Two missionaries,

St. Modan and St. Ronan, in

connection with Ro

formity during his life, and the schism was in full vigour up to the day of his death.

We must place probably at this time and in connection with these events two missionaries, who likewise appear to have proceeded from the south towards the western districts and the Isles. These are Modan and Ronan. Modan appears in the Scotch Calendars as an abbot on the 4th February, man party. and as a bishop on the 14th November; but the dedications to him are so much mixed up together that it is probable that the same Modan is meant in both. Ronan appears as bishop on the 7th of February. The dedications to them are usually found so close together as to show that they both belonged to the same mission. We first find Modan at Dryburgh, on the south bank of the Tweed, and then at the church called by the Celtic people Eaglaisbreac, and by the Anglic population Fahkirk, now called Falkirk, both meaning 'the speckled church.' We then find him at Rosneath, in the district of Lennox, and near it is the church of Kilmaronok dedicated to St. Ronan.10 They appear to have proceeded to Lorn, where Balimhaodan, or 'St. Modan's town,' is the old name of Ardchattan, and where on the opposite side of Loch Etive, is again Kilmaronog. Ronan appears then to have carried his mission to the Isles. He has left his trace in Iona, where one of the harbours is Port Ronan. The church, afterwards the parish church, was dedicated to him, and is called Teampull Ronaig, and its burying-ground Cladh Ronan. Then we find him at Rona, in the Sound of Skye, and another Rona off the coast of Lewis; and finally his death is recorded in 737 as Ronan, abbot of Cinngaradh, or Kin

10 This is an example of a peculiar form in which the names of many of the saints appear in Irish. As a mark of affection, the syllable mo, meaning 'my,' was prefixed, and the syllable og, meaning 'little,' added to the name; and

when the name ended with the
diminutive form an, it was altered
to og.
Thus, Ronan becomes
Moronog, or my little Ronan; Col-
man, Mocholmog; Aedan, Moaedog
or Madoc, etc.

garth, in Bute.11 The church, too, in the island of Eigg again appears about this time, when we hear in 725 of the death of Oan, superior of Ego.12

An

abbot of

A new element seems now to have been introduced into A.d. 726. the controversies at Iona, and probably still further com- anchorite plicated the state of parties there. This was the appearance, becomes after the death of Cillene the Long, but while Feidlimidh, Iona. the rival abbot, was still alive, of an anchorite as abbot of Iona. Tighernac tells us that in 727, the year after Cillene's death, the relics of St. Adamnan were carried to Ireland and his law renewed,13 that is, what was called the law of the innocents, which exempted women from the burden of hosting. An ancient document, however, in one of the Brussels MSS. explains this to mean not that the bones of Adamnan had been enshrined and carried to Ireland, but other relics which had been collected by him. The passage is this: Illustrious was this Adamnan. It was by him was gathered the great collection of the relics (martra) of the saints into one shrine; and that was the shrine which Cilline Droichteach, son of Dicolla, brought to Erin, to make peace and friendship between the Cinel Conaill and the Cinel Eoghain.' 14 Cilline Droichteach, however, appears in the Martyrology of Tallaght as Abb Iae,' or abbot of Iona; and the Martyrology of Marian expressly says, Abbot of Ia Cholumcille was this Cilline Droichteach;1 .15 while his death is recorded by Tighernac in 752 as ' anchorite of Iona.' 16 Here then we have an anchorite who 11 737 Bass Ronain abbatis Cindgaradh.-Tigh. For the legends of St. Modan and St. Ronan see Bishop Forbes's Calendars of the Scottish Saints, pp. 400, 441.

12 725 Oan, princeps Ego, mortuus est.-An. Ult.

13 727 Adamnani reliquie transferuntur in Hiberniam et lex renovatur.-Tigh.

14 This passage is quoted by Dr. Reeves in his edition of Adamnan (Ed. 1874, p. clxv.), on whose authority it is here given.

15 3d July. Cilline Abb. Iae.— Mart. Tam.

Abb. Iae Cholaimcille an Cilline Droichteach sin.-Mart. Marian. lb., p. clxxiii.

16 752 Mors Cilline Droichtigh ancorite Iea.-Tigh.

was abbot from 727 to 752 during the tenure of the same office by Feidhlimidh. Cilline was not of the race of Conall Gulban, and therefore not of the line of legitimate successors to the abbacy, but belonged to the southern Hy Neill. The collecting of the relics of the saints by Adamnan is clearly characteristic of that period in his history when he had conformed to Rome; and Cilline's bearing the shrine as a symbol of his authority in renewing Adamnan's law connects him also with the same party. The results then of the controversy at Iona correspond with those which we have already found among the Picts after the expulsion of the Columban monks-that, besides the secular clergy who made their appearance in connection with the Roman party, there likewise came clergy belonging to the more ascetic order of the anchorites; and they now appear as forming one of the parties in Iona. The epithet of Droichteach means literally bridger, or bridgemaker, a name apparently little appropriate in an island where there are no streams large enough to render bridges necessary; but behind the vallum of the monastery, and extending from the mill-stream to the hill called Dunii, was a shallow lake, occupying several acres, which fed the stream, and which was probably partly natural and partly artificial. Through the centre of this lake, which is now drained, there runs a raised way pointing to the hills. It is a broad and elevated causeway constructed of earth and stones, and is now called Iomaire an tachair, or 'the ridge of the way.' It is 220 yards long and about 22 feet wide.17 In a hollow among the hillocks to which it points, and at some little distance, is the foundation of a small oval house measuring about 18 feet long by 14 broad, outside measure, now called Cabhan Cuildeach; and from the door of the house proceeds a small avenue of stones, which grows wider as it ascends to a hillock; and there are traces of walls which appear to have 17 Reeves's Adamnan, ed. 1874, pp. cxxxix.-cxliii.

enclosed it. It is difficult to avoid the conjecture that it
was the construction of this causeway which gave to Cillene,
the anchorite abbot, his epithet of Bridgemaker, more
especially as it points towards what appears to have been
an anchorite's cell, to which it was probably designed to
give ready access across the lake; and, if he constructed it,
we have only to look to an old anchorite establishment in
Ireland to find what afforded him his pattern. In the
island of Ardoilen, on the west coast of Ireland, already
referred to as affording an example of an early anchorite
establishment, we find that on the south side of the
enclosure there is a small lake, apparently artificial, from
which an artificial outlet is formed, which turned a small
mill; and along the west side of this lake there is an
artificial stone path or causeway, 220 yards in length,
which leads to another stone cell or house, of an oval form,
at the south side of the valley in which the monastery is
situated. This house is eighteen feet long and nine wide,
and there is a small walled enclosure joined to it, which
was probably a garden. There is also, adjoining to it, a
stone altar surmounted by a cross, and a small lake which,
like that already noticed, seems to have been formed by
art,' 18
There is no appearance of a stone altar near the
cell in Iona. In other respects the resemblance seems too
striking to be accidental.

It is during this period, while Feidhlimidh and Cilline The term the anchorite appear as rival abbots, that a catastrophe is Comhorba, or Coärb, recorded by Tighernac in 737,19 in which Failbe, son of applied to Guaire, the heir of Maelruba of Apuorerosan, was drowned abbots of in the deep sea with twenty-two of his sailors. The monas- monastery founded by Maelruba at Apuorcrosan, now Applecross, had therefore remained intact. The word 'hæres,' or heir,

18 Petrie's Round Towers, p. 423. 19 737 Failbe mac Guairi eires (hæres) Maelrubai in Apuorcrossan

in profundo pelagi dimersus est cum
suis nautis numero xxii.-Tigh.
Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 76.

Columban

teries.

is here the equivalent of the Irish word Comharba, pronounced coärb, signifying co-heir or inheritor,20 which occasionally appears as applied to the heads of religious houses in Ireland during the preceding century, in connection with the name of its founder, and which now makes its first appearance in Scotland. In the Monastic Church in Ireland, when land was given by the chief or head of a family, it was held to be a personal grant to the saint or missionary himself and to his heirs, according to the ecclesiastical law of succession. Heirs of his body such a founder of a monastery, who was himself under the monastic rule, of course could not have; but, as we have seen, when the tribe of the land and the tribe of the patron saint were the same, the former supplied the abbacy with a person qualified to occupy the position; and, when they were different, the abbot was taken from the tribe to which the patron saint belonged. These were his ecclesiastical successors and co-heirs. As such they inherited the land or territory which had been granted to the original founder of the church or monastery, and as such they inherited, as coärbs, or co-heirs, his ecclesiastical as well as his temporal rights.21 When the integrity of the monastic institutions in Ireland began to be impaired in the seventh century under the influence of the party who had conformed to Rome, the heads of the religious houses found it necessary to fall back more upon the rights and privileges inherited from the founders; and hence in this century the term of Coärb, in connection with the name of some eminent saint, came to designate the bishops or abbots who were

20 Colgan gives the following correct explanation of the word :--'Vox autem Hibernica comhorba vel radicitus comh-fhorba, a qua desumitur, derivata videtur a comh, id est, con vel simul; et forba, id est, terra, ager, districtus; ut ex

vocis origine Comhorbanus idem sit quod Conterraneus.'-Tr. Th. p. 630.

21 See Dr. Todd's St. Patrick, p. 155, for an account of the Coärbs; also Dr. Reeves's paper in Proceedings of R. I. A., vol. vi. p. 467.