There is nothing specially interesting in subsequent history of the School of Bangor down to the time of St. Malachy. It was totally destroyed by the Danes, although a nominal succession of abbots was still kept up, whose names are sometimes mentioned in our annals.
III.—Dungal.
Dungal, however, after Columbanus was, perhaps the greatest glory of the School of Bangor. This distinguished theologian, astronomer, and poet, was one of the Irish exiles of the ninth century who were so highly honoured in the Court of France. His name is not widely known to fame; yet few men of his time held so high a place in the estimation of his contemporaries, or rendered more signal service to the Church. The controversy concerning image worship was carried on with great warmth in the Frankish Empire during the first quarter of the ninth century, and in this contest Dungal was the foremost champion of orthodoxy. He gave the coup de grace to the Western Iconoclasts; after his vigorous refutation of Claudius of Turin, they troubled the Church no more. It is well, therefore, to know something of his history.
That Dungal was an Irishman is now universally admitted. The name itself is conclusive evidence of his nationality. It was quite a common name in Ireland, and seems to have been peculiarly Irish. We know of no foreigner who was called “Dungal;” but we find from the index volume of the Four Masters, that between the years A.D. 744 and 1015 twenty-two distinguished Irishmen bore that name.
In a poem which he composed in honour of his friend and patron, Charlemagne, Dungal calls himself an Irish exile—Hibernicus exul. There can hardly be a doubt that he was the author of this beautiful poem to which we shall refer further on. At the close of his life he retired to the Irish monastery of Bobbio, in the north of Italy, founded by Columbanus, to which he left all his books, as we know from Muratori’s published list. One of them, according to the opinion of Muratori, was the famous Antiphonary of Bangor, which Dungal brought from that great school at home, and fittingly restored to Irish hands at his death.
Yet unfortunately we cannot fix the place or date of his birth in Ireland, although the possession of the Bangor Antiphonary leaves little room to doubt that he was educated in the monastic school of St. Comgall. Not a cross, nor even a stone, now remains to mark the site of the famous monastery whose crowded cloisters for a thousand years overlooked the pleasant islets and broad waters of Inver Becne;[305] but the fame of the great school which nurtured Columbanus and Gall, and Dungal and Malachy can never die.
In all probability Dungal left his native country in the opening years of the ninth century. Two causes most likely induced him to leave Ireland, the fame of Charlemagne, as a patron of learned men, and the threatened incursion of the Danes, who were just then beginning their long career of pillage and slaughter in Ireland.
However, in A.D. 811, we find Dungal in France. In that year he addressed a remarkable letter to Charlemagne on the two solar eclipses which were said to have taken place in the previous year, A.D. 810. He is described at this time as a recluse, that is, one who led a monastic life in solitude; he seems, however, to have had some connection with the community of St. Denis, for he evidently recognised the Abbot Waldo as his superior. From the tone of this letter we can also infer that the Great Charles honoured the Irish monk with his intimacy and confidence, and the monarch seems to have the highest opinion of Dungal’s learning. He accordingly requested the Abbot Waldo to ask the Irish monk to write an explanation of the two solar eclipses, which are said to have happened in A.D. 810. It is well known that Charles took a great interest in the advancement of knowledge, and was himself a diligent student. Hence he was anxious to understand that portion of divine philosophy, of which Virgil sang—
“Defectus solis varios lunaeque labores.”
Moreover, although there certainly was a solar eclipse on the 30th of November, A.D. 810, visible in Europe, it was alleged by many persons that there had been another eclipse in the same year on the 7th of June, if not visible in Europe, yet certainly visible in other parts of the world. This last point especially seems to have staggered the scientific faith of the royal scholar, and hence he appealed to his friend Dungal for an explanation.