The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore | Page 6

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 relations of the people to the Church and its ministers are in many respects not at all easy to understand. Oblations, for instance, of themselves and their territory, &c., by chieftains are frequent. Oblations of monasteries are