No Irish saint perhaps has so strong a local hold as Declan or has
left so abiding a popular memory. Nevertheless his period is one of
the great disputed questions of early Irish history. According to
the express testimony of his Life, corroborated by testimony of the
Lives of SS. Ailbhe and Ciaran, he preceded St. Patrick in the Irish
mission and was a co-temporary of the national apostle. Objection,
exception or opposition to the theory of Declan's early period is
based less on any inherent improbability in the theory itself than on
contradictions and inconsistencies in the Life. Beyond any doubt the
Life does actually contradict itself; it makes Declan a cotemporary
of Patrick in the fifth century and a cotemporary likewise of St.
David a century later. In any attempted solution of the difficulty
involved it may be helpful to remember a special motive likely to
animate a tribal histrographer, scil.:--the family relationship, if
we may so call it, of the two saints; David was bishop of the Deisi
colony in Wales as Declan was bishop of their kinsmen of southern
Ireland. It was very probably part of the writer's purpose to call
attention to the links of kindred which bound the separated Deisi;
witness his allusion later to the alleged visit of Declan to his
kinsmen of Bregia. Possibly there were several Declans, as there
were scores of Colmans, Finians, &c., and hence perhaps the confusion
and some of the apparent inconsistencies. There was certainly a
second Declan, a disciple of St. Virgilius, to whom the latter
committed care of a church in Austria where he died towards close of
eighth century. Again we find mention of a St. Declan who was a
foster son of Mogue of Ferns, and so on. It is too much, as Delehaye
("Legendes Hagiographiques") remarks, to expect the populace to
distinguish between namesakes. Great men are so rare! Is it likely
there should have lived two saints of the same name in the same
country!