Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/72

 Vessels too became ceremonially unclean when any defiling substance had come in contact with them. This usage enabled them at one time to show their abhorrence of Romish teachers in a peculiarly irritating manner. Whenever a vessel had been used by one of those who followed the foreign rule, the Irish ostentatiously cleansed it, as if it had been defiled by the contact. They observed the Jewish ordinance of the Levirate marriage, that when a man died and left no seed, his brother should take his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. Consecrated salt was used in some ceremonies. Baptism was administered by preference in running water, and was most probably by immersion. This is mentioned in the lately-discovered Teaching of the Twelve Apostles as having been an early custom in other places. Some of these usages became modified afterwards; but there is abundant evidence that in the earlier times they were all observed.

A closer bond of union joined the several establishments where the rule of Saint Columba was followed than was usual in Ireland. True to the tribal instincts, the abbacy was confined to the kinship of the founder; but in the election of abbots all the Columban monasteries seem to have taken part, and the Abbot of Iona, who was in some measure the head of the order, might have been chosen from any of them. They regarded themselves as the same brotherhood, though living in different places and under different rulers; and this federation of the several monasteries continued until a very late date.

Several incidents might be cited in illustration of this. For example, when Iona was attacked by the Norsemen in the beginning of the ninth century, the relics and valuable possessions of the community were transported to Kells. Again, in the eleventh