The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

hat was with justice and propriety called Christendom. Ireland, by receiving the Gospel, was really making her first entry into the European family; but there wer

e great reception of the faith, and the few obstacles she encountere

is, undoubtedly, the most intellectual and refined age, in point of literary and artistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. No country, in ancient

ible adornment which render it worthy of being the transient sojourn-place of immortal souls. Beneath the true, the good, and the beautiful, lies the useful, which is brightened by their reflection. No people has more keenly a

nd of battle comes to you from the ends of the earth, where you are repelling the Goth, the Moor, or the Arab. But soon that sound is dispersed like a dream. Other are the rivalries and different the conflicts which you excite through the

er day richer and better cultivated; even the islands are no longer solitudes; the rocks have

different provinces with a like solidity, regularity, and uniformity; and the various races of men were lost in ad

It found proselytes at once among the most polished and the most learned of men, as well as among slaves and artisans; and thus was it proved that

l, although idolatry was contained in it; and as it honored the human mind and the arts it produced, so the persecution of the apostate Julian, in which the study of the classics had been forbidden to the faithful, was the severest of its trials. Literary history possesses no moment of greater interest than that which saw the school with its profane -that is to say pagan-traditions and texts received into the Church. The Fathers, whose christian austerity is our wonder, were passionate in their love of antiquity, which they covered, as it were, with their sacred vestments. . . . By their favor, Virgil traversed the ages of iro

ed her, and that there the new religion assumed a peculiar aspect, which has neve

y impregnated with paganism. All their chief acts of social life required a profession of idolatry; even

a voluptuous, often, and demoralizing literature and poetry, of an unimaginable prostit

the thousand duties, festivals, and the like, decreed or sanctioned by the state, the most ordinary acts of life, the enlisting of the soldier, the starting on a military expedition, the assumption of any civil office or magistracy, the civil oaths in th

uths requiring constant care and self- examen. For the Christian there were two courses open-both excesses, yet either almost unavoidable: on the one side, a

us, Arnobius, and the authors of many Acts of martyrs, we may easily understand how the doctrines of Christianity stood in danger of never taking deep root in the h

in the midst of which Christianity was preached, was a rea

hat the poet Claudian, in addressing Honorius at the beginning of his sixth consulship, pointed out to him the site of the capitol still crowned with the Temple of Jove, surrounded by numerous pagan e

feasts of the Saviour and his apostles. Within the city and beyond, throughout Italy and the most remote

inging the praises of Ceres and of Bacchus, trembling at Fauns and Satyrs and the numerous divinities of the groves and fountains. Christ

that of the early martyrs, showed themselves more than half pagans in their tastes and productions. Ausonius in the West, the preceptor of St. Paulinus, is so obscene in some of his poems, so thoroughly pagan in others, that critics have for a long time hesitated to pronounce him a Christian. How many of his c

where it first took such an alluring shape; and Constantinople was in every sense of the word a Christian city when Ro

ho were a scandal to the Church and yet remained in it. Synesius is the most striking example; whose doctrine was certainly more philosophical than Christian, and whose life, though decorous, was altog

re the perils besetting the true Christian s

losophy itself became a real stumbling- block to many, who would fain appear disciples o

; and although the Latin mind, always practical to the verge of utilitarianism, was not congenial to utopian speculations, still, as it was the fashion, all intellectual men felt the need of becoming sufficiently acquainted with it to be able to speak of it and even to embrace some particular school. Those patricians, who remai

ade subservient to the conversion of many. Thus we find St. Justin, the martyr, all his life long glorying in the name of ph

losophy grew to be a stumbling-block in the path of Christianity, and originated the worst and most dangerous forms of heresy; that it sowed the

hilosophy with a new and dreamy character, which became the source of subsequent and frightful errors. The Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus was intended, in th

Christian heresy; so that a man might be a pantheist, of the worst kind, and still call himself Christian. St. John had foreseen the danger from the beginning, and it is said that he wrote his gospel against it because the doctrine openly denied the divinity of Christ. But

s of the Old Law, nay, even preserved a certain outward respect for them, on account of the multitude of Jews living in Alexandria, and particularly because the open system of Dualism, which

th for many minds, at that time inclined toward every thing which came from the East. We know what a firm hold those doctrines took on the great soul of Augustine, who for a long time professed and cherished them. Rome, under the pagan emperors, had received with open a

en, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them. Gnosticism was prevented from any longer impartin

ius and Pelagius. The teachings of the first were clearly Neo-Platonic; of the second, Stoic: and all the

pt the new and a seeming rational explanation of unfathomable mysteries; the apparent agreement of his doctrine with certain passages of Scripture, where the Son is said to be inferior to the Father; but chiefly the satisfaction it afforded to a number of new Christians who had embraced the faith at the conversion of Constantine on political rather than conscientious grounds, and who were at once relieved of the su

uld have surely become converted into a mere rational school, under the pressure of

d to be written, the efforts required from the rulers of the Church, chiefly from the Roman pontiffs,

all every thing in question, to seek out strange and novel difficulties, to start war-provoking theories in the midst of peace, to aim at founding a new school, or at least to stand forth as the bril

ame object in view in the long-run, to strip our

sible philosophical doctrines, even when directly opposed to the first principles of revealed religion; and, within the

owing stream of the heavenly graces of the Gospel. This resulted, we repeat, from causes anterior to Christianity, from sources of evil which the divine religion had to overcome, and which too often impeded its supernatural action. In fact, the ecclesias

ts reception of the truth. The island, compared with Europe, is small, it is true; but the heroism displayed by its inhabitants during so many ages, in support of the religion which they received so freely, so generously, and at once, in mind as well as heart, marks it out as worthy of a special account; and, from its

encountered on landing in the island, and the ease with which it was destr

e Gospel, we must first take a general survey of polytheism, if it can be so called, i

beginning, in the penalty imposed on sin, which gave a reason for great mundane calamities-the Deluge chiefly- the memory of which lived in the traditions of almost every nation; in the necessity of prayer and expiatory sacrifice; in the transmission of guilt from father to son, expressed in all primitive legislation

lteration in its passage through the various nations of antiquity,

e universal? No one can tell precisely. All we know for certain is, that a thousand years before Christ idolatry prevailed everywhere, an

a smiling or dreary country, but chiefly the thousand differences of temper which are as marked among mankind as the almost in- finite variety of forms visible in creation, gave to each individual religion its proper and characteristic types, which in after-times, when truth was brought down from heave

red volumes have been written on the subject. Julius Caesar believed that they were worshippers of idols in the same sense as his own countrymen; but he probably stood alone in his opinion. Aristotle, Pythagoras,

. N. Morus particularly, who, with J. A. Ernesti, was esteemed the master of antiquarian scholarship in Europe during the last century, maintains, in his edition of the "Commentaries" of Caesar, that "human beings, as well as human affairs, f

gion, joined to such a sublime philosophy, could not have been the product of the soil. In his endeavor to investigate its origin, he supposes that it was brought to the west of Eu

s it obtained and still obtains in the East, but into those of other human beings-the eternal duration of existing substances, material and

superior to that of the Druids, more especially if we add that, in addition to religious teaching, a whole system of physics was also developed in their large academies. "They dispute,"

while still pagans? Very few positive facts are known on the subject; but we have data e

e slightest foundations grand structures of superstitious and abominable rites. Fire- worship, Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship, even human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were, according to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland. But, with the advan

me of St. Patrick, as he could not have failed to give expression to his horror at them in some shape or form, which expression would have been recorded in one, at least, of the many lives of the saint, written shortly after his deat

now admitted by all well-informed antiquarians that they had no connection with sacrifices of any kind. They were merely monuments raised over the buried bodies of chieftains or heroes. Many sepulchres of that description have been opened, either under cromlechs or under large mounds; great quantities of ornaments of gold, silver, or precious stones, utensils of various materials, beau

do with fire-worship. For a long time they were believed to have been constructed for no other object, and consequently long prior to the coming of St. Patrick. But Dr. Petrie and other antiquarians have all but demonstrated that the round towers never had any connection with superstition or idolatry at all;

e is placed as a proof of the existence of fire-worship, is now of proportionate weakness. It seems, to judge by the

nvened an assembly, or held a festival at Tara, it was customary to make a bonfire on the preceding day, a

Patrick, in lighting his own paschal-fire, would not only have shown disrespect to the monarch, but in the eyes o

ts:" "We see, by the book of military expeditions, that, when King Dathi- the immediate predecessor of Laeghaire on the throne of Ire- land- thought of conquering Brita

. The fires of Lailten (now called Lelltown in the north of Ireland) were lighted, and t

er of the King of Spain, and wife of MacEire, the last king of the Firbolg colony. It was at her court that Lug had been fostered, and at

rved down to the ninth century"- therefore, in Christian times-and consequently the light

culty meets us in th

k, and it is importa

uld really be

the statue of a god, but of any pagan sign whatever in Ireland. It is clear, from the numerous details of the life of St. Patrick, that he never encountered either temples or the statues of gods in any place

tainly places the Irish in a position, with regard to idolatry, far different from that of all other polytheist nations. In all other countries it is characteristic of polytheism to multiply the statues of the gods, to expose them in all public places, in their houses, but chiefly within or at the door of edifices erected for the purpose. Yet in Ireland we find no

lars of brass, around it, typifying, probably, astronomical signs. St. Patrick, in his "Confessio," seems to allude to Crom Cruagh when he says: "That sun whic

ht refer to Crom Cruagh, which possibly represented the sun, surrounded by the s

omena, set in a conspicuous position, had in course of time become the object of the superstitious veneration of the people, and that St. Patrick thought it his duty to destroy it? And the attitude of the people at the time of its destruction shows that it could not have borne for them the same sacred character as the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon did for the Greeks or that o

on that the Irish Celts were not idolaters like all other peoples of antiquity. They possessed no mythology beyond harmless fairy- tales, no poetical histories of gods and

the facility with which they accepted it. They were certainly, even when pagans, a very religious people; otherwise how could they have embraced the doctrines of Christianity with that ardent eagerness which shall come under our consideration in the next chapter? A nation utterly devoid of faith of any kind is n

onsideration. It is taken from the "Book of Armagh," which Prof. O'Curry, who is certainly a competent authority, believes older than th

ain of Clebach, near Cruachan in Connaught, Ethne and Felimia, daughte

t people, or from what country; but they supposed them to be fair

unto them: 'Who are

etter for you to confess to our true Go

irgin said:

where

is his dwe

and daughters,

he li

e beau

ny foste

dear and beauteous t

heaven or

vers?-In mountainou

o us the know

-How shall he be loved?

s it in old age tha

ll of the Holy Ghost

The God of the sun, and the moon, and all stars. The God of the high mountains, and

in the heavens, and

that are

. He quickeneth all thing

than the Father, nor the Father older than the Son. And the Holy Ghost brea

enly King inasmuch as you are daughte

ligently how we may believe in the heavenly King. Show us how we may s

at by baptism you put off the sin

red him, 'W

ntance after sin? 'W

asked to see the face of Christ. And the saint said unto them: 'Ye cannot see th

s the sacrifice that we may

e eucharist of God, a

ed with garments -and their friends made

irgins only who understood and believed so suddenly at the preaching of the apostle. The great men of the nation

e had formerly sung the heroes of his nation. To the end he remained firm in his faith, and a dear friend to the holy man who had converted him. How could he, and all the chief converts of Patrick, have believed so suddenly and so constantly in the God of the Christians, if their former life had not prepared them for the adoption of the new doctrine, and if the doctrine of

we add a short description of the

on their rich soil, cheered by their bards and poets; very few, or no slaves in the country; an abundance of food everywhere; gold, silver, precious stones adorning profusely the persons of their chiefs, their wives, their warriors; rich stuffs, dyed with many colors, to distinguish the various orders of society; a deep religious feeling in their hearts, preparing them for the faith, by inspiring them with lively emotions at the sight of divine power displayed in their mountains, their valleys, their lakes and rivers, and on the swelling bosom of the all- encircling ocean; superstitions of various kinds, indeed, but none

hemselves, in the depths of their hearts. He explains, by the power of one Supreme God, why it is that their mountains are so high, their valley so smiling, their rivers and lakes teeming with l

o be sinners in need of redemption, and points out to them in what manner

ishes; many, not content with the strict commandments enjoined on all, wish to enter on the path of perfection: the men become monks, the women and young girls nuns, that is to say, spouses of Christ.

that at the first preaching in Erin of the glad tidings of salvation, by Saints Palladius and Patrick, those countless Christian churches were built, whose sites and ruins

its real duration, certain it is that his feet traversed the whole island several times, and, at his passing, churches and

the man of God, all the inhabitants of that portion of the province now represented by the County Mayo became Christians; and the seven sons of the king of the province were baptized, together with twelve thousand of their clansmen. In Leinster, the Princes Illand and Alind were baptized in a fountain near Naas. In Munster, Aengus, th

y others, among whom was Fingar, the son of King Clito, who is said to have suffered martyrdom in Brittany; Fiech, pupil of Dubtach, himself a poet, an

a learned man even before he embraced Christianity; and during his lifetime he was, as a C

ids, called in the old Irish annals magi, tried their utmost to estrange the Irish people from him. But he stood in danger of his life only

gan in the whole of Ireland; the very remembrance of paganism even seemed to have passed away from t

g was left in its monuments or in the inclinations of the people-to imperil the existence of the newly-established Christianity, or of

ntry; that, when she was thus admitted by baptism into the European family, she made her entry in a way

eft to her, Christianized and consecrated by her great apostle; clanship even penetrated into the monasteries, and gave rise later on to some abuses. But, perhaps, the saint thought it better to allow the existence of t

and this passage is very remarkable as the only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and the strong terms in which the saint

e Christian experiences when confronted by mysteries in the natural as well as the supernatural order? The awe-struck pagan saw the lightning leap, the tempest gather and break over him in majestic fury; heard the great voice of t

fairies; but fairy land has never become among any nation a pandemonium of cruel divinitie

. But, as we find no traces of bloody sacrifices in Ireland, the Druids there probably never bore the character which they did in Gaul; they cannot be said to have been sacrificing priests; their office consisted merel

simple announcement of a God, present everywhere in the universe, and accepted it. The dogma of the Holy Spirit, not only filling all-complens omnia- - but dwelling in their very souls by grace, and filling them with love and fear, must have appeared natural to them. Their very superstitions must have prepared the way for the truth, a change -or may we not say a more direct and tangible object taking the place of and filling their undefined yearnings-was alone requisite. Otherwise it is a hard fact to explain how, within a few years, all Druidism and magic, incantations, spells, and divinations, were replaced by pure religion, by the doctrine of celestial favors obtained through prayer, by the intercession of

as greatly as their physical characteristics; and to study the Irish mind we have only to take into consideration the institutions which swayed it from time immemorial. They

races. It was among these that philosophy was born, and among them it flourishes. They may, by their acute reasoning, enlarge the human mind, open up new horizons, and, if confined within just limits, actually enrich the understanding of man. We are far from pretending that philosophy has only been productive of harm, and t

ced many evils among men, has often been subservient to error, has, at b

low those intellectual aberrations than the Celtic, ow

the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge of "the nature of the eternal God," were, according to Caesar, extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements of those intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attention of the Irish student durin

nd than anywhere else, as is proved by the extraordinary impulse given to that science b

the vernacular, the Bible in Latin and Greek, and the writings of many Fathers in both languages, as also the most celebrated works of Roman and Greek classical writers, became most interesting subjects of study. They reproduced those works for their own use in the s

ies were sent to receive their education in Innisfail, as the island was then often called; and, from their celebrated institutions of lea

xcept the eccentric John Scotus Erigena, whom Charles the Bald, at whose court he resided, protected even against the just severity of the Church. Witho

ich they are broadly distinguished from all other European nations, comes from dulness of intellect and inability to follow out an intricate argumentation. They show the acuteness of their understanding in a thousand ways; in poetry, in romantic tales, in narrative compositions, in legal acumen and extempore arguments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterly eloquence by which so many of them are distinguished. Who sha

ting Christianity and taking a place in the commonwealth of Western nations, it has known how to do so in its own manner, and has thus secured a firm hold of the saving doctr

faith into Ireland were necessarily very limited, as our chief object was to speak of the nation's preparat