# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Celsus

​CELSUS or CELLACH, Saint (1079–1129), archbishop of Armagh, and the greatest of St. Patrick's successors till the election of St. Malachy, was the son of Ædh, and grandson of Mælisa, who had held the same office from 1064 to 1091. Hence he belonged to that powerful local family of which St. Bernard says that, though sometimes lacking in clerks, it had never for fifteen generations, or two hundred years, failed to find one of its members ready to accept the bishopric at its disposal (Vita Malachiæ, ch. x.). This statement, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, is partly corroborated by the Irish annals, where, to confine ourselves to the eleventh century, we find Celsus's grandfather great-uncle, and great-grandfather all preceding him in the see of Armagh (Annals of Four Masters, sub annis 1105, 1064, 1020). On the death of his great-uncle, Domhnall, Celsus was elected his successor, at the illegal age of twenty-four or twenty-five, although, from the words used in recounting the event, it is by no means impossible that he had not yet been ordained priest (A. F. M. and Ann. Ult. sub anno 1105; with which cf. the case of Gregory ap. Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rolls Ser.), p. 298). The predecessors of Celsus seem, for the most part, to have been married men, and to have discharged their ecclesiastical functions by the aid of suffragans; but, despite the attempt that has been made to prove that Celsus too was married, it is more likely that, in the passage on which this theory is based (Vit. Mal. c. 10), the words ‘uxor Celsi’ are to be interpreted of the church of Ireland (Lanigan, iv. 33). Celsus, however, seems to have retained the custom of appointing, or at least continuing, the services of suffragan bishops (Ann. Ult. p. 371; A. F. M. sub anno 1122). The new prelate entered on his office with vigour (23 Sept. 1105). In 1106 he made a visitation of Ulster and Munster, receiving his full tribute of cows, sheep, and silver from every cantred (A. F. M.) Munster was revisited in 1108 and 1120, Connaught in 1108 (Annals of Loch Cé, i. 77) and in 1116, and Meath in 1110 (A. F. M. and Ann. Ult. p. 374). Of ​the treasure collected upon each visitation Celsus may well have made a noble use, as, for example, in the case of the great ‘damhliag,’ or church, at Armagh, which he fitted with a shingle roof (January 1125) after it had remained without a coping for 130 years (Annals of Loch Cé, i. 119); or when he gave the precious silver chalice to the church of Clonmacnoise (Chr. Scot. p. 329). Besides his ecclesiastical duties Celsus was constantly being called upon to mediate between the rival kings and tribes of Ireland. So in 1107 and 1109 we find him making a year's peace between Donald Mac Lochlainn, king of Elagh, and Muirchertach O'Brian, king of Munster—the northern and southern claimants for the supreme lordship of the whole island (Ann. Ult. pp. 372, 373; A. F. M.) Again, when Donald came to ravage Down in 1113, and the two armies lay confronting each other for a whole month at Clonkeen, it was Celsus, with his ‘Bachall-Isa,’ or staff of office, who reconciled the rival hosts (Loch Cé, i. 103). Many years later (1128), just before his death, he made a year's peace between the men of Connaught and Munster (Ann. Ult. p. 394), and two years previously (1126) he had been absent from Armagh for thirteen months on a similar errand, ‘pacifying the men of Erin and imposing good rules and customs on all, both laity and clergy’ (Loch Cé, i. 121).
As head of the church of Ireland, Celsus convoked the great synod of Fiadh-mac-Ænghusa (1111), sometimes called that of Usneach (Ann. Buell. p. 21, &c.). At this synod, Murtogh O'Brian and the chiefs of Leth-Mogha (S. Ireland), fifty bishops, three hundred priests, and three thousand students are said to have been present (A. F. M., with which, however, cf. the less symmetrical numbers given in the Chr. Scot. sub anno 1107). Of this council we read that it made better ordinances and rules for the conduct of all, both laity and clergy (Loch Cé, i. 1, and Ann. Inisf. p. 98). According to Dr. Lanigan it was probably about this time that Celsus confirmed Cashel in the primacy of S. Ireland (Eccles. Hist. iv. 30, with which cf. Vit. Mal. c. 15). The same authority tells us that Celsus was present at the council of Rathbreasil (1117), over which Gilbert, the papal legate, presided, when the boundaries of the Irish dioceses were fixed (Lanigan, pp. 38–45).
On the death of Samuel O'Haingly, bishop of Dublin, who had been consecrated by Anselm, we read that Celsus was chosen his successor by the election of both Danes and Irish (Ann. Ult. p. 1121). This appointment was, however, challenged by another section of the townsmen, who sent over their own nominee—one Grein or Gregory—to be consecrated by Archbishop Ralph at Canterbury (Eadmer, Historia Novorum, pp. 297–8). But the influence and generosity of Celsus seem to have restrained his rival (though apparently supported by the good wishes of the kings of England and of Ireland) from venturing to assert his rights actively (ib.; Ussher, Syllogæ, pp. 100, 101). There seems to be no authority for Dr. Lanigan's statement (p. 48) that Celsus ‘acquiesced in Gregory's appointment.’ This dispute appears in great measure to have been one between the nominee of the Danish burgesses of Dublin, who would naturally prefer to have a Teutonic metropolitan—especially at so convenient a distance as Canterbury—and those who supported the rights of the Celtic archbishop of Armagh. Celsus's success led to the temporary severance of the close connection that, since the first years of Lanfranc's episcopacy, had existed between the sees of Dublin and Canterbury (Epistolæ Lanfranci, ap. Migne, cl. 532–7; Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 526–530); Gregory seems, however, to have recovered his bishopric on Celsus's death (A. F. M. pp. 1157, 1162). If the king of Ireland, alluded to above, be Turlough O'Conor, who had become master of Dublin in 1118 (Loch Cé, i. 111), it is curious that Celsus should have succeeded in maintaining himself in his new office. It was a little previous to this Dublin contest (1118) that Celsus was submerged in the river Dubhall (Blackwater in Armagh), and had to swim ashore, ‘propriis viribus,’ with the loss of his treasure of cloths and silver (Loch Cé, i. 109). In 1128 he was subject to a most unprovoked attack, of which all the old Irish annals speak in terms of the greatest horror—as of an insult offered to Christ himself—a deed that, until it was avenged, would bring down the wrath of God on the whole land. The O'Ruarcs and the O'Brians had set upon Celsus and his retinue in a church, plundering him of his goods and slaying his retinue, and among them a young clerk who had taken shelter beneath the altar. Next year Celsus died, in his fiftieth year, at Ardpatrick in Munster (1 April 1129). Two days later his body was conveyed to Lismore, where it was buried on the following Tuesday (4 April).
Celsus seems to have determined to break through the hereditary succession to the see of Armagh, and, with this end in view, drew up a kind of will (testamentum or constitutio Celsi), in which he recommended St. Malachy as his successor. From his deathbed he sent his pastoral staff to this saint, whose career he had watched over from its earliest manhood, and whom he had himself ordained ​deacon (Vit. Mal. c. 2), priest (c 1119), and bishop (c. 1123) (Vit. Mal. cc. 3, 8, 10). In fact, so great was his confidence in the discretion of St. Malachy that he appointed the young priest his vicar almost immediately after ordaining him (‘etiam vices suas commisit ei’), and a few years later recommended him for the see of Connareth (Conor). Despite the dying wish of Celsus it was five years before St. Malachy made good his claim to the archbishopric of Armagh, having to contest the see with Celsus's cousin and brother (A. F. M. sub annis 1134, 1129). In the ‘Irish Annals’ this saint appears as Cellach, in St. Bernard as Celsus, but in Eadmer under the more perverted form of Cœlestinus. Tanner, quoting from Bale, gives a list of the works of Celsus, including a ‘Testamentum ad Ecclesias,’ several letters to St. Malachy, certain constitutiones, and a ‘Summa Theologiæ,’ which in Bale's time was said to be still preserved at Vienna. St. Celsus appears in the ‘Roman Calendars’ on 6 April, by a clerical error of VI for IV, the day of his burial.
[Annals of the Four Masters (A. F. M.), transl. O'Donovan (1856), vol. i.; Annals of Inisfallen and Annals of Boyle (Ann. Buell.), Annals of Ulster (Ann. Ult.), ap. C. O'Conor's Scriptores Rerum Hibernicarum, vols. ii. and iv. The Annals of Inisfallen are seventeen years in arrear of the true dates. Eadmer's Historia Novorum, ed. Rule (Rolls Ser.); Annals of Loch Cé, ed. Hennessey (Rolls Ser.); Chronicon Scotorum, ed. Hennessey (Rolls Ser.). The dates of this work are for the period in question four years in arrear. St. Bernard's Vita Malachiæ ap. Migne's Patrologiæ Cursus, clxxi. 1074–1118; Lanfranci Epistolæ ap. Migne, cl.; Colgan's Trias Thaumaturga, pp. 299–303; Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (1829), vols. iii. and iv.; Wilkins's Concilia, i. 391; Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (6 April), pp. 619–20; Bale's Catalogue (1559), i. 288; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 162; Ussher's Syllogæ (1632); Baring-Gould's Lives of the Saints (1873), 6 April, pp. 106–10.]
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