文档介绍：LIFE OF ST. DECLAN OF ARDMORE
LIFE OF ST. DECLAN
OF ARDMORE
By REV. P. POWER, .
1
LIFE OF ST. DECLAN OF ARDMORE
INTRODUCTION
"If thou hast the right, O Erin, to a champion of battle to aid thee thou
hast the head of a hundred thousand, Declan of Ardmore" (Martyrology of
Oengus).
Five miles or less to the east of Youghal Harbour, on the southern
Irish coast, a short, rocky and rather elevated promontory juts, with a
south-easterly trend, into the ocean [about 51 deg. 57 min. N / 7 deg. 43
min. W]. Maps and admiralty charts call it Ram Head, but the real name
is Ceann-a-Rama and popularly it is often styled Ardmore Head. The
material of this inhospitable coast is a hard metamorphic schist which bids
defiance to time and weather. Landwards the shore curves in clay cliffs
to the north-east, leaving, between it and the iron headland beyond, a
shallow exposed bay wherein many a proud ship has met her doom.
Nestling at the north side of the headland and sheltered by the latter from
Atlantic storms stands one of the most remarkable groups of ancient
ecclesiastical remains in Ireland--all that has survived of St. Declan's holy
city of Ardmore. This embraces a beautiful and perfect round tower, a
singularly interesting ruined monly called the cathedral, the
ruins of a second church beside a holy well, a primitive oratory, a couple
of ogham inscribed pillar stones, &c., &c. No Irish saint perhaps has so
strong a local hold as Declan or has left so abiding a popular memory.
Nevertheless his period is one of the great disputed questions of early Irish
history. According to the express testimony of his Life, corroborated by
testimony of the Lives of SS. Ailbhe and Ciaran, he preceded St. Patrick in
the Irish mission and was a co-temporary of the national apostle.
Objection, exception or opposition to the theory of Declan's early period is
based less on any inherent improbability in the theory itself than on
contradictions and inconsis