Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/84

 76 THE SOURCES OF CONCHUBRANUS' January Tercia decima Allabuir • filia Foidmin * • xxxiii annis. Quarta decima Flaithgrath • annis xxx. Quinta decima Medboc • filia Midgasa • abbatissa annis quindecim. We have here a number of names and data not found else- where. Of the successors of Monenna enumerated, one only is recorded in the Irish annals. At the date 654 the Four Masters tell us, ' Coincenn of Cill-Sleibhe died '. Assuming this date as approximately correct — approximation is, in fact, all that we here require — we can now turn the data given above into concrete dates : 5th abbess, Cron, died 624 ; 6th abbess, Conchen, d. 654 ; 7th, Cron, d. 655 ; 8th, Demorir, d. 670, in mortalitate magna ; ^ 9th, Gnathat, d. 700 ; 10th, Finan, d. 700 ; 11th, Luccan, d. 711 ; 12th, Femen, d. 744 ; 13th, Allabuir, d. 777 ; 14th, Flaithgrath, d. 807 ; 15th, Medboc, d. 822. Our document may therefore have been written shortly after about 822. Carrjang our calculation back now to the three immediate successors of Monenna mentioned in X we get : 4th abbess, Derlaisre, died 600 ; 3rd, Dognidiu, d. 550 (or 540 following Brux.) ; 2nd, Bia, date undeterminable ; 1st, Monenna or Darerca, abbess from c. 477 to 517 or 519. The enumeration in X stopping with Derlaisre's death ^ (600), we are led to infer that X was written during the period of her successor, Cron, i. e. between the years 600 and 624. It would thus belong to the same century as the Vita S. Brigidae of Cogi- tosus, and numerous other Latin lives of Irish saints. The chapters of the Vita by Conchubran which were not derived from X are : i. 1, 4, 7-15 ; ii. 8-9 ; iii. 3-4, 7-8, 11, 14. Of these i. 1 ajid iii. 14 are Conchubran's own introductory and concluding paragraphs. In i. 1 we notice some phrases borrowed from X {Vita Brux. 19, col. 175). As to sources he merely says, ' de huius [Monennae] uita . . . quid nobis ajmd nos a uerissimis testibus traditum est . . . sermonibusproferre conamur '. With iii. 14 compare the epilogues of Cogitosus * ( Vita S. Brigidae), and of Probus ^ ( Vita S. Patricii). The miracles we read in i. 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and iii. 4, are such as commonly occur in lives of Irish saints, i. 10, 11, 12 are a good example of Conchubran's method of interpolating • Compare Annals of Ulster at 752, ' Foidmenn, son of Fallach, king of Conaille- Muirteunhne, died.' • The Annals of Ulster mention Mortalitas magna at the dates 664, 66.5, 667, and 668. • The ' episcopus Finbarrus ' of Brax. cap. 34 may be St. Findbarr or Bairre, bishop and founder of Cork, who flourished c. 600. • See my paper in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xxx (1912), C, no. 11. • Tri(M Thaumatiirga, ed. Colgan, 1647, p. 61.