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  • An Irish School

     

    According to the Martyrology of Gorman, November 13 is one of the days on which the memory of Colman i Maigh Éo is commemorated, his main feast falling on August 8. Saint Colman is also known as Colman of Lindisfarne and Colman of Inisboffin for he was the leader of those Irish-trained northern English saints who, finding themselves unable to accept the settling of the Paschal Dating Controversy in favour of the Roman date, relocated to the west coast of Ireland. This episode fitted very well with the nineteenth-century view of the ‘Celtic church’ as being intrinsically anti-Roman, but is read in a different context by modern scholars. In the report from an 1888 Australian newspaper below, the Archbishop of
    Melbourne takes the opportunity to bring Saint Colman’s foundation of ‘Mayo of the Saxons’ to the attention of his
    Irish diaspora audience. I was interested to see how the contemporary efforts of religious orders to provide education for the masses are linked to this ancient monastic heritage in the final paragraph. One small point: it is claimed that Mayo translates as ‘plain of the oaks’ but this should read plain of the yews.

    AN IRISH SCHOOL.
    (Melbourne Advocate, June 30.)
     

    The Hibernian Hall was well filled on Saturday night when a concert was given in aid of the building fund of St. Joseph’s Hall and School, Port Melbourne, which is under the charge of the Carmellite Fathers. The Archbishop of Melbourne, the Very Rev. Prior Butler and the Rev. Father Shaffrey were present. During the interval the Archbishop delivered the following address : — 

    His Grace said that as he was set down in the programme to deliver an address, and not allowed, as he desired, to remain a silent listener to the beautiful vocal and instrumental music, and to the admirable recitation, which filled the first part of the programme, he thought it would not be inappropriate— as this concert was given in aid of a Catholic school under the care of the Carmellite Fathers— to give a short chapter of history connected with a famous school, the very name and existence of which seemed to be unknown to general readers. He referred to the school of “Mayo of the Saxons.” The history of this school carries us back over twelve centuries. The scenes are laid in far famed Iona, in Northumbria, in the lone island of Innisboffin, but, above all, in “Mayo of the Saxons,” where this school flourished from the latter part of the seventh to the close of the sixteenth century, when its light was finally put out in the bitter strife which accompanied the attempted introduction of the Reformation into Ireland. Ethelfrid, grandson of Eda, who may be said to be the founder of the Anglo-Saxon race, being defeated in battle and slain, his sons, Oswald and Oswy, fled to the court of the King of Dalradia. By him they were sent for instruction to Iona, where during seventeen years they were taught by St. Columba’a monks secular science in addition to Christian virtue. After this long exile Oswald, having recovered the throne of his fathers, determined to rule over a Christian people. When he looked around for an apostle he naturally turned his eyes to Iona where he himself had received the faith from Irish monks. Sts. Aidan, Finan, and Coleman became in succession Bishops of Lindisfarne and succeeded in winning Northumbria permanently to the true Faith. The rule of St. Coleman was embittered by the disputes which arose between his Celtic and Saxon subjects regarding the proper time for celebrating the Easter festival. When the King sided with his Saxon subjects, St. Coleman, rather than abandon the traditions of the Irish Church, resigned his See, and taking with him the remains of his two immediate predecessors, all the Irish monks, and thirty of the Saxon monks, who had made their religious profession at Lindisfarne, sailed back to Iona. To provide a new home for his Irish and Saxon monks was his next effort. Sailing again from Iona he landed on the island of Innisboffin, off the western coast of Ireland. As the new monastery and the chapel and schools sprang up, the saint, no doubt, flattered himself that here would he end his days, and in death lie by the side of his two saintly predecessors in the See of Lindisfarne. But Saxon and Celt even then found it difficult to agree. So taking with him the Saxon monks, St. Coleman once more set sail and landed on the coast of Mayo. Here, in a large plain, covered with great oaks from which the place derived its name — Mayo means the plain of the oaks — he selected the site of the future monastery and school, which thus gets its name of “Mayo of the Saxons.” That the school soon attained a European reputation we know from authentic history. We may not believe that Alfred the Great ever visited Mayo, or that he sent his son to be educated by Irish monks, or that Alfred’s son, who is said to have died during his scholastic course, lies side, by side with the two sons of a French king beneath a mound which is still pointed out to the inquiring traveller. But the tradition of itself is a strong testimony to the fame which the school long enjoyed. We know enough from Venerable Bede, and from Adamnan, to convince us that few of the great Irish schools attained greater renown or success. Twice it was plundered, and twice burned down, but each time a new monastery and school arose from the ashes of the old. It was only in the reign of Elizabeth that it fell to rise no more. The moral which the Archbishop derived from the chapter of school history was that when an Irish monk or an Irish friar undertakes to build a school he receives great encouragement from the memory of the success of the great Irish schools of old, end when he makes on appeal for this purpose he has strong claims, not only on Irishmen, but also on the descendants of all those who in Irish schools, like that of “Mayo of the Saxons,” received hospitality, gratuitous education, and the highest culture then attainable. 

    AN IRISH SCHOOL.,New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 13, 20 July 1888

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  • Graves of Irish Exiles

     

    As November is traditionally the month in which we remember the dead, this seems a fitting time to reflect on the many Irish saints and scholars whose graves are to be found far from our shores. Such was the theme of this 1905 article ‘Graves of Irish Exiles’, published anonymously in the New Zealand press. The author brings together many of the Irish saints who laboured in Europe and about whom accounts may be found on this blog. But by including many other famous churchmen and scholars from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it also unites this site to my new blog on the Irish martyrs. The early medieval monks may have left Ireland in different circumstances to those who founded the Irish Colleges in Europe during the Reformation period, but for the writer the pain of exile, expressed in typically romantic terms, remains the same:

    Graves of Irish Exiles

    Scarcely a Cathedral bell is rung on the Continent of Europe (says an exchange) that does not sound above the remains of some Irish priest or Bishop. Seldom a flower fades in the cloistered cemeteries along the banks of the yellow Tiber, or the castled Rhine, that some of its leaves do not touch the lonely grave of some monk or student from the green banks of the Shannon or the Liffey. The names of Irish Students are carved on the flagged floor of many an abbey chapel, and on the walls of many a famous shrine from the Tagus to the Garrone. St. Fridolen sleeps in his island city of Seckingen, in the abbey he himself founded for the Benedictines; the holy remains of St. Fiacre centuries ago were removed from the oratory of Breuil, and may now be found near the mausoleum of Bossiuet, behind the high altar in the Cathedral of Meaux; the noble martyrs Kilian, Colman, and Totnan are buried in the principal church of Wurtzburg; St. Frigidian, lies at rest in the church of ‘The Three Holy Levites,’ at Lucca, while Cataldus (Cathal) awaits the Resurrection not far from the blue waters of the fair bay of Taranto. Often the twelve knights of St. Rupert may be seen kneeling by the tomb of St. Virgillius, in Saltzburg. St. Caidoc and St. Fricor are interred in the abbey of Centule, in the territory of Ponthieu, Picardy. In the collegiate church of Lens, in the diocese of Arras, the body of St. Vulganus is honored. Marianus Scotus, the chronographer, was laid to pious rest in the Church of St. Martin, beyond the walls of the city of Metz. St. Tressan calmly reposes at Avenay, in Champagne. In a church guarded by the Fort of St. Andrew, at Salins, the relics of St. Anatolius are preserved in a silver shrine. St. Maimbodus securely sleeps in the shade of the castle rock of the valiant city of Montbelliard. The magnificent Cathedral of Mechlin is the tomb and monument of St. Rumold— prince, Bishop, martyr. 

    But to come to a later period of Irish history. How many Irish students are laid to rest forever on the hill of St. Genevieve! How many of them sleep their long sleep in the Franciscan Convents of Louvain and Salamanca, in the Dominican garden of Madrid, and in the consecrated ground belonging to the Jesuits at Lisle, Antwerp, Tournay, St. Omer, Douay, and Pont-a-Mousson. Florence Conroy sleeps near the high altar in the Franciscan Church of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain; Thomas Stapleton’s ashes are mingled with the dust of Belgium’s most gifted sons in the chapel of St. Charles Borromeo; Luke Wadding has been laid near Hugh O’Neill, on St. Peter’s Mount, in Rome. In the Cistercian monastery at Alcala in Spain, William Walsh, from Waterford on the Suir, lies in peace. The grand-souled and patriotic Bishop of Ferns, Nicholas French, passed away from life’s toil and troubles at Ghent, in Belgium. His venerated body was piously placed at the foot of the grand altar in the parish church of St. Nicholas in that city. A slab of purest marble, decorated with the Cardinal’s hat and armorial bearings, has a beautiful and truthful inscription in honor of his memory. Ambrose Wadding, brother to the famous Luke Wadding, calmly rests at Dillingen; Bishop Edmond O’Dwyer, who governed the See of Limerick, silently lies in the subterranean chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, beneath the Church of St. James, in the city of Brussels. The pious pilgrim to Compostella will find in the world-renowned temple of St. James, Apostle of Spain, the Holy Remains of two Waterford Bishops— Thomas Strong, of the diocese of Ossory, and his nephew, the firm friend of Rinuccini, T. Walsh. The relics of Patrick Fleming and Matthew Hoar, martyred by the cruel followers of the Elector of Saxony, are treasured in the Franciscan convent of Wotiz, near Prague, in Bohemia. 

    Ward, Colgan, Lombard, MacCaughwell, Edmund O’Reilly, and the Stanihursts, men whose names will ever live among the names of Ireland’s most gifted and patriotic sons, are all in far foreign graves. The winds of Ireland never chant their mournful dirge around their tombs, the maids of Erin scatter no flowers over their graves, the faithful peasants never pray above their ashes. They fell where they have bravely fought with voice and pen for the land of their love. They died far away from the isle of their birth, with the great shadow of Ireland’s suffering upon their breaking hearts. They sank to rest in the calm of silent convents, and they tranquilly rest either in the dim shades of old cathedrals, or in the peaceful aisles of chapels whose silence is never broken except by the prayer of some pious monk or nun.

    Graves of Irish Exiles, New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 16, 20 April 1905

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  • 'Lives of Heroic Sanctity' – Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, November 6

     

     

     …..What could not be destroyed was the memory of the past; above all, the memory of those Irish men and women, whose lives of heroic sanctity won for them a place in the Martyrologies, in the Félire of Oengus, the Félire of Tallaght, the Félire of Gorman. Their number is about seventeen hundred, a goodly company, whose virtues Catholic Ireland of the centuries since has sought but rarely to emulate and has never been able to surpass.

    John Ryan, S.J. Irish Monasticism – Origins and Early Development (2nd edition, 1972, reprinted Irish Academic Press, 1986), viii.

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