After referring to the Synod of the Campus Lene, as explained above, and the appeal to Rome in accordance with the ancient statute (mandatum) of the Irish Church, he goes on to say that according to the synodical decree[200] all such “causae majores ad caput urbium sunt referenda.” This refers to the decree of the Synod of Patrick, Auxilius, and Iserninus, bidding the Irish prelates if any cause of disunion arose, to go to the place which the Lord hath chosen (to Rome, the ‘caput urbium’) for the decision of these more important causes, “so we sent there certain wise and humble men, whom we knew, as children to their mother.” And they returned in the third year, and told us what they had seen and heard, and how in the Church of St. Peter, the common hospice of all the faithful, Greeks and Hebrews, Scythians and Egyptians—“all celebrated Easter on the same day, which differed an entire month from our own, and we saw with our own eyes many miracles wrought by the relics of the saints and martyrs which they had carried home with them from the holy city.” In conclusion, he adds that he had not written to attack them but to defend the truth; he apologises for any wrong or harsh words that might have fallen from him, and in the last sentence implores on them all the strong blessing of the Holy Trinity to guard them from all evil.
This remarkable epistle affords a striking proof, not only of Cummian’s own learning, but of the high efficiency of the schools of his native land, in which he studied. He gives the Hebrew, Greek and Egyptian names of the first lunar month. He refers to almost every cycle, and emendation of a cycle, of which we have any account, briefly, indeed, but sufficiently to show that he was acquainted with them, and with the decrees of synods, and with the passages of the Fathers that make reference to them. Above all things, he insists upon the unity of the Church, and incontestably establishes the Irish tradition in his own time, that the Irish Church was founded from Rome, that Rome is the Source of Unity, the final Court of Appeal, and the Mother of the Irish, as of all other Churches. The text is unfortunately somewhat corrupt, and the style wants polish; but, though in this respect Cummian is inferior to several Irish writers of the seventeenth century, his Latin is much superior to that of several ecclesiastical documents that we have seen in our own nineteenth century.
The Liber de Mensura Poenitentiarum, cannot with certainty be ascribed to Cummian Fada; but it is highly probable that he was the author. It was preserved like so many other invaluable Irish MSS., in the Monastery of St. Gall, and has been published in the Bibliotheca Patrum, and, together with the Paschal Epistle, has been republished by Migne.[201]
We have seen that Cummian was regarded by the Abbot of Hy as a great moralist, and it may be that the same Segienus was the “faithful friend,” whom the author addresses—mi fidelissime—in the prologue. The treatise consists of fourteen chapters, giving the canonical penances assigned to sins of various kinds. It treats of these sins in the most minute detail, but contains little original matter; for the penances are, in most cases, taken from the works of the Fathers and the penitential canons of various early Councils. But it shows how carefully these matters were attended to in our early Irish Church, and is another striking monument of its ecclesiastical learning.
Cummian Fada has not unfrequently been confounded with Cummian Finn, the nephew of Segienus, Abbot of Hy. The latter wrote a life of St. Columba, to which Adamnan refers, and most of which he, Adamnan, inserted in the Third Book of his own Life of St. Columba. The Paschal Epistle has also been attributed to him, but without any grounds. The intrinsic evidence of the letter itself shows that it was written by a prelate of the southern half of Ireland; he speaks of Ailbe, Brendan, and the rest as “our fathers and predecessors;” he had accepted the Roman usage which Hy and its family refused to accept for many years after; and he uses in reference to St. Peter the very peculiar expression, “clavicularis,” which is also used by the author of the poem in honour of the Apostles, which was undoubtedly the work of Cummian Fada, the Bishop of Clonfert.
The Four Masters say that “St. Cummian Fada, son of Fiachna, Bishop of Cluainfearta Brennain, died on the 12th of November, 661,” which is his festival day. The entry of the death of his beloved tutor, St. Colman O’Cluasaigh, is marked a little later on as happening in the same year, and therefore towards its close. Colman, however, lived long enough after Cummian to compose an elegy on his death. The Four Masters have preserved a few lines, which may be thus translated:—
“No bark o’er Luimneach’s bosom bore,
From Munster to the Northern shore,
A prize so rich in battle won,
As Cummian’s corpse, great Fiachna’s son.
Of Erin’s priests, it were not meet
That one should sit in Gregory’s Seat,
Except that Cummian crossed the sea,
For he Rome’s ruler well might be.
Ah! woe is me, at Cummian’s bier
My eyelids drop the ceaseless tear;
The pain, of hopeless anguish bred,
Will burst my heart since Cummian’s dead.”
The poet’s verse was true—Colman died within a month of his pupil to whom he was so deeply and tenderly attached. We may infer, too, from these verses that Cummian died at home in his native Kerry, but that his remains were carried up the Shannon in a boat to his own Cathedral of Clonfert, where he was interred. The Four Masters tell us that in A.D. 1162 the “relics of Maeinenn and of Cummian Fada[202] were removed from the earth by the clergy of Brenainn (that is, of Clonfert), and they were enclosed in a protecting shrine.” So far as we know there is no account to be had now of the existence of this shrine.
IV.—Subsequent History of Clonfert.
Frequent reference is subsequently made in our Annals to the monastery and See of Clonfert, but it is oftentimes a saddening record. Its buildings were four times plundered, and six times burnt. Nor was this the work of the Danes alone. The degenerate chieftains of Ireland too frequently followed their bad example, and provoked Divine vengeance by unspeakable acts of sacrilege, especially during the tenth and eleventh centuries.