The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore | Page 6

A more formal monasticism
had developed by the time of Mochuda; this was evidently influenced
by the spread of St. Benedict's Rule, as Patrick's quasi-monasticism,
nearly two centuries previously, had been influenced by Pachomius and
St. Basil, through Lerins. The real peculiarity in Ireland was that when
the community-missionary system was no longer necessary it was not
abandoned as in other lands but was rather developed and emphasised.

INTRODUCTION--ST. MOCHUDA
"It was he (Mochuda) that had the famous congregation consisting of
seven hundred and ten persons; an angel used to address every third
man of them." (Martyrology of Donegal).
In some respects the Life of Mochuda here presented is in sharp
contrast to the corresponding Life of Declan. The former document is
in all essentials a very sober historical narrative--accurate wherever we
can test it, credible and harmonious on the whole. Philologically, to be
sure, it is of little value,--certainly a much less valuable Life than
Declan's; historically, however (and question of the pre-Patrician
mission apart) it is immensely the more important document. On one
point do we feel inclined to quarrel with its author, scil.: that he has not
given us more specifically the motives underlying Mochuda's expulsion
from Rahen--one of the three worst counsels ever given in Erin.
Reading between his lines we spell, jealousy--'invidia religiosorum.'
Another jealousy too is suggested--the mutual distrust of north and
south which has been the canker-worm of Irish political life for fifteen
hundred years, making intelligible if not justifying the indignation of a
certain distinguished Irishman who wanted to know the man's name, in
order to curse its owner, who first divided Ireland into two provinces.
Three different Lives of Mochuda are known to the present writer. Two
of them are contained in a MS. at Brussels (C/r. Bindon, p. 8, 13) and

of one of these there is a copy in a MS. of Dineen's in the Royal Irish
Academy (Stowe Collection, A. IV, I.) Dineen appears to have been a
Cork or Kerry man and to have worked under the patronage of the
rather noted Franciscan Father Francis Matthew (O'Mahony), who was
put to death at Cork by Inchiquin in 1644. The bald text of Dineen's
"Life" was published a few years since, without translation, in the 'Irish
Rosary.' The corresponding Brussels copy is in Michael O'Clery's
familiar hand. In it occurs the strange pagan-flavoured story of the
British Monk Constantine. O'Clery's copy was made in January, 1627,
at the Friary of Drouish from the Book of Tadhg O'Ceanan and it is
immediately followed by a tract entitled--"Do Macaib Ua Suanac." The
bell of Mochuda, by the way, which the saint rang against Blathmac,
was called the 'glassan' of Hui Suanaig in later times.
The "Life" here printed, which follows the Latin Life so closely that
one seems a late translation of the other, is as far as the editor is aware,
contained in a single MS. only. This is M. 23, 50, R.I.A., in the
handwriting of John Murphy, "na Raheenach." Murphy was a Co. Cork
schoolmaster, scribe, and poet, of whom a biographical sketch will be
found prefixed by Mr. R. A. Foley to a collection of Murphy's poems
that he has edited. The sobriquet, "na Raheenach," is really a kind of
tribal designation. The "Life" is very full but is in its present form a
comparatively late production; it was transcribed by Murphy between
1740 and 1750. It is much to be regretted that the scribe tells us nothing
of his original. Murphy, but the way, seems to have specialised to some
extent in saint's Lives and to have imbued his disciples with something
of the same taste. One of his pupils was Maurice O'Connor, a scribe
and shipwright of Cove, to whom we owe the Life of St. Ciaran of
Saighir printed in "Silva Gadelica." The reasons of choice for
publication here of the present Life are avowedly non-philological; the
motive for preference is that it is the longest of the three Lives and for
historical purposes the most important.
The Life presents considerable evidence of historical reliability; its
geography is detailed and correct; its references to contemporaries of
Mochuda are accurate on the whole and there are few inconsistencies or
none. Moreover it sheds some new light on that chronic puzzle--
organisation of the Celtic Church of Ireland. Mochuda, head of a great
monastery at Rahen, is likewise a kind of pluralist Parish Priest with a

parish in Kerry, administered in his name by deputed ecclesiastics, and
other parishes similarly administered in Kerrycurrihy, Rostellan, West
Muskerry, and Spike Island, Co. Cork. When a chief parishioner lies
seriously ill in distant Corca Duibhne, Mochuda himself comes all the
way from the centre of Ireland to administer the last rites to the dying
man, and so on.
The