School: Christian Brothers, Athlone

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1. Glories of Famed Clonmacnoise - Teacher of Highest Learning for 600 Years

   

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   "How solitary now she sits by the great river, that once thronged city. Her gates are broken and her streets are silent. Yet in olden times she was a queen and the children of many lands came to do her homage. She was the nursing mother of our saints and the teacher of our highest learning for a long six hundred years." Cionmacnoise is the sacred run to which Archbishop Healy here refers. Every stone that remains in her crumbling walls, the dust and clay you press beneath your feet, and even the fresh Western breezes that sing their lullaby amid the runs whisper something of superhuman and heavenly grandeur. Here prelate and king, abbot and monk, prince and peasant, learned professor and talented student, sleep together in their quiet graves. "View it as you may," continues Dr. Healy, "Cionmacnoise was the greatest of our schools in the past as it is the most interesting of our ruins in the present." What did the great George Petrie say of it? Writing to his dear friend John O'Donovan, editor of the "Four Masters," he used the following words: I wish I were along with you groping among the inscribed tombs of the kings and saints of Ireland at Cionmacnoise, the most interesting spot in the Three Kingdoms Today two beautiful specimens of ancient stone crosses, two majestic round towers, numerous ant que grave-stones, the ruins of seven churches remain to testify even in their dilapidated condition to the refinement of our fathers during the Ages of Faith.

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   Topics

   1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)

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   English

2. Height of Its Fame

   

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   During the eighth and ninth centuries Clonmacnoise was at the height of its literary glory, and from Europe and all parts of Ireland young and old, peasant and prince, crowded to Clonmacnoise in search of peace, wisdom and knowledge, in this home of sanctity and learning.
   In the government of Clonmacnoise, it abbots were chosen not from any special family of from any particular tribe, but from all the provinces without distinction.
   Thus even in its rulers the great school foreshadowed the universality of the genius that dwelt within its sacred walls. Clonmacnoise then may be well styled the "University of Ireland."
   St. Ciaran's successor was from Leinster. "The third abbot was an Ulster man and the fourth a Munster man. But what of St. Ciaran its first abbot? he was a Conraught man of half-northern and half-southern extraction, his father being an Ulster man and his mother a Kerry woman, or the race that gave its name to th County Kerry.
   We may remark that in referring to St. Ciaran's life most of the following items are taken from the "Book of Lismore," a work compiled about the twelfth century. At the same time it is to be noted that in relating wonderful things occuring in the lives of the saints, we are only required to give these facts that degree of credibility which the historical evidence requires from any reasonable man.
   Only mere human credibility is expected from the faithful unless the Church specially approves of some fact in the life of a saint. Most likely in the lives of the early Irish Saints the Church has never officially examined the many wondrous things recorded of those servants of God. In the year 515 St Claran was born at Fuerty in the County Roscommon, and he was baptised by the holy deacon Justus- a disciple of St. Patrick. Ciaran received his early education from the same holy man, and as there was a distance of 12 miles between both of them there is a story told of how a fox trained by Ciaran used to travel back and forth between master and pupil carrying in his mouth the waxed tablets from which the lessons were learned. He later had as tutor St. Diarmuid of Inish Cloraun.
   When the boy grew older, he was sent to the famous school of Clonard which was ruled at that time by the wise and learned Finnian-the Master as he was called by the Saints of Eireann.

   

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