"JOHANNES: OBARRDAN: FABRICAVIT.
"The second--
"JOHS: OKARBRI: COMORBANVS: S. TIGNACH: PMISIT."
""_John O"Barrdan made this box by the permission of John O"Carbry, successor of St. Tigermach_."
"St. Tierny, or St. Tigernach was third Bishop of Clogher, having succeeded St. Maccartin in the year 506. In the list of bishops, St.
Patrick is reckoned the first, and founder of the see. Tigernach died the 4th of April, 548.
"John O"Carbry was abbott of Clones, or Clounish, in the County of Monoghan, and as such was _comorb_, or _corb_*--i. e., successor--of Tigernach, who was founder of the abbey and removed the episcopal seat from Clogher to Clounish. Many of the abbots Were also bishops of the see. He died in 1353. How long he was abbot does not appear; but the age of the outside covering of the Dona is fixed to the 14th century.
* All the successors of the founder saints were called by the Irish _comorbs_ or _corbs_. The reader Will perceive that O"Carbry was a distant but not we immediate successor of St. Tigernach.
"Since the foregoing was written I have seen the Dona, which was exhibited at the last meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. it has been put together at a guess, but different from the drawing. There is inside O"Barrdan"s case another of silver plates some centuries older, and inside that the yew box, which originally contained the ma.n.u.scripts, now so united by damp as to be apparently inseparable, and nearly illegible; for they have lost the color of vellum, and are quite black, and very much decayed. The old Irish version of the New Testament is well worthy of being edited; it is, I conceive, the oldest Latin version extant, and varies much from the Vulgate or Jerome"s.
"The MS. inclosed in the yew box appears from the two membranes handed me by your friend Mr. ------, to be a copy of the Gospels--at least those membranes were part of the two first membranes of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and, I would say, written in the 5th or 6th century; were, probably, the property of St. Tigernach himself, and pa.s.sed most likely to the abbots of Clounish, his successors, as an heirloom, until it fell into the hands of the Maguires, the most powerful of the princes of the country now comprising the diocese of Clogher. Dr. O"Beirne"s letter I trust you will publish. I feel much indebted to the gentleman for his courteous expressions towards me, and shall be most happy to have the pleasure of being personally known to him.
"You must make allowance for the hasty sketch which is here given.
The advanced state of your printing would not allow me time for a more elaborate investigation.
"Believe me, my dear sir,
"Very sincerely yours,
"W. BETHAM."
We cannot close the ill.u.s.trations of this ancient and venerable relic without adding an extract from a most interesting and authentic history of it contributed by our great Irish antiquarian, George Petrie, Esq., R.H.A., M.R.I.A, to the 18th vol. of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, together with an engraving of it taken from a drawing made by the same accomplished artist.
"I shall endeavor to arrange these evidences in consecutive order.
"It is of importance to prove that this _c.u.mdach_, or reliquary, has been from time immemorial popularly known by the name of _Domnach_, or, as it is p.r.o.nounced, Donagh, a word derived from the Latin _Dominicus_.
This fact is proved by a recent popular tale of very great power, by Mr.
Carleton, called the "Donagh," in which the superst.i.tious uses to which this reliquary has been long applied, are ably exhibited, and made subservient to the interests of the story. It is also particularly described under this name by the Rev. John Groyes in his account of the parish of Errigal-Keeroch in the third volume of Shaw Mason"s Parochial Survey, page 163, though, as the writer states, it was not actually preserved in that parish.
"2. The inscriptions on the external case leave no doubt that the Domnach belonged to the monastery of Clones, or see of Clogher. The John O"Karbri, the _Comharb_, or successor of St. Tighernach, recorded, in one of those inscriptions as the person at whose cost, or by whose permission, the outer ornamental case was made, was, according to the Annals of the Pour Masters, Abbot of Clones, and died in the year 1353.
He is properly called in that inscription _Comorba.n.u.s_, or successor of Tighernach, who was the first Abbot and Bishop of the Church of Clones, to which place, after the death of St. Mac-Carthen, in the year 506, he removed the see of Clogher, having erected a new church, which he dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul. St. Tighernach, according to all our ancient authorities, died in the year 548.
"3. It appears from a fragment of an ancient life of St. Mac-Carthen, preserved by Colgan, that a remarkable reliquary was given by St Patrick to that saint when he placed him over the see of Clogher.
""Et addidit, [Patricius] Accipo, inquit, baculum itineris mei, quo ego membra mea sustento et scrinium in quo de sanctorum Apostolorum reliquiis, et de sanctae Mariae capillis, et sancta Grace Domini, et sepulchro ejus, et aliis reliquiis sanctis continentur. Quibus dictis dimisit c.u.m osculo pacis paterna fultum benedictione."--_Colgan, Vit. S.
Macaerthenni_ (24 Mart.) Acta SS. p. 738.
"From this pa.s.sage we learn one great-cause of the sanct.i.ty in which this reliquary was held, and of the uses of the several recesses for reliques which it presents. It also explains the historical _rilievo_ on the top--the figure of St. Patrick presenting the Domnach to St.
Mac-Carthen.
"4. In Jocelyn"s Life of St. Patrick (cap. 143) we have also a notice to the same effect, but in which the Domnach is called a _Chrismatorium_, and the relics are not specified--in all probability because they were not then appended to it.
"In these authorities there is evidently much appearance of the Monkish frauds of the middle ages; but still they are evidences of the tradition of the country that such a gift had been made by Patrick to Mac-Carthen.
And as we advance higher in chronological authorities, we find the notice of this gift stripped of much of its acquired garb of fiction, and related with more of the simplicity of truth.
"5. In the life of St. Patrick called the Tripart.i.te, usually ascribed to St. Evin, an author of the seventh century, and which, even in its present interpolated state, is confessedly prior to the tenth, there is the following remarkable pa.s.sage (as translated by Colgan from the original Irish) relative to the gift of the Domnach from the Apostle of Ireland to St. Mac-Carthen, in which it is expressly described under the very same appellation which it still bears.
"" Aliquantis ergo evolutis diebus _Mac-Caertennum_, sive _Caerthennum_ Episcopuin prsefecit sedi Episcopali Clocherensi, ab Ardmacha regni Metropoli haud multum distanti: et apud eum reliquit argenteum quoddam reliquiarium _Domnach-airgidh_ vulgo nuncupatum; quod viro Dei, in Hiberniam venienti, ccelitus missum erat."--_VII. Vita S. Patricii_, Lib. in. cap. 3, _Tr. Th._ p. 149.
"This pa.s.sage is elsewhere given by Colgan, with a slight change of words in the translation.
"In this version, which is unquestionably prior to all the others, we find the Domnach distinguished by the appellation of _Airgid_--an addition which was applicable only to its more ancient or silver plated case, and which could not with propriety be applied to its more recent covering, which in its original state had the appearance of being of gold.
"On these evidences--and more might probably be procured if time had allowed--we may, I think, with tolerable certainty, rest the following conclusions:
"1. That the Domnach is the identical reliquary given by St. Patrick to St. Mac-Carthen.
"2. As the form of the c.u.mdach indicates that it was intended to receive a book, and as the relics are all attached to the outer and the least ancient cover, it is manifest that the use of the box as a reliquary was not its original intention. The natural inference therefore is, that it contained a ma.n.u.script which had belonged to St. Patrick; and us a ma.n.u.script copy of the Gospels, apparently of that early age, is found within it, there is every reason to believe it to be that identical one for which the box was originally made, and which the Irish apostle probably brought with him on his mission into this country. It is indeed, not merely possible, but even probable, that the existence of this ma.n.u.script was unknown to the Monkish biographers of St. Patrick and St. Mac-Carthen, who speak of the box as a scrinium or reliquary only. The outer cover was evidently not made to open; and some, at least, of the relics attached to it were not introduced into Ireland before the twelfth century. It will be remembered also that no superst.i.tion was and is more common in connection with the ancient c.u.mdachs than the dread of their being opened.
"These conclusions will, I think, be strengthened considerably by the facts, that the word _Domnach_, as applied either to a church, as usual, or to a reliquary, as in this instance, is only to be found in our histories in connection with St. Patrick"s time; and, that in the latter sense--its application to a reliquary--it only once occurs in all our ancient authorities, namely, in the single reference to the gift to St. Mac-Carthen; no other reliquary in Ireland, as far as can be ascertained, having ever been known by that appellation. And it should also be observed, that all the ancient reliques preserved in Ireland, whether bells, books, croziers, or other remains, have invariably and without any single exception, been preserved and venerated only as appertaining to the original founders of the churches to which they belonged."
There is very little to be added, except that the Donagh was purchased for a few pounds from the old woman who owned it, by Mr. George Smith, of the house of Hodges and Smith, of College Green, Dublin, who very soon sold it for a large sum to the Honorable Mr. Westenra, in whose possession I presume it now is.