Celsus

ON ST. CELSUS

ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH IN IRELAND.

IN THE YEAR 1128

Celsus, Archbishop of Armagh, in Ireland (St.)

BY D. P.

The tables of the Roman Martyrology, by order of Gregory XIII, again recognized by Caesar Baronius to the Saints of this day, listed in the prior edition, St. Celsus Bishop, add St. Celsus, with these words: "In Ireland, of St. Celsus, Bishop, who preceded Blessed Malachy in the Episcopate." Which words Wilson the author of the English Martyrology so badly understood, that because St. Malachy had been ordained Bishop of Connor by Celsus, he believed that he himself had succeeded Celsus in this Episcopate; which must be understood of the Armagh See. This appears from St. Bernard, in the life of St. Malachy thus writing: "While these things are thus being done, it happened that Archbishop Celsus became infirm... and knowing that he was to die, not of Connor, but of Armagh; he made a testament for himself, that Malachy should succeed him, because no one seemed more worthy to be made Bishop in the first See." That this was the Armagh See from the very institution of St. Patrick no one doubts: but how Celsus and how holily he ruled it, we learn not from the Acts of his Life, which are not extant; nor from the cult delivered to his name and body by the Irish, of which we have found nothing; but we know only from those indications which the aforecited Life supplies us.

[2] First, that it is he who had ordained Malachy as Deacon, Priest, and Bishop. not only in name, but also in character, He was therefore a Bishop not only in name and jurisdiction (such as the eight had been before Celsus, married men and without Orders, though lettered) but even in character itself, who could himself confer sacred Orders on others: which thing argues a notable zeal for continence. Another is, that although by the diabolical ambition of certain powerful men a most evil custom had grown up, that the holy See was to be obtained by hereditary possession, nor did they allow anyone to be made bishop except one who was of their own tribe and family; and although the generations that had run their course in this malice were as it were fifteen, and so far had an evil and adulterous generation confirmed for itself a depraved right, that although sometimes there should be a lack of Clerics of that blood, yet not of Bishops, with married laymen supplying the lack of celibate Clerics; Celsus nevertheless well understanding, he abrogates the right of hereditary succession. that from such a source there existed, all that (of which Bernard speaks at length) dissolution of ecclesiastical discipline, enervation of censure, emptying of religion; altogether determined to break the execrable succession, and to designate Malachy, Bishop of Connor, alien from it, to be Archbishop after himself. Therefore near to death, he enjoined this to those present, this he commanded to those absent, this specially to both the Kings of Munster and the greater men of the land, by the authority of St. Patrick, he commanded.

[3] He is said by more recent writers, These are what can be had undoubted concerning St. Celsus from certain antiquity: more things in the chronicle of the Bishops of Armagh, which is appendix VII to the Acts of St. Patrick, Colganus gathers: but from the Annals compiled in this very century by Brother Michael O'Clery and three companions in the convent of Donegal, which for this reason he calls the Annals of the Four Masters, and asserts were collected from the older and more approved chronicles of the country, especially those of Clonmacnoise, Inisfallen, and Senat. To which as to fountains, the antiquity and probity of each having been first set forth, would that Colganus had pointed his finger, and had given us their words! Now following somewhat timidly the same one who only alleges his Four Masters, without indicating how great is the antiquity of those chronicles: yet we follow, lest we be forced to pass over the deeds of Celsus in the Episcopate untouched. But they are arranged by years in this manner.

[4] In the year 1106, according to the Senatense chronicle, Celsus, or by others Celestinus and Cellachus, To have died in visiting the Provinces of Ireland, son of Aedan, grandson of Moelissa (this was one of the married men, whom we mentioned, one of the Bishops, and had left his son Amalgad as successor) when Domnald son of Amalgad had died, was designated Archbishop of Armagh, and on the feast of St. Adamnan, namely September 23, was consecrated, and in the immediately following year he goes about and visits Ulster and Munster: and in Ulster indeed, according to the taxation of the people, he received for every six persons one ox, or for three persons one heifer, with many gifts and offerings: in Munster moreover in each Cantred (the Anglo-Saxons call them Hundreds, in Latin you would say Centuries) he received seven oxen, seven sheep, and half an ounce of silver. For, to other evils which St. Bernard enumerates, this too that hereditary succession of the Armagh Bishops within one and the same family had produced, that instead of Christian gentleness, fierce barbarity, indeed a kind of paganism under a Christian name, had been everywhere introduced. But since Connacht, which lies between Ulster and Munster, also seems then to have been visited (for a decade later it is said that Celsus a second time went to Connacht, and traversed the whole in a visitation circuit), it is credible that it also came into the share of the aforementioned contribution: not likewise Leinster and Meath, which the Normans held, having long had the fixed seat of the kingdom at Dublin.

[5] To have celebrated a great Synod, Moreover Celsus seems at first indeed to have held a method of visiting his flock scarcely worthy of a Christian Pastor, such as he had received from his predecessors; then to have removed the same: perhaps in that great Synod, noted in the Senatense annals about the year 1112, and in the margin of the said Annals called "of Uisneach," which most pleasant mount and the navel as it were of the whole island, is celebrated long since for the holding of assemblies of the whole people. For this Synod was summoned to prescribe rules of life and morals to the Clergy and people; and it was fitting that the Archbishop by his example of integrity should shine before the chief men of both orders who were present; namely on the one part Moelmuine or Marianus, the most noble elder of the Clergy of Ireland, with fifty Bishops, three hundred Priests, and three thousand of the Ecclesiastical Order; on the other Murchertach the King of Southern Ireland, with the nobility collected from there. That these things may not seem incredible at least as to the number of Bishops; let one see the notice of the five Patriarchates, drawn out from the ancient leaves of the Royal and Thuanean Library at Paris, by Charles of St. Paul at the end of his Sacred Geography; and in the first of them, besides the four Archiepiscopal, to fifty-four suffragans of them will be found named. It must also be known that at that time two Kings held the island, who each called themselves Kings of Ireland, so that over the Southern one, namely the aforenamed Murchertach or Maurice; over the Northern ruled Domnald, uncle of the said Maurice.

[6] To have repaired burned churches; Then there followed times mournful both privately for the Armagh metropolis, and publicly for the whole people, which held the outstanding virtue of Primate Celsus no less exercised than they could make it illustrious: for in the year 1112 the Citadel of Armagh with the churches, and three streets of the rest of the city, burned up. Four years later the Abbey with twenty houses was consumed: two streets again burned in the year 1121, which extended far from the gate to the citadel, and in the month of December a great tempest threw down the roof of the tower of Armagh. To repairing which damages Celsus so applied himself, that through him in the year 1125, on the 5th of the Ides of January, the Cathedral Church was wholly covered with tiles and restored, after for a hundred and thirty years it had been only partly covered: and through the same, in the immediately following year, was consecrated on the 12th of the Kalends of November, the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul at Armagh, built by Blessed Imar. A great tempest of war after these things arose through all Ireland, by the rivalries and factions of the Princes: to settle which St. Celsus was absent from his See for the space of one year and a month, reconciling the discordant souls of the Princes, and prescribing rules of peace and morals to the clergy and people: and again in the year 1128 by the same Archbishop, laboring at the business for the space of a year, was sanctioned a covenant of peace and concord between the Connachtmen and the Munstermen.

[7] and dying on April 1, Finally the same holy Archbishop, after he had laudably administered the Primacy of Ireland for more than twelve and a half years, also the Dublin Bishopric, to which he had been elected by the common vote of the Irish and the Normans, for eight years; after many ordained Bishops, Priests, and Clerics of various grades; after many

basilicas, churches and cemeteries consecrated; after great alms and pious largesses; after a life passed in fasts, prayers, sermons, celebrations of Masses and various exercises of piety of this kind; being fortified with the Sacraments of Penance and Extreme Unction, in the fiftieth year of his age, of Christ 1129, in Munster and in the place called Ard-Patric, buried at Lismore, he rendered his spirit to heaven, on the first day of April. The body was carried on the following Wednesday to Lismore of St. Mochuda, there to be buried according to his testament, and there on the following Thursday, with psalms, hymns and canticles, in the sanctuary commonly called "of the Bishops," he was buried.

[8] in the year 1128, on Thursday; All these things if the Four Masters took them from the Ulster or Senatense annals, which alone are cited, which anticipate the common Era of Christ by one year (as Colganus often emphasizes); Cardinal Baronius rightly in his notes to the Roman Martyrology assigned the death of St. Celsus to the year 1128. Nor does it matter that in that leap year with Dominical Letters A G, the 5th day of April does not concur with the 5th day of the week, and so cannot be venerated as the anniversary day of his deposition. For he who gave Baronius occasion to insert the name of St. Celsus in the Roman Martyrology, first and alone John Molanus, among his own additions to Usuard, received from the collections of more recent hagiologists, and published at Louvain in the year 1568, appending these words in small letters, and therefore not on April 6. "In Ireland of St. Celsus, Bishop and Confessor of Armagh, concerning whom Bernard in the Life of St. Malachy"; the same Molanus omitted the same words in the second and third edition of the same Martyrology in the years 1573 and 1583: and by that sufficiently indicated, that he was not sufficiently certain either about the cult of Celsus or about the day on which he should be placed: which later editions if Baronius had obtained, perhaps the name of Celsus would even today be absent from the Roman Martyrology, as also some others.

[9] Ascribed to the Irish Fasti on April 1, Therefore nothing stands in the way of believing with the Irish Martyrology of Marianus Gorman, written about five hundred years ago, that Kallach, Comarba of Patrick (this is indeed that Celsus of whom we treat: for no other of the successors of St. Patrick bore this or a similar name) on the day on which he is noted, that is, on the very Kalends of April, was accustomed to be commemorated in the Irish Church; indeed even to have died on that day, if this could be had from elsewhere than from martyrologies, which contain anniversaries affixed on such a day not for death but for commemoration, buried on April 5. for whatever other cause. But if he died on the first day of April, and was buried on the Thursday next following, that would have been done likewise on the fifth day of the month; nor need we have recourse with Colganus to the year 1129, so that the day of deposition may be moved one day nearer to the day of death. For Lismore, a distinguished city of Waterford County, to which the body of the holy man is said to have been carried, is distant from Ard-Patric, or (as it is pronounced by the English) Done Patrick, that is, the Hill of St. Patrick, a village of Limerick County, in which he died, by more than a two-day journey.

[10] His glory revealed to Tugdalus. In the wonderful Vision concerning the punishments of the infernals and the joys of paradise, offered to Tugdalus, an Irish soldier, about the year 1148, and translated by Marcus, a monk of the Barbara island, into the Latin tongue, the soul of that soldier is said to have seen St. Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, with a great crowd of Bishops, among whom he saw four known to him; namely Celestine, Archbishop of Armagh, and Malachy, who succeeded the aforesaid man in the Archbishopric... He succeeded, however, as Bernard writes, not soon nor easily. "For behold of an evil seed one who occupies the place, Maurice by name. He for five years, relying on secular power, sat on the Church, not a Bishop but a tyrant." For he was the son of Domnald, Bishop before St. Celsus. The other things which followed are contained in the Life of St. Malachy, to be given on November 3, which meanwhile can be read in Surius or among the works of St. Bernard.