Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/156

 Each of the contending parties had to pay for the abbot's peaceful interference, and were mulcted in the sum of thirty times seven cumhals (a cumhal was the value of three cows); he was also required to give hostages for his future good behaviour, and to give up four of his followers to be hanged. Thus it will be seen that the Abbot of Armagh had become like one of the ordinary chiefs. Like them, he demanded his 'eric' or fine, for the offence committed, with the alternative of war.

There are few countries in which the Church has not, at some time or other, gained abnormal secular power. This has never worked for good. The weapons of the Church's warfare are not carnal, and when she lays aside the armour that belongs to her, and assumes that of the world, she ceases to be of any power in the pulling down of the strongholds of Satan.

It will not surprise us now to learn that not only at Armagh, but in most parts of the country, the Church became thoroughly secularized. Forced as it was to take up arms in its own defence against the Norse invaders, those arms soon came to be used in internecine strife. Abbots and bishops who ought to have been foremost in promoting peace, became foremost in stirring up causes of civil war, and joined in the battles themselves, forgetful of their sacred profession. In Munster the office of spiritual and civil ruler became united in one, and the succession of bishop-kings founded a kingdom so powerful that eventually it became the greatest in the whole country. The case of one of these bishop-kings will best illustrate the entire secularization of the Church, and the low ebb of spiritual life to which she was brought by the influences then at work.

A certain Felim united in himself the offices of