having raised the sail-yards in the form of a cross, and having spread the sails upon them, we put to sea;" he also states that twelve such boats were necessary to convey trees to sea from the mainland for the repair of the monastery at Iona.1

It was only brave, courageous men, inspired by faith, that could overcome such difficulties in a religious crusade. We hear of them not only facing the perils of the sea, but at that time encountering the equally great perils of the land; penetrating inland, travelling at the risk of their lives among wild tribes, by no means disposed to receive the Christian religion, and dominated by Druids, who deepened their hold over them by the sorcery which is always powerful with the ignorant.2 Nowhere, unless in the Acts of the Apostles, will we find such heroism displayed or greater bravery in the presence of the dangers by land and sea.

Another important aspect of the Celtic monastery was its educative influence. Each institution possessed a school, and an important part of the daily work connected with it was the training of the young. Dr Skene says: "In the smaller monasteries the number of scholars was usually fifty. In the larger, of course, a much greater number were taught. Hence a single generation was sufficient to convert the mass of the people to be devoted adherents of the Church." 3

The Columban Church from the very first emphasised the importance of education, and the school of the Candida Casa attained

1 See 'Pinkerton's Lives of the Scottish Saints,' translated by Dr Metcalfe, p. 143. 2 "From writings we gather what was the appearance of these pilgrim Scots. They travelled in companies, provided with long walking-sticks and with leathern wallets and water-bottles. They wore long-flowing hair, and were clothed in rough garments. Yet they were possessed with accomplishments which their rough exterior strangely belied. They were apt learners of the languages of the countries which they traversed, and addressed the people everywhere with all the fervour of their native eloquence. . . . They visited England, France, Switzerland, Italy, the Mediterranean coast, Iceland, leaving in all these countries traces of their presence which remain to this day. St Gall has given his name to a whole canton of Switzerland."-Dr Anderson's Scotland in Early Christian Times, 1st Series, p. 162.

3 Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. p. 76.

great fame as an educational seminary. History does not tell us very definitely about the Pictish ones, but is explicit in its evidence that the Irish schools attracted scholars from other countries by their reputation for scholarship. Colgan, in his 'Life of St Servan,' tells us that fifty Roman monks came to Ireland to lead a life of stricter discipline and improve themselves by the learning of the schools there. Bede is also explicit, and says that many of the nobility and middle class of the Anglic nation joined these Celtic seminaries, and adds that Aldfred, who succeeded Ecgfrid, who was slain by the Picts in 685, was a man most learned in the Scriptures, and that for the sake of study he lived as an exile in the islands of the Scots.1 The scribes in these schools attained marvellous proficiency in the art of ornamentation. Some regard the Book of Durrow as written by St Columba himself, while part of the Book of Kells has been also attributed to him. A catalogue of the library belonging to the monks of St Gall, compiled in the first half of the ninth century, contains thirty-two entries under the head of "Libri Scottici scripti"-books written after the manner of the Scots. The outstanding features of such are in the decoration of their initial letters and pages, and Dr Anderson regards the decoration as the development of a school, native and Christian.2

These scribes also created a native literary impulse, and we get a glimpse of this in the Book of Armagh, compiled in 807 A.D.3 The work contains (1) Memoirs of St Patrick, with Confession; (2) St Jerome's Preface to the New Testament, with Gospels in their order, and a Latin prayer for the transcriber; (3) St Paul's Epistles, with prefaces chiefly taken from the works of Pelagius; (4) the Apocalypse; (5) the Acts of the Apostles; (6) the Life of St Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus. The office of scribe also gave an impulse to the writing of hagiologies.*

1 Bede, Eccles. Hist., bk. iii. c. 27; bk. iv. c. 27.

2 Scotland in Early Christian Times, p. 165.

3 Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. p. 423.

4 See Paper by Professor Lindsay, Trans. of Glasgow Arch. Soc., p. 14.

We thus see from the general evidence that the Columban monastery in Abernethy would be a Christian colony, a centre of missionary work, and an educative institution; it will now be necessary to grasp more definite details. There are three periods in the history of the Celtic Church: the first is distinguished by a secular order of clergy; the second by a monastic order; the third by an eremitical order. The first was called sanctissimus; the second sanctior; the third sanctus. The Church of St Ninian is the Church of the first of these orders; the Church of St Columba belongs to the second; that of the Culdees to the third.

It is with the second of these orders that we have now to do, and its distinctive features will be best understood by contrasting them with the first. Our knowledge of them is derived from a document of the eighth century, and we learn that the saints of the first order, which continued for about a century after St Patrick, were all bishops, 350 in number, founders of churches. They had one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius; they had one mass, one celebration ; one tonsure, from ear to ear; one Easter, on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox; and what was excommunicated by one Church, all excommunicated. They did not refuse the services and society of women (or, according to another MS., either laymen or women), because, founded on Christ, the Rock, they feared not temptation. All these were sprung from the Romans, Franks, Britons, and Scots. The second order consisted of many bishops and many presbyters, 300 in all. They had one head, our Lord; they celebrated different masses and had different rules; their Easter and tonsure were as in the first order, but they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries. They received a mass from Bishop David and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.1

The two orders must have somewhat overlapped each other, but 1 See 'Celtic Scotland,' vol. ii. pp. 12, 13; also Fowler's Adamni Vita S. Columbæ, pp. xxxvi.

the first was secular and the second monastic; and the predominance of the second over the first indicates the growing influence and authority of St Columba. We shall see in a subsequent chapter the development of the third order and the assertion of the eremitical tendencies, but in the meantime we must observe, as far as the history of this parish is concerned, that while the church of St. Bride, St Ternan, and St Servanus belonged to the first, the monastery of St Columba indicates the transition to the second order. We now enter upon the period when Christianity attacked paganism by organisation, by an ecclesiastical polity modelled after the pattern of the social polity, and resembling it in many features, and it was the genius of St Columba which gave rise to a Church in Ireland and Scotland, composed not of secular clergy but of monks, observing monastic rule and founding monasteries.

The Columban monastery was tribal, and existed for the good of the tribe amid which it was situated. But, like several others in Ireland, the ancient monastery of Abernethy must have wielded exceptional influence, from the fact already pointed out, that it was situated in the capital of the ardrig, or supreme king, who ruled over a large number of confederate tribes. This fact, along with the sanctity attaching to it from its association with the saints, already indicated, must have given it exceptional influence and made this monastery on the Tay equal in influence to the great Candida Casa in Northumbria.

Like the other monasteries, remains of which are to be seen at Clonmacnois and the Aran Islands, it would consist of scattered beehive cells grouped round a church or churches, and surrounded by a fortified enclosure, called a rath, cashel, or lis, with a ditch, near which was a palisade, usually placed for warding off wild beasts or brigands. The cashel was of pagan origin, and was indigenous to the country; it was at first accepted as a necessity for defence, and became a regular part of the monastic buildings,

continuing so until the twelfth century. Thus the Church in its structural organisation adopted the forms of paganism, and yet there could not but be differences, for the object of the latter was defence, while that of the former was chiefly seclusion. Miss Stokes points out that the pagan fort is composed of two or three areas, the interior one being an oval or a circle or a half ellipse, whereas the Christian one deviates from all these in taking in all the oratories and buildings it was formed to protect; that the diameter of the latter was generally 140 feet, and guarded generally by one wall. Within the cashel was the oratory or oratories, always rectangular, and made distinctively Christian by the symbol of the cross within. There was always a window to the east either square or arched by a single scooped stone, with an altar under it; the entrance was always at the western side. These sacred buildings were in the centre of the beehive cells.

Reasons have already been adduced for the supposition that the church built by King Gartnaidh was of stone, and not of wood and wattles; it has been pointed out in accordance with the testimony of ancient writers that stone churches existed in Ireland from a very early date. The Celtic churches of the early period (from the fifth to the seventh century at least and subsequently) were invariably rectangular, and never basilican in form. There is throughout the adherence to a primitive type, and "no apsidal termination exists among them;"5 most likely it was a type which

1 See 'Scotland in Early Christian Times,' pp. 77, 78.

2

Early Christian Architecture in Ireland, pp. 32, 33.

3 "It is more than likely that within the wall enclosure there would be seven churches or oratories-seven being regarded as the sacred number, and as identical with that of the seven Apocalyptic Churches in Asia. Thus there are seven at Glendalough and Cashel ; and generally two or three are grouped together. There are still to be seen the ruins of seven at Scattery and Innis Caltra in Clare, Tory Island, Donegal, Rattoo in Kerry, Inchclorin, Longford, and Aranmore in Galway."-Fergusson's History of Architecture, vol. ii. p. 229.

4 Early Christian Architecture in Ireland, pp. 35, 39.

5 Scotland in Early Christian Times, p. 129.