THE SCHOOL OF CLONFERT.
| “I grew to manhood by the western wave, Among the mighty mountains on the shore; My bed the rock within some natural cave, My food whate’er the seas and seasons bore; My occupation morn and noon and night, The only dream my hasty slumbers gave Was time’s unheeding, unreturning flight, And the great world that lies beyond the grave.” —The Voyage of St. Brendan. |
The School of Clonfert was for many centuries the most celebrated and most frequented in the West of Ireland. From the earliest times the fame of its great founder, St. Brendan, did much to attract students to its halls from all parts of Ireland. He was succeeded in the Monastery and See of Clonfert by several other distinguished scholars, some of whose writings still remain to show the extent and variety of their learning. In spite of the incursions of the Danes a continuous succession of prelates and abbots, whose names have been all handed down to us, continued in Clonfert to cultivate and encourage the pursuit of sacred studies. Even in more recent times its prelates were generous patrons of learning and learned men, and many important works connected with Celtic Ireland still remaining for us, are due in great measure to their munificence.
I.—St. Brendan of Clonfert.
St. Brendan, the founder of the see of Clonfert, and the patron of the dioceses of Ardfert and Clonfert, is in many respects the most interesting figure amongst the saints of ancient Erin. His travels by land, and still more his voyages by sea, have made him famous from the earliest times. Manuscript copies of his Seven Years’ Voyage in the Atlantic Ocean, some of them dating from the ninth and tenth centuries, are to be found in every great library, and almost in every language of Europe. In our own times, poets and literary men, both in these countries and in France, have been attracted to celebrate his romantic career, and their genius has helped to lend a new immortality and more attractive grace to his strange adventures. We can, however, at present only give the reader a very brief sketch of his holy but adventurous career.
St. Brendan the Navigator, as he is frequently called, to distinguish him from Brendan of Birr, was born on the sea-coast a little to the west of Tralee, in the County Kerry, about the year A.D. 484. The time, place, and circumstances of his birth can be fixed with greater accuracy than is usual in the case of most of our Irish saints. He was the son of Findlug, who was grandson of Alta, of the race of the celebrated Fergus Mac Roy; and hence he is frequently called Brendan Mac Hy Alta. His family belonged to the tribe called the Ciarri Luachra, and they dwelt, we are told, in Altraighe Chaille, at Rand Bera.[179] This place, still called Barra, retains its ancient name, and is close to the little promontory of Fenid, north of the Bay of Tralee.[180] It is said that the ruins of an old church, still traceable at Fenid Point, mark the exact spot where the saint was born. Findlug was a Christian, and, with his wife, lived under the spiritual direction of the holy Bishop Erc, who then dwelt at a place about three miles north of Ardfert, still called by the peasantry Termon Eirc. Brendan’s mother had a vision foreshadowing his birth, in which she thought she saw her bosom filled with purest gold and radiant with heavenly light. This the holy bishop explained to signify the fulness of the Holy Spirit which would adorn the offspring then in her womb. A prophet of God called Bec Mac De also announced the future sanctity of Brendan, and the fact of his birth, to a rich man called Mac Airde, who dwelt at a place still called Cahir-Airde close to Rand-Bera. This rich man made an offering of thirty cows, with their calves, to the infant, and from his very birth took him to be the patron of his home and family.
The child was baptized shortly after his birth by Bishop Erc at Tubber na Molt, or the Wedder’s Well, which has given its name to the townland of Tubrid, near Ardfert, and is still regarded as a holy well by the people, who hold a station there on the festival of Brendan. Numerous votive offerings of every kind, hung around the well, attest the faith of the people in the healing virtue of its waters.
For one year the child was nursed in the house of his parents, and was then taken away by Bishop Erc to be placed under saintly fosterage. St. Ita had just then founded her convent of Ceall Ita, now known as Killeedy, in the great plain south of Newcastle West, in the county Limerick, and close to the northern limits of that Slieve Lougher range, which bounded the native territory of St. Brendan. The ruins of her ancient church are still to be seen, as well as the bountiful stream from which young Brendan must have often drunk, and also the lofty fragment of an ancient castle, doubtless built there to defend the church, like a round tower, during the stormy centuries of the Danish incursions.
The young Brendan remained under the care of St. Ita for five years, and no doubt during these years acquired much of that spirit of confiding and fervent piety in which he walked all the days of his life. He always looked upon St. Ita as a mother; in his temptations and trials he had recourse to her holy counsels; “for she was prudent in word and work, sweet and winning in her address, but constant of mind and firm of purpose.”[181]
St. Erc, the tutor of Brendan, then took the boy under his own charge. He was a learned as well as a holy man, and is most probably to be identified with Erc of Slane, ‘the sweet spoken judge of Patrick,’ who was one of the high officials of the king, when St. Patrick visited Tara, and whose death is recorded A.D. 512.