Author: William Carrigan

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-10-22

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 9780266607069

Excerpt from The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, Vol. 1 T HE Diocese, of which these volumes are the record, is a Diocese which presents to the student of history some remarkable characteristics and contrasts. Its Founder, St. Kieran, is called in our ecclesiastical annals, Hibernia: Sanctorum primogenitus. According to the opinion universally received amongst Irish historians up to the time of Lanigan, he was one of the four pre-patrician saints who first introduced Christianity into Ireland. But whether this be so or not, it is fairly certain that he began and ended his career as Bishop within the fifth century of our era, and thus was a contemporary of our national apostle, St. Patrick. It would appear he had royal blood in his veins, for he is said to have descended by his father from the Kings of Ossory. Ossory was a territory of ancient Ireland long before the Gospel was preached here, which embraced, roughly speaking, about the third part of the Queen's County and nearly the whole of the present County Kilkenny. St. Kieran preached the Gospel to his kinsmen and won them, rulers and all, to the Christian faith. His Diocese was called by the name of the clan, was practically co-extensive with the civil division called Ossory, and continues to this day, in its name and extent, almost exactly what it was when founded and left by him at his death. No other Diocese in our country appears to enjoy these distinctions with the exception of royal Meath, which, too, claims to be called after an ancient Irish kingdom, and to be coincident with it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.