The Regula Coenobialis or Monastic Rule is divided into ten short chapters which treat of the fundamental virtues of the monastic life. It is especially valuable in so far as it affords points of comparison and contact with the more complete and systematic Rule of St. Benedict. In some things it is exceedingly rigorous and very minute in the penances which it imposes, even on the most venial and semi-deliberate faults. The first six chapters are devoted to the essential virtues of the monastic state—obedience, silence, self-denial in the use of meat and drink, poverty and chastity. The maxim—cibus monachorum sit vilis et vespertinus—seems to allow the poor monks only one plain meal in the day, and that after vespers. He inculcates also a daily fast, daily prayer, daily labour, and daily reading[303]—thus including in one sentence the whole routine of monastic life. The Liber de Paenitentiarum Mensura Taxanda is equally rigorous and minute in prescribing penances proportionate to the guilt of the sinner. In those days when there were no elaborate scientific treatises on moral theology, it was very useful to have a work of this kind which apportioned its own penance to almost every class of sin. The confessor, or soul’s friend, was thus enabled to form an estimate sufficient for most practical purposes of the magnitude of the crimes from the amount of the penance. To fast for a number of days, weeks, or even years, on bread and water was the stern penance imposed on the sinner, according to the measure of his guilt, by the rigid directors of the early Irish Church. Drunkenness was punished with a comparatively light penance—only a week on bread and water. That same would be even now of great service if it were rigorously enforced.
The Sermons have nothing specially characteristic to recommend them. They are, however, brief and to the point, which is more than can be said of many volumes of more modern discourses.
The Six Letters are perhaps the most valuable of the literary remains of Columbanus, because they reflect most clearly the character of the man and the genius of the Celt. We have already spoken of his letters to Pope Gregory the Great, and to Pope Boniface. Whilst full of respect for the Holy See they exhibit an uncompromising spirit of resolute independence and conscious integrity. The letter on the Paschal question to a certain synod of French Bishops is written in the same spirit, and reminds the Gallican prelates of some unpleasant truths, which they must have regarded as a very great impertinence coming from a mere Irish monk, who had uninvited taken up his quarters in the hospitable land of France.
The Latin poems show considerable acquaintance with the language, and are especially valuable as exhibiting the classical culture of our Irish schools in the sixth century. Most of them are in hexameter verse, but contain few classical allusions. The prosody is sometimes faulty; but on the whole it is perhaps better than the pupils or even the professors of our colleges would produce at present if called upon at short notice.
The shorter Adonic verses are simply marvels of ingenuity, and it shows great familiarity with the Latin language to be able to write an entire letter of about 150 lines in this metre.
The two most celebrated literary monuments of St. Columbanus and the School of Bangor that have come down to our time are the Bobbio Missal, and the Antiphonary of Bangor, both of which are at present preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.
The Missal which was brought from Bobbio to Milan by Cardinal Frederic Borromeo is undoubtedly of Irish origin, and was probably brought from Bangor by St. Columbanus himself, or by some one of the Irish monks who accompanied him. We shall not here repeat the critical arguments used by scholars to prove that it was brought from Ireland in the sixth or seventh century. The fact, indeed, is no longer questioned. This Missal is particularly interesting, because it gives us so early a specimen of the liturgy in use in our Irish Church. The Missa Cotidiana of this Bangor Missal has practically the same Canon as that now found in the Roman Missal, and used throughout the entire world. There is greater variety in the prayers, and our Celtic forefathers were fond of inserting a greater number of them in the Mass after the Gloria in Excelsis. They were inclined too to canonize their own local saints, and even sometimes inserted their names in the Litanies and in the Canon of Mass without any authority but their own devotion. This led not only to variety in the public liturgy but sometimes to other grave abuses, which were not eradicated until the time of St. Malachy and other great reformers of Church discipline in the twelfth century.
Now that we have the Stowe Missal accessible to scholars in the Royal Irish Academy, we may hope for a minute and careful comparison of these two ancient books, in order to trace the beginnings of these discrepancies in the liturgy which were first introduced into Ireland by the Second Order of Saints, and afterwards led to so much inconvenience.
The Stowe Missal, which is so called, we presume, because it was kept so long locked up in the Duke of Buckingham’s Stowe Library, is considered to have belonged to the ancient Monastery of Lorrha, in Lower Ormond, Tipperary. Dr McCarthy, a very competent judge, thinks it represents the ancient Patrician liturgy used by the First Order of the Saints of Erin, whilst Bangor may be supposed to have the Mass in its Missal derived from Wales, or more likely from Candida Casa.[304] The question is a very intricate one, and full of interest, but cannot be discussed at length in these pages.
The Antiphonarium Benchorense, or Bangor Hymnal, is a collection of ancient hymns in the Latin language, which were in common use in the ancient Church of Ireland. Many of them are contained in the Book of Hymns edited by Todd, to which we have already referred so often. Some of them were in general use throughout the Latin Church, or at least in the early Gallican Church, like the Hymn of St. Hilary. But others seem to have been peculiar to Bangor, and hence have a special interest for us at present. Such was the Hymnus Sancti Comgilli Abbatis Nostri; also the Hymnus Sancti Camelaci, and another entitled Memoria Abbatum Nostrorum, which has considerable historical interest, inasmuch as it gives a metrical list of the abbots of Bangor down to the time of the writer. These poems, and also the Missa Cotidiana of the Bobbio Missal may be seen in the second volume of Father O’Laverty’s excellent History of the Diocese of Down and Connor.