It is unnecessary for us to dwell at any great length on the importance of this venerable document. It not only illustrates in an extraordinary manner many points of Catholic dogma, but also shows that several of the disciplinary observances now in force in the Church were faithfully observed by our fathers in the seventh century. For instance, the respectful and loving homage due to the Blessed Mother of God is insinuated in the fifth strophe; in the ninth and following strophes we are taught the authority with which bishops are invested in the Church—authority which extends over every class no matter how exalted: "Check the noble kings: be thou the vigilant pastor". In the eighteenth and following we are instructed in the duty of honouring superiors as we honour Christ Himself. From the thirty-eighth to the sixty-sixth we are taught the great and most important offices of a priest, especially with regard to offering the Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord, the practice of daily Mass, the celebration of Requiem Masses for the dead, the administration of the Holy Communion in life and death, and the necessity of receiving the confessions of the faithful, both before Communion and at the last moment.
The disciplinary observances which we chiefly remark in the Rule are the raising up of the hands, the striking the breasts, and the genuflexions prescribed at the time of prayers and of the Holy Sacrifice; the perpetual psalmody: "To sing the three times fifty (Psalms) is an indispensable practice"; the purity of life required in the priest: "There shall be no permanent love in thy heart, but the love of God alone; for pure is the Body which thou receivest: purely must thou go to receive it" (strophe 65). The use of the sign of the Cross is mentioned at strophe eighty-eight; and at eighty-six we find mention of the canonical hours, and at eighty-nine of the ancient custom, still preserved in many parts of the Liturgy, of praying erect, of not kneeling on Sundays, and of genuflecting on entering the church or place where God's glory dwells. The practice of fasting, and of other corporal austerities, is also inculcated; and while in the 102nd and 106th strophes, Sundays and festivals are exempted from the law of fasting, the fast of Lent (strophes 105, 109, and following), of Advent (strophe 111), of two fasting days in each week, (strophe 110), and of the Quarter Tense (strophe 114), are specially mentioned. We also find an enumeration of the festivals as they are celebrated by the Church even at our day; the Sundays, festivals of the apostles, of noble martyrs, and of all the saints; the "night of great Christmas", the Epiphany, when the star led the wise men to Bethlehem; Easter; "the festivals of the King of Truth"; Pentecost; and even the festival of the birth of St. John the Baptist.
On reading over this remarkable document we are struck with the truth of the remark of the eloquent Ozanam in the chapter of his work Etudes Germaniques, he has devoted to the "preaching of the Irish". He says: "We must not here repeat that accusation so often brought against the Church of Ireland, viz., that being instructed in sacred learning from Asia, she rejected the authority of the Popes; and that in union with the Culdees of Brittany, her monks preserved their religious independence in the midst of the universal spiritual bondage of the middle ages. If the founders of Irish monasteries, in the provisions and very terms of their rules, often recall to mind the institutions of the east, it was at Lerins and in the writings of Cassian they learned them. It was from Rome that Patrick received his mission; from Rome he received the language of his liturgy, the dogmas he taught, and the religious observances he propagated. Run over all that remains of these first centuries (of the Irish Church), the decrees of national synods, the penitentials, the legends: you will find in them everything which the enemies of Rome have rejected; the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the invocation of saints, prayers for the dead, the practice of confession, of fasting, and of abstinence. The differences between her and the Churches of the continent are reducible to three points: the form of the tonsure, some of the minor ceremonies of baptism, and the time of keeping Easter, and these slight differences disappeared when the Fathers of the Council of Lene (A.D. 630), 'having had recourse', as they tell us, 'to the chief of Christian cities, as children to their mother', adopted the customs of the rest of Christendom. The religious communities of Ireland were not, then, the jealous guardians of some unheard-of heterodox Christianity. They were the colonies and (as it were) the out-posts of Latin civilization. They maintained learning as well as faith, and their schools imitated the Roman schools in Gaul, whence had come forth the bright luminaries of the Church, Honoratus, Cassian, Salvian, and Sulpicius Severus".
How beautiful is the description of one of these monastic rules, that of Benchor, found in the ancient Antiphonary of that monastery, published by Muratori, and quoted by the same distinguished writer:—
"Benchiur bona regula.
Recta atque divina.
Navis nunquam turbata,
Quamvis fluctibus tonsa,
Necnon vinca vera,
Ex Ægypti transducto,
Christo regina apta,
Solis luce amicta.
Simplex simul atque docta.
Undecumque invicta
Benchiur bona regula".
After giving this glowing picture of the monasteries of Ireland we are not surprised to find this same learned writer exclaiming, "That the monastic race of the ages of barbarism, the missionary race destined to bear aloft the light of faith and learning amidst the increasing darkness of the west, was the Irish people, whose misfortunes are better known than the great services they rendered to European civilization, and whose wonderful vocation has never been studied as it deserves".
In a future number we hope to enter again upon this most interesting subject, when reviewing a valuable contribution just given to our national literature by the learned Dr. Reeves on the Culdees of the British Isles.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Epiphany.
[3] Tithe.