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The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore By: P. (Patrick) Power (1862-1951) |
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(Edited from MS. in Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels). Translated from the Irish With Introduction by Rev. P. Power, M.R.I.A. University College, Cork.
INTRODUCTION
"If thou hast the right, O Erin,
to a champion of battle to aid thee
thou hast the head of a hundred
thousand, Declan of Ardmore"
(Martyrology of Oengus).
Five miles or less to the east of Youghal Harbour, on the southern
Irish coast, a short, rocky and rather elevated promontory juts, with a
south easterly trend, into the ocean [about 51 deg. 57 min. N / 7 deg.
43 min. W]. Maps and admiralty charts call it Ram Head, but the real
name is Ceann a Rama and popularly it is often styled Ardmore Head. The
material of this inhospitable coast is a hard metamorphic schist which
bids defiance to time and weather. Landwards the shore curves in clay
cliffs to the north east, leaving, between it and the iron headland
beyond, a shallow exposed bay wherein many a proud ship has met her
doom. Nestling at the north side of the headland and sheltered by the
latter from Atlantic storms stands one of the most remarkable groups of
ancient ecclesiastical remains in Ireland all that has survived of St.
Declan's holy city of Ardmore. This embraces a beautiful and perfect
round tower, a singularly interesting ruined church commonly called the
cathedral, the ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive
oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed pillar stones, &c., &c. No Irish saint perhaps has so strong a local hold as Declan or has left
so abiding a popular memory. Nevertheless his period is one of the great
disputed questions of early Irish history. According to the express
testimony of his Life, corroborated by testimony of the Lives of SS.
Ailbhe and Ciaran, he preceded St. Patrick in the Irish mission and
was a co temporary of the national apostle. Objection, exception or
opposition to the theory of Declan's early period is based less on any
inherent improbability in the theory itself than on contradictions and
inconsistencies in the Life. Beyond any doubt the Life does actually
contradict itself; it makes Declan a cotemporary of Patrick in the fifth
century and a cotemporary likewise of St. David a century later. In
any attempted solution of the difficulty involved it may be helpful
to remember a special motive likely to animate a tribal histrographer,
scil.: the family relationship, if we may so call it, of the two
saints; David was bishop of the Deisi colony in Wales as Declan was
bishop of their kinsmen of southern Ireland. It was very probably part
of the writer's purpose to call attention to the links of kindred which
bound the separated Deisi; witness his allusion later to the alleged
visit of Declan to his kinsmen of Bregia. Possibly there were several
Declans, as there were scores of Colmans, Finians, &c., and hence
perhaps the confusion and some of the apparent inconsistencies. There
was certainly a second Declan, a disciple of St. Virgilius, to whom the
latter committed care of a church in Austria where he died towards
close of eighth century. Again we find mention of a St. Declan who was
a foster son of Mogue of Ferns, and so on. It is too much, as Delehaye
("Legendes Hagiographiques") remarks, to expect the populace to
distinguish between namesakes. Great men are so rare! Is it likely there
should have lived two saints of the same name in the same country! The latest commentators on the question of St. Declan's period and they
happen to be amongst the most weighty argue strongly in favour of the
pre Patrician mission (Cfr. Prof. Kuno Meyer, "Learning Ireland in the
Fifth Century"). Discussing the way in which letters first reached our
distant island of the west and the causes which led to the proficiency
of sixth century Ireland in classical learning Zimmer and Meyer contend
that the seeds of that literary culture, which flourished in Ireland of
the sixth century, had been sown therein in the first and second decades
of the preceding century by Gaulish scholars who had fled from their own
country owing to invasion of the latter by Goths and other barbarians... Continue reading book >>
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