The Persian religious figure Mani listed as Axum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time. It was in the early 4th century AD that a Syro-Greek castaway, Frumentius, was taken to the court and eventually converted king Ezana to Christianity. The Kingdom of Aksum, the first verifiable kingdom of great power and the Trojans to rise in Ethiopia, rose during the first century BC.
In Ancient Persia, Atharvans bards were the highest, sacerdotal class similar to the Brahmanic caste. The Pictish Crom-cruaghair, the great Creator, he has, by some writers, been identified with the Persian Kerum Kerugher) was the chief god of Ireland. Their Irish names, Tur-aghan or adhan, Feidh-neimhedh and Cileagh, are of themselves conclusive as to their pagan origin, and announce at once a fane devoted to that form of religion, compounded of Sabæism or star-worship and Buddhism of which the sun, represented by fire, was the principal deity.
THE CONVERSION OF THE MANX
The FIRBOLGS are reckoned amongst the first adventurers of the English Channel who colonised Ireland. In ancient lore the kingdom of Connacht was ruled from a ritual center at Cruachain Ai, near Rathcroghan between Belanagare and Elphin, in the County Roscommon.
A number of years later (A.D. 254) the migration of a colony of Irish Cruithneans from Ulster to Man is registered by Tighernach. Many of this tribe, however, chose to remain in Ireland and pay tribute to the King of Ulster, and we find them still there when St. Patrick came. They continued to enjoy their own peculiar laws and customs, and were looked upon by the settlers in Man and Wales as still forming part of their common family. In the changes of time, when the glories of the Norman church gave place to the primitive constitution of the Celtic Fathers, the sons of St. Bernard, from the mother-house of Furness Abbey, became the guardians of the Faith in Man. St. Patrick chose one of his disciples, by name German, a wise and holy man, whom he promoted to the Episcopate, and constituted ruler of the new Church, and the Episcopal See was fixed in the promontory, which to the present day is called Inis-Patrick, because the saint remained there for some time. The word Gall is often used by the Irish writers as a sort of generic name for all foreign invaders, and may perhaps in the present instance be intended for the Saxons, who about this time had begun to make considerable progress in England. It was by Baedan that Man was cleared of the Galls, so that its sovereignty belonged to the Ultonians thence-forward; and the second yeare after his death the Galls abandoned Man.
According to tradition, the Firbolg tribes ruled much of Connacht down to the third century. In the 4th century AD the ancient line of Connacht kings was displaced by the midland rulers, whose centre was at Tara. Two members of this Tara dynasty, Brion and Fiachra, founded septs, or clans, the Uí Briúin and the Úí Fiachrach, to which all the rulers of Connaught from the 5th to the 12th century belonged.
The Isle of Man was converted to the Christian faith by St. Patrick in the yeare 440. So devoted were the Manx men in after ages to his memory, that the promontory now called Peel, formerly separated from Man, was in the Chronicon Manniae always called Insula Sancti Patritii, or St. Patrick's island. The Latin traditions which link together the names of Patrick and Germanus are found to harmonise with the bardic compositions which quote Patrick and Mochamhog.
In the Life of St. Patrick, composed by Jocelyn, a monk of Furness, in the twelfth century, some particulars are given regarding the preaching of our Apostle in the Isle of Man. When Jocelyn wrote, the closest relations existed between Furness Abbey and its offshoot the celebrated Cistercian Monastery of Rushin in the Isle of Man, and hence his testimony must be regarded as presenting to us the local records and traditions of the island.
Before this Scandinavian period, Christianity here was undoubtedly represented by a branch of the early Celtic Church, and as in the case of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, we may be sure that in connection with the larger Churches or Monasteries, there must have been illuminated copies of the Gospels, the Psalter, and other MSS., as well as relics enshrined in cases of metal. No local Manx records of the period of our Celtic Church, and the absence of tradition, or of any indication other than those mentioned, may be accounted for by the disturbed and unsettled condition of the land and the many great changes which have since occurred. Occasionally, however, a brief reference to the Isle of Man is to be met with in the Annals of the surrounding lands, and from Ireland we learn that there was at one time a Shrine to St. Mochonna on Inis Patrick, which, in this connection, has, on the excellent authority of Dr. Todd, been identified with Peel. One of Columba's companions, St. Mochonna, or St. Dachonna, who was sent by him to the Picts, had a Shrine on Inis Patrick, probably Peel Island in Man, which in 798, according to the Annals of Ulster, was 'broken' by the 'Gentiles,' i.e., the Northmen."
The Imchad mac Rochado mentioned in the Ogham inscription of knock y Doonee, Andreas, must also in some way be connected with the two brothers Imchad and Rochaid, the sons of Colla Da Crich and nephews of Colla Huais, Monarch of Ireland A.D. 327 to A.D. 331, the progenitor of the CLANN CHOLLA from whom sprang the Lords of the Isles.
The Ballaqueeney inscription raises the Pictish question anew. Conaille Muirthemne belonged, with Antrim, Down, and parts of Meath, to the Pictish domain in Ireland. In the Chronicle of the Picts and Scots all the Conailli of Ireland are said to descend from the Picts of Dál Riada [PICTLAND] (and thus far the expansion of the Conaille Muirthemne to Man may be looked upon as a precursor of Dál Riada's conquest of West Scotland). From a linguistic point of view, the Pictish question is not a question of either Celtic or non-Celtic language.
Our staff-lands of Kirk Patrick and Kirk Maughold imply precious relics in the form of Staffs of early Saints, encased no doubt in ornamental metal work, and held by hereditary keepers, or Dewars, to whom grants of land were made in return for their custody; of Bell-shrines, Book-shrines or Cumdachs, and others, all trace has long since dis-appeared. The Runic language was that of Scandinavia, and included the peoples of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. It was closely related to the Gothic language but eras before the High German consonant shift. In England, the Norsemen seized Cumberland and Strathclyde, the western half of Britain from the latitude of Edinburgh to that of York, and from the northern boundary of Wales to the Clyde. In 882, on the eastern coast, the Danes had subdued Northumberland, and had made York their capital. [RUNIC]
The register of this parish begins in 1647.