The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
_The Book of Armagh_ has also been selected. This volume, a transcript of
one still older, supposed to have been the holograph of S. Patrick, was
ascribed by Sir W. Betham to Bishop Aedh of Stetty, whose death is
recorded in the _Four Masters_ in 698; and O’Curry conceived it to be as
old as 724, but Mr. Graves seems to have proved that it was written by the
scribe Ferdomnach in 807. It is a small quarto volume, consisting of 221
leaves of vellum, and containing an extract from the _Tripartite Life of
S. Patrick_, annotations on that saint’s life by Tirechan and others, his
confession or epistle to the Irish, the Epistle of S. Jerome to Pope
Damasus, the ten Eusebian canons, an explanation of Hebrew names used in
the Gospels, with various prefaces and arguments, the four Gospels and
remaining books of the New Testament, the life of S. Martin of Tours by
Sulpicius, with two epistles by Sulpicius and Severus, and concludes with
a prayer. It belonged to the Church of Armagh, being, as Prof. Westwood
relates, held in such veneration that the family of Mac Mayre held lands
from the See of Armagh by the tenure of its safe keeping; and in 1846 it
was presented to Trinity College, Dublin, by the Rev. Francis Brownlow,
into whose family it had passed in the XVIIth century.
Six pages have been selected, the first three of which contain the extract
from the _Tripartite Life of S. Patrick_. On the first column of page 18b
is the following account of a miracle performed by S. Patrick: “Sechnall
went afterwards to rebuke Patrick on account of a chariot he had. Then
Patrick sent the chariot to Sechnall without a charioteer in it, but it
was an angel that directed it. Sechnall sent it, when it had stopped three
nights there with him, to Manchan, and it remained three nights with him.
He sent it to Fiacc. Fiacc rejected it. After that where they went to was
round the church three times, when the angel said, ‘It is to you they have
been given from Patrick when he came to know your disease.’ ” The miracle
as here related is, as O’Curry very truly observes, not quite
intelligible, but the key to it is to be found in the _Tripartite Life_,
from which it had probably been taken. The story there is that once, when
Sechnall was at Armagh, he remarked that two chariot horses which he saw
there would be a fitting gift to Bishop Fiacc. Patrick was not at home at
the time, but as soon as he returned and heard this he had the horses
harnessed to a chariot, and sent them off, without a coach‐man, to Fiacc
at Stetty, where they arrived safely. The reason of S. Patrick making him
this present was to enable him to go to his cave on the hill of Drom
Coblai, where he used to repair on Shrove Saturday with five loaves, and
remain till Easter Saturday; and because “chafers had gnawed his legs so
that death was near him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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