CHAPTER II. THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IRELAND. order of Presbyters. ASSUMING that the three orders of the saints pictured the The second leading characteristics of three periods of the Irish Church, Catholic there can be no question that the great feature of the second period was its monastic character. The principal points of difference in the constitution of the Church represented by the first two orders were these:-The first order was of Catholic saints,' the second of Catholic presbyters.' In the first they are said to have been 'all bishops, founders of Churches'; in the second there were 'few bishops and many presbyters, in number 300.' In the first they had one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius'; in the second they had one head, our Lord,' but no chief. In the first they observed one mass, one celebration'; in the second 'they celebrated different masses, and had different rules.' In the first 'they excluded from the churches neither laymen nor women'; in the second they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries.'1 The first, as we have said, exhibits a secular clergy founding churches; the second a clergy observing rules and founding monasteries. There were no doubt 1 They appear to have excluded not only women but laymen generally from the monasteries. Jonas tells us, in his Life of Columbanus, who belongs to this order of saints, that Theodoric, king of Burgundy, came to Luxeuil and demanded of Columbanus why he did not allow all Christians to have access to the more secret The entire Church monastic. Relative position of Bishops and Presbyters. monasteries in the earlier church, and, as St. Patrick tells us in his Confession, 'sons of the Scots and daughters of the princes are seen to be monks and virgins;' but these were accidental features in a church essentially secular, and the monasteries were probably of the earliest type, when the monks were laymen, while the clergy, in common with the church at that period, consisted of bishops with their presbyters and deacons; but in the second period the entire church appears to have been monastic, and her whole clergy embraced within the fold of the monastic rule. Bede well expresses this when, in describing one of her offshoots at Lindisfarne, he says, 'All the presbyters, with the deacons, cantors, lectors, and the other ecclesiastical orders, along with the bishop himself, were subject in all things to the monastic rule." The Irish Church was therefore at this period a monastic church in the fullest sense of the term, and the inevitable effect of this was materially to influence the relation between the two grades of bishops and presbyters, both as to position and as to numbers. In order to estimate rightly the nature of this change, it is necessary to keep in view the distinction between the power of mission and that of orders. The former is the source of jurisdiction, and the latter of the functions of the episcopate. When the two are united, we are presented with a diocesan episcopacy; but the union is not essential. A monastic church requires the exercise of episcopal functions within her as much as any other church, and for that purpose possesses within her the superior grade of the bishop according to canonical rule; but when 2 Omnes presbyteri, diaconi, cantores, lectores, ceterique gradus ecclesiastici monachicam per omnia cum ipso episcopo regulam servent. Vit. S. Cuthberti, c. xvi. 3 By the episcopal functions, as distinguished from diocesan juris diction, are meant those ecclesiastical functions appropriated to bishops in virtue of their orders, irrespective of any territorial supervision, such as ordination, confirmation, and celebration of the mass pontificali ritu. it became customary for the abbot of the monastery as well as several of the brethren to receive the ordination of the priesthood, for the purpose of performing the religious rites within the monastery, the tendency of all monasteries within a church was to encroach npon the functions of the secular clergy, and not only to claim exemption from the episcopal jurisdiction, but even to have within themselves a resident bishop for the exercise of episcopal functions within the monastery, to whose abbot he was subject as being under the monastic rule.1 The idea of transferring monachism entirely to the clergy of a particular district was not absolutely unknown in the Western Church. But at this period it was adopted by the Irish Church in its entirety; and when the entire church became monastic, the whole episcopate was necessarily in this position. There was nothing derogatory to the power of episcopal orders, nothing to reduce the bishops, as a superior grade, below or even to the level of the presbyters; but the mission, and the jurisdiction of which it is the source, were not in the bishop, but in the monastery, and that jurisdiction was 4 The Bollandists take the same view, and quote the case of the monastery of Fulda as an example. They say, 'Presbyteriani obliti distinctionis inter potestatem ordinis et jurisdictionis, dum abbatem presbyterum vident primatem totius provinciæ cui et ipsi episcopi subduntur, continuo eliminatam potestatem ordinis episcopalis effinxere. Quasi vero, ut ratiocinationem exemplo illustremus, Fuldenses monachi ad medium usque sæculum præterlapsum, presbyterianismum sectati fuissent, habentes abbatem presbyterum, jurisdictionem quasi episcopalem in vastum territorium exercentem, qui unum ex subditis monachis habebat, episcopali charactere insignitum, ad ea, quæ sunt pontificalis ordinis peragenda; qui rerum status continuavit usque ad annum 1752, quo Benedictus XIV. Fuldense territorium in episcopatum erexit bulla sua, data iii. Nonas Octobris 1752. Erat igitur et Fuldæ ordo, ut Bedæ verbis utamur, inusitatus; de quo tamen dicere licet, exceptionem firmare regulam, nec quidquam decrescere dignitati et necessitati ordinis episcopalis, si, propter speciales rerum et temporum circumstantias, extraordinaria via, alicui presbytero amplior quædam jurisdictionis potestas obtingat.'-Boll. A.SS., October, vol. viii. p. 165. 5 Eusebius bishop of Vercelli, and Augustine bishop of Hippo, united with their clergy in adopting a strictly monastic life. The presbyter abbot. necessarily exercised through the abbot as its monastic head. There was episcopacy in the church, but it was not diocesan episcopacy. Where the abbot, as was occasionally the case, was in episcopal orders, the anomaly did not exist. But the presbyters greatly outnumbered the bishops, and the abbot in general retained his presbyterian orders only. When this was the case, the bishop appears as a separate member of the community, but 'the presbyter-abbot was the more important functionary.' Bede, the most observant as he is the most candid of historians, remarked this when he says that Iona 'was wont to have always as ruler a presbyter-abbot, to whose jurisdiction the whole province and even the bishops themselves were, by an unusual arrangement, bound to submit;' and again, that the monastery in Iona (not the abbot but the monastery) for a long time held the pre-eminence over almost all those of the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts, and had the direction of their people.' It was this inversion of the jurisdiction, placing the bishop under that of the monastery, which Bede pronounced to be an unusual order of things. The episcopate was in fact in the Monastic Church of Ireland a personal and not an official dignity; and we find at a later period that inferior functionaries of the monastery, as the scribe and even the anchorite, appear to have united the functions of a bishop with their proper duties.8 6 Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatem presbyterum, cujus juri et omnis provincia et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine inusitato, debeant esse subjecti.-H. E., B. iii. c. iv. 7 Cujus monasterium in cunctis pene Septentrionalium Scottorum et omnium Pictorum monasteriis non parvo tempore arcem tenebat, regendisque eorum populis præerat. -H. E., B. iii. c. iii. 8 The following extracts from the Irish Annals will illustrate this :624 S. Maodocc Epscop Ferna dec. 652 S. Dachua Luachra Abb. Ferna dec. 713 Cillene Epscop Abb. Ferna dec. 766 Aedgen Epscop agus Abb. Fobhair dec. 769 Forandan, Scribneoir agus Epscop Treoit dec. 791 Clothchu Epscop agus Angcoire Cluana Ioraird, Suibhne Epscop Atha Truim decc. character Church de Gaul. Whence then did the Irish Church at this period derive Monastic its monastic character? Monasticism, as we know, took its of the rise in the East; but when Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, rived from took refuge in Rome from the persecution of the Arians in the year 341, told of the life of the monks in the east, and wrote a Life of St. Anthony, the monastic life became at once popular in the west, and all Rome became filled with monasteries. The term religio, or 'religion,' was given to the monastic institutions, and that of 'religious' to all who followed a monastic rule, in contradistinction to that of 'secular,' which was applied to the clergy whose lives were regulated merely by the general law of the Church. From Italy it was introduced into Gaul, and it was finally established as an institution in that Church by Martin, monk and afterwards bishop, who founded the monastery of Ligugé, the most ancient monastery in Gaul, at the gates of Poitiers, in 361; and afterwards, when he became bishop of Tours in 372, a monastery near that city, which bore the name of 'Majus Monasterium,' or Marmoutier; and this monastery became the centre of monastic life in Gaul." Church ent chan From Martin of Tours the monastic influence reached Monachism reached the the Irish Church through two different channels, and be- Irish came the means of infusing a new life into that Church, im- through parting to it a character which harmonised better with the two differtribal organisation of the social system and exhibited itself nels. in that marvellous burst of energy which not only filled Ireland with monasteries, but was carried by its monkish missionaries across the sea to Britain and the Continent. The legend which connects Patrick with Martin, narrating that Conchessa, Patrick's mother, was his niece, and that Patrick went to Martin at the age of twenty-five, and after four years' instruction received from him the monastic 9 The Monks of the West, by Montalembert, vol. i. pp. 452-460. Dupuy, Histoire de Saint Martin, p. 50. His biographer, Sulpicius Severus, says that he filled the |