United States or Finland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Tighernach, according to all our ancient authorities, died in the year 548. 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. Quibus dictis dimisit cum osculo pacis paterna fultum benedictione. Colgan, Vit.

It is indeed, not merely possible, but even probable, that the existence of this manuscript 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.

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. In the life of St. Patrick called the Tripartite, usually ascribed to St. Mac-Carthen, in which it is expressly described under the very same appellation which it still bears.

He is properly called in that inscription Comorbanus, 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.

"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.

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.

"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.

"From this passage we learn one great-cause of the sanctity 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. In Jocelyn's Life of St.