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^Bookseller ik Binder, IS lissex Quay, Dublin. BOOKS* 1'puglit aii(t Exchanged "" ~ ; "v . ": _ S>- 1. I Cbc clmvcr*Uv o nm PT si :t$ VlKT' ol. OlAwAiN PATRON OF OSSORT: A MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES, COMPRISING A PRELIMINARY ENQUIRY RESPECTING THE PERIOD OP HIS BIRTH J AN HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON THE LEGEND OP HIS LIPE ; SOME NOTES ON HIS DEATH, AND ON THE SURVIVING MEMORIALS OP HIS MISSION, BY :e:oa--A_isr 7 >. KILKENNY. KILKENNY : " PRINTED AT THE JOURNAL" OPPICE, PARADE. 1876. TO "FIEST BORN OF THE SAINTS OF IRELAND,' FOUNDER AND PATRON OP THE CHURCH OF OSSORY, THIS OF HIS LIFE AND MISSION is REVERENTIALLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. There are few propositions in Irish history which present so many obstacles to a direct solution as the date of the birth of St. Ciaran. Such is the complication in which that event is entangled that the " early writers, who lightly adopted the chronology of the old Life" of the saint, arrived at a period for the date of his birth so surrounded by anachronisms, and so irreconcilable with the duly authenticated facts of contemporary history, that modern students, with equal pre- cipitancy, have rejected both the Legend and its chronology, and with them the honoured names of Ussher, Colgan, Ware, O'Flaherty, O'Donovau, &c., together with the traditions, legends, and lore of at least a thousand years in Irish literature. It is to be regretted that the modern scholars just referred to, and to whom we are wont to appeal for guidance through the obscure paths of Irish history have, in the question now under discussion, contented themselves with rejecting the decisions of their prede- cessors, without leaving us some clearly-defined conclusion, as a result of their own researches, setting forth the criteria by which it was arrived the which it is sustained at, and arguments by ; but instead of this each writer arbitrarily assigns a date for the missionary career of the saint which either suits some favourite foregone conclusion of his own, " or fits like a dove -tailed" joint his present pxirpose for some object in hands and the result is that no two of our modern writers have agreed respecting the period of St. Ciaran's birth, or have even ad- vanced any one date for the occurrence of that event. In proof of what has been just stated, we give a few extracts from the writers of the present century, which will show how vague and undefined are their views respecting the date of St. Ciaran's birth, and that in re- " jecting what Dr. Lanigan calls the foolish stories about Ciaran's antiquity" they themselves have not arrived at any definite conclusion, nor have they left us anything better than theories and conjectures on the point. We shall in the first place allow Dr. Lanigan to state his own case respecting the period of Ciaran's mission. " " It may be allowed," he writes, that St. Ciaran became a bishop VI. about the time we are now treating of, viz., about A.D. 538. His having been at Finnian's school of Clonard can be easily reconciled with his pro- motion at that period, as he was one of Finnian's first scholars, and might have been twenty years old when he went to study under him." Finnian's school, according to TJssher, was opened in 544, and as Ciaran was one of his first scholars, and was twenty years of age when he entered the school, he must have been but fourteen years old in A.D. 538, when he was promoted to the episcopate. Dr. Lanigan seems to have perceived that his calculations will not bear criticism, " for in a foot-note on the above he writes : In the list of illustrious men mentioned in Finnian's Acts (cap. 19) as having studied under " him the two Kierans are placed first. 1 allow," he adds, "that this may not be considered as a conclusive argument, nor do I pretend to state as certain that Ciaran was a bishop at the time above given (A.D. 538). Tet it is more than probable that he was not prior to it. But as he is not named in the second class of Irish saints who flourished after the year 544 we may suppose that he had become dis- tinguished earlier." Ecclesiastical History, vol. 11, p. 7, note 22. If Ciaran did not belong to the Irish saints who flourished after the ''"C year 544 he must have been, as a mabter of course, distinguished " before' it. How then does our author say, yet it is more than pro- bable that he was not a bishop prior to A.D. 538 ?" Our present busi- ness with our learned author goes no further than to show that his system of calculation regarding the age of St. Ciaran gives us no criterion by which we can arrive at the date of the saint's birth. Dr. Todd is the nest writer in the order of time who refused to accept the ancient date assigned for the birth and mission of St. Ciaran, and it will be fotind that though he writes rather dogmatically against the faith in the antiquity of Ciaran' s birth he signally fails in giving us anything tangible as a substitute for what he calls the apochryphal theories which he rejects. The learned Doctor rapidly reviews the life of the saint as pub- lished by Colgan, exposes the contradictions in its chronology, the im- possibility of Ciaran being born in A.D. 352, and of his being a disciple of St. Finnian's in 540, and then gives us the following conclusion " as the only result of his investigations into the subject : We " are," he says, fcold indeed by the author of his Life that he was far advanced in years, and a bishop when he became the disciple of St. vii. Finnian, and other difficulties are obviated by the assumption that he lived to be three hundred years old. No doubt we must have recourse to some such hypothesis if we believe him to have been a dis- ciple of St. Tinman's in A.D. 540, and a bishop in 402. But whether this hypothesis removes all difficulty is another question. The whole story of his studying at Rome, and his meeting of St. Patrick there, is as apocryphal as the prophecy of the thirty years on which the chronology of the Legend rests." We shall show at p. 19 of the following essay that the direction said to have been given by St. Patrick to St. Ciaran on the occasion of " their meeting in Italy, and generally known as the Thirty Tears' Prophecy," have been most egregiously misread by Dr. Todd. With that, however, we have nothing to do here. We are now following him only as a guide to the date of Ciaran's birth. In the passage quoted he throws no light on the point, but in a foot-note he thus " illustrates the case : It may as well be mentioned that the genealogy of his [Ciaran's] father, Luaigre, is preserved in nine descents from his ancestor, Aengus of Ossory, who was expelled from his lands by the Desii in the reign of Cormac Ulfada (A.D. 254-277). "If this be " so," he adds, St. Ciaran's father could not be born much before the " year A.D. 500." St. Patrick," p. 202, n. 6. " That this was not so" we shall very clearly prove at p. 26 of the " following essay. But even if this be so" it forms no criterion from which to determine, with any degree of precision, the date of St. Ciaran's birth or the age of his mission. The next writer with whom we have to deal in connection with the age of Ciaran's mission or the date of his birth is a correspondent of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for 1866, and who, unlike those already referred to, undertakes to prove by a tabulated pedigree that St Ciaran was nephew to Feradach, who died King of Ossory in 582, and first cousin and contemporary to Colman, his son, who died king of the same territory in the year 601, and having, as, he asserts, es- tablished these points, he thus sums up the case : " I have thus proved at once that St. Ciaran and Fearadach were the latter the uncle of the former that relatives, being ; they were con- in temporaries, and that, fine, which was my third and last inquiry, " " we may," in the words of Dr. Lanigan, safely conclude that he St. Ciaran belonged to the sixth century, became distinguished Vlll. " towards the middle of it, and died during its latter half." Irish Ecclesiastical Eecord," October, 1866, p. 33. the With arguments advanced by the writer we deal below, p. 29 Here it is only necessary to observe that neither they nor the conclu- sion which he deduces from them, and on which he so confidently relies, reflect more light on the subject than had been previously effected by the researches of Dr. Lanigan. We have just stated the case as made out by the learned Doctor himself, and as the writer in the Record unreservedly adopts it, we have only to add here that his enquiries do not help us more, than those which he adopts, to ascertain the date of St. Ciaran's birth. The next and last writer we shall refer to in illustration of the diversity of opinion amongst modern scholars respecting the date of St.