Mochuda, Patron Saint of Lismore Ireland

Rev Canon Patrick Power wrote extensively on matters to do with Lismore and Saint Mochuda. He was an Amateur Archaeologist and a well read Historian. I will have more on his Bio later. For now here a few observations from his "Lismore" and St Mochuda. Lismore is designated a heritage town, the full story is sometimes overlooked in favour of immediate and obvious buildings and the people who occupy them. To commence Lismore's heritage with Mochuda is still to leave out the rich heritage we hold from pre-history.

Heritage= A tradition, Something handed down from the past. (Not property).

The photo left, demonstrates "Heritage" A whitethorn bush is weighed down under petitions, an act of faith from thousands of years ago, still observed in 2008. This bush is at the "Vee" near the southern summit of the road from Lismore to Clogheen in the Knockmealdown Mountains. [Nearby are the remains of relay stations built by Bianconi, known locally as the Bothaun - bo-hawn. and a monument built to the memory of those who died in an air crash on the Mountain some years ago]

In his Introduction Canon Power waxes romantic about Lismore, then quickly gets to the History.

Its rare combination of scenic beauty with historic association renders Lismore-Mochuda a region of unique attraction. Nowhere else in Ireland are woods and waters so lovely and romantic, mountains so many-hued and bold, and nowhere is the charming scene more richly gilded over by memories so soul- inspiring and so holy. Standing in the Mall the visitor feasts his eyes upon an unforgettable picture – the tree-embowered old Cathedral with its stately 18th century avenue of approach in the foreground the purple or dark brown-brown cone of stately Knockmealdown behind! Is there in all Ireland a more scared spot? Twenty-three calendared Saints await the Resurrection beneath its consecrate sod; the number of additional uncalendared is known to God alone. Is even holy Aran, in its ocean setting, or lonely Clonmacnoise, by the lordly Shannon, a place more sanctified? As, however, our immediate quest is historic fact, we must eschew rhapsody and superlatives in favour of sober narrative and pedestrian prose.

Lismore – both name and parish – is of ancient origin; the name we can trace backwards some sixteen centuries, and how much further it may go into the dim prehistoric past we can only conjecture. For more than a thousand years it has been linked with Mochudas holy city and the diocese to which the latter gives its name. Other ancient names appear to have been Magh Sciath and Dun Sginne, while in Padraig Mac Phiarais’s poem to the Duke of Devonshire the poet calls it Beal-Easa-Ruaidh. Formerly one of Ireland’s chief religious and scholastic centres, Lismore is to-day a neat Irish country town – an appendage to the ducal castle of Devonshire. It never attained to the dignity of a walled town, but in its later centuries it lay under the gun of a strong castle and was governed by a portreeve, and for centuries it was an Episcopal city and so nominally at any rate, inviolable in domestic warfare.

Our immediate interest in Lismore begins with the year 635 or thereabout, and the arrival there that year, or the year following, of Mochuda (otherwise Carthage). Mochuda’s ascertained history can be summed up in a single paragraph: He was a Kerryman by birth and boyhood (born, probably 564) and he became in early manhood a disciple of Carthage the Elder, who gave him his own name as cognomen. Later he entered the great monastery of St. Comgall at Bangor and later still, he founded the monastery of Rahan in Offaly, wherein he ruled and worked for nearly forty long years. Some sort of tribal, or monastic jealousy led to Mochuda’s expulsion from Rahan and his departure for Lismore (1).

The Saint was an aged man – more than seventy years old – when he and his muintir commenced erection of their wooden or wickerwork hutments on the southern banks of the Blackwater. He survived his migration to Munster only a year or two and died about 638.

Like other Irish monastic founders, e.g., Declan, Coemhin and Ciaran, Mochuda had provided himself with a place of occasional retreat apart from the monastery proper, and it was in this ”Diseart“ as such a place was called that the angle of death overtook the toilworn abbot, when he was in, or about his seventy-fourth year. Rather, the exact spot where he died was midway between the ”diseart“ and the main group of monastery cells. Presumably the founder’s remains were interred beside, or within, his chief church on the present Cathedral site; presumably also, the ”diseart“ was a rock-cave by the river bank a few perches north of the monastery buildings. Unfortunately the original cliff-face at this particular point has been much quarried into – in connection with erection (1775) of the adjacent bridge. In the course of excavation the saint’s retreat may have been destroyed; a still surviving small cave to the west of the bridge, is popularly known as ”An Teampuilin“

Lismore monastery and school did not belong to the first, or earliest, period of Irish monasticism; its rise to eminence was comparatively late. Bangor, Clonmacnoise and Clonard had already passed their zenith when Lismore appeared above the horizon – the greatest monastic school of the 8th century. It attracted students from all over Ireland, and even some from beyond the Irish Sea. Alfred the great is said to have spent some time there, as well as Agilbert a distinguished bishop of Dorchester, and Aldhelm, famous author of a well known mediaeval work – ”De Laudibus Virginitatis.“ Among the hundreds of native students we find Malachy the Primate and Corcran Cleireach ”the most renowned senior of the Scots“ And great men like Murtough O’Brien. King of Munster, and Celsus, Archbishop of Armagh, who could not study there, desired to be buried in holy Lismore.

When ordinarily we speak of an abbey or religious house we picture ourselves a stately pile of building on a definite plan – chapel, refectory, dormitory, cloisters Etc. Lismore’s religious and scholastic settlement differed widely from this. The buildings were of wood or wattle. i.e., stout wickerwork heavily plastered with earth. Instead of a single grand monastic chapel there was a series of diminutive churches and there were scores – possibly hundreds – of diminutive wooden cells, each housing a single monk, who spent much of his time within it and alone. The chief church of Lismore – which we should now style the Cathedral – was called a diamhliag in the earlier period, and Christchurch (2) later. From analogy we conclude that Lismore’s chief church has stood on the same spot from the beginning, i.e., the site of the present Cathedral. At one time Lismore is said to have no fewer than twenty churches, and seven were actually standing as late as the 17th century. Of wood or wattle, these early structures were easily burned down. Sometimes the burnings were accidental but they often were malicious. There were burnings and plunderings, mostly by the Danes, in 780, 812, 819 -20, 831-33, 869, 915 and 960. It must have been an optimistic community which in the face of persistent destruction, continued to rebuild. Huts of wood, lath-and-plaster or wattle were however, almost as easily destroyed, and their destruction mattered comparatively little. Some time in the 11th century a practically new stone church on the old site, but on a grander scale, was erected and portions, or fragments, of this survive – incorporated in the present edifice. The main church again underwent repair and partial rebuilding in the next century, under that great lay-churchman, Murtough O’Brien. It was rebuilt again, repaired and restored by Richard Boyle, better know as the ”Great Earl of Cork“, in the first half of the 17th century. Boyle does not seem, however, to have completed his contemplated restoration when the Confederate War broke out in 1641.

A good specimen of the earthen rampart which surrounded an early ecclesiastical settlement survives near the village of Clashmore, some eight or nine miles down the river from Lismore. This is still about fifteen feet in height from centre of its concentric fosse and it encloses an area of four or five acres in extent. It is popularly known as ”Cill Mhor“, (Kilmore) and it gives name to the townland in which it stands. Allusion to it here is suggested by the facts that Lismore and Clashmore were intimately associated in their day, that the latter would even seem to have had some dependence on the other and that we may therefore assume their respective ramparts to have been of identical, or similar, plan and style.

The course of study in an Irish school- the course followed, we may assume, in Lismore – embraced the Latin language and some Greek, the Sacred Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers, with history, some astronomy, elegant calligraphy, ornament drawing and illumination of manuscripts. As parchment was scarce and dear most of the texts and all the lecture material was memorised – the students reclining on rush-covered benches rather than sitting at tables or desks. Except ”The Rule“ of Mochuda, we have surviving hardly any ancient literary composition which emanated directly from Lismore, but its sister, next-door-neighbour and associated abbey of Molana (Ballinatray) we have a very famous series of eight century documents – the ”Collectio Hibernensis,“ which circulated widely on the Continent, and influenced the Church discipline of Europe for four centuries. The so-called Book of Lismore has, notwithstanding its title, no connection of origin or particular association of subject with Lismore. ”The Rule“ of Mochuda is one of the few ancient Irish so-called monastic Rules surviving. It is less a Rule, as the latter is now understood, than a series of religious counsels drawn up by a master of the spiritual life for his disciples. This extract from the chapter on the duties of an abbot will give an idea of its style:-

1. If you be the head man of a church noble is the power; better that you be just who take the heirship of the King.

2. If you are the head man of a church noble is the obligation – preservation of the rights of the church from the small to the great.

3. What Holy Church commands preach then with diligence, what you order to each one do it yourself

4. As you love your own soul love the souls of all. Yours the augmentation of every good the banishment of every evil.“

Our main authority for the career and times of Mochuda in his ”Life“ in Irish and Latin, preserved in various ancient Mss. The Irish ”Life“ has been published with translation and notes by the Irish Texts Society; the Latin ”Life“ edited by Plummer is printed in ”Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae“ (Clarendon press, 2 vols). Like the general run of such old writings the ”Life“ is very uncritical, though it compares favourably enough with most documents of its class. As originally written, the ”Lives“ were, no doubt, brief, simple and veracious narratives but in course of centuries and after the fashion of a long vanished age, they came to be inflated with accounts of miracles, and marvels to such an extent that the supernatural became almost the ordinary and the natural the exception. On the whole the old life of Mochuda, as we have it, bears evidence of historical reliability; its geography is detailed and correct and its references to contemporary persons accurate and consistent. (3)

We have been anticipating a little, let us retrace our steps for a few moments to accompany Mochuda and his people on their southward trek from Rahan; the journey must have been slow for there were among them some aged and infirm as well as the inmates of a leper colony and there were cumbersome and slow-moving vehicles and cattle. Moreover, roads were bad, rivers bridgeless, and the cavalcade travelled mostly on foot. The season however was late Spring and the countryside had donned its robe of green. The company halted at various monasteries on the road where the travellers were hospitably received in the name of Christ – Sier Ciarain, Cashel, Ardfinnan, Etc.. At, or near Ardfinnan, on the Suir, they were met by Maeloctair, chieftain of the Decies, who welcomed Mochuda and made him formal offer of a desirable site for an abbey – on the south side of the Blackwater, then called Nemh and later Amha-Mhor.

From the crossing-place of the Suir at Ardfinnan an early road (the Rian-Bo-Padraig) led in a direct line over the saddle of Knockmealdown, to the ford of the Blackwater at the Roundhill. But this does not appear to be the road taken by Mochuda and his muintir. For some reason, not stated, after crossing the Tar at Killdanoge, they diverged a little to the S.E. and skirting the valley of the Finnisk basin. They tarried some days at Kilclogher, the Church of St Mochua-Mianain and finally crossed the Blackwater at Affane. Thence – along what to this day is called Bothar-na-Naomh, the distance to Lismore is only four miles.

In the earliest ecclesiastical literature and period the name, Lismore, generally designates Mochuda’s religious settlement on the Blackwater. At a later period it came to designate the diocese of the name. It is in neither of these senses that we use the name in our present context but in a middle sense – to mean the parish of Lismore. And here again the name has two – perhaps three – secondary implications:-

(b) The present day parish with its two churches of Lismore and Ballysaggart. The ancient or ”civil“ parish includes not only the present-day Lismore parish but the parishes likewise of Cappoquin and Ballyduff, and the portion of Tallow parish on the north side of the Bride River. To be sure Ballyduff, or most of it, once i.e. up to the Reformation or thereabouts, formed an independent parish, under the name of Mocollop. But, for a couple of centuries, Mocollop had been forgotten and the area comprised in it had become part of Lismore, Lismore was thus a parish of immense extent – a super parish, in fact, and about as extensive as the whole diocese of Waterford. Moreover, for some time previous to 1828, when Irish population was at its densest, some townlands of the present Ballyporeen parish on the North side of the Araglen River were regarded as belonging to Lismore. This was, presumably, the region overlooking the Araglen river valley from the North i.e. the southern parts at least of Barnahown, Flemingstown and perhaps Glenacunna. Probably road communication with Lismore was better than the corresponding amenity to the North.

Lismore parish history, for our present purpose, naturally divides itself into periods and may best be studied:-

The list of Mochuda’s successors in Lismore for the four centuries following the sainted founder’s death is, as given by Ware, our leading authority, very imperfect indeed. Ware records only thirteen names, when as a matter of fact, the number ought to be forty-one at least. Most of these, it must be admitted are names and little more. Of the gross total no fewer than twenty-one coarbs are calendared as saints in the Irish matyrologies. Most notable of the early coarbs, or successors, of Mochuda are Hierologus, otherwise Jarlath (Died 698). Colman (Died 725), Suaireach ( Died 774), Suibhne (Died 855), Martan (Died 878), and Nial Mac Mic Aeuducain (Died 1123) (4)

There are preserved in the Cathedral ancient inscribed tombstones to Suibhne And Martan, there is a Holy Well (Carraignagower) dedicated to Colman, and for Nial, in the early 12th century., was made the famous Crozier of Lismore. During the episcopate of Maelbrighte, Cormac Mac Cuillennin, King of Cashel, presented chalices and costly silken vestments to Lismore. The coarbs of Mochuda in Lismore were, for centuries, abbots as well as bishops, but in old Irish ecclesiastical usage it was their abbatial, rather than their Episcopal, character that was emphasised. The abbot was, in popular estimate, exalted above the bishop and some abbots, although exercising their Episcopal jurisdiction, were actually not bishops. (5)

Under Abbot Hierologus (Supra) the school of Lismore is claimed to have reached its zenith of fame; three thousand students are said to have been on its rolls, but this is a mianifest exaggeration; presumably it merely means that the numbers were large – varying from day to day. Cormac O’Cuilennain, who died bishop of Lismore in 918, was also Chieftain of the Decies.

Attached to the church of Lismore was a rather picturesque if somewhat mysterious, member of the religious community, known as the anker or anchorite. He was voluntarily and solemnly immured for life in a little cell, room or house, which generally communicated with the church interior by a small window-opening and with the outer world by a slot through which he gave counsel and spiritual advice to those who sought it. We have, preserved in the annals, the names of, at least seven ankers of Lismore.

they are Suairleach (774), Suibhne (855), Morierteach (1034), Corcran (1040), Cathfad (1056), Scanlan (1095), and Maelbride (1130). Suairleach and Suibhne are commemorated as both ankers and abbots and Suibhne is noted as a ”scribe“ also. The anker of Lismore had as his permanent endowment (i.e. for his food and clothing) a townland which still bears his name – Ballyanchor.

Another permanent official member of the establishment, but not the community, was the archinnech or steward of monastic lands. He was generally a layman and his office was hereditary, descending in the same family for generations. The archinneach was sometimes rather a tenant-farmer than a steward, i.e. his status varied somewhat with century and locality. The system was designed to serve religion by relieving the brotherhood of secular worry, but it led ultimately – as at Armagh – to grave abuse. Among the archinneachs (herenaghs) of Lismore mentioned in the annals are Diarmaid (951), Cathmog, who was also abbot ( 958), Cineadh, also abbot (1063) and Mac Mara (1128).

It must be confessed that in spite of our innumerable memorials of Ireland’s Christian past, we have but few details – certainly much fewer than we should wish – of the day to day monastic life as lived in Lismore or elsewhere in Ireland. The ancient chronicler took all these routine matters to be things of general knowledge, and such of course; they were in the chronicler’s day. We should ourselves, writing of current events, act similarly. Analogy, however, and an occasional document like the Rule of St Maelruan of Tallaght, enables us to deduce that discipline was severe, prayer constant and the axiom ”Laborare est orare“ universally and practically accepted.

An angel, we are told in the ”Life“ and elsewhere, conversed familiarly with every third man of Mochuda’s large community; this was the historian’s way of saying that the monks were men of exalted virtue and fervour. The number of Lismore’s calendared saints corroborates the historian’s testimony. Possibly fervour had commenced to wane towards close of our period; postulants for the religious habit had, at any rate, grown fewer, no more saints are recorded and the coarb has become bishop simply and head of a diocese. Danish raids and expectation of others had rendered monastic life difficult. Still, despite Danes and domestic wars, Lismore preserved something of its monastic atmosphere up to, at least the 12th century. As late as 1129, the primate, St Celsus, was, by his will, buried there, for a time in 1130 his successor, St Malachy, sojourned as a pilgrim or student of divinity.

About the same time another pious pilgrim resident in the holy city was Cormac MacCarthy, deposed chieftain of Desmond and afterwards King of Cashel and builder of the famous chaple on the rock of Cashel, which still bears his name.

(1) Much speculation and controversy have centred around Mochuda’s expulsion. What causes led to it?. Was it really the outcome of tribal or monastic jealousy or was the motive less ignoble?. Anyhow, the unworthy deed was reputed one of the three evil counsels of Ireland. It is not at all unlikely – in fact, it is probable enough – that the famous Easter controversy, which about this time shook the ancient Irish church, had something to do with it. St Colman Luchain, one of the protagonists of reform, was, be it remembered a disciple of Mochuda’s. He founded the church of Kilworth, next door to the master’s, and the new foundation took the name Chill Uird, i.e. Church of the (new) Order. From some recently introduced disciplinary cannon, scil – the new Observance which Molaise, or Laisren of Leighlin, had brought from Rome. It is somewhat significant that the ancient ”Life“ of Mochuda stresses the combination of Religious and Seculars which took part in the expulsion – the monks influenced by hostility to the new discipline and the secular princes resentful of a Munsterman’s presence in their midst. Truly the baneful ”Man of our own“ theory has had a long Genealogy in Ireland! That Mochuda had also adopted the Roman tonsure appears from a Rennes Ms. Quoted by Plummer. ”Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.“ Vol. 1. p. 23. No. 6.

(4) A list of the coarbs - complete, as it is at present possible to make it, is given in an appendix

(5) In the Irish Life of Mochuda is a curious statement - to the effect that the founders successors at Lismore were always Kerrymen. This is evidently an implied reference to the Brehon Law of succession which in time came to hold good in the monastic as well as the civil domain.

[Contractions:- prefixed + = Saint; (F.M) = Annals of the Four Masters; (A.U.) = Annals of Ulster;

(A.I.) = O'Connors Annals of Inisfallen; (W.) = Ware's "Bishops"; (H.) = Hayman's "Annals of Lismore"; (L.) = Lynch (De Praesulibus Hiberniae); (D.) = Matyrology of Donegal; (G.) = Martyrology of Gorman; (O.) = Martyrology of Oenghus; (T.) = Martyrology of Tallaght; Ab = Abbot; Bp = Bishop].

Lios Mor Mochuda

Lismore.

Mochuda to Malachus

NOTES