Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/316

Rh 304 CELTIC LITERATURE a rich Roman province. The British Church must, therefore, have been organized upon the municipal type as in the rest of the Koman empire ; that is, the jurisdiction of the bishops must have coincided with the civil govern ment of the Romans, out of which the later diocesan system grew. The intercourse, partly commercial, partly hostile, which took place between Britain and Ireland in the 3d and 4th centuries could scarcely have failed to introduce Christianity into the latter country. Mediaeval writers state that Christianity existed in Ireland before St Patrick ; and Celestius, the chief disciple of Felagius, and, according to St Augustine, the real leader of the Pelagians, was an Irishman. Indeed, if we can trust the statement of Genadius, who flourished at the end of the 6th century, the parents of Celestius must not only have been Christians in Ireland in the year 369, but must have known the use of letters, for, according to the writer quoted, Celestius wrote three letters, in the form of little books, on the things necessary for all desirous of serving God. This primitive Irish Church appears to have been principally, if not altogether, confined to the south of Ireland, the province of Munster forming an independent kingdom at this period, or at least one having but little political connection with the other provinces. In after times, when the fame of St Patrick had become established, and he came to be regarded as the sole apostle of Ireland, the saints of the primitive church, many of whose names have come down to us, were assumed to have belonged to the Patrician period, or were confounded with persons of the same name. In this way St Brendan, the voyager, born on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the county of Kerry, has been confounded with a later St Brendan who lived in the centre of Ireland. The church which grew up in the south of Ireland, though the offspring of the British Church, must necessarily have adapted itself to the political and social organization of the country, which was altogether tribal, and being without walled towns had none of the elements of municipal government which had moulded the church organization elsewhere. Some of the Irish legendary lives of saints of the early church, though, in the form in which we have them, not older than from the 12th to the 14th century, give us amidst a luxuriant growth of prodigies an insight into this highly interesting church, which the subsequent conversion of the rest of Ireland by St Patrick merely extended, but did not change. When a missionary had converted a chief and his Occa, or principal men, he became an adopted member of the tribe, and was considered to be a Sai ; in other words, he was given the same rank and privileges as the pagan priests had, Beyond building a round wicker oratory for the priest, no change whatever was made in the organization of the tribe. The course of study for the different grades of Ecna, Filidecht, and Fenechas went on as before, except that in the course of Ecna, or wisdom, the Christian doctrine was added. The practice of the different kinds of verbal incantation which did not involve distinct pagan rites some centuries later by the poets shows this. Fasting, prayer, and vigils were practised, and those who wished to embrace the ecclesiastical state, that is, to join the new learned class called later the Gradh JEclasa, or grade of the church, tonsured themselves, as did the students of Filidecht also, as we have before said. The Dun, or fortified residence, of the chief, around which lay always a village of the different classes of people who constituted the retainers of an Irish chief, became a kind of Cenobinm of a novel type. Some members of the Fine, or &quot;House,&quot; desirous of practising a higher degree of asceticism, went into the march-land, or waste land of the territory, and built a wicker hut and oratory. Others followed, and built their huts all around, and a new Cenobium, consisting of a village of huts and a circular oratory gradually grew up, which differed from the original one only by the absence of the ramparts and ditch forming the Dun. Afterwards the round tower, which was a mere extension of the circular stone Caisel, itself an imitation in stone of a circular wicker-house afforded a refuge and place of safety for preserving from fire and theft the sacred vessels and books belonging to those religious establishments, which were directly established for religious purposes. Whether a single Fine or the collection of &quot; Houses &quot; forming a Tuath, or tribe, became Christian, they were all of the same blood, and the right of succession to the property and government of the church remained with the Fine or &quot; House &quot; of the donor. The church within each Tuath, or tribe, which constituted the unit state of the Irish political system, was simply a spiritual Fine, or &quot; House,&quot; and could receive and hold land only in the same way as any other Fine. Hence the Comorb (coheir), or successor of the founder of a Cenobium, might be, and frequently was, a layman. This explains, too, the aristo cratic character of the saints of the early Irish Church, who all necessarily belonged to the families of the chiefs, as the unfree classes could not form Fines, or &quot; Houses,&quot; or enter those in existence, except by adoption according to legal forms. When a person of low birth appears among the saints we are sure to have some legend showing how he came to be adopted by somebody. As a consequence of this system all the Cenobia which grew out of the first, and the chapels which were established in connection with Cenobia to supply the religious wants of districts remote from the latter, remained under the government of the parent establishment. Nay more, the Cenobia founded in neighbouring countries by missionaries often continued to acknowledge the headship of the parent establishment. They formed, in fact, a religious clan, in which the abbot of the parent establishment exercised tho same kind of authority as the head of the ordinary clan. In this way it often happened that bishops, notwithstand ing the higher order of their functions, were under the jurisdiction of priests, and even of women, as in the case of St Brigit. This peculiar organization of the church continued to exist unaltered in Ireland during several centuries, indeed with few changes, chiefly relating to the position of bishops, down to the Norman Conquest. Tho Irish carried this organization with them into Wales, Scotland, England, Gaul, Germany, and Switzerland, where it was finally supplanted by the Benedictine order. When a Dun, and its surrounding village, in which Early Irish lived the various classes who formed the household and schools. retainers of a chief, became a kind of Cenobium, in which were associated together those who had formally adopted a religious life and those who had not, we can understand how a school could grow up in which Ecna, Filidecht, and Fenechas should be taught along with Latin and Christian knowledge. But even in the case of Cenobia which had a direct religious origin the same thing took place, because many persons of those professions embraced a religious life, and came there with their pupils, either with the object of increasing their own knowledge, or to partake of the literary life of the place. In the 6th century some of those schools had already acquired considerable reputation ; while in the 7th and 8th centuries some had grown into small towns, and were much frequented by strangers. Bede. tells us that in 664 many of the nobility and lower ranks of the English nation were in Ireland leading a monastic life, or attending the schools, &quot; going about from one master s cell (hut) to another.&quot; Incidentally we learn that one of those schools, namely, Gill Belaigh, had seven streets of huts occupied by foreigners in the first half of the 8th century. From all this it will be seen that