bronze or silver (cumhdachs) for enclosing copies of the Gospels or other MSS., and leathern cases (polaires) for carrying about portable missals and other service books1.

Education was also carried on by these early monks. Their monasteries were seminaries for the training of the native youth, and were frequented by adult foreigners, who flocked to Ireland from all parts of Great Britain, France, and the Continent generally for purposes of study3. Among the distinguished persons who thus visited Irish or Scottish monasteries were Egbert and Chad, the French Agilbert, who succeeded Birinus as second Bishop of Dorchester A.D. 650", Aldfrith, who succeeded his brother Ecgfrith as King of Northumbria A.D. 685", Willibrord, the Anglo-Saxon missionary to Frisia A.D. 6907, &c.

While the seniors were exclusively engaged in the sedentary occupations of reading, writing, and teaching, the younger monks also laboured in the various departments of husbandry, at least so far as to provide for the wants of their own monasteries. When St. Columba visited the monastery of Clonmacnois the monks at work in the fields flocked together to receive him. St. Cuthbert and St. Furseus worked with their own hands. St. Gall went fishing while his monks

'Further account of these various articles is given in J. O. Westwood's Facsimiles, &c., pp. 80, 149, 150.

W. Skene, Celtic Scotland, ii. 75.

Erant ibidem eo tempore (A.D. 664) multi nobilium simul et mediocrium de gente Anglorum, qui tempore Finani et Colmani episcoporum, relicta insula patria, vel divinae lectionis, vel continentioris vitae gratia, illo secesserant. Et quidam quidem mox se monasticae conversationi fideliter mancipaverunt; alii magis circumeundo per cellas magistrorum lectioni operam dare gaudebant; quos omnes Scotti libentissime suscipientes victum eis quotidianum sine pretio, libros quoque ad legendum, et magisterium gratuitum praebere curabant. Bede, H. E. iii. 27.

Bede, H. E. iv. 3.

Natione quidem Gallus sed tunc legendarum gratia Scripturarum in Hibernia non parvo tempore demoratus.' Ib. iii. 7.

Vit. S. Cuthberti auct. anon, quoted in Skene's Celtic Scotland, ii. 422. ''Et quia in Hibernia scholasticam eruditionem viguisse audivit Hiberniam secessit,' &c. Alcuin, Vit. Willibrordi, lib. i. cap. 4.

Adamnan, Vit. S. Col. i. 3.

Bede, Vit. S. Cuthberti, cap. 19; H. E. iii. 19.

were, some of them, working in the garden, and others were dressing the orchard 1.

One short fragment of an ancient Celtic Pontifical survives in the Public Library, Zurich, in an Irish handwriting of the tenth century. The first page is quite illegible, having been made the outside cover of a book. Page 2 contains these words:

[De Virgine Investienda.]

(a) Permaneat ad prudentibus qui. lantia ... adferte copuletur

per.

virginibus vigi

(6) Oremus, fratres carissimi, misericordiam ut euntum bonum tribuere dignetur huic puellae N. quae Deo votum candidam vestem perferre cum integritate coronae in resurrectione vitae acternae quam facturus est; orantibus nobis, praestet Deus.

(c) Conserva, Domine, istius devotae pudorem castitatis dilectionem continentiae in factis, in dictis, in cogitationibus; Per te, Christe Jesu, qui.

(d) Accipe, puella, pallium candidum quod perferas ante tribunal Domini.'

This fragment is interesting as showing that the office for the reception of a nun into a Celtic monastery included, in addition to the ceremony of crowning, the formal presentation of a white dress, which is not part of the 'Ordo de Consecratione Virginum' in the present Roman Pontifical. Nor are (a) (b) (c) (d) found elsewhere, although a formula resembling (d) accompanies the presentation of the veil, in a tenth-century order for the 'Consecratio Sacrae Virginis' printed in Gerbert, Liturg. Aleman. ii. 96: Accipe velum sacrum, puella, quod praeferas sine macula ante tribunal Domini nostri Jesu Christi.'

And again in the tenth-century copy of the Pontifical of

''Alii hortum laboraverunt, alii arbores pomiferas excoluerunt, B. vero Gallus texebat retia,' &c. Wal. Strabo, Vit. S. Galli, cap. 6.

Egbert, Archbishop of York, at the presentation of the 'pallium' in the 'Consecratio Viduae :'

'Post haec imponis viduae pallium et dicis.

'Accipe viduae pallium quod perferas sine macula ante tribunal Domini nostri Jesu Christi1.'

The monastic was closely connected with the missionary character of the Celtic Church. The list of monasteries given on pp. 14-16 proves how widespread was the area once covered by its evangelistic agency and monastic development; but such development was not the work of one century, nor due to the energy of a single portion of the Celtic Church.

It began by the colonisation of Brittany from the British Church in the fifth century 2.

A British colony was established in Spanish Gallicia in the sixth century, where a Celtic See was occupied by a bishop named Madoc, c. A.D. 5703.

In the same century the Irish Church began to exhibit its missionary power. The Christianising of the whole of the north and north-west of Scotland and its adjacent islands was due to St. Columba, chief among the missionary Irish. He was Abbot of Iona, and patron saint of Mull, Tiree, Islay, Oronsay, and Lewis. Maccaldus, a native of Down, became Bishop of Man in the fifth century; St. Donnan of Egg; St. Maelrubha of Skye; St. Moluoc of Lismore, and Raasay; St. Brendan of Seil; St. Molaise of Arran; SS. Catan and Blaan of Bute. St. Columba's successors at Iona converted in a similar way the whole of the Anglo-Saxon population north of the Humber. St. Aidan, the Apostle of the Northumbrians (A.D. 634), whose diocese extended from the Humber to the Frith of Forth, was an Irishman

1 Pontif. Ecgb. (Surtees Soc.), p. 114.

• See p. 15.

The evidence on these points will be found in H. & S., Councils, vol. i. There was a mission on the part of the British Church to Ireland to restore the faith c. A.D. 550, conducted by SS. David, Gildas, and Cadoc; ib. p. 115.

and a monk of Iona; so were his successors Finan and Colman, the latter of whom resigned hi see after the Synod of Whitby A.D. 664, and retired to his native country rather than accept its anti-Scottish decisions'. Diuma, the first bishop of the Mercians, and his successor Ceollach, were both of them Irishmen, the former certainly and the latter probably having been brought up at Iona. Other distinguished Irish saints in England were St. Fursa, who planted Christianity at Burghcastle in Suffolk; Mailduf (Meildulfus), the founder of Malmesbury; St. Bega, the foundress of St. Bees in Cumberland; St. Moninna (Modwenna), the patron saint of Burton-on-Trent; St. Ciaran, or Piran, whose name occurs frequently in the dedications of Cornish churches 2.

But Irish missionary zeal sought a vent beyond the confines of Great Britain. Early in the sixth century (A.D. 511) the Irish St. Fridolin appeared at Poitiers, Strasbourg, and Seckingen near Basle, as the pioneer of future missionary hosts. Late in the sixth and early in the seventh centuries St. Columbanus and St. Gall, with their companions, traversed Gaul, Italy, and Switzerland, founding their chief monasteries at Luxeuil, Bobbio, and St. Gall. Soon afterwards St. Kilian, with his companions the priest Totman and the deacon Colman, penetrated to Würzburg, where he was martyred A.D. 687; and the later names of Fiacrius, Chillenus, Furseus, Ultanus, Foillanus, &c., celebrated at Lagny near Paris, at Meaux, Peronne, &c., indicate the Irish nationality of many who laboured successfully in propagating the Christian faith

1 Bede, H. E. iii. 25, 26.

2 Even for St. Cuthbert an Irish origin has been claimed. Bede introduces him to the reader of his H. E. without mentioning his birth-place or nationality (iv. 28), but recognises him as a native of Britain in his poetical life of St. Cuthbert; Smith's Bede, p. 269. The authority for his Irish origin is a Libellus de Ortu S. Cuthberti written in the twelfth century, but the earliest extant copy of which belongs to the fourteenth century. It has been published by the Surtees Soc. vol. viii. St. Cuthbert's Irish name is said to have been Mullucc.

in France, Belgium, and other parts of central Europe. Less known Irish missions also carried Christianity to the Faroe Isles c. A.D. 725, and to Iceland A.D. 7951. Thus between the fifth and eighth centuries the Celtic Church extended, with intermissions, North and South from Iceland to Spain, East and West from the Atlantic to the Danube, from Westernmost Ireland to the Italian Bobbio A.D. 612, and the German Salzburg A.D. 696.

Even beyond these limits Irishmen were afterwards and occasionally elected bishops, as Cataldus at Taranto and his brother Donatus at Lupiae in the eighth century, and another Donatus at Fiesole a century and a half later.

It will have been noticed that all the great leaders in this Celtic wave of missionary enterprise were of Irish origin, viz. St. Columba, the Apostle of the Picts and Scots; St. Aidan, the Apostle of Northumbria; St. Columbanus, the Apostle of the Burgundians of the Vosges district of Alsace; St. Gall, the Apostle of North-east Switzerland and Alemannia; St. Kilian, the Apostle of Thuringia; and Virgilius, the Apostle of Carinthia.

§ 3. ORTHODOXY OF THE CELTIC CHURCH.-There are no substantial grounds for impugning the orthodoxy of the Celtic Church. On the contrary, there is unimpeachable evidence the other way. But expressions have been sometimes used with reference to it which would lead to a different conclusion. Pope Gregory probably knew very little about the faith of the British Church when he claimed the right of subjecting to the jurisdiction of Augustine not only the bishops whom he should ordain, but also all the priests in Britain, that they might learn the rule of believing rightly and living well from his life and teaching 2.'

1 Recorded by Dicuilus (an Irish monk A.D. 825), De Mensura Orbis, pp. 29, 30. His work exists in a tenth-century MS. at Paris (Bibl. Imp. no. 4806), printed by A. C. A. Walckener at Paris, 1807.

* Bede, H. E. i. 29.