islands off the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland must have been small. Others were very large. The Irish monastery of St. Finnian of Clonard, and that of St. Comgall at Bangor, were said to contain three thousand inmates. The Welsh monastery of Bangor-Iscoed contained, according to Bede, two thousand one hundred monks, of whom twelve hundred were slaughtered under the Northumbrian King Ethelfrith'. St. Patrick asserted that the number of Irish men and women who embraced the monastic life in his own time was incalculable 2.

The structure of the monasteries was of a simple and inexpensive character. Like the early Celtic churches (ch. iii) they were built at first of earth, and wattles, or wood. It was not till the end of the eighth century that stone buildings began in Scotland and Ireland to be substituted for wooden ones, as a protection against the ravages of the Danes.

The Rule of the Western monks, as laid down in the writings of St. Columbanus, was very severe, far more so than the Rule of St. Benedict. Its principles were absolute and unreserved obedience, constant and severe labour, daily self-denial and fasting; and the least deviation from the Rule was visited with corporal punishment or a severe form of fast, the precise number of blows and of days or hours of fasting being minutely prescribed3.

1 Bede, H. E. ii. 2.

• 'Et filii Scotorum et filiae Regulorum monachi fiebant et virgines Christi quos enumerare nequeo.' Patricii, ad Corot. ep. vi. Further details are given in Reeves' edit. of Adamnan, p. 336.

3 Ussher, iv. 305; Montalembert, Monks of the West, ii. 447. The Rule itself is printed in Fleming, Collectanea Sacra, p. 4. It is frequently alluded to along with other Irish Rules in the Lives of the Saints, passages from which have been collected by Dr. Reeves in his edit. of Archbishop Colton's Visitation of Derry, p. 109. It was mentioned by Wilfrid in his controversy with St. Colman: 'De patre autem vestro Columba et sequacibus ejus, quorum sanctitatem vos imitari, et regulam ac praecepta caelestibus signis confirmata sequi perhibetis, possem respondere.' Bede, H. E. iii. 25.

In describing the success of St. Aidan's mission to Northumberland, Bede speaks of the erection of churches and monasteries where 'imbuebantur prae

C

The chief occupation of all the monks, and the only occupation of the more aged, apart from the services of the Church, consisted of reading and writing. It was said of the Irish monastery of Lughmagh under Bishop Mochta, that

"Threescore psalm-singing seniors

Were his household, royal the number,
Without tillage, reaping, or kiln-drying,
Without work except reading'.'

The office of Scribe (Scribhnidh or Scribhneoir) was of such honour and importance in an Irish monastery, that the penalty for shedding his blood was as great as that for killing a bishop or abbot2. Sometimes in Scotland, in the seventh to tenth centuries, a scribe was elected to be an abbot or a bishop, and the head of a diocese or monastery thought that it added to the dignity of his position to be able to append the title of 'scriba' to his name. Baithene, the second Abbot of Iona, was an accomplished scribe, and was selected by Columba before his death to finish the Psalter left incomplete by himself3. The eighteenth and thirtieth Abbots of Iona, in 797

ceptoribus Scottis parvuli Anglorum, una cum majoribus studiis et observatione disciplinae regularis.' Hist. Ec. iii. 3.

The Irish Rule at Bangor in the seventh century is described in the Antiphon. Benchor. p. 156:

Benchuir bona regala
Recta atque divina,

Stricta, sancta, sedula,' etc.

Ozanam attributes the eventual failure of Columban rule on the Continent to its Eastern severity; La Civilization Chretienne, p. 140.

1 Martyrology of Donegal, p. 216; Félire of Oengus, p. cxxxii.

'Sanguis Episcopi vel excelsi Principis [=Abbot] vel Scribae qui ad terram effunditur, si collirio indiguerit, eum qui effuderit, sapientes crucifigi judicant, vel vii ancillas reddant.' 8th cent. Canon of a Sinodus Hibernensis; Wasserschleben, Bussordnungen, p. 140. The latter alternative (=vii ancillarum pretium) is St. Patrick's modification of what would be demanded under the older national law of retaliation. See also Sinodus Hibernensis, cap. 29; ib. p. 138. Again: 'Patricius dicit omnis qui ausus fuerit ea quae sunt regis vel episcopi vel scribae furari aut aliquod in eos committere, parvi pendens dispicere, vii ancillarum pretium reddat, aut vii annis peniteat cum episcopo vel scriba.' Sin. Hibern. iii. c. 8, ib. p. 141; iv. c. 6, ib. p. 142.

Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. i. 23, iii. 23.

and 978, and the Bishop of the Isles of Alba in 961, are also recorded to have been scribes1,

St. Patrick is said to have first taught his converts letters in a passage which is interpreted as attributing to him the introduction of a written alphabet. If so, it was probably the Irish or Latin-Irish alphabet supplanting the earlier Ogham characters2; and the books of Durrow, Kells, Dimma, Mulling, &c. survive to show what apt scholars the Irish were, and to what a marvellous pitch of perfection calligraphy reached within a few centuries after St. Patrick's death 3. The art of writing was transferred from Ireland to Scotland by St. Columba and his followers. It may have flourished at an earlier date in Southern Pictland at the time of St. Ninian's mission, as doubtless it flourished in the early British Church in England, but invading waves of heathenism had swept that earlier Christian civilisation away, and all traces of its sacred and liturgical writings are irrecoverably lost. But in connection with Iona there are many references to books. St. Columba himself wrote a volume containing hymns for the various services of the week. He possessed a volume containing the Prayers and Ceremonial for the Consecration and Coronation of Kings, which, perhaps on account of its beautiful binding, was called the 'book of glass' and considered to be of celestial origin". His last occupation on earth was the writing of a Psalter, and he was engaged in transcribing the thirty-fourth Psalm for it on the evening before his death. Baithene wrote a Psalter so correctly that a single omission of the vowel 'i' was the only

1 Annals of the Four Masters. For further information see Skene's Celtic Scotland, ii. pp. 423, 444.

2 Skene's Celtic Scotland, ii. 449.

› Facsimiles of National MSS. in Ireland, edited by J. T. Gilbert.

Hymnorum Liber Septimaniorum;' Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. ii. 9. The total number of books written by St. Columba was, according to tradition, three hundred; Leabhar Breac, p. 32 b. The same number of books was said to have been written by Dagaeus (ob. 586); Acta SS. Aug. iii. 656. ⚫ 'Vitreum ordinationis regum librum ;' Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. iii. 5. • Ib. iii. 23.

20

mistake which St. Columba could find throughout it1. There are many other allusions to books and writing, as in the case of the awkward monk who dropped the book which he was reading into a vessel full of water2, and of the impetuous guest who in his anxiety to greet St. Columba managed to spill that saint's ink-horn3.

Sometimes the monks wrote on wax tablets, ceracula, pugillaria, tabulae, with a hard pointed instrument, graphium, or stimulus. Cum in agro ipse sederet allato angelus Domini ceraculo eum litterarum docuit elementa1.'

Adamnan narrates in his work 'De Locis Sanctis' how Bishop Arnulf 'primo in tabulas describenti fideli et indubitabili narratione dictavit quae nunc in membranis brevi textu scribuntur 5.

In the Codex Sangallensis, 242, entitled 'De pugillaribus id est parvis tabulis,' there is a gloss written over v. 3, Sicut videtur in tabulis Scotorum. The parchment skins ('membranae'), the use of which superseded the 'ceracula,' were either bound together in the form of a volume, or assumed the shape of a long scroll". The word commonly in use for writing was caraxare, charaxare, craxare, crassare, or xraxare. The Irish monk Arbedoc, who wrote the MS. Cod. Lat. Paris. 12021, begins by invoking the Divine blessing thus: 'Mihi xraxanti literas missereatur trinitas.' Adamnan closes his work 'De Locis Sanctis' by a request that the reader would offer a prayer 'pro me misello peccatore eorundem craxatore.' The same Abbot closes his Vita S. Columbae with this adjuration, 'Obsecro eos quicumque volu

1 Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. i. 23.

2 Tb. i. 24.

* Ib. i. 25. Many other phrases and allusions to the art of writing have been collected together by Dr. Reeves in the additional notes to his edit. of Adamnan's Life of Columba, p. 359.

Vita S. Mochtei, Acta SS. Aug. tom. iii. die xix. 743.

" In Prologo Auctoris, Migne, Bib. Pat. Lat. lxxxviii. 781,
Westwood, Facsimiles, Plates x, xxii, xxiii, xxvi,

Ib. Pl. i, xv, xvi.

erint hos describere libellos, immo potius adjuro per Christum judicem saeculorum, ut postquam diligenter descripserint, conferant et emendent cum omni diligentia ad exemplar unde caraxerunt et hanc quoque adjurationem hoc in loco subscribant.' Specimens of the early Scottish style of writing survive in an eighth-century MS. Life of Columba by Adamnan, Codex A at Schaffhausen, and in the Book of Deer written by a native scribe of Alba in the ninth century. These two MSS. are specially mentioned because the facsimiles of the originals which accompany the careful editions of the books by Dr. Reeves and Mr. Stuart place samples of early Scottish calligraphy within the reach of every modern reader. Their ornamentation and initial letters, though less elaborate than those of the Book of Kells and other early Irish MSS., confirm the statements so often made in the Lives of the Saints, that the arts of designing, drawing, and illuminating were extensively practised in these early times2. Other monks were skilful workers in leather, metal, and wood. St. Patrick himself was said to have been accompanied by workers in bronze and artificers of sacred vessels3. It was recorded of St. Dega, an Irish monk and bishop (d. 586), that he spent his nights in transcribing MSS., his days in reading them, and in carving in copper and iron. Among the articles of most frequent construction were costly reliquaries for enshrining the remains of saints, metal cases of embossed

1 Caraxare seems to be a Latinised form of xapátte, and to point to the earlier form of writing by engraving letters on wax tablets.

2 The passages referred to are collected by Professor Westwood in his Palaeographia Sacra, Gospels of Meiel Brith Mac Durnan, p. 7. The epithet 'pictorium' in the passage quoted there from Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. iii. 10, is an erroneous reading for 'pistorium.'

3 Tres fabri aerarii vasorumque sacrorum fabricatores.' Colgan, Trias. Thaum. p. 167 a.

✦ 'Idem Daygeus episcopus abbatibus aliisque Hiberniae sanctis, campanas, cymbala, baculos, cruces, scrinia, capsas, pyxides, calices, discos, altariola, chrysmalia, liborumque coopertoria; quaedam horum nuda, quaedam vero alia auro atque argento, gemmisque pretiosis circumtecta, pro amore Dei et sanctorum honore, sine ullo terreno pretio, ingeniose ac mirabiliter composuit.' Acta SS. Aug. tom. iii. p. 659 a. Montalembert, Monks of the West, iii. 89.