CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCHES IN THE WEST.

[Sidenote: Early notices of the British Church.]

In endeavouring to form a just conception of the history and characteristics of the early Celtic Churches of the British Isles, it is necessary at the very outset to discriminate between three consecutive periods, which are strongly contrasted. The first is that period which preceded the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain and the termination of the civil government of the Roman province there in the beginning of the fifth century; the second, the period of isolation which followed, when the invasion of the Roman provinces in Gaul and Britain by the Barbarians interposed a barrier of paganism between the churches of Britain and the Continent, and for the time cut off all communication between them; and the third, that which followed the renewal of that intercourse, when they again came into contact in the end of the sixth century.

During the Roman occupation of Britain the Christian religion had unquestionably made its way under their auspices into the island, and the Roman province in Britain was, in this respect, no exception to the other provinces of the empire. It can hardly be doubted that, as early as the second century of their occupation, a Christian Church had been established within its limits, and there were even reports that it had penetrated to regions beyond it. It is unnecessary for the purpose of this work, and it would be out of place here, to enter into any inquiry as to the actual period and history of the introduction of the Christian Church into the British province, a subject which has been fully discussed by other writers.[1] Our more immediate concern is with the churches founded beyond its limits, among those tribes termed by the Roman writers Barbarians, in opposition to the provincial Britons. Suffice it to say that during the Roman occupation the Christian Church in Britain was a part of the Church of the empire. It was more immediately connected with that of Gaul, but it acknowledged Rome as its head, from whom its mission was considered to be derived, and it presented no features of difference from the Roman Church in the other western provinces.

[Sidenote: Church of Saint Ninian.]

Towards the end of the Roman occupation the Christian Church seems to have penetrated in two directions beyond the limits of the province, but in other respects to have possessed the same character. During that troublous time when the province was assailed by the barbarians on the north and west, and its actual boundary had been drawn back from its nominal limits, a Christian Church was established in the district extending along the north shore of the Solway Firth, where Ptolemy had placed the tribe of the Novantæ, its principal seat being at one of their towns situated on the west side of Wigtown Bay, and termed by him ‘Leukopibia.’ The fact is reported by Bede as one well known to have taken place. The missionary was Ninian, a bishop of the nation of the Britons, who had been trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline of the western Church, and who built at Leukopibia a church of stone, which was vulgarly called Candida Casa, and dedicated to St. Martin of Tours.[2] This is the earliest account we have of him, and shows very plainly both his relation to Rome as the source of his mission and his connection with the Church of Gaul. It is probable that Ailred of Rievaulx, in his Life of Ninian, written in the twelfth century, but derived from older materials, repeats a true fact when he says that Ninian heard of the death of Martin while he was erecting this church; and this fixes the date of its foundation at the year 397. From Bede’s statement we learn that the object of his mission seems to have been the conversion of the Pictish nation, with the view probably of arresting, or at least mitigating, their attacks upon the provincial Britons. He founded his church of Candida Casa among the people occupying the district on the north side of the Solway Firth, extending from the Nith to the Irish Channel, who afterwards appear as the Picts of Galloway; and we are told that through his preaching the Southern Picts, extending as far north as the great mountain range of the Grampians, abandoned their idolatrous worship and received the true faith.

While the Christian Church had thus been extended into the southern province of the Pictish nation, it appears to have by this time penetrated also to the Scots of Ireland. If the old Irish Life of Ninian can be trusted, he is said to have left Britain and spent the last years of his life in Ireland, where he founded a church in Leinster called Cluain Conaire, and it is certain that he was commemorated there on the 16th of September under the name of Monenn.[3] The date of Ninian’s death is not recorded. It has been almost uniformly stated by modern writers to have taken place on the 16th September in the year 432, and has been given by some on the authority of Bede, by others on that of Ailred; but no such date is to be found in either writer, and this supposed year of his death rests upon no authority whatever.

The Roman dominion in Britain came to an end in 410, when the troops were withdrawn from the province and the provincial cities left to protect themselves. Roman Britain thus ceased, to all intents and purposes, to form part of the empire; her intercourse with the Continent was almost entirely cut off by the incursions of the barbarian tribes into Roman Gaul; and, with the exception of a few contemporary notices of the Church during some years after the termination of the Roman dominion, all is silence for a century and a half, till it is broken in the succeeding century by the querulous voice of Gildas. The few facts which we learn from contemporary sources are these: that in the year 429 the churches of Britain had been corrupted by the ‘Pelagian Agricola, son of the Pelagian bishop Severianus,’ who had introduced the Pelagian heresy among them to some extent;[4] that the orthodox clergy communicated the fact to the Gallican bishops, by whom a synod was held, when it was resolved to send Germanus bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus bishop of Troyes, to Britain; and that, at the instance of Palladius the deacon, Germanus received a mission from Celestine, bishop of Rome, to bring back to the Catholic faith the Britons tainted with this heresy.[5] Two years after, in 431, according to the same chronicler, Pope Celestine ordained Palladius a bishop, and sent him to the Christian Scots of Ireland as their first bishop; and thus, ‘having ordained a bishop to the Scots, while he endeavoured to preserve Roman Britain as Catholic, he made the barbarian island Christian,’[6] in this sense at least that he had formed into a regular church those of its inhabitants who had already become Christian. Whether the Christian religion had been introduced into Ireland by the preaching of Ninian, or whether it had existed there from even an earlier period, there are now no materials to indicate;[7] but the mission of Palladius seems to imply that Ninian was at this time dead.

Such are the few facts which we have from contemporary sources at this time; and all other accounts which we possess of the church among the barbarians are derived from tradition or legend, which will be dealt with in its proper place. These few isolated statements show us a church in Roman Britain, which had been extended, in one direction, into the districts north of the Roman wall, till arrested by the great mountain barrier separating the northern from the southern Picts, and, in another, to the island of Ireland, then the only country inhabited by the people called Scots. We find it in close connection with the Gallican Church, and regarding the Patriarch of Rome as the head of the Western Church and the source of ecclesiastical authority and mission. With the exception of the temporary prevalence of the Pelagian heresy in Britain, we can discover no trace of any divergence between them in doctrine or practice.[8] There now follows a long period of utter darkness, during which all connection with the Continent was broken off; and we learn nothing further regarding the churches beyond the western limits of the empire, till the church of the extreme west came into contact with that of Gaul towards the end of the sixth century.

[Sidenote: Mission of Saint Columbanus to Gaul.]

In the year 590 the ecclesiastical world in Gaul, in which the Franks and Burgundians were already settled, was startled by the sudden appearance of a small band of missionaries on her shores. They were thirteen in number—a leader with twelve followers. Their outward appearance was strange and striking. They were clothed in a garment of coarse texture made of wool, and of the natural colour of the material, under which was a white tunic. They were tonsured, but in a different manner from the Gaulish ecclesiastics. Their heads were shaved in front from ear to ear, the anterior half of the head being made bare, while their hair flowed down naturally and unchecked from the back of the head. They had each a pilgrim’s staff, a leathern water-bottle and a wallet, and a case containing some relics. They spoke among themselves a foreign language, resembling in sound the dialect of Armorica, but they conversed readily in Latin with those who understood that language.[9] When asked who they were and whence they came, they replied,—‘We are Irish, dwelling at the very ends of the earth. We be men who receive naught beyond the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles. The Catholic faith, as it was first delivered by the successors of the holy apostles, is still maintained among us with unchanged fidelity;’ and their leader gave the following account of himself,—‘I am a Scottish pilgrim, and my speech and actions correspond to my name, which is in Hebrew Jonah, in Greek Peristera, and in Latin Columba, a dove.’[10] In this guise they appeared before the people, addressing them everywhere with the whole power of their native eloquence. Some learned the language of the country. The rest employed an interpreter when they preached before the laity. To ecclesiastics they spoke the common language of the Latin Church. Their leader, Columbanus, was a man of commanding presence and powerful eloquence, and endowed with a determination of character and intensity of purpose which influenced, either favourably or the reverse, every one with whom he came in contact. From the kings he soon obtained permission to settle in their territories and to erect monasteries; and two monastic establishments soon arose within the recesses of the Vosges mountains, which now divide Alsace from France—those of Luxeuil and Fontaines, to which the youth of the country flocked in numbers for instruction, or for training as monks.

[Sidenote: Controversy regarding Easter.]

They had not been long established there when the Gaulish clergy became aware that in the new monasteries the festival of Easter was occasionally celebrated on a different Sunday from that observed by the Roman Church, there being occasionally an interval of a week between the two, and sometimes even the violent discrepancy of an entire month. This arose from a difference in the mode of calculating the Sunday on which Easter ought to fall, both in regard to the week within which it ought to be celebrated and the cycle of years by which the month was to be determined. By the law of Moses the passover was to be slain on the fourteenth day of the first month of the year, in the evening (Exod. xii. 2, 3, 6), and the children of Israel were further directed to eat unleavened bread seven days:—‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one-and-twentieth day of the month’ (__Ib.__ xii. 18). It was further declared that the month in which the fourteenth day or the full moon fell first after the vernal equinox was to be their first month. In applying this rule to the Christian Easter, the Eastern Church, in the main, adopted it literally, and celebrated Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover, on whatever day of the week it might fall. The Western Church, however, held that, as our Saviour had risen from the dead on the first day of the week after the Passover, the festival of Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday between the fourteenth and the twentieth day of the moon on the first month of the Jewish lunar year. In order to bring the lunar date into connection with the solar year so as to fix the day of the month on which Easter was to be kept, various cycles were framed by the Church; till at length the Easter cycle of nineteen years was introduced at Alexandria by Anatolius, bishop of Laodicea, in 270, by which Easter was celebrated on the Sunday falling on the fourteenth day of the moon, or between that day and the twentieth on a cycle of nineteen years. In the Western Church, however, the time for celebrating Easter was calculated on a cycle of eighty-four years, which was improved by Sulpicius Severus in 410, and continued to be used till 457, when a longer cycle of 532 years was introduced by Victorius of Aquitaine, based upon the cycle of nineteen years; and in the year 525 the computation was finally fixed by Dionysius Exiguus on the cycle of nineteen years. By this time it was likewise held that, as the Passover was slain on the evening of the fourteenth day of the moon, according to the Jewish system of reckoning the days from evening to evening, the fifteenth, and not the fourteenth, ought to be considered as the first day of unleavened bread, and consequently Easter ought to fall on the Sunday between the fifteenth and twenty-first days of the moon; and by a canon of the fourth council of Orleans, held in the year 541, it was directed that the Easter festival should be observed by all at the same time, according to the tables of Victorius.[11]

These changes in the mode of computation in the Western Church took place after the connection between Britain and the rest of the empire had ceased, and when the British Churches were left in a state of isolation. They therefore still retained the older mode of computation, which had been once common to the whole Western Church; and thus it came that when Columbanus went on his mission to Gaul he found the continental Churches celebrating the festival of Easter on the Sunday between the fifteenth and twenty-first days of the moon, calculated on the cycle of nineteen years, while the British and Irish Churches celebrated the same festival on the Sunday between the fourteenth and twentieth days of the moon, calculated according to the cycle of eighty-four years; the difference in the days of the moon causing an occasional divergence of a week, and that of the cycles a possible divergence of a month.[12] The prelates of Gaul seem to have eagerly caught at a ground upon which they could charge these strange missionaries, who had taken such a hold upon the country, with following practices at variance with the universal Church, and thus pursuing a schismatical course. A council was summoned for the purpose of considering what steps they ought to take with regard to these strangers; but Columbanus, though probably included in the summons, contented himself by sending a letter, which is still extant, addressed to ‘our holy lords and fathers or brethren in Christ, the bishops, presbyters, and other orders of Holy Church,’[13] in which he vindicates the mode of keeping Easter which he had received from his fathers, according to the cycle of eighty-four years, refers to Anatolius as having been commended by Eusebius and St. Jerome, and denounces the change made by Victorius as an innovation. He claimed his right to follow the course derived from his fathers, and remonstrated with them for endeavouring to trouble him on such a point. What the result of this synod was we do not know; but it was followed by an appeal by Columbanus to the Pope himself. To Columbanus Rome was still the traditional Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries. Since then the Irish Church had not come into contact with her, and inherited the same feelings of regard and deference with which the early church had regarded her before the period of their isolation, and while she was still to them the acknowledged head of the churches in the western provinces of the Roman empire. In this letter, which also is extant, he addressed Boniface IV. as ‘the holy lord and[14] Apostolic Father in Christ, the Pope.’ He tells him that he had long desired to visit in spirit and confer ‘with those who preside in the apostolic chair, the most beloved prelates over all the faithful, the most revered fathers by right of apostolic honour.’ He vindicates the doctrine of his church as no way differing from that of other orthodox churches, but claims to be regarded ‘as still in his fatherland, and not bound to accept the rules of these Gauls; but as placed in the wilderness and, offending no one, to abide by the rules of his seniors;’ and he appeals to ‘the judgment of the 150 fathers of the Council of Constantinople, who judged that the churches of God established among the Barbarians should live according to the laws taught them by their fathers.’ This was the second œcumenical council held at Constantinople in the year 381. The second canon directs that the bishops belonging to each diocese shall not interfere with churches beyond its bounds. It then regulates the jurisdiction of the great patriarchates, and concludes by declaring that the churches of God among the Barbarian people—that is, beyond the bounds of the Roman empire—shall be regulated by the customs of their fathers.[15] The position which Columbanus took up was substantially this—‘Your jurisdiction as Bishop of Rome does not extend beyond the limits of the Roman empire. I am a missionary from a church of God among the Barbarians, and, though temporarily within the limits of your territorial jurisdiction, and bound to regard you with respect and deference, I claim the right to follow the customs of my own church handed down to us by our fathers.’

It is unnecessary for our purpose to enter further into the life and doings of Columbanus. They have been referred to here at the very outset, because it was by his mission that the churches of the extreme west were again, for the first time, brought into contact with the Roman Church; and he has left behind him authentic writings which present to us at once the points of contrast between the two churches, and the relation they bore to each other, and thus afford us a fixed point from which to start in our examination of the early history and peculiar characteristics of these Celtic churches during the dark period of their isolation, when all intercourse with the Continent was cut off.

[Sidenote: Three Orders of Saints in early Irish Church; Secular, Monastic, and Eremitical.]

There are two ancient documents, both belonging to the eighth century, which afford us, at the outset, a view of the characteristic features of the early Irish Church. One is a ‘Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland according to their different periods,’ in which they are arranged in three classes corresponding to three periods of the church;[16] and the other is the Litany of Angus the Culdee, in which he invokes the saints of the early church in different groups.[17] The Catalogue of the Saints proceeds thus:—‘The first order of Catholic saints was in the time of Patricius; and then they were all bishops, famous and holy and full of the Holy Ghost; 350 in number, founders of churches. They had one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius; they observed one mass,[18] one celebration, one tonsure from ear to ear. They celebrated one Easter, on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox, and what was excommunicated by one church, all excommunicated. They rejected not the services and society of women,’ or as another MS. has it, ‘they excluded from the churches neither laymen nor women; because, founded on the rock Christ, they feared not the blast of temptation. This order of saints continued for four reigns.[19] All these bishops were sprung from the Romans, and Franks, and Britons, and Scots. The second order was of Catholic Presbyters. For in this order there were few bishops and many presbyters, in number three hundred. They had one head, our Lord; they celebrated different masses,[20] and had different rules, one Easter on the fourteenth moon after the equinox, one tonsure from ear to ear; they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries. This order has hitherto lasted for four reigns.[21] They received a mass from Bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.[22] The third order of Saints was of this sort. They were holy presbyters, and a few bishops; one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places, and lived on herbs and water, and the alms; they shunned private property,’ or, as the other MS. has it, ‘they despised all earthly things, and wholly avoided all whispering and backbiting; they had different rules and masses, and different tonsures, for some had the coronal and others the hair (behind); and a different Paschal festival. For some celebrated the Resurrection on the fourteenth moon, or on the sixteenth with hard intentions. These lived during four reigns, and continued to that great mortality’[23] in the year 666. This document presents us with a short picture of the church prior to the year 666, and it is hardly possible to mistake its leading characteristic features during each of the three periods. In the first period we find churches and a secular clergy. In the second, the churches are superseded by monasteries, and we find a regular or monastic clergy; and in the third, we see an eremitical clergy living in solitary places. But while this seems to indicate, and may to some extent have arisen from, a deepening asceticism—the clergy passing from a life under the ordinary canonical law of the church, through the discipline and strict rule of monastic observances, to a solitary life of privation and self-denial in what was called the _Desert_—there were probably causes connected both with the social state of the wild people among whom they exercised their clerical functions and with the result of their labours, which led to the church being reconstructed from time to time on a different basis, and thus presenting a different outward aspect. The distinction in order between the bishop and the presbyter, however, seems to have been preserved throughout, though their relation to each other, in respect to numbers and jurisdiction, varied at different periods.

[Sidenote: The Church of Saint Patrick.]

The first order of Saints representing the Church during the first period had Christ for their head, and St. Patrick for their leader or chief. They claimed therefore to be peculiarly the Church of Saint Patrick. And here we are struck at the outset by the fact that there is no mention whatever of the mission of Palladius; and if we turn to the few notices of the early Irish Church in contemporary writers of other countries, we find the equally striking contrast that, while they record the mission of Palladius, they make no mention of Patrick. The life of Patrick, as usually told and accepted in history, is derived in the main from his acts, as contained in Lives of the Saint compiled at different times ranging from the eighth to the twelfth century. Seven of these lives were published by Colgan in his _Trias Thaumaturga_, and he has attempted to assign fixed dates to those which are anonymous; but it is obvious that they are, to a large extent, composed of legendary and traditional matter. The Book of Armagh, which was compiled about the year 807,[24] presents us with two older narratives. One was compiled by Muirchu Maccumachtheni, or the son of Cogitosus, at the suggestion of Aedh, bishop of Sletty, who died in 698; the other by Tirechan, who is believed to be the author of the Catalogue of the Saints. Both, therefore, belong to the same period. Muirchu’s life is imperfect, as we only possess a short summary of the first part;[25] and we can gather from it that Patrick had gone to Rome to prepare for his mission, but went no farther than Gaul, as he there met the disciples of Palladius, at a place called Ebmoria, who reported the death of Palladius, who, having failed in his mission, had died on his return to Rome in the territory of the Britons; and that Patrick then received the episcopal degree from Matho the holy king and bishop, and proceeded on his mission to Ireland.[26] Tirechan’s account is more precise. He says, ‘In the xiii. year of Theodosius the emperor, Patricius the bishop was sent by Bishop Celestine, Pope of Rome, for the instruction of the Irish; which Celestine was the forty-second bishop of the apostolic see of the city of Rome after Peter. Palladius the Bishop was the first sent, who is otherwise called Patricius, and suffered martyrdom among the Scots, as the ancient saints relate. Then the second Patricius was sent by an angel of God, named Victor, and by Pope Celestine, by whose means all Ireland believed, and who baptized almost all the inhabitants.’[27] This account of his mission also appears in all the Irish Annals, and is apparently taken from the older chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who died in the year 1084, and who gives it thus:—‘In the eighth year of Theodosius, Bassus and Antiochus being consuls, Palladius, being ordained by Pope Celestine, was sent as first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ. After him St. Patricius, a Briton by birth, was consecrated by St. Celestine the Pope, and sent to the archiepiscopate of Ireland. There during sixty years, preaching with signs and miracles, he converted the whole island of Ireland to the faith.’[28] As Pope Celestine died in July 432, this supposed mission of Patrick must have taken place within a year at least of that of Palladius; and while Probus records the latter alone, without any hint of its sudden termination, we are asked to believe that it had proved at once unsuccessful, and that Palladius having either suffered martyrdom or died within the year, a second mission, headed by Patrick, was sent either directly by or during the life of Pope Celestine. If this be so, if it be true that the mission of Palladius effected nothing and came to an end either by his martyrdom or flight within a year, and that Patrick’s mission, which succeeded it, was followed by the conversion of the whole island, it seems strange that nothing should have been known on the Continent at the time of this great event, and that it should be noticed by no contemporary author. Not a single writer prior to the eighth century mentions it; and even Bede, who quotes the passage in Probus recording the mission of Palladius, and mentions those of Ninian and Columba, is silent as to that of Patrick. Columbanus, and the other missionaries from Ireland who followed him, seem to have told their foreign disciples nothing about him, and in the writings of the former which have been preserved,—in his letters to the Popes and the Gaulish clergy, and in his sermons to his monks,—the name of Patrick, the great founder of his church, never appears. We should be tempted to conclude, as many have done, that the account of Patrick and of his mission was entirely mythical, and that neither the one nor the other had any real existence, were it not that, when we turn to the writings of two of the contemporaries of Columbanus at home, we do find an occasional mention of Patrick at a sufficiently early date to leave no reasonable doubt of his existence, and that two documents are attributed to him which may fairly be accepted as genuine. The oldest authentic notice of Patrick occurs in a letter which is still extant, written by Cummian to Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, regarding the proper time for keeping Easter. In it he refers to the cycle ‘introduced into use by our pope, Saint Patricius;’[29] and Adamnan, writing in the end of the seventh century, in the second preface to his Life of Columba mentions ‘Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of Saint Patricius the bishop.’[30] These early notices, though few in number, seem sufficient to prove his existence; but if we are to receive as genuine documents his Confession and the Epistle to Coroticus, as undoubtedly we ought, they not only afford conclusive evidence of his own existence and the reality of his mission, but give us his own account of the leading particulars of his life.[31] The information he gives us may be shortly stated thus:—Patricius was born of Christian parents and belonged to a Christian people; for he ‘was the son of Calpornius a deacon, son of the late Potitus a presbyter, who lived in the village of Bannavem of Tabernia, where he had a small farm.’[32] He was of gentle birth, his father being also a ‘decurio,’ that is, one of the council or magistracy of a Roman provincial town.[33] He lived at this little farm when, in his sixteenth year, he was taken captive and brought to Hibernia or Ireland with many thousands; and he adds, ‘as we deserved, for we had forsaken God, and had not kept his commandments, and were disobedient to our priests, who admonished us for our salvation.’ He remained six years in slavery in Ireland, where he was employed tending sheep; and then he escaped in a ship, the sailors of which were pagans, and after three days reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through a desert. He was again taken captive, and remained two months with these people, when on the sixtieth night he was delivered from their hands. A few years after he was with his parents, or relations, in the Roman province of Britain,[34] when he resolved, in consequence of a vision, to leave his native country and his kindred, and go to Ireland as a missionary to preach the gospel, which, he says, he was able to accomplish after several years.

Saint Patrick’s narrative of his early life conveys the impression that he was a simple youth, of an earnest and enthusiastic temperament, who, in the solitude of his captivity in Ireland, had communed with his own spirit and been brought under a deep sense of religion; and, when again restored to his native country and his home, had brooded over the desire which strong religious conviction creates in many a youth to devote himself to missionary labour, till he became persuaded that he had received a divine call. If he was taken captive in his sixteenth year and remained six years in captivity, he was twenty-two when he escaped, and was probably now between twenty-five and thirty years old. He had early been made a deacon,[35] and must at this time have gone to Ireland probably in priest’s orders; for he tells us that he had lived and preached among the Irish from his youth up, and given the faith to the people among whom he dwelt.[36] At the age of forty-five he was consecrated a bishop, and in his epistle to Coroticus he designates himself ‘Patricius, a sinner and unlearned, but appointed a bishop in Ireland.’[37]

It is clear from Patrick’s own account of himself that he was a citizen of the Roman province in Britain;[38] that his family had been Christian for at least two generations, and belonged to the aristocracy of a Roman provincial town, and that the district of Tabernia, in which it was situated, was exposed to the incursions of the Scots; that he had laboured among the Irish as a missionary for at least fifteen, if not twenty, years before he was consecrated a bishop, and it was only latterly that his labours were crowned with much success. His Confession appears to have been written towards the end of his life, as he concludes it by saying that it was written in Ireland, and that this was his confession before he died;[39] and his epistle was written to Coroticus while the Franks were still pagan—that is, before their conversion in the year 496. In his Confession he tells us that through his ministry clerics had been ordained for this people newly come to the faith, and that in Hiberio or Ireland ‘those who never had the knowledge of God, and had hitherto only worshipped unclean idols, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called the sons of God. The sons of the Scoti and the daughters of princes are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ.’[40] In the epistle to Coroticus he addresses his ‘beloved brethren and children whom he had begotten in such numbers to Christ.’[41] It is, however, remarkable that he does not in either document make the slightest allusion to Palladius or his mission, and this leads certainly to the inference that it had failed and had never become an efficient and operative episcopal mission in the country. Patrick’s episcopate must certainly have followed that of Palladius, and that possibly at no great distance of time; and if he was then forty-five years of age, this would throw his sixteenth year, when he was taken captive, to the first decade of the century, when the Roman province was exposed to the incursions of the Scots, and thus he must have himself already laboured as a missionary among the Irish people, to whom Palladius was sent as their first bishop.

Such is the account which Patrick gives of himself in these documents, which we accept as undoubtedly genuine; and we shall see how, at a later period, this simple narrative became incrusted with a mass of traditional, legendary, and fictitious matter, which had gradually accumulated in the minds of the people, and was brought into shape and added from time to time to the story of Saint Patrick’s life and labours by each successive biographer.

Patrick states in his Confession simply that he ordained clerics, but we are told in the Catalogue of the Saints that ‘they were all bishops, famous and holy, and full of the Holy Ghost, 350 in number, founders of churches;’ and this is confirmed by Angus the Culdee, in his Litany, where he invokes ‘seven times fifty holy bishops, with three hundred priests, whom Patraic ordained,’ and quotes the verse—

‘Seven times fifty holy cleric bishops[42] The saint ordained, With three hundred pure presbyters[43] Upon whom he conferred orders.’

Upwards of one half of his clergy seem, therefore, to have been bishops, and he appears to have placed a bishop, consecrated by himself, in each church which he founded. The difference in order between bishop and presbyter is here fully recognised; and there was nothing in this very inconsistent with the state of the primitive church before it became a territorial church, and its hierarchical arrangements and jurisdiction were adapted to and modelled upon the civil government of the Roman empire.[44] In the earlier period of the Christian Church there was, besides the chief bishop in each city, whose consecration required the action of at least three bishops, an order of ‘Chorepiscopi,’ or country bishops,[45] who were consecrated by the chief bishop; and the relative proportion of bishops and presbyters was very different from what it afterwards became. We find in the Apostolical Constitutions in the ordinances of the church of Alexandria that ‘if there should be a place having a few faithful men in it, before the multitude increase, who shall be able to make a dedication to pious uses for the bishop to the extent of twelve men, let them write to the churches round about the place, in which the multitude of believers are established. If the bishop whom they shall appoint hath attended to the knowledge and patience of the love of God, with those with him, let him ordain two presbyters when he hath examined them, or rather three;’[46] and we are told that in Asia Minor alone there were upwards of four hundred bishops.[47] Such a church as this could not have been very unlike the Irish Church at this period—the relative proportion of bishops and presbyters much the same; and Patrick seems to have adapted it to the state of society among the people who were the objects of his mission. Their social system was one based upon the tribe, and it consisted of a congeries of small septs united together by no very close tie. Anything like a territorial church, with a central jurisdiction, was hardly possible among them. Patrick tells us nothing of the mode in which he was consecrated a bishop; but the expression in his epistle to Coroticus, that he was constituted the bishop in Ireland, seems to imply that he regarded himself as chief bishop for the whole people. He founded churches wherever he could obtain a grant from the chief of the sept, and appears to have placed in each _Tuath_ or tribe a bishop, ordained by himself, who may have had one or more presbyters with him. It was, in short, a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by a federal rather than a territorial tie under regular jurisdiction; and this is implied by the statement that ‘what was excommunicated by one church was excommunicated by all.’ During Patrick’s life, he no doubt exercised a superintendence over the whole; but we do not see any trace of the metropolitan jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over the rest.

‘All these bishops,’ we are told in the Catalogue of the Saints, ‘were sprung from the Romans, and Franks, and Britons, and Scots.’ By the Romans and Britons probably those are meant who belonged to the Roman province in Britain, and followed Patrick in his mission; by the Franks those who came from Gaul appear to be intended; and whenever it was possible, he no doubt appointed a native Scot, and one of the tribe among whom he founded a church, to be its bishop. The extent to which the foreign element entered into the clergy of his church may be learnt from the Litany of Angus, who invokes ‘the Romans in Achudh Galma, in Hy Echach; the Romans in Letar Erca; the Romans and Cairsech, daughter of Brocan, in Cill Achudh Dallrach; Cuan, a Roman, in Achill; the Romans in Cluan Caincumni; and the Romans with Aedan in Cluan Dartada; the Gauls in Saillidu; the Gauls in Magh Salach; and the Gauls in Achudh Ginain; the Saxons in Rigar; and the Saxons in Cluan Muicceda; fifty men of the Britons with Monan, in Lann Leire.’ And, in another tract by Angus the Culdee on the Mothers of the Saints, he has, ‘Dina, daughter of the king of the Saxons, was the mother of the ten sons of Bracan, king of Britain, son of Bracha Meoc: viz. St. Mogoroc of Struthuir; St. Mochonoc, the pilgrim of Kil Mucraisse and of Gelinnia in the region of Delbhna Eathra; Dirad of Eadardr uim; Duban of Rinndubhain alithir; Carenn of Killchairinne; Carpre, the pilgrim of Killchairpre; Isiol Farannain; Iust in Slemna of Alban; Elloc of Kill Moelloc, near Lochgarman; Pian of Killphiain in Ossory; Coeman, the pilgrim of Kill Choeman, in the region of Gesille and elsewhere. She was also mother of Mobeoc of Gleanngeirg, for he was a son of Brachan, son of Bracha Meoc.’[48]

The first order, too, ‘rejected not the services and society of women,’ or, according to another MS., ‘they excluded from their churches neither laymen nor women,’ which indicates their character as secular clergy, in contradistinction to those under a monastic rule. ‘They celebrated Easter on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox,’ that is, as we have seen elsewhere, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first day of the moon; and there appears to have been no difference in this respect between them and the Church of Rome prior to the year 457. Their clergy were tonsured; but at this time there were in the Church various forms of tonsure, and the first form, ‘from ear to ear,’ that is, having the hair removed from the fore part of the head and leaving it to grow behind the ears, was also practised in Gaul, from whence it was probably derived.[49]

Although Patrick alludes to the great numbers he converted, there does not seem to have been anything like a national adoption of Christianity. It is remarkable enough that the _Ardri_ or chief king of Ireland appears to have remained pagan during the entire period of his mission, and it was not till the year 513 that a Christian monarch ruled in Tara. Neither did the arrangement by which isolated bishops were placed in each sept or tribe whose chief or petty king had been converted prove well calculated to disseminate Christianity through the whole tribe, and to leaven the entire people with its influence.

[Sidenote: Collegiate Churches of Seven Bishops.]

This appears to have led, towards the end of his life, to the adoption of a very peculiar sort of Collegiate Church. It consisted in a group of seven bishops placed together in one church; and they were brought closer to the tribal system based on the family which prevailed in Ireland, by these bishops being usually seven brothers selected from one family in the tribe. We see the germs of something of the kind in Tirechan’s Annotations, where it is said that towards the end of his career ‘Patrick passed the Shannon three times, and completed seven years in the western quarter, and came from the plain of Tochuir to Dulo Ocheni, and founded seven churches there.’ And again, ‘The seven sons of Doath—that is Cluain, Findglais and Imsruth, Culcais, Deruthmar, Culcais and Cennlocho—faithfully made offerings to God and Saint Patrick.’[50] But Angus the Culdee in his Litany gives us a list of no fewer than one hundred and fifty-three groups of seven bishops in the same church, all of whom he invokes. A few of these we can identify sufficiently to show that they usually consisted of seven brothers living together in one church, and that they belong to this period. For instance, he invokes ‘the seven bishops of _Tulach na’n Epscop_,’ or Tulach of the Bishops; and we find in the old Irish Life of St. Bridget, who died in 525, that on one occasion at Tealagh, in the west of Leinster, ‘pious nobles, _i.e._ seven bishops, were her guests.’[51] Again he invokes ‘the seven bishops of Drom Arbelaig;’ and in the Irish Calendar on 15th January we have ‘seven bishops, sons of Finn, _alias_ Fincrettan of Druimairbealagh.’ Again he invokes ‘the seven bishops in Tamhnach;’ and in the Calendars on 21st July we have this notice: ‘The seven bishops of Tamhnach Buadha, and we find seven bishops, the sons of one father, and their names and history among the race of Fiacha Suighdhe, son of Feidhlimidh Reachtmhar, son of Tuathal Teachtmhar.’ Again he invokes ‘the seven bishops of Cluan Emain;’ and we are told in the Life of Saint Forannan that, after the Council of Drumceatt Columba was met by a large concourse of ecclesiastics, among whom the descendants of Cennaine, the aunt of St. Bridget, are alone enumerated, and among these are ‘the seven bishops of Cluain-Hemain,’ now Clonown, near Athlone, and they are represented in the Genealogy of the Saints in the Book of Lecan as seven brethren, the sons of the same mother.[52] Such appear to be in the main the characteristics of the early Irish Church in this the first period of its history; and we must now turn to Scotland to see to what extent they are reflected there.

[Sidenote: Church of the southern Picts.]

The dark interval of a century between the death of Ninian and the coming of Columba when we find ourselves treading on firm ground, is thus filled up by Fordun:—

‘In A.D. 430 Pope Celestinus sent Saint Palladius into Scotia, as the first bishop therein. It is therefore fitting that the Scots should diligently keep his festival and church commemorations, for by his word and example he with anxious care taught their nation—that of the Scots to wit—the orthodox faith, although they had for a long time previously believed in Christ. Before his arrival, the Scots had, as teachers of the faith and administrators of the Sacraments, priests only or monks, following the rite of the primitive church. So he arrived in Scotland with a great company of clergy in the eleventh year of the reign of King Eugenius, and the king freely gave him a place of abode where he wanted one. Moreover, Palladius had as his fellow-worker in preaching and administering the Sacraments a most holy man, Servanus; who was ordained bishop and created by Palladius his coadjutor—one worthy of him in all respects—in order to teach the people the orthodox faith, and with anxious care perfect the work of the Gospel; for Palladius was not equal to discharging alone the pastoral duties over so great a nation.’ And again: ‘The holy bishop Terrananus likewise was a disciple of the blessed Palladius, who was his godfather and his fostering teacher and furtherer in all the rudiments of letters and of the faith.’[53] This statement has been substantially accepted as history by all historians of the Church in Scotland; but when we examine the grounds on which it rests, we shall see reason to doubt whether Palladius ever was in Scotland, and to place Servanus at a much later period. Terrananus alone appears to have any real claim to belong to this period.

The only real information we possess as to the acts of Palladius, in addition to the short notice of his mission given us by the contemporary chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine, is derived from the Lives of St. Patrick; and we shall see how this statement of Palladius’ missionary labours in Scotland grew out of these lives, combined with the fictitious character of the early history of Scotland as it is represented by Fordun. The oldest Lives of Patrick are those in the Book of Armagh; and Tirechan, whose annotations contain our first notices of his life, states that Palladius ‘suffered martyrdom among the Scots’—that is, the Irish—‘as the ancient saints relate.’[54] Muirchu, whose Life was compiled soon after, says, after narrating his mission to Ireland, ‘Neither did those rude and savage people readily receive his doctrine, nor did he wish to pass his time in a land not his own; but returning hence to him who sent him, having begun his passage the first tide, little of his journey being accomplished, he died in the territory of the Britons.’[55] The next notice we have of him is in the Life attributed to Mark the Anchorite which belongs to the beginning of the ninth century, and is added to the _Historia Britonum_ of Nennius. Here Palladius is not allowed to land in Ireland at all, ‘but tempests and signs from God prevented his landing, for no one can receive anything on earth except it be given him from above. Returning, therefore, from Ireland to Britain, Palladius died in the land of the Picts.’[56] Probus, who had the Book of Armagh before him, and embodies many passages of Muirchu’s Life in his own narrative, repeats his account of Palladius, but substitutes for the expression ‘in the territory of the Britons’ that of ‘in the territory of the Picts.’[57] The Life termed by Colgan the third follows that of Muirchu, and states that ‘he returned to go to Rome, and died in the region of the Britons.’[58] Another Life makes Palladius land in Ireland and found three churches there; but ‘seeing that he could not do much good there, wishing to return to Rome, he migrated to the Lord in the region of the Picts. Others, however, say that he was crowned with martyrdom in Ireland,’[59] alluding in the latter part to the statement of Tirechan. The Tripartite Life says that, ‘on turning back afterwards, sickness seized him in the country of the Cruithne, and he died of it.’[60]

Thus far we find that the oldest view was that he suffered martyrdom in Ireland. This is followed by the statement that he died in the territory of the Britons on his way back to Rome. The territory of the Picts is then substituted for that of the Britons; but this evidently points to Galloway as the place where he landed and died, if he had not been martyred in Ireland. Finally the storm, which Mark the Anchorite tells us hindered his landing, is now made to execute a more remarkable feat. One of the earliest lives of Saint Patrick is the hymn attributed to Fiech of Sletty, and in the Scholia attached to it we are told that Palladius founded three churches in Ireland; ‘nevertheless he was not well received by the people, but was forced to go round the coast of Ireland towards the north, until, driven by a great tempest, he reached the extreme part of the Modhaid towards the south, where he founded the church of Fordun and Pledi in his name there.’[61] Another biographer, not satisfied with this, removes his martyrdom from Ireland, and, after narrating the founding of the three churches, tells us that ‘after a short time Palladius died in the plain of Girgin, in a place which is called Forddun. But others say that he was crowned with martyrdom there.’[62] The place meant is undoubtedly Fordun in the Mearns, the Irish form of which name was _Maghgherginn_, and the storm here drives him from Ireland to the north, through the Pentland Firth, and along the east coast southwards till he reaches the coast of Kincardineshire, and dies at Fordun.

This form of the legend, which takes him round Scotland to the territory of the Picts on the east coast, evidently owes its origin to the fact that the church of Fordun in the Mearns was dedicated to Palladius under the local name of Paldy, and was believed to possess his relics. How then came his dedication and his relics there if he had no mission himself in Scotland? The notices of Terrananus may throw some light upon this. He is said in the Breviary of Aberdeen to have been a native of the province of the Mearns, to have been baptized and instructed in the Christian faith by Palladius, and to have died and been buried at Banchory on the river Dee, called from him Banchory-Ternan. His day in the Calendar is the 12th of June, and on that day Angus the Culdee has in his metrical Calendar,—

‘Torannan, the long-famed voyager Over the broad shipful sea.’

Now the scholiast upon this Calendar records a tradition that he was the same person with Palladius. He says,‘Torannan, the far-famed voyager, that is, Palladius, who was sent from the successor of Peter to Erin before Patraic. He was not received in Erin, whereupon he went to Alban. He is buried in Liconium.’[63] Liconium was probably the old name of the place afterwards called Banchory-Ternan. The probable solution is that Terrananus or Ternan really was a disciple of Palladius, and brought his relics either from Ireland or from Galloway to his native district in the territories of the southern Picts, who, we know from Bede, had been converted, perhaps not long before, by Ninian of Candida Casa, and, as the founder of the church of Fordun in honour of Palladius, became to some extent identified with him. Add to this Fordun’s assumption that the Scots to whom Palladius was sent as first bishop were the inhabitants of Scotland, and we see upon what his statement was based. There were, of course, no Scots in Scotland at that time. But, by thus appropriating Palladius, Fordun brought himself into a dilemma. According to his fictitious and artificial scheme of the early history of his country, the Scots had colonised Scotland several centuries before Christ, and had been converted to Christianity by Pope Victor I. in the year 203. But if Palladius was their first bishop in 430, what sort of church had they between these dates? He is therefore driven to the conclusion that it must have been a church governed by presbyters or monks only. Hector Boece gave the name of Culdees to the clergy of this supposed early church; and thus arose the belief that there had been in Scotland an early church of Presbyterian Culdees.

Although we may thus accept Terrananus as a disciple of Palladius, Servanus has no claim to be regarded as possessing the same character. Fordun tells us ‘In the History of Saint Kentigern we read that Servanus was the disciple of the reverend bishop Palladius, almost in the very earliest days of the Scottish Church;’ and again, ‘On his arrival in Scotia he (Palladius) found Saint Servanus there, and called him to work in the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth; and when afterwards the latter was sufficiently imbued with the teaching of the church, Palladius appointed him his suffragan over all the nation of the Scots. So runs the story in that work.’ These passages are quoted from a Life of Kentigern, a fragment of which, containing the passage in question, is still preserved.[64] In this life the birth of Kentigern is placed at Culross, where he is received and educated by Servanus. Kentigern died in extreme old age in 603, which places his birth towards the beginning of the sixth century; but unless the life of Servanus had extended beyond the century, he could not have been found in Scotland by Palladius if he arrived in 430. It would be just possible that he might have been a disciple, were it not that the Life of Servanus has also been preserved. It is contained in the same MS. with one of the lives of Kentigern, and seems to have been recognised by the church of Glasgow as the life of the same Servanus who was his instructor;[65] but when we turn to this life, we do not find in it the least mention of either Palladius or Kentigern. Servanus is there brought in contact with Adamnan, abbot of Iona, who flourished in the seventh century; and he founds the church of Culross in the reign of Brude, king of the Picts, who filled the throne from 697 to 706 in the latter part of the life of Adamnan.[66] It is obvious, therefore, that there is a great anachronism in placing this Servanus as the instructor of Kentigern, and that he in reality belongs to the century after his death. We are thus left with Terrananus or Ternan alone, as having: any claim to belong to this period, and the dedications to him show that the field of his labours was the territory of the southern Picts, who are said by Bede to have been converted some time before by Ninian.

Although we thus lose two traditionary apostles of the early Scottish Church, we find, on the other hand, indications of a connection between this church of the southern Picts and the church in Ireland which belongs to the first period in the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland and is said to have been founded by Patrick. Nectan, who is called in the Pictish Chronicle king of all the provinces of the Picts, and reigned from 458 to 482, is there said to have founded the church of Abernethy in honour of St. Bridget; and we are told in the Life of Boethius or Buitte, who founded the church of Mainister Buitte in Ireland and died in 521, that he arrived in Pictland with sixty followers, ten of whom were brothers and ten virgins; and finding Nectan, king of that land, just dead, he raised him to life, and received from him a grant of the fortress in which his miraculous recovery had taken place, where he founded a church.[67] In the dedications of the churches in the territory of the southern Picts, we find traces of the presence of two other saints who belonged to this early period of the Irish Church. The church of Inchmocholmoc, now Inchmahome, in the Loch of Menteith, is dedicated to Mocholmoc, whose day in the Calendar was the 6th of June, and this identifies him with Colman of Dromore, in Ireland, who was called Mocholmoc.[68] He was an Irish Pict, a disciple of Ailbe of Emly, and founded his monastery of Dromore at latest before the year 514. Fillan, called _an lobar_, or the leper, whose day is 20th June, was also a disciple of Ailbe, and is said in the Irish Calendar to have been of _Rath Erenn in Alban_, or ‘the fort of the Earn, in Scotland;’ and the parish of Saint Fillans, at the east end of Loch Earn, takes its name from him, while the church of Aberdour, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, is also dedicated to him.[69] Further than this we can throw no light upon this early church among the southern Picts.

[Sidenote: Early Dalriadic Church.]

Towards the end of the fifth century, however, there took place among them a settlement of an Irish people who were already Christian. These were Scots from the district in Ireland termed Dalriada, forming the north-eastern part of Ulster, and extending from the river Ravel to the Bann. We are told in the Lives of St. Patrick that he visited this district of Dalriada, and founded several churches in it; and that when he again revisited it for the purpose of confirming and extending the faith, he found the twelve sons of Erc in possession of the sovereignty, and prophesied of one of them, Fergus mor, son of Erc, that he should be a king, and that the kings of that land, and also of Fortren, in the land of the southern Picts, should descend from him;[70] and Tighernac records that ‘Fergus mor, son of Erc, with the people of Dalriada, takes possession of part of Britain and dies there.’ They appear to have landed in Kintyre and spread from thence along the coasts of Argyll, which from them took the name of Dalriada. For sixty years they appear to have gradually , until their extended their possessions encroachment upon the land of the Picts, towards the north, brought down upon them Brude, son of Maelcu, the powerful king of the northern Picts, from whom they sustained a great defeat; and they were for the time driven back into Kintyre. This Dalriadic people brought their Christian religion with them, and, during this period of sixty years of their advance into the country, appear to have extended themselves as far as the island of Mull, so as to embrace the island of Iona within their bounds, for in this island we are told the three sons of Erc—Loarn, Fergus, and Angus—were buried; and Fordun is probably recording real events when he tells us that Domangart, the son of Fergus, and Gabran his grandson, after whose death the Dalriads were driven back to Kintyre, were buried here.[71] There does appear, in fact, to have been in the island of Iona, even at this early period, a Christian establishment of that peculiar collegiate form which appears at this time in Ireland: for among the groups of seven bishops whom Angus the Culdee invokes in his Litany, we find ‘the seven bishops of Hii’; and again, apparently the same group, as ‘the seven bishops of the church of Ia,’ another form of the name of the island.[72]

The extensive prevalence of the dedications to Bridget or Bride in the West Highlands and Islands shows the influence of the Irish Church at this period in the western districts; and we learn from the old Lives of St. Bridget that she was visited shortly before her death, which took place in 525, by Nennidius, son of Ethath, ‘de partibus Mula,’ which Colgan rightly takes to mean the island of Mull.[73] The dedications to Odhran or Oran, too, in the islands connected with Dalriada, probably belong to this earlier Dalriadic Church. Besides the cemetery in Iona called Reilic Odhrain, he appears in Tyree, where there is a burial-ground called Claodh Odhrain, in Colonsay at Killoran, and in Mull at Tiroran, on the north bank of Loch Scridan. He appears to be the same person as Odhran or Oran of Leitrioch-Odhrain, now Latteragh, in the barony of Upper Ormond and county of Tipperary in Ireland, whose death is recorded on the 2d October 548. He was of the same stock as the people of Dalriada.[74]

[Sidenote: Church south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde.]

When we turn to the district south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, which contained a mixed population of Britons, Picts, and Saxons, the former two of whom alone professed Christianity, we find, as we might expect, that there was a connection between the Christian Church there and both the British and the Irish Church. With the British Church we may connect those sons of Brachan or Brychan who are said to have founded churches in Manau. These are Rhun Dremrudd and Rhawin, two of his sons who are said to have founded churches there and to have been slain by the Saxons and Picts. Another son, Arthur, was buried in Manau; and Nevydd, the son of Rhun, is said to have been a bishop in the north and likewise to have been slain by the Saxons and Picts. In one account his church is said to have been at _Lechgelyddon_, or ‘the Stone of Celyddon’ or Caledonia, in the north; and his name is probably preserved in Rosneveth, now Roseneath.[75]

The connection between this church and that of Ireland appears from the legend of St. Monenna, of which we have three versions. She is said to have been consecrated as a virgin by St. Patrick, and to have formed a society consisting of eight virgins and one widow, and founded the church of Cillsleibhe Cuillin, now Killevy in the county of Armagh. In one of these legends she is said to have sent one of her virgins called Brignat to Rosnat, a name by which, as we shall afterwards see, Candida Casa, or Whithern, was known. Three days after her death, one of her virgins who succeeded her, called Tannat, dies. In another form of the legend she is said to have founded seven churches in Scotland: one at Chilnecase in Galloway, a second on the hill of Dundonald in Ayrshire, a third on Dumbarton rock, a fourth in the castle of Strivelyn or Stirling, a fifth at Dunedene, ‘which in Anglic is called Edeneburg,’ a sixth on the hill of Dunpelder in East-Lothian, and the seventh at Lanfortin or Longforgund in Gowrie, where she is said to have died; and her relics were divided between the Scots, English, and Irish, the first portion being at Lanfortin and the last at Cillsleibhe. In the third form of the legend she founds many churches and monasteries in Scotland: one in Strivelyn or Stirling, one at Edeneburg on the top of the rock in honour of Saint Michael, three in Galloway, and one at Lanfortin. Here we see that her churches were mainly founded at the principal fortified posts in the country. Her death is recorded in the year 519.[76]

Such are the few scattered notices of this church which we are able to substitute for the fabulous missions of Palladius and Servanus in Scotland at this time. It was confined to the southern Picts, the Dalriads, and the population south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, the tribes forming the nation of the northern Picts, and occupying the districts north of the great mountain range called the Mounth, being still pagan; and we find indications that the church, as then constituted, proved ineffectual to win over the people to any great extent to a thorough adoption of Christianity, and that a very general relapse to paganism had taken place.

[Sidenote: Apostasy of early churches.]

Jocelin is probably reporting a genuine tradition when, in his Life of Kentigern, he says that the Picts, who had received the faith from Ninian, had lapsed into apostasy; and so also the author of the older Life of Kentigern, when he terms a king of the Picts of Lothian ‘semi-pagan.’[77] St. Patrick, in his epistle to Coroticus, written probably towards the end of his life, terms Coroticus, in whom we have already recognised that Ceretic Guledig from whom the kings of Alcluith or Alclyde were descended,[78] ‘a tyrant who fears neither God nor his priests,’ and his followers ‘wicked rebels against Christ, and betrayers of Christians into the hands of the Scots and Picts.’ The latter, too, he repeatedly terms the apostate Picts, and says that the people ruled by Coroticus were no longer ‘his fellow-citizens, or the fellow-citizens of pious Romans, but were the fellow-citizens of demons,’ and the ‘associates of Scots and apostate Picts.’[79] It is apparent that the churches founded by Ninian and Patrick had in the main failed to effect a permanent conversion of the native tribes to Christianity, and that the latter was doomed to witness, even in his own life, a great declension from the Christian Church and relapse into paganism.

It required a different organisation to establish the Christian Church on a firm and permanent basis among them, and to leaven the whole people with its doctrines and rules of life. The introduction of the monastic element, and its application to the entire organisation of the Church, not only effected what a church with its secular clergy had failed to do, but led to that remarkable outburst of missionary zeal which sent from the shores of Ireland a stream of Christian missionaries invading the Continent in every direction, converting the people and founding monasteries among them, of whom Columbanus was the forerunner.

-----

Footnote 1:

There is a very able paper in the recently published volume of the remains of the late A. W. Haddan, which originally appeared in the _Christian Remembrancer_, on ‘The Churches of British Confession.’ It contains an admirable _résumé_ of this question, and the deductions of the writer are unquestionably sound. With the views in this paper the author entirely concurs.

Footnote 2:

Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. iv.

Footnote 3:

An extract from this Life is given by Usher, _Brit. Ecc. Ant._, and an abstract of it in Bollandus, _Acta Sanct._, Sept. 16. In the Felire of Angus the Culdee we have, at 16 Sept., _Moinend nuall cech genai_, ‘Monenn the shout of every mouth;’ and the gloss is _Moinend Cluana Conaire Tomain hi tuaiscert h. Faelan_, ‘Monenn of Cluan Conaire Toman in north Hy-Faelan,’ in Leinster. The Martyrology of Tamlacht has ‘Monenn, _i.e._ Ninianus episcopus Candide Case.’ Monenn is merely _Nenn_ or Ninian with the Irish _mo_ or ‘my’ prefixed, as is usual in naming these saints.

Footnote 4:

‘Florentio et Dionysio Coss. (A.D. 429) ... Agricola Pelagianus, Severiani Pelagiani Episcopi filius, Ecclesias Britanniæ dogmatis sui insinuatione corrupit.’—Prosper, _Chron. Opp._ i. 400, 401.

Footnote 5:

‘Florentio et Dionysio Coss. (A.D. 429) ... ad actionem Paladii diaconi Papa Cœlestinus Germanum Antisiodorensem Episcopum vice sua mittit, et deturbatis hæreticis Britannos ad Catholicam fidem dirigit.’—Prosper, _Chron._ 401. Prosper wrote two chronicles about the year 455. The share taken in the mission by the Gallican bishops is reported by Constantius in his Life of Germanus written some thirty years after. The two accounts are not inconsistent. See Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. i. p. 17, note.

Footnote 6:

‘Basso et Antiocho Coss. (A.D. 431) ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatus a papa Cœlestino Palladius primus episcopus mittitur.’—Prosper, _Chron._

‘Et ordinato Scotis Episcopo, dum Romanam insulam studet servare Catholicam, fecit etiam barbaram Christianam.’—Prosper, _Cont. Collat._ xxi. (A.D. 432).

There can be now no question that the Scots to whom he was sent were those of Ireland.

Footnote 7:

See Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 189, for a critical examination of the facts which seem to imply an earlier Christianity in Ireland.

Footnote 8:

Protestant church historians are unreasonably jealous of admitting any connection between the early British or Irish Church and Rome; but the Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries was not the Rome of the middle ages. It was the church of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. There was no question then about supremacy, and the bishop of Rome was simply regarded with deference and respect as the acknowledged head of the Christian Church within the western provinces of the empire of which Rome was the capital. Questions of ecclesiastical supremacy did not emerge till the empire was broken up.

Footnote 9:

See ‘The Irish Monasteries in Germany,’ _Ulster Journal of Arch._, vol. vii. p. 233, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 10:

Columbanus in Epist. to Pope Boniface IV., says—‘Nos enim SS. Petri et Pauli et omnium discipulorum, divinum canonem Spiritu Sancto scribentium, discipuli sumus, toti Heberi, ultimi habitatores mundi, nihil extra evangelicam et apostolicam doctrinam recipientes.’ He calls himself ‘perigrinus Scotus,’ and adds,—‘Sed talia suadenti, utpote torpenti actu ac dicenti potius, quam facienti mihi, _Jonæ_ Hebraice, _Peristeræ_, Græce, _Columbæ_ Latine.’—Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 37, coll. 275, 282.

Footnote 11:

Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. i. p. 317; vol. ii. p. 758.

Footnote 12:

There is no clearer account of the difference in the reckoning of the days of the moon than that in the letter of Abbot Ceolfrid to Nectan, king of the Picts, given to us by Bede, and probably his own composition (_Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 21). The ordinary idea that the British and Irish Churches derived their mode of keeping Easter from the Eastern Church, or from the disciples of St. John, is based upon a mistake, and arises from their being occasionally but erroneously termed quarto-decimans from their celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon when it fell upon a Sunday; but the Eastern Christians, to whom this name was properly given, differed essentially from them by invariably celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day, whether it fell on a Sunday or not.

Footnote 13:

‘Dominis Sanctis et in Christo patribus vel fratribus, episcopis, presbyteris, cæterisque sanctæ Ecclesiæ ordinibus.’—Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 37, col. 264.

Footnote 14:

‘Domino Sancto et in Christo apostolico patri Papæ.’—_Ib._ col. 226.

Footnote 15:

Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. ii. p. 16.

Footnote 16:

This Catalogue was first published by Usher from two MSS., and is believed to be the work of Tirechan, the author of the annotations on the Life of Saint Patrick in the Book of Armagh. His period is the eighth century.

Footnote 17:

The Litany of Angus is contained in the Leabhar Breac, and also in the Book of Leinster.

Footnote 18:

This was certainly the Roman or Western Form.

Footnote 19:

The names of the kings are given, but it is unnecessary to add them. They reigned till the year 534.

Footnote 20:

Some retained the Roman Form, others adopted the Gallican introduced by David, Gillas, and Docus.

Footnote 21:

The kings mentioned reigned to the year 572.

Footnote 22:

This is followed by the names of twenty-five saints of this order.

Footnote 23:

The names of seven bishops and eight presbyters are given.

Footnote 24:

The Book of Armagh has been very inaccurately printed by Sir William Betham in his _Irish Antiquarian Researches_. An edition of this most valuable MS. has long been promised by the then Dean of Armagh, now Bishop of Down, and it is hoped that he will still accomplish it. It would be an invaluable boon to all students of Church history. See _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. iii. pp. 316, 356, for an account of this MS. and of the authors of the lives.

Footnote 25:

The author adopts the theory that the summary of Aidus appended to the annotations of Tirechan contains the headings of the chapters of the first part of Muirchu’s life.

Footnote 26:

Betham, _Ant. Res._, App. pp. i, ii, and xliii.

Footnote 27:

_Ibid._ App. xxxv. xxxvi. In this passage xiii. is probably written for viii. either in Sir W. Betham’s manuscript or in the original MS. Theodosius became sole emperor in 423. His eighth year was therefore 431, and his ninth 432.

Footnote 28:

Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist. Script._, vol. v. p. 533.

Footnote 29:

Usher, _Sylloge_, Ep. xi.

Footnote 30:

Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, ed. 1874, p. 107.

Footnote 31:

A careful edition of the Confession and Epistle, with a translation, is annexed to Miss Cusack’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, to which the references are made.

Footnote 32:

Qui fuit vico Bannavem Taberniæ.—_Conf._ The natural inference certainly is that Tabernia was the name of the district in which Bannavem was situated.

Footnote 33:

Ingenuus fui secundum carnem; Decurione patre nascor.—_Ep. Cor._

Footnote 34:

Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram cum parentibus meis.—_Conf._ The expression Britanniis or Britannicis in the plural, clearly designates the Roman province in Britain. He calls it here his ‘patria.’ ‘Parentes’ may be either parents or relations.

Footnote 35:

He alludes to words spoken when he was fifteen years old. ‘Quod confessus fueram ante quod essem diaconus.’—_Conf._

Footnote 36:

‘Vos scitis et Deus qualiter apud vos conversatus sum a juventute mea et fide veritatis et sinceritate cordis; etiam ad gentes illas inter quas habito, ego fidem illis præstiti et præstabo.’—_Conf._ The same thing is implied in his epistle to Coroticus, where he says that he had sent a letter by a holy priest, ‘quem ego ex infantia docui.’ If he had taught this priest from his infancy, he must himself have been long in Ireland.

Footnote 37:

In his Confession he says that, when about to be given the rank of a bishop (‘gradus episcopatus’) a fault was brought up against him which he had committed thirty years before, when he was fifteen; and his epistle to Coroticus commences ‘Patricius peccator indoctus, scilicet Hiberione constitutis episcopum me esse futeor certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum.’

Footnote 38:

In his Confession he says he had been desirous to go ‘in Britanniis ... quasi ad patriam et parentes; non id solum, sed etiam usque Gallias.’ This excludes the idea that he could have been a native of any part of Gaul. Britanniæ is the well-known expression for Roman Britain. In his epistle to Coroticus he says, ‘Non dico civibus meis, neque civibus sanctorum Romanorum.’

Footnote 39:

Et hæc est confessio mea antequam moriar.—_Conf._

Footnote 40:

Et ut clerici ubique illis ordinarentur ad plebem nuper venientem ad credulitatem.... Unde autem Hiberione, qui numquam notitiam habuerunt, nisi idula et himunda usque nunc semper coluerunt, quomodo nuper effecta est plebs Domini et filii Dei nuncupabantur. Filii Scotorum et filiæ Regulorum monachi et virgines Christi esse videntur.—_Conf._

Footnote 41:

O speciossissime, atque amantissimi fratres et filii, quos in Christo genui, enumerare nequeo.—_Ep. Cor._

Footnote 42:

The word is _Sruith episcop_. Sruth is the Irish equivalent of cleric.

Footnote 43:

The word is _Crumthir_. In the Sanas Cormaic we have _Cruimther_, i.e. _Gaedelg indi as presbyter_, ‘that is the Gaelic of presbyter.’—Stokes, _Three Irish Glossaries_, p. 9. In Nennius the number of presbyters is increased from 300 to 3000, and in the Tripartite Life to 5000.

Footnote 44:

By the council of Sardica in 347 a canon was passed prohibiting bishops being placed in small cities or villages where a single presbyter was sufficient.

Footnote 45:

Bingham’s _Ant._, Book ii. c. 12.

Footnote 46:

_Copt. Coll._, Book i. Can. i. 11. Bunsen’s _Hippolytus_, ii. p. 27.

Footnote 47:

Bingham’s _Ant._, Book ii. c. 11; Book ix. c. 3.

Footnote 48:

Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 312. St. Mochonoc’s church was called Gailinne nam Breatan, or Gallen of the Britons, in King’s County.

Footnote 49:

St. Paulinus of Nola says (Ep. 7) of some of the monks of his time in Gaul, that they were ‘casta informitate capillum ad cutem cæsi, et inæqualiter semitonsi et destituta fronte prærasi.’

Footnote 50:

Betham, _Ant. Res._, App., pp. xxxiii. xxxix.

Footnote 51:

O’Hanlan, _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vol. ii. p. 84.

Footnote 52:

Dr. Todd’s _Life of St. Patrick_, p. 34. The notices from the Irish Calendars are taken from those of Tamlacht and Donegal.

Footnote 53:

Fordun, _Chron._, B. iii. cc. 8, 9.

Footnote 54:

Qui martyrium passus est apud Scotos, ut tradunt sancti antiqui.—Betham, _Ant. Res._, App. xxxvi.

Footnote 55:

Sed reversus ad eum qui missit illum revertere vero eo hinc, et in primo mari transito cœpto qui erat parum itinere in Britonum finibus vita factus.—_Ib._, App. i.

Footnote 56:

Sed per quasdam tempestates et signa illum Deus prohibuit, quia nemo potest quicquam accipere in terra nisi fuerit datum desuper, et illa Palladius rediens de Hibernia ad Britanniam ibi defunctus est in terra Pictorum.—Nenn., _Hist. Brit._ Ed. Gunn.

Footnote 57:

Ad fines Pictorum pervenisset ibidem vita decessit.—Colg. _Tr. Th._ p. 48.

Footnote 58:

Tertia Vita, _ib._ p. 23.

Footnote 59:

Quarta Vita, _ib._ p. 38.

Footnote 60:

Hennessy’s translation in Miss Cusack’s _Life of S. Patrick_, p. 378.

Footnote 61:

Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 5.

Footnote 62:

Secunda Vita, _ib._ p. 13.

Footnote 63:

These and the other notices of St. Ternan will be found conveniently collected together in the Preface by the late Bishop of Brechin to the Missal of Arbuthnot.

Footnote 64:

It is printed in the _Chartulary of Glasgow_, and also in the volume of _Lives of Saint Ninian and Saint Kentigern_, edited by the late Bishop of Brechin for the series of _Scottish Historians_, vol. v. p. 123.

Footnote 65:

This life is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p. 412.

Footnote 66:

The chronicle in the _Scala Cronica_ has under this Brude, ‘En quel temps veint Saint Servanus en Fiffe.’—_Chron. of Picts and Scots_, p. 201.

Footnote 67:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p, 410. The church was probably Carbuddo, or Castrum Boethii, near Dunnichen, the old name of which was Duin Nechtain.

Footnote 68:

Lanigan, _Ec. Hist._, vol. i. p. 432. In Ireland the custom existed of prefixing the word _mo_ or ‘my,’ and adding the word _oc_, or ‘little,’ to the name of a saint, as an expression of endearment. When the name ended with the syllable _an_, the word _oc_ was substituted for it. Thus Colman becomes _Mo_cholm_oc_.

Footnote 69:

June 20, _Faolan amlobair i Raith-Erann in Albain._—_Mart. Don._

Footnote 70:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 17.

Footnote 71:

The old chronicles have ‘Yona insula, ubi tres filii Erc, seu Fergus, Loarn, et Angus sepulti fuerunt.’—_Ib._ pp. 151, 174, 288. Fordun says of Gabran, ‘cujus ad sepeliendum corpus ad ecclesiam Sancti Orani delatum est, ubi patris et avi funera quiescunt in Hy insula.’—B. iii. c. 24.

Footnote 72:

Angus has _Secht n-epscoip na Hii_, and also _Secht n-epscoip Cille Hiæ_—‘The seven bishops of Hii,’ and ‘The seven bishops of the church of Ia.’

Footnote 73:

Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 112. Mula certainly is Mull, and the old parish of Kilnoening in Mull probably takes its name from him.

Footnote 74:

_An. IV. Mag._, vol. i. p. 187. In the Martyrology of Tamlacht this Odhran appears on 2d October as _Odran Lathracha_; and again on 27th October as _Odrani sac. Lettracha vel o Hi_, that is, ‘Odran, priest of Latteragh, or of Iona.’ Angus the Culdee has on 27th October _Odran Abb. Saer Snamach_, ‘Odran, Abbot, noble swimmer’; and in the gloss it is said he was either ‘Odran the priest of Tech Aireran in Meath, or Odrain of Lethracha-Odhrain in Muskerry, and of Hi Columcille—that is, of Relic Odrain in Hii.’—(Forbes, _Calendars_, p. 426.) This identification of the Oran of Relic Oran in Iona with Oran of Latteragh places his death in 548, fifteen years before Columba, with whom he is connected in popular tradition, came to Scotland. The first appearance of this story is in the old Irish Life of Columba. It is as follows:—‘Columcille said thus to his people, It would be well for us that our roots should pass into the earth here. And he said to them, It is permitted to you that some one of you go under the earth of this island to consecrate it. Odhran arose quickly and thus spake, If you accept me, said he, I am ready for that. O Odhran, said Columcille, you shall receive the reward of this; no request shall be granted to any one at my tomb unless he first ask of thee. Odhran then went to heaven. He founded the church of Hy there.’ This story, however, was unknown to Adamnan, who records the natural death of one of the brethren whose name was either Brito or who was a Briton, and adds that he was the first of the brethren who died in the island (B. iii. c. 7). Neither does the name of Odran appear in the oldest lists of the twelve companions of Columba; and Angus the Culdee expressly says the Odran celebrated on 27th October was an abbot, which the Oran of the tradition could not have been. The epithet of swimmer, too, alludes to an incident in the life of S. Odran of Latteragh.—See Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 372.

Footnote 75:

See _Lives of the Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 272, 602, for an account of Brychan and his family. He had an impossible number of children, varying in different legends from ten to twenty-four sons and twenty-six daughters. It has already been remarked (see vol. i. p. 160, note, and the _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. i. p. 82) that some of these sons and daughters are connected with _Brycheiniog_ or Brecknock in Wales, and others with Manau Guotodin in the north, and with the men of the north. It is obvious that there must have been two Brychans, and that two different families have been mixed together. The name Brychan comes from _Brych_, ‘speckled,’ the Gaelic equivalent of which is _Breacc_, and seems to refer to a characteristic of the Picts. It enters into the name _Brycheiniog_ or Brecknock in Wales, and we also find it in two different localities in Scotland. In Manau Guotodin, the chief church, that of Falkirk, was called _Ecglis Breacc_, or ‘the Speckled Church,’ the Saxon equivalent of which was _Fahkirk_, from the word _Fah_, signifying speckled. There is also the river Briech, and on the Firth of Forth Briechness, now Bridgeness. In Forfarshire we have also Brechin. The northern family seem to have been the same as that of the ten sons of Braccan, son of Bracha Meoc, king of the Britons, who found churches in Ireland, as one of the sons, Iust, is said to have been of _Sleamna in Alban_ or Scotland; and another, Maconoc, we find in the patron saint of Inverkeilor in Forfarshire. There is there also a church called Neveth, and in the _Cognatio_ the sepulchre of Brachan or Brychan is said to be ‘in insula que vocata Enysbrachan, que est juxta Manniam.’ Mannia stands here for Manau in the north, and it is possible that Inchbrayoch in Forfarshire, which was dedicated to Saint Braoch, may be the island meant.

Footnote 76:

Pervenerat etiam in Albaniam, id est Scotiam, in qua ædificaverat ecclesias in Christi nomine, quarum hæc sunt nomina.

Una est Chilnecase in Galweia.

Altera vero in cacumine montis, qui appellatur Dundeuel, quia sic semper solebat, sicut prædiximus, ut supra nudam petram nudis membris in noctibus oraret Deum, qui semper orandus sit, sicut scriptura ait; ‘Orate sine intermissione,’ et reliqua.

Tertia autem in alto montis Dunbreten.

Quarta in castello, quod dicitur Strivelin.

Quinta vero Dunedene, quæ Anglica lingua dicta Edenburg.

Sexta enim Mons Dunpeleder, et illinc transfretavit mare in Albaniam ad Sanctum Andream.

Post hæc vero exiit ad Alecthae, ubi modo est optima ecclesia, quam Lanfortin aedificavit cum quodam fonte sanctissimo, et mansit illic aliquanto tempore et multum dilexit illum locum, in quo in fine vitæ suæ, ut affirmaret, Domino volente, emisit spiritum.—_Vita S. Mon. a Conchubrano_, cap. vii. 66; _A.SS._ Boll. ad 5 July.

Another Life of Saint Monenna, printed by Capgrave, has

Multis itaque signis in Hibernia declaratis, ad regem Scotiæ nomine Conagal cognatum suum profecta multas ecclesias et monasteria construxit, inter quæ

Apud Strivelin unam et

Apud Edenburgh in montis cacumine in honore Sancti Michaelis alteram edificavit ecclesiam.

Et in Galwedia tres nominatas a fundamentis fecit ecclesias.

Monenna appears in the Calendars on 5th and 6th July; and on the former day the Irish Calendars have Saint Edania, Edœna, or Edana.

In the Scotch Calendars she appears only in that of David Camerarius on 5th July as ‘Sancta Moduenna, virgo in Laudonia et Galovida, Scotiæ provinciis celebris;’ but the Breviary of Aberdeen has on 19th November ‘Medana virgo Dei castissima ex Ybernia oriunda.’ The account given of her in the ‘Lectiones’ is shortly this:—Flying from the attempts of a ‘miles quidam illius provincie nobilis,’ she takes refuge in Scotland, having crossed in a vessel with two handmaidens, ‘et ad partes Galuidie superiores que Ryndis dicitur arripuit ubi pauperculam laborando egit vitam.’ The soldier still pursuing her, she and her maidens embarked upon a stone, which floated thirty miles ‘ad terram que Farnes dicitur ubi nunc Sancte reliquie virginis acquiescunt.’ The Breviary places her in the time of Ninian. ‘Tandem vitam in sanctitate et paupertate transigens sub sanctissimo et beatissimo patre Niniano antistite pridie kalendarum Novembrium animam a corpore Domino jubente seperari permisit.’—_Brev. Ab._ xiii. Id. Dec.

The churches of Kirkmaiden in the parish of that name and the Rinns of Galloway, and in the parish of Glasserton and district called Farnes, were dedicated to this Medana. She is, however, probably the same person as Monenna, also called Moduenna and Edana, and these may have been two of the three churches said to have been founded by her in Galloway, the third being the church called Chilnacase, which may have been at Whithern or Candida Casa, where Medana is said to have died. It is impossible from the lives to ascertain her true date, as they are full of anachronisms; but the Ulster Annals have at 518 ‘Quies Darerce que Moninne nominata est.’

Footnote 77:

Cap. xxvii.—Picti vero prius per Sanctum Ninianum ex magna parte ... fidem susceperunt. Dein in apostasiam lapsi....

Rex igitur Leudonus vir semipaganus.

Footnote 78:

See vol. i. p. 158, note.

Footnote 79:

See Miss Cusack’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 613, for this epistle and a translation, and for the expressions above quoted.