Life of St. Declan of Ardmore / Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore.

Power, Rev. P. (editor)

ISBN 10: 1870166167 / ISBN 13: 9781870166164

Published by London, Irish Texts Society, 1995

About this Item

Reprint of 1914 edition. 14.5 cm x 22 cm. XXXI, 202 pages. Original hardcover. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Inscription by preowner. Very slight yellowing of page edges. Clean inside with intact binding. [Irish Texts Society - Vol XVI] Includes the following chapters: Preface / Introduction / Life of Declan / Life of Mochuda / Notes to Life of Declan / Notes to Life of Mochuda / Index. "It is solely the historical aspect and worth of the two tracts herewith presented that appealed to their editor and first suggested to him their preparation for publication. Had preparation in question depended for its motive merely on consdierations of the texts' philologic interest or value it would, to speak frankly, never have been undertaken. The editor, who disclaims qualification as a philologist, regards these Lives as very valuable historical material, publication of which may serve to light up some dark corners of our Celtic ecclesiastical past" (from Preface).

Seller Inventory # 72690AB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Life of St. Declan of Ardmore / Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore.
• Publisher: London, Irish Texts Society
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1870166167
• ISBN 13: 9781870166164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Sehr gut
• Weight: 1200 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Varia

About this title

Synopsis

A most distinctive class of ancient Irish literature, and probably the class that is least popularly familiar, is the hagiographical. It is, the present writer ventures to submit, as valuable as it is distinctive and as well worthy of study as it is neglected. While annals, tales and poetry have found editors the Lives of Irish Saints have remained largely a mine unworked. Into the causes of this strange neglect it is not the purpose of the present introduction to enter. Suffice it to glance in passing at one of the reasons which has been alleged in explanation, —that the “Lives” are uncritical and romantic, that they abound in wild legends, chronological impossibilities and all sorts of incredible stories, and, finally, that miracles are multiplied till the miraculous becomes the ordinary, and that marvels are magnified till the narrative borders on the ludicrous. The Saint as he is sketched is sometimes a positively repulsive being—arrogant, venomous, and cruel; he demands two eyes or more for one, and, pucklike, fairly revels in mischief! As painted he is in fact more a pagan deity than a Christian man. The foregoing charges may, or must, be admitted partially or in full, but such admission implies no denial of the historical value of the Lives. All archaic literature, be it remembered, is in a greater or less degree uncritical, and it must be read in the light of the writer’s times and surroundings. That imagination should sometimes run riot and the pen be carried beyond the boundary line of the strictly literal is perhaps nothing much to be marvelled at in the case of the supernatural minded Celt with religion for his theme. Did the scribe believe what he wrote when he recounted the multiplied marvels of his holy patron’s life? Doubtless he did—and why not! To the unsophisticated monastic and mediaeval mind, as to the mind of primitive man, the marvellous and supernatural is almost as real and near as the commonplace and natural. If anyone doubts this let him study the mind of the modern Irish peasant; let him get beneath its surface and inside its guardian ring of shrinking reserve; there he will find the same material exactly as composed the mind of the tenth century biographers of Declan and Mochuda. Dreamers and visionaries were of as frequent occurrence in Erin of ages ago as they are to-day.