And the tide of sanctity and learning overflowed the shores of the holy isle; many were the pious missionaries who, in those days of religious fervor, went forth to labor for the salvation of souls among the nations of Europe. The memory of their works is still preserved in the countries which reaped the fruits of their zeal. The Italian town, San Columbano, still bears the name of the great Columbanus, a native of Leinster; and St. Gall, in Switzerland, still reminds us of his friend and disciple Gallus. The hermitage of Saint Fiacre, another Irish saint, is still one of France’s consecrated spots; and the memory of the Connaught man, Saint Fridolin, “the Traveller,” is still blessed on the banks of the Rhine. The famous universities of Paris and of Pavia owe their origin
to the learning and industry of Clement and John, both Irishmen. From Ireland the Anglo-Saxons derived their first enlightenment, and till the thirteenth century the literature of Scotland was the special province of the Irish clergy.
“When we look into the ecclesiastical life of this people,” says the learned Görres, “we are almost tempted to believe that some potent spirit had transported over the sea the cells of the Valley of the Nile, with all their hermits, its monasteries with all their inmates, and had settled them down in the Western isle—an isle which, in the lapse of three centuries, gave eight hundred and fifty saints to the church; won over to Christianity the north of Britain, and, soon after, a large portion of the yet pagan Germany; and, while it devoted the utmost attention to the sciences, cultivated with especial care the mystical contemplation in her religious communities, as well as in the saints whom they produced.”
Numerous vestiges are still to be found in Ireland of those days of enthusiastic faith. Ivy-grown abbeys and churches, and the habitations of saints; and the emblem of our holy creed, now rudely cut on pillar stones, now exquisitely carved in fine proportions, are to be met with scattered over the whole length and breadth of the land—“memorials,” we are told “by a celebrated archæologist, “not only of the piety and magnificence of a people whom ignorance and prejudice have too often sneered at as barbarous, but also as the finest works of sculptured art, of their period, now existing.”
In the wild and lonely valley of Glendalough, County Wicklow, are yet to be seen the remains of the noble monastery, “once the luminary of the Western world,” founded in the beginning of the sixth century by
Saint Kevin, around which a city rose, flourished, and decayed. Gloomy mountains encompass the silent and now almost uninhabited glen, in whose bosom lie the ruins of shrines which nearly thirteen centuries ago were raised in honor of their God by men joyous and thankful in the feeling of certain immortality—men whose fathers in their youth reverenced the Druid as a more than human counsellor.
“Yes, peopled were once these silent shades
With saintly forms of days departed,
When holy men and votive maids
Lived humble here, and heavenly-hearted!”
Here are assembled dismantled churches, crumbling oratories, broken crosses, shattered monumental stones, and tombs, no longer to be distinguished, of bishops, abbots, and recluses. And near the wasted remains of the holy piles, one of those mysterious edifices, a tall and slender Round Tower, stands, still strong and straight, like a sentinel guarding the wrecks of the past. It is impossible to imagine a scene of sterner, more desolate grandeur. On the shore of one of the two lakes that lie embosomed in the glen, rises a beetling rock, in a cavity of which Saint Kevin is said to have lived while pursuing that course of study and contemplation for which his name is even now revered. In this same cavern, too, still known by the name of “Saint Kevin’s Bed,” the illustrious saint and patriot Laurence O’Toole is believed to have ofttimes mused and prayed when he was abbot of Glendalough.
In the county of Meath we find the remains of Saint Columb’s house—Saint Columbkille, the elegant poet, the pious founder of so many monasteries—a high stone-roofed construction of singular architecture, seeming to combine the purpose of an oratory with that of a habitation.
On the celebrated Rock of Cashel stands a group of ruins unparalleled for picturesque beauty and antiquarian interest. The most ancient structure, with the exception of the Round Tower, is Cormac’s chapel, built by Cormac MacCarthy, the pious king of “deep-valleyed Desmond,” in the beginning of the twelfth century. It also is a stone-roofed edifice, with Norman arches and an almost endless variety of Norman decorations. Near it rise the magnificent cathedral founded by Donogh O’Brien, King of Thomond, about 1152; and on the plain beside the rock, Hoar Abbey, the ancient castle of the archbishops, a perfect Round Tower, and numerous crosses.