An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800. Mary Frances Cusack
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had a singular respect for her virtue. Soon after, she founded a house of her order in the plain of Cliach, near Limerick; but the people of Leinster at last became fearful of losing their treasure, and sent a deputation requesting her return, and offering land for the foundation of a large nunnery. Thus was established, in 483, the famous Monastery of Kildare, or the Church of the Oak.
At the request of the saint, a bishop was appointed to take charge of this important work; and under the guidance of Conlaeth, who heretofore had been a humble anchorite, it soon became distinguished for its sanctity and usefulness. The concourse of strangers and pilgrims was immense; and in the once solitary plain one of the largest cities of the time soon made its appearance. It is singular and interesting to remark, how the call to a life of virginity was felt and corresponded with in the newly Christianized country, even as it had been in the Roman Empire, when it also received the faith. Nor is it less noticeable how the same safeguards and episcopal rule preserved the foundations of each land in purity and peace, and have transmitted even to our own days, in the same Church, and in it only, that privileged life.
The Four Masters give her obituary under the year 525. According to Cogitosus, one of her biographers, her remains were interred in her own church. Some authorities assert that her relics were removed to Down, when Kildare was ravaged by the Danes, about the year 824.
It has been doubted whether Downpatrick could lay claim to the honour of being the burial-place of Ireland's three great saints,[141] but there are good arguments in its favour. An old prophecy of St. Columba regarding his interment runs thus:—
"My prosperity in guiltless Hy,
And my soul in Derry,
And my body under the flag
Beneath which are Patrick and Brigid."
The relics of the three saints escaped the fury of the Danes, who burned the town and pillaged the cathedral six or seven times, between the years 940 and 1111. In 1177, John de Courcy took possession of the town, and founded a church attached to a house of Secular Canons, under the invocation of the Blessed Trinity. In 1183 they were replaced by a community of Benedictine monks, from St. Wirburgh's Abbey, at Chester. Malachy, who was then bishop, granted the church to the English monks and prior, and changed the name to that of the Church of St. Patrick. This prelate was extremely anxious to discover the relics of the saints, which a constant tradition averred were there concealed. It is said, that one day, as he prayed in the church, his attention was directed miraculously to an obscure part of it; or, according to another and more probable account, to a particular spot in the abbey-yard, where, when the earth was removed, their remains were found in a triple cave—Patrick in the middle, Columba and Brigid on either side.
At the request of De Courcy, delegates were despatched to Rome by the bishop to acquaint Urban III. of the discovery of the bodies. His Holiness immediately sent Cardinal Vivian to preside at the translation of the relics. The ceremony took place on the 9th of June, 1186, that day being the feast of St. Columba. The relics of the three saints were deposited in the same monument at the right side of the high altar. The right hand of St. Patrick was enshrined and placed on the high altar. In 1315, Edward Bruce invaded Ulster, marched to Downpatrick, destroyed the abbey, and carried off the enshrined hand. In 1538, Lord Grey, who marched into Lecale to establish the supremacy of his master, Henry VIII., by fire and sword, "effaced the statues of the three patron saints, and burned the cathedral, for which act, along with many others equally laudable, he was beheaded three years afterwards." The restoration of the old abbey-church was undertaken of late years, and preceded by an act of desecration, which is still remembered with horror. The church had been surrounded by a burying-ground, where many had wished to repose, that they might, even in death, be near the relics of the three great patron saints of Erinn. But the graves were exhumed without mercy, and many were obliged to carry away the bones of their relatives, and deposit them where they could. The "great tomb," in which it was believed that "Patrick, Brigid, and Columkille" had slept for more than six centuries, was not spared; the remains were flung out into the churchyard, and only saved from further desecration by the piety of a faithful people.
The shrine of St. Patrick's hand was in possession of the late Catholic Bishop of Belfast. The relic itself has long disappeared; but the shrine, after it was carried off by Bruce, passed from one trustworthy guardian to another, until it came into his hands. One of these was a Protestant, who, with noble generosity, handed it over to a Catholic as a more fitting custodian. One Catholic family, into whose care it passed at a later period, refused the most tempting offers for it, though pressed by poverty, lest it should fall into the hands of those who might value it rather as a curiosity than as an object of devotion.
This beautiful reliquary consists of a silver case in the shape of the hand and arm, cut off a little below the elbow. It is considerably thicker than the hand and arm of an ordinary man, as if it were intended to enclose these members without pressing upon them too closely. The fingers are bent, so as to represent the hand in the attitude of benediction.
But there is another relic of St. Patrick and his times of scarcely less interest. The Domhnach Airgid[142] contains a copy of the Four Gospels, which, there is every reason to believe, were used by the great apostle of Ireland. The relic consists of two parts—the shrine or case and the manuscript. The shrine is an oblong box, nine inches by seven, and five inches in height. It is composed of three distinct covers, in the ages of which there is obviously a great difference. The inner or first cover is of wood, apparently yew, and may be coeval with the manuscript it is intended to preserve. The second, which is of copper plated with silver, is assigned to a period between the sixth and twelfth centuries, from the style of its scroll or interlaced ornaments. The figures in relief, and letters on the third cover, which is of silver plated with gold, leave no doubt of its being the work of the fourteenth century.
The last or external cover is of great interest as a specimen of the skill and taste in art of its time in Ireland, and also for the highly finished representations of ancient costume which it preserves. The ornaments on the top consist principally of a large figure of the Saviour in alto-relievo in the centre, and eleven figures of saints in basso-relievo on each side in four oblong compartments. There is a small square reliquary over the head of our divine Lord, covered with a crystal, which probably contained a piece of the holy cross. The smaller figures in relief are, Columba, Brigid, and Patrick; those in the second compartment, the Apostles James, Peter, and Paul; in the third, the Archangel Michael, and the Virgin and Child; in the fourth compartment a bishop presents a cumdach, or cover, to an ecclesiastic. This, probably, has a historical relation to the reliquary itself.
One prayer uttered by St. Patrick has been singularly fulfilled. "May my Lord grant," he exclaims, "that I may never lose His people, which He has acquired in the ends of the earth!" From hill and dale, from camp and cottage, from plebeian and noble, there rang out a grand "Amen." The strain was caught by Secundinus and Benignus, by Columba and Columbanus, by Brigid and Brendan. It floated away from Lindisfarne and Iona, to Iceland and Tarentum. It was heard on the sunny banks of the Rhine, at Antwerp and Cologne, in Oxford, in Pavia, and in Paris. And still the old echo is breathing its holy prayer. By the priest, who toils in cold and storm to the "station" on the mountain side, far from his humble home. By the confessor, who spends hour after hour, in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, absolving the penitent children of Patrick. By the monk in his cloister. By noble and true-hearted men, faithful through centuries of persecution. And loudly and nobly, though it be but faint to human ears, is that echo uttered also by the aged woman who lies down by the wayside to die in the famine years,[143] because she prefers the bread of heaven to the bread of earth, and the faith taught by Patrick to the tempter's gold. By the emigrant, who, with broken heart bids a long farewell to the dear island home, to the old father, to the grey-haired mother, because his adherence to his faith tends not to further his temporal interest, and he must starve or go beyond the sea for bread. Thus ever and ever that echo is gushing up into the ear of God, and never will it cease until it shall have merged into the eternal alleluia which the often-martyred and ever-faithful children of the saint shall shout with him in rapturous voice before the Eternal Throne.