But it was not the Danes alone who wasted the abbey-lands and destroyed the sacred edifices. Native Irishmen now followed their bad example both at Glendalough and elsewhere. In A.D. 983, “the three sons of Cearbhall, son of Lorcan, plundered the termon, or abbey-lands of Coemghen; but the three were killed before night through the miracles of God and Coemghen.” No one can regret their fate; it was an example and a warning greatly needed in those rude and lawless days. Five times during the next thirty years St. Kevin’s sacred city was plundered and destroyed by the Danes;[328] yet it was still a venerated and much frequented shrine during the whole of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In A.D. 1095 died the Brehon O’Manchan, Comarb of St. Kevin, and a most celebrated judge. He was doubtless a member of the same distinguished family, which had already given many abbots and anchorites to Glendalough.
Noble ladies, too, we find, used to go on the pilgrimage to Glendalough; for in A.D. 1098, Dearbhforgaill, daughter of Tadhg Mac Gillaphadraig, and mother of Murtogh and Tadgh O’Brian, died in pilgrimage at Glendalough. The same year Mac Maras Cairbreach, a noble priest and learned senior, died in the sacred vale; but whether on his pilgrimage or in his own monastery is not stated. In A.D. 1127, the abbot Gilla Comghall O’Toole was slain by the men of Fertuathal; he was doubtless a member of the same family as the illustrious Laurence O’Toole, the greatest glory of Glendalough after its founder, of whom we must give a more particular account, for he was the last canonized of the countless saints of ancient Erin.
The Four Masters in A.D. 1085 record the death of “Gilla na-Naomh Laighen (the Leinster-man), noble bishop of Gleann-da-locha, and afterwards head of the monks of Würzburg.” The celebrated monastery of Würzburg in Germany, called in Latin Herbipolis, was founded by St. Killian. There is still preserved in the library of its university a famous MS. called the Codex Paulinus, or Codex of the Epistles of St. Paul in Latin, with copious glosses, both marginal and interlinear, in the Irish language, which were largely made use of by Zeuss, in the composition of his Grammatica Celtica. This MS. is hardly of the time of St. Killian himself. Zeuss thinks it was written either by Marianus Scotus, or more probably brought from Ireland by one of the learned pilgrims, who crowded the Scoto-German monasteries at that time. He makes special reference to Gilla na-Naomh, Bishop of Glendaloch; and it may be that he was the writer of this Codex, which still proves to the learned world how carefully the Scriptures were studied in our Irish schools, and how the Irish language was cultivated by our native scholars during the ‘darkest’ of the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XVIII—(continued).
THE SCHOOL OF GLENDALOUGH.
| “And, Thou, O mighty Lord, whose ways Are far above our feeble minds to understand, Sustain us in these doleful days, And render light the chain that binds our fallen land. Look down upon our dreary state; And through the ages that may still roll sadly on, Watch Thou o’er hapless Erin’s fate, And shield, at least from darker ill, the blood of Conn.” —Clarence Mangan. |
St. Laurence O’Toole.
Something like this was the prayer of St. Laurence O’Toole when he was dying in a foreign land. He was the last of our saints; and he was also the associate and intimate friend of the last of our kings. At one time both had high hopes that the demon of civil strife might be banished from the land; and that Celtic learning and Celtic art would find their highest development under the protection of a strong government and a united people.