St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh Part 8

[204] Luke xxiv. 29.--Malachy can hardly have been more, he was probably less, than twenty-three years of age at this time. See p. 16, n. 2.

[205] _I.e._ deacon.

[206] It does not appear that deacons as such were specially concerned with the burial of the dead. The present pa.s.sage, indeed, implies the contrary. Malachy was made deacon against his will; his care for the dead poor is mentioned as a work of piety, voluntarily superadded to the duties of his office. His sister (see below) would have been unlikely to ask him to abandon a practice which he could not decline.

But there was ancient precedent for a deacon engaging in such work, of which Malachy may have been aware. At Alexandria throughout the persecution of Valerian, one of the deacons, Eusebius by name, not without danger to himself, prepared for burial the bodies of "the perfect and blessed martyrs" (Eus., _H.E._ vii. 11. 24).

[207] _Tobiae._ The Greek of the Book of Tobit, followed by the English versions, calls the father Tobit, and the son Tobias; the Vulgate calls both Tobias. The text of chap. ii. is longer in the Vulgate than in the Greek and English, and neither of the verses (Vulg. 12, 23) from which St. Bernard here borrows words is represented in the latter.

[208] Tobit ii. 12 (vg.).

[209] Cp. Gen. iii. 12 f.

[210] She is mentioned again in - 11.

[211] Matt. viii. 22.

[212] Tobit ii. 23 (vg.).

[213] Prov. xxvi. 5.

[214] Ps. xii. 6.

[215] Cellach and Imar.

[216] Malachy completed his twenty-fifth year in 1120. See p. 130, n.

2. For the date of his ordination to the priesthood see p. 16, n. 2.

[217] For the canons of councils which regulated the minimum age of deacons and priests reference may be made to the article "Orders, Holy," by the late Dr. Edwin Hatch in the _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 1482 f. From a very early date they were respectively twenty-five and thirty years, in accordance with the statement of the text, though there were some exceptions in remote places. The eighth-century Irish Canons, known as the _Hibernensis_, prescribe the same minimum ages for the diaconate and presbyterate, and add a clause, the gist of which seems to be that a bishop at the time of his consecration must be thirty or forty years of age (Wa.s.serschleben, _Irische Kanonesammlung_, 1885, p. 8). As late as the year 1089, at the Council of Melfi, presided over by Pope Urban II., it was decreed (can. 5, Mansi, xx. 723) that none should be admitted deacon under twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, or priest under thirty. But at the Council of Ravenna, 1315 (can. 2, _ibid._ xxv.

537), the ages were lowered to twenty and twenty-five respectively.

[218] Cellach would hardly have understood the need for this apology.

It is more than probable that he was ignorant of the canons referred to. He himself was ordained, apparently to the priesthood, in 1105, when he was under twenty-six, and consecrated bishop in 1106, when he was under twenty-seven years of age. St. Bernard himself seems to have been ordained priest when he was about twenty-five years old (Vacandard, i. 67).

[219] In other words he made him his vicar. This may well have been in 1120; for the Annals record that in that year Cellach made a visitation of Munster. It was quite natural that during a prolonged absence from his see he should leave its administration in the hands of one who had proved himself so capable as Malachy. And we shall see that this date harmonizes with other chronological data. If, then, we place the beginning of Malachy's vicariate in 1120, his ordination as priest, which appears to have been not much earlier, may be dated in 1119, when he was "about twenty-five years of age," _i.e._ probably soon after his twenty-fourth birthday. His admission to the diaconate may be placed at least a year earlier, _i.e._ in 1118. Indeed, if we could be sure that in Ireland the normal interval between admission to the diaconate and to the priesthood was at all as long as in other countries we might put it further back.

[220] Luke viii. 5.

[221] 1 Pet. ii. 9.

[222] Rom. ii. 12.

[223] Rom. xii. 11.

[224] Cp. Matt. xxv. 24 ff.

[225] Jer. i. 10 (vg.).

[226] Isa. xl. 4.

[227] Ps. xix. 5.

[228] Cp. Isa. x. 17.

[229] Ps. lxxiv. 6 (vg.).

[230] Cp. Ignatius, _Trall._ 11.

[231] Ps. lxxviii. 49 (vg.: inexact quotation).

[232] Ezek. v. 11, etc.

[233] Cp. Rev. vi. 13.

[234] Ps. i. 4 (vg.).

[235] Malachy acted in accordance with the aims of Gilbert, bishop of Limerick, who about the year 1108, wrote these words (_De Usu Ecclesiastico_, in Ussher, 500): "I have endeavoured to describe the canonical custom in saying the hours and performing the office of the whole ecclesiastical order ... to the end that the various and schismatical orders, with which almost the whole of Ireland has been deluded, may give place to the one Catholic and Roman office."

[236] Armagh.

[237] This was probably the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. See p.

11, n. 5. J. de Backer's suggestion (_AA.SS._, Nov. ii. 1, p. 147), that "his monastery" was Bangor is negatived by the whole context, which refers only to Armagh.

[238] The word "anew" (_de nouo_) seems to indicate St. Bernard's belief that it was only in comparatively recent times that the usages to which he refers had fallen into desuetude.

[239] It is interesting to observe that Confession is here not ranked as a sacrament.

[240] For the statements in this section see Additional Note A.

[241] Mael Isa Ua hAinmire, who is always called Malchus in Latin doc.u.ments, though a native of Ireland, had been a monk of Winchester, as we are here told. He was elected first bishop of the Danish colony of Waterford in 1096, and was consecrated by Anselm, a.s.sisted by the bishops of Chichester and Rochester, at Canterbury on December 28, having previously made his profession of obedience to the archbishop as one of his suffragans (Eadmer, p. 76 f.; Ussher, pp. 518, 565). He signed the Acts of the Synod of Rathbreasail in 1110 as archbishop of Cashel (Keating, iii. 307). He had probably been translated to that see shortly after its foundation in 1106 (see below, p. 65, n. 4). The Synod of Rathbreasail enlarged the Danish diocese of Waterford by adding to it an extensive non-Danish area, which included the ancient religious site of Lismore, on which St. Carthach or Mochuta had founded a community in the early part of the seventh century (Lanigan, ii. 353). The Synod decreed that the see of this diocese should be either at Lismore or at Waterford, apparently giving preference to the former (see p. xlvii). It would seem that after organizing the diocese of Cashel Malchus retired to his former "parish," just as at a later date Malachy retired from Armagh to Down (- 31), placing his see at Lismore. There, at any rate, he was established when Malachy visited him, and there he died in 1135 "after the 88th year of his pilgrimage"

(_A.F.M._). An attempt has been made to distinguish Mael Isa Ua hAinmire from the Malchus of the text (Lanigan, iv. 74), but without success. It is interesting to observe that both _A.F.M._ and _A.T._ style him bishop of Waterford in the record of his death.

[242] Gen. x.x.xv. 29; 1 Chron. xxiii. 1; Job xlii. 16.--Malchus was in his 75th year when Malachy visited him in 1121. See preceding note, and p. 20, n. 3.

[243] 1 Kings iii. 28.

[244] An error for Waterford. It is explained by, and confirms, the suggestion that Malchus transferred the see to Lismore.

[245] Throughout the _Life_, _Scotia_ is used, in its later sense, for the country now called Scotland; and here the Scots are evidently its inhabitants. But traces of earlier usage remain in - 14, "a Scotic (_i.e._ Irish) work," - 61 "We are Scots," and - 72 where Ireland is called "further Scotland" (_ulterior Scotia_).

[246] Cellach. Note Imar's share in the matter, and cp. p. 11, n. 1.

[247] Malachy must have been the archbishop's vicar for a considerable time if the account of his labours in that capacity (- 7) is not grossly exaggerated. Hence, if his vicariate began in 1119 or 1120 his departure for Lismore can hardly have been earlier than 1121; and as he spent "some years" there before he was raised to the episcopate (1124; see - 16), it cannot have been later. Samuel O'Hanley, bishop of Dublin, died on July 4, 1121, and Cellach at once made an attempt, which proved unsuccessful, to take possession of the vacant see.

Samuel's successor, Gregory, was duly elected, and was consecrated at Lambeth on October 2. (_O.C.C._ p. 31; _A.U._ 1121; John of Worcester, ed. J. H. R. Weaver, 1908, p. 16; Ussher, 532). It may have been in August or September, on the return of Cellach from Dublin, that Malachy was released from his office and went to Lismore.

[248] Job xii. 12.

[249] I read _rex australis Mumoniae_, for _rex Mumoniae_ in the printed text, restoring the word _australis_ from two of de Backer's MSS. The king is said in - 18 to have been Cormac, _i.e._ Cormac Mac Carthy, son of Teague Mac Carthy, who succeeded his father as king of Desmond (South Munster) in 1124. He was never king of the whole of Munster. That he went to Lismore in 1121 is very probable. For the Annals tell us that in that year Turlough O'Conor, king of Connaught, invaded Desmond, and "arrived at the termon of Lismore" (_A.I._ say that he destroyed Lismore, which can hardly be true). What more likely than that one of the sons of Teague, the reigning monarch of Desmond, should fly before that formidable warrior to the sanctuary of Mochuta?

But St. Bernard errs in supposing that he was then king of Desmond. On Cormac, see also p. 43, n. 5.