crown of the head, leaving the hair to grow in a circle all round it; while the Irish, allowing the hair to cover the back of the head, shaved or clipped it away, in the form of a crescent, from the front. Both parties, with equal confidence, and, it may be added, ignorance, appealed to antiquity in support of their respective tonsures; while, on the part of the Irish, the real motive for clinging so fondly to their old custom was, that it had been introduced among them, with all their other ecclesiastical rules and usages, by the national apostle, St. Patrick. According as their Paschal rule, however, gave way, this form of the tonsure followed its fate; and in a Canon, the date of which is supposed to be about the seventh or eighth century, we find an order for the observance of the Roman tonsure. A. D. However constantly the kings of Ireland, at this period, were, as her annals record, in conflict with each other, that perfect security from foreign invasion which she had through so long a course of ages enjoyed, still continued to be inviolate. A slight interruption, however, of this course of good fortune,—as if to break the spell hitherto 684. guarding her, occurred towards the close of this century, when, notwithstanding the habitual relations of amity between the Northumbrians and the Irish, an expedition, commanded by the general of Egfrid, King of Northumberland, landed on the eastern coast of Ireland, and ravaging the whole of the territory, at that time called Bregia, spared, as the annals tell us, neither people nor clergy, and carried off with them a number of captives, as well as considerable plunder. This sudden and, apparently, wanton aggression is supposed to have been owing to the offence taken by Egfrid at the protection afforded by the Irish to his brother, Alfrid, who was then an exile in their country. Availing himself of the leisure which his period of banishment afforded, this intelligent prince had become a proficient in all the studies of his age: nor was he the only royal foreigner who, in those times, found a shelter in Ireland, as Dagobert, the son of the King of Austrasia, had, not long before, been educated there in a monastery; and, after a seclusion of many years, being recalled from thence to his own country, became sovereign of all Austrasia, under the title of Dagobert II. The very year after his piratical attack on the Irish coast, King Egfrid, by a just judgment upon him, as Bede appears to think, for this wanton aggression on 66 a harmless nation, which had been always most friendly to the English," was, in a rash invasion of the Pictish territory, defeated and slain; and his brother Alfrid, though illegitimate, succeeded to the throne. With the view of seeking restitution, both of the property and the captives, which had been carried away in the marauding expedition under Egfrid, Adamnan, the abbot of Hy, was sent to the court of the new king, whose warm attachment and gratitude to Ireland, as well as his personal friendship for her legate, could not fail to ensure perfect success to the mission; and accordingly we find, in the annals of the year 684, a record of the return of Adamnan, bringing back with him from Northumbria sixty captives.) This able and learned man was descended from the same royal line with his predecessor, St. Columba, namely, the race of the northern Nials, which, from the first foundation of Hy, furnished, for more than two centuries, almost all its abbots. So constant did the Irish remain to one line of descent, as well in their abbots as their kings. It was during this or a subsequent visit to his royal friend that Adamnan, observing the practice of the English churches, was induced to adopt the Roman Paschal system; as well as to employ, on his return home, all the influence he possessed, with his countrymen, in persuading them to follow his example. In those parts of Ireland which were exempt from the jurisdiction of Hy, his success appears to have been considerable; but neither in that monastery, nor any of those dependent upon it, could their eminent abbot succeed in winning over converts. Among the writings left by Adamnan, the most generally known is his Life of St. Columba,-a work, of which a fastidious Scotch critic has pronounced, that "it is the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole Middle Ages."|| In the annals of the reign of the monarch Finnachtha, which lasted from the year 674 to 693, we meet with one of the few records of civil transactions, which the *On account of his illegitimacy, Alfrid had been set aside by some of the nobles, and his younger brother Egfrid exalted to the throne. "Is (Alfridus) quia nothus, ut dixi, erat factione optimatum, quamvis senior, regno indignus et æstimatus, in Hiberniam, seu vi, seu indignatione secesserat. Ita ab odio germani tutus, et magno otio literis imbutus, omni philosophia animum composuerat."—Gulielm. Malmsbur. De Gest. Reg. lib. i. c. 3. † Vastavit misere gentem innoxiam et nationi Anglorum semper amicissimam.-Lib. iv. c. 26. He ably retrieved, too, as Bede informs us, the ruined state of that kingdom. How much this prince had profited by his studies in Ireland, appears from what the same historian states of him, that he was most learned in the Scriptures"-" vir in scripturis doctissimus."-Lib. iv. c. 26. § Annal. IV. Mag. Pinkerton, Inquiry, &c. monkish chroniclers have deigned to transmit; nor even in this instance, perhaps, should we have been furnished with any knowledge of the fact, had it not been so closely connected with the ascendency and glory of the church. The Boarian tribute, that iniquitous tax upon the people of Leinster, which had now, through forty successive reigns, been one of the most fertile of all the many sources of national strife, was, at length, at the urgent request of St. Moling, archbishop of Ferns, remitted by the pious King Finnachtha, for himself and his successors, for ever. Towards the close of this century, we again find the page of Irish history illuminated by a rich store of saintly ornaments. It is highly probable that, on the return of Prince Dagobert to Austrasia, he had been accompanied or followed thither from Ireland by some of those eminent scholars who had, during his stay there, presided over his studies; as we find him, on his subsequent accession to the throne, extending his notice and pa tronage to two distinguished natives of Ireland, St. Arbogast* and St. Florentius, the former of whom having resided, for some time, in retirement at Alsace, was, by Dagobert, when he became king, appointed bishop of Strasburg; and, on his death, a few years after, his friend and countryman, Florentius, became his successor. The tombs of two brothers, Erard and Albert, both distinguished Irish saints of this period, were long shown at Ratisbon; and St. Wiro, who is said to have been a native of the county of Clare, rose to such eminence by his sanctity, that Pepin of Heristal, the mighty ruler and father of kings, selected him for his spiritual director, and was accustomed, we are told, to confess to him barefoot. But one of the most celebrated of the Irish missionaries of this period, was the great apostle of Franconia, St. Kilian, who, to his other triumphs and glories in the cause of religion, added finally that of martyrdom. His illustrious convert, the Duke of Wurtzburg, whose conversion was followed by that of numbers of his subjects, having contracted a marriage with the wife of his brother, St. Kilian pointed out to him the unlawfulness of such a connexion, and required, as a proof of his sense of religion, that he should dissolve it. The Duke, confessing this to be the most difficult of all the trials imposed upon him, yet added that, having already sacrificed so much for the love of God, he would also give up Geilana, notwithstanding that she was so dear to him, as soon as a military expedition, on which he was then summoned, should be at an end. On being informed, after his departure, of what had passed, Geilana determined to take her revenge; and, seizing the opportunity when St. Kilian, accompanied by two of his brethren, was employed in chanting the midnight service, she sent an assassin, with orders to put them all to death. As the saint had exhorted them to receive calmly the wished-for crown of martyrdom, no resistance was made by any of the party, and they were, one by one, quietly beheaded. On the same night, their remains were hastily deposited in the earth, together with their clothes and pontifical ornaments, the sacred books and cross; and were many years after, discovered by St. Burchard, Bishop of Wurtzburg. Of the impious Geilana we are told, that she was seized with an evil spirit, which so grievously tormented her that she soon after died; and, to this day, St. Kilian is honoured as Wurtzburg's patron saint. To this period it seems most reasonable to refer the patron saint of Tarentum, Cataldus, of whose acts more has been written, and less with certainty known, than of any other of the great ornaments of Irish church history. His connexion with the cele *Arbogastus, origine Scotus.-Mabillon. † There has been some doubt as to the claims of Ireland to this saint; but Bollandus, after much consideration on the subject, declares it to be the most probable opinion that he was an Irishman. See the point discussed by Dr. Lanigan, chap. xviii. note 95. Dr. Lingard says (Anglo-Saxon Church, chap. xiii. note 12.) that Alcuin, in the poem de Pont. Ebor. v. 1045, calls Wiro an Anglo-Saxon. Now, in the said poem, which, by the by, was not written by Alcuin, there is not a word about Wiro at that verse, nor, as far as I can find, in any other part of it."-Lanigan, chap. xviii. note 105. § See, for a long account of this saint, Usher's De Brit. Eccles. Primord. 751. et seq. From a Life of Catal. dus, in verse, by Bonaventura Moronus, Usher cites some opening lines, of which the following are a spe. cimen : "Oceani Divum Hesperii Fhæbique cadentis The place of his birth was thus announced, we are told, in song, in the ancient churches of Tarentum: "Gaude, felix Hibernia, de qua proles alma progreditur:" And again, in this rhyming epitaph: brated school of Lismore, which was not founded till about the year 669, places him, at least, towards the conclusion of the seventh century, if not at the beginning of the eighth; it being evident, from the mention of Lismore, in some of the numerous poems dedicated to his praise, that the fame of that school had, at the time when he flourished, already extended itself to foreign lands.* In the eighth century, indeed, the high reputation of the Irish for scholarship had become established throughout Europe; and that mode of applying the learning and subtlety of the schools to the illustration of theology, which assumed, at a later period, a more systematic form, under the name of the Scholastic Philosophy, is allowed to have originated among the eminent divines whom the monasteries of Ireland, in the course of this century, poured fourth. Of the dialectical powers of these theologians we are furnished with one remarkable specimen, in a sort of syllogistic argument used by them on the subject of the Trinity, which, however hetrodox may seem its tendency, by no means merits the charge of sophistry brought against it; as it but puts in a short, condensed form, the main difficulty of the doctrine, and marks clearly the two dangerous shoals of Tritheism and Sabellianism, between which the orthodox Trinitarian finds it so difficult to steer.t As we approach the middle of the eighth century, the literary annals of the country present a much rarer display of eminent native names. But, however thinly scattered, they were the sole or chief lights of their time. Minds, in advance of the age they live in, have always received and deserved a double portion of fame; and there is one dis tinguished Irishman of this period, whose name, from the darkness in which it shone out, will continue to be remembered when those of far more gifted men will have passed into oblivion. Virgilius whose real name is supposed to have been Fargil, or Feargal, appeared first as a missionary abroad, about the year 746, when, arriving in France, he attracted the notice and friendship of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, and became an inmate of his princely residence near Compiegne, on the Oise. From thence, after a stay of two years, he proceeded to Bavaria, bearing letters of introduction from his able patron to the duke Odilo, then ruler of that duchy. The great English missionary, Boniface,the Apostle, as he is in general styled, of the Germans,-had been lately appointed to the new archbishopric of Mentz, and a difference of opinion on a point of theology, between him and Virgilius, who had been placed within the jurisdiction of his see, first brought them into collision with each other. Some ignorant priest having been in the habit of using bad Latin in administering baptism, St. Boniface, who chose to consider the ceremony thus performed to be invalid, ordered Virgilius, in some such cases that had occurred, to perform the baptism over again. This the wiser abbot spiritedly refused, maintaining that the want of grammatical knowledge in the minister could not "Felix Hibernia, sed Magis Tarentum, Que claudis in tumulo magnum talentum." Usher has amply exposed in this, as in numerous other instances, the impudent pretences on which the notorious Dempster has laid claim to our Irish saints, as natives of Scotland. In a passage too long to be given entire, Bonaventura Moronus has described the multitudes of foreign scholars that flocked from every part of Europe to the famous school at Lismore, where Cataldus had been educated: "Apud modernos scholasticos maxime apud Scotos est syllogismus delusionis, ut dicunt, Trinitatem, sicut personarum, ita esse substantiarum."-Letter of Benedict, Abbot of Aniane, quoted by Mosheim, vol. ii. cent. viii. chap. 3. The object of the syllogism of those Irish scholastics is thus described by Benedict :"Quatenus si adsenserit illectus auditor, Trinitatem esse trium substantiarum Deum, trium derogetur cultor Deorum: si autem abnuerit, personarum denegatur culpetur:" that is, as explained by Mosheim, "You must either affirm or deny that the three Persons in the Deity are three substances: if you affirm it, you are undoubtedly a Tritheist, and worship three Gods; if you deny it, this denial implies that they are not three distinct persons, and thus you fall into Sabellianism." 1 Avant tous ces savants hommes, on avoit admiré eu la personne de Virgile, Evêque de Saltzbourg et Apôtre de la Carinthie, de grandes connoissances, tant sur la Philosophie que sur la Théologie. Il est le premier que l'on sache qui ait découvert les Antipodes, ou l'autre monde."-Hist. Litt. de la France, tom. iv. "The Irish Fear, sometimes contracted into Fer, has, in latinizing of names, been not seldom changed into Vir. For Fear, in Irish, signifies man as Vir does in Latin. Thus an abbot of Hy, whose name is con. stantly written in Irish Fergna, is called by Adamnan Virgnous, through, as Colgan observes, a Latin inflection."-Lanigan, chap xix. note 127. In performing the ceremony of baptism, this priest used to say, "Baptize te in nomine Patria et Filia et Spiritua Sancta, instead of " Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."-Epist. Zachar. Vet. Ep. Hibern. Sylloge. invalidate the efficacy of the ordinance. Confident, too, in the correctness of his opinion, he laid all the circumstances of the case before Pope Zachary, who immediately wrote to reprove the archbishop for the order which he had issued, and thus virtually gave his sanction to the opposition of Virgilius. This triumph over him by an inferior seems to have rankled in the mind of Boniface, who from thenceforth sought opportunities of denouncing Virgilius to the pope, as guilty of various errors on points of catholic doctrine. Among these charges, the most serious, as may be concluded from the excitement which it produced, was that which accused the Irish abbot of maintaining that there "was another world, and other men, under the earth." The fact was, that the acute mind of Virgilius had, from the knowledge acquired by him in the Irish schools, where geographical and philosophical studies were more cultivated than in other parts of the West, come to the conclusion that the earth was of a spherical figure, and that, by a necessary consequence, there were antipodes. This, as it proved upon inquiry, was the scientific doctrine which had been represented ignorantly to the pope, as a belief in another world below the earth, distinct from ours, inhabited by men, not of the race of Adam, nor included among those for whom Christ died. It is by no means wonderful that, on such a representation, as well of the opinion as of the deductions from it, Pope Zachary should regard it as an alarming heresy, and write, in answer to the archbishop, that, "should the charge be proved, a council must be convened, and the offender expelled from the church." As no record exists of any farther proceedings upon the subject, we may take for granted that the accused abbot found means of clearing himself from the aspersion; and so little did this memorable charge of heresy stand in the way of his preferment, earthly or heavenly, that in a few years after he was made bishop of Saltzburg, and in a. D. 1233, we find him canonized by Pope Gregory IX. Such are the real particulars of a transaction which it has been the object of many writers to misrepresent, for the purpose of flippantly accusing the church of Rome of a deliberate design to extinguish the light of science, and obstruct the progress of truth. Were it even certain that this pope was slow to believe in the existence of antipodes, he would, at least, have erred in good company; as already the poet Lucretius had pronounced this belief to be inconsistent with reason; while no less a church authority than St. Augustine had denounced it as contrary to the Scriptures. But there is every reason to suppose, that Pope Zachary, on the doctrine of Virgilius being explained to him, saw that it was an opinion to be at least tolerated, if not believed; and so far was the propounder of it from being, as is commonly stated, punished by losing his bishopric,** that it appears, on the contrary, to have been shortly after his promulgation of this doctrine that he was raised to the see of Saltzburg. The life of this learned and active man, after his elevation to the see of Saltzburg, was marked by a succession of useful public acts; and the great Basilic, raised by him in honour of St. Rupert, attested at once the piety and magnificence of his nature. But the most lasting service rendered by him to the cause of religion, was the zealous part which he took in propagating the Gospel among the Carinthians. Two young princes of the reigning family of that province having been, at his request, baptized and educated as Christians, he found himself enabled, through their means, when they afterwards succeeded to power, so far to extend and establish the church already planted in their dominions, as fully to justify his claim to the title of the Apostle of Carinthia. Under the auspices of the munificent Charlemagne, that country on whose shores the missionary and the scholar had never failed to meet with welcome and fame, had become a still more tempting asylum for the student and the exile; and among the learned of other lands who enjoyed that prince's patronage, those from Ireland were * "Quod alius mundus et alii homines suð terrâ sint, seu alius sol et luna."-Bonifac. Epist. Bibliothec. Patrum. The argument of Boniface was, that "Si essent antipodes, alii homines adeoque alius Christus introduceretur." "Disceptationis exitum non comperio. Fit verisimile aut purgasse se Virgilium Pontifici, sive coram, ultro, quod inter bonos solet, in sive per litteras: aut, cognitis invidorum utriusque fraudibus gratiam esse reditum."-Velser, Rerum Boiarum, lib. v. § Among others, D'Alembert has founded on this supposed persecution of the Irish scholar, whom he honours so far as to connect his name with Galileo's, some strong charges against the tribunal of Rome, which, he says, condamna un célèbre astronome pour avoir soutenu le mouvement de la terre, et le déclara hérétique; a-peu-près comme le pape Zacharie avoit condamné, quelques siècles auparavant, un Evêque, pour n'avoir pas pensé comme Saint Augustin sur les Antipodes, et pour avoir déviné leur existence six cens ans avant que Cristophe Columbe les découvrit."-Discours Prélim. de l'Encyclopédie. De Civitat. Dei. lib. xvi. c. 9. Lib. i. 1064. **Thus, Dr. Campbell, one of the most pretending and superficial of the writers on Irish affairs, speaks of "this great man as sentenced to degradation, upon his conviction of being a Mathematician, by Pope Zachary, in the eighth century."-Strictures on the Ecclesiast. and Lit. Hist. of Ireland. 148 not the least conspicuous or deserving. The strange circumstances under which two itinerant Irish scholars, named Clement and Albinus, contrived to attract the emperor's notice, are thus related by a monkish chronicler of the time.* Arriving, in company with some British merchants, on the shores of France, these two Scots of Ireland, as they are designated by the chronicler, observing that the crowds who flocked around them on their arrival were eager only for saleable articles, could think of no other mode of drawing attention to themselves, than by crying out "Who wants wisdom? let him come to us, for we have it to sell." By continually repeating this cry, they soon succeeded in becoming objects of remark; and, as they were found, upon nearer inquiry, to be no ordinary men, an account of them was forthwith transmitted to Charle magne, who gave orders that they should be conducted into his presence. Their scheme or whim, whichsoever it might have been, was at once crowned with success; as the king, finding their pretensions to wisdom (as all the learning of that time was by courtesy called,) to be not without foundation, placed Clement at the head of a seminary which he then established in France, and sent Albinus to preside over a similar institution at Pavia. The historian Denina, remarking the fallen state of Italy at this period, when she was compelled, as he says, to look to the North and the extreme West for instructors, adds, as a striking proof of her reduced condition, that Irish monks were placed by Charlemagne at the head of some of her schools.‡ Some doubts have been started as to the truth of this characteristic adventure of the two Irish scholars. But, in addition to the evidence on which the story rests, and which is the same relied upon for most of the early life of Charlemagne, the incident is marked throughout with features so truly Irish-the dramatic humour of the expedient, the profession itself of an itenerant scholar, to a late period common in Ireland,— that there appear but slight grounds for doubting the authenticity of the anecdote. The vehement denial of its truth by Tiraboschi is actuated too evidently by offended national vanity, at the thought of an Irishman having been chosen to preside over a place of education in Italy, to be received with the deference his authority might otherwise command; and both Muratori and Denina have given their sanction to the main fact of the narrative. In the latter part of this century we find another native of Ireland, named Dungal, trying his fortune, with far more valid claims to distinction, in France, and honoured in like manner with the patronage of her imperial chief. Of the letter addressed by this learned Scot|| to Charlemange, on the two solar eclipses alleged to have been observed in Europe in the year 810, I have already had occasion to speak; and, however superficial the astronomical knowledge displayed in this short tract, the writer has proved himself to have been well acquainted with all that the ancients had said upon the subject; while both in his admission that two** solar eclipses might take place within the year, and his doubt that such a rare incident had occurred in 810, he is equally correct. The very circumstance, indeed, of its having been selected by Charlemange, though living a recluse, at that time, in the monastery of St. Denis, as one of the few European scholars worthy of being consulted on such a point, shows sufficiently the high estimation in which he was then held. * Monach. Sangall. de Gest. Carol. "On compte encore (say the Benedictines) entre les co-opérateurs de Charlemagne dans l'exécution de son grand dessein, un certain Clement, Hibernois de nation."-Tom iv. "Ma ben maggior maraviglia ci dovrà parere, che l'Italia non solamente allora abbia dovuto riconoscere da' barbari boreali il rinnovamento della milizia, ma abbia da loro dovuto apprendere in quello stesso tempo le scienze più necessarie; e che bisognasse dagli ultimi confini d'occidente et del nord far venire in Italia i maestri ad insegnarci, non che altro, la lingua latina. Carlo Magno nel 781 avea preposto alle scuole d'Italia e di Francia due Monachi Irlandesi."-Delle Rivoluzioni d' Italia, lib. viii. cap. 12. After mentioning that one of these Irishmen, Clement, had been detained in France by Charlemagne, Tiraboschi adds, "L'altro fù da lui mandato in Italia, e gli fù assignato il monastero di S. Agostino presso Pavia, ...... acciochè chiunque fosse bramoso, potesse esser da lui istruito. Ecco il gran racconto del Monaco di S. Gallo, su cui è fondata l'accennata commune opinione. Ancorchè esso si ammettesse per vero, altro finalmente non potremmo raccogliene, se non che uno Scozzese fu mandato da Carlo Magno a Pavia, per tenervi scuola; ne ciò basterebbe a provare, che vi fosse tale scarsezza d'uomini dotti in Italia, che con. venisse inviarvi stranieri."-Storia della Letterat. Kalian., tom. iii lib. 3. cap. 1. Having stated that Mabillon supposed Dungal to be an Irishman, the authors of the Hist. Littéraire de la France say, "Ce qui paroit appuyé tant sur son nom que sur ce que l'Hibernie fournit alors plusieurs autres grands hommes à la France." Dacher. Spicileg. tom. iii. The following remarks on Dungal's letter are from the pen of Ismael Bullialdus," astronomus profunda indaginis," as Ricciolus styles him, whom D'Achery had consulted on the sub. ject:"Non est enim possibile ut in locis ab æquinoctiali linea paulo remotioribus, intra semestre spatium binæ eclipses solis cernantur, quod sub lineâ æquinoctiali, vel in locis subjacentibus parallelis ab eâ non longè descriptis accidere potest: intra vero quinquemestre spatium in eodem hemisphærio boreali vel austrino bine eclipses solares conspici quæunt, quæ omnia demonstrari possunt utpote vera. Sed hujus Epistolæ Auctor Dungalus has differentias ignorasse videtur." **In Struyk's Catalogue of Eclipses there occur, I think, four instances of a solar eclipse having been observed twice within the space of a year, viz. A. D. 237-8, 812-3, 1185-6, and 1408-9. |