Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/166

 CHAPTER XVII.

must now retrace our steps, and ask how the Irish Church itself fared in that age which saw the conversion of the Danes and the establishment of a branch of the English Church on Irish soil. We have seen how the old monastic system broke down, and ceased to be an effective power against the surrounding lawlessness. Some of its worst features, however, survived. From the first, the rule was followed that wherever possible the abbot of every monastery should be of the same family as the founder. This easily developed into a kind of heredity. Celibacy, though encouraged, was never very strictly enjoined, and often the abbacy or bishopric passed from father to son. When ecclesiastical positions became sources of wealth and influence, they were as jealously confined to the ruling families as were the offices of king and chieftain. In Armagh the one family kept possession of the see for two hundred years, and Bernard of Clairvaux stigmatizes it as 'an evil and adulterous generation, for although clergy of that race were sometimes not to be found amongst them, yet bishops they never were without.'

It is, however, not at all certain that this condem-

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