198 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



the year of the death of 'Maniehaeus" and the other Irish sages ;. first year of 

 the twelfth cycle = 653, the third year of which is 655. The 'De ilirabilibus" 

 was therefore written in A.D. 655. 



Having now fixed the date, we can identify the " Maniehaeus," who died 

 according to our author in 652, with Manchene, abbot of Mondiehid near 

 Borris in Queen's Co., whose death, precisely in this year, is recorded by the 

 so-called " Annals of Tigernach "' and by the " Annals of Ulster."- The 

 " other sages " who died in the same year are named in the " Annals of 

 Tigeniach "' under the same date. Tliej' were : Seghine, abbot of loua : 

 Aedlug, abbot of Clonmacnoise ; and St. Caimin of Inis Cealtra. 



With regard to the Bathanus and Manchianus mentioned in the second 

 passage given above, the first can be identiHed with Baetan Mac-Ui-Connaic, 

 abbot of Clonmacnoise,' who died in 664, and was probably the bisiiop 

 Baithanus mentioned by Bede.* The " pattr Manciiiauus " is the same person 

 as " Maniehaeus,"* as a Munich MS. will show. 



It remains now to deal with the Dedication, which presents certain serious 

 difficulties. The writer therein styles himself Augustinus and professes to 

 be writing his work principally for the bishops and priests of Carthage. 

 Evidently he int«ndcd to convey the impression tliat the great St. Augustine 

 was the author, which is conclusively disproved among otlier things' by the 

 references to Ireland and the mention of the dat« 655. There is no 

 foundation fur the suggestion of the editors that some such word as 

 CaniuarUnsium is concealed beneath Carthaginensium, which is read by all 

 the complete MSS. in which the Dedication occurs. 



' Ed. Stokes, " Revue Celtique," 17. 1896, p. 192. Cf. BlacNeill, Eriu, 7, p. 30. 

 ' Ed. MacC^rthy. iv, 1901, pp. Ixx n., 268. 



* E.i .St..k««. loc. <ri/., p. 192. 



« ".\nn»ls of rist«r,' ed. MacCarthy, iv. p. 29 ; TigemHch. p. 198. 

 » •' Hut. Eccl.," ii, 19, ed. Plumnier. 



• We may here note that Holder and Soater (Proc. British Academy, 1907, pp. 430- 

 431) have discovered that the anonynioiii lAtin coinmentary on the Cnthnlic Epistles in 

 M.H Karlsruhe, .\iig. a33. a. ii, fols. la-4<^lb (cf. Holder, "Die Reichenauer H.ind- 

 ■chrifxen," i, 19<jl'i, j.p. o31-6:i3), is the work of an Irishman, who cites three native 

 teachers— BreCKDus (at least four times , Bercanus, son of Aido (once), and Manchianus 

 (once). .Aido is an Old-Irish genitive. Souler conjectured the work to date from the 

 end of the seventh or liegiuning of the eighth centurj', apparently on the strength of 

 Holder's most improbable identi6cation of Manchiana.s with St. Mochonna (ob. 704). 

 Qniiigin's suggestion th»t Drecuius is the contemporarj- of St. Enda of Arran (saec. v) is 

 e<{ually unlikely. It is quite pos.sible that the Manchianus of the Karlsruhe treatise is 

 none other than our Manchinnus of the " De Mirabilibus," and that the work is to be 

 assigned to the middle or to the latter jiart of the seventh century. I shall deal with 

 this work elsewhere. 



' Linguistic and stylistic inferiority, and the mention at the opening of the Prologue 

 of the writer's father Eusebius. 



