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performed well on his instrument. 31 As we have already seen, the twelve saints of Ireland promised heaven to the unfaithful steward on condition that he should tell his master a lie, and so deceive him to his destruction. S. Carannog threatened to shut heaven against S. Finnian unless he would get into the tub he had prepared for him as a bath.32 Senan of Iniscathy threatened King Lugaidh to deprive him of heaven if he thwarted him, and he left assurance with his community that no man buried in his churchyard should go to hell. 33 S. Finnian of Clonard made the same promise relative to his own burial ground. 34

So much, then, for the ferocious self-torture exercised by the early Celtic saints. But in many cases there was a nobler motive in the hearts of these venerable fathers than one of mere following in the traces of their pagan predecessors, and outrivalling them. A clue to their conduct may be found in an incident related of S. Columba.

One day he saw a poor widow gathering sting-nettles. He asked her the reason. She replied that she had no other food. The old man trembled with emotion, went back to his cell, and bade his attendant give him thenceforth nettles only to eat. He had come among the Picts to be an apostle, to poor as well as to rich, mean as well as noble, and he would not fare better than the lowliest among those to whom he ministered. The story goes on to say that the disciple, seeing the aged master become thin and pinched on this meagre diet, employed a hollow elder stick with which to stir the nettles, over the fire, and he surreptitiously introduced a little butter into the hollow of the stick, that ran down and enriched the porridge. 35

There are, moreover, remarkable instances among the Irish ascetics of their standing high above a narrow formalism. Some travellers came to Ruadhan of Lothra during Lent, and he at once produced a meat supper, and, to exhibit true hospitality, not only sat down at it himself, but bade his monks do the same. Some travellers came to S. Cronan, and he at once produced all he had for their refreshment, and sat down with them. Humph!" said a stickler for rule, "At this rate, I do not see much chance of Mattins being said." "My friend," said Cronan, "in showing hospitality to strangers we minister to Christ. Do not trouble about the Mattins, the angels will sing them for us." 36

31 Silva Gadelica, ii, pp. 137, 191.

32 Breviary of Léon, 1516.

34 Ibid., p. 219.

33 Book of Lismore, pp. 210, 214.
35 Ibid., p. 302.

36 Vitæ SS. Hibern. in Cod. Salamanc., p. 548.

At the same time that the saints were vastly hospitable they refused to regale kings and their retinue when this was demanded as a right. It was one of the conditions of subjection to a secular prince to have to find him in food when he called, and to furnish his beasts with provender. Compliance with the demand established a dangerous precedent, for vassalage brought with it liability to military service. It was accordingly stubbornly resisted.

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When Maelgwn Gwynedd was hunting in the neighbourhood of S. Brynach, he sent to the saint a command to prepare supper for him and his attendants. 'But the holy man being desirous that he and his brethren and also his territory should be free from all tribute, asserted that he did not owe the king any supper, nor would he obey in any manner to his unjust command." Naturally this produced an explosion of anger, but it ended in the saint furnishing the meal, which the king formally acknowledged as being accorded. him out of charity, and not as a due.37

S. Senan absolutely declined to pay tax to Lugaidh, the petty local king. Then the king sent his race-horse to be turned out on Senan's pasture, saying he would take his dues in this manner. Accidentally the horse was drowned, and this led to violent threats on the king's part and demand for compensation.

The three obligations required of a monk were obedience, chastity, and poverty. Obedience, according to the Life of S. David, must be implicit. 38 According to the Penitential statutes of Gildas, a monk who neglected executing at once the orders of his superior, was deprived of his dinner. If he forgot an order, he was let off with half a meal. If he should communicate with one whom the abbot had excommunicated, he was put to penance for forty days.39 According to the rule of S. David, if a brother should even say of a book that it was his own, he was subjected to penance. 40 This, however, may be a later addition, for certainly, as we see by instances in the Lives of the Saints, it was not an universal rule. With regard to transgressions of the rule of chastity, great severity was shown, as the Penitential Canons show. A nun, who had transgressed, when she died, was sunk as an accursed thing in a bog. 41

It is difficult to say with any amount of confidence how many were the offices of devotion performed by the monks during the day and night, because so many of the Lives are late, and writers described

37 Cambro-British Saints, pp. 10-12.

38 Ibid., p. 128.

39 Præfatio Gilda de Pænitentia, caps. ix, xi, xii; in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i, pp. 113-114.

40 Cambro-British Saints, p. 128.

41 Book of Lismore, p. x.

the routine in the early monasteries very much as it was known to them in Benedictine abbeys of a far later date. They would seem to have had the Mass said, not daily, but on Sundays, and daily to have recited the entire Psalter; not, however, invariably in choir, but privately in most cases. They had, however, common offices: one only of these has been preserved, and is found in the Book of Mulling. It is that of Vespers, and is in part illegible. It began with an invitatory, then came the Magnificat, then something that cannot be deciphered, followed by three verses from a hymn of S. Columba. Then ensued a lesson from S. Matthew, followed by three stanzas from a hymn by S. Secundinus, and three from a hymn by Cummian Fota. Then the three final verses of the hymn of S. Hilary of Poitiers, the Apostles' Creed, Lord's Prayer, and a Collect. 42

Whether the Laus perennis formed an institution in the great monasteries generally cannot now be determined. We learn from Joscelyn's Life of S. Kentigern that it was the order at Llanelwy. It is spoken of as customary in Llantwit, Bangor Iscoed, Salisbury, and Glastonbury. But the authorities are late. The institution (dyfal gyfangan) is mentioned in the Triads and the Iolo MSS.,1 but neither can be trusted. If it were established, then it would show how close a relation was maintained between Britain and the East, and how that a movement there communicated itself rapidly to our isle.

43

The archimandrite Alexander, an Asiatic by birth, renounced the world about the year 380 and became a member of the convent of the archimandrite Elias. He remained in it four years, then became a solitary in the desert for seven, and then suddenly was transformed into a missionary who traversed Mesopotamia in all directions. He gathered about him a congregation of 400 monks on the right bank of the Euphrates. Later he established another in Constantinople near the Church of S. Menas, then one at Gomon, and died about 430. Alexander was a man of intense energy and of narrow views. The Bible, and the Bible only, literally interpreted, was to be the rule of his order. Because he found therein," Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," it was to be a missionary confraternity. Because our Lord said, "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor," therefore the monks were to be entirely penniless. Because He said, "Men ought always to pray and not to faint," on that account worship should be perpetual. But human nature did not allow each man to remain day and night in 42 Liber Hymnorum, 1898, p. xxii.

43 Myv. Arch., pp. 393, 408; Iolo MSS., p. 150.

. prayer, consequently the work of incessant prayer and psalmody should be the function of the community. This was the capital point of his rule, and this constitutes an important feature in the history of Monachism. It created so much astonishment in men's minds, that the name given to the Order was ȧkoiμnтo, the Unsleeping Ones. It would be indeed remarkable if the Laus perennis could have reached Britain as early as the beginning of the sixth century. The instruction given in the Celtic institutions was altogether oral. "There were no books except a few manuscripts, and they were highly prized. The instruction was generally given in the open air. If the preceptor took his stand on the summit (of the rath enclosure), or seated his pupils around its slopes, he could be conveniently heard, not only by hundreds but even by thousands. The pupils were easily accommodated, too, with food and lodging. They built their own little huts throughout the meadows, where several of them sometimes lived together like soldiers in a tent. They sowed their own grain; they ground their own corn with the quern or hand-mill; they fished in the neighbouring rivers, and had room within the common lands to graze cattle to give them milk in abundance. When supplies ran short, they put wallets on their backs, and went out in their turn to seek for the necessaries of life, and were never by the people refused abundant supplies. They wore little clothing, had no books to buy, and generally, but not always, received their education. gratuitously.44

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The routine in Clonard can be gathered from the Life of S. Finnian. We are told that on one occasion he sent his disciple Senach to see what all his pupils were doing. Senach's report was: engaged in manual labour, some are studying the Scriptures, and others, notably Columba of Tir-da-Glas, are engaged in prayer." 45 Owing to the scandals which had arisen through women being in. the same monastery or college with men, the abbots often swung to the opposite extreme. S. Senan would not suffer a female, however aged, to enter the isle in which he lived with his monks. In some monasteries the interior within the rath, with its churches and dininghall, was interdicted to women, and this interdiction had subsisted at Landevenec from the close of the fifth century for four hundred years. 46 At the close of the sixth century the rule was in full rigour in the monastery of S. Maglorius at Sark. Some went even further,

44 Healy, Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum, 1896, p. 202.

45 Vita SS. Hib., Cod. Salamanc., p. 200.

6 De la Borderie, Hist. de Bretagne, i, p. 517.

like S. Malo, who would not allow even a layman to come within the embankment.47

That in spite of every effort to raise artificial barriers, a very pure morality did not always reign among the monks and pupils, appears from the Penitential of Gildas; indeed, that reveals a very horrible condition of affairs.48

The diet of the monks consisted of bread, milk, eggs, fish. On Sundays a dish of beef or mutton was usually added.49 Beer and mead were drunk, and sometimes so freely that in the Penitential of Gildas provision had to be made for the punishment of drunkenness. At Ynys Byr, or Caldey Isle, where the abbot tumbled into a well when drunk, we are assured that S. Samson by his abstinence gave great offence to the monks. "In fact," says his biographer, "in the midst of the abundant meats and the torrents of drink that filled the monastery, he was always fasting, both as to his food and his drink." 50 The liquor drunk was not only ale, but also "water mixed with the juice of trees, or that of wild apples," that is to say, a poor cider and we are assured that at Landevenec nothing else was employed.51 At Llantwit Major "it was usual to express the juice of certain herbs good for health, that were cultivated in the monastery garden, and mix this extract with the drink of the monks, by pressing it, by means of a little tube, into the cup of each; so that when they returned from the office of Tierce, they found this tipple ready for them, prepared by the pistor." 52 This was clearly a sort of Chartreuse.

Few features are more amazing in Irish or Welsh ecclesiastical history than the way in which whole families embraced the religious life. In a good many cases they could not help themselves; the fortunes of war, a family revolution, obliged members of a royal family to disappear as claimants to a secular chieftainship, and to content themselves with headships of ecclesiastical institutions. But religious enthusiasm was also a potent power determining them in their choice. We see this among the Northumbrians. Bede says that the same phenomenon manifested itself there; for chieftains who were entirely undisciplined in religion all at once posed as saints, founded monasteries, and placed themselves at the head of these institutions. 53 Into these monasteries they invited their friends and dependents, 47 Vita Ima S. Maclovii, i, c. 40.

48 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i, p. 113.

49 Reeves, Life of S. Columba, 1874, p. cxvii.

50 Vita Ima S. Samsonis, in Acta SS. O. S. B., sæc. i, p. 175.

51 Vita S. Winwaloei, ii, c. 12.

53 Vita Ima S. Samsonis, i, c. 16.

53 Hist. Eccl. v, 23.

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