The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick/The Life and Acts of St. Patrick/Chapter 174

The Saint titheth Hibernia and the Dwellers therein.

Then at the Paschal tide, his accustomed devotions being finished, he went round the whole island with a holy multitude of his sons whom he had brought forth unto Christ; and everywhere teaching the way of the Lord, he converted to, or confirmed in, the faith the dwellers therein. And all the islanders, unto whom had come even the knowledge of his name, for this so strange and wondrous miracle surrendered themselves to him and to his doctrine, as to an angel of light, and devoutly they obeyed him for their peculiar apostle. Then this most excellent husbandman, seeing the hardness of the Lord's field to be softened, and the thorns, the thistles, and the tares rooted forth, labored to fertilize it so much the more abundantly with the increase of profitable seed, that it produced good fruit not only to the increase of thirty or sixty, but even of an hundred-fold. Therefore he caused the whole island to be divided with a measuring line, and all the inhabitants, both male and female, to be tithed; and every tenth head, as well of human kind as of cattle, commanded he to be set apart for the portion of the Lord. And making all the men monks, and the women nuns, he builded many monasteries, and assigned unto them for their support the tithe of the land and of the cattle. Wherefore in a short space so it was that no desert spot, nor even any corner of the island, nor any place therein, however remote, was unfilled with perfect monks and nuns; so that Hibernia was become rightly distinguished by the especial name of the Island of Saints. And these lived according to the rule of Saint Patrick, with a contempt of the world, a desire of heaven, a holy mortification of the flesh, and an abandonment of all pleasure; equalling the Egyptian monks in their merit and in their number, so that with their conversation and example they edified far distant countries. And in the days of Saint Patrick, and for many ages of his successors, no one was advanced unto the episcopal degree or the cure of souls, unless by the revelation of the divine Spirit or by some other evident sign he was proved worthy thereof.