ON ST. KIERAN, ABBOT OF CLONMACNOISE,
IN THE MIDDLE PROVINCE OF IRELAND,
In the year DXLVIII or DXLIX.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Kieran or Queran abbot of Clonmacnoise in Ireland (S.)
BHL Number: 4655
BY C. S.
§ I. His veneration from the Martyrologies: whence such deeds of the Saint as there are must be drawn.
[ ] Among the Saints who in the VI century made ancient Scotia, or present-day Ireland, illustrious by the holiness of their life, His memory on this day there comes to be recorded S. Kieran or Queran, famous for the foundation of the once noble monastery of Clonmacnoise, otherwise Cluanense, and for the Rule prescribed to his followers. Of him the Roman Martyrology at the present day briefly records thus: In Scotia, of saint Queran the abbot. Usuard had gone before Baronius, in whose genuine text is read: In Scotia, of Queran the abbot. Among the older writers no mention is made of him: whence our Sollerius there gathers that that holy Abbot obtained a place in the sacred Tables by the singular diligence of Usuard. Him also the Reichenau Hieronymian Martyrology, or that of Augia Dives, published by Sollerius in our Work after the seventh volume of the month of June, records, which at the V of the Ides of September, with the title of Abbot and the certain place of his veneration omitted, has thus: Elsewhere, of saint Keranus conf. In our manuscript Florarium too the following eulogy, borrowed from the Epistle of B. Paul to the Ephesians, chap. 3, is woven for him at the same day: In Scotia, the birthday of saint Queran the abbot. This holy Man, rooted and founded in charity, learned what is the breadth, what the length and height and depth: and to know also the charity of Christ which surpasseth knowledge, being filled unto all the fulness of God.
[2] in the Martyrologies. Among the more recent writers, Castellanus and the author of the Paris Martyrology at the same day call him Kiarianus; Wion in the Lignum Vitæ, Ménard in his Martyrology and Bucelinus in the Benedictine Menology ascribe him to the Saints of their own Order: but to Mabillon, both in the Acts and in the Annals, he is more rightly unknown. John Wilson in the English Martyrology, which he published in his native tongue in the year 1608, and which, revised, he issued in repeated printings in the 40th year of the same century, weaves a twofold eulogy, neither of them without faults. In the earlier edition he has in English what I subjoin in Latin: In Scotia the deposition of S. Queran abbot and confessor, who, sprung of a noble family in that kingdom, despised the vanities of the world, and, having entered a monastery, was made a monk of the venerable Order of S. Benedict and afterward abbot of the same: whose singular life and miracles were abundantly made manifest to the world both at home and abroad. But in the later edition thus: In Scotia the deposition of S. Queran abbot and confessor, who was first made a monk, then abbot of the monastery of S. Columba in the same kingdom; whose holy life and miracles are celebrated among posterity. He died about the year of Christ DCL, and was buried in Scotia. From these things at the least the Saint's noble family is doubtful, since in various Acts he is surnamed the son of a Craftsman or smith. That he was of the Order of S. Benedict we do not believe; much less that he was a disciple of S. Columba or abbot in his monastery: for the first is asserted without foundation; the latter are convicted of falsity both from what is to be said, and from this, that S. Columba survived S. Kieran by more than fifty years; for when he asserts that the latter died in the year of Christ 650, he strays a whole century from the truth.
[3] Among the proper Masses of the Patron Saints of France and Ireland, The Mass which is contained in the Irish Missal published by order of Pope Clement XII, one is prescribed at the XI day of September, on the feast of saint Kiranus, abbot of Foilum and patron. This man I should hold for certain to be the same as our holy Abbot, if the name of the monastery of Foilum did not render it somewhat doubtful: for I have nowhere been able to ascertain that the monastery of Cluanum or of Anginum, of which the Saint was founder and abbot, was called that of Foilum. Many things however persuade that he is believed to be the very same. For first, when I searched through the various Catalogues of the Saints of Ireland and Scotia, and the authors who have written of the Saints of those regions, no Kirianus abbot of Foilum, or another of the same name, occurs, in whose honor this Mass could seem to have been composed. Our manuscript Breviary of Aberdeen too acknowledges only our Queran, and on no other day than the IX of September.
Secondly, Augustin Lubin in the geographical Tables to the Roman Martyrology at this day expressly notes: He was abbot of Foilum in Scotia. The same Camerarius judges in book 3 on the piety of the Scots, where he alone among the martyrologists commemorates Kieran at the XI day of this month, yet in such a way that he would have him the same as him who is referred by the rest to the IX. Take his words: Saint Queran abbot of Foilum in Scotia. Concerning him see the Roman Martyrology at the IX of September; Wion, book III of the Lignum Vitæ, Usuard and others.
[4] Nor did Colgan think otherwise, who at the V of March, pag. 470, censuring Camerarius, writes this: at the XI day of this month, After he has asserted that the birthday of S. Kieran, or as he himself says, Queran the abbot, is celebrated on the XI day of September; he afterward at the XXII of October places among his own Saints another Kieran, saying: "On the XXII day S. Kieran; concerning him see the Life of S. Patrick by Jocelin, chap. CXIII and others." But Jocelin there treats of no other Kieran than of our Kieran abbot of Cluanum; of whom Camerarius himself treated wrongly at the XI of September, but the Roman Martyrology rightly, as also others, at the IX of the same month. Nor does any other author hand down that the memory of this (the abbot of Cluanum) or of that (of Saighir) or of another Kieran is celebrated on either day (the XI of September or the XXII of October) etc. Unknown therefore to Colgan was any Kiranus abbot of Foilum, or any other whatever who is different from our Abbot, whose feast is celebrated on the XI day of September.
[5] Finally the editor of the said Irish Missal testifies in his preface that our Saint is meant that Saints of unknown or uncertain name are not reported in it; but those whom the Martyrologies themselves celebrate and extol with praises, and whose memory it was of old the custom to celebrate, as is attested both by the Martyrology of Usuard, and by the History of Bede, and finally by the Missals of churches or of Orders and Congregations, ancient as well as more recent. Hence again gather that by the Kirianus whose Mass is prescribed the Abbot of Cluanum is designated; for the Martyrologies after Usuard record him, him the Breviary of Aberdeen celebrates, him without doubt the followers of his Rule venerated as their founder and father: but an abbot of Foilum distinct from him of Cluanum the writers whom I have seen do not know, except Camerarius and Lubin, and even these give notice that he is by no means to be distinguished from today's Saint. But, you will say, why then is he called abbot of Foilum in the aforesaid Missal, why is he venerated at the XI day? The first, to confess the truth, I cannot declare, unless perhaps of the monasteries which used his Rule some was of that name: but that is to divine. Perhaps the editor of the Missal followed Lubin or Camerarius; whence these learned it is wholly hidden from me. The cause of the other is at hand: for this seems to have been done because the IX day is also sacred to S. Osmanna, an Irish virgin, who, because she passed the last years of her Life in the Gauls and there died, is held in veneration by both nations, and therefore was by no means to be moved from her place. And since in the Roman Missal, which the Irish too use, the X day is hindered by the double feast of S. Nicholas of Tolentino, but the XI day is free, the festival of S. Kieran could not more conveniently be prescribed than on this day.
[6] is shown. But this is the Mass: Introit. I as a fruitful olive tree in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of my God, and I will wait on thy name, because it is good in the sight of thy Saints. Psalm: I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be always in my mouth. Collect: May the intercession, O Lord, of blessed Kiranus the abbot not cease to appease thy Majesty for us, and may it make our service continually devoted to thee. Through our Lord etc. The Reading of the Epistle from chap. 2 of Ecclesiasticus from ℣. 19: They that fear the Lord. Gradual: Who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, O Lord, or who shall rest in thy holy mountain? ℣. He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice. Alleluia, alleluia. ℣. O Lord, my portion, I have said, is to keep thy law. The Gospel according to Luke, chap. 6, from ℣. 47. Every one that cometh to me. Offertory: They that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences. Secret: Grant us, we beseech thee, O Lord, following the examples of saint Kiranus the abbot, to reject our evils with the whole heart, that we may be able to receive thy goods. Through our Lord etc. Communion: Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many: enter into the joy of thy Lord. Finally the Postcommunion: May the receiving of thy Sacrament sanctify us, we beseech thee, O Lord, and may the intercession of saint Kiranus the abbot render us acceptable to thee. Who livest etc. But enough of these things.
[7] He is numbered among the apostles and founders of Ireland: That our Saint Kieran was celebrated among the chief Saints of Ireland, we learn from various passages in Colgan: for in his Annotations to the Life of S. Finnian, pag. 398, num. 24, he asserts that he is in certain codices numbered among the twelve apostles of Ireland: the same he has at pag. 402, num. 4: but in the Acts of S. Patrick, pag. 214, he reckons him among the eight chief founders of monastic Rules. To this sense too Thomas Sirin, likewise an Irish Minorite, in his Dissertation on the monastic profession of S. Columbanus, art. 3, §2, adduces Alcuin, singing in poem 246:
> Patrick, Cheranus, glory of the Scottish nation, > And Columbanus, Comgall, and Adamnan, > Illustrious fathers of morals, and masters of life: > Hence may piety, by their prayers, help us all.
Besides, Colgan brings forward another testimony in the Triad thaumaturga, pag. 471 and following, culling this from chap. 26 of the Saint's Life: He is and is deservedly held one of the chief Apostles of Ireland, according to what his fellow-disciple and fellow-apostle the most holy Columba sang of him in a certain hymn which he composed in his praise, saying:
> How great an apostle, O Christ, > Hast thou sent as a man to the world! > The lamp of this island, > A wonderful shining lamp etc.
[8] Further, we read the holy Abbot's name written variously by various authors. his name variously written, and why. Usuard, Baronius and others, as we have seen, call him Queran; Castellanus and the author of the Paris Martyrology, Kiaran. In Colgan, in the Life of S. Munis the bishop, pag. 266, of S. Aidus pag. 420, and in the Triad thaumaturga, the Life of S. Patrick pag. 136, and in the Life of S. Columba pag. 392 and elsewhere, it is written Kieranus: but in the Acts of S. Finnian pag. 395, and in the metrical Life of S. Senan, Kyeranus; finally in the Life of S. Endeus, pag. 708, Keranus; while by Alcuin just praised he is called Cheranus. The cause of this varied writing is explained by the above-mentioned Colgan in the Life of the saint of the same name, namely Kieran abbot and bishop of Saighir, pag. 463, where he says: By the Irish, who have not the letter K or Q, but use C in place of both, he is called Ciaran and Cieran (which word is with them of two syllables). For they pronounce the letter C, even before E and I, in the same way as others do K… Hence this name expressed in Latin is now Kieranus, Kiaranus, Keranus, and in the Roman Martyrology Queranus; by the Britons too, who pronounce P in place of C and Q, it is written Piranus. Thus he there: I with Colgan and others shall call him Kieran.
[9] We grieve indeed that we have no Life of this holy Man which we could profitably exhibit to the studious reader. Why we do not exhibit a Life: We have indeed one by an anonymous author in our manuscript Salamanca codex marked P Ms. 11, of which Bolland makes mention in tom. 2 of February in the historical Commentary on the holy bishops Melus, Melchus, Munis and Riocus, § III: but it is of such a kind that the praised Bolland deservedly called it unskillfully and negligently written, and I judge it wholly unworthy of the press. For in it you will scarcely find anything except prodigies, and these partly borrowed from other Lives, partly related so tastelessly that they do not deserve credit among the learned, unless they be handed down by a more skilled and more trustworthy writer than that anonymous author was. Some specimen we shall give below. That other Acts of the Saint exist, however, we learn from Colgan, who both in the Acts of the Saints of Ireland and in the Triad thaumaturga frequently praises the Life of S. Kieran, promising that he would publish it at the IX day of September; which however, perhaps prevented by death, he did not perform. That this Life is different from ours is clear from this, that both Colgan and Ussher in the Antiquities of the British churches recite certain things from it which are wanting in this. Perhaps however it is the same which Sirin, cited at num. 7, calls a manuscript Irish Life, and asserts to have been compiled by the Saint's own disciples: whether that is true, the lack of a copy forbids us to inquire.
[10] Whence the Saint's deeds must be drawn. By the defect of this, therefore, I am compelled to have recourse to the Lives of other Saints of Ireland which exist, and to gather what is narrated in these here and there, and to refer it in some measure to its own time. But before I do this, I would have the reader warned of two things generally: the first is, that the Acts of the Irish Saints are generally of doubtful credit, and were written by writers by no means accurate and far later in age. The other is that in them there frequently occurs a narrative of very similar matters, which they ascribe to various Saints; so that you do not know to whom they can safely be ascribed. These things being premised, I proceed to the Saint's deeds.
§ II. The Saint's birth foretold by S. Patrick, his parents, his country, the baptism conferred upon him.
[ ] The Saint's birth That the birth of S. Kieran was foretold many years before he was brought forth into the light by S. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, is asserted by Jocelin, the writer of the Life of S. Patrick, tom. 2 of March at the XVII day, where in chap. 12, num. 98, when he had narrated that S. Munis wished to take up the body of a certain leper once buried by S. Patrick, on account of a certain heavenly vision, he adds: S. Patrick forbade this to be done, foretelling that a certain son of life not yet born, Kieran by name, would dwell there, who would fill that place with an illustrious company of Saints, and would exalt that holy body with much honor. For what he foretold came to pass in course of time: for that place is between Meath and Connaught, in which is situated the city of Cluanum, in which today there is an episcopal see. The author of the Tripartite Life of S. Patrick in Colgan, pag. 132, chap. 25, relates these things a little differently in this manner: But when S. Munis was returning from Rome, and, overtaken by night, was passing the night there, astonished by an apparition of angels flying about the place, he said: A man of God is buried here; for I see there the ministries of angels. And he laid down his casket with the relics enclosed in the hollow bosom of a neighboring tree; which the tree also had encircled, and, the bark having grown over and all the hollow being done away, it was found the next morning shut in on every side.
[12] by S. Patrick Astonished at the strange novelty of the miracle, they seize axes and other iron tools, and try with vain labor to cut the tree apart: and when, wearied, they profited nothing, they report to S. Patrick what had happened. Patrick said to them: There is a certain son of life not yet born who will have need of those relics, namely S. Kieran the son of the smith, for whom, thus reserved by the special favor of divine providence, they are therefore to be left. Colgan at the VI day of February in the Life of S. Munis, chap. 9, narrates the like from chap. 2 of the Supplement to the Acts of S. Kieran, from which, after relating the prodigy of the sacred relics, he recites this: Moved by the miracle, (S. Munis) goes to his master (S. Patrick), engaged in divine contemplation, as we have said, on the summit of the mountain of Cruachan-aighle; to whom he disclosed the manner in which he had lost the sacred relics. Whom Patrick bids to be of good cheer, admonishing him that that place and the relics are reserved, by the decree of the divine will so preordaining, for a great man to be born after thirty years, named Kieran, whose church was to be erected there, and whose name would be far most famous throughout Ireland and Albany.
[13] In the apocryphal Life too, of which we treated at num. 9, is foretold: the prophecy of a certain magus is exploded: this prophecy is briefly mentioned: This Man of God was prophesied of by S. Patrick fifty years before his birth. He subjoins also another prophecy of a certain magus. His mother too, he says, when on a certain day, sitting in a chariot, she was passing near the house of a certain magus, the magus, hearing the creaking of the chariot, said prophesying: The chariot sounds beneath a king. And when his men out of wonder went to see the truth of the matter, and saw no one in the chariot but the wife of Boëus, they said in mockery: Behold, the wife of Beord sits in the chariot: to whom the magus said: I do not speak of her, but of the son whom she has in her womb, who shall be a great king, and, as the sun shines at midday, so shall he flash with miracles and shall make this island illustrious. But these things savor of a fable, and seem drawn from the Acts of S. Comgall, abbot of Bangor, and altered according to the writer's fancy. For in these, in tom. 2 of May, pag. 580, I read this: The blessed and venerable abbot Comgall, sprung of a most noble family of the Aradenses, was brought forth of his father Sedneus and his mother Briga. Of whom, the day before he was born, S. Macniseus bishop of Connor prophesied, the Holy Spirit revealing it to him. For hearing the sound of horses and of a passing chariot, he said to the bystanders: That chariot carries a king. When they had heard this, they go out with hurried step to see the king: but when they found no one there except Sedneus and his wife Briga, whom they had known well enough before, they return astonished to the man of God, saying: Holy father, Sedneus and his wife sit alone in the chariot. Then the bishop said: Sons, do not think me a liar in what I have said: for she carries a king in her womb, whom tomorrow, when the sun is risen, she shall bring forth, who shall adorn the heart with virtues, and the world with the brightness of miracles etc. I do not doubt that our inept compiler, borrowing this prophecy of S. Macnisius from hence, ascribed it to a magus.
[14] That Kieran's father was named Beoanus or Beoadus, The Saint's parents, Colgan writes at the XV day of January, annotation 15 to the Life of S. Ita the virgin; adding that he was a craftsman or smith. The author of the inept Life mentioned above says that the Saint was sprung of a noble and religious stock, his father Beord or Boëus, whom he makes a maker of chariots, his mother Darecta. Colgan too, presently to be cited, affirms that he and his parents were sprung from the house of the Rodericii in Ulster. How rightly this nobility of birth agrees with the said trade I do not inquire; but that the Saint's father was a craftsman is clear from the Lives of various Saints published by Colgan. And to adduce one example out of many, in the Triad thaumaturga, chap. 18 of the fifth Life of S. Columba, mention is made of Kieran the son of Saor: which words Colgan among his annotations, num. 75, thus takes up: This is saint Kieran abbot of Cluain-muc-nois, who is called by the patronymic surname son of Saor, that is, of the smith, as is established from his Life to be exhibited at the IX of September. More examples will occur in the course of the work.
[15] As regards the Saint's country, the author of the Tripartite Life in Colgan's Triad, pag. 145, chap. 123, and his country: introduces S. Patrick prophesying of S. Kieran as about to be born in the Southern parts of Ireland. On this Colgan in his annotations, pag. 181, num. 182 and 183, observes that S. Kieran, the son of the smith, abbot of Cluanum in Meath, although he himself and his parents were sprung from the house of the Rodericii in Ulster, was nevertheless born in the region of Meath, as his Life has it, chap. 1, and that hence he is said to be about to be born in the Southern parts. Further, Media or Midia, to the English Meth or Meath, formerly a kingdom and the fifth portion of Ireland, on the testimony of William Camden, is situated in the very middle of ancient Scotia or present-day Ireland, and is divided into the county of Meath or Eastern Meath and the county of West-Meath or Western Meath, as may be seen at more length in him. In our manuscript Life however he is said to have been born in Connaught, by the natives Conaghty, which to Camden is the fourth part of Ireland, enclosed by the Western Ocean and the river Shannon. Take the biographer's words: When his father was oppressed under the tributes of king Anmereus, that is Anmirets, leaving his own country, he departed into the region of the Connaughtmen, and there in the plain of Rius begot his blessed son Queran. Anmereus or Anmirets seems to have been he who in the Life of S. Columba in the Triad, pag. 341, is called Ainmerius son of Setnus, and in the Acts of S. Gildas of Bath is called Anmericus: but he was not yet king before the birth of S. Kieran, as may be gathered from the praised Life of S. Columba, and from Colgan's annotations, pag. 374, num. 39 and 40: but there is no reason why that inept compiler should detain us.
[16] By whom his baptism is said to have been conferred. The same biographer asserts that our Saint was baptized and taught by a certain holy man, Dermitius by name: on the contrary the author of the Tripartite Life, now so often praised, pag. 136, chap. 49, says that he was washed in that sacred laver by a certain disciple of S. Patrick, in fact and in name Justus. That Justus was, he says, a man not so much of eminent sanctity as of wondrous long life: for he is reported to have read out from that Ritual book which S. Patrick left him the form of Baptism and the rite of the ministry, when in the hundred and fortieth year of his age he regenerated S. Kieran of Cluanum in the saving laver. Which of these two writes the truth, it does not please me to divine. In the Acts of S. Columba abbot of Iona, illustrated by us at the IX day of June, a certain Diermitius, the minister of the aforesaid abbot, is recorded; but he was without doubt younger than S. Kieran, since S. Columba is said to have died in the year 597, but Kieran to have been born in the year 516. But in the Life of S. Patrick, given at the XVII of March, a certain holy hermit named Justus is written to have kindly received the holy apostle of Ireland: but whether he is the one of whom the author of the Tripartite here speaks, who shall declare? Certainly so long-lived an age for Justus cannot but be suspect to me, especially since he seems to have learned it from some tradition, perhaps popular, as the word is reported indicates. Nor perhaps does the Baptism conferred by him rest on a firmer foundation: yet, to admit that the holy Abbot was initiated in that Sacrament by one of Patrick's disciples, it is not on that account necessary to assert so singular a length of life in him: since indeed that great apostle of the Irish departed to the heavenly ones in the year 460, as Papebroch shows in his Acts, but holy Kieran is reported to have been born in the year 516, it is understood that the latter could have been baptized by a disciple of the former who was not more than eighty years old.
§ III. He passes into the discipline of S. Finnian, then leads the monastic life first under Ninnidius, afterward under S. Endeus, as abbots.
[ ] Instructed by S. Finnian The author of the Life of S. Finnian, or Finnen the abbot, in Colgan at the XXIII day of February, pag. 395, chap. 19, hands down that our S. Kieran was instructed under this abbot's discipline in the monastery of Cluain-erard, which Colgan in his annotations says is today called Clonard and is situated on the borders of Leinster and Meath. In this place therefore, says the biographer, like the sun in the midst of heaven, he (Finnian) sent forth the rays of virtues and of saving doctrine and of miracles, making the world bright. For the fame of his good works drew from divers parts of the land illustrious men, partly to learn sacred Scripture, partly to receive ecclesiastical instruction, as it were to a certain admirable sanctuary of all wisdom. Whose names are two Kyerans; Kyeran the son of the craftsman, who is called Mac-an-tsoir, and Kyeran of Saighir… And all these were holy men and full of virtues. The Acts of S. Finnian, referred among the Prætermissi at the XXIII day of February, our predecessors deferred to the XII of December: meanwhile in the preliminary Commentary to the Life of S. Kieran of Saighir at the V day of March, §2, it was shown that no chronological reason forbids our Saint to have heard S. Finnian as a disciple.
[18] James Ussher in the Antiquities of the British churches, pag. 909, recites this from the records of the church of Meath: he is said to have given Clonard to him; Saint Keranus gave the lordship of Clonard with its little farms annexed to it to saint Finian his teacher and to his successors; and he thinks that these things are to be understood of our S. Kieran. To the same opinion Papebroch inclined in the Commentary on S. Kieran of Saighir, §2, num. 12, where he discoursed thus: It suffices if Finnian returned (into Ireland) before the end of the V century, and at the beginning of the VI century began to admit disciples for instruction: for thus both Kierans could have heard him teaching, though not in the monastery of Cluain-erard: for he received possession of this from his younger disciple Kieran only then, when the latter, an abbot conspicuous for sanctity and authority, had, if not in the monastery of Cluanum, at least in his own of Anginum, so far prospered by the liberality of princes that out of what he had in abundance he could pay back so ample estates to his master as it were for a schoolmaster's fee.
[19] But if this was not done after the death of king Thuatalius, which is very uncertain. when Dermitius was already reigning about the year DXL, since Finnian was then already ninety years old, yet it cannot have been done much sooner: unless we should wish to say, against Ussher's meaning and the testimonies produced by him, that those estates were given to Finnian by the liberality of Kieran of Saighir, not of Cluanum: but since the latter survived to the year DLXV, as is established from the Acts of S. Columba, having passed his hundredth year by a decade and more, nothing compels us to go against another's opinion resting on some authority. But if that
donation was really made by one or the other Kieran, it seems rather to be ascribed to the munificence of him of Saighir. For although we do not admit the opinion of those who lay down that our Kieran died in the 33rd year of his age — according to which, against the biographer's assertion, the abbot of Saighir, whom Papebroch believes to have died about the year 520, could not have frequented the school of Finnian in the monastery of Cluain-erard together with our Kieran, who in that opinion had not yet passed boyhood — nevertheless so great an abundance of estates before the reign of Diermitius is ascribed to the younger Kieran without sufficient foundation. Nor does the instrument of the church of Meath adduced by Ussher stand in the way of these things, since it determines neither Kieran, as is clear from what has been said.
[20] An angel turns the mill for him: I have found no deeds of the Saint under Finnian's discipline handed down to memory, except one, which Colgan in the Acts of S. Columba, pag. 457, num. 12, relates from Kieran's biographer in these words: For in the school of the most blessed Finnian there were several Saints of Ireland; that is, two saints Kieran, two saints Brendan, S. Columba, and many others: and each of them on his own day ground the mill with his own hands; but the angels of God ground for S. Kyeran, as they did for him in his captivity with king Furbithus. I have indeed nothing by which to weaken the said prodigy; nevertheless, since I do not know the age of the biographer, whose lucubration I have not been permitted to see, it is suspect to me, and I fear lest here there happened what my predecessors frequently observed in other Irish Lives, namely lest he transferred another Saint's miracle to Kieran. For a similar prodigy of an angel turning the mill for S. Senan may be read in his Acts, tom. 1 of March, pag. 771, num. 13 and following. Of the captivity under king Turbithus, about which Colgan here adds nothing, there is treatment both in our apocryphal Life and in the Acts of S. Kieran of Saighir, tom. 1 of March, pag. 396 and following: but the things narrated there are so fabulous that I have thought they should by no means be transferred hither, and have deemed it enough to refer thither readers curious about such marvels.
[21] thence he visits various Saints, The praised Ussher in the Appendix among the addenda, pag. 1064 and following, culls the following from the Acts of our holy Abbot: Having received Finnian's leave, he hastened to S. Ninnidius, dwelling in the wood of the lake of Erne, abbot of a monastery. Afterward he set out to S. Endeus abbot of Aran, by whom he was kindly received: thence to S. Senan on the island of Cathay, on the river Shannon, where he was made master of guests: but through the envy of the monks, whom Keranus' great liberality toward the poor displeased, he withdrew to a certain other island, by name Angin, on which, a monastery having been founded, he gathered a very great multitude of excellent monks, and acquired most ample revenues for the uses of the poor: whom afterward S. Adompnanus, a Munsterman by birth, succeeded as abbot there. At length he departed thence to build the monastery of Cluanum or Cluayn-mac-nois in Meath. Let us throw a little light on these various sojourns of the Saint in different monasteries.
[22] and first passes through the discipline of S. Ninnidius, The Life of saint Ninnidius, or Nennidhius or Nennius, abbot and bishop, Colgan compiled from the Acts of other Saints at the XVIII day of January, where at pag. 113, num. 8, he has this to our purpose about him: He built a noble monastery on an island of the lake of Erne in Ulster, commonly called Inis-mhuige Samh, in which he had many illustrious disciples excellently instructed in piety and letters and singular continence and innocence of life; and indeed among these, as among torches less than the moon, he had as a disciple that great light of Ireland S. Kieran of Cluanum, once his fellow-disciple in the school of Cluain-erard. For this opinion he praises chapter 7 of the Life of our holy Abbot written by Augustine Graidin, from which he recounts the following: S. Kieran, when a space of time had passed, having received his master's leave and blessing, hastened to S. Ninnidius, dwelling in a certain wood of the lake of Erne, and when he had arrived there, he was received with great joy and unfeigned charity.
[23] And when he was daily advancing there in the discipline of morals and virtues, where three men beheaded on a certain day he hastened, a true obedient one, to the neighboring groves with the Brothers to cut wood: for it was the custom in that sacred college that three monks with a senior should always go, according to the order of time, to carry wood. But while the rest were cutting wood, he apart was attentively praying to God, as was his custom: meanwhile certain wicked robbers, carried over to the island on a raft, rushed upon the aforesaid monks and killed them, and carried away their heads with them. But Kieran, not hearing the noise of his companions striking, wondered; and out of wonder came in haste to the place where he had left them working. And seeing what had been done to the Brothers, he draws deep sighs and was vehemently saddened. He followed also on the track of those murderers, and found them at the harbor sweating to bring their little ship down to the water, but by no means able to do so. For God had so glued their skiff to the land that they could in no wise move it; and when they could not go against the will of the Almighty, then, repenting, they suppliantly ask pardon of the Man of God: who, mindful of his Master praying for the Jews who crucified him, prayers having been made for them though unworthy, they were able most easily to bring their raft to the water.
[24] But as the reward of this benefit he asked of the robbers the heads of his Brothers: is related to have been recalled to life, and having received these, coming to the place where the bodies lay, he devoutly asked the Lord that he would show his omnipotence in the raising of his servants. Very wonderful is what I relate, but a most evident truth of fact. He fitted the heads to the bodies, and by the power of holy prayer recalled them to life. And these, so wonderfully raised, carried the wood with them to the monastery: yet as long as they lived, they bore the scars of the wounds on their necks. A memorable prodigy indeed: but that it might be admitted as true without scruple, I could wish that it had been handed down by an older writer. Augustine Graidin is he whom James Ware, book 1 on the Writers of Ireland, chap. XI, calls Augustine Magraidin, an Augustinian canon, a learned and prudent man, and lays down that he died in the year 1405, reckoning among his works the Lives of the Saints of Ireland.
[25] According to these things that writer was indeed many centuries later than the Saint, wonderfully enough, if truly enough. but learned nevertheless and prudent: but otherwise Papebroch judged of him in tom. III of March, pag. 268, num. 5, where he wrote of the Acts of S. Endeus abbot of Aran, communicated to him from the Lille manuscript codex, in these words: He who wrote that Lille codex, Augustine Magraidin, about the year MCCCXC a monk of the institute of Canons Regular on an island of the lake of Ree, called of All Saints, did not indeed write the Life in his own style; but patched it together out of two older ones with so little judgment that the things which pertain to S. Kieran, and which were narrated in different ways in both those, with circumstances not a little changed, he reported as events different in substance: about the matters too done on the Roman pilgrimage and after the return he joins together a twofold narrative, of which the one is so fabulous from beginning to end that Colgan printed it in a different type and noted in the margin that it seemed apocryphal. From these things we have indeed that the writer of the praised Life, as he had in the Acts of S. Endeus, so also could have had at hand older Acts from which he drew the said prodigy; but since in compiling those he used so little judgment that now he reported the same deeds as different, now even mingled in things wholly fabulous, it is likewise to be feared lest here too he adopted either invented or more recent Acts as undoubted and ancient. I would not however infer from this that these or any others whatever are certainly to be rejected as fables, since he could really have used ancient monuments here and there.
[26] Then he withdraws to S. Endeus: a vision Further, the same Augustine in the Acts of S. Endeus just mentioned has this concerning S. Kieran's sojourn in the monastery of Aran, from two older Lives, chap. 4, num. 18 and following: To this man of God (S. Endeus) S. Kieran the son of the smith also came, and remained seven years in the territory [\] of the monastery, faithfully serving. In these seven years too he so diligently performed the office of thresher that in the chaff-house of the territory not a grain could be found which would make a stalk. Whence to this day the walls of his territory remain at Aran. After these things S. Keranus saw a dream, which he took care to relate to his master. For by night he dreamed that beside the bank of a great river, which is said to be the Shannon, he saw also a great and leafy and fruitful tree, and this tree overshadowed the whole island of Ireland. And so he related the dream to saint Endeus. He said: That fruitful tree is thou, who shalt be great before God and men, and shalt afford the sweetest fruit of good work, and shalt be honored throughout all Ireland. And Endeus added: Now therefore go and, fulfilling the will of God, build a monastery there.*
[27] offered there prematurely, is reported So he, designating by the monastery that of Cluanum, or Clauin-mic-nois, to whose foundation he subjoins that the Saint presently girded himself. But Papebroch in the same place, lit. b, notes that this passage is to be understood of the remote preparation for founding the said monastery, and not of the proximate one; since before he undertook that, he is said to have lived for some while first in the monastery of Inis-cathay under the discipline of S. Senan, and then to have founded the monastery of Angin. Wherefore it appears to me more likely that Magraidin confounded a twofold approach of the Saint to Endeus, and that hence it came about that he fixed the building of the monastery of Cluanum to a wrong time. That I should judge thus, Magraidin himself brings about, who, about to narrate the same vision which we have just now reported, but clothed with altogether different circumstances, and therefore as different from the former, thus begins: At another time also the same Keranus returned again to the island, that he too might make there the profession of a monk, and might there await the end of life. Now since, on Papebroch's testimony in the Commentary, num. 4, Magraidin patched together the Life of S. Endeus out of two older ones, it is most likely that the same vision was variously described in those two copies, which he therefore, believing it different, judged should be referred to different times also.
[28] Further, if we admit the latter narrative as the truer, by Magraidin. we shall unravel the objected difficulty by a probable reason. For we shall say that S. Kieran, when he was avoiding the envy of the monks of Inis-cathay, returned to his former abbot, S. Endeus, that he might make the profession of a monk there, that is, that under his governance he might spend the rest of his life in monastic exercises; but that he was forbidden by that same Endeus, then
taught through a dream that he was divinely destined to found a famous monastery. It must also be observed that in the latter account no express mention is made of the monastery of Cluanum; but it is only said that Kieran ought to hasten to the place shown from heaven and to found a monastery beside the bank of the aforesaid river (the Shannon): whence, if the monastery of Angin stood beside the aforesaid river, all is right: but if it was far distant from it, it is credible that either Magraidin, or the biographer from whom he transcribed these things, interpreted the said vision prematurely of Cluanum, as of the chief monastery and that from which the Saint received the name of Cluanum. These things being observed, we shall set forth the rest of the Saint's deeds in the following §§.
Annotations\ perhaps teritorio*
§ IV. Having left the monastery of Aran, he goes to S. Senan: thence he returns to Endeus: he founds the monastery of Angin.
[ ] The vision of S. Endeus, as Kieran departed From the Saint's Life, reported by Ussher at num. 21, we have seen that, having left the monastery of Aran, he withdrew to S. Senan bishop and abbot of Inis-cathay, and there for some while discharged the office of master of guests. To this departure I think should be referred what Magraidin in the Life of S. Endeus praised above, chap. 4, num. 24, narrates from older Acts in this manner: But what we have omitted concerning S. Keranus, let us add here. For when by S. Endeus' leave he had gone out from the island, Endeus sees in spirit all the angels who ministered to the saints of Aran the food of the spiritual life withdrawing with S. Keranus. By which vision Endeus was made sorrowful, thinking that the heavenly spirits would not return again; and when he had given himself to fasting and prayer beyond his strength, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, saying: For what cause art thou sad, O man of God, and why dost thou afflict thyself too much? Endeus said: The cause of my sadness is that all the angels have left us, and have gone on with Keranus. The angel answered: Because S. Keranus is most dear to God, therefore he has sent his angels in his company: cease therefore to afflict thyself further; since they shall return to you again: loose therefore thy fast in the name of the Lord. These things are indeed honorable to our Saint; but on what authority they rest, as I have already given notice, is not sufficiently established.
[30] A twofold set of Acts of S. Senan you have in tom. 1 of March at the VIII day, the one metrical, which is there said, at pag. 761, num. 7, to seem to have been written toward the end of the XII century or the beginning of the XIII; to S. Senan the other in prose, composed after the XII century. For the author of both perhaps S. Colman, son of Leninus, went before, who is there reported to have written the Life of the same Senan in his native verse before the end of the VI century, in which he flourished. In these Acts Kieran is recorded once and again with praise, and although it is nowhere expressly said that he lived under S. Senan's discipline in his monastery, yet this is not obscurely hinted in the metrical Life, when it is said:
> Then at a certain time, while the most holy Kieran was sitting on the shore, > it is announced to the bishop > That his inseparable comrade and ever companion > was at hand, sitting with his disciples on the bank of the river.
For that he is here called the inseparable comrade and companion of S. Senan seems to be understood of a familiar intimacy formed of old, while he was living there as a monk under his governance: for at the time in which the things which the poet sets forth in this place were done, Kieran already had, as is plain, his own disciples, and so had already left the monastery of Sena.
[31] abbot of Inis-cathay; returning to Endeus The situation of Inis-cathaig, which word Papebroch interprets in Latin as the island of the wild beast or of the Monster, we learn from the prose Life of Senan, chap. 5, where it is said to have been in the gulf of the Shannon, where it is discharged with a vast channel into the Western Ocean: but in the Life of S. Kieran, praised in the same place in the Annotations, lit. a, it is read: The island of Cathus, which is at the mouth of the Ocean toward the West, placed namely in the strait of Limerick, between the regions of Kier-raighi and Corcobaskind. The monastery of Inis-cathay therefore had been founded in present-day Connaught, in the county of Thomond or Clare, where the Sineus, to the inhabitants the Shannon, the noblest river of all Ireland, rolls out with a vast mouth into the Western Ocean, as may be seen in Camden's Ireland. How long the Saint stayed in this monastery is uncertain. Ussher in his chronological Index thinks that he departed thence only after the death of S. Senan, which with others he fixes to the year 544, in order to found the monastery of Angin: but Papebroch in the Commentary prefixed to the Acts of S. Senan, num. 3, more truly believes that these things were done before the year 540. For from both Lives of S. Senan it is manifest that S. Kieran, while he was alive, had his own disciples, and therefore also his own monastery over which he presided, which could have been none other than that of Angin. Some words we have given in the preceding number; the rest we shall presently bring forward.
[32] he is ordered by him We judge therefore that Kieran, in order to yield to the envy of the monks of Inis-cathay, about the year 540, while Senan was still then alive, went out from that island, and, according to what was said in the preceding §, returned to S. Endeus, his former master. For which reason we believe that to this pertains what is narrated in the Acts of this Saint, tom. III of March, pag. 273, in the Appendix, and which I transfer hither in the same words. At another time also the same Keranus returned again to the island (of Aran), that he too might make there the profession of a monk, and might there await the end of life. There were also at that time on the aforesaid island abbots and founders of a most holy life, namely S. Endeus and Finnian the elder. But at that time in which he came to the island, S. Endeus saw a dream worthy of interpretation. For he had seen a certain tree in the middle of the island growing on high, which with outstretched branches reached even to the sea. Then he had seen many men approaching the tree, who dug it up by the roots, and at length, lifting it with them into the air, carried it back as far as the bank of a great river, named Shannon, and there planted it again. He had seen also that same tree growing there to an exceeding height, so that the branches reached as far as the sea.
[33] Relating this wonderful vision before S. Finnian the elder and other trustworthy men, to found the monastery of Angin: S. Endeus said: This vision, which you have just now heard, dearest brethren, pertains to our brother Keranus, who shall be the father of many monasteries. And so with our blessing he ought to hasten to the place shown from heaven, and to found a monastery beside the bank of the aforesaid river, from which many other monasteries shall spring up like the branches of a fruitful tree. And when these words of father Endeus had been heard, those who were present poured out tears abundantly; likewise Keranus himself, who was present, wept bitterly. When the ship was being prepared for his journey, the holy abbots, namely Endeus and Finnian, with a multitude of monks accompany him to the harbor. Thus far that: but before we proceed further, certain things must be observed. First, it cannot be doubted that this vision is the same as that reported at num. 26, which Magraidin, as we have already given notice, believed different on account of the other circumstances. Secondly, in the same Appendix it is presently added that S. Endeus, when Kieran departed, returned to his monastery and died on his last day: which, since it is reported to have happened about the year 540, confirms our opinion about the monastery of Angin founded about that time.
[34] To the same departure I judge belongs what the praised Magraidin narrates after the vision reported at num. 26. he, obeying these commands After these things S. Keranus, having received the blessing of his abbot Endeus, prepared himself to build the monastery of Cluain-mhic-nois (rather, of Angin). And when he commended himself to the prayers of the Saints, he said before them all to S. Endeus: Receive me, father, with my parish under thy protection, that all my disciples may be thine also. And Endeus answered: Not so has God ordained concerning thee, that we should all live in this narrow island under my discipline; but on account of thy wondrous humility and perfect charity Christ thy Lord shall deliver to thee half of Ireland as the lot of thy inheritance. And when they had said these things to one another, a cross was erected as a sign of the mutual brotherhood which they contracted there between themselves and their posterity, and they said: Whoever after us shall violate the unity of our brotherhood on earth, let him lack our brotherhood and fellowship in heaven.
[35] After these things S. Endeus came into the land which is called Medraighe (a little maritime region of Southern Connaught in the county of Galway, says Colgan), and, being escorted by Endeus, commands a wild beast to flee. to a certain harbor, which is called the harbor of Luaban; and there S. Endeus asked Keranus that he would go to a neighboring place, which is called Acahd-Draighnich, and cast out of it a beast which had laid waste the whole land round about the aforesaid place: for one of S. Endeus' disciples, who was called Gigneus, dwelt there… Driving out the beast therefore from the aforesaid place, they possessed their hermitage in peace. So indeed he: but to me that narrative is suspect, both because the things which we recounted at num. 32 and 33 from the Appendix appear not a little more likely, and because I fear lest the writer borrowed that expulsion of a beast from the Acts of S. Senan, who in our Work, chap. 5, is narrated to have cast out a like monster from the island of Inis-cathay. The suspicion is increased by Papebroch, who in his Annotations to chap. 4 of the Life of S. Endeus observes that like plagiarisms were committed among the Irish in the Acts of disciples and masters.
[36] The situation of the monastery of Angin. The said monastery, or island of Angin, about which I have nowhere else found anything handed down, seems to have been situated in Meath, and perhaps in that district of it which is called Breaghmuid. So we gather from Ussher, who, praising the Book of Navan, asserts that the Saint received as a gift from Diermitius king of Ireland Cluain-mac-nois and the island called Inis-Aingean, together with a hundred churches or cells in Meath and Breaghmuid. But Breaghmuid seems to be that district which Colgan in the Acts of B. Dunchad, abbot of Cluanum, pag. 105, num. 5, calls Breghmuine, but in the topographical Index calls in Latin Bregmania, and says that it is a little region by the lake of Ree in Western Meath. With these agrees Louis Alemand in the Monastic History of Ireland published in French at Paris in the year 1690, in which at pag. 48 he places that monastery in the present-day county of Longford, in the lake of Ree. Papebroch too, in his Annotations to chap. 4 of the Life of S. Endeus, lit. b, acknowledged our holy Abbot as founder and rector of the monastery of Angin; nay, in the words recited at num. 18 he suspected that he had so far prospered there by the munificence of princes that he could even pay back ample estates to his master S. Finnian, as it were for a schoolmaster's fee. He could have drawn these things from the praised
Ussher, and from the Saint's Life, which he praises from time to time; but which does not survive in our Museum. More about that monastery I have not found; nor is S. Adompnanus, whom Ussher makes abbot of that place after S. Kieran, and whom Colgan at the XXIX day of January, pag. 191, gives notice should more rightly be written Donnanus, known to me from elsewhere. Of Diermitius' donation the discussion will recur in the following §, where we shall treat of the foundation of the monastery of Cluanum.
[37] With provisions sent by a prince divinely admonished, Further, Kieran, while he was now himself presiding as abbot in his monastery of Angin, seems to have gone frequently to S. Senan, whether that he might with him expiate the faults of his soul, of which human frailty is not free, or that he might enjoy the pious conversation of his once beloved master, whom he venerated as a father. So we learn from the metrical Life of S. Senan, chap. 4, num. 27, whence I have excerpted the following:
> Meanwhile Kieran, and Brendan besides, > arrive, admonished by an angelic oracle, > That they might confess to the holy man the causes of all their excesses. > But when these had been honorably received by the pontiff, > And had confessed all their [\*] excesses, > The keeper of the cellar reports that there is nothing left > Wherewith either the Brothers or the guests or the needy might be fed. > Nothing, says the bishop, is lacking to them that fear God; > Wherefore hope in the Lord and be of even mind: > For the Lord shall give food to us and to the Brothers. > Meanwhile a certain prince, divinely admonished, > To the cell of the man of God on the island of the Beast [\*] > Brings in a freight-ship the necessaries for the Saints: > Whom the pontiff, seeing that he had come for this cause, > Goes out to meet him with the aforesaid guests; > He received the food, and gave much thanks, > And, full of the prophetic spirit, foretold on the spot > That to him and to his seed, by the will of the Lord, > A province had been given, that he might reign over it. > And so, the prince being dismissed by the blessed pontiff, > When the hour of the meal was at hand, sitting down with the aforesaid Servants of God, > The holy father likewise took the gifts of God.
Presently there is subjoined a prodigy of a bell fallen from the heavens: but if that is not fabulous, it belongs properly to S. Senan, and may be read there.
[38] The prose Life, more recent than the former, at pag. 775, num. 41, narrates the like about the same coming of Kieran and the provisions sent by the prince in these words: he is refreshed with provisions sent, at S. Senan's: When on a certain day S. Brendan and Kieran came to S. Senan, that they might take him, as superior in years and dignity (for he was a bishop, but they presbyters), as their spiritual father and confessor; it happened that the cook had nothing wherewith to refresh either the guests or the household Brothers. When Nectanus Kenn-fhoda, prince of Y-figinte, learned this, he commands his steward to carry at once all the provision of food and drink which he had for the royal table to S. Senan and the other servants of God at Inis-cataig. The steward carries out his orders, and the prince himself presently follows to the harbor of the island, and there offers and consecrates to S. Senan and the servants of Christ the service and clientship of himself and of his posterity, and, humbly asking it of them, carries back a bountiful blessing.
[39] The metrical Life, chap. 5, num. 34, hands down yet another visit of the holy Abbot to Senan, carried in a leaky ship, he is received by him: and at the same time celebrates his singular confidence in God and his exceptional mercy toward the poor.
> Then at a certain time, while the most holy Kieran was sitting on the shore, > it is announced to the bishop > That his inseparable comrade and ever companion > was at hand, sitting with his disciples on the bank of the river. > He rejoiced, and quickly bidding a servant come near, > Take, he says, the little boat, and carry over this worshipper of Christ. > When the bishop heard that there was no other ship for him but a wicker > Skiff, and that not fit for use; > Enter this one at least, he says, that thou mayest be able to carry over > The Man of God, long waiting on the bank of the river. > He enters therefore the skiff, and glides on unafraid; > Because such as the teacher was, such was the disciple. > When Kieran beheld him from afar, he said to his men: > The holy one of the Lord tries us, whether we dare to enter > The skiff in the name of God, relying on his prayer. > Let us enter therefore; for Christ is surely able > By his merits to preserve us in this little boat. > Entering therefore, they sailed on prosperously; > The skiff, with its seams gaping, was not filled by the waves.
40> So, when he had been received by the Brothers, he at once > ordered holy Kieran to be clothed with a cope, because he knew by the spirit > a memorable example of mercy toward the needy. > That he had already spent his own in alms. > Then leading his Companion by the hand to the oratory, > After these and like offices of charity, > At last he refreshed him with the Brothers with a more sumptuous meal.
Upon the latter verses, which are somewhat more obscure, the author of the prose Life will throw light, who at pag. 776, num. 43, has this: On a certain day, as S. Kieran was making a journey to visit S. Senan, there met him a certain ragged and naked beggar, asking alms of him with the utmost and importunate entreaties: to whom the most pious Man, since he had nothing else at hand, taking off the very cloak or monastic gown with which he was clothed, bestowed it; and so he goes naked to the island. When S. Senan learned this in spirit, he commands the monks to bring over S. Kieran, standing on the opposite shore, in a certain broken little boat pervious to the water (for they had then no other on the island). When they had done so, he himself runs to the holy Man, carrying with him a gown hidden under his bosom, and, when he had been clothed with it, led him joyfully to the monastery.
[41] The time of the founding of the monastery is confirmed. From these things it is clear that S. Kieran at that time did not dwell on the island of Inis-cathay under Senan's discipline, but was only wont to come thither, that he might use that holy bishop as the director of his conscience, or as his teacher in doubtful matters. And since he is said to have had his own disciples already then, it must altogether be said, against Ussher, that the monastery of Angin was founded before Senan's death. This very thing the same prose Life again proves, in which at chap. 3, num. 20 and 21, fifty monks are said to have landed in Ireland, some of whom, as they desired, were sent by S. Senan to S. Kieran, at any rate already abbot of the men of Angin.
Annotations\ perhaps illi*
\* i.e. Iniscathaig
§ V. The monastery of Cluain-mic-nois founded.
[ ] The situation of the monastery, of the city The chief monastery of S. Kieran, called Cluain-mic-nois or Cluanum, from which he too is wont to be called of Cluanum, to distinguish him from the other S. Kieran, abbot and bishop of Saighir, was founded in Western Meath on the river Sineus, to the natives the Shannon, which flows between this province and Connaught. With the lapse of time it grew into a city distinguished with its own bishopric, which after the English schism was joined to that of Meath by the supreme senate of the kingdom, which they call the Parliament. James Ware in his Commentary on the prelates of Ireland, pag. 95, writes this of the beginnings, growth and ruin of this place: S. Kiaranus, or Ciaranus the younger, sprung of the family of the Aradenses, but the son of Boëtius, otherwise Beonandus, a worker in wood, whence he was also commonly called Maciteir, or son of the craftsman, founded a monastery at Clonmacnoise, formerly called Tipraic, in the very navel as it were or middle of Ireland, in the year of the Lord DXLVIII, the place being granted by Dermitius son of Cervallus, king of Ireland. Over this monastery, according to very many, Kiaranus presided as abbot only a single year, according to some (wrongly, I think) seven years, being carried off there by death on the V of the Ides of September, in the year of Salvation through Christ DXLIX, in the very flower of his age, when he had lived only thirty-three years.
[43] and of the bishopric of Cluain-mic-nois. The church of this monastery was afterward — but at what time is hidden from me — changed into a cathedral church. There are indeed not lacking those who expressly hand down that S. Kiaranus was bishop of Clonmacnoise. If this is true, there is no reason why we should inquire further about the beginning of the cathedral church. However it may have been, later times subjected to it nine other churches, in one and as it were the same cemetery, embracing in its circuit more or less two Irish acres. To the west of this place the prelates afterward built an episcopal residence. The cathedral church itself was certainly of old enriched with many possessions: and it was besides notable especially for the burial of magnates and bishops, and for some monuments and inscriptions, carved partly in Irish, partly in Hebrew. Nevertheless it gradually declined, and was at length reduced to a shameful poverty. Thus far Ware: whether all these things are true, we shall presently discuss. Colgan at the XX day of January in his Annotations to the Life of S. Molagga, pag. 150, mentions the same place more briefly thus: This was of old a noble city, raised up out of the famous monastery of S. Kieran, in Western Meath on the bank of the river Shannon; today a lowly town, indicating its former splendor by its ruins and rubble alone.
[44] The prophecy of S. Patrick about this famous monastery to be founded by Kieran we have already reported at the beginning of §2: Diermitius, to whom the Saint had foretold the kingdom, the foundation itself the author of the Tripartite Life narrates, part 2, num. 28, in Colgan's Triad thaumaturga, whence I transfer hither the following. But Tuathalius, grandson of the aforementioned Carbreus by his son Corbmac, was afterward made monarch of all Ireland according to the man of God's prophecy, and so persecuted Diermitius, son of Kervallus, his cousin, the rival and competitor for the scepter, that he was obliged to consult for his life by flight and by the protection of hiding-places; and hence to lie hid for many days on the islands of the river Shannon and of the lakes of Ree and Derg-dherc. On a certain day, while he was passing from one of the aforesaid islands to another, the vessel in which he was was going past Cluain-muc-nois, where S. Kieran on that same day wished to lay the foundations of that famous monastery of Cluanum, which was being erected on the patrimony of Diermitius.
[45] Learning this, the holy Man took care that he should be called to him, gives estates for the founding of the monastery: saying: Thou art the son of kings, begotten of a king and a queen; this place is of thy right; grant it for the use of the house of God to be built, appoint the site of the church and mark out the measure thyself, and lay the first foundation. To whom Diermitius said: I am not a king. To whom Kieran said: Thou shalt be king tomorrow. While these things were being done, king Thuatalius, learning that Diermitius his rival had been staying in those parts, came against him on the same day with a strong band, and, battle being joined, Moelmorus, Diermitius' foster-brother, inflicted a mortal wound on king Tuathalius, by which he presently died… But Diermitius, Tuathalius being slain, succeeded to the kingdom, as S. Kieran had foretold, while laying the foundations of the church of Cluanum, which is called the little one; and going on thence to Tara, he dismounted from his horse in three different places, and consecrated those three places, with the estate of Druim-reuthe, to God and to S. Kieran forever. That I may not detain the reader with long observations, I shall illustrate only those things which pertain to our present purpose, namely to the foundation of the monastery of Cluanum.
[46] That this Diermitius, son of Kervallus, was the first of that name king of Ireland, is agreed among the historians; the time of this foundation but about the year in which he obtained the kingdom they somewhat disagree, whence the year of the founded monastery too
is called into doubt. Ussher in the Antiquities or Beginnings of the British churches, pag. 947, exhibits from the Annals of Ulster a catalogue of the kings of Ireland, or rather of Meath, carried down from the year of Christ 433 to 665, which Papebroch inserted in the preliminary Commentary to the Patrician Acts, tom. 2 of March, pag. 523. In this catalogue at the year of Christ 544 it is thus read: VI. Dermitius I, son of Cervaillus; XXI years. Hence the praised Ussher in his chronological Index attaches the beginning of the reign of Diermitius I to the year 544, and its end to the year 565. But Colgan in his Annotations to the 5th Life of S. Columba, pag. 447 in the Triad, sets forth a like series of kings from the four Masters in the catalogue of the kings of Ireland, to whose credit, he says, it must be attributed if any discrepancy or slip occurs in the years of these kings. This series differs in many things from that of Ulster, and, to pass over the rest which does not belong here, it refers the slaying of Tuathalius to the year 538, but, concluding the reign of Diermitius at twenty years, ends it in the year 558. But the beginning of Diermitius' reign the same four Masters, in the Annals praised by Colgan, pag. 6, num. 16, set together with the year 539.
[47] is inquired into, But this opinion of the Masters seems to me improbable in comparison with the other, whether you ascribe to his reign only twenty years with them, or twenty-one with Ussher's catalogue: since he himself fought the famous battle of Culedreibne with the Conallians in the year 561 and survived it, as was said in tom. 2 of June at the IX day in the Acts of S. Columba the abbot, pag. 194, num. 19, and pag. 196, num. 28; and Colgan himself too holds this in his Annotations to the second book of the fifth Life of S. Columba, pag. 452, num. 3, where he gives notice that the Masters must be corrected in this part, who prematurely attach the said battle to the year 555. For the same cause the praised writer, in annotation 80 to the fourth Life, pag. 379, charges them with error, because they write that Diermitius was slain in the year of Christ 558, whom he contends to have been still reigning in the year 563, in which S. Columba withdrew into Britain.
[48] and is attached to the year 544: it is shown that he presided longer And so, since from what was said at num. 45 the beginnings of the monastery of Cluain-mic-nois coincided with the beginning of Diermitius' reign, we gather that the foundations of this place were laid in the year 544. In this part Ussher opposes us in his chronological Index, where, although at pag. 1139 he refers the royal donation of the estate and the beginning of the reign to the same time as we do, nevertheless at pag. 1140 he judges that the monastery itself was first begun to be founded in the year 548. His reason without doubt is that in the Life of the same Saint, which he had praised at pag. 909, he is said to have died in the XXXIII year of his age, when he had lived only one year in his city of Cluain-mic-nois, and the Annals of Ulster set this year together with 549 of our era. But that passage of the Life suffers great difficulties, which render that opinion less likely to me. For, to pass over what we are about to prove below, that the Saint more probably died in a more advanced age, the Life of S. Kellach the bishop in Ireland, which you have illustrated in tom. 1 of May from pag. 104, manifestly hints that the holy Abbot presided over his monastery of Cluanum longer than a single year: and since nothing forbids his death from being said to have fallen in the year 549 or perhaps 548, it is likewise necessary that Cluain-mic-nois be believed to have been founded earlier.
[49] than one year. For in the praised Life it is said that S. Kellach, son of Eugenius Bel king of Connaught, when he was leading the monastic life in the said monastery under the discipline of S. Kieran, on the death of his father, being induced by the nobles of the kingdom, fled secretly and against Kieran's will, that he might succeed to his father's kingdom: and having possessed it for some while, when he had scarcely escaped by flight a most immediate peril of life, turning to sounder counsels, having left the palace and cast off the desire of reigning, he withdrew into a solitary wood, whence after a whole year spent in mourning and penitence he returned to Cluain-mic-nois, and, being kindly received by S. Kieran, lived most holily under his governance and was initiated into the priesthood. But all these things require at least two or three years, and certainly could not have been done in one. From the same Life we should have a surer argument, if the year of Eugenius' death, in which S. Kellach was already professing as a monk of Cluain-mic-nois, were certainly established. The four Masters indeed assert, in the Annals in Colgan at the XXVI day of March, pag. 755, annotation 10, that he died in the year of Christ 537: but how little accurate they are in their reckonings is clear from what was said at num. 47: wherefore, just as they made the reigns of Tuathalius and Diermitius five years too early, so also they could have anticipated the death of Eugenius by some years. For the rest, to return to Ussher: he acknowledges that some monastery was founded by Kieran in the year 544, but judges that it was that of Angin; and since we have shown that this was built by him earlier, there is no reason why we should depart from our opinion on account of a biographer of an age unknown to me adduced by Ussher.
[50] Thomas Sirin in his Dissertation on the monastic profession of S. Columbanus, Various testimonies and prophecies are adduced art. 3, §2, produces the Saint's biographer writing thus about the said foundation: S. Kiaranus came to the place which was formerly called Typrait, but now is called Cluain-mac-nois; and coming to that place he said: Here shall I dwell, for many souls in this place shall go forth to the kingdom of God, and in this place shall be my resurrection. Then the most blessed Kieran dwelt there with his men and began to found a great monastery there, and many came to him from every side, and his parish was much enlarged round about, and the name of S. Kiaranus was much celebrated throughout all Ireland, and a famous and holy city grew up in that place in honor of S. Kiaranus, whose name is called Cluain-mic-nois, which is in the Western tract of the region of the descendants of Niall, upon the Eastern bank of the river Shannon, over against the province of the Connaughtmen, in which either the kings or the leaders of the descendants of Niall and of the Connaughtmen are buried with S. Kiaranus.
[51] Further, that this monastery of the Saint was illustrious and the head of very many others, concerning this illustrious monastery we learn from various Lives of the Saints of Ireland, in which certain prophecies about its wealth and about the multitude of monasteries which depended upon it are recited here and there; which prophecies, whether we admit them as such or reckon them invented by the biographers, declare well enough the common sense of the ancients about the greatness of that place. The vision and prophecy of S. Endeus we have already reported at num. 32; I add another also from the 5th Life of S. Columba in Colgan, pag. 403, num. 88, where I read this: Once, when Columba was copying out a sacred codex of the Gospels, S. Kieran, whom they call the son of the smith, being asked, promised that he would write out half of the book for him: to whom Columba, showing his gratitude, said: And I promise and foretell to thee on God's part, that the regions of Ireland shall for half their part take their name's appellation from thee, and shall be tributary or pensionary to thy monastery.
[52] To this also pertains what Colgan notes on the Life of S. Gildas of Bath, pag. 191, in these words: testimonies and prophecies: This monastery was afterward so noble and so honored and endowed by the princes of Ireland that in different parts of the kingdom it had very many estates and other cells and monasteries subject to it, so that hence it was said to have possessed half of Ireland under its parish, as S. Finnian, S. Kieran's master, foretold of it beforehand, as is established from the Life of that same Saint, in which, with a notable eulogy of this most holy Man, we read this: S. Kieran was reading the Gospel of Matthew with others under S. Finnian, and when in the middle of the book he had come to the place where it is said: All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them; S. Kieran said to S. Finnian: Father, this half of this book which I have read suffices me, that I may fulfill it in deed, and truly this sentence alone still suffices me. Then one of the school said to all: From this hour a fitting name for Kieran is Leth Matha: that is, half of Matthew. To whom S. Finnian said: No, but a fitting name for him is Leath Nerionn, that is, half of Ireland: for his parish shall be spread through half of Ireland. With these agree the things which at num. 36 Ussher narrates from the Book of Navan.
[53] a monastery of virgins subject to him: But among the other monasteries which obeyed our holy Abbot, one is said to have been of virgins in the Life of S. Aidus or Aedus in the often-praised Colgan, pag. 420, where the biographer has this: S. Aedus the bishop came to certain blessed virgins who had been under the care of S. Kieran the abbot. Those virgins had a supper prepared for B. Kieran their patron, which they had given to B. Aedus the bishop. But the bishop, knowing that the virgins were in straits, since S. Kieran was near, says to them: Set out your vessels of food and drink, as they were before, and they shall be full in like manner. And so they were found, and the supper was restored by the Lord God through the grace of S. Aedus the bishop, and was again delivered to B. Kieran by the blessed virgins. But Colgan notes at num. 18 that the Kieran of whom here is called in the Lille codex Kieran of Cluanum.
[54] The Rule written by him. Further, what Rule the Saint gave his followers to observe, is undiscovered by me; but that he prescribed one of his own the author of his second Life affirms, in Colgan in the Acts of S. Patrick, pag. 214: S. Kieran, he says, is numbered among the eight chief founders of Rules by which the almost innumerable monasteries of the kingdom of Ireland were governed. For the first Rule was that of S. Patrick, the second that of S. Brigid, the third that of S. Brendan, the fourth that of S. Kieran etc. Of the same Rule Ussher too, now so often praised, makes mention: and first, at pag. 914, exhibiting an ancient catalogue of the Saints of Ireland, he reckons among the Saints of the second order, who observed different Rules, S. Ciaranus, otherwise, as he notes in the margin, Queranus: then among the addenda at pag. 1050 he says: Kieran the son of the craftsman, by whom the Book of Navan indicates that a monastic Rule was written… Nor is that law of Ciaranus any other, whose enlarged use we have observed at the year DCCXLIII in the Annals of Ulster. Similarly in the chronological Index, pag. 1170, at the same year he writes: The use of the monastic Rules of Kiaranus, son of the craftsman, and of Brendan, son of Findloga, was propagated in Ireland. The same things James Ware has, On the Writers of Ireland, book 1, chap. 2; Thomas Sirin the Irish Minorite in his Dissertation on the monastic profession of S. Columbanus, §2; and others who have treated Irish sacred matters.
§ VI. The Saint's death and burial: a hymn in
his praise composed by S. Columba, who by his help escapes shipwreck: the chronological order of his life examined, the episcopal dignity denied him.
With Coëmgenus present at the funeral, Of the blessed death and burial of Kieran wonderful things are narrated by the author of the Life of suspect credit of S. Coëmgenus the abbot, given by us at the III day of June, chap. 4, whence I excerpt the following: At another time also the most blessed Coëmgenus set out to visit the most holy Kyeranus the abbot, who founded his city, namely Cluain-muc-noyss, which is in the Western tract of the region of Meath, upon the bank of the river Shannon over against the province of the Connaughtmen: but S. Kyeranus, before S. Coëmgenus had come to him, on the third day passed from this world to Christ; and his body was set upon a bier in a certain basilica, until S. Coëmgenus and other Saints should come to bury it. And S. Coëmgenus, coming late to the monastery of Kyeranus, entered the basilica in which the holy body was, and commanded all the Brothers to go out, wishing himself alone to stay there that night beside the holy corpse. And when all the Brothers had gone out, S. Coëmgenus carefully closed the door of that basilica, and remained there alone until the morrow; but some of the Brothers kept watch before the doors of the basilica until morning.
[56] And as S. Coëmgenus prayed there, the most blessed soul of S. Kyeranus returned to his body; the Saint is reported to have revived for a little while: and he, rising, began to speak with saving words to S. Coëmgenus, and the Brothers remaining outside plainly heard the voices of both. And S. Kyeranus asked S. Coëmgenus that, as a sign of eternal fellowship, each should exchange his garment with the other; and so they did. And when on the next day the door of the basilica had been opened, the Brothers found S. Coëmgenus clothed in the garments of S. Kyeranus, and S. Kyeranus wrapped in the garments of S. Coëmgenus: and the body of Kyeranus was warm, having a ruddiness in the face; and S. Coëmgenus made known to the monks of S. Kyeranus the brotherhood and fellowship which he and S. Kyeranus had ever confirmed between themselves and their places and their monks: and the Brothers who kept watch that night before that basilica testified to these things. And when the body of S. Kyeranus had been honorably given to the earth, S. Coëmgenus returned to his own city.
[57] Thus far the said Life, which our Baert deservedly reckons fabulous in the place cited, pag. 311, num. 3: his burial: but since nevertheless true things are sometimes mingled with fables, I have thought these should be transferred hither: not that I suspect that that wonderful exchange of garments is true; but because under those fabulous circumstances something of the truth may lie hidden: for neither is it incredible that Coëmgenus was present at S. Kieran's funeral, and perhaps also obtained from the monks some one of his garments for religion's sake; whence some idle fellow wove that wonderful story. Further, that S. Kieran was buried in his own church, which he himself had built at Cluain-mic-nois, Colgan hands down in the Acts of S. Munis, pag. 266, recounting the following from the Supplement of our Saint's Life: The body of the most holy Man was laid up in the church of Cluanum founded by himself before, which in comparison with the greater cathedral is called the little one; in which also countless other relics are preserved. In the fifth Life of S. Columba too, pag. 434, the monastery of Cluanum is called noble and venerable for the dwelling and burial of S. Kieran. But how long that sacred deposit remained there, I have not read: but since Colgan in Appendix 5 to the Life of S. Brigid, pag. 633, writes that Cluain-mic-nois was thirty-four times either burned or plundered from the year 719 to 1155, it is to be feared that it did not survive so manifold a disaster.
[58] what is to be judged about S. Columba's hymn The same author in Appendix 2 to the Acts of S. Columba, pag. 457 and following, has this to our purpose from the Life of S. Kieran, chap. 33: S. Columba, hearing of the death of S. Kieran, said: Blessed be God, who has called the most holy Kieran from this world to himself in his youth: for if he had lived to old age, the envy of many would have been against him; for he would have taken hold of the parish of Ireland exceedingly. And S. Columba made a hymn for S. Kieran, and when he himself showed it in the city of Cluain, the successor of S. Kieran said to him: Famous and praiseworthy is this hymn: what reward therefore shall be rendered thee, Father? S. Columba answered: Give me my two hands full of the earth of the sepulcher of the holy father Kieran: for that I desire and love more than pure gold and precious gems. And S. Columba, taking earth from the sepulcher of S. Kieran, set out for his own island of Iona.
[59] And when S. Columba had sailed upon the sea, and the shipwreck overcome a storm arose on the sea, and the ship was driven to the Charybdis, which place is called Corebreacayn, in which there is a most perilous sea-whirlpool, into which if any ship enters, it does not escape. And when the whirlpool began to draw the ship to itself, S. Columbanus cast a part of the earth of S. Kieran into the sea. Very wonderful to tell! Straightway the storm of the air, the motion of the waves, the circling of the whirlpool, all at once [\] ceased, until the ship went far out from thence. Then S. Columba, giving thanks to God, said to his men: See, Brothers, how great grace the earth of the most blessed Kieran has brought us.* On these words of the biographer let us make some observations. Colgan in Appendix 3 to the Acts of S. Columba, pag. 471, reckons among the writings of this holy abbot four hymns composed in the Latin tongue, of which he affirms that the first was on the praises of S. Kieran, praising the Saint's biographer, chap. 26, whose words we gave at num. 7: but the rest of the hymn has not come into my hands.
[60] is to be judged. He also cites O'Donnell, book 1, chap. 70, in the Life of S. Columba: but wrongly; for there that Saint is said to have given to Kieran, then still living among men, a certain hymn which he had composed in praise of God, to be read. He turned aside, he says, to the monastery of Cluain-muc-nois, where he showed to S. Kieran, the abbot of the place, and gave to be read through, a certain hymn which he had before composed in praise of God. I would not however deny that a hymn of this kind on the Saint's praises was composed by him and given to the men of Cluanum. But as regards the calming of the storm and the restraining of the whirlpool's onset, I observe that something like it is narrated in the 5th Life of S. Columba, pag. 434, but with other circumstances, and less credible. For there it is said that S. Columba's ship, when he was crossing from Ireland into Britain, was snatched into the whirlpool which they called, from Brecanus, grandson of the great Niell king of Ireland, swallowed up many years before, Core Brecain, that is the Charybdis of Brecanus; and that while this was happening, the bones of Brecanus presently appeared in the waves: but that Columba, recognizing them, after prayers had been poured out, delivered his soul from the expiatory flames of purgatory, and himself and his men from the present shipwreck. No mention is here made of the sepulchral dust of S. Kieran, although the same peril of shipwreck seems to be treated of: but the former narrative appears simpler and more like the truth.
[61] Up to this point I have deferred treating of the Saint's time of birth and of death, The chronological order of his Life asserted by Ussher because the knowledge of both depends much on his various deeds, which we have recounted, and on the age of the other Saints with whom he is reported to have lived. Ussher arranges the chronological order of his life in his chronological Index in this manner. In the year of Christ 516 Kieran was brought into the light, and passed into the discipline of S. Finnian. Thence in the year 530, leave having been obtained from him, he set out first to S. Ninnidius abbot of Erne, then to S. Endeus, who presided as abbot on the island of Aran; where he also stayed seven years. These being completed, he came to S. Senan, prelate of the monastery of Inis-cathay, in the year 538 or 539, by whom he was appointed master of guests: when Senan died, yielding in the year 544 to the envy of the monks, whom the Saint's liberality toward the poor displeased, he received as a gift from king Diermitius Cluain-mic-nois and the island of Angin, with a hundred churches or cells in Meath and Breaghmuid, and, the city of Clonard with its little farms having been given to S. Finnian his former master, he himself founded a very great monastery on the island of Angin and acquired most ample revenues for the uses of the poor. Finally in the year 548, appointing Dompnanus or Adomnanus in his own place, he founded the monastery of Cluain-mic-nois, in which in the next following year, that is of Christ 549, but of his own age the 33rd, he was called away to the heavenly country.
[62] This chronological order rests on the authority of the biographer, of a certain Book of Navan and of the Annals of Ulster, is examined: he died in the year of Christ 548 or 549; which Ussher praises; of which the two former assign him only thirty-three years of life, the first lays down that he died when he had lived only one year in his city of Cluain-mic-nois; and finally the Annals of Ulster attach his death to the year of Christ 549. The same years of age Colgan ascribes to him at the VI day of February, pag. 267, but is of opinion that he died in the year 548, praising the Annals of Donegal: the same at pag. 150 in his Annotations to the Life of S. Molagga, num. 31, writes that he died of a plague: There raged, he says, a mortality in Ireland in the year DXLVIII, called Cronchonnuill, by others Cromchonnail, in which our cited Annals record that among several others S. Kieran of Cluanum perished. But he had cited a little above the common Annals, namely the Irish ones, which are perhaps those of Cluanum, of Sena and of the four Masters, whom at pag. 466 he praises for the same years of age and of death. Ware, On the Writers of Ireland, book 1, chap. 2, agrees with Ussher as to the year of age and of death, adds however that the holy Abbot, according to his biographer, presided over the monastery of Cluanum only one year, but according to the Annals of Tigernach about seven. From these things it becomes altogether probable that Kieran died in the year 549, since all conspire toward that year, nor does anything occur from which they may be convicted of error. Nor do the Annals adduced by Colgan stand in the way; for their sense can be that the said pestilence, by which the Saint is said to have been extinguished, arose in the year 548: which does not prevent the Saint from having died in the following year, the plague still continuing. The Paris Martyrology therefore must be corrected, which places the Saint's death more than a whole century later, namely about the year 669.
[63] but much later, Not so easily can we agree with the rest of Ussher's chronological order, for the reason that so short a life does not cohere conveniently enough with the deeds done by the Saint. For according to it he would have gone to S. Senan in the 21st year of his life, and would have been appointed by him master of guests; and while in the fourteenth year of his age he would have lived under the discipline first of S. Ninnidius in the monastery of Erne and then of S. Endeus in that of Aran, performing at that tender age the office of a miller; and yet before these things, namely before the year 530, he would have had S. Finnian as his master:
all which things are not likely enough in so scant a space of years and at so tender an age. From the age too of Kieran abbot and bishop of Saighir, with whom our Saint, if we believe the biographer of the former, lived at the least as a grown youth, a difficulty arises against Ussher; for if the bishop of Saighir died about the year 520, as Papebroch judged in his Life, how could our Saint at that time of life have lived with him? Finally the oracle of S. Patrick about the birth of our Kieran, which we reported from num. XI, is opposed to the said chronological order. For Papebroch in the Patrician Acts, tom. 2 of March, pag. 523, judges that it was uttered about the year 453. In the year, he says, CCCCLIII, or thereabout, S. Patrick undertook a forty days' fast on the mountain of Cruachan-aichle, receives S. Munis returning from Rome with relics, and foretells S. Kieran, the founder of Cluanmicnosia.
[64] than in the 33rd year of his Life: Now, whether with S. Kieran's biographer, praised at num. 12, you count only thirty years, or with the other Life cited at num. 13, fifty, between the aforesaid prophecy and the Saint's birth, you will labor in vain to set the thirty-third year of his age together with that of Christ 549; and according to the former reckoning indeed Kieran's birth must be fixed to about the year 483, but according to the latter to about 503, and thus his final age will have been of 66 or of 46 years. I know indeed that a number of years of this kind, which the other Lives do not determine, could have been added by some smatterer; but why may one not suspect the same of the year of his age, especially when it seems to conflict with the series of the deeds done? To me at any rate it appears much more probable that the holy Abbot died in the 66th year of his life, nay even at a more advanced age, than in the thirty-third: for thus the things which we have thus far produced from the Lives of others will cohere more aptly, nor will it be needful to believe the Saint the father of so many monasteries or cells while so young. Of the time of the founding of the monastery of Angin we have already treated at num. 31 and 32, but of that of Cluain-mic-nois at num. 40 and following, and there we have shown that the foundation of both is placed by Ussher later than is right.
[65] note the blunders of Alemand. Much further from the truth strayed Louis Augustin Alemand in his Monastic History of Ireland, published in French at Paris in the year 1690, in which at pag. 40 he contends that Cluain-mic-nois, and at pag. 48 that Angin, were founded in the fifth century, and charges Ussher with anachronism, because he referred these two monasteries to the middle of the VI century, although he elsewhere recorded that their founder, S. Kieran, was born on the island of Clera in the year 352. But Alemand himself here blundered, confounding S. Kieran bishop and abbot of Saighir with S. Kieran likewise abbot of Cluain-mic-nois, although at pag. 40 he had rightly distinguished both. That the island of Clera fell to him of Saighir as his birthplace in the year 352, Ussher hands down in the Antiquities of the British churches, pag. 78, 785, 788, and in the chronological Index, pag. 1085; concerning which prodigious age what is to be laid down the reader will find in his Acts, tom. 1 of March, pag. 390 from num. 5: but that our holy Abbot was born in the year 516 he writes in the same Index, pag. 1126, as was said above. I do not know whence that same writer learned what he has at pag. 20 of the Introduction to the praised History, namely that the monastery of Seir-Keiran, situated in Eastern Meath, was one of the two chief ones which followed the Rule of S. Kieran: and what he says in the History itself at pag. 48, that the monastery of Inis or of the Island, on the island of All Saints, was founded in the IV century by the same Kieran who founded that of Angin. Did he here again cling to his former blunder?
[66] It remains that we add a word about the pretended bishopric He was not a bishop, which some ascribe to him. James Ware in the Commentary which he entitled On the Prelates of Ireland, pag. 95, treating of Clonmacnoise first as a monastery, then as a bishopric, doubts somewhat whether the beginnings of that see are not to be referred to Kieran himself. The church of this monastery, he says, was afterward — but at what time is hidden from me — changed into a cathedral church. There are indeed not lacking those who expressly hand down that S. Kiaranus was bishop of Clonmacnoise. If this is true, there is no reason why we should inquire further about the beginning of the cathedral church. And adding no more about this controversy, after some matters he places Baitanus as the first abbot and bishop whom he knows, and notes that he died on the 1st of March in the year 663. Whether rightly, I do not inquire: but I could wish that he had at least recounted in a few words the writers by whom he found the Saint's bishopric of Cluain-mic-nois expressly handed down.
[67] Alemand, later than Ware, in the praised little Work, pag. 40, holds the said episcopal dignity of the Saint as by no means doubtful, as certain men praising Ussher and Colgan, as though they said that our S. Kieran is read to have been called by the historians bishop Coloniensis for Cloniensis: but neither of these two says this openly. Ussher in his Sylloge of ancient Irish letters, num. XI, published the Letter of Cummian to Segienus abbot of Iona on the Paschal controversy, written in the VII century, in which among other things he says this: According to Deuteronomy, I asked my fathers, that they might declare to me — namely the successors of our former fathers, of Ailbe the bishop, of Queranus Coloniensis, of Brendinus, Nessanus, Lugidus etc. This text Ussher in the often-mentioned Antiquities, pag. 935, thus takes up: He who is here written Coloniensis ought to have been called Clonensis: for that was the see of Queranus or Keranus (for it is the same name…), whom we have noted to have been surnamed by our writers the son of the craftsman, commonly Cluan-mic-nois or Clon-mac-nosh, called in the old Roman Provincial Dunckeranensis (which denotes the hill of Keranus).
[68] without foundation Where, I ask, is this Queranus called by Cummian or by Ussher bishop Coloniensis or Clonensis? Assuredly the former of these, when he names Ailbe alone as bishop, seems to me rather to hint the contrary: but the latter favors it only so far as he calls Cluain-mic-nois the see of S. Kieran: but he could so call it either because that Saint presided there as abbot, or because the bishopric of Clon, afterward erected, owes its beginnings to the monastery of Kieran, and could therefore be distinguished by his name. Much less has he Colgan favoring him: for he, in his Annotations to the Life of S. Cumineus on the XXIV day of February, pag. 411, explaining the same passage of Cummian, expressly says that the successor of Ailbe was bishop or archbishop of Emly in Munster, the successor of Nessanus either bishop of Cork or abbot of Inis-Domble; but of our Kieran's successor he acknowledges only an abbot: The successor, he says, of Queranus Coloniensis, or more rightly … of Kieran of Clon or of Cluanum, abbot of Cluain, otherwise Cluain-mic-nois, on the border of Meath.
[69] have supposed. Finally, not to be longer than is fair, the pretended episcopal dignity seems to be denied to S. Kieran. That I should think so, the silence of all the ancient writers whom I have at any rate seen persuades me, who all frequently hand down that our Kieran was an abbot, never a bishop. The same do the martyrologists, who adorn him with no other title than that of abbot. Add that the author of the prose Life of S. Senan, whose words we recited at num. 38, expressly gives notice that our Saint was only a presbyter when he came to S. Senan; nor do we learn anything from elsewhere about a bishopric afterward undertaken. Wherefore I strongly suspect that the contrary opinion arose either from the error by which certain men confounded the holy abbot and bishop of Saighir of the same name with the Abbot of Cluanum, or from this, that they judged the erection of the bishopric of Cluanum should be referred to the Founder of that same monastery, led by no other reason than that they did not know the beginnings of that bishopric.
Annotations\ omnia*