The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore | Page 3

Irish materials or data from
which the formal Lives (Irish or Latin) were compiled.
The Latin Lives are contained mainly in four great collections. The first
and probably the most important of these is in the Royal Library at
Brussels, included chiefly in a large MS. known as 'Codex
Salmanticensis' from the fact that it belonged in the seventeenth century
to the Irish College of Salamanca. The second collection is in Marsh's
Library, Dublin, and the third in Trinity College Library. The two latter
may for practical purposes be regarded as one, for they are sister
MSS.--copied from the same original. The Marsh's Library collection is
almost certainly, teste Plummer, the document referred to by Colgan as
Codex Kilkenniensis and it is quite certainly the Codex Ardmachanus
of Fleming. The fourth collection (or the third, if we take as one the
two last mentioned,) is in the Bodleian at Oxford amongst what are
known as the Rawlinson MSS. Of minor importance, for one reason or
another, are the collections of the Franciscan Library, Merchants' Quay,
Dublin, and in Maynooth College respectively. The first of the
enumerated collections was published 'in extenso,' about twenty-five
years since, by the Marquis of Bute, while recently the gist of all the
Latin collections has been edited with rare scholarship by Rev. Charles

Plummer of Oxford. Incidentally may be noted the one defect in Mr.
Plummer's great work--its author's almost irritating insistence on pagan
origins, nature myths, and heathen survivals. Besides the Marquis of
Bute and Plummer, Colgan and the Bollandists have published some
Latin Lives, and a few isolated "Lives" have been published from time
to time by other more or less competent editors.
The Irish Lives, though more numerous than the Latin, are less
accessible. The chief repertorium of the former is the Burgundian or
Royal Library, Brussels. The MS. collection at Brussels appears to
have originally belonged to the Irish Franciscans of Louvain and much
of it is in the well-known handwriting of Michael O'Clery. There are
also several collections of Irish Lives in Ireland--in the Royal Irish
Academy, for instance, and Trinity College Libraries. Finally, there are
a few Irish Lives at Oxford and Cambridge, in the British Museum,
Marsh's Library, &c., and in addition there are many Lives in private
hands. In this connection it can be no harm, and may do some good, to
note that an apparently brisk, if unpatriotic, trade in Irish MSS.
(including of course "Lives" of Saints) is carried on with the United
States. Wealthy, often ignorant, Irish-Americans, who are unable to
read them, are making collections of Irish MSS. and rare Irish books, to
Ireland's loss. Some Irish MSS. too, including Lives of Saints, have
been carried away as mementoes of the old land by departing
emigrants.
The date or period at which the Lives (Latin and Irish) were written is
manifestly, for half a dozen good reasons, a question of the utmost
importance to the student of the subject. Alas, that the question has to
some extent successfully defied quite satisfactory solution. We can, so
far, only conjecture--though the probabilities seem strong and the
grounds solid. The probabilities are that the Latin Lives date as a rule
from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they were put into
something like their present form for reading (perhaps in the refectory)
in the great religious houses. They were copied and re-copied during
the succeeding centuries and the scribes according to their knowledge,
devotion or caprice made various additions, subtractions and occasional
multiplications. The Irish Lives are almost certainly of a somewhat
earlier date than the Latin and are based partly (i.e. as regards the bulk
of the miracles) on local tradition, and partly (i.e. as regards the purely

historical element) on the authority of written materials. They too were,
no doubt, copied and interpolated much as were the Latin Lives. The
present copies of Irish Lives date as a rule from the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries only, and the fact that the Latin and the Irish Life
(where there is this double biography) sometimes agree very perfectly
may indicate that the Latin translation or Life is very late.
The chief published collections of Irish Saints' Lives may be set down
as seven, scil.:--five in Latin and one each in Irish and English. The
Latin collections are the Bollandists', Colgan's, Messingham's,
Fleming's, and Plummer's; the Irish collection is Stokes' ("Lives of
Saints from the Book of Lismore") and the English is of course
O'Hanlon's.
Most striking, probably, of the characteristics of the "Lives" is their
very evident effort to exalt and glorify the saint at any cost. With this
end of glorification in view the hagiographer is prepared to swallow
everything and record anything. He has, in fact, no critical sense and
possibly he would regard possession of