Veneration
Clonard became an important school because of the number of its students who went on to found other monasteries. For centuries after his death the school continued to be renowned as a seat of Scriptural learning, but it suffered at the hands of the Danes, especially in the eleventh century, and two Irishmen, O'Rorke of Breifney and Dermod McMurrough, helped to complete the work which the Northmen had begun. The relics of Finnian himself were enshrined at Clonard until 887, after which the shrine was destroyed. With the transference by the Norman Bishop of Rochfort, in 1206, of the See of Meath from Clonard to Trim, the glory of the former place departed forever.
St Finnian of Clonard's feast-day is 12 December, which is first attested to in a Spanish Martyrology of the 9th century. In later years the monastery of Clonard came under the rule of the Uí Néill, and came to share an abbot with either Kildare or Clonmacnoise.
Read more about this topic: Finnian Of Clonard
Famous quotes containing the word veneration:
“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)