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monastery, and that he was elected by the Culdee monks out of their own number, receiving his share of the altar-oblations.1

For two succeeding centuries, the names of the bishops prove their native Celtic origin, and lead us to infer the continuance of the Celtic polity which made the abbot the centre of jurisdiction. During this period, however, the primacy of the bishop was taking shape and growing in prominence. Kellach, the first recorded bishop, took part with the king and the people at a council at Scone, where all swore to observe the laws and discipline of the faith. His successor, Fothad, received possession of the Culdee monastery of St. Serf, in Lochleven, on undertaking the maintenance of the brethren of that house. In the first quarter of the eleventh century, Bishop Malduin granted the church of Markinch to the Culdees of Lochleven. His successor, Tuathal, gave them the church of Scoonie,3 and from a second Fothad, who came next to the see, they got Auchterderran. Events these, which not only indicated an improvement in the episcopal position, but also other changes of ecclesiastical polity; for we may discover in these grants of churches the first symptoms of parochial institutions. Still, all these native bishops were so far bound up with the effete and corrupt monastic system then existing, as to be unable or unwilling to check its evils; for, as the "History of the Foundation of St. Andrew" proceeds, after describing the corrupted state of the clerics there, "Nor could this monstrous abuse be corrected before the time of Alexander [the First] of happy memory, who, besides enriching the church of St.

1 Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i. p. 338.

2 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 9. This was in the year 909.

3 Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p. 116. Idem, p. 117.

4

5 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 189.

Andrews with many and valuable gifts, restored to it the lands called the Boar's Chase, with the professed object and understanding that a religious society should be established in that church for the maintenance of divine worship." Another indication of the growth of the episcopal power, is the fact that after the usurped ecclesiastical possessions had been recovered from their lay holders, they are found in the hands of the bishop, who was inclined to regard the whole as belonging to his see, and at last yielded up rather ungracefully to the newly-established canons, the portion of the lands which had fallen in through the deaths of the "persona."1

But the evil continued to linger, for although Turgot, a prelate foreign in blood and in polity, was elected to be bishop in the time of King Alexander, yet, as we have seen, a fresh house of religion was not established till nearly forty years after, and both agencies were required to overpower the earlier abbatial system and its clan corruptions. Still, the first step may be said to have involved all that followed, so that the statement quoted by Selden from the ancient chronicler of Durham has much of substantial truth in it.

1 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 193.

THE EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCH-Continued.

II. OF THE ORIGIN OF PARISHES AND DIOCESES.

DIOCESES AND PARISHES UNKNOWN IN THE EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCH-PREVALENCE OF THE MONASTIC SYSTEM IN IT-CLAN BISHOPS AND MONASTERIES THE PLOU OF BRITTANY -THE SAXON PARISH

THE CLAN TERRITORY INTO A PARISH.

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THE system of the Celtic Church of Alba is represented with tolerable accuracy in the following statement of Hector Boece :"Nondum enim Scotorum regnum, uti nunc, in dioceses diuisum erat; sed quivis episcoporum, quos ea ætate vitæ sanctimonia cunctis reverendos fecerat, quocunque fuisset loco, sine discrimine pontificia munera obibat."1

Neither dioceses nor parishes, in the sense now attached to them, can be traced further back than to the time of Alexander I.

The patriarchal idea which pervaded all the arrangements of our Celtic forefathers, led them to mould their ecclesiastical polity on the divisions of tribes and families, involving a personal basis of arrangement.

The monastery founded by their spiritual ancestor became the religious centre of the tribe or clan. It was endowed with tributes

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2

from which it appears that the saint, in his journeyings in the remote parts of Ulster, was "a nobili stirpe Sodani Fiaco Aradio nati in partibus Dalaradiæ tunc rerum potiente honorifice et devote susceptus." Here

and lands by its members, while the religious sway of the abbot extended over the territories of the tribe, as was afterwards the case with the bishops when dioceses came to be formed, so that it has been said, "every Irish seignory had its own [cathedral], whose diocess runned with the seignory bound." And as there were clanmonasteries, so it naturally followed that the personal relationship resulted also in clan-bishops, who were thus primarily bishops of a people, and not of a district. At times the early Irish bishops are described as bishops merely of a Dun or Rath, which, as being the seat of the chief and the centre of the clan, is used in speaking of the whole. Thus, A.D. 618, Tighernach records the death of Eoganus Episcopus Rath-sith-ensis (i.e. Munimenti Lemurum, O'Conor, vol. ii. p. 184). Dr. Reeves quotes a passage from the tripartite life

he built a church, from him called KillBoedain, " quam agris et possessionibus dotarunt posteri Sodani, et precipue nobiles familiæ de Kinel-Decill, Clann-Scoba et Sil-noiridhin, quæ se, suosque posteros ei ut patrono in devotos clientes consecrarunt."

2

(Acta SS., p. 728, col. 2; p. 753, col. 2.) 'O'Flaherty's "Description of West Connaught,” p. 1 (in Dr. Reeves' Eccles. Antiq. of Down, Connor, and Dromore, p. 303). It is in harmony with this state of things that our early chroniclers tell us that the bishops of St. Andrews were styled chief bishops of the Scots, that is, of the people who at its foundation, or by conquest of the Ardrigh of Alba, were subject to the monastery of S. Andrews, "in scriptis tam antiquis quam modernis inveniuntur dicti summi Archiepiscopi sive Summi Episcopi Scotorum." And

the history of the foundation of St. Andrews, written soon after the introduction of diocesan arrangements, further informs us that in common parlance they were still called Escop Alban, i.e. Episcopi Albaniæ, which style they also received, by way of eminence, from all the other bishops of Scotland, "qui a locis quibus præsunt appellantur."-(Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 191.)

On this subject Mr. Skene remarks "The territory forming the diocese of St. Andrews would almost seem to point out the limits of the Scottish population, and the districts actually occupied by them as a people. North of the Firth of Forth it comprised the whole of Fife, Kinross, and Gowrie-what may be called the central portion of the Scottish kingdom, which was peculiarly the kingdom of Scone. In

of St. Patrick,' to show that St. Cethecus, the bishop, had under his jurisdiction places in separate districts, among which were two, one in his father's country, the other in that of his mother, from which it appears that the personal connection of Cethecus with these places led to his being employed in them for the celebration of such offices as might be looked for from an Irish bishop of these times by their inhabitants, thereby giving him a claim to the customary rights and tributes.2

The incessant warfare in which the people lived, resulting in the subjection of one tribe to another, sometimes temporary, and at others permanent, must have thus led to frequent changes in the area of the jurisdiction of clan-monasteries..

Angus and Mearns it shared the churches with the diocese of Brechin in a manner so irregular and unsystematic, as to point to a mixed population, of which some of the villages were Scottish and some Pictish." -(Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, Pref., p. clxiv.)

1 Eccl. Antiq. of Down, Connor, and Dromore, p. 137.

2 This peculiarity in the constitution of the Celtic Church has been discussed, with his usual exhaustiveness and candour, by my friend, the learned Jesuit Father, Victor de Buck, in his Annotations on the Life of St. Colman Mac Duach (Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, Tom. xii. pp. 888, et seq.)

Quoting from an Irish life of St. Colman the following account of the origin of the see of Kill mac duach, “ Fundata itaque est in hoc loco Kill-mic-Duach, ita ut omnis

Aidhne regio et gens Guarii filii Colmani in perpetuum ad eum (S. Colmanum mac Duach) pertineant," the Father adds, “Quæ episcopalis sedis fundatio, plane diversa est a similibus per reliquum patriarchatum Romanum, et per Orientem institutionibus."

He afterwards thus explains these words -"id est, fundato templo Kill-mac-Duach, cum aliis necessariis ædibus, sedes constituta est capitis novæ progeniei ecclesiasticæ quæ progenies iisdem constet hominibus (nempe Fiacriis meridionalibus) easdemque terras occupet, ac progenies sæcularis cujus caput est Guarius ; ita ut S. Colmanus, per suos hæredes perpetuo dominetur in progenie ecclesiastica, quemadmodum Guarius per suos hæredes in progenie sæculari Fiacriorum meridionalium. Neque hoc singulare exemplum est: diceceses Enach Duin seu Annadown, Cill

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