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

by John Healy

Whether or not St. Gerald and his brothers accompanied St. Colman to Ireland is doubtful. The narrative in the Life would seem to imply that they came straight to Ireland after Colman’s departure from Lindisfarne, and that during the time he remained in Iona Gerald and his companions had founded the monastery of Elitheria, or ‘The Pilgrims Home,’ as we might call it. At first, it seems, they met with some opposition from a certain wicked ruler in the district, called Ailill, who sent an armed force to oppose their landing. This was in all probability Ailill, or Oilioll, son of Dunchadh of Murrisk, prince of the Hy-Fiachrach, and ancestor of the O’Dowds. Dunchadh himself was slain in A.D. 681; but his son, Oilioll, might well be of age and a ruler of a separate territory in A.D. 664 or 665. He was prince of Tirawley; and hence it is highly probable that it was either at Killala or in the Bay of Westport that the Saxon pilgrims landed. By a wondrous miracle Gerald disarmed the hostility of Ailill, and even induced him to grant them the site of a monastery which, in the Life, is called Elitheria, or the Field of the Stag, from the Irish Elith, a stag. Colgan, however, thinks it more probable that the place received its name from elitheir, a pilgrim. This locality has not been identified. It is evident, however, that it was not far from the banks of the Moy, for prince Ailill, seeing the wonders wrought by St. Gerald, asked him to remove a rock from the bed of that river which was a great impediment to navigation, and tore the fishermen’s nets when they were draughting the river for salmon. In this, also, Gerald gratified the prince, and caused the rock to be broken in fragments. No doubt this occurred somewhere between Killala and Ballina.

Here the writer of Gerald’s Life is guilty of a great anachronism, for he says that Raghallach (Ragallus), the celebrated King of Connaught, hearing of the fame of St. Gerald, invited the latter to come to his court, and promised also to give him land for founding a monastery; adding that afterwards he fulfilled this promise, and gave him the ground on which the monastery of Mayo was built. Now Raghallach, or Reilly, King of Connaught, was slain in A.D. 645, as the Four Masters say, or in A.D. 648, according to the Annals of Ulster, that is, nearly twenty years before Gerald came to Ireland. The King of Connaught, when Mayo was founded, was Cennfaeladh, son of Colgu, whose death is notified by the Four Masters, A.D. 680. Besides, Bede expressly says that it was Colman himself who procured the site of the Mayo monastery, partly for money and partly for the prayers of the community.

We are then told that Gerald divided this community into three sections. One party he sent back to England in order to procure all things necessary for the new monastery. A second division was told off to build the dun or cashel—murus it is called in the Latin Life—around the monastery. The third division was, meantime, employed in the celebration of the Divine Offices for themselves and for the people around them.

We are then told that Gerald of Mayo, and all the other heads of religious houses in Ireland, went to Tara in obedience to an edict of the joint kings, Diarmaid and Blathmac, who reigned from A.D. 658 to 664 or 666. The purpose of the kings in summoning this meeting seems to have been to devise some means of staying the dreadful plague and its attendant famine which were then ravaging the country. St. Fechin and St. Gerald are represented as divided in opinion; the former said the plague was sent by God to prevent the people from starving, and that they must have perished either way, seeing that the country was over populated. But St. Gerald, like many other well-meaning people, put his trust in God, and said that all the clergy should pray to God to stop the plague, and also to supply food for the starving people. Divine Providence, he said, could do both one and the other; but it seems there was no human help to save them. The plague, however, soon solved the problem; it spared none—saints, kings, and people alike perished, so that half the population of the land disappeared in two years. St. Gerald himself escaped, and saved many others by his gift of healing; but his sister, Segresia, and one hundred of her nuns, who, it seems, had a convent close to Elitheria, with fifty of the monks of that establishment, all perished.

It is certain that St. Gerald was alive until A.D. 697, for we are told that about that time St. Adamnan, the celebrated Abbot of Iona, paid him a visit at the convent of Mayo. We know that Adamnan in that year went to Ireland, and promulged the celebrated ‘Lex Innocentiae,’ by which women were forbidden to share the dangers of the battlefield. We know, too, that he founded the Church of Skreen in Hy-Fiachrach, probably about the same time; and if he were in that neighbourhood nothing is more natural than that he should visit the foundation of Colman, whom he must have known in his youth, and try to ascertain how the Saxon monastery, which he had planted, was progressing in the land of the Scots. He seems to have remained, too, a considerable time in Ireland, or very soon returned thither, for in A.D. 703 he celebrated the Roman Easter (Canonicum Pascha) ‘in Hibernia.’[393] It is even stated that he ruled the monastery of Mayo for seven years after the death of Gerald himself, and during that time was engaged in writing books, casting bells, and teaching the monks, until he returned to die in his own monastery of Iona. This is not ‘manifestly a figment,’ as has been said by some writers; there is nothing at all improbable in it, especially if St. Gerald did not live after A.D. 697, as Colgan thinks.

The chief difficulty arises from the fact that the death of St. Gerald seems to be recorded at a much later date. The Four Masters record it, A.D. 726, “Gerald of Magh Eo died on the 13th of March.” The Annals of Ulster record the same event, A.D. 731. “The Pontiff of Magh Eo of the Saxons, Gerald, died.” It is alleged, however, that the words ‘Pontifex Magh Eo of the Saxons’ should be connected with the previous entry, which would then read thus: “Bellum Connacht in quo cecidit Muredach Mac Indrechtaigh pontifex Maighe Eo Saxonum.” The critics say, however, that the mistake was made by the Four Masters, who connect it in this way, and that Gerald, not Muredach Mac Indrechtaigh, was the Pontiff referred to. If Gerald really lived to this date, he must have been at least ninety years of age when he died in his monastery of Mayo. It is, at all events, certain that he died there, and his fame as a saint and scholar both during his life, and long afterwards, was the means of attracting crowds of students both from Erin and Saxonland, to the great monastic school, which he founded in the plains of Mayo.

There is a local tradition that King Alfred the Great visited Mayo, and that he sent his son to be trained up in that monastery, but that the young prince died there, and some of the natives even undertake to point out the place where he was buried. It is very likely this tradition had its origin in the undoubted visit to Ireland, and most probably to Mayo also, of King Aldfrid of Northumbria. He was an intimate friend of Adamnan, and probably accompanied that saint to Ireland. William of Malmesbury states expressly that he spent his youth in Ireland, and if so, it was most likely at Mayo.

III.—Subsequent History of the School of Mayo.

Of the subsequent history of this great monastic school we know very little.

Aedhan, Bishop of Magh Eo, died A.D. 768 (F.M.); and the monastery was burned in A.D. 778 (recte 783) by lightning, “on Saturday night, precisely on the 4th of the Nones of August. That night was terrible with thunder and lightning, and wind-storms,” which destroyed Armagh and Clonbroney, as well as the monastery of Mayo. Probably all these edifices were then built of wood. It is said that Turgesius, the Dane, attacked and plundered the monastery in A.D. 818; but of this pillage we can find no record, except in the Life of St. Gerald, which is no authority for dates. In A.D. 805 (but really in A.D. 808), the Four Masters say the oratory of Mayo was again burned.