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

by John Healy

Shortly after the see of Glendalough became vacant and the eyes of all were turned on Laurence as the most suitable person to assume the mitre. But the pious abbot this time absolutely refused; they made him a religious superior against his will; but he would not become bishop at any rate; and that for two very good reasons—first, because he had not yet attained the canonical age; and secondly, because in his humility he thought himself unable to bear so heavy a burden.

But Providence reserved him for greater things.

Shortly after the archiepiscopal See of Dublin became vacant by the death of Gregory in October, A.D. 1161. Next year the abbot of Glendalough was chosen to succeed to the vacant See, and was consecrated in Christ Church Cathedral by the Primate Gelasius, attended by several other prelates and abbots from various parts of the kingdom. The choice of Lorcan to fill the See of Dublin is a singular proof of the great esteem is which he was held by all classes of his countrymen, both clergy and laity. For the citizens of Dublin were mostly of Danish origin, and had small sympathy with the natives. Hitherto their prelates were either of foreign extraction, or Irishmen, who had been trained and educated in England. They were consecrated too by the Archbishops of Canterbury; and they invariably took an oath of obedience and subjection to the see of Canterbury.

But the election of Lorcan inaugurated a new era. He was Irish of the Irish; trained and educated at home, as far as we know, exclusively within the shadow of the Wicklow Mountains. He was consecrated by the Primate of Armagh, and of course he was neither asked, nor if asked, was he a man to promise obedience to the see of Canterbury, which certainly had no claim de jure to the obedience of any Irish prelate. Nor did any prelate after him consecrated for any Irish see promise or pay any such canonical obedience to any prelate except the Pope. So that in the person of Lorcan the Irish Church was finally emancipated from this dependence on the Primate of all England, which in after days, had it continued, might have been the means of causing the shipwreck of our country’s faith.

Laurence was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin—Glendalough was not yet united to the Archdiocese—in the year A.D. 1162. In the same year we find that there was a Synod of the Irish prelates held at Clane in the co. Kildare, at which twenty-six bishops and several abbots are said to have assembled for the reformation of abuses, and the enactment of salutary discipline. The Primate Gelasius presided; and it is highly probable that many of the same prelates assisted at the consecration of St. Laurence in Dublin.

At that time the city seems to have been greatly in need of some moral reformation; and the holy prelate at once girt up his loins for the difficult task.

He began with the clergy; for he knew that the people would readily follow their good example. He persuaded the secular clergy of the Cathedral Church to form themselves into a kind of religious community. With the sanction of the Pope they adopted the rule of life followed by the Regular Canons of Aroasia—a reform that had been introduced into the diocese of Arras in France some eighty years before. The Archbishop himself adopted the same rule of life, and became a living model of its perfect observance for all his clergy. We fortunately have accurate details regarding his manner of life at this period; and beyond all doubt it was, as the lessons read on his festival declare, a life of marvellous austerity.

Beneath his episcopal dress he wore the habit of a Canon Regular, but, unlike the others, next his skin he wore a coarse hair shirt night and day; and as if that was not enough to mortify his flesh, he had himself frequently scourged, often no less than three times in the day, by an attendant who knew how to keep the scourging secret. He dined in the same refectory with the other canons, and, as with St. Augustine and his clergy, whilst the body was refreshed with food, the spirit was nourished by spiritual reading. He was most abstemious too at all his meals, and never tasted meat. On Friday his only food was bread and water; and sometimes on that day he absolutely abstained from all food—feeding his soul, however, with meditation on the passion of Christ. Yet he was hospitable as became a great prelate, and had banquets rich and abundant prepared for his guests. He even pretended on these occasions to take a share of the good things provided for the strangers, and coloured his water with a little wine, lest his own abstinence might prevent them from fully enjoying the bountiful hospitality prepared for them.

He was assiduous in prayer, and before all things anxious to promote the beauty of God’s house, as well as the splendour and regularity of Divine worship. Here, too, the example of the holy prelate must have exercised a very powerful influence both on the clergy and on the people. We are told by the writer of his Life that he was a constant attendant at all the offices of the Church, when not visiting his diocese; and not content at presiding at the daily offices, he regularly got up at midnight to recite matins and lauds with his canons; and when they retired to rest after the office was completed, he generally remained behind in the choir, before the miraculous crucifix of Christ Church, sometimes standing, or sitting, or kneeling, but always praying; so that he often continued reciting the psaltery until the morning dawned, and then he would go out to the cemetery to say a prayer for the dead before retiring for a few hours’ brief repose. Yet in all things which might win popular favour or applause, he loved to hide even his good works, lest they might beget self-esteem or hypocrisy.

Such a life was sufficiently rigorous, but it was not enough for this man of God. His nephew Thomas, whom he greatly loved, became Abbot of Glendalough; and then the holy prelate having one in whom he could confide, used to retire to his beloved mountain valley at the approach of Lent, in order to give himself up to a forty days’ retreat in the desert. All the saints of God loved solitude, and longed to fly from the haunts of men. They seem to have been especially anxious to select for their place of retreat those secluded spots where the sights and sounds of nature might be most apt to raise their minds to God. Hence we find them in the islands of the great sea, or of some lonely lake; or they retired to the majestic solitude of some mountain valley, where no mean or sordid thoughts could cross their minds; nay, rather everything around them helped to raise their souls to heaven. It was in this spirit—the spirit of a noble generous soul that Laurence used to leave the city and go out to meet and commune with God in the solitude of the mountains of Wicklow. It was the same Spirit of God that brought Moses to Nebo, and Eliseus to Horeb. Therefore it was that St. Gall sought the inmost recesses of the Alps, and St. Kevin the deepest valleys of the Wicklow mountains. So Laurence, like another Kevin, took up his abode not with his nephew in the monastery at the bottom of the valley, but in the bosom of the hills—in the very cave where St. Kevin himself spent his earliest penitential years. There St. Laurence dwelt in the grotto in the face of Lugduff, under the mountain’s brow, overlooking the gloomy lake, to which access could be gained only by a boat, or by a ladder planted in the lake itself. Twice a week his nephew brought him a little bread and water to support life, and ascertained his wishes or commands in all things concerning the government of the diocese. If urgent business called him, he went at once from his retreat; but this rarely happened. Whilst there he saw no one but his nephew. His bed was the rock; his canopy the sky; his lamps the midnight stars that shone above the summit of Comaderry mountain. He was there in cold and hunger, in storm and sunshine, alone all the day and all the dreary night. Yet he was perfectly happy, for he lived with God. The saints are not alone in these solitudes, they are watched by angels; the light of heaven is around them; the glow of perfect love is in their hearts; God speaks to them in all the voices of the mountains, and they see Him in all the majestic sights before their eyes. He spoke by day and night to Laurence, as He spoke to holy Job of old.