also a 'decurio'-i.e. a magistrate-in a Roman provincial town. Patricius lived at this little farm for sixteen years, and at that early age was taken captive and brought to Ireland with many others. He remained there six years in slavery, when he was engaged in tending sheep. Then he escaped in a ship, the sailors of which were pagans, and after three days reached land. He was a second time taken captive by the same people, and remained with them two months, when he was again delivered from their hands. A few years later he was with his parents in Britain, when he resolved, in consequence of a vision, to leave his native land and his kindred, that he might go to Ireland as a missionary and preach the Gospel. He must at that time have been about thirty years old, and having been early made a deacon, he went to Ireland in priest's orders. At the age of forty-five he was consecrated a bishop, and in his Epistle to Coroticus he designates himself as Patricius, a sinner and unlearned, but appointed a bishop in Ireland.' It is clear that he laboured as a missionary for fifteen years at least before he was raised to the episcopate, and it was only in the latter part of his life that his labours were crowned with much success. In his Confession he tells us that, through his ministry, clerics had been ordained for the Hibernian people newly come to the faith, and that 'those who never had the knowledge of God, and had hitherto only worshipped unclean idols, had become the people of the Lord, and were called the sons of God;' and in his Epistle he addresses the beloved brethren and children whom he had begotten in such numbers to Christ.'

This simple account, given by S. Patrick of himself, became encrusted at a later period with a mass of legendary and fictitious matter, which was amplified by successive biographers till his labours and their results assumed a very unreal aspect. We find, however, from the Catalogue of the Saints-an undoubtedly genuine document, which arranges these holy persons in three classes, corresponding to three different periods—that during the century and a half in the history of the Church with which we are at present dealing, her organisation underwent marked changes three several times under external influences. In the first period we have churches and a secular clergy; in the second these give place to monasteries and a monastic clergy; while in the third stage we have an eremitical clergy, living in solitary places. During the first period the Church was entirely moulded by S. Patrick, and we find that upwards of onehalf of the clerics whom he ordained were bishops, and that

he placed a bishop consecrated by himself in each church which he founded. The Catalogue of the Saints, speaking of the clergy at this time, says that they had 'one Head-Christ —and one chief-Patricius-and that they were all bishops, famous and holy and full of the Holy Ghost, three hundred and fifty in number;' and this is confirmed by Angus the Culdee in his Litany, where he invokes seven times fifty bishops with three hundred priests whom Patrick ordained, and quotes the verse

'Seven times fifty holy bishops

The Saint ordained,

With three hundred pure presbyters,
Upon whom he conferred orders '-

thus fully recognising the distinction between a bishop and a presbyter, though the relative proportion of bishops and presbyters was very different from what it afterwards became.

S. Patrick's system seems to have resembled that which existed in the East in the first centuries of the Church, where, besides the chief bishop in each city, whose consecration was not valid without the action of three bishops, there was an order of chorepiscopi, or country bishops, who were consecrated by the chief bishop alone. S. Patrick's consecration had evidently been to the higher order, so that he considered himself the spiritual head over the whole people; and he states in his Epistle to Coroticus that, as he was constituted the Bishop in Ireland, he founded churches wherever he could obtain a grant of land from the chief of a tribe, and placed in each a bishop ordained by himself alone, with one or more presbyters under him. It was, in short, a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by a federal rather than a territorial tie, under regular jurisdiction.

Later on S. Patrick seems to have formed a very peculiar sort of Collegiate Church, consisting of seven bishops placed together in one spot, who were usually seven brothers selected from a family in the tribe. This singular episcopal system was extended into Scotland at the end of the fifth century, in consequence of a settlement of Irish people in the Argyleshire coasts and in some of the western islands, who had been converted or confirmed in the Christian faith by S. Patrick. They were Scots from a district named Dalriada (the north-eastern part of Ulster), and apparently established this same Collegiate Church wherever they went. They certainly did so in the island of Iona, as the 'seven bishops of Hii'-the ancient name of that spot-are twice mentioned by

Angus the Culdee. The Church thus constituted was plainly secular, as it is stated that the clergy of this period 'rejected not the services and society of women,-they excluded from the Church neither laymen nor women, because, founded on the Rock Christ, they feared not the blast of temptation.' They were tonsured, but it was not the tonsure representing the crown of thorns, now worn by monks; their heads were shaved from ear to ear, and left bare at the front, while at the back the hair flowed down to its full length. Evidently the celibacy of the clergy was not enforced in this first period of the Celtic Church, since we find it distinctly named as a characteristic of the saintly clerics of the second period that 'they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries.' We find occasional instances of dedication to a single life, as in the case of S. Bridget, who is stated to have been 'consecrated a virgin by S. Patrick,' and to have formed a society consisting of eight virgins and one widow. She is said also to have sent one of these virgins to Candida Casa, in Scotland, to be trained in religion, but it seems certain that these were only accidental features of a thoroughly secular Church, in which the monks were laymen, while the clergy consisted of bishops with their presbyters and deacons. The churches of those days were of wood or wattles, as were also the rude huts of the clergy; and the somewhat curious explanation is given of the word Duirtheach, employed to denote the early wooden church, that it meant 'the house in which tears are shed.' Such, therefore, so far as we are able to discern it through the mist of ages, was the Celtic Church of the first period; and there is ample evidence that, constituted as it then was, it proved ineffectual to win the people over to any great extent to a thorough adoption of Christianity.' Planted by S. Ninian in Scotland and by S. Patrick in Ireland, it failed in both countries to effect a permanent conversion of the native tribes, and S. Patrick was doomed to witness, even in his own lifetime, a great declension from the Christian Church and a relapse into paganism. The remedy was, however, at hand, and it introduces us to the second period, which is separated from the first in all essential points by a distinct line of divergence. The effete and decaying Celtic Church, which after the death of S. Patrick we see languishing among a people relapsing into barbarism, was restored to vigorous life by the introduction of the true. monastic element, with its principles of self-devotion and purity, and its powerful, firmly-knit organisation. This great work seems to have received some assistance from Candida

Casa, now rising into prominence as a school of monastic life, but it was mainly effected in Ireland by Finnian and twelve of his principal disciples, who filled the land with monasteries and became known as the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Finnian had received his training in Wales, to which monachism had spread from Gaul through Bretagne in the beginning of the fifth century. He sprang from a race of Picts in Ireland, and after having been there instructed in the faith by two Christian teachers, named Fortchern and Caiman, he crossed the Irish Channel in his thirtieth year to the city. of Kilmaine, where he placed himself under the direction of three eminent fathers of the Welsh Monastic Church-S. Cadoc, S. David, and Gildas the historian. He remained thirty years in Britain, chiefly in the Monastery of S. Davids, and then returned to Ireland, followed, as the old chronicler expresses it, 'by several of the religious Britons, to gather together a people acceptable to the Lord.' He there founded the great Monastery of Clonard, in Meath, which ultimately contained no fewer than three thousand monks, and became a vast seminary of religious life, whence many eminent saints went forth to evangelise the country. When this first important step in his mission had been accomplished, Finnian was seized with a strong desire to go on a pilgrimage to Rome; but while he was preparing for his departure we are told that 'an angel of God came to him, and said unto him, "What would be given to thee at Rome shall be given to thee here. Arise and renew sound faith and doctrine in Ireland after Patrick." Finnian, like S. Paul, whom he is said in his habits and life to have resembled, was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but remained in his native land, labouring there until his death. He is described in an old martyrology as 'a doctor of wisdom and a tutor of saints in his time.'

The work accomplished by Finnian and the Twelve Apostles of Ireland (whose several names are preserved in an ancient Life of the Saint) and their successors, was wonderful in its rapidity and completeness. It established the Christian religion on a permanent basis throughout the land, while the languishing Church was inspired with a new and living energy by its entire reorganisation on the monastic system, which drew the whole body of clergy into submission to the higher rule.

'It seems difficult,' says Mr. Skene, 'now to understand how there should have proceeded so great an influence from a small body of monastic clergy, living in these isolated 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. 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 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 the 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. 1. 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. Even in the smaller monasteries the number of scholars was usually fifty. 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.'

We can only briefly touch on the chief features of the Celtic Church in this her second period. The mode of her administration was peculiar. She did not possess what may be called a diocesan episcopacy—the union, that is, of the power of mission, which is the source of jurisdiction, with the power of conferring holy orders which belongs to the episcopate. The monasteries, which embraced within their fold the entire clergy, claimed exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, and in order to secure that exercise of episcopal functions which was essential to the existence of a clergy, they had resident bishops in their own houses, who were subject to the abbot, as being under monastic rule. The Celtic Church being entirely monastic at that time, the whole of her episcopate was necessarily in this position. The superior grade of the bishop was in no sense lowered by it to the level of the presbyter; but the power of mission was vested in the monastery, and not in him, and the