In the year 558 the great monastery of Bennchar, or Bangor, was founded in the county of Down, the ancient territory of the Irish Picts, by Comgall, who was of that race and had been a companion of Columba at Glaisnaoidhen. It was situated on the south side of Belfast Lough; and the following account of it is given in his Life:—‘So great a multitude of monks then came to Comgall that they could not be maintained in one place, and hence they possessed several cells and many monasteries not only in the region of the Ultonians, but throughout the other provinces of Ireland; and in these different cells and monasteries three thousand monks were under the care of the holy father Comgall; but the greater and more memorable of them was the monastery of Bennchar.’^[111] St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, in his Life of St. Malachy, written in the twelfth century, tells us that Bennchar was given to him by the lord of the land, that he might build, or rather rebuild, a monastery there; ‘for,’ he says, ‘a most noble monastery had existed there under its first father Comgall, which, as the head of many monasteries, produced many thousand monks. This sacred place was so fertile of saints and so abundantly bore fruit to God, that one of the sons of that holy fraternity, called Luanus, is said to have been alone the founder of no fewer than a hundred monasteries, filling Ireland and Scotland with its offspring, and not only in these, but even in foreign countries these swarms of saints poured forth like an inundation, among whom Saint Columbanus, penetrating thence to these our Gallican regions, erected the monastery of Luxeuil.’^[112] Angus the Culdee in his Litany invokes ‘forty thousand monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of Comgall of Bangor,’ but this number has probably been written for four thousand in the text.^[113] The Luanus mentioned by St. Bernard was Lugidus, or Molua, of Clonfert-Molua, now Clonfertmulloe, on the boundary between Leinster and Munster, and his monasteries were mainly founded in the southern half of Ireland. It was, as we have seen, by the mission of Columbanus to Gaul that this Monastic Church of Ireland was brought into contact with the Continental Church. We have already adverted to some of the external peculiarities which distinguished it from the Roman Church at this period; and we must now consider more in detail the features which characterised it in the aspect in which it presents itself to us in its home in Ireland.

When we read of such a number of monasteries constructed within a short period, so many of them, too, the work of one saint, we must not suppose that they at all resembled the elaborate stone structures which constituted the monastery of the Middle Ages. The primitive Celtic monastery was a very simple affair, and more resembled a rude village of wooden huts. We find from the Irish Life of Columba that, when he went to the monastery of Mobhi Clairenach, on the banks of the river Finglass, where no fewer than fifty scholars were assembled, their huts or bothies (botha) were by the water, or river, on the west, and that there was an ecclais, or church, on the east side of the river, which was no doubt, as was usual at the time, made of no better material. Thus it is told of Mochaoi, abbot of Nendrum, that on one occasion he went with seven score young men to cut wattles to make the ecclais, or church.^[114] When Ciaran of Saighir, who was one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, proceeded to erect his huts and church, he is said to have constructed them of the rudest materials, and when he went into the wood for these a wild boar assisted him by biting off with his sharp teeth the rods and branches for the purpose.^[115] Coemgen of Glendalough, too, built his oratory of rods of wood, planks, and moss;^[116] and in Conchubran’s Life of Monenna we are told that ‘she founded a monastery, which was made of smooth planks, according to the fashion of the Scottish nations, who were not accustomed to erect stone walls or get them erected.’^[117] The church in these early monasteries was thus, as well as the huts or bothies for the accommodation of the monks, frequently built of wood; and the usual name given to this early wooden church was Duirthech, or Deirthech, of which the Latin equivalent was ‘oratorium.’ Of this word various etymologies are given; but the most probable is that contained in an old glossary which tells us that Duirtheach comes from Dairthech, a house of oak, and Deirthech from Dear, a tear, that is, a house in which tears are shed.^[118]

It was not till the end of the eighth century, when the ravages of the Danes and their repeated destruction of the churches by fire showed the great insecurity of these wooden buildings, that they began, when reconstructed, to be built of stone, and the cloicteach, or stone belfry, was then added to the ecclesiastical buildings. Of the repeated destruction of the wooden buildings by fire the Irish Annals afford sufficient evidence, and that the cloicteachs were added through fear of the Danes, is probable from the evidence that they were not only used as belfries, but also as places of safety both for the monks and for the valuables in possession of the monasteries.^[119] The stone churches were termed Damhliag, and are usually rendered in Latin by ‘templum,’ ‘ecclesia,’ and ‘basilica.’^[120] In an ancient tract of Brehon laws, which treats of the different stipends given to artificers for their labours, there is a statement of the payments to be made to the Ollamh Saer, or master builder, who was required to be equally skilled in the art of building in stone and in wood, which well brings out the distinction between the modes of constructing these buildings. In this document we are told that he was to be paid ‘for the two principal branches of the art as from the beginning, that is, stone building and wood building, the most distinguished of these branches to remain as formerly—viz., the Daimhliag and the Duirthech. Twelve cows to him for these, that is, six cows for each.’^[121]

Attached to the Duirthech was usually a small side building termed Erdam, or in Latin ‘exedra,’ which was used as a sacristy.^[122] There was also a somewhat larger house which was the refectory, or common eating-hall, termed the Proinntigh, and in connection with it a Coitchenn, or kitchen, and when there was a stream of water fit for the purpose there was a Muilinn, or mill, and in connection with it a stone kiln for drying the corn. The Ollamh Saer was also to receive ‘six cows for coicthigis, or kitchen-building, and six cows for muilleoracht, or mill-building.’ Somewhat apart from the cells of the monks were the abbot’s house and the house set apart for the reception of guests, called the Tighaoid-headh, or ‘hospitium,’ and these two were of wood, as appears from the numerous notices in the Annals of those buildings being burnt by the Danes;^[123] while the Ollamh Saer is to receive ‘two cows for houses of rods.’ The whole of these buildings were protected by a circumvallation, sometimes of earth, or of earth and stone, termed the Rath, or Lios, and in Latin ‘vallum,’ at others of stone, or of earth faced with stone, and termed Caiseal, the remains of which still exist in connection with several of these foundations.^[124]

The size of these monasteries, as well as the number of monks which they contained, varied very much, but this did not affect their relative importance, which depended more upon the position of their founder and the jurisdiction they possessed from their foundation over other monasteries which had emanated from the same founder, or his disciples. The smallest in size appear to have usually contained one hundred and fifty monks. This was the number in the monastery founded in the Aran isles by Enda, who was one of those founders of monasteries who were trained at the ‘Magnum Monasterium’ of Candida Casa, or Whithern. We find the same number in the monastery of Lothra, founded by Ruadhan, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland;^[125] and Angus the Culdee in his Litany invokes ‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Bishop Ibar,’ ‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Munnu, son of Tulchan,’ and ‘thrice fifty true monks with the favour of God in Dairiu Chonaid.’ We have then a monastery three times as large, when he invokes ‘nine times fifty monks under the rule of Mochoe of Nendrum.’ The numbers of seven hundred and eight hundred occur in connection with Mochuda, when he invokes the ‘seven hundred true monks who were buried at Rathinn before the coming of Mochuda, upon being expelled thence to Lismore,’ and the ‘eight hundred who settled in Lismore with Mochuda, every third of them a favoured servant of God.’ Then we have a monastery at Lethglin containing fifteen hundred monks, when he invokes ‘the three hundred and twelve hundred true monks settled in Lethglin, who sang the praises of God under Molaisse, the two Ernas, and the holy martyr bishops of Lethglin.’ Finally, the great monastery and seminary of Clonard, from whence emanated the twelve apostles of Ireland, contained, as we have seen, three thousand monks.

When Brendan, one of the twelve, is said to have been the father of three thousand monks, and four thousand are said to have been under the rule of Comgall of Bennchar, or Bangor, it is probable that these numbers included the inmates of other monasteries, either founded by them or under their jurisdiction. The aggregate of monks in each monastery was termed its Muintir, or ‘familia;’ but this word seems to have been used both in a narrow sense for the community in each monastery and also in a broader signification, for the entire body of monks, wherever situated, who were under its jurisdiction.^[126] The monks were termed brethren. The elders, termed seniors, gave themselves up entirely to devotion and the service of the church, while their chief occupation in their cells consisted in transcribing the Scriptures. In the monastery of Lughmagh there were under Bishop Mochta sixty seniors; and of them it is said—

There was then a class of working brethren who were occupied in the labours of the field, and from these were chosen too those required for mechanical work in the monastery. When Columba visited the monastery of Clonmacnois, some of the monks, we are told, were at their little grange farms near the monastery, and others within it.^[128] An important occupation, too, was the training of the young, and those under instruction were termed ‘juniores’ or ‘alumni,’ and were said to be ‘learning wisdom.’^[129] These formed the congregation of the monastery.

The larger monasteries were usually situated on the mainland; but the small islands round the coast, or in the inland lochs, appear to have possessed an irresistible attraction for the founders of these monasteries, probably from the security against danger and the protection from intrusion which they afforded, and on them the smaller communities probably were settled. Of the islands round the coast of Ireland, the three Aran isles, which lie off the coast of Galway, seem to have at once attracted these settlements. Among the class of saints who were trained to the monastic life in the monastery of Whithern, while Finnian founded the great monastery and seminary of Maghbile or Moville in Ulster, Enda at once directed his steps to these islands, and we are told in his Acts that, having received a grant of the island of Aran from King Angus of Munster, he collected a company of disciples, and divided the island into ten parts, in which he constructed ten monasteries, placing in each one superior, as father, and another as second in power who should succeed the first on his death. He directed that the seniors should be buried with the rest, but that the bishops who succeeded them should be interred in their own proper cemeteries, and he founded his own monastery at the east end of the island, which is still called the Cell of St. Enda.^[130] This island is now known as Ara na Navach, or Aran of the Saints. Tory Island, off the north-west coast; Rachra, off the north-east; Rechra, or Lambay, in the Irish Channel, and other small islands, became likewise the seats of similar foundations. Of the twelve apostles of Ireland, we find that three—Molaisse of Devenish, Senell of Cluaininnis, and Ninnidh of Inismacsaint, founded their chief monasteries on three small islands in Lough Erne; and on two other islands in the same lake there were also monasteries. In Lough Ree, a lake formed by the Shannon, there were five; and in Lough Corrib and Lough Derg, both also formed by the Shannon, there were, in the former, three, and in the latter two monasteries. Wherever the river Shannon in its course formed a small island there was also a monastery; and the number of these island monasteries throughout Ireland generally was very great.

The monastic system which thus characterised the Irish Church in its second period and pervaded its organisation in every part, forming its very life, presented features which peculiarly adapted it to the tribal constitution of the social system of the Irish, and led to their being leavened with Christianity to an extent which no other form of the church could have effected. These large monasteries, as in their external aspect they appeared to be, were in reality Christian colonies, into which converts, after being tonsured, were brought under the name of monks. Thus we are told in the Life of Brendan that, as soon as he had been ordained priest by Bishop Erc ‘he also received from him the monastic garb; and many leaving the world came to him, whom he made monks, and he then founded, in his own proper region, cells and monasteries,’ till they reached the number of three thousand.^[131] There was thus in each tribe a Christian community to which the people were readily drawn, and in which they found themselves possessed of advantages and privileges without their actual social position with reference to the tribe and the land being essentially altered. They formed as it were a great ecclesiastical family within the tribe, to which its members were drawn by the attractions it presented to them. These were, first, greater security of life and property. Before the tribes were to any extent brought under the civilising influences of Christianity, life must have been, in a great measure, a reign of violence, in which every man had to protect his life and property as he best might; and the struggle among these small communities, either to maintain their own rights, or to encroach on those of others, and the constant mutual warfare to which it gave rise, must have exposed the lives of their members to incessant danger. To them the Christian community offered an asylum in which there was comparative rest and relief from danger at the cost of observing the monastic rule. An anecdote in Columba’s early life, told us by Adamnan, will show clearly enough what must have been the state of early society in Ireland in this respect. ‘When the holy man,’ he says, ‘while yet a youth in deacon’s orders, was living in the region of Leinster, learning divine wisdom, it happened one day that an unfeeling and pitiless oppressor of the innocent was pursuing a young girl, who fled before him on a level plain. As she chanced to observe the aged Gemman, master of the foresaid young deacon, reading on the plain, she ran straight to him as fast as she could. Being alarmed at such an unexpected occurrence, he called on Columba, who was reading at some distance, that both together, to the best of their ability, might defend the girl from her pursuer; but he immediately came up, and without any regard to their presence, stabbed the girl with his lance under their very cloaks, and leaving her lying dead at their feet, turned to go away back. Then the old man, in great affliction, turning to Columba, said, “How long, holy youth Columba, shall God, the just judge, allow this horrid crime and this insult to us to go unpunished?” Then the saint at once pronounced this sentence on the perpetrator of the deed; “At the very instant the soul of this girl whom he hath murdered ascendeth into heaven, shall the soul of the murderer go down into hell;” and scarcely had he spoken the words when the murderer of the innocent, like Ananias before Peter, fell down dead on the spot before the eyes of the holy youth. The news of this sudden and terrible vengeance was soon spread abroad throughout many districts of Ireland, and with it the wonderful fame of the holy deacon.’^[132] Thus there soon sprang up a belief that any violation of the protection to life afforded by these Christian communities would draw down on the perpetrator the vengeance of the Christian’s God. Adamnan’s Life is pervaded by similar instances of the insecurity of life and property through crime and oppression.

But these monasteries, or Christian communities, likewise claimed the privilege of sanctuary within their bounds, which was fenced by similar religious sanctions. The loss of a battle, or any similar misfortune which befell any one who had violated this right of sanctuary, was directly attributed to such violation, till it became a confirmed belief that it could not be infringed with impunity. Thus, when the battle of Culdremhne was fought between Diarmaid, king of Ireland, and the northern Hy Neill, in 561, in which the former was defeated, it was said to have been ‘in revenge of the killing of Curnan, son of Aedh, son of Eochaidh Tirmcharna, while under the protection of Colum-cille.’^[133] The same King Diarmaid, too, drew upon himself the curse of Ruadhan of Lothra, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, by violating his sanctuary and carrying off by force to his palace at Tara a person who had taken refuge with Ruadhan. On his refusal to deliver him up, ‘Roadanus and a bishop that was with him took their bells that they had, which they rang hardly, and cursed the king and place, and prayed God that no king or queen ever after should or could dwell in Tarach, and that it should be waste for ever, without court or palace, as it fell out accordingly,’ and as stated in an old Irish poem,—

The belief that the violation of the sanctuary of a Christian community would infallibly be avenged led to the fulfilment of the prophecy.

But a still more powerful influence arose from the intimate relation which the Christian community bore to the organisation of the tribe, and the extent to which the one was a reflection of the other. The publication of the Brehon Laws of Ireland, and the details with which they supply us, enable us now to understand better the precise nature of this relation. In estimating this, two facts must be kept in mind:—First, that the Irish Church of this second period cannot be regarded as forming one united church under a common hierarchy, recognising the authority of one central head, as may have been true of the church of the earlier period. While the first order of Catholic saints is said to have had ‘one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius,’ the second order of Catholic presbyters is only said to have had ‘one head, our Lord,’ The church of this period must be viewed as consisting rather of different groups of monasteries, founded by the respective saints, either bishops or presbyters, of the second order, each group recognising the monastery over which the founder of the group personally presided, or which possessed his relics, as having jurisdiction over those which emanated from him and followed his rule.^[135] It was thus not one great ecclesiastical corporation, but an aggregate of separate communities in federal union. Secondly, that the abbots of each monastery, whether bishops or presbyters, were not elected by the brethren forming the community, but succeeded one another by a kind of inheritance assimilated to that of the tribe. As we have already seen, the foundation of a monastery usually commenced by a grant of a royal Rath or fort, or of a portion of land made by the head of the tribe to which it belonged to the saint, and in most instances the founder obtained this grant from the head of the tribe to which he himself belonged. These two tribes are in the Brehon Laws termed respectively the Fine Grin, or Tribe of the Land, that is, the tribe to whom the land belonged; and the Fine Erluma, or Tribe of the Saint, that is, the tribe to whom the patron saint, or founder, belonged. By the law of Tanistic succession in Ireland, the right of hereditary succession was not in the individual, but in the family to which he belonged. That is, it was hereditary in the family, elective in the individual. When the founder of the monastery belonged to the same tribe, or family, as the owner of the land which had been granted to him, the abbacy remained with this family, who provided from among the members of it a person duly qualified to fulfil the functions of abbot. There was thus connected with each monastery, to use the words of Dr. Reeves, a ‘Plebilis progenies,’ or lay family, ‘in‘in whom the tenancy of the lands was vested, possessing a regular succession, and furnishing from its members certain Coärbs, or successors, to the first abbot, who formed the Ecclesiastica progeniesEcclesiastica progenies and who, being unmarried, exhibit no lineal succession. In fact, the rule was, on each avoidance of the abbacy, to fill up the situation from founders’ kin, and, failing a qualified person in the direct line, to choose a successor from a collateral branch.’^[136] The monastery of Derry is an instance of this. Aedh, son of Ainmire, the king of Ireland who granted the land, and Columba, the saint who founded the monastery, both belonged to the same tribe—that of the Cinel Conaill. The rule is thus stated in the Brehon Laws: ‘When it is a Church of the Tribe of the Land and the Church of the Tribe of the Saint and of the Land at the same time. That is, the tribe of the land succeeds to the church—that is, the tribe of the saint and the tribe of the land are one tribe in this case, and the saint is on his own land,—

When, however, the saint who founded the monastery belonged to a different tribe from that of the chief from whom the grant was obtained and in whose tribe it was founded, the succession to the abbacy was often retained by the family to whom the saint belonged, from the members of which the abbot was in the same manner supplied. The monastery of Drumcliffe is an instance of this. It was founded by Columba in a district which belonged to a stranger tribe, and in the old Irish Life it is said that ‘he gave the authority, and the clergy and the succession to the Cinel Conaill for ever’—that is, to his own tribe. When this was the case, instead of the same tribe forming a lay and ecclesiastical ‘progenies,’ or family, the two families connected with the succession—the tribe of the land and the tribe of the saint—were different, and the following is the rule in the Brehon Laws:—

‘The Church of the Tribe of the Saint. That is, the tribe of the Saint shall succeed in the Church as long as there shall be a person fit to be an abbot (Damna Apaidh, or materies of an abbot), of the tribe of the saint, even though there should be but a psalm-singer of these, it is he that will obtain the abbacy. Where this is not the case, it is to be given to the tribe of the land until a person fit to be an abbot, of the tribe of the saint, shall be found; and when he is, it is to be given to him if he be better than the abbot of the tribe of the land who has taken it. If he be not better, he shall take it only in his turn. If a person fit to be an abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint or of the tribe of the land, the abbacy is to be given to the tribe of the monks (Fine Manach), until a person fit to be an abbot, of the tribe of the saint or of the tribe of the land, shall be found; and where there is such, he is preferable. If a person fit to be abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint, or of the tribe of the land, or of the tribe of the monks, the Annoit shall take it in the fourth place; the Dalta shall take it in the fifth place; the Compairche shall take it in the sixth place; the nearest Cill shall take it in the seventh place. If a person fit to be an abbot has not come in any of these seven places, the Deoruid De shall take it in the eighth place. If a person fit to be an abbot has not arisen of the tribe of the saint, or of the land, or of the monks together, and the Annoit, or the Dalta, or the Compairche, or the nearest Cill, or the Deoruid De, has the wealth, it must be given to the tribe of the saint, for one of them fit to be an abbot goes for nothing. The abbacy goes from them.’^[138] The untranslated terms in these passages are used to designate the different churches which belonged to the same monastic group. The Annoit is the parent church or monastery which is presided over by the patron saint, or which contains his relics.^[139] The Dalta was a church affiliated to it.^[140] The Compairche was a church in the same ‘parochia.’^[141] The Cill was the ‘Cella,’ as distinguished from the ‘Monasterium.’^[142] The Deoruid De, literally ‘God’s stranger or pilgrim,’ was, as we shall afterwards see, the anchorite or solitary who lived secluded from his brethren in a stone cell.^[143] The Cell Manach, or ‘Cella Monachorum,’ is thus explained. ‘That is, a cell of monks is held by the tribe of monks; and the abbacy shall always belong to the monks as long as shall be a person of them fit to be an abbot; and whenever this is not the case, it is similar to that before mentioned of the tribe of the land, binding the tribe of the saint by a guarantee to the tribe of the land, upon the Annoit.’^[144]

These notices as to the succession in which the abbacy is held, obscure and fragmentary as are some of them, are sufficient to show the close connection in this respect between the church and the tribe; but that connection was rendered still more intimate by the claims which the church had now established upon the people of the tribe. They are thus defined:—‘The right of the Church from the Tuath or tribe is tithes and first fruits and firstlings; these are due to a church from her members,’ Tithes probably belong to a late period of the church; but the two others seem to be more archaic, and are thus defined:—‘What are lawful firstlings? Every first-born, that is, every first birth of every human couple, and every male child that opens the womb of his mother, being the first lawful wife, with confession according to their soul-friend, by which a church and souls are more improved; and also every male animal that opens the womb of its mother, of small or lactiferous animals in general. First fruits are the fruit of the gathering of every new produce, whether small or great, and every first calf and every first lamb which is brought forth in the year,’ ‘Every tenth birth afterwards, with a lot between every two sevens,^[145] with his lawful share of his family inheritance to the claim of the church, and every tenth plant of the plants of the earth and of cattle every year and every seventh day of the year to the service of God, with every choice taken more than another after the desired order.’^[146] It is very characteristic of the spirit of these laws that the day of rest—the seventh day—should form one of the demands of the church upon the lay tribe, which its members were bound to render for the service of God with their other dues. The position of the son so given to the church is thus described: ‘The son who is selected has become the tenth, or as the firstling to the church; he obtains as much of the legacy of his father, after the death of his father, as every lawful son which the mother has, and he is to be on his own land outside, and he shall render the service of a free monk (saermanuig) to the church, and the church shall teach him learning; for he shall obtain more of a divine legacy than of a legacy not divine.’ The term Manach, or Monk, embraced all who were connected with, or subject to, the ecclais or monastery, and formed her muintir, or ‘familia,’ down to the lowest grade of those who occupied the church lands; and when they had any of the church orders conferred upon them, there was attached to it a very valuable privilege which must have powerfully attracted them to the service of the church. It is thus stated:—‘The enslaved shall be freed, the plebeians exalted, through the orders of the church and by performing penitential service to God. For the Lord is accessible; he will not refuse any kind of man after belief, among either the free or the plebeian tribes; so likewise is the church open for every person who goes under her rule.’^[147]

On the other hand, ‘the right of the Tuath or tribe against the church’ is thus stated:—‘They demand their right from the church, that is, baptism and communion and requiem of soul, and the offering (oifrend) from every church to every person after his proper belief, with the recital of the Word of God to all who listen to it and keep it.’^[148] However difficult it may be for us now to comprehend the full import of these arrangements, they still indicate clearly enough how much the monastic church was a tribal institution, and how completely her rights were interwoven with those of the members of the tribe. This is implied, in a tract on the legal constitution and rights of privileged classes, when it is said, ‘It is no Tuath or tribe without three free neimhedh, or dignitaries—the Eclais, or church; the Flaith, or lord; and the File, or poet.’^[149]

The influence of the church, however, in her spiritual and moral aspect was as great as that which arose from her adaptation to the customs and laws of the tribe; and if we would understand how she so rapidly attained so powerful a position in the social organisation of the aggregate of tribes forming the population of Ireland, we must advert to her character and mode of operation as a missionary church. We can readily understand that these large monastic churches founded upon the mainland might at once exercise a great influence among the surrounding population; but when we consider the almost universal preference shown, in founding these churches, towards placing them in small islands, either near the coast or in the large inland lakes, and how numerous these island monasteries were, it seems difficult now to understand how there should have proceeded so great an influence from a small body of monastic clergy living on these isolated and unfrequented spots, as so rapidly to overthrow the heathenism of a great people, and to bring them so generally and speedily into subjection to the Christian Church. The monastic character of the church gave, however, a peculiar stamp to her missionary work which caused her to set about it in a mode well calculated to impress a people still to a great extent under the influence of heathenism. It is difficult for us now to realise to ourselves what such pagan life really was—its hopeless corruption, its utter disregard of the sanctity of domestic ties, its injustice and selfishness, its violent and bloody character; and these characteristics would not be diminished in a people who had been partially Christianised and had fallen back from it into heathenism. The monastic missionaries did not commence their work, as the earlier secular church would have done, by arguing against their idolatry, superstition, and immorality, and preaching a purer faith; but they opposed to it the antagonistic characteristics and purer life of Christianity. They asked and obtained a settlement in some small and valueless island. There they settled down as a little Christian colony, living under a monastic rule requiring the abandonment of all that was attractive in life. They exhibited a life of purity, holiness, and self-denial. They exercised charity and benevolence, and they forced the respect of the surrounding pagans to a life the motives of which they could not comprehend, unless they resulted from principles higher than those their pagan religion afforded them; and, having won their respect for their lives and their gratitude for their benevolence, these monastic missionaries went among them with the Word of God in their hands, and preached to them the doctrines and pure morality of the Word of Life. No wonder if kings and nations became converted to Christianity and incorporated the church into their tribal institutions in a manner which now excites our wonder, if not our suspicion. The lives of the saints show us these missionaries, owing to their devoted and self-denying lives, first received with respect by some chief, then obtaining a grant of land to found their monastery, and the people soon after converted by the preaching of the Word of God. Their influence, however, was soon enhanced by a less legitimate feature. We know how readily a rude and primitive people invest with superstitious and supernatural power those claiming superior sanctity, and the newly converted people soon surrounded these saints, as they termed them, with the same old halo of reverence and awe which had belonged to their pagan priests, such as they were. The power with which the latter were supposed to be endowed, of influencing the action of their native gods, was transferred to the Christian missionary, who was believed to exercise a similar power with regard to the Christian Deity. Their intercession was sought for, their malediction dreaded, and the claims and rites of the Christian Church invested with superstitious sanctions which brought the people more readily and universally into subjection to her. We can trace this feeling in the Brehon Laws. We are there told that ‘there are three periods at which the world is worthless: the time of a plague, the time of a general war, the dissolution of express contracts. There are three things which remedy them: tithes and first fruits and alms; they prevent the occurrence of plague; they confirm peace between the king and the people; they prevent the prevalence of war; they confirm all in their good contracts and in their bad contracts; they prevent the worthlessness of the world.’^[150] And again, in explaining the rights of the Graid Feine, or country people, as to marriage, the commentary adds, ‘That is, the daughter of each of them to the other, such a person as is not under the word, or curse, of a patron saint.’^[151]

But these monastic establishments probably acquired a still greater influence from the extent to which they had obtained possession of the instruction of the young. They soon became, in fact, great educational seminaries to which the youth of the tribe were sent, not only to be trained to monastic life, but also for the purpose of receiving secular education. Each monastic church had, besides her community of monks, a body of young people who received instruction; thus in one of the laws it is said, ‘purity benefits the church in receiving every son for instruction, every monk to his proper penance, with the proper payments of all to their proper church.’^[152] Even in the smaller monasteries, the number of scholars was usually fifty.^[153] In the larger, of course, a much greater number were taught. Hence a single generation was sufficient to convert the mass of the people to be devoted adherents of the Church.

The great evidence, however, of life and energy in a church is her missionary spirit towards foreign countries, and the irrepressible desire of her members to carry her teaching and her institutions into the neighbouring countries; and this evidence of her vitality the Irish Church at this period manifested in a very remarkable degree. It was natural that the opposite coast of North Britain and the islands which lay between it and Ireland should attract these missionaries at once to their shores. The first impulse seems to have been given by Brendan of Clonfert, who, it is said, soon after he had been ordained priest by Bishop Erc and assumed the monastic habit, sailed with fourteen of his monks in search of the land of promise of the saints, and spent seven years in the search before he returned home. The narrative of his seven years’ voyage became one of the most popular tales of the Middle Ages, and numerous editions exist of it. In its present shape it is, no doubt, a mere romance or monkish dream, in which the narrator, under the fiction of an imaginary voyage to different unknown islands, endeavours to realise his ideal of monastic and eremitical life, and it possesses some truly picturesque features. But there must have been some historic foundation for it; and such a romance could hardly have been interwoven into the acts of a real Brendan, if there had not been in the events of his life a missionary adventure in which he sought to extend the Christian Church to some distant island. There are not wanting some indications that this was so; but be this as it may, there seems no reason to refuse credit to the statement that, after his return from this voyage, he went to Britain to visit St. Gildas,^[154] who, as we have seen, was one of those from whom the monastic life passed to Ireland through the medium of Finnian of Clonard and his twelve disciples, of whom Brendan was one. After leaving Gildas, Brendan appears to have gone to the Western Islands, and to have founded in one of the islands a monastery called Ailech, and a church and its surrounding village in the land of Heth, and then returned to Ireland.^[155] This land of Heth we now know to have been the island of Tyree,^[156] but the precise situation of the other it is more difficult to fix. It must, however, certainly be looked for in one of the islands belonging to Britain.^[157] The name of Brendan is connected with more than one of the Western Isles. Fordun tells us that the island of Bute bore the name of Rothesay ‘until, when the faith of our Saviour had been diffused through all the ends of the earth, and the islands which are afar off, Saint Brandan constructed thereon a booth—in our idiom, bothe, that is, a shrine.’^[158] But though the old chronicler’s etymology of the name of Bute is bad, the name of Brendan is preserved in the designation given to the people of Bute of ‘the Brandanes,’ and in the Kilbrandan Sound, which separates the island of Arran from Kintyre. The principal church in the island of Seil, which lies off the coast of Lorn, is also dedicated to Brendan, and one of the small islands forming the group called the Garveloch Isles, bears the name of Culbrandan, or the retreat of Brendan. This island is next to that called Eilean na Naoimh, or the Island of the Saints, and as the latter appears to have borne the name of Elachnave,^[159] it is not impossible that here may have been the monastery of Aileach. This visit to the Western Isles took place some time before the foundation of his principal monastery in Ireland, that of Clonfert, the date of which is known to have been 559; and we shall probably not be far wrong if we fix the the year 545 as the probable date.