Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/661

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583

GLENNON


583


GLORIA


120 years. His earliest tutor was St. Petroc of Corn- wall, who had come to Leinster about 492, and de- voted himself with considerable ardour to the study of the Sacred Scriptures, in which his pupil also became proficient. Kevin next studied under his uncle, St. Eugenius, afterwards Bishop of Ardstraw, who at that time lived at Kilnamanagh in W'icklow, where he taught his pupils all the sacred learning which he had acquired in the famous British monastery of Rosnat.

Young Kevin was at this time a handsome youth, and had unconsciously won the affections of a beauti- ful maiilen, who once followed him to the woods. The young saint perceiving her, threw himself into a bed of nettles, and then gathering a handful scourged the maiden with the burning weeds. "The fire without", says the biographer, "extinguished the fire within", and Kathleen repenting became a saint. There is no foundation for the story, which Moore has wedded to immortal verse, that Kevin flung the unhappy Kath- leen from his cave, in the face of Lugduff, into the depths of the lake below. Kevin then retired into the wilds of the Glendalough valley, where he spent many years in a narrow cave, living alone with God in the practice of extreme asceticism. In the course of time, holy men gathered round him, and induced him to build the monastery, whose ruins still remain lower down in the more open valley to the east. Here his fame as a saint and scholar attracted crowds of dis- ciples, so that Glendalough became for the east of Ire- land what the Arran Islands were for the west — a great school of sacred learning, and a novitiate in which the young saints and clergy were trained in virtue and self-denial.

One of the most celebrated of the pupils of St. Kevin at Glendalough was St. Moling, the founder of the well-known monastery, called from him St. Mul- lins, on the left bank of the Barrow in the south-west of the County Carlow. Like his master Kevin, he was a man of learning and extreme austerity, living, it is said, for a long time, as Kevin did, in a hollow tree. He was also an elegant writer both in Latin and in Irish. Several Irish poems have been attributed to him, his prophecies were in wide circulation, and the "Yellow Book of St. Moling" was one of those which Keating had in his hands, but which has since been unfortunately lost. Of all the scholars of Glenda- lough, however, St. Laurence O'Toole was by far the most distinguished. A great scholar, bishop, patriot, and saint, he owed his entire training in virtue and in learning to this school. So far did he carry his devo- tion to St. Kevin that, even after he had become Archbishop of Dublin, he made it a practice to retire from the city, and spend the whole Lent in the very cave in the face of the rock over the lake where St. Kevin had lived so long alone with God.

The existing ruins at Glendalough still form a very striking scene in that wildly beautiful mountain valley. Within the area of the original enclosure are the great church, or cathedral, built probably in the time of St. Kevin, a fine round tower still 110 feet in height, the building called St. Kevin's Cro or kitchen, and the Church of the Blessed Virgin, for whom Kevin, like most of the Irish saints, had a particular devotion. The building called St. Kevin's kitchen was doubtless the private oratory and sleeping-chamber of the saint, the latter being in the croft overhead, as in St. Co- lumba's house at Kells.

Healy, IreianiVs Ancient Schools and Scholars; Lanigan, History of Ireland (Dublin. 1827); Petrie, Round Towers; O'Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints.

John Healt.

Glennon, John Joseph. See St. Louis, Arch- diocese OF.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo. — The great doxology {hymnus anyelicus) in the Mass is a version of a very old Greek form. It begins with the words sung by the angels at Christ's birth (Luke, ii, 14). To this verse


others were added very early, forming a do.xology. In a slightly different form it occurs at the beginning of a "morning prayer {-n-potreuxv iuBivq)" in the ".\postolic Constitutions", VII. xlvii. This text, which has a subordination colouring {<rif fidvos Kvpios 'Itj<tov XpitrToO), will be found in Duchesne, "Origines du Culte Chre- tien" (2nd ed., Paris, 1898, p. 158, n. I). It goes back at least to the third century; Probst (Lehre und Gebet der drei ersten christl. Jahrhunderte", Tubingen, 1870, p. 290) thinks even to the first. A very similar form is found in the Codex Alexandrinus (fifth century) and in Pseudo-Athanasius, "de Virginitate", §20 (be- fore the fourth century), in P. G., XXVIII, 275. Ex- tended further, and with every trace of subordina- tionism corrected, it is sung by the Byzantine Church at the Orthros. In this form it has more verses than in the Latin, and ends with the Trisagion (01^10X6710^ t6 iiiya, Rome, 1876, p. .57). It is not used in the Liturgy by any Eastern Church. Only the first clause (the te.xt of Luke ii, 14) occurs as part of the people's answer to the words, " Holy things for the holy", at the elevation in the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions (Brightman, Eastern Liturgies, Oxford, 1890, p. 25), as part of the Offertory and Communion prayers in St. James's Liturgy (ibid., pp. 45, 64), at the kiss of peace in the Abyssinian Rite (p. 227), in the Nestorian Pro- thesis (p. 248) and again at the beginning of their Liturgy (p. 252), in the Byzantine Prothesis (p. 361). The tradition is that it was translated into Latin by St. Hilary of Poitiers (d.366). It is quite possible that he learned it during his exile in the East (360) and brought back a version of it with him (so Belethus, "Rationale divinorum officiorum", c. 36; Durandus, "Rationale", IV, 13, who thinks that he only added from "Laudaraus te" to the Mass, and notes that Innocent III attributes it to Telesphorus, others to Symmachus). In any case, the Latin version differs from the present Greek form. They correspond down to the end of the Latin, which however adds: "Tu solus altissimus" and "Cum sancto Spiritu". The Greek then goes on: " Every da}' I will bless thee and will glorify thy name for ever, and for ever and ever" and continues with ten more verses, chiefly from psalms, to the Trisagion and Gloria Patri.

The "Liber pontificalis" says "Pope Telesphorus [128-139?] ordered that . . . on the Birth of the Lord Masses should be said at night . . . and that the angelic hymn, that is Gloria in Excelsis Deo, should be said before the sacrifice" (ed. Duchesne, 1, 129) ; also "that Pope Symmachus [498-514] ordered that the hymn, Gloria in excelsis, should be said every Sunday and on the feasts [natalicia] of martyrs. " The Gloria is to be said in its present place, after the "Introit" and "Kyrie", but only by bishops (ibid., 263). We see it then introduced first for Christmas, on the feast to which it specially belongs, then extended to Sun- days and certain great feasts, but only for bishops. The "Ordo Romanus I" says that when the Kyrie is finished " the pontiff, turning towards the people, be- gins Gloria in Excelsis, if it be the occasion for it [si tempus fuerit]" and notes specially that priests may say it onlv at Easter (ed. C. Atchley, London, 1905, pp. 130, 148). The "Ordo of St. Amand" (Duchesne, "Origines", appendix, p. 460) gives them leave to do so only on Easter Eve and on the day of their ordina- tion. The Gregorian Sacramentary (dicitur Gloria in excelsis Deo, si episcopus fuerit, tanturamodo die dominico sive diebus festis; a presbyteris autem minime dicitur nisi solo in Pascha) and Walafrid Strabo, "Liber de exordiis", c. 22, in P. L., CXIV, 945, note the same thing. Berno of Constance thinks it a grievance still in the eleventh century (Libellus de quibusdam rebus ad Missce officium pertinentibus, c. 2, in P. L., CXLII, 1059). But towards the end of the same century the Gloria was said by priests as well as by bishops. The " Micrologus" (by the same Berno of Constance, 1048) tells us that "On every feast that