reply to them. spirit of submission to his pontifical authority, but rather adopted such a tone as indicated that they valued indeed his opinion, and would give it due consideration; yet not so as to feel themselves constrained to adopt it, unless it should commend itself to their own judgment. Style of his This appears plainly from the answer which Gregory returned them in A.D. 592. He sends them a book on the subject at issue, which he thinks ought to be sufficient to convince them that they were in the wrong, and remarks on it in his letter:-" If after the reading of this book, you will persist in holding the same opinions that you now entertain, you show beyond a doubt that you are giving yourselves to be ruled, not by reason, but by obstinacy." Additional The second passage of Baronius referred to in the text (ad an. 604) occurs at p. 193 of tom. 8, (Antwerpiæ, 1600,) and is as follows. After giving (from Bede) the account of Laurentius' ministerial exertions, to be found at p. 138 of the present work, as far as the commencement of the letter there quoted, he proceeds to say (under the heading, "SCHISMATICS PUNISHED BY GOD, Jer. 5):— "It is quite plain that the Scots also [i. e. the Irish] observations were just in like manner tinged with the same dark dye of Baronius of schism as the Britons, and guilty like them of separathe "schis- tion from the Church of Rome. And for this reason relative to toward Laurence of Ch. v., ve. 15, 19. they also were visited by God with the same vengeance matical" as came upon the Britons, in being given up for a prey position of to those inhuman savages, the Angles and the Saxons, the Irish according to that prediction of Jeremiah to IsraelBehold I will bring upon you a nation from afar, a mighty Canterbury. nation; and lower down, And if ye shall say why hath A. D. 609. the Lord our God done all this unto us, thou shalt say unto them, Like as ye have forsaken me, and served a strange God in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours,' inasmuch as it will be in the possession of strangers. It is plain that all schismatics are convicted in a sense of worshipping strange gods, for this reason, that the one God is not to be rightly worshipped except in the one Church; from which whosoever goeth astray, he is detected in revolting to strangers; according to that word of Samuel, Rebellion is as the sin of witch- 1 Sam. xv. craft, and stubbornness is as the iniquity of idolatry.' 23. Surely if any man of understanding were to cast his eyes around, as from some lofty eminence, over the entire surface of the world, he would see that for this one cause above all others, Christian states have been given up to the dominion of barbarians; viz. for their having, in the first instance, forsaken the Church. Thus was it the fate of the Africans to be delivered up to the Vandals, when in the obstinacy of their spirits they refused communion with the Catholic Church of the whole world; thus was it the lot of the Spaniards to fall into the hands of the Saracens, according to the account which will be found in the end of this volume. Thus it appears also to have happened to all the nations of the east, when after their revolt from the communion of the Catholic Church, they were given up to the oppressive tyranny of barbarous invaders. "Now as to the purport of the communication addressed Laurence's to these people by Bishop Laurentius and his brethren, letter we can gather it from the part of his letter cited by an indica tion of the pains taken by the Saxon priests to bring the Irish, &c., to confor mity with Rome. Baronius probably wrong in making the Irish bi shops have any concern with Bede, to the following effect:-'To our lords and most dear brethren'. . . &c. &c. [as at pp. 138, 139, sup., to the words] no not so much as in the same lodging where we were eating.' Thus far Bede recites of this letter, to show that the Britons as well as the Scots had been, previously to that time, separated from the Catholic Church. "But as for the labours which must have been endured by these priests, few in number as they were, who came as missionaries from Rome, it is almost impossible to form a correct estimate of their number and magnitude; considering that they had not only to work hard by day and by night for the conversion of the Angles, an exceedingly numerous people, from the idol-worship of their fathers, and to labour to win them over to the true religion; but also to toil might and main for the purpose of extricating the Britons and Scots from their schism, and reconciling them to the Catholic Church." This latter extract from Baronius requires no comment, being sufficiently illustrated by its connection with the matter contained in the text of this work. On the former passage, however, some additional observations are necessary, for the sake of historical truth and clearness, in this place. The opinion of the Cardinal, that the bishops of Ireland entered with schismatical warmth into the controversy about the Three Chapters, appears to be altogether erroneous. It rests on the supposition that the letter of Pope Gregory, versy of the which he refers to, was intended for the bishops of Ireland; but this view of the matter, although the contro Three Chapters. bishops received by Ussher, Fleury, Pagi, and other learned authorities, appears to be contrary to the fact. For the letter in question, which in the old editions of Gregory's works (where it is marked as Ep. 36 of the second Book of the Register,) has the heading, Gregory to all the bishops in Ireland, appears to have received this title without any proper authority; and accordingly, in the Benedictine Edition (where it is Ep. 51, ib.) the heading is altered to the following form, Gregory to all bishops, on the subject of the Three Chapters. That this inscription, however, is essentially nonsensical, will appear even from a perusal of the letter itself. But The Istrian the conjecture of some that the bishops to whom more likely it was in reality addressed were those of Istria, to be inseems probable enough. The circumstances re- sSt. Gregory ferred to in it do not agree with those of the Irish Christians of that age; for they to whom it was written were suffering persecution, as it seems, about the controversy then going on, whereas none of our ancient documents make the least allusion even to its existence in Ireland. "Whatever opinion St. Columbanus entertained concerning the Three Chapters was formed by him in consequence, not of what he had heard or seen in Ireland, but of the ferment that agitated the north of Italy, relatively to this controversy;" at least, so says Dr. Lanigan, and appa tended by What the were. rently with reason. (See his Eccl. Hist., ii. 293.) What the Three Chapters were, we are informed in the following words of the Fifth General Council (Collat. 8,) "We anathematize the aforesaid Three Chapters, that is, Theodore of Mopsuestia with his impious writings, and the ungodly compositions of Theodoret, and the ungodly letter that goes under the name of Ibas, and all who defend them," &c. (Vid. Opp. S. Greg., Reg. Ep. Lib. ii. Ind. x. coll. 614, 615, not. d. Jus. Primatiale Armacanum. . . assertum per H. A. M. T. H. P. 1728, pp. 124, nn. 207-209, &c. &c.) The Epistle of St. Co lumbanus to P. Boni face IV., No. II. ST. COLUMBANUS'S FAMOUS EPISTLE TO POPE BONIFACE IV., ON THE N.B.-The following valuable relic of antiquity is undoubtedly one of the most important records in existence, connected with the circumnever before stances of the Irish Church at the time when it Englished. was written, or we might perhaps say, with those of any period of its early history. Yet it has never, I suppose, been read in an English translation;—a circumstance, after all, not so much |