Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum Part 32

These gentlemen issued a most elaborate production addressed to the emperor, by him to be forwarded to the Pope. They begin by attacking the letter of Hadrian to Constantine and Irene, in which letter, as they allege, he ordered images to be superst.i.tiously adored--_quod superst.i.tiose eas adorari jussit_. In support of his doctrine he cited the Fathers, but according to them it was _valde absona_ what he cited, and _ad rem non pertinentia_.

Then they attack the Second Council of Nice which gravely erred by ordering images to be wors.h.i.+pped, as the Great Charles had clearly proved in the books sent to Rome by the Abbot Angilbert. And Hadrian, too, in his answer to this treatise, when defending the Synod, wrote what he liked, not what he ought--quae _voluit_, non tamen quae _debuit_.

This was not enough for this Paris Conference; they had the a.s.surance to dictate to the Pope what he was to write in reply to the Greek emperor; and to Lothaire himself they recommended what he ought to write to the Pope. On the point of doctrine they declare that nothing made by the hands of man is to be adored or wors.h.i.+pped; and to prove their position they quote St. Augustine, who, according to them, says that image wors.h.i.+p had its origin with Simon Magus, and a _meretricula_ called Helen!

When the Emperor Lothaire received these precious doc.u.ments from the two prelates, Halitgar and Amalarius, deputed to present them, and ascertained their contents, he told them, as might be expected from a sensible man, that the letter to the Pope especially contained some things that were superfluous and more that were impertinent. He therefore commissioned Jeremias of Sens, and Jonas of Orleans, to make extracts from the report which would be more to the point and less likely to give offence in Rome; telling them, at the same time, to show every respect to the Pope, as they were bound to do; that although much might be gained by deference, nothing could be effected by exasperating the Pontiff. If, he adds, the _pertinacia Romana_ will make no concessions, but the Pope is prepared to send an emba.s.sy to Constantinople, then let them try at least to induce him to allow the emperor also to send an emba.s.sy in conjunction with that of the Pope.

The emperor himself wrote a respectful and plausible letter to the Pope, urging upon him to send amba.s.sadors to the Greek court, adding that he might send with them the two bishops who bore the report of the Paris Conference to His Holiness; and that thus he might be instrumental in restoring peace to the distracted Churches of the East.

Things were at this pa.s.s when Dungal appears upon the scene. The prelates of France were, many of them at least, not quite sound on the question of image wors.h.i.+p; but Claudius of Turin, just about this time, brought things to a crisis.

This Claudius was a Spaniard, educated in his youth by Felix, Bishop of Urgel, in Spain, one of the leaders of the Adoptionist heretics. The mind of Claudius was infected with this as well as several other errors; but especially with the most extreme form of Iconoclasm.

Like Dungal, he seems to have been in high favour at court; but he kept his errors at that time to himself, at least in their extreme form. When appointed to the See of Turin he threw off the mask. On his first or second visitation he removed the crosses from his cathedral, he broke the images of the saints, and the holy pictures on the walls; he declaimed from the pulpit even against the wors.h.i.+p of the saints themselves, or their relics in any shape or form; and finally, heartily denounced the pilgrimage to Rome, which even then was customary with the faithful, as unnecessary and superst.i.tious.

These rash and violent proceedings gave great scandal to the faithful of the diocese. They were divided into two factions; for the bishop had numerous partisans of his own, but they were in a minority; and on one occasion the prelate very narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by the mob. The wily Claudius, however, by his representations to the emperor, in which he threw all the blame on the turbulence of the superst.i.tious Lombards, succeeded in maintaining his ground.

About A.D. 824 a friend of his, the pious Abbot Theodemir, wrote a remonstrance to Claudius on his proceedings, in which he adjured him, by the memory of their former friends.h.i.+p, to discontinue these odious proceedings, reminding him how unworthy it was of a Christian bishop to dishonour the Saints of G.o.d, to insult the Cross of Christ, and break the images of His saints and martyrs.

This gentle remonstrance only made the Iconoclast more furious. He wrote a reply to the holy abbot, a considerable portion of which has come down to us, and shows Claudius in his true colours.

It is ent.i.tled--"Apologetic.u.m atque Rescriptum Claudii Episcopi adversus Theutmirum Abbatem."

It was this work brought out Dungal. He had hitherto been much pained at the proceedings of Claudius; for being then in Pavia he could scarcely be ignorant of what took place in Turin. Most of the French prelates, however, themselves more or less infected with unsound doctrine, held aloof; and even Agobard of Lyons wrote in favour of Claudius, so Dungal, although probably only a deacon, if, indeed, at all in holy orders, felt it his duty to come forward as the champion of the truth. He got his teaching not in France or Germany, but in Ireland; so he was not tainted with the errors of the Frankish theologians.

Dungal's treatise against Claudius is ent.i.tled: "Dungali Responsa contra Perversas Claudii Taurinensis Episcopi Sententias."

In the prologue of the book Dungal declares that for G.o.d's honour, and with the sanction of Louis and his son Lothaire, he undertakes to defend, on the authority of the Holy Fathers, the Catholic doctrine against the frantic and blasphemous trifling of Claudius, Bishop of Turin. Many times since his arrival in Italy he had just cause to complain, whilst he saw the field of the Lord oversown with tares, yet he held his peace in grief and pain. He can, however, do so no longer, when he sees the Church distracted, and the people seduced by deceivers. He first sets forth very clearly the points at issue between the rival parties, and then proceeds to refute Claudius, and prove the Catholic doctrine, observing at the outset that it was astonis.h.i.+ng insolence for any man to presume to "censure and blaspheme that doctrine and practice which for 820 years or more was followed by the blessed Fathers, by most religious princes, and by all Christian households up to the present time."

After proving that these practices were not only not forbidden, but sanctioned by G.o.d Himself in the Pentateuch, he goes on to establish this tradition of the Catholic Church, quoting most of the Greek and Latin fathers, the poems of Paulinus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, the Acts of the Martyrs and the Liturgy of the Church. He quotes, moreover, the Apocalypse, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, at great length, to prove the same doctrine, and alleges that it was the universal belief and practice in the East and in the West from the days of the Apostles down to his own time. The Greeks lately erred; but their errors were retracted and condemned.

It is impossible not to admire the great knowledge of Sacred Scripture and Patristic literature displayed by the author. He reasons, too, clearly and cogently; and writes in a limpid and flowing style. Indeed, we know no writer of that age who excels Dungal in Latin composition, whether in poetry or prose; and this is generally admitted by those acquainted with the Latin literature of the period. Muratori observes that this work shows that Dungal was a man of wide culture.[311] This is high testimony from such an authority. Papirius Ma.s.sonus, in his address to the prelates and clergy of Gaul prefixed to the treatise of Dungal, calls him an excellent theologian--_Theologus excellens_--and Alzog declares that the sophistical reasoning of Claudius, Bishop of Turin, was refuted by Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, but much _more ably_ by Dungal, an Irish monk of St. Denys, and subsequently by Strabo and Hincmar of Rheims.

Dungal's was not only the ablest, but also the first work that was written on the subject; for in it he alludes to the Synod or Conference of Paris in A.D. 825, as held two years before. So it must have appeared in A.D.

827, long before the refutations published by Jonas, Eginhard, Strabo, or Hincmar. Henceforward Iconoclasm began to lose ground in the West; and soon entirely disappeared, until revived in the sixteenth century.

As was observed before, towards the close of his life, Dungal retired to the monastery of Bobbio, to which he bequeathed his books. From Bobbio they were transferred to Milan, in A.D. 1606, by Cardinal Frederic Borromeo, and are now in the Ambrosian Library of that city. Among them were three Antiphonaries, one of which seems to have been the famous Bangor Antiphonary. Dungal, no doubt, procured these ancient rituals in order to quote them against Claudius in support of the Catholic doctrine.

He appropriately dedicated the work to his countryman St. Columba.n.u.s.[312]

Columba, as Lanigan observes, was the real name of Columba.n.u.s, the founder of Bobbio, and in all probability, when Dungal calls himself an _incola_ of the saint, he rather means fellow-countryman, than inmate of his monastery.[313]

We cannot stay to criticise the poetry of Dungal. His best poem is an elaborate eulogy on Charlemagne, written in hexameter. Some critics have questioned if Dungal were the author; the style, however, even of the opening lines of the poem, compared with the first lines of the epitaph which he wrote on himself leaves no doubt that the "Irish Exile" was Dungal. The smaller poems that survive, are written in elegiac metre, and display considerable taste, although not much imagination.

There is every reason to think that Dungal, who died about the year A.D.

834, was buried in the crypts of Bobbio. He sleeps well with the friendly saints of Erin; and we earnestly join in his own humble prayer, that he may live for ever with those saints in heaven, even as their dust has long commingled in their far-off graves under the shadows of the Appenines.[314]

IV.--ST. MALACHY.

We cannot close the history of the School of Bangor without giving a sketch of the life of its greatest abbot, St. Malachy, who may, indeed, be regarded as its second founder. We refer to him here, not because he was a great scholar or a distinguished writer, but rather because the Abbot of Bangor was the great reformer of the Irish Church in the twelfth century--a man pre-eminent for the zeal, energy, and holiness of his apostolic career in the face of the greatest difficulties and dangers. He was, says the _Chronicon Scotorum_, the man who restored the Monastic and Canonical rules of the Church of Erin; and that sentence is really a summary of his whole life.

St. Malachy--in Irish Maelmeadhog--was born probably in the neighbourhood of Bangor or Armagh in the year A.D. 1095. The family name was O'Morgair, or O'Mongair, which it is said was afterwards changed into O'Dogherty. His father was a lay professor or lecturer in the School of Armagh; but his mother seems to have come from the neighbourhood of Bangor, of which her brother, the uncle of Malachy, was afterwards t.i.tular abbot or perhaps airchinnech. The boy was thus fortunate not only in having the advantages of a famous school and a learned father; but also in attaching himself as a personal friend and disciple to the great and holy Imar O'Hagan, who then lived as a recluse in Armagh. It was doubtless under his holy guidance that Malachy acquired that fund of solid virtue which he afterwards exhibited throughout his life.

In consequence of his eminent virtues whilst still very young, Malachy was promoted by Celsus of Armagh to deacon's orders; and shortly afterwards, before he had attained the then canonical age of thirty, he was ordained a priest by the same great prelate.

Wis.h.i.+ng to perfect himself in sacred learning, and especially in the laws and discipline of the Church, St. Malachy next went to the great College of Lismore, which was at this period under the presidency of the venerable Malchus, Bishop of Waterford, and apparently also of Lismore. St. Bernard describes him as then an old man full of days and virtues, and richly endowed with divine wisdom. He was an Irishman by birth, but had been trained in the monastery of Winchester to a more accurate knowledge and observance of ecclesiastical discipline than were to be found at that time in Ireland. Under the influence and direction of this prelate the School of Lismore became, perhaps, the first in Ireland,[315] and St. Malachy fully availed himself of its great advantages.

On his return from Lismore in A.D. 1125, he was at once appointed to the Abbacy of Bangor. His uncle, the lay or t.i.tular abbot, gave up to Malachy peaceable possession of the ruined monastery and its wide domains, and became himself an humble monk of the new community--yes, a new community--the abbey lands were there, and a nominal abbot who enjoyed the revenues, but no church, no school, no community.[316] The ancient home of the saints had become a wilderness, the stones of the sanctuary were scattered, no sacrifice was offered on its altars.

It was the work of the Danes, who made a more complete ruin of Bangor than of any monastery elsewhere; because it was on the sea-sh.o.r.e of that narrow channel between Down and Galloway, which was the highway of the pirates.

St. Bernard says that it was reported that in one day they slew nine hundred monks at Bangor.

Malachy now took twelve brethren with him and began to build an oratory once more at Bangor. It was finished in a few days, for it was an humble building in the Irish style--opus Scotic.u.m--constructed of planed boards, but closely and firmly put together. Cells for the monks were built around it, and thus Bangor again began to flourish.

Then Malachy most unwillingly was taken from his infant monastery and made Bishop of Connor, that is of the entire County Antrim. At this time things were in a dreadful state in Antrim. There is no reason to question the testimony of St. Bernard. He is an independent and impartial witness, who got his information from St. Malachy and the disciples, whom he had left at Clairvaux. No doubt St. Bernard is rhetorical in style, but he is definite in statement. The natives were indocile and immoral. They neglected to go to confession, contracted illegitimate marriages, paid no t.i.thes or first fruits. There were few priests, and no preaching in the churches. Malachy girt up his loins for the work before him. He went amongst the people on foot, accompanied with a few disciples. He admonished, he instructed, he ordained priests, he preached the Gospel everywhere. He had to endure much, but in the end he succeeded. The face of the country was soon changed, the desert bloomed as a garden, and the people that were not the Lord's became once again the chosen people of G.o.d.

It was during these years that Malachy went to the south of Ireland on a visit to his friend Cormac Mac Carthy, King of Cashel, and there founded the monastery which St. Bernard calls monasterium Ibracense, on land given him by King Cormac for that purpose. St. Celsus, Archbishop of Armagh, had been driven by usurpers out of his See and was now in the south of Ireland, at Ardpatrick, in the co. Limerick, over which, as heir of St.

Patrick, he claimed certain rights. Feeling his end approaching, and knowing that St. Malachy was, of all others, best fitted to succeed him in the Chair of St. Patrick, he sent him his crozier as a token of his wish to have Malachy as his successor.

But Malachy was unwilling to be transferred to the primatial See, and not without good reason. First of all he wished the translation to be made in a canonical way by the bishops of the province with the sanction of Gilbert the Papal Legate. This, however, was soon accomplished, the temporal princes also giving their cordial adhesion to the proposal. Then Malachy consented on one condition, that when things were put in order in Armagh, he might be free once more to return to his own diocese and his beloved monastery of Bangor.

Malachy now found that he had even a more difficult and dangerous task to accomplish in Armagh than had awaited him in the County Antrim.

For more than two hundred years a family of usurpers had established themselves at Armagh, and held the land and See of Armagh, transmitting it from father to son, or grandson, in regular hereditary succession. Most of them were laymen and married men; but they paid regularly ordained prelates to perform all necessary episcopal functions, keeping for themselves the lands, the nomination to the churches, and even the t.i.tles of Bishops and Abbots of Armagh.

It has been said that some of these married men were regularly consecrated prelates duly recognised by the Irish Church. There is not a shadow of evidence for the statement, except _the name of bishop_ which is given to some of them. On the other hand, we have unexceptionable testimony that these men were laymen, and that the t.i.tle of bishop was given to them, although they were laymen. St. Bernard settles the question. He says that this wicked and adulterous generation were so obstinate in a.s.serting this right of hereditary succession, that although clerics of their blood were wanting, bishops were never wanting--that is bishops who were not even clerics. Of these, he says, before Celsus there were eight married men, learned enough but without orders.[317] "Denique jam octo ext.i.terant ante Celsum viri uxorati, et absque ordinibus, litterati tamen." Gerald Barry tells exactly the same story--that various churches in Ireland and Wales had lay abbots.[318] He explains too, how it came to pa.s.s. Certain powerful men in the parish, who were at first the stewards of the church lands, and defenders of the clergy, afterwards usurped the owners.h.i.+p of the lands, and in order to secure them for themselves, their children, or their relations, they called themselves abbots and owners of the lands, leaving only to the clergy such chance offerings as they might happen to receive.

Such a system was of course the fruitful root of many evils. St. Malachy resolved to expel these usurpers from the See of Armagh. It was a long and difficult task; and frequently his life was in deadly peril. But G.o.d visibly protected him; he was patient, too, and prudent, as well as zealous; and in the end was completely successful. After three years of patient toil, he was universally recognised as Primate; and having thus banished the usurpers, he resigned the See to the care of the learned and saintly Gelasius, and retired once more to his beloved Bangor, keeping only the charge of the episcopal Church of Down.

We cannot follow St. Malachy through his subsequent glorious career. He went to Rome and was specially honoured by Pope Innocent II., who put his own mitre on his head, and his own stole around his neck in presence of his court, and appointed him his Legate for all Ireland. On his way to Rome he stopped at Clairvaux, where he had the good fortune of meeting St.

Bernard, who became his dearest and most intimate friend. In him too, St.

Malachy, more fortunate even than St. Columba, found a biographer who made the virtues and merits of the Irish saint known to posterity, and to the entire Church of G.o.d.

The saint also left at Clairvaux four of his disciples to be trained there under the eyes of St. Bernard himself in the discipline of the great Cistercian Order. It is to them we owe the introduction of that order into Ireland in A.D. 1142, and all the great religious houses which the Cistercians founded throughout the length and breadth of Ireland.

After his return home, armed with the plenary powers of Papal Legate, Malachy devoted himself with even more zeal and success than before to the reformation of his own diocese, and the general restoration of ecclesiastical discipline throughout the kingdom. He was ably supported by the Irish prelates both in the North and in the South; and he would have changed the face of the Church before many years, but it pleased G.o.d to call him to Himself all too soon for Ireland. In A.D. 1148 he went to France to meet Pope Eugene III., who was then at Clairvaux. Before Malachy, however, arrived, the Pope had departed, but he was consoled by the warm welcome which he received from St. Bernard and his monks. Shortly after the Irish saint fell sick to the great sorrow of the community, but Malachy consoled them, and told them that there was no chance of his recovery for it was G.o.d's will that he should die at Clairvaux. Feeling his strength failing he caused all the brethren to be summoned to his bedside. At once they came--St. Bernard at their head. "With longing I have longed," said the dying man, "to eat this pasch with you"--that is the holy Viatic.u.m--"before I die, and I thank my G.o.d that my longing has been gratified." Blessing them one by one he said, "Remember me, and please G.o.d I will not forget you." So saying he rested a little; but towards midnight the community was summoned again, and while they wept and prayed around his bed, he fell asleep in the Lord, and "the Angels carried his soul to Heaven." It was at midnight between the 1st and 2nd of November, but the latter being All Souls' Day, his Feast is kept on the 3rd of November. He was canonized by Pope Clement III., about the year A.D. 1190.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SCHOOL OF CLONENAGH.

"Pleasant to sit here thus Beside the cold pure Nore."

--_Leabhar Breac._