St. Patrick and the early Christians of the fifth century spent much of their time and labour in the conversion of pagans and the building of churches. Columcille and the leading churchmen of the sixth century, on the other hand, gave themselves up more to the foundation of monastic institutions and the conduct of schools. They belonged to what is well known in Irish ecclesiastical history as the second Order of Saints. The first Order was composed of Patrick and his associates, bishops filled with piety, founders of churches, three hundred and fifty in number, mostly Franks, Romans, and Britons, but with some Scots [i.e. Irish] also amongst them. These worshipped, says the ancient "Catalogue of the Saints," one head—Christ, and followed one leader—Patrick. They had one tonsure, one celebration of the Mass, and one Easter. They mixed freely in the society of women, because they feared not the wind of temptation, and this first Order of Saints, as it is called, is reckoned by the Irish to have lasted during four reigns.
The next Order of Saints had few bishops but many priests, this was the order to which Columcille belonged, and most of the saints who founded the great schools of Ireland which in[Pg 193] the following century became so flourishing and spread their fame throughout Europe, as those of Ciaran and Finnian and Brendan, and a score of others. This Order shunned all association with women, and would not have them in their monasteries.[1] These saints whilst worshipping God as their head, and celebrating one Easter and having one tonsure, yet had different rites for celebrating, and different rules for living. The rite with which they celebrated Mass they are said to have secured from the British saints, St. David, St. Gildas, and others. They also lasted for four reigns, or, roughly speaking, during the last three quarters of the sixth century.
After these came what is called the third Order of Saints who appear in their time to have been pre-eminent amongst the other Christians, and to have been mostly anchorites, who lived on herbs and supported themselves by such alms as they were given, despising all things earthly and all things fleshly. They observed Easter differently, they had different tonsures, they had different rules of life, and different rites for celebrating Mass. They are said to have numbered about a hundred and to have lasted down to the time of the great plague in 664.
This third Order, says the writer of the "Catalogue of Saints," who gives their names, was holy, the second holier, but the first Order was most holy. "The first glowed like the sun in the fervour of their charity, the second cast a pale radiance like the moon, the third shone like the aurora. These three Orders the blessed Patrick foreknew, enlightened by heavenly wisdom, when in prophetic vision he saw at first all Ireland ablaze, and afterwards only the mountains on fire, and at last saw lamps lit in the valleys."
By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honeycombed from shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges,[Pg 194] and foundations of all kinds belonging to the Christian community, and books had multiplied to a marvellous extent. At the same time the professional bards flourished in such numbers that Keating says that "nearly a third of the men of Ireland belonged, about that period, to the poetic order." Omitting for the present the consideration of the bards and the non-Christian literature of poem and saga—mostly anonymous—which they produced, we must, take a rapid survey of some of the most important of the Christian schools, whose pious professors, whose number, and whose learning, secured for Ireland the title of the Island of Saints. We have already seen how the three patron saints of Ireland established their schools in Armagh, Kildare, and Iona, and their example was followed by hundreds.
St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at some school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian—who is said to have been himself an Irishman—at his noble monastery of Candida Casa in Galloway, built about the year 400), and after travelling through various parts of Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in the rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mór, and was the first of those holy men who have won for it the appellation of Aran of the Saints. "One hundred and twenty-seven saints sleep in the little square yard around Killeany Church"[2] alone, and we are told that the countless numbers of saints who have mingled their clay with the holy soil of Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment. Here most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or later, to be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda; amongst them Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under the title of Navigatio Brendani, became so well known in later ages to all medi?val Europe. To him also came St. Finnian of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in later days as the "Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north came[Pg 195] Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St. Jarlath of Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder, of Lismore, and with St. Keevin of Glendalough. St. Columcille[3] himself was amongst Enda's visitors, and tore himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing himself by recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont—
"Farewell from me to Ara's Isle,
Her smile is at my heart no more,
No more to me the boon is given
With hosts of heaven to walk her shore.
How far, alas! how far, alas!
Have I to pass from Ara's view,
To mix with men from Mona's fen,
With men from Alba's mountains blue.
Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun,
Ah! softly run through Ara's sky,
To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter
Than lie where Paul and Peter lie.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
O God, cut short her foeman's breath,
Let Hell and Death his portion be.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
Herdless and childless may he go
In endless woe his doom is dree.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves thee not,
When angels wing from heaven on high
And leave the sky for this dear spot."[4]
[Pg 196]
Another early school was that founded by St. Finnian at Cluain Eraird, better known under its corrupt form Clonard, a spot hard by the river Boyne, to which students from both north and south resorted in great numbers. Finnian, who was of the Clanna Rury, or Irian race, had been baptized by Bishop Fortchern, who—so quickly did the Christian cause progress—was a grandson of King Laeghaire, who withstood St. Patrick. This Fortchern, too, like Brigit's favourite bishop, was a skilled artificer in bronze and metal, a calling to which many of the early saints evinced a strong bias. Clonard even during Finnian's lifetime became a great school, and three thousand students are said to have been gathered round it, amongst them the so-called Twelve Apostles of Erin. These are Ciaran of Clonmacnois and Ciaran of Saigher, who is patron saint of Ossory; Brendan of Birr, the "prophet," and Brendan of Clonfert, the "navigator"; Columba of Tir-da-glass and Columcille; Mobhí of Glasnevin and—infaustum nomen!—Rodan of Lothra or Lorrha; Senanus of Iniscathy, whose name is known to the lovers of the poet Moore; Ninnidh of Loch Erne; Lasserian, and St. Cainnech of Kilkenny, known in Scotland as Kenneth, and second in that country only to St. Columcille and St. Brigit in popularity. The school of Clonard was founded about the year 520, when, to quote the rather jingling hymn from St. Finnian's office—
"Reversus in Clonardiam
Ad cathedram lectur?
Opponit diligentiam
Ad studium scriptur?."
[Pg 197]
The numbers who attended his teaching are given in another verse—
"Trium virorum millium
Sorte fit doctor humilis,
Verbi his fudit fluvium
Ut fons emanans rivulis."
Like all the other early Irish foundations which attained to wealth and dignity before the ninth century, Clonard suffered in proportion to its fame. It was after that date plundered and destroyed twelve times, and was fourteen times burnt down either wholly or in part. That being so, it is not much to be wondered at that there only remains a single surviving literary work of this school, which is the "Mystical Interpretation of the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ," by St. Aileran the Wise, one of Finnian's successors, who died of the great plague in 664. This piece, like so many others, was found in the Swiss monastery of St. Gall, whither it had been brought by some monks from Ireland. The editors who printed it for the Benedictines in the seventeenth century say that, although the writer did not belong to their Order, they publish it because he "unfolded the meaning of sacred scripture with so much learning and ingenuity that every student of the sacred volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will regard the publication as most acceptable." The learned editors could have hardly paid the Irish writer a higher compliment. "A Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred Names" is another still existing fragment of Aileran's, and "whether we consider the style of the latinity, the learning, or the ingenuity of the writer," says Dr. Healy, "it is equally marvellous and equally honourable to the school of Clonard." Aileran is said to have also written lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Fechin of Fore, and to be the original author of a litany, part Irish, part Latin, preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.
Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon,[Pg 198] founded about the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who, like Finnian, came of the Irian race, being descended from Fergus mac Roy.[5] He was born towards the close of the fifth century, and his school, too, became very famous, having, it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks. The influence of the Navigatio Brendani, by whomsoever written, was immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in many of the great continental libraries good MS. copies of it, sometimes very ancient, may be found.[6] But perhaps Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have indirectly influenced European literature in a still more important manner. This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were known all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There can be no doubt about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's life, for Bede himself, who dedicates a good deal of space to Fursa's visions,[7] refers to it. It must have been written within ten or fifteen years after his death, because it refers to the plague and the great eclipse of the sun which happened last year, that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account of Fursa and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him, and furnished him with the groundwork of part of the Divine Comedy of which it seems a kind of prototype.[8]
[Pg 199]
Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he was shown by the devil, may also have been known to Dante. Brendan prepared three vessels with thirty men in each, some clerics, some laymen, and with these, says his Irish life in the Book of Lismore, he sailed to seek the Promised Land, which, evidently influenced by the old pagan traditions of Moy Mell[9] and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an island in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically—
"Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with abundance of the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful marvellous islands, yet they tarried not therein."
Like Sindbad in the Arabian tales,[10] they land upon the back of a great whale as if it had been solid land. There they celebrated Easter. They endured much peril from the sea. "On a certain day, as they were on the marvellous ocean"—this adjective is strongly indicative of the spirit in which the Celt regards the works of nature—"they beheld the deep bitter streams and the vast black whirlpools of the strong-maned sea, and in them their vessels were being constrained to founder because of the greatness of the storm." Brendan, however, cried to the sea, "It is enough for thee, O mighty sea, to drown me alone, but let this folk escape thee," and on hearing[Pg 200] his cry the sea grew calm. It was after this that Brendan got a view of hell.
"On a certain day," says the Irish Life, "that they were on the sea, the devil came in a form old, awful, hideous, foul, hellish, and sat on the rail of the vessel before Brendan, and none of them saw him save Brendan alone. Brendan asked him why he had come before his proper time, that is, before the time of the great resurrection. 'For this have I come,' said the devil, 'to seek my punishment in the deep closes of this black, dark sea.' Brendan inquired of him, 'What is this, where is that infernal place?' 'Sad is that,' said the devil; 'no one can see it and remain alive afterwards.' Howbeit the devil there revealed the gate of hell to Brendan, and Brendan beheld that rough, hot prison full of stench, full of flame, full of filth, full of the camps of the poisonous demons, full of wailing and screaming and hurt and sad cries and great lamentations and moaning and handsmiting of the sinful folks, and a gloomy, mournful life in hearts of pain, in igneous prisons, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death, without limit, without end; in black, dark swamps, in fonts of heavy flame, in abundance of woe and death and torments, and fetters, and feeble wearying combats, with the awful shouting of the poisonous demons, in a night ever-dark, ever-cold, ever-stinking, ever-foul, ever-misty, ever-harsh, ever-long, ever-stifling, deadly, destructive, gloomy, fiery-haired, of the loathsome bottom of hell. On sides of mountains of eternal fire, without rest, without stay, were hosts of demons dragging the sinners into prisons ... black demons; stinking fires; streams of poison; cats scratching; hounds rending; dogs baying; demons yelling; stinking lakes; great swamps; dark pits; deep glens; high mountains; hard crags;... winds bitter, wintry; snow frozen, ever-dropping; flakes red, fiery; faces base, darkened; demons swift, greedy; tortures vast, various."[11]
This is one of the earliest attempts in literature at the pourtrayal of an Inferno.
[Pg 201]
After a seven-years' voyage Brendan returned home to his own country without having found his Earthly Paradise, and his people and his folic at home "brought him," says the Irish Life, "treasures and gifts as if they were giving them to God"!
His foster-mother St. Ita now advised him not to put forth in search of that glorious land in those dead stained skins which formed his currachs, for it was a holy land he sought, and he should look for it in wooden vessels. Then Brendan built himself "a great marvellous vessel, distinguished and huge." He first sailed to Aran to consort with St. Enda, but after a month he heaved anchor and sailed once more into the West.
He reaches the Isle of Paradise after many adventures, and is invited on shore by an old man "without any human raiment, but all his body full of bright white feathers like a dove or a sea-mew, and it was almost the speech of an angel that he had." "O ye toilsome men," he said, "O hallowed pilgrims, O folk that entreat the heavenly rewards, O ever-weary life expecting this land, stay a little now from your labour." The land is described in terms that forcibly record the delights of the pagan Elysium of Moy Mell, and prove how intimately the Brendan legend is bound up with primitive pre-Christian mythological beliefs. "The delightful fields of the land" are described as "radiant, famous, lovable,"—"a land odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land many-melodied, musical, shouting-for-joy, unmournful." "Happy," said the old man, "shall he be with well-deservingness and with good deeds, whom Brandan, son of Finnlug, shall call into union with him on that side to inhabit for ever and ever the island whereon we stand."
But better known—at least in ecclesiastical history—than even St. Brendan, is St. Cummian, surnamed "fada" or the Long, who was one of his successors in the school of Clonfert, and who perished in or a little before the great plague of 664.[Pg 202] There are two hymns, one by himself in Latin,[12] and one in Irish by his tutor, Colman Ua Cluasaigh [Clooasy] of Cork, preserved in the "Liber Hymnorum." But his great achievement was his celebrated letter on the Paschal question addressed to his friend Segienus, the abbot of Iona. The question of when to celebrate Easter day was one which long sundered the British and Irish Churches from the rest of Europe, and has, as students of ecclesiastical history know, given rise to all sorts of conjectures as to the independence of these churches. The charge against the Irish was that they celebrated Easter on any day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, even on the fourteenth if it should happen to be Sunday, but the fourteenth was a Jewish festival and the Council of Nice had, in 325, declared it to be unlawful to celebrate the Christian Easter on a Jewish festival.[13] The Irish had obtained their own doctrine of Easter from the East, through Gaul, which was largely open to Eastern influence; also the Irish used the old Roman cycle of 84 years, not the newer and more correct Alexandrian one of 19 years. The consequence was the scandal of having different Churches of Christendom celebrating Easter on different days, and some mourning when others were[Pg 203] feasting, a scandal which the Epistle of Cummian was designed to put an end to.
"I call this letter," says Professor G. Stokes,[14] "a marvellous composition because of the vastness of its learning; it quotes besides the Scriptures and Latin authors, Greek writers like Origen, and Cyril, Pachomius the head and reformer of Egyptian monasticism, and Damascius the last of the celebrated neo-Platonic philosophers of Athens, who lived about the year 500, and wrote all his works in Greek. Cummian discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Hebrews, and Copts, giving us the Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian names of months and cycles, and tells us that he had been sent as one of a deputation of learned men a few years before to ascertain the practice of the Church of Rome. When they came to Rome they lodged in one hospital with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian, and a Scythian, who told them that the whole world celebrated the Roman and not the Irish Easter."
Cummian throughout this letter displays the true spirit of a scholar, he humbly apologises for his presumption in addressing such holy men, and calls God to witness that he is actuated by no spirit of pride or contempt for others. When the new cycle of 532 years was first introduced into Ireland he did not at once accept it, but held his peace and took no side in the matter, because he did not think himself wiser than the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, nor did he venture to disdain the food he had not yet tasted. So he retired for a whole year into the study of the question, to examine for himself the facts of history, the nature of the various cycles in use, and the testimony of Scripture.
There is another book, "De Mensura P?nitentiarum," ascribed to Cummian and printed in Migne; and there is a poem on his death by his tutor, St. Colman, who was carried off by the same plague a short time after him.[15]
[Pg 204]
The great institution presided over by St. Cummian was flourishing in full vigour at the time of the first incursions of the Northmen. It is frequently mentioned in the Irish Annals as a place of note and learning. Turgesius the Dane, attracted by so fair a booty, promptly plundered and burnt it to the ground. Again and again it was rebuilt, and again and again the same fate befell it. The monastery and the school survived, however, until the coming of the Normans, and the "Four Masters" under the year 1170 record the death of one of its teachers, Cormac O'Lumlini, whom they pathetically designate "the remnant of the sages of Erin," for by this time Clonfert had been six times burnt and four times plundered.
Even a greater school, however, than Clonfert, was that founded by St. Ciaran [Keeran], the carpenter's son, beside a curve in the Shannon, at Clonmacnois, not far from Athlone, about the year 544. He had himself been educated by St. Finnian of Clonard, and he died at the early age of thirty-three, immediately after laying the foundations of what was destined to become the greatest Christian college in Ireland.[16]
The monastery and cells of St. Ciaran rapidly grew into a city, to which students flocked from far and near. In one sense the College of Clonmacnois had an advantage over all its rivals, for it belonged to no one race or clan. Its abbots and teachers were drawn from many different tribes, and situated as it was, in almost the centre of the island, all the great races, Erimonians, Eberians, Irians, and Ithians, resorted to it impartially, and it became a real university. There the O'Conors, kings of Connacht, had their own separate church; there the Southern Ui Neill reared apart their own cathedral; there the MacDermots, princes of Moylurg, and the[Pg 205] O'Kellys, kings of Hy Mainy, had each their own mortuary chapels; there the Southerns built one round tower, the O'Rorkes another; and there too the Mac Carthys of Munster had a burial-place. Who, even at this day, has not heard of the glories of Clonmacnois, of its ruins, its graves, its crosses; of its churchyard, which possesses a greater variety of sculptured and decorated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland put together, and of which the Irish poet beautifully sang so long ago—
"In a quiet watered land, a land of roses,
Stands St. Ciaran's city fair,
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations,
Slumber there.
There beneath the dewy hill-side sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone, with name in branching Ogham,
And the sacred knot thereon.
There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbré sleep,
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Ciaran's Plain of Crosses,
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh.
Deep the sod above Clan Creidé and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest,
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast."[17]
[Pg 206]
Some of the most distinguished scholars of Ireland, if not of Europe, were educated at Clonmacnois, including Alcuin, the most learned man at the French court, who remembered his alma mater so affectionately that he extracted from King Charles of France a gift of fifty shekels of silver, to which he added fifty more of his own, and sent them to the brotherhood of Clonmacnois as a gift, with a quantity of olive oil for the Irish bishops. His affectionate letter to "his blessed master and pious father" Colgan, chief professor at Clonmacnois, is still extant.
This Colgu, or Colgan, himself wrote a book in Irish, called "The Besom of Devotion," which appears to be now lost. A litany of his still remains. The great eleventh-century annalist, Tighearnach, was an alumnus of Clonmacnois. So, too, was the reputed author of the "Chronicon Scotorum," O'Malone, in 1123. The Annals of Clonmacnois was one of the books in the hands of the "Four Masters," but it is now lost, and a different book called by the same name (the original[Pg 207] of which has also ............