Fahan Monastery

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Inishowen Peninsula

Fahan ( Irish Fathain or older Othain Mór , Fathain Mhura , Fathain Mór ) was a regionally important monastery in Ireland in early Christian times , which was closely associated with the ruling family of the Uí Néill . The ruins of the monastery are located in the village of Fahan, which belongs to Buncrana . Fahan is located on the Inishowen peninsula in the Irish county of Donegal . The place can be reached via the R238 between Buncrana and Derry .

The gable of a small church, a cross stele , one of the earliest in Ireland, and a tombstone with a ring cross are preserved from the monastery of the Iroschottische Kirche, founded by St. Mura in the early 7th century . St. Mura's staff is on display in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin and St. Mura's bell in the Wallace Collection in London .

Demarcation

Fahan or Glenfahan is also the name of a place near Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry , where a number of beehive-huts are to be regarded as the remains of one or more monastic foundations or hermitages.

history

West side of the cross stele of St. Mura in Fahan

The Inishowen peninsula belonged to the ancestral home of the Úi Néill. Several clerics emerged from this ruling family who shaped the development of the monasteries in early Christian times. Particularly influential was Columban of Iona , who founded the famous monastery on the Scottish island of Iona and in the immediate vicinity of Fahan the monastery and the bishopric of Derry. According to a tradition by John Colgan, Fahan is also one of his foundings. But even with the founding of Derry, which some sources put to the year 546 and thus before the founding of the monastery on Iona, there are well-founded hypotheses that this only took place in the late 580s during one of Columban's trips. It is difficult to narrow down the time when the monastery was founded.

Columban then left the management of the newly founded monastery to his student, St. Mura, who also belongs to the Úi Néill family. He later became the holy patron of the monastery. The fragmentary annals of Mac Fir Bhisigh tell of an encounter between the king and St. Mura at Fahan that occurred shortly before 605. More precise dates of life of Mura are not available. Only his descent from Eoghain, the namesake of the Inishowen peninsula ( Irish : Inis Eoghain) via Muiredach, another Eoghain, Rónán and Feradach is passed down by Colgan. Mura was also known for his hagiography about Columban.

Fatal for Fahan's legacy and its further development was a campaign by Muirchertach Ua Briain, King of Munster in 1101. He sought retaliation for the destruction of Ceann Coradh and other places in Munster in 1088 by Domhnall Ua Lochlainn , the king of Aileach and thus the sovereign of Inishowen. As part of this retribution, churches in Fahan were desecrated and burned down.

After that, Fahan never regained its earlier spiritual meaning. Unlike other early Christian monasteries in Ireland, Fahan did not become an Augustinian canon . However, Fahan included extensive lands that were administered by monastic administrators (Airchinnech) until the early 17th century .

The cross stele

The cross stele of the monastery has remained in the same place on the local grounds of the Anglican Church to this day. It is about 2.10 m high, 1.04 m wide and 18 cm thick. On both large sides there is a relief of a cross, which consists of an artfully woven knot pattern in the Celtic style .

There is no reliable knowledge of the exact time of manufacture. Mostly, however, the view is that the cross stele was erected as early as the 7th century. This is also obvious because this cross stele is unique in Ireland in terms of the transition from the simple cross stelae to the ornate Celtic high crosses . This intermediate step in the development is indicated by the two small stumps on both sides of the stele, which look like the continuation of the cross shown. Not far from Fahan, also on the Inishowen Peninsula, Carndonagh is the next stage of development with a pronounced cross shape, but still without the ring.

Another interesting detail is the Greek inscription on the northern narrow side. This is a doxology that was adopted in Toledo, Spain, at the 4th council in 633 . Translated into German: "Glory and honor be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit". This inscription is further evidence of the ongoing contacts with the continent, especially with Spain.

Monastery church

East gable of the monastery church of Fahan

Not far from the cross stele is the ruin of an old church overgrown with ivy, which only offered a rectangular room with a width of 5.67 m. Essentially, only the east gable with a round arched window with Gothic tracery probably dating from the 17th century has been preserved. (Work in the Gothic style was common in Ireland at the time.) The walls, however, are of an older date, as evidenced by the construction in use in Ireland up to the 12th century, in which the extension of the outer walls beyond the gable wall gives the impression of two pillars emerges (Antae) . The old church was used as an Anglican parish church until 1820 after the Reformation.

Other buildings from the time of the monastery have not been preserved to this day. This is likely due to the fact that the majority of buildings in Ireland were built from wood in the early Christian period. It was not until the 12th century that brick monastery architecture with a continental European influence prevailed in Ireland , particularly through the Cistercians .

St. Mura's Shepherd's Staff

Although Mura was not a bishop and Fahan never became a bishopric, Mura had a pastoral staff , the so-called Bachall Mura , to which great importance was attached. Respected abbots played mediating roles, particularly in disputes. When an agreement could be reached, both sides of the conflict took an oath on the shepherd's staff. Some miracles have also been attributed to the staff.

After the invasion of the Anglo-Normans , the shepherd's staff moved to Armagh . In 1177 it was stolen, along with countless other relics, when the Abbot of Armagh was taken hostage by John de Courcy . Although some relics were returned in 1178, the shepherd's staff continued to remain as prestigious booty at Downpatrick , where de Courcy had his headquarters.

In his work of 1658 Colgan reports that the shepherd's staff remained in Fahan after the turmoil of the Reformation, and describes it from his own perspective as a work of art richly decorated with precious stones, which was kept in a container lined with gold. Confirmation of this can be found in the work of Mervyn Archdall , who reported in 1786 that the shepherd's crook was owned by the Úi Néill family. Then the track of the shepherd's staff was lost in the dark. John O'Donovan, who visited Fahan in 1835 as a member of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland , reported that the whereabouts of the shepherd's staff were unknown. O'Donovan further speculated that the pastoral staff was either lost in the uprising of 1688 or saved to the continent.

Later, however, O'Donovan, in collaboration with the antiquarian George Petrie, managed to track down the shepherd's staff and transfer it to the National Museum in Dublin, where it is on display to this day. However, most of the gemstones have been lost.

St. Mura's bell

The bronze bell and an associated shrine have been preserved to this day . The shrine belongs to a characteristic group that found distribution in Ireland and Scotland and around a dozen specimens have survived to this day. The shrines are typically made of yew wood and are designed in the shape of a small house or sarcophagus , with small eyelets on either side and a removable lid. On the outside, they are richly decorated with metal plates and precious stones. Richardson thinks it plausible that the spread of these shrines from Iona occurred via the foundations of Columban, which included Fahan. This corresponds to the traditional tradition, which assigns the bell and the shrine to St. Mura and thus to the 7th century.

The bell and shrine were bought from a local near Fahan by John McClelland in 1850. The relic later passed into the possession of the Duke of Leinster, who passed it on to his sister-in-law Lady Fitzgerald, with the request that it be given to a museum. This is how this relic came into the possession of the Wallace Collection in London, where it is on public display to this day.

St. Mura's book and other writings

St. Finnian introduced the study, copying and writing of scriptures to his monastery in Clonard in the 6th century as an important part of monastic culture in Ireland. Columban, who stayed with Finnian for some time, adopted this tradition for the founding of his monasteries and first introduced the practice in Ireland of keeping annals in which all significant events were recorded.

This practice was passed on from Columban to Mura, who, according to the tradition of John Colgan , wrote a manuscript in Old Irish in the first half of the 7th century , which reported on the life and work of Columban. This manuscript was probably made and bound in an artful way, as it was one of the most important relics in Fahan. Unfortunately, Colgan complained in 1658, parts of it were lost in the turmoil after the Reformation, so that only fragments have survived. Colgan also reported that there was also another very old, also lost manuscript, which contained both a chronicle and several historical reports.

The fragments of the Book of Mura mentioned by Colgan were later lost. Parts of the text by Mura have been passed down to the present day through quotations and copies in other manuscripts. For example, a copy of a report by Mura about the encounter between Columban and Mongan is preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford as part of the manuscript MS Laud 615, which contains a series of poems by various medieval authors on the life and work of Columban in Old Irish.

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Secondary literature

  • John Colgan: Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae . Louvain 1658.
  • Mervyn Archdall: Monasticon Hibernicum . Dublin 1786.
  • James F. Kenney : The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical . First published 1929, reprinted by Four Courts Press 1997, ISBN 1-85182-115-5 . (In this work there is a reference to the copy of a text by Mura in the Bodleian Library in entry 220.xxii.)
  • Aubrey Gwynn and R. Neville Hadcock: Medieval Religious Houses Ireland . Longman, London 1970, ISBN 0582-11229-X .
  • Brian Lacy: Archaeological Survey of County Donegal . Donegal County Council, 1983, ISBN 0-9508407-0-X .
  • Sean Beattie: Ancient Monuments of Inishowen, North Donegal . Lighthouse Publications 1994, ISBN 0-9520481-16 .
  • Hilary Richardson: Visual arts and society , article from the volume Prehistoric and Early Ireland from the series A New History of Ireland , edited by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. Oxford University Press 2005, ISBN 0-19-821737-4 . (In this article, Richardson dates the Fahan's cross stela to the middle of the 7th century, but also points out that there are divergent assessments. Richardson also discusses the bells and shrines in Ireland and Scotland.)

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 2, 2006 .

Coordinates: 55 ° 5 ′ 12 "  N , 7 ° 27 ′ 52"  W.