My Jimdo Geocities Lifeboat
===============================
CORK
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i81sLnwDt9WZjFM4-3eRYbKjmlOTarVyedlSHM6P2bM/edit
Site logo image West Cork History
Dr. John O’Donovan Ireland’s Great Scholar. View 1850s of The O’Donovan (1812-1890). A Good Friend, He Seemed To Me A Kind and Good Man and Really an Irishman of Spirit.
Durrushistory Nov 23 2022
After the death of Lieutenant General Donovan of Bawnlahan, Leap the Chieftainship passed to the Montpelier (Douglas) Cork branch. They too were Protestant very wealthy by way of prudent marriages in the 18th and 19th century into the Cork Mercantiler Community.
When the General died his estate passed to his wife’s nephew Colonel Powell who was from Wales. By all accounts a reasonable landlord but no feeling for him locally as he was not of ancient stock.
The subsequent O’Donovan were in fact very popular and very engaged locally and even after~`independence when they decamped to England were active in promoting agricultural development locally.
In the John O'Donovan papers and also in O'Donona Rossa's recollections there were superior genealogical claims to be Chieftain of the O'Donovan including the gateman in Skibbereen Workhouse who wanted no mention of this lest he lose his job. Others mentioned were a ploughman in Myross and a cobbler in Waterford.
In John O’Donovn reference to a young gentleman on the Inner Temple London he may be from the Wexford O'Donovans on his mother's side, later a senior figure in Dublin Castle . John O’Donovan said the Wexford O'Donovan originated in Carbery but wer ‘Rabid Orangemen”
Re John Collins, The Silver Tongue of Carbery a wonderful poet but many doubted the facts in his genealogical tracts.
O’Donovan from Cois Life
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i81sLnwDt9WZjFM4-3eRYbKjmlOTarVyedlSHM6P2bM/edit
The O'Donovan's son:
Colonel Morgan William ‘The O’Donovan’ Oxon (1861-1940), CB, D.L., MA, 1888, ‘The O’Donovan’, Clann Cathal, Lis Árd, Skibbereen, son of Henry Wintrop ‘The O’Donovan’ MA, DL. and Amelia d ‘The O’Grady’, Courcy O’Grady, Kilballyowen, Co. Limerick. Ed. Haileybury and Oxford, Lieutenant-Colonel Munster Fusiliers, Colonel South Cork Militia Boer War, Succeeded Colonel Aylmer C. Somerville 1899 as President Carbery Agricultural Society. Presented organ to Creagh Church to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. 1892 High Sheriff, Co.Cork ill, spent the summer on the Continent recovering. 1893 Member Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. Member Royal Society of Antiquaries 1889. Sent a carriage to the funeral of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Somerville D.L. (1824-1898), Clontaff, Drishane. Signed Requisition 1905. Cork Junction Railway Bill. Requisition to the Right Honourable The Earl of Bandon K.P., to Call a meeting for the purpose of Approving the Cork Junctions Railway Bill. Addressing a recruitment meeting in Drimoleague In July 1915 he referred to this ancient stronghold (Castle Donovan) of his family. After they displaced the O’Driscolls they became the Chief People of the Carberies. Listed family members as giving a present to 1907 Spaight wedding Union Hall. Considered the preservation of ancient documents a matter of importance. M Mary Eleanor, (Madame) odo Rev. J Yarker Barton, Chaplain to British Forces, she chaired the Women’s Emergency Recruiting Committee WW1, Skibbereen, listed 1921. Attending 10 Grand Jury presentments. 1933 writing to Carbery Agricultural Society suggesting horticultural potential in West Cork.
Overview of John O'Donovan from Kilkenny:
Click to access OKR1962-05-T-J-Clohosey-John-O-Donovan.pdf
1841-. Dr. John O'Donovan correspondence with Timothy O'Donovan, Landlord and Magistrate, Durrus, James O'Donovan, Gravesend, Kent
Tracing members of the extended O'Donovan family:
Originals in the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson St., Dublinm Graves Collection.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16VJptRac8CKsG_ylR0Zm78DLE-rPwWHJ_q2n4HKpW5s/edit
------------------------------
==================================
Jeremiah Joseph Callanan, Cork Poet, (1795-1829)
durrushistory
Nov 12
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fh89WiU9uQf-h1hqm1Agm66d_nRLVzIrk9zM3VC5jxg/edit#
J J Callanan
Death in Lisbon, p.1
Teacher, p.1
Background, p.3
Gougan Barra, p.6
Songs Of the Munster Poets, p. 7
Dr. Thomas Burke, Bantry, p.16
Extended Callanan Medical Family, 17
Appraisal, p. 20
Denis Florence Mccarthy, p. 22
National LIbrary Catalogue, p. 24
The Irish Poems of JJ Callanan, p. 25
Dictionary of Irish Biography, p 26
J J Callanan
Callanan, J. J. [Cork] city
At Lisbon, on the evening of the 19th of September, 1829, Mr. J. J. Callanan. He was a
native of this City, and had distinguished himself by his poetical compositions, which
were of the first order of merit.‘ Cork Constitution (05/11/1829)
Teacher for a brief Period in Cork:
.
..
JJ James (Jeremiah) Joseph Callanan, 1786 died Lisbon 1829, Cork Poet bridging Gaelic Ireland with Irish Literature in English, Aonghus Ó Dalaigh, poems.
The Trinity Alumni records record him as Pensioner admitted 6th July 1801, aged 15, Roman Catholic, son of John Physician educated Mr. Lee Vernon 1805 see Allibone.
Presumably a brother slightly different spelling ‘Callinan’ Thomas educated Mr. Barrington admitted 5th July 1802.
Walker’s magazine records a marriage in November 1779 between John Callanan MD and Miss Cooper, Barry’s Court, daughter of William. It is possible that Cooper is a version of Coppinger and might account for his schooling in Cobh.
1-IMG_0221
From Dr. Casey collection.
It is forgotten but a section of the Catholic population survived and some thrived during the Penal Laws. The Callanans appear as apothecaries in Cork, Doctors, and are close to McCarthys, Nagles and O’Learys (of the ‘outlaw’ family Raleigh Macroom) and form a close network. It is from this background that JJ Callinan came. Later his friend Crofton Croker would comment that he spent years living with various friends who were Doctors, Schoolteachers and surprisingly Policemen. One such Doctor was Doctor Burke who practised in the Square in Bantry and was from A Caheragh Landowning family probably associated with the McCarthys according to the late Cork Historian John T Collins. It was in Bantry he wrote Gougán Barra.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqhnQGE3ANjzdDA2VHduY1pNUHllbFFHbzJKRUhzU3c#gid=0
In the online edition of the Kings Inns Admission papers (Irish Manuscript Commission) p 92 online p 72 text the admission records of James Joseph Callanan gives his date of birth as the 17th January 1786, 3rd son of father John Medical Doctor mother Catherine Coppinger. TCD 1805, MT M 1806 E (Admitted King’s Inns) 1809. The mother’s name is interesting, as the Coppingers are of Danish descent and his friend Crofton Croker describes him as ‘fair’.
A possible cousin also appears on the list for 1800 James Callanan born 1783 2nd son of Michael Apothecary and Elizabeth McCarthy.
The Callinan’s were the hereditary physicians of the McCarthys:
https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/callanan-apothecaries-cork-18th-century-and-hereditary-physicians-to-mccarthys/
https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/callnan-family-hereditary-physicians-to-the-mccarthy-riabhachs-1798-in-west-cork-dr-john-richard-elmore-owner-of-largest-linen-mill-in-munster-in-clonakilty-1820s-and-dr-william-and-albert-callnan/
To continue the McCarthy connection JJ Callanan at one time tutored from a well to do McCarthy family in Millstre
================================
Beginning on the 28th of July 1914 World War 1 or the Great War as it's often referred led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties resulting in the destabilization of Europe and a revolution in Russia. The Central Powers (Germany, Austria -Hungary, and Turkey) were pitted against the Allies (France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the US). After 4 years he Allied Powers claimed victory.
Britain's Mass Voluntary Recruitment
While a nationwide recruitment campaign took place at home for the British army, thousands more Irishmen were already serving or were recruited or conscripted in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Canada. Back in 1914, Ireland was on the verge of securing Home Rule when the Great War broke out. Both unionist and nationalist leaders put their differences aside and supported the war effort against Germany. The Nationalist leader John Redmond rallied support and created the National Volunteers which had approximately 10,000 men. It was this very group that launched the Easter Rising in 1916 while Britain continued to fight in WW1. It is estimated that one in three men of age throughout Ireland served in British forces during the war.
At the time there was already approximately 58,000 Irishmen serving but more was needed. Lord Kitchener (Secretary for War UK) told the British government that it would be at least a 3-year war and over a million men would be needed, sparking a huge recruitment drive. Over the first 12 months, 80,000 Irishmen answered the call, and over the course of the four years 206,000 signed up to British forces. Conscription was never forced in Ireland as it was in the rest of the United Kingdom. Whether regular army or volunteers, the Irish showed remarkable fortitude, and their countless stories of exceptional bravery were rarely given the recognition they deserve. Some of the most common reasons for signing up included,
https://www.irelandxo.com/ireland-xo/news/ireland-and-world-war-1?utm_medium=email&utm_source=emfluence&utm_campaign=Remembering_WW1-9_11&emfl_e=99E2D1D3F14D2D42741EDD50D595C61B&emfl_c=959D864F0A2EB34BB247BB9FD27F51EA6FB5B2DFFFBEA9401D7E3014E547D3D2
---------------------------------------
March 2022
ESCAPE from Ukraine. Tom O’Callaghan, of Moyvane has been living in Kyiv with his wife Anna and two children for the last five years. He left Kyiv with his wife and family and his wife’s aunt as the Russian invasion began, and is now safely out of Ukraine.
=================================
A Little Known Kerry Man
How a New York street got an Irish name
(from Irish Central online)
Tim Sullivan went from a poor Five Points Great Hunger immigrant to Tammany Hall politician, but he never forgot his humble roots.Kenmare Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, just above Little Italy, was named after an Irish immigrant’s mother.
The story of Kenmare Street is one of famine, enforced emigration, New York tenements, politics, and how a kid from the slums of the ‘Five Points’ got to name a street in Manhattan after his mother’s home town of Kenmare.
In 1849 the population of Ireland was suffering the horrors of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Poverty, disease and hunger were rife.William Trench, the agent of Lord Lansdowne landlord of the Kenmare Estate in Kerry, took a census of the local population and realized the situation was untenable.
Trench recommended the estate could cut costs if they sent a portion of the destitute population to the United States and Canada. The cost of the trip would cost less than food and lodgings for one year in a Kenmare workhouse. The cost of passage to North America was £5.
Despite the harsh weather of a winter passage and no appropriate clothing, thousands took them up on the offer. Many survived and landed in New York where they settled in the notorious neighborhood “Five Points.”
The area (Baxter Street, Orange Street and Worth Street, in what is Chinatown and Little Italy today) strained under the massive influx of immigrants at the time and living conditions were famously awful. However, many Irish found some work in tanneries, taverns and selling food on the streets.
One of the residents, Tim Sullivan, was the son of Kenmare immigrants Daniel O’Sullivan and Catherine Connelly. Sullivan started off shining shoes and doing paper rounds. He soon began running the newspaper distribution, before developing bars, and theaters and ending up in politics.Known as Big Tim or Big Feller, he was one of the city’s most powerful politicians in the first decade of the 20th century.
Richard F. Welch, a New York historian, who wrote “King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City From the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era” describes his legacy.
“Profoundly Irish by birth, heritage and experience, the new district leader held little in the way of ethno-religious prejudices and took people as he found them.
“Brought up in abject poverty himself his worldview was refracted through a prism of class-consciousness that owed nothing to theory or ideology and everything to experience and practicality.”
“Sullivan was a master of mass politics in an age when personal contact was everything,” he writes.
“The loyalty he engendered in the multiethnic population below 14th Street was based on his big-hearted solicitude for his constituents.”Sullivan founded Kenmare Street in 1911, in memory of the town his mother emigrated from.
He died at the age of 51 when he was killed on August 31, 1913, by a train near Pelham Parkway in the Bronx.
From Listowel Connection .com
https://www.irishcentral.com/topic/new-york
-----------------------------------------------
Solène Tadié World
May 28, 2021
PARIS — May 28, 1871, ended the dark episode of the Commune of Paris, a bloody civil war that opposed the legitimate French government of the Third Republic to the socialist and revolutionary republicans who had controlled Paris for 72 days.
The terrible wave of repression that followed this period of insurrection, considered the most violent episode of the country’s history since the French Revolution (with approximately 6,500 deaths), tends to cover the ruthless exactions committed by the Communards on those they considered to be their enemies, including many clergymen.
One hundred and 50 years later, the parish of Our Lady of the Hostages (Notre-Dame-des-Otages) in Paris will commemorate the events of the Commune with several events, including news on the progress of the cause of beatification of the five clergymen who died at the hands of the Commune’s supporters, called the Communards.
---------------------------------------------------------
Margaret Eager was born on the 12th August, 1863 in Limerick, one of ten children to Francis McGillycuddy Eagar and Frances Margaret (née Holden). She moved to Belfast as a teenager where she trained as a nurse and later worked as a matron of an orphanage.
In 1898 she was appointed nanny to the four daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia. The four Grand Duchesses Olga; Tatiana; Maria; and Anastasia—known collectively as OTMA were placed under her care from 1898 to 1904 and are supposed to have developed a slight Limerick accent when English as a result. After her return to Great Britain she wrote a memoir entitled Six Years at the Russian Court about her time with the family and remained in touch with the princesses till their murder in 1918. She later ran an unsuccessful boarding house for many years before her death in 1936.
Discover Ireland from the outside in and find out why saying “I’m Irish” is one of the biggest conversation starters, no matter where you are.
Germany 1992-1995
Fr. Brendan Duggan
After the unification of Germany in 1989 our Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) in West Germany asked for volunteers to open a new foundation in the former “Deutsche Demokratishe Republic (or DDR), which had become a Russian Puppet State in 1945. We were invited to take over a parish in Rostock on the Baltic coast. Rostock had about 400,000 inhabitants, with a famous University , and was a good port also. In the Middle Ages Rostock had been a member of the Hanseatic League of seaside river ports. East Germany was about 90% Atheist, 9% Lutheran and 1% Catholic. Raymond Maher and myself were two of a small group with two German Spiritans.
I arrived in Germany in September 1992 and I attended a Language School in Cologne for four months. I was a beginner in German and I found it a bit daunting as I was 45 years old. Middle-aged people do not learn a language as easily as a teenager or young adult, as so many migrants have found when they live in a new country. I got some good insights into the German psyche. Young Germans have a huge shame complex because of what their families did to people during the last war. I was told at the language school in Koln about a girl student who discovered by chance that her grandfather had been an S.S. solider in Auschwitz. From that moment her grandfather ceased to exist for her. She was so devastated and ashamed. One can understand the sympathies Germans have for the State of Israel. In the light of ISIS I can’t see many Germans being sympathetic to Moslems even though the German Federal Republic has taken in about 1,000,000 refugees from the Near East.
When I finally arrived in Rostock I was installed as Pfarrer (Pastor). My salary was 5800 German Marks/month=2800$. So I was earning about twice the salary of a U.S. priest. In Germany, to practice as a Catholic or Lutheran one had to pay an extra 9% of your total taxation. The Church in Germany before the Unification in 1989 was filthy rich. The Archdiocese of Cologne (Koln) used to give the Vatican 60 million Marks a year which was probably equal to the whole contribution of the U.S. Church. The 9% extra taxation was collected by the State which deducted 2% for the collecting. I remember the Bishop of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, our Bishop in Rostock, once complaining that he had only 45,000,000 Marks to run his Diocese of about 23 parishes. I am sure our Bishop in Limerick would have been envious. In Rostock when we had to do a big job in the Church we were given 95% of the total cost from “Aid to the Church in Need” and we had only to raise about 10,000 Marks.
My parish had about 300 people who attended church on Sunday. They sang beautifully and one choir had a mini orchestra of Cello, French Horn, Piano and Clarinet. Germany has a high culture and our hymns in German were part of a 300 year music tradition.
In the parish I had no one to help me with the nitty, gritty of preaching and instructing the teenage children for Confirmation. I found it rather daunting to teach teenagers about Confirmation through my halting German. One of the teens I taught was not baptised so I had the privilege of baptising her on Holy Saturday night. In fact it was in Rostock that I met my first real Atheist. This girl, of Lutheran tradition, had been reared as an Atheist, had never heard of God, the Bible etc but was a very good living person and hugely intelligent. Most Germans were either Cultural Catholics or Lutherans
Abe Edgeworth
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/abbe-edgeworth-king-louis-irish-confessor
May 15, 2013
Abbé Edgeworth: King Louis’ Irish Confessor
by Rev. George W. Rutler
Among the singularities of the French monarchy was the tradition of having Scottish bodyguards. Scottish history has not been riddled with pacifism, and the Scots along with the fiery Castilians, were used as mercenaries as early as Charlemagne. An “Auld Alliance” between Scotland and France was sealed in 1295, and in the dark war days of 1942, Charles de Gaulle invoked it as “the oldest alliance in the world.” In 1418, as Charles VI began to go mad, the Dauphin called on Scottish troops to support his cause against Henry V. They were victorious at the battle of Baugé in 1421, prompting Pope Martin V to comment: “The Scots are well known as an antidote to the English.” St. Joan of Arc entered besieged Orleans in 1429 with a retinue of 130 Scots guards protecting her and playing on bagpipes the same tune, “Hey Tuttie Taiti,” that had been played for Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn a century before. The guards and pipers were also present with Joan at the coronation of the Dauphin as Charles VII at Rheims. The new king chose one hundred of the Scots as his personal bodyguards to honor their heroism when 6,000 of their number died at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424. The “Garde Ecossaise” later became “Garde de la Manche” since they escorted the king close enough to be touched by his sleeve. By the eighteenth century, some of them were more French than Scottish but they wore the thistle and carried claymore with basket guards of steel, guarding the French kings until Charles X abdicated in the July Revolution of 1830. They served as a poignant reminder of the Auld Alliance that lasted until 1906, and as late as then, anyone born in Scotland could have dual citizenship with France.
This recalls another Celtic curiosity: the priest who accompanied King Louis XVI to his execution was Irish. Rarely does anyone ask why the French king had an Irish confessor. Like the Garde Ecossaise, there is of course an explanation, and an edifying one at that.
Henry Essex Edgeworth was born in County Longford at Firmount, the ancestral home of the Edgeworths who had come from Middlesex, England during the reign of Elizabeth in 1582. In their house, Oliver Goldsmith had learned to read and write. Some accounts claim Henry as a great great grandson of the third cousin of Archbishop James Ussher, the seventeenth century Anglican Primate of Ireland who was a first rate classicist but a less distinguished historian, as he used the date of King Nebuchadnezzar’s death to calculate that the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC. His contemporary, John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, outdid him by dating the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden at 10 AM on Monday, November 10 in the same year. Just as Edgeworth eventually would do, Ussher consoled his sovereign Charles I in prison during his last night on earth in 1649 and accompanied him to his execution but fainted before the axe was brought down.
Henry’s mother, Martha, was the daughter of Christopher Ussher of Wicklow, an unyielding Protestant who wrote in his Last Will: “My daughters Catherine Ussher and Martha Edgeworth are turned Roman Catholiques and have quitted me and my family and all natural ties to them and their country. I leave them one shilling each, with my blessing.” Henry’s father Robert was an Anglican clergyman whose own family was not unfriendly to Catholics. One of them recalled: “The Roman Catholic Bishop M‘Gaurin, held a Confirmation the day before yesterday, and dined here on a God-send haunch of venison.” The Reverend Robert Edgeworth made an intense profession of the Catholic Faith and left the Penal Laws behind for France with his wife, his sister-in-law Catherine, and his youngest son Henry who began studies in Toulouse and eventually was ordained in Paris. He had hoped to become a foreign missionary and lived at the residence of Les Missions Etrangers, working with all ranks of the agitated populace, gaining a great following among the poorest, and counseling expatriate English and Irish, converting some Protestants among them. He chose not to accept the offer of a bishopric back in Ireland, so that he might minister to the poor Savoyards of Paris. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Antoine Le Clerc, de Juigné nominated him as confessor to Madame Elizabeth, the sister of Louis XVI and he visited her frequently in prison. His mother and sister joined him in Paris, his mother eventually dying in captivity while his sister died later. The Archbishop gave the Abbé Henri Essex Edgeworth de Firmont the title Grand Vicaire, with responsibility for all the Catholics of Paris, and fled for is own life to Germany. An aunt in Galway asked him to flee and be her chaplain, as she had also become Catholic, but he used as an excuse that his English had become poor after many years abroad. A letter to a priest in London told the truth:
Almighty God has baffled my measures, and ties me to this land of horrors by chains I have not the liberty to shake off. The case is this: the wretched master [the King] charges me not to quit this country, as I am the priest whom he intends to prepare him for death. And should the iniquity of the nation commit this last act of cruelty, I must also prepare myself for death, as I am convinced the popular rage will not allow me to survive an hour after the tragic scene; but I am resigned. Could my life save him I would willingly lay it down, and I should not die in vain.
The evening before January 21, 1793, the Abbé fell in tears at the King’s feet. Louis helped him up, made his last confession and then bade farewell to the Queen and their children. The Commune having reluctantly allowed the Abbé to put on vestments, as clerical dress had been forbidden, he said Mass and gave the King his last Communion. The two stayed together until dawn:
The King, finding himself seated in the carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near….
In one of his last gestures, the King placed his hand on Edgeworth’s knee and then told the guard to take care of his priest. Louis appeared shocked when the guards began to bind his hands. Edgeworth told him: “Suffer this outrage, as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be your reward.” The youngest of the executioners, eighteen years old, held the King’s head high and let some of the blood splatter on the Abbé. He slipped through the crowd: “All eyes were fixed on me, as you may suppose; but as soon as I reached the first line, to my surprise, no resistance was made…. I was not permitted, on this occasion, to wear any exterior marks of a priest. I was absolutely lost in the crowd, and no more noticed than if I had been a simple spectator of a scene which forever will dishonour France.”
The Abbé first took refuge in the Rue du Bac where the Blessed Mother would appear to Catherine Labouré in 1830. After a stay in Bayeux, he crossed to England in 1796 and went to Scotland to see the King’s brother, the comte d’Artois. Prime Minister Pitt offered him a large pension which he accepted, though he declined the presidency of Maynooth seminary and honors from King Louis XVIII. He joined the exiled household of Louis in Blankenberg and moved with them to Mittau in Russia. Louis delegated him to go to St. Petersburg and present the Order of the Holy Spirit to Czar Paul who, moved by the transparent piety of Edgeworth, knelt and begged his blessing. Back in Mittau he contracted typhus from nursing sick French soldiers stranded during the Napoleonic campaign. Risking contagion, the Princess Marie-Therese, daughter of Louis XVI, attended the deathbed of the “beloved and revered invalid, her more than friend, who had left kindred and country for her family.”
The Abbé Edgeworth never claimed to have said the words ascribed to him as the King climbed the steps to the guillotine, and many suppose they were as apocryphal as Newton’s apple or the three hundred Spartans who stopped the army of Xerxes, but they were dear to Macaulay: “Montez au ciel, fils de Saint Louis. Climb up to heaven, son of Saint Louis.”
Louis XVIII did him the rare honor of personally composing his epitaph, and in splendid Latin, too:
Here lies the Very Reverend Henry Essex Edgeworth de Firmont, a priest, of the Holy Church of God: Vicar General of the Diocese of Paris, etc., Who following in the steps of our Redeemer, was an Eye to the Blind, a Staff to the Lame, a Father to the Poor, and a Consoler of the Afflicted. When Louis XVI was delivered over to Death by his impious and rebellious subjects, he gave the resolute Martyr strength for his last struggle and pointed out to him the opening Heavens. Snatched from the hands of regicides by the wonderful protection of God, he voluntarily attached himself to Louis XVIII, when he signified his wish for his services To whom and to whose Royal Family and Faithful Comrades, he proved himself for a space of ten years, an example of Virtue and an Assuager of misfortune. Driven from kingdom to kingdom by the calamity of the times, he went about doing good, ever like to Him who possessed his sole devotion. At length full of good works, he died the 22nd May, the year of our Lord, 1807, aged 62. May he rest in peace.
Tagged as: Ireland, King Louis XVI, Scotland, St. Joan of Arc, The Abbe Edgeworth
The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.
Europe and the Irish Monks
By Enzo Farinella
We knew that the Celts founded the first Europe, but very few are aware that Irish monks had a very important role in Medieval Europe, which they transformed culturally and spiritually. Britain, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, Russia, Iceland, Greenland, America... are in many ways linked to them.
Bobbio, Fiesole, Lucca, Taranto, Lumièges, Auxerre, Laon, Luxeuil, Liège, Trier, Wurzburg, Regensburg, Rheinau, Reichenau, Salzburg, Vienna, St. Gallen... are all European towns founded by, or linked to, Irish monks
Many dioceses in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Italy have an Irish Saint as their Patron. So we find in the 7th century Columbanus, from Leinster, in France and later in Bobbio; Cathaldus, from Canthy, in Taranto; Finbar or Redrian in Lucca; Killian, from Mullagh in Co. Cavan, in Wuerzburgh; Fergal or Vergil, the surveyor and satirist, from Kilkenny, & Colman, as Patrons of Salzburg and the province of Lower Austria respectively.
Wendel in Saarland, one of the 16 regions of Germany; Willibrod in Luxembourg; Columcille or Columba from Derry, prince of Tirconell, went to Lindsfarne, Northumbria, to Iona in Scotland and then to Iceland; Fursa, the Visionary, travelled from Ireland to East Anglia, then to Lagny, just east of Paris, and Peronne, which would be known in time as Peronna Scottorum, Peronne of the Irish and City of Fursey; Caidoc and Fricor advanced on Picardy; Rufus in Val d’Aosta; Gall, Columbanus
best friend, founded St. Gallen in Switzerland; the scholar Donatus, scottorum sanguine creatus, was bishop of Fiesole from 826 to 877; Fiachra or Fiacre left Kilkenny and could claim to have opened the first Irish-run B&B in France when he established a priory and a guest house in the village of Brueil (now St. Fiacre), about 50 km east of Paris.
He became famous as a healer; today he is known as the patron saint of gardeners and his statue – a spade in one hand and a book in the other – can be found in churches across France; Brendan, the Navigator, reached Greenland and North America, to mention but a few. All of them had a profound influence on the history of Europe for centuries.
In 870 Heiric of Auxerre wrote in his Life of St. Germanus: Almost all of Ireland, despising the sea, is migrating to our shores with so many philosophers. This is The Irish Miracle, as Daniel Rops stated. The Irish Miracle is the second setting out of Christianity, from a country which had just been baptized, and which was immediately dreaming of giving Christ back to the world.
According to Arthur Kingsley Porter, Yale professor, the success of the Celtic Church was a religious and political event of the first magnitude. Also the French writer Montalembert wrote: "It has been said and cannot be sufficiently repeated, Ireland was then regarded by all Christian Europe as the principal centre of knowledge and piety – superior to
anything that could be seen in any other country of Europe."
We have to agree with Card.Tòmàs O’Fiaich, writing: Even after allowing that a number were doubtfully Irish, the
achievement of the remainder, culturally as well religiously, borders on the incredible. It both challenges us & fills us with pride.
Irish monasticism is an important moment of history, equal to the one of Greece, centuries before, civilizing Rome, the conqueror, or to the later one of the Italian Renaissance. To know, to meet and to dialogue with the various cultures is, today, necessary for the Europe of peoples and for the action of Christians in an always more globalized world,
especially in this moment of crisis that the EU is experimenting.
In the meeting of these cultures we find the Culture as foundation of all values and then of the person with his/her freedom and supreme dignity in a world of justice, solidarity and peace, all equal as human beings, united by the deep-rooted sense of belonging to a common intellectual and spiritual tradition, respecting diversity.
The Irish monks, true missionaries, like St. Columbanus or St. Cathaldus, had an important task in promoting the reality of this Culture and in developing it during the snoozing of Middle Ages. To them we owe a lot, as an essential part of our DNA. Infact, immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire, in 476 A.D., in a Europe, devastated by the lack of moral values, barbaric invasions and famine, a wave of re-evangelization and moral and cultural renewal, true work of spiritual and civic re-unification of the whole of Europe, starts from Ireland.
They brought an Irish style of Christianity to Europe and had an important role in preserving their indigenous cultural heritage. So, while the Roman Empire was fading, literary culture was blooming in Ireland in places such as Armagh, Inis More, Kildare, Clonard, Clonmacnoise, Bangor, Clonfert, Durrow, Derry, Glendalough, Lismore… that made Ireland, the land of “Saints and Scholars”.
The secret of their work came from a small church at the centre of their monastery, “where, over the white Gospel page, the Gospel candles shone”. The White learning, which made the Irish monks famous, was the learning and teaching
based on the Bible. Meditation and concentration on the Word of God, studying and teaching it, assimilating and communicating it, became the soul of this White learning. The words of the Gospel: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me, to bring glad tidings to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blinds, to let the oppressed go free were St. Patrick’s and later the Irish monks' message.
The monastery became in this way a place for faith and of meeting people, scriptorium where to gather epic poems, love stories, elegies of everyday life, passed on generation to generation, and the Irish monastic centres developed, from the 5th century onwards, into villages, hostels for pilgrims, hospitals for the sick, university citadels, work places or cultural centres for all, true oases of peace and prayer, meditation and contemplation, learning and teaching.
Students from every part of Ireland and Europe attended them and, under their guidance, European people began again to work the land, to read and write. From here Irish monks, answering to a special call, spread everywhere throughout the world. . To leave Ireland for Christ became a must for the new converts, who gave origin to the famous movement: Peregrinatio pro Christo. St. Bernard wrote of throngs of Irish Saints who flooded Europe. Many of them went as pilgrims to the Holy Land, others to Rome, but as missionaries or pilgrims, in both cases, the Irish monks, with their books, striped on their back, spread culture and faith everywhere they went.
In the 6th century, the abbot of Iona, Adamnam (624-704 A.D.), in De locis sanctis 3, 6, 1-3, writes how the monk Arculf, being in Catania for a few days, saw the fire of the Volcano at night and was fascinated by the rumbles of Mt. Etna, that made all Sicily tremble. Before the end of the 8th century, Irish monks reached Modra in Moravia (now in the Slovak
Republic), 30 km North of Bratislava.
The ruined wall of an ancient church, similar to the little St. Kevin church at Glendalough, and nearby town of Malacky seem to speak of the presence of the Irish monks in this part of central Europe. A Celtic cross in Ják, the most complete Romanesqe church in Hungary, is another example of this presence. Up and down the length of western and central Europe, as far east as Kiev, we can find a living legacy of the travels and achievements of these intrepid Irish monks from
the 6th to the 14th century.
They founded the Schottenstift in the city centre of Vienna, today a Benedictine monastery. In 782 we find Alcuin, at Charlemagne’s Court as director of the Palatine School, that turned into the University of Paris. Another Irish monk, Dungal, was sent by Charlesmagne to Pavia, the capital of the Longobards and of the Franks in Italy, to preside over the local Palatine School. This School, that became the University of Pavia, was the most important of his Kingdom and all young people from Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Novara, Lodi, Asti, Tortona, etc., had to continue their higher studies in this College -“ln Pavia conveniant ad Dungalum”, as the Corteolona Capitulary (year 825) stated. So we can say that Irish monks were at the birth of the Paris and Pavia Universities and of the education in general of the Kingdom of Italy in the late Midle Ages.
John Scotus Eurigena (800-877), dominated the philosophical scene of the 9th century and certainly he was one of the best scholars of the Greek and Latin world. He was “the giant of the Carolingian Renaissance, whose like was not seen again in Western Christendom until the Italian Reneissance” (Toynbee). Many were also the pilgrims who went towards Italy and Europe. Among them there was King Donough O'Brien, youngest son of Brian Boru, who, once he arrived in Rome in 1064, renounced his title and entered the Roman monastery of "Santo Stefano Rotondo", where a memorial tells us about his death.
The Visio Tungdali of 1149, written by the Irish monk, Marcus, influenced Dante in his Divina Commedia, as well as many others European writers. At the same time the highest Italian Poet excercised a great fascination upon many Irish writers, including Ciaran Carson, Louis MacNiece,Seamus Heaney, W.B.Yeats, both Nobel Prize for Literature.
The knowledge of reading & bookmaking made of them counsellors in Charlemagne’s Court and of other kings, teachers and educators, publishers and very well respected people in many other fields. According to Arthur Porter, from Ireland, England learned her later writing. From these monks Europe received again culture and values, hope and an Irish style of
Christianity. Daniel-Rops, the most important historian of Church History, writes: The history of this Celtic Christianity is a history which has not always met with the notice it deserves, but anyone who studies it fairly, will find, it is of capital importance.
They left us with master pieces like the Book of Kells, the most beautiful manuscript, created between the 8th and the 9th century. Also the development of a form of confession fully private, of which an equivalent did not exist in the continent, is attributed to them. They were truly at the centre of the new Christian life in Ireland and Europe, as St.Columbanus and St. Cathaldus.Coumbanus left from the , the most eminent representative of Irish ascetics, land of the ultimi habitatores mundi – the inhabitants of the world’s edge -, from the small port of Bangor, offering a great contribution to the common European house, as a restorer of civilization in the old Continent.
At the age of 50, he started his pilgrimage throughout Europe, passingfrom England and Cornwal to Britanny around 592; then he went from the Northern Provinces of Gaul, descending along the Moselle, up to Oberland and to the Uri canton in the heart of Switzerland, in Costance; Bregenz in Austria was his next stop; finally, Milan, Pavia and Piacenza saw him as pilgrim before settling in Bobbio, in the Spring of 613. Tradition wants that he stopped also in San Colombano al Lambro, on the river of the same name, of which the poet Redi wrote:bel colle / cui bacia il Lambro il piede / ed a cui Colombano il nome diede.(beautiful hill whose foot the Lambro kisses and to whom Columbanus gave the name).
He covered about 5.000 km of desolate lands, marshes, Alpine and Appennine passes, preaching passionately the faith among the Franks, the Swabians and the Lombards. Many arehis foundations at Annegray, Luxeuil, Fontaines, in France, and afterwards in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, which were for many centuries, beacons of light for all Europe.
He wrote to Popes and Kings in defence of the human dignity, proclaiming everywhere a message of peace and universality. He contributed with his mission as evangelizer and legislator to the construction of Europe, based upon Christian values, the centrality of the human person and the primacy of the common good. These are elements
common to the Europe of the 3rd millennium, that sees in Columbanus its natural protector.
For his diplomatic skills as builder of peace, his vast culture and his work at the Christian origins of the same Europe, he should be proclaimed Patron Saint of Europe, at the dawn of the new European Union, seen as the land of all its citizen, be they Galls, British, Irish, Italians or of any other nationality. His European vision of this new social world, called to grow in justice and perfection, and his untiring work make of him the most equipped man of European spirit, almost 200 years before Charlemagne. And Columbanus is certainly, together with the founder of the Sacred Roman Empire, the most eminent personality of the late Middle Ages. Robert Schuman wrote that Columbanus is the Saint Patron of those who
are trying to build a united Europe.
St. Columbanus merits becoming copatron of Europe because in the 6th century he anticipated with his pilgrimage throughout the nations what became later the European Union, is said in a ANSA news flash on the 23th November 2007. These are words of Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, in Bobbio, received, together with
Card. Cathal Daly, the Freedom of the city by the town made famous by this Irish monk.
Today the European West owes in part its history to the work of this “itinerant” for Christ, a true European, pioneer of civilization, father founder of monasteries, precursor of justice and freedom, witness and champion of the supreme dignity of the human being for his time and also for ours. For his pilgrimage throughout Europe, for the creation of so many communities on the continent, for the Christian civilizing European function of his foundations, for his message and for his social vision, Columbanus represents the man and the European Saint who was a true engine in the reunification of the various countries, promoting their freedom and dignity in an universal vision. Robert Schuman, father of the new Europe, saw in Columbanus its Patron. Fra Anselmo Tommasini, in Irish Saints in Italy, described Columbanus as a giant Irish
Saint. Bobbio, a natural cross-road of the most important communications path-ways during the Middle Ages, became with Columbanus the capital of monastic culture and the centre, for many centuries, of religious, philosophical, scientific, artistic & social life.
Petrarch, at the beginning of Renaissance, and Muratori found in Bobbio Capitular Archive150 Latin manuscripts, written before the 7th century, among which Cicero’s De Re Publica, works by Virgil and Frontone, the Biblical Codex K, only to name a few. The majority of these codex can now be admired in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, in the Royal Library in Turin, in Naples and Vienna. The codex of these illuminators and their style of writing were the treasure of these libraries. Many classics would have been lost if not were for the patient work of these monks in their land and abroad.
Poggio Bracciolini, the prince of Florentine humanism, discovered many completely new orations by Cicero, Argonautica by Flaccus, Silvae by Statious and an entire Quintilian in the libraries of the monasteries of Cluny and St. Gall.
If Columbanus was the great European monk, Cathaldus was the most commemorated and venerated Irish Saint in Italy and other parts of Europe, though we haven’t historical documents about him. Towns, villages, churches, hospitals, monasteries, ports, have been named after him.
The Cathedral of Taranto, where, according to the tradition, he is buried, is dedicated to him. Mosaics of the Saint can be admired in the Basilica of the Nativity, Betlem, in the Palatine Chapel of Palermo, in the Cathedral of Monreale (12th century). In the County of Caltanissetta there is S. Cataldo town, and he is also the Patron of various cities, as Taranto,
Gangi and many others.
The contribution given by the Irish monks to the various countries of Europe was incalculable. They brought perennial values and Christian hope in a decadent world. The Irish clergy enjoyed great prestige everywhere throughout Europe, Arthur Kingsley Porter wrote. And the Bishop Milner: They were the luminaries of the western world and to them we owe
the Bible, the Fathers and the Classics. Card. Henry Newman stated: Their monasteries became the storehouse of the past and the birthplace of the future. This is a lot for a small country like Ireland.
To build the EU upon solid basis, it is not enough to appeal only to a mere economical and commercial union or to economical interests, which, if sometimes unite, other times divide. It is necessary instead to aim at authentic values, based upon the universal moral law, written in the heart of every human being and, therefore, upon an authentic spiritual, ethical and cultural unity, notwithstanding religious, ethnical differences or of any other kind.
Without the Europe of culture, the economic and political union could easily fail, as it is happening in our days. Such Culture implies the deep sense of belonging to a common intellectual and spiritual tradition, of sharing a common source of respect for values, united in the common wish of defending and spreading the ideals of freedom and democracy.
This vision of culture or style of life, as foundation of all values, first of all the right to life of the human person with his/her inner dignity and his/her escatological vocation, was promoted by the Irish monks from the 6th century onwards, as common anthropological, cultural and ethical heritage, and it will be celebrated by the International Eucharistic Congress ( Dublin, June 10-17, 2012).
Only a similar vision can exalt pluralism, exploit the richness of the various cultural and religious identities and put the basis for a common journey towards social, civic, political, spiritual and cultural goals, capable to renew our world.
Enzo Farinella
Further information on the 6th Century
The years 491 to 615 saw the most remarkable men, women and events that ever Ireland produced. We begin with the most likely date of Patrick's death and we end with the death of Columbanus in Bobbio in Italy in 615. That 124 years saw the life and death of all those labeled 'the second order of Irish saints' , the founders of our great monasteries and our most important missionaries.
Finnian (d.549) founded the great monastery of Clonard on the banks of the Boyne in County Meath in 520. Among the young men who entered that monastery were Colmcille (521 - 597), Brendan of Fenit (486 - 578), Brendan of Birr and Ciarán the son of the wright (511 - 547). Ciarán founded Clonmacnoise in 545, Brendan founded Clonfert in 561 and Colmcille founded Iona in 563. Colmcille also founded Derry, Durrow and, probably Kells before and after Iona. Meanwhile Comgall ( born 515) founded Bangor in 555. Bangor was to send out Columbanus (540 - 615) to found Annegray, Fontaine and Luxeuil in France and Bobbio in Italy in 614. With Columbanus went Gall (d.630) whose foundation grew into the great monastery and city of St. Gall in Switzerland. Very possibly, it was later to send out John Scotus Eriugena and Dicuil to grace the academic world of ninth century Europe.
Others who lived at this time were Brigid of Kildare, Brega of Annaghdown, Enda of Inishmore, Jarlath of Tuam, Flannan of Ennis, Colman of Cloyne, Fachtna of Ross, Kevin of Glendalough, Finbarr of Cork, Senan of Scattery and the Maharees and two Kerrymen who must be mentioned, Carthage of Lismore and Fionan Cam of Corca Dhuibhne who founded the Sceilig among other places from Offaly to Kerry. All these men and women are interesting in their own right and their names grace the playing fields of Ireland today but we have space but to mention their names and the fact that most of them knew and, doubtless, influenced one another.
To return to the great saints and their monasteries, they attracted students from all over Europe and beyond during Europe's dark ages when the only lights left shining were the Irish monastic schools which preserved not only theology and scripture but astronomy, geography, navigation, mathematics, and the classics. Until the middle of the ninth century the Irish influence would be great in Europe. One proof of this is that, as the new vernacular languages of Europe emerged, the principal reader and text was the Voyage of Brendan, copies of which are preserved in manuscript form in most of the libraries of Europe.
Not all the activities of our great saints were edifying. They were human beings who were deeply involved in the secular affairs of their time. Colmcille was in great measure responsible for the development of what is modern Scotland and, through Iona's daughter house in Lindisfarne, was highly influential in the development of the Northern Kingdoms of England. We owe it to these men and women, and to ourselves, to learn what we can about them, that we may understand them and learn lessons for our own time.
MORE St BRENDAN
Further information on St Brendan
Two Irishmen are named for their achievements, Daniel O Connell, the Liberator and Saint Brendan of Fenit, the Navigator. We are justly proud of them, Kerrymen both.
A local Fenit committee has received planning permission to erect a statue in honour of Saint Brendan in his birthplace. As we move into the third millennium, it seems appropriate to make this gesture in honour of a local man who inspired thousands down the years by his spirit of courage, initiative, enterprise and love of God.
We know of Brendan (or Bréanainn) from four sources, the Irish Lives, the Latin Lives, the Latin Navigatio Sancti Brendani and many vernacular versions of his voyage in the emerging languages of Europe, collectively known as the Voyage of Brendan. These various sources are in manuscript in all the major and many smaller libraries of Europe.. The earliest source was probably written around 750 to 800 A.D., some two hundred years after the death of Brendan. The various editions of the Navigatio and the Voyages were the most popular reading material of the early Middle Ages and inspired Columbus in his voyage to the New World. Up until 1721 explorers like Don Gaspar Dominguez searched for Saint Brendan's Island which was represented on maps of the time, West of Ireland. A full bibliography of sources and studies on the life of Brendan fills a substantial volume. The voyage of Brendan is a particular type of literature and is based on oral tradition of which we have some manuscript evidence. The literature comprises echtrae (adventures), fis (visions) and immrama (voyages). The last of these are of the same genre as the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorpheses and the Arabian tales of Sinbad, some of whose themes they share. They require careful interpretation. It is difficult to separate myth and legend from fact, yet some things seem fairly certain about Brendan. One recognizes that much research must yet be done to verify some of the points made below.
Brendan was born in 486 to Finlug and Cara in Alltraighe Caille or Cinbeara, a district comprising the four miles from Spa to Fenit Island, some five miles west of Tralee in County Kerry. The Alltraighe were a sept of the Ciarraighe who have given their name to the present County Kerry. His most likely place of birth was Fenit Island with Kilfenora and Barrow also possibilities. From Fenit Island the view of the Atlantic is framed by Kerry Head and by Brandon Mountain. The ocean and the mountain were to have a profound influence on Brendan, challenging him to dream impossible dreams and to make of them reality.
Brendan was born some five years before the death of Patrick whose ministry covered the North and West of Ireland. Finlug and Cara were probably pre-Patrician Christians whose religion was due to contact with traders from France, Spain and North Africa. One factor that points towards this contact, particularly with North Africa, is the maintenance of some Apocryphal (non-canonical) sources in the Irish manuscripts, sources which do not appear in continental works. There seems to be some Coptic (Egyptian) influence that can only have come along the trade routes around the coast of Ireland. Fenit, near the mouth of the Shannon, must have been a common port of call for travelers. Their boats and ships were of wood as were Brendan's.
The sixth to the eighth centuries (500 - 800) are most important in understanding the contribution made by the Irish people to Europe. Strangely, when one reads the annals of Ireland, these years were ones of continuous fighting and of many great famines and plagues. Yet, in the midst of this, Brendan was one of the first to give a lead by his missionary activity and his organizing of communities around the central focus of the monastery wherein was lived a life of harmony, prayer and study. He probably founded Ardfert, some six miles from his birthplace sometime after 530. We then find him associated with Wales, Scotland and Normandy. He certainly visited Columkille in Scotland and many places there carry his name as do places in the Faeroes. At some time around the middle of the sixth century, Brendan's people, the Alltraighe, seem to have been uprooted and went up along the Shannon to East Galway and Roscommon. Brendan followed them and founded the monastery or Clonfert on the western side of the Shannon in County Galway in 561. Clonfert became one of the most important schools in Europe.
Brendan died in 578 aged 93 and is buried at Clonfert.
Dicuil, an Irish monk, became astronomer and geographer at the court of Charlemange and published his work De mensura Orbis Terrae at the beginning of the ninth century (c 825). His is the first written account of Irish hermits visiting Iceland and marveling at the midnight sun, in 795. Some think that this work may have inspired subsequent accounts of Brendan such as we have in his lives and voyages. Alcuin, the Englishman, derided the work of Dicuil, criticizing him and his 'Egyptian boys' who were mistaken in their computation of the date of Easter. This is another pointer towards the influence of the Eastern Mediterranean on Early Irish Christianity.
Whatever may be said of the accounts of Brendan's voyages, it seems clear that, amidst the fantastic renderings of the saga, there is evidence that someone had experienced the ice floes of the north, the fog of Newfoundland, and the exotic birds and flowers of the Caribbean. It is not possible to prove that Brendan himself experienced the events of the Voyage, yet it is most likely, such was his reputation as a Navigator, that his name came to be associated with the many undoubted voyages made by inhabitants of the coast of Kerry and of Ireland, so that in honouring Brendan we give honour to generations of Irish traders and fishermen who have braved the Atlantic and lived to tell the tale. Some, doubtless, went in search of the promised land, others went with missionary intent, many were blown long distances out to sea and off course and found themselves in the Faeroes, Iceland and places further afield. Recent genetic research shows the same gene-pool in Western Ireland, the Faeroes and Iceland. Further research will undoubtedly show that Irish seafarers were in America a thousand years before Columbus. And they probably were not the first!
The committee that has undertaken this work is local and has faced some of the difficulties that Brendan faced. We hope that, now that planning permission has been received, Kerry people and Irish people everywhere will be anxious to support this project. Teige O Donoghue of Glenflesk, Killarney, is designing the statue, in bronze. Teige is an internationally acclaimed artist and sculptor. The monument will be 12 feet high and stand on a four foot plinth on top of Samphire Island seventy feet above the mouth of Fenit Harbour. It will stand testament that the people of the locality, known to history as the 'feara foirne' (people of the shore), gave birth to a prophet whose fame has endured through the centuries. We expect this monument to become one of the most famous in Ireland and help local tourism as well as proclaiming the values of the local people..
We already have many pledges of support and many more will be needed. All contributions will be acknowledged and anyone who contributes €20 or more will have one's name entered in the Brendan Book along with any dedication they wish to make. This book will be a lasting memorial to those who chose to honour Brendan and to those they have commemorated at the start of the third millennium.
Financial contributions are not all that are required. We hope this project will generate interest in our culture and history and rekindle pride in ourselves and in our achievements, so we should like to hear from anyone who is interested and can help in any way.
By
JANE WALSH,
IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 9:10 AM
Updated Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 9:10 AM
Ardfert Cathedral, Co. Kerry.
Photo by Google Images
The Diocese of Kerry will celebrate The Gathering 2013 with an open air Mass in the historic Ardfert Cathedral. The prelude and Mass will be broadcast live on the internet throughout the world on The Gathering TV Channel.
St. Brendan the Navigator (484-577 AD) was born in nearby Fenit and the 13th century medieval Cathedral at Ardfert, now a National Monument site, was built on his 6th century monastic foundation.
Brendan is one of Ireland’s best known Early Christian missionaries who travelled extensively in Ireland and Western Europe. During one of his many overseas voyages Brendan is reputed to have discovered North America, the account of which is detailed in the Early Medieval manuscript called The Navigatio which circulated widely in Europe.
The Principal Concelebrant of the St. Brendan’s Day Mass will be the Bishop of Kerry, Most Rev. Dr. William Murphy. The Church of Ireland Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe, Rt. Rev. Trevor Williams will read the First Lesson. Fr. Pat Ahern, founding artistic director of Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, will direct singers and musicians from “Siamsóirí na Ríochta” in their first performance of his composition of ‘Aifreann Na nDaoine’ (Mass of the People) during the ceremony.
The television broadcast is an initiative of the Kerry Gathering Steering Committee and the Ardfert Development Association in conjunction with the FAS TV and Media Centre, Tralee and Kerry Broadband. Fr. Dermod McCarthy, former director of Religious Affairs at RTE, will present the programme and it will be produced by Brian Nolan of FAS and directed by Theo O’Grady. The Mass is being facilitated by the Office of Public Works who manage the site on behalf of the State.
Transmission from Ardfert will commence at 19:50 GMT with a short video on Ardfert and its association with St. Brendan. Children from the local schools, dressed as monks, will participate in the ceremony as will members of the Ardfert Community and Professor Joseph Nagy, Los Angeles, one the world’s leading Early Christian scholars.
St. Brendan is one of the 12 Apostles of Ireland, patron of the dioceses of Kerry and Clonfert, Co. Galway and his feast day on May 16 is celebrated by the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions.
Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/Mass-broadcast-live-on-Gathering-TV-from-Ardfert-Cathedral-for-Feast-of-St-Brendan-207522881.html#ixzz2TUDbPPus
Follow us: @IrishCentral on Twitter | IrishCentral on Facebook