We have a letter of Alcuin’s addressed to “the most noble sons of holy church who throughout the breadth of the Hibernian island are seen to serve Christ the God in the religious life and in the study of wisdom”. In this letter Alcuin fully recognizes that in the old time most learned masters used to come from Hibernia to Britain, Gaul, and Italy, and did excellent work among the churches. But beyond that, the letter, which is far from a short one, is so completely vague that it is impossible to imagine that Alcuin had studied in Ireland, or had had the help, in England or in France, of one of the most famous of Irish teachers from one of the most famous of their seats of religion and learning.
Ep. 276.
The same impression is given by Alcuin’s letter to the monks of Mayo, of whom he naturally knew more. When the Conference of Whitby went against the Scotic practices, Bishop Colman retired, first to Iona, then to Inisbofin, and then to the place in Ireland now called Mayo, where he settled the thirty Anglo-Saxon monks who had accompanied him, leaving the Scotic monks, formerly of Lindisfarne, in Inisbofin, “the island of the white heifer.” Bede tells us that Mayo was kept supplied by English monks, so that it was called Mayo of the Saxons. Curiously enough they kept up the practice of having a bishop at their head in succession to their first head, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. There were bishops of Mayo down to 1559. In Alcuin’s time Mayo was still a Saxon monastery. The Irish Annals of the Four Masters mention a Bishop Aedan of Mayo, in 768; but his real name was English, Edwin, not Irish, Aedan, as we learn from Simeon of Durham. Alcuin must certainly have mentioned his own visit to Ireland in his letter to the monks of Mayo, if such a visit had ever taken place. The letter was written late in his life. He tells them that when he lived in Northumbria he used to hear of them from brethren who visited England. He reminds them that for the love of Christ they had chosen to leave their own country, and live in a land foreign to them, and be oppressed by nefarious men. He urged them to keep zealously the regular life, as established by their holy predecessors; and to devote themselves to study, for a great light of knowledge had come forth from them, and had lighted many places in Northumbria. The lord bishop they must hold as a father in all reverence and love, and he must rule them and their life with all fear in the sight of God.
The story of the migration from Lindisfarne to Mayo, as told by Bede (H. E. iv. 4), is so quaintly Irish in its main part, that it may fairly be told here in Bede’s words. After stating that Colman took with him all the Scotic monks of Lindisfarne, and thirty Saxons, and went first to Iona, he proceeds thus:—
“Then he went away to a small island some distance off the west coast of Hibernia, called in the Scotic tongue Inis-bofin, that is, the Isle of the White Heifer. There he built a monastery, and in it he placed the monks of both nations whom he had brought with him. They could not agree among themselves; for the Scots left the monastery when the summer came and harvest had to be gathered in, and roamed about through places with which they were acquainted. When winter came they returned to the monastery, and claimed to live on what the English had stored. Colman felt that he must find some remedy. Looking about near and far he found a place on the main land suitable for the construction of a monastery, called in the Scots tongue Mageo. He bought a small portion of the land from the earl to whom it belonged, on which to build, on condition that the monks placed there should offer prayers to God for him who had allowed it to be purchased. With the help of the earl and all the neighbours he built the monastery and placed the English monks in it, leaving the Scots on Inisbofin. The monastery is to this day held by English monks. It has grown large from small beginnings, and is commonly called Mageo[156]. All has been brought into good order, and it contains an excellent body of monks, collected from the province of the Angles. They live by the labour of their own hands in great continence and simplicity, after the example of their venerable fathers, under the Rule and under a canonical abbat.”
Bede appears to have not known anything of a bishop-abbat of Mayo.
It is clear that the bishop-abbat acted as a diocesan bishop in the neighbourhood of Mayo. In the year 1209 the Irish Annals record the death of Cele O’Duffy, Bishop of Magh Eo of the Saxons, the name Magh Eo, or Mageo, meaning the Plain of Yews. In 1236 Mayo of the Saxons was pillaged by a Burke, who “left neither rick nor basket of corn in the church-enclosure of Mayo, or in the yard of the church of St. Michael the Archangel; and he carried away eighty baskets out of the churches themselves”. It was for protection in such raids that the round towers were built adjoining the churches. In 1478 the death of Higgins, Bishop of Mayo of the Saxons, is recorded. The see was about that time annexed to Tuam so completely that the Canons of Mayo ceased to have the status of Canons of a Cathedral Church. Alcuin used the form Mugeo, not Mageo, and Simeon of Durham calls it “Migensis ecclesia”. This last form explains the signature—or rather the “subscription”—of one of six bishops present at a Council under King Alfwold of Northumbria in 786, “Ego Aldulfus Myiensis ecclesiae episcopus devota voluntate subscripsi[157].”