Cormac of Cashel

Origins and early life

Cormac was the son of Cuilennán, of the Eóganacht branch of the royal house of Munster, descended — the genealogists state — from Óengus, the first Christian king of Munster, baptised by Patrick. His birth is placed in the year 837. The Annals of the Four Masters report that he was taught by Snedgus (d. 885), a learned man of Disert Diarmada — Castledermot in the present Co. Kildare — a place for which, the accounts agree, he kept a lifelong affection; O'Hanlon cautions that whether Castledermot was the chief seat of his education is "rather doubtful, although sufficiently probable." Nothing further of his childhood or youth is transmitted.

Ministry / ascetic struggle

At what time and place Cormac was ordained and raised to the episcopate the record does not say; it is certain only that he was bishop of Cashel before his elevation to the kingship of Munster, the first bishop that royal seat is recorded to have had, Cashel having until then lain within the older diocese of Emly. (Lanigan thought it probable that he had earlier been bishop of Lismore — see Disputed questions.) As king he reigned, according to the elegy of Selbhach quoted by the O'Clerys, seven years — which, with his death in 908, places his accession about the beginning of the tenth century.

The O'Clerys' martyrology preserves the memory of his austerity: that he was always a virgin; that he slept in a very thin tunic, which he wore also at matins; and that he was accustomed to sing his psalms immersed in water. A later tradition — resting, O'Hanlon notes, "on no very trustworthy evidence" — made Gormlaith, daughter of the high-king Flann Sinna, his wife, adding that he never sinned with her save by one kiss after matins, for which he sang thrice fifty psalms of penance in the fountain of Loch Tarbh; the chronology of her reputed three marriages is confused, and the tradition sits ill with the settled enmity between Flann and Cormac. Keating describes his splendid celebration of Easter at Cashel in the years of his reign.

Martyrdom or repose

In 908 Cormac was drawn — against his own presentiment, the accounts insist, and chiefly at the urging of Flaithbertach, abbot of Inis Cathaig (Scattery), who would succeed him at Cashel — into war with Leinster. The fullest narrative, given in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and retold by Keating, relates that before the campaign he made his confession to Maenach, a follower of the rule of St Comgall who had laboured to make peace between the kingdoms, received Holy Communion from him, and added a codicil to his will: if his body could be recovered, it was to be buried either at Cluain Uamha of Mac Lenin (Cloyne) or in the cemetery of Diarmait son of Áed Rón at Disert Diarmada, where he had been schooled.

At Belach Mughna — Ballaghmoon, in the south of Co. Kildare between Carlow and Castledermot — the army of Munster met the combined forces of the high-king Flann Sinna and Cerball, king of Leinster, and was routed; the annals number six thousand fallen, among them many princes and ecclesiastics of Munster. In the flight Cormac's horse fell on ground slick with blood and rolled upon him, breaking his neck and back. Before he died he exclaimed, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." His body was pierced through by enemy soldiers and beheaded — by one Fiach Ua Ugfadan, say the Four Masters; the Annals of Clonmacnoise relate instead that he was "pittifully slaine by the hands of a cowherd," and a Cottonian manuscript read by Ware had him killed at Beanree near Leighlin while kneeling in prayer for his army. When the head was laid before Flann Sinna in expectation of reward, the high-king — so the Fragmentary Annals and Keating relate — drove the killers from his presence, took up the head, kissed it, and mourned the fallen king-bishop, ordering that the body be sought out and buried according to his will.

Relics and translations

The place of burial is transmitted in two forms. Keating relates that Maenach solemnly conveyed the body to Disert Diarmada (Castledermot), where it was interred with great honour; near the church there local tradition long pointed out a rude coffin-shaped stone, incised with a cross, as the grave of the king of Munster. Ware, however, states that the body was carried to Cashel and buried there. No later translation is recorded.

Veneration and later cultus

The oldest Irish martyrologies — Tallaght and the Félire of Óengus — were compiled before Cormac's death and so do not contain him; indeed the Todd–Reeves introduction to the Martyrology of Donegal uses the absence of any notice of Cormac as a criterion for dating a martyrology of that older stratum. The twelfth-century Félire of Marianus O'Gorman commemorates him at September 15: "lauded Cormac of Munster, without niggardliness, without oppressiveness." The Martyrology of Donegal enters him at September 14 — "Corbmac, Mac Cuilennáin, king of Munster, Bishop and Martyr" — and repeats the O'Gorman notice at the 15th in a later hand. O'Hanlon, with "most hagiologists," keeps his festival on September 14. It is very probable, the historians judge, that it was in consequence of the veneration in which Cormac's memory was held that Cashel became a permanent episcopal see after his death; at the synod of Ráth Breasail (1118) its bounds were defined, and in 1152 it was made a metropolitan see.

Hymnographic and literary legacy

Cormac's fame as a scholar equalled his fame as king and bishop. To him the tradition ascribes the Sanas Cormaic — Cormac's Glossary, the celebrated early Irish etymological compilation — and the lost Psalter of Cashel; a metrical Rule bearing his name survives (listed by Stokes among the contents of the manuscript of O'Gorman's Félire), and the O'Clerys cite a poem of his composition, "Arise, O daughter of the king." An elegy on his death is attributed to Selbhach, called his secretary. The famous Romanesque chapel on the Rock of Cashel that bears the name "Cormac's Chapel" is not his: it was built in the twelfth century by King Cormac MacCarthy.