THE QUAY, BANGOR, COUNTY DOWN.-The accompanying view shows a portion of the Quay at Bangor, County Down, situated on the south side of the entrance to Belfast Lough and about twelve miles east-north-east of the City of Belfast, with which it has connection by railroad and steamer. St. Comgall founded there an abbey in A. D. 555, which became so eminent a seate of learning that its fame spread throughout Europe, and it was resorted to by scholars from all parts of the known world.
The Annals of Ulster tell us that the monastery of BANGOR was founded by Saint Comgall in approximately 555 and was where the Antiphonarium Benchorense was written. The Antiphonary of Bangor is an ancient Latin manuscript, supposed to have been originally written at Bangor Abbey in North Ireland. The codex, found by Muratori in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and named by him the "Antiphonary of Bangor" ("Antiphonarium Benchorense"), was brought to Milan from Bobbio Abbey ( a monastery founded by Saint Columba in 614) with many other books by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo when he founded the Ambrosian Library in 1609. The background to the foundation of Bobbio abbey was the Lombard invasion of Italy in 568. he Lombard king Agilulf married the devout Roman Catholic Theodelinda in 590 and under her influence and that of the Irish missionary Columbanus. . As a base for the conversion of the Lombard people Agilulf gave Columbanus a ruined church and wasted lands known as Ebovium, which, before the Lombards seized them. Next to this little church, which was dedicated to Saint Peter, a monastery was soon built. The abbey at its foundation followed the Rule of Saint Columbanus, based on the monastic practices of Celtic Christianity.
During Ireland's golden age, when she was the land of scholars, as well as saints, whose fame has outlived the devastation of barbarians and the rage of ruthless conquerors. In A. D. 818, the pagan Northmen descended on Bangor in their war galleys and slew the abbot and nine hundred of his learned monks. When King Alfred the Great, some of whose ancestors were educated in Ireland, founded, or restored, Oxford, he sent to the Bangor College for professors to complete the faculty.
The learned Saint Dungal (d. after 827) bequeathed to the abbey his valuable library, consisting of some seventy volumes, among which was the famous "Antiphonary of Bangor". Among the bishops of Bobbio have been Blessed Albert (1184), who was translated to the Patriarchal See of Jerusalem and died a martyr at Acre in 1214. The Creed in this codex differs in its wording from all other forms known to exist. It is in substance the original Creed of Nicaea. The modern town Bangor has its roots in the early 17th century when the Scot, Sir James Hamilton, arrived in Bangor, having been granted lands in north Down by King James I in 1605. Saint Columbanus' abbey and church were taken from the Benedictines by the French occupying forces in 1803, when the abbey was suppressed. The largest remaining individual land owner in the woodland area is the Clandeboye Estate, located a few miles from the town centre and was first settled in 1674, but the Clandeboye House of today dates from 1801.