But Marianus was quite as remarkable for the holiness of his life as for his learning and literary labours. “He was,” says the writer of his Life, “like Moses, the meekest of men; and God bestowed upon him in a wonderful way the gift of healing many diseases, but especially fevers, and not only during his life, as I have heard from trustworthy witnesses, but at his tomb after his death, as I have seen with my own eyes.”
We cannot now, however, give an account of the celebrated monastery of St. James of Ratisbon, which was founded by Marianus for his countrymen, who came to that city in great numbers towards the close of the eleventh century, nor of the great scholars which it produced.
Marianus is described by Aventinus in the Annals of Bavaria as a distinguished poet and theologian—poeta et theologus insignis—second to no man of his time. His poems are unfortunately lost, but his Commentaries still remain to us at least in manuscript. His Commentary on the Psalms was so highly valued, as Aventinus tells us, that it was not allowed outside of the walls of the monastic library without a valuable deposit being left to secure its safe return. There is in the Cotton collection a codex not yet published entitled Liber Mariani genere Scoti excerptus de Evangelistarum voluminibus sive Doctoribus.
His most famous work, however, is the codex containing the Epistles of St. Paul, with a marginal and interlinear commentary. This precious MS. is now in the Imperial Library at Vienna,[282] and is especially valuable because it contains several entries in the old and pure Gaedhlic of the eleventh century.[283] It is quite astonishing what a number of writers is quoted by Marianus in the marginal gloss—Jerome, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Arnobius, St. Gregory, Origen, St. Leo the Great, Alcuin, Cassian, Peter the Deacon, Pelagius, and the Ambrosiaster are all laid under tribute. We wonder how many Irish scholars of the present day are acquainted with them.
This great work was completed on Friday, the 16th day before the kalends of June, A.D. 1079—he marks the date himself, and asks the reader to say ‘Amen’ to the brief prayer for his soul’s salvation. “Amen, God rest him” (Amen Got der Erleich), wrote a pious old German of the fifteenth century on the face of the page in response to this pious request. Amen say we too—may God give him rest—that God whom he served so well during all the years of his pilgrimage in the land of the stranger.
“And now, my brothers,” says the eloquent old Irish monk, who wrote the Life of Marianus, thinking no doubt of his own far-off home in Ireland by the swelling Boyne or winding Erne; “and now my brothers, if you should ask me what will be the reward of Marianus and pilgrims like him, who left the sweet soil of their native land which is free from every noxious beast and worm, with its mountains and hills, its valleys and its groves so well suited for the chase, the picturesque expanses of its rivers, its green fields and its streams welling up from purest fountains, and like the children of Abraham the Patriarch, came without hesitation unto the land which God had pointed out to them, this is my answer: They will dwell in the house of the Lord with the Angels and Archangels of God for ever; they will behold in Sion the God of Gods, to whom be honour and glory for endless ages.”
The exact date of the death of Marianus is not marked, but it seems to have occurred in A.D. 1088, just six years after the death of his namesake the Chronicler. After Adamnan he was the most distinguished writer produced by the Columbian Schools.[284]
III.—The Later School of Derry.
As the great Columbian order of monks and scholars began in the Black Cell of Derry, so also from Derry flashed out the latest bright gleams of that sacred lamp which Columba had kindled, and which at one time irradiated both Scotland and Ireland. Kells held the principatus during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, as we have already stated; but during the twelfth century Derry came again to the front, and produced a large number of very distinguished men, most of whom belonged to a famous literary family named Ua Brolchain, or O’Brollaghan. This family derived its descent from Suibhne Meann, who was King of Ireland from A.D. 615 to 628. He was of the Cenel-Eoghain, but belonged to a sub-division known as the Cenel-Feradhaich, whose tribe-land seems to have been in the barony of Clogher, County Tyrone. The first of the Ua Brolchain family noticed in our Annals is Maelbrighde, whose death is recorded in A.D. 1029. He is described as chief builder of his time in Erin.[285]
The next of the name whom we meet with is St. Maelisa O’Brolchain, a very celebrated man, who died A.D. 1086. He was probably an alumnus of the monastery of Derry, but afterwards retired to Both-chonais, an ancient monastic church in Inishowen, which is best known from its connection with this holy and learned man. It was delightfully situated[286] on the margin of a semicircular bay in the north-western extremity of Inishowen, where the fierce Atlantic billows spend their force in broken wavelets on its sandy shore. It is well sheltered on the east and south by a range of steep and rugged hills. The entire parish of Clonmany, in which it was situated, abounds in natural curiosities as well as in objects of antiquarian interest, such as cromlechs, raths, and castles perched on lofty crags.