5G FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590 TO 1049.
The second period was monastic and missionary. All the presbyters and deacons were monks. Monastic life was conge nial to the soil, and had its antecedents in the brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the Druids.1 It was imported into Ireland pro bably from France, either directly through Patrick, or from the monastery of St. Ninian at Galloway, who himself derives it from St. Martin of Tours.2 Prominent among these presbytermonks are the twelve apostles of Ireland headed by St. Columba, who carried Christianity to Scotland in 563, and the twelve companions of Columbanus, who departed from Ireland to the Continent about 612. The most famous monastery was that of Bennchar, or Bangor y founded A. D. 558 by Corngall in the county of Down, on the south side of Belfast Lough. Comgall had four thousand monks under his care.3 From Bangor pro ceeded Columbanus and other evangelists.
By a primitive Keltic monastery we must not understand an elaborate stone structure, but a rude village of wooden huts or bothies (botha) on a river, with a church (ecclais), a common eating-hall, a mill, a hospice, the whole surrounded by a wall of earth or stone. The senior monks gave themselves entirely to devotion and the transcribing of the Scriptures. The younger were occupied in the field and in mechanical labor, or the train ing of the rising generation. These monastic communities formed a federal union, with Christ as their invisible head. They were training schools of the clergy. They attracted con verts from the surrounding heathen population, and offered them a refuge from danger and violence. They were resorted
1 Ammianus Marcellinus (XV. 9) describes the Druids as "bound together in brotherhoods and corporations, according to the precepts of Pythagoras." See Killen, I. 29.
2 See next section. St. Patrick also is said to have been one of St. Martin's disciples ; but St. Martin lived nearly one hundred years earlier.
3 Angus the Culdee, in his Litany, invokes " forty thousand monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of Comgall of Bangor." But this is no doubt a slip of the pen for "four thousand." Skene IE. 56. Bangor on the north eastern coast of Ireland must not be confounded with Bangor on the western coast of Wales.
1 15. THE HUSH CHURCH AFTER ST. PATRICK. 57
to by English noblemen, who, according to Bedc, were hospita bly received, furnished with books, and instructed. Some Irish clergymen could read the Greek Testament at a time when Pope Gregory I. was ignorant of Greek. There are traces of an original Latin version of the Scriptures differing from the Itala and Vulgate, especially in Patrick's writings.1 But "there is uo trace anywhere of any Keltic version of the Bible or any part of it. St. Chrysostom's words have beeu misunderstood to support such a supposition, but without ground."2 If there had been such a translation, it would have beeu of little use, as the people could not read it, and depended for their scanty know ledge of the word of God on the public lessons in the church.
The "Book of Armagh/' compiled by Ferdomnach, a scribe or learned monk of Armagh, in 807, gives us some idea of the literary state of the Irish Church at that time.3 It contains the oldest extaut memoirs of St. Patrick, the Confession of St. Pat rick, the Preface of Jerome to the New Testament, the Gospels, Epistles, Apocalypse and Acts, with some prefaces chiefly taken from the works of Pelagius, and the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, with a short litany on behalf of the writer.
In the ninth century John Scotus Erigeua, who died in France, 874, startled the Church with his rare, but eccentric, genius and pantheistic speculations. He had that power of quick repartee for which Irishmen are distinguished to this day. "NVhen asked by Charles the Bald at the dinner-table, what was the difference between a Scot and a Sot (quid distat inter Scottum ct Sottumf), Joh>s replied : " Nothing at all but the table, please your Majesty."
1 B iddan & Rtubbs, Vol. I., 170-198, give a collection of Latin Scripture quotations of British or Irish writers from the fifth to the ninth century (Fa-stidius- St. Patrick, Gildas, Columbanus, Adamnanus, Xcnnius, Asser, etc.], and come to the conclusion that the Vulgate, though known to Fastidius in Britain about A.D. 420, was probably unknown to St. Patrick, writing half a century later in Ireland, but that from the seventh century on, the Vulgate gradually superseded the Irish Latin version formerly in use.
1 Haddan & Stubbs, I. 192; comp. p. 10. Ebrard and other writers state the contrary, but without proof.
8 First published in the Swords Parish Magazine, 1861.