Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/27

Rh the rude inhabitants of the Pictish highlands, or the English of Northumbria or Mercia. But the zeal of the Irish missionaries could not be confined within the compass of Britain. The Celt yielded not to the Northman in his passion for travel; then as now the poverty of the land was the peremptory cause of emigration: but the ambition of the missionary supplied a far stronger incentive to distant enterprises than the mere love of adventure or the mere hope of gain; and those who had once been known but as the pirates whose terrible fleets ravaged the coasts of Britain or Gaul, became the peaceful colonists of Christianity in nearly every land where the Teuton in his advance westward had established himself. From Iceland to the Danube or the Apennines, among Frank or Burgundian or Lombard, the Irish energy seemed omnipotent and inexhaustible.

To account in any sort for this astonishing activity we have to go back to the form in which the Celtic church had grown up, and observe how its loose and irregular organisation left its ministers free to choose their own work where they would. In other countries the diocese had been the basis of Christian organisation: in Ireland it was the monastery. This was the centre of the religious community; the abbat, not the bishop, was its representative chief. When gifts were made to the church the monastery was the recipient; the abbat was their steward. Round the monastery then the clergy of the neighbourhood grouped themselves as a tribe or clan. The absence of any fixed endowment was an insuperable obstacle to the formation of an ecclesiastical constitution after the common pattern. Almost everywhere the bishops were untrammelled by the cares of a definite diocese; often a band of many bishops is found settled at one place. The lesser clergy were driven to earn a living as they might, in the secular business of the farm or the plough. They had no hopes of ecclesiastical