town_," § 34: "a fragment of the cask remained _here_ till recently,"
§ 36: "_here_ are the relics of Ciaran," § 41. Similarly the First
Latin Life, § 35, calls the saint "_Our_ most holy patron"]. The
actual date of the Irish sermon is less easy to fix; the language
has been modernised step by step in the process of transmission from
manuscript to manuscript, but originally it may have been written
about the eleventh century, though incorporating fragments of earlier
material. The passage just quoted, saying that a certain relic had
remained _till recently_, may possibly indicate that the homily had
been delivered shortly after one of the many burnings and plunderings
which the monastery suffered; in such a calamity the relic might have
perished. The prophecy put into Ciaran's mouth, that "there would be
great persecution of his city from evil men in the end of the world"
[Irish Life, § 38] seems to relate to such an event: it is very
suggestive that exactly the same exprestion "great persecution from
evil men" (_ingrem mór ó droch-daoinibh_) is used in the _Chronicon
Scotorum_ of certain raids on the monastery which took place in the
year A.D. 1091; and that on the strength of an old prophecy there was
a belief in Ireland that the world was destined to come to an end in
the year 1096, as we learn from the _Annals of the Four Masters_ under
that date.[4] It must, however, be remembered that a date determined
for a single incident does not necessarily date the whole compilation
containing it.

The text of the First Latin Life (here called for convenience of
reference LA) is found in an early fifteenth-century MS. in Marsh's
Library, Dublin. It has been edited, without translation, by the Rev.
C. Plummer in his most valuable _Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae_ (Oxford,
1910) vol. i, pp. 200-216. The translation given in this volume has
been made from Plummer's edition, which I have collated with the