Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 2 (of 3), Church and cultureSkene, W. F. (William Forbes)
History
Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 2 (of 3), Church and culture
Skene, W. F. (William Forbes)
Celts -- Scotland; Civilization, Celtic; Scotland -- Antiquities, Celtic; Scotland -- History -- To 1603
There can be little question that the monastery of Rosnat, called also
‘Alba’ and ‘Candida’ and ‘Futerna,’ and known as the ‘Magnum
Monasterium,’ could have been no other than the monastery of Candida
Casa, known to the Angles as Whithern, of which ‘Futerna’ is the Irish
equivalent. The future bishops and abbots who were trained there were
all more or less connected with Ulster; the monasteries founded by them
were in the north of Ireland; and Finnian, the latest of them, was of
the race of Dal Fiatach, occupying the districts of Down and part of
Antrim, separated by the Irish Channel from Galloway. They would
naturally resort to the great school of monastic life established there
by Ninian in honour of St. Martin of Tours, to be trained in the rules.
Whether Mancenus, or Manchenius, and Mugint were the same person, or the
latter the successor of the former, it is difficult to say. Both appear
to have borne the name of Nennio; but this appellation may have been
applied to the abbots of Candida Casa as the successors of the founder
Ninian. The former name of Manchenius is obviously the Irish name
Manchan; and he is probably celebrated in the Litany of Angus the
Culdee, when he invokes ‘thrice fifty disciples, with Manchan the
master.’[96]
[Sidenote: Second channel through Bretagne and Wales.]
While this monastic life, which Ireland thus received from Saint
Ninian’s monastery in Galloway, affected mainly the north of Ireland,
the second great channel through which monachism reached Ireland
exercised a powerful and all-pervading influence on her central and
southern districts. In the year 394 Tours was made the capital or civil
metropolis of the province of Lugdunensis Tertia, and became a
metropolitan city. Her ecclesiastical jurisdiction extended over the
provinces now called Bretagne, Maine, and Anjou, with a part of
Touraine; and Saint Martin became the metropolitan bishop. The monachism
introduced into Gaul and fostered by him spread at once into Bretagne,
where the monasteries of Landouart and Landevenech were founded;[97] and
from thence it passed into Wales. In the Catalogue of the Saints we are
told that those of the second or monastic order ‘received a mass from
bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.’ Bishop David is of
course the celebrated Saint David who founded the church of
_Cillemuine_, or Menevia, now St. David’s. Gillas is no other than the
historian Gildas;[98] and by Docus is meant Saint Cadoc, who founded the
great monastery of Nantgarvan, or Llancarvan, in South Wales, where
Gildas was also associated with him. From these three eminent fathers of
the monastic church of Wales the monastic institution also passed into
Ireland through Finnian of Clonard. Finnian was of the race in Ireland
termed _Cruithnigh_, or Picts; and we are told in his Acts, that after
having been instructed in his youth by Fortchern of Trim and Caiman of
Dairinis, an island in the bay of Wexford, he, in his thirtieth year,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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