Page:Life and death of the Irish parliament.djvu/7

7 in the ancient Irish Church is made certain from the penitential canons. Some of these, drawn up by Cummian, who lived in the first half of the seventh century, decree, “That if a cleric or monk, after consecrating himself to God, shall return to his secular habit, or marry a wife, he shall do penance for ten years, three of which he shall spend on bread and water, and shall ever abstain from the use of marriage”. Look again to the scale of penances graduated by St. Columbanus, who lived in the sixth century. He speaks in the twentieth canon of those who had wives when ordained: “Tf any cleric or deacon, or one of any ecclesiastical dig. nity, who after his conversion again knows his wife, let him be assured that he has committed adultery, and sinned as grievously as if he had been a cleric from his youth, and as if he had sinned with a stranger; because he sinned after taking a vow, by consecrating himself to God, and made void the vow. Therefore let him do penance on bread and water for seven years”. To the same purpose are the rules laid down in the Irish liturgy, and most probably brought to Robbio by the same Columbanus: “If any cleric who was married, knows his wife, after being raised to the ecclesiastical dignity, let him know he has committed adultery. The inferior cleric must do penance on bread and water, for four, the deacon for six, priest for seven, and a bishop for twelve years”.

Ecclesiastical celibacy in the ancient Irish Church is established by an irresistible mass of evidence, that all the sophistry of pleaders on either side the Channel cannot set aside. The express canons, the incidental practices of the Church, the constant traditions support it. Who could doubt the opinions of St. Gall in Switzerland, of Columbanus in France and Italy, of St. Columba among the Northern Scots? No objection was