The little cathedral city of Armagh (pronounced with a strong accent upon the last syllable) is the most sacred town of Ireland. It is the ecclesiastical headquarters of both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches, the seat of the most ancient and celebrated of Irish schools of learning; the burial place of Brian Boru, the greatest of all the Irish kings; the home of St. Patrick for the most important years of his life, and the cradle of the Christian church in the United Kingdom. It was from Armagh that the message of the gospel was sent to the people of Scotland and England, and there was the genesis of the faith that is now professed by all the nation.

Armagh is a quiet, well kept town of about eight thousand inhabitants, built on a hill around the cathedral founded by St. Patrick in the year 432, and the streets are steep and rather crooked. It resembles an English university town, and looks more like Cambridge or Winchester than the rest of Ireland. More than twelve hundred years ago it was the greatest educational center in the civilized world, and it still has several important schools, including a Roman Catholic theological seminary, a large convent for young women, a technological school, an astronomical observatory, a public library of twenty thousand volumes and a little old-fashioned Grecian temple of a building with a sign to advertise it as the rooms of the Philosophical Society. The houses are packed together very closely, as is the custom in all Ireland, although there is plenty of room for the town to spread out, if it were the fashion to do so. There are ranges of green hills all around, and their sunny slopes are closely planted to grain, and other crops. We saw them at harvest time when the song of the reaper and the mower was heard in the land. There are several linen factories in the neighborhood which furnish employment for the wives and daughters of the town, and a small automobile factory. The population is about equally divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. There are three Presbyterian churches and one Methodist, which assert themselves boldly even in the presence of an ecclesiastical see that is nearly fourteen hundred years old.

’Way back about the year 444 St. Patrick came to Armagh and built a church and a monastery upon the summit of a beautiful hill overlooking a most delightful country, where he established his ecclesiastical headquarters as Primate of Ireland. The land was given him by the King, whose royal palace stood there for centuries, and that estate has remained in the possession of the church ever since and is now occupied partly by the demesne that surrounds the palace of the Protestant archbishop and partly by the residences and business houses of the town, and the ground rents furnish a handsome endowment. The ancient episcopal palace is now occupied by the Rev. Dr. Alexander, Protestant Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of the Episcopal Church of Ireland.

Across the valley, upon a similar hill, is another cathedral, also dedicated to the glory of God and St. Patrick, and behind it, in a much more modest mansion, is the residence of Cardinal Logue, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland and a member of the sacred college of Rome. Thus in the same little town we have two cathedrals of St. Patrick, two archbishops of Armagh, and two primates of the Holy Catholic church, both claiming ecclesiastical authority inherited from St. Patrick, founder of the Christian church in Ireland, and first archbishop of Armagh, through one hundred and fourteen generations of archbishops who have lived and prayed and reigned in this picturesque little place.

In several cities there are two archbishops or bishops, one Roman Catholic and one of the Church of Ireland, and the duplication is often the cause of embarrassment and confusion. If you are seeking or even mentioning one of them it is necessary to make yourself clear by giving the name of the church or the name of the man as well as the title. I once addressed a letter to “His Grace, the Archbishop of Dublin,” and it was returned to me from the post office for more definite address. The post-office authorities would not take the risk of delivering it to the wrong man.

Archbishop Alexander and Cardinal Logue are the best of friends and see each other frequently, co-operating in works of charity and movements of public interest with cordiality and mutual esteem. When I was in Armagh Cardinal Logue had recently returned from a visit to America, where he went to assist in the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the diocese of New York. He was enthusiastic about his reception and what he saw and did in the United States. He is a man of great dignity, ability, and usefulness, but with all has a keen sense of humor and a jolly disposition.

The town of Armagh is surrounded by scenes of transcendent historic and ecclesiastical interest. On a lovely hillside is a holy spring where St. Patrick baptized his first converts. A little farther away is a large artificial mound, about eleven acres in extent, covered with aged hawthorn trees, where stood the royal palace of Ulster, and it was occupied for a century after the arrival of St. Patrick. Within the grounds of the Protestant archbishop are the remains of a Franciscan monastery and a well beside which St. Bridget lived for several years. Eastward of the town, upon the hills, was located the ancient Catholic University of Armagh founded by St. Patrick in the year 455, where as many as seven thousand students gathered for instruction in literature, the arts, and theology, and until the Reformation it was one of the greatest schools of Europe.

Emania, now called the “Navan Fort,” the residence of the kings of Ulster, was founded by Queen Macha of the Golden Hair, whose legend is most interesting. It was founded about 300 B.C. It was a royal residence for six hundred years or more. It was then destroyed by the three Collas, and has remained a waste ever since. St. Patrick came nearly a century after its destruction. The petty king, Daire, who gave a site to St. Patrick, was probably king of Oriel, or possibly of one of the tribes which composed the kingdom of Oriel, or Oirgialla. Professor Bury, in his “Life of St. Patrick” says:

“King Daire ... dwelt in the neighborhood of the ancient fortress of Emania, which his own ancestors had destroyed a hundred years agone, when they had come from the south to wrest the place from the Ulidians [Ulidia is Ulster] and sack the palace of its lords. The conquerors did not set up their abode in the stronghold of the old kings of Ulster; they burned the timber buildings and left the place desolate.”

Patrick’s first foundation was not on the hill where the old cathedral now stands. He asked that site of Daire, but the latter refused, and gave him a site at the foot of the hill instead. The original church of St. Patrick is believed to have stood somewhere about the spot whereon the branch Bank of Ireland now stands in Armagh. Bury says of the original structures of Patrick:

“The simple houses which were needed for a small society of monks were built, and there is a record, which appears to be ancient and credible, concerning these primitive buildings. A circular space was marked out one hundred and forty feet in diameter, and inclosed by a rampart of earth. Within this were erected, doubtless of wood, a ‘great house’ to be the dwelling of the monks, a kitchen, and a small oratory.”

Ultimately, King Daire gave Patrick the hill he coveted, then called Drum-saileach, the “ridge of the willows.” The story is quaintly interesting. Daire brought to Patrick a bronze cooking-pot, as a mark of respect. Patrick merely said in Latin, “Gratias agamus” (“I thank thee”). This sounded, in the unlearned ears of the king, like “gratzacham.” Daire was annoyed that the pot should be received with no greater sign of satisfaction. So, when he reached home, he sent servants to bring back the cooking-pot, as something which the monk was not able to appreciate. When they came back with the pot, Daire asked what Patrick said, and was told “Gratzacham.” “What,” said Daire, “‘gratzacham’ when it was given, and ‘gratzacham’ when it was taken away! It is a good word, and for his ‘gratzacham’ he shall have his cooking-pot.” Then he went himself with the pot to Patrick, and said, “Keep thy cooking-pot, for thou art a steadfast and unchangeful man.” And he gave Patrick, besides, the hill on which the old cathedral stands.

The name Armagh is derived from that of Macha of the Golden Hair. It is “Ard-Macha,” that is, “Macha’s Height.” The legend is that she was buried on the hill where the cathedral stands, and that it was named for her in consequence. But some seven hundred years passed before Patrick obtained the hill; its name had been changed to “Drum-saileach”; but Patrick seems to have revived the old name. A spurious derivation is given by some--“Ardmagh,” the high plain; but there is no “high plain” there, and the “Four Masters” give it Ard-Macha.

Naturally, the object of supreme interest at Armagh is the ancient Cathedral of St. Patrick, the cradle of the Christian church in Ireland. The present building, however, dates back only to the seventeenth century, although portions of the walls were built as long ago as 830, when “the great stone church of Armagh” is described in detail in the “Annals of Armagh,” one of the oldest of human records. The church was partly destroyed by fire in 1268 and rebuilt. In 1367 it was restored again. During the rebellion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was used as a fortress by Shane O’Neill and burned by him. In 1613 it was thoroughly rebuilt, and in 1834 was restored to its present condition by Lord George Beresford, the wealthy archbishop of that date.

Although it has often been asserted that St. Patrick is buried in Armagh, no such claim is made here, and the authorities of both the Irish and the Roman Catholic churches accept the tomb at Downpatrick as genuine. But the old cathedral is the burial place of several other of the early saints, and somewhere under the tiling on the north side of the high altar lies the moldering dust of Brian Boru, the greatest of all the Irish kings, whose bleeding body was brought there after the battle of Clontarf in 1014, in obedience to his dying request. There is no trace of his tomb, which was destroyed centuries ago. All of the tombs within the church are comparatively modern. The oldest epitaph in the churchyard dates back to 1620, and most of the graves contain the dust of archbishops who have presided over this diocese. In the east and west aisles, in the center of the cathedral, are two beautiful sarcophagi of white Italian marble, carved by an eminent artist with effigies of two Beresfords, John George and Marcus Servais Beresford, father and son, who were successive archbishops of Armagh. The principal windows contain artistic memorials to their wives, Lady Catherine and Lady Anne Beresford.

After the Reformation the few Roman Catholic residents of Armagh who remained true to the church of Rome worshiped in “the old chapel,” as it is called, a humble structure erected in the seventeenth century to mark the site of the house where St. Malachi was born in 1094. And when the primatial see was revived at Armagh by the pope that old church was made the cathedral of Ireland. In 1835 Archbishop Crolly undertook to raise funds for a more appropriate building, and obtained two acres of land on the other side of town, adjoining Sandy Hill Cemetery, which is the oldest Christian burial place in the United Kingdom. His successors have since obtained seven acres more, and hope ultimately to secure a larger area. In 1840 Mr. Duff, a native architect, prepared plans for a cathedral of massive proportions, and the corner stone was laid on St. Patrick’s day of that year. A building committee of laymen was formed and priests were sent through the length and breadth of the land, and, indeed, throughout the world, to collect funds. Generous gifts came from the United States, from Canada, from Australia, and from every other country where Irish emigrants have gone, and a great bazaar was held in 1865 at which $35,000 was raised. The exterior was not completed until 1873, when the finishing touches were added to the spires, and on the 24th of August the temple was dedicated, as the inscription over the entrance reads, “To the One God, Omnipotent Three in Person, under the invocation of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.” Dr. M’Gettigan was archbishop then, and he lived until 1887, when he was succeeded by Michael Logue, who had been chosen as his coadjutor by the parish priests of Armagh.

Cardinal Logue was born in County Donegal in 1840, graduated from Maynooth College and was ordained in 1866. For several years he was professor of theology and belles lettres in the Irish College at Paris. In 1876 he was made dean of Maynooth and professor of dogmatic and moral theology. The following year, at the age of thirty-nine, he was consecrated Bishop of Raphoe and for eight years labored among the people of his native county with great energy and usefulness until he came to Armagh. In January, 1893, he was elevated to the college of cardinals, a dignity never before attained even by the greatest of the long line of one hundred and fourteen primates since St. Patrick that have presided over this see.

Immediately after going to Armagh in 1887 to assist his venerable predecessor, Cardinal Logue began to raise funds to complete the interior of the cathedral, which was then undecorated and fitted with temporary altars and seats. His appeals to Irish patriotism were responded to with great generosity, and in 1899 he organized the National Cathedral Bazaar, as it was called, which continued for two years and resulted in raising $150,000 to complete the cathedral, so that on July 24, 1904, the building was again solemnly dedicated with a great pageant and impressive ceremonies at which his Holiness, the Pope, was represented by his Eminence, Cardinal Bishop Vincente Vanuetelli.

Cardinal Logue resides in a modest mansion in the rear of the cathedral, between the synod house and the theological seminary. Many a parish priest in Ireland and America lives in greater style. His manner of life illustrates the simplicity of his character and tastes. His lack of ostentation is one of his most charming traits.

It seems very remarkable that St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Columba, the three saints most venerated by Ireland, should be buried in the same grave in an obscure little churchyard at the village of Downpatrick, about twenty miles south of Belfast. There is nothing in the way of documentary evidence to prove that the bodies of St. Bridget and St. Columba were placed in St. Patrick’s tomb, but the fact is stated in the earliest histories of the church in Ireland, and is frequently referred to by writers in the tenth century and later. And the claims of Downpatrick to this great honor are not seriously disputed.

The “Annals of the Four Masters” refer to the death of St. Bridget in 525 as follows: “On February first, St. Bridget died and was interred at Dun [Down] in the same tomb with St. Patrick, with great honor and veneration.”

St. Patrick died in the year 465 at the Monastery of Saul, which he had founded at Downpatrick. It was his wish to be buried at Armagh, then, as now, the ecclesiastical headquarters of Ireland, and during the twelve days given up to mourning and funeral ceremonies a controversy arose between the monks of Armagh and those of Downpatrick, who claimed the body and insisted upon its burial in their cloisters. A wise old friar suggested that the decision be left to heaven, and after saying mass the coffin was placed upon a wagon and two young oxen were taken from the field and yoked for the first time. It was agreed that they should be started along the road to Armagh, and that wherever they stopped the grave of St. Patrick should be made. The oxen commenced their journey and the rival bodies of monks retired to their cloisters to pray.

The “Book of Armagh,” written in the year 802, and now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, duly relates that, after proceeding for two miles down the road slowly, the oxen turned from the main thoroughfare and rested at Dundalethglass, the site of the present Cathedral of Down. The monks from Armagh submitted to the will of heaven, and there the sacred dust was laid. Shortly after this, about 495, a church was built upon the site now occupied by the present edifice. It was rebuilt in the twelfth century, a considerable portion of the original walls being retained and several interior arches. And those walls and arches remain to-day. It is therefore the oldest structure in Ireland and is entitled to the veneration it receives. It stands in a grove upon the summit of a hill, a plain, dignified pile of perfect proportions, with a square tower and four spires—in no way imposing, but beautiful in its simplicity.

The interior of the church is said to be precisely as it was originally built, there having been no change in the arrangement. And most of the columns which sustain the arches and several of the arches were a part of the original building. The “Annals of Ulster” give the names of the abbots who had charge of the monastery that was built in connection with the church, as far back as the year 583, although there are several wide gaps in the records of the eighth, ninth, and thirteenth centuries. The abbey was plundered and partially destroyed on no less than eight occasions, between the years 824 and 1111, and the “Annals of Ulster” give the particulars of each invasion. In 1177 Sir John de Courcy, the most powerful and able lieutenant of Strongbow, who assumed authority over the kingdom of Ulster, made Downpatrick his principal residence and erected there a strong castle, the greater portion of which remained until about half a century ago. At his time the church and the monastery were occupied by Augustinian monks, who were driven out by De Courcy and replaced by Benedictines from the Abbey of Chester, England, and the church was rededicated in honor of St. Patrick, having previously borne the name of the Holy Trinity. And De Courcy gave the abbey a liberal endowment. He also erected a Celtic cross, which is believed to be the same that was recently recovered in fragments, carefully mended and placed in the churchyard. Among the endowments of the Downpatrick abbey were four of the principal ferries across the rivers of Ulster, forty-seven “town lands,” which probably correspond to our townships, and every tenth animal upon the farms of Ulster. Of the extensive monastic building erected by De Courcy’s generosity not a trace remains except the foundations, and these are covered with the accumulated dÉbris of four centuries. The inhabitants of Downpatrick and all the country around have used the ruin as a quarry for building material. Nearly all of the old houses in the village are made of materials from that source.

The monastery was plundered and burned by Edward Bruce, brother of Robert Bruce, the Scottish chieftain, who caused himself to be proclaimed King of Ireland in 1315. It was rebuilt and burned again in 1512. Lord Grey, who was sent over by King Henry VIII. to quiet Ireland, profaned and destroyed it, as he did everything else in this section, in his attempts to exterminate the O’Neills. Lord Grey was executed in the Tower of London in 1541. The fourth charge in the indictment against him was that “He rased St. Patrick’s, his church, in the old ancient citie of Ulster and burnt the monument of Patricke, Brided and Colme, who are said to have been there intoombed. That without onie warrant from the King or Councill he profaned the Church of St. Patrick in Downe, turning it into a stable after plucked it down and ship the notable ring of Bels that did hang in the steeple, meaning to have sent them to England, had not God of His Justice prevented his iniquitie by sinking the vessels and passengers wherein the said bells should have been conveied.”

The “Annals of Ulster,” under date of 1538, record that “the monastery of Downe was burned and the relics of Patrick, Columcille Briget and the image of Catherine were carried off.”

The oldest inscription in the church is on a tombstone erected to the memory of Edward, Lord Cromwell and Baron Oakham, no relative of Oliver Cromwell, but a great-grandson of Thomas Cromwell, the famous minister of Henry VIII., who, after the pacification of the country obtained possession of the Downpatrick estates, which continued in his family until 1832, when they were purchased by David Kerr, and in 1874 sold to the late Lord Dunleath, who now owns the largest part of the surrounding country.

At the time of the Reformation, the monks of Downpatrick refused to subscribe to the new ordinances and were driven out of the monastery. The history of Downpatrick is quite vague from that time until affairs quieted down, but from 1662 the records are complete.

Rev. John Wesley visited Downpatrick in 1778, and in his diary he describes the ruins of the Abbey of Saul as “far the largest building I have ever seen in the kingdom. Adjoining it is one of the most beautiful groves which I have ever beheld with my eyes. It covers the sloping side of the hill and has vistas cut through it every way. There is a most lovely plain very near to the venerable ruins of the cathedral.” Wesley visited Downpatrick on four different occasions between 1778 and 1785, and during each visit preached in the grove he describes, using as a pulpit the pedestal upon which a statue of St. Patrick formerly stood.

Perhaps the most celebrated resident of Downpatrick was Rev. Jeremy Taylor, who, while bishop of this diocese, wrote his famous book, “Holy Living and Holy Dying.”

Nothing but the irregular surface of the ground upon a hill about two miles from Downpatrick marks the site of the ancient Monastery of Saul, which from the time it was founded by St. Patrick in 432 was for several centuries one of the most celebrated and influential educational institutions in the world. Like the monastery at Armagh, only twenty miles away, which was also founded by St. Patrick about the same time, it was attended annually by thousands of students from England, Scotland, France, Spain, and other countries of the continent to hear and absorb the learning of the Augustinian and afterward the Benedictine monks. Unfortunately, however, no records remain of the institutions farther than an occasional reference in the “Annals of Ulster.”The sanctity of the place, however, is recognized by Christians of every race and sect, although the grave of St. Patrick—and of two other saints—which is a hundred feet from the entrance to the old cathedral church, is marked only by an enormous granite bowlder, almost as nature made it, bearing no inscription except the word “Patric” in celtic letters beneath a celtic cross chiseled on the surface of the stone. It is a most appropriate monument in its simple dignity, and one that you might imagine that St. Patrick would have preferred rather than a lofty and ornate tower. It is rather curious, however, that no movement has ever been started to erect an imposing memorial here; there is no evidence that any monument of size ever marked the grave, although the three most venerated saints in the Irish calendar lie here together. A distich, said to have been written by Sir John de Courcy in 1185, says:

which is liberally translated as follows:

Downpatrick is visited annually by thousands of pilgrims. The town is practically supported by them, and the tomb has to be guarded against vandalism, particularly on Sundays, Good Friday, Easter, and other religious holidays. Relic hunters have carried away tons of earth from about the grave, which they dig up with their fingers or trowels or sticks and consign to bottles, boxes, or baskets. As soon as the cavities become too large, the custodian hauls a cart of soil from the nearest field and fills them up.

It is asserted in the guide book that St. Patrick was never canonized by the pope, and that he is recognized as a saint only by the Irish people. This is a singular assertion. The Roman Catholic prayer book used in Ireland mentions March 17, the feast of St. Patrick, as one of the holy days upon which there is strict obligation to attend mass and to refrain from all unnecessary labor.

According to the best authorities, St. Patrick was born at Nemthur (the Holy Tower), now known as Dumbarton, Scotland, in the year 387, and his father, Palpurn, was a magistrate in the service of the Romans. When he was sixteen, in the year 403, Patrick was taken captive and sold as a slave. A rich man named Milcho brought him to Ireland and employed him to herd sheep and swine in County Antrim. At the end of six years of slavery he escaped, returned to his home and family and then went to a monastic school at Tours, France. After receiving his education and being ordained he went to Rome, where he was blessed by Pope Celestine and commissioned to go to Ireland as a missionary. He landed at the mouth of a little stream called the Slaney, only about two miles from Saul, and settled at Downpatrick, where the chief gave him the use of a sabhall or barn for divine service, and upon that site was erected the famous monastery which took its name, Saul, from the barn. He remained there for several years, teaching and training disciples, and then visited every part of the island, preaching the gospel to the kings and chiefs as well as to the poor half-civilized habitants of the mountains. He founded many churches and monasteries in different places and finally settled down at Armagh as Bishop of Ireland in 457, where he remained for eight years. In March, 465, when he was seventy-eight years old, while paying a visit to the monastery of Saul, the scene of his first ministrations in Ireland, he was seized with a fatal illness and breathed his last. The news of his death was the signal for universal mourning in Ireland, and thousands of the clergy and laity came from the remotest districts to pay their last tributes of love and respect to the greatest of missionaries.

St. Bridget, who ranks next to St. Patrick in the veneration of the Irish, was the daughter of a nobleman, and was born at Fochard, a village near Armagh, in the year 453. Her great beauty and her father’s wealth and position caused her to be sought in marriage by several of the princes of Ireland, but early in life she became a convert to the new religion, consecrated herself to its service, and retired to a forest near Kildare, about twenty miles from Dublin. She built herself a cell in the trunk of a great oak, around which grew a great religious community. She died Feb. 1, 525, at the age of seventy-two years. For many years the nuns of Kildare kept a light burning constantly in her memory. “The bright light that shone in Kildare’s holy flame” was suppressed, however, by the Archbishop of Dublin for fear it would be interpreted as a pagan practice.

The body of St. Bridget was originally buried at Kildare, but in the year 1185 was translated with great solemnity to Downpatrick, attended by the pope’s legate, fifteen bishops, and a great number of clergy. Her head was carried to the convent of Neustadt, Austria, and in 1587 was removed to the Church of the Jesuits in Lisbon.

St. Columba, or St. Columbkill, died while kneeling before the altar of his church on the Island of Iona, a little after midnight, Jan. 9, 597. He was originally buried in his monastery, and his body was removed to Downpatrick the same year as that of St. Bridget.