9, and Carm., vii. in Migne's Pat. Lat., t. Iviii., col. 597, 601, 680, 688, 689. ' Three points seem to me conclusive as to the age of "St. Patrick's Confession : I. The Version of Holy Scripture used, which was the old Latin ; 2. State organisation of decurions, divisions of, and name used for Britain ; 3. Ecclesiastical organisation and disciphne, specially the notice of a married clergy, engaged in secular occupations. We cannot conceive an ignorant monk of the Middle Ages, or even a monk of two cen- ST. PATRICK. 39 and Pictish foe, organised Northern Britain into a separate province, called Valentia, the names of the other provinces being Britannia Prima, Britannia Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Gsesarien- sis.' Patrick's original name, too, was Succath, a Celtic name, such as naturally would find place in a popula- tion living in the midst of Celts, even if his family was not. originally Celtic, as probably was the case, though at the same time conforming themselves, as the Britons largely did, to the institutions, language, religion; and civilisation of Rome.^ So much as to the' place of his birth. The father of St. Patrick was called Calpurnius, a deacon. His grandfather was Potitus, a priest.^ His father then was a clergyman, a town councillor, and a married man. Observe this, he was the son of a deacon and the grandson of a priest. In the beginning of the fifth century the law of celibacy had not yet been efiectually enforced on the clergy of Gaul or Britain. In fact, the marriage of the clergy successfully resisted the denun- cia,tions of popes and councils during the next six tuties later, imagining such a state of affairs, or composing such a work. The organisation among Gallic and Roman Christians for the redemption of captives from the Franks is another piece of evidence, -which I have discussed at some length in the article on St. Patrick in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. ' Cf. Hubner's British Inscriptions in the Corpus Ins, Lat., t. vii., p. 4 ; and Backing's Notitia Dignitatum. ^ See a learned paper on St. Patrick's names by Dr. Todd, read, January 14th, 1856, before the Rpyal Irish Acad. Proceedings, n., 292. Analect. Bolland., ii., 35, where Tirechan mentions four names, e.g., Patricius, Succetus, Magonus, and Cothraige. ' The name Patricius occurs in Hubner's volume C. I. L., t. vii., flos. 1 198 and 1336. ' The other names Calpurnius and Potitus do not occur among the British inscriptions, but the cognate ones, Potitianus and Kalpurnianus, are found there. Patricius was found among the Coleraine coins discovered in 1854, already referred to. 40 HISTORY OF IRELAND. hundred years.' But let us take the case of Southern Gaul during St. Patrick's youth. There was a cele- brated bishop of Toulouse, named Exuperius, who lived during the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries. He was the intimate friend and correspondent of St. Jerome, and -famous for his holy life and conversation. This bishop addressed a letter to Pope Innocent I., about the beginning of the year 405. In it he asked the pope a number of questions, some of which throw interesting light on the social and religious life of Southern France at that time. He wished for information upon a burning question in the nineteenth as in the fifth century. He asked whether a man might marry his deceased wife's sister ; whether retired soldiers might be ordained ; whether divorced persons might remarry ; wh,at books are contained in •the Canon of Scripture ; and how he should treat married priests and their children. The pope, in his reply, gives us a glimpse into the inner life of the times. Those who have held judicial posts may not be ordained without doing penance, on account of the sin necessarily connected with their office. Retired soldiers may not be ordained at all, because of the loose morals of the army. While as to the clergy, while disap- proving in general of their marriage, he tolerates it under certain circumstances, proving conclusively that the law of celibacy, which had been first promulgated at Rome less than twenty years before, had made as yet but little way in Southern Gaul. If so, it must have been practically unknown in Britain. ' See Wilkins' Concilia, t. i., p. 367, where the Council of Winchester, a.d. 1076, decreed that "married priests Uving in castles or villages should not be compelled to abandon their wives." - ST. PATRICK. 41 Here now arises a very natural question. St. Patrick's father was a decurion or town Gouncillor. How, then, was he ordained ? The reply is simple enough. In his capacity of decurion he did not act as a magistrate at all. In colonies like Dumbarton the oiily magistrates were aediles and duumvirs. The decuripns, however, in council assembled, controlled the whole social and municipal life of the place ; instituted and regulated the games, managed the water supply, the public buildings, local taxes and education. In addition to his public employments his father Cal- purnius was also a farmer, and possessed a country house from which St. Patrick was carried captive. This union of spiritual and of secular offices, — decurion, cleric, farmer, — was by no means uncommon during the earlier ages of the Church. It was, in fact, only about the opening of the third century that the clerical office became a profession "separate from secular cares or employments. Cyprian, in Africa, bent all his energies in this direction about the year 250, but the old system still maintained itself.* Here and there, in remote out-of-the-way corners of ecclesiastical history) we get glimpses of the earlier order and its long-con- tinued existence. Let me give you an instance or two. Among the genuine acts of the martyrs which have survived the wreck of time, those of Theoddtus, the innkeeper of Ancyra, hold a high position.^ They are valuable for many, reasons. They give us interesting glimpses into the social condition of the empire just before its conversion to Christianity ; they present us with pictures of paganism drawn from life, and they ' See Cyprian., Ep'p., i. ^ Cf. Ruinart., Acta Sincera, p. 354 : Mason's Diocletian Persecu- tion, Appendix ; Theodotus, in Diet. Christian Biography 42 HISTORY OF IRELAND. show us the organisation and discipHne which enabled the Church to triumph over the power and determina- tion of a Diocletian himself. Theodotus was an innkeeper in the Celtic town of Ancyra, at the beginning of the fourth century. He was celebrated for his devotion and love to the martyrs who were suffering under Diocletian's edict. Ancyra became at last too hot for him, when he fled and took refuge with a priest in a country village. This priest minis- tered every day at stated hours in a village church, but at the same time worked a farm, and regularly visited the great market of Ancyra, driving his own cart and selling his wares. On one of these journeys which he thus undertook in the course of his regular business, he was enabled to perform a kindly office for the earthly remains of the devout innkeeper. Theodotus, having long escaped the persecutor, was at last arrested, tortured, and slain. The prefect determined that his body should lie unburied, exposed to the beasts and- birds, which the Christians counted a disgrace to be avoided at all risks. So the magistrate appointed a strong guard to watch the body, some of whom he had just flogged for neglect on a similar occasion. And now the narrative becomes strikingly lifelike. The body lay where Theodotus had been beheaded in the place of common execution, just outside the city. The evening was cold and late, and the guard had lit a fire, and made a booth of branches, when the priest drove tip with his cart laden with barrels of wine, the produce of his vineyard. They invited him to remain all night with them, as the gates were already shut. He learned whose body they were guarding, treated them plente- ously to his best wine, made them all drunk, and trium- phantly drove off with the body of his devout innkeeper. ST. PATRICK. 43 In the fourth century, then, a priest could be a farmer and a wine- merchant, without any reproach on that account j while as a sufficient evidence that the union of the clerical and secular office continued to much later than St. Patrick's time, I shall simply quote an inscription ^ on the walls of Assos, in Asia Minor, telling us how the walls were restored, about the time of Justinian, by Helladius, a presbyter and chief magistrate of the city, corresponding to the union among ourselves of such diveree offices as Dean of St. Patrick's and Lord Mayor of Dublin. Having, thus illustrated and explained the position of his family, I must hurry on to other portions of my story. At sixteen years of age St. Patrick was carried captive into Antrim by the Irish pirates, who also ■vdDunded his father, and carried off his sister, whom they sold into slavery in Connaught. His boyhood, if we are to believe his own account, far from being specially saintly, "as his more credulous biographers describe, was marked by spiritual darkness, and even by gross immorality. But then we can never take devout men at the estimate they form of themselves in moments of deep contrition. The holier they grow, the more of the vision of God they enjoy in this life, the more intense their abhorrence of themselves and of their wasted opportunities in the past. Augustine's Confessions tell us of boyish scrapes and tricks as if they were sins of deepest dye. Bunyan speaks of his youthful frolics, his -May-day dances and Sunday bell- chiming, as if they were the vilest immoralities., And St. Patrick attributes the misfortunes of himself and of his fellow-captives to their gross wickedness. Thus he ' Boeckh, Corp. Ins. Grcec, No. 8838; cf. Contemporary Re-- view, June 1880, p. 983. 44 HISTORY OP IRELAND. tells us in his Confession, " I was taken captive when I was nearly sixteen years of age. I knew not the true God, and I was brought captive to Ireland with many thousand men as we deserved, for we had forsaken God and had not kept His commandments, and were disobedient to our priests, who admonished us for our salvation." He was carried to the opposite coast of Antrim, and retained as a slave in the family of a chieftain of Dalaradia. We are able to identify the very place of his captivity. It Was close to' the village of Broughshane, five miles from Ballymena. The name ^ of his master was Milchu.-' He lived in a valley near the hill of Slemish, now called the valley of the Braid, from the river which flows through it. There- St. Patrick spent six years tending cattle. St. Patrick's solitude and misfortunes were blessed to his soui. He was recalled from the world to a higher hfe. "He was every day frequent in prayer." He tells us that the love of God increased in him so much,- that he would often in a single day say a hundred prayers, and in the- night almost as many, so that he frequently arose to prayer in the woods and mountains before daylight, in snow and frost and rain, and " I felt no evil," he adds, "nor was there any laziness in me, because as I now see the Spirit was burning within me." The time of his escape, however, drew nigh. He had been enslaved at sixteen. When he arrived at three-and-twenty the highly-strung imagination of the young Christian received an intimation that his deliverance was nigh. One night, as he tells us, he heard in a dream a voice saying unto him, " Thy fasting is well ; thou shalt soon return to thy own country." ' Milchu, A.D. 388, was son of Hua Buain, King of North Dalaradia. — Reeves, Antiquities, p. 339. ST. PATRICK. 45 He waited a little, and again had a dfeaba in which the same voice told him the ship Was ready, but was distant two hundred miles. Whereupon he fled from his master, reached the ship, and safely- made his escape, apparently to France, whither his family seems to have meanwhile removed. St. Patrick's preparatory work was novy done. He ;had learned the language, manners, and customs of the Irish. His affections were engaged. Like many another, he ha,d become Hibernior Hibernis. His direct missionary work will next engage our attention. LECTURE III. , ST. PATRICK'S MISSION. ST. PATRICK had spent his youth in Ireland. There God had revealed Himself to his soul, and Patrick ever longed to return to the same country with the tidings of salvation. He felt, like Livingstone or our own Bishop Patteson, the martyrs, one of Africa, the other of the Southern Ocean, as if the voices of the perishing multitudes whose needs he well knew were continually sounding in his ear, " Come over and help us." His manner was restless. His life was unsatisfied, because missing its great end and object. His own words in the Confession prove this : " Again, after a few years, I was with my relations in Britain, who received me as a son, and earnestly besought me that then at least, after I had gone through so many tribulations, I would go nowhere from them. And then I saw in. the midst of the night a man, who appeared to come from Ireland, named Victor(icus), and he had innumerable- letters with him, one of which he gave to me. I read the commencement of the epistle containing ' The Voice of the Irish,', and as I read aloud the beginning of the letter, I thought I heard in my mind the voice of those who were near the wood of Fochlut, which is near the Western Sea ; and they cried out, ' We entreat the holy youth to come and walk still amongst us.' And my heart was greatly touched, so that I could not read ST. PATRICJSPS MISSION. 47 any more. So I awoke. Thanks to God that after very many years the Lord hath granted them their desire.'' St. Patrick, in fact, had been seized by an enthusiasm which must find an outlet. Like Francis Xavier and Howard and Wilberforce ; like George Fox the Quaker, who tells us that the burden of the Lord brought him nigh to the gates of death till he yielded to the inner call; like a greater than all of them, like St. Paul, so too St. Patrick felt " necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel." The mission of St. Patrick to Ireland — using the word mission in its technical sense — has been the subject of bitter controversy. Some maintain that St. Patrick was sent straight from Rome to Ireland by Pope Goelestine in 432. Others deny with equal vigour that he had any commission from that pope. " The Confession of St. Patrick" (says Dr. Todd, p. 310, who strenuously upheld the latter view) " contains not a word of a mission from Pope Goelestine. . Qne object of the writer was to defend, himself from the charge of presumption in having undertaken such a work as the conversion of the Irish, rude and unlearned as he was. •Had he received a regular commission from the see of Rome, that fact alone would have been an unanswerable reply. But he makes no mention of Pope Ccelestine or of Rome, and rests his defence altogether on the Divine Call which he believed himself to have received for the work." The evidence on this question is, I am bound to tell you, very conflicting. The writings of St. Patrick himself undoubtedly contain not even the remotest hint of such a mission. Nay, they even use language, such as I have just recited, apparently, though not necessarily, at variance with such an idea. On the other hand the documents and traditions which date HISTORY OF IRELAND. from the seventh century appear more or less to favour such a view. The facts of St. Patrick's life in the interval between his captivity and his return to Ireland are subjects of much debate. Miss Cusack, in her Life of St. Patrick, gives as intimate and minute an account of his history as the special correspondent of the New York Herald or of the Daily Telegraph could have done. But then she is a lady, and, therefore, gifted with an ima.gination. According to the Brussels document found a few years ago by Smedt, and which supplements the Book of Armagh, St. Patrick set out to visit Rome, but, meeting with Germanus, went no further, receiving clerical education at his hands. He is said to have visited the famous monastery of Lerins, which was founded upon the model of the Egyptian monasteries. If this were so, it would help to explain certain Oriental customs and ideas in ritual and in architecture prevalent in the Irish Church. Thus the annotations of Tirechan, which date from the seventh century, tell us that " in the thirteenth year of the Emperor Theodosius the Bishop Patrick was sent by Coelestine, Bishop and Pope of Rome, to instruct the Irish. Bishop Palladius was first sent, who was also called Patrick by a second name, and he was martyred among the Scots, as the old saints have said. Then the second Patrick was sent by the Angel of God Victor and by Pope Coelestine. All Ireland believed, and nearly all were baptized by him."i Though I have no fancy to take part in this con- troversy, I must still say a few words concerning it, I do not, indeed, believe in the Roman mission of our national apostle, not only because his own ' I-Iogan, in Analecta Bollandiatia, ii., p. 67. ST. I" A TRICK'S MISSION. 49 tigu^ge appears inconsistent with it, but also upon oader grounds. People who read Church history- rough the spectacles of the nineteenth century are :ry apt to fancy that the pope occupied then for e whole Western Church the same position as he les now in the- Roman Communion. The Congre- ition De propaganda Fide now controls the whole issionary activity of that Church. No faithful son ereof would , dream of starting any important mis- Dnary work without the sanction and support of that )dy, and. through it of the pope ; and that sanction is )t easily given. About forty-five years ago an enthusi- ;tic "Alsatian, named Liebermann, a converted Jew, was ixious to establish a brotherhood devoted to the con» ;rsion of the negroes, He made a journey to Rome on ot in December 1839, and spent twelve months there ;fore he could obtain the papal sanction for the Society - the Holy Ghost, which has now become one of e most important missionary as well as educational -ganisations connected with the Church of Rome, But the beginning of the jifth century it was not so. The )pe then neither exercised the control nor received e reverence afterwards yielded to him, The. bishops the province of North Africa flouted the claim of e same Pope Coelestine who is said to have sent ;. Patrick, when he attempted to exercise supremacy 'er the province of Africa. Columba never sought ipal sanction for the conversion of the Picts, St. Colum- inus for the conversion of the Germans and Swjss. etropolitan and provincial jurisdiction and rights sre then respected. Each province claimed, as frica did, the right to manage its own affairs, and convert the heathen in its own neighbourhood, thanasius and Egypt sent Frumentius to Abyssinia ; 4 50 HISTORY OP IRELAND. -Ambrosius and the province of North Italy sent Vigilius and his companions to convert the pagans of the Alps ; arid the bishops of the British province, or more probably still Germanus of Auxerre, whose connection with Celtic' Christianity was very close indeed, consecrated Patrick for the conversion of the Irish. Let me just briefly state the reasons which lead me to this conclusion. Germamjs was a distinguished bishop of Gaul, and noted for his opposition to Pelagian- ism.^ About the year 425 a Briton, named Agricola, introduced that heresy to Britain. The British bishops, living in perpetual anxiety, and deprived, through the incursions of the Scots and Saxons, of that peace and tranquillity Without which study or leai^ning cannot flourish, summoned, Germanus to their aid from the happier and more tranquil Church of Gaul.^ The pope, too, tormented. in Asia, Africa, Constantinople, and Italy, by the obstinate and persistent attacks of the Pelagian heretics, supported the proposal of the British bishops. The career of Germanus in Britain was a triumphant one. He defeated and expelled the heretics, and not only so, but falling back upon his old experiences as a soldier (for he had been a general before he became a bishop), he organised the Britons and routed the combined forces of the Saxons and Picts. This ' Cf. the article on. Germanus in Smith and Wace's Dictionary o/'Christian Biography.. ^ The Churcli of Gaul, especially, on the northern and eastern frontiers, was in a disturbed state enough during the second half of the fifth century. The writings of Salvianus of Marseilles, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Zosimus, lib. vi., prove this. Zosimus, I.e., shows how a ring fence of semi-barbarian powers grew up, separating the rest of the empire from Britain, and explaining the want of intercourse between it and the rest of Christendom, which led Gregory the Great to consider it utterly pagan. See Cooie's Romans of Btitain, p. 137, and Girald. Cawibr. 0pp., t. iii., p. 77 (Rolls Series), where he expressly asserts this separation. ST. PATRICK'S MISSION. 51 ttle is celebrated in history (Bede, i., 20) as the dlelujah Victory, and was fought near Mold, in intshire. These events occurred when Patrick's art was drawn towards Ireland. Palladius had just en sent by Pope Coelestine to Ireland, and had received ; crown of rnartyrdom at the hands of. the Picts. ; had been the friend and probably the arch- aeon of Germanus, who recognised in Patrick an itrument suited to carry on the work thus inaugurated Palladius and sanctioned by the pope. But, after , why should there be bitter contention about the ssion ofSt. Patrick? Suppose that he was conse- ited and, sent to Ireland by Coelestine himself, what es it matter ? Every one confesses that Augustine of iriterbury was sent to England direct from the pope ; es that fact affect in any degree the independent claims the English Church ? A parallel instance is a sufS- ;nt reply. Every one admits that the first bishop who nistered in the United States derived his orders from ; Church of Scotland ; does that fact imply the supre- icy of the Scotch bishops over the American Church ? it us return to St. Patrick's work and inission. About the year 432, according to the usually received ronology, St. Patrick, with a few companions,, sailed -, the shores of Ireland. He landed at the mouth the river Vartry,, on the spot where the town of icklow now stands. This place seems in those ages have been a favourite harbour of resort. Palladius ided there a year or two earlier. Three or four tituries later the Danes founded a settlement there, d very naturally. Witklow Head is the most aminent object to persons coming up the Channel, d running far out into the sea forms a convenient ice of refuge for ships sailing before a southern 52 HISTORY OF IRELAND. breeze. The nature of the ground, too, made it especially suitable for ' the ships of that age, as it renders it specially unsuitable for the ships of our age. The ships of ancient times were many of them large and commodious, but they were shallow and almost flat-bottomed. We may derive a sufficient notion of them from a specimen of a war galley discovered some years ago in a Sleswick peat bog.-"- The boat was flat- bottomed, seventy feet long and eight or nine feet wide.. Its sides were of oak-boards, fastened with bark ropes and iron bplts, while fifty oars propelled it over the waves. It is evident to any one who knows the ground that the Murrow and great strand of Wicyow presented to such shallow but commodious barks the most fitting shelter, as they -were never anchored if it was at all possible to, draw them up on shore. In fact, the ancient life of St. Patrick in the Book .of Armagh expressly calls the harbour '-opportunum et clarum," commodious and famous, term's which no one would now dream of applying to it. The neigh- bourhood of Wicklow, and all the coast lands as far as the Three Rock Mountain, were ' then occupied by a tribe named Cualann, or Cualanni, wHo were expelled by the O' Byrnes and O'Tooles in the thirteenth century, but have left their name imprinted upon the wild, lovely valley of Glencullen, within seven miles of this spot, Palladius, the predecessor of Patrick, a few years before, was received with hostile demonstrations at this place. Palladius, however, knew nothing of Ireland. He was a Gaul indeed, and acquainted probably with a kindred tongue, but he had not that command over the language which St. Patrick had, and which enabled him at once ' Cf. Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, pp. 8, 9 ; Green's Making of England, p. 16 ; and Glasgow Archeeol. Soc. (1886), N. S., t. i., pt. ii., No. IX. ■ ST. PATRICK'S MISSION. 53 gain the hfearts and ears of the natives. Patrick ci not tarry long at Wicklow. His heart was set 3on Dalaradia arid the scenes and personages of his )uthful captivity. He sailed, therefore, along the last, touching here and there at convenient points, e landed at a spot still called, after him, Inis atrick, a small island off Skerries. The parish to hich it belongs is still called Holmpatrick. He then -oceeded northwards, coasting along a shore which len, as now, affords only at long intervals any shelter om the storm. He stopped at the Boyne, passed arlingford Bay, and came to land at the next atiiral harbour, Strangford Lough, where he found is' farther progress barred by the terrific race which revails' at this point. Tbere St. Patrick landed, and roceeded, with his companions, to explore the country; hey had not gone far when they iriet a swineherd, upposing them to be pirates or rbbberSj — a very natural apposition under the circumstances,^^the swineherd in away and called his master, whose name was lichu. He was a chieftain of high birth, descended om Fiatach Finn, King of Ireland in a.d. i 16. Hear- ig that pirates had landed in his territory, Dichu came nt, sword in hand, to oppose the invaders; but, :ruck with the venerable appearance of St. Patrick, e received him with kindness, took him to his house, stened to his preaching, and finally became a behever I Christ — "the first of the Scots," say more than one F the lives, " who confessed the faith under Patrick's linistry.'' Dichu, having been baptized, became & mvert, not only in word, but in deed. Tradition ;lls, that he at once presented to St. Patrick the round on which they were standing, upon which the lint erected a church, since called Sabhall Padhrig, 54 HISTORY OF IRELAND. in Latin Horreum Patricii, or in English, Patrick's Barn. Dr. Lanigan, t. i., p. 213, the celebrated Irish historian, well suggests that this church was called a barn because it was built according to the form and position of Dichu's barn, or perhaps it was nothing else than a real barn which Dichu presented for the preaching of the Gospel, just as many an edifying service has since been held in such a building. This barn, Sabhall, or Saul, as now it is called, was the earliest church founded by St. Patrick, and continued to be a favourite haunt of his till death overtook him, for it was in the monastery of Saul, the -site of his earliest missionary success, that he entered into his rest. Saul has ever since continued to be a Christian church, and still exists a parish of our own Church, the most ancient and most venerable of Christian parishes and Christian churches in Ireland. St, Patrick did not tarry too long at Saul. He committed his boats, or coracles, to Dichu's charge, and thence made his way to Dalaradia, the scene of his captivity. No place connected with the ancient history of Ireland has been more clearly identified than Dalaradia, and few places retain more vivid traditions concerning the sojourn and actions of our saint. Let me now describe it, though the description would most fitly have occurred in my last lecture. It is a beautiful district, and must have been more beautiful, because clad with woods of oak, in St. Patrick's time.* Dr." Reeves, in his Antiquities of Down and Connor, has devoted much space and much learning to the elucidation of its ancient history.^ ' See Reeves, Antiquities, pp. 86, 300, 345 ; concerning Saul, see pp. 220, 223. ^ Reeves, Aniiqtdties of Down and Connor, Dissertations on Dalriada and Dalaradia, pp. 318-348. ST. PATRICK'S mission: 55 Let me state the substance of his remarks in a few. words. There are two districts in the county Antrim which in ancient times had names closely akin. One was called Dalriada, a name which continues in use in the corrupted form of the Route, by which the dis- trict is still known. It, extended from Coleraine to ' Larne, embracing all the coast district of the Giant's Causeway and the glens of Antrim. Dalaradia was a distinct division, forrning the centre of the county bounded roughly on one side by Lough Neagh and on the jDther by the glens. These districts have made their mark on more than Irish history. They formed during the occupation of Britain by the Romans the land whence issued some of the most deadly and persistent of their foes. In the second century Marcus Antoninus sent to Britain one LoUius Urbicus, afterwards famous in. Christian history as the prefect whom Justin Martyr has pilloried in his second Apology for his unjust persecution of the Christians.^ Urbicus erected another fortification besides that of Agricola between the Forth and the Clyde. He showed his fear of the Scots of Antrim by placing his loftiest and strongest, fort at Barhill, near West Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. Later, too, the district became famous. In the begin- ning of the sixth century,' about the year 502, the Antrim men invaded the opposite coast of Scot- land, and successfully established a kingdom which perpetuates itself in the modern name of Argyleshire. This event is "thus recorded by the Irish annalist Tigernach under the year 502 : " Fergus the Great, son of Ere, accompanied by the race of Dalriada, occu- pied a part of Britain and died there." Some people, ' See Lightfoot's Ignatius, t. i., p. 493, and the article on Lol. Urbicus in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. S6 HISTORY OF IRELAND. many of them too calling themselves Irishmen, are ever inclined to treat the Irish Ahnals with scofh. Such persons may perhaps regard this notice with more respect when I mention that the Venerable Bede in the first chapter of his first book gives exactly the same account, telling us that the Scots, who then invaded Britain, established themselves, "vel amicitia vel ferro," as he tersely puts it, dnd were thence called Dalreudini, "nam lingua eoriiin daal partem significat.'' This, as Dr. Reeves says {Antiquities, p. 337), "is a very condensed account, but of the highest value as an external testimony to the correctness of our domestic records." "• We can even form some conception of what the 'inhabitants Were like in St. Patrick's time, thanks to the researches of archaeology, which is every day proving more and more the truest handrrikid of history. - All along thfe Antrim coast, from Carrickfergus to Glenarm, there runs a series of chalk cliffs, where the chalk is abundantly mixed with flint. These cliffs in ancient times formed a perfect magazine for the in- habitants of the county Antrim, whence they dreW implements for domestic service and weapons for th6 chase and for war. The strand, indeed, of Larne is to this day the greatest source of flint-finds in Ireland, or perhaps in the British Islands. Some twenty years ago a large number of these flint weapons, and even a complete arrow with a flint head, were discovered in the very neighbourhood of St. Patrick's captivity, scattered all over the hills which had been uncultivated since his time, proving that the coitipariions of his ' See Keating's History of Ireland, ed. O'Mahony, p. 422; and Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan, a.d. 498, for the Irish account. ST. PATRICK'S MISSION. 57 youth and the converts of his later years belonged to, that rude race which had not abandoned the use of flint weapons, at least . for the purposes of the chase, though acquainted with the use of iron and the nobler metals .-"^ It was to this district that St. Patrick was now making his way to visit his old Master Milehu, bearing with him the tidings of salvation. The earliest life of St. Patrick-^--that by Matcumacthenius — now indulges in legend. Patrick wished to revisit Dalaradia and the hill of Slemish, not only to preach the Gospel there, but also to see the place where his guardian angel Victor or Victoricus had ascended into heaven before his eyes. The perpetuity of Irish tradition is strikingly illustrated -by this notice. Indeed, the more you investigate the more will you be struck with the firm, tenacious grasp tradition, traditional scenes, traditional history, tradi- tional garnes. and celebrations take of the popular mind. And no country is richer in these unexplored mines of traditional history than oUr bwti. Its backwardness in other respects has been advantageous from this point of view. Nothing destroys tradition so utterly and so' rapidly as education. Give a peasant a penny news- paper and. teach him to use it, get him to take an interest in the politics of Europe, and the great political questions which may be exciting his own country, and you deprive him of the keen interest he once took in the. stories handed down from generation to "generation and told round the iireside on the winter evenings as the rain and storm raged without. In the course of my investigations for these lectures, I have been greatly struck by the perpetuity and ac- curacy of Irish traditions. There was, for instance, ' See Journal oi tile Kilkenny Arch. Society, N.S., t. iii., p. 218. S8 HISTORY OF IRELAND. a tradition in the neighbourhood of Kilkenny that the Danes of Waterford, in the ninth century, had pursued a band of native Irish to a large natural cave in the neighbourhood of that city, had shut them in, and smothered or starved them to death. In the beginning oftlielast century Dr.. Thomas Molyneux, a distinguished scholar of that time, visited Kilkenny, and explored that cave, when human bones in immense quantities were found in ' the exact spot which the tradition desig- nated. ■■■ The traditions about St. Patrick correspond with facts in much the same way. The ancient life in i\\& Book of Armagh, speaking, of Slemish, says, "From which mountain a long time before when he served as a slave he saw the angel Victor ascend into heaven, • his footstep being marked in stone on another hill." Now let us come to facts. Takfe up Dr. "Reeves' Antiquities of Down and Connor, pp. 83, 84, and you must be struck with the topographical accuracy of this ancient life. The valley where St. Patrick lived as a slave is divided into ^two parts by the river Braid. One side of the river is the parish of Skerry, the other side is the parish of Rathcavan. In the parish of Rathcavan, on one side of the valley, is the mountain of Slemish whence Victor ascended into heaven. On the other side, in the parish of Skerry, is the basaltic hill of Skerry, on which you can still see the ruins of a church said to have been founded by St. Patrick ; while at a few yards' distance from the north-west angle of the church is a patch of rock, on the edge of which is a depression having a faint resemblance to the print of a shoe, which the Ordnance Survey,, agreeably to the tradition ' S^e Journal of the Kilkenny ArchEeological Society, N.S., iii., 299. ST. FATIUCICS MISSION. 59 as old as the seventh century, notices as " St. .Patrick's footmark." Nay, it is possible that we may identify even the very spot, the very farm where St. Patrick resided. In the townlandof Killycarn, parish of Skerry, just across the river Braid (Ordn. Maps, Antrim, Nos. 28 and 29), is a large rath under which are some beehive constructions, usual in such places. This is said to have been one of the residences of Milchu. But I am inclined to think that we have , a surer indication of its locality. In the valley of the Braid, and lying in . a straight line between Slemish and Skerry, is the townland of Ballyligpatrick. This word means the place or town of Patrick's Hollow (Bally = town, iig = hollow, Patrick). In this hollow are still some remains of a fort or rath. Now, remembering that St. Patrick says he got up in the night and resorted to the woods and mountains for prayer, what is more natural and more probable than that this townland preserves in its name th6 memory of the residence of St. Patrick in the days of his slavery ? Slemish is on the southern side of it, while stepping- stones over the Braid and a short walk lead to Skerry Hill on the northern side, either of them forming such a resort for spiritual exercises as a youth of St. Patrick's temperament would have eagerly desired at that time. I have dwelt at some length on this point, because ■ every day's experience is teaching that a careful personal survey, an intimate knowledge of the ground where events happened, is absolutely necessary for their true comprehension. Oftentimes, too, a name preserved perhaps by local tradition or in some local landmark, will shed a flood of light upon some doubtful point. Mr. Freeman's present position as a historian of England is due very largely to such careful studies 66 HIS TOR Y'OF IRELA ND, made by him of all the scenes which he depicts. Lord Macaulay personally visited every part of the battle-field of the Boyne, and, therefore, his narrative reads like an eye-witness's. To this region which I have thus described, and which still bears various evidences of his residence therein, St. Patrick now approached. But as legend clusters round his slavery there, so legend again clusters round his first visit as a Christian missionary. Milchu,^ his former master, heard of the approach of his fugitive slave and of the triumphs which accompanied his march. Milchu feared that he should be unable to withstand the magical powers by which, as he believed, Patrick was attended, and should, therefore, become a slave himself in turn. So, by the direct instigation of the devil, the chief gathered all his substance into his house, arid standing on it as a funeral pile burned himself to death. St. Patrick meanwhile had arrived at the northern side of Slemish, whence a view is gained over the Braid valley ; and longing to impart to his former master the tidings of salvation, saw Milchu's house on fire. There the saint stood astounded for several hours at the sight of the burning homestead. Maccumacthe- nius, who wrote the account, had evidently visited the locality, for he tells us all the local details with great ■ exactness, and mentions that the precise spot where Patrick thus stopped was then marked by a wayside cross.^ St. Patrick gave vent to his feelirigsin sighs, ' Milchu was a historical character. He is thus mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters, a.d. 388 : " J/tilchuo, son of Hua Bain, King of North Dalaradia." Cf. Reeves' Antiqq. of Down and Connor, pp. 78, 83, 339. ^ The exact words of the narrative in the Book of Armagh are: " Ubi primum illam regionem, in qua servivit, cum tali gratia adveniens, vidit, ubi nunc-usque crux habetur in signum." Analecta Bollandiana, i., 559. ST. PATRICK'S MISSION. oi groans, and prayers, and then prophesied that none of Milchu's seed should sit upon his throne for ever, but , that they should ever be subjects, not rulers. His family, however, received the faith at St. Patrick's hands. His son- Guasacht was a- bishop in the Church of Granard, and is commemorated in the Marlyrology of Donegal on January 24th, while two of his daughters became consecrated virgins. St. Patrick straightway -returned to his convert Dichu, on the shores of Strangford Lough, to prepare for his next great step, his "assault on Tara, the very centre of Irish paganism. LECTURE IV. TAJ?A AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. GREAT jtnissionaries would be great generals. They require the peculiar talents demanded in great conquerors. They must be able, "to form comprehensive plans of warfare, they must be able to grasp details, and they must have an eagle eye to detect that central point round which the really important battle should be fought. Such men were St. Paul, Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, John Wesley, ■ Bishop Selwyn, and such an one was St. Patrick. He recognised at once that triumphs for Christ won beside Strangford Lough, or amid the picturesque but distant mountains of Antrim, might be very important in themselves, but were as nothing compared with the impression which would be made by a victory gained at the capital and centre of national life. For you will observe there was a centre of national life in Celtic Ireland. Ireland was just the same as all the' other branches of the Celtic family. That family has re- tained longer than any other section of the Aryan race the tribal formation. In Galatia, for instance, the Celts were three centuries settled there before our era ; they had passed, too, under the mill of Roman provincial despotism ; yet they retained the tribal organisation down to the first century. In the great Corpus of Greek Inscriptions, edited by Boeckh, you will find an inscription from Ancyra, number 4039 TAMA AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 63 describing games celebrated in that city every fifth year. This inscription glorifies the officials in the celebrations. It mentions the' spectacles, the gym- nastic contests, the gladiatorial shows,- the wild beast fights, the frequent sacrifices, for the Celts in Asia were evidently as fond of uniting religion and amuse- ments as the modern Irishman. And they had another point of contact. No modern race-course or fair would be complete without a house of refreshment and entertainment. And in like manner we are told of the ancient Galatians that in addition to the games they did not forget the refreshments, for the inscription celebrates the hospitality of the officials who gave banquets to two whole cities, and entertained three entire tribes, the Tectosagae, the Tolistobogii, and the Trocmi.^ Now, you must bear in mind why I have adduced this example. The tribal organisation per- vaded Galatia, but still the tribes found a central point of meeting and of union in Ancyra, and in the games connected with their national assembly which the Romans permitted them to hold in that city. The case was the same with ancient Gaul. The tribal organisation was not only tolerated, but even utilised by the Romans. Certain things the Romans did not tolerate. They put down the Druids and Druidical practices. The Roman state could find better use for her subjects than ruthlessly sacrificing them in hecatombs ' See Lightioois Galatians, p. 243, and Macmillaris Mag., Oct. 1882, "Home Rule imder the Roman Empire." The Romans utilized for the purposes of local government the tribal and communal organisation which they found existing through- out the empire. See on this topic a series of articles by Pallu de Lessert in the Bulletin des Antiquites Africaines, 1884, on "Les assemblees Provinciales de TAfrique Romaine," and a monograph by him styled Etudes sur le droit public et Vorganisa- tionsociale de tAftique Romaine (Paris : 1884). 64 HISTORY OS IRELAND.. {cf. Rev, Celtique, t. v., p. 44), But the tribal organic sation was legalised by them. Yet the tribes were not independent of one another. The bond of union may have been a loose one, but yet it was a reality. They met every year for common consultation at the - city of Lyons, celebrated games, held literary contests, passed votes of thanks to former governors, instituted prosecutions, against unjust ones. In Lyons,, how- ever, as at Ancyra, we find the same union of busi- ness, pleasure, and refreshment. Britain again was split up into tribal organisations when conquered by the Romans, but they could unite at times under a common head ; and the Celtic coinage of Britain proves that, while the several chieftains ruled their separate clans with all independence, yet there was an. over^ king, a supreme governor, to whom they all paid allegiance. Ag it was in other Celtic countries, so was it in the Ireland of St. Patrick's time. The population was organised on a -tribal basis. Each tribe was ruled by its own chief. But there was a supreme Jcing who governed the district or kingdom of Meath, and held a great convention of his sub- ordinate chiefs every three or seven years (it is hot quite settled which) at Tara, where the same happy combination of business and festivity found place, which I have noticed in very different localities. To Tara. therefore St. Patrick now directed his course. Setting sail from Strangford Lough he sailed back to the mouth of the Boyne, landed at Colp in the barony of Lo^er Duleek, where he laid up his boats, and made his way towards Tara. Let me now pause in the course of our narrative to set before you some facts concerning Tara, for Tara as well as St. Patrick is the subject of my lecture. The TASA AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 65 popxilar notion abciut Tara is gained from Moore's melody of worldwide fame — " The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls as if that soul were fled. So' sleeps the pride of former days, so glory's thrill is o er, And hearts that once beat high for'praise, now feel that pulse no more." The usual idea is that Tara was a splendid city and a magnificent palace, like Windsor, where the kings of Ireland held high festival until the Anglo-Norman conquest in the twelfth century, when the glorias of Tara were finally destroyed. Now, this notion is without a shadow of historical foundation. Tara, as a royal residence, ceased to exist hundreds of j'ears before Strongbow. The last assembly of the tribes was held there in the sixth century. Its desolation too, A.D. 563, was due not to the cruel invader, but to the action of an indignant priest. A criminal had fled for sanctuary to the Abbey of St. Ruan, now Lorha near RoScrea, was dragged thence, -and executed at Tara. The enraged abbat went in procession to the royal palace and cursed it. And no king sat- in Tara from that day forth. The malediction was commemorated by the name afterwards bestowed on the monastery, " The Monastery of the Curses of Ireland." -^ Let me explain to you the origin of Tara, so far as it can be historically ascertained. The Hill of Tara is about twenty-'five mUes from this spot. Petrie, its great historian, describes it thus : " The HiU of Tara, though undistinguished either for altitude or picturesqueness of form, is not less remarkable for the pleasing and extensive prospects which it com- ' See about St. Ruan, or Ruadan, Ussher's Worts, t. vi., pp. 472, 529. 590. S97 ; O'Curry's Lectt., 1., 337, 343- 66 HISTOM-Y OF IRELAND. mands, than for the associations connected with it, as the site of the residence of the Irish monarchs from the earliest times. In both these circumstances it bears a striking similitude to the hill of Aileach, near Derry, the residence of the kings of Ulster; and to the hill of Emania, near Armagh, another residence of the Ulster kings of a different race. All these localities have, shared a similar fate in the destruction of their monu- ments at distant periods, and all equally present striking vestiges of their ancient importance." Now as to the history of Tara. The Irish" bards tell us that the Hill of Tara became the chief residence of the Irish kings on the first arrival, of the Firbolgs or Belgse in Ireland. But as they tell us that 136 kings reigned there in succession before St. Patrick's arrival, we must decline to follow them into times so near the antediluvian period. Petrie declares that all the monu- ments now remaining at Tara are due to Cormac MacArt. His period is the earliest date to which we can trace the genuine history of Ireland. "He lived in the third century. He was grandson of Conn of the hundred battles. He reigned from a.d. 218 — 260. He was a vigorous ruler and an active warrior. He never neglected what then (if not in later years) was regarded as a sacred duty, the spoiling of Great Britain. Under date of the year 222 the Annals tell us that " the large fleet of Cormac MacArt went over the $ea for the space of three years ; " which simply means that he was ravaging the English and Scotch shores with fire and sword. This statement receives a striking confirmation from Roman history. The Emperor Severus waged a series of campaigns against the Celtic insurgents from 208 — 211, with but very small success, He was, in fact, practically defeated, which seems to TAJiA AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 67 lave encouraged the foes of Roman rule, and amply iccounts for the raids of Cormac MacArt.^ But our lero ■ gained more from the Romans than mere spoil, ^e carried back notions of a higher civilisation and of I purer faith. He brought back a beautiful captive vsrith vhomhe fell in love. She' apparently did not like the :oarse food of the Irish, the bread was not fine enough. 30 to please her, he sent to England for a millwright, ind thus introduced water-mills into Ireland, instead of he kerns, or hand mills, alone previously used.^ From he same source, too, he may have imbibed those mono- heistic, if not Christian ideas, which gained for him he bitter hostility of , the Druids, which Sir Samuel "ergusdn has celebrated in his poem oh the burial )f Cormac MacArt. Cormac was not only a warrior, he was also a legis- ator and a ruler. He organised the Brehon laws, the .rmy with the aid of his son-in-law, Finn MacCumhaill,' he literary classes, the" poets, bards, and chroniclers if Ireland, and settled the national convention on a egular basis, appointing a meeting every third year or the administration of public affairs. Perhaps it ' See article on L. Sep. Severus in Smith's Dictionary of Greek nd Roman Biography. ^"It is an interesting circumstance that the historical fact 'thus ecorded respecting this mill is still vividly preserved ; and a lill, now called LismuUen Mill, still exists on the reputed site f the ancient one. It may also be worthy of remark, that the resent miller considers himself, and is considered by the people f the district, as the lineal descendant of the Pictish millwright rought over by King Cormac, though the original name of the imily, MacLamha, or Hand, has through the failure of the main ne in his grandfather become extinct." — Petrie's Tara, p. 162 ; f. Keating's History of Ireland, ed. O'Mahony, p. 350. ^ Finn MacCumhaill, commonly called Finn MacCoul, was a istorical character (see O'Curry's Lectures on MS. Materials f Irish History, vol. i., pp. 301-306. He was the Fingal of )ssian's poems), m HISTORY OF IRELAND. may interest you to hear a bardic description of this' national convention from a poet of the year 984 : ^ — " The feis of Temur each third year, To preserve laws and rules, Was then convened firmly By the illustrious kings of Erin. Cathaoir of sons-in-lavsr convened The beautiful feis of regal Temur, There came with him (the better for it) The men of Erin to one place, Three days before Laman always, Three days after it, it was a goodly custom. The host of very high fashion spent Constantly drinking during the week. Without theft, without wounding a man Among them during all this time, Without feats of arms, without deceit,' , Without exercising horses. Whoever did any of these things Was a wretched enemy with heavy venom ; Gold was not received as a retribution from him, But his soul in one hour." Such was the general convention or general assembly of the tribes at Tara, as organised on a fixed basis by Cormac MacArt. But now, what was the appearance of Tara ? The bards tell us of the halls and buildings erected at Tara by Ollamh Fodhla, in the year of the world 3922. They are very particular in their details about this man. He ruled Ireland for forty years, and died in his own house at Tara. He was the first king by whom the assembly of Tara was instituted, and he erected the poets' house at Tara. He also appointed a chief over every barony, and a farmer over every townland, and he was called Ollamh, or chief poet, because he was first ' O'Donovan's Booh of Rights, p. 10. TASA AND THE CONVERSION OF. IRELAND. 69 a learned bard, and then king of Ireland. But though we may feel a natural interest in one who rose to be king of Ireland through literature, and not through the more popular course of arms, yet we must be excused from going back beyond Cormac, to whom Petrie attri- butes the erection of all the buildings which have left any trace upon the present Hill of Tara. I cannot, indeed, •, attempt to enter upon a description of these ruins. That has been exhaustively done for all time by Mr. Petrie, in his memoir contained in vol. xviii. of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. There you will find the fullest description of them as they appear at present, and .the most careful, learned, and critical account of them as they are described by poets and historians who must have seeit Tara in its highest glory. There you will find a description of the feasts of Tara, the order of precedence observed therein, and the, character of the viands served up for the entertainment of the guests. But Mr. Petrie does not leave us under , any false impression. He tells us that exactly the same customs and the same rude magnificence were to be found in the household of every chief, not only in Ireland, but also in the Highlands of Scotland, so late as the sixteenth century. Indeed, he might have come down still later, for any of you that have ever read the Legend of Montrose or Waverley or Roh Roy will re^ mernber how Sir W. Scott depicts customs and feasts, which find their aptest illustrations in the banquets of Tara as described by the bards whom Petrie has translated for us. And now for the buildings which Moore has celebrated, and about which so many false impressions prevail. Buildings there were certainly, and some of them very sxtensive. The Hall of Assembly, or the banqueting 70 HISTORY OF IRELAND. hall, is situated on the northern slope of the hill. It measures 759 feet in length, was originally 90 feet in breadth, and retains marks of fourteen distinct entrances. This is the hall where the great national assembly or convention of Tara was held. But now we may fairly ask. What was the character of the buildings ? They were simply composed of wood and clay. "Though stone houses,'' says Petrie, "as well as stone fortresses are commonly found along the northern, western, and southern coasts of Ireland, nothing of the kind, with one exception, ever existed at Tara. But though the houses were unquestionably of wood and clay, it must not be inferred that they were altogether of a barbarous structure, or inferior in point of comfort to the contem- poraneous structures of "^ther nations, equally remote from examples of Greek and Roman civilisation. It is probable they were not unlike or inferior to those of the ancient Germans, of which Tacitus speaks {De Germania, c. 16) in terms of praise, and which he describes as being overlaid with an earth so pure and splendid, that it resembled painting" (Petrie, p. 231). In corroboration of Mr. Petrie's statement, that, though the buildings were only of wood and clay, yet this does not imply a state of barbarism, I may just note that all of you can any day see a convincing proof that a certain degree of civilisation must have existed among the princes which assembled at Tara. In the year 1 8 10 two magnificent golden torques were found at Tara, and are now preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. They are of a spiral or screw fashion. One is five feet seven inches from one extremity to the other, and weighs 27 oz. 9 dwts. The other is of equal diameter, but of more delicate construction and greater lightness, weighing only 12 oz. 6 dwts. Seeing, TASA AMD THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 71 then, that history and legend alike tell us of Tara, that the remains of Tara are still to be seen exactly corre- sponding to ancient descriptions, and that the evidences of ancient art have been there discovered, we have certainly as good ground to accept the convention of Tara as a historical fact, as classical archaeologists have for accepting the statements and conclusions of Schliemann about ancient Troy. Tara then and its barbaric glory may be accepted as a historical fact. Let me now describe for you another feature which marks the neighbourhood, and proves the rude magnificence of the ancient kings of Ireland. The burial-places of the kings of Tara have astonished the minds and roused the curiosity of scholars and inquirers of every land. They- form, in fact, collections of pre- historic remains well-pigh unrivalled. There are several royal burial-places in Ireland. The most celebrated, however, is Brugh, or Brugh-na-Boinne, " the fort or town of the Boyne," to which reference is made in almost every ancient Irish manuscript. It is thus described by Sir W. Wilde in his Beauties of the Boyne and Black- water : — " About two miles below Slane the river be- comes fordable, and several islands break the stream. Here, upon the left or south-western bank of the river, is the place called Ross-na-ree, or Wood of the Kings, and upon the opposite swelling bank of the river occur a series of raised mounds, raths, forts, caves, circles, and pillar stones, bearuig all the evidence of ancient Pagan sepulchral monuments." The raised mounds amount to twenty in number-; some of them are of world-wide fame, as Knowth, New Grange, and Dowth. Knowth occupies an acre in extent, and rises to the height of eighty ' feet. New Grange covers two acres, and is perhaps the most, remarkable Celtic monument now 72 HISTORY OF IRELAND. existing. Sir W. Wilde's description of it is too long for quotation. He justly remarks, however, upon our neglect, that while visited by antiquarians from every land, it is practically unknown to Irishmen, though within a two hours' drive from Dublin. As Schliemann and^ Mycenae and Greece are now all the rage, I may mention that the interior chamber of the New Grange Moat has often been compared to the great cavern variously called the tomb of Agamemnon and the treasury of Atreus. Both are constructed on exactly the same principle., the roof being dome- shaped, but built without any knowledge of the prin- ciple of the arch. The central chamber is nineteen feet six inches high, twenty-two feet long, and eighteen . broad, while the passage which leads to it is sixty-three feet long, and in general six feet .high. Again, a mile from New Grange the third great Rath of Dowth presents very similar features. This vast cemetery was existing in the same state as now in St. Patrick's time. One thousand years ago, in the year 862, it was plundered by the Danes of Dublin, and the raths were rifled of their treasures. Earlier still we have a notice of it. Cormac MacArt, King of Tara, in the third century, became a Christian, or at least imbibed Christian ideas and rejected Druidism. He died from the bone- of a Boyne salnion sticking in his throat. His burial is thus described in the Irish Annals : " He " (Cormac) " told his people not to bury him at Brugh, because it was a cemetery of idolaters; for he did not worship the same God as any of those interred at Brugh ; but to bury him at Ross-na-Righ, with his face to the east. He afterwards died, and his servants held a council, and carae to the resolution of burying him at Brugh, the place where the kings of Tara, his pre- TAJ?A AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 73 decessors, were always buried. The body of the king was thrice raised to be carried to Brugh, but the Boyne swelled up thrice, so that they could not cross. They afterwards dug his grave at Ross-na-Righ, as he had ordered."^ I have bestowed considerable time upon these details, because they strikingly illustrate and confirm the history of St. Patrick at this great crisis in his missionary career. St. Patrick arrived at the mouth of the Boyne. There, as Ma,ccumacthenius tells us, he abandoned his boats, and proceeded a day's journey up the river's bank, till "he came to the graves of the sons of Feic, this . very pagan cemetery_ of Slane which I have described. There St. Patrick determined to tarry, that' he might ' This incident has been vigorously painted by a poet of our own, Sir S. Ferguson, in his Lays of the Western Gael. Let me just quote you one or two stanzas; the whole poem is well worth careful study. King Cormac is represented as thus speaking on his death-bed : — "Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve,' Said Cormac, are but lawen treene ; The axe that made them haft or helve Had worthier of our worship been ; But He Who made the tree to grow, And hid in earth the iron stone. And made the man with mind to know The axe's use, is God alone." He then orders his burial at Ross-na-ree, not among the pagans of Brugh-na-Boine. The attempt of the pagans to bury hijn ^ there, and their defeat by the Boyne itself, are depicted, and then the poem ends : — " Round Cormac Spring renews her buds In March perpetual by his side ; Down come the earth-fresh April floods And up the sea-fresh salmon glide ; And life and time rejoicing run From age to age their wonted way. But still he waits the risen sun ; For still 'tis only dawning day." 74 HISTORY OF IRELAND. keep the great feast of Easter, pitching h(s tent on the hill of Slane. At the same time the king of Ireland and his priests were observing a great pagan feast at Tara, whence Slane is easily visible. Maccumacthe- nius was well versed in Scripture, and his narrative now becomes steeped in Scripture phraseology. Let me give the substance thereof. King Laoghaire, like another Nebuchadnezzar, had assembled to his feast his kings, satraps, dukes, princes, and counsellors, together with his magicians and priests. It was their custom, proclaimed by royal edict, that no fire should be lit on that night over all the plain within sight of Tara, before the beacon light shone out from the royal palace ; arid that, if anyone did light a fire, that soul should be cut off from his people. The holy Patri ;k, however, was ignorant of the edict, and even if he knew of it, would have treated it with contempt. He, therefore, commenced the celebration of the Paschal feast by lighting a sacred and blessed fire, according to custom, which was seen with amazement by the in- habitants of Tara.-' The king speedily summoned a council of his great men, that he might be ascertained as to the offender ; whereupon, the Druids declared, " O King, live for ever ! This fire which has been lighted before the royal fire will never be extinguished, unless it be extinguished this night. Moreover, it will conquer all the fires of our religion. And he who has lit it will conquer us all,- and will seduce all thy subjects, and all kingdoms will fall before him, and he will fill ' The Easter fire is authentic. Let me say a word about it, as it illustrates the details of ancient Christian life. 'A great autho- rity on Christian antiquities speaks thus : " One special solemnity indicating the festival character of Easter eve was the lighting of lamps and candles, — a custom which is repeatedly referred to by writers from the fourth century dov/nwards. Eusebius records TAJ?A AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 75 all things, and will reign for ever and ever." ^ Upon this the king was greatly enraged. He ordered nine chariots to be prepared, and, taking his two principal magicians, proceeded to visit and punish the bold indi- viduals who had dared to violate the royal edict. And now the Book of Armagh relates a series of encounters between St. Patrick and the magicians, very similar to stories of encounters between Christians and heathen priests, told in the acts of the martyrs, and modelled apparently upon the legends current from early times concerning the conflicts of St. Peter with Simon Magus in the city of Rome. Let me tell you the story of the first encounter, which must serve as a sufficient instance of them all. The magicians advised the king, as they drew near Slane, not to enter the that Constantine observed Easter eve with such pomp, that he turned the sacred or mystical vigil into the light of day by means of lamps suspended in every part, and setting up huge waxen tapers as big as columns through the whole city. , We find a reference to the- same custom in Gregory Nazianzen, who speaks of persons of all- ranks, even magistrates and men and ladies of rank, carrying lamps and setting up tapers, both at home and in the churches, thus turning night into day. Gregory Nyssen describes the brilliancy of the illumination as a cloud of fire mingling with the dawning rays of the sun, and making the eve and the festival one continuous day, without any interval of darkness. Prudentius, at the end of the fourth century, has a poem on the lighting of the Paschal torch. In later times, one special wax taper of large size was solemnly lighted from the newly-lighted Easter fire, and was blessed as a" type of Christ's rising from the dead, to give light to the world. The institution of this custom was attributed to Pope Zosimus, A.D. 417." See Bingham's Antiqq., bk. xxi., ch. i., sec. 32, and Smith's Diet. Christ. Antiqq., vol. i., p. 595. Tirechan tells us the name of the man who carried the blessed fire St; Patrick used. It was Kannanus, or Ciennanus (in modern times, Keenan), who afterwards presided over the Church of Duleek. ' Cf. Proceed. Roy. Irish Acad., t. vi., p. 50, for a feast or con- vention like that of ancient Tara, held in 135 1 at Castle Blakeny, in the co. Galway. 76 HISTORY OF IRELAND. circuit of St. Patrick's fires, lest their magical in- fluence might overcome him, but to remain outside the circle and summon ,the stranger thither. St. Patrick was accordingly summoned to the king's pre- sence, the magi advising that no one should rise when he approached, as whoever did so would believe iri him. St. Patrick drew nigh, and, seeing many horses and chariots, he uplifted his voice in the words of the Psalm, "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will walk in the name of our God." No one rose up at his approach, save Ere, son of Dego, one of the royal pages. He was converted by our saint's preaching, and in after-years appointed the first bishop of Slane, the spot where he was converted, and where his relics were still preserved in the seventh century.' Then commenced a vigorous discussion, one Druid, named Lochru, making himself specially prominent in abusing the Catholic faith. His career was but a short one, however, for the saint sternly beholding him, as formerly St. Peter beheld Simon Magus, cried out aloud to God, " O Lord, Who canst do all things, by Whose power all things consist, and Who hast sent me hither, let this wretch who blasphemes Thy name be forthwith raised aloft, and let him speedily perish." Whereupon the unfortunate magician was caught up into the air, dashed head foremost against the earth, and thus miserably perished. Tirechan, indeed, tells us that he himself had seen the very stone on which his brains had been dashed out. The king, seeing his favourite Druid dead, wished to slay St. Patrick, and ordered his attendants toseize him. ' A small chapel, called St. Erc's Hermitage, still exists in the Marquis of Conyngham's . demesne on the banks of the Boyne., It is beautifully situated, looking up one of the most charming TARA AND THE CONVERSION OF IRELAND. 77 The saint, perceiving their threatening movements, arose, and intoned in a loud voice the words of the sixty-eighth Psalm, " Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate Him flee before Him." Where- upon a horror of darkness fell upon his foes, and they began to fight one with another. An earthquake also added its terrors, when all the guards took to headlong flight, and never halted till they had reached a plain half- way between Dublin and Drogheda, leaving the king and queen and two attendants in St. Patrick's presence. The queen drew near, and entreated St. Patrick not to slay her husband, and promised he, should worship St. Patrick's God ;- whereupon the king approached, and did obeisance to the saint ; but it was only a feigned convert sion on his part, for the king immediately afterwards tried to kill the saint and his attendants, when St. Patrick in a moment turned himself and his seven attendants into stags, .who skipped away before the astounded monarch. I need scarcely delay you with more of the prodigies which happened at Slane. Let me just sum up the narrative. Next day being Easter .day, St. Patrick proceeded to Tara, and there again encountered another arch-Druid. The. pagan performed miracles, but Patrick far surpassed them all. This part of the narrative is modelled upon the contest of Moses with the magicians of Pharaoh. This second Druid also perished in the contest. Again the king strove to kill St. Patrick, but finally, at the prayer of his chief men, accepted the faith, was baptized, and gave St. Patrick a safe conduct through Ireland. His conversion was and romantic stretches of the Boyne, resembUng portions of the Rhine above Coblentz. It stands close to the bridge of Slane, where the decisive struggle took place between William III. and James II. 78 HISTORY OF IRELAND. only nominal, however. Laoghaire lived to an advanced age, but died a pagan at heart, for he ordered himself to be buried after the manner of his forefathers. They had a feud with the Leinster men and their king, who lived near Naas, and were always buried with their faces -looking towards Leinster, and with their arms by their side, to signify the intensity and perpetuity of their hate. Now you may ask me a very natural and proper question — What about the shamrock all this time ? did not St. Patrick preach the faith at Tara and illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity by that national emblem ? I am obliged to tell you, however, that, like many another interesting tale, this legend has no foundation in history. * The use of the shamrock as an emblem in this country is very ancient, derived probably from the times of paganism, when the trefoil was held sacred. It is possible, then, that the emblem begat the legend. Men used the shamrock when pagans. They continued it, like many other pagan practices, in Christian times, and then Christianised the emblem by developing the legend about St. Patrick's use of it.^ St. Patrick's direct, success at Tara was not at once very great. He gained, indeed, two or three of the king's courtiers who afterwards became bishops, but the ' The legend about the shamrock can be traced back to the year 1600. It formed the subject of a prolonged controversy jn the pages of Notes and Queries, series iii. and iv., 1864-1869, when Mr. F. R. Davies, K.J.J., M.R.I.A., a well-known Dublin antiquarian and student of heraldry, gave the best explanation of it. He referred its origin to the reverence of the Druids for trefoil. See also Moore's Cybele Hibernica, p. 73. None of the mediseval lives of St. Patrick mention it. I have consulted several eminent Celtic scholars, including Mr. Hennessy, who possesses an unrivalled knowledge of such legends, and they all profess their ignorance of any historical foundation for it. memories and associations of Tara were too closely connected with the native worship to yield to a single assault. Patrick then set out on a series of missionary excur- sions through Meath. He came to Telltown, where a brother of Laoghaire lived. It was the time of the great feast or fair of Telltown,^a feast, by the way, which is mentioned by Tirechan in the seventh century, and is described by Sir W. Wilde as existing within living memory.^ It was just like Donnybrook fair, Carbri was the name of this chief. He, like his brother Laoghaire, was an obstinate pagan, and therefore Patrick, after offer- ing him the faith, denounced him, and went on to another brother Conall at Donagh-Patrick, a mile or so lower down the Blackwater. Conall accepted the faith in sincerity, was baptized and blessed by St. Patrick, and promised the reversion of his brother's kingdom. From this Conall St. Columba was descended, and many of the kings of Ireland till the eleventh century.^ The assault delivered by St. Patrick on Irish paganism at Tara was typical "of his missionary policy. St. Patrick recognised the facts of Celtic nature, and delivered his message accordingly. He knew the devotion of the tribes to their chiefs, and that if the chiefs were secured {he conversion of the tribes would naturally follow. He and his followers always aimed, therefore, at the chiefs, and thus made rapid progress. If he delivered his message, however, in accordance with the facts of human nature, he ruled his move- ments according to the physical formation of the country. ' Wilde's Beauties of (he Boyne and Blackwater offers a chaiiu- ing guide to the scenes of St. Patrick's preaching in Meath, 2 Keating's History of Ireland ed. O'Mahony, p, 425. 8o HISTORY OF IRELAND. St. Patrick conquered at Tara, and must have spent , a considerable time in that central district of Ireland. ' But though Meath had received the Gospel, the four other provinces remained in darkness. Tara was then the centre of Ireland towards which all the great roads of the kingdom converged. These roads were five in number. One road ran north-east from Tara through Duleek and Drogheda, in which direction a road still exists. ' Another, called Slighe (Sligi) Cualann, was the Wicklow road. You remember that I told you the Cualanni inhabited Wicklow at that time. The Wicklow road passed through Ratoath, down through the classic locality of our own city, called Stonybatter, crossed the Liffey at Ath-Cliath, or Dublin, the ford of the hurdles, passed south through Booterstown, which gained its name from it, and so on into Wicklow. Another road led southwards to Ossory and Eastern Munster. It is probably identical with a road which now leads in that direction. A fourth road was called the Slope of the Chariots. It still exists, and though partially dis- used for a long time, has been well restored within the last few .years at the, public expense. This road led north-west. A fifth road, called Slighe Mor or the great road, led to Connaught. It is probably identical with the present road to Trim, where it joined the great western road across Ireland.-' There is a very curious physical feature which marks the centre of Ireland. About five miles from Dublin, in the neighbourhood of Tallaght, there rises a series of drift gravel undulations, called the Green Hills. This range, varying from one to three or four hundred feet in height, traverses the whole central plain of ' On the roads leading from Tara see Petrie's Tara, in the Transactions of the Roy. Irish Acad,, t. xviii. • Ireland. Anyone who takes a ticket from Dublin to Galway can trace it side by side with the Midland Railway the whole way, sometimes oa one side, sometimes on the other. This ridge has determined the course of the railway. Two thousand years ago it determined the course of the great road from Dublin to Galway Bay, which passed from Dublin to Trim, from Trim to MuUingar, Ballymore, Athlone, thence west by Ballinasloe to Galway, or by Ros- common to , Mayo. Now, these great lines of road determined the course followed by St. Patrick, just as the line of the Egnatian road across - Macedonia determined St. Paul's course of labour, or the course of the Roman roads connecting Lystra, Derbe, and Iconium determined his field of work in Asia Minor.'^ St. Patrick went first into Connaught. His mind had ever been drawn towards Connaught. After his escape from captivity, he heard in sleep the voices of the children from the wood of Fochlut, near the Western Sea, calling him to their aid.^ And now an accidental circumstance deterniined him to proceed thither. Tire- chan, in the Book of Armagh {Anal. Bolland., ii., 42), tells the story. St. Patrick had converted, as I have aliready mentioned, a Brehon lawyer, named Ere, one of King Laoghaire's courtiers. He was baptizing him at the Well Loigles, the situation of which has been ascertained by Dr. Petri e on the slope of the highest part of the Hill of Tara. The well, indeed, has been filled up, but the ground is still marshy just beneath it. ' The value of such considerations has been clearly shown by the Bishop of Durham in his great work on Ignatius and Poly carp, vol. i., p. 348. ^ On the identification of this locality see Analect. Bolland., ii., 42 ; and 0,'Donovan's Hy-Fiachrach, pp. 463, 464. 6 82 HISTORY OF IRELAND. While baptizing Ere and many thousands of other converts, he overheard two chiefs talking together behind his back. They were strangers to one another. One of them asked the other whence he came. Where- upon the man who was questioned, one Endeus by name, replied that he was from the western parts, from the plain of Domnon, and from the Wood of Fochlut. Then the holy Patrick rejoiced in spirit, and said to Endeus, " I will go with you if I shall be alive, for God has told me to go." Endeus demurred to this, until St. Patrick told him he never should arrive home alive unless he himself went with him. Endeus then asked baptism for Conall, his young son, but declared that he and his companions could not accept it till they consulted their tribe, " lest they should be laughed at."^ St. Patrick committed young Conall to a bishop named Cethiacus, whose "relics," says Tirechan, "are now" (seventh century) " in Patrick's great church in the Wood of Fochlut." Now, we can identify by the aid of the Ordnance Survey and the list of townlands com- piled by the Census Commissioners of 1861, the places here mentioned. Endeus said he was from the pailn of Domnon ; and to this day " Dun-Domnon," or the fort of Domnon, is found in the barony of Erris, co. Mayo. Again, the relics of the Bishop Cethiacus, who educated Conall, are said to have been in the great church of Patrick — inagna ecclesia Patricii — in the ' There is a striking parallel to this in the history of Russia in the tenth century. - " When one of the soldiers of the Grand Prince wished to become a convert, he was not prevented, but only laughed at. The efforts of the Empress Olga for the con- version of her son Sviatoslaf were fruitless. He did not like exposing himself to the ridicule of his soldiers by embracing a new faith. ' My men will mock me,' he replied to the prayer of his mother." — Rambaud's History of Russia, t. i., p. 61. Wood of Fochlut. Now the Irish equivalent of " magna ecclesia" is Domnach-Mor, or Donaghmore. And to this day there is a Domnach-Mor and a cross of Patrick near Killala, thus clearly identifying the posi- tion of the Wood of Fochlut/ St. Patrick set out from Tara along the great western road of which I have spoken, having purchased a safe conduct at the price of fifteen slaves (Tirechan in Analect. Bolland., t. ii., p. 43). He was accompanied by the chiefs from the west, and also by a number of attendant clergy, whom he placed in various churches along . his route. These seventh-century details of this first missionary journey across Ireland are very interest- ing, as told by Tirechan. Patrick came to the river Inny, a well-known trout stream, draining the West- meath lakes into Lough Ree and the Shannon. On the one side there is the barony of Granard and the modern county of Longford, on the other side West- meath, the whole district forming, however, Teabhthaor Teffia, the western section of the kingdom of Meath.' ' See Cusack's Saint Pattick, pp. 423, 424. Domnach, which signifies a church and also Sunday, comes from the Latin dominica, the Lord's" day. According to the Tripartite Life, Joceline, Ussher", etc., all the churches which bear the name of Domnach or Donagh were originally founded by St. Patrick, and were so called because he marked out their foundations on Sundays (see "Reeves' .<4»ft'j'j'., p. 107; 0''Dona^a.n'sHy-Fiachrach, P-463)- ^ See O'Curry's Lectt., i., 286, about TefEa or Westmeath. The Tripartite Life tells us that Granard in the north of this district was presMj^ed to St. Patrick, who appointed his old master's son, Guasacht, son of Milchu, to preside over the monastery established there! This monastery became very famous from its ^connection with St. Patrick. The monks in later times used its patrician reputation to absorb for it the ecclesiastical revenues of the best parishes lying along the Shannon, such as Athlone, an arrangement of which we find traces till long after the Reformation. Thus we find the rectorial tithes of these parishes leased to laymen in 1578, ^nd described as lately the possessions 84 HISTORY OF IRELAND. There Patrick appointed St. Mel first bishop of Ardagh, and made Guasacht, son of his old Antrim master, bishop of Rahan, near Tullamore.i Thence St. Patrick, made his way across the Shannon, somewhere near the site of Clonmacnois, in the King's county. The Tripartite Life, of course, makes his crossirig miracu- lous. "Patrick afterwards went into the territory of Connaught across the Shannon, . where he found a ford. The bed of the river rose up under Patrick, and the learned will yet find that esker." I am afraid, however, that the Shannon Commissioners must in their improvements have made short work of the esker, AS the Shannon is now navigable for large vessels in the spot where our saint crossed. Thence he passed into western Mayo and Galway, or the district answering to the modern Connemara. He spent seven years in Connaught, leaving his mark to this day in the dedications of various churches and in the traditions of the people concerning his teaching. Mr. Petrie and Sir W. Wilde, indeed, thought they had discovered a of the priory of Larro, alias Granard. See i-^th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland (1881), p. 75, No. 3300. Charles I., at the instance of Strafford, restored the rectorial tithes of Athlone, which the monastery of Granard had absorbed. See some papers on the history of Athlone contributed by me to the Meath Parochial Magazine, 1886. ' The original rude Latin of Tirechan, in the Book of Armagh, is very accurate in its local details. It runs thus : " Et venit per flumen Ethne" (now Inny) "in ii. Tethbias et ordinavit Melum Episcojium; et seclesiam Bili fundavit et ordinavit Gosactum, filium Milcou Maccubooin, quern nutrivit in servitute vii. annorum, et mittens Camulacum Commiensium in campum Cuini et digito illi ■ indicavit locum de cacumine Graneret, id est, eecclesiam Raithin." St. Patrick indicated with his finger the site of Rahan Church — still a church and parisla as in the eighth century — near TuUamore, from the summit of the moat at Moate Grenogue, in Westmeath; the intervening country being a plain and a part of the^'Bog of Allen (see Analecta Bollandiana, ii., 44). TJLKJL JLJSIUT±±J£ VUJN VMK^ilUM UJ^' IKMLANn. 85 most interesting memorial of his visit. Let me describe it in the words of Sir W. Wilde, whose book concerning Lough Corrib and its beauties is a most charming guide to the archaeology of those western scenes. On p. 134 he says, "Tempull Phaidrig, or St. Patrick's Church, is situated on the island of Inisghoill, in Lough Corrib, in the parish of Cong: It measures thirty-four feet seven inches long. Its walls are nine feet thick, and its doorway is six feet high. That this church is of the age of St. Patrick, as tradition, relates and its name would indicate, can scarcely admit of a doubt. A stone is there preserved containing one of the earliest Christian inscriptions in Ireland. It is a single four- sided, unhewn pillar, of hard greyish Silurian stone. On the east face is an inscription in the uncial or old Latin character which Dr. Petrie first published in 1845 as the stone of Lugnsedonj.son of Limenach, the sister of St. Patrick."^ However, I am bound to tell you that our later archaeologists - do not agree in this view. Mr. Whitley Stokes was the first to challenge the opinion sanctioned by Petrie, O'Donovan, Wilde, and Todd, that here we have the veritable tombstone" of St. Patrick's nephew, the son probably of that very sister who was carried captive with himself and sold a slave into Connaught. He and Sir S. Ferguson, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, t. i., "Polite Literature and Antiquities," 2nd series, p. 259, read this inscription as " the Stone of Lugnsedon, son ' Lugnaedon was a presbyter, but the presbyters attendant on St. Patrick were not confined to 'clerical duties alone. They were more like a modern missionary party, where one man may be doctor, another an agriculturist, and another skilled in mechanics. So was it with -St. Patrick's attendants. One man was a smith, another man a maker of book-satchels, and Lugnjedon's ofSce was that oi pilot or navigator. 86 HISTORY OF IRELAkD. of Menuch," — a solution which, of course, leaves it in doubt whether it really is the tombstone of St. Patrick's nephew or not. St. Patrick's success in Connaught was very decided. He is said to have founded churches in every direction, and to have appointed bishops at Killala and Elphin, which have ever since continued to be episcopal sees. Two or three incidents during this seven years' mission have caused discussion, and been surrounded with abundant legends. After St. Patrick entered Connaught, he came to a great plain between the towns of Roscommon, Elphin, Castlerea, and Strokes- town, in which was Cruachan (Croghan), the ancient palace of the kings of Connaught, and the site to this day of very interesting remains of antiquity. Here was a large Druidical establishment as well as a royal residence, and hither had king Laoghaire sent his two daughters, Ethne the fair, and Feidelen the ruddy, to be reared up. These young ladies were early risers, and, like another king's daughter of whom we read in Exodus, they were fond - of cold baths in the early morning. There is still a well at the Rath of Croghan, surrounded by a double fosse, which may be the identical fountain which the young ladies frequented, just as still at Tara we find the same wells which were flowing in St. Patrick's time. Ethne and Feidelen were greatly surprised one morning to discover a synod of grave clerics sitting there clad in white garments, and with their books before them. Let me now give you the exact words of the ancient historian in the Book of Armagh. You will notice that the young ladies overwhelmed the saint with questions. "The virgins said unto them, 'Whence are ye, and whence come ye?' And Patrick said unto them, 'It u. u:jLj.y.u:i ^x± v J--' -t j.j.jjj o \^j.\ v ±LiX\.%JX KJ±\ \J±' J.JX±:j±j.CX±\I^, °i were better for you to confess to the true God than to inquire concerning our race.' • The first virgin said, ' Who is God ? And where is God, and of what nature . is God ? And where is His dwelhng-plaee ? Has your God sons and daugliters, gold and silver? Is He ever- living ? Is He beautiful ? Did Mary foster His Son ? Are His daughters dear -and beauteous to men of the world ? Is He in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in rivers, in mountainous places, in valleys ? Declare unto us the knowledge of Him ? How shall He be seen ? How is He to be loved ? How is He to be found ? Is it in youth ? Is it in old age that He is to be found ? ' But St. Patrick, full of- the' Holy Ghost, answered and said, ' Our God is the God of all men ; the God of heaven and earth, of the sea and rivers. The God of the sun, the moon, and all stars. The God of the high mountains and of the lowly valleys. The God Who is above heaven and in heaven and under heaven. He hath an habitation in the heaven and in the earth and the sea and all that are therein. He inspireth all things. He quickeneth all things. He is over all things. He sustaineth all things. He giveth light to the sun. He hath made springs in a dry ground ; and dry islands in the sea. And hath appointed the stars to serve the greater >lights. He hath a Son co-equal and co-eternal with Himself. The Son is not younger than the Father, nor is the Father older than the Son. And the Holy Ghost breathes in them. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not divided. But I desire to unite you to the heavenly King, in- asmuch as you are the daughters of an earthly king. Believe in Him ! ' And the virgins said as with one mouth and one heart, 'Teach us most diligently how we may believe in the heavenly King. Show us how 88 HISTORY OF IRELAND. we may see Him face to face, and whatsoever thou shalt say unto us we will do.' And Patrick said, ' Believe ye that by baptism ye put off the sin of your father and your mother ? ' They answered, ' We believe.' ' Believe ye in repentance after sin 7 ' ' We believe.' ' Believe ye in life after death ? Believe ye the resurrection at the day of judgment?' 'We believe. ' ' Believe ye the unity of the Church ? ' ' We believe.' And they were baptized, and a white garment put upon their heads. And they asked to see the face of Christ. And the saint said unto them, ' Ye cannot see the face of Christ, except ye taste of death, and except ye receive the sacrifice.' And they answered, 'Give us the sacrifice that we may behold the Son, our spouse.' And they received the Eucharist of God, and they slept in death. And they buried them near the well Clebach, and they made a circular ditch like to a ferta. And this ferta or tumulus was granted with the bones of the holy virgins to Patrick and his successors after him for ever. And he made a church of earth in that place."! This story bears the marks of the highest antiquity. The ritual is of the most ancient character. The baptismal queries proposed by St. Patrick are just those specified by writers as old as St. Cyprian and Tertullian, while the white cloth placed on the virgin's head pertains to a very ancient rite. The early Church used a double unction. Catechumens were anointed when they were baptized. They were again anointed by the bishop when they were confirmed. The white cloth or napkin — called in ■ old English Chrisom — -was bound round their heads at baptism to prevent the ' See Tirechan's narrative in Anakcta BoUandiana, ii., 49. oil of unction falling off.' But the special point of interest about the narrative concerns the death of the neophytes. Some forty years ago a learned writer in- the twenty-sixth volume of the British Magazine, the Hon. Auberon Herbert, appealed to this trans- action to show that the early Irish Church had esoteric as well as exoteric teaching, and that One of its sacred doctrines was the efficacy of human sacrifice and. the certainty of salvation to those who submitted to voluntary death, such as the Albigenses prescribed. However, there does not seem any ground for this charge as far as our present narrative is involved. St. Patrick simply tells ' the virgins they cannot see Christ till they taste of death and partake of the Holy Communion. And then, some time after their Commu- nion, they die in or about the same time, an event by no means impossible, though the simultaneous character of their deaths may be improbable. Another event famous in legend is St. Patrick's visit to Croagh-Patrick, formerly called Croach-Aigli, or Hill of the Eagle, situated over the bay of Westport. This visit is also mentioned in the Book of Armagh. Tirechan (Anal. Boll., ii., 58) describes it briefly, the Tripartite Life enters into the most copious details, while as for Joceline, writing somewhat later, he, is the source of our most famous popular story. This is a typical instance of the growth of legend. The Book of Armagh tells us that on the approach of Lent St. Patrick retired to Croagh-Patrick, to spend forty days in fasting and prayer after the . example of ' Cf. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, t. i., pp. 163 356, and the article on unction in the second volume. In the Galilean an d Irish Churches of the fifth century only one unction was used. See decree of the Synod of Orange, A.D. 441 ; Hefele's Councils, iii., 160 ; Mansi, vi., 444. go HISTORY OF IRELAND. Moses and Elijah. To this historical fact Joceline adds a story that the -saint brought together on the top of the mountain- all the serpents, toads, and other venomous creatures of Ireland, and drove them into the sea with the aid of his miraculous staff (the baculus or baculum lesu) which our Lord is fabled to have given our saint in one of the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. There is a deep hollow on the northern face of the mountain looking down on Clew Bay, called to this day Lugna- demon (the Lug or Hollow of the Demons), into which they all retreated on their way to final banishment. I need scarcely delay to point out the absurdity of , this tale. It is not found in the early authentic lives of St. Patrick. Solinus too, a Roman geographer of the third century, and Bede in the eighth century, mention Ireland's exemption from reptiles. Doubtless, as I have already noticed, the fact of our exemption produced the legend in order to explain the fact.^ Tirechan, however, does refer to some mysterious spiritual conflict which St. Patrick endured upon Croagh-Patrick, and the Tripartite Life enlarges upon it, telling how the demons assaulted St. Patrick in the shape of immense flocks of black birds, who so tormented the saint that he flung his blessed bell at them and smashed it in his impetuosity. Evidently the poor man's digestion was out of order, or he had fasted too much, and was in much the same state as Luther when he flung his ink-bottle at the devil, who was making faces at him across the table.^ ' See Bede's Ecclesiastical History, bk. i., ch. i ; Reeves' edition of Adamnan's St. Cohemba, pp. 142, 200 ; above, p. 6. ' ^ The origin of this famous legend is as follows. Tirechan states in the Boo7s of Armagh {Anal. Bolland., t. ii., p. 58) that Patrick spent forty days ajid forty nights fasting, after the example of Moses, on Croagh-Patrick. There is evidently here 'TARA ANl) THK CUNVjURSION OF IRELAND. 91 From Connaught St. Patrick next proceeded to visit Ulster. He preached in Donegal, revisited his old friends in Antrim, and finally founded the great prima- tial See of Armagh in the year 445, a century and a half prior to the foundation of the See of Canterbury. As this fact more nearly concerns ourselves as Irish Churchmen than any other, I may be pardoned for dwelling a little upon it. There is an old-standing contest between the Churches of Trim and Armagh. The^ Church of Trim, according to a tradition preserved in the Book of Armagh, was built by St. Patrick twertty-two years before the foundation of Armagh. It is still called St. Patrick's Trim, and is the nearest approach to a cathedral which the diocese of Meath possesses. -I will not, however, undertake to decide upon the question of its antiquity, for whether older or not it has long since been eclipsed by Armagh.^ Now as elsewhere an elaborate attempt to parallel the career of- Patrick with that of Moses. During that period he was assaulted by large birds, in such numbers that he could not see either heaven, earth, or sea. Joceline, in the twelfth century, improved this notice into the legend in its present shape. Solinus, as I have already stated, noticed Ireland's freedom from snakes in his Polyhistor, cap. 22, where he also gives many other interest- ing details, showing the accurate knowledge of Ireland possessed by the Romans. He tells us of the mildness of its clirriate, so that cattle had seldom to be housed in winter, of the stormy character of the Irish Sea, amply verified by modern expe- rience, of the boats or coracles used by the inhabitants, and of the perpetual feuds waged within its shores. See for other notices of the Croagh-Patrick legend Adamnan's Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, pp. 142, 200 ; and also the article on St. Patrick in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, t. iv. About Patrick's bell, see O'Curry's Lectt., i., 337. , ' There evidently was a very close connection between the See of Armagh and various portions of the diocese of Meath. The See of Armagh, in virtue of its primatial position, held property in places which had no ecclesiastical connection with it. Thus I find the following grant among the patents of Jaines I., p. 267, ed. Morrin : — "Licence to Christopher Hampton and John 92 ■ HISTORY OF IRELAND. as to Armagh. The district round Armagh was owned or ruled in St. Patrick's time by a chieftain named Daire. St. Patrick, in the course of liis missionary tour in Ulster, came and preached to him, and demanded as usual a site for a church. " The rich man said unto the saint," continues the Book of Armagh, " 'What. place askest thou ? ' 'I ask,' said the saint, ' that thou give me that height of land which is called Dorsum Salicis (Ridge of the Willow Tree), and there I ,will build a place.' But he would not give the high land to the saint ; he gave him, however, another place in lower land, where now is Fertae Martyrum, near Ard-Machae. And ihere St.' Patrick dwelt with his followers." St, Patrick was not satisfied with this gift.. He wished for the high ground, or ridge,^ while the chief was unwilling to entrust such a strong military position to any stranger. Miracles, however, came to the aid of St. Patrick. Both Daire and his horse suddenly died and were as suddenly revived by St. Patrick, when the saint at once received the ridge of ground on which to this day stands the metropolitan church of St. Patrick's Armagh.^ Jeeve to keep taverns or wine cellars in the towns of Armagh, Terfnonfeckin, Dromiskeene, Eniskeen, Nobber, and- Kilmone, in the Manor of Tirlaugh in Mayo, and in all other towns and manors of the Archbishop of Armagh." Tirlaugh in Mayo is in the west of Connaught, while Nobber is in Meath diocese. To the present day the local tradition of Nobber is, that if the fairs are not held on certain fixed days the town becomes forfeited to the Primate, The See Of Armagh once possessed property in Limerick. These scattered estates were probably relics of the ancient tribute paid to St. Patrick's See. ' See Analecta BoUandiana, t. i., p. 572, and Dr. Reeves' Oturches of Armagh. -St. Patrick must have endowed the Church of Armagh with some special privileges, as we find, from the earliest dawn of- Irish Church History that the heirs df St. Patrick, as his successors at Armagh were called, were always claiming superiority and increasing jurisdiction over other churches throughout Ireland, J. jCU.V.£X j:i,J.\JL^ J.J.J.UJ OLy'^V f ±!j J.\.^J. ^^ J.V \J J.' J.^yjUjjU.rLJ.V MJ, yj After the foundation of Armagh, the Tripartite Life and Joceline indulge in some -of their usual romance. St. Patrick goes off to Rome. There the Pope invested him . with the paUium, made him his legate, and con- firmed by the authority of the Holy See whatever he had done in Ireland. They do not even hesitate to irripugn the saint's honesty. St. Patrick, says the Tripartite Life, was not long at Rome on this occasion when he contrived by a pious fraud, whilst the keepers of the holy places were asleep and unconscious, to carry off a great quantity of relics of apostles and martyrs, a towel stained with our Saviour's blood', and some of the hair of His blessed mother. It is added that this pious' theft was committed with the connivance of the Pope himself. And then the writer exclaims in rapture, " O wondrous deed ! O rare theft of a vast treasure of holy things, committed without sacrilege, the plunder of ■ the most holy place in the world ! " Disregarding such fables, let us return to the historic docurnents of the Book of Armagh. From them I must very briefly sum up the remaining events of our saint's life. St; Patrick departed from Ulster to the south. He preached at Naas, the palace of the King of Leinster. He preached in the plain of the Liffey, on which occasion he may have penetrated to the site of our preserit city of Dublin. It is an evidence, however, of the ancient character of the lives in the Book of Armagh that they make nO' reference to this city, which only rose- into note, either from an ecclesiastical or civil point of view, a!fter the coming of the Danes to Ireland, who first appeared off these coasts in the year 795. Joceline indeed tells us that St. Patrick came to DubHn, a noble city, but then he wrote only in jhe twelfth century, and he betrays 94 HISTORY OF IRELAND. the anachronism by representing it as inhabited by Danes in St. Patrick's time, and also by telling us that St. Patrick predicted its future eminence in these words, " Pagus iste, nunc exiguus, eximius erit." It is to Joceline and such writers that all the legends are due about St. Patrick's wells in our own College Park, and in Cantrell and Cochrane's Yard, and in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and concerning the multitudes there baptized. St. Patrick also proceeded into Munster, and legend says that as he spent seven years in Connaught so - did he spend seven years in Munster. Dr. Todd, indeed, is inclined wholly to reject our saint's visit to Munster, declaring that the Book of Armagh does not give any hint of such a journey. In this, however. Dr. Todd was mistaken. The Book of Armagh does mention a visit to Munster, but it tells us nothing of the legends and wonders with which his journey has been embellished by later writers,^ According to these he went to Cashel, the seat of the kings.. As he approached, the idols fell before him, like Dagon before the ark. The king of Munster, Aengus, came out to meet him, and received him with the greatest reverence. However, all this is quite fabulous, the simple fact being that there is no notice of Cashel in the Irish annals as a place of ecclesiastical importance until the middle of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century. But now St. Patrick's end drew nigh, and he made his way back to the scene of his earliest labours beside Strangford Lough. Concerning the death of our saint legend has been again busy. An angel in a burning bush predicted his approaching dissolution, a light from heaven indicated the spot where his remains' should lie, St. Bridget, moved by Divine inspiration, embroidered - — i, -— — - . * SoGi Anaiecta Bollandiana, \\,, 66. .M-^j-j-t^^^ .£j.^v.£^r J. j..t.j.^ \j\^^r r- -i-irjty. tjj. \^^ Y \^-l.' yo his shroud with her own hands. For a whole year the sun stood still over his grave, and the district of Maghinis enjoyed a perpetual day. The historical fact seems to be that St. Patrick was overtaken by death at Saul, near Downpatrick. Round this simple kernel an accretion of abundant legends has grown, bearing manifest proof of their later origin. His first wish, we are told, was to reach Armagh and be there interred, but an angelic voice sent him back to Saul, announcing that the four petitions he had asked of God had been granted : (i) That his jurisdiction should have its seat in Armagh ; (2) That whoever repeated at the hour of death St. Sechnall's hymn in his honour should have Patrick as the judge of his repentance;^ (3) That the descendants of Dichu should receive mercy and not perish ; (4) That Patrick, as the Apostle of Ireland, should be the judge of all the Irish ia the last day, according to the promise made to the other apostles, " Ye shall sit upon the twelve thrones judging the tribes of Israel." The burial of St. Patrick was the cause of much contention. The men of Armagh wished to have his bones, the men of Down wished to retain them. How- ever, the matter was settled according to biblical precedent. The monks of Saul yoked two untamed oxen to the cart which bore his body, and left them without guidance. They went forth and stopped on ' The Book of Armagh, in Hogan's opinion, speaks of his own hymn, i.e., the hymn composed by St. Patrick himself. Its words are {Anal. Boll., i., 580), " Secmida petitio, ut quicunque ymnum qui de te compossitus est, indie exitus de corpore cantaverit, tu judicatis poenitentiam ejus de suis peccatis."' St. Patrick's hymn will be found in Petries Tara, pp. 57-67 ; Whitley Stokes' Goidelica, p. 149 ; Todd's and Cusadsrs Lives of St. Patrick; Windisch, hische Texte, p. 52. St. Sechnall's hymn has been already discussed, p. 32 above. 96 ' HISTORY OP IRELA]^D. the site of the present cathedral of Downpatrick, where since the year 700, when Maccumacthenius wrote, the bodj' has been beheved to lie, for that ancient writer tells us that when they were building a church at Downpatrick, the workmen coming on the relics of St. Patrick were compelled to desist by the flames which issued from the tomb.^ ' About the burial-place of St. Patrick see Dr. Reeves'' dis- sertation in Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down and Connor, p. 223. LECTURE V. ST. COLUMBA, ST. PATRICK is the most celebrated of the saints connected with Ireland. But he was not an Irish- man, though his name has become inextricably bound up with. Ireland. Patrick, Patricius, a Roman title of aristocratic dignity, has now become the most popular and most plebeian of names. St. Columba, on the other hand, is the most celebrated of saints purely and thoroughly Irish, — Irish by birth, Irish by education, Irish in their life's work and devotion. To St. Columba, then, and his age, we shall now devote our attention. St. Columba -^ may be taken as a representative of the Irish Church when it first emerges into the clear light of history. Whatever doubts may be' felt about the existence of a historical Patrick, the most incredu- lous feels none about St. Columba, but most fully admits the existence of our saint. To what is this due ? How is it that Columba's history, who was born certainly within fifty years of St. Patrick's death, basks in the light, while St. Patrick's is surrounded with clouds and thick darkness ? The difference is ' Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., and Montalembert'sZ?)^ of St. Columba, published in English by Blackwood & Sons (London : 1868), are the best popular accounts of St. Columba, to which may be added the article on " Cojumba " in the Diet. Christ. Biog. Bishop Reeves' edition of Adamnan is, of course, the one great authority. ' ■ 7 HISTORY OF IRELAND. due to the labours of one man. Adamnan was abbat of lona, and ninth -in succession from St. Columba him- self He was of St. Columba's own family ; was born some twenty-five years after his death ; spent a long life in his monastery; enjoyed many opportunities of conversing with his friends and contemporaries ; had ,abundant access to the literary remains of the saint, the records of the community; beheld the relics of Columba, his very clothes, which were there preserved ; and as the result has bequeathed to us the life pub- lished by Bishop Reeves, which every historical student recognises as one of the most valuable extant speci- mens of ecclesiastical antiquity. I shall, after my usual custom, first describe that work, which is our great authority and guide on this subject, just as Maccumacthenius and the Book of Armagh were our great authorities about Patrick's life. With this im- portant difference, however: St. Patrick's life was written more than two centuries after St. Patrick's death ; Adamnan wrote his life of Columba within one hundred years of Columba's death. Let me, then, say a few words about the biographer and his work before I treat of the subject of his biography. Adamnan was a Donegal man, born about the year ,625. He entered the monastery of lona some' time about the middle of the seventh century, where he remained till he became abbat in 679, — a post which he continued to hold till his death in 709. He was a man of very wide culture considering the age in which he lived. He has left us two works : one, the life of Columba; the other, a treatise on the holy places of Palestine. The treatise, De Locis Sanctis, is a very interesting narrative of travel in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Constantinople, of the state of Jerusalem ST. COLUMBA. 99 with its churches and relics, while yet Christianity stood, firm, and the authority of Rome prevailed, or had till lately prevailed, in these lands. Adamnan did not, indeed, travel thither himself. Arculf, a French bishop, undertook a voyage to Palestine, accompanied by one Peter, a Burgundian monk, about the year 690. On his return voyage he embarked at Rome for some port on the west coast of France ; but, encountering a storm, was driven northward upon the coast of Scotland,' where he took refuge with Adamnan, spending a whole winter with him, till he could secure a passage to Gaul in one of the ships which traded to the neighbouring ports. The winter seems to have passed in diligent conversation concerning the wonders hfe had seen. We can imagine how eagerly this distant and primitive community would have drunk in all his stories during the long dreary nights, lasting eighteen or nineteen hours. Arculf had been a wise as well as a diligent traveller. He had preserved careful- and extensive notes on waxen tablets, with plans and measurements of the buildings he had inspected. These sketches. Adamnan copied, and worked up into his treatise De Sanctis Locis, which he divided into three books. The first, deals with Jerusalem ; the second, with the rest of Palestine, — Bethany, Hebron, the Jordan, the Dead Sea, Damascus, Tyre, and Joppa, whence he sailed to Alexandria ; the third book tells of Constantinople, where Arculf spent eight or nine months.^ The other work of Adamnan was the Life of St. Columba, his kinsman and predecessor. It is divided, like the treatise on the holy places, into three books. ' This treatise, on the Holy Places deserves careful study by those interested in tjie development of art and architecture. Their theories often require the tests which history supplies. 100 HISTORY OF IRELAND: The first describes the prophecies ; the second, the miracles ; the third, the visions of the saint. In doing so, he relates many marvels, some of which we must regard as legends pure and simple; others we may accept and explain on purely natural principles. This life has been preserved in seven MSS., the oldest of which belonged to the famous Irish convent of Reichenau, on the Lake of Constance. From this work I now propose to offer a sketch of the life of St. Columba. . Columba, or Columcille, was born at Gartan, a wild district in Donegal, on December 7th, a.d. 521. He belonged to the O'Donnells, a clan famous in the annals of Ireland, and not yet extinct in Donegal. He belonged to the royal" family of Ireland, being the great-great- grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who reigned towards the close of the fourth century. He was baptized at the church of Temple Douglas, half-way between Gartan and Letterkenny, where he received the twofold and opposed names of Crimthann, a wolf, and Colum, a dove, to which was afterwards added the suffix " cille," as some say, from his close attendance at church, and, as others say, from the numerous churches founded by him. His birth as well as the events of his later life abundantly prove the rapid spread of Christianity in Ireland ; since we find that within fifty years of St. Patrick^s death the Gospel had penetrated the remotest wilds of the Donegal highlands, had converted the kinsmen of that very Laoghaire who so vigorously resisted St. Patrick at Tara, and had established Christian churches and priests even in such a distant region. Columba was . educated principally at the monastic school of Clonard, which St. Finnian, a friend of St. Brigid, founded in the beginning of the sixth century. Clonard was then the O^. I^Ul^UlVlJlSJi.. 101 most distinguished school which Ireland possessed, and .was resorted to from every quarter. " From the school of Clonard," says Ussher, " scholars of old came out in as great numbers as Greeks from the side of the horse of Troy. The usual number of pupils in attend- ance is~ set down at three thousand, so that the ancient annalists call St. Finnian himself 'a doctor of wisdom and tutor of the saints of Ireland in his time ; ' while from the fact that he taught St. Columba, Kieran of Clonmacnois, Brendan- of Clonfert, and a number of other celebrated bishops and abbats, he was styled preceptor of the twelve apostles of Ireland." Let me here interrupt the course of our narrative, and strive to make Finnian and Clonard and its monas- tery somewhat more real for you ; ■"■ for the mythical character of early Irish history has been so accepted as a matter of course, that we are apt to treat such persons and things as- names and nothing more. St. Finnian was the first of the great Irish scholars who made this country famous throughout the earlier Middle Ages.^ He was, like all the ancient Irish saints, specially devoted to the study and exposition of Holy Scripture. One of the hymns, rhymed in monkish fashion, anciently sung at his festival, brings out this point as his leading characteristic. It begins thus :-- — " Regressus in Clonardiam, Ad cathedram lecturse, ' Sir W. Wilde, in his Boyne and Blackwater, chap. Jii., gives a good account of the ancient and modern state of Clonard. ^ See for the life of. St. Finnian and his disciples, the office and hymns used at his commemoration, and the annals of his monastery till the twelfth century ; Colgan's Acta Sanctorum, Feb. xxiii., p. 393-407 ; Ussher, AntiquUates Ecclesianim Britan- nicarum, cap. xvii. (0pp., ed. Elrington, t. vi., p. 472-477, 580); Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography, ii., 518. HISTORY OF IRELAND. Apponit diligentiam, Ad studium ScripturEe." ' He studied for many years under St. David ^ and Gildas/ celebrated doctors at Menevia, in Wales, and then, returning to his own country, founded Clonard. The site of that monastery is well known. Clonard is a village upon the head waters of the River Boyne, where it first takes shape as a definite river, draining the vast morass of the Bog of Allen. It is situated on the Great Western or Connaught road from Dublin, and within a short distance of the Midland Western Railway. Clonard does not now retain many vestiges of its ancient ecclesiastical splendour; but till the thirteenth century it was one of the most famous sees of Ireland. One fact alone shows this, — it was pillaged no less than twelve times ; five of them by those persistent robbers, the Danes. The church and adjoining buildings were fourteen times consumed by fire, which doubtless must often have happened, since they were usually constructed of timber. Thus we read that in 1045 the town of Clonard, together with its churches, was wholly consumed, being thrice set on fire within one week. But neither the Danes nor fire were the worst enemies of Clonard. Domestic faction helped to lay it low. Thus in 1 1 36 we read that " the inhabitants of Breffny plundered and sacked Clonard, and behaved in so shameless a manner as to strip O'Daly, then chief poet of Ireland, even to his skin, and leave him in that situation ; and amongst other outrages they sacrilegiously took from the vestry of ' Ware's Writers of Ireland, p. \'i\ cf. Colgan, Acta Sand., p. 400. ^ Smith's Dictionary, of Christian Biography, i., 791. ' Dictionary of Christian Biography, ii., 670-672. this abbey a sword which had belonged to St. Finnian, the founder." The library was burned in 1143. The village was again sacked by Dermot MacMurrough and his English allies in 1172 or 1173, and its ecclesias- tical ruin was completed in 1 206, when Simon Rochford, Bishop of Clonard, removed the episcopal seat from Clonard to Trim, and styled himself Bishop of Meath. Clonard preserved till the beginning of the present century some traces of its ancient , glory. Archdall, in his Monasticon Hibernicum, describes the remains of the abbey which, within the present century, were com- pletely extirpated, the very site of them having been with some difficulty ascertained by Sir W. Wilde. The monasteryand scholastic buildings stood on the western bank of the Boyne; the present church and church- yard occupying a part of the site. The modern church was built out of the materials of the ancient abbey, and contains a splendid font, one of the few remains of Clonard's former grandeur. It is beautifully carved, and is still used, while in the adjoining churchyard the lava- tory,a large stone trough for washing the pilgrims' feet, was preserved in Wilde's time, buried in the ground.^' I may add, that any of you who will extend your rambks as far as Tallaght can still find, buried in the graveyard, - the ancient lavatory or stone trough of that famous monastery, formerly used for the veiy same purpose of washing the pilgrims' feet.^ ' For the decree concerning the change of Clonard see into Meath, see Wilkins' Concilia; Archdall's Monasticon, and Caesar Otway's Toiir in Connaught in 1832 tell more about Clonard. " Tallaght is an interesting spot from an ecclesiastical point of view, five miles south-wrest from Dublin. It was a famous monas- tery and seat of learning in the ancient Celtic Church. After the Norman Conquest it became the country seat of the Archbishops of Dublin, till abandoned by them in the early part of the 104 HISTORY OF IRMLANJD. It was at Clonard, in the days of its primeval glory, that St. Columba received his education and training for his future work. He came to Clonard a deacon. He assisted St. Finnian in Divine service, and at the same time advanceid rapidly in knowledge, especially in the art of copying and illuminating MSS., which, as the Book of Kells in our .own library proves, attained the highest perfection in the schools and houses of the Columban Order. Columba remained several years at Clonard, and while there received priest's orders. The story of his advancement to that dignity illustrates the constitution and social life of the ancient Irish Church. That Church was, as I have often said, intensely monastic in all its arrangements. Its monasteries were always ruled by abbats who were sometimes bishops, but most usually presbyters. This does not prove that they were Presbyterians in Church govern- ment; for, if not themselves bishops, the abbats kept a bishop on the premises for the purpose of conferring holy orders. The abbat was ruler of the monastery by virtue of his monastic or collegiate position, and was so far superior to the bishop ; but recognised his own inferiority in ecclesiastical matters, whether in celebrat- ing the Eucharist or in conferring Holy Orders, — a function which appertained to the bishop alone. You will at once understand the distinction by supposing a fellow or professor of this University consecrated a bishop while still retaining his fellowship or professor- ship. From a collegiate point of view he would be subject to the provost, though merely a presbyter ; while present century. The episcopal seat is -now in the possession of the Dominicans. The well-known pulpit orator, Father Burke, presided over the monastery till his death. See Handcock's His- tory and Antiquities of Tallaght (Dublin : 1877). in ecclesiastical matters the provost would at once acknowledge his superior rank and pbwer.^ Attention to this distinction would have saved our Presbyterian friends from the mistakes they have made when claiming , the ancient Irish Church as an adherent of ■ their modern ecclesiastical polity.^ > At Clonard St. Finnian, the abbat, desired to have Columba as a domestic bishop to discharge episcopal functions. With this end in view, he sent him to Etchen, bishop of the monastery of Clonfad, in the neighbouring county of Westmeath.' Columba took his ' Returned colonial bishops have been known to act a:s curates to presbyters. As curates they were inferior to their rectors and subject to them ; as bishops they were superior. ^ The position of the bishops in connection with the ancient ■Irish monasteries has been discussed by Bishop Reeves in his Ecclesiastical Antiquities, pp. \i\-\6p. Wasserscbleben, in his Introduction to the second edition of Die Irische Kanonen- sammlung (Leipzig: 1885), p. xlii., has shown that the custom of monasteries having their own bisjiop under the government of an abbat, was not peculiar to the Irish Church, but was spread as far ' as Mount Sinai. He quotes the Chronicon Ademari out of Labbe, Nov. Biblioth. MSS. Libr., t. ii., p. 175 (Paris : 1657); cf. Pertz, Man. Ger. Hist.,rv., 137, Hapnov. : 1 84 1 (which contains the best edition of the Chronicle), as speaking of '_' monasterium montis Sinai, ubi quingenti et amplius mw.iachi sub imperio abbatis manebant, habentes ibidem proprium episcopum." In the Epp. of S. Nilus, ii., 160, Migne, Pat. Greece, t. Ijocix., col. 275), we find a fifth-century instance of the union in the same neighbourhood of the abbatial and episcopal offices in one person. Dr. Reeves notices a similar union at Down and Connor {Antiqg., pp. 95, 175, 261). The connection between the early monastic and diocesan systems is manifest from this one fact alone, that no less than three Irish dioceses were without the mere mediaeval institution of deans and chapters till the reign of James I., viz., Meath, Connor, and Down ; of which number Meath still continues in the same condition. Previously to 1609 the archdeacon and clergy of each diocese, in synod assembled, acted instead of a chapter in succession to the monasteries out of which the sees were developed. See Beeves, I.e., pp. 177, 262. ' The^history of Etchen, and the authorities for this story, are coUectecl together in the Dictionary ofChristidn Biography, ii. 20B, io6 HISTORY OP IRELAND. way thither, and inquired for the bishop. He was told that he was ploughing in the field. Columba went up to him, was heartily welcomed, and by mistake ordained priest instead of bishop, — a circumstance which has been the source of much perplexity for those who imagine that the early Irish Church was an off- shoot from Rome, and governed in all its respects by the cast-iron ritual and laws of that Church. St. Columba soon left Clonard and made a round of the other leading colleges of Ireland, after the fashion of the Schoolmen. Amongst others, he studied at the school and monastery of Glasnevin, near Dublin, situated on the banks of the little river Tolka. Columba's life from this period was one of intense activity. He entered upon a course of earnest evangelisation, founding churches and monasteries in every part of Ireland. To him is ascribed the origin of three hundred churches, among which are numbered those of Derry, Kells, Tory Island off the Donegal coast, Drumcliffe in Sligo, Swords in the county Dublin, Raphoe, Lambay near Malahide, and Durrow, which became the largest and most important of all St. Columba's monasteries. Some of these foundations retain to this day traces of their early connection with St. Columba. Thus, at Kells is a small arched and stone-roofed building called St. Columba's House. It contains a kind of garret, an apartment between the stone ceiling of the lower apart- ment and the slanting roof. This garret is only six feet in height, and yet in it we find St. Columba's penitential bed, a flat stone six feet long and one foot thick ; while at Durrow, in the King's county, there exist in the churchyard St. Columba's cross and well. .1 have already said that St. Columba was celebrated as a scribe. Like the Venerable Bede, whose final ;si. lujjum^a. 107 scene is so famous, Columba was found when death overtook him engaged in copying the Scriptures.''- His monasteries followed in this respect the example of their master, and ihe Book of Durrow, an evangeliarium, which professes to have been written by St. Columba himself, testifies in our own University library to the perfection attained in this direction.^ St. Columba's life and history were indeed strangely modified by his literary zeal. The first forty years— the first half, in fact — of his life, were spent in Ireland ; the latter half in Scotland, evangelising the pagan Picts. His missionary labours are said to have been thus occasioned. St. Finnian of Clonard was famous as a teacher in Meath and the central parts of Ireland. St. Finnian of Moville, near Newtownards, in the county Down, was equally famous in the north.^ His tastes were similar to St. Columba's own. He was distinguished as. a scribe and as a teacher. St. Columba, in the course of his scholastic wanderings, borrowed a Latin psalter from this latter St. Finnian, which _ he forthwith proceeded to copy. This act of ■ Cuminian, Abbat of lona, in the seventh century, tells us that on the day preceding his death, a.d. 597, Columba was occupied in copying a psalter which he left to be finished by Baithene, his brother's son, who succeeded (see below, p. 129). Upon the curious law of succession to ofBce prevalent in the ancient Celtic Church the student may consult Maine's Early History of Institutions, pp. 235-238 ; Reeves' Proceedings Roy. Irish Acad., January 12th, 1857, t. vi., p. 447. ^ A now partly obliterated entry in Latin on the back of fol. 12 prays "remembrance of the Scribe Columba, who wrote this Evangel in the space of twelve days." I have not devoted space to the description of the early Irish manuscripts still extant, because this has been amply done by specialists. For a handy statement I may refer to Mr. J. T. Gilbert's work. Account of Facsimiles of National MSS. of Ireland (1879). ' See on Finnian of Moville Dictionary of Christian Biography, ii., 518. io8. HISTORY OF IRELAND. literary piracy the original owner immediately resented, and claimed the copy as well as the original. Columba refused to part with the result of his own labour ; whereupon the case was carried before Diarniait, King of Meath, who decided against Columba, according to the principle of brehon law, that, as " to every cow belongs its calf, so to every book belongs its copy." -^ Thereupon ensued ' a commotion. Columba was a thorough Celt. Christianity, indeed, had spread itself through Ireland, but it was as yet only a thin veneer over the Celtic nature, rash, hot, passionate, revengeful. It had indeed conquered some of the grosser vices; and made them disgraceful.^ It had elevated somewhat the tone of morals, but it had scarce touched the fiery, unforgiving spirit which lay deep beneath, and still exhibits itself in the fierce and prolonged faction fights of Limerick and Tipperary. In the sixth century the tribal organisation of the Irish people intensified this spirit. The very women, and monks, and clergy yielded ' This fateful book is said to be still in existence. It is_ popularly identified with the Cathach of St. Columba ; see Reeves' Adamnan, pp. 319-321, Gilbert's National MSS. of Ireland, pp. 7-10, where an account of its vicissitudes is given.- It is now preserved in the Royal Irish Academy. ^ Sir H. Maine, in his Early History of Institutions, "g^^. 58-61, points out in the brehon laws ample evidence proving the low state of morals among the Irish in the tenth "century. The Book of Aicill is the oldest of the ancient law tracts officially trans- lated and published. Maine remarks that it assumes the temporary cohabitation of the sexes to be part of the accustomed order of society. If so, it is no wonder that Pope Adrian should have spoken so severely of Ireland and the Irish in his Bull, handing over the country to Henry II. Sir H. Maine's work, as noted above, will be found most useful for the study of the brehon laws. He points out their numerous points of contact with Hindoo law ; specially in the custom of fasting upon a debtor or offender, which, as practised in ancient .Ireland, exactly corresponds to the "Sitting Dharna" of the Hindoos. See Maine, I.e., p. 39, and cf. Ancient Laws of Ireland, vol. i., p. 113. themselves up to its fascination. Just as in the days of the Land League and of the tithe agitation, and in the Belfast riots, and at many an election contest in bygone times, the women were the fiercest combat- ants, so in the sixth century the women went to battle as regularly as the men, and it was only the influence of this very Columba which obtained a decree from the national assembly, held at Drumceatt in 590, exempting women from their UabUity to military service.-*^ But we cannot wonder at the weaker sex going to battle when their spiritual guides showed them the example. The monastic communities were not exempted from military ser\dce tiU the year 804, and even then they do not seem to have very ardently desired the exemption. When left to themselves, the monasteries often diversified the monotony of their existence by a vigorous fight. In the year 673 a battle was fought in King's county between the monasteries of Clonmacnois and Durrow. Each could place no contemptible force in array when all their tenants, and servants, and dependants were summoned to warfare. On this occasion Dermod Duff, son of DoneU, the leader of the Durrow faction, and two hundred of his people were slain by the ^dctorious men of Clonmacnois ; while even after the3- were exempted from attending battle at the call of the ting, the monasteries stiU con- tinued to follow the customs of their fathers; for we learn from the Annals that in 816 no less than four himdred men were slain in a battle between rival monasteries. The very synods of the clergy were not ' A law wliich seems to have had so little effect that Adamnan, his biographer, had to renew it at the synod of Birr, 697 ; see Annals (tf Ulster, A.D. 696, and Bishop Reeves' artide on "Adamnan" in the Dictionafy of Christian Biography; with which compare his AdamnaiCs Columba, p. 179. no HISTORY OF IRELAND. exempt from such un-Christian practices. The MS. Annals of MacFirbis, one of the most learned of Irish annalists and historians, tell us that till the time of Adamnan, that is, the year 700, " the clergy of Ireland went to their synods with weapons, and fought pitched battles, and slew many persons therein." ^ Such being the spirit of the age, such being the. habits and customs of the time, even in classes most naturally bound to peace, it is no wonder that Columba, a child of the great northern Hy-Neill, took his judicial defeat very badly, and summoned his tribesmen to a contest which, as he represented, touched most keenly their tribal honour. The decision of the king against Columba's claim became, in fact, the occasion of a great conflict between the rival northern and southern branches of the Hy- Neill, which terminated in the battle of Cooldrevny, fought between Sligo and DrumclifFe in the year 561, and won by the Ulster men, the party of St. Columba, when no less than 3,000 of the Meathmen were slain. The story then runs that St. Columba retired to the monastery of Inismurray, lying" off the coast of Sligo, which I shall hereafter describe. The abbat, St. Molassius, was his soul -friend or confessor. Columba consulted him as to his conduct. A synod had already excommunicated him. Molassius advised submission, not resistance, and prescribed as a penance that St. Columba should retire to Pictland, the modern Scotland, and there convert the pagans to Christ, in return for the scandal he had occasioned and the blood he had shed. His celebrated work in Scotland will form the subject of our next lecture. ' See Dr. Reeves' CoUon's Visitation, pp. 93—97, where he gives a list of desecrated churches, which proves how warlike the Irish monasteries were. LECTURE VI. COLUMBA IN ION A. THE early Celtic Church was intensely monastic, and intensely missionary. It presented truly Celtic features. Go where you like throughout the world at the present day, and there you will find an Irishman who yet declares there is no place half so sweet or half so charming as Ireland. So was it in Columba's age. The Celtic clergy were wanderers over the face of the earth, and yet they ever carried with them memories of the land whence they came out. The period of missionary activity began with Columba, whom we may designate the first Irish missionary, the apostle of pagan Scotland. I have already alluded to one cause which some allege for his exile to lona. He had been ordered to abandon Ireland for ever, and gain as many souls for Christ in Scotland as he had destroyed in Ireland, in return for the bloodshed he had caused. This may indicate one cause of his departure to lona. His life in Ireland was not up to our conception - of the saintly character ; and his saintly reputation must be based, not on it, but on his life and work in lona. Like St. Peter or St. Paul, his life divides itself into two parts, — the unconverted portion and the converted portion. During his Irish life he could not forget either his high birth or tribal and family anti- 1 1 2 BIS TOR Y , OF IRELA ND. pathies, or his hot, vengeful Celtic temper. During his Scottish life, while the old character can be oftentimes traced, he was. evidently a very altered man. Another and a more reputable reason may be, however, offered for his departure. Columba was a very energetic and forcible character. The monastic life had taken a firm and permanent hold upon the temper and imagination of the Celtic people. They flung themselves with all their Tvild unreasoning enthu- siasm into the movement, and the monasteries were teeming with monks, many of whom must necessarily have soon wearied of a life of pure devotion, and have longed for a life of active piety, which should make known the truth whose value they had themselves proved. Such spirits and such aspirations found a willing and a qualified leader in St. Columba. We can plainly see, too, another occasion for his departure to Scotland. Political and religious events urged him in the same direction. Columba was, as I have told you, of the royal family of Ireland, and very nearly akin to the reigning monarch. He was, in fact, of high social rank, and as such possessed, not merely the imperi- ous disposition, but also the wider, the more extended mental horizon which lofty station confers. St. Columba looked across the narrow channel which separated the coasts of Alba, or Scotland, from those of Scotia proper. He saw the Irish colony which inhabited the Scotch Dalri'ada, and the Christian Britons of Strathclyde, in imminent danger of utter extinction at the hands of the pagan Picts, who inhabited the highlands ; and he determined to bring effective assistance to his brethren, not the might, indeed, of temporal warfare, but of those spiritual weapons which alone can curb and restrain unregenerate nature. Let me explain what I mean COLUMBA IN ZONA: , 113 ■because this fact is the key-note of all St. Columba's later career. If you grasp it, you will easily understand the plan and object of his work in lona. If you miss it, it will be simple chaos to you. There were two dis- tricts called Dalriada. One is in Ireland, on the north coast of Antrim, and is now called the Route. This was an ancient kingdom in St. Patrick's time, and its^ inhabitants all accepted Christianity during the fifth cen- tury. ' At, the beginning of the sixth century, that is, about the time of St. Columba's birth, the Irish Dal- riadani, urged on by the restless genius of the Celtic race, crossed the Channel, and founded a second Dal- riada in Argyleshire, which in course of time became the dominant power in Scotland, and the germ out of which the mediaeval kingdom of Scotland was developed. It will be well for you to remember that the very name, the kingdom, and the royal family of Scotland, and, therefore, of England (through the Stuart line), drew their origin from this Irish colony. Its earliest fortunes in Scotland, however, gave no indication of its brilliant future. Scotland was then -groaning beneath the rule of the savage Picts. The Romans had subdued and civilised it as far as Edin- burgh and Glasgow. Their departure left it for a century subject to the inroads of the northern pagans, till at last, about the year 500, the tribesmen of Antrim came to the rescue of their brethren, and established this Christian outpost. The Irish settlers maintained their ground successfully for half a century, under three different kings. In the year 560, however, they sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of Brude, ' King of the Picts, whose royal seat was at Inverness. This battle entailed the loss of a great portion of their territory, and threatened the extinction in Scotland of 114 HISTORY OF IRELAND. the Irish colony and of Christianity itself. Columba was closely connected with the Isings of the Scottish Dalriada through his grandmother.^ His imagination was fired by the prospect of such a dangerous work, and the thought may have dawned upon him that the martyr's crown, which so many had longed for, awaited him in the land of the pagan and bloodstained Picts. In the year 563, or thereabouts, " the saint with twelve disciples, his fellow-soldiers, sailed across to Britain," as his earliest biographer puts it, and took up his abode at the Island of lona, which he has rendered so famous." I shall now divide this lecture into four sections, each of which I will treat as concisely as possible. These four will be: i. lona itself; 2. Columba's missionary work there ; 3. The Synod of Drumceatt ; 4. His death and the results of his work. Where, you may ask, is lona, and how did Columba get there ? lona, let me say first of all, rejoices in various names. The oldest form of the name is Hii, la, or I ; on the tombstones in the local cemetery it is called Y or Hy. Adamnan usually calls it lova, which by a misprint has given rise to the name lona. If you wish to visit lona, the best way is, first, go to Glasgow, then take a ticket to Oban upon one of those magnificent Clyde steamboats which have made sailing on that river synonymous with comfort. At Oban you will arrive late in the afternoon, and next day a sail of three or four hours will bring you to lona. lona, in' fact, is a little island lying off the larger island of Mull, on the west coast of Scotland. Two stories are current,, assigning reasons for Columba's choice of ' See Reeves' Adamnan, p. 94, for Columba's genealogy (cf. pp. 32, 40), and his Ecclesiastical AntiqzdUes, pp. 318-322 ; Skene's Celtic Scotland, t. ii., p. 84, COLUMBA IN lONA. 115 it. One, and the more probable, tells that lona was given him by the king of Dalriada as a fitting station for his missionary labours. Another story is connected with his alleged exile from Ireland. The penance imposed on him for his quarrelsome conduct was, that he should leave Ireland for ever, a;nd never behold it again. The saint in pursuance thereof set sail from Ireland in the coracles of the period, made of skins of beasts and wicker rods ; a kind of boat which, frail as it may seem, is . still commonly used in Arran, Achill, and the western coast, and • is able to live in seas where stouter barks would utterly perish.^ He sailed doubtless from his favourite monastery of Derry, and landed upon the island of Oronsay, north of Islay. Upon climbing a hill, however, he perceived Ireland in the dim dis- tance ; whereupon he again took to' his boat, and sailed north to lona, where no traces of Erin any longer appeared. The memory of this is kept up by the name affixed to a cairn on a hill at the south end of lona, called the Cairn of Farewell, overhanging the bay where he landed, called Port-na-currach. lona' is a small island, but three miles by two in extent, divided from Mull by a stormy sound just one mile' broad, across which the pilgrims and monks were able to call for the ferry-boat to carry them over. I need not spend much time in describing it, as any guide-book to Scotland will give you full particulars, and Dr. Reeves' edition of Adamnan contains a map with the Celtic names of the various localities. As it may not, however, be convenient for you all to ' They can also be seen on the Boyne at Drogheda, where they are used in salmon-fishing. They demand very cautious management ; an unskilful step into one has sent me headlong into the Boyne. ii6 HISTORY OF IRELAND, make an immediate visit thereto, and as a visit to lona at this season could probably be made only in a bark not much superior to that used by St. Columba/ I may mention that you will find three modern books in our library on the subject. The Duke of Argyle has written one, the late Bishop Ewing of Argyle wrote another, while a third was published in 1850 by Mr. H. D. Graham. This last is miserable as far as the letterpress is concerned. It was written before Dr. Reeves' book was published, which introduced a new epoch in Scottish ecclesiastical history. But its illustra- tions are very admirable, offering the best substitute for a personal visit to lona. A journey to the spot cannot introduce you, however, to any buildings St. Columba ever erected. Ruins there are in abundance. You can see the cathedral, and the monastery, and St. Oran's Chapel, and the nunnery, and plenty of carved tomb- stones; but they are all mediaeval. The old Celtic community were expelled, or at least absorbed, by the Benedictine order of monks and nuns introduced in 1203, when the churches were raised of which the ruins still exist.^ The monastery estabhshed by St. Coluniba was of the usual Irish type. Its buildings were like Brigid's at Kildare, of wattles and clay, or at best of oak planks.^ The attentive reader of Adamnan's Life of Columba will see abundant proofs of this. The monastery was still in the same state, even when more than a century old, for Adamnan tells of the toil he and his brother monks endured bringing home trees to repair their wooden huts. Some traces of the site and surroundings of the Coluinban monastery are still ' These lectures were delivered during Michaelmas and Hilary- terms. '^ Skene, I.e., ii., 415. » See Reeves' 'Ecdes, Antiqq., p. 195. COLUMBA IN lONA. 117 pointed out.^ The mill and kiln, the hill, the pond, the anchorites' cells, have all been identified. The outline of the cashel, or fortifiQation, of the convent can be traced, just as . you can trace to this day the cashel of Rath- michael old church, near Bray, or, better still, the cashel which surrounds the churches in the cemetery at Glendalough.^ From Adamnan's Life, and from a study of other Columban foundations, we can reconstruct the monastery of lona as Columba built it. There was a vallum, or cashel, of mixed stones and earth surround- ing the monastery. There was a stone kiln, of which some remains are still to be seen, a mill, and a barn. The monastery proper contained a refectory of consider- able size, in which was a fireplace and a stone vessel full of water, probably used for washing the pilgrims' feet. There was then the hospitium, or guest chamber, of wattles and clay, arid the cells or huts of the monks. • See Skene, I.e., and Reeves, Adamnan's Life, pp. 357 — 364. ^ Concerning cashels and their ecclesiastical use see. the lecture on " Ireland and the East," where their existence to this day in Egypt is noticed. See also Petrie's. Round Towers, pp. 440 — 446 ; Reeves' Adamnan, p. 24, and his Eccles. Antiqq., pp. 182, 196. Bede, H.E., iv., 28, describes the cashel of St. Cuthbert's hermit's cell as. so high that he could see nothing but heaven. Pjof. Joyce, in his useful and interesting book on Irish Names, p. 276, vvrites thus on the word caiseal: "The word caiseal is very common in Irish, and is always used to signify a circular stone fort. It is a simple word, and either cognate with, or, as Ebel asserts, derived from the Latin castellum. It is found in the most ancient MSS., such as those of Zeuss, Cormac's Glossary, etc. In the modern form, Cashel is the name of about fifty town- lands, and begins the names of about -fifty others, every one of which was so called from one of those ancient stone forts.' The cashels belong to the same class as cahers, raths, etc., and like, them are of p_agan origin ; but the name was very often adopted in Christian times to denote the wall with which the early saints surrounded their establishments." Lord Dunraven, Notes on Irish Architecture, i., 46-54, gives beautiful views of the cashel on Inismurray, see further below', pp. 184.^188. ii8 HISTORY OF IRELAND. made of planks and situated round a central court. The church was built of oak, and possessed an exedra, or vestry, while at some distance and upon the highest ground was placed St. Columba's hut of timber. Such was the outward appearance of this Christian colony, thus settled to convert the pagans of northern Scotland. It was well and wisely planned; and it was successful with a success never vouchsafed to modern missions, because we have rejected the experience and the wisdom of the ages when nations were born to God in a, day. Columba's idea in settling in lona was not to spend his life in meditation or penitential exercises. His idea was first of all that lona should be a Christian community, where a number of Chris- tian men should present a picture and model of what Christianity was, what Christian civilisation meant. Doctrine and practice went hand in hand in the Columban venture. Modern missions,, have almost without exception reversed the process. Doctrinal con- troversies and prepossessions have dictated a wrong course. The heads of our missionary societies have scorned the notion of calling civilisation to their aid. As for sending out associated bodies of men to work in common, and show an example of civilised life to the heathen, they have regarded such an idea as downright Romanism. They have interpreted the texts which speak of the Gospel of Christ and the cross of Christ as the power of God unto salvation, as excluding all other helps ; and they have sent out lone men here and there to preach and to pine, and then either to die or return home, poor miserable failures. I can just now only recall two instances where the Columban idea has been carried out by Protestants. One is the case of the Moravians, and they have been successful. The other is that of the Universities or Central African mission, and it too has- been successful, though working only for a very short time. Columba, however, in- tended his society to be something more than a model Christian colony. He made it a centre of active evangelistic effort, whence wise and well-planned attacks could be made on the surrounding districts, and whither the wearied evangelists could retreat for rest, for sympathy, and for meditation. We may now pass to the second division of our subject, and ask what missionary work and missionary successes were achieved by St. Columba. St. Columba landed in lona, and necessarily took some months to arrange his monastery. His companions numbered at least quite two hundred persons. The wants of such a multitude demanded no small care and foresight. Houses had to be built, provisions stored, fields brought under cultivation, flocks and herds acquired and tended. As soon as this preliminary work was done^' Columba vigorously applied himself to his missionary labour. In the first two years of his residence he converted large numbers, of the peasants in the adjoining island of ' Mull and upon the mainland, though he had to struggle with all the difficulties of an unknown tongue. Two years after landing in lona he determined to assail Pictish Paganism at its centre and stronghold. Columba's plan of attack was similar to St. Patrick's, as I have already described it. Let me briefly recall it. ^Patrick first settled in Down and Antrim, and made good his footing therein, founding churches and securing a place of retreat in case of need. Then he advanced to Tara. So did St. Columba act. He first established himself at lona, studied the- language of the Picts, converted his neighbours, and then, following the 120 HISTORY OF IRELAND. windings of that long line of loughs and lakes which now form the Caledonian canal, he penetrated to the fort, or royal residence, of the Pictish sovereign, the renowned King Brude himself, situated close by the modern Inverness. This man's name and fame are thoroughly historical. Adamnan celebrates him. A little later Bede describes him as "the powerful king of the Pictish nation,"-^ while again, the mediaeval lives of St. Kenneth, or St. Canice, anS of St. Comgall of Bangor, the friends and companions of St. Columba, equally bear traces of him.^ Columba knew how impor- tant, and yet how dangerous, was his mission on that occasion. Fie had not yet attained sufficient command over the Pictish tongue ; so he summoned to his help two of his friends and fellow-students at Clonard, St. Comgall, the founder of the celebrated monastery of Bangor, in the county Down, and St. Canice, the founder of Aghabo, in the Queen's county, and the patron saint of Kilkenny. Observe the reason of this. St. Columba was a genius in many respects. He was a jDoet, an artist, a teacher, but he was above all things great as an organiser and leader. One characteristic of all such leaders is knowledge of men, power of choosing ' Bede's Eccles. Hist., iii., 4, where the following account of Columba's mission is given. " Columba came into Britain in the ninth year of Bridius, who was son of Meilochon, and the powerful king of the Pictish nation ; and he converted that nation to the faith of Christ by his preaching and example, whereupon he also received of them the aforesaid island (lona, or Hii, as Bede calls it) for a monastery. It is not very large, containing about five farhilies according to the English computation. His successors hold the island to this day. He was also buried therein, having died at the age of seventy-seven, about thirty-two years after he came into Britain to preach." ^ See the article on St. Cainnech in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, t. i, p. 382, and on St. Comgall, p. 608; Adamnari's Life of St. Columba, ed. Reeves, pp. 28, 121 about S. Cainnech, pp. 93, 94 about St. Comgall. COL VMS A IN ZONA. 121 fit instruments and assistants, specially qualified for their work. Now, why did Colurriba choose Comgall and Canice? Can we discover any peculiar fitness in these men for the dangerous mission to the very source and centre of Pictish Druidism ? Yes, I reply, we can. Columba summoned Comgall and Canice to his help because they were Picts — Irish Picts by birth, and, therefore, possessed of that linguistic fluency which St. Columba as yet lacked.-' Attended, then, by these friends, and followed by a number of his monks, St. Columba evangelised most diligently all along the great glen which divides Scotland into two parts, until he came to the palace of King Brude himself. The story of the king's conversion is very similar to that of Laog- haire's at Tara. Both kings at first were hostile, both were made hostile by Druidical influence, and both were overcome by the mighty wonders displayed by the missionaries. Adarrinan's Life of Columba is more a record and laudation of our saint's miraculous gifts, than a history of his life and work. Yet, here and there, we gain glimpses of his missionary activity. Thus he relates that "when the saint made his first visit to King Brude, the king would not open his gates to him. When Columba observed this, he approached with his companions, and having . first formed upon the closed doors the sign of the cross, he knocked and laid his hand upon the gate, which in- stantly flew open of its own accord, the bolts having been driven back with great force. The saint and his companions then marched through the gate thus wondrously opened. When the king learned what had ' For proof of the Pictish origin of Comgall, see note by Bishop ReeveSj in his edition of Adamnan, p. 94 ; and his Ecdes.. Antiqq., P- 337- 122 HISTORY OF IRELAND. occurred, he and his counsellors were filled with alarm, and immediately setting out from the palace advanced to meet the holy man, with due respect, addressed him in the most conciliatory language, and ever after from that day the king held the saint in very great honour." The conversion of King Brude took place in a.d. 565, and, as was the case in most rude and Celtic commu- nities, was rapidly followed by his tribesmen. Churches "and monasteries were founded in every direction, an evidence of which is still extant in the vast number of churches and parishes in those northern regions dedicated to St. Columba, — a dedication pre- served even by the most rigid Presbyterians. During the nine years which followed, that is, from 565 to 574, Columba devoted himself with all the en- thusiasm of his character to evangelistic work. He had now gained complete mastery over the language, and was a frequent visitor at King Brude's residence. Columba, with that political tact which always marked his course, saw at once what a powerful instrument for the promotion of Christianity he possessed in Brude, whose influence and power extended to the farthest Orkneys. His own zeal and pious ambition reached even unto that distant • spot. Adamnan tells us that, when visiting Brude, St. Columba on one occasion addressed him thus in the presence of the ruler of the Orkneys : " Some of our brethren have lately set sail, and are anxious to discover a desert in the pathless sea.-" Should they happen, after many wanderings, to come to the Orcadian islands, do thou carefully instruct this chief, whose hostages are in thy hand, that no evil befall them within his dominions." ' For the meaning of this expression see the lecture on " Ireland and the East," note, p. 179, and Reeves' Adamnan, p. 366. COLUMBA IN ION A. 123 - Columba did not, however, escape the hostility of the pagan party. The Druids, too, headed the oppo- sition at the Pictish court, just as they had previously done at the court of Tara when Patrick preached. The various hves of Columba, that by Adamnan, the old Irish hfe of the tenth century,^ and O'Donnell's life,^ contain many notices of Druidical antagonism to our saint. One of the most notorious of his foes was a Druid named Broichan, the king's foster-father, a relationship which at every period of the Celtic race has been counted a specially sacred one. He opposed Christianity in every way. One day, when Columba and his monks came out of the enclosure of the fort where the king resided, to chant their evensong, according to monastic custom, the Druids attempted to prevent them singing, lest the sound should reach and attract the people. Columba, however, was equal to the emergency. He possessed a voice of the most magnificent compass, which coiild be heard like a trumpet, even to a mile's distance. So the abbat at ,once uplifted this voice in the words of the forty-fifth Psalm, " Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum : dico opera mea regi ; " " My heart is inditing of a good matter, I speak of the things I have made unto the king," with such effect that he caused all his adversaries "to tremble. This same Druid is said to have raised a . storm against Columba when the latter boldly launched his boat on Lough Ness, and victoriously sailed right ' Edited and translated by Hennessy, in an appendix to Skene's Celtic Scotland, and by Dr. Whitley Stokes, in Three Middle Irish Homilies, p. 90 — 125 (Calcutta : 1877). '^ See O'Curiy's M.S. Materials, i., 328 — 407, and Colgan's Trias Thaumat., pp. 389 — ^446, where O'Donnell's work" is sum- marised. The original is in MS. at Oxford, ,see Reeves' Adam- nan', Fieicice, pp. xxxiv — xxxvi. 124 HISIORY OF IRELAND. in the teeth of the wind,- — a fact which Adamnan duly reckons among his miracles. Another incident strik- ingly illustrates the tenacity with which the Celtic race retains its most ancient superstitions. This Druid possessed an Irish captive maid. Columba's national feelings were stirred on her behalf. He asked the Druid for her liberation, which he refused. " Be it so," said the saint ; " but know that if thou refusest to set free this foreign captive, ' thou shalt die before I leave this province." When he had spoken thus he left the king's residence, directing his steps towards his boats, which were moored on the river Ness. He was soon overtaken by messengers from the king, saying that the Druid had met with a, terrible accident from which he was dying, and was now quite willing to set the captive free. Columba stooped down, took a pebble from the shore, blessed it, and sent it back with the assurance that water in which it should be dipped would heal the sick man, the girl being first set free. The cure, we are assured, duly took place, and the blessed pebble was carefully deposited among the king's treasures as an infallible remedy against disease. The king himself had occasion, some years afterwards, to test its powers; he fell sick and lay dying. He remembered his pebble, and ordered- it to be brought ; but, unfortunately, it had disappeared, and King Brude died for want of its aid.-"^ ' This incident can be illustrated from superstitions arid cus- toms still existent among the Irish peasantry. No belief is more widely spread among them than a belief in pebbles as charms against diseases of man and beast. The use of crystal pebbles for similar purposes still continues in the south of Ireland, instances of which have been given by Windele in a paper on "Irish Medical Superstitions," Journal Kilk. Archseol. Society, vol. v., p. 306, 2nd series; in a paper on the "Imokilly Amulet,", by G. M. Atkinson, m.&& Journal of the Royal Histor. and Archseol. UUJ^UMJtSJL IJM XUJMJL. 1 25 One of the most notable and authentic circumstances in the life and work of St. Columba is the Synod or National Assembly of Drumceatt, a.d. 575.^ Let me very briefly state the facts thereof. Brude, the first Christian king of the Picts, died in 584, twenty years after his conversion. He was duly succeeded by a Chi^istian prince, under whom Christianity continued its career of conquest among the Picts. But all this time Columba had never forgotten his kinsmen of Dalriada, to whose aid he had originally come. He had successfully used his influence with King Brude on their behalf He also reorganised the internal condition" of Dalriada. One king died. Columba, with the instinct of a statesman- and the authority of a princely Churchman, recognised the incapacity of the legal successor to cope with such troublous times ; so he set aside the incapable one, and appointed and consecrated a more energetic prince out of the regular order of succession according to brehon or Irish law.^ Association of Ireland for 1875, p. 440, and in the same journal for 1880, p. 347. See also a learned and exhaustive paper on the same subject by my friend Dr. Frazer, M.R.I.A., of Dublin, in the last volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. The Irish; in their superstitions and customs, are the most con- servative of Western nations. ' See Reeves' Adaimian, p. 92. ' The prince whom Columba tlius appointed was one Aidan by name. He was a descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages. He was consecrated, at:cording to tradition, upon the Stone of Fate, afterwards transferred to Scone, and thence brought to Westminster Abbey, where it now serves as tlie coronation stone. But this is not the only link between our present sovereign and King Aidan, this Hibernian prince. Queen Victoria is descended from him, and through him from Niall of the Nine Hostages, King of Ireland about the year 400. This may seem incredible, yet it is capable of most satisfactory proof. Aidan's descendants continued to reign over Dalriada alone till B42, when Kenneth MacAlpine, a prince of his house, united Picts as well as Scots, Highlanders and Lowlanders, under ths 126 HISTORY OF IRELAND. The princes of Dalriada chafed under their subjection to the kings of Ireland and the tribute exacted from them. So Columba determined to plead their cause before the supreme king of Tara. Other motives, too, led Columba to Ireland. Columba was a poet and a bard, qualified for such a profession by that intense love for nature, in all its aspects, whether grave and magnificent or soft and gay, which he ever displayed. The poets were,, threatened with expulsion from the kingdom on account of their exactions, and their fate now hung in the balance. To Drumceatt, therefore, St. Columba, the most saintly and venerated of all the bards,^ was duly summoned to plead their cause. Drumceatt, the scene of the synod, — or parliament rather, for it was an assembly of lay chiefs as well as of bishops and abbats, — is still pointed out. It is situated at Roe Park, near Newtownlimavady. The memory of this famous assembly lasted till the seven- teenth century. Colgan, the famous writer of that age, tells us in 1645 that the site of this assembly was even then still frequented by numerous pilgrims, and that a procession was formerly celebrated there on All Saints' Day, with a great concourse from all the adjoin- ing neighbourhood.^ This synod, which made so deep an impression upon the popular mind, was no affair of a few days. The Irish lords and clergy encamped under arms during its entire duration, which lasted same rule. The male line of these Celtic kings ended only with Alexander III. in 1285. But then came in the dynasties of Bruce and Stuart, which were descended in the female line from the Celtic kings, whence the blood of the Celts passed over to our present royal family. ' Colgani Ada Sanctt., p. 204 ; see p. 203 for Colgan's account of the poem said to have been composed in honour of St. Columba by Dalian Forgaill ; cf. O'Curry's MS. Materials ; 'Reeves' Ada^m- nan, p. 17 ; and next page below. COLUMBA IN lONA. izf fourteen months. I cannot go into the details of it. Montalembert, in his Monks of the West, has done this at great length, and depicted its proceedings with all his French vivacity and brilliancy, making the ordinary reader feel" as if the historian had been present at the synod, but leading the more suspicious student to fear that his imagination has carried him captive. It miist suffice for me to state that Columba attained • both his objects. He gained Home Rule for Scottish Dalriada, freeing it from subjection to the king of Taraj and he procured the revocation of the decree which had been issued against the bards. The bards proved themselves grateful for his mediation, and we still possess a poem in his honour, expressing their thanks ; to' their sainted protector, composed by Dalian Forgaill, poet laureate of Ireland at that time. This poem has been at least twice printed and translated, once by the late Mr. O'Beirne Crowe, and a second time, by Mr. Hennessy, of the Record Office, in his life of St. Columba, attached as an appendix to the second volume, of Skene's Celtic Scotland. Time would fail me to give even a brief sketch of Columba's deeds subsequent to Drumceatt. He re- peatedly visited the leading monasteries of Ireland. Adamnan gives us a lively picture of Clonmacnoise when Columba approached it. On every side, he tells us, the monks ran together. They left their out-door work, crossed the cashel or entrenchment, and came to receive him chanting hymns. When they met him, they prostrated themselves on the ground ere they embraced him, and then, forming in procession, carried him into the monastery under a canopy of branches. His greatest difficulty was, however, with- the king of Tara, Aedh or Hugh, the same who -threatened to 128 HISTORY OF IRELAND. expel the bards. He did not like St. Columba, and was jealous of his power. His eldest son, t6o, shared his feelings, and mocked the monks of lona. But the second son was of a more devout turn, and revered them. There is an interesting story told of him which illustrates the social life of this, the golden age of Ireland's history. Columba was so pleased with his religious turn that he predicted for this young prince, not only k long and glorious reign, but also the very exceptional privilege that he should die in his own bed, on condition of receiving the Holy Communion every week, and of keepdng at least one in seven of his promises, certainly not too exacting a limita- tion.^ But, as we all know, " to every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late," and from this law St. Columba was not exempted. He had premonitions of the event, and he got himself back to his beloved lona, there to meet the last enemy. Marvels cluster around the story of his departure, the natural outcome of pious but very simple souls. His death, we are told, was retarded four years by the* prayers of his community. The brethren meanwhile often .saw the angels of God conversing with him. A celestial light shone in his cell, rendering it a kind of antechamber to heaven, and diffusing therein somewhat of that Divine effulgence which lightens the city of God. At the end of four years the inevitable time came. He visited his monks at their labours in the fields, and blessed them. He visited the granary, and saw that the provisions were sufficient till the next harvest ; then he turned home to die. Here Adamnan tells one of his most touching stories, illustrating Columba's ke en poetic sympathy " Reeves' Adamnan, pp. 36-38; \^^jj^uiyin.a. ii\ xui\.a.. -with nature aiid with animals.i Half-way between the granary and the storehouse is a spot still marked by one of the ancient crosses of lona, called Maclean's cross. There St. Coluraba met the old white horse which had been, employed to carry milk from the dairy to the monastery. The horse came and put his head on his master's shoulder, as if to take, leave of him. The eyes of the aged animal seemed bathed with tears. His attendant would have sent the horse away, but Columba forbade him. " ' The horse loves me,' he said ; ' leave him with me ; let him weep for my departure. The Creator has revealed to this poor beast what He has hidden from thee, a reasonable man.' Upon which, caressing the faithful brute, he gave him a last blessing." After this he went to his cell, and worked at the transcription of a psalter. When he came to Psalm xxxiv. lo, " Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono," he stopped short, feeling his work was done. " I must stop here," he said. " Baithene will finish the rest.'' He then sent a last message to his followers, enjoining peace and charity. It was now Saturday night, June 9th, 597. As soon as the midnight bell rang for the matins of Sunday, he rose from his stone couch, ran to the church before the other monks, and there was found by his attendant prostrate before the altar. Columba opened his eyes once, turned them upon his brethren with a look full of serene and radiant joy, raised his right hand in an effort to bless them, and so passed away, says Adamnan, with a face calm and sweet, like that of a man who in his sleep had seen a vision of heaven. ' Reeves' AdamnanX. iii., c. 23, p. 233. 9 130 HISTORY OF IRELAND. Such was the life of the apostle of Caledonia, a mixed life, like all human lives, chequered, wild, and passionate at times, but ever consecrated to the one great object of evangelising the masses of Paganism, and always advancing in charity, gentleness, and the Divine life, until he came to God's everlasting kingdom. LECTURE VII. COLUMBANUS. THE golden age of the Irish Church was at its earliest age. From 500 to 700 was the period when most of those missionaries appeared whose names have made the fame of the early Celtic Church, -^Columba, Columbanus, St. Gall, St. Colman, Adam- nan, and a host of others. The missionary activity of the Irish Church did not then cease utterly and at once. It was prolonged for centuries later, till the time of Marianus Scotus, of Ratisbon, in the eleventh century."- But after the seventh century it was no longer the one all-absorbing national thought and passion. Other interests had arisen. The Roman controversy about Easter, and the ever-increasing claims of the Roman see, helped to distract attention. Con- troversy then, as now, led men's minds from practical work, and hindered the advance of the Gospel. The incursions of the Danes, too, deprived the Irish Church ' See Dr. Reeves on Marianus Scotus in the Troceedings of the Roy. Ir. Acad., vii., 290, where he notices the achievements of the following Irish missionaries, SS. Cataldus, Fiacra, Fridolin, Colman, and Kilian, none of whom find place in our Annals. St. Cataldus laboured in Southern Italy, where San, Cataldo, near Otranto, is called after him ; St. Fiacra in France ; St. Colman is patron saint of Lower Austria ; Kilian taught in Franconia ; Fridolin at Glarus, where his figure finds place in the cantonal arms and banner. Cf. Mittheilungen der Antiqum ischen Gesell- sckafi'm Zurich, vol. ix., part I., tab. 12, No. 10. 1 3 2 HIS TOR Y^ OF IRE LA ND. of that internal tranquillity needful for missionary enterprise. The boldest spirits, which used to seek the post of danger and the crown of martyrdom in foreign missions, could now find that position much nearer home. It is to the sixth and seventh centuries I must, therefore, again direct your attention when describing one who in many respects was the greatest, bravest, most thoroughly national, and most repre- sentative of all the warriors of the Cross sent forth from Irish shores. Columbanus is quite distinct from Columba or Columcille. It is necessary to bear this most carefully in mind, for Columba and Columbanus are very often confounded, and have been so confounded even by eminent scholars. Let me briefly distinguish - them. They were both Irishmen, indeed, and both born in the sixth xentury. Columba was an Ulster man, however, Columbanus a Leinster man. Columba was born in 521 ; Columbanus was more than twenty years his junior, having been born in 543. Columba was the apostle of Scotland or Caledonia ;_ Columbanus never set foot in Scotland. He was the apostle of Burgundy, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. Columba spent his life among the Pictish pagans of North Britain ; Colum- banus laboured among the pagans of Central Europe. Now, some may say, or secretly think, as ignorant people are wont to do, "Is not, his whole history legendary, with just as much historical truth in it as in the ■ Arthurian legends, and not nearly so much as in Homer's account of the destruction of Troy ? " This,, indeed, is the real view of many who write in newspapers, whose political - or national spleen leads them to confound the miserable squabbles and degra- dation of the mediaeval Church of Ireland with its COL UMBANUS. 133 earlier and purer period. They seem to think there are no real authentic records of early Irish Church history, and they really class Columba and Columbanus with the legends and myths of a poetic people. With such persons I have neither patience nor sympathy, because they are wilfully and inexcusably ignorant. I have already shown you the folly of such a notion about Columba, and pointed out; that we have as good reason for believing the leading facts of his life as for believing any others in history. St. Columbanus is in a still more favourable position. Let me, then, briefly tell you first of all what are the authorities for his life. They are of the highest value and character. First, we have his own writings. These consist of his Monastic Rule, in ten chapters ; a book on the daily penances of the monks ; seventeen sermons, all of them • very short ; a book on the measure of penances ; an instruction concerning the eight principal vices ; a considerable number of Latin verses ; and five epistlefe, two addressed to Boniface IV., one to Gregory the Great, one to the members of a Galilean synod, upon the question of Easter, and one to the monks of his monastery of Luxeuil, wherein he gives us various details of his life. Besides his own writings, we have his life, written by the Abbat Jonas, a contemporary of St. Columbanus and a monk in his Italian convent of Bobbio. From these documents, aided by the general history-of the age wherein Columbanus played a lead- mg political as well as religious part, we can construct a strictly historical life of this great missionary. Columbanus was born in Leinster, a.d.~543, the same year in which Benedict of Nursia, his great monastic predecessor and rival, died at Monte (Hassino. He was educated first of all on one of the islands of Lough 134 HISTORY OF IRELAND. Erne, which in those early times was studded with sacred retreats, of which the island of Devenish, the home of St. Molaise, now presents the only remains. From Lough Erne Columbanus migrated to Bangor, on Belfast Lough, which was then at the height of its fame as a place where the greatest attainments in learning' and sanctity were possible.^ We are apt to undervalue the studies of, these ancient monasteries, just as we, in our intellectual conceit,, are apt to undervalue all mediseval learning, because the men of those times knew nothing of the daily press, photography, electricity or gunpowder. In monasteries like Bangor, the range of studies was a wide one. Take up the worki, of the Venerable Bede, produced at the monastery of Jarrow by a man who never travelled farther than the neigh- bouring city of York, and then you will have some idea how extensive must have been the range of monastic studies. Listen to one of the latest and most com- petent judges upon this point. Bishop Stubbs, writing of Bede in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography, says, " The attainments of Bede were very great. He certainly knew Greek, and had some knowledge of Hebrew. Among the classical writers of antiquity he knew Virgil, Ovid, Lucian, Lucretius, Terence, and a host of smaller poets. Homer he quotes once. He knew nearly all the second-rate poets, using them for the illustration of the Ars Metrica. The earlier fathers were, of course, in familiar use. The diversity as well as the extent of his reading is remarkable : grammar, rhetoric, poetry, hagiography, arithmetic, chronology, the holy places, the Paschal controversy, epigrams,. ' See Reeves' Eccles. Antiqq., pp. 93, 199, about the foundation and celebrity of Bangor. St. Comgall, the friend and companion of St. Columba, was its first abbat. COLUMBANUS. 135 hymns, sermons, pastoral admonition, and the conduct of penitents ; even speculations on natural science, on which he specially quotes Pliny, furnished work for his pen, beside his great works on history and the interpretation of Scriptyre. He must have had good teachers, as well as a good library and an insatiable desire of learning." Bede was, indeed, a century later than Columbanus, yet all this description might be transferred to Columbanus and to Bangor, which must have been a thoroughly equipped and vigorous seat of learning in the latter half of the sixth century, when it could despatch such a trained and even elegant scholar as he was to convert "the pagans of France. The proofs of his learning are evident to the student of his writings. The scholarship of them is manifest. He writes good Latin verses, full of quaint metrical con- ceits, both in the classical and monkish rhyming style. Allusions to pagan and Christian antiquity abound in his poems.* Where did he get this scholarship? His life on the Continent was one of rough, vigorous, all-absorbing practical effort, leaving no time for such studies. His age, too, forbids the idea. No man ever, I should think, gains the facility in Latin versification ' At sixty-eight he addressed to a friend, named FedoUus, an epistle in Adonic verse, which everywhere bears the impression of those classical studies which the Irish monks of that period cultivated. He prays him (0pp., ed. Migne, Pat. Lat, Ixxx., 291)' not to despise those little verses by which Sappho, the illustrious muse, loved to charm her contemporaries in lines like the following : — "Jnclyta vates, Nomine Sappho, Versibus istis Dulce solebat Edere carmen. Doctiloquorum, Carmina linquens Frivola nostra Suscipe Isetus." 136 HISTORY OF IRELAND. which Columbanus possessed unless he begins the study in youth. Even did time and leisure permit, the opportunity was wanting, as the Continent was then plunged in utter darkness, literary as well as spiritual. St. Columbanus, we therefore conclude, gained his extensive knowledge and elegant scholarship at the abbeys of Bangor and of Lough Erne. About the year 585, he was seized with a desire to preach the Gospel. The triumphs of Columba and of the Caledonian mission were then rousing the holy ambition of theTrish monasteries, and Bangor, within sight of the Scotch coast, must have felt a special call to such work. Some circumstances — what they were we know not — determined Columbanus and twelve companions to seek the shores of France. They crossed to Great Britain, and thence reached Gaul. France was, towards the end of the sixth century, a bye-word throughout Europe for immorality and irre- ligion. When we think of the Gaul of that period, we must not think of it as it was in the fourth and fifth centuries, the age of a Hilary of Poitiers, of a Martin of Tours, or a Germanus of Auxerre. For a hundred years and more it had been the prey of every invader ; and, though the country was struggling on towards better things, these better things were yet far distant. . Let me quote from Milman a vigorous passage illustrat- ing the dangers and obstacles our countryman had to face as he went forth to call the Franks and Burgun- dians to the obedience of Christ. "It is, difficult," says that historian, in his Latin Christianity, lib. iii., cap. ii., " to conceive a more dark and odious state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict of COLUMBANUS. 137 coalition of barbarism with Roman Christianity, bar- . barisin has introduced into Christianity all its ferocity, with none of its generosity or magnanimity. Its energy shows itself in atrocity of cruelty, and even of sensuality. Throughout, assassinations, parricides, and fratricides interiningle with adulteries and rapes .... That King Clotaire should burn alive his rebellious spn with his wife and daughter is fearful enough, but we are astounded even in these times with a bishop of Tours burning a man alive, to obtain the deeds of an estate which he coveted. Fredegonde sends two murderers to assassinate Childebert, and these assas- sins are clergymen. She causes -the Archbishop' of Rouen to be murdered while chanting the service in church ; and in this crime a bishop and an archdeacon are her accomplices. Marriage was a bond contracted and broken on the lightest occasion. Some of the Merovingian kings took as many wives, either together or in. succession, as suited either their passions or their politics. Christianity hardly interferes even to inter- dict incest." It was into a country where all the bonds which bind society together were thus totally dissolved, St. Columbanus flung himself, with all the headlong courage of his race, to be the champion of morals, the apostle of civilisation, the fearless soldier of the cross of Christ. He landed in the north of France. The two languages used by him, the Celtic and the Latin, would, of course, carry him everywhere. He at once set out on a course of apostolic wanderings, which at last led him to Burgundy, at that time ruled by Gonti:an, who may be . described as the least im- moral of the grandsons of Clovis.* T his king received ' Gontran was son of Clotaire I., the youngest of the four sons 138 HISTORY OF IRELAND. him gladly, offered him riches and honour, which the missionary dechned, and settled upon him the old Roman castle of Annegray, where the first Irish monastery ever planted on the Continent raised its head.^ There he laid the foundations of his system as he had learned it in Ireland. These foundations were plain, aye, the very plainest, living, high thinking, and hard work. His biographer Jonas describes the simple life led at Annegray. Columbanus lived for weeks without any other food than the herbs of the field and the wild fruits yielded by the forest around. We trace in him the same love of nature and of natural objects which we find in some of the beautiful stories told of St. Columba. Everything is said to have obeyed his voice. The birds came to receive his caresses. The squirrels descended from the tree-tops to hide themselves in the folds of his cowl. One day, when wandering in the depths of the woods, meditating whether the ferocity of the brutes, which, could not sin, was not better than the rage of men, which destroyed their souls, he saw a dozen wolves approach and of Clovis, among whom his kingdom was divided in 5 1 1. See the articles " Clotaire I. " and " Guntramnus " (2) in the Diet. Christ. 'Biog. Gontran has been canonised, and his memory is celebrated in the Roman martyrology on March 28th. The article just cited will show what a strange saint he was. ' Columbanus drew up a rule for the use of his m,onasteries. It was of the sternest kind, and doubtless represents the disci- pline of Bangor, Clonard, lona, and the Irish monastic system of his day. It punished the slightest fault with fasting or corporal chastisement. See Regtila Ccensbialis and De Pmnit. Mensurd. in Migne's Pat. Lat., t. Ixxx., 209, 223; Wasserschleben, X>z> Irische Kanonensammhmg, p. Ixxvi., and his Bussordnungen der Abendland. Kirche, pp., 52-60. The rule has also been made the subject of a monograph by Dr. Otto Seebass, styled Ueber Columba von Luxeuils Klosterregel und Bussbuch (Dresden: 1883), where the author uses of set purpose the name Columba instead of Columbanus {cf. p. 3). COLUMBANUS. 139 surround him on all sides. He remained motionless, repeating the words, " Deus in adjutorium." The wolves touched his garments with their mouths, but seeing him fearless, passed upon their way. The example of a quiet Christian household, shedding the blessings of civilisation, education, and religion all around, proved a very powerful one, even upon men more ferocious than wolves. Crowds flocked to the Irish teacher to learn the secret of a pure and happy life, and the great foundations of Luxeuil and Fontaines followed one another in rapid succession. They were all successful ventures, and among the disciples of Columbanus were numbered by hundreds the children of the noblest Franks and Burgundians. For twenty years the great missionary thus laboured, till the crisis of his life came, and his activity was changed to a new direction. You must bear with me while I go somewhat into detail about this event, as the details alone will enable you to realise the state of religion and of morals with which Columbanus was obliged to deal. About the year 600, Gaul, in its widest limits, from the British Channel to the Vosges and Jura mountains, was subject to the government of two Jezebels, — Fredegund, called the enemy of God and man, who ruled, roughly speak- ing, the north; Brunehault, who ruled the south and east, and of whom the best that can be said is this: she was not quite as bad as the other.'' Now fix your attention on Brunehault, for it is with her St. Colum- banus came into conflict in defence of the plainest principles of Christian morality. Brunehault ruled Burgundy as regent for the young king Thierry, her grandson. To preserve her own power, and to prevent ' See the article " Fredegundis " in the Diet. Christ. Biog. 140 HISTORY OF IRELAND. a rival standing near the throne, she for a time success- fully encouraged him in the utmost licentiousness, and opposed every attempt to replace his numerous con- cubines by a legitimate queen. Her ambition overcame even her national and patriotic feelings. She was herself a Visigothic princess. Thierry at last chose a lawful wife from the same house. But Brunehault so worked upon him, that at the end of twelve months he repudiated her, and St. Didier (Desiderius), Bishop of Vienne, who had arranged the match, ■ was murdered by the agents of the queen-mother.^ She was utterly shameless, too. Thierry, her grandson, was a man of strong passions, indeed, but still was not devoid of religious instincts, and always bore most respectfully those sharp reproofs Columbanus bestowed upon him. On one occasion the saint was thus visiting him, when he came into conflict with the queen regent. Brunehault presented to Columbanus the four sons Thierry already had by his concubines. " What would' these children with me ? " said the uncourtly monk. " They are the sons of the King," said the queen regent ; " strengthen them by thy blessing." " No," replied the fearless saint ; " they shall not reign, for they are of bad origin." From that moment Brunehault vowed war to the death against Columbanus. Another cause hastened his fall. He never would abandon his Celtic peculiarities and national customs in religion. Here we come upon the first symptoms of those controversies which were so soon to rend asunder the Celtic Church in all its branches. Columbanus would never surrender his Celtic tonsure and his Irish method of celebrating Easter. The Gallic bishops followed the custom of Rome in both respects, and strove to reduce the fearless Irishman to'confor- ' See " Desiderius " (9) in Diet. Christ. Biog. COLUMBANTJS. 141 mity with their own practices. It was all useless. He not only refused obedieiice, but addressed' a long epistle to the bishops in synod, in which he deals very plainly with them, and then touchingly sets forth his own case thus : — " I am not the author of this difference ; I have come into these parts a poor stranger for the cause of Christ the Saviour, our common God and Lord. I ask of your holinesses but a single grace : that you will permit me to live in silence in the depths of these forests, near the bones of seventeen brethren whom I have already seen die. Oh, let us live with you in this land where we now are, since we are destined ' to live with each Other in heaven, if we are found Worthy to enter there. I dare not go to you for fear ' of entering into some contentien with you ; but I confess to you the secrets of my conscience, and how I believe, above all, in the tradition of my country, which is besides that of St. Jerome." Both Church and State were thus arrayed against the undaunted Irishman, who dared to maintain the traditions of his forefathers, and to cham- pion the laws of immutable morality. Columbanus had soon to pay the penalty of his bravery. His monastery was regularly boycotted. The inhabitants were forbidden to have any dealings therewith. He was himself arrested and confined at Besan^on, whence he soon escaped to Luxeuil. Thither a royal officer and a strong detachment of soldiers were sent to arrest him. They found him, as Athanasius was found, in church, chanting the service with his com- munity. "Man of God," said they, "we pray you to obey the King's orders, apd to return from whence you came." " No," answered Columbanus ; " after having ■ left my, country for the service of Jesus Christ, I can-, not think my Creator wishes me to return." Parley 142 HISTORY OF IRELAND. was, however, useless. The soldiers treated him with every respect, but if they did not execute their com- mission, their lives would have been forfeited. He was, therefore, arrested, bade a final adieu to his be- loved Luxeuil, was hurried across France, and placed on board a ship of Nantes bound for Ireland. Brune- hault and Thierry thus freed theinselves of their enemy, but his future work lay not in Ireland, whither they thought they had despatched him. The Bishop and Count of Nantes hastened his departure, according to the royal wishes. But though man proposes, God dis- poses. The Irish vessel in which Columbanus was embarked was flung back upon the sands at the mouth of the Loire. The captain, with a true sailor's super- stition, imbibed the notion that Columbanus was an unlucky passenger, landed him and his Irish com- panions who had been exiled with him, and at once continued his voyage. Columbanus was permitted to go where he would. Thus ended his struggle and work in Burgundy. And now, when more than sixty, he began with indomitable energy to carve out a new career for himself The prospect, however, was not inviting. His quarrel with Brunehault and Thierry shut him out from the greater part of France. For a time he took refuge with Clotaire II., son of Frede- gund, but his heart was set upon the evangelisation of Northern Italy, which was even yet filled with Arian heresy and with pagan superstition.^ But how was he, ' The Arianism of North Italy was persistent. Some of the most authentic and interesting information about the Arian Ulfilas has been thence derived. See Scott's Ulfilas, pp. 38, 117 (Cam- bridge: 1885) and Card. Mai's Scriptt. Vett. Nov. Coll., iii., 186, where Arian documents have been printed, derived from Bobbio, Columbanus' own monastery. The library of Bobbio proves the scholarship and research of the Irish missionaries. The Mura- torian fragment, a MS. of the age of Columbanus, was derived COLUMBANUS. 143 to get there ? The usual routes down the Rhone and by sea, or through the passes of the Western Alps, were all cut off by the dominions of Burgundy. He, therefore, chose another road, destined to be rich in spiritual trophies which still perpetuate the fame of these devoted Irish missionaries. Clotaire's court had no charms for Columbanus. He was in very deed no fit subject for a courtier. He was not a man clothed in soft raiment, neither did his tongue easily frame those soft and honeyed words which alone suit the tone and temper of kings' palaces. Clotaire received him generously, and protected him . effectually. Yet Columbanus felt not at home. The atmosphere was tainted, heavily laden with that miasma of immorality and vice which ever haunted the descendants of Clovis. Columbanus, fearless as a John the Baptist, reproved the king for all his wicked deeds, and the king took the reproof mildly and well, and promised reformation, but never fulfilled his promise. Columbanus longed, however, for freedom. He was, like Columba, a child of nature. The moan of the storm, the murmur of the ocean, the rustle of the forest, spoke to these men of purity, of poWer, and of God, and Columbanus ardently desired to regain those wilds and forests where he had laboured and conquered for Christ. One path of escape alone remained open to. him. The Rhine presents a waterway often traversed in later times from the shores of the German Ocean to the very border of Northern Italy,, and it lay wholly beyond the .realms and power of Brunehault and from thence ; see Canon Muratorianus, by S- P. Tregelles, LL.D., and Dr. Salmon's article on the " Muratorian Fragment" in the Dict._ Chtist. Biog, ; see below, note on p. 146, 144 HISTORY OF IRELAND. Thierry.^ He, therefore, embarked upon that river, and ti-aversed a large part of the beautiful defile between Mayence and Bingen which has made the name of the Rhine famous. It must have been very hard work pulling against that stream. . Those who have not seen it, or, still better, tried to swim against it, have no idea of the force and power wherewith the river rushes from the tableland of Switzerland to the sands of the Dutch coast. It is hard work even for the powerful express steamers which daily strive to overcome it. They descend the stream from Bingen to Cologne in almost half the time which they take to ascend it ; but what must have been the exertions used by St. Colum- banus and his companions as they slowly battled their way in their coracles all up the defile of the Rhine,, and then along through the calmer waters between .Heidel- berg and Strasbourg, and thence, by Bale, and Schaff- hausen, and the falls of the Rhine, till they emerged into the great broad expanse of the Lake of Constance ? There they halted for a time, evangelised, preached, taught, and established the monasteries of Reichenau, and above all of St. Gall, a inonastery which to this day is one of the richest repositories of Irish MSS. and Irish literature on the continent of Europe. St. Gall was a companion of Columbantis ; he has given the name to the town and canton of St. Gall. In preach- ' ing the Gospel to the Swiss, Columbanus displayed all the impetuosity of his temper. Sometimes he broke the boilers in which the pagans prepared the beer they offered— a truly national sacrifice — to Woden. ' Even so late as two centuries ago, about the year 1659, the Rhine formed the route traversed by the followers of Johannes Bollandus on a famous literary journey to Rome. Cf. the " Life of Bollandus," capp. xiii.-xx., -in the first volume of the A€ia Sane- - ionim for March ; Contemp. Review, January 1883, p. 75. COLVMBANUS. 145 At times he burned their temples or broke their images. Such conduct naturally provoked opposition. The Irishm_en were driven from place to place with violence, and refused food by the inhabitants. But such sturdy missionaries were no way disconcerted. They erected their- huts of timber, planted their gardens, snared the wild fowl, fished like apostles on the Lake of Con- stance. Columbanus made the nets. Gall, the learned and eloquent preacher, flung them into the lake with no small success. A fine legend illustrates the difficulties they so long encountered and so bravely overcame in Helvetia. One night St. Gall was in his boat, silently watching his nets, when he heard the derrion of the mountain calling to the demon of the waters. " Here I am," answered the water demon. " Arise then," said the other, "and help me to chase away the strangers who have expelled me from my temple; it will require us both to drive them away." "What good should we do ? " answered the demon -of the lake ; " here is one of them upon the water-side whose nets I have tried to break, but have never succeeded. He prays con- tinually, and never sleeps. It will be labour in vain • we shall make nothing of it." Gall inade the sign of the cross, and said to them, " In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave these regions without injuring any one." Then he hastened to land, awoke the abbat, and rang the bell for nocturns ; but before the first psalm had been intoned, they heard the yells of the demons echoing from the tops of the surround- ing hills, at first with fury, then losing themselves in the distajice,. and dying away like the confused voices of a, routed army. Success attended the labours of Columbanus in Switzerland, and even greater success attended his lO '146 HISTORY OF IRELAND. disciples, but his soul was not yet satisfied^ He felt as if he had not yet attained the great end for which his spirit panted. Columbanus, in truth, was made to rule, and to rule a large community. He felt the need of a sphere where his activity could find scope for its exercise, as at Luxeuil and Fontaines. Other influences, too, combined to lead him from Switzerland. King Thierry had been extending his dominions, which now embraced the very district where Golumbanus was living. The inhabitants had got tired of him and his preaching. They stole his cows ; they slew his monks. They complained to the duke of the province that these strangers scared away the game of the royal chase, by infesting the forest with their presence and their prayers, It was necessary to depart. Columbanus put it vigorously : " We have found a golden egg, but it is full of serpents." He set out, therefore, with one companion, painfully crossed the Alps, probably by the route of the St. Gothard pass, and arrived at the court of Agilulf, King of the Lombards. There he was received with the greatest 'respect, and endowed with the church and territory of Bobbio, in a retired gorge of the Apennines between Genoa and Milan. An old church, dedicated to St. Peter, was in existence there. Columbanus undertook to restore it, and to add to it a monastery. Despite his age, he shared the workmen's labours, and bent his old shoulders under the weight of enormous beams of fir-wood. This abbey of Bobbio was his last stage. H!e made it the citadel of orthodoxy against the Arians, lighting there a lamp of knowledge and instruction which long illumined Northern Italy.* The monastery ' Even modern learning owes something to it. The School and library of Bobbio rank among the most celebrated of the COLUMBANUS. 147 existed^ till suppressed by the French in 1803, while the church still serves as a parish church. Bobbio was in one sense his last stage. It was his final scene of work, whence he evangelised the pagans and Arians all around. In another sense it was not. Columbanus ended life by seeking a solitude more profound still. Upon the opposite shore of Trebbia he discovered a cavern, which he transformed into a chapel, and there, like other Irish anchorites, he spent his last days " in a desert " till God called His faithful and fearless servant home, on November 21st, 615. Did time permit, we might devote, and with much profit^ a whole lecture to consider the ecclesiastical position of Columbanus. It has been a great crux for modern Ultramontanes. In Columba's life there is not one trace of the pope or the slightest acknow- ledgment of his claims. There is silence, however, ■ and this is at most only a negative argument. In the Life of Columbanus there is many a mention of the pope and several epistles to popes, but there is also an express rejection and denial of their claims, and a use of plain language to them which no Irish priest of the Roman obedience would now dare to use. For an Ultramontane's explanation of this phenomenon I must refer you to Montalembert in his Monks of the West. It is very amusing. For instance, striving to explain away his letter to Pope Boniface IV., Montalembert says : " Doubtless some of the expressions he employs would be now regarded as disrespectful, and justly middle ages. Muratori has given a catalogue of seven hundred MSS. which the monastery possessed in the i. sixteenth century. Thence, for instance, came the famous palimpsest from which Cardinal Mai published the De Republica of Cicero. See Tre- gelles, Canon Murator:, part i. ; Muratorii Antiqq. Ital. Medii^vi, t. iii. (Mediol. mdccxl.), coll. 809-880 ; and note, p. 142, above. 148 HISTORY OF Ireland: rejected. But in those young and vigorous times, faith and austerity could be more indulgent." Let me, how- ever, give a brief extract from his epistle on the Easter question, written to one of the greatest popes, Gregory the Great, in defence of his own Irish rites and cere- monies, and in opposition to the Roman mode. The unbiassed student can then draw his own conclusions. " How is it that you,, with all your wisdom, you, the brilliant light of whose sanctified talents is shining abroad throughout the world, are induced to support this dark Paschal system ? I wonder, I confess, that the erroneous practice of Gaul has not been long since abolished by you. . . . You are afraid, perhaps, of incurring the charge of a. taste for novelty, and are content with the authority of your predecessors, and of Pope Leo in particular. But do not, I beseech you, in a matter of such importance, give way to the dictates of humility of gravity only, as they are often mistaken. It may be, that in this affair a living dog is better than a dead lion" (or Leo). "For a living saint may correct errors that have not been corrected by another greater one." -^ I do not think that the reverence of Columbanus for the pope or his belief in papal infallibility can have been very great, when he would use such language.^ ' The full force of the play upon words in this passage only comes out in the Latin. It was not very complimentary to Pope Gregory to call him a living dog. '' A full analysis of the life and letters of Columbanus will be found in Ceillier, Hisl. des Auteurs EccUsiast, vol. xi., pp. 612—630. Migne's Patrologia Latina, t. Ixxx., offers a con- venient edition of his works, including his Latin poetry. See also Fleming's Collectanea Sacra (Lovan. : 1667) ; and for. the bibhography of the subject " Columbanus "' iti the Diet. Christ. Biog. LECTURE VIII. THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. I HAVE now endeavoured to sketch the histories of Patrick the apostle of Ireland, of Columba, the apostle of Scotland, and of _ Columbanus, the apostle of Burgundy. These three men represent the early Celtic Church in its origin and development, during the fifth and sixth centuries. In considering their careers I ' have omitted many interesting questions. The organization, the liturgy, the government of the Church have merely been alluded to. Our attention has been fixed on men, not on measures.^ The period which elapsed from the seventh to the twelfth cen- turies, or, broadly speaking, from St. Columbanus to the Anglo-Norman conquest, is an unknown time for most people." Men have heard of Brian Boru, and perhaps of Cormac of Cashel, and they have a vague idea that they lived some time in that period ; but in their secret hearts regard them as mythical personages. And when we pass beyond them there is no other personality which stands out dominating the whole horizon and calling attention to his work as does the ' A French historian has well remarked that " history studies not merely facts and institutions. Its true object is the human soul. It ought to seek to know what that soul has believed, thought, and felt during the different ages of the life of the human race." Fustelde Coulanges, Cite Antique, ■^^. 103, 104; cf. Jean R^ville, Religion sous les Severes^ Pref , p. i. ISO HISTORY OF IRELAND. personality of a Patrick or of a Columba. Yet the period of five hundred years we have now to study is an extremely interesting one, and no more mythical or dark than the same period in the history of England. Original Irish documents, original Irish works, and original Irish records of that age abound. They lie concealed, sometimes in manuscripts, sometimes in the ponderous volumes of a D'Achery, a Canisius, a Colgan, the Four Masters, or the tomes, even more ponderous still, of the BoUandists ; but there they are, to reward the diligent student with a contemporaneous glimpse of the ways and doings of the ancient Celtic Church. There are two distinct methods in which we might study this period. I might present you with a record as voluminous, minute, and accurate as I could make it of the successions and struggles of the multitudinous chieftains and ecclesiastics who lived in Ireland. I might, in fact, copy out and read to you the annals of the Four Masters; but I fear you would not be much the better, but rather the worse for such a style of ■ treatment, as you would have the feeling intensified — which too often prevails already — that Irish, history is intensely stupid and intensely uninteresting. There is another and more useful method of dealing with our subject. I may avoid burdening your memory with bare lists of names, and present you- instead with a series of pictures of great movements, or of leading characters, which will illustrate the whole spirit of the times and shed light upon the course which, the deve- lopment of the national life followed. This latter is the method which I shall adopt, and in doing so I shall begin with the first great external movement which impinged on Irish national life, modifying at first, and then radically altering, its whole tone and character. THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. ici That movement I call the Paschal Controversy. Let me explain this for you, and in doing so I must preface a few words. The feast of Easter has been a subject of contro- versy since the second century. Polycarp of Smyrna and popes Anicetus and Victor of Rome, held diverse views as to the proper time of its observance ^ Poly- carp and the Churches of Asia followed the Jewish method, of computation, while all other Churches ob- served the Christian style. This caused the celebrated Quartodeciman Controversy. With that controversy the Irish Church had nothing to say, though its adver- saries, to give it a bad name, designated it by the oppro- brious name of Quartodeciman. Irish churchmen agreed with their opponents in celebrating Sunday and Sunday alone as the feast of the Resurrection. But they differed from them as to the method of computing the Sunday. Let me explain how this happened. You will se:e that my explanation will throw some light upon the vexed question of the age and period at which Irish Chris- tianity first arose. The earliest Easter cycle of the Christian Church was naturally identical with that used by the Jews. It was called the eighty-four year cycle.^ During the debates of the second century this cycle was discovered to be faulty, whereupon the aelebrated Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, devised his cycle of one ' See art, " Anicetus " in the Diet, of Christ. Biog., p. i., i r6. ' The Jews at the time of our Lord's crucifixion probably used an eight-year cycle (Octaeteris). After the fall of Jeru- salem they adopted the eighty-four year cycle. See on the whole question the article e-n Easter in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, and Dr. Salmon's articles on the Chronicon Cyprianium and Hippolytus in the Diet, of Christ. Biog.; Hefele's exhaustive treatise on the Easter question and the Nicene Council in his History of the Councils, vol. i., pp. 298-341 (Clark's trans.) ; Bingham's Antiq., xx., c. 5. 152 HISTORY OF IRELAND. hundred and twelve years, which we find iflscribed on the chair of his statue, discovered- in iSS^j ^^'^ ^°^ in the Lateran. The Fathers of Nice took up the question. They laid great stress upon the true time of keeping Easter. They placed their ban upon the Quarto- decimans and all who followed Jewish customs, and to ensure uniformity entrusted the duty of calculating, and announcing the true time, of Easter to the bishops of Alexandria, as living at the great scientific centre of the existing World. However, even in such a slight matter Rome was not willing to be second to Alexandria ; so the Roman Church fell back, with that conservative instinct she has always • displayed, upon the original Jewish cycle of eighty-four years, while the Alexandrian Church used the ancient metonic cycle of nineteen years, as arranged by Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, about the year 284. Now mark this point. During the fourth and first half of the fifth centuries the Alexandrian Church used the nineteen-year cycle; the Roman Church used the old "Jewish cycle of eighty-four years. This diver- gent use at last caused great inconvenience. Thus from an epistle of St. Ambrose we learn that in the year 387 Easter was observed at three distinct dates : by some on March 21st, by others on April i8th, and by others on April 25 th. The popes of Rome, with their old imperial notions of accuracy and uniformity, chafed at this. It was bad enough to be subject to Alexandria on such a topic, but it was still worse when Alexandria seemed unable to give a certain, of at least an accurate answer.^ The uncertainty which prevailed -' Quoted in Bingham's Atitiq., bk. xx., cli. v., sec. 4. ^ There is no formal canon or decree of the Council of Nice now extant compiitting the function of calculating Easter to the Alexandrian patriarch. Pope Leo I. refers, however, to some such decision in an epistle addressed to the Emperor THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. 153 in the fifth century may be illustrated by one fact. Pope Leo the Great wrote to St. Cyril of Alexandria, the very last year of St. Cyril's life, to inquire concern- ing the true date of Easter. The Roman calculation made it March 26th, while the Alexandrian fixed it to April 23rd. The Roman Church determined at last to shake itself free from this thraldom, and to assert its competence to determine all such questions for the entire Western world, of which the Roman See was now becoming more and more visibly the guide and leader. So Rome determined to have a reform of the calendar. For this purpose Pope Hilary, in the year 463, employed Victorius, an abbat of Aquitaine, who framed a new cycle. Hitherto, as I have said, the Roman Church used the old Jewish, cycle of eighty-four years. Henceforward they used the new cycle of Victorius and Dionysius Exiguus, which embraced a period of five hundred and thirty-two. years. But the Irish Church had received with St. Patrick and its first teachers the old Jewish and Roman cycle of eighty-four years. Barbarian invasions and wars and distance separated them from Rome and its new fashions. They -knew nothing of the new cycle of five hundred and thirty-two years. Their whole energy was concentrated on study and missionary effort, and so continuing faithful to the practices of their forefathers, they found when St. Augustine and the Roman mission came. to Canterbury, about the year 600, that Rome and Ireland Marcian, where, speaking of Easter, he says : " Studuerunt itaque Sancti Patres occasionem hujus erroris auferre, omnem hanc curam Alexandrine episcopo delegantes (quoniam apudiEgyptios hujus supputationis antiquitus tradita esse videbatur peritia) per quern quotannis dies prsedictse solemnitatis Sedi Apostolicse indicaretur, cujus scriptis ad longinquiores ecclesias iudicium generale percurreret." See Hefele's Councils, vol. i., p. 327 (Clark's trans.) 154 HISTORY OF IRELAND. differed very considerably about this important ques* tion.^ Now observe two facts : (i) Tlie mission of Augus- tme, about a.d. 600, first raised tiiis question ; (2) As I shall afterwards show you by contemporary evidence, the Irish Church never heard till then of the new Roman cycle introduced for the first time in 463. And from these two facts I conclude that Christianity must have been introduced into Ireland prior to 463, or, in general, about that epoch, the first half of the fifth century, to which St. Patrick's mission is usually attributed. But why, you may say, did they make so much fuss about such a trumpery matter as the proper method of calculating a date ? The answer is easy. We all know from our own experience that the bitterest quarrels in religion rage over apparently the pettiest details. What can seem to an external observer rnore insignificant than the proper position of the celebrant at the Holy Communion, whether he should look towards the south or towards the east? and yet two parties in the English Church have fought most bitterly, threatening even at times to rend that com- munion in twain, over this point. And why have they done so ? Not that they saw any special virtue in either the south or the east, but because this position symbolised for both parties views they either cherished or abhorred with equal vigour. So it was with the question of Easter. The Council of Nice and the Church of the fourth century regarded the Quartodecimans as heretics, and cut them off from Christian communion. The Roman Church transferred ' The Irish Church came, as we shall see, into contact with the Roman missionaries from the very outset. See Bede, H.E., ii., 4 ; cf. Baron. Annah, a.d. 601, sec. 25, Greg. Mag. in Migne's P.L. Ijcxvii., 1203 ; Ussher's Sylloge, 0pp. iv., 399, 402. THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. 155 the same penalty to all those who would not conform themselves to her calculations. She regarded them as Judaizers and Jews, and Judaizing and the Jewish con- troversy were still a real terror and a real danger to the Christian Church.^ Let this suffice upon the importance of the question. We shall now proceed to the history of this bitter strife. St. Augustine landed in England towards the close of the sixth century. His mission was twofold : first, to preach to the pagan Saxons ; secondly, to correct and instruct the members of the old Celtic Church. In the year 603, or thereabout, Augustine assembled the bishops of the Celtic Church to a conference at a spot near the Severn, afterwards called Augustine's Oak. There he propounded three points upon which he demanded conformity with the customs of Rome: (i) The use of chrism in baptism;^ (2) The new Easter cycle; and (3) The fulfilment of the primary duty of every Christian Church, the preaching of the gospel to the pagan Saxons, which the British Celts in their national hatred refused to do. Augustine failed, and failed utterly, to bring the Celts over to his view. Augustine died the very next year, and was succeeded by Arch- bishop Laurentius, who soon discovered, that the British Celts were supported in their controversy by the Scots, the Irish Celts, who held precisely the same views as the ' The Theodosian Code, bk. xvi., ti.tle viii., treats of the privileges, disabilities, offences, etc., of the Jews, and shows how actively hostile to Christianity they still were in the fifth century. Gebhardt and Harnack in their Texte tmd Untersuch- ungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literattir, Bd. i., Hft. 3, Leipzig, 1883, have given us a specimen of the Jewish controversy of the fifth and sixth centuries in a dialogue called "Altercatio Simonis Judsei et Theophili Christiani." Their Introduction shows what a burning question it then was. ^ See note on p. 318 concerning the difference between Rome • and Ireland about chrism. 156 HISTORY OF IRELAND. Celtic Church of England. He wrote, therefore, an epistle to the bishops and abbats of Ireland about the year 605. It is most important, for it is the earliest docuinent, save one, connecting Rome and Ireland, and places us at the very fount and origin of this pro- longed controversy. We find it in Bede, Bk. ii., ch. 4. " To our most dear brothers, the lords, bishops, and abbats throughout all Scotland, Laurentius, Mellitus, and Justus, servants of the servants of God." You will observe what a convincing proof we here have of the episcopal character of the Celtic Church of that period. Some persons have endeavoured to make out- that its government was presbyterian. Laurentius has many faults to find with it. But neither he nor any subse- quent controversialist ever impugned its church govern- ment as defective, which they undoubtedly would have done had it been presbyterian. This letter then pro- ceeds': "When the Apostolic See, according to the universal custom which it has followed elsewhere, sent us to these western parts to preach to pagan nations, we came into this island which is called Britain without possessing any previous knowledge of its inhabitants. We held both the Britons and the Scots in great esteem for sanctity, believing that they had proceeded according to the customs of the universal church ; but becoming acquainted with the errors ' of the Britons, we thought the Scots had been better ; but we have been informed by Bishop Dagan coming into this aforesaid island, and by the Abbat Columbanus in France, that the Scots in no way differ from the Britons in behaviour ; for Bishop Dagan coming to us not only refused to eat with us, but even to take his repast in the same house where we were entertained." It is quite clear from this epistle that hostility and THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. 157 separation between the Roman and the Irish party were bitter, clear, and distinct when an Irish bishop would not even eat in the same house or beneatli the same roof as his Roman opponents.^ ' Yet the Roman party soon made extensive conquests in Ireland. Ireland frorn its earliest history had been divided into two great sections, separated broadly by that curious chain of sandhills which takes its rise at the Green Hills near Tallaght and terminates at Galway Bay. The southern half of Ireland was of course very conveniently situated for intercourse with southern England and with* France. Harbours- like Cork and Waterford and Wexford offered abundant opportunities for intercourse with the Continent, of which the monks largely availed themselves. This continental intercourse helped rapidly to undermine the old Irish customs. Pilgrimages to Rome became the fashion, and Rome soon gained the affections of the Munstermen, while then, as still, the heart of Ulster remained sternly anti-papal. It is easy to see how it was so. The untutored Irish, accus- tomed to their own humble homes, crossed the Bay of Biscay, and there came into contact with the Roman Church in all its majesty. They beheld its liturgical service developed by the genius of a Gregory the Great, its magnificent churches, its hierarchy ever growing in power and dignity, and dominating the rough and rude though powerful princes of that age, and then, contrasting their own mean circumstances at home, they were prepared to hear and to acquiesce in the argument of a Pope Honorius when he wrote to these Munstermen, as he did aTaout the year 634, " exhorting thera not to think their small number placed in the utmost border of the earth wiser than all the ancient and modern churches of Christ throughout the world ; iS8 HISTORY OF IRELAND. and not to celebrate a different Easter contrary to the Paschal calculation and the synodical decrees of all the bishops upon earth." Active negotiations now were set on foot between Rome and Munster. The principal agent in this transaction was St. Laserian, Abbat or Bishop of Old Leighlin, where to this day the old cathedral marks the site of his seventh-century monas- tery.^ He was one of those Irishmen who had travelled to Rome and been seduced by its charms from alle- giance to his national rite. He is said- to have ,been ordained priest at Rome by Gregory the Great, and bishop some thirty years later by Pope Honorius, who sent him as his deputy- to bring the Irish into submis- sion. He called a synod for this purpose, but was defeated for a time by the interposition of St. Fintan, Abbat of Taghmon, near Wexford, the most famous saint of that time. Fintan was an Ulster man, an adherent of the Columban order, and a thorough Irish- man, opposed to all foreign notions and interfer- ence. Fintan's action was characteristic. It reminds us of St. Patrick on Tara. He challenged Laserian to the proof, and offered him a threefold choice. " You 'have three options given you, O Laserian. Let two books, one of the old order, another of the new, be cast into the fire, and let us see which of them will escape from the flames ; or, let two monks, one of yours and another of mine, be shut up in the same house, and let the house be set on fire, and we shall see which of them will escape unburht. Or let us both go to the sepulchre of a dead monk and raise him up to life, and he will tell us which order we ought to observe in the celebra- ' See art. "Laserian," in Diet. Christ. Biog., vol. iii., p. 625;, Ussher's Works, ed. Elrington, iv., p. 342, vi., pp. 503 — 505, 604, 605. THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. 159 tion of Easter." All of which proposals the Roman deputy declined, on the ground that Fintan's holiness was so well established that if he prayed " that yonder mount," pointing to the cliffs of the neighbouring Slieve Margy, " were to change places with this white field," pointing to the site of Old Leighlin, " God would at once grant the request."-' But notwithstanding all opposition Rome rapidly gained ground- in the south, till at last the whole province yielded, obedience. We have a historic docu- ment of the most clear and satisfactory character, which certifies us of this fact, and at the same time illustrates the state of learning and the intercourse with Rome and the Continent, as then existing in the Church of Ireland. That document is the letter of St. Cummian'' to Segienus, Abbat of the Columban monastery of lona. The Columban monks and monasteries were the great opponents of Rome, and the supporters of the Irish Easter. Cummian had been trained as a Columban monk in their celebrated monastery at Durrow, in the Queen's County. He now joined the Roman party, and sent an epistle, preserved for us by Ussher,' which is a wonderful monument of Irish learning in that age, and at the same time sheds most important historical light on the events of the time. The epistle begins by an apology, on Cummian's part for daring • See Ussher'a Works, ed. ElringtoD, t. vi., p. 504, where this story is told ; cf. Ephraim (6) in Diet. Christ. Biog. ^ See " Cummian " in Diet. Christ. Biog., i., p. 723. The name in various forms was very common in ancient Ireland (see "Cumin" in-Diet. Christ. Biog.) Mr. Bradshaw attributes the collection of Irish Canons called Hibernensis, to an abbat Cummian, of the south-east. of Ireland, living early in the eighth century (see Wasserschleben's Irisehe Kanonensammlung, zweite Aufl., Einleit., S. Ixxii.) ' Sylloge, ep. xi., Works, ed. Elrington, iv., pp. 432 — '444. i6o- HISTORY OP IRELAND. to differ from the Abbat of lona. " What I have here to say in defence of -my conduct I do not presume to thrust upon the notice of your hoHness in an offensive manner, but I desire that you should as a father accept of my apology ; for I' call God as a record upon my soul that it is not froni disrespect towards you, nor from a conceit of my own moral wisdom, regardless of what others may think, that I have not adopted the mode of celebrating Easter which is used by other sensible men." He then proceeds to discuss the question from the scriptural point of view, beginning with the first' institution of the Paschal feast in Exodus. In doing so he quotes corrimentators like Jerome and Origen. Then he proceeds to later authorities and the views of the Fathers, where he discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Egyptians, and Hebrews, the opinions of Augustine, Cyprian, Cyril, Pachomius, the head and reformer of Egyptian mpnasticism, and of Gregory the Great, whom he reverenced most of all, and describes as one " qui etsi post omnes scripsit, tamen est merito omnibus prseferendus." He refers to the views of ancient Irish saints which he had investigated during the previous twelve months. He quotes St. Patrick as " Sanctus Patricius noster papa.'' He mentions names that are now regarded as shadows or myths ; Ailbe of Emly, Kieran of Clonmacnois, and Brendan of Clon- fert. He balances the decrees of Councils like those of Nicsea and of Aries, and sums up his case very neatly and very epigrammatically by asking, "Quid autem pravius sentiri potest de Ecclesia" matre, quam si dicamus, Roma errat, Plierosolyma errat, Alexandria errat, Antiochia errat, totus mundus errat, soli tantum Scoti et Britones rectum sapiunt ? " (What can be thought worse concerning the Church, our mother, than THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY, i6i that we should say Rome errs, Jerusalem errs, Alex- andria errs, Antioch errs, the whole world errs ; the Scots and Britons alone know what is right ?) This letter is well worth study. It bears the most interest- ing notes of time and of historical truth evident upon its face. It repeats the very language of Pope Honorius' letter, as described by Bade. It ridicules the claim of the Celts to set up for themselves, " being but an eruption on the very chin of the world." It mentions an em- bassy sent to Rome some three years before on this point, and finally notices a circumstance which com- pletely establishes its own authenticity. Cummian points out that the Irisji deputies found during their stay at Rome that the Roman Easter was divided by a whole month from the feast celebrated by the Irish Church, which happened in the year 631, when Easter fell on March 24th at Rome and on April 21st in Ireland. Munster yielded to the Roman customs within the first half of the seventh century, though no fornial Roman connection or supremacy was thereby esta- blished. But a much harder "struggle remained. More than half a century was yet to elapse before the Columban monasteries and northern Ireland would .consent to abandon, their ancient usages. To their subjugation the Roman party now bent every effort. The point round which the battle first raged was the Irish mission in the north of England. Aidan at Lindisfarne had inaugurated that great work about the year 635, when the Roman party had already gained the victory in southern Ireland. But "what the Colum- ban party lost in one direction they gained in another, and soon the Northumbrian kingdom acknowledged the sway of the Cross through St. Aidan's labours, while 1 1 162 HISTORY OF IRELAND. his friends and disciples Finan and Cedd and Diuma pushed the borders of the Irish Church far down into the Midland Counties (Bede, Bk. iii., ch. 2i).i During St. Aidan's life the controversy concerning Easter was riot raised. The Roman party had quite enough to do to hold its own in the south, leaving the Columban party to pursue in quietness the work of northern evangelisation. But they soon came into contact. Just as Russia and England are daily drawing closer to each other's boundary limit in Central Asia, so during the middle of the seventh century Rome and lona drew daily closer to eaeh other in central England. The contest between them must be therefore settled. The crisis came> as far as England was concerned, in 664. That year was marked by a celebrated conference held at Whitby between the Roman and the Irish parties. St. Aidan and his suc- cessor St, Finan had been allowed to celebrate the Irish Easter, and to retain Irish customs in northern England.^ But now great inconvenience was ensuing. The Roman party too. was cleverly utilizing an agency which they still manage with great effect. Mixed marriages were playing into their hands. The I^orth- umbrian King Oswy had married a Queen Eanfled ' who had been converted to the Roman view in Kent, and had imported Roman, clergy to act as her private chaplains. Great trouble soon followed. Nothing , brings a man round quicker than to find all his ' I lately heard of an English ecclesiastic, holding a high official position, who when visiting Dublin scoffed at the idea ot England owing any of its Christianity to Irish missionaries. It is thus evident that a man may gain great ecclesiastical promotion in the English Church and yet never have opened his Bede. ' See art. "Finan" (7) in Did. Christ. Biog., t. ii., p. 516. " See art. "Eanfled" (2) in Did. Christ. Biog., t. ii., p. 15. THE PASCHAL CONTROVERSY. 163 domestic arrangements upset by a difference with his wife. Thus