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LIFE OF ST. DECLAN OF ARDMORE
(Edited from MS. in Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels).
Translated from the Irish
With Introduction
by
REV. P. POWER, M.R.I.A.
University College, Cork.
INTRODUCTION
"If thou hast the right, O Erin,
to a champion of battle to aid thee
thou hast the head of a hundred
thousand, Declan of Ardmore"
(Martyrology of Oengus).
Five miles or less to the east of Youghal Harbour, on the southern
Irish coast, a short, rocky and rather elevated promontory juts, with
a south-easterly trend, into the ocean [about 51 deg. 57 min. N /
7 deg. 43 min. W]. Maps and admiralty charts call it Ram Head, but
the real name is Ceann-a-Rama and popularly it is often styled Ardmore
Head. The material of this inhospitable coast is a hard metamorphic
schist which bids defiance to time and weather. Landwards the shore
curves in clay cliffs to the north-east, leaving, between it and the
iron headland beyond, a shallow exposed bay wherein many a proud ship
has met her doom. Nestling at the north side of the headland and
sheltered by the latter from Atlantic storms stands one of the most
remarkable groups of ancient ecclesiastical remains in Ireland--all
that has survived of St. Declan's holy city of Ardmore. This embraces
a beautiful and perfect round tower, a singularly interesting ruined
church commonly called the cathedral, the ruins of a second church
beside a holy well, a primitive oratory, a couple of ogham inscribed
pillar stones, &c., &c.
No Irish saint perhaps has so strong a local hold as Declan or has
left so abiding a popular memory. Nevertheless his period is one of
the great disputed questions of early Irish history. According to
the express testimony of his Life, corroborated by testimony of the
Lives of SS. Ailbhe and Ciaran, he preceded St. Patrick in the Irish
mission and was a co-temporary of the national apostle. Objection,
exception or opposition to the theory of Declan's early period is
based less on any inherent improbability in the theory itself than on
contradictions and inconsistencies in the Life. Beyond any doubt the
Life does actually contradict itself; it makes Declan a cotemporary
of Patrick in the fifth century and a cotemporary likewise of St.
David a century later. In any attempted solution of the difficulty
involved it may be helpful to remember a special motive likely to
animate a tribal histrographer, scil.:--the family relationship, if
we may so call it, of the two saints; David was bishop of the Deisi
colony in Wales as Declan was bishop of their kinsmen of southern
Ireland. It was very probably part of the writer's purpose to call
attention to the links of kindred which bound the separated Deisi;
witness his allusion later to the alleged visit of Declan to his
kinsmen of Bregia. Possibly there were several Declans, as there
were scores of Colmans, Finians, &c., and hence perhaps the confusion
and some of the apparent inconsistencies. There was certainly a
second Declan, a disciple of St. Virgilius, to whom the latter
committed care of a church in Austria where he died towards close of
eighth century. Again we find mention of a St. Declan who was a
foster son of Mogue of Ferns, and so on. It is too much, as Delehaye
("Legendes Hagiographiques") remarks, to expect the populace to
distinguish between namesakes. Great men are so rare! Is it likely
there should have lived two saints of the same name in the same
country!
The latest commentators on the question of St. Declan's period--and
they happen to be amongst the most weighty--argue strongly in favour
of the pre-Patrician mission (Cfr. Prof. Kuno Meyer, "Learning
Ireland in the Fifth Century"). Discussing the way in which letters
first reached our distant island of the west and the causes which led
to the proficiency of sixth-century Ireland in classical learning
Zimmer and Meyer contend that the seeds of that literary culture,
which flourished in Ireland of the sixth century, had been sown
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