PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

As the first impression of BRENAN'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND has been many years out of print, some members of the Irish Hierarchy suggested to the Publisher the propriety of issuing a second edition of the same invaluable work enlarged and improved.

It is almost superfluous to remark, that this History has been esteemed by many of our most learned ecclesiastics and laymen-the late John O'Donovan among others as the best and most comprehensive book of its sort that has yet come from the Irish press. Written in a style calculated to make it popular with the learned as well as unlearned, no one can peruse its pages without acquiring a large and satisfactory amount of information, on all subjects relating to the Church of Ireland, from the earliest introduction of Christianity, down to times. not very distant from our own.

Were it necessary to do so, we might dwell at conconsiderable length on the distinctive features of Father Brenan's learned work; but as these have long since been recognised and duly appreciated, we have only to repeat, that no other volume of a similar nature presents such strong recommendations to the support and patronage of studious readers. Nevertheless, in justice to the

author's memory we feel it a duty to state, that in the following pages he has given unquestionable evidence of intimate familiarity with rarest manuscript sources, from which he derived so many facts of highest importance, and also with the published writings of Fleming, Wadding, Colgan, Ware, Usher, and other eminent literati, whose works are seldom found outside great public libraries.

The history of the foundation of the religious houses by native chiefs and Anglo-Norman settlers, is accurately chronicled in Brenan's pages, and it is almost unnecessary to say that he has taken special care to tell us all that could be collected regarding their suppression and confiscation. We may also add that he has spared no pains. to make us acquainted with the biography and works of those great Irish writers, who, though banned from the land of their birth, devoted all their energies to maintain its ancient and well-deserved reputation for learning and fidelity to the Holy See.

Viewed in all its aspects, no work is better calculated to afford reliable information on all the subjects which come within its scope.

The section of this volume in which the author treats of the sanguinary attempt to plant the Reformation in Ireland, throws a strong light on that disastrous period; and nothing can be more faithful than the manner in which he deals with the vicissitudes of the Irish Catholics during the seventeenth century, which, we need hardly observe, teems with episodes of most spirit-stirring nature. The portraits which he gives us of the men who figured prominently in those calamitous periods are depicted with a master's hand, and, indeed, so vividly, that the reader cannot fail to realise a comprehensive notion

of the cold-blooded tyranny of the Tudors, and a just estimate of the duplicity and ingratitude with which the Stuarts behaved to their Irish Catholic subjects.

Some additional notes, few, indeed,-for Father Brenan left little room for such-have been inserted wherever the text seemed to require them; but though few, it is hoped they may help to enhance the value of the whole work.

ECCLESIASTICAL

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

CHAPTER I.

Character of the ancient Irish previously to the introduction of the GospelThe Christian faith most probably known amongst them before the preaching of Palladius-Arrival of that Missionary-His departure from Ireland St Patrick-The place and period of his Birth-Brought as a captive into Ireland-Released from his captivity-Retires to the Monastery of St. Martin of Tours, and afterwards to Lerins-Repairs to RomeIs elevated to the Episcopacy-Receives his Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from. Pope Celestine-Arrives in Ireland-His Apostolic Labours in Ulster-In Connaught-In Leinster-In Munster-Establishes his See at Armagh-Synods of St. Patrick-His writings-His death and funeral obsequies-The wonderful mercy of the Almighty displayed in the conversion of the Irish nation.

THE moral condition of Ireland in the commencement of the fifth century was in many respects perfectly similar to that of the other nations of the Gentile world. The ancient Irish were a brave, warlike, intelligent and a high-minded people; heroism and unbounded hospitality were inseparable traits in their character; and although in the universal wreck which human nature and the human mind had undergone, they became fellow-sufferers with the rest of mankind, yet their idolatry and superstition were less gross and more excusable, in consequence of their apparent proximity to the real notions of the God-head, and to the laws and principles of rational worship. It is certain that there was neither a hierarchy nor a Christian bishop in Ireland antecedent to the period of which we are now treating, although it is highly probable that the natives in many parts of the island were by no means unacquainted with the Christian religion. Tacitus, in his life of Agricola, bestows very high encomiums on the

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harbours and commercial advantages of Ireland, and in the days of that writer, a very considerable trade had been kept up between the southern parts of Ireland and the principal maritime towns along the western coast of Gaul. It is, moreover, an historically attested fact, that ever since the landing of the Milesians, a regular commercial intercourse subsisted between Spain and Ireland; and from these circumstances we may, with strong probability, conclude that a knowledge of the Christian religion had been communicated to the Irish, at least in those southern districts which lay immediately opposite Spain and Gaul, and which had been so repeatedly visited by Christian merchants and other adventurers from the continent. For a long period previously to the reign of Nial of the nine hostages, the monarch by whom St. Patrick had been made a captive, the Irish princes were in the habit of making occasional predatory incursions not only on the coasts of Britain, but also on the western shores of the continent, and of carrying away with them vast numbers of the inhabitants, whom they afterwards either sold or retained as menials in their own domestic employment. These captives were generally Christians; and considering the ardent zeal for which the faithful in those primitive times were distinguished, it is very natural to suppose, that many of them were the happy instruments in the hands of Providence for spreading the light of the Gospel over the benighted minds, not only of their associates, but even of their very masters. That Christianity, therefore, existed, at least to a certain extent, in Ireland anterior to the fifth century, rests upon a presumption amounting almost to a certainty; that there were some priests dispersed amongst them who, upon the invitation of the natives, had nobly relinquished their own country for the advancement of the Gospel, might likewise be admitted; but as to a hierarchy, or the establishment of a bishop in Ireland before the year 431, the pages of authentic history are silent, and in such a research we have no other light to guide us but mere hypothesis and unsubstantial conjecture. Some writers have attempted to maintain that Ailbe of Emly, Declan of Ardmore, Ibar of Begerin, and Kieran of Saigar, were bishops in Ireland, and had regular sees prior to the arrival of St. Patrick; but when we come to the period in which these eminent men flourished, which was at the close of the fifth and during the progress of the sixth century, the misstatements of these biographers will be clearly and satisfactorily developed.

Palladius is the first Christian bishop whom the genuine