Kitabı oku: «Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886»

The Columbian Abbey of Derry

One bright sunny day last summer I found myself in the city of Derry, with some hours to spare. I passed them in rambling aimlessly about whither fancy or accident led me,—now on the walls, endeavoring to recall the particulars of that siege so graphically described by Macaulay, now in the Protestant Cathedral musing on the proximity of luxuriously-cushioned pew and cold sepulchral monument along which the sun, streaming through the stained windows, threw a mellow glow that softened but did not remove the hideousness of the death's emblems on them—now wandering down the busy street and admiring the beauties of the Casino College, which, like the alien cathedral a little distance up, rejoices in the patronage of St. Columb and is built on the site of his old monastery. Here I lingered long, trying to picture to myself the olden glories of the spot on which I stood, for

 
"I do love these ancient ruins;
We never tread upon them
But we set our foot upon some reverend history;"
 

although here not an ivy-clasped gable, or even a mossy stone remains to claim the "passing tribute" of a sigh, or a vain regret for the golden days of our Irish Church. Yet its very barrenness of ruins made it dearer to my heart, for one never clings more fondly to the memory of a dear friend than when all mementoes of him are lost. As warned by the stroke of the town-clock, I hurried down to the station to be whirled away to Dublin, I thought that perhaps my fellow-readers of the Magazine would bear with me while I gossiped for half an hour on the story of this grand old monastery, the mother-house of Iona.

You know where Derry is, or if you don't your atlas will tell you, that it is away up in the north of Ireland, where, situated on the shores of the Lough Foyle, coiling its streets round the slopes of a hill till on the very summit they culminate in the cross-crowned tower of St. Columb's Cathedral, it lies in the midst of a beautiful country just like a cameo fallen into a basket of flowers. The houses cluster round the base of the hill on the land side, spread themselves in irregular masses over the adjoining level, or clamber up the opposite rise on the brow of which stands St. Eugene's Cathedral, yet unfinished, and the pile of turrets which constitute Magee College. A noble bridge spans the Foyle, and through a forest of shipmasts one may see on the other side the city rising up from the water, and stretching along the bending shore till it becomes lost in the villa-studded woods of Prehen.

The massive walls, half hidden by encroaching commerce, the grim-looking gates, and the old rusty cannon whose mouth thundered the "No" of the "Maiden City" to the rough advances of James, in 1689, give the city a mediæval air that well accords with its monastic origin. For, let her citizens gild the bitter pill as they may, the cradle of Derry—the Rochelle of Irish Protestantism—was rocked by monks—aye, by monks in as close communion with Rome as are the dread Jesuits to-day.

Fourteen hundred years ago the Foyle flowed on to mingle its waters with ocean as calmly as it does to-day, but its peaceful bosom reflected a far different scene. Then the fair, fresh face of nature was unsullied by the hand of man. "The tides flowed round the hill which was of an oval form, and rose 119 feet above the level of the sea, thus forming an island of about 200 acres."¹ A Daire or oak grove spread its leafy shade over the whole, and gave shelter to the red deer and an unceasing choir of little songsters. It was called in the language of the time "Daire-Calgachi." The first part of the name in the modern form of Derry, still remains—though now the stately rows of oak have given way to the streets of a busy city, and the smoke of numerous factories clouds the atmosphere.

One day, in the early part of 546, there visited the grove, in company with the local chieftain, a youth named Columba, a scion of the royal race of the O'Donnells. He was captivated by its beauty. It seemed the very spot for the monastery he was anxious to establish. He was only a deacon; but the fame of his sanctity had already filled the land, and the princes of his family were ever urging him to found a monastery whose monks, they hoped, would reflect his virtues and increase the faith and piety of their clan. This seemed the very spot for such an establishment. The neighborhood of the royal fortress of Aileach, that

 
"Sits evermore like a queen on her throne
And smiles on the valleys of green Innishowen,"
 

promised security; the river an unfailing supply of fish; the woods material to build with; and, better than all, the lord of the district was his cousin Ainmire, from whom Columba had only to ask to receive. He did ask the island for God, and his request was joyfully complied with.

It was just three years after the deacon-abbot of Monte Casino had passed to his reward, that the young Irish deacon began his monastery. To erect monastic buildings in those days was a work of very little labor. A wooden church, destined in the course of time to give place to a more durable edifice—the seat of a bishopric—was first erected. Then the cells of the monks were put up. They were of circular form and of the simplest construction. A stout post was firmly planted in what was to be the centre, and a number of slighter poles were then placed at equal distances round it. The interstices—space however having been left for a door—were filled up with willow or hazel saplings in the form of basketwork. From the outer poles rafters sprang to the centre-posts, and across them were laid rows of laths over which a fibry web of sod was thrown, and the whole thatched with straw or rushes. The inside of the wall was lined with moss—the outside plastered with soft clay. A rough wooden bed—and in the case of Columba himself and many of his monks—a stone pillow, a polaire or leathern satchel for holding books, a writing-desk and seat, formed the furniture of this rude cell, which was the ordinary dwelling of monk and student during the golden age of the Irish Church.

Only a few weeks elapsed from the time that the first tree was felled till the new community, or rather order, took up their abode in it, and the swelling strain of their vespers was borne down the Lough by the rippling breeze and echoed by the religious, whose convents, presided over by SS. Frigidian and Cardens sentinelled the mouth of the Lough at Moville and Coleraine. The habit of these monks—similar to that of Iona and Lindisfarne, consisted of "²the cowl—of coarse texture, made of wool, retaining its natural color and the tunic, or under habit, which was also white. If the weather was particularly severe an amphibalus, or double mantle, was permitted. When engaged at work on the farm the brethern wore sandals which were not used within the monastery."

Though their time was mainly devoted to prayer, meditation and the various other religious exercises, yet their rule made them apply every spare moment to copying and illuminating MSS. or some other kind of manual or intellectual labor, according as their strength and talents permitted. By this, people were attracted to the spot. Houses sprang up in the neighborhood of the monastery, that continually increasing in number, at length grew into a city, just as from a similar monastic germ have sprung nearly all the great German cities.

Columba in the busy years that elapsed between 546 and his final departure from Ireland in 563, looked upon Derry as his home. It was his first and dearest monastery. It was in his own Tyrconnell, but a few miles from that home by Lough Gartan, where he first saw the light, and from his foster home amid the mountains of Kilmacrenan, that, rising with their green belts of trees and purple mantles of heather over the valleys, seemed like huge festoons hung from the blue-patched horizon. Then the very air was redolent of sanctity. If he turned to the south, the warm breezes that swayed his cowl reminded him that away behind those wooded hills in Ardstraw, prayed Eugene, destined to share with him the patronage of the diocese, and that farther up, St. Creggan, whose name the Presbyterian farmers unconsciously preserve in the designation of their townland, Magheracreggan, presided over Scarrabern, the daughter-house of Ardstraw. Then turning slowly northwards he would meet with the persons, or relics, of St. O'Heney in Banagher, St. Sura in Maghera, St. Martin in Desertmartin, St. Canice in Limavady, St. Goar in Aghadoey, St. Cardens in Coleraine, St. Frigidian in Moville, St. Comgell in Culdaff, St. McCartin in Donagh, St. Egneach in the wildly beautiful pass of Mamore, St. Mura in Fahan, and his own old teacher, St. Cruithnecan in Kilmacrenan. All these, and many others, whose names tradition but feebly echoes, were contemporary, or nearly so, with him; and with many of them, he was united in the warmest bonds of friendship,—a friendship that served to rivet him the more to Derry. Even the budding glories of Durrow and Kells could not draw him away from his "loved oak-grove;" and at length, when the time had come for him to go forth and plant the faith in a foreign land, it was the monks of Derry who received his last embrace ere he seated himself with his twelve companions, also monks of Derry, in his little osier coracle, and with tearful eyes watched his grove till the topmost leaf had sunk beneath the curving wave.

When twenty-seven years after he visited his native land, as the deputy of an infant nation and the saviour of the bards, on whom, but for his kindly intercession, the hand of infuriated justice had heavily fallen, his first visit was to Derry. It was probably during this visit that he founded that church on the other side of the Foyle, whose ivy-clad walls and gravelled area the reader of "Thackeray's Sketch Book" may remember; but few know that it was wantonly demolished by Dr. Weston (1467-1484), the only Englishman who ever held the See of Derry; and "who," adds Colgan, "began out of the ruins to build a palace for himself, which the avenging hand of God did not allow him to complete."

Columba's heart ever yearned to Derry. In one of his poems he tells us "how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak grove." And one day when "that grey eye, which ever turned to Erin," was gazing wistfully at the horizon, where Ireland ought to appear, his love for Derry found expression in a little poem, the English version of which I transcribed from Cardinal Moran's "Irish Saints."

 
"Were the tribute of all Alba mine,
From its centre to its border,
I would prefer the sight of one cell
In the middle of fair Derry.
 
 
"The reason I love Derry is
For its quietness, for its purity;
Crowded full of heaven's angels,
Is every leaf of the oaks of Derry.
 
 
"My Derry, my little oak grove,
My abode and my little cell,
O eternal God in heaven above,
Woe be to him who violates it."
 

With the same love that he himself had for his "little oak grove," he seems to have inspired the annalists of his race, for on turning over the pages of the Four Masters, the eye is arrested by such entries as,—

"1146, a violent tempest blew down sixty oaks in Derry-Columbkille."

"1178, a storm prostrated one hundred and twenty oaks in Derry-Columbkille."

These little tokens of reverence for the trees, which had been sanctified by his presence and love, show us how deep a root his memory had in the affections of the Donegal Franciscans, when they paused in their serious and compendious work to record every little accident that happened to his monastery. But, alas, all the protection that O'Donnell's clan might afford, all the fear that Columba's "Woe" might inspire, could not save his grove. Like many a similar one in Ireland, storms, and the destructive hand of man, have combined to blot it off the face of the landscape, and nothing now remains but the name.

The monastery, too, shared the same fate. Burned by the Danes in 812, 989, 997 and 1095, phœnix-like it rose again from its ashes, each time in greater beauty. The church, after one of these burnings, was rebuilt of stone; and from its charred and blackened appearance after the next burning, received the name of Dubh-Regles or Black Church of the Abbey—a name by which in the Annals the monastery itself is often called.

But Derry had other enemies than the Danes. In 1124 we find "Ardgar, Prince of Aileach, killed by the ecclesiastics of Doire-Columbkille in the defence of their church. His followers in revenge burned the town and churches." The then abbot was St. Gelasius, who, after presiding sixteen years over the monastery, which he had entered a novice in early youth, was, in 1137, raised to the Primatial See of Armagh; and dying in 1174, nearly closes the long calendar of Irish Saints. The first year of his abbacy (1121) had been marked by the death in the monastery of "Domwald Magloughlin Ardrigh of Erin, a generous prince, charitable to the poor and liberal to the rich, who, feeling his end approaching, had withdrawn thither,"—a fact which shows the great veneration in which this monastery was held.

The name of the next abbot, Flathbert O'Brolcan, or Bradley, is one of the brightest in the Annals of Derry. He was greatly distinguished for his sanctity and learning, but still more for his administrative abilities. As abbot of Derry he was present at the Synod of Kells in 1152. Six years after, at the Synod of Brightaig (near Trim, county Meath), a continuation or prorogation of that of Kells, Derry was created an Episcopal See and Flathbert appointed its first bishop. A much more honorable distinction was given him, when by the same synod, he was appointed "prefect general of all the abbeys of Ireland," an appointment which must probably be limited to the Columbian Abbeys, which were at the time very numerous. Some idea of the wealth and power of the Columbian order may be gathered from the records that the Masters have given us of Flathbert's visitations. "In 1150 he visited Tireoghain (Tyrone), and obtained a horse from every chieftain; a cow from every two biataghs; a cow from every three freeholders; a cow from every four villeins; and twenty cows from the king himself; a gold ring of five ounces, his horse and battle-dregs from the son of O'Lochlain, king of Ireland." "In 1153 he visited Down and Antrim and got a horse from every chieftain; a sheep from every hearth; a horse and five cows from O'Dunlevy, and an ounce of gold from his wife." And in 1161 he visited Ossory, and "in lieu of the tribute of seven score oxen due to him, accepted four hundred and twenty ounces of pure silver."

But though thus honored by the hierarchy and people, enemies were not wanting to him. In 1144 the monastery had been burned and hostile clouds were again gathering round it, when in 1163 Flathbert erected a cashel or series of earthen fortifications, which baffled for a time the enmity of the plunderer. A passing calm was thus assured him, of which he took advantage, in 1164, to commence the building of his Cathedral, called in Irish "Teampull-mor," a name which one of the city parishes still retains. But the times were troublous, and hardly was the Cathedral finished than we find in 1166 "O'More burning Derry as far as the church Dubh-Regles."

In 1175, on the death of their abbot the monks of Iona elected Flathbert; but he felt that the shadows of death were gathering round him, and he would not leave his own monastery of Derry. He died the same year, and "was buried in the monastery, leaving a great reputation for wisdom and liberality;" but before his death he had the pleasure of knowing that "1175, Donough O'Carolan perfected a treaty of friendship with the abbey and town, and gave to the abbey a betagh townland of Donoughmore and certain duties."

Some years before his death Flathbert had resigned the See of Derry in favor of Dr. Muredach O'Coffey,³ who, having been consecrated bishop of Ardstraw had, in 1150, transferred that See to Maghera or Rathlure, thus uniting Ardstraw and Rathlure. His accession to Derry joined the three into one, to which under Dr. O'Carolan in the next century, Innishowen was added, thus forming the modern diocese.

Dr. O'Coffey took up his residence in the abbey where, on the 10th of February, 1173, he breathed his last. Archdall in his Monasticon calls him "St. Muredach;" but the old Annalists content themselves with saying that "he was the sun of science, the precious stone and resplendent gem of knowledge, the bright star and rich treasury of learning; and as in charity so, too, was he powerful in pilgrimage and prayer." The Masters add that "a great miracle was performed on the night of his death; the dark night was illumined from midnight to day-break; and the neighboring parts of the world which were visible were in one blaze of light; and all persons arose from their beds imagining it was day."

But I must now hasten to the end, for there is little in the history of the next four centuries over which one loves to linger. The story it tells is the old one of robberies and murders and burnings. It records the first rumblings of that storm so soon to break over that land and make of our island a vast coliseum, drenching it with the blood of martyrs. I have often thought what a pang it must have cost the heart of Brother Michael Oblery to pen such entries as these:

"1195, Rury, son of Dunlere, chief of Ulidia, plunders Derry-Columbkille with an English force."

"1197, Sir John De Courcy plunders the abbey of Derry."

"1198, Sir John De Courcy again plunders Derry abbey."

How his eyes must have filled as he glanced in memory over the long tale of his country's sufferings, on the record of which he was about to enter. 'Twas bad enough to see the Dane lay sacrilegious hands on the sacred vessels; but it was worse still to behold one's fellow-Catholic apply the robber's torch to the church of God where, perhaps, at that very moment our Lord himself lay hid under the sacramental veils. Yet these were the men who, from the Loire to the Jordan had fought the church's battle so gallantly,—whose countrymen would only hold the Calabrian kingdom, that their lances had purchased so dearly, as vassals of the Pope,—the very men who themselves were studding the Pale with those architectural gems, of which the ruins of Dunbrody and its sister abbeys still speak so eloquently. It was a strange fancy that made them tumble the Irish monastery to-day, and lay the foundation of an Anglo-Irish one to-morrow. Yet so it was; for in the charters of many of those monasteries, in which, it was enacted in 1380, that no mere Irishman should be allowed to take vows, the name of John De Courcy is entered as founder or benefactor. One hardly knows whether to condemn him for destroying Columba's favorite abbey, or praise him for the solicitude he expresses in his letter to the Pope for the proper preservation of Columba's relics. The acts of the man and his nation are so contradictory, that the only reasonable conclusion we can draw from them is the practical one, never again to wonder that the faith of such men withered at the first blast of persecution.

Nevertheless, the monastery survived these attacks; for in the early part of the fifteenth century, we find the then abbot of Derry negotiating a peace between the English and O'Donnell. But in its subsequent annals nothing more than the mere date of an inmate's death meets us till we come to the great catastrophe, which ended at once the monastery and order of Columba. Cox thus tells the story: "Colonel Saintlow succeeded Randolph in the command of the garrison and lived as quietly as could be desired, for the rebels were so daunted by the former defeat that they did not dare to make any new attempt; but unluckily on the 24th of April, 1566, the ammunition took fire and blew up the town and fort of Derry, so that the soldiers were obliged to embark for Dublin."⁴ "This disaster was regarded at the time as a divine chastisement for the profanation of St. Columba's church and cell, the latter being used by the heretical soldiery as a repository of ammunition, while the former was defiled by their profane worship."⁵

J. McH.

An actor once delivered a letter of introduction to a manager, which described him as an actor of great merit, and concluded: "He plays Virginius, Richelieu, Hamlet, Shylock, and billiards. He plays billiards the best."