72 FOURTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
§ 19. The Culdees.
After the expulsion of the Columban monks from the king dom of the Picts in the eighth century, the term Culdee or Ceile De, or Kaledei, first appears in history, and has given rise to much controversy and untenable theories.1 It is of doubtful origin, but probably means servants or worshippers of God.2 It was applied to anchorites, who, in entire seclusion from society, Bought the perfection of sanctity. They succeeded the Columban monks. They afterwards associated themselves into communi ties of hermits, and were finally brought under canonical rule along with the secular clergy, until at length the name of Culdee became almost synonymous with that of secular canon.
The term Culdee has been improperly applied to the whole Keltic church, and a superior purity has been claimed for it.
There is no doubt that the Columban or the Keltic church of Scotland, as well as the early Irish and the early British churches, differed in many points from the mediaeval and modern church of Rome, and represent a simpler and yet a very active mission ary type of Christianity.
The leading peculiarities of the ancient Keltic church, as dis tinct from the Roman, are :
1 To Adamnan and to Bede, the name was entirely unknown. Skene (II. 226) says: "In the whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing more entirely destitute of authority than the application of this name to the Columban monks of the sixth and seventh centuries, or more utterly baseless than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption." The most learned and ingenious construction of an imaginary Protestant Culdee Church was furnished by Ebrard and McLauchlan.
2 The word Culdee is variously derived from the Gaelic Gille De, servant of God; from the Keltic Cuil or Ceal, retreat, recess, and Cuildich, men of the recess ( Jamieson, McLauchlan, Cunningham) ; from the Irish Ceile De, the spouse of God (Ebrard), or the servants of God (Keeves) ; from the Irish Culla, cowl, i. e. the black monk; from the Latin Deicola, cultores Dei (Colidei), worshippers of God the Father, in distinction from Christicolce (Calechrist in Irish), or ordinary Christians (Skene) ; from the Greek KeWiearai, men of the cells (Goodall). The earliest Latin form is Kaledei. In Irish Keile as a substantive means socius maritus, also servus. On the name, see Braun, De Culdeis, Bonn, 1840, McLauchlan, pp. 175 sq. ; Ebrard, pp. 2 sq., and Skene, II. 238.
g 19. THE CULDEES. 73
1. Independence of the Pope. lona was its Rome, and the Abbot of loua, and afterwards of Dunkeld, though a mere Pres byter, ruled all Scotland.
2. Mouasticism ruling supreme, but mixed with secular life, and not bound by vows of celibacy; while in the Roman church the monastic system was subordinated to the hierarchy of the secular clergy.
3. Bishops without dioceses and jurisdiction and succession.
4. Celebration of the time of Easter.
5. Form of the tonsure.
It has also been asserted, that the Kelts or Culdees were opposed to auricular confession, the worship of saints and images, purgatory, transubstaiitiation, the seven sacraments, and that for this reason they were the forerunners of Protestantism.
But this inference is not warranted. Ignorance is one thing, and rejection of an error from superior knowledge is quite ano ther thing. The difference is one of form rather than of spirit. Owing to its distance and isolation from the Continent, the Keltic church, while superior to the churches in Gaul and Italy — at least during the sixth and seventh centuries — in missionary zeal and success, was left behind them in other things, and adhered to a previous stage of development in truth and error. But the general character and tendency of both during that period were essentially different from the genius of Protestant Christianity. We find among the Kelts the same or even greater love for monasticism and asceticism, the same superstitious belief in incredi ble miracles, the same veneration for relics (as the bones of Columba and Aidan, which for centuries were carried from place to place), the same scrupulous and narrow zeal for outward forms and ceremonies (as the observance of the mere time of Easter, and the mode of monastic tonsure), with the only difference that the Keltic church adhered to an -older and more defective calendar, and to the semi-circular instead of the circular tonsure. There is not the least evidence that the Keltic church had a higher conception of Christian freedom, or of any positive distinctive