Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars

by John Healy

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SCHOOL OF BANGOR.

“Our princes of old, when their warfare was over, As pilgrims forth wandered; as hermits found rest. Shall the hand of the stranger their ashes uncover, In Bangor the holy, in Aran the blest?” —De Vere.

St. Comgall, who founded the famous School of Bangor, though not greatly celebrated for his own learning, was the founder of a school which of all others seems to have exercised the widest influence on the Continent by means of the great scholars whom it produced.

Bangor and Armagh were by excellence the great Northern Schools, just as Clonard was the School of Meath, Glendaloch of Leinster, Lismore of Munster, and Clonmacnoise and Clonfert of Connaught. For it must be borne in mind that Clonmacnoise was founded by St. Ciaran from Roscommon, that he was the patron saint of Connaught,[292] and that until a comparatively recent period it formed a portion of the Western Ecclesiastical Province. The influence of the other schools, however, was mainly felt at home, or to some extent in England, Scotland and Germany; but the influence of Bangor was felt in France, Switzerland and Italy, and not only in ancient times but down to the present day. There are great names amongst the missionaries who have gone from other monastic schools in Ireland to preach the Gospel abroad, but if we except St. Columba, who was trained at many schools in Ireland, there are no other names so celebrated as St. Columbanus, the founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, and St. Gall, who has given his name to an equally celebrated Monastery and Canton in Switzerland. It is, then, highly interesting and instructive to trace the origin and influence of this famous Irish school.

I.—St. Comgall of Bangor.

St. Comgall, the founder of Bangor, was a native of the territory anciently called Benna Boirche,[293] or Mourne, the name of that wild but beautiful mountain district extending from Carlingford Lough to the Bay of Dundrum. There is some difference of opinion as to the exact date of his birth, and indeed as to the length of his life; although all admit that he died in the year A.D. 600 or 601. He seems to have been during his life from boyhood to old age a friend and companion of St. Columcille, and hence if we accept the length of his life given by the Bollandists[294] as eighty years, we may fix his birth at about A.D. 520—which was also the date, or near it, of Columcille’s birth. Comgallus, the name by which he was baptized, has been frequently explained to signify the ‘lucky pledge’—faustum pignus—because he was a child of benediction, the only son of his parents, and born, too, when they were advanced in years. As usual in the case of our Irish saints, several prodigies are said to have taken place both before and shortly after his birth. His father was Sedna, a small chief of the district then known as Dalaradia or Dalaray; his mother was a devout matron called Briga, who is said to have been warned before his birth to retire from the world, because her offspring was destined in future days to become a great saint of God. These pious parents took him to be baptized by a blind old priest, called Fehlim, who knew, however, by heart, the proper method of administering the Sacrament of Baptism. There being no water at hand a miraculous stream burst forth from the soil, and the old priest feeling the presence of the divine influence washed his face in the stream, and at once recovered his sight, after which he baptized the child and gave him the appropriate name of Comgall. This is only one of the numberless miracles recorded in the two lives of St. Comgall, given by the Bollandists, but it will not be necessary for our purpose to refer to them in detail.

The boy in his youth was sent to work in the fields, and seems to have assisted his parents with great alacrity in all their domestic concerns. When he grew up a little more he was sent to learn the Psalms and other divine hymns from a teacher in the neighbourhood, whose precepts were much better than his example. The young child of grace, however, was not led away from the path of virtue; on the contrary, he seems in his own boyish way to have given gentle hints to his teacher that his life was not what it ought to be. On one occasion, for instance, Comgall rolled his coat in the mud and coming before his master, the latter said to him, “Is it not shame to soil your coat so?” “Is it not a greater shame,” replied Comgall, “for anyone to soil his soul and body by sin?” The teacher took the hint and was silent; but the lesson was unheeded, and so the holy youth resolved to seek elsewhere a holier preceptor.

This was about the year A.D. 545. At that time a young and pre-eminently holy man, named Fintan, had established a monastery at a place called Cluain-eidnech, now Clonenagh, near Mountrath, in the Queen’s County. The fame of this infant monastery had spread far and wide over the face of the land; for although in many places in those days of holiness there was strict rule, and poor fare, and rigid life, yet Fintan of Clonenagh seems to have been the strictest and poorest and most rigid of them all. He would not allow even a cow to be kept for the use of his monks—consequently they had neither milk, nor butter; neither had they eggs, nor cheese, nor fat, nor flesh of any kind. They had a little corn, and herbs, and plenty of water near at hand, for the bogs and marshes round their monastic cells were frequently flooded by the many tributaries of the infant Nore coming down from the slopes of the Slieve-bloom mountains. They had plenty of hard work, too, in the fields tilling the barren soil, and in the woods cutting down timber for the buildings of the monastery as well as for firewood, and then drawing it home in loads on their backs, or dragging it after them over the uneven soil. The discipline of this monastery was so severe and the food of the monks so wretched that the neighbouring saints thought it prudent to come and beg the Abbot Fintan to relax a little of the extreme severity of his discipline, which was more than human nature could endure. The abbot, though unwilling to relax his own fearful austerities in the least, consented at the earnest prayer of St. Canice to modify the severity of his discipline to some extent for the others, and they were no doubt not unwilling to get the relaxation.