The "Life" here printed, which follows the Latin Life so closely that one seems a late translation of the other, is as far as the editor is aware, contained in a single MS. only. This is M. 23, 50, R.I.A., in the handwriting of John Murphy, "na Raheenach." Murphy was a Co. Cork schoolmaster, scribe, and poet, of whom a biographical sketch will be found prefixed by Mr. R. A. Foley to a collection of Murphy's poems that he has edited. The sobriquet, "na Raheenach," is really a kind of tribal designation. The "Life" is very full but is in its present form a comparatively late production; it was transcribed by Murphy between 1740 and 1750. It is much to be regretted that the scribe tells us nothing of his original. Murphy, but the way, seems to have specialised to some extent in saint's Lives and to have imbued his disciples with something of the same taste. One of his pupils was Maurice O'Connor, a scribe and shipwright of Cove, to whom we owe the Life of St. Ciaran of Saighir printed in "Silva Gadelica." The reasons of choice for publication here of the present Life are avowedly non-philological; the motive for preference is that it is the longest of the three Lives and for historical purposes the most important.
The Life presents considerable evidence of historical reliability; its geography is detailed and correct; its references to contemporaries of Mochuda are accurate on the whole and there are few inconsistencies or none. Moreover it sheds some new light on that chronic puzzle—organisation of the Celtic Church of Ireland. Mochuda, head of a great monastery at Rahen, is likewise a kind of pluralist Parish Priest with a parish in Kerry, administered in his name by deputed ecclesiastics, and other parishes similarly administered in Kerrycurrihy, Rostellan, West Muskerry, and Spike Island, Co. Cork. When a chief parishioner lies seriously ill in distant Corca Duibhne, Mochuda himself comes all the way from the centre of Ireland to administer the last rites to the dying man, and so on.
The relations of the people to the Church and its ministers are in many respects not at all easy to understand. Oblations, for instance, of themselves and their territory, &c., by chieftains are frequent. Oblations of monasteries are made in a similar way. Probably this signifies no more than that the chief region or monastery put itself under the saint's jurisdiction or rule or both. That there were other churches too than the purely monastic appears from offerings to Mochuda of already existing churches, v.g. from the Clanna Ruadhan in Decies, &c.
Lismore, the most famous of Mochuda's foundations, became within a century of the saint's death, one of the great monastic schools of Erin, attracting to his halls, or rather to its boothies, students from all Ireland and even—so it is claimed—from lands beyond the seas. King Alfrid [Aldfrith] of Northumbria, for instance, is said to have partaken of Lismore's hospitality, and certainly Cormac of Cashel, Malachy and Celsus of Armagh and many others of the most distinguished of the Scots partook thereof. The roll of Lismore's calendared saints would require, did the matter fall within our immediate province, more than one page to itself. Some interesting reference to Mochuda and his holy city occur in the Life of one of his disciples, St. Colman Maic Luachain, edited for the R.I.A. by Professor Kuno Meyer.
There are many indications in the present Life that, at one period, and in the time of Carthach, the western boundary of Decies extended far beyond the line at present recognised. Similar indications are furnished by the martyrologies, &c.; for instance, the martyrology of Donegal under November 28th records of "the three sons of Bochra" that "they are of Archadh Raithin in Ui Mic Caille in Deisi Mumhan" and Ibid, p. xxxvii, it is stated "i ccondae Corcaige ataid na Desi Múman." Not only Imokilly but all Co. Cork, east of Queenstown [Cobh] and north to the Blackwater, seems to have acknowledged Mochuda's jurisdiction. At Rathbreasail accordingly (teste Keating, on the authority of the Book of Cloneneigh) the Diocese of Lismore is made to extend to Cork,—probably over the present baronies of Imokilly, Kinatallon, and Barrymore. That part, at least, of Condons and Clangibbon was likewise included is inferrible from the fact that, as late as the sixteenth century visitations, Kilworth, founded by Colman Maic Luachain, ranked as a parish in the diocese of Lismore. Further evidence pointing in the same direction is furnished by Clondulane, &c., represented in the present Life as within Carthach's jurisdiction.
The Rule of St. Carthach is one of the few ancient Irish so-called monastic Rules surviving. It is in reality less a "rule," as the latter is now understood, than a series of Christian and religious counsels drawn up by a spiritual master for his disciples. It must not be understood from this that each religious house did not have it formal regulations. The latter however seem to have depended largely upon the abbot's spirit, will or discretion. The existing "Rules" abound in allusions to forgotten practices and customs and, to add to their obscurity, their language is very difficult—sometimes, like the language of the Brehon Laws, unintelligible. The rule ascribed to Mochuda is certainly a document of great antiquity and may well have emanated from the seventh century and from the author whose name it bears. The tradition of Lismore and indeed of the Irish Church is constant in attributing it to him. Copies of the Rule are found in numerous MSS. but many of them are worthless owing to the incompetence of the scribes to whom the difficult Irish of the text was unintelligible. The text in the Leabhar Breac has been made the basis of his edition of the Rule by Mac Eaglaise, a writer in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (1910). Mac Eaglaise's edition, though it is not all that could be desired, is far the most satisfactory which has yet appeared. Previous editions of the Rule or part of it comprise one by Dr. Reeves in his tract on the Culdees, one by Kuno Meyer in the Gaelic Journal (Vol. V.) and another in Archiv für C.L. (3 Bund. 1905), and another again in Eriu (Vol. 2, p. 172), besides a free translation of the whole rule by O'Curry in the I. R. Record for 1864. The text of the Record edition of 1910 is from Leabhar Breac collated with other MSS. The order in the various copies is not the same and some copies contain material which is wanting in others. The "Rule" commences with the Ten Commandments, then it enumerates the obligations respectively of bishops, abbots, priests, monks, and culdees [anchorites]. Finally there is a section on the order of meals and on the refectory and another on the obligations of a king. The following excerpt on the duties of an abbot (I. E. Record translation) will illustrate the style and spirit of the Rule:
"Of the Abbot of a Church.
1.—If you be the head man of a Church noble is the power, better for you that you be just who take the heirship of the king.
2.—If you are the head man of a Church noble is the obligation, preservation of the rights of the Church from the small to the great.
3.—What Holy Church commands preach then with diligence; what you order to each one do it yourself.