We cannot follow St. Malachy through his subsequent glorious career. He went to Rome and was specially honoured by Pope Innocent II., who put his own mitre on his head, and his own stole around his neck in presence of his court, and appointed him his Legate for all Ireland. On his way to Rome he stopped at Clairvaux, where he had the good fortune of meeting St. Bernard, who became his dearest and most intimate friend. In him too, St. Malachy, more fortunate even than St. Columba, found a biographer who made the virtues and merits of the Irish saint known to posterity, and to the entire Church of God.
The saint also left at Clairvaux four of his disciples to be trained there under the eyes of St. Bernard himself in the discipline of the great Cistercian Order. It is to them we owe the introduction of that order into Ireland in A.D. 1142, and all the great religious houses which the Cistercians founded throughout the length and breadth of Ireland.
After his return home, armed with the plenary powers of Papal Legate, Malachy devoted himself with even more zeal and success than before to the reformation of his own diocese, and the general restoration of ecclesiastical discipline throughout the kingdom. He was ably supported by the Irish prelates both in the North and in the South; and he would have changed the face of the Church before many years, but it pleased God to call him to Himself all too soon for Ireland. In A.D. 1148 he went to France to meet Pope Eugene III., who was then at Clairvaux. Before Malachy, however, arrived, the Pope had departed, but he was consoled by the warm welcome which he received from St. Bernard and his monks. Shortly after the Irish saint fell sick to the great sorrow of the community, but Malachy consoled them, and told them that there was no chance of his recovery for it was God’s will that he should die at Clairvaux. Feeling his strength failing he caused all the brethren to be summoned to his bedside. At once they came—St. Bernard at their head. “With longing I have longed,” said the dying man, “to eat this pasch with you”—that is the holy Viaticum—“before I die, and I thank my God that my longing has been gratified.” Blessing them one by one he said, “Remember me, and please God I will not forget you.” So saying he rested a little; but towards midnight the community was summoned again, and while they wept and prayed around his bed, he fell asleep in the Lord, and “the Angels carried his soul to Heaven.” It was at midnight between the 1st and 2nd of November, but the latter being All Souls’ Day, his Feast is kept on the 3rd of November. He was canonized by Pope Clement III., about the year A.D. 1190.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SCHOOL OF CLONENAGH.
| “Pleasant to sit here thus Beside the cold pure Nore.” —Leabhar Breac. |
I.—St. Fintan.
Several famous religious houses were in ancient days founded around the base of the Slieve Bloom mountains, and the great saints who founded them were mostly contemporaries and intimate friends. Saigher, now called Serkieran, from the name of its founder, Ciaran the Elder, was situated in the old territory of Ely, at the north-western base of the mountain, about four miles east of Birr. Exactly at the southern corner of the mountain slope St. Molua built his oratory, which was called from him Cluain-ferta-Molua, but is now known by the name of Kyle. St. Cronan’s Church of Roscrea, his first oratory, close to Corville House, and the beautiful little abbey of Monahincha—Giraldus’ Island of the Living—called by the Four Masters, Inis-locha-Cre—are all still to be seen in the north-western extremity of Tipperary, not more than three miles from Kyle. There on the great plain that stretches along the south-eastern base of the mountain, we find, a little to the right of the railway to Maryborough, first St. Canice’s old abbey of Aghaboe, then farther on to the left, near Mountrath, is St. Fintan’s Church of Clonenagh. Not far from Clonenagh is the townland of Disartbeagh, where St. Ængus used to sit by the side of the ‘cold pure Nore,’ and like Abraham, received visits from the angels. Still further on, not far from Maryborough to the right, are Dysartenos, to which the same Ængus gave his name, and Coolbanagher beyond the Heath of Maryborough, where he saw the angels around the grave of the old soldier who loved to invoke the saints of God. Not inviting from a scenic point of view are the marshy meadows and sluggish streams of that broad plain; but it is relieved by the great bold mountain on the left, and more than all it is crowded with memorials of the saints of God.