Armstrong and Lawlor — The Domnach Airgid. Ill 



Assuming for the moment that it remained there till the sixteenth century, 

 I may indicate what seems to have been its later history. It was probably 

 removed from Clogher in the interval between the death of Cornelius 

 MacArdghail, who was alive and administering the see in 1592/ and the 

 arrival of the first bishop appointed by the Crown, the Scotsman George 

 Montgomery. He succeeded MacArdghail, after a long vacancy, in 1605. 

 From that time, except during its sojourn at Florence Court, till its purchase 

 by Smith — a period of 130 or 140 years — it was in the territory of the 

 Maguires, and in the custody of various members of the sept. 



Dr. Petrie's discovery was apparently made shortly before he wrote, or 

 finally revised, the paper in which for nearly sixty years he was generally held 

 to have said the last word on the Domnach Airgid. 3 It was published in the 

 Transactions of the Academy in 1838. 3 In that paper be found some difficulty 

 in escaping from the thrall of the earlier theory. Thus he writes that the 

 shrine was purchased " in the neighbourhood of Clones, in the county of 

 Monaghan, its original locality."* And further on he says that it " belonged 

 to the monastery of Clones, or see of Clogher"; adding, in explanation of 

 that obscure, if not unmeaning, phrase, that on "the death of St. MacCairthinn 

 in the year 506, [St. Tigernach] removed the see of Clogher " to Clones 5 — a 

 statement which is unhistorical. 



In this essay Dr. Petrie's main purpose is to prove that the manuscript 

 which was found in. the Domnach Airgid belonged to St. Patrick, and that it 

 was brought to Ireland by him. 6 His argument rests on the three following 

 propositions : — 1. The Domnach itself was the property of St. Patrick ; 2. It 

 was originally intended to be a book-shrine, not, as has been commonly 

 supposed, a reliquary; 3. The book for the preservation of which it was 

 designed was the manuscript of the Gospels which was found in it in 1832. 



i Journal of Kilkenny Archaeological Society, N.S., vol. i (1856-7), p. 81. This conjec- 

 ture, which was suggested by the historical facts, is confirmed by Mr. Armstrong's 

 opinion that the latest part of the outer case of the shrine dates from Elizabethan times, 

 and that the figures with which it is adorned rosemble the Maguire arms. There is no 

 improbability in the hypothesis that the case was made after 15SI2, when the shrine was 

 in the hands of the Maguire clan. 



2 The evidence which connected the Domnach with St. Mac Cairthinn was unknown 

 to Betham after the exhibition of the shrine in 1832, at which he was present. See 

 Carleton, I.e., p. 440. 



3 Transactions of R.I. A., vol. xviii, Antiquities, pp. 14-24. 



4 P. 14. On p. 17 Clogher is said to be the see to which it " originally appertained." 

 The words " in the neighbourhood of Clones " are misleading, for Brookeborough is almost 

 equidistant from Clones and Clogher — about twelve miles from each, as the crow dies. 

 The important point is that neither Clones nor Clogher is in the Maguire Country. 



5 P. 18. I may again refer to my Fragments of the Clogher Register, I.e. 

 c P. 20. 



R.I.A. PROC, VOL. XXXJV, SECT. C. [18] 



